“More like…rugged,” she said with a smile.
Ginny smiled back. “Well it’s about time. I keep telling Joe that he can’t hang on to you the way he does or you’ll never feel as if you can date anyone else.”
“Joe is a good friend, Ginny, and he’s never stopped me from doing anything.” She looked at her watch. “Anyway, I need to get going.” She hesitated, then asked curiously, “Ginny, why did you leave the place dark last night?”
“What are you talking about? I left a light on. Nick even went over with me the other day to change the front hall lightbulbs. I know the light was on when I left,” Ginny said, troubled.
Ginny was closer to eighty than seventy, Rowenna thought. Usually, her mind was as sharp as a tack. But maybe…
Rowenna knew that she forgot plenty of things herself.
“Thanks, Ginny,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you later.”
“I can’t wait to meet your young man.”
Rowenna was already heading back out to her car. “He’s not my young man, Ginny. He’s just a friend.”
“Then I can’t wait to meet your friend,” Ginny called, grinning.
A few minutes later, Rowenna found herself driving past the cornfields. Even though it was full daylight, she tried not to look at them.
She couldn’t help noticing that there wasn’t another car in sight, and she shivered.
She turned her radio up and stepped harder on the gas.
Suddenly her car began to sputter. She stepped harder on the gas, but the engine quit, and she rolled slowly to a halt. At least she managed to steer the car onto the shoulder first.
Swearing, she looked at the gas gauge. It was on empty. She could have sworn that the tank had been full when she left. Then again, she’d been gone for weeks, so she could have forgotten—just as Ginny had no doubt forgotten to turn on the light. But she didn’t believe it.
“I know I filled that damned gas tank,” she muttered.
No problem. She had AAA. All she had to do was call, and eventually someone would make it out to her.
Swearing, she put through the call. The dispatcher promised that someone would be out within the hour. Then she called Joe, and told him where she was and what had happened. “I’m glad I got started early,” she told him.
“You need to keep a better eye on that gas tank,” Joe said. “Well, thank the good Lord that it’s daytime and you’re not stuck out there in the dark.”
“What could happen to me in a cornfield anyway?” But even as she asked the question, she felt a chill of foreboding settling over her.
“You call me when that AAA guy gets out there with your gas, you hear?”
“Will do,” she promised, and hung up, then glanced at her watch. It was only ten past eleven. She didn’t have to worry about calling Jeremy, since he wasn’t expecting her until two.
She leaned her head back, but that only gave her an all-too-clear view of the surrounding cornfields, so she closed her eyes.
It didn’t matter. She still saw nothing but rows and rows of cornstalks.
Irritated with herself, she opened her eyes, stormed out of the car and stared at the cornfield.
“You’re nothing but a bunch of corn on the freakin’ cob,” she said aloud.
But as she stood on the shoulder and stared at the field stretching out to the horizon, the wind began to whisper.
Looking up, she saw crows.
She started when one landed on the hood of her car.
“Scat, you black rodent!” she yelled, waving her hands at the bird.
It looked at her and cawed accusingly, then flew off.
She followed its path across the sky as it went to join its fellows. A hundred of them—or it seemed like it, anyway. They were circling a spot not all that far from the road, maybe only twenty or so rows back.
She closed her eyes. “No,” she whispered passionately. “I’m not going.”
But then she opened her eyes again and, swearing, started to push her way through the corn.
6
“Jeremy, how nice to see you.”
Eve Llewellyn gave him the same genuine smile she had offered the night before.
“And you, too, Brad,” she added, giving him a warm hug. As she pulled away, she looked at both of them anxiously. “Anything new?”
“We’re hoping you can help us with that,” Jeremy said.
“You don’t think we’ve already told the police everything we know?” Eve asked.