Chapter 4 The Lion and The Lamb
FOUR
The Lion and The Lamb
Mabel
“So, you own The Groove,” Harry started after I sat down. “My wife Lillian likes that place a lot.”
This was good to know.
And it was nice that he wanted to start gentle.
Even so.
“Honestly, I don’t mean to be rude,” I replied. “But you can imagine I’m more than mildly creeped out.” I swept a hand in front of me to indicate the note on his desk. “After that, with how you all are behaving, the creep factor is heading into the red zone.”
Harry glanced at Rus.
I looked to Rus.
He was jerking up his chin toward Harry.
“All right, Ms. Adams—” Harry started.
“Mabel. Please call me Mabel,” I invited.
“Mabel,” he muttered. Then, “You’re renting The Retreat from Mrs. Matthews?”
I was confused. “The Retreat?”
“The Cooper’s Retreat,” he said.
“I…no. But I am renting a cabin and workshop from her,” I replied.
“That’s The Cooper’s Retreat.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t think we’re talking about the same place.”
Harry leaned into his forearms on the desk. “So we can get down to business, quick history. I’m sure it won’t surprise you, considering our remoteness, and proximity to Canada, back in the day, Misted Pines and Fret County on the whole were centers of bootlegging activity.”
“Oh,” I whispered, thankfully so fascinated by this knowledge, I forgot my most recent woes.
“There was also a whiskey distillery out there,” Harry carried on. “It’s since burned down. But the cooper, the man who made and maintained the barrels to contain that whiskey, lived on your property.”
“Right,” I said.
“He did his coopering in your workshop,” he went on.
Well, wasn’t that kickass?
“In fact, the workshop was built for that purpose,” Harry said. “So, even though Prohibition is long gone, since that business up there was not exactly clandestine, your place has always been known as The Cooper’s Retreat.”
“Okay.”
“And for at least as long as I’ve been aware, it’s been owned and rented out by Mrs. Matthews and her boys.”
I nodded.
“Did you deal with her? Or her son or one of her grandsons?”
“Her son was in the truck, but when I was shown the place, Mrs. Matthews did it.”
Incidentally, she’d been a hoot.
Diminutive (though not as short as Aunt Bea), with a helmet of steel-gray, set curls, she was matter of fact, no nonsense, and blunt to the point of rude.
And her son looked less like he was assisting his elderly mother in her rural mountain real estate empire, and more like a goon who would enforce the will of a vicious mob boss.
I liked her upon meeting, obviously.
“Did they disclose anything about your neighbors?” Harry asked.
Here we go.
I shook my head.
Harry shot an irritated look to Rus.
I didn’t turn my eyes from Harry. “What?”
He sat back in his chair and started carefully, “Now, I’m not saying that was them.” He dipped his head to the note on his desk. “But regardless, you should know, to the south of your property, there’s a…”
He trailed off, clearly at a loss for words.
“Community,” Rus supplied.
“Right,” Harry muttered. “Community. A community called The Lion and The Lamb.”
Dang it!
Really?
Really?!?!
“What you’re saying is, I’ve got some Christian extremist cult living next to me.”
Harry held my gaze unwavering. “I did not describe them as that.”
That meant I had some Christian extremist cult living next to me.
Just my luck.
Precisely my damned luck!
“Fantastic,” I spat.
Rus took up the story. “They’ve been there some time. They don’t cause any problems. There’ve been no complaints. In fact, we’re surprised, if it was them, that they even entered your property, much less left that note.”
Harry added, “We don’t know much about them, and they take pains to keep it that way, except it seems they’re based quite a bit on self-sufficiency.
They have electricity, they own trucks, but for the most part, they farm their land, they have livestock, chickens.
They come into town for necessities or things that fill in the gaps of what they can’t grow and raise on their own.
They have a booth at the Farmer’s Market and sell eggs, jam, bread and pies there.
As far as we know, that’s their only income. ”
“The men sell jam, bread and pies,” Rus added.
I skimmed him but went back to Harry when he spoke again. “That’s an important distinction, Mabel. The men sell at the booth. The men are seen at the feedstore and market. The women are never seen.”
