Forbidden Ground. Karen Harper

over him and Kate. “Lacey’s Green Tree would be proud.”

      “I’ll see you back at the house,” Grant said, taking Kate’s arm to steer her away.

      “What’s Lacey’s Green Tree?” she asked.

      “Lacey was my first wife—I mean, my wife, but we’ve been divorced for years. She’s really active in Green Tree. It’s a Midwest knockoff of Greenpeace. They protest over environmental issues. Ignore Brad. He likes to make waves. Kate, listen. I can drive you back, wait until you change clothes if you want to go see the mill. I need to stop by there for a little bit. Then maybe we can have another private toast to the happy couple, though not at my place. I can’t stand looking through that picture window at that spot of naked sky right now.”

      “Sure, that would be fine. Char’s going back to the hotel with my father’s family to play with the boys and give their parents a break.”

      “You’re sure you don’t want to go with them?”

      “I’m sure. I’ll go back in to wish them well, say goodbye. It will just take a second. I also want to ask Paul Kettering if I could stop by tomorrow to talk about a special project I’d like to commission, but I see he’s leaving.”

      “I can call him for you, set it up. He lives out a ways, up Sunrise Mountain. I’d be happy to drive you there tomorrow.”

      “I’d really appreciate that.” So easily accomplished, she thought, to spend more time with Grant, though she wished it was at his Adena mound.

      * * *

      The Mason Lumber Mill made a lot of noise and a lot of sawdust, but it seemed like violins and pixie dust to Kate. She loved being with Grant—unfortunately—because after a couple of weeks here, making her own maps of unexcavated Adena burial mounds and hoping to get permission for a team to excavate some, she fully intended to go to Columbus to spend more time with Carson and then back to England to finish her work there.

      She also liked seeing an array of Paul Kettering’s tree trunks for sale in front of the mill, but was surprised he’d carved Disney characters—though, of course, they were as imaginary as his fairy folk. The seven dwarfs peered from one trunk and The Little Mermaid’s Ariel and sea creatures from another.

      “I’m surprised to see Paul’s carved something so commercial as Disney characters,” she told Grant as they headed inside.

      “Money talks. I think Nadine’s been on him to expand his horizons. Welcome to my daily world,” he added as they went inside through a big double door.

      Kate didn’t want to let on to Grant that she’d overheard his friends arguing about money earlier today. Paul had threatened to do something she couldn’t catch, and Todd had threatened him if he did.

      “This mill is huge!” she shouted over the noise of several massive machines devouring tree trunks that came out the other side either stripped of bark or sawed into planks.

      “Let’s go on up to my office,” he shouted back. “It’s mostly soundproof, and we can see the cutting line from there, so I can point things out. It’s the scaler and debarker making all the noise. We’d need industrial earmuffs like the men are wearing to stay here long. Come on.”

      They climbed metal stairs to Grant’s glassed-in office high above the cutting floor. It helped when he closed the door, shutting them into his lofty observation site.

      “I’ve been making a list,” he told her. “Mill owners in a tristate area to call Monday morning to be on the lookout for a big buy in bird’s-eye maple.”

      “Your tree.”

      “Right. I’ve been really vocal about stopping the local band of tree thieves and, I’m thinking, they probably decided to show me they can get me back—come in right on private property and do damage. Then they’ll leave the area to sell the wood, so I can’t trace it to them.”

      “Could it possibly be someone who has a more personal vendetta in mind—someone who is not that tree thief gang but someone using them as a cover to steal that tree? That way, they figure they won’t get blamed.”

      He sank into his chair opposite where she’d perched across the corner of his huge wooden desk.

      “You’ve been reading too many mysteries or something. I don’t take you for a soap-opera fan. No, I don’t think that a someone-close-to-me, personal-revenge or vendetta theory’s in play here.”

      “It’s just that I’ve learned to think that way because the world of academia can be cutthroat. In scholarly pursuits, people who have worked together for years might steal research or ideas. It’s human nature over the ages. But yes, I guess I do have a suspicious mind.”

      “You don’t mean it could be Brad?”

      “I don’t mean anyone in particular. But he sure knows the area, and he seems to be upset with you—and he wasn’t home when it happened.”

      “But I know he was at the mill, not that he doesn’t know rogue cutters who could have done it for him. Okay, so he is upset with me, mostly because I’m not demoting Todd McCollum to let Brad be mill foreman. Or coughing up big bucks like when I backed him once before.” A frown creased his brow. “Then there’s Green Tree and my ex.”

      “You said that group is like Greenpeace, so you meant they’re willing to use strong measures if someone’s anti-green or polluting the environment? But then, they would never cut down a tree.”

      “At our logging sites, we plant two trees for every one we harvest, and Lacey knows that, so that’s a stretch. I have made some enemies in the Ohio Statehouse and U.S. Congress, pushing for certain laws. But that’s far out, too. Someone had to know how to get in through my back lot, cut that massive tree and get out fast and clean.”

      “So, no personal enemies?”

      “I still think it’s that timber gang. But—you know—there was a case out West when I lived in the lumber camps in my twenties. A massive golden spruce of great age and size, venerated by a local Indian tribe, was cut down by an idiot who supposedly loved trees, but wanted to make a statement about others cutting trees. He wanted publicity, to have a voice in a trial if he was caught. Is that crazy or what? The culprit had delusions of grandeur and was on a mission.”

      Kate shook her head. Being on a mission—she was like that with her theory that the European Celts might have sailed to this continent and became the progenitors of the mysterious, brilliant Adena. If only she could link some of the Adena burial artifacts to Celtic culture. Oh, yeah, she understood someone doing crazy things who was passionate about his or her mission in life.

      “I do have a great, happy story about a big tree to tell you,” she said, leaning toward him. He looked so downcast she wanted to reach out to him, and she’d better do it with words before she went over to hug him. He looked at her intently.

      “Tell me. I could use that.”

      “Last autumn I visited Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, England. It’s much smaller than in the days of Robin Hood, only a little over one acre now instead of the thirty miles by ten miles it was in the old days. But it has a tree called the Major Oak, which is supposedly between 800 and 1000 years old. I think they said it weighs about twenty-three tons and has a trunk circumference of thirty-three feet. I could not believe how much ground its spreading branches covered. And according to legend, the tree was Robin Hood’s main hideout while he robbed from the rich to give to the poor. That part about it being his hideout reminded me of the tree house you and Brad used to share in your special tree.”

      He nodded, his gaze distant, instead of on her. “So maybe someone sees taking that tree of mine as robbing from the rich to give to the poor. You know, growing up, Brad and I, Gabe, Todd and Paul used to play there all the time.” He looked at her again. “You’ve helped me, Kate. You’ve made me face up to the harsh reality about people’s possible motives, but it lifts my spirits just to know