Drift (9 page)

She glanced away, not meeting his eyes as she took it. “Thanks, Jerry.”

He stared at her, aware of her averted gaze, and he smiled sadly. “My pleasure.”

18

Back in the car, Nola seemed pensive. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the encounter with Simpkins or the problem with the corn. She handed me the paper with Rupp’s address and I drove as fast as I dared, my previous run-in with the local authorities still fresh in my mind.

Once we got onto the main road, the silence stretched out enough that I had to say something.

“So, I’m perfectly fine going to see this guy right now. It’s not like I’ve got anything else to do. But why is it so important that we see him right now?”

“Because the caterer is coming tomorrow, and I need to be able to tell them what’s wrong with the corn. I need to know if this is something I can cut around and use the rest. Is it something that can spread to my other crops? I need to know what I’m up against. Plus there are contractual aspects. Some things I’m not liable for, some things I am.”

“And this blue corn, they can’t get it anywhere else?”

“Not at this point. I doubt it.”

“Maybe something just like it.”

She sighed deeply, like she was talking to an idiot, like she was trying not to get annoyed but her efforts would not succeed indefinitely. “You don’t understand. The bride was very specific. She chose this particular strain of corn to match the bridesmaids’ gowns. The entire meal is going to be blue: The cake is blue, the pork medallions glazed in blueberry, the champagne will have a few drops of blue Curacao. It might be beautiful. It might be tacky as hell. But it will be very blue, and it will be very hard to replace at the last minute.”

“Well, maybe they can—”

“No,” she cut me off, “they can’t. Look, I appreciate your help. I do. And I know you’re just trying to help some more, but you really just don’t understand.”

I’ve been single a lot more than I haven’t been, but one thing I know about women is that when they say you just don’t understand, any attempt to convince them otherwise simply proves their point. Instead, I looked straight ahead as I drove, kept my Smurf jokes to myself, and tried not to do or say anything to make matters worse, like telling her what I really thought—that this was a fool’s errand and that no matter what the guy said, she was screwed.

*   *   *

As we drove, Nola’s silence turned from stressed to exhausted. Before long, she let out a soft sigh and her head pressed against the window, near the smudge Moose’s head had left. I leaned forward to see if she was asleep, and looked back just in time to swerve out of the way of a black Saab coming at us way too fast and drifting into our lane. It had tinted windows, gold trim, and fat tires, but what stuck out in my mind was the face in the backseat, looking out the open window as it passed us.

He had curly dark hair and a single eyebrow. Apart from that there wasn’t much memorable about it, except for the fact that I remembered it. In my line of work if you remember someone’s face, they’re probably either a cop or they’re something bad. This guy was not a cop.

“What?” Nola asked, sitting up and blinking as I straightened out the car.

“Nothing,” I said, finishing my turn. “Guy was going pretty fast.”

She mumbled something about young kids driving too fast on country roads, but my mind was somewhere else, flicking through the mug shot book in my head, trying to place that face.

A few minutes later, she was asleep. I called Danny Tennison.

“About five years ago,” I started, as soon as he picked up. “You and Ralph Ritchie took down some dumbass in an ice-cream truck in Port Richmond. Real badass, thought he was cool selling crack in the bottom of ice-cream cones.”

He laughed. “Mr. Softee we called him. Yeah, I remember. Ugly kid with a unibrow. Why?”

“I think I just saw him up here.”

“Mr. Softee? Nah, he got like ten years, remember? Fought a little bit when we picked him up.”

“Can you check?”

“Dude.”

“Just check.”

“Do you have cable up there? ’Cause you can get a satellite dish, if that’s the problem. Even just for twenty days, it’d be worth it.”

“I’ll look into that.”

“You could probably even get one of those intro deals, first month free or something.…”

He was still talking when I put the phone back into my pocket.

19

Jason Rupp lived in a small, nondescript, wooden ranch house. Apart from a shiny black Mustang looking out of place parked out front, there was nothing decorative at all: no window boxes, no shutters, no sign posts, no garden, no welcome mat, no lamppost. Nothing. Actually, it was probably what the outside of my place would look like if I didn’t rent an apartment.

