Jenny said, “The limonite pseudomorphs are a part of the county’s heritage. The farmers used to bring them up with the plow and collect them.”
Fred added, “They’re an iron ore. Mining at its most elemental.”
Jenny continued. “Fred and I had been working to preserve the last good stretch of ground they weather out of. It’s the last farm to fall in Manheim Township, and we made a deal with the township government that they could cut up the farm, put in a library and all, if they kept this one field open and let the children pick up the pseudomorphs. Put up a little display in the library, even plow the ground once a year to keep them coming up.” She shrugged her shoulders, suddenly looking small. “But they paved it over for a parking lot for the new soccer field instead.”
I said, “Manheim Township is just south of the Krehbeil farm, isn’t it?”
“It’s a few miles south. But sad to say, the developments will sweep through all of those farms within the next decade if no one stops them.”
Fred drove on, his jaw set. “We’ll go on to Intercourse instead, then,” he muttered.
“Excuse me!” shrieked Nigel. “Freddie darling, I hold you in the highest esteem, but I shall not bed thee!”
“The town, idiot,” he said, his mood easing slightly. “Not your shorts.”
“What mining interests are there?” I asked.
“None,” he said. “But it has the best bakery in the county, and after that little ‘disappointment,’ I need something sweet.”
WE CONTINUED ON our diagonal through the county until we junctioned with a secondary highway that led us straight east through Bird-in-Hand to Intercourse, and I’m not making this up. Funny names or not, the scenery was splendid. Here I found the heart of Lancaster County’s fabled farmlands. Great patchworks of beautifully tended fields spread out around us, undulating over softly rolling hills. My heart sang.
Fred did some classic arm-waving, drive-by geology. “This is the Hagerstown Silt Loam to the north,” he said. “And to the south, the Conestoga Silt Loam. Wonderful soils, both developed on Paleozoic limestones. Over there is a log house made from the original chestnuts,” he added, pointing one out to me as we zoomed past. It was a smallish structure, built of massive, squared-off logs.
“The chestnuts must have been huge,” I said. “A far cry from the narrow lodgepole pines my folks’ ranch was built out of.”
“They were indeed,” said Fred, “and they’re all gone now. Jenny’s noble settlers brought in the blight. Many of the old stumps are still alive,
and they keep sending up shoots, but just as soon as the sapling matures enough to bloom, the blight knocks it out again, and it’s back to the roots.”
Jenny had a homily for this one, too. “We all do to the best of our knowledge, Fred. I’m sure those people had no idea they were carrying the blight. That’s why we have to be vigilant today to make sure we aren’t continuing to screw up our tomorrows.”
We pulled off in Intercourse and found the bakery, which featured a confection called Whoopie Pies. They were composed of two large, soft chocolate cookies glued together with your choice of whipped filling: chocolate, vanilla, peanut butter, or maple. I chose vanilla and got a cup of coffee to go with it, figuring that Tert wouldn’t miss an extra dollar, and ambled outside with the others to munch and sip in the sunshine.
The bakery was adjacent to a large parking lot filled with cars with out-of-state license plates that belonged to people who had come to Intercourse to send home giggling postcards and ogle the Amish. And Amish there were: Black, boxy, horse-drawn buggies trotted past on the main drag, driven by bearded men wearing straw hats who did their level best to ignore the gaping tourists in Cadillacs and Volvos. The local bank had not only a parking lot for its automobile-driving customers, but also a small stables block for the horse-drawn carriages. I ate my Whoopie Pie and joined the other out-of-staters in a little shameless goggling myself.
My cell phone rang. It was Faye. “I wanted to apologize for shouting at you the other day,” she said.
I was flabbergasted. “That’s okay, Faye. I mean—”
“No, it’s not, and I wanted to say so.”
I wanted to warn her about Tert, but didn’t want to ruin the détente by getting in her face, so I just said, “How are things? Sloane okay?”
“A little tummy-ache.”
“What?” I went on red alert.
“She’s kind of cranky. She’s sleeping now.”
“That’s, ah … nice. You still in Philadelphia?”
