Different Paths (11 page)
Carla wasn’t home. I rang her doorbell and banged on the door, but all I succeeded in doing was getting Concord all riled up. Queenie heard him barking and began her own ruckus in the truck. I found some paper and a broken pencil in my glove compartment. Using one of my keys, I scraped enough wood off the end of the pencil that I could write Carla a note, asking her to call me as soon as she got home. I stuck it in the door, where she should see it, and hoped the breeze didn’t blow it off.
Concord continued to bark, and I tried to calm him by talking through the door, but that only produced whining, which was harder to take than barking.
“Sorry, buddy. Sorry. Carla will be home soon.” I hoped.
My hands had finally stopped shaking, but it was still hard to drive home. The sun hurt my eyes, and the ache from my foot had traveled up to lodge itself in my temple. Or maybe that was just from trying not to let any more tears cloud my vision.
Lucy was at the back of the barn, pulling nails out of a piece of wood. She didn’t notice me until I was standing right in front of her, and even then she didn’t stop working, except to notice my crutches.
“Those are nice. Feel better?”
When I didn’t answer, she stopped what she was doing and looked up. Seeing my face, she dropped the board and stepped toward me. “What? What is it?”
“It’s Dr. Peterson.”
“Dr. Peterson? You mean your doctor?”
“Yes.”
She waited, but I couldn’t speak.
“What? What about her?”
“Lucy, she’s dead.”
Lucy dropped her hammer now, and stared at me, stricken. “What happened?”
I told her.
“Willard thinks it’s about drugs?”
“Seems to. But he’s calling Kulpsville about the church, to see if maybe they could be connected.”
Lucy leaned against a stall and put her face in her hands briefly before looking up. “Are we in danger?”
“Us?”
She held out her hands. “Look at us. Women running a dairy farm.”
“So you think that, too. That he’s after women.”
“What else would it be?”
“Separate cases. A random car-jacker, an angry Mennonite, a drug addict who happened to choose her office.”
She considered it. “It could be either. But we need to keep our eyes open. Protect each other.”
I looked out the door of the barn, over the manure lagoon and my back pasture, bordered by the developments, which seemed closer every day. Closer to this farm, that had been my haven.
Lucy came to stand beside me. “Does she have family?”
“Dr. Peterson? Her dad, at least. And I think she’s married. I haven’t seen any photos of kids. And she never talked about any.”
Lucy shook her head. “What a waste.”
Soon she left me, and I heard the hammer scraping against the wood, and the sound of nails being dropped into a can. I turned and walked back through the barn to my office, where I stood staring at my phone. I sat down and picked it up, dialing Carla’s cell phone.
No answer. Where could she be?
I looked at the phone a little longer, and ended up calling Nick. He answered, out of breath.
“Sorry,” I said. “Bring you running from somewhere?”
“Actually, I’m on the treadmill. I’ve got a ton of paperwork to go through and I’m getting all stiff, so I thought I’d loosen up. I only answered the phone when I saw it was you. What’s going on?”
I tried to tell him, but my throat closed, and I pushed on my eyes with my fingers to get myself together. The whine of the treadmill on the other end of the phone stopped.
“Stella?”
I took a shuddering breath. “Something awful has happened.” And I told him.
He was quiet for a moment, and I listened to him breathing before he said, “You okay? Is Lucy there with you?”
“She’s here.”
“You want me to come up?”
Yes
. “You don’t have to. I know you have things to do there. I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I just wanted to talk to you. That’s all. Hear your voice.”
“Why don’t I—”
“You don’t have to come. I feel better now. Sorry to bother you.”
“You never bother me.”
I bit my lip, trying to breathe deeply, trying to get rid of the tight feeling in my chest. “You can call later, if you want.”
“Okay. Okay, I will.”
“Love you.”
“Stella?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Love you, too.”
I hung up and looked at the phone some more before getting up. It was lunch time, but I had no desire to eat, so I strapped a garbage bag over my foot and went to work around the farm. After a short while I realized I had only managed to get in the way of the others and give myself a headache. I figured if I waited another day or so I would be able to do the same work in a quarter of the time with no extra resulting body aches or irritated co-workers, so I took some painkillers and set myself up in the office…again. The amount of time I’d spent sitting at my desk and staring at my computer during the past twenty-four hours was enough to make me stir-crazy.
