Horvath's, one of the town's thriving all-purpose “general stores,” was located under the Waterton water tower, a distinctive silver and green onion standing tall above the north edge of the city limits. They pulled in to the parking lot and saw Cullen standing near the bed of his pickup, in animated conversation with another farmer. They waited until the other man walked away. Then they got out and said hello.
“Thanks for letting us pick your brain about this, Cullen,” Royce said.
“Sure ‘nuff. Still no word about Mr. Sam?” He looked at Mary and she shook her head, making a face of sadness. What would everyone say when they heard she'd been hiding out with Royce Hawthorne in the family's cabin? That would give the town plenty to talk about. It was the least of her troubles—what people thought of her.
“I know you've already answered a bunch of questions and so forth, but I was talking about the deal Sam had been working on—talking to Mary, you know?—and we wondered if we could ask you, in confidence, when the contract was signed, were there any riders or changes to this contract? This is the copy from Sam's files.” Royce handed a photocopied sheaf of legal-size papers to Cullen Alberson, opened to the page where it told what the “Community Communications Company” was getting for its money.
Alberson, a man close to retirement age, took his spectacles out and started reading, holding the document rather far from him and squinting, even with his bifocals on.
“We noticed that you didn't sell off any mineral rights, at least in the contract we saw,” Royce said.
“Oh, no. I wasn't about to sell no mineral rights. That was the first thing me and the wife talked about when Mr. Sam told me about the offer. I figured a—whaddyacallem?—geologist ... somebody'd done some testing and found something valuable. I made that clear from the start. He said no—I could retain all mineral rights. They just wanted that little bite out of my corner ground. At the time, I never could understand why they'd throw that kind of money on the table—but, hey, I wasn't going to look no gift horse in the mouth neither.” He shook his head, chuckled, and looked at the contract some more.
“But you never got a direct explanation out of them why they were paying so much for a small piece of farm property?"
“Yeah.” He looked up. “I felt like they were honest enough about what they wanted it for. You know how these big corporations are, they got more money than sense. They take it in their heads they want to do something, it's got to be the way they want it. Somebody out East drew a circle on a map, and I was just lucky enough to be part of the circle.” He smiled and handed the copy back. “Who'd turn down money like I was offered?"
“Not me. We just thought maybe—like you said—they'd found something like a rich gold ore deposit, or oil, or whatever. And when I couldn't find anything about you selling the rights—"
“It was the same with Lawley, ya know?” He meant his next-door neighbor to the east, Weldon Lawley, who'd sold his entire farm to CCC and the parent holding company. “He said—'Shoot, I'd gladly sold them mineral rights for reasonable money, if that's all they wanted.’ It was part of his package deal, but they didn't seem ‘specially interested in that. According to what he said to me."
The three of them talked some more, and Royce and Mary left, checking in with Mary's answering service from a pay telephone. She phoned Alberta Riley, and they made a couple of other calls, including one to Luther Lloyd's home, trying to see if anything had changed with respect to the missing persons. Mrs. Lloyd was no longer stonewalling it for the cops. Mary spoke with her, at Royce's suggestion, and the woman confided in her.
“They tol’ me not to say anything about Luther being gone and such—said I'd just be making folks panic. They're all in a panic now any which away. There was more killed yesterday—Kenneth Roebeck and Dub Olin and a feller that worked for him. Shot down in the middle of—” She caught herself, and Mary thought she'd decided she was overstepping her place to say these things. But she was weeping. Soft, muted snuffles into the telephone.
“It's all right, now. It's okay there.” She didn't know how to comfort the woman. “I've done plenty of crying, too. It's a terrible feeling—not to know.” This only made it worse, and the floodgates opened. Royce watched Mary. She teared up a little herself. Finally Mrs. Lloyd was able to get back under control.
“We don't have to talk anymore if you don't want to, Mrs. Lloyd."
“No. It's okay. I don't mind."
“Have you ever felt like there was something wrong with the deal they made to buy your ground? I wouldn't repeat what you say to me."
“I don't care if you do repeat it. Of course I've felt like there was something wrong with the thing. Luther would a never sold that piece of ground. It was slicked offa him some which away. I don't care how much money they give us, he loved the farm. It was no-account river ground that had just about been farmed out, and we could barely scratch a living off it, but by gols, his gran'daddy give him this ground."
“But yet...” She wanted to be careful how she worded it. “The contract and all ... That was Mr. Lloyd's signature on it, wasn't it?"
“I reckon so. But I went to the lawyer over in Maysburg, and he said that, aw, you know—if we wanted to try to go to court an’ that we might be able to prove that it wasn't done under the right conditions and so forth—"
“Or that he was under pressure of some kind to make him sell—something like that maybe?"
“Yeah. I forget all the things he said. I tol’ him go ahead and do it and I'd pay him best I could. And then he called up later on and said he didn't think he could recommend it on my behalf anymore. That I'd just spend all my money for nothing. He said he'd still take them to court if I insisted, but he was purty sure I'd lose."
“Why was that?"
“He thought they were too big. Some big company that had dealings with the U.S. government, he said. And they'd tie it up in court for years. I told him finally if he thought we'd best drop it, then drop it. If Luther was here and it was him and me, it might be different; he'd want to fight it. But I can't deal with all that and him gone too."
“I understand.” They traded wishes of sympathy, Mary thanked her and wished her well, and rang off.
She filled Royce in on the other side of the conversation, and he voiced the question that had occurred to her as welclass="underline"
“It would be very interesting to know what Mrs. Lloyd's lawyer found out, and who told him. I wonder how difficult it would be to get any information out of him."
“You know lawyers.” She shrugged.
“Right. But what if we had Mrs. Lloyd call her lawyer and ask him where he got his information. Just have her hint around. You know—she wants to know so she can decide whether or not to pursue the thing against the company for maybe forcing him to sell the farm under duress or whatever?"
“Do you know Mrs. Lloyd?"
“Umm. Yeah. I see what you mean. She's good people, but I can't really see her bringing that off either. What if you were to go to him—as a friend of the family considering the same kind of lawsuit? Think that could work?"
“I'd be willing to try."
“Tell you what, Mary, let's see if we can find out any more information by poking around out there at the construction site. We'll see what we can find out this evening. Maybe we can learn something that will point us in the right direction. Tomorrow—if nothing's changed—we can go rattle the bars on Mrs. Lloyd's lawyer's cage. Okay?"
“Yes. What do you think we'll find out there?"
“I don't have a clue. But all that traffic and massive concrete work and whatnot—there have got to be some plans around, maybe in a trailer or something. Surely we can get a better idea of what they're doing out there in the middle of the boonies."