Nineteen

“I don’t run from the cops now, Hera. I’m not a rebellious teenager getting into trouble anymore.” His upstate New York accent was gone, his speech softened by the warmth of the west coast.

“Ronnie.” I stepped forward. He enveloped me in deeply tanned arms and kissed me. Jake’s headlights as he came up the drive illuminated our embrace.

He was wearing his cop look when he approached us, and his words said his visit had become official.

“Let me guess. This must be the prodigal son, come home to claim his share of the estate.” Good heavens. Not another wave of testosterone tonight. Jake’s mouth was set in a tight line that would surely snap if he stretched it any more tautly.

Ronald ignored Jake’s comment, his arms still around me, his eyes as brown as chocolate jellybeans. “You’ve filled out a bit, I see. Bet the guys don’t call you Skinny Minnie now.”

I wanted to tell him he was right. Nobody except for Michael. He liked tall blondes, but he preferred them to look more like a Playboy centerfold. My physique ran more to a center for a women’s basketball team. No, I guess I wasn’t over him yet.

He reached around me for Jake’s hand. “I’m Ronald Ramford.” He nodded toward the sheriff’s car. “What did she do? Speeding? Shoplifting? Your sticky fingers in junior high got you in some trouble, didn’t they, Harry?”

Puzzlement joined Jake’s frown. “Harry?”

“She was a real tomboy. We thought she needed a name that wasn’t so wimpy, so we called her Harry.”

Jake ignored Ronald’s good-natured ribbing of me as well as the looks of pure joy on both our faces. His police presence said he didn’t have the patience for jokes or a review of old times. “Do you know that the authorities have been looking for you for the past several weeks?”

Ronald and I weren’t in the mood to have our get-together ruined by Jake’s sour attitude.

“You read my ad in the Albany paper then?” I asked.

He nodded. A woman emerged from the passenger side of the van. She, too, appeared to have walked right out of a how-to-be-a-hippy manual. Long black dreadlocks swung in the moonlight, and delicate silver bells sewed onto the hem of her skirt tinkled as she stepped around the van to take my hand.

“Ronald has told me about you and your family. You saved his life, you know. If you hadn’t showed him such kindness when he was here, he would have killed himself. Surely he would have.” Her accent said she might have been from Jamaica. Listening to her with the jingle of the tiny bells in the background was like an island song set to the sound of the waves.

I gave Ronald another hug and reached out for Deni’s hand. “Good. You’re here, and that’s all that counts. How about a cup of coffee or a beer?” I put my arms around their waists and began steering them toward the house.

“Oh, hell, I give up. I’ll be back in the morning to ask you some questions.” Jake stalked off to his car and sped out of the drive, spraying gravel and dirt in his wake.

“Don’t visit Francine without me.” I yelled loud enough for my voice to carry into the next county, but I feared Jake might have decided not to hear me.

“Did we interrupt something important?” Ronald asked.

“I don’t think so. Let’s go into the house, and I’ll make some coffee and dig up a few stale cookies. Where are you staying? You can stay with me, if you like. Or you can have beer. You might want to try one of my new brews, or I think I’ve got a little wine.” I was so excited at Ronald’s appearance that I was running on and on, and I couldn’t help myself. Neither of my guests seemed to mind my chatter.

*

“I almost came back here five years ago when I heard about your father. He meant a lot to me, you know.” Ronald and Deni sampled Knightsbridge Ginseng Rush in my living room. “Great brew.” Ronald lifted his beer glass to the light and studied the amber glow of the liquid.

“This could make a beer drinker out of me.” Deni stuck out her tongue to lick away the foam that settled on her top lip.

“About Jake, he’s not such a bad guy. He’s just a little tense about this case. It’s his first in the county, and he wants to make a good impression on his boss and the people in the area.“

“You don’t need to explain. We understand.” Ronald spoke, but both heads wagged up and down in agreement. “I’m kind of glad you’re over Michael. I never thought the two of you were a good match anyway.”

Oh, no. They thought Jake was my boyfriend.

“Let me give you the whole story.” Deni and Ronald sat close on my battered maroon couch. She leaned her head on his shoulder, and the two sets of brown eyes focused on me. I rocked back and forth in my mother’s chair and told them about Michael Senior’s death and how I found the body, then updated them on the investigation so far and included Jake’s suspicion that my father’s death wasn’t suicide. I left out two things, Sally’s pregnancy and most of what they really wanted to know about Jake and me, but they seemed to respect my omissions and never pressed me for more about him.

“We’ll take you up on your offer to let us stay here. I’ll visit the family tomorrow, and I think I’d better go alone. From what you told me about Mother and Michael, I can’t trust how they might treat Deni, and I don’t want her hurt by their unkind words.”

Deni lifted her head off his shoulder, straightened up, and looked him in the eye. “I can take care of myself. Besides, when did you want to spring me on them?”

“She’s always right. Reminds me of you, Hera.”

Kind words, but nothing felt right in my life now, not my business or my personal life. Deni tried to hide a yawn behind her hand.

