Chapter Eleven
Sawyer confirmed Walker’s assessment.
The calf had been killed on the dirt road, and the killer was
human. He also found tire tracks indicating a large vehicle had
been parked at the side of the dirt road.
They stood staring at the marks in the
dust.
“These tread marks are
recent, and the calf was killed last night,” Sawyer observed.
“Either of you see or hear anything?”
Delaney shook her head.
“No. Those assholes shot
at me before midnight not two miles from here. It’s damned
suspicious this calf is slaughtered here most likely within a few
hours of that.”
“Agreed.” Sawyer crouched
and used his phone to snap photos of the imprints in the dirt. He
stood again and nodded to Delaney. “I’ll email you a police report
to fill out and we’ll attach these photos to it. I’ll stop by Lone
Pine Ranch and talk to Shane, see if he’s missing a calf.” He
looked at Walker. “Need help burying it?”
Walker shook his head. “I’ll take care
of it. Thanks for coming out.”
“Anytime, brother. Be
safe, both of you.” His face was grim as he gave the
warning.
Delaney stood beside Walker as Sawyer
drove away leaving a cloud of dust hanging in the air. She closed
her eyes to tip back her head and soak up the sun.
If she kept her eyes closed, it would
be easy to pretend there wasn’t a butchered calf covered with flies
only feet from her, and that whatever danger seemed to lurk around
Walker had dissipated into the warm mountain air.
But she had never been good at
pretending.
Opening her eyes, she took in the
picturesque beauty of the scene marred by the dead calf. The
serenity of the landscape with the not-yet-ripe shiny green
Gravenstein apples usually brought a peace she could find nowhere
else.
A blue jay called from its perch on a
tree branch, an answering cry coming from the far side of the
orchard. The tranquil setting seemed incongruous given the violent
assault to an innocent creature. Cattle were butchered for beef
every day, but having an animal, and specifically a baby animal,
slaughtered for no reason other than possibly to intimidate or
threaten her or Walker, was more than troubling.
Walker got to the shovel first and dug
at the hole she’d started under a ponderosa pine. She used the
steel rake to gather the remains until Walker took over the job,
raking the body parts into the hole.
She shoveled dirt into the pit until
it was full and tamped down the soil. They drove back to the cabin
where Walker let Bud out and he raced to the
side-by-side.
Delaney leaned down and scooped the
little dog onto her lap to pet him as he licked her chin. Walker
stood with his arms crossed over his chest, a frown lowering his
brows over his eyes.
“What? Why are you
glowering at me?”
“Because you’re not going
to like what I’m about to say.”
“That’s probably true most
of the time, so what’s new?”
“I don’t want you working
alone.”
“That’s ludicrous. I work
alone all the time.”
“You’re vulnerable alone.
I want you to take Oscar with you when you’re working away from the
house.”
She laughed at his
high-handedness.
Oscar was a trusted and valuable
employee, too valuable to have him working as a bodyguard. “Not
going to happen. If I have Oscar with me all the time, then he’s
not doing his work. Too much needs to get done before we open for
the season, and it won’t get done if we don’t each do what we do
best.”
Walker didn’t share her humor. In
fact, his expression only got darker. “This isn’t a joke, Delaney.
Whoever killed that calf committed a violent act. It’s not much of
a jump to commit violence against a woman.”
“Or a man. Will you have
someone with you all the time?” she asked sweetly.
“That’s hardly the
same.”
“You were the one who was
shot at, not me.”
He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “I’m
watching my back. I’m more worried about you.”
She shook her head. “I’ve got to get
to work. You be careful, Walker.”
He gave her a half smile. “Maybe I
like you worrying about me. It shows you care.”
The flippant response on the tip of
her tongue died. She couldn’t stop herself from being honest.
“You’re right, I do care. I can’t seem to help myself.
“Just don’t read anything
into it.”
***
Mid-morning the following day, Delaney
was still feeling out of sorts, and it wasn’t only because of the
dead calf. She was unsettled. She hadn’t seen Walker since after
burying the calf, but she still pinned most of the blame for how
she felt on him. No one could unsettle her the way Walker McGrath
could.
Why did he have to kiss her on that
dirt road?
She’d been able to convince herself
her reaction to those kisses at Easy Money was momentary insanity,
and locked the feelings he’d pulled from her into a corner of her
brain where they wouldn’t distract her.
