Becca nodded, gazing out the window over the sink at Ryan as he poked at the fire with an iron rake. When she turned her attention back toward Mee-Maw, she saw the woman was looking out the window, as well. “Yes, ma’am. My grandmother sure could make a mean fried green tomato.”
Mee-Maw sank into her chair at the kitchen table and buried her head in her hands. “First I lose Mac, and then J.T. has to leave the day after Mac’s funeral…then that blamed vine starts springing up. Bad enough it got into the cotton, but now the vegetables? And with money so tight!”
“Mac?”
“My husband. Ryan’s grandfather. Mac’s daddy gave us this little corner of land to build the house on. He was in the Pacific, Mac was, during World War II. Spent the whole entire war surrounded by water. Swore if he could ever make it back on dry land, he’d nail his feet to the ground, and he just about did. Don’t get me wrong—we battled hail and sleet and drought and floods and just about everything the Lord could hand us…but I never thought I’d see anything like this…this blamed vine.”
“Is J.T. one of your sons?”
“J.T.?” For a moment, Mee-Maw looked a little startled. Her face resembled Ryan’s as it closed down, defensive and wary. “No. J.T. helped us out around the farm. Me and Mac, we were no spring chickens, you know, and we needed someone with a strong back. Ryan was on the road with that chemical company back then, and Jack’s always so busy with his insurance agency.”
“So your children…”
“Jack’s dad got killed in a wreck, oh, ten years ago. And Marshall, Ryan’s dad—he’s my youngest—he’s teaching at the agricultural college. That’s a good three hours away.”
Mee-Maw sighed again. “I didn’t know what I’d do when J.T. had to leave. I thought for sure I’d have to give up this place. But then Ryan came back and helped me keep the farm going. He’d been itching to for years, but he kept putting it off. Besides, he didn’t want to seem like he was pushing his gramps out of the tractor seat.” She snorted. “As if anyone could have, even if he’d wanted to.”
“Why did J.T.—”
But before Becca could get the question out, Mee-Maw had pushed up from the table and crossed to stand beside Becca at the white enamel sink and drainboard, muttering something about Ryan and the fire.
“Ma’am?”
“Fire. Hate the stuff. Lost everything we had to a fire when I was a kid. An old cookstove messed up—ain’t nothing sadder than to stand outside in the middle of the night and see every stick of furniture, every scrap you own, everything you worked for…gone. Makes me the pack rat I am, I guess.
“Go on out there, will you? Make sure he banks that fire. I know he will, mind you, but just humor a silly old woman.”
Becca crossed the backyard to the bonfire—and stopped in her tracks.
Ryan had stripped off his T-shirt and laid it aside. The fire lit the planes of his chest, highlighting well-developed pecs and a firm, flat abdomen.
His skin was damp from his exertion and the heat of the flames licking over the dodder vine at his feet. Ryan seemed intense, focused, apparently unfazed by the smoke and the crackle of sparks that shot up from the wood into the dark night sky.
The sight made Becca’s belly flutter. She tried to quench the butterflies with a good dose of common sense.
First she’d mooned over his scent and now she was ogling him? Her dad would yank her off this case so fast…She knew better than to get involved with the target of an investigation.
But you’re already involved.
“Mee-Maw said to be sure to bank the fire.”
Ryan jumped. “Damn. You scared me. I figured you’d gone by now.”
“No. You know, I should have gotten pictures of the vine before you burned the plants.”
“Yeah, well, chalk that up to my thinking it was more important to get a harvest than an insurance settlement.”
Or was it to cover something up? She silenced her dad’s whisper in her head, but it was there for a reason. While she’d always prided herself on being objective and open-minded, she had enough of her father in her to avoid being led down many a primrose path.
“Ryan…” Becca fought the urge to touch him. It was so hard to act as though she’d only just met him. “Before I close out this investigation, I’m going to need detailed time lines, to establish where this vine first popped up, how it spread. Your claim forms are pretty scant on details like that.”
“You see how it spreads!” He scowled and gave the fire a jab with his rake, sending off an explosion of sparks. “It’s like damn toadstools—one day it’s not there, the next, it’s strangling half a garden. Fill out all the blanks and check all the boxes you want to on your forms, but it all comes down to the same thing—I don’t know how it got here. I can speculate, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m fighting something here—we’re all fighting something—that could wreck agriculture in this part of the state.”
“Whoa. A bit of hyperbole, isn’t it?”
“No. Another farmer who has this stuff in his fields says it’s resistant to the one herbicide that ought to kill it.”
“I thought you said if you kill the host plant—”
“If you starve it out, sure. But in his case, the vine just found something else to latch on to. Look—I know insurance companies don’t want to pay out claims. Hell, they’ve got shareholders, and I know whose tune those insurance execs are marching to. But rather than send us someone to investigate us—” this he made sound like the basest of insults “—why not send us someone to solve the problem?”
“And who might that be? What experts have you called in?”
Again, Ryan gave her a look that screamed his discomfiture.
“Well? Surely you—”
“I’ve put in calls to every expert that might have the faintest clue of how to get rid of this vine. They all say the same thing—drag a firebreak around the affected acreage, throw in a match and watch what little profit you have left go up in smoke. Believe me, I’ve been tempted. And tonight…tonight I’m past temptation.”
“No! You can’t do that. It could be evidence—”
“See? You do think I’m running a scam.”
“Evidence can prove you either guilty or innocent, Ryan. But if you destroy it, you destroy any chance of me helping you.”
“You? Helping me? Why would a hired gun from Ag-Sure want to help me?”
Frustrated, she ground her teeth. “I am not a hired gun. The outcome of this case—at least from my point of view—is not a foregone conclusion, okay? But you’re being so damned paranoid that you’re sure as hell acting guilty.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m just frustrated, okay?”
“Okay. But believe me. I’m here to help. Surely you can’t have tapped out all the experts on this sort of problem.”
The flicker of hope in his face died, and the corners of his mouth twisted. “You might as well know since you’ll find out sooner or later—if you don’t already know.”
“What?”
The bonfire crackled as the flames fed on the pine resin. Bits of ash rained down on Becca and Ryan, but she waited. She tried to read anything but misery in Ryan’s expression.
She