she reached the gate, her head was pounding and her elbow ached unbearably.
She had just turned onto Hunter Street when her phone rang. Wesley, finally.
“What’s going on?” he said, sounding agitated. “I got all these calls from you.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Phoebe said, sliding into the front seat. “I was just anxious to catch up with you.”
“Is something the matter?”
“No, no. I just need your help. I want to get a bit more info from you about the man at the jukebox in Cat Tails.”
“The man? Why does that matter anymore? They’ve arrested the girls who did it.”
“Uh, maybe not. I’m having doubts that Blair and her friend are the killers.”
“Whoa, really? And you think it was this man I talked to?”
“I don’t know, but I just keep coming back to him. Is there any way you can meet me tonight? I can explain when I see you.”
“Lemme think for a second,” he said. “I’m still at work, and then I’m going out from here—but in the opposite direction from Lyle.” There were a few seconds of silence. “Is there any way you could meet me here? It’s about twenty, twenty-five minutes west of Lyle.”
She didn’t like the idea of driving all that way, especially because it would be completely dark soon, but she was desperate to meet with Wesley. In person she could take notes, prod him better. And even show him a picture.
“Okay,” she said. “How late will you be there?”
“I was planning to leave in half an hour because I need to be at this other place. But if you hurry, I’ll wait.”
Phoebe was worried about how she would pull it off, but she didn’t want to pass up the chance to see him. She scribbled down the address and signed off. Now she needed to hurry home, check on Ginger, and pick up her car. She also had to download a photo.
The little dog seemed overjoyed to see her and nearly leaped in her arms when she walked into the house. Phoebe took a few seconds to pet her and toss her one of the tiny treats from the package Dan had left. Next, with the clock ticking in her head, Phoebe pulled up the college Web site and downloaded the photo of Stockton. There was a remote chance, she thought, that once Lily had been spurned by Duncan—if that were really the case—she had moved on to Stockton, and the story had then morphed slightly in the telling.
Phoebe was in the car in less than ten minutes, but she was now behind schedule. She programmed the address into her GPS and pulled out of the driveway. Fortunately most of the trip turned out to be on backcountry roads, and there was little traffic to contend with. As she drove, the misery she was feeling seemed to balloon with each mile. Her boots were soaked through from walking over soggy ground earlier, her elbow still ached, and her emotions were a battered mess. She
Wesley’s feed company was at the edge of a small town called Springville, and Phoebe reached it fifteen minutes later than she’d promised. She prayed that Wesley was still waiting. As she pulled off the road into the parking lot, she saw a sign out front that read, “Closed,” but there was one car still in the parking lot.
She stepped from her car into the cold. She was at the far right end of the large brick building, and peering through the twilight, she saw a stream running near the back. It was the one Wesley had mentioned, she realized, the one that once moved the paddle wheel that then turned the grist stones. In the air was the smell of something sweet but unidentifiable.
As she hurried toward the main door, she saw that she was actually looking at two buildings—the big old gristmill with a drive-through on one end—probably for trucks and vans making pickups—and a newer, less impressive structure on the far side that appeared to be devoted to the lawn care business. There was a light on just inside the main building, so she tried that door first. Entering, she spotted Wesley standing behind a counter in the two-story-high space, dressed in his standard-issue khaki pants, button-down shirt, and pullover. The smell she’d picked up outside was even stronger in here.
“Thanks so much for waiting,” Phoebe told him. The front of the large room, she saw, had been set up as a store, with shelves of feed and supplies. It opened at the back onto an area with industrial-looking equipment and huge container bags. That was clearly where the feed was ground and bagged.
“Not a problem,” Wesley said. “What’d you do to your arm?”
“Broke my elbow—but just a minor fracture.”
He smoothed an eyebrow with his hand, a gesture she interpreted as impatience. He was being polite, but he was clearly eager to leave.
“This should only take a second,” Phoebe said. “What’s that smell, by the way?”
“Oh, that’s probably the molasses you’re smelling. We sweeten the animal feed with it. We have vats of it in the basement, and it’s piped up to the back room.”
As she drew a notebook from her purse, the store phone rang.
“Lemme just grab this, okay?” he said. “It’s a guy calling back about a lawn issue.”
Wesley answered, “Springville Feed Company,” and ended up in a conversation about crabgrass. As he talked, Phoebe’s eyes wandered over the space. In the middle of the first floor was an open area protected by a waist-high wooden fence; beyond it was the top of a large, weathered paddle wheel, at least twelve feet in diameter. She moved closer and stared down into a pit large enough to hold the wheel and several wooden gears. At one point the stream had run through there, she realized, making the wheel turn, but now it was totally dry.
Across the room she heard Wesley say good-bye, and she returned to where she’d been standing.
“Pretty interesting, isn’t it?” he said, coming from behind the counter. “The water churned the paddle wheel around, and that moved the gears that in turn activated the grist stones.” He pointed to an area to her left, and she swiveled her head in that direction. There was a large circular stone resting on the floor.
“Yes, fascinating,” she said, though she hadn’t a lick of interest at the moment. “Anyway, as I said on the phone, I’d love a better description of the man at the jukebox. You said he was in his late thirties, perhaps early forties, not dressed as a townie. Anything else you recall?”
Wesley slowly shook his head. “Not really,” he said. “I mean, he seemed sure of himself, confident. That much I remember.”
Phoebe pulled the photo of Stockton out of her purse. It was a long shot, but it was all she had.
“This wasn’t the guy by any chance, was it?”
“He looks vaguely familiar, but no,” Wesley said. “The guy I talked to was darker. Dark hair, dark eyes.”
Phoebe stuffed the photo back in her purse and, after hesitating for a second, pulled out her phone. I can’t believe I’m doing this, she thought.
“What about him?” she asked. She opened up the photo she had taken of Duncan in his kitchen last Friday.
“Oh, wow,” Wesley said after a couple of seconds.
Phoebe caught her breath. “What?” she asked. It came out as barely a whisper.
“This is a professor from Lyle. I’ve seen him.”
“What do you mean? He’s the man you saw that night?”
“No, no, definitely not,” Wesley said. He narrowed his gray eyes. “I just recognized him from school.”
Thank God for small favors, Phoebe thought.
“So now you’re thinking a guy did it, huh?” Wesley said as Phoebe dropped the phone back in her purse.
“Yes. Someone familiar with the area who knew about the Sixes and figured it would be easy to frame them. And very possibly someone connected to Lyle College. It might be the man you talked to that night, but maybe not. Can I ask you one more favor?”
“Is it going to take long?” Wesley asked. He sounded a little testy, as if he were starting to run out of patience.
“No, just a few minutes, I swear.” She reached into her purse again and pulled out a copy of Hutch’s notes.
“These are the notes Ed Hutchinson took after talking to you last fall. He told me that when he’d reread them, he’d found something significant in them, but he never had a chance to tell me what it was. Can you look and
