Below the Tree Line Page 8

  “Bettes,” Felicity began, dropping the newspaper on the counter, “did you ever hear of a secret about the woods around here?”

  Bettes shook her head. “My dad took me out scavenging once. We were supposed to take a road trip out West but he got laid off. But he didn’t want me to miss out, so we went out to the Berkshires and hiked around and found all sorts of Indian arrowheads and pieces of pottery.”

  “Wow! That’s so cool.” Felicity smiled, thinking how fortunate Bettes was. “I had no idea you could find things like that around here.”

  “You can’t.” Bettes picked up the newspaper, folded it neatly, and returned it to the stack. “My dad had salted the hiking trail so I wouldn’t be disappointed. There’s nothing hidden out there.” She crossed her arms but went on smiling at the memory.

  Felicity left her pickup parked in front of the cafe and headed for the town’s main street. She walked along a row of storefronts, with the fabric shop on the east end and Trunks and Treasures at the other. Between them was the Flagg Insurance Company, where insurance and real estate agents rented desk space. Seton Flagg had given up sales in favor of building management, and then ran for local office. Since being elected to the Massachusetts General Court as a representative for the district that included West Woodbury, he had learned the art of letting the business run itself. He was sometimes there and sometimes not, but today he’d returned to the town for office hours.

  Felicity and her parents had sought out Seton Flagg with a number of issues over the years, attended his fundraisers, which were mostly ten-dollar-a-person bean suppers, and knew his extended family. He was the first person Felicity thought of when she thought of government. She could hear his horsey laugh when she opened the front door.

  “He’s in the back,” a woman at a desk said without pausing in her typing. She had her coat draped over her shoulders and fingerless gloves on her hands, a sure sign that Seton was meeting with a steady stream of constituents and the front door had been opening and closing all morning. Felicity stopped to share news about her dad before threading her way among the desks to the two-room office in the back.

  “Hi, Felicity!” A young woman in a navy suit, white blouse, and low-heeled navy shoes greeted her. Alexis had joined the office soon after college and had a natural ease with people. “Representative Flagg is in a meeting, but he’ll be out soon.” Three men hunched together in a corner, speaking in soft voices, and two women sitting on a bench beneath a window shared an image on a cell phone. “Let me see what’s up now.” Alexis rose and pushed open the door that was already standing ajar. She murmured, and a moment later Seton burst into the room.

  Felicity often found Seton Flagg a little overwhelming, with his over-the-top greeting, his effusive enthusiasms for all things West Woodbury, and his intense expression no matter what anyone was talking about. Tall, with unruly red hair and the light pink skin that went with it, he seemed to need a lot of oxygen, and Felicity often felt drained after spending time with him. It was a reminder of how quiet her life was. She sat down in front of his desk and relayed her conversations with Sasha Glover and with Marilyn Kvorak.

  “Sasha Glover? Terrible.” Seton shook his head. “Clarissa Jenkins? Sad, very sad. Nice woman.” He frowned. “You think she knew something about your property and wanted you to know?”

  “Sasha seemed to think Clarissa had something to tell me but wouldn’t talk about it until she’d spoken with me first,” Felicity explained. Now that she’d said it openly, she wondered if it really sounded as odd as it seemed. But she’d liked Sasha, and got the sense the young woman was trustworthy and reliable. Something had driven her to the farm, and Felicity wasn’t going to abandon her and her memory until she knew what that was. When she thought about the offer from Marilyn’s client, she was certain she was on the right track.

  Seton’s fleshy cheeks and nose folded in, and his red hair trembled. “Nope, I haven’t heard any rumors about your land or that area.” He lifted his hand. “But let’s check.” He swung around in his chair to face his computer, punched a few keys on his keyboard, and peered at the screen, looking it up and down as though the words were riding an escalator. “Nope again. Nothing about your property or even our county on my radar.” He rested his elbow on the desk and continued to stare at the computer.

  “I thought you might know if something was going on that might push investors to start buying up land,” Felicity said.

