Chapter 2
Chapter Two
J enny headed toward Hemingway’s trailer first thing in the morning. She could have taken the gravel path that led to his trailer, but preferred the wide, sandy aisles through the grove. Walking among these trees made her feel connected to the generations of ancestors who’d farmed this land before her. It had been a good place to grow up. When she was younger, she and Jack used to spend endless summer days playing in the green-tinted world beneath the canopy of leaves.
Walking past the charred acre in the middle of the west field tugged at her conscience. She and Hemingway still had a long way to go in disposing of evidence, and the burned acre might raise questions from the sheriff she didn’t want to answer.
A break in the trees gave way to a clearing dominated by the two storage barns, the pumping station, and the battered, single-wide white trailer. The beachy tunes of Jimmy Buffett leaked from behind the aluminum door, assuring her that Hemingway was back from his morning fishing trip. She navigated around a couple of free-range chickens pecking at the ground to approach the trailer door. Hemingway answered her brief rap.
“Want some catfish?” he asked, then went back to wiggling a cast-iron skillet on the stove. Hemingway ate so much fish he’d probably sprout gills one of these days.
“Too nervous,” she said as she slid onto the dinette bench. As always, the interior of the trailer was a mess of books fighting for space among mounds of clothes and dirty dishes. “We’ll tell the authorities about the skeleton first, then mention the egg after things calm down.”
Hemingway flipped his morning catch onto a plate before taking the opposite bench at the table. “Do you think he’ll show up?”
There was no need for Hemingway to say Wyatt’s name. Jenny’s brief, exhilarating love affair with Wyatt Rossiter had flamed out eighteen months ago during their first real crisis. Even thinking about him triggered a pained thrill. Wyatt was nothing more than forbidden fruit. Six feet and two inches of whipcord-lean, darkly handsome forbidden fruit, but that was all over. She’d seen him around town a few times since their breakup, though he always looked away and made himself scarce before they had to speak to each other.
Mercifully, he wouldn’t have any role in today’s investigation. “Wyatt works for the Department of Agriculture, not the sheriff,” she said. If anyone was trying to steal cattle, hunt during the off-season, or violate agricultural regulations, Wyatt would lead the investigation. Dead bodies and murder investigations fell to the sheriff’s department.
As soon as Hemingway polished off his breakfast, he set his fork down and sent her a sympathetic look. “Ready?”
Not really, but delaying wouldn’t help matters. “Let’s go poke the hornet’s nest,” she said with a wink, bracing herself to endure the next few hours.
Hemingway called the sheriff while Jenny unlocked and opened the metal gates to Summerlin Groves, then they both returned to the farmhouse to wait on the porch swing for the authorities to arrive. Jenny wore her heaviest wool peacoat and still shivered. Maybe it was just nerves, because fifty degrees wasn’t too terribly cold considering it was the middle of January, but it was still chilly for Florida.
Within fifteen minutes, two green-and-yellow cruisers from the sheriff’s department arrived. The tires crunched on the gravel drive as they slowed down, then cut their engines at the front of her house. She hopped down the porch steps as a deputy got out of the front car.
It was Tommy Kasich. She remembered him from high school. Tommy played the trumpet in the marching band while Jenny had been in Future Farmers of America, so they both ran with the nerdy crowd. They didn’t know each other well, but he’d always struck her as a decent guy.
That was a long time ago, and like most people in Pierce County, his attitude toward her was cool as he rounded the car. “Hey, Jenny,” he said. “What’s this I hear about a skeleton on the grove?”
“It’s about a quarter mile away in the hollow of a cypress tree,” she said. “You’ll probably want to drive. I can show you the way.”
Tommy nodded and gestured her to the back of his squad car. She didn’t recognize the deputy in the front passenger seat, a skinny man with a thin mustache, who frowned at her as she slid onto the vinyl bench in the back of the car.
“Who found the skeleton?” Tommy asked after he started the engine and began rolling down the gravel path.
“Hemingway. Neither one of us know who it could be. We don’t have any friends or family members who went missing. Neither of us know anyone who?—”
“Did your brother have anything to do with it?” the skinny guy interrupted.
Jenny’s breath froze, and Tommy sent the younger deputy an annoyed glance. “Shut up, Ames,” Tommy muttered, then met her gaze in the rearview mirror. “Sorry, Jenny. Tell me again what you saw.”
