“I met him,” Jonathon admitted. “He was in the office when I was talking to Wolff. Slick-snappy dresser, smooth talker. Just the type that gives me the willies. Stuck out like a sore thumb. I assumed the Porsche parked out front was his.”
“You happen to ask Wolff what other properties he’s bought recently?” Joe asked.
Jonathon tapped his last little pile straight and immediately swooped down on a file he’d placed earlier, opening it up. “Yeah. I kept it to farms only, since he’s a jack-of-all-trades, selling, leasing, and renting damn near anything he can list. He couldn’t tell me what deals might still be in the works with the other people who work out of his office, like Gregory, but”-he extracted a single sheet of paper and slid it across the table to Joe-“here’s his list.”
He continued speaking as Joe glanced at the document. “Not much to it, like you can see. There’s the Loomis place and two others. I included the names, dates, prices, phone numbers, and everything else he gave me. I also double-checked the land records at the various town offices, to make sure he wasn’t bullshitting me, but I guess he was telling me the truth. He seems like a pretty straight guy.”
Joe put the report aside as Jonathon also found a seat and settled down.
“And what about a cause for the Loomis fire?” he asked. “Your last e-mail said you were still digging.”
Michael looked disappointed. “That hasn’t changed. When we were at the restaurant and arson first came up, I was scared I’d dropped the ball somehow.” He held up his hand quickly, adding, “I’m not saying I didn’t, but I went back over everything, down to the last detail, and the only thing I’d change now is to leave the cause as undetermined, instead of electrical mishap. I jumped the gun a little there.”
Tim looked up from his housekeeping. “Too much damage?”
Jonathon nodded. “The place was trashed. I could trace it to the milk room and the bulk tank wiring, no problem, but that’s about it. Loomis admitted right off he’d fooled with the wires and that it might not have been the best job in the world. I went from there. But to be honest, I never could find anything you’d call a positive source of ignition. If it was arson, it was well done, and designed to look like faulty wiring.”
“Things just get too hot for any evidence to survive,” Tim chimed in supportively. “It happens a lot.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen that,” Joe agreed appeasingly. “So there’s nothing to go on at all?”
Jonathon smiled and extracted another document. “Maybe. I reinterviewed everyone as well, and this time I asked if anything unusual or suspicious was noticed before the fire. I did that the first time, of course,” he added, “but now I was a little more persistent.” Again, he handed over what he was holding to his boss. “That’s a statement from Butch Yeaw, Loomis’s hired hand. He claims to have noticed a dark sedan with out-of-state plates drive by a couple of times the same week as the fire. He didn’t get where it was from, just that the plates were light-colored. It stuck in his mind because it seemed like a city car to him-four-door sedan, American-made. But that was pretty much it.”
“He couldn’t describe the driver?” Joe asked.
“Only that he was alone and wearing a brimmed hat. Yeaw also said the car was going slowly, as if the guy was a tourist, except that the feeling was all wrong.”
“We talking reality here, or too many cop shows?” Joe wondered out loud, staring at the cover of the statement.
Jonathon didn’t take offense. “Butch Yeaw doesn’t seem overequipped in the imagination department. I think he tells things pretty much like they are.”
Joe paused to think a moment-a mason considering what stone to use next. “Rick Frantz is still in a coma. It might be interesting to find out if he had access to an out-of-state car.”
“And the hat could’ve been a disguise,” Jonathon suggested. “Local boy throwing suspicion on some mysterious flatlander.”
By now Tim Shafer had sat down, his unpacking finished. “I have a sighting of a man in a brimmed hat,” he said, holding up a statement. “Right here: ‘Looked like somebody from the city-short leather coat and a hat like one of those gangster shows from the seventies-a fedora.’ That’s according to Farley Noon himself, who saw the guy a couple of days before his barn went up.”
“No car?” Joe asked.
“Nope.”
“Still,” Joe mused, “that’s a connection, if only a small one, between Loomis and one of the other two. It gives a little more credibility to Loomis’s being an arson.” He then asked no one in particular, “I wonder if Loomis knows Rick Frantz.” He turned to Tim. “You get any further into your case?”
Shafer looked equivocal. “I went back over it all and conducted a few more interviews, but to be honest, I don’t have much more than before. It doesn’t seem like there was a reason to burn down Noon’s barn. Nobody benefited except the neighbor, who bought the place, like I said, and he looks squeaky-clean.”
“I might have something,” Joe finally admitted, unfolding a map and spreading it open on the table. The other two left their chairs to gather beside him.
“I had somebody at headquarters call around for all the local farm sales over the last half year. This is what they came up with. I’ve circled the acreages in red.”
The map showed Lake Champlain on the left, speckled with various-size islands looking like stepping-stones, and the Vermont shore to the right, with St. Albans at the top and the outer reaches of Burlington lining the bottom.
“Huh,” Shafer grunted softly. “That’s interesting.”
From a distance, the small cluster of eight red circles looked like a shotgun blast, the brunt of which covered a patch of land between the water and Interstate 89, which in turn pointed like a blue ruler line straight at the Canadian border.
“God,” Jonathon commented. “If I ever saw a blueprint for a development project, this is it.”
“Big, too,” Shafer agreed. “Huge, in fact.”
“Maybe,” Joe cautioned. “Some of these properties are three hundred acres or more. If these clustered sales are related-which is a major if, since no one buyer stands out-then it’s possible the actual point of interest is something like this.” He placed his fingertip on a remote crossroads bordered by three of the circled properties. “Right there you have a prime, commercial, two-acre spot owned by three different people. For all we know, the plan is to build a gas station and make a killing on the side by selling off the excess acreage.”
Both arson experts looked at him dubiously.
Gunther laughed and shook his head. “I’m talking theoretically, guys. The point is that something unusual is going on, we have no clue what it is, and it isn’t on the up-and-up. ’Cause here”-he stabbed the map among the red circles-“is the Loomis place, and here”-he stabbed again nearby-“is Noon’s.”
“But Cutts is nowhere near there,” Jonathon said.
Joe looked up from the map, his eyes bright. “Exactly.” He pointed to the outermost property, far inland and distant from the rest of the cluster. It was outlined in blue, distinguishing it from the land sales. “It’s way out in left field. Interesting, huh? For some reason, the same guy who burned Noon’s and may have burned Loomis’s-assuming he’s the man in the brimmed hat-traveled way over here to torch the Cutts place, too. The question is why?”
The others remained silent.
“And to add to the mystery,” Joe added, “I heard this morning that Billy St. Cyr, the same neighbor who’s been ragging at Cutts for two decades but all of a sudden showed up at the funeral and is doing Cal’s sugaring for him, has just offered to buy his place, lock, stock, and barrel.”
“They going to accept?” Jonathon asked.
Joe shrugged. “Don’t know. I just got it through the grapevine. The catch there is that when I interviewed Cal, he said that St. Cyr is looking to get out of the farming business, not wade in deeper. Makes you wonder about the sudden change of heart.”