It was while he was looking at the herbs that he got his first idea that something was wrong. He was startled to see that smack in the middle of each triangle was what looked to be a tall, thriving marijuana plant.
When Mike took a step toward the closest plant, he heard a fain
t click. It was a sound that, had there been any noise of, say, dogs barking, he wouldn’t have noticed. But Mike had heard the sound once before—and seconds later a friend of his had been blown up.
Mike stood absolutely still, not moving except to look down at what he’d stepped on. It didn’t appear to be a land mine, but he could see a circle of something hidden under the dirt.
Keeping his foot in place, he slowly pulled his knife from his jeans pocket and used the long blade to move the dirt away. It looked to be an old iron trap with teeth on it. Had it sprung, it would have cut deeply into his ankle.
Carefully, Mike put his hands on the two iron half circles and held them down while he lifted his foot. The nasty little trap sprang shut the second he let go. It was like a lethal Venus flytrap—and it was meant to hurt anyone who tried to get near the marijuana plant.
Okay, so the old man was making some money through illegal drugs. In Mike’s life, that was nothing, but he wondered if more traps had been set around the other plants to protect them. Or was it the other way around and the cannabis was being used as a lure?
As cautiously as he’d ever worked in his life, Mike began to closely inspect the vegetable garden. Each of the marijuana plants had a trap near it, and each one was concealed under the dirt.
At the gate Mike saw four holes in the ground, and the grasses were flattened in the center. He realized a tent had been placed there, and Mike thought that made sense. If the old man was growing weed, the local boys were probably trying to steal it, so Lang had been sleeping outside to protect it.
It was a plausible explanation, but, still, Mike didn’t believe it. Something wasn’t right. For one thing, there was no way Lang could so openly grow those plants and not have everyone in Edilean know about it. Mike had been told that Luke repaired the buildings and often cut the grass around the house. He would have seen the plants, and Mike didn’t think he’d tolerate them.
If, by some long shot, Luke didn’t tear out the plants, Mike was sure that Sara’s mother wouldn’t allow them. He’d spent less than an hour with the woman, but it was enough to know that she’d refuse to buy vegetables from a man who was growing marijuana.
Mike stepped over half a dozen spiny, smelly herbs to reach one of the cannabis plants. When he brushed away the dirt, he saw that it was inside a pot. It looked like Lang was growing them somewhere else, then when he went away, he put them in the ground. Mike was even more sure that the old man was using them to entice someone into the garden.
Mike reset the trap he’d triggered, removed all trace that he’d been there, and left to continue his exploration.
He went away from the house, toward the large lawn. There was another garden directly in front of the main house, with tall boxwood hedges encasing geometric beds.
In the second square, he saw a net hidden in a tree branch that hung over the garden below. When Mike moved a stick on the ground, he found a trip wire. If he’d walked across it, the net would have come down on him.
“It’s a damned Tarzan movie,” he muttered as he moved out of what he thought of as the flower garden.
At the far end was about a half acre of mown lawn, and he didn’t want to run across it, but at the other side was another fenced area that he wanted to see. In the middle of the lawn was a gravel driveway, narrow, but it had recently been used for a car, so obviously, it was trap free. It looked like Lang just didn’t want anyone sneaking about where he couldn’t see them.
Mike jogged down the drive to what looked to be an old orchard, and when he got there, he stood at one end and couldn’t help admiring it. The trees looked to have originally been planted in five neat, long rows, but now there were many gaps from missing trees, and half of the remainder looked too old to produce fruit.
For the first time, Mike thought of this property as being his. He’d like to take out the dying trees and replace them. He thought it would be nice to pull an apricot or a plum off his own trees. He glanced at the big lawn and envisioned playing catch with Tess’s kid. And when she wasn’t around, he’d show the boy—or girl—a bit of kickboxing. Maybe he could put some weight machines in one of those old buildings and—
He made himself get back to business. The fenced area near the orchard was a cemetery. He wasn’t surprised to see the name MCDOWELL on a dozen old markers, but when he got to the gate, he saw something that drew his attention away. A few yards from the cemetery was a line of small, handmade concrete stones with names and dates drawn into them. They were obviously pet graves, and they started in the 1920s. The most recent graves were for animals named King, Queen, Prince, Princess, Duke, Duchess, Marquess, Marchioness, Earl, Countess, Viscount, and Viscountess. The last two were freshly dug and dated this year.
As Mike looked at the dates, he realized that each of the dogs seemed to have lived very long lives—except for the last two. They were no more than three years old when they died. Maybe it was Mike’s cynicism from what he’d seen in his life, but he wondered if the dogs had been murdered. Losing his dogs would explain why Lang had made traps that were lethal.
Mike wasn’t sure yet, but he thought there was a war going on here, and it was probable that the dogs had been casualties of it. It was his guess that someone had been attacking the old man and Lang was trying to protect himself. But at the same time, like a spider and a fly, Lang had been trying to lure his enemy into a trap. When someone tried to get the marijuana, he’d have his foot nearly torn off. When the enemy sneaked through the old flower garden, he’d find a net falling on top of him.
Of course the first thing Mike wanted to know was who was after old Brewster Lang. But if he couldn’t find that out—and he felt sure he already knew—then he was going to figure out the cause of this war.
7
SARA WALKED DOWN the long driveway of Merlin’s Farm and marveled that there had been so few changes since she first saw it when she was just eight years old. At dinner the night before that visit, her mother had excitedly told her family that Brewster Lang had contacted her to say that he wanted to sell some of his vegetables to Armstrong’s Organic Foods. That he grew the most succulent and beautiful produce in the county, maybe in the state, was well known.
“And how did he contact you?” her husband, Dr. Henry Shaw, asked. “Smoke signals? Or did he use two cans and a string?” He hadn’t grown up in Edilean and often let his wife know how backward he thought the town was.
Only Sara giggled at the joke, but then she’d always been a “daddy’s girl.” Her two older sisters were as perfectly conventional as Sara was a dreamer.
“Telephone,” Eleanor said as she passed the bowl of carrot and raisin salad to Taylor who, at twelve, was the eldest of their three daughters. “I’m going out there to see him tomorrow, and, Sara, you’re going with me.”
Everyone at the table paused, frozen, as they looked at Sara in surprise. Whereas the two older daughters were as organized and determined as their mother—but without the hippie undertones—Sara was content to play with her many dolls and sew endless dresses for them.
Sara looked as though she didn’t know if she was being punished or honored. “Me?” she whispered. She’d gone to work with her father many times. Of course it was always on a Saturday, when he had more paperwork to do than patients to see, but she liked the old hospital in Williamsburg where he worked, was fascinated by his office, and most of all, she loved being with her father. But, unlike her sisters, she’d never been to work with her mother.