Chapter Three

Kate made her way back through the mud and, stopping at the front of Joe’s cabin, again checked her cell phone.

Still no signal.

She longed to talk to Paul, to draw strength from the familiarity of his deep voice. He’d probably heard about the storm and was worried about her. She gave her cell a little shake out of frustration.

Dawn was creeping over the storm-ravaged landscape, but the damage to the trees surrounding Joe’s cabin was minimal. Just a few large branches down and a river of mud over the driveway. His stout cabin also appeared none the worse, just a few shingles missing, considering what it had been through. She hoped others in Copper Mill had gotten through the storm with little, if any, severe damage to their homes.

As soon as she was inside the pickup with her seat belt fastened, Kate turned on the radio to monitor the aftermath of the storm. She was relieved to hear that the damage was less than anticipated at the height of the storm. Even so, EMTs and emergency road crews were reporting that they had received hundreds of calls. The radio announcer again warned people to stay off the roads and asked them to avoid making 911 calls unless it was a true emergency. He added that if someone did make a call, the response time would vary depending on where the person was located and the urgency of the situation.

Kate flipped off the radio, her worry for Joe growing. She turned on the cab light and studied the roughly drawn map. Wobbly lines seemed to indicate back roads, and a roughly drawn building that looked like a house a child might draw sported an X in the middle of it. Behind the building were rows of little circles, with the words “old orchard.” There was no indication of north, south, east, or west, so she turned it around a few times, trying to make sense of it.

She vaguely remembered a small sign marking a gravel road to the north of Joe’s cabin. She couldn’t be certain, but she thought she remembered that the sign read Old Orchard Road.

She made a three-point turn with some difficulty, then headed the vehicle back toward the main road. She turned onto Smith Street and headed north.

As she drove, she pondered the distance between the building on the map and the road. She couldn’t recall if Joe, or anyone else for that matter, had ever mentioned exactly how much land he owned. It was more than forty acres, that much she knew, and this map, crude as it was, seemed to indicate more than that.

She slowed to miss a large tree that had fallen parallel to the road near a campground. Kate looked out over what should have been a lush, forested parklike setting. Some smaller trees had been uprooted, and branches had been tossed like children’s Tinkertoys hither and yon. What was once a parking area now looked like a shallow lake.

She finally reached the turnoff and let out a sigh of relief. She was right. The sign said Old Orchard Road. Though the road was unpaved, it was covered with what appeared to be fresh gravel, which made the going easier. But to Kate, it seemed she was moving at an agonizingly slow pace.

A few minutes later, she came over a rise. The first rays of sunlight hit a two-story structure in the distance, the light playing on the faded, rough-hewn plank walls. It had the look of a grand century-old lodge, she thought, something you might see in Yosemite or at the Grand Canyon.

A corner of the roof was missing, and the rest of the building was in various stages of repair. Behind the structure was what remained of an ancient apple orchard, mostly gnarled trunks and barren branches standing like stalwart, old soldiers in a battlefield.

She spotted Joe’s truck, and an initial sense of relief swept over her: she had connected the right dots. She whispered a prayer of thanksgiving as she parked well to one side of another river of mud. As she set the parking brake, the handyman, Russ Keenan, came through the door.

Even before he met Kate’s gaze, she could see that same wariness in his demeanor she’d noticed before: his hesitance to make eye contact, his halting way of moving. It was as if he had some secret to hide.

And now she knew that he did.

“Hi, I’m Kate Hanlon,” she said, her voice bolder than she felt. “I think we met before.”

He nodded briskly. “I never forget a face,” he said without expression. “Name’s Russ Keenan. We met at the diner.”

Looking up, Kate was surprised to see two clean-cut college-aged boys saunter through the doorway, looking equally surprised by her presence.

“These are my sons,” Russ said. “Connor and Liam.”

They stepped forward, and each shook Kate’s extended hand.

“Glad to meet you,” they said almost in unison.

Other than the wariness in their father’s eyes, they were like mirror images of him, from their thick auburn hair to their moss green eyes. All three had a rather stocky build, but Connor, who appeared to be the older of the two sons, was taller by a head than his father. And Liam, at his father’s height, wore eyeglasses with tortoiseshell frames, giving him an owlish look. Neither had Russ’s ruddy complexion.

“I’m looking for Joe Tucker.” Kate glanced at Joe’s truck, pointedly, then back to the three men standing shoulder-to-shoulder in front of her, almost as if blocking her way forward. She didn’t blink. “Is Joe here with you?”

