Conquering Kilmarni (15 page)

"I'll look again tomorrow, Dad."

"Where?"

"Well, the way I see it, he's more likely to be somewhere up there in the high bush. Not in Kingston."

"Should I go with you, do you think? There's that meeting of coffee growers at the co-op that I'm supposed to attend, but I can skip it."

Peter shook his head. "I can handle it. And I'm going back up to the garden. Something happened up there today."

"Something happened? What do you mean?"

Peter pushed himself out of his chair and stood with his back against the veranda railing, facing Mr. Devon. "Maybe it was nothing. I don't know. When we went into the hut there, I didn't see anything to tell me Zackie had been around, but Mongoose acted a little weird. I mean, we'd been there twice before and all he did was sniff. But this time he ran around like crazy, making those little cat sounds he makes. I think he might have been trying to tell me Zackie had been in the hut since we were there last. So what I'll do tomorrow—"

Hearing the sound of a car's engine in the driveway, Peter stopped talking and turned his head. It wasn't a car; it was the police Land-Rover.
Another visit from Corporal Buckley
, he thought.

It was indeed the tall man from the Rainy Ridge station. After sliding out from behind the wheel, he walked around the vehicle to help a passenger step down. The passenger was a woman.

She clung to the policeman's arm as the two of them came to the foot of the veranda steps. In the deepening dusk the white dress she wore showed how slim she was. She wore white shoes, too, and a little piece of what looked like white lace on her head.

The diesel generator by the garage began throbbing then. Miss Lorrie must have switched on the remote con
trol in the kitchen, either because the kitchen was getting dark or because she had heard the Land-Rover arrive. When Peter turned on the veranda light, he saw the woman more clearly as she stood looking up at him.

Mr. Devon had risen from his chair and now joined Peter at the top of the steps. "Good evening, Corporal," he said.

"Mr. Devon, I've brought a friend." Buckley stepped forward, still holding the woman's arm. "This is Zackie Leonard's mother, Elaine Grant."

"I thought it might be. Please come up, both of you."

Zackie's mother was frightened, Peter saw. Or shy. Before putting a foot on the steps, she turned her head to look questioningly at the corporal, and only when he urged her forward did she move. They came up together.

Mr. Devon held out his hand to the woman and said, "I'm pleased to meet you, Miss Grant."

"She came in by bus a little while ago," the corporal said. "Seems she had a letter from her son."

"Peter told me about it."

"Being a bit shy about coming to your house on her own—never having met you, that is—she called at the station first. As I mentioned before, I knew her when we both lived in Seaforth. Someone in Kingston had told her I was at Rainy Ridge now."

Mr. Devon turned to the big double doors, which were still open but would be closed now that darkness was falling and the air had a nip in it. "Shall we go inside?" He smiled at Elaine Grant as she passed him, and Peter
could see he was pleased that Zackie had a mother like her. Then Dad led the way to chairs by the fireplace, and while the corporal and Miss Grant were seating themselves, he lit the fire he had laid earlier. At that moment Miss Lorrie came up from the kitchen.

The corporal introduced Miss Grant to Miss Lorrie. Then Mr. Devon asked Miss Lorrie to sit and join in the talk. "Dinner can wait, can't it?" he suggested with a smile. "And if there's enough when we do have it, which I'm sure there will be, why don't we all share it?"

Miss Grant smiled.

When he had the fire going well, Dad sat down and looked at Peter. "Suppose you bring Zackie's mother up-to-date on what's been happening, son."

"Trying to find Zackie, you mean?" Peter said.

"That, yes, but how you and he became friends, too." He turned to Miss Grant. "I'm sure Corporal Buckley has already told you about Zackie's running away."

She nodded, looking as if she might start to cry.

"Don't worry," Dad said. "If he is not the one doing the stealing, we'll find a way to prove it somehow. Won't we, Corporal?"

"I'm sure we will."

"And if you are planning to stay here, Miss Grant, our Miss Lorrie has already said she wants you to live with her until you find a place of your own. You
have
come to stay, I hope."

"If I can, sir," Zackie's mother said in a low voice that to Peter sounded something like a prayer.

"There will be some problems, I'm sure," Mr. Devon went on. "Have you told her about Merrick Leonard, Corporal?"

"Yes, Mr. Devon, I have." The tall man reached out to touch Miss Grant's hand, and it was obvious he still liked her, even though they hadn't seen each other in a long time.

"So, Peter?" Mr. Devon said. "Begin with the pig, why don't you?"

Peter found it hard at first, but it became easier as he went along. When he finished, Miss Lorrie said she had better go downstairs and see about dinner, and Miss Grant said, "Let me come with you, Lorrie. I'd like to help." So the two women went down to the kitchen, and Peter just listened while Mr. Devon and Corporal Buckley talked.

"What puzzles me," the corporal said, "is where Merrick Leonard is hiding the money he's stealing—if he is the one stealing it."

"Hiding it?" Dad said. "More likely he's spending it on rum and ganja."

"But more than a hundred dollars has been taken, when you add up all the break-ins."

"Isn't the ganja habit pretty expensive?"

"Maybe in the States, but not here. A lot of the stuff is grown in these mountains, I'm sorry to say. We try to stamp it out, but it's hard to detect, even with helicopters." The corporal frowned. "No, I don't think the boy's father has spent any hundred dollars on rum and ganja, Mr. Devon. Yet I've searched that shack where he lives,
and must admit I haven't found any money or anything else that's been stolen."

Peter thought of the money box in Zackie's garden shed. "Maybe he hides it in the bush somewhere," he suggested. "Even in his yard somewhere. The time I was there, the yard was all overgrown with weeds."