“Yeah. Taking lots of walks.”
“Oh. Listen, if Sloane’s stomachache gets any worse, or persists, you take her right to a doctor, okay?”
Faye came back with a defensive tone. “What, you think I can’t look after my own child?”
“No! No, I didn’t mean to suggest that. I’ve just been talking to experts about poisonous pigments, and—”
“Relax,” she said testily.
I thought fast, trying to think of something to say that would keep her in communication. “Are you having a good time?”
“Tert is down at the gallery a lot, or holed up in his office here at the house.” Faye sounded lonesome.
“Not much fun for you. Maybe you should head on up north and see some other friends.”
“No, I made the mistake of turning in my rental car. Trying to be frugal, like you keep suggesting. But I’ve already seen the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall anyway.”
I gritted my teeth and asked, “How’s the food there in Philadelphia?”
“We’re eating a lot of takeout.”
I sighed with relief. “That’s great.”
“Huh? I thought you’d consider that spendthrift.”
“Oh, no. No, no, no! Go for the pizza, the Philly cheese steak, the—”
“Em? Is something bothering you? I mean really?”
There it was, the perfect opening, and yet the moment felt infinitely delicate. If I told her that I suspected Tert of poisoning his mother—Tert, whom she trusted well enough to be his houseguest—I’d come off as a crackpot and a meddler, which in fact I hoped I was. I had not a shred of hard evidence that Tert was anything other than a privileged bit of puff pastry with an art gallery attached. So I said, “Well, it’s just you say that Sloane is sick. It’s just that you both mean so much to me.”
There was a pause, then a surprised, “Thanks for saying.”
“So keep up your strength. Eat that takeout. And stay off whatever’s laying about Tert’s house. He’s a bachelor, you know, and sometimes they keep foods in the cupboard or the fridge way too long, and—”
“I suppose you’re right. Sure, I’ll order Chinese next, and then maybe Thai. Except the peppers in Thai food make my milk kind of funny, and Sloane gets gas.”
I managed to chuckle. “How well I know.” I stuffed another bite of Whoopie Pie into my mouth and chewed. It was great talking baby care with her again. Had I not been so anxious for their safety, I would have prescribed that they go get bored at Tert’s house more often.
“So, you didn’t tell me where you are and what you’re doing,” Faye said.
I grinned. “Oh, I’m just in Intercourse with a couple of geologists eating Whoopie Pies,” I said.
Faye snorted with laughter. “Good old Em,” she said. “You always know how to get yourself into something worth telling about.”
“Intercourse is a town, and a Whoopie Pie is a cookie, you see, and—”
“Don’t spoil it for me, Em. The image is too ripe.”
I laughed. “Okay, okay. We’re doing some fieldwork. Looks like I might get a thesis project after all. You were right to kick me in the butt.”
“De nada.”
I sighed with relief. We were on the right track again at last, and all it had taken was the consumption of a little humble … Whoopie Pie. “So, day after tomorrow we’ll be heading home.”
“Yup. So you’re there in Lancaster County still?”
“Well, I’m back. I went down to Washington, remember. I saw your great uncle. Hey, I think he’d like you to call him.”
“Okay … but anyway, I was wondering about Friday. Do you think you can maybe pick us up?”
“Sure! I’d be glad to. Maybe you’d even like me to pick you up early. Thursday night. That’s tomorrow.”
“No, Friday morning’s okay. I can avoid the cost of a night at a hotel, eh?”
So here it was, my frugality coming back to bite me. “Okay then, give me some directions.”
“It’s sort of complicated. I can guide you in Friday morning by cell phone. And we’ll talk again, okay?” She sounded cheered. “Oh, the baby’s waking up. Good-bye!”
“’Bye!”
I thought of phoning Mr. Carter immediately and telling him to call Faye quick while she was feeling so approachable, but Nigel interrupted me.