Nola woke with a start when I killed the engine. “Are we there?” she asked, looking out the window.

She took a moment to collect herself, then we got out. She cleared her throat and pressed the doorbell.

A voice from inside yelled, “Come on in.”

The inside of the house was as spare as the outside, but it was clean, with modern furniture, a massive TV, and an elaborate computer workstation. Sitting on the computer chair, bending over as he pulled on a pair of socks, was a chubby guy with pale skin, frizzy brown hair, and bushy, uneven sideburns.

He paused between socks and looked up at us. “Hey.”

Nola cleared her throat again. “Jason Rupp?”

“Yeah.” He looked at her appraisingly, holding his breath as he pulled on the second sock. “Are you the corn lady?” He had a tiny trace of an accent or an affectation, like he was from the same country as Madonna and Tina Turner.

Nola smiled nervously and held up the bag.

Rupp put out his hand and wiggled his fingers. As she crossed the room to bring him the bag, he glanced over at me. “Who’s he?”

I thought about throwing out my own cheesy accent, and the phrase “I’m your worst nightmare” came to mind, but Nola was asking for a favor, so I didn’t.

Maybe she sensed my temptation, because she quickly said, “He’s my friend Doyle. He drove me here.”

Rupp looked back at me, lingering suspiciously for a moment before glancing at the bag. When he looked back up at Nola, he paused and smiled as if he was actually seeing her for the first time. “So you’re a horticulturist, huh? Are you one of Jerry’s kids?”

“At Pine Crest?”

He nodded.

She smiled. “Oh, no.”

“No?” He sat back, looking at her again, ignoring the bag. “So how do you know him?”

“He was a grad student when I was a senior at Cornell. He was one of my teaching assistants.”

“Cornell, huh? Good program.”

“Yes, it was great. How about you?”

He paused, and his expression soured. “Pine Crest, briefly. Then Penn State, and grad school at MIT.” He paused again like he was thinking or making a decision. “So now you’re a farmer?”

“That’s right.”

He looked her slowly up and down. “You don’t look like a farmer.”

I couldn’t argue with his conclusion, but I wasn’t crazy about his methodology. Still, this was Nola’s show. And my previous attempts at chivalry hadn’t gone so well.

“Where’s your farm?”

“In Dunston. On Bayberry, just up from Valley Road.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “You didn’t sell?”

She shook her head and smiled. “No, so far I’ve been able to resist all the pressure.”

“Pressure? What kind of pressure?”

I think she may have blushed. “Oh, nothing. I’ve gotten some calls, that’s all. But I’m staying.”

“Calls? Like what?”

“Nothing, just hang-ups, but—”

“You probably could have made a lot of money selling.”

“If I was in it for the money, I wouldn’t be farming.”

He smiled as if he thought that was cute. “Good for you.”

I would have wanted to smack him—hell, I did want to smack him—but Nola just smiled nervously and looked down at the bag with the corn.

Rupp’s eyes lingered on her for another second. Then he pulled the bag closer and flattened it out so he could see it better. He turned on a desk lamp and grunted.

Nola leaned closer. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said abruptly, shaking his head. “This corn is not well.”

“I know. I thought at first it might be some sort of weird smut,” she explained, nervously rubbing her fingers, “but the way it only affects certain kernels, I thought it had to be some sort of cross-pollination issue, only there’s no other corn nearby.”

He looked up at her with an unpleasant smile, his condescension now undiluted with any effort to charm. “Cross-pollination?”

“Yes,” she replied. “And Jerry agreed that—”

“Cross-pollination with what?”

“Well, I, I…” Nola stammered. “What do you mean?”

“Look at these kernels. They are obviously diseased. With what, I don’t know, but something. There are so many different types of smut. There are wilts, kernel rots. I can’t say for sure.”

“But Jerry said—”

“Jerry said what?”

“That it looked like a genetic issue, too. Look at how—”

Rupp waved his hand dismissively. “Everybody thinks everything is genetic these days. Look, the simple fact is that there are thousands of bacteria and viruses and fungi out there, all of them waiting for a chance to infect a host, for a weakness they can exploit—too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too windy, whatever.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Why did Simpkins tell you to ask me about this?”

