A Lethal Time (A Samantha Jamison Mystery Volume 4) (8 page)

Chapter 29

What’s Next?

I wondered what would happen next? Armed with my hi-tech, adventurous, savvy crew, I was really looking forward to uncovering a lead that would move us along. But with this bunch, there was no predicting anything.

Now there was a wrinkle thrown into the mix that none of us expected. Clay never returned to the farm that night. Numerous attempts at calling his cell went to voicemail. An unusual silence came over the group.

No one could figure out what might have happened to him. And no one was willing to speculate, either. So the next morning at the table, everyone ate their breakfast dished out by me for a few minutes in a noticeable veil of silence, a true rarity for this group.

A clearly disturbed Martha finally said, “I don’t get it.”

“I don’t either,” said Betty, frowning. “He was the one person we thought we could count on.”

“What could have happened?” asked Crystal, eyeing me.

I shrugged. “Hopefully, nothing that can’t be explained away, and nothing we’re going to regret.”

Having read between the lines, everyone turned to me.

“What?” I snapped when I realized I’d said too much.

“Has he ever done this before?” Crystal asked.

I hated to bring an awkward subject up, but I couldn’t lie. “Yes. Sometimes he just picks up and leaves with no explanation whatsoever, thus our
on and off
relationship.”

I could tell that was not what they wanted to hear, but the truth was the truth. He always managed to vanish at the most inopportune times and this definitely qualified as one.

“Well, what do we do now?” Crystal asked, exasperated.

My mind was imagining the worst, but rooting for the best. Other than the tractor, he had the only drivable vehicle on the property. Worse yet, what would I tell Sally? I had no intention of buying her a truck. So, he’d better haul butt.

Knowing Clay’s skills, I knew he could handle himself, regardless of the situation, but I was still worried and didn’t want to let on how much. He was as predictable as an upset stomach right after I’d devoured a whole box of candy, but like an idiot I went back for more, unable to stop myself.

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but this has been one hell of a day,” said Martha.

Crystal looked over to her. “I disagree. Every day with you is one hell of a day.”

Hazel huffed. “She drives Betty and me nuts, too.”

“Look on the bright side,” said Betty. “She may be over-the-top sometimes, but would we be happy just sitting in a senior center doing bead work all day? We’d go crazy!”

Ha! So they drove me crazy, instead.

Chapter 30

Dissecting Thoughts Not Fit To Print

Once again, how would I write down what was going on when I didn’t even know myself? My agent and editor already thought my life was over-the-top. I tried to lessen their anxiety for them putting up with my wild capers when I,
by some small miracle
, seemed to manage at the very last minute to squeak across those deadlines by delivering a somewhat unusual and unexpected mystery.

The skeptical emails I received from my editor were amusing. After looking at what happens to me from her viewpoint, maybe she was right. It all seemed
off-the-wall
. At least someone was amused by the absurdity of my life.

Just when I thought things were looking up in the clue department, I find myself walking down another road that led me to something else. It sure looked as if I had gotten involved in another tangled affair.

You see, I write like I cook, cleaning up on the fly, but this time, I think I’d have to do a lot more cleaning up than usual. If Clay didn’t get back with a good explanation of why he never responded about what was going on with the Boston angle, I might take a hiatus from this relationship thing because, I felt shortchanged in the trust department.

Why didn’t he call me?

I laughed. What relationship? Where was the big sit-down we planned? Out the window, like usual. Something always managed to come up, or one of us got cold feet, finding an excuse from signing on that dotted line.

Of course, we sort of have this conflict going on about out-besting each other. Hey, a little competition goes a long way, right? Always keep them guessing, that’s my motto. Don’t give the store away.
Create demand
.

If he came back and told us there was no suspicious Boston connection, then there had to be something we weren’t getting, or we were looking at it the wrong way. Maybe I could speak to Sally’s neighbor, Jacob, across the street. He was an artist with a home studio.

Martha and the two bookworms took off for the library to dig up more dirt. Crystal, who was on her way to check out that stallion, whose name she said was Boss, explained he was an old harness racer with a history of being abused.

Story goes that George approached Sally and Tom about adopting Boss because his wife, Sarah was going to euthanize him. After hearing that, I wondered why? They said yes, of course. But after Sally and Tom tried to unsuccessfully to get Boss used to being with their three gentle horses, Sally decided that rather than give him back to be put to sleep, they would carve out a corral in their property and hopefully one day Boss might just come around with their horses one at a time.
I seriously had my doubts though. I mean, come on!

Odds of that happening were slim to none.

Chapter 31

Well-intentioned Intentions?

Before lunch, I finally received a text. Clay would arrive for a late lunch after being delayed, making one last contact in Boston. He said he had some interesting news.

As a side note, he added he was sorry about not contacting me, but with all that was going on, and rushing around, he had misplaced his phone, but then found it.

Yeah, and I am the tooth fairy!

But I let it slide. I was more interested in what he had to say. By the time I heard tires on the gravel drive, I had lunch already set out on the table with two large pitchers of sweet, southern iced tea, a recent favorite of mine, and some thick turkey club sandwiches, chips, and pickles.

Everyone was talking away as they came through the door at the same time. Martha, Hazel and Betty were back from the library, and Crystal had returned from her visit to oversee Boss’ food and water. I caught that excited glint in Clay’s eye and motioned him to come over handing him a glass of iced tea and mentally forgave him.

He was safe.

“Well, what happened?” I asked, eager to find out.

The kitchen went silent as everyone turned to hear what Clay had to say. His absence had been a main topic of over-speculation. The subject was exhausted hours ago, but hyperbole and hunches still lingered in the air.

