The Cradle Robber Read online

  Copyright Information

  Copyright © 2007 by E. Joan Sims.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  www.wildsidepress.com

  Dedication

  To my grandparents

  Ada Atherton Mohon and Hyla Mohon

  Thank you for all those wonderous hours.

  And thanks, Granpapa, for gifting me with your wicked sense of humor!

  Chapter One

  It was still not quite the middle of May, but the temperature had been hovering in the mid-to-upper eighties for the past week. This morning had started out a bit cooler than the others, and encouraged by the dewy freshness in the air, I set out for a brisk walk carrying a picnic basket and a sweater. The cotton cardigan that was a necessity at seven had been discarded by nine and the picnic basket had been emptied before eleven.

  The early morning breeze had been sweet and just strong enough to keep the insects at bay, but shortly after noon the wind died down, and June bugs, their beautiful iridescent bodies shining like emeralds, began to dive dangerously close to my resting place beneath the hickory nut tree.

  Curious dragonflies hovered over my face, daring me to reach up and touch their fragile wings. Scores of dainty yellow butterflies, looking for all the world like real pats of butter, swirled around me and the remains of my picnic lunch.

  A hairy little leg tickled the back of my sweaty neck, but I was too lazy to move. After a few moments, the tiny green grasshopper traversed my shoulder and hopped on the red and white calico square of the quilt underneath my cheek. For a full minute, the two of us stared into our various eyes trying to size each other up. He won when I blinked first. Waggling a slender antenna in farewell, he hopped off into the grass with a triumphant bounce.

  I heard the sound of a plane in the distance and raised up on an elbow to peer through half-closed eyes in the direction of the airport that bordered our back field a half mile away. Twenty years ago, the “powers that be” had forced my father to sell them the land where the Lakeland County Airport now proudly boasted its one runway. We hadn’t been happy about it at the time, and even though it was used only occasionally, Mother and I still resented having our quiet afternoons disturbed by noisy little airplanes practicing takeoffs and landings.

  The single engine aircraft circled slowly above the end of the runway in preparation for landing. The plane waggled its wings, and for one brief moment I thought I saw a something fall to the ground. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and blinked against the bright sunlight. When I looked again, all I could see was a solitary buzzard wheeling in slow, indolent circles over the distant field.

  I plopped back down on the quilt and tried to shut out the harsh sound of the engine as the plane landed and taxied to the other end of the runway. When the blessed peace and quiet finally returned, so did the insects.

  “I guess you’re all trying to get me to leave,” I mumbled drowsily. “I should have brought Aggie. She’d chase you away.”

  Aggie was my daughter’s foul-tempered Lasa Apso. Cassandra had talked her grandmother into letting Agatha Christie become a part of our little family here on Meadowdale Farm three years ago. Our lives haven’t been the same since.

  Aggie is a soft cottonball of a dog with the teeth of a piranha. I had the scars to prove it. The last time she bit me I had to get a tetanus shot. Cassandra was coming home tomorrow. I didn’t know what her post-graduation plans were, but I was going to make sure they included taking Aggie with her wherever she went.

  I tried to put the possibility of Cassie’s moving away out of my mind. I had missed her terribly during the four years she had spent at Emory University—and Atlanta was close enough for us to spend most vacations and holidays together. What would I do if she did something crazy like I did and move to South America? I knew one thing for sure, I couldn’t argue against it.

  My parents had let me marry Raphael Luis DeLeon twenty-two years ago and then move to San Romero without a squawk because they knew how very much in love we were. They trusted Rafe to take care of me, and a year later, our baby daughter. What none of us counted on was his disappearing into the jungle when Cassie was eight. By then, San Romero was torn by a bloody revolution, and Cassie and I barely escaped to New York with nothing but the clothes on our backs.

