Bait & Switch (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 1) (5 page)

CHAPTER 7

Clarice and I waited in silence until the sound of Matt’s big-engined sedan crunching over the rutted tracks faded.

“Good for us he forgot his French press.” Clarice refilled her mug. “Why are there no chairs in here?” She propped one padded hip against the counter and scowled around the kitchen. Fuchsia lipstick prints ringed her mug.

I pinched the bridge of my nose against a stabbing pain that seemed to be splitting my forehead. “Freddy?”

“Voicemail. I left three messages for good measure. Also tried Leroy and got his wife. He went out yesterday afternoon and hasn’t come home yet. Sounds like behavior she’s accustomed to. Feels fishy to me.”

Clarice heaved a sigh and scooped my hiking boots off the floor. I’d rejected them last night as being too hard to sleep with. She shoved them against my chest. “I’m sticking, no matter what. You know that. But you need to get thinking, girl. Get us out of this mess. Go on.” She gave me a push toward the door. “I’ll rustle up some level of domesticity while you’re pondering.”

I’m a rambler, as Clarice well knows. I’ve worn a groove in the sidewalks of Nob Hill and along the piers. I plopped down on the stoop outside and traded my sandals for the boots. Just tying the laces is therapeutic for me.

I jumped up and dashed through the door again.

Clarice was already folding clothes and tidying the mess on the tabletop. “Forget this?” She held out my think-things-through notebook and mechanical pencil, my tools of the trade.

“And this.” I enveloped her in a monster squeeze. “What would I ever do without you?”

“Oooof.” Clarice pushed me away and sniffed. “Go on.”

Shhnork grumpf shnuff shnuff bump — from under the table.

Clarice and I stared at each other wide-eyed.

I backed away and peered under the table.

Two beady eyes buried in deep, fleshy wrinkles glinted back. The delicate edges of its snout rippled with eager inquisitiveness as its neck stretched forward.

I giggled.

“What?” Clarice bent over just as the pig emerged. “Aaaiee. Get it away from me.” She flailed a few karate chops in the air and staggered backward, crashing into a pie safe. “What is that?” She slapped a hand over her heaving bosom.

The pot bellied pig followed in her wake, snorting greedily.

I could hardly breathe for laughing. The pig had a collar, so I grabbed it and dragged the little porker away from its active investigation of Clarice’s taupe Naturalizer loafers. Its hoofed feet skidded, splayed on the linoleum tiles.

“You’re a wildlife magnet,” I chuckled. “It must have followed you in earlier.”

“Bah.” Clarice scowled at the pig.

The pig scrutinized her right back, its mouth open in a lolling guffaw expression as though it had just heard a raunchy joke. It was mostly pink with a few black blotches. One blotch covered its left eye in a half mask like a rakish Lone Ranger.

I scratched it behind the ears, and it grunted accordingly. “See? Friendly.”              

“Out,” Clarice announced, her rigid arm pointing in an emphatic, no-nonsense gesture. “Pigs live outside. Take it with you.” She muttered a few other things I won’t repeat, and I lured the pig to safety with a stale bit of leftover cinnamon roll.

I knelt beside the pig, and it shnuffled my fingers for crumbs.

“Who do you live with? You don’t look neglected.”

It blinked.

I patted the side of its round belly and pushed off my haunches. “Want to give me the tour?”

The pig took off trotting, its curly tail bobbing in time with its steady gait. I stuffed my notebook in the back pocket of my jeans and fell into line. Clean, cold air — I inhaled deeply and savored the ache in my lungs.

A bit of meadow surrounded the house. More like a mansion, really. Three stories of brick and crumbling, ivy-covered colonnades in the center with two-story wings off each end. The kitchen was in the back of one of these wings. Slate roof with moss grown thick in every crevice. If this had been a poor farm, I wondered how the wealthy had lived.

It was still thickly overcast, the clouds so low the roof’s peaks sliced through them as they drifted overhead. I shivered and blew on my hands.

An impatient grunt drew my attention to the tree line where my escort waited beside a cud-chewing goat.

I squinted to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. What was with the random animals? I couldn’t imagine the place was still functioning as a producing farm. A petting zoo?

The goat had stubby horns, so I gave it a wide berth even though it was tethered. No point in testing the length of that rope. I slipped between two enormous trees into a different world — tangled vines sprawled across the ground and climbed soaring trunks, flitting chatter turned out to be tiny birds scouring unseen insects from tree bark. Collected condensation dripped off branches onto the thick layer of dead pine needles at my feet in soft syncopated plops. Peaceful and eerie at the same time.

Rustling undergrowth told me which direction the pig was taking. It took a while and some stumbling about to find the narrowly trod path. The pig was following a trace, probably etched into its little brain through repetition. I caught a whiff of wood smoke.

I tripped over a root and slammed my palm against the rough bark of a tree to catch my balance. When I glanced back up, the same boy from this morning stood in front of me, nonchalantly tapping the butt end of a hatchet against the side of his leg.

His crystal-clear, endless blue eyes drew me in. “Hello,” I ventured.

“Are you lost?” the boy asked.

“Quite possibly.”

“Orville knows the way. To his slop bucket at any rate.”

I nodded as if his statement made sense.

“Wilbur’s around here too, but he’s anti-social.”

“Is Wilbur the goat?” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder.

“No.” The boy’s tone was scornful. “Orville and Wilbur are twins. You know—” He took a practice swing at the nearest trunk with the hatchet. “When pigs fly.”

“Oh. Of course.”

“The goat’s Terminator ‘cause he has a four-part bionic stomach.”

What kind of child was this? He couldn’t be more than seven or eight, tossing about such bizarre and yet strangely informed phrases. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“Eli.”

