Below the Tree Line Page 7

  “She’s right, Marilyn. There must be more to this. Is he some kind of advance man for a fracking company?”

  Marilyn blanched. “Don’t say anything like that. Don’t use that word. We don’t have that kind of land.”

  “So he’s after something else.” Loretta wasn’t going to give up. “Something he’s not telling us about.”

  “You’re too suspicious, Loretta. I told him we care about our neighbors.”

  Loretta grumbled and reached for the beer.

  “We do, Loretta,” Marilyn said. “And besides, I checked and he’s not tied to any oil drilling company.”

  “You checked?” Loretta studied her. “Maybe I’ve misjudged you, Marilyn. I know I’m hard on you. I know I am. But I don’t want my boy selling that farm just for money.”

  “What else would he sell it for? Fame? The Nobel Prize in animal husbandry?”

  “I think we’ve all had too much to drink, and I feel like I’m going to be sick, this time for real.” Felicity leaned back and then bolted for the bathroom. When she returned a few minutes later, Marilyn was putting on her shoes and Loretta was resting her head on her arms. In another minute she’d be snoring.

  “I’m gonna make some coffee,” Felicity said.

  “No thanks.” Marilyn stood up. She looked at Loretta, head on her arms, eyes closed. “Sometimes I envy you. My sister moved out to California so she could go off the grid. She and her husband make less than eight thousand dollars a year, so they don’t have to pay taxes. They have solar panels, and they barter for everything they need. But she told me she goes weeks without talking to anyone but her husband.” She winced as she tried to wriggle her toes in her shoes.

  “And you’d go crazy living like that,” Felicity said.

  “I would. And so’s my sister.”

  “And so would I. I live without money because I’m no good at making it. But I sure wouldn’t mind having more of it.”

  “That buyer—”

  “Save your breath. That’s not the way for me.” Felicity looked over at Loretta, now snoring softly. “We were going to have dinner, so I think I’ll go out to the kitchen and see what’s there. I’m starving and I was thinking about something I wanted to ask her.”

  “If you change your mind … ” Marilyn patted her arm and headed for the front door. Felicity heard it slam just as she opened the refrigerator door and stared at two shelves of brown bottles.

  “You’re a good cook, did you know that? Don’t roll your eyes at me, girl.” Loretta reached for the ladle and filled her plate with another serving of vegetable and sausage casserole. She grabbed the salt shaker and gave it a good turn upside down a few times, and then slid it across the table to Felicity.

  “It’s a miracle you’re still alive, Loretta.”

  “So my doctor tells me.” She wiped her mouth with her napkin and continued chewing. “Where’d you get the wine?” She nodded to the bottle of cabernet sitting near Felicity.

  “I walked down to Jeremy’s and borrowed it. He declined to join us because he says he knows how you get when you’ve found the whisky bottle.”

  “What’s that mean?” Loretta sat up straight and gave her head a little jerk.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen you drink whisky before. I guess you save it for really special occasions.” Felicity took a sip of her wine and returned to her meal.

  “Well, thanks for staying.” Loretta looked like she was getting ready to burp but she caught Felicity’s eye and modified her behavior. “Living alone does things to you.”

  “Hmm. If you say so.”

  “Look, honey, I’m sorry I did all that.” She looked over the dishes and casserole as though searching for evidence of her earlier behavior. But Felicity had cleaned the table, prepared the supper, and waited for Loretta to sober up, which she’d done remarkably quickly.

  “No problem.”

  “I fall apart when I think of Jeremy leaving.” Loretta seemed to lose interest in her meal and pushed her plate away. “And the idea of him selling the land. It means so much to me, to him, to all of us.”

  “I think he knows that. Even Marilyn knows that.”

  “She was awful pushy tonight.” Loretta scowled at her plate. “I don’t remember her being that bad.”

  Felicity placed her fork on her plate and slid it along the edge, back and forth a few inches. “Loretta, I want to talk about something.”

  “Sure, go ahead.” The older woman reached for her beer but thought better of it and pushed it away, along with her plate. “You sound serious.”

  “I am.” Felicity leaned forward and tried to gather her thoughts. “You know we found a young woman on my property yesterday, and I don’t know what she was doing there or how she came to die there.”

  “Sasha Glover.”

  “Yes, Sasha.” Felicity went out to the kitchen and returned with the coffee pot. She poured herself a cup and one for Loretta. Loretta poured milk into hers and Felicity added milk and sugar to hers. “Dessert,” she said with a smile, lifting her cup.

  “Good thing too. I’m full, honey. So, go on about Sasha.”

  “The thing is, I’d just seen her the day before. She came by the farm to thank me for being there when Clarissa died.” Felicity sipped her coffee. “I didn’t tell her Clarissa was already dead when Jeremy and I reached the car. She talked about Clarissa and how close they were and how Clarissa was talking to her about how important it was to appreciate the land and all. Anyway, she said Clarissa had something to tell her but only after she talked to me. She made it sound important.”

  “Whaddya mean, important?”

  “She didn’t say. I got the feeling she was hoping I knew, or could guess, so I could tell her.” Felicity turned to look out the window, now black with only the reflection of the women sitting across from each other at the table. “She talked about farming.”

