Scarlet Nights (12 page)

When Mike took a step toward the closest plant, he heard a faint click. It was a sound that, had there been any noise of, say, dogs barking, he wouldn’t have noticed. But Mike had heard the sound once before—and seconds later a friend of his had been blown up.

Mike stood absolutely still, not moving except to look down at what he’d stepped on. It didn’t appear to be a land mine, but he could see a circle of something hidden under the dirt.

Keeping his foot in place, he slowly pulled his knife from his jeans pocket and used the long blade to move the dirt away. It looked to be an old iron trap with teeth on it. Had it sprung, it would have cut deeply into his ankle.

Carefully, Mike put his hands on the two iron half circles and held them down while he lifted his foot. The nasty little trap sprang shut the second he let go. It was like a lethal Venus flytrap—and it was meant to hurt anyone who tried to get near the marijuana plant.

Okay, so the old man was making some money through illegal
drugs. In Mike’s life, that was nothing, but he wondered if more traps had been set around the other plants to protect them. Or was it the other way around and the cannabis was being used as a lure?

As cautiously as he’d ever worked in his life, Mike began to closely inspect the vegetable garden. Each of the marijuana plants had a trap near it, and each one was concealed under the dirt.

At the gate Mike saw four holes in the ground, and the grasses were flattened in the center. He realized a tent had been placed there, and Mike thought that made sense. If the old man was growing weed, the local boys were probably trying to steal it, so Lang had been sleeping outside to protect it.

It was a plausible explanation, but, still, Mike didn’t believe it. Something wasn’t right. For one thing, there was no way Lang could so openly grow those plants and not have everyone in Edilean know about it. Mike had been told that Luke repaired the buildings and often cut the grass around the house. He would have seen the plants, and Mike didn’t think he’d tolerate them.

If, by some long shot, Luke didn’t tear out the plants, Mike was sure that Sara’s mother wouldn’t allow them. He’d spent less than an hour with the woman, but it was enough to know that she’d refuse to buy vegetables from a man who was growing marijuana.

Mike stepped over half a dozen spiny, smelly herbs to reach one of the cannabis plants. When he brushed away the dirt, he saw that it was inside a pot. It looked like Lang was growing them somewhere else, then when he went away, he put them in the ground. Mike was even more sure that the old man was using them to entice someone into the garden.

Mike reset the trap he’d triggered, removed all trace that he’d been there, and left to continue his exploration.

He went away from the house, toward the large lawn. There was
another garden directly in front of the main house, with tall boxwood hedges encasing geometric beds.

In the second square, he saw a net hidden in a tree branch that hung over the garden below. When Mike moved a stick on the ground, he found a trip wire. If he’d walked across it, the net would have come down on him.

“It’s a damned Tarzan movie,” he muttered as he moved out of what he thought of as the flower garden.

At the far end was about a half acre of mown lawn, and he didn’t want to run across it, but at the other side was another fenced area that he wanted to see. In the middle of the lawn was a gravel driveway, narrow, but it had recently been used for a car, so obviously, it was trap free. It looked like Lang just didn’t want anyone sneaking about where he couldn’t see them.

Mike jogged down the drive to what looked to be an old orchard, and when he got there, he stood at one end and couldn’t help admiring it. The trees looked to have originally been planted in five neat, long rows, but now there were many gaps from missing trees, and half of the remainder looked too old to produce fruit.

For the first time, Mike thought of this property as being his. He’d like to take out the dying trees and replace them. He thought it would be nice to pull an apricot or a plum off his own trees. He glanced at the big lawn and envisioned playing catch with Tess’s kid. And when she wasn’t around, he’d show the boy—or girl—a bit of kickboxing. Maybe he could put some weight machines in one of those old buildings and—

He made himself get back to business. The fenced area near the orchard was a cemetery. He wasn’t surprised to see the name
MCDOWELL
on a dozen old markers, but when he got to the gate, he saw something that drew his attention away. A few yards from the cemetery was a line of small, handmade concrete stones with names
and dates drawn into them. They were obviously pet graves, and they started in the 1920s. The most recent graves were for animals named King, Queen, Prince, Princess, Duke, Duchess, Marquess, Marchioness, Earl, Countess, Viscount, and Viscountess. The last two were freshly dug and dated this year.