“Look at this,” he said. He had his computer open on the hood of the field vehicle, and was tapping in commands, his peanut butter Whoopie Pie clenched between his teeth. The effect of brush mustache and soft chocolate cookies was almost too much to bear. He chewed the pie systematically, absorbing it into his body by millimeters. Suddenly, he whipped the remaining nub away from his lips and rested it on the hood of the Jeep next to his machine. “There,” he said. “All the lands of clan Krehbeil,
cross-referenced to both geology and soils, with tax roll overlay, for your viewing pleasure.”
Jenny and I both hurried to his side. The large farm in Elm was immediately obvious, but there was also another land parcel situated in the extreme south of the county.
Fred leaned over and looked at the display. “That’s interesting—they have a tract in the middle of the schists,” he said. “Are you sure it’s the same Krehbeil?”
Nigel clicked on that location and told the computer to zoom in. Sure enough, it belonged to William Krehbeil II, home address same as the main farm.
“Why would they have a parcel there?” I asked, knowing damned well what the family history was from Mr. Hauser. William Primus had probably kept part of the tract he sold to Tyson. But I could not tell Fred, Nigel, and Jenny what I knew without undermining my assertion that on Monday, I’d only chanced upon the Krehbeil farm. And I imagined that only I knew Primus’s widow had also owned a ranch outside of Cody, Wyoming, and apparently left it to her daughter Winnie.
I glanced at Jenny, wondering how much she knew about the Krehbeils’ financial situation. Who had inherited that ranch when Winnie died? Did she have children, or had the land devolved to her brother and his heirs? Did the ailing Mrs. Krehbeil now own it? And were her children eyeing it like hungry coyotes circling a fresh kill? “Would that database show lands held outside of the county?” I asked.
“No,” said Nigel. “Why?”
Jenny met my gaze. She was a quick one, all right.
But my mental machinery was far ahead of her, because I knew things she did not. Tert’s errand to Cody suddenly was cast in a new light: Had he gone to Wyoming to appear on the Remington committee, or was his true mission to fetch that painting from his aunt’s ranch before someone else nabbed it?
I ratcheted through the possibilities this opened up. If Grandmother Krehbeil had left the Pennsylvania farm to Secundus and the Wyoming ranch to Aunt Winnie, then Tert’s relationship to the painting would have slipped from heir to visitor. And he’d said he hadn’t seen the painting in decades. Had he perhaps had a falling-out with his aunt? Had Winnie’s
death provided his opportunity to seize the painting? And if so, was it his alone, or did he owe his siblings each one-quarter of its value?
And hadn’t Frank Barnes said that there was something suspicious about Winnie’s death? Another doorway to possibilities opened up, and I began to wonder just how many of his relatives Tert might have poisoned.
Was he cold-bloodedly killing off his relatives to snatch his inheritance? I cleared my throat. “Jenny, why exactly did old Mr. Krehbeil apply for the easement? Was he a preservationist like you?”
“Oh, heavens no. The farm’s falling down and he was a proud old coot. He wanted the bucks to fix the place up.”
“And you say the Krehbeil farm is not on the best soil. How exactly does that affect the Ag easement process?”
“The County Agricultural Preserve Board system relies on annual evaluations of each property that applies for the trust. A scoring system had been devised to set the priorities for which farms get the money. Because the budget is renewed each year, the evaluations are redone annually, and the top candidates get the money. It’s four years since Old Man Krehbeil applied for his easement, and each year the Krehbeil farm has scored too low. The limited county budget keeps going to farms with higher rankings.”
“But you said there are two easement funds.”
“Right. The other fund is privately administered. But it doesn’t pay as much, and in fact relies on farmers donating their easement values as much as actually getting paid, or they get paid much less than market value.”
So Tert’s father had applied for the agricultural easement to gain cash needed to fix up the property and pay for the day-to-day cost of living. If he had succeeded, the land could not be developed. That would have seriously lessened its value as an inheritance, and the cash realized from the County Agricultural Preservation Board would soon be consumed making repairs. So why wouldn’t Tert want to hurry Papa’s descent into the grave? And why leave Mama alive? Much better to hasten their demise before the sale could go through, and lock up the sale of the development rights in probate. And what of Aunt Winnie’s assets? I had to find a way to uncover that story, too.