The Heirloom Murders (22 page)

Chloe was slogging through
Ralph Petty’s make-work activity on Thursday when the phone rang. “It’s me,” Roelke said. “I need your help with something.”

“What do you need?” Roelke wasn’t one to make casual work-day calls.

“I’m still trying to get a handle on AgriFutures. A friend of mine told me that the Sabatola brothers are engaged in a royal battle for the throne.” His voice was tight, and Chloe couldn’t tell if he was pissed at something, or frustrated. “It’s gotten ugly. Simon Sabatola is involved in something that’s either unethical or illegal.”

She had no idea how he thought she could help.

“I overheard Dellyn talking once about small-time farmers in poor countries being pressured to replace their traditional crops with seeds from America,” Roelke said. “Something about legumes and protein and something called cassava. And plants going extinct.”

Chloe blinked. “When did you hear that conversation?”

“I’m kinda pressed for time right now. Do you know what she was talking about?”

“Cassava?” Chloe leaned back in her chair. “I’m out of my league. You really need to ask Dellyn.”

“I tried. She’s not by a phone, and I need to understand this.”

“Oh.” Chloe tried to marshal what she knew about old seeds and new corporations. “For centuries, people saved their own seeds. Or they bought seeds from little companies. Companies in one area provided varieties that might be different than the next little seed company over.”

“OK, I get that.”

“But now big corporations involved with genetic engineering are trying to come up with single strains of certain crops that they can push onto the global market. Often those new varieties have a higher yield than the old ones.”

“Well, that would be good, right?”

“Not necessarily.” Chloe tapped her pencil against her clipboard. “You’ve heard of the Irish potato famine, right? Mass starvation, mostly because a blight hit the potato crop?”

“Yeah. Lots of Irish people came over here.”

“Right. All the potatoes in Europe succumbed to the disease. But in the Andes, people were growing hundreds or thousands of potato varieties, and some of them proved to be resistant to the blight. If that hadn’t been the case, we wouldn’t be eating mashed potatoes for dinner every Thanksgiving.”

“Hunh.”

“Well, the same type of thing can happen to any crop. Letting governments and agrochemical companies push a single variety of a particular crop has the potential for disaster.”

Roelke was silent, and she gave him time to think that through. Finally he said, “I heard Alan Sabatola say at Bonnie’s funeral that he wants AgriFutures to start breeding seeds. So … if his scientists are developing some fancy new wheat seed, for example, some people might think it’s great, and some might not.”

“That might be why the board is split. The whole topic raises enormous ethical questions. If subsistence farmers accept the so-called new and improved variety, there’s a good chance that the old varieties will eventually become extinct.”

“And perhaps one of those old varieties is the only one that could have resisted the next blight or pest that comes along.”

“Exactly. And AgriFutures does other things too, right? Equipment, chemicals, all that stuff ?

“Right.”

“Well, Alan Sabatola can talk about how the new seeds will create a bigger yield, and therefore help feed the hungry. All very humanitarian. But the
real
truth might be that those new crops will make the farmers in Ghana or Bolivia or wherever dependent on AgriFutures’ implements and fertilizers and pesticides.”

“Which makes even more money for the company.”

“And it traps farmers in a cycle they can’t get out of. It may even be that Alan’s scientists engineer the seeds in such a way that they
can’t
be saved to plant the next year, which means the farmers are forced to purchase what they need from AgriFutures every year. It’s a vicious trap.”

“Hunh.” Another pause. “OK, thanks.”

Chloe frowned. “Roelke, wait a minute! Do you think—”

“I gotta go.” He hung up.

She was still thinking that over when the site farmer called. “Chloe? It’s Larry. Do you know where Dellyn is? She was supposed to meet a couple of garden volunteers in the village an hour ago.”

Chloe didn’t like the sound of that. “Did you try her home number?”

“Yeah. No answer.”

Chloe hung up the phone slowly. Dellyn had probably just spaced the obligation. Still … it wasn’t like her.

