Warm Front Read online

  “Thank you.” She bypassed him to reach the packages of wide noodles for the next batch of soup.

  “My pleasure, especially since you’re feeding me.” He folded the last bag, then turned and propped himself against the counter.

  “Want something before you go?” she asked. “It’s not much, but—”

  “That’d be good.”

  She filled a bowl with soup and warmed it in the microwave — several minutes at a lower temperature to get it heated through, then a minute at the hottest, to add the steam that brought the aroma to life. In the meantime, she cut bread and sliced cheese.

  He’d used that time to stow a few items in the refrigerator and pantry. Leaving less familiar things on the island.

  “Thanks again,” she said as she set the bowl and plate before him.

  “You’re welcome and this smells great. Besides,” he added, “it’s nice to find something I can do around here — no hay bales, no gates, no goats.”

  He smiled, and she found herself smiling back.

  She turned and stuck her head in the freezer, making room there for the roast that had been on sale.

  When she emerged, he said, “Mmm, what is this?” indicating the soup.

  “Corn chowder.”

  He gave a short chuckle. “That makes sense, with all the corn around you.”

  “Wrong kind of corn. We grow field corn. You need sweet corn for chowder. That corn came from Ned Benzil. He still plants as much sweet corn as when they had all six kids at home. Candy’s forever trying to give it away.”

  “So you make soup when they give you the corn and freeze—”

  “No way. No time for making soup then. That’s harvest. Candy takes it off the cob and dehydrates it. I made the soup yesterday.”

  He ate another spoonful. “It’s amazing. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  They’d been thank-you-ing and you’re-welcome-ing each other ever since she got home.

  She grabbed boxes of rice and went into the pantry.

  It needed rearranging. So some time passed before she came out, and he was gone.

  His place was cleared and there were no new dishes in the sink.

  He didn’t know the first thing about a farm, he wore impractical clothes, he thought all corn was the same, he made her uneasy, but she couldn’t complain about his manners.

  Everett was back, wearing his lucky gray sweater.

  “I’d take a cup of soup,” he said.

  She ladled a cupful from the pot in the refrigerator and put it in the microwave. “Did you have lunch?”

  “Got too busy.”

  “You know what the doctor said—”

  “Fussy old woman,” he muttered. She was at least eighty percent sure he meant the doctor. “I’ve been taking care of this body a lot longer than he has.”

  She sighed.

  They’d followed the track of that ring-around-the-rosy discussion so many times a groove was dug into the ground. And it never succeeded in getting Everett to take better care of himself.

  But there was something else that might be more useful to discuss.

  “Everett, do you think it’s wise to take Quince to your poker game?”

  “Wise? Why? You heard something? The boy’s a card shark?”

  “No, of course not.”

  He cackled now, as if he’d meant it as a joke all along, but she wasn’t so sure.

  “Didn’t think so. As long as he’s no cheater, it’s plenty wise. Remember, I played cards with him at Zeke’s bachelor party. He’ll do. And it’s not like he won’t be able to ante-up with the stakes we play for.”

  “It wasn’t his card-playing ability I was thinking about.”

  “What then?”

  “He’s … he’s not … from around here. He’s not like the rest of them you play with.”

  “New blood can’t hurt.”

  She shook her head, trying to pinpoint her uneasiness. “You won’t have anything to talk about. He’s … an outsider. He won’t have anything in common with the rest of them.”

  “He’ll have fifty-two cards in common, that’s plenty enough for poker. We aren’t going to some hen party, sitting around yakking and yakking and yakking.”

  But they did yak. A lot. Next to Monday night bingo, this long-standing poker game was probably the most prolific rumor mill in the county.

  Was that what made her uncomfortable? That Quince would hear things he shouldn’t?

  Things he shouldn’t?

  What did she even mean by that?

  Yes, he was an outsider, but what did she think he could do with any information he picked up at the game?

  Blackmail someone whose son got a girl pregnant? Deny them employment at Zeke-Tech because they’d slipped off the wagon? Hire them for cheap because their farm was in trouble?

  No.

  And yet … something left her unsettled.

  Everett brought his empty cup to the sink.

  That was progress.

  “Everett, I just think…”

  She didn’t finish. The thought drowned out by Quince’s approaching footsteps.

  “You’re wearing jeans,” she blurted out. Old jeans from their softness and fit.

  “For poker? Absolutely.” Once he had his jacket in hand, Quince looked back at her from the mudroom door. “You going to be okay alone? You know where we’ll be if anything comes up?”

  Surprise robbed Anne of speech, but Everett gave his characteristic sound of disapproval and disbelief.

  “Course she’ll be all right. She’s a woman, but she ain’t an idiot.” Then he clomped out the back door. “C’mon! Or Ned’ll grab my lucky chair, sure as shootin’.”

  Her lips twitched.

  Almost as if that had been what Quince had been waiting for, his eyes crinkled into a smile, then he followed Everett out.