  “Out here? That would be something.”

  “Sasha didn’t say that, but like I mentioned, Clarissa left her with a feeling that it had to do with land, and she talked a lot about that.” Felicity paused. “And Marilyn’s client’s offer was very impressive.”

  Seton pursed his lips and studied her. “Made you wonder?”

  Felicity nodded.

  “Hmm. Would me too.” He leaned to the other side in his chair and punched a few more keys, scanning the text and images.

  “I figured if there was anything to know, you’d know it. The government’s not up to anything?”

  Seton jerked his head back. “It’s always up to something, but I assure you, Miss Felicity O’Brien, it’s not up to anything out here.” He sighed and swiveled around in his chair. “I wish. We could use some more jobs out here, repair some of those bridges we risk our lives on every day. Sometimes I think no one even knows we’re alive out here.” He swung back in his chair. “But in answer to your question, no, whatever Clarissa Jenkins wanted to tell you, it doesn’t look like it’s

  anything tied to the state government. And that Gentile guy is nowheres in my stuff.”

  Felicity stood up and thanked him for seeing her.

  “But I’ll keep an ear out,” Seton said, standing up also. “And you let me know what you find out. It does sound like something but I can’t say what.” He walked with her to the door. “How’s your dad?”

  Felicity stepped out onto the sidewalk. The air was brisk, the cold end of winter that held a hint of the spring season to come. She’d let herself be deceived by the warmth of the sun and wore only a light Polartec jacket. She stopped to zip it up. Across the street she saw a man standing on the opposite sidewalk, and at first she was amused to think he was doing the same thing—zipping up a jacket after misjudging the warmth. But it wasn’t a jacket zipper he was holding in his hands.

  Lance Gauthier was shuffling through a number of scratch tickets, frowning and scowling. After doing this once or twice, he tidied them together and tore the bunch in half. He turned to the doorway behind him, where a small trash barrel was positioned. Barely noticing what he was doing, he tossed the torn pieces into the barrel and walked up the sidewalk, his fists balled at his sides. Most of the tickets made it into the barrel, but a few pieces of shiny paper floated to the ground. Lance didn’t notice. He was already halfway up the street to his truck when the fluttering fragments came to rest on the cracked cement.

  Felicity waited until Lance had driven through the intersection, then crossed the street to the cramped convenience store. She gathered up the fragments of the lottery tickets and shuffled them into a neat pile. Inside the trash barrel she saw the other pieces. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Lance Gauthier had just lost three hundred dollars on thirty ten-dollar scratch tickets. She dropped the papers into the trash can and headed back to her pickup. Could Lance’s spending on lottery tickets be behind his eagerness to include extra land in the cutting plan? She understood the pressure of too many bills and too little cash. Holding thousands of dollars in assets didn’t help when the bills came due. But she’d never felt so pressed for money that she’d considered exploiting anyone. If Lance was spending hundreds of dollars on lottery tickets in one go, then to her mind he’d lost his perspective, and that meant he was capable of anything. It also meant she’d have to keep a closer eye on him.

  With that resolve in mind, Felicity turned her thoughts back to her me
eting with Seton Flagg. Even though he’d reassured her, she wasn’t satisfied. Seton was well known for his uncanny ability to suss out what was coming down the pike, but that could mean only that Clarissa’s news was not yet on his horizon.

  Felicity had one more idea for a way to set her mind at rest. She looked up at the sky. Noon. Warm. Lunchtime.

  A single truck was parked in the sandy lot at the head of the trail leading into the woods. She parked alongside and climbed out of her pickup. She checked the hood of the other truck, felt the warmth of a cooling engine, and stepped onto the trail. She dodged a barrier with a Do Not Enter sign hanging from the bar and continued walking. She listened to the friendly sound of frozen ground crunching under her feet and inhaled the crisp, fresh fragrance of crushed grass. After a half hour she emerged into a clearing that ran through the countryside, the pathway for high-tension lines.

