Chapter 18
Cheese competitions at fairs were never as popular as the pie contest. Brynn knew that, and the crowd wasn’t nearly as big as she would have liked. But still, there was a crowd, and it was the first year of what she hoped to be the start of a long tradition.
She took in the group, a mix of ages and genders. Cheese touched everybody, as Grandma Rose used to say. Didn’t matter who you were, there was a cheese for you. When Brynn met someone who didn’t like cheese, she was immediately suspicious. Not being able to eat cheese for health reasons—or ethical reasons—was one thing. But not liking it? She’d never understand.
Brynn eyed the cheddar. Uniform, with no irregular finishes, no waves or lumps. Good body and sound-looking texture. Perfect creamy orange color. She bored a hole into it. She sliced a piece and brought it to her nose. She loved the tangy scent of a good cheddar. She bit into it.
The smooth cheese crumbled nicely in her mouth and the flavor popped. Cheddar finish with a distinct note of butterscotch or butter caramel on upper back of palate.
This was a beautifully crafted cheddar. She glanced at the tag: “Mary Rogers, Waynesboro, Va.” She scanned the crowd in an attempt to figure out who Mary was. Was she the short, birdlike woman, dressed in a tracksuit? Or was she the tall, curvy woman with long gray hair, wearing jeans and a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt? Or perhaps she was the woman with a pageboy wearing a long denim skirt?
Whoever she was, Brynn was enamored.
The cheddar was the third cheese she’d tasted, and while the others were fine, this was extraordinary. She bit an apple slice to cleanse her palate and took a drink of water. She wanted more, of course—but she had fifteen other cheeses to sample. She filled out her judging form and moved on to the next, passed a cowboy-hat-wearing man who seemed to be watching her intently. He nodded at her as she walked by. She smiled politely.
She glanced at Wes, happily tasting cheese, and eyed her next tasting—Parmigiano-Reggiano—brought by Sophia D’Amico.
Brynn fancied any sort of Parmigiano cheese. Crowned the king of cheeses, it’s an Italian pureblood cheese—sharp, intense, and full-bodied in taste. She eyed it as a block of cheese. Firm but a bit granular and crystallized as it should be—because that happened when this cheese aged a bit. And it should age at least twelve months because the secret to its iconic flavor lies in its maturation. The cheese flavor lingered in her mouth—delicious, but not as extraordinary as the cheddar.
Brynn was mulling over the medley of flavors in her mouth, took a bite of an apple, and a scream interrupted her. She whipped around toward the noise. A small group of people gathered around something on the floor. She rushed over, elbowing her way in.
Wes! Why was he lying on the floor?
“Oh my God!” someone said. “He’s been shot!”
What? That couldn’t be? Was this some sick joke? Shot? Fear tore through Brynn. What was going on?
“I’ll call 9-1-1!” another voice said.
Brynn’s heart raced as she kneeled on the floor next to him. “Wes! Wes.” His eyes rolled around, as if he was trying to stay awake. “Get him,” he said, barely coherent.
“What? Who?” Brynn’s focus zoomed in on him. She brushed hair off his forehead. “Wes? What happened?”
“Dreadlocks,” Wes said before he passed out.
“Did he say ‘dreadlocks’?” the cowboy-hat man asked over Brynn’s shoulder.
Numb, Brynn nodded.
“I know that little jerk,” the man said. “I’m going to get his ass.”
The next thing Brynn knew, the man was gone and the medic arrived on the scene, shooing everybody away. Time was moving in drips and waves. The building swayed as a man’s arm lifted her to her feet. She was covered in a sticky substance. Dark. Blood! Everywhere. The floor was covered as well.
As the paramedics lifted Wes onto the stretcher, Brynn wobbled, with a man behind her holding her up. “Brynn,” he said. She turned to see Mike Rafferty trying to catch her before her head thwacked the floor and all went black.
* * *
When she awakened, she was on a stretcher, being wheeled into the hospital. She tried to sit up, but straps prevented it. Why was she on a stretcher? She’d just passed out, for God’s sake. Flashes of Wes’s face in agony sprang to her mind.
“Wes,” she said to the paramedic next to her. “Is Wes okay?”
“Who?”
“The young man who was shot?”
The paramedic didn’t answer as they wheeled her into the room, unstrapped her, and transferred her to a bed. The room spun. Pain shot through her head.
“Do you know? How is Wes Scors?” Her stomach roiled from the movement.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know. All I know is you have a nasty concussion, thirteen stitches in your head. You’re going to need to take it easy for a while.”
She must have hit her head on the ground when she fainted. Brynn’s stomach soured. “Think I’m going to be sick,” she said right before he handed her a pan.
* * *
Brynn heard faraway voices, reminding her of a game she played as a kid with tin cans. Pretending they were phones. She suddenly wanted her mother.
