Vicious Circle Page 4

  “Rufus, right?”

  The man nodded before, surprisingly, initiating a handshake. “Nice to meet you – again.”

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “About six months,” Rufus said. “It’s decent work.”

  “I’m glad to see you’re keeping out of trouble,” Kat replied. “I hope it stays that way.”

  Rufus looked puzzled. “Are you here to check up on me or something?”

  “No, I’m here to talk about what happened on the farm next door.”

  “The crop circle?”

  “Yes. You know anything about it?”

  “Not really. Why would I?”

  “Because you work on the farm next to it,” Kat said. “You see anything suspicious around here lately?”

  “Like what?”

  Like his boss walking out into a neighbor’s field with a heavy board and a rope tied around his waist. Or someone else doing the same thing. Or even a UFO, hovering over the field and lit like a Christmas tree. Any bit of information would be more than what Kat had now.

  “Anything out of the ordinary,” she said. “Or maybe your boss saw something.”

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

  “You just told me he’s asleep.”

  “Not anymore.”

  Rufus pointed to the porch behind her. Standing in the doorway, propping himself up with the help of crutches, was Tom Hawkins. Kat looked to his right leg, which was encased in a cast from knee to toe. No wonder John had said he wasn’t in the best shape right now.

  “What happened to your leg, Tom?”

  “Broke it two weeks ago. Fell out of my combine. Hurt like a bitch, but I’ll live.” The farmer shifted his weight on the crutches. “Now would you mind telling me what the hell you’re doing here?”

  Five minutes later, they were seated in lawn chairs on the front porch. Kat still didn’t feel safe there – the roof looked about as stable as wet cardboard – but old Tom didn’t seem to mind. He leaned back in his chair, injured leg propped up on a wooden crate, and lit a pipe.

  “How’s your soybean crop doing?” Kat asked.

  “Better than Landon Gale’s.”

  “You know about the crop circle, then?”

  Tom Hawkins stared over his pipe at Kat. He had dark eyes that looked as shrewd as they were intense. They were the eyes of someone who had spent a lifetime making deals and calling people’s bluff. He was exceptionally smart, and Kat knew that. You couldn’t make it as a farmer for as long as Tom had without extreme intelligence.

  “I get the news just like anyone else, Chief,” he said. “Besides, it’s kind of hard to miss, what with the helicopters circling all day.”

  “Did you know about the contract Landon signed with an organic tofu company in Lancaster County?”

  “I did.”

  “Now that his crop is ruined, they might be looking for someone else to fill the void,” Kat said. “Granted, yours isn’t organic, but they might be willing to make an exception for someone who’ll help them out in a pinch.”

  Tom plucked the pipe from his mouth and pointed it at her. “If you’re going to accuse me of having something to do with all that ruckus at the Winnick property, just come out and say it.”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything. Yet. But it’s my understanding that you and Landon Gale didn’t get along. Is that true?”

  “Landon Gale,” Tom said with a derisive snort. “What the hell kind of name is Landon anyway? It’s stupid, if you ask me. He should be embarrassed to even say it.”

  “I’m going to take that as a yes,” Kat replied. “I also hear you really wanted that land and was pretty disappointed when Alma Winnick wouldn’t sell it to you.”

  “I offered Alma a good price for that land. A very good price. Fields. House. Everything. She didn’t even consider it.”

  “Maybe because you once dropped a sack of horse manure on her front porch.”

  “That was a joke,” Tom insisted. “Although she didn’t see the humor in it.”

  “I can see why,” Kat said. “Just like how Landon Gale didn’t see the humor in what you did to his field.”

  Tom leaned forward and tapped his cast. “Does it look like I’m capable of making a crop circle?”

  “No, but your farmhand does.”

  “Rufus? I have a hard enough time getting him to do his regular job, let alone anything extra. So you’re barking up the wrong tree, Chief.”

  Tom popped the pipe back into his mouth, his cheeks narrowing as he sucked on it defiantly. He thought the conversation was over. He thought wrong.

