Drift (8 page)

Moose stared up at her, confused but too scared to ask her to clarify.

With an exasperated growl, she grabbed a handful of husk and silk and tore it away, exposing half the ear.

Moose squinted and tilted his head, screwing up his face as he stared at the ear of corn.

“Look at it!” she yelled at him. “It all looks like this!”

“What is that?” he asked.

The corn was mostly blue, but it was speckled with kernels that were a sickly gray color.

“Well, that’s a damn good question,” she said through gritted teeth.

“I … I…”

“I know,” she said. “You, you … You were supposed to take care of that plot. You said you knew heirloom corn, and I trusted you.” As quickly as it had erupted, her anger faded and her lip started to quiver. “I needed this client.”

She teetered for a second, like she was going to fall over, then she seemed to collapse inward instead. Moose got up and went to her, but she swatted him away, still too annoyed to take comfort from him.

That left me.

I didn’t want her to think I was taking advantage, but she was crying now, and she seemed like she needed a shoulder to do it on. I took a step closer and put my arm lightly around her, resting my hand on her upper arm.

She swayed into me. I could feel her warmth, and the slightness of her small frame. Even slack, though, her muscles felt strong and supple.

Her body shook once, a single deep, silent sob. She put her head against my chest and turned me toward the house. I felt like I was driving but she was steering.

Moose looked at me wide-eyed, shaking his head, his hands upraised, protesting his innocence as we walked past him. I shook my head back at him. Now was not the time to argue the point.

Nola’s effect on me had been strong since the first time I laid eyes on her, but as I walked her inside and we sat on the sofa, the effect was even stronger. Part of me wanted to make a move. Several parts, actually. But instead, I sat upright so she could lean against me. I smoothed her hair away from her face, and I waited until she was okay.

After ten minutes, she stiffened slightly and the pressure of her leaning against me lessened perceptibly. My back was cramping, but I didn’t want her to move any farther away, so I stayed where I was.

“Sorry,” she said in a whisper.

“It’s okay,” I whispered back.

I felt her head move against me, and when I looked down, she was looking up at me, her cheeks and the tip of her nose a soft pink. Even rimmed with red, her eyes were clear and strong.

The desire to kiss her was almost overwhelming, but she smiled self-consciously and gave me a pat on the cheek, then moved a few inches away. The air felt cold where her body was no longer touching mine.

*   *   *

“I put everything I had into this business,” she said, watching as I pulled a box of teabags out of the cabinet. The coffee was still out in the car. She had a crumpled tissue in her hand, occasionally dabbing her eyes, but she had regained her composure. “I just need to get to year three, get my organic cert, then I’ll be okay. It’s taken a while to get the crops growing right, get the business plan ironed out, get some steady customers. The restaurants are a good market, but this specialty catering thing—the high-end weddings and stuff—that’s what was going to keep me going until I got the certification. It’s all word of mouth, and a couple of jobs can make you or break you.”

The kettle started clearing its throat. Before it could start to sing, I turned off the burner and poured water into the two cups.

“It’s not just that I like working with the soil, out in the fresh air. There aren’t many jobs out there where you don’t have to worry about being exposed to some chemical or another. So far I’ve been lucky, my MCS isn’t real bad, and maybe I’m overly cautious, but I don’t want to push it and make it worse. I don’t want to end up being the crazy lady in the cubicle at the end who’s always asking people not to wear scented deodorant. This is a job where I know I can have a good life. A normal life. My last bit of operating capital went into that field of blue corn.” She shook her head. “Honest to God, chosen to match the bridesmaids’ gowns.”

I opened the refrigerator and grabbed the quart of milk, but immediately turned on the taps and emptied it down the drain. “Sorry,” I said, handing her one of the cups. “I hope you don’t take milk.”

She smiled. “It’s fine. I like it like this.” She held the cup with both hands, absorbing the warmth into her body.

“So what now?” I asked.

She shrugged, closing her eyes as she sipped her tea. “Who knows? I don’t even know what it is. It doesn’t look like smut or blight or wilt or any of the usual problems.”