“Never,” Rus stressed.
“Ah, hell,” I muttered.
“You won’t be able to miss them, if you haven’t already noticed them,” Rus said.
“They have long beards, workpants, button-down work shirts. They look Amish, except their clothes are store-bought, they wear western hats if they wear hats, they have long hair, and they wear full beards, including the mustache.”
I could do nothing but nod.
I was never telling Kacey and Mona this.
Never.
“At this juncture, we have two issues on our hands,” Harry stated.
“One, although it’s jumping to conclusions, it’s a reasonable conclusion considering the facts, this note”—he reached out to tap the note with one long finger—“was left by one of them. That said, as much as it guts me to point this out, you’re a good twenty-minute drive, fifteen if we’ve got our sirens on, away from any law enforcement protection.
Therefore, if we go to their compound and ask questions about this note, it might tweak them into doing something bolder. ”
My stomach was sinking.
“We will do that, absolutely,” Harry declared.
“While explaining that there are some rather steep fines, plus jail time, for trespassing in Fret County. And reminding them of just general friendly neighbor relations, including the fact that folks who live up there want privacy. Just the same as The Lion and The Lamb plainly enjoy, they should offer privacy to others. In other words, we’ll also be reminding them no one bothers them, so they should return that favor. ”
I nodded again.
“But that would be your call,” he said. “In the meantime, the other issue at hand is, I’d like to understand your capacity for protection.”
His comment flummoxed me.
“Sorry?”
“Has Mrs. Matthews put an alarm system in the house?”
I almost laughed at that.
I’d had a problem with the downstairs toilet flush mechanism, and one of her grandsons was out fixing it within two hours.
But nothing in that place had been updated in, my esteemed guess, over a decade. Not the fridge, range, bathrooms, nothing.
I shook my head.
“Motion sensor lights?” he asked.
Another shake of my head.
It was with what I would assume was all law enforcement’s trepidation that some moron had a firearm, say, a city girl born in LA and out from Orlando, like me, when he asked, “Do you have a gun?”
“I hate guns,” I replied.
“A dog?” he asked.
“Nope,” I said.
He blew out a breath.
“Living that remote, you need to at least get a dog,” he said softly. “The three biggest deterrents to criminals looking to commit crimes are light, security and dogs.”
He sat forward, grabbed a piece of paper, a pen and started writing.
He did this while talking.
“Even if you just get a sign you can buy online, or I think they have them at the Box and Save, one you can plant outside your house that says you have a security system installed, even if you don’t, it’ll make someone who’s there doing something they shouldn’t at least hesitate, if not scare them off. ”
It was wild to see a man multitask so splendiferously, because after he said that, he offered the paper to me.
I took it and looked at it.
“That’s the number for Hutch Hutchison,” he said. “He lives out your way. In fact, he’s your neighbor to the north. He breeds and trains police and guard dogs, and he’s very good at it.”
I stared at the paper with this Hutch Hutchison’s name (what parent would do that to a child?) and number.
“There’s also a rescue and wildlife sanctuary up near you where you can adopt a dog, but I suggest you contact Hutch first. He not only breeds his own dogs, he trains others.”
“You also might get in touch with Mrs. Matthews, share what happened, and ask her to put up some motion sensor lights,” Rus put in.
I did not thrill at that news, for three reasons.
One, Mrs. Matthews clearly was not a woman who liked to spend money, she preferred raking it in.
Two, I knew my property had gone unrented for quite some time, possibly because of this Lion and Lamb business.
Therefore, I sensed if she knew they were messing with me (allegedly), she’d send her goon son, and her equally goon-like grandsons, to have a few words, and we didn’t need a mini-Waco on our hands in Fret County.
Not after all the population of Misted Pines had already endured (or ever).
Three, there were a lot of critters out there, and the lights would be lighting all the time because of it.
But I got what Harry Moran was saying without saying it.
I was a fool to be a single woman, living in the middle of nowhere, without at least some form of protection.
And of the protection he listed, I had none of it.
I looked back down at Hutch Hutchison’s name.