So when Zach and Randy stopped by, asking me to give them a ride to see Randy’s calf at his uncle’s farm, I jumped—or stood up very slowly—at the opportunity.
I grabbed my keys and followed the boys out the door. “How come you didn’t drive today, Randy?”
He frowned. “My dad dropped me off on the way to work.”
“Caddy not working?” I remembered the whining it had made as he’d left the farm the day before.
“It’s working fine. Never mind, okay? Can’t a guy get a ride to work without playing Twenty Questions?”
He stomped off ahead of me, and I looked at Zach, who gave me a sickly smile. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right. Just make sure you sit in the middle. I don’t want to have to smack him while I’m driving.”
So Zach sat between Randy and me, and no smacking took place, or even much conversation. Queenie, who had joined us and taken a spot in the extended portion of the cab, kept sticking her nose in Randy’s ear, until he’d finally snapped at her to keep her drool to herself, and she’d stayed over on my side. I reached up to scratch her ears, telling her she was much better off leaving grumpy teen-agers to themselves, but I glanced over at Randy a time or two and wondered exactly what had happened to turn this nice boy into Oscar the Grouch. Was it just the driving thing, or was there more to it? I’d have to ask Zach later.
Randy’s uncle lived on one of the few farms left out toward Chalfont. We made it there in a little over twenty minutes, dodging cars and sitting at traffic lights a good portion of the time. His uncle, who was mowing his lawn at a speed faster than what we’d been able to do most of the way over in the truck, waved and kept on going once he saw who it was.
The boys took off for the barn, and I paused to let Queenie jump out ahead of me and run to greet the obviously ancient golden retriever who lay almost flat out on the sidewalk. I hoped Queenie wouldn’t be too annoying to the old dog, but it seemed she’d already discovered its limitations, and had trotted restlessly away, sniffing the bushes.
I stumped into the barn, following the path of the boys, and soon found them at a stall, where Zach leaned on the door, watching Randy.
Randy’s calf nuzzled the hand I held out to it, and I checked out my former property. He looked good. Healthy and clean. Friendly and manageable. Very cute, with his mostly black body and a white spot right over his rump.
“Looks good,” I said.
Randy grunted and continued forking dirty straw into a pile.
“What’s his name?”
Randy mumbled something I couldn’t understand.
“What?”
“Simeon,” Zach said.
I glanced at Randy and opened my mouth to say something else, but Zach grimaced at me, shaking his head. I closed my trap and turned around, taking in the smells and sounds of a beef cattle operation. Quite a different beast from home.
Before long we were ready to go, and Randy closed the door, making sure the hook was secure. He didn’t even look at us before walking away.
Zach followed, and I tried to push down my concern at Randy’s unusual behavior. By the time we were in my truck, I was about ready to burst.
“So, where are we going now?” I asked.
Zach’s seat belt clicked in. “Dropping Randy off at home, if that’s okay.”
“No problem. And you?”
“Back to the grind at your place.” He grinned.
“Okey-dokey.” I waved to Randy’s uncle and pulled out of the drive. We were a few miles down the road, enduring Randy’s sulky silence, when I remembered. “Hey, how was MYF last night? Was it fun?”
Zach shrugged. “It was all right.”
Randy mumbled something about “women” and “telling people what to do.”
I raised my eyebrows at Zach. He smiled weakly. I decided to let it go so I wouldn’t damage my suddenly tense relationship with Zach’s best friend.
We dropped Randy off at home none too soon—without even a ‘thank you’—and Zach held his hand up before we’d even left the driveway, to keep me from pouncing. “He’s hurtin’.”
“Obviously. What the hell is going on? It can’t all be because your parents don’t want you driving with him.”
“No.” He sighed loudly. “It’s a coupl’a things. But mainly his girlfriend’s acting weird.”
Oh, boy. “That swim team girl? What’s her name? Chrissie?”
“Crystal. She’s a lifeguard. And she decided this summer that 4-H is boring and she’s ‘outgrown’ the farm stuff.”
Stupid girl. “So she’s too good for him now?”
