"What are you still doing here?" Carlos asked as he got back to Thunder Investigations. Trent was seated at Kim's desk, using her computer.
"I'm just messing around online. I got a lead on the Peters case. It seems that Bucky and Wayne's family used to own Gwendy's property, but they had to sell it when they went bankrupt," he shifted trains of thought. "You wouldn't happen to know where Kim's at, would you?"
"Her car's outside," Carlos commented. "I'll check downstairs with Butch when I leave. That sounds like motive to me," he referred to Trent's discovery by tapping the monitor. "We'll check it out tomorrow?"
"Sure," Trent agreed. "I closed the Internet Love case," he said.
"That was fast," Carlos said.
Trent told him about it. "I feel bad for her," he concluded.
"Yeah," Carlos said. "Ok, I'm out of here! I'll see you tomorrow for more Haunted House fun!"
As he left, the slamming door caused the papers on Kim's desk to fly everywhere. Trent sighed and started to pick them up. He marveled that with all of Kim's high-tech gadgets, she couldn't seem to order herself a paperweight so this wouldn't keep happening. A smaller piece of paper under the desk caught his attention. After checking it out, he immediately called Carlos. "Don't leave yet. I found a note from Kim saying she and Danae went out to the farm on business, but I just called Gwendy, and she said they left about two hours ago," Trent said.
"Maybe she just went home?" Carlos turned off his ignition and headed back up the stairs.
Trent pursed his lips. "This is Kim we're talking about," he said to Carlos' amusement. "Besides, her car is still here, and I can't get through to either of their cell phones."
"So we're going to look for them, right?" Carlos was back in the building now, and snapped his phone shut.
Despite Carlos' speed, the sun had almost finished setting by the time they got to the edge of the Peters' farm. If Trent was thinking what Carlos supposed he was thinking, the darkness would help cover them as they searched for Kim and Danae, but it would also make the finding process more difficult.
"We find Danae's truck, we find them," Trent explained. "And since this is the last place anyone saw them…"
"We start here," Carlos finished. He unbuckled his seatbelt and got out of the Durango. "Let's do this," he said with a cheesy grin as he locked the doors.
They set off for the house to see if her truck was still parked there. Not finding it, they turned toward the barn east of the house. The men cut across the dead field in a trot, preferring the short cut to find out sooner rather than later if their hunch was right. They were breathing heavily when they reached the barn, but it only took Carlos a matter of seconds to pick the old lock on the door and enter.
Carlos cut through the darkness with his flashlight, and both men needed a couple minutes to adjust their eyes to the dim light and their noses to the smell of diesel and oil. The walls were lined with tools and tractor accessories, and the cold, concrete floor was cluttered with pieces of metal and ropes, causing them to trip as they circled the lone tractor. They pushed their way further into the barn, stepping through a large plastic curtain that divided the barn in half, to find Danae's truck. Her old, worn vehicle curiously looked like it belonged there amid all the rusty parts and crude machinery. Trent tried the driver's door, which opened readily for him. The dashboard pinged at him, and he looked up at Carlos.
"Doors are unlocked and the keys are in the ignition," he said.
"Someone drove it here," Carlos agreed before sliding into the passenger's seat. His flashlight revealed no other clues for the sleuths, but now they knew for sure that Danae and Kim had to be around the Peters property somewhere. Carlos just hoped they were alive and well, wherever they were.
"From where?" Trent asked as they checked the rest of the car. Carlos got out and walked around the outside. He held up a long, dried piece of grass he had pulled out of the grill. Where had he seen grass this long before?
"Right here," he said. "It was parked right out front of the house." The men quitted the barn and looked around in the last, quickly waning light. "If I wanted to hide someone, I'd put them in that field," he pointed west at the foreboding, razor-like stalks barely visible in the growing shadows.
"It's as good place as any to start," Trent shrugged, and the two of them trotted off to the field. As Carlos thought, the darkness made it almost impossible to find a trace of anything in the corn. Even with their flashlights, the long leaves cast crisscrossing shadows on the ground, obscuring it. Trent couldn't tell if he was seeing footprints or imagining them because of the way the light played in the hard-packed dirt. Neither man was in doubt, however, when they presently wandered into the clearing.
