Damaged Goods (32 page)

Hershel rehearsed his plan. He would use the green Ford pickup that was on consignment at the sale barn. He had the keys as well as the title. He’d take that, along with John Wayne. At least one woman screamed every Tuesday when she discovered the movie star unexpectedly lounging against the wall with his eyes fixed on the ladies’ room door. He would arrive at the agreed-upon place early enough to set up his decoy near the rim of the walnut orchard. It had occurred to Hershel that if Castor looked the place up and discovered that it was a hog farm he’d be suspicious. It was too late to change that, though. He hoped that deer poachers in Wyoming didn’t feed the evidence of their crimes to the pigs the way they did in Oregon. Hogs were amazingly efficient at disposing of remains, leaving nothing behind. No hooves, no fur. And, in Darling’s case, not even his clothing. Of course, a lawman would know that. Hershel felt uneasy. He’d already made at least one potentially fatal mistake. What else had he overlooked?

Silvie appeared in the doorway. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” He laughed emptily.

“Well, I guess I’ll just stay here today.”

Hershel was relieved that she hadn’t asked to go to the sale barn with him. He’d prepared an excuse, but she seemed content to remain where it was safe. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about her.

“You’ll be okay. You have my number, right?”

She nodded.

“Please stay here. I don’t …” He felt near tears. It was the stress, not getting enough sleep. He was acting like an idiot. But what if he didn’t say what was on his mind? It would be a sad-forever thought if anything happened to her.

“I love you,” he blurted.

She looked up at him, unable to mask her surprise.

He kissed her hastily on the forehead, his lips grazing her still-damp, apple-scented hair, and gathered his keys. He felt the prick and sting of tears as he made his way to the back porch.

“Lock the doors,” he said without looking back.

Silvie stood on the porch in the cool sunlight, watching Hershel’s pickup cruise down the driveway. She didn’t know how long he’d be gone, so she moved quickly, out to the little shed behind the garage. She pulled the door open to give herself as much light as possible, then tugged at the rubber gloves she’d found under the kitchen sink, pulling them snugly over her fingers. His declaration of love had surprised her, and she didn’t know what to make of it exactly. It was an elusive idea, love. The movies made it out to be something magical, but she’d never felt it that way. Her mother drank herself into oblivion almost daily because of love. This wasn’t the first time a man had told her he loved her; Jacob said it often.

She tied a bandanna over her nose and mouth, then inventoried the cans and bottles of farm chemicals in the dusty shed. She came directly back to the drum of organophosphates. The others
were mysterious; this one she understood personally. She’d arrived prepared for a challenge in getting the rusted lid open, and produced a hammer and a screwdriver. To her delight, it hadn’t been properly secured and three sharp blows with the screwdriver under the lip popped it off. The drum was nearly empty, but Silvie knew that she didn’t need much. She pulled a Ziploc bag and a spoon from the oversized shirt pocket. Careful not to get any of the crystals on her clothing, she held her breath, leaned in, and scooped several heaping spoonfuls of the powdery substance into the bag. She sealed it up with the spoon inside, replaced the lid, and went back to the house.

She detected no odor in the chemical, but she knew better than to test it by inhaling it. She picked the almond-scented bottle of motion lotion to mask any smell it might have. The transparent liquid had a mild golden hue as she poured a teaspoonful into a plastic bowl. She carefully spooned some of the crystals into the oily liquid and they dissolved into the solution. Silvie questioned its potency after all these years in Hershel’s shed. A few drops of liquid organophosphates was enough to kill a large dog, but a grown man? And how quickly? She needed to make sure this worked, and more seemed better.

She poured off the top half of the bottle. Then, using a folded square of paper, she filled it again with crystals. She recapped the bottle and watched as the crystals merged into the liquid and dissolved, giving the lotion a slightly cloudy appearance. After contemplating her creation, she washed and dried the outside of the bottle with soap and placed it in a new Ziploc bag as an added precaution. She disposed of the materials in a plastic grocery bag, which she would later drop in a garbage can between here and Kyrellis’s house. She was ready.

The Porsche drove better than her Rabbit had ever run, though this car rattled with every bump in the road. At the turnoff to Campo Rojo, she slowed and pulled in. It was small acknowledgment, she knew. Monumentally inadequate, in fact. The car bumped down the lane, scraping its underside on ruts and potholes.
When she reached the parking lot, three children paused from their game of tag to gape at her. Even the rooster approached.

She sat inside, the sun warm through the windshield, and wrote her note on a piece of paper she’d found in Hershel’s kitchen. Now she wished it didn’t have
SHERWOOD AUTO REPAIR
emblazoned across the bottom, but it was too late to find something more suitable.

As she scribed, she remembered the concentration on Carl’s face as he doctored her blistered feet. His head bent forward, his touch soft and caring. He’d treated her as if she were the only person in the world, taking his time, pausing from the more important business of preparing for the sale. He didn’t ask if he could help but simply
did
help. It was an extraordinary moment, perhaps more so because of its ordinariness.

She passed the rooster and the children on her way to Carl’s door. There she touched the notes that adorned it, taking a moment to find the right place, where she posted her own. It looked so small in that sea of gratitude, and Silvie tried to fathom the number of people she had deprived of Carl’s generosity and kindness with her selfish request. The burden that his death was her fault caused her to stumble and fall against the step, where she wept for him.