“Seems to think so. And Randy’s convinced she’s met another guy at the pool. She’s always busy when he calls, and they haven’t seen each other for over a week. He thought once he got his license it would help, but…” His voice trailed off.
“Poor Randy.”
“Plus he
is
ticked at my mom and his for not letting him drive me around.”
Can’t say I was too bummed about that, myself.
“So that was the problem with MYF last night?” I asked. “Was he complaining that Katherine’s just another woman to tell him what to do?”
“He seems to think his life is run by women, even at church now. Except the MYF sponsors haven’t changed any. There’s still a couple of guys doing that. Well, their wives, too.”
We drove in silence for a few minutes.
“And how about Trevor?” I asked. “Was he as weird last night as everyone thought he was going to be?”
“Yeah, kinda. But I feel sorry for him. I think he’s pretty tired of his mom telling him what to do, too. I don’t think he talked to her once all night. And when she tried to introduce him he acted all embarrassed and mad.”
Like any normal teen-ager in front of a group.
When we got home Zach thanked me and headed into the barn, where Lucy had already gotten started with milking. I was tempted to follow him, but decided I’d take one more round off. By morning I figured maybe I’d feel well enough to try my hand at work again. If I could possibly sleep without nightmares.
It smelled yummy in the house, and I was surprised to notice I was actually hungry. A peek in the kitchen showed a crockpot full of chicken and vegetables. I was just reaching to take off the lid for a better view when the phone rang. It was Ma.
“You can drive your truck, right? Your foot doesn’t keep you from doing that?”
“Yeah, I can.”
“Good. Then I need you to go around to the Hershbergers’ tomorrow morning and deliver a load of mulch.”
“You mean Katherine’s?”
“Who else would I mean? Go out to the nursery in Hilltown and get a load of the nice dark stuff. You don’t have to worry about unloading it. Alan and David will take care of that part.”
“So you already volunteered me?”
“Well, they don’t have a truck.”
Okaaaay. “Thanks for checking with me first, Ma.”
“Oh, what do you have that’s better to do? You can handle a bit of Christian charity now and again.”
I supposed she was right. And I certainly wasn’t brave enough to tell her no.
So I guessed I knew what I’d be doing after milking the next day, whether I wanted to or not.
After eating Lucy’s delicious supper, sharing the table once again with Lenny and Tess and avoiding all conversation of murder and car-jackings, I decided I’d waited long enough to take on the project of showering. So when the house was my own again, I got a clean garbage bag, taped it to within an inch of its life, and stepped into the shower. There were a couple of close calls, and I’m not sure I got all the shampoo rinsed out of my hair, but I felt a hundred percent better. Or at least eighty.
I pulled on an extra large T-shirt and climbed into bed, exhausted from the effort of becoming clean. Once I’d gotten back my breath and stopped sweating from all the exertion, I picked up the phone and dialed Nick’s number.
Busy. Crap.
Carla hadn’t called, and I wondered if she’d gotten my note on the door. I dialed her number, but got only her machine. I left a short message for her to call, and hung up.
I lay down, and tried Nick again five minutes later. Still busy.
This time when I lay down, I fell asleep until something jerked me awake. I lay still, heart pounding. Did I have a nightmare? Was there wind? Had Queenie been barking? A glance at the clock said it was almost ten. Not late, but dark. I lay frozen, breathing as quietly as I could. Something creaked downstairs, and I heard the stairway door open, rasping on its hinges. I reached over to grab one of my crutches, and eased off the side of the mattress onto my good leg, keeping the bed in-between me and the door.
Quiet footsteps came up the stairs, the wood creaking, and a man-sized shape filled my bedroom door. I raised the crutch.
“Stella?”
I froze. “Nick?”
He stepped forward, and I fell into his arms.
***
I woke before my alarm, lying on my side, Nick behind me, still in the clothes he’d been wearing the night before. It had taken a while for my shaking to stop after the scare he’d given me, but once my heartbeat had returned to normal I’d told him to stop apologizing, and I’d slept through the night without dreaming.
But now a wave of nausea hit me as I remembered the events of the day before, and I swallowed. When the sick feeling had passed I turned off my alarm and eased out of bed. I needed to get my mind on something other than Dr. Peterson’s death, and work would be the best thing, if I could handle it.