She took another sip, so I did, too. It wasn’t coffee.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I know a horticulturist who works at the college out here.”

I smiled. “There’s a college out here?”

“Don’t be mean. Pine Crest Community has a very fine horticulture department.”

“So, when are you going to call her?”

“Him,” she said, looking at her watch. “He’s actually lecturing right now. It’s not far. It would probably be better if I just took the corn out there.” She paused again. “Any chance you feel like coming with me?”

“Um … sure.”

“It’s just that, well, I don’t want him to think there’s anything going on between you and me, but I definitely don’t want him to think there’s anything between him and me, either.”

I laughed ruefully. She wanted me to cock block for her.

“What?” she asked, reading my expression. “You don’t have to. It’s okay.”

“No, that’s fine,” I said, forcing a smile. “Happy to help.”

*   *   *

Moose was sitting on the front steps, looking like a dog that had pooped on the rug. When we stepped out, he sprang to his feet.

“Nola, listen, I’m really sorry,” he said. “But I swear, I did everything you said, just the way you said. Everything.”

She put up a hand to silence him. “It’s okay, Moose. It’s all right.” She spoke calmly, but she didn’t look at him.

“Where are you going?”

She closed her eyes, like she didn’t want to answer him but she didn’t want to be rude. “We’re taking it to Jerry Simpkins,” she said, holding up the ear of corn in a big Ziploc bag.

“Nola, I’m really sorry.”

She put up her hand again. “Farming is like that.”

I got behind the wheel of my car without thinking about it. Nola got in the passenger side without a word. Guess I was driving, then.

“Make a right,” she said as I pulled out.

I looked back at Moose, sitting down on the steps. I felt bad for him, whether he had screwed up or not. I could see on his face that he felt terrible.

“Nice car,” she said as we drove away, looking at me with an amused expression.

She was right, it was a sporty little thing, a Nissan Z with more bells and whistles than I could really afford. She seemed to be waiting for an explanation. I didn’t want to give her one, but I didn’t want her thinking I was compensating for anything other than the fact that I spend too much time in my car and have no life.

“It used to belong to a guy named Oscar Quezada,” I told her, “a coke dealer who liked to laugh at my Corolla. When Quezada was busted and his car was seized, I made sure I knew when it was coming up at the auction.”

I could feel her staring at me, trying to decide what to make of the story. I was still trying to figure that out myself.

“I probably bid more than it was worth,” I said, “but I made sure I got it. And I made sure he saw me driving it.”

17

Pine Crest College was twenty minutes away, just off the interstate. It had that college campus look, all stone walls and brick walkways, but if you looked closely, you could see it was all textured concrete.

We walked across a small quad, weaving between groups of students reading or talking, to a three-story stone building with “Markson Science Annex” etched across the top floor. We entered through a small glass atrium and went up half a flight of stairs to a long sunlit hallway with large windows along one side and double doors every thirty feet on the other side.

As we approached the first set of doors, Nola looked at her watch and said, “One-fifteen.”

The doors swung open, and a steady stream of students started filing through, the ambient sound in the hallway getting louder and louder with each additional voice.

Through the doors, I could see the professor, holding court over a cluster of female students. He had curly blond hair, just over his collar, but he was about my age, maybe older, and slightly thick around the middle. He had a sly smile, like he thought he was really something. The adoring gazes of his students said they thought so, too.

One by one, he was charming them, moving his gaze from one to the next like a rich kid shopping in his favorite candy store.

When he caught sight of Nola standing out in the hallway, however, his attention was on her and her alone. He swam through the students like a fish against a strong current, never taking his eyes off her.

“Nola Watkins, what a pleasant surprise,” he said with a flourish, giving her the same sly smile he’d used on the girls now standing dejectedly inside the lecture hall. “You’re looking very well.”

I was prepared not to like the guy, and I didn’t. But when his eyes went up and down Nola, the dislike intensified.

When he was done looking at her, he stepped closer.

Nola pulled back a bit and said, “This is my friend, Doyle.…”

Before she finished the introduction, he had already dismissed me with a glance and resumed staring at her. “Professor Simpkins,” he said without extending his hand.

