Read Online The Winnowing Season by Cindy Woodsmall - Free Book Online Page B

said to be.”
    “Gut. I know where to find her. How long ago did she call?”
    “Maybe twenty minutes.”
    “Pick up, Sandra. Pick up.” He waited, looking as if his life hung in the balance. He finally slammed the phone down. “I have to go, and you have to cover for me.” He went to a file cabinet and pulled a small address book from the back of the drawer.
    “Cover for you? No. For what?”
    “I’ll call and leave a message as soon as I can.”
    “I don’t know what’s going on, but Rhoda needs you tonight.”
    Jacob paused, looking startled by that reminder. “You’ll have to tell her for me. I’ll be there if I can, but—”
    “Don’t say but . She needs you.”
    “Listen to me.” Jacob flipped through the book before sliding it into his pocket. “I have no choice.” He held Samuel’s gaze, balking at telling him anything. As much of a peacekeeper as Jacob was, he had areas he opened to no one.
    Samuel exhaled. “Rhoda doesn’t know any more than I do?”
    “Less. And if you don’t want to watch my life unravel, let’s keep it that way.” He stepped through the office door and into the barn.
    Samuel grabbed his arm. “I need to know some part of why you’re running out. Something I can understand and support.”
    Jacob glanced around. “Fine.” He went back into the office with Samuel and closed the door behind them. “It’s confusing. You’ll only understand a little. I made friends with the wrong kind of people, but I honestly thought Blaine was a good guy.”
    “He’s the guy you saved from falling off the roof, right?”
    “Ya. But to understand how I walked into such underhanded dealings, you have to remember how young I was and where I was coming from.”
    “You were nineteen.”
    “And I was used to this farm, and here, if the apple orchard is doing better than the dairy farm side, or the other way around, or equipment comes up missing, we borrow and swap money as needed to make the books balance. In housing, when people sign multimillion-dollar contracts to pay for a home, you borrow nothing from one house to build another.”
    “That’s all you did?”
    “At first. But then the balancing took on a life of its own and ended up being a kind of Ponzi scheme. The builders I worked with were in deeper than me, and they owed money, a lot of money, to some very nasty people.” Despite the cooler temperatures of late October, Jacob wiped sweat from his brow. “As it turned out, I helped to design and build structurally unsound decks. When one fell”—Jacob jerked air into his lungs, looking shaken at the memory—“insurance adjusters got involved. They investigate the cause when a claim is filed. That’s when I learned two important things. One was that someone at the construction company had purposefully bought cheap, black market products, and they had set me up to take the fall. Two was that insurance adjusters are like hound dogs: they don’t give up, not when lawsuits are involved, and they have ways of finding people I’ve yet to figure out. They’re looking to putsomeone in jail over this mess.” Jacob shook his head. “Sandra has no one but me and her little girl. I have to go to her.”
    “Is that who’s after your friend? An insurance adjuster?”
    “Probably. Or the loan sharks. Either way, I have to get her and her little girl somewhere safe.”
    Samuel’s mind spun as Jacob tossed years’ worth of missing puzzle pieces at him, but he couldn’t fit them together. “I can see why an insurance adjuster would want to speak to you, but why to your friend?”
    Jacob flinched, as if realizing he’d said something he hadn’t intended.
    Samuel adjusted the suspender on his shoulder. “How does Blaine fit into all this?”
    “He was a friend, or so I thought. He was Sandra’s husband.”
    “Was?”
    Jacob pointed at Samuel. “You tell Rhoda that I had some unexpected business come up. That’s all. You tell no one about the call or where I’m