A Dime a Dozen (40 page)

What did we know about John Doe? Judging from the way he was dressed, he was wealthy. He was also connected to Enrique’s murder somehow, since his fingerprints were on the letter that had been sent to Luisa four months before from New York City, ostensibly from Enrique, telling her he didn’t love her anymore.

But there was one other connection to New York City, I realized, and when I put it all together, it seemed to make sense. If John Doe had sent the letter from New York, then that meant he might live in New York, which meant that when Zeb Hooper flew off to New York, John Doe could’ve been the man he was going to see. Was John Doe a gem dealer? If so, for some reason, the dealer had come to Greenbriar and had ended up getting himself killed. Chances are, he was here looking for money. Was it blackmail, perhaps?

I paddled my canoe in a wide curve so that I was slowly headed back toward the shore. There was one question I couldn’t figure out, and that had to do with the money laundering through Su Casa. Basically, I wondered why it was necessary. As far as I knew, there was nothing illegal about possessing, buying, or selling gemstones in the United States. I didn’t understand at all why Zeb had to hide his profits through some tricky bookkeeping. My best guess was that by passing them through Su Casa, a nonprofit, he was saved from having to pay taxes on them.

I thought back to that night in the parking lot, when the man lay dying on the ground. What had he whispered as his final word? “Jim” or “Jim’s”?

I said it out loud now, listening to the sound it made on my lips.

“Jim’s.”

I didn’t know of any Jim who was connected with this case.

Paddling toward shore, I said it again, and then suddenly I realized what the man had meant. The truth had been there all along! His final word hadn’t been “Jim’s.”

His final word had been “gems.”

Forty-Six

I reached the restaurant a few minutes early. Inside it was dark but roomy, with flickering candles on the tables and wooden booths lining the walls. The hostess seated me in a booth at my request, and then I perused the menu, hoping Harriet would get here soon because I was starving.

There was a bar adjoining the restaurant, and I could tell that it was a popular place. As the clock crept past 5:30, people began crowding into the bar area until they were more than two deep. The restaurant, however, was still only about half full when I finally gave up on Harriet and ordered a cup of vegetable soup for myself. Sure enough, Harriet called me a few minutes later, saying that she had been delayed but that she would be here soon.

“Eating alone?” a man asked as I hung up my phone.

I glanced up to see Danny Stanford, all brown curls and dimples, dressed in the jeans and work shirt of the orchard.

“Hey, Danny,” I said. “I’m waiting on a friend, but she’s been delayed. Would you care to join me?”

“I’m just having a drink,” he said. “But sure. The bar’s kind of crowded tonight anyway.”

“Looks like a popular place.”

“Only on Thursdays,” he replied. “Free catfish buffet until seven.”

He sat across from me, flashing me that dimpled grin. I realized we hadn’t really had a chance to speak since we were together at the orchard, trying not to laugh at our sorry joke about the mummy.

“Hey, look, I’m sorry about what happened the other day at the orchard, the way Pete just kind of took over your tour and everything,” Danny said. “I don’t know what came over him. I’ve never seen him like that before.”

I nodded, taking a sip of my water.

“I think it was a case of mistaken identity,” I said. “He thought I was someone else. We got it straightened out.”

“Oh. Well, I’m glad you got a good tour at least. Though of course I’m sorrier still about the way it had to end. What a mess, huh?”

“Yeah, that was really something. I’m curious. What are the people at the orchard saying about the death?”

“You mean who killed the migrant? Everybody’s got a different idea, and everybody suspects everybody else. Most of them just go on and on about what a nice man he was and a hard worker and all of that. Have you ever noticed, once somebody’s dead, all you hear are the good things?”

I sat up straight.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Were there things about Enrique that weren’t so good?”

He took a sip of his drink and shook his head.

“Oh, I don’t know, I just mean in general. Nobody’s all good or all bad, but once they’re dead, all you hear is how wonderful they were. I find it ironic, I guess. Some of the people who work there hate migrants. They probably weren’t giving that guy the time of day when he was alive. But now that he’s dead, they’re all like, ‘Oh, we’ll miss his smiling face! He always had a kind word!’ Give me a break.”

“I guess it is kind of hypocritical.”

“Please. To most folks these migrants are just a dime a dozen, nameless, faceless, quantities of people who show up, do their job, and leave. Cheap labor, almost interchangeable. Now that one of them is dead—and dead in such an exotic way, I might add—they want to pretend that he mattered. I’m sure he never mattered to them before.”

“What’s Pete saying about all of this?” I asked. “I imagine the death has had some repercussions in the workplace.”

“Pete’s so focused on his precious apple trees, I don’t think he’s even noticed. You saw what I’m talking about from your tour. He’s like a walking apple encyclopedia.”

“That’s the truth,” I chuckled. “I know more about apples now than I ever dreamed I’d want to know.”

“Yeah, well,” he laughed, “I guess you could say apples are his passion.”

I took a sip of my water and then set it on the napkin in front of me.

“So what’s
your
passion, Danny?” I asked.

“Excuse me?”

“You seem a little out of place at the orchard,” I explained. “I just wondered, why are you there? What are you doing?”

He set down his drink as well and stared at a point somewhere beyond my right shoulder. When he spoke again, his voice was low and soft.

“I grew up in apple country,” he explained. “A little bit northeast of here.”

“Really? But you don’t have a Southern accent at all.”

“That’s because we moved away when I was ten. My dad got a job in Detroit, working for a recording studio.”

“Impressive.”

“Not really,” he said sheepishly. “He was an accountant. Not exactly a glamour job.”

