Crops and Robbers (31 page)

“I know that,” I said, sounding like a snotty teenager. I cleared my throat. I knew her fingerprints had been on Hobbit’s collar. But so had Jake’s.

“Jake killed Joan. I know that now. I confronted him. He as much as admitted it.”

Later, I would look back on that exact moment and wonder why I didn’t completely digest what she’d just said. She’d confronted him? Chances were that hadn’t gone well. That confrontation would dictate the tone of the rest of my current nightmare.

“Why did he kill her?”

“Joan gave some money from the association dues to some members of the association—the five marked with yes on the list; four owners she’d started the association with and Viola Gardner, Jake’s aunt. She’d been giving a little money to Viola for years, but Viola didn’t know it was wrong. Viola thought she was just getting a good price for her tomatoes. But, Joan had a soft spot for Viola and Joan wanted to take care of her. Viola didn’t know she was stealing—but they were all stealing, Becca. Apparently the four other restaurant owners recently found out Joan was giving money to Viola and big chunks of money to Nobel. They threatened to ruin Bistro if she didn’t stop immediately and pay them back everything she’d paid to Viola and Nobel.”

“That probably added up to a lot, but I still don’t know why Jake killed Joan,” I said. Joan had most likely been well-off, but coming up with a chunk that might have added up to hundreds of thousands of dollars wouldn’t be easy for anyone.

Betsy took a step closer and continued as if she wanted to make sure I heard every detail. “That’s not all. I didn’t know this until just recently,” she swallowed hard, “but years ago the other four owners threatened to ruin anyone who quit the association. And they could, they were that powerful. They poisoned an apple vendor when he was eating at Bistro, not with a deadly dose but enough to scare everyone from going to the authorities. Joan didn’t have anything to do with the poisoning, but I’m not sure about Nobel, I want you to know that. In fact, I think Joan was being held hostage in some way by the other four owners and her son. Joan might have started the association, but it got out of control. The list, the no’s and maybe’s. Joan and Nobel were trying to guess who they could demand more dues money from. Recently, Joan told Viola that she wasn’t going to get money anymore. Viola told Jake. Jake figured the rest of it out. He figured everything out, Becca. They all seemed to figure it out and it was as if everything was discovered at once. And . . .” She stopped speaking.

“What, Betsy?”

“I, uh.”

Another figure darted from the side of the house. There wasn’t time to notice disfigurement or much of anything except the movement of something dark and solid. The figure stopped next to Betsy and held up something that glimmered in the moonlight.

“He brought me out here. He told me to say the things I just said, but they’re all true. He wanted you to know,” she said.

“Get out of the truck, Becca,” Jake said as he held a knife to Betsy’s throat.

“Jake, I thought we were friends,” I said.

Jake shook his head and said, “No time for friends. Get out of the truck or I’ll kill her.”

I got out of the truck.

Hobbit had gone still, statuelike. She was sitting upright and staring out the windshield, but she wasn’t making a sound. I didn’t know if she was scared or plotting something, but I ignored her with the hope that Jake would ignore her, too.

“What do you want, Jake?” I said.

“I want you both to go to your barn.”

“Why?” I said.

“He’s going to kill me and make it look like you did it. He wanted you to call the police so they’d find you and think you were the murderer. He knows I figured him out. He wants me out of the picture,” Betsy said. “He’s nuts.”

“Why, Jake?” I said. “None of this makes sense. None of this fits with what I know about you.”

“You don’t know me at all, Becca. You never did. Your sister didn’t keep me around long enough.”

“This can’t be about Allison breaking up with you in high school.”

“Only in a roundabout way,” Betsy added.

Jake twisted her arm.

“You’ll have to kill us both,” I said. “And we’ll fight you.”

“I’ve got the knife. I bet I’ll win.” He laughed maniacally. “I couldn’t believe it when Joan insulted you at the market. I was the one who had Betsy bring her out to your farm. I was defending you, Becca. I wanted her to see your farm, see your barn, see the good work you put into your products.”