  “So?” Loretta swiveled her coffee cup in the saucer.

  “I got the feeling she was disappointed I couldn’t tell her anything, but then I showed her a lady’s slipper and that seemed to cheer her up. Like it helped her make peace with Clarissa’s death.”

  “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

  Felicity turned over her fork and moved around a slice of sausage, pushing it through the vegetables. “When we found her in the woods she was just sitting there. I felt something was wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I stopped thinking about it because next thing I knew, Kevin showed up with news that Dad had run away from Pasquanata and no one knew where he was.”

  “Yeah, that would throw me off too.”

  “I never anticipated him doing that, Loretta.”

  “It happens, honey. It’s part of the deal.”

  “I guess.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “It just feels like so much of my life is coming apart. Maybe it’s Marilyn with all this talk about selling land.” She pushed her fork across the plate again, turning it over and using the tines to draw squiggly lines in the sauce. “I was completely thrown off balance when Kevin told me about it.” She glanced up at Loretta, who watched her with a half-smile. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight.”

  “I do,” Loretta said, “But every time I say anything, you have at me.”

  “I don’t do that, Loretta.”

  The other woman shrugged. “You and Jeremy … ” She shook her head.

  “Right now, I’m just worried about Dad.”

  “Sure you are.” Loretta leaned to one side and gazed around the dining room, as though looking for something else to do.

  “Anyway, when we were looking for Dad we found an old cabin out there.”

  “Lots of old cabins around.”

  “Someone had been living in it, so we searched it. I smelled something but I couldn’t guess what it was. But tonight it came
to me. It was vomit. I’m sure of it. Someone was sick in that cabin. And I think I got the same smell from Sasha when I got close to her body.”

  “You think Sasha was in the cabin when someone was sick in there? Or you think Sasha was sick in there?”

  Felicity shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know what she was doing on my property and I have no idea why she would have been in Zeke Bodrun’s old cabin.”

  “That was Zeke Bodrun’s cabin?”

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “Oh sure, one of the last Swamp Yankees, at least around here. Well, maybe not the last. You never know who’s living out in the woods hoping no one notices them.” Loretta leaned back and gazed up at the ceiling. “Jeez, I’d forgotten about him. And that cabin was still standing? It’s been years since he died. He’d be way over a hundred by now.” Loretta shook her head, her eyes dim with memories. “Old Zeke. Him and your dad used to be thick as thieves.”

  “I knew they were friends, but you make it sound like it was much more than that.” Felicity rested her arms on the table. “He was my grandfather’s age. Wow, Zeke and my dad? Are you serious?”

  “Dead serious, girl. Your family and Zeke’s weren’t the type to be friends, but your granddad and Zeke seemed to have some kind of understanding. They used to help each other out, and they respected each other. Your dad and Zeke shared a love of pranks and secrets and hunting. But even back then Old Zeke was getting kind of strange.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He’d get in his pickup and drive away and no one knew where he went or if he was coming back. And once he said he might never come back if he found what he was looking for.” Loretta snorted. “No one took him seriously. He was always playing mysterious, the older he got. He was normal for a while there.”

  “How do you define normal?”

  “He had a family, a girl and a boy, both about my age now, or maybe a little older. The grandchildren are around. Clarissa was one, of course, and there’s some others. He raised his kids like a regular family. I think he worked for some farm equipment company. Anyway, after the two kids were grown, he got a little strange.”

  “Not the kind of person I think of as a friend of Dad’s.”

  “Well, they were pals for a while. I think your dad did him a good turn and then he did one for your dad. Something about a gift for your grandmother, your mother’s mother.”

  “My grandmother? Faith?”

  “Yeah.” Loretta rested her forehead on her templed fingers, trying to recall the memory.

  “What else do you remember?”

  Loretta shook her head. “Not much. Sorry, honey. It was so long ago and I was just a girl. Well, a teenager and not interested in much outside myself. To me Zeke was an old guy even then.”

  “Maybe it’ll come to you.” Felicity didn’t know if she was disappointed or not.

  “All I remember is the whole thing was kind of odd, like if your dad didn’t take care of it, whatever it was, Zeke got it back or something like that.”

  “Oh. That sounds like an animal, an award-winning cow or something.” Felicity frowned.

  “Oh, Lordy, no. Zeke wasn’t one for animals unless he could shoot them.”

  “So not a farmer.”

  “Old Zeke wasn’t so strange back then. It sort of grew on him. He found that cabin and moved in and forgot about his family and they went on without him. Kind of strange, but then he was kind of strange.” Loretta stared into her coffee. “I’ll miss Clarissa. She had an old-fashioned name because of him, she told me. He wanted to hear that name continue. He was like that. She was kind, too.”

  “Clarissa.” Felicity whispered the name. She thought she would never forget it, or the woman’s death.

  “She was a really good pet foster mother. She saved Shadow.” Loretta looked over at the dog sprawled in front of the window, where he’d slept peacefully through the drinking bouts and supper preparation and now the after-supper chat.

  “He’s not this serene at my place,” Felicity said.