All right, enough of Petty’s crap. Chloe gathered up the pages she’d completed, and scrawled a note on the top:
I received several calls from potential donors today, so this is as far as I got. Will finish tomorrow.
She dropped off the note for Petty, burying it in his mailbox in hopes he wouldn’t see it for a while.

Then she went looking. Dellyn wasn’t in the drafty sun porch at the Education Building she used as a makeshift office. She wasn’t at the barn in the administration area, where she had a corner to store plants and tools. Chloe looped through the historic site proper on foot, checking each of the gardens Dellyn maintained. No luck.

“Well, shit,” Chloe muttered, as she scanned the last garden. With almost six hundred acres of trails and roads, it wasn’t hard to miss someone. But Chloe had nabbed every interpreter she could find and asked if they’d seen Dellyn. No one had.

By the time Chloe got back to the parking lot, it was 4:30. She drove to Dellyn’s house. She was going to make sure her friend was OK, even if Simon Sabatola was there with an army of lawyers.

At the house, no one answered Chloe’s knock. The garden was empty, too.

Chloe stood on the front step, hugging her arms across her chest. Maybe Dellyn had run to the grocery store for peanut butter.

Or … maybe she was in the house, unwilling—or unable—to respond.

Chloe unlocked the door with the key Dellyn had given her. When she went inside she almost tripped over a pile of mail that had been shoved through the old-fashioned door slot, but managed to side-step without trampling anything. “Dellyn?” she yelled. “It’s me, Chloe. Are you here?”

No answer. Something bitter slid up Chloe’s throat as she began a quick circle of the downstairs rooms. The last time she’d entered a friend’s home like this, she’d found the man dead in a pool of blood.

No similar scenes downstairs today. Chloe pounded up to the second floor. She felt uncomfortable intruding into Dellyn’s bedroom, but she did it anyway. Finally she checked the attic, poking around among the piles of cartons and haphazard storage of antiques.

Nothing. Chloe sagged with relief. Thank God.

But … no. Dellyn wasn’t in the house, but that didn’t mean she was OK.
Shit
, Chloe thought. Dellyn, where are you?

_____

Roelke got to Roxie’s Roost about four-thirty. Several vets were swapping tales of their service days. A young couple played darts in the corner. And Simon Sabatola was parked on a bar stool with a shot glass in front of him.

Roxie tossed a nervous gaze toward Roelke. He ignored her and headed toward the middle of the bar, then paused and veered, as if just noticing someone he knew. “Mr. Sabatola!” he said, sliding onto the stool beside the businessman. “Good afternoon, sir.”

Simon Sabatola squinted at him through reddened eyes, then looked back at the glass of amber liquid. “Hello, officer.”

“Please—it’s just Roelke.” He raised his voice and ordered a beer and a glass of water.

Sabatola emptied his shot. “And give me another.”

Roelke didn’t speak again until Roxie had delivered the drinks and disappeared again. Then he leaned toward Sabatola. “I hope the materials I dropped off with your secretary yesterday proved helpful.”

“Nothing is helpful.” Sabatola spoke with the precise care of someone trying to pretend he was still sober. “Today I should be celebrating my wedding anniversary. And instead …” He picked one hand up in a vague gesture:
Look where I am, what I’m doing
.

“Oh man, that’s tough.”

“My wife was a beautiful woman.”

“I’ve seen pictures.” Roelke shook his head, half admiring and half sympathetic. “It’s hard to understand why a gorgeous woman like that, living in a beautiful home, with a successful husband to be proud of …”

Sabatola ran one finger around the rim of his shot glass. “She had every reason to be happy.”

“From what I could see, you’d given her everything any woman could ask for.”

Sabatola drained his glass.

“I mean, you’ve clearly been working your ass off to help build AgriFutures. Did your wife understand that?”

