“And now?”
Patrick bent and lifted something from the grass. “I came to look the fence over.” In his hand was a rotted piece of alder. “I was thinking maybe I could help you build it again—maybe this weekend? With the two of us we could finish in an afternoon.”
“Yeah,” Drake said. “I don’t see why not.” He looked his father over one more time and then made an excuse about getting out of his work clothes. He said good-bye and then, halfway to the house, turned and saw his father still there at the edge of forest, picking pieces of rotten alder from the ground.
Later, dressed in a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, Drake came into the kitchen and stood watching Sheri peel carrots over the sink. “You never left him alone the whole day?”
She told him that his father had slept until ten. Then they’d walked to the lake, and gone shopping for that night’s meal.
“How long has he been out there?”
“Not long,” Sheri said.
Drake took the few remaining steps to where she stood. Through the window he watched his father carry a load of wood and dump it into the burn pile out behind the house. “So you never left him alone the whole day?”
“He went to the bathroom on his own,” Sheri said. “I didn’t sign up for anything like that.” Sheri was laughing now, looking to Drake like she thought the joke was so funny. Like she belonged on a stage in front of a packed house.
All Drake could think about was the money and if his father had somehow stashed it under the bathroom floorboards, or in a waterproof bag in the porcelain tank. All of his ideas ridiculous. He was turning into his father, seeing things that were not there.
Chapter 4
THE MAN CAME IN wearing a black suit, ill fitted to his skinny body, and ordered two coffees and a Danish to go. While he waited he tapped his fingernails in rhythm to the stereo playing behind the counter and watched the girl walk away to the coffee machine, where she filled the two cups. When she came back he thanked her and paid.
He balanced the two coffees in the claw of his upturned palm. And as he went out the door, holding it with his hip, he already saw how the Danish had begun to stain the small paper bag. The paper turned waxen with pastry grease in the cold early evening air.
When he took his seat in the car again, he gestured to the glove box, asking the big man for a pen and paper, all the while watching the shop and drinking from his cup of coffee. As the minutes passed, they kept time by checking a prepaid cell phone they’d picked up at a convenience store and that they’d charged while driving.
They sat in the car for an hour before the girl closed the shop. When she was about a block up they started the car and pulled forward, coming even with the girl as she stopped at the corner.
The skinnier of the two men drove, slowing to make pace with the girl. He put the window down and called to the girl by name.
The girl paused, her eyes searching the face that looked up at her from the driver’s-side window. “Hello?” she said, unsure at first. And then as she recognized the face staring out at her from inside the car. “How was the coffee?”
“It’s Cheryl, isn’t it?” the man said. His hair was slicked back and the suit was too big on his thin bones. He had one arm out the window and he moved his hand while he talked, gesturing to the uniform she wore. “It’s right there on your name tag.”
She turned and looked back toward the shop and then looked around her. The sun was almost gone down, a pale light now hanging in the air to the west and the street blue with shadow.
“You know Deputy Drake?” the man asked. “And maybe you met our boss Frank Driscoll today? They were in your shop earlier.”
“You guys work for the DEA?” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and then stepped forward, bending a little to take in both men.
“Have you seen either of them?” the skinny man went on. “Driscoll asked us to come up. He said there might be some trouble with Deputy Drake’s father. Driscoll gave us the address but we’re having a hard time.” He held out a coffee-stained piece of paper for her to see. The address, written in blue ink, clouded and distorted with dried liquid.
She stepped up to the black car, a foot’s distance from its open window, and took the small piece of paper from the man. She looked the address over and then gave it back. “I can see why you’d have trouble with this,” she said.
“Some of the coffee spilled. It’s important we find the deputy’s place.”
“Is Bobby in some sort of danger?”
“We don’t think so but Driscoll asked us to come up. We heard they had coffee in your shop this morning. Would you mind showing us the address?”
The girl looked around on the street. The sound of plates and cutlery could be heard far down the block from the open kitchen window of the Buck Blind. The girl hesitated, looking to the restaurant a few hundred feet away. “You can’t call your boss?”
“That’s the thing,” the skinny man said. “We’re already late. He probably wouldn’t be too happy.”
She looked in at the two men and told them it was only a couple minutes away. The big man in the passenger seat was dressed informally in a worn pair of jeans and a padded flannel button-up. The last few buttons on the shirt left loose at the collar to allow for the rolls of skin that appeared below his jaw.
The driver turned and looked back down the street and then when he turned back, still holding the coffee-stained address between his fingers, said, “You show us where it is and we’ll have you back in five minutes.”
“Five minutes?”
“Yep, you’d really be helping us out.” He reached behind him and pushed the door open from the inside. “Get in,” he said. “We’ll bring you right back.”
She stepped in and brought the door closed behind her.
When they came to the intersection with the dangling caution light she told them where to turn and they followed the lake road. The shadow of the mountains over much of the lake, but far to the east a sliver of gold was still visible on the water.
“You heard what Driscoll was saying to the deputy today?” the man asked.
“Some of it,” she said.
The man smiled up at her reflection in the rearview. “So you were eavesdropping?”
“No, of course not.”
“It’s okay if you were,” the man said, kidding her still, his smile wide beneath his thin lips. “If the deputy is in trouble it’s better we hear about it sooner than later.”
“I didn’t hear anything really. They were talking about his father,” Cheryl said. “You’re here about his father, right? So you must know the story about him.”
“We’ve heard some stories.”
The man watched her in the rearview and when they came to the driveway leading to the Drake property Cheryl pointed it out and told them how far up the house was. “Are you two here to take him back to prison?” she asked.
The man looked up at her in the rearview again and then broke away. He was driving on the lake road still, Drake’s driveway now a quarter mile behind them. “What’s up ahead here on this road?” the man asked.
“Nothing. Logging. A couple more houses.”
“Can you keep a secret?” the man asked. His eyes were on her again and with his free hand he touched a button and dropped all the locks on the doors.
The sound made Cheryl jump, her fingers to the door handle before she knew she had placed them there. When she looked back to the front, the big man was climbing over the seat with one large hand outstretched toward her.
Chapter 5
DRAKE SAT ON THE back stairs, drinking a beer and staring out on the orchard. The sky tinged a deep blue in the west and the first stars already showing. The little garden Sheri kept, dug out and lined with earth-turned rows.