Corporal Buckley looked thoughtful and said, "Maybe you're right."

There was a brief silence, and then Mr. Devon said, "What kind of work did Leonard do before he got into bad habits, Corporal? He must have been a pretty decent fellow when Miss Grant—" He stopped, and a touch of red came into his face.

"When Elaine chose him over me?" the corporal finished with a smile. "Is that what you were going to say?"

"I'm sorry."

"It's all right, Mr. Devon. That's exactly what happened. I wasn't a policeman then, just a young fellow who didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. Merrick Leonard was older and more settled, with a good job on a Seaforth sugar estate."

"Which he lost when he began drinking, I suppose."

"Yes. And then it was all downhill for him. The rum led to the ganja. He and Elaine broke up. She left the child with her mother and went to Kingston to look for work, as I think you know. When the mother died, Leonard took the boy and came up here."

"The one thing that puzzles me," Mr. Devon said, "is why Elaine didn't take the child at that point."

"I've asked her that. I guess the answer is, she was barely able to keep herself alive there in the city. Kingston is no place for a country person, Mr. Devon. They think it is, a lot of them; they go there expecting everything will be nice and easy, with good jobs and lots of money. Then they find out it isn't like that at all, and they get confused. The first thing they know, they're in a rut they just can't get out of, and then they give up hope and stop trying."

The corporal was silent for a moment because the two women had come up from the kitchen to put food on the table. But when they stopped moving around, he finished what he was saying, as if he felt it was important and even wanted them to hear it. "Country people should stay in the country, Mr. Devon. They should stay where there's fresh air and clean water and they can grow things and have decent houses to live in. Sorry, sir. I didn't mean to go on like this. But it's true."

Peter's father stood up. "Why do you think I bought Kilmarnie?" he said with a smile.

The smile made Peter feel good as he followed the two men to the table, where Miss Lorrie and Elaine Grant were waiting.

I
n the morning, as Peter was getting ready to leave, Miss Lorrie came up from Mango Gap and insisted on making sandwiches for him to take along. Zackie's dog was with her. Mr. Devon was still asleep.

The morning was cold and Peter was wearing a jacket, so he stuffed the sandwiches into his pocket to make the housekeeper happy. "I have to find him, Miss Lorrie," he said. "So if I'm not back until dark, don't let Dad worry about me."

She looked worried herself. "Where you will be going?" she asked.

"Well, to his garden first. After that, I don't know."

"If you find him, don't forget to say who is here to help him. Then him not so likely to be afraid to come back." A smile touched her face. "You like Elaine Grant, don't you?"

"Yes, Miss Lorrie."

"So me do, too. And so do Corporal Buckley, as me sure you did notice."

Peter nodded.

"You must do you best to find the boy, Peter. Then we can put an end to all this trouble."

Peter said good-bye and went up the driveway with Mongoose. When he reached the top, he stopped to look back. With the house built into a slope the way it was, he could see most of the yard from there, and a movement in the mule pen caught his attention. It caught the eye of Mongoose, too, and for some reason the dog voiced a low growl.

Peter hadn't thought to look in the pen to see if Zackie had been sleeping there again. Could the boy have been hiding that close to the house all this time?

But it was a grown man, not Zackie. And before Peter could identify him, he stepped into a clump of gone-wild guava bushes and disappeared. Most likely it had been Mr. Campbell, looking after his ill-tempered mule as he usually did in the mornings.

Peter went on without looking back again. At the bridge over the plantation river he stopped, though, and stood for a while to look at the water. The stream was low and quiet that morning. It was so quiet that when a small brown goat with a white face suddenly stepped out of the underbrush, Peter actually heard the rustling of the branches. The goat froze for a few seconds to gaze at him, then stepped to the water and drank. Mongoose, like Peter, merely watched. No growling now.

Mr. Campbell would have to be told, Peter thought. Dad wouldn't allow him to harm the animal, but he would have to find out who owned it and make sure the
owner came for it, because goats killed coffee trees by eating the young, tender leaves.

The animal finished drinking and disappeared. Standing there on the bridge, with Mongoose gazing up at him, Peter recalled the day of the drowning.

Neither Dad nor he had seen it, actually. Maybe that was why it tormented Dad so much when he thought about it. But even if he had been there, he couldn't have saved Mark. According to the men Mark had been with, no one could have done that.

There had been a big rain the night before, accompanied by a fierce wind. Such a storm always filled the Stony Valley River with leaves and broken tree limbs, and the trash never failed to choke the wire screen at the plantation intake, shutting off the flow of water to the house. To reach that intake and clean it out, someone had to cross the stream here and go up the other side of the gorge.

When the water failed at the house that morning, Mr. Devon had sent a crew of men to put things straight, and Mark had gone along with them. He had been fourteen years old then and was always keen for any kind of excitement or adventure. But there had been no bridge here then, only a big old cedar log. Mr. Devon had built the bridge later, after the accident.

On that day, with the river wild and high as it tumbled over an endless string of high falls on its way to the valley, crossing on the log was particularly dangerous. The men
said they had begged Mark not to try it, but he refused to be left behind.

Mark had slipped on the spray-soaked log and fallen into the rushing water. And he was gone over the next high waterfall before anyone could reach him.

And Dad—well, Dad had never forgiven himself for letting Mark go with the men in the first place.

"Hello, Mark." Peter whispered the words aloud as he turned away. Then to Mongoose he said, "Come on, fella. We have things to do."

There were workers in the lower fields—weeding, mostly—and they spoke to him as he passed. After field four, though, the mountain silence took over. As he hurried on, his mind gradually emptied itself of sad memories and let him think about the boy he was looking for.