A sage and a prophet, and precocious. I grinned. “Where are you going?”

A loud crack arced through the air and bounced off the trees — either a large branch breaking free or something else — something that sounded a lot like a gunshot. The idea seared through my mind, and I ducked instinctively. Eli’s face mirrored my own startled fear.

Then the soft skin around his jaw hardened and he grabbed my hand. He tugged me off the semi-path into the undergrowth. We plunged through waist-high ferns and blackberries.

Eli darted, twisting and turning and stringing me along, beating a surprisingly quiet retreat through the woods. I kept an arm up to protect my face from the taller branches he dodged under and tried to pace my breathing. He was a speedy kid for such short legs.

Eli was wearing mud-encrusted sneakers, but his stealth was better matched to leather moccasins. Clearly this was not the first time he’d practiced such evasive maneuvers. Why would he need to? But since he didn’t want to stick around, neither did I.

The trees dissipated — separated from en masse to individual trunks, and the gloom lightened. Eli pulled up short at the edge of a clearing, his hand hot and damp in mine.

A sprawling building slumped in the thick grass as though it couldn’t muster the energy to admit residents. It was mostly single story except in places where the roof dipped even lower. A man — Walt — was on the roof in one of these swayback segments, straddling the ridge line and nailing bright, luminescent cedar shakes over bald spots. The whole building was a rangy patchwork of variously aged parts. One of the three river rock chimneys puffed reluctant smoke wisps.

Walt caught sight of us and waved his hammer. I glanced down and squeezed — nothing.

Eli was gone — just gone. There wasn’t even an indentation in the dewy grass where he’d been standing. How had he slipped away without my noticing? And why?

Walt was edging toward a ladder propped against the close end of the building. I hurried forward and leaned on the ladder’s rails to steady it while he descended.

“Some storm last night,” he said.

“Do they happen often?”

“Fair bit. Several times a winter. Come in.” Walt tipped his head toward the door. “Meet the boys.”

I had to duck to avoid the door mantle and step over a high threshold at the same time to enter the building.

“This was the cattle hands’ bunkhouse back when several hundred head of beef ranged these hills. Dairy cows were kept separate, up by the main road. Pampered, they were.” Walt chuckled and led the way down a dark, narrow hall.

The remains of breakfast smells lingered in the stagnant air plus the added scent of boys.

This is hard to explain, but boys, especially when they’re growing fast, have an odor all their own, and it’s not pleasant — mostly acrid, newly formed sweat with top notes of rancid clothing and vestiges of negligent grooming. It doesn’t seem to bother them. In fact, they seem to wallow in it. I’ve encountered this same scent in the boys’ wings of orphanages the world over. Women everywhere are eternally grateful that the males of their species do eventually grow out of it.

The hallway emptied into a large, low room — the one with the working fireplace. Neat rows and columns of student desk and chair combos corralled boys bent over their books. A few laptops were propped open, their screens flickering. I did a quick count — twenty-one desks, four empty — seventeen boys. I wondered which desk belonged to Eli and why he wasn’t in it when everyone else appeared so industrious.

It was hard to tell from the shy and curious glances from under brows and long-hanging forelocks, but the boys appeared to range from about ten years old to older teens. A few had dark shadows forming on their upper lips.

“Online courses,” Walt murmured near my ear. “We have a tutor come help with advanced math and literary criticism as needed, as well as ACT and SAT test prep.”

“And this is—” I whispered, then bit my lip and tried again. “Is Skip involved with this?”

Walt nodded. “He pays our accounts — at the general store and for repairs and maintenance. We’re here rent free.”

“Why—” I hesitated, not wanting to ask the reasons for this unusual situation in front of the boys. I also wondered just how many people Skip was supporting. I wasn’t surprised, but I would have wanted to be part of it — if I’d known.

“Coffee? I finally got some brewing.” Walt applied gentle pressure on my elbow and ushered me through a different doorway into a kitchen. It wasn’t fancy, but the appliances were meant for large-scale cooking. Walt pointed to a stool at the peninsula countertop and stepped over to a gurgling coffee pot. “If you’re here in a couple weeks, maybe you’d like to judge the creative writing contest. The boys get tired of hearing critiques from me. Poetry, plays, short stories — their submissions will run the gamut.”

I accepted a steaming mug. “That’s amazing. I don’t think they do that even in the best private schools anymore.”

“Probably not.” Walt settled onto a stool opposite me. “I’m old-fashioned. The boys need to learn to imagine life through other people’s perspectives, even if the people are fictional. Develops compassion, sympathy, empathy and leadership.”

“Is that why they’re here? Needing to learn those traits?”

“Their parents, if they have them, or case workers think so. More often than not I think it’s the adults in their lives who need those traits. The boys tend to straighten out on their own when they don’t have the pressure of living in the difficult circumstances they come from.”

“So they’re in the system?”

“Most are. It’s hard to place boys in foster homes generally, and older boys especially. Foster families are usually well intentioned, but not often well equipped to handle boys’ aggression, compulsion for adventure and a challenge, the need for meaningful work beyond book learning.” He shrugged and fingered the handle on his mug. His nails were cut short, with dirt shadows embedded in the rough calluses surrounding them. “The list goes on.” His gaze wandered to the window as though he’d forgotten I was there.

Walt’s nose was sharp and thin, pointed in profile. It’d been a few days since he’d shaved, and his stubble glinted red-gold in the window’s light. He had blue eyes too, but not with the same clarity as Eli’s. Could have been caused by a lifetime of worry. Maybe they were related.

“Eli?” I asked.

A slow smile spread across Walt’s face, raising his ears and squinting the corners of his eyes. But he didn’t answer or return his attention to me.