Claire’s job was interfering with her job. After a month of nothing, she was exhausted. At least she had something to show after all her repairs on the Hiebert farm.
She’d reported the new Macleans to her superiors, who had promised to run checks on them and get back to her. Until something broke with that, she was up to her elbows in rotten boards as she pulled away the last section of the west side. Clearing the way to get to the walls on both the interior and the exterior of the building had been the hardest part. Once she and Red had a path, the repairs had gone unexpectedly quickly. It hadn’t been cheap or easy, but the entire barn would be completely weathertight in a few more days.
Red had also hired a local company to redo the roof. The crew from Turnbull Construction had attacked in force, fixing weak rafters and putting up a new waterproof roof in a matter of days. It hadn’t hurt that the sunlight hours were getting longer by the day, and the always sunny July skies provided the perfectly dry, if hot, conditions to get it all done.
“Are we going to be making any changes to the interior layout?” Claire asked on her break. “We took down a lot of the broken walls and framing. It’s wide open. What are you planning?”
Red handed her a diet cola from the porch fridge. “I’m planning to leave the barn’s interior design to the new owners.”
She sprayed her soft drink all over the steps. “Excuse me?”
“We sold the farm to the Maclean brothers. Laurie and I can’t run it anymore with the kids and my bad health. Part of the terms of sale was that we bring it up to a usable condition.”
Understanding slowly dawned. No wonder Claire had started off fixing fences. She was establishing the property boundaries. Then Red had directed her to make repairs to the structures so they would protect anything stored inside them. He wasn’t worried about the shape of the machinery that would be parked there because it wouldn’t be his. Benton couldn’t have known. He would have said something. “It’s a done deal then? When are they moving in?”
“At the end of the summer. Laurie and I have rented a house in Hopewell until we can find something permanent. That way we’ll be in town for our oldest to start kindergarten.”
There went any chance the Macleans were part of a nefarious gang of thieves. Once lawyers were involved, it was all over. “So the Lawsons are going to have new neighbours.”
“So will some other families. The Macleans also closed on the Trent property that we back onto,” Red said.
“Wow, they’re really moving into the area.” There was no way they’d be bringing stolen equipment back to where they stole it from; the chance of it being recognized was too great. Apparently, the Macleans were exactly who they appeared to be. It was great for them, but it left her without any suspects.
“If you want to take off early, Laurie was hoping you could make a delivery on your way home. She sold some eggs. You should be going right by the Melnyk farm. She wrote out directions again.” Claire didn’t have a chance to respond before he continued, “But since we know how well that turned out last time, I wrote out better, more accurate directions that will actually get you there.”
Claire laughed at Red’s preventative measures. “No problem.”
Two flats of eggs rested carefully on her passenger seat. Claire drove as if a single bump could set off any of the five dozen eggs like a grenade. It was a challenge on the gravel roads, doubly so when she purposely made a short detour to drive by the old Windsor place. This time she didn’t go up the driveway to see if there had been more activity. She didn’t have to. Fresh oil dotted the turnoff from the road, and sunshine glinted off clean window glass. Since there hadn’t been any rain in a month, they had to have been cleaned by hand.
She did a little dance in the driver’s seat when she pulled up to the correct farmhouse on her first try. Luba was thrilled to see her and gave her a cookie as a thank-you for saving her the trip. Claire loved the country life.
When she stopped at the intersection to brush crumbs off her lap, she waited an extra second for a classic pickup to turn off the highway and drive the way she’d come from.
She didn’t think any more of it until she was pulling into the Hiebert farm for work the next morning and a police cruiser was already parked beside the barn. Corporal Random was deep in conversation with Laurie and Red when she joined them.
“Constable King, it’s good to officially meet you,” he said, sticking out his hand.
She tripped over her feet at his words. Her secret was out, but she hadn’t had any warning from her superiors. That could mean good or bad news. “It’s good to officially meet you too, Corporal Random. What brings you out today?”