  “I don’t have a cat.”

  Seven

  On Friday morning, as soon as she finished her chores, Felicity drove down into the center of West Woodbury. She spent a few minutes chatting with the town clerk as she handed over half of the real estate taxes due for the quarter. In addition to being short, they were late, as usual, but no one seemed to mind. Feeling depleted, she walked down the street to the Morning Glory Cafe for a morale boost.

  Bettes and her husband, Gill, had inherited the cafe from his mother. Just before he and Bettes could finalize their decision to open only for morning coffee and pastry so both could get other jobs, a group of artists had bought the Mill, the old industrial building where the cafe was located. Business picked up enormously. As Bettes remarked often, thank god artists can’t cook. Felicity nodded to an acquaintance and slid onto a stool at the counter.

  “You’re looking down in the mouth,” Bettes said as she poured a mug of coffee and slid it across the counter to her.

  “Just paid my taxes.” Felicity reached for the coffee and wrapped her hands around the hot mug.

  “Say no more.” Bettes selected a pastry from the plexiglass case and set it on a plate. “Think of it as a sympathy card.”

  Felicity laughed and thanked her. A young woman dressed in paint-spattered combat pants and a heavy blue jersey slid onto the seat beside her.

  “I saw you coming down the sidewalk, and I just wanted to tell you how sorry we were about what happened at your place.” When Felicity looked confused, the woman introduced herself as Nikki, an artist from the Mill, and explained, “About Sasha Glover.”

  “Thank you. Did you know her?” Felicity put down her pastry to listen.

  “Yes. She wasn’t an artist, but some of us ran into her at art events. She was a buyer for a shop in Pittsfield and we invited her to visit the Mill. We were hoping she’d take some of our stuff. Anyway, when we heard she’d died on your land, we wondered what happened. And then we heard about the bobcat.”

  “I don’t think the bobcat had anything to do with her dying. There weren’t any visible signs of injury anyway.” Felicity paused. “I only met her once, when she came to the farm after her cousin’s death. What was she like to work with?”

  “Very professional. She looked carefully at things and asked a lot of questions. She knew what she wanted for the shop, but she was ready to look for something new.” Nikki shrugged. “We all liked her and it seemed like a real opportunity, and now she’s gone. I sound really self-involved, but most people don’t appreciate handwork the way she did.”

  “They’ll be getting another buyer, won’t they?”

  “Yeah, I guess. But it’s easier to buy cheap stuff from China than order regularly from local artists where each piece is a little different.” Nikki reached for a menu. “I just wanted to let you know we were thinking about Sasha. I liked her and I’m sorry she’s gone.”

  “I liked her too.”

  “We used to see her in the cafe, with her boyfriend.” Nikki’s nose twitched just enough to give away her feelings. She tapped the edge of the laminated menu on the counter.

  “Don’t know anything about him.”

  “You’re not missing anything. He was bossy. One time I saw them here, in the cafe. He was looking at a map and punching in GPS locations and she was bored, but he kept telling her to wait just a little longer.” She pulled a face. “He wasn’t very considerate of her.”

  “Do you remember when this was?”

  Nikki looked at her as though she hadn’t fully noticed her before. “You mean here, in the cafe?” She looked around at the empty booths. “Maybe a month ago. I’d just met her at the trade show in Pittsfield, so not so long ago. Something made me think they were looking for property to buy and he wasn’t sure where things were.”

  “Di
d he say that?”

  “Well, not exactly. She wanted to leave—it was getting late, almost ten o’clock, and he said we don’t have forever to do this, so let’s get this done.”

  Felicity repeated the words softly to herself.

  “You look worried,” Nikki said. “Is something wrong?”

  “No, just sad for Sasha.” She decided not to repeat what Sasha had said about land and heritage. “Do you remember his name?”

  Nikki shook her head. “Kyle something. I’m sorry about Sasha. Like I said, we all really liked her. And her dying on your land has to make things unpleasant for you. I didn’t mean to bring up anything that’s a problem.” Nikki didn’t seem to know what to do with the menu now and slid it into a slot in the metal holder for napkins. “I think I’ll come back later. It’s too early for food for me.”

  After Nikki left, Felicity listened to Bettes chatting with Gill in the kitchen, watched a car drive by, and heard the faint sounds of a radio playing elsewhere, perhaps in one of the studios above. She selected one of the local newspapers left stacked in a corner by the door and began paging through it. Since finding Sasha dead in her woods, she had found her thoughts drifting back to the night she’d fired her shotgun into the apple orchard. She’d tried to put the experience out of her mind, as though she really had imagined an intruder trying to get into her farmhouse. But Sasha’s death had ended her complacency.

  And now this report, of Sasha and her boyfriend arguing in the cafe, perhaps not far from where she was sitting right now, sent chills up Felicity’s spine. Sasha had come to Tall Tree Farm right after her cousin’s death to learn something, something important that Clarissa had not been willing to tell her until after she’d spoken with Felicity, but she never got the chance. At this point, Felicity felt she couldn’t just walk away. She rifled through the paper looking for Sasha’s obituary but found only the paid announcement, which was as brief as anyone could make it.