Scarlet Nights (Edilean 3)

Edilean.”

“Try in all of Virginia. Forget him, what about the farm?”

“Grans used to rhapsodize about it. I think that over the years she made it into a sort of Valhalla, a heaven, where only good could happen. I think she meant to die there.”

“It was her ‘happy place.’”

“It sure wasn’t with us kids!” Mike said with feeling. “So, anyway, she threatened to report me for kidnapping an underage child if Tess didn’t swear that after she finished college, she’d go back to Edilean and do anything she could to own Merlin’s Farm. At the time, I tried to get Tess to say no, but …” He shrugged. “You know Tess.” He didn’t embellish his story by telling how Tess had kept in touch with the old woman for the rest of her life. Nor did he tell her that after their grandfather’s death, it had been financially difficult for him and Tess to keep their grandmother in a retirement home. She had demanded a place that was known for its luxurious accommodations and caring staff.

Sara stared at him in silence for a few moments. “Everyone wondered why Tess agreed to work here as Ramsey’s secretary. We knew she had an MBA, but she came here to this little town to take dictation.”

“She swore to our grandmother that she’d do what she could, and the old woman was still alive when Tess graduated, so she felt she had to keep her vow.” Mike smiled.

“What?”

“I was just remembering one of the fights Tess and I had while she was still in school. I didn’t want her to go to Edilean, but she wouldn’t listen to me. You know what she said?”

“Tell me,” Sara said eagerly.

“She said she’d get Merlin’s Farm no matter what she had to do. I said, ‘And how will you do that?’ Tess said, ‘I plan to get a job with the McDowell law firm, and if I have to, I’ll marry whoever owns that damned farm.’”

Sara looked at Mike in astonishment. “And that’s exactly what happened. Tess came to Edilean and took a job from my cousin just to get an old farm from him.”

“It started that way.” Mike was afraid he’d made her think Tess had falsely enticed Ramsey into marriage.

“I know,” Sara said, and her eyes softened. “Tess fell in love with Rams, then waited for years for him to realize he was in love with her.”

“Yeah, she did.” His voice showed his relief, and he thought that it was a good thing Grans was dead by that time or the old woman would have shown up with a machine gun. Her granddaughter marrying a McDowell! That’s the worst thing she could have imagined.

“So now, to Rams’s old-fashioned mind, you’re family, so the farm could be given to you.”

“With lots of limitations,” Mike added, with the thought that finally, at last, he could get back to what he wanted to talk about: Stefan Vandlo. All in all, he thought, criminals were much easier than “good” people. If he wanted information from a crook, Mike just paid him money. To get information from sweet little Sara he had to bare his soul. Oh yes, criminals were much easier. “Uh, Sara,” he said cautiously. “You mentioned that your fiancé wanted the farm.”

She gave him a look of apology. “I don’t know what it is about you, but you bring out the anger in me. You’d never believe me, but I rarely show anyone else when I’m angry. You can ask Greg and he’d say I don’t even have a temper.”

Mike had to resist the urge to kiss her hand in gratitude because he knew that Vandlo liked to hit women who thwarted him. But Mike sat still. “It’s your turn for confessions. Why does he want that old farm?”

“I’m not sure,” Sara said, but she shifted her eyes sideways, making Mike think she wasn’t telling the truth, or not all of it, anyway. “Greg talked about a lot of things, from remodeling it and opening it to the public, to starting our own organic stores. Whatever Greg plans to do with it, I know he deeply and desperately wants that farm.”

Mike swallowed, trying hard not to show his excitement. This was a real breakthrough in the case! “But Rams wouldn’t sell it to him?”

“No.”

“But you’re part of Ramsey’s family and you’re to marry Greg, so isn’t that the same thing as with Tess and me?”

Sara tightened her lips. “That’s the way I saw it, but Rams said no. It was the biggest fight Ramsey and I ever had. The biggest fight I’ve ever had with any human being—at least until I met you. He went on and on about how that place had been in his family since the eighteenth century, handed down from oldest son to the next. His father’s two older brothers died young, so that’s why it went to his father, Benjamin. Oh! When I think of the sob story he gave me! He even whined about how the Langs, father and son, had been caretakers of the place for …” She threw up her hands. “Since it was built for all I know. And to think that the real reason was that he’d promised to lease it to Tess—and probably because Rams doesn’t like the man I love. I could just hit Ramsey!”

Mike frowned in his best imitation of sympathy. “But you have no idea why Greg wants an old farm?”

Sara’s pretty face turned blush pink as she looked down at her hands. “Greg’s never said so, but he may want it for me. When I told him that I’d always liked the farm, he said he’d buy it for me.”

“Did he mention the place first or did you?” Mike knew he sounded like an interrogator, but he couldn’t help it.

Sara didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t remember. No. Wait. One time he told me he’d heard of it from somewhere else, before he even came to Edilean.”

“Tess didn’t say anything to me about your asking Rams for the farm.”

“If I know my cousin, he didn’t tell her. Do you have any idea how many people have asked the McDowell family to sell that farm to them?”