“Yeah, if it was me, I’d be getting on getting the dog first,” Harry said quietly, and I lifted my gaze to him.
“Nothing small and yippy. Mid to large, with a ferocious bark. Although I’ve seen the results of one of Hutch’s animals on a trespasser, and it was not pretty, even if it was deserved, with a dog, you’re not only going for a deterrent, you’re going for an early warning system.
I haven’t been to The Cooper’s Retreat in years, but I do know it’s sturdy, has stood the test of time, and hopefully has good locks.
If a dog tells you that you have company you don’t want, you can get on the line with us, and in fifteen minutes, you’ll have help. ”
“And don’t hesitate to call that help,” Rus entered the conversation. “It’s not an inconvenience. It’s our job. You get spooked, you phone.”
That last sentence was an order.
“Okay,” I said.
“Right then, do you want us to go speak to Lars Enstrom?” Harry asked.
I turned to him. “Lars Enstrom?”
“As far as we know, he’s the leader of The Lion and The Lamb. His name is on the property. And in any dealings we’ve had with them, which are few, mostly just going in to warn if there were wildfires and they might need to evacuate, he was the front man of that crew.”
I took a second with this information.
I took another second with my history (and maybe that was more than just one).
That morning, when I found that note, I didn’t think I was flying off the handle and overreacting with coming down to talk to the cops.
It was not okay to leave that note. It wasn’t okay to watch someone on their property. And if something like that happened, the cops should know so you had it on record in case things escalated.
That said, considering my Post-it Lover was a slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am type of dude, and this would not be repeated (definitely not) for some time (if ever), it could just be a blip.
I’d lived there for seven and a half months without even knowing that community existed (outside of now realizing I’d bought jam and bread, and once a very delicious apple pie, from them at the Farmer’s Market).
Right now, there was no reason to make a big deal of this, possibly get on their bad side, and make people who lived extreme beliefs do something I wouldn’t like a whole lot more.
“Can we just have this on record, and I’ll get a dog?” I asked.
“It’s your call,” Harry murmured.
I glanced at his very shiny, very wide gold wedding band.
“Is that the call you’d make if your wife lived out there, before she was your wife?” I queried.
He smiled a smile that made a handsome man breathtaking.
“Even if we haven’t been married long, I can’t think of Lillian as not my wife, so…no. I’d probably go in there, itching for a fight, do something stupid, and we’d be holding another election for sheriff because I’d get canned.”
I laughed and made the firm decision I liked this guy.
If it could be believed, he seemed to be one of the negative one percent of men who was one of the good ones.
“Though, sitting here, looking at you,” he continued, “knowing how far you are from our help, I think it’s the wise decision to have this on record, but at this juncture, let it slide.”
And again, I was nodding.
“That said, even if you get an inkling they’re messing with you, Mabel, I want you right back here in my office, yes?” he pushed.
More nodding from me.
He stood.
Rus stood.
I stood.
He indicated the paper in my hand. “Give Hutch a call. He doesn’t normally have animals available. They’re usually spoken for before they’re even trained. But he can give you good advice.” He put his hand on the note. “And we’ll keep this with your file.”
“Thank you,” I said.
We shook and it was Rus who escorted me to the front door.
He even opened it for me.
But as he was holding it open with a long arm, he caught my elbow when I was about to walk out.
“Any inkling, Mabel,” he reiterated.
“Okay, Rus,” I replied.
He let me go and smiled.
I walked toward The Groove thinking, either this assertion from both of them was because they weren’t taking any chances due to the fact they’d been through hell and high water with Ray Andrews (the psychopath who’d pulled his shenanigans), Carrie Molnar and Ezra Corbin (the copycat killers), Richard Sandusky (the actual Crystal Killer), the Whitaker fiasco (long story) and Karl Abernathy (the dirty cop who’d killed a number of people to hide the fact he was filthy).
Or it was because The Lion and The Lamb was flipping their shit, an unknown but possibly explosive situation they were waiting, with all that had already befallen that town, to combust.
I already had an inkling.
And that inkling was, the answer to that was door number two.