“
Detective
Carrick,” I replied, because I can be a prick, too. Some people think I’m pretty good at it.

He stopped and glanced back at me for a moment. I gave him a grin that said, “Yes, I
am
being a prick.”

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” he said, turning back to Nola.

She held up the baggie with the ear of corn. “Jerry, I was hoping you could take a look at this.”

He looked at the bag, then looked at her, his expression changing from curiosity to suspicion to disappointment at the realization that she was not there because she missed him. When he glanced over at me, he looked resigned, and I’d like to think a little nervous, too.

As we stood there, the cluster of girls gave up and filed past us down the hallway.

Simpkins turned back to Nola, looking hurt and annoyed. He put on his reading glasses and took the bag out of her hand, squinting as he held it up in the light from the windows.

“Yech.” He smiled condescendingly. “There’s a lot that can go wrong being a farmer, isn’t there, Nola? What is this, Mexican Black?”

“Lenape Blue.”

“Looks terrible.”

“I know. Do you recognize it?”

He opened his mouth, like he expected an answer to come out. But then he just closed it. “I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “Let’s have a closer look, shall we?”

We followed him to a lab in the basement, where he perched on a stool and put the corn on the work surface. He pulled over an illuminated magnifying glass on a spring-balanced arm and switched on the light, examining the corn closely from a number of angles. After grunting a few times, he wheeled his stool to a microscope a few feet away. Popping one of the gray kernels with his thumbnail, he smeared some of what came out onto a glass slide. He placed a glass cover over it and slid it under the microscope.

After several minutes, he sat back and rubbed his eyes, gesturing for Nola to look in the microscope. As she did, he said, “I don’t know what you’ve got here. It doesn’t look quite right, that’s for sure, but there’s no sign of disease. No fungus or anything. The way it’s localized, I wonder if it is cross pollinated.”

Nola looked up. “I wondered about that, but cross pollinated with what? Those strange kernels don’t look like anything I’ve seen in a seed catalogue. Or would want to.”

“No, they don’t, do they?” He bit his lip for a moment, thinking. “I do know of a guy. Jason Rupp. A plant geneticist, among other things. I don’t know him very well, and he’s not here at the college, but he lives nearby. He might be able to shed a little more light. I’ve only met him a few times. An odd bird, but apparently quite brilliant. He was a finalist for the Gairdner Award. Very prestigious. Anyway, I could give him a call, if you’d like.”

*   *   *

We followed Simpkins across the hall, into a small, windowless room with books and papers everywhere. He sat behind the desk and flicked through a Rolodex for a moment, then picked up his phone and punched in the number.

“Jason, hi. This is Jerry Simpkins.… Pine Crest, yes, that’s right. Oh, thanks, yeah, maybe one day.” He rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I’m here with a former student, and she has kind of an interesting problem with some Lenape Blue corn. I was wondering if you might be able to take a look at it.… Well, I don’t know, that’s why I’m calling you.”

He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “He says he can call you in a few days, maybe he can look at it then.”

Nola bit her lip. “Actually, can you ask if there’s any chance he could look at it today? I have a client coming tomorrow, and I need to know what to tell them.”

Simpkins raised one eyebrow dubiously, and then took his hand away from the phone. “Actually, Jason, I know this is asking a lot,” he said, looking up to make sure we caught that. “She was wondering if she could bring it by today. It seems this is more urgent than I had realized.… Yes, I understand … I don’t know, Jason, that’s why we’re calling you.… It’s blue corn. It looks like maybe some kind of smut, but it’s only affecting isolated kernels, as if it was a pollination issue.… They’re kind of discolored, gray and bloated.… Okay, I’ll tell them. Thank you.” He scribbled on a piece of notepaper. “Yes, thanks again, I’ll think about that.”

He hung up the phone and looked at Nola. “He can see you at his house, but he’s leaving in an hour, so you’ll need to get a move on.” He told us how to get there as he wrote Rupp’s address and phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to Nola.