Authors: Nora McFarland
I took the tablet from him and stared down at the map. “This borders Warner's property.”
Rod laughed, but his voice was hoarse from the strain of the day and it sounded forced. “That doesn't mean anything. Warner is so rich that almost everything in town borders something of his.”
“No,” I said. “It borders his original property. The one he inherited from his father. It used to be orange groves, but now it's an oil field.”
My cell phone made a noise, followed by Rod's and Callum's. We all silenced them and read our new text messages.
“That's weird,” Rod said. “Freddy is texting me from the station. He doesn't even work there anymore.”
Callum stared at his screen. “He's filling in on the assignment desk today.”
Rod's head shot up. “Freddy?”
I nodded and then read my message:
SOS. 9II. HLP. XMAS PETS GNE2HELL. CAT8BRD
.
Callum leapt from his seat.
“It might not be as bad as it sounds,” Rod said, but Callum was already running out of the restaurant. “Maybe Freddy means the animal shelter brought one cat and eight birds.”
“Your optimism is the thing I love best about you.”
Rod didn't laugh. He didn't even look at me. He took a breath that sounded surprisingly like a sigh. His shoulders hunched and the worry lines on his forehead deepened. “Lilly, I need you to stop working on this story.”
“I know you've been through hell today.” I got up and transferred to Callum's empty seat next to Rod. “But is there more you're not telling me?”
“The hardest part about how my grandfather died was that I couldn't get to the hospital in time to say good-bye. He asked for me, and I wasn't there.”
His eyes were glassing over, but he didn't look away.
“I'm so sorry,” I said. “I forgot that you . . . I mean, of course that's on your mind now. We'll go to the hospital right away.”
We paid our check and left. I'd eaten half my tuna melt, but Rod had barely touched his catfish and eggs. I wrapped the biscuit, usually his favorite, in a napkin and took it with me.
We were close to the Oildale house so we detoured to pick up Rod's Prius. Neither of us wanted to go inside what I'd once thought of as a safe placeâwhich was good, because we couldn't. Crime-scene tape blocked the front porch and a police seal was on the door.
Rod suggested, and I quickly agreed, that we stay at the house he owned near the bluffs. The repairs that had prompted his moving in with me a year earlier had been completed, and the 1970s ranch-style house would be free and comfortable.
We drove to the hospital in our separate cars. I lagged behind only long enough to put my KJAY shirt back on. Once on the
road, my cell phone rang. It was Callum, so I took the call and put it on speaker.
“What happened with the animals?” I said. “Is the bird really history?”
“Yes, but it didn't happen on air.” Behind Callum's voice I heard a cat meowing. “The animal control guy took off after the noon show, but he left a couple cages unlatched.”
“I thought he looked distracted. What if he doesn't come back for the five?”
“We'll figure something out.” Callum paused, and I heard a computer mouse clicking. “I've done more Internet snooping about the man who stole Warner's jewelry. Mida is Carter King's sister. They both inherited the family farm from their parents, who died young.”
“Is Mida still alive?”
“Nobody ever bothered to change the title on the land so she must be. The farm is her last known address.”
“As much as I'd like to talk with her, I have to go to the hospital first.”
“Perfect. I'll call Leanore and brief her on the story.” A dog barked, followed by a sharp hiss. “When you're ready, take her with you to the King farm. If you run into anybody, say she's doing one of her local-history pieces on the old robbery.”
“What about Rod? He's been through a lot today.”
“Then leave him at the hospital or send him home to get some rest. Whatever he needs.”
At the hospital I parked and met Rod in the lobby. On the ride upstairs I explained that Callum was sending Leanore and me out to the King farm.
Rod's cheeks were already chalky white, so he couldn't pale any more. “This is a bad idea, Lilly. You need to stay here with me.”
We stopped at the entrance to the surgical waiting room, where Leanore and Annette sat together. Three new people waited for news of their own relative on the other side of the room. I
imagined myself in their place with hunched shoulders and a listless, miserable gaze directed at the floor.