  “I got to ride in Sonny Duncan’s crop duster today,” Kat said. “You ever get the chance to go up in it?”

  “No. Why would I?”

  Kat shrugged. “Just wondering. He told me you’ve been hiring him for a while now. Thought he might take you up in the plane as a favor. Get to see the lay of the land.”

  “I know the lay of the land, thank you very much.”

  “Sonny also told me you suggested he toss some leftover pesticide on Landon Gale’s soybean crop.”

  “Maybe,” Tom replied. “I can’t really recall.”

  “Sonny recalled it real well. He said it was a few months ago. Probably not that long after you stopped by their farm. Does that ring a bell?”

  “It sounds like Sonny talks too much. Did he mention that he’s been overcharging me for years?”

  “He didn’t mention that,” Kat answered.

  “Well, he is. I only let him get away with it because he’s hurting for business and I don’t want to try to find a new duster.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Kat said.

  Tom inhaled sharply on his pipe before puffing out rings of smoke that drifted in her direction. On purpose, no doubt.

  “Yes,” he replied, sighing. “I told Sonny to spray that field.”

  “Why?”

  “I was being neighborly.”

  “Even though you knew that spraying it with chemical pesticides would ruin the whole organic thing they’ve got going over there?”

  “For what it’s worth,” Tom said, “I didn’t come up with the idea myself.”

  “Really?” Kat folded her arms, calling Tom out on what had to be a load of horse shit bigger than the one he left on Alma Winnick’s front porch. “Sounds to me like you wanted that land and would try any dirty trick to get it.”

  “I’m speaking the God’s honest truth. I was asked to tell Sonny to spray that field.”

  “By whom?”

  “That woman. I forget her name, even though it’s just as damn stupid as Landon. Audrey something.”

  “Aimee?”

  “Yeah. Landon’s wife or girlfriend or whatever they are. She saw Sonny flying over one day. An hour later, she walked over and asked me to talk to him about giving their field a spray.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  Tom took another puff from his pipe, pleased with himself. “Your guess is as good as mine, Chief.”

  When Kat returned to the Winnick farm, she saw that the crowd had thinned considerably. Fewer cars crowded the road, allowing her to actually park in the driveway. The news helicopter was long gone, hopefully covering real news. Those who still remained stood on the edge of the field, taking pictures, or crowded around the farm stand, now being manned by Landon. Kat tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Is Aimee around?”

  Landon, who was just about to drop a carrot into a customer’s bag, instead used it to point to the farmhouse.

  “She’s taking a break in the kitchen. Have you figured out who made the crop circle yet?”

  “I’m close,” Kat said. “Really close.”

  Inside the house, she found Aimee sitting at the kitchen table, sipping a steaming cup of tea. Seeing her, Aimee tried to get to her feet, but Kat motioned for her to stay put.

  “Relax,” she said. “You’ve had a busy day. Must be pretty tired.”

  A
imee placed a hand on her stomach. “You don’t know the half of it. It’s even worse when you’re standing for two.”

  “How far along are you?”

  “Five months. He’s been kicking up a storm lately.”

  “That’s good. Shows the baby is healthy.”

  Kat joined her at the table, which was still as cluttered as it had been that morning. No surprise there. There was no time to keep things tidy when half the town was tramping through your yard. Kat absently fingered the seed catalogs there before moving on to her favorite item atop the table – the claw hammer.

  “Are these the catalogs you got from John Elliott?” she asked.

  Aimee gave them a cursory glance. “Those? I think Landon brought them home last week. He was already planning next year’s crop. Although God knows where we’re going to be next year. Most likely far away from here.”

  “John told me he gave you some catalogs at his place last night. I just assumed you carried them with you when you walked across the field.”

  “You may be right,” Aimee said. “Honestly, today’s been so crazy that I don’t remember anything from yesterday. The furthest memory I have is waking up and finding Landon shouting like a madman in the back yard.”

