Cynthia Reese - Where Love Grows

But you’re already involved.

“Mee-Maw said to be sure to bank the fire.”

Ryan jumped. “Damn. You scared me. I figured you’d gone by now.”

“No. You know, I should have gotten pictures of the vine before you burned the plants.”

“Yeah, well, chalk that up to my thinking it was more important to get a harvest than an insurance settlement.”

Or was it to cover something up? She silenced her dad’s whisper in her head, but it was there for a reason. While she’d always prided herself on being objective and open-minded, she had enough of her father in her to avoid being led down many a primrose path.

“Ryan…” Becca fought the urge to touch him. It was so hard to act as though she’d only just met him. “Before I close out this investigation, I’m going to need detailed time lines, to establish where this vine first popped up, how it spread. Your claim forms are pretty scant on details like that.”

“You see how it spreads!” He scowled and gave the fire a jab with his rake, sending off an explosion of sparks. “It’s like damn toadstools—one day it’s not there, the next, it’s strangling half a garden. Fill out all the blanks and check all the boxes you want to on your forms, but it all comes down to the same thing—I don’t know how it got here. I can speculate, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m fighting something here—we’re all fighting something—that could wreck agriculture in this part of the state.”

“Whoa. A bit of hyperbole, isn’t it?”

“No. Another farmer who has this stuff in his fields says it’s resistant to the one herbicide that ought to kill it.”

“I thought you said if you kill the host plant—”

“If you starve it out, sure. But in his case, the vine just found something else to latch on to. Look—I know insurance companies don’t want to pay out claims. Hell, they’ve got shareholders, and I know whose tune those insurance execs are marching to. But rather than send us someone to investigate us—” this he made sound like the basest of insults “—why not send us someone to solve the problem?”

“And who might that be? What experts have you called in?”

Again, Ryan gave her a look that screamed his discomfiture.

“Well? Surely you—”

“I’ve put in calls to every expert that might have the faintest clue of how to get rid of this vine. They all say the same thing—drag a firebreak around the affected acreage, throw in a match and watch what little profit you have left go up in smoke. Believe me, I’ve been tempted. And tonight…tonight I’m past temptation.”

“No! You can’t do that. It could be evidence—”

“See? You do think I’m running a scam.”

“Evidence can prove you either guilty or innocent, Ryan. But if you destroy it, you destroy any chance of me helping you.”

“You? Helping me? Why would a hired gun from Ag-Sure want to help me?”

Frustrated, she ground her teeth. “I am not a hired gun. The outcome of this case—at least from my point of view—is not a foregone conclusion, okay? But you’re being so damned paranoid that you’re sure as hell acting guilty.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m just frustrated, okay?”

“Okay. But believe me. I’m here to help. Surely you can’t have tapped out all the experts on this sort of problem.”

The flicker of hope in his face died, and the corners of his mouth twisted. “You might as well know since you’ll find out sooner or later—if you don’t already know.”

“What?”

The bonfire crackled as the flames fed on the pine resin. Bits of ash rained down on Becca and Ryan, but she waited. She tried to read anything but misery in Ryan’s expression.

She couldn’t.

“One of my last projects with the ag chemical company I worked for was on a farm in Texas with this same dodder vine. I didn’t have a clue what to do to help them, and neither did anybody else. And I damn sure,” he bit out, “don’t know how to get rid of it here. I was there, on-site, equipped with means and opportunity to bring the vine east. So, you still think this case has no foregone conclusion?”

Sunny_76@yoohoomail.com: Have you ever wondered about me? I mean, what I look like, who I am? If you’ve ever passed me on the street?

Rooster@yoohoomail.com: I know pretty much everybody on the streets I’ve been on, but I’ve wondered, yeah.

Sunny_76@yoohoomail.com: What would you say if you met me, but you weren’t sure it was me? If we did meet up?

Rooster@yoohoomail.com: I probably wouldn’t say anything—what if it wasn’t you? She’d think I was nuts.

Sunny_76@yoohoomail.com: So do you think one day we ever will meet?

Rooster@yoohoomail.com: Maybe…but part of me doesn’t want to spoil the way things are.

RYAN’S PATH WAS BLOCKED by a four-foot-ten-inch pixie with the saddest eyes he’d ever seen.

“Charlotte, I swear. I don’t know where J.T. is,” Ryan told the diner waitress. “I haven’t heard from him in months—since Gramps’s funeral. You just need to…”

Ryan tried to swallow the anger he felt whenever he thought of the disappearing J. T. Griggs. The man had taken advantage of at least two women—Charlotte and Mee-Maw—left them high and dry, and still they defended him.

“You just need to forget J.T.”

Charlotte Hooks shifted her weight from one rubber-soled foot to the other, the carafe of hot coffee sloshing dangerously in her hand. “I can’t. He was a good man. I—I just don’t understand it, Ryan. J.T. just wouldn’t vanish this long without telling me where he was going. He wouldn’t leave Mee-Maw in a crunch, leaving right after Mr. Mac’s funeral. He had respect for Mr. Mac, and you know that. He flat worshipped the ground that man walked on.”

“Maybe he went back to Texas?”

Her brows drew together in an even darker frown. “They have phones in Texas, last I heard. If he’s that tight for money, he could at least send me a postcard. Besides, J.T. swore he wasn’t ever going back there. Wasn’t anything there for him, he said.”

Ryan eyed the glass door leading to the private dining room, the one where Murphy was holding court—and waiting for him.

He didn’t need to be here. He needed to be out plowing—and making sure that damned vine hadn’t taken any more potential harvest.

Ryan had been on a tractor, in fact, when Murphy had called this impromptu meeting this morning. Some people didn’t apparently have to work for a living.

But calls from Murphy—what with his web of connections to local politics and his big fat checkbook—were the equivalent of a command performance. Mee-Maw—and what she might have done to protect Gramps’s memory—was part of this equation, as well. Ryan hated the doubt and suspicion that had clouded his thoughts about her lately.

Besides, Ryan had a few things to unload on Murphy.

Not that it would do any good.

First, though, he had to get past Charlotte.

“I swear, scout’s honor, I have no clue where J.T. is. He hasn’t called me, hasn’t written, hasn’t left a crop circle or a message in skywriting. But if he should, you’ll be the first to know, okay? I know…I know you miss him, Charlotte.”

Her mouth twisted, and tears gathered in her eyes. “I’m worried. That’s what I am. He had so much going for him. He was finally getting his life together. He wouldn’t throw it all away. He wouldn’t.”

Maybe he didn’t have a choice.

Ryan shook off the dark thought. “That’s right. I’m sure he’ll let you know where he is and what he’s doing. How about getting me a cup of that coffee and bringing it to me in the back dining room?”

“That’s another reason why I thought…You never come here anymore. I thought maybe you knew something and weren’t telling me.”