Then he’d gone and blasted that lock
away.
On top of that, there was the issue of
the calf. Shane had confirmed he’d lost a one-month-old calf from
his west pasture the night before it’d been found dead. He hadn’t
heard or seen anything unusual, but he’d be taking extra care to
protect his livestock.
The only thing Delaney could do was to
continue her work and keep her guard up.
She sat in the side-by-side and tapped
the irrigation app on her iPad. Boysenberries were beginning to
plump and with temps in the eighties in the coming days, the water
flow needed adjusting. Plenty of water meant fat
berries.
Initially she’d thought to plant
raspberries but had decided on the more heat-tolerant
boysenberries.
Plumper and sweeter than blackberries,
they were prolific producers.
She and Oscar had built trellises and
installed an irrigation system, and in the three years since they’d
planted the strip of land closest to Mill Creek Road with bare root
berries, the plants had fully matured.
When the fruit ripened, visitors to
the farm would buy baskets to fill with deep purple berries.
Hopefully, they’d also buy jams and jellies, pies and syrup, and
other products the farm offered, and then come back in September
for apple season.
One of the best parts of her job was
watching the enjoyment kids got filling their baskets, stains on
their chins evidence they’d been sampling the bounty. As far as she
was concerned, a trip to Cider Mill Farm made for the perfect
family outing.
Tapping the iPad screen, she set the
irrigation levels, checked the intervals, and saved the
changes.
The farm ran on well water, and so far
supply had been plentiful.
But the development planned by the
Norris company would include condos, and that meant swimming pools
and landscaping. Residential neighborhoods were water intensive
enough, but add in the planned golf course, and water usage would
become an issue.
As far as she was concerned, golf
courses were water hogs and an abomination in the drought-prone
west. All the planned development meant the aquifer they all
depended on would be dangerously depleted.
Already the persistent drought had
forced some residents to dig deeper as the shallower wells they’d
relied on for decades went dry.
She steered the side-by-side along the
road and circled a low hill separating the big house and the
McGrath cabin from the area that would be open to the public in a
few short weeks. By the end of June, the boysenberries would be
ready for u-pick, which meant the open field off Mill Creek Road
they used for parking would be full of minivans and SUVs, and
parents would be pushing toddlers in strollers up the gravel
path.
The apples in the orchards blanketing
the rolling hills that stretched behind the mill to the edge of the
valley and the steep slopes of Payback Mountain would be ripe by
Labor Day. Since allowing the public to tramp through the orchards
and pick their own apples often resulted in damaged trees, they
limited visitors to a few acres closest to the mill and the retail
area.
Bordering the boysenberry field was a
wide swath of grass they called the picnic meadow. Couples and
families often brought picnic lunches or the donuts and pies they’d
bought at the bakery to the tables and benches shaded by a half
dozen leafy chestnut trees.
In addition to everything else he did,
Oscar Ortiz kept the grass in the field mowed. Oscar and his wife,
Francesca, had been at Cider Mill Farm as long as Delaney could
remember. They lived in the largest of workers’ cottages nestled in
a copse of aspen trees behind the retail area.
Delaney bumped along the road to where
it ended at the heart of the operation: century-old buildings that
over the past half decade she and Clara had restored and
transformed into the modern Cider Mill Farm.
For her senior project in college,
Delaney had developed the idea of adapting the farm’s business
model to sell directly to the public. Up to that point the farm had
been barely profitable, but even given that it’d taken time and
patience to convince Clara the plan was a good alternative to
selling acreage to stay afloat. They were still paying off their
initial investment, but if sales could increase by a measly fifteen
percent over the previous year, they’d meet their target
goals.
The cider mill was a large building
that looked like an oversize barn. Delaney had found a photo of the
mill from when Clara’s grandparents operated it in the 1940s, and
had reproduced that look by painting the building white and
repainting the big block letters reading “Cider Mill Farm” on the
side.
Inside were the presses where apples
were milled into a pulp, then the juice squeezed out by a hydraulic
press before being drained into stainless steel vats where it was
pasteurized, then bottled as cider.
In the last year, they’d also begun
making apple cider vinegar. Sales had been surprisingly good so
they planned to expand vinegar production with this year’s crop.
Oscar was the master of making cider, and she planned to hire
another full-time employee to take over some of Oscar’s other jobs