Sabatola remained silent. For a moment Roelke thought he’d gone too far. But finally Sabatola muttered, “She never did. And when we needed her help, just the one time …”

Roelke struggled to find context for that unexpected bit of information, and came up empty. “She wasn’t willing?” He shook his head, mortally stymied by the perfidy of women.

“She was—not—willing.”

Roelke lowered his voice another notch. “Mr. Sabatola, I have a lot of admiration for you. Now that your wife’s case is officially closed, I’ve been putting the file to bed and …” He spread his hands, palms up. “There are still some things, just a couple of little things, that don’t add up.” He paused, giving Sabatola a silence to fill.

“Roxie!” Sabatola yelled. “Bring me another one.”

“I gotta admire you, man,” Roelke said. “I think I know what was going on. You must have felt pushed beyond endurance. How did you manage to keep things hidden?”

Sabatola studied his empty glass for a moment, and then traded it for the shot Roxie deposited in front of him. “The secret,” he said finally, “is control. You must not ever let anyone steal your power. Especially not a woman.”

Roelke felt adrenaline throbbing through his veins. He almost trembled with the effort of appearing relaxed. “Yeah? I suppose that’s true in the business world. About not letting anyone steal your power.”

“You remember that,” Sabatola told him.

“How’s that thing with the Board coming?” Roelke asked. “Have they announced your new position yet?”

Sabatola’s jaw jutted forward like a truculent child’s. “That,” he said, “is none of your damn business.” He walked away. Conversation over. Game over.

Roelke left the bar. Dammit! he thought, as he started his truck. Sabatola had not given him anything concrete. Nothing he could track down or verify. Nothing that suggested whatever activity he so desperately did not want Roelke to know about. Whatever secret had been worth trying to run Roelke off the road just because he was hanging around.

There was just one small saving grace. Those comments about control and power and women—Roelke felt he could officially warn Dellyn Burke to stay away from Sabatola, now. Maybe that was why he’d needed to do this. Maybe that was enough.

But it didn’t feel like enough.

_____

Chloe went back downstairs and headed to Mr. Burke’s study, hoping to find some clue to Dellyn’s whereabouts. No luck on that, but she did find a deed to the Burke property. Chloe stared at it grimly. Why did Simon want this place? The Eagle Diamond, or even a second diamond, would have no meaning for him. Neither would the detritus of Eagle history tucked into the attic, or any personal Burke family heirlooms mingled among the other antiques.

Roelke thought the guy was capable of violence. Dellyn thought he was a nice guy after all. Was Simon Sabatola being kind to his sister-in-law, or trying to get her out of the way?

Chloe turned her back on the deed and headed into the kitchen. There must be a calendar or something around here! She scanned the cluttered room. She didn’t see a calendar, but at least it looked as if Dellyn was still busy with normal activities. Small labeled trays by the windowsill held seeds from various vegetables, laid out to dry. Custard cups held tomato seeds, moldering stinkily in their gelatinous sacs. The tops of several dead hollyhocks lay across the kitchen table. The blooms had been replaced by pods, each now open to reveal rings of dark seeds.

A telephone was mounted on the wall beside the kitchen counter. A pen and pad sat waiting. The top sheet was blank, but it held obvious indentations of whatever had been scrawled on the page above. Chloe scrabbled among the clutter and found a pencil. “This is so frickin’ Nancy Drew,” she muttered, feeling ridiculous as she lightly covered the paper with graphite. The last written note appeared as white lines:
Meet Frietags, tomorrow, 5 PM
. Driving directions were below.

Chloe felt her eyebrows rise. Dellyn was meeting the Frietags? Markus must have arranged that, although since the directions were to the farm itself, the plan must have been for Dellyn to go alone. Assuming that “tomorrow” meant today, Dellyn would be at the Frietag place right about … now.

Chloe plopped into a kitchen chair and frowned, feeling oddly left out. Would it have killed Markus or Dellyn to at least mention this trip? Something weird was going on. Something had been bugging Dellyn ever since Markus had toured the site with her on Tuesday.