I glanced inside to make sure the patrol officer was gone before speaking. “I know it's important for you to be here, and I understand why, but we're different. If I sit here and wait, I'll come apart. I have to do something.”
Rod looked uncomfortable and refused to make eye contact. “The more you investigate who shot Bud, the more you're going to discover about his life. Not all of it's going to be good.” He finally looked at me. “If he does die, don't you want to remember the best of him?”
I laughed. “I have no illusions about Bud. He's a cheat, a liar, and probably even a petty criminal, but I love him. There's nothing I can find out that's going to change that.”
“Are you sure?”
I flashed on Erabelle standing in her bedroom doorway.
Bud was good at hurting people.
Was Rod right? Was I going to find out that Bud used women? That he even led them on and treated them badly? He'd obviously treated Erabelle badly. What had happened that she still felt the pain after so long?
“You're right,” I said. “There may be some things about Bud that I'd rather not dwell on, but even if the worst is true, it won't change the way I feel about him. He's always been there for me, and my dad before that. If our situations were reversed, he wouldn't rest until the person who hurt me was caught.”
Leanore had seen us in the hallway and now joined us. “Rod, you look terrible.”
“I'll be okay.”
“Poor thing.” Leanore hugged him. “Don't worry. Lilly and I will handle this new assignment for Callum. You rest.”
We left an unhappy Rod slumped in one of the waiting-room chairs. The only time I'd seen him looking worse was when he'd been shot.
Leanore and I drove north past the city limits. The freeway
was crowded with people ripping through Bakersfield on their way to Fresno or Yosemite for the holiday. On the relatively short drive, Leanore filled me in on what she knew about Warner's sister and son.
Apparently Erabelle had been a fixture in Warner's household until the early seventies. Rumors at the time said she ran away to Europe against Warner's wishes. He'd cut her off, but she hadn't returned. That is, until five years ago when Warner had funded a charity she was running. Leanore thought it helped businesswomen in developing countries but wasn't sure.
“That must be what Erabelle was talking about,” I said. “She had a huge fight with Junior because he cut off all of Warner's discretionary spending, including Erabelle's foundation.”
“Junior, as you call him, is well thought of, but rarely seen. He lives in New York, I think.”
“He may be in debt. Erabelle accused him of siphoning off money while his father was sick.”
I spent the rest of the trip describing Warner's mansion. Leanore was like a kid in a candy store as I detailed the architecture and construction. By the time we'd exited the freeway, I'd resolved to blackmail Warner into finally letting her do a story on the house.
That we were discussing a famous property, whose owner and architect had spent a fortune to perfect it, was ironic considering the property at our destination was a rocky, barren stretch of no-man's-land.
“I thought you said this was a farm.” Leanore leaned forward to see out the windshield. “Demeter herself couldn't grow anything on this land.”
I didn't point out that weeds and scrub brush were growing with abandon. Instead, I looked again at the county assessor's website on my iPhone. “Callum's the one who said it was a farm. Maybe it used to be.”
“I'm guessing there's no oil.” She glanced at the fence on the opposite side of the road from the King property. A Warner
Petroleum sign cautioned that the fence was electrified. “Otherwise the Kings would have sold the land or dropped their own well a long time ago.”
She was probably right. It didn't appear Warner had any actual oil wells nearby. Instead his property housed a massive refinery, processing the crude oil and natural gas coming to it from other locations through a maze of pipes. I guessed that the field I'd seen from Warner's mansion was some distance to the south and probably feeding the refinery.
I pointed to the county assessor's map on my phone. “Supposedly some kind of driveway or road cuts into the Kings' property at this spot. It leads to a house and several other structures.” I rolled down the driver's-side window and looked out. “But I don't see anything resembling a road. Is it possible my GPS is wrong?”
“It's more likely that the driveway is so overgrown with weeds that we can't see it.” Leanore pointed to a stretch of ground that was slightly more even looking than the rest. “That might be it.”