He smiled and started filling his plate. “I’m starved.”

Martha edged forward, impatient as usual. “Yeah, yeah, you’re hungry. Big deal. What the heck did you find out?”

He set his plate down and sat at the table. In minutes, everyone had thrown sandwiches
with reckless abandon onto their plates and sat waiting to hear the latest info.

“What we initially heard,” said Clay, “about Robinson’s relatives not being close-knit was true. They were only concerned with the money angle. But this is where it gets interesting. Robinson had a will in place when he died. It stipulated that his property couldn’t be divided into lots. It was to stay with only one house on it because it had been previously donated in a land conservation easement.”

I smiled. “So, it could still be sold, but with conditions.”

“And if a developer bought it for a subdivision, he would then have to pay back about twenty year’s worth of previously reduced taxes to reverse the easement.”

“Clever! Because that would be cost prohibitive.”

“Plus, they would have to get zoning permission, but it was the last clause in the will that was the real surprise.”

“And what was that?” Crystal asked.

“It instructed that Jackson Porter could graze his cattle on a portion of it for ten years regardless of who owned it.”

“Well, that doesn’t make sense,” said Crystal.

“That’s what I thought. Then I found out
who
Jackson’s mother was, which made it all the more mystifying.”

Chapter 32

Hey, You’re Killing Me

Everyone stared around the group, mentally trying to out-think the other about who this mystery woman might be. There wasn’t one single nibble or speculation coming forth, so it was up to Clay to verbally hand it over.

He leaned back after a few bites of food, taking his sweet old time, drawing out the suspense.

“Okay, quit dragging it out,” I said, laughing.

“Yeah,” said Martha. “Spit it out. You’re killing us.”

“Her name was Helen Mason,
and
the woman that was murdered during that home invasion, who just so happens to have had those water rights to the well here, remember?”

Well, you could have heard a pin drop in the silence that followed. No one, including me, had expected that one.

“You sure?” Betty asked. “Their names are different.”

“Anyone can legally change their name. It’s done a lot.”

“How old was she?” asked Hazel.

“Fifty-five years old.”

Now, why would Jackson keep his past quiet?

I gave Clay a suspicious look. “Exactly how do you find this stuff out? Or shouldn’t we be asking?”

Clay winked, and stood up. “That’s on a need to know basis. Hey, I’m going for a Harley ride, any takers?”

I declined. “I think I’ll go walk over to the neighbor’s across the road to see what information I can scare up.”

Crystal got up. “I can never get enough Harley rides.”

We were all about to go our separate ways when Martha remembered something. “Speaking of the neighbors, we almost plumb forgot about our library visit.”

Hazel sat back down. “Why, yes, we did, didn’t we?”

“I think you will find this interesting, Sam,” said Betty.

Martha scooted closer to the table. “Remember we told you about Robinson and the lumber truck?”

“Yeah, what about it?” I asked, leaning in.

“That woman at the library forgot to mention that her brother’s cousin’s headlights flashed on something the other evening in the most unexpected place.”

Betty laughed. “And not where you’d expect it.”

“And where might that be?” I asked.

“Across the street at Sally’s neighbor’s house.”

“Why, that’s Jacob’s house!” said Crystal.

“Well, what was this
something
he saw?” I asked.

“
Someone
, a man that looked familiar,” said Betty.

“Well, who was it?” I asked.

Hazel smiled. “That same guy who was the lumber truck driver that pulled away from Robinson’s.”

“How is he so sure it was him?” Crystal asked.

“Not many people around here have bright red hair.”

Oh, the possibilities on this thing were proving endless.

Chapter 33

Crowding & Clouding My Field of Vision

I was sitting at my laptop, sorting through all the players that were crowding the field and trying to make sense of my info. It was murky at best, but I was determined.

This is what I had so far
:

Crystal’s cousin, Sally, and her husband, Tom, owned the farm where we were staying. They had three horses. No, make that four. I forgot Boss that wired stallion.

Robinson was the neighbor adjacent to Sally, who was now deceased, and had lived down the road from her place.

The
Sarah Smith and her older husband, George, who was deaf, lived down from Sally’s, angled across from Robinson’s place. It was their woods that were stolen.

Jackson Porter owned the parcel down from Sarah’s at another angle across the dirt road from Robinson’s place. Jackson was an unexpected recipient of pastureland, was also that murdered woman, Helen Mason’s son, plus, he was Sarah’s former employee, a biker, and an experimental cattle owner, who now had his own parcel where I took that embarrassing spill in the drink.

Did you get all that?

Millicent and Major Fielding, the elderly couple, lived almost directly across from Jackson on the flipside of Robinson’s property.

All of them were from Boston, or had some kind of connection to Boston.

I had yet to meet Jacob, the artist who lived directly across from Sally and Tom.

At this point in my enquiries my questions were:

Who stole the lumber from Sally?
No clue. Relevant?

Was it a motive other than money?
I doubted that.

Was I reading too much into the Boston angle?
Perhaps.

Why did Jackson work at Sarah’s?
Good question!

Why did Jackson buy that particular property?
Not sure.

Why would Robinson sell to Jackson?
Still a mystery.

Why did everyone want Robinson’s property?
No clue.

How did the neighbor, Jacob know that driver?
No clue.

What am I going to do about Clay?
No clue
.

Do I want to keep my relationship with him?
Maybe.

Okay, so maybe those last two questions had absolutely nothing to do with my mystery, but they sure had a lot to do with my life, or lack thereof.

You know, I think my cognitive skills were affected, too.