  Without hesitation, my best friend from college took me under her wing. She gave us a home for the first few months and even helped me find a way to support myself. Pamela is a literary agent. She convinced me to write down the bedtime stories I told Cassie each night. From those stories, we created a best-selling series of children’s books. With the income from my writing, Cassie and I were able to shape a decent, if not completely content, existence in Manhattan. When America’s children finally got fed up with my stories, I started writing murder mysteries under the nom de plume of Leonard Paisley, hard-boiled detective. “Leonard” was a great success, and soon I was financially stable enough to move back to my hometown in Kentucky. Life suddenly became a real pleasure again.

  I loved Meadowdale farm. It had been in my family for generations. I loved the rich brown dirt that squished up between my bare toes as I walked, the smell of the honeysuckle blooming haphazardly on the back fence, and the buttery yellow Anjou pears in my grandfather’s orchard. I was convinced that the sun shone brighter from a sky more beautifully blue over our hundred acres of rolling fields and woods than anywhere else on God’s earth.

  My mother’s house was over one hundred and fifty years old. It had originally been a log cabin. Succeeding lords of the manor had built on room after room until it was a strange hodge-podge of various roofs and walls. I loved every capricious inch of it. If I could summon up enough energy, I would gather up my picnic debris, trudge over the fields to the big screened-in back porch, and collapse in the chaise lounge for the rest of my nap. Maybe Mother would have some fresh sweet tea in the fridge. The ice had long ago melted in my thermos, leaving nothing but unappetizing flecks of lemon pulp floating on a sea of tepid brown.

  A bumbling black carpenter bee bombarded my right ear and forced me to my knees. I swayed for a moment in the heat and glare of the sun, then stumbled to my feet. I was ready for air-conditioning and a nice cool shower with some of that fancy lavender-scented soap Cassie gave me for my birthday.

  Chapter Two

  My shower was not the luxuriously indulgent affair I had envisioned. I barely had time to dry off, much less put on lipstick or float face powder over the freckles on my nose. The only thing I could say for myself was that I was clean and fresh when Mother packed me into her new Lincoln Continental and headed for town. She decided that our larders needed replenishing and insisted that she needed my knowledge of Cassie’s likes and dislikes to make sure of pleasing her returning granddaughter’s palate. I argued that she was well aware that Cassie ate almost everything except celery and oysters, but to no avail.

  Mother is a good driver, even if she does get distracted on occasion. My grandfather Howard taught her how to drive his vintage 1939 Ford coupe when she was eleven. Five years later, when she got her license, he gave her the car, which by then was only four years shy of twice her age. Our family album has almost as many pictures of “Mr. Peabody” as it does of the non-motorized members of our clan.

  She babied the old car through college and into the fifth year of her marriage to my father. When it was apparent that Mr. Peabody was on his last cylinder, my father bought his bride her first Continental to ease the loss of a beloved and faithful friend.

  Cassie or I would have been inconsolable. Mother was ecstatic. She has sported a new Lincoln every five years since then. The latest one—baby blue with white leather seats, was a mere four months old when the ramshackle
, mud-spattered farm truck broadsided us at the corner of Harrison and Oak streets.

  “Damn it, Mother! Didn’t you see that stop sign?”

  “I most certainly did! But I stopped twice back there for that silly squirrel. How many times do I have to stop in one block?”

  I shook my head in bewilderment rather than answer her in the mood I was in, and tried to open my door. I pushed and pulled, but even though the truck had bounced back after the impact, I was unable to budge the door an inch.

  “Get out, Mother.”

  “The manual clearly states that the driver should always remain in the car after an accident unless the vehicle is in immediate danger of another collision or fire,” she pontificated.

  “Get out of the bloody car, please.”

  “Really, Paisley, watch your language! I know you’re under some stress. I don’t like being involved in a traffic accident either, but…”

  “Being involved? You caused the accident! And I can’t open my door. Please let me out!”

  “I cannot believe you wish to flout the rules by exiting the car before the authorities arrive.”

  “Mother!”

  “Very well, then, if you insist on rebelling.”