The men exchanged glances. Connor, wearing only a T-shirt and jeans and shaking visibly from the cold, finally answered. “Yes, ma’am, he is.”

Liam remained silent and let his gaze drift over Kate’s shoulder, as if bored. Or perhaps as if hiding something.

“He took quite a blow to the back of his head,” Russ said. “During the storm, debris was flying everywhere. I think it was a branch that got him.” He squinted at her, his expression far from pleasant. “How’d you know he was here?”

Kate had gone cold at the mention of Joe’s injury. How she’d found him wasn’t important. Only Joe mattered.

“A blow to the head?” she said. “How serious is it? Is he okay?” Before the words left her mouth, she’d already started for the cider-house door. She’d barrel right through the trio standing in front of her if necessary. Fortunately, they moved.

All she could think about was Joe’s cry for help, right after he’d said he’d found something of value. Two images popped into her head at the same time: Joe finds something. Joe gets knocked over the head by an ex-con or one of his sons.

She was immediately ashamed of jumping to such an ominous conclusion. She was condemning the family before she knew anything more about them. She shot up a prayer for forgiveness. But the image stayed at the back of her brain nonetheless.

Russ and his sons followed Kate inside. There on the floor in the corner lay Joe, a jacket covering him and a wadded-up parka beneath his head. Kate glanced at the boys and felt a little better about them. They had given up their jackets to keep Joe warm. She breathed easier.

She hurried over and knelt beside Joe. As she lifted his hand and took his pulse, he opened his eyes and blinked.

“What are you doing here?” He attempted to sit up, but he could only raise his head a couple of inches above his parka pillow. With a groan, he lay back down, turning toward Kate, and closed his eyes. “You wouldn’t believe the headache I’ve got.”

“We need to get you to a doctor,” Kate said.

Russ, looking guilty, said, “We would have taken him to the doctor ourselves, but the truck is stuck in the mud outside.”

“I don’t need a doctor,” Joe muttered, his eyes still closed. “Just take me home.”

“Well, I’m driving, and you don’t have any say in the matter,” Kate admonished, though as Joe looked up she smiled to soften the direct order. Then she turned to Russ. “Help me get him into the pickup.”

Without being asked, the two boys also stepped in to assist Kate. Between the three men, they easily transported Joe to the vehicle. “Just lay me out in the truck bed,” Joe mumbled. “My head hurts more when I’m upright.”

“No way,” Kate said as she climbed into the pickup. “It’s too wet and cold. You’ll have to sit up front, but we’ll try to make you comfortable.”

As soon as Joe was settled, Russ leaned in to speak to him. “The boys and I will stay and try to get the roof finished,” he said. “Plus clean up the mess from the storm.” He looked over at Kate, who had just turned the key in the ignition. “Can you send someone out to get us later—maybe a wrecker that can pull out the old man’s truck? We’ll drive it to his place and drop it off.”

Before Kate could get a word out of her mouth, Joe leaned forward with a groan. “Number one, I’m not an old man. That much I do know. Number two, I don’t need a doctor. I just need to get home. There’s something...” His voice drifted off as he lifted his hand slowly to touch his head. He winced, then whispered hoarsely. “Something I have to do.” After a moment, he added, “But I can’t remember what it is.”

Russ remained silent as he backed away from the pickup. As Kate studied his expressionless face, his cold eyes, she remembered Joe’s cry for help, and a shiver traveled up her spine. She couldn’t get away from the handyman and his sons fast enough.

“Joe,” Kate said as she backed up the truck to turn around, “you called me a few hours ago, before dawn, in the middle of the storm. It was your phone, but I don’t think you meant to call. Yet you called out for help. Do you remember why?”

His forehead wrinkled as if he was searching his memory. After a moment, he sighed heavily. “No...”

“You also said something about an important discovery. The signal was cutting in and out. But I pieced together those words I could hear, and it seems you’d found something important.”

“An important discovery?” His eyes were still closed. “I don’t remember anything.”

“Then there was a loud crash. That’s when you said you needed help. Then the phone went dead.”

He blinked as if trying to comprehend what she was saying. “I don’t remember any of that,” he said. “And I certainly don’t recall finding anything, important or otherwise.”

Then he surprised her with a barely audible chuckle. “Well, I must say, if I had to make an accidental call, I’m glad it was to you. I don’t know how you found me, but if anyone in Copper Mill could do it, it would be you.”

Kate grinned at the compliment. “Rainstorm or no rainstorm, I’m just glad you’re okay.”

But as she drove, the image of Russ Keenan’s cold expression kept working its way into her thoughts. She shivered, wondering if the blow to Joe’s head had been intentional.