The late May sunshine felt unusually powerful as it pounded down on her from a cloudless sky. A little after noon, after temporarily giving up on a particularly damaged section of fencing, she returned to the Hiebert homestead for lunch and to reload her truck bed with another bale of fencing and a spool of wire.
As her pickup bumped along the rutted dirt lane, her concentration was on the tracks in front of her, so the black truck parked in front of the barn was a shock when she arrived. Two men, one with hair so dark it was almost black and the other with light hair like Benton’s, were having an intense conversation with Red, who was shaking his head vigorously. The dark-haired one was the guy from the diner, she was sure of it. Both strangers continued to talk, and eventually Red dropped his head, looking defeated. He gave them a single nod, and they returned to their vehicle and drove off.
Whatever had happened looked bad, but Claire the farmhand had no right to ask about any of it. Claire the constable fought to keep her frustration hidden. “Hi, Red. Are you okay?”
He didn’t seem to hear her, and she didn’t want to push, so she walked past him toward the fridge on the porch where she had placed her lunch earlier. A couple minutes later, he joined her, pulling out a can of soda and cracking the top with a grunt.
“Not friends of yours, I’m assuming,” she commented, probing gently. “Corporal Random was talking about a black pickup being seen in the vicinity of the robbery at the Neufeld place. Should you be worried about strangers scoping out your farm?”
“I’d laugh because I can totally picture those guys robbing somebody blind, but they aren’t strangers coming to steal any of our equipment. None of it is worth anything anyway.”
She didn’t want to agree with him, but Red was right. The farm was struggling more than she’d originally thought. What made it worse was that the Hieberts seemed like genuinely good people; everybody she’d spoken to loved them. But a farm was more than a home. It was a business. Even if she did a fantastic job making a ton of smaller repairs and helping ensure that Red got the crops in on time, it would take a miracle to give the farm a bumper crop and record prices in order for them to make enough to address some of the bigger issues.
That wasn’t something she could control. Claire frowned as she took a bite of her sandwich. She couldn’t even control her ability to come up with a single lead to her case, and the men who left no longer fit the parameters of the gang she was looking for, not if Red knew them well enough to be certain of their intentions.
Red gave himself a shake. “They aren’t the problem today. The fence is. How bad is it?”
That was something she could, and would, fix. “You were right. Most of the south fence is toast. I don’t think your neighbour on that side has been doing any maintenance either.” Claire had been shocked to find a place in a worse state than the Hieberts’, but it had been obvious that nobody had been taking care of the attached property at all.
“No, that was the old Trent place. They still own the property, but they don’t live there anymore. They’re leasing the fields, and the corporation that’s renting them doesn’t care about the damage because it’s not their responsibility. Do what you can.”
“Will do. On the plus side, there are two sections along the highway that look a lot worse than they are. I think I can clean them up with minimal repairs, no replacement necessary. It should only take a couple days,” Claire guessed.
It took two and a half. Laurie pulled her off the field for the second half of the third day, and Claire spent it fighting with the doors on the garage until they opened smoothly and the latches for the locks were realigned. The farm wife sighed in relief when Claire finished. “Thank you for that. With the robberies, I wanted to be able to lock up our equipment at night.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“Do you have any plans for the weekend?” Laurie asked.
“Benton’s brother is visiting, and it sounds like he hasn’t been home in a while, so they’re throwing a big barbecue. I’m going to meet the rest of his family.” Benton had sprung that news by text that afternoon, accompanied by a promise that she had nothing to worry about. The event was more of a small party rather than an intimate family event, since they were going to be inviting friends as well. Claire didn’t know if that would be better or worse.
“You’ll be ready for a weekend off by then. Don’t worry, they’re a friendly bunch. They’ll be happy to have you.”
That was her goal. Hopefully, if she could charm the rest of the family, Clay would back off from whatever it was about her that he didn’t like. She needed to stack the Lawson deck in her favour. Besides, she didn’t like not being liked. She hated to disappoint anybody. Especially Benton.