  Kat studied the woman sitting across from her, although Aimee looked more like a girl than a woman. Plopped in her chair, taking tiny sips from her teacup, she brought to mind a child merely guessing at what it was like to be an adult.

  “I just got back from Tom Hawkins’s place,” she said.

  “Do you think he had something to do with the crop circle? Landon does. He swears Tom did it.”

  “He didn’t do it,” Kat said. “His leg’s in a cast. The guy can barely stand without his crutches.”

  “Doesn’t he have a —”

  “Farmhand? Yes, but I doubt he did it, too. In fact, the only thing I learned from old Tom was that you asked him to talk to Sonny Duncan about spraying your field with pesticide. Is that true?”

  Aimee stared at her teacup, frowning. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “It sounds to me like you did.”

  “Do you really want to know what I was thinking?” Aimee asked. “I was thinking that I hated it here. That I never wanted to come here in the first place.”

  “Landon told me you came around to the idea.”

  Aimee let out a laugh that contained more bitterness than mirth. “He likes to tell everyone that. Makes it seem like his stupid plan to become a farmer was both of our ideas.”

  “I guess it wasn’t,” Kat said.

  “No. It was just his.” Tears welled up in Aimee’s eyes. A single once escape and rolled down her cheek. “I had two options – go along with it or lose him. So I went along with it. I hated it from the start. This big, dirty house that’s impossible to keep clean. Especially with him clomping dirt in all the time. It got to the point that I couldn’t keep up. So I gave up trying.”

  Her gaze flitted around the kitchen, taking in the squalor the same way Kat had earlier. Each eyeful of disarray brought more tears, which Aimee fought to contain.

  “I just wanted to go home,” she said, sniffling. “I missed Brooklyn. I missed my friends. So when I saw that crop duster fly over one day, I realized it could be the key to going home. All I needed was for it to spray the fields just once. Then the crop wouldn’t be organic, that stupid tofu place wouldn’t pay us and Landon would have no choice but to go back to Brooklyn where we belong. So that’s when I went to Tom Hawkins to see about getting it sprayed.”

  “But it didn’t work out like you planned.”

  When Aimee shook her head, a tear slid down her cheek and plopped into her teacup. She looked down, watched the ripples it created and took a sip anyway.

  “Landon’s still here,” she said. “And so am I.”

  “You know,” Kat said, “if you weren’t pregnant, I’d think you were the one who created that crop circle outside.”

  “I know. But I didn’t do it.”

  “Of course not. John Elliott did it for you. Unless I’m wrong about the two of you having an affair.”

  Kat stared at the table as she spoke, not bothering to look at Aimee’s reaction to see if she was right. She didn’t need to. Kat knew she had hit the nail on the head the moment the stunned farmer’s wife dropped her teacup. It shattered when it hit the floor, splintering into a dozen pieces.

  Seven

  “Please don’t tell Landon,” Aimee begged. “Please.”

  “How else am I going to explain why his good friend John destroyed his field?”

  “Make something up. Anything.”

  Aimee was still in her chair, although now a few feet away from the kitchen table. Kat was on the floor, gathering up bits of broken china. Aimee had offered to clean it up herself – “It’s my mess,” she said, in what was a huge understatement – but Kat couldn’t in good conscience watch a pregnant woman crawl around on the floor. Aimee had enough problems to deal with.

  “When did the affair start?”

  “In early March,” Aimee said. “Landon was so busy getting the farm up and running and I was feeling so alone. Some days, Johnny was the only person I talked to. He’d stop by every day, just to see how we were making out. He’d give me tips about the garden, the animals, everything. Most days, I saw him more than I did my own husband.”

  Kat could write the rest of the story herself. This wasn’t the first time a farmer’s wife had cheated on her husband. Others smarter than Aimee had done the very same thing. Most of them eventually regretted it.

  “How did you find out?” Aimee said. “I never told anyone.”