As Mike looked at the dates, he realized that each of the dogs seemed to have lived very long lives—except for the last two. They were no more than three years old when they died. Maybe it was Mike’s cynicism from what he’d seen in his life, but he wondered if the dogs had been murdered. Losing his dogs would explain why Lang had made traps that were lethal.

Mike wasn’t sure yet, but he thought there was a war going on here, and it was probable that the dogs had been casualties of it. It was his guess that someone had been attacking the old man and Lang was trying to protect himself. But at the same time, like a spider and a fly, Lang had been trying to lure his enemy into a trap. When someone tried to get the marijuana, he’d have his foot nearly torn off. When the enemy sneaked through the old flower garden, he’d find a net falling on top of him.

Of course the first thing Mike wanted to know was
who
was after old Brewster Lang. But if he couldn’t find that out—and he felt sure he already knew—then he was going to figure out the cause of this war.

7

S
ARA WALKED DOWN
the long driveway of Merlin’s Farm and marveled that there had been so few changes since she first saw it when she was just eight years old. At dinner the night before that visit, her mother had excitedly told her family that Brewster Lang had contacted her to say that he wanted to sell some of his vegetables to Armstrong’s Organic Foods. That he grew the most succulent and beautiful produce in the county, maybe in the state, was well known.

“And how did he contact you?” her husband, Dr. Henry Shaw, asked. “Smoke signals? Or did he use two cans and a string?” He hadn’t grown up in Edilean and often let his wife know how backward he thought the town was.

Only Sara giggled at the joke, but then she’d always been a “daddy’s girl.” Her two older sisters were as perfectly conventional as Sara was a dreamer.

“Telephone,” Eleanor said as she passed the bowl of carrot and
raisin salad to Taylor who, at twelve, was the eldest of their three daughters. “I’m going out there to see him tomorrow, and, Sara, you’re going with me.”

Everyone at the table paused, frozen, as they looked at Sara in surprise. Whereas the two older daughters were as organized and determined as their mother—but without the hippie undertones—Sara was content to play with her many dolls and sew endless dresses for them.

Sara looked as though she didn’t know if she was being punished or honored. “Me?” she whispered. She’d gone to work with her father many times. Of course it was always on a Saturday, when he had more paperwork to do than patients to see, but she liked the old hospital in Williamsburg where he worked, was fascinated by his office, and most of all, she loved being with her father. But, unlike her sisters, she’d never been to work with her mother.

“Yes, you,” Ellie said. “Merlin’s Farm is old and mysterious. It’s right up your alley. You’ll stay outside while I negotiate terms with Mr. Lang, but that shouldn’t take more than half an hour.”

But it had taken over four hours, and during that time, Sara had wandered about in her little pink dress—given to her by her aunt Lissie—and had fallen in love with the old farm. She’d made friends with Mr. Lang’s two dogs, had mingled with a flock of geese that were nearly as big as she was, and had explored every old building on the property.

When her mother was ready to leave, it seemed to Sara that she’d spent only minutes there. But not so her mother. She was the most angry Sara had ever seen her.

Behind her came a short, heavy man whose back bent forward so much he reminded Sara of a storybook character: the Hunchback
of Notre Dame. He was trailing behind Sara’s angry mother and smiling as though he’d won a prize.

But when he saw Sara standing by the car, he stopped and stared at the little girl, and his round face recomposed into a look of menace.

“She looks just like her,” he said in a deep, wiggly voice that, to Sara’s mind, was funny. If he hadn’t been scowling at her so hard, she would have giggled.

Ellie was opening the car door, and in her agitated state, she dropped the keys. As she picked them up, the old man removed the sneer from his face so that when Ellie turned, he was merely gazing at the child. “You mean my aunt Lissie. Yes, Sara looks like her and
is
like her.” She flung open the back door of the car and waited for Sara to get in. Ellie got in the driver’s seat and started the engine.

In the back, Sara looked out the window at Mr. Lang, and she knew her mother didn’t see the way he glared, and certainly didn’t see the way he pointed his finger at her. Just as her mother sped away, the old man made his hand into a gun and pulled the trigger.