I grabbed some shorts and was able to get out of the room without waking Nick. My trip down the stairs was much better than the day before, and once I’d eaten a little breakfast and popped some ibuprofen I went out to the barn, beating both Lucy and Zach. With a little hitch in my breathing I put on the little shoe Dr. Peterson had given me, tied a bag around my cast, and found a place to put my crutches. Then I started down the rows, clipping in the cows who had already found their spots. By the time Queenie had herded the rest of them in Zach had been dropped off by his dad and was in the aisle, ready to start. He didn’t say anything, but grunted twice, so I thought that was pretty good.
Lucy arrived after Zach had attached the first milkers, and I was filling feed cups.
I looked up at her. “Well, look who decided to show up.”
She glanced at the clock, hands on her hips. “I’m not late.”
“Nope. Just not as early as me.”
She narrowed her eyes. “So I got up for nothing?”
“Sorry. Didn’t know I’d feel up to it.” I gestured toward the house. “You can go back to sleep if you want. Your old bed’s still there.”
She thought about it, but apparently decided sleep was now a lost cause. “Nick’s here? I saw his truck.”
“Yeah. Arrived last night.”
“I didn’t know he was coming.”
“I didn’t, either.”
She took a deep breath and pushed her hair back from her face. “I’ll go feed the calves.”
“Thanks. Sorry again, Luce.”
She waved me off. “No biggie.”
With three of us around the work got done in good time, even with me being gimpy. By the time we were finished it was close to eight.
“Anybody know what time the Hilltown Nursery opens?”
Zach looked at me blankly.
Lucy smiled, cocking an eyebrow. “Planning some gardening?”
“No. Ma volunteered me to pick up some mulch for the Hershbergers.”
Zach looked at me some more. “You want help?” It was a grudging question.
“Thanks, but Alan and David are supposed to be there to take it off the truck. And I can drag Nick along, if he’s awake.”
I could almost hear the “Good” Zach didn’t say.
Leaving them to repair some boards in the paddock, I went into the house and found Nick still sleeping. I eased the door back shut, left Nick a note on the kitchen table, and went outside, where I found a shovel in the heifer barn that Lucy and Zach wouldn’t need after milking. It was covered with filth of the kind the Hershbegers probably wouldn’t want in their mulch, so I wiped it down with a rag before heaving it into the truck bed. I whistled Queenie into the back seat, and took off for Hilltown.
The nursery manager loaded us up with the beautiful dark brown mulch the Hershbergers had pre-ordered, and sent us on our way toward Kulpsville. A half hour later I found their house on a winding “country” road behind the church. “Country” meaning there were houses only every fifty feet instead of every twenty.
David met my truck in the drive, looking a little more awake than he had the other morning at my farm. “Morning.”
I nodded. “Where do you want this?”
“How ‘bout you back up to the front of the house? The ground’s hard enough these days it shouldn’t matter. Just don’t run over the guys.”
Another look showed Alan and Trevor hunched down between two bushes, messing with something in the dirt. I maneuvered the truck so the open tailgate hovered over the middle of the flower bed, and hopped down from the truck. Queenie jumped down, too, and immediately began running circles with a terrier that shot out of the shrubbery, yapping to high heaven.
Alan, who had clambered up from his knees, winced. “How they can have so much energy at this time of the morning is beyond me.” He reached for a coffee cup balanced on the porch railing.
Trevor looked up, but didn’t say anything.
“Early?” I said. “I’ve been up four hours already.”
Alan groaned, putting his mug to his forehead. “You and the Incredible Hulk over there.”
I glanced at David, who grinned. “Can’t help it I’m a morning person. At least I do you the favor of going out for a run and not making noise in the house.”
“Can you imagine?” Alan said. “Getting up early just to exercise?”
I looked toward the road, where cars passed every few seconds. “Where do you go so you don’t get run over?”
David pointed west. “If I go that way, there’s a little road that misses a lot of this traffic. And that early in the morning, I even beat most of the commuters.”
“Crazy,” Alan said, with feeling.
I laughed. “You’re not an exerciser?”
“Give me an air-conditioned gym at a decent hour, and I might consider it.”
I remembered the gift certificate Carla wanted me to use, and fought down a wave of anxiety at the thought of sweating on purpose, in front of people.