  As she opened her door, she noticed for the first time the crowd that had gathered to watch our predicament.

  “Oh, dear! Paisley, where is my handbag? Is my makeup on straight?”

  By the time I finally got us out of the car, Andy Joiner and his deputy chief of police had arrived. They took one look at the mess of metal and chrome that had been Mother’s pride and joy and promptly arrested all three Mexican laborers in the other vehicle.

  “But, Andy,” I argued heatedly, “the accident wasn’t their fault.”

  “She’s quite right for once,” agreed Mother. “I was trying to avoid hitting one of God’s smaller creatures, and I’m afraid I was too distracted to remember to stop at the corner.”

  “Sorry, Miz Sterling. But I have to take them in. There’s not a valid driver’s license between the three of them, and I’m almost positive what little documentation they do have is fake. Besides, one of them was drinking a beer. There’s a law against drinking alcohol in this county.”

  “Then you’d better hurry on out to the Country Club. It’s just about time for cocktails.”

  “Don’t be cheeky, Paisley.”

  “It’s true, Mother, and you know it. This whole town is in on the secret. I guess you only get arrested for drinking if you’re too poor to hire one of the lawyers that gets drunk at the Rowan Springs Country Club every night.”

  “That’s quite enough, dear,” whispered Mother in my ear. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself.”

  “Well, damnit! It’s just not fair. Those poor guys probably haven’t got a pot to pee in, and we come barreling along in your fancy car to ruin their day and maybe even get them deported.”

  I watched as Andy’s deputy handcuffed the three men and pushed them roughly into the back seat of the police cruiser. The Mexicans weren’t a pretty sight. They had obviously been working in the tobacco fields all day. Their clothes were sweat-stained and dirty, and they all were in need of a shave and a haircut. I thought I would see my outrage mirrored in their faces, but instead they seemed only weary and resigned to their fate, as though being hauled off to prison were not a new experience for them.

  “Looks like we’d better call a tow truck for your car, Miz Sterling. I can drive you home when Jimmy returns with the cruiser, if you don’t mind waitin’,” offered Andy.

  Under the gentle insistence of their Chief of Police, the crowd gradually dispersed. Once they were gone, and Mother no longer felt like she needed to put up a front, she sank gratefully into the backseat of her ruined car and closed her eyes.

  “Mother, are you okay?” I asked in alarm. “You weren’t hurt were you?”

  “No,dear. Only my pride is a bit wounded. You were quite right to chide me. It was my fault. I was driving carelessly. And now look at my beautiful car.”

  I knew better than to think she would cry outside the confines of her own bedroom, but this was as close to it as she would come. I slid in beside her.

  “Never you mind,” I said, patting her hand. “The car will be as good as new before you know it.”

  “Am I getting too old to drive, Paisley? Tell me the truth. Am I getting senile?”

  “Senile? You?”

  I started laughing. I guess it was the reaction setting in from the accident—hysteria perhaps—but I laughed until my sides were hurting, and my mother was about as mad as she ever gets. She looked at me with fire in her eyes and whipped out her makeup mirror. Once she was assured that every silver-white hair was neatly pulled back into the soft French twist and the makeup was perfect on her patrician features, she climbed out of the car and went into the drug store to call the town’s only taxi. When it came, she left without even waving goodbye.

  When Jimmy returned with the cruiser, he supervised the towing of the Lincoln so Andy could take me home.

  “Sorry ’bout you havin’ to ride in the back, but it’s the law,” Andy apologized. “Hope it doesn’t smell too bad back there.”

  “It is a mite rank,” I admitted. “Those men, how long will you keep them in jail?” I asked, trying not to breathe too deeply.

  “I’ll have to run a check on them. See if any of them have a sheet. And we’ll have to look into those bogus-looking papers.” He glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Don’t you worry about those guys, Paisley. I’ll see they get a fair shake; but if they’re here illegally I’ll have to send them back. You know that, don’t you?”