“That must’ve been quite a culture shock for you, Southern country boy moves to a Northern city?”

He nodded.

“At first, yeah. Eventually, I learned to fit in. But I never lost that yearning to come back home. I guess you could say the Smokies were in my blood.”

I didn’t tell him that I knew exactly what he meant, that I had spent nearly every moment since I got here thinking that very same thing.

“After college, I went into accounting too. But my heart wasn’t in it.”

“So let me guess,” I said with a grin. “You were sitting in a traffic jam one day in your suit and tie, chewing Tums and honking your horn, when you finally realized you didn’t want that life anymore. You decided to chuck it all and move to the mountains. Get back to nature.”

“Well, not exactly.”

My soup came at that moment, and I waited until the waitress had left before speaking again.

“What, then?” I said as I unrolled my silverware and put my napkin in my lap. “That’s a pretty brave move. Leaving the big city for the country life.”

Danny downed the last of his drink, set the glass softly on the table, and met my eyes with his own.

“A few months ago, my parents were driving home in the snow from a party. They hit some black ice and skidded into the path of an oncoming truck. They were killed instantly.”

I put my hand to my mouth.

“At their funeral,” he continued, “I realized that life’s too short, too fragile, to waste even a moment. I closed up the house, quit my job, and headed to the mountains. The position at Tinsdale Orchards was the first opening I found where they were willing to hire someone without experience.”

To cover my embarrassment, I ate a spoonful of soup, letting the silence sit between us.

“I’m sorry, Danny,” I said finally. “I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like I tell this story to everyone I meet.”

He waved to the waitress to bring him another drink. I felt a surge of sadness for him, and I wondered if his time in the mountains would end up being his salvation or merely his escape.

“But enough of my sob story,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be such a downer.”

“My fault,” I said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

He made an attempt at small talk, launching into a humorous tale about a machine malfunction at the orchard. I let him talk, eating my soup and making the occasional comment. The waitress brought him a fresh drink, and then he moved on to the subject of Karen. Just from the way he spoke, I could tell that he was smitten with her and eager to take their relationship to another level.

“She’s pretty single-minded right now, with her charity and all,” he said. “But I can be fairly tenacious when I put my mind to it. I’ll wear her down eventually.”

I wondered how much he knew about Karen’s connection to the orchard.

“Is that uncomfortable for you,” I asked, “working for her father with them being estranged and everything?”

“Nah. I’ve only seen the old man once or twice. I work for Pete, really. He calls the shots around there.”

“I wonder if Karen and her dad will ever reconcile.”

He shrugged.

“She hopes so. But that first step is always the hardest. I keep telling her he may not be around much longer and she’d better make her move while she can.”

“I wonder what Karen will do with such a big inheritance,” I said innocently, remembering my conversation with Pete. I wasn’t sure if Karen knew about the change to the will—or, if she did, whether she would’ve shared her thoughts on the matter with Danny. But it was worth doing a little fishing to find out.

“To be honest,” Danny said, lowering his voice, “I think she has big ideas for the place. It’ll remain a working orchard, of course, but she wants to turn the house into a migrant resource center.”

“Really?”

I listened to him talk about Karen’s plans, feeling fairly certain that she had no clue that she wasn’t in line to inherit after all. Poor Pete, he may have been right. By leaving everything to him, Lowell may well have set Pete up for a long court battle where, in the end, he would come out with nothing.

Harriet finally appeared just as I was finishing my soup. I introduced her to Danny, and after chatting for a moment, he excused himself and returned to the bar. Harriet slid into the booth across from me and apologized for being so late.

“So what’s that cutie pie’s story?” she asked.

“He works at Tinsdale Orchards.”

“Does he pick apples?” she asked. “’Cause I can change my name to ‘Apple’ if it means he’ll pick me!”

Harriet was disappointed to learn that Danny was already spoken for, but we settled down and enjoyed our meal nonetheless. North Carolina was known for down-home cooking, and I treated myself to a true indulgence: chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes smothered in white gravy. I could feel my arteries hardening with every delicious bite.

When we finished eating, Harriet and I took a stroll through downtown Greenbriar, and I shared with her some of my memories from coming here over the years. She asked how it was that the boy I met at summer camp at 16 could end up becoming my husband.

“I know what those summer camp flings are like,” she said. “You fall head over heels for a guy and become an instant couple, think you’ll die of agony once you have to go your separate ways, and then within a few weeks you’ve forgotten all about him.”

“It was different,” I replied, wondering how to explain it. “The next summer, the year I was seventeen, we both just knew somehow. It wasn’t a fling. It was a forever kind of love. That was the year we were applying to colleges, so we found one that was a good fit for both of us, and everything else just sort of fell into place.”

Harriet shook her head slowly from side to side.

“Why do I get the impression that you’ve always been like a sixty-year-old woman, even inside a seventeen-year-old body?”

I laughed out loud.

“My mother used to say that!” I told her. “She called me ‘the old lady’ when I was a kid because I was always so logical and methodical.”

“Well, hey, I guess it’s paid off in the long run. Now you have a career that requires you to be logical and methodical.”

“I suppose so.”

We walked along together quietly in the cool night air, each lost in our own separate thoughts.

“So what do you think will happen with you and Tom?” she asked finally. “Is he a forever kind of love too?”

I smiled.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I hope so. But there’s still an awful lot about him that I don’t know.”

“He’s a very private guy,” she agreed. “I don’t know if I could deal with all that as patiently as you have. I think at some point when he’s going on and on about ‘that’s not relevant’ or ‘let’s not go there,’ I’d just hogtie the man and drag him through some manure.”