Trevor stood up and brushed dirt off his knees.
“You in any sports?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “I like soccer.”
“Well, that’s good around here. Big soccer area, isn’t it?”
“I guess. The school’s team won State a few times.”
Mallory had talked about that. “You going out this fall?”
He looked away. “I’m not that good.”
“Sure you are,” David said. Then to me, “I told him he could come running with me. Wouldn’t take that much to get him in shape.”
Alan groaned, and I took a look at his son. David was probably right—Trevor looked pretty fit, from what I could see under his baggy shirt and shorts. But knowing most teen-agers and their sleep patterns, I couldn’t imagine David was going to have much luck getting this one up at dawn to pound the pavement. I was surprised he was up now, and it was closing in on nine-o’clock.
“So should we get this mulch unloaded?” I asked.
“Oh,” Alan said. “Right.”
I grabbed my shovel from the corner of the truck bed and swung onto the tailgate while Alan set his mug back on the porch.
David gestured to my foot. “You sure you should be working?”
I stood up, towering over him. “I’m fine. Doctor said I could start work after a day or two.”
“He know what he’s doing?”
“
She
does. Or, she did.”
“Oh. She. Sorry.”
Alan looked up. “What’s her name? We need to line up a doctor, and Katherine would prefer a woman.”
I took a breath, wondering how to say what I needed to say. They obviously hadn’t caught it when I’d changed tenses. “Her name was Rachel Peterson.”
Alan looked at me. “Was?”
“Yeah. She…she died yesterday.”
“Oh my God,” David said. “She’s that doctor that was on the news. Someone broke into her office to steal drugs, and she was there. They killed her.”
Alan blinked. “Are you serious?”
I sat on the side of the truck bed, the nausea of the morning returning.
“You okay?” David stood beside me, his hand on my elbow.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” I took a deep breath and stood back up, getting a shovelful of mulch.
Alan stood to the side, thinking. “You know, I’m pretty sure she was on the list one of the church members made up for us. Doctors and dentists and stuff.”
David dumped a shovelful of mulch around a plant. “Wasn’t she the one taking over her father’s practice?”
Alan snapped his fingers. “That’s right. Over in Souderton? The one Sarah was urging you to check out.”
Trevor’s shovel banged the tailgate, and I jumped. A look at his face reminded me of what Zach had said about Trevor and women. Having Dr. Peterson as his doctor would’ve given the kid yet one more woman to tell him what to do. He didn’t have to worry about that now. Unless there was another female doctor on the list.
We left the topic and finished unloading the mulch in silence, Alan bringing a broom from the garage to sweep the last chunks out of the truck’s nooks and crannies. “Thanks so much for bringing the mulch. I wasn’t sure how to get it here before Mrs. Granger mentioned your truck.”
“No problem. I’m glad to help out.” And I was, now that I’d done it.
He finished sweeping before taking off his gloves and banging them together over the flowerbed, spraying tiny mulch pieces. I held out my shovel and he took it and gave it to Trevor to hold while he helped me climb down from the truck. “Katherine’s over at the church. I’m sure she’d be glad if you’d stop by and say hello.”
“Well—”
“In fact, when I mentioned you were bringing the mulch she said to be sure to tell you to come on over and see her office.”
Oh, great. More people volunteering my time. “Thanks.”
He took my shovel from Trevor and set it in the truck bed. “The church is just around the corner. Less than a mile.”
“Sure. I know.” I closed the tailgate, and little mulch pieces fell to the ground from the back bumper. I swept the rest off with my hand.
Trevor was giving me the eye, so I whistled for Queenie. “Come on, girl! Time to go!”
After a few more rounds of the yard, and an entirely mismatched wrestling bout—Queenie was bigger, but the terrier ten times feistier—my disheveled collie escaped the clutches of the little bugger and jumped into the truck. I closed her window halfway and pulled slowly out of the yard, finding a space in the traffic to drive away. It was busy enough I didn’t feel comfortable looking back to wave.
When I got to the red light at the intersection to Allentown Road, I paused. Left to my house, or right to the church?
“What do you think?” I asked Queenie. “Should we do what we want or try to act neighborly?”
She smeared her nose on the window.
“Oh, if you insist.”
I turned right.