“Just turn left at the fork,” she said stiffly. By now she ought to be used to the snubs because after Jack died, she was the only one left to blame. The car gently rocked across the uneven soil, and pebbles pinged the undercarriage as it rolled closer to the cypress trees.
“You can park here,” Jenny said, pointing to a grassy spot. The other squad car had followed, so she waited until all four men were out of their cars before guiding them to the split cypress tree.
“That tree got hit by lightning last summer,” she said. “The gap has been widening ever since, and the hollow opened up. We noticed the skeleton yesterday.”
“You haven’t disturbed the scene?” Tommy asked.
“I haven’t,” she said truthfully enough. It was Hemingway who found and disturbed the egg, not her. She watched as the men took turns stepping onto the raised cypress knees to peer into the cavity, then two of them started encircling the area with yellow crime-scene tape. Tommy spoke into the two-way radio anchored on his shoulder, and another deputy sheriff started taking photographs.
All of them were engaged in the scene. Nobody noticed the burned patch a few acres away in the west field, which was a relief. She headed back to the farmhouse since it sounded like Tommy was summoning more people to the grove. She and Hemingway had already agreed that one of them would ride in each car coming to the scene so the cars wouldn’t take a shortcut through the grove and see the burned acre.
An hour later, a van with a sign on its side noting it carried mobile crime scene equipment arrived, driven by a woman from the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department. Hemingway offered to take her to the scene, which was good. Women liked Hemingway because he was funny and acted like he didn’t realize how good-looking he was to every female with a pulse. Jenny stood on the porch and monitored the action at the cypress trees through a pair of binoculars. Everyone seemed fully engaged in the scene, and a hint of misgiving arose. Her family had worked this grove for ninety years. She didn’t know how long that skeleton had been there or how he died, but if he was murdered, the odds were good someone in her family might have been involved.
It didn’t take long before Hemingway came jogging back. “Brace yourself,” he said. “They’re calling the fire department and a tree service.”
“Why?”
“They can’t get the skeleton out of the tree without disturbing a possible crime scene, and aren’t taking any chances. They want to cut it down. One of the deputies kept mouthing off about Jack probably being responsible.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she scoffed.
But it wasn’t. No matter how much she wanted to deny the possibility, Jack might have done it. She never could have imagined that he would kill the mother of his child and the young social worker who’d been sent to help facilitate visitation, but eighteen months ago he snapped and did it. Two women dead, Jack’s senseless suicide, and an orphaned four-year-old boy were all the result of Jack’s hair-trigger temper.
She hadn’t seen her nephew since that terrible night. Neither Jack nor his girlfriend, Miranda McAllister, had been stable enough to raise a child. Miranda’s parents had custody of the boy since infancy, so at least there had been no jarring transition for the boy’s living arrangements. And now they had a $1.2 million trust fund for him.
The fire engine arrived, kicking up clouds of dust from the gravel drive as the heavy truck came closer to the farmhouse. The siren wasn’t engaged, but the emergency lights were rolling, twisting Jenny’s nerves even tighter. A flatbed truck from a tree service company followed.
Hemingway hopped into the firetruck to lead it to the cypress tree, and a few minutes later another car pulled onto the grove. It was the squad car Jenny dreaded the most.
Captain Wyatt Rossiter’s familiar white cruiser with a green stripe drove slowly down the gravel path toward the farmhouse. She walked to the porch swing on unsteady legs and sat, watching as Wyatt calmly unfolded his tall frame from the Agricultural Law Enforcement vehicle.
The sight of him packed a wallop. He wore mirrored sunglasses and his khaki officer’s uniform. Tension crackled between them as he approached the steps, his mouth unsmiling in his hard, chiseled face.
“Jenny,” he said tersely.
One word. After all they’d been to each other. After the way he disappeared without even telling her goodbye, all he could muster was a single word. She returned the favor.
“Wyatt.”
The sculpted features of his lean face were expressionless. He planted a boot on the porch step, hooked a thumb in his belt loop, and waited.
She wasn’t going to make this easy on him. She rocked slowly, the chains from the porch swing grinding out a rhythmic squeak. The two of them used to spend hours on this porch swing. Sometimes they spoke of raising kids here; other times they held each other and kissed until they were both breathless.
