SHADE FRIGHT

Chapter 2

"Valerie Stevens," I chirped, stirring another cup of coffee.

There was dead air for about ten seconds and then a man's wheezing voice.

"How did you know about the dead trees?" He coughed and then cleared his throat with a loud hork.

I smiled into the phone. "Well... I didn't say the trees were dead in my e-mail; I asked if they were devoid of foliage."

"You mean, like leaves?"

"Yes, sir, are there any leaves on the trees surrounding your missing bin?" I asked, politely.

"Nope." he coughed.

"What did you do with all of the leaves? Did you burn them?"

"What I'm sayin' is there ain't no leaves on none of them trees — they're just gone. Them damned trees just died."

I reached over to my book case and pulled out a red binder I'd labeled "Missing Items" and then flipped to the divider that read "Large Items". I flipped a few more pages until I found a snapshot I'd taken of a large hole in the ground, where a lawn shed once stood.

"When did you last see it?" I asked, noticing the hedges in the background of the snapshot were bare, and every flower in the adjacent flower bed was dead.

"Two days ago," he said. "It was there when I went to bed, and it was gone the next morning. I looked for tire tracks, because I thought it might be the work of vandals, but shit... they'd have made a helluva lot of noise, and the dogs would have been on 'em faster than you can say 'what the hell'."

"Hmmmm... is there a hole in the ground where your bin used to be?"

"Yer damned right there is!" he snapped. "Listen lady, if you're the one behind this, I won't press charges or nothing — the joke's on me. Just return the bin, alright?"

I closed the binder and took a large slug of my coffee.

"I didn't steal your bin, Mister..."

"Peter Orlowski," he said, finishing my sentence. "Who the hell are you?"

"My name is Valerie Stevens, and I think I can help you find your bin," I said.

There was another brief period of dead air, and I half thought the man would hang up on me.

"Damned bin ain't worth no more than a couple of hundred bucks, eh?" he grumbled. "Not the end of the world if I don't get it back, but it's just the principle of the whole thing."

"I understand," I said, nodding into the phone. "Mr. Orlowski, I'm wondering if you'd be agreeable to a meeting — I'd like to take a look at that hole in the ground."

"How come?"

I'd like to take some soil samples and snap a few pictures, if that's alright."

I heard a loud THUNK as he dropped the phone, and then I heard him shouting.

"Bern... okay if we have company today? I got someone on the horn who might know what happened to the bin!"

"Are they staying for dinner?" a raspy female voice rang out. "I don't feel like entertaining guests."

"Nope — they just want to look around," he shouted back.

"That's fine with me," Bern's voice answered.

There was a scuffling sound, and then I heard Mr. Orlowski's wheezing voice.

He sniffled and then blew his nose. "Yep — you can come out here and have a look. Meet me at the Tim Horton's in Okotoks, and you can follow me out to the farm. I'll wait in my truck... you can't miss it, because it'll be the only truck in the parking lot that's older than whale shit."

"Do you have a cell phone?" I asked.

He made another horking sound. "Nope. Been farming this land for the past forty-eight years. We didn't have cell phones then, and I don't need one now."

"Fair enough," I said. "Two hours is enough time?"

"Yeah, that's fine. Meet you at the Tim's at eleven-thirty."

He hung up the phone, so I wandered over to the bathroom and turned on the shower. I slung my bathrobe over the toilet and grabbed a fresh towel from inside the vanity, then placed it on top of my robe. I poked my hand inside the shower to test the water temperature and then hopped in.

The hot splashing water pulsed against my back and felt heavenly. I reached for my loofa and wondered how it would be possible to pilfer a grain bin without leaving at least some evidence that you'd been there. The darned things are made of galvanized steel, and they have to weigh at least a thousand pounds, so it's not something you can just throw on the back of a pickup truck in the middle of the night. I massaged some conditioner in my hair and chewed my lip as I thought about the trees the old farmer had told me about. While a missing bin might be of great concern to a farmer at harvest time, the fact that the trees surrounding the bin had lost their foliage was a sure sign that whoever took the bin probably wouldn't need a truck.

"Are you thinking it's space aliens, Valerie? Dear God, I hope not."

"DAMN IT, BILL!" I choked, nearly slipping on in the tub and landing flat on my ass. My heart pounded in my throat as I got back to my feet and threw my loofa through the shower curtain. "You scared the hell out of me!"