Kyrellis had learned his lesson the first time, and when the doorbell rang he didn’t assume it was Silvie. He took his gun with him and peered through the window at the driveway, but it was empty.
The angle had never been quite right to see who stood on the doorstep through the foyer windows, and he considered things carefully. He didn’t want to spoil the mood by showing up armed. Then it occurred to him that she wouldn’t park in the driveway now that she knew where to find the shipping entrance to the nursery. She’d park behind one of the greenhouses to ensure that Hershel didn’t see her there. Kyrellis relaxed; he was simply being paranoid. Who else
could
it be? His creditor had been appeased for the time being, and if it was a customer a gun would guarantee a non-sale. He set it down on the entry table and opened the door.

He instantly understood his stupidity, but it was already too late. A short man in jeans and cowboy boots stood on the doorstep, but it wasn’t his attire that caught Kyrellis’s attention. Rather, it was the pistol the man thrust in Kyrellis’s face. He had a fleeting memory of Carl Abernathy.

“Victor Kyrellis?” the man asked with a distinct western twang. When Kyrellis didn’t answer, he seemed to conclude that he had the correct man. “Step back.”

Kyrellis obeyed, his heart thudding double time, his mind trying to make sense of his own carelessness.

“Where is she?” Castor asked as he stepped inside and closed the door.

This is what will save me, Kyrellis thought. “She isn’t here right now.”

Castor placed his gun between Kyrellis’s eyes; the cold metal almost burned against his skin. The sheriff glimpsed the ten photos spread out across the coffee table, and his eyes made a slow sweep of the room.

“Where are the rest of them?”

“P-put the gun down,” Kyrellis stammered. “So we can talk.”

Castor studied him coldly, and Kyrellis did an accounting of the man’s treachery. This was the man who’d beaten a child. This was the man who’d bound her. This was the man who’d threatened
to kill her to keep her quiet. Why had he imagined that he could talk to such a man? Silvie had told him that Castor would hunt him down and kill him. Why in God’s name hadn’t he believed her?

Castor stepped back and picked up the gun Kyrellis had left in the entryway and stood with both pistols pointed at Kyrellis.

“Where is Silvie?” Castor repeated slowly.

“I told you, she’s not here.”

“You better start talking or you’re a dead man.”

“And what will stop you from killing me when I tell you?”

Castor considered this. “You never had her, did you?”

“I can tell you where she is. We have a deal. Let’s just stick to our deal and you’ll get your photos back as well as the girl.”

Castor snorted. “Let’s see, you want a million dollars for Silvie and the photos. And another man offers me Silvie to see you dead.
Who should I believe?
” he shouted. Castor’s long white teeth gave him a vicious, canine appearance.

Kyrellis’s mind went wild with the implications. He should’ve known he couldn’t trust Hershel Swift.

A car pulled into the driveway; it sounded like an old Volkswagen Beetle. Castor stepped back again and craned through the foyer window, both guns still trained on Kyrellis.

“Expecting someone?” But no sooner had he said it than he smiled broadly. A smile that sent a shiver up Kyrellis’s spine.

He hadn’t been alone the night he killed Albert Darling; Kyrellis had been there, too. Hershel gripped the steering wheel so tensely that his knuckles ached. His head was too full to think straight. As he’d tried to focus on the details of his plan, his memory continued to plague him with random images. He was piecing it together now, in broken chunks. The two of them had lured Darling to the Willamette River west of St. Paul with the promise of telling him where his Winchester had gone. In exchange, Darling would leave them alone. That Winchester was the most beautiful gun Hershel had ever laid eyes on, and he should never have underestimated its owner’s desire to see it returned. Darling had told him that it had been passed down through his family—a hundred years of pride, with its roots in postwar Mississippi. A treasure that set them apart. That was the difference between this and all other gun sales Hershel had taken a hand in. To Darling, the rifle was a proud symbol of who he was—his heritage. Hershel had not simply liquidated the man’s storage unit, even legally; he’d stripped Darling of his identity, leaving him no way to reclaim it. Had they sold the gun through legal channels, Darling would have been on someone else’s trail, looking for another way to retrieve his lost treasure. But that they claimed the gun had never been there—what else could the poor man do?

The irony was that the gun would have brought a high enough price through an auction sale. It would have gained national attention, possibly wider. There was no telling how much it might have brought in an international bidding contest. Hershel didn’t have to do things the way he did. But Kyrellis had connections to a buyer who was looking for a gun like this, and he was willing to pay several times the market price. It came down to customer service, in a strange sort of way. That and greed. The same anonymous buyer—a man whose name Hershel never learned, or wanted to know—had already shuttled tens of thousands of untraceable, tax-free dollars their way. It wasn’t just
this
gun but all the guns he would buy in the future. He was a veritable gold mine.

In the end, though, after Kyrellis’s cut, Hershel gained only a few thousand dollars more. That and a tenacious little pitbull of a man, who was determined to ruin him. Darling had managed to make the connection between Hershel and Kyrellis, and he’d thrown around accusations and threats, drawing the attention of several gun buyers. He was poised to ruin everything.