“You did not,” Betsy said, proving she might have been even dumber than I was when it came to talking to a killer. “I think I figured it out, Becca. He wanted to kill Joan and he saw the perfect opportunity to frame you for her death. Your mother being here just gave him another idea.”

“Shut up,” he said, wielding the knife with incompetent vigor.

“I still don’t know why you wanted her dead, Jake. Money?” I said.

He laughed again. “I put everything I had into my restaurant, but no, that’s not why I wanted her dead. It was when her son threatened to ruin me and hurt my aunt that I knew they had to go. Nobel’s next, but I need the right opportunity.”

“I was getting to that, but I do believe the threats from Nobel were real if that matters at all,” Betsy said.

“I called the police, Jake,” I said.

“I heard. They have no idea I’m here. You didn’t say a word about me. I waited until you’d made the call to show myself.”

He had a point.

“They have your fingerprints,” I said.

“Not possible. I wiped everything down.”

I shook my head slowly. “Not everything.”

“You’re bluffing,” he said.

“You’ll find out soon enough. The police are on their way.”

“We’ll have our business completed by the time they get here,” Jake said as he grabbed Betsy’s arm and shoved her toward the barn.

Bizarrely, the Clash’s song “Should I Stay or Should I Go” played in my head. It must have been some sort of coping mechanism. I felt like giggling and screaming at the same time. Jake wasn’t going to give me a chance to choose anyway. I was going to have to go to the barn, and I was going to have to figure out a way to fight him off. He had the knife, but it wasn’t like it was a gun. It would take more precision and skill than a gun required. I’d wielded few knives in my time—okay, so it was at fruit, but still, I knew how to handle them. Maybe I could get the advantage with my own weapon.

The lock on the door still hadn’t been fixed, so Jake pushed it open. I noticed he had latex gloves on his hands. Wiping things down last time must have been more work than he’d thought. He reached around and flipped up the light switch. My barn was spotless clean, but the warm light wasn’t as welcoming as it usually was.

“Get over there,” he said to me as he pointed at the sink area with the knife. He closed the door after I entered. He took hold of Betsy’s arm again and forced her to the other side of the worktable.

“Now, I want you to get your own knife out of the drawer. I know where you keep them. Grab the handle and then set it on the worktable,” Jake said.

“No.”

He sighed. “Then I’ll hit you over the head like I did your mother and get the prints myself, but first I’ll kill her and you’ll have to watch.”

And when I woke up, I’d just tell the police what happened. I didn’t vocalize my thought. He was clearly coming unhinged and didn’t see how implausible his plan was.

“I know what you’re thinking, but there won’t be evidence that I killed her. Just evidence that you did. Your mother didn’t see my face. I wore a ski mask. She’ll never be able to identify me. It’ll be your word against mine with all the real evidence pointing to you,” Jake said.

My mother didn’t see his face, but she smelled him, and the fingerprints on Hobbit’s collar should be enough, but I couldn’t be sure. There was no good option, except that if I took a knife into my hand, maybe I could try to make an offensive move.

“Again, I’ll kill her if you do anything funny.”

“He’s going to kill me anyway, Becca. Don’t do it.”

Jake thought for a second. “Okay, then after I kill Betsy, I’ll kill your dog and make you watch that, too. I’m a lot stronger than you, Becca. You can’t move quickly enough to get away.”

It wasn’t that I put more value on my dog’s life than a human’s, but his threatening Hobbit made me burn with a new level of anger, fear, and pure hatred. It wasn’t a good feeling, but I hoped I could do something constructive with it.

“Jake, think about Viola. She’s going to be devastated,” I said.

“She still doesn’t know I’m the killer. She’ll never know. She thinks it’s Nobel. She tried to sic you on him. Now she’ll just think the Robins women are crazy. Get the knife. Quit stalling,” Jake said.