"Is that what I think it is?" Trent trailed off as Carlos knelt down beside one of many dark green shrubs.
"Marijuana," his friend answered grimly. He stood up and dusted off his hands. "This case gets better and better."
"We have to find the girls," Trent said darkly. He didn't need to elaborate on his fears that Kim and Danae were already in serious trouble. Carlos knew personally just how dangerous crossing drug dealers could be, even if for a 'minor' drug such as weed. A flash of lightning lit up the darkness, and the two men could faintly make out what they supposed to be footprints and a trail through the wall of corn. "This way," Trent trotted off in the direction of the tracks as the sky grumbled a warning.
They made it as far as the small grove of trees behind the field when Trent felt something strange underfoot. Before he could wonder about it, he and Carlos were swooped up in a sturdy rope net. They had blindly run into a trap that held them suspended some feet above the ground. A zag of lightning again split the night sky, preceding by scant seconds the pouring rain.
"Tell me this isn't happening," Carlos wailed as he was quickly soaked. "Stuff like this doesn't happen in real life!"
"It could be worse," Trent grimaced. "The top is down on the 'vette."
Carlos laughed, then silence overtook them. They swung gently in the rainy breeze, lost in their own thoughts for a while. Suddenly, Carlos slapped his forehead. "What about your stars?" he asked.
Trent pulled out one of the sharp, pointed throwing stars he carried instead of a gun and studied it. "We'll, uh, kind of fall if I do this," he mentioned candidly.
Carlos grabbed hold of a branch through the large mesh container and bade him do the same. Trent looped one arm around the branch while he laboriously sawed a hole through the ropes forming the side of the trap. Despite the inconvenience it posed to his freedom, he noted the fine craftsmanship of the net. Before he had finished, and completely negating his effort, they felt the net—and themselves—being slowly lowered to the ground. A figure shrouded in a dark rain coat walked around the tree and greeted them. Trent and Carlos remained still, trying to gage whether this man was friend or foe, when a voice broke through the tense quiet.
"Carlos?" Danae asked. "Trent!" She limped over to the men and knelt down beside them. "Boy am I glad to see you guys!"
"You know these men?" The somber question came from the man in the slick black jacket.
"They're good men," even hidden in the darkness, Trent could recognize Kim's unique voice. "They're looking for us."
"Come with me," the man offered a weathered hand to help Trent up, while Danae did the same to Carlos.
"What happened to you?" he asked her during their brisk walk through the woods.
"I'm ok," she answered. "One of the brothers threw something at me. A wrench I think."
"So it's the brothers, then?" he mused.
"What took you so long?" she teased. "I take it you saw the marijuana field. Kim has talked about nothing but the great publicity you guys will get when you turn this in."
"She would," he replied good-naturedly, just loud enough for Kim to hear it. The red-head stuck her tongue out at him and continued her own talk with Trent about what the girls had discovered.
"It still doesn't make sense, though," Trent said when the five had reached a stopping point. The old Indian (his name was Joseph Blackstone, Danae told Carlos) had set up a crude shelter in a corner of the woods. No one was sure if he lived there all the time, and they were too polite and grateful for his help to ask him and risk offense. He was busy erecting another tent to shelter the two additional men, as his tent was too small to hold all five of them for the night. The rain was worsening, making travel by foot dangerous in the dark, and the bitterly cold wind made them all thankful for the shelter.
"Why not?" Carlos asked as he gnawed on a stick of jerky given to him by the white-haired man. "The brothers aren't getting paid enough by Peters, so they grow pot on the side."
"There's more to it than that," Trent replied from the other tent, set up across from the first. "I was down at the courthouse this afternoon, and I found out that the brothers' family, the Farles, used to own that land until the bank foreclosed on it and auctioned it off. Wouldn't you think they would resent Gwendy?"
"Could just be another reason to grow pot," Carlos said. "She's not long for this world, so maybe they can buy it back."
"Before this land belonged to anyone," Blackstone spat out the word, "it was home to my tribe. The Farles bought all this for one hundred dollars. Now that we want to buy it back, it costs a thousand times that much."
"He's right," Kim piped up. "The Farles brothers will get what they deserve in the morning. Maybe you can get your land back, Mr. Blackstone."