  “You didn’t need to.” Kat grab two of the seed catalogs from the table. “I knew from these.”

  “The catalogs?”

  Kat placed one catalog next to the pile of glass shards she had created. She used the other to sweep them onto its cover.

  “John said you walked over to his place last night so he could give you some seed catalogs. Normally, I would have bought that excuse. But his house is almost a mile away – a bit far for a pregnant woman to walk just for some catalogs that he could have easily dropped off. Not to mention the creek that divides his property from this one. I saw it from Sonny’s crop duster. You couldn’t cross that, Aimee. Not five months pregnant.”

  “You’re right. We weren’t at John’s house. I told Landon I walked there and back to explain why I was gone for such a long time.” Aimee sniffed bitterly. “Not that he cared. He didn’t even notice I was gone.”

  Kat carried the swept-up glass shards to the trash can in the corner. “Where did you go?”

  “Into town. John got a room at the Sleepy Hollow Inn. But it’s not what you think.”

  “It certainly sounds like it.”

  “We just talked,” Aimee said. “That’s all.”

  Kat imagined how the conversation went – the two of them sitting on the edge of the bed, Aimee slowly but surely planting the crop circle idea in John’s head. If she wanted to get off that farm, having her lover destroy their crop was one way of doing it.

  “Did you tell John to make the crop circle?”

  Aimee placed a hand on her stomach, more out of shock than anything else. “God, no. I didn’t know he was thinking about destroying the field. I had no idea. You have to believe me.”

  Kat had been a cop long enough to know when someone was lying. Aimee was telling the truth. This time, at least. Kat could see it in her wide, panicked eyes.

  “Then what did you talk about?”

  “I was there to call off the affair. I told John that I couldn’t see him anymore. I had to think of Landon and the baby.”

  “How did he react?”

  “He was upset,” Aimee said. “Angry, too. But mostly just sad. He kept telling me to change my mind. He said we could be happy if I left Landon and lived with him.”

  “So he thought of making the crop circle all on his own?”

  Aimee nodded slowly.
“I suppose. But how do you even know it was John? It could have been anyone.”

  Because he had motive: revenge. On both Aimee and Landon, the man she ultimately chose. Plus, his alibi was weak. Kat didn’t buy his story about the dog hearing something in the field the moment she heard it. Then there was the fact that John Elliott had mud caked onto his boots – a sign that he had crossed the creek during the night, right into Landon Gale’s field.

  “I just know,” Kat said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Arrest him, of course. For destroying private property. Plus, Landon has every right to sue for lost income.”

  Aimee hopped up from her chair, grabbing at Kat’s sleeve in pure panic. She was crying again – large, sloppy tears that drenched her cheeks.

  “You can’t tell Landon why he did it. You just can’t.”

  “I think he needs to know the truth about what happened to his field.”

  “He’ll know John did it. Isn’t that enough? He doesn’t need to know it’s because of me and our affair.”

  Kat felt the atmosphere of the kitchen shift ever-so-slightly. It was the same feeling she got when she knew James had entered a room even though she never heard his approach. Aimee felt it, too, and squeaked out a gasp of surprise. Both of them faced the door.

  Landon was there, standing just beyond the door on unsteady legs. He leaned right, then left, struggling to regain his equilibrium. When he spoke, his tone was flat – the voice of a man too stunned for mere emotion.

  “John did this?”

  Aimee stayed silent, too guilty to speak or even look at her husband. That forced Kat to do the talking.

  “I’m pretty sure he did.”

  “And is it true?” Landon asked Aimee. “You two were having an —”

  He couldn’t bring himself to say the most important – and most horrible – word in his question. Yet they all still heard it, as loud as cannon fire.

  “I’m sorry,” Aimee whispered. “I never meant to hurt you.”

  “And the baby?” This time, emotion crept into Landon’s voice. It was pain, high-pitched and devastating to hear. “Is it even mine?”

  Aimee shook her head before whispering again. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t.”