She kept rocking and staring at the two tiny reflections of herself in his mirrored sunglasses. He’d once told her he wore mirrored sunglasses because they made people with a guilty conscience feel uncomfortable.
Everything about Wyatt Rossiter made her uncomfortable, from his six-foot-two frame to his wavy dark hair and the square jaw that looked like it was carved from a block of granite. She’d hoped the pull of attraction he provoked would have died by now, but no. Wyatt’s aura of calm, controlled strength still held her in thrall.
Except . . . he wasn’t always so calm and controlled. The last time they’d spoken to each other there’d been bellowing voices, things thrown, and tears. Before that afternoon she hadn’t ever heard Wyatt raise his voice.
Now he was back to being grim and unruffled, with the corners of his mouth turned down in disapproval.
“You’ve got a sagging gutter on the side of your house,” he finally said.
She shrugged.
“It’s a safety hazard,” he pointed out.
Repairing the gutter was a luxury she couldn’t afford. She’d liquidated almost every asset she had to settle the lawsuit, so there wasn’t money for things like repairing a saggy gutter.
“What brings you out here, Wyatt?” She managed a deliberately polite tone, rather than one laden with eighteen months of lonely anguish.
“I came over as soon as I heard a skeleton had been found on your land.” He sounded genuinely concerned, which deepened her discomfort, but she strove for a nonchalant tone.
“The west field is already crawling with government investigators, so the situation is under control. You can leave.”
“I want to see it anyway.”
She didn’t want him anywhere near the west field. So far, nobody had looked twice at the burned acre, but Wyatt might be different. He knew a lot more about citrus groves than anyone else on the scene today, and he might spot the trouble.
“Forget it,” she said casually. “This is private property and I don’t want you here.”
He cleared his throat and braced a foot on the top porch step. He even took off the scary sunglasses to lean in and lock gazes. “You and I have good cause not to like each other, but I am an officer of the law and want to see what’s out there.”
His words hurt, though she refused to let him see it. She’d always vowed that when the inevitable day came when she finally encountered Wyatt again, she would be thoroughly decent. It was time to deliver.
She stood and softened her tone. “Drive down to the fork in the path, then turn left. You’ll be able to see the split cypress at that point.”
He got in his car without another word and closed the door with a click . . . not a slam like she would have done. Even the purr of the engine sounded soft and controlled as he put the car in gear and started down the gravel drive.
Of all the people on the grove today, Wyatt was the only one smart enough to figure out what she and Hemingway had been doing when they incinerated the trees in the west field. Wyatt was Sherlock Holmes, Clark Kent, and Captain America rolled into one man. He was the straightest of straight arrows and would blow the whistle long and loud if he figured out what she’d done.
His car rounded the bend and she lifted her binoculars to track his journey to the cypress tree.
It would have been better if their first words to each other after eighteen months hadn’t been so prickly. She’d hoped that maybe when they finally spoke again, he might apologize for abandoning her. Say that what happened wasn’t her fault. Say that he wanted to patch up their wounded hearts and recapture what they had before.
What a pathetic fantasy. The loneliness of the grove made it easy to spin daydreams and then hope they might come true. She’d done the same when she was eight years old and prayed the car accident that killed her parents hadn’t happened and they would miraculously come back to the grove. Silly, wishful thinking.
Wyatt’s car turned left at the fork and rocked over the rutted path toward the cypress trees. The car rolled past the burned acre, and a faint smile curved her lips. The muscles in her neck relaxed and her smile grew wider. He hadn’t noticed anything.
A second later Wyatt’s car began to slow, and then it stopped. The taillights illuminated, and the car backed up several yards and paused, its engine idling.
Jenny’s mouth went dry and her heart began to pound. Long seconds ticked by, then Wyatt got out of the car. He shaded his eyes and stared straight at the acre of cinders and burned stumps.
He only lingered a few seconds before getting back in his cruiser and heading toward the split cypress tree. Her heart continued pounding long after he arrived at the yellow tape and began conferring with the others. Her racing heart had nothing to do with grief over an old flame or curiosity over what the officials were learning about the skeleton.
It was due to the fact that if Wyatt figured out why she’d burned those trees, Jenny would lose the rest of her orange grove. He was the enemy now—and wouldn’t hesitate to see her entire grove destroyed.