  Three months ago, on a Sunday morning, she’d run into an old school friend, Handly Matthews, outside the Morning Glory Cafe. With his love of the outdoors, Handly had surprised everyone by going to law school. And then he surprised everyone again when he went to work for utility companies, identifying and clearing rights of way for utility companies all over the United States. Everyone was mad at the utility companies, he said, but no one was mad at him. He liked talking to people and he was a good listener.

  Handly had surveyed in Montana and New Mexico and now was back in Massachusetts. But not for long, he said. He never knew for sure where he would go next until he went. He loved the uncertainty of his life and traipsing around new territory. As he’d told Felicity, he was especially good at finding spots where he could relax, maybe eat lunch, hike a bit, and then get back to work without losing any time. He’d told her about a new place he’d found for lunch, and she set out along the clearing to find him. After hiking for almost half a mile, she heard someone call out.

  “Hey, you!” Handly swept his arm in a wide arc. Felicity waved back and hiked up the side of the open swath of land to the rocks where her friend sat with his thermos and sandwich. “Am I getting a visitor out here?”

  “Looks like it.” Felicity hopped up onto a nearby boulder and looked down into the valley. “Nice out here.” Even with the sun full on her, the wind blowing up through the pathway chilled her.

  “How’d you find me?” Handly rested the thermos on his thigh.

  “You told me where you were checking things and eating lunch these days, and I figured out which trail you had to use to get in here.” Felicity had to admit he’d picked a beautiful spot. Over the hill was a well-traveled road, but only occasionally did she hear cars. The trees, even in their bare winter state, muted most of the traffic noise. She wished she had more time to find places like this and enjoy them.

  “You ignored all the ‘do not enter’ signs, didn’t you?”

  “I did. What did you expect?”

  Handly laughed. He sounded so relaxed, and Felicity guessed his easy way of reacting to people helped win over skeptical landowners. For him, getting permission to cross private property to either build or service utilities was easy. “So are you here to flirt with me, or do you want something?” he asked.

  “Do I flirt?”

  “No, big fail there, Felicity. Big fail.”

  She laughed. “I do have an agenda.”

  “Go for it.”

  “Where do you go after here?”

  He looked at her, waited, then blinked and shrugged. “That’s your question? Okay, I’m going back out West, probably Montana again. I’m just about done here.”

  “Done because you don’t like what the utility company offered, or done because there was nothing offered?” She pressed the palms of her hands onto the warm stone. It smelled so clean and fresh out here despite the heavy wires above her.

  Once again, he looked at her as though her question was odd, unexpected. But he answered it anyway. “Nothing more out here for me. No work, if that’s what you mean. This was a small job and I took it because the money was okay and I like to come back to New England once in a while, see family and get out in the countryside.” He waited for her to comment. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

  She nodded.

  “Why?” Handly rested the thermos on the boulder and gave her all his attention.

  “I was just wondering if a utility company was up to something and keeping it quiet. Since you’re working on something out here, you might be the only one outside a board room to know about it.” She turned to look at him, letting him take it in. “You’re pretty good at figuring out whatever the hidden agenda is.”

  He shook his head several times. “No one’s even thinking about anything new out here. First, the money is out West, and the resistance to just about everything is here in the East.” His face warmed with a broad smile. “You might think I’m in on all the secret stuff, but only if my supervisor is pissed at his boss.”

  “And is he pissed at his boss?” Felicity grinned.

  “Wicked pissed.”

  “So? What can you tell me?”

  “‘If Mr. Effing Genius ever gets his head out of his ass you might get back East in the next millennium but don’t count on it.’” He spoke in a whiny, nasal voice, with his lips pursed and his nose wriggling.

  “You don’t like your boss and he doesn’t like his boss.” Felicity laughed and Handly joined in.

  “That obvious?” He sobered. “So, no, nothing going on here. What got you worrying about it? Someone trying to scare you into selling your place?”