“Will she be okay?” A woman’s voice.
“She has a concussion. It’s going to take some time. But she’ll be okay.” A man’s voice.
Pain thudded in Brynn’s temples.
“Did they get the guy?” Another man’s voice.
She tried to lift her eyelids. But they were too heavy. Voices kept sounding.
“I believe so.” A woman’s voice.
Something in Brynn’s mind eased, gave way, and she drifted off.
Light shone in her eyes, which prompted her to awaken. She batted her eyes. The light was coming from outside. Sunlight streamed into the room. She turned her face away from it and saw Schuyler curled up on a chair in the corner. “Schuyler?”
She shot up out of the chair.
“Brynn. How are you feeling?”
“The light . . . hurts.”
Schuyler walked over to the window and pulled the curtains shut.
“What happened?”
Schuyler smiled and leaned over the bed. “You passed out and conked your head.”
Memories slowly waved into her brain. The cheese contest. Wes.
“Wes?”
“He’s going to be fine. Superficial wound, but he did bleed a lot. I had no idea you are so skittish about blood.”
All the blood. Everywhere. “Me either,” Brynn said, grimacing as a shot of pain moved through her head. “Who shot Wes?”
“It was Rad.”
The nurse walked in. “Hello, I’m Sherry, your nurse. I need to take your vitals. I won’t be but a moment.” She slipped a blood pressure cuff on Brynn.
“Should I know him?” Brynn asked Schuyler.
Schuyler shook her head. “No. Not unless you’ve wanted to score some crack or something.”
The blood pressure cuff tightened and then loosened as the nurse read the dial. Then she slipped it off.
“How does someone like that know Wes?”
“I don’t think he did. He heard Wes killed Donny and was stoned out of his mind and went off on a tangent, thought he was a vigilante.” Schuyler crossed her arms.
The nurse slipped her fingers onto Brynn’s wrist and watched her pulse.
Brynn and Schuyler quieted. After the nurse was done and walked out of the room, Schuyler sat down on the edge of Brynn’s bed. “This has been crazy.”
“What? What’s happening?”
“They have a guard posted at Wes’s room for his protection. Do you believe it’s come to that?”
Brynn’s heart raced. He was such a great kid and had wanted to find a place and people he could belong with. He thought he found it with Brynn and in Shenandoah Springs. Who knew about a racist element here?
“It’s bizarre.”
“His dad is coming to visit,” Schuyler said. “He’s fit to be tied.”
Would he make Wes go home? Brynn didn’t want to consider it. She’d come to rely on Wes. Even though she was his teacher, there were things he’d helped her with that she’d still be struggling with if it weren’t for him.
But was she being selfish? If it was dangerous here for him, her little cheese business and micro-dairy farm didn’t matter. His life was more important than any of that.
“I imagine,” Brynn said, “I am, too. I don’t understand what’s going on.” Right now, she struggled to put a single thought together in her mind. “Schuyler. Help me out. What’s happening?”
“What do you mean?” She leaned forward and looked down into Brynn’s face.
“Why is everybody against Wes?”
“That’s not true,” she said with a soft tone in her voice, making Brynn suspicious. She may have been conked on her head, but she knew Schuyler didn’t do soft, unless it was with an animal.
Brynn crossed her arms. “If you’re not going to be honest with me, then who will be?”
Schuyler drew back and frowned. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m not against him. Nobody I know is against him. But the police . . . seem to be suspecting him. So, yes, people are leery of him. Plus there are some racist asses around. But you know all that.”
Brynn wished her brain would work quicker. She almost remembered something. “Something . . . I remember. . . thinking . . . there’s one common denominator.”
“You’re right about that,” Schuyler said. “It’s Chelsea.”
“Chelsea. Yes. We saw her on a date. I thought it was suspicious. Her dad is still in jail. She was dating the man who he ran over. Why would she be on a date?”
“She was also dating the man that Wes found in the barn, Donny?”
“Sounds like a lover spurned out there who may be behind all this.”
“And? You mean like setting Wes up? Man, you did take a blow to the head.” Schuyler grinned.
Perhaps she wasn’t making any sense. It sounded crazy, admittedly.
“Well, something’s wrong if the police are looking seriously at Wes. He just discovered a body. He didn’t kill anybody.”
Schuyler hesitated. “Brynn, try not to worry about any of this. Try to relax and concentrate on getting better. We’ve got the farm covered. Wes is being well taken care of. His dad will be here soon.” She paused. “Concussions can be serious, especially if you push yourself. So please try to relax.”
Brynn appreciated her friend’s concern, but she should have known better. Brynn wasn’t going to relax until she knew Wes was completely off the hook and was okay—concussion or not.