  She leaned back against the sink, listening to the engine of that silly car.

  Town was a bad enough trip for Quince’s car, but Ned’s farmhouse sat down a stretch of dirt road before turning in to a drive possibly even worse than theirs.

  That car was about as suited to these farm roads as stilettos were to walking a corn row. What if the weather forecasters were wrong? What if it snowed or iced? Or what if they went off the road without the aid of any bad weather? That little car could slide into a ditch and completely disappear from view.

  Not that Everett was thinking of any of that.

  The opportunity to show up in it in front of his poker buddies was too good to pass up. After all, they might have missed his trip to town. Wonder if Quince realized he’d been invited mostly for his car?

  She hoped to heaven he had the sense not to let Everett drive.

  Then the engine noise was gone, and she was listening only to the familiar sounds of the house.

  She shook her head, pushed off from the sink, and turned around to the dirty dishes there.

  Enough of this.

  She had work to do.

  *

  Anne didn’t look up from the computer when they came in.

  She didn’t need to see him to know how Everett’s card-playing had gone.

  And Quince… She didn’t need to see him at all. For any reason.

  “I’m going to bed. Can’t sleep the morning away like some folks,” Everett declared the minute he walked in the door.

  So he hadn’t won.

  If he had, he would have been expansive, wanting to sit around and talk — no matter that she had a long way to go tonight to finish updating the farm’s accounts.

  He also hadn’t lost all his poker money.

  If he had, he wouldn’t have said a word.

  She still hadn’t decided if he felt bad for losing money — even though it came from his small “allowance” of personal spending money — or for losing to his cronies.

  “Foolishness. Staying up all hours on that damned computer, as if it knows better than a real farmer,” Everett muttered as he
stumped toward the stairs.

  She’d heard those words a hundred times from him, the sentiments a hundred times a hundred. It wasn’t the words that gave her information, it was the attitude behind them at the time he spoke them. Sometimes they could be taken for affectionate teasing. Other times not.

  She shot a look after him as he started up the stairwell.

  His leg bothered him the most at night, making his gait more uneven.

  Tonight was worse than usual — probably the weather. And they hadn’t even hit the real cold for the season yet.

  Quince moved around behind her, running water at the sink. She paid him no heed. Not until she heard him drawing a chair over to the desk.

  She looked from him to where he’d placed the chair — with a view of the computer screen — and frowned.

  He adjusted the chair, swinging it around to the side, where it didn’t overlook the screen’s contents. He did it smoothly, as if being able to reach the glass of water he’d set on the desk was the reason for the shift.

  “Would you like some water, Anne? Happy to get it for you.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Interesting group of men Everett plays poker with.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “All long-time farmers.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You ever join them?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve never been asked.”

  “Ah.”

  Since he’d moved the chair she’d kept her focus on the screen, setting the program to adding and subtracting.

  “Working on accounts for Stenner Autos?”

  “No.”

  “But you do the accounts for them, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Working on them tonight?”

  “Did them first.”

  “Uh-huh. So now you’re working on the farm accounts.”

  She grunted. Would he ever go away?

  “Fair amount of talk at the poker game about farming.”

  “They’re farmers — what did you expect?”

  “It was interesting.”

  She said nothing. She knew she was being ungracious, but she still had an hour’s worth of work to do and planned an even earlier morning than usual.

  “Last spring, Zeke had the guys at Zeke-Tech put together a program to help farmers figure out which crops to raise and the best ways to get them to the best markets. Turns out it was great for the produce farmers, doesn’t help the crop farmers.”

  “I know.”

  From the corner of her eye she caught his nod, it didn’t interrupt the flow of his words. “The crop farmers — and you’re in the vast majority around here — are getting squeezed. Costs of seeds and fertilizer and other expenses have been climbing fast. That wasn’t so bad when the prices that crops got were rising, too. But now crop prices have dropped and input costs haven’t. Not telling you anything you don’t know.”

  “No, you’re not,” she said.

  That didn’t deter him. “Add to that the pressure on farmers around Drago because of Zeke-Tech’s arrival. Land has suddenly become more valuable for other things than farming. Land like the land Hooper Farm and a few others sit on.”

  Her typing paused, apparent in the sudden quiet.

  “There was discussion about whether or not this land — your land and the farms around you — is prime farming land or not.”

  Prime?

  No.

  Decent, but their yield was unlikely to rate excellent even if she had unlimited resources and time.

  But she didn’t need prime land. She just needed more resources and time to farm this land.

  To kill the quiet, she forced her fingers to move again, not sure what calculations they might be requesting.

  Eventually, he started talking again.

  “Quite the discussion. Including talk that land developers are — using Ned’s image — circling around some county farms like wolves around a herd of sheep. Developers would pay the farmers the going rate, maybe a little more, for their land, and then turn around and sell it for multiples of that.”

  She kept her fingers going, showing no sign she’d heard.

  But she had.

  Not only what he’d said, but what others were saying.