Sara slid down in the seat in sheer terror and listened to her mother complain all the way home about what a “pirate” Brewster Lang was. “He might as well have held a gun to my head,” her mother said—and her words made Sara slide down farther.

Sara never told anyone what Mr. Lang had done, with his hand firing a shot at her. Over the ensuing years, she was able to separate the beautiful old farm with its butterflies flitting about from the scary old man who seemed to hate her because she looked like her aunt Lissie. One day Sara asked her great-aunt about the old man, but all Lissie would say was that Sara should stay away from him. “Remember, dear, you must never believe anything Brewster Lang says.”

After that, Lissie refused to say another word about Mr. Lang. Aunt Lissie had believed in the power of positive thinking so deeply that she absolutely refused to allow bad words to cross her lips. It had always amused Sara that some people in Edilean remembered this trait with great fondness, while others said Lissie made them insane.

So now, it was afternoon, and Sara was once again visiting Merlin’s Farm. This had come about because at two she’d been outside sewing when she saw Luke walking about Edilean Manor garden with a little man. She didn’t think about it until she felt a chill go through her. She gave a little shudder, rubbed the goose bumps on her arms, and looked up. Standing just a few yards away from her, glaring at her in what she could only describe as hatred, was the boogeyman of all her dreams: Mr. Lang. She hadn’t seen him up close since she was a child—she’d made sure of that—but he hadn’t changed much. He was still ugly, his head as large and round as a pumpkin. Maybe he was a bit shorter and his face had a few more wrinkles, but he was essentially the same.

And yet again, just as he had before, he made a motion as though he was shooting her. But this time, Sara wasn’t a little girl. She gave him her sweetest smile, then lifted her second finger at him. He smiled back at her in a way that made the goose bumps return to her arms, then he turned away and trotted after Luke.

After that, try as she might, Sara couldn’t continue sewing. She gathered her things, went back into the apartment, and locked all the doors and windows. When she’d finished, she remembered that Mike was staying with her and he’d not be able to get in.

With the thought of Mike, everything fell into place. Last night at dinner he’d been so nice, listening hard to her reasons of why she should go with him to see the old farm. She’d gone to bed
confident that she’d persuaded him. Since she’d first seen Merlin’s Farm, she’d dreamed of going back, but only if “he” wasn’t there. When she’d had the idea of going with Mike, a detective who probably carried a gun, it had seemed like the perfect opportunity. She’d even thought about what she’d wear and the food she’d pack for a picnic.

But it looked like Mike had never had any intention of letting her go with him. “After all I’ve done for him!” she muttered in anger. That she couldn’t think of anything she’d done for him didn’t stop her anger. She knew Mike had arranged for Luke to babysit old Mr. Lang while he, Mike, went to see the farm. Alone.

“Two can play at this game,” she murmured, then called her mother’s store manager and asked that they make a picnic lunch for two. Sara knew the news that she’d ordered a basket full of food would spread all over town within minutes, but that was fine with her. She was truly sick of men treating her like she was too delicate to hear the truth. Greg refused to tell her what had happened that was so urgent that he’d had to leave immediately. And now Mike had made it clear he thought she couldn’t handle visiting a
farm
! With the help of
her
relatives, he’d gone there a day before he said he was going.

Twenty minutes later, Sara had the picnic basket in her car and she was on her way to Merlin’s Farm. When she saw Mike’s car partially concealed under the big oak tree, it made her even more sure she was doing the right thing.

For herself, she refused to sneak about. She drove in through the gate, parked her car in front of the farmhouse, and got out. If she saw Mike fine, if she didn’t, that was all right too.

As she picked up her handbag, she felt her phone buzz. Her mother had sent her an e-mail saying she had the dried molokhia Mike wanted, and Joce had texted to ask her to come over and tell her all about the dreadful little man who was following Luke around the garden. And Tess had left a voice mail asking how she and Mike were getting along. And there were four e-mails from clients asking when their clothes would be ready. Sara put her bag back on the seat, took her cell, and as she walked, she rapidly pushed buttons to answer everyone.