Merry Market Murder(25)

I was certain that Hobbit thought I was righteous and perfect, and she whined in agreement.

I put the truck back into drive and drove for about a mile until I came upon two dirt road turnoffs, one going each direction. From the map I’d found I was fairly certain I was supposed to turn left, but there was no signage to help with the decision.

“You’d think he’d want people to know about his farm,” I said.

The sun was beginning to rise, so I could see a pretty good distance down the road. The area was wooded, but not thickly. I couldn’t see any sign of a farm.

“Just a quick look.” I pulled the truck onto the road and was pleasantly surprised to find it was much smoother than many other local dirt roads. I followed it into the sparse woods and then took a curve to the right and then another one to the left, and then I brought the truck to a dead, hard halt.

“Holy . . .” I said as I looked at the view in front of me.

Hobbit whined again.

“No, girl, I’m fine. It’s just so . . . so amazing. I had no idea.”

The Stuckey Tree Farm was a couple hundred yards straight ahead. The road I was on would lead me beside a smallish lot of trees and then to a spot in front of an old farmhouse. It was a farmhouse directly out of the early twentieth century; something that fit the small valley perfectly. The sun peeked out from behind a distant slope and had the house in its sights. The direct light should have highlighted any flaws, but I didn’t see any.

The house was a tall two-story with a wraparound porch on the bottom level and a small corner porch on the top level. Opposite the top-level porch was a white spire with a decorative ball on its tip. There were pale-green shutters bordering all the windows, milky shears fluttering inside them. The whitewashed clapboard siding looked like it had recently been painted, which might have been the one thing about the extraordinary house that I didn’t like. It was either an older house that had been refurbished or it was a new house built to look like something from the turn of the century; the century before the one we were currently in. It seemed like it should lean a little and perhaps be covered in chipped paint. But it was perfect.

The trees filling the land next to the left of the house were dark green, and the pine scent that found its way into the cab of my truck was just as intoxicating as the scents from the Ridgeway trees.

“There is just nothing like the real thing, is there?” I said.

There weren’t as many pines as I thought there should be on a working tree farm, which probably explained the farm’s almost anonymous existence. The trees I did see were of varying sizes, and I couldn’t tell offhand where the ones that had been brought to the market had originally grown. Either the planted part of the land went back deeper than I could see or the stumps were well hidden.

“Stop!” a voice rang out from the middle of the tree patch. It took a second but I finally found the woman attached to it.

She wore a long, brown skirt and what I thought was a beige muslin shirt. Her getup reminded me of Linda, who dressed the pioneer part. This woman was a lot older than Linda, though; her steel-gray hair had been pulled back into a bun at some point, but many pieces had come loose, giving her a wild and somewhat crazed look as she chased after an animal she was bound to never catch.

A goose—no, a huge goose—was running with quick, web-footed steps and intermittent flaps of its wings.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

The goose had the serpentine move down pat. I had no idea that geese were so skilled at averting a chase. I wondered when it was just going to take off and fly.

“You stupid, stupid creature. Stop right this minute,” the woman commanded. It did no good.

If I left at that moment, she’d notice my truck if she hadn’t already. It was hard to miss. But I wanted to leave. In the span of a few seconds I predicted several potential outcomes, and none of them were appealing. The woman was either going to ask me to leave, ask me to come in and buy a tree, or ask me to help her catch the goose and if, by chance, it was a Christmas goose in the same vein as Dickens’s, I wanted no part in the hunt.

I stalled a fraction of a second too long. The woman stopped, put her hands on her hips, and signaled in my direction.

“Could use your help,” she yelled.

“Stay here,” I said to Hobbit.

I got out of the truck and waved, hoping she’d see my small stature and think I wasn’t up to the task. It didn’t work.

“Just stop the damn creature. I’ll chase him in your direction.”

“How?”

She shrugged. “Any way you can. He’s a stubborn old cuss, so you can’t hurt him.”