I turned slowly, hoping my mind would come up with something I could do. I knew that if I could hang on just a few more minutes, Sam would come to the rescue, but no other stall tactics popped into my mind.

I reached into a drawer and pulled out a knife. I was moving slowly. Suddenly, the door burst open. A sense of relief flooded my system. I looked over, expecting to see Sam, his weapon drawn and his icy blue eyes on the target.

But it wasn’t Sam—the bark gave her away.

Hobbit, moving at a speed I didn’t know she had in her, flew through the door and jumped high into the air. My mind would remember that she looked as if she’d sprouted wings. The force of her speed and the length of her long paws landed right where she’d intended: on Jake’s chest.

They both went down, and then suddenly Hobbit was off him and moving toward me. Jake was flat on his back on the ground. He’d hit his head on the floor and seemed slightly dazed, but the knife was still in his hand.

“Move, Betsy!” I yelled.

She did, but not fast enough. Jake gathered his senses and threw the knife right at her. His throw was awkward and off target slightly, but it looked like it would hit Betsy in the back.

I didn’t think, but leapt up to the table, landing on my belly. I put my arm out, right in the path of the knife.

My maneuver led to a flesh wound on my forearm, but at least it wasn’t the arm that had been recently grazed by a bullet.

I hadn’t noticed the flashing lights outside the open door, but I saw them behind Sam as he ran into the barn, weapon drawn as I’d imagined a moment before. He sized up the situation quickly and told Jake (in words that probably shouldn’t be repeated here) to stay where he was.

Hobbit stepped back around the table and put a long paw on Jake’s chest. He wasn’t going anywhere.

“Thank you,” I said. “So, you don’t think Joan said she didn’t like it to keep me from having to be involved with all those terrible people?” I’d come to the conclusion that Joan had pushed the Staffords out of working with the restaurant association for their own good. Miriam and Joan had been good friends and when Joan saw what was happening with the owners and their greediness, she wanted to make sure Miriam and her family were kept safely away from any danger. It was a noble way to ruin a friendship and a story that Miriam thought was probably true. I’d shared it with her when she’d stopped by my house the day before to show me a sketch of her next work of art, a painting of me and the rat in her kitchen.

“No, I’m pretty sure she just didn’t like it, but I do,” Betsy said.

“Of course you do. It’s the best,” my mom said.

For some reason, we laughed—all of us.

We were at Bistro, enjoying Betsy’s hospitality. In celebration of Mom’s release from jail and the discovery of the real killer, we were gathered for dinner. Betsy, Mom, Dad, Allison, her husband, Tom, Ian, and Sam.

Bistro had become Betsy’s. Nobel had simply signed it over to her with the promise that he could work there again when and if he was released from jail. He wasn’t a business owner anyway, he was a recipe guy. We all thought he didn’t have a firm grasp on his illegal activities, but as Betsy had said, he was odd and maybe just not able to clearly see his guilty ways. Betsy had felt plenty of guilt about not giving the list to the police earlier. She’d had a loyalty to Nobel that now seemed horribly misplaced, but Sam had tried to tell her that she’d done the right thing eventually.

Jake had confessed to the killings and explained that Betsy hadn’t had anything to do with either of them. She’d merely petted Hobbit before leaving my house that day and probably inadvertently touched her collar then.

Jake said that Joan had told him she asked Betsy to leave my house because she knew Jake would follow them. Apparently, Jake had been following Joan for a number of days. He hadn’t heard from her regarding his demand that the association come clean, so he’d started following her; he wouldn’t say or do anything, but just let her know he was watching her. His continued stalking, apparently, had been the catalyst for the heated meeting between her and Nobel, a meeting that led to Nobel threatening Jake and Viola. Nobel claimed that he never told his mother about the threats and that she had only wanted all the illegal and unethical activity to stop. We’d never know for sure.