Finally they’d gone through all the pictures and found nothing useful—besides the negative attitude toward Max. Not from everyone but from a lot of the men.
She put her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.”
“About what?”
“I was too wound up with myself, and I wasn’t seeing all the stuff you had to deal with while we were there.”
He shrugged. “Part of the job. A private detective gets that a lot. Too bad it doesn’t give a clue to the killer.”
She wanted to tell him that she wished she’d been more of a partner at the meeting. But it seemed that he wanted to stay on task. “So either it wasn’t one of those guys, or he changed his shirt.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a padded envelope and a mailing label I can use to send the sucker?”
“It wasn’t something my dad would have needed.”
He clicked away from the pictures and found the address of the lab he’d used on previous occasions. Then he filled out an online form to accompany the sample and printed it using the portable printer he’d brought to the farmhouse.
Their next stop was the closest mailbox store, in one of the new shopping centers Olivia had seen when they were driving home the night before. The detour took an hour, and it was close to noon when they drove back to the farm next door.
“We’re going to have to use the engaged couple story with the Yeagers,” Max reminded her.
She winced, thinking that she might as well take out an ad in the Howard County Times announcing her status.
Max caught her reaction. “Sorry. When this is all over, you can send out announcements setting the record straight.”
“How will that make you feel?” she suddenly asked.
He hesitated. “Like I completed my assignment.”
“You mean because you caught the killer?”
“Yeah.”
“You won’t care that everyone will know you weren’t really engaged to the hot model?” she probed.
“Oh well.”
And how would she really feel about it? She’d hired him to do a job, but she was thinking it was more than that to him now. And to her. Was that what she wanted—something romantic with Max Lyon? It hadn’t started off as part of her plans. Now it was hard to avoid considering it. Still, she switched her thoughts away from herself and Max as they got out of the car.
Bill Yeager’s wife opened the kitchen door when they knocked. She was a woman in her late forties or early fifties with a weather-roughened face. She’d changed since Olivia saw her last: She wasn’t as thin as she had been, and her hair was now a salt-and-pepper mix. Olivia felt a twinge of sadness for the woman, who apparently led a hard life, not unlike her own mother’s.
Mrs. Yeager was obviously concerned that the owner of the farmland her husband rented had dropped by. “Ms. Olivia, what can I do for you? Is anything wrong?”
“We just need to ask your husband a few questions about any…unauthorized visits to the farm.”
“He don’t do that.”
Realizing her answer had done nothing to set the woman at ease, Olivia hurried to explain. “What I meant was, if someone he doesn’t know has come by.”
“Oh, well, he’s out in the south field inspecting the corn.”
“Yes. It’s good we’ve had rain,” Olivia, a farmer’s daughter, said. “We’ll drive over there.”
As they returned to the car, Max commented, “She seemed nervous.”
Olivia laughed. “I guess it’s from years of dealing with my father. Maybe she expects the same from me.”
“Was he hard on them?”
“Not exactly. But he stuck to the letter of their agreement. Like when there was a bad year and half the crops dried up, the Yeagers still had to pay as much as if they’d done well.”
He turned his gaze toward her. “You don’t do the same thing?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t need the money, and I know the Yeagers do,” Olivia said. “Plus, I feel like they’re doing me a favor, helping me keep the land.”
She directed Max back along the farm road, then told him where to stop. They both got out and walked to the field.
A tall thin man wearing worn jeans, a plaid shirt, and a straw had glanced up inquiringly when he saw them on his property.
“Everything okay?” he asked, looking from Olivia to Max and back again.
“No problem about you,” Olivia said.
“But?”
“We were wondering if you’d seen anyone suspicious around the Winters’ property?” Max said.
“Well, you, for starters. You’re the guy who was nosing around with two other fellows,” Yeager said.