“We can talk more in the morning. I’m not being a very good hostess. I don’t even have anything substantial to offer you to eat. Everything’s in the freezer. I’ll give you my bedroom, and I’ll take Dad’s old room.”

“No, you won’t. We’ll sleep in your father’s room.” I squeezed Ronald’s arm in gratitude as I passed by him to run upstairs and make the bed. I hadn’t spent any time in Dad’s room since he died, and Ronald seemed to sense how difficult it would be for me to spend the night there.

As I showed the two of them into the room, Deni hugged me goodnight. “I don’t care what you say about Jake’s trying to impress the good citizens of this county. I think he’s trying to impress someone else.” She kissed my cheek. “May your dreams reveal the path of truth to you.”

I slept well, and if I dreamed, I didn’t remember the content. I awoke with a sense that the sound of bells accompanied whatever gifts came to me that night.

*

Jake caught me in the barn the following morning. I’d dumped the malt in the mash tun and was adding the hot water. Not only was the temperature in the vessel producing enough heat to melt my face, the temperature on the outside thermometer had read above eighty when I entered the barn.

I ignored his arrival by feigning concentrated interest in the water filling the vessel.

“I just talked with Ronald. He arrived from California before his father’s murder, not after, so he’s been stretching the truth a little about why he’s here.”

I tried not to let my surprise show by plunging my head further into the kettle with the hot liquor in the bottom.

“Did you hear me?” he asked.

I decided not to reply.

“He dropped Deni off to visit her family two days before the murder and said he spent time alone in the Adirondacks camping, but he’s very vague about where he was.”

I banged the lid shut on the vat and turned toward him.

“So now you’re saying Ronald is your suspect? Who is it, Ronald or Michael, or do you think they’re in this together?” I took the metal steps down off the platform two at a time and landed in front of him.

“I thought you might like to know, since you’re my unofficial snoop on this case.”

I walked around him and entered the cooler to check my yeast supply.

“What do you want from me? You interrogated Ronald. Don’t you have someone else to annoy?” Why did this man aggravate me half the time and turn my limbs to spaghetti the other half? I could have thought about that if he hadn’t been standing so close.

“Why are you so mad at me this morning? Last night we seemed to be getting along so well, and I thought …”

“This is my property, and Ronald is my guest. Could you not use my house as your office?”

“You’d prefer I hauled him down to headquarters and put him in one of our rooms with the metal chair, light bulb hanging from the ceiling and peeling paper falling off the walls?”

“You’d better take a closer look at your facilities. I attended the open house last spring, and it didn’t look anything like that.” I closed the cooler door, wishing I could shut out the conflicting feelings I had about Jake and the case with as much ease.

I turned to face him. “I’m sorry. Let’s begin again. I am a little peeved that you just came in here and questioned Ronald. Considering what he will be facing at home, I wanted this to be a kind of sanctuary for him.”

“And the rest of your mad?”

I couldn’t admit it had to do with the arrival of Ronald interrupting Jake and me, so I shrugged. “The weather’s getting to me. When it’s hot outside, and I’m in this stage of brewing, it’s an inferno in here.”

“How’s the water holding up?” Nice of him to ask.

“Rafe’s man connected a new pump on that old well and laid some pipe to the road leading to Ramford property. I’m supplying Rafe and Michael with water, but for how long, I can’t predict.”

I climbed the steps to the platform again and looked in my tank, adjusted the temperature gauge on the water heater, and leaned against the railing.

“I’m like an aerial act in the circus. So far I’ve been lucky to have Rafe and Michael catch me with an infusion of just enough money, but tomorrow, I may lose my partners and fall without a net underneath me. Then what?” A loud clanking sound came from underneath the boiler, and hot water began to pour out onto the floor.

“There goes my net. I’ve got a leak in my boiler. Shit.”

*

By late afternoon, Jeremiah had determined that the boiler was not leaking. A hose from my water holding tank to the boiler had broken, rotted, Jeremiah thought, because of its age. I wasn’t so certain. I thought I remembered replacing that hose a year ago.

“Good as new.” Jeremiah got up from the cement floor after installing a new line and brushed himself off.

“Where’d you put that old section with the leak in it?” I held out my hand for the hose, and Jeremiah slapped it into my palm.

“You know, that doesn’t look like old hose.” He pulled his glasses down his nose and looked over the tops of them.

I bent the hose in half, and the rupture revealed itself. Instead of disintegrating rubber, I saw a clean cut lengthwise on the tube. “It’s been cut.” A lot of good changing those locks was. Someone was still invading the barn. I’d tell Jake about this when he stopped by tonight to pick me up.

I heard a car rumble up the drive. That might be Ronald and Deni back from their visit to his family.

“I’ll let you take over now. I don’t know what I’d ever do without you, Jeremiah. Is Brian coming in soon? We could use him on cleaning out those kegs that arrived yesterday.”

Jeremiah assured me that Brian was due to arrive within the hour. Then he acted as if he had more to say.

“I know this isn’t the time to drop this on you, but I’ve had an offer for a job at higher pay. I guess I’ll be giving you my two weeks’ notice.”

I felt another rope on my safety net let go.