  Like Bob Chitmell, with his smarmy, want-to-be-your-friend snake-oil salesman approach.

  We can’t help you with another loan, but I sure can help you. A pretty young woman like you doesn’t want to be farming, tied to the same place forevermore. You and Everett sell your acres and you’ll be set up for life. You can travel and explore the world. Be real comfortable, the both of you. Now, I have contacts and I can make sure you make the right decision. You won’t even have to pay me a fee, because the buyers do that. What are you—? You shouldn’t walk out, Anne Hooper. This is the best offer you’re going to get. You hear me?

  She’d heard him and she’d heard the talk from others that Quince obviously had picked up tonight.

  He said, “So far, those wolves haven’t brought down any sheep. But there’s talk that some might be stumbling. Nobody’d be surprised to hear if first one then another got picked off soo—”

  She swung around to him. “Do you want something, Quince?”

  “I want to know if you and Everett — if the farm is in trouble.”

  “Why don’t you ask Everett? It’s his farm.”

  “Because you’re running it and doing the work. Is it in trouble?”

  She stared at him. She could tell him it was none of his business. She could tell him to go to hell — oh, that was tempting — but what was the point? It wasn’t like it was a secret around the county. All he’d have to do was ask anyone in town.

  She gave him a level look, willing it to be devoid of emotion.

  “Please leave me alone so I can finish my work.”

  No secret, but that didn’t mean she had to say the words. Why should she? Let him ask around town.

  Slowly, he nodded twice. As if she had answered fully and he was both accepting and assessing the information.

  Then he picked up the chair and the empty glass, returning the chair to its rightful place at the table and putting the glass in the dishwasher.

  Heading toward the stairs, he said, “Good night, Anne.”

  And that was it.

  Except it took her another twenty minutes of futilely re-playing the conversation in her head before she got back to work.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Hands knit beneath the pillow cradling his head, Quince heard her coming up the stairs more than an hour later.

  How much would she hate that he was lying here thinking about her?

  About as much as Everett would.

  The old man had made that abundantly clear on their drive back to Hooper Farm.

  The trip to the poker game had been mostly devoted to discussing his car and various vehicles Everett had owned over the decades, punctuated by directions to their destination and brief identifications of the farms they passed on the way.

  He wondered if Everett realized how much he gave away with his laconic descriptions:

  “Schmedlers sold off. City folks have the house, rent out the land.”

  “Todd and Tammy Van Winkle brought in her brother when he went bust. Small place to support so many.”

  Even the more optimistic “Will Larkin and his son’re holding on” told a lot.

  “You love farming, don’t you, Everett?” he asked.

  The older man snorted in derision. “You know why they use bought the farm as a synonym for died?”

  “Something about a soldier’s death benefit in World War I being enough to pay off the farm for the people at home.”

  “That’s one theory. Never heard it proved. So mine’s just a good. It’s that some people see buying a farm as the first step toward working themselves into the grave. But I’ll tell you this— How often do you
need a car salesman or a lawyer or a banker—” Quince had the idea he would have spit if the car window had been open. “—or CEO or whatever it is you do? But you need a farmer three times a day, as long as you want to eat. Love farmin’? Sure I do. Love it because I love eatin’. Everybody should love farmin’.”

  There was more talk about the state of local farms — and farmers — at the poker game, most of it nearly telegraphic among men who clearly knew all the context so nothing needed any explaining.

  That meant Quince missed details.

  But not the gist.

  He’d slipped in a few quiet questions. Adroitly, he’d thought, until he caught Everett’s stare after he’d tried to tease out more information on two fronts by asking if the tale about a neighboring farmer selling off his equipment a few years back had happened around the time Chris Hooper had died.

  “Oh, that was before,” said Will Larkin.

  “A full month after,” disputed Ned Benzil.

  While that debate raged, Quince had felt the weight of Everett’s stare. Turning, he saw in the older man’s eyes questions, concerns, and warnings.

  He’d been careful to ask two more questions after that — neither related in any way to the Hoopers.

  It hadn’t saved him on the ride home.

  “Don’t get any ideas about Anne.”

  “What in the world makes you think I have ideas about her?”

  “You were poking around in her business tonight. The rest of ’em might not’ve heard it, but I did.”

  “I’m curious about my surroundings — the farm. Including how Zeke-Tech’s arrival might impact it. That’s what I asked about.”

  Everett huffed in disgust. “Oh, you’re clever enough, I’ll give you that. Clever enough for the rest of ’em — bunch of old coots. Not me. I’m old, but I’m not blind. I see what I see. And what I see is you’re not blind either. Anne’s something special. Knew it from the minute Chris came home after the first time he met her, looking like he’d swallowed the sun and the moon and every star in the sky. Looked at her that way right up to his last day. Not sure it — but that don’t matter now.”

  Quince would have given a handsome number of his shares in Zeke-Tech to know what Everett had started to say, while accepting that no number of shares would get the man to divulge it once he’d decided against that.