“The Melnyk farm was robbed last night. When I spoke to them, they said you were there late yesterday afternoon. When I came to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Hiebert to confirm they’d sent you there, they admitted that they knew who you were. Who you really were,” he amended. A furrow stretched between his eyebrows.
“I’m sorry, Claire. He said that he’d received a call from Alberta about your background, so I thought it would be okay to tell him that we knew,” Red said. He looked like he was offended on her behalf about Owen’s questions. “Corporal Random, Laurie’s cousin’s wife is in the RCMP in Bonnyville. When they needed somebody to provide a cover and some background, we volunteered to help. Claire really has been here every day, Monday to Friday, and a few times on the weekends. We tracked her hours in case anybody needed to know after the fact.”
“We really did send her to the Melnyks yesterday afternoon. We didn’t give her any notice. We asked her to do us a favour as she was leaving for the day,” Laurie added. “She didn’t have time to plan anything even if she wanted to. Luba called me half an hour after Claire left to say she’d received the eggs and that she was sending me an electronic transfer for the money. Their farm is a twenty-minute drive from here.”
Owen clapped Red on the shoulder. “She isn’t under suspicion, Mr. Hiebert. But I still need to talk to her.” He angled his head back toward his cruiser. “Constable.”
“What did they get from the Melnyks?” Claire asked. She remembered seeing a couple vehicles in the yard but none of the big machinery or toys that had attracted the thieves to other properties.
“Otto Melnyk repairs a lot of farm machinery on the side. They emptied his workshop. That’s thousands and thousands’ worth of tools and machinery. They also lost a couple of dirt bikes. The quick and dirty total right now means that crew scored a thirty-thousand-dollar haul from the Melnyks alone. That puts them near the quarter-million-dollar mark for the area since they started.”
Claire whistled. That was about what the crew had cleared in Bonnyville. “They’re too smart to be greedy. Do you think they’re moving on?”
“I do. Everybody is on the lookout now. Speaking of which, did you see anything yesterday? Anything at all?”
“A classic pickup turned onto the road as I was getting back onto the highway. It had Manitoba plates. I have the plate number in my truck.” She retrieved her notebook and rattled off the plate to the corporal, who called it in to his dispatcher with a request for registration information. The reply only took a moment: the plate didn’t exist in the provincial database.
“Which direction were they coming from?”
“South.” She shared a frustrated look with him. “I know. Not helpful. I did have one place that I wanted to go back and check. Benton Lawson told me about an old homestead that was supposed to be abandoned. I took a quick look at it a while back, and there had been some activity, but nobody present. When I drove by the Windsor homestead again yesterday, there had definitely been recent activity on the property. I didn’t spot anybody around though. I’d like to check it again and take a good look around this time.”
Owen didn’t recognize the name, but once she described the location, she could see the lightbulb go off over his head. “I know the place. Do you think it’s a serious possibility?”
“We’ve got nothing else.” Claire jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “They’re okay if I have to take off in the line of duty. There’s no time like the present, especially if we think they’re getting ready to move. I don’t think they’re going to hang around much longer, do you?”
“Not after this last haul.”
“I agree. Do you want to be my backup?”
“Let me make a call first, so Virden can be on standby if we find anything,” Corporal Random said. “These clowns have been running us ragged in three different municipalities. If there’s a chance that we can catch them flat-footed, a lot of people are going to want a piece of them.”
After some coordinating with the Virden detachment, they came up with a three-part plan to search the suspected base of criminal activity. The first involved her swinging by her apartment to get her into uniform. The second was surveilling the Windsor property. She’d go in first. If anyone was there, she’d communicate it to her backup over their open phone line. With her well-known propensity for getting lost, she might be able to keep up the pretense long enough to turn around and leave, buying time for the Virden contingent to come riding to the rescue. The third part was the search itself. If nobody was on the scene, they’d search the house and the outbuildings. If it was occupied and they didn’t buy her little-girl-lost routine…
Claire was about to have a very exciting morning.