Read Online Poisoned Ground by Sandra Parshall - Free Book Online

topic. “Have you noticed anything unusual going on around here in the last few days?”
    “No, not a thing,” Winter said.
    “Have you seen any strangers in the area?”
    The women’s eyes darted from their hands to the wall beyond Tom’s head, and sideways at the yard framed in the window. Then, at the same instant, they all focused on Tom and shook their heads no.
    Their synchronized movements struck him as creepy. He was beginning to see why kids concocted weird stories about them.
    “But that’s not necessarily meaningful,” Spring said. “If someone approached the Kelly farm from the opposite direction, he wouldn’t have passed our place, and we wouldn’t have seen him.”
    Tom glanced at the window. He could see the roof of Hollinger’s house in the distance. Beyond that lay the Kelly farm. “With the leaves down, can you see Lincoln and Marie’s house from your second floor windows?”
    Winter’s eyebrows went up. “We don’t spend our time spying on the neighbors.”
    “Like hell you don’t. Come on, spill it. “What’s been going on over there lately?”
    “Well…” Winter patted the knot of white hair at the back of her head and pushed a stray strand into place. “I did happen to glance that way this morning. Not at the Kelly house, but at the fence between the properties. Lincoln and Jacob Hollinger were standing there, and they were gesticulating vigorously. I could only assume they were yelling at each other over that blessed fence. I noticed that Lincoln had knocked it down again.”
    Brandon sat forward in his chair, and Tom told him with a nod to jump in.
    “What time was that?” Brandon asked.
    “Oh, it was early. Nine o’clock, ten o’clock.”
    Summer sighed. “Our father should never have sold either of them a square inch of his land all those years ago. If he’d known it would come to this…” Her voice trailed off.
    “And things have been considerably worse between those two since the Packard company started waving money around,” Spring said. “Figuratively speaking. I guess they’re waving contracts around, with promises of big money.”
    “Did any of you see which of them ended the argument today?” Tom asked. “Which man walked away first?”
    They all appeared reluctant, but after a hesitation Winter answered, “Jake did. In fact, Lincoln appeared to continue shouting at him as he walked off, but Jake wasn’t drawn back into the argument.”
    Tom wasn’t impressed. If the sisters were telling the truth, Hollinger had lied about being at his lumber mill all morning. He might have returned home after the argument, stewed over it for a while, then grabbed a gun and gone back to finish his fight with Lincoln once and for all. “Has Hollinger been pressuring the Kellys to sell their farm to Packard?”
    For a second none of the women spoke. Winter slid a sidelong glance at her sisters before she answered. “Apparently so. We only know what Marie told us. It was upsetting Lincoln terribly, she said. In his mental state—you must know he suffered from Alzheimer’s—he simply couldn’t cope with the thought of leaving his home.”
    “How do you feel about your neighbors selling land that used to belong to your family? The Kelly farm, Hollinger’s place, the Richardson land, that all used to belong to your parents, right? Are you planning to sell your own place to Packard?”
    All three took on identical expressions of distress—furrowed brows, faces screwed up as if they were in pain.
    “That’s such a contentious issue,” Spring said. “I wish it had never come up. Who could ever have imagined that a huge development company would want to put a luxury resort here? In Mason County, of all places.”
    “We’re not even handy to the interstate,” Summer added.
    Winter’s lips twisted in a cold smile. “That’s the point, I suppose. It would be a retreat from the rest of the world. But with all the conveniences of that world, of course. For