"What about Gwendy?" Danae asked softly. "This is her home, too."
"It strikes me as odd," Carlos mentioned casually, "how she thought you girls had left, when your truck was parked in her front yard."
Danae considered this unpleasant theory as Kim thought aloud: "There's no guarantee that you'll get this land if they take it from Gwendy, but we'll help you any way we can," she told Blackstone, brown eyes bright with sincerity. The old Indian managed a handsome smile before donning his raincoat again.
"I have work to do," he replied to questions about his destination. "There are blankets in my tent to keep you warm." With that, he disappeared into the grove of trees.
The four stayed up a little longer, discussing the case. Danae was the first to fall asleep, followed shortly by Kim. Rather than wake the ladies, Trent and Carlos remained as they were for the night: Carlos and Danae shared one tent while Trent and Kim shared the other. Shortly before dawn, Danae was awakened by the sounds of Carlos in the throes of a nightmare. She sat up and gently shook him.
"What?" He wasn't fully awake yet. He wiped his sweaty face and panted.
"How often do you have nightmares?" she asked in a low voice. Carlos rolled over onto his back and considered his answer. He never told anyone about the dreams that haunted his sleep recently, figuring it was better to just ignore them. They would pass with time. "Do you want to talk about it?" Danae was not easily fooled by silence or evasion.
He shook his head. "No." He closed his eyes, and Danae looked on as his breathing became slow and deep as he easily slipped back into dreamless sleep. She, meanwhile, stayed awake and watched the morning sky lighten and bloom with color. There was so much to think about and sort through in her life, and the fresh dawn helped her reflect. Any conclusions she had come to lost when Carlos rolled onto his side and laid his head in her lap. Tentatively, she ran a hand through his disheveled black hair, consumed by even more thoughts without answers.
By the time the sun had finished rising, the rest of the gang had gotten up. They stretched their stiff bodies in the chilly damp and made feeble conversation out of short, choppy sentences.
"I could really go for some coffee," Kim admitted, rubbing her eyes tiredly. The others grunted their agreement.
They milled around for a few minutes, wondering silently if they had been abandoned by their guide. Relief came when the weathered man picked his way silently through the trees. He carried several medium-sized branches, which he used to create a meager fire and set up a tripod. Pulling out a beaten cooking pot, he boiled some water and made tea for the four young people. It was weak, but it was enough to wake them up.
"We must hurry," Blackstone told them when they had finished. "The brothers will be up soon, and they will be looking for you," he looked at the girls. Despite his age, the old man moved quickly and deftly through the forest, and even Trent, the fittest of all of them, struggled to keep pace with him. Before long, they arrived to find the Durango parked along the side of the road, an orange sticker from the sheriff's office asking him to move it or have it towed. Kim slid into the back of the Durango, followed by Danae. She assumed grumpily that she would eventually get her truck back from the Farles brothers.
Trent and Carlos shook hands with Blackstone and thanked him for their help.
"So what now?" Danae asked her companions.
Carlos sighed, and Danae was immediately alarmed by the weariness she heard in it. "We'll fill out a police report for grand theft auto, possession of illegal substances, and assault."
"Against whom? The brothers or Mrs. Peters?"
"Only the brothers, unfortunately," he replied. "Although this is enough to open an investigation. I just know Gwendy had a hand in this, but I don't know why."
"Bucky told me the first time we met that she had always hated that farm," Danae offered.
"Combined with the credit problems she was having, maybe she just wanted to get rid of the land but couldn't afford to pay off the banks," Kim mused.
"So she conspires with the Farles to come up with the money," Carlos took over the narrative, "But the Farles just wanted their farm back, and they tried to get rid of her, so she retaliated and used us to expose them?"
"Sounds pretty thin," Trent said. "All I know is that they're both guilty of something, and we got caught in the middle."
"I'm so tired of being used," Carlos grumbled.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
Carlos brushed her question aside. "It has something to do with another case I was working."
Everyone was quiet for the rest of the ride. They were grumpy from being hungry and tired. As soon as they had given their statements to the police, Kim, Trent, and Carlos went home for some well-deserved rest. Danae, unfortunately, had work. At least the police promised to return her truck to her immediately.