seventy-nine

Tom and I finally left Shadetree three hours later. He had driven the newlyweds to their honeymoon hotel while I consoled Norm and helped clean up some of the mess. The ambulance had whisked Zola away under guard long before, but the police took some time asking questions and taking names. The residents seemed to enjoy the process—the ones who stayed awake, at least. Hutchinson had been off-duty but got the call, and since he’d been with Giselle, she insisted on coming along. When she saw the remains of the cake, she had said, “Oh, there has to be wedding cake!” and half an hour later she was back with a reasonable replacement from a nearby Scott’s grocery. Norm had put his best face on the cake disaster.

Tom had to swing by his house to get Winnie, and I was lying on the couch with Jay and the cats, my ankle elevated and wrapped in ice, when my cell phone vibrated.

It was Hutch. “I thought you should know. Summer’s been arrested.”

“What? But they never actually made the insurance claim, right? So what—”

“No, not that,” he said. “There are several outstanding warrants for more serious charges in Nevada. That’s why we put out the alert. She’ll be heading west as soon as the paperwork goes through.”

“Where is she?”

“They took her off the train to Chicago this morning. Elkhart police are holding her pending extradition.”

“This morning?”

“I was off duty. I just found out.”

I felt a strange mix of emotions about Summer—anger, sadness, loss, disgust. She had never done anything to me, but she had hurt a lot of people, and had done so with cunning and intent. She wasn’t directly responsible, but people had died because of her actions.

“Have you called Evan?”

“No. I drove out there. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing you tell a guy on the phone.”

“How’s he going to manage?”

“Seems he was expecting something like this,” said Hutch. “He said the neighbor, the fellow you met—”

“Meyers.”

“Right. He’s offered to buy Evan’s place and the sheep. Seems he has a daughter who’s interested in taking over the shop.”

“Did he say anything about Nell, his dog?” If no one wanted her, I decided, she could come to my house.

“Well, Evan told her it was just the two of them now, so I guess he’s keeping her.”

I thanked Hutch and hung up when Tom came through the door with Drake and a folding metal crate. “Winnie’s staying in here while we’re gone,” he said. I buttoned my lip.

Life-threatening experiences make me ravenous, and since the only thing I had eaten since morning was half a slice of cake, Tom suggested a nearby Indian restaurant. “But first,” I said, “I want to stop by Blackford’s. I think Joe should know the goon won’t be back.”

But Joe wasn’t in the alley, and worse, his box home was gone. So were his beat-up folding chairs. There was no sign that he’d ever been there, and my heart sank. Had he been frightened away? Had Ralph Blackford run him off? The store was closed, but a car I thought to be Ralph’s was still in the parking lot and the lights were on inside, so I knocked on the front door.

Ralph smiled when he saw us. “Come in! Come in!”

“Sorry to bother you, I was just worried about …”

A door at the back of the store opened and Joe stepped out of the storage area and waved.

“Oh, I thought—” I said, smiling at Joe. “I was afraid—”

“Joe’s going to be helping me out,” said Ralph. “I’ve been worried about security, so Joe’s going to be staying in the store to keep an eye on things at night and on Sunday mornings.”

Joe nodded. “I get a room, too, with a bed.”

Ralph cleared his throat and looked down, shuffling his feet. “We needed to get my son’s old bed and his dorm fridge and hotplate out of the house anyway, and there’s an office back there just sitting empty.”

Joe added, “I’ll get paid every Friday, too.” It may have been the first time I’d seen him really smile.

I was still glowing over Joe’s good fortune when we filled our plates and settled in to eat and catch up. I told Tom about Summer, but added, “I have a very good feeling about people tonight, in spite of everything.”

He smiled and said, “I missed the rest of the story when I drove Tony and your mom to the hotel. What else did that guy—what’s his name, anyway?—what else did he say?”

“His name is Albert Zola. He and Fallon worked for some guy in Cleveland named Cucinelli who has his fingers in all sorts of illegal and semi-legal stuff.” I scooped some chana masala into a bit of naan and savored its gingery bite, then went on. “He sent Zola and Fallon looking for Evan, and they found the farm just as Evan and Summer were leaving for the herding event, so they followed them. They didn’t recognize Summer because they knew her with dark hair and sexy clothes, and they weren’t expecting to find her in Indiana. It was a complete fluke that they spotted Ray.”

“So, Ray and Summer had conned Cucinelli?”

“Yep. Just like Martin and who knows how many other guys. She’d gotten Cucinelli into a hotel room in Reno where Ray had set up cameras and tried to extort a bundle out of him. Hutch was too embarrassed to tell me everything, but from what I gathered, Cucinelli liked to play dress-up games. But he didn’t extort well, and when they figured out that he wasn’t really a shoe salesman, they ran.”

“But not together.”

“Hutch thinks they may have been planning to split up and rendezvous somewhere. Cucinelli’s people were looking for a man and woman together, so that makes sense. But when Summer spotted Evan, she latched on.” I thought about how long it had taken me to feel safe after I dumped my ex, and wondered whether Evan would ever trust another woman.

Tom said, “What kind of man makes his living by blackmailing people who have sex with his wife?”

“I guess they deserved each other.”

“Do the police think she killed Ray?” asked Tom “After watching her hoist sheep onto their feet, I still say she’s strong enough—”

“No! Zola confessed. He was kind of out of it, just rattling on. He said he and Fallon didn’t mean to kill Ray. I suspect he meant not right then. Anyway, he said they just wanted to know where Summer was. I don’t know if that’s true, but anyway, they conked him on the head and dragged him into the storage room, and when he came to, they started breaking his fingers. And he died.” I thought about it for a moment. “The autopsy will probably show a heart attack. Once he was dead, they decided to hang him to scare Summer. They knew she was around, and didn’t think they’d have any trouble finding her.”

“They must have seen her during the weekend event.”

“Probably,” I said, “but again, they were looking for a thinner dark-haired woman. So my hunch is they just didn’t recognize her until they saw her with Evan’s truck that evening at Blackford’s. She was wearing a dark wig so people around here wouldn’t recognize her, and that obviously backfired.”

“Now that Zola’s telling all about his boss, Evan is probably off the hook for the money.”

We were drinking our chai when I changed the subject. “Tom, I’ve been thinking.”

“I have, too.” He looked very serious, and I felt a flutter of fear, but forged ahead.

“You know I’ve been afraid to give up my independence, but, well, I think we should give it a try, as we’ve planned. I’ll adjust. I hope you’ll still move in with me.”

“I’ve already made other arrangements,” he said, staring at his chai. “But we can still see each other.”

More ominous words have seldom been spoken.