Forbidden Ground. Karen Harper

to some of his workers about keeping their ears to the ground for any word of someone selling bird’s-eye maple. As she and Todd went outside amid the mountains of stacked wood waiting to be cut, they turned a corner and ran right into Bright Star Monson.

       5

      “Oh,” Kate blurted out. “I didn’t expect to see you here, Bright Star. And Lee!” she cried when she saw her cousin standing behind Bright Star with two other men. “So good to see you since you couldn’t come to the wedding.”

      Lee nodded, but he didn’t smile or step forward until Kate went past Monson to extend her hand. She was tempted to give Lee a hug, but who knew what punishment this leader of the pack doled out when someone disobeyed his rules. She could not fathom that Lee and spunky Grace had been taken in by this man. And to have their two kids reared in that repressive atmosphere was tragic.

      Lee took her hand, shook it and quickly released it. “We hardly expected to find you here,” he said. “We came to buy some wood for an addition at the Hear Ye home.”

      Home. That word stunned Kate. At least Lee and Grace had a home. And, really, she didn’t.

      Todd spoke up. “We have salesmen who can show you around, depending on what you need, Mr. Monson. We deliver and can even put you in touch with architects or builders if you want.”

      “Oh, we’ll do all that ourselves,” Monson said. “Brother Lee and others are very skilled at all that. Quite a family we have, talented and diverse for all our needs.”

      Kate knew she should keep her mouth shut, but this man really riled her. “Lee is from the Lockwood family, also talented and diverse before he changed his life so radically,” she said.

      “It seems to me,” Monson replied in his calm, quiet, infuriating voice, “that your two sisters follow life paths to help the living, whereas you seem to be fixated on the dead. The pagan dead. Don’t think we are so primitive that we cannot research people. I know a bit about you and your pursuits.”

      “You like to seem all-knowing, all-wise, don’t you?” she challenged, despite the fact Todd kept clearing his throat and had edged his shoulder between the two of them. “To keep an eye on people, don’t you?”

      “His eye is on the sparrow, and mine also,” Monson intoned. With a nod he moved away down the aisle of wood, with the others following like robots. Lee did not look back.

      “Sorry about that, if I lost you a sale,” she told Todd. Unlike Grant, whom she had to look up to, Todd was just her height, so she looked at him eye to eye. He seemed very fit, strong but agile, a serious man with bright eyes and a beard to balance his shaved head.

      “We’re the only lumber mill for miles around,” he said with a shrug. “I know he’s weird, but, in a way, we all are.”

      “Yes, we all have our eccentricities. But no one stands up to him as if it’s forbidden, and I can’t help disliking him. He’s been reading up on my work, which makes me wonder why.”

      They strolled toward the front of the mill, occasionally avoiding forklifts moving huge pallets of lumber. “I guess you’ve heard they call me Tarzan around