  I sighed and lifted the hair off my forehead. I didn’t have time to dry it before we left for town and now the auburn curls were tangled and messy. I had stuck a rubber band in my jeans pocket before we left the house. I pulled it out to make a pony tail and promptly dropped it in the seat.

  “Damn!”

  “What’s that, Paisley?”

  “Nothing, I just…never mind, I found it.”

  I pulled the hair off the back of my neck, vowing once again to have a haircut in the immediate future, and looked at the other object my searching fingers had encountered. It was a small, well-worn, silver medallion of the Virgin of Guadalupe—the patroness of Mexico. I knew then that somehow I would have to help those men. They were a long, long way from home and friendless. I knew what that was like. I, too, had once been a stranger in a strange land.

  Chapter Three

  Mother wasn’t home when Andy dropped me off. I decided to try and get back into her good graces by taking my Jeep and fetching the groceries myself. I walked down through the orchard to the carriage house, pausing on my way to examine the young buds on the peach and pear trees. From the looks of the abundant blossoms, we would have a bumper fruit crop by late summer. The plum trees were already in full bloom, and the honeybees were making merry on the first nectar of the season. I smiled. The orchard had been my grandfather’s pride and joy. Every spring a little bit of him came back to life as each tree awakened and was reborn.

  I could hear Aggie barking inside the house. If she recognized me, I couldn’t tell. She wasn’t the most astute watchdog in the world. I daydreamed for a moment about the new puppy I would get when Cassie took her away. Maybe a friendly, happy-go-lucky Lab, or a little Jack Russell with all the smarts Aggie was missing. Big or small, the new canine would have to be a lot easier to get along with. I was tired of being a pincushion.

  Since Mother had taken possession of her new car, I hadn’t driven my Jeep Cherokee very much. At least for the next couple of weeks I would get to be the chauffeur again. I opened the garage door and admired the big hunky fenders and the bilious green body. I loved Watson. Cassie had named him when I first came home with him two years ago. I thought at the time that we would be bouncing over hill and dale in search of evil-doers for my stories and have need of a four wheel drive. So far I had been disappointed. All the villains we had enc
ountered were either city dwellers or hidden so deeply in the forest that they could only be tracked on foot.

  The big engine started up on cue and hummed merrily as I backed out of the garage and circled the carriage house to make sure everything was in working order. The late afternoon sun was courting the western horizon, but it was still strong enough to make the air above the fields shimmer with heat. I looked up and noticed that the lone buzzard I had seen earlier was now in the company of almost a dozen of his predatory fellows. They were spiraling over the end of our farm just beyond the airport runway— right where I thought I had seen something fall from the airplane earlier.

  “Hey, wha’cha’ say, Watson! How about a little adventure?”

  I barreled down the lane toward the field with little more thought about what I was doing than if I had a cabbage for a head. If I had ruminated a bit, I might have realized that my dog with no brains and I had more in common than I knew.

  Billy, our farm manager, had cleaned out the lane last fall. The overgrowth of blackberry and honeysuckle had been cut back and pruned so that the snaking vines no longer grasped wickedly for arms and hair.

  I cut across the field at the little pond, but not before seeing two turtles and several big bullfrogs jump for their lives into the cool depths. From a distance, the field looked smooth and even, a carpet of green velvet, but the ride was rough. I had a grand old time.

  The circling buzzards created something of an optical illusion. The closer I got, the farther away they appeared. Seeds from the tops of the tall growth of fescue splattered across the windshield and gathered in little rivulets above the wiper blades. I made the mistake of trying to wash them away. Even Watson’s mighty wipers couldn’t clear off the mess of dried hulls and fine, chocolate-colored dust. I pulled up on the highest point in the middle of the field and rummaged around in the backseat hoping to find some glass cleaner and paper towels. What I found instead was a half-empty plastic bottle of Evian and three used paper napkins from the Dairy Queen.