We decided to give it a try. The news van was not a sport-utility vehicle and I had to drive carefully.
After a few minutes, Leanore, who held my phone with the plat displayed on the screen, pointed toward a cluster of trees. “It should be just ahead.”
The trees were grouped at the top of a small ridge. Through the branches and trunks several structures were visible below. I stopped the news van so we were at least partially concealed by the pines. Caution seemed in order. Bud had been shot, after all. Not to mention that the house and the land were still co-owned by Carter King, a wanted criminal. Wouldn't a remote farmhouse be the perfect place for him to hide?
“Just a minute,” I told Leanore and got out.
I crouched next to a tree trunk and gazed down at the empty, decaying structures. The barn had collapsed inward as though the
hand of God had chopped it down the middle. The black, rotting wood stuck out at sharp, unnatural angles the way a broken bone might.
The other smaller structures were in similar states of collapse and ruin, but the main house at least was still standing. It appeared to be structurally sound except for where the roof of the long porch dipped at one end.
Leanore followed me from the van. “There can't be anyone living out here. Is there even electricity?”
“I'd like to check it out anyway, but I don't think I can drive down.” I gestured to where the road disappeared at the ridge. It had probably gone down to the house at one time, but growth and decay had removed all traces of it. “Even if the brush were cleared, the drop is too steep.”
Leanore looked down at her pretty leather shoes. “I don't think I can make it dressed like this.”
I lifted one of my size-ten boots and set it next to Leanore's dainty foot. “I won't have that problem. You stay here and I'll go check it out. It's probably abandoned, but I'd like a closer look anyway.”
I took my gear bag with the camera. The hill proved easy going. My boots provided excellent traction, and I was able to grab hold of a large weed the one time I began to slip.
At the bottom, I dusted off my jeans and took stock of my surroundings. It was a cold day, but the trees up on the ridge behind me made it worse by blocking the sun's direct rays. The resulting drop in temperature was unsettling. My unease wasn't helped by a pungent odor I guessed to be the rotting barn.
“Hello?” I didn't really think I'd get an answer, but this was private property, after all. Technically we were trespassing. “Is anyone here? We're from KJAY.”
On the way to the house, I passed a large oak tree with a tire swing. Dead winter leaves rotted on the ground below, leaving
the tree's branches exposed. I observed that the ground directly beneath the tire had been cleared, probably so someone could use the swing.
If so, it meant either a child or a whimsical adult had been on the property recently. Certainly not an old man such as Carter King.
My attention was diverted by these thoughts and I was not heeding the ground ahead of me as I walked. A sharp increase in the foul odor got my attention just in time to stop.
I cried out and stumbled back as a cloud of flies erupted from the dead animal.
“Lilly?” Leanore yelled. “What's wrong? Are you okay?”
The animal was unrecognizable, but had probably once been a rabbit or large cat. I raised my shirt up over my nose to block the revolting smell. “I'm okay. There's a dead animal in the weeds. Don't come down.”
I walked well around the remains, but had to stop again. Another animal's body lay in my way. This one was fresher. The rabbit had been shotâprobably recently, since it was still intact.
I found four more small animals, all shot, before I finally made it up to the porch. I dropped my shirt and took a deep breath. The smell was less rank up here, but somehow sharper and more metallic. I wondered if this might be a separate odor coming from the treated lumber I observed in the porch roof. It looked as though a well-meaning amateur had recently tried to make some repairs.
There was also a new, unpainted metal door as well as new plywood up over all the windows. The latter made it impossible for me to see inside. I knocked, then pressed my ear to the door. Dead silence inside. I knocked again with similar results.
I retrieved the camera from my gear bag and rolled off a few shots. If we got permission later from the property owner, the video might come in handy.
When that was done, I walked around to the side of the building. Leanore had been right about the building's not having
electricity. I knew because a portable diesel generator was set up in the back. A power cord ran from its base and up into a high, open window. There were fresh tire tracks too. They came and went on a dirt road running out past the barn. Someone had definitely been here recently.