have to give it away for nothing? Some kind of construction project?”
“Could be.” He slowed the BMW, began looking for a place to turn around. “Let’s go find out.”
“Oh, now, Sam…”
“Why not? I’d like to know the answer myself. And I’d like to meet somebody who doesn’t know how to spell dirt.”
She put up an argument, but he didn’t pay any attention. He drove back to the rutted lane, turned onto it. It meandered through a grassy meadow, up over the brow of a hill, and down the other side. From the crest they could see the farm below, nestled in a wide hollow flanked on one side by a willow-banked creek and on the other by a small orchard of some kind. The layout surprised Ramage. He’d expected a little place, rundown or close to it, something out of Appalachia West. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
It wasn’t just that the farm was large—farmhouse, big barn, smaller barn, chicken coop, two other outbuildings, a vegetable garden, the rows of fruit trees, fences around the house and along the lane farther down and marching across the nearby fields. It was that everything was pristine. The buildings, the fences gleamed with fresh coats of white paint. The wire in the chicken run looked new. There wasn’t anything in sight that seemed old or worn or out of place.
“Whoever owns this may not know how to spell,” Carolyn said, “but they certainly know how to keep things in apple-pie order.”
Ramage drove down between the fences and into the farmyard. A dog began to bark somewhere in the house as he nosed the BMW up near the front gate. Once he shut off the engine, the noise of the dogs and the clucking of chickens and the murmur of an afternoon breeze were the only sounds.
They got out of the car. The front door of the house opened just then and a man came out with a dog on a chain leash. When Ramage got a good look at the man, he thought wryly: Now that’s more like it. Farmer from top to bottom, like the one in the Grant Wood painting. In his sixties, tall, stringy, with a prominent Adam’s apple and a face like an old, seamed baseball glove. He’s even wearing overalls.
As he brought the dog out through the gate, Carolyn moved close to Ramage and a little behind him. Big dogs made her twitchy. This one was pretty big, all right, some kind of Rottweiler mix, probably, but it didn’t look very fierce. Just a shaggy farm dog, the only difference being that its coat was better groomed than most and it didn’t make a sound now that it was leashed.
“Howdy, old-timer,” Ramage said to the farmer. “How you doing?”
“Howdy yourself.”
“We were driving by and saw your sign down by the road.”
“Figured as much. Brings visitors up every now and then.”
“I’ll bet it does.”
“Interested in free dirt, are you?”
“Might be.”
“Can’t get but a couple of sacks in that little car of yours.”
“We couldn’t use any more than that. You the own er here?”
“That’s right. Name’s Peete. Last name, three e’s.”
“Sam Ramage. This is my girlfriend, Carolyn White.”
Carolyn gave him a look. She didn’t like the word girlfriend. Ms. Feminist. But, hell, that was what she was, wasn’t it?
“What’s the dog’s name?”
“Buck.”
“He doesn’t bite, does he?” Carolyn asked.
“Not unless I tell him to. Or unless you try to bite him.”
That made her smile. “You have a nice place here, Mister Peete.”
“Suits me.”
“Must take a lot of work to keep everything so spick-and-span.”
“Does. Always something that needs tending to.”
“Keeps you and your hired hands busy, I’ll bet.”
“Don’t have any hired hands,” Peete said.
“Really? Just you and your family, then?”
“No family, neither.”
“You mean you live here alone?”
“Me and Buck.”
“Must be kind of a lonely life, ’way out here, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“I like it. Don’t like people much.” Peete was looking at Ramage’s right hand. “Some trick you got there, young fella,” he said.
Ramage grinned. He’d been knuckle-rolling his lucky coin back and forth across the tops of his fingers, making it disappear into his palm and then reappear again on the other side.
“That’s his only trick,” Carolyn said. “He’s so proud of it he has to show it off to everybody he meets.”
“Don’t pay any attention to her. Her only trick is running her mouth.”
“Never seen a coin like that,” Peete said. “What kind is it?”
“Spanish doubloon. I picked it up in the Caribbe an a couple of