“Why? Well … he said you’re an expert.”

“Exactly. More of an expert than him, that’s for sure.” He snorted. “If he were an expert, he wouldn’t be teaching at Pine Crest, would he?”

Nola’s mouth hung open.

Rupp paused for a moment. “Look, I have to get going. If you’d like, I can examine this more closely.” He looked up at her again, up and down, a bit of the leer returning to his smile. “Maybe we could meet in a couple of days, discuss it over coffee.”

“Well, um, actually, I need it asap. I have a client coming up to check on it tomorrow. Maybe I should just take it to the county agent. If it is some rare disease, the Department of Agriculture is going to—”

Rupp laughed, shaking his head. “Look, I can tell you just by looking at it, this is diseased. But I’ll look into it. Give me your number, and if I can find out anything more about it, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

Nola gave Rupp her card and moments later we were standing out on the front step with Rupp’s front door closed firmly behind us.

20

“What a putz,” I said as we got into the car.

Nola shook her head. “Academia is filled with that type. I
so
don’t miss them.”

Rupp was indeed a putz, but he had become noticeably more so halfway through the conversation, and I hadn’t said a single word. Maybe I no longer needed to speak to have that effect on people, or maybe it was something else. Usually, when I get that reaction, it’s a reaction I am trying to get. If we had been asking about anything other than corn smut, I would have thought Rupp was acting as if his cage had just been rattled.

When we got back to the house, Moose was sitting on the steps, right where we’d left him.

“Did you find anything out?” he asked as we got out of the car.

Nola sighed as she walked up to him. “Probably some sort of smut. We might know more tomorrow. Simpkins sent us to another guy, Jason Rupp. He said he would try to study it tonight or tomorrow.”

“Hmm. You want to know what
I
found out?”

“Actually, Moose,” she said, “I think I want to go inside and take a bath.”

He held up another big plastic Ziploc bag. Inside it were half a dozen stripped ears of corn. Instead of a sprinkling of bloated grey kernels, these ears were composed entirely of them, swollen and baggy and sickly and misshapen. “I found an entire field of this stuff growing next door.”

Nola rushed over and took the bag from him, studying it closely. “Where?”

“Next door.”

“You went in there? How did you know?”

“Because I’m a genius.”

We followed Moose across the street, through Nola’s tomato and herb patch, past the blue corn, to the split-rail fence that separated her property from the adjacent land. Just past the fence was a massive wall of dense green foliage, twenty feet high.

“Siberian elm,” Nola said, looking up at it. “It’s amazing how big those trees have grown in two years.”

“They planted
that
two years ago?” I asked.

She smiled sardonically. “Good fences make good neighbors, right?”

Moose hopped over the fence. “Luckily, it’s on the north side, otherwise it would really take out some sunlight. You guys coming?”

I wasn’t above a little trespassing, but I waited for Nola’s response. She looked at me and shrugged, then hiked a leg onto the fence and hopped over it. I followed suit.

Moose plunged into the greenery, and I went next, holding back some of the thicker branches so they didn’t whack Nola in the face. I put out a hand for her, and she took it—a purely utilitarian gesture that reminded me of a girl named Cindy Mailer and a walk home from school in the sixth grade.

We emerged twenty feet later in front of a ten-foot chain-link fence. It stretched out to our left for at least a quarter mile. To our right, it turned sharply after a hundred feet, angling away from us to follow the hedges that lined the road. Every forty feet or so was a sign that said
POSTED: NO TRESPASSING.

“That’s a big fence,” I said.

Just beyond the fence was a field of corn, not very tall, looking slightly gray and withered. A pair of butterflies fluttered down one of the rows. They were a muted orange and black, but looked colorful compared to the drab stalks.

“That’s where you got it?” Nola asked.

“Yeah,” Moose replied. “And it’s all like that.”

“I thought they were developing this land. I didn’t know they were farming it.”

I stepped to the side so I could look down the rows; they were straight and they were long. “So whose land is this? The people who want to buy your property?”