  Felicity brushed the grit from her hands and rubbed her palms down her thighs. Now that she’d gotten the answer she’d hoped for, she relaxed. In doing so, she realized just how stressed Marilyn Kvorak’s news had made her. She was more than relieved. “Someone has been sniffing around the larger farms in West Woodbury offering big bucks. Much more money than the land is worth.”

  “And you thought that meant a stealth invasion by some big bad utility company.” Handly smiled at her and held out half of his sandwich. She shook her head. He took a bite and went on talking after a minute. “Nope, they can’t really do things like that, but they’d sure like to.”

  “You keeping them honest?”

  He grinned, took another bite, and waved the sandwich at her in lieu of tipping his hat. “Something like that.” He finished his lunch, then crushed the plastic bag and stuffed it into a soft-sided lunch box. “Rest easy, Felicity. It’s not anyone I’m connected with. My guess is he’s an independent contractor, maybe looking for a quiet piece of land that the real owner wants without anyone knowing he’s out here.”

  “Hmm. A straw buyer.” She considered that. “Would a straw buyer want to keep his name secret?”

  “Sure. If the real buyer wants to avoid attention, he’d want his people to do the same.” Handly dropped the lunch box like a football and gave it a kick, sending it flying to land right beside his bag of tools. “Don’t worry too much about it. Whoever he is, it’ll come out. It always does.”

  Eight

  Saturday morning was visiting day at Tall Tree Farm, and Felicity looked forward to it. After her conversations with Seton Flagg and Handly Matthews, she’d begun to feel confident that she could handle whatever it was the mystery buyer was up to. Whoever it was didn’t have the government as backup.

  Felicity slid open the barn door and chivvied her small flock outside and over to the paddock. She spread out hay and filled the water troughs, then left them to graze while she finished her morning chores. The three fiber artists who owned the sheep arrived on schedule and, as expected, bleary-eyed at eleven o’clock in the morning. Felicity met them at the fence and listened to them admire Minnie, Lady Bountiful, and Jezebel, her three charges, each name chosen by the individual sheep’s owner.

  The artists seemed satisfied with leaning against a railing and admiring their stock, but Felicity was taking no
chances. She led each animal over to the fence, undid its cloth coat, and urged the specific owner to check out the wool. She combed it out every Friday afternoon in anticipation of the Saturday visit but she wanted to make sure the artists were familiar with the coat. She didn’t want any surprises after the first shearing, which was coming up soon.

  Nola Townsend leaned over Minnie and cooed to her as she ran her strong hands through the thick coat. She grabbed tufts of wool, literally getting a feel for it. She rubbed the wool between her fingers and pressed them onto Minnie’s back. Minnie munched on a carrot, a favorite treat that was sure to keep her rooted to the spot while Nola went through her inspection. On any other Saturday morning, Felicity would have spent more time trying to engage the artists in learning about their sheep. She was a firm believer in general interest leading to skill and skill leading to commitment. But today she had other issues on her mind, namely Nathan Holyoake and Sasha Glover.

  She waved to the fiber artists as they drove down the driveway after their brief visit and hurried to her pickup. A few minutes later, she pulled into the parking lot of Kimball Hardware.

  Felicity hadn’t thought about Nathan Holyoake since speaking with his dad, Pat, and she hadn’t been to the hardware store to ask the boy directly how he was doing. A distant cousin of the Kimball family that owned the hardware store, Nathan worked on Saturday mornings helping to mix paint and carry things out to the parking lot for customers. He was too young to work officially, but he always hung around until they found something for him to do. On the morning of Clarissa’s accident Nathan had been on his way to school, and so dressed very differently from his Saturday morning attire of khaki pants and cotton shirt, but with no rips anywhere.

  “I like that color,” Felicity said, pointing to a square of pale yellow.

  “I can make that for you, ma’am.” Nathan Holyoake would soon look just like his dad, with the long face and the wavy brown hair. His Mohawk was tucked beneath his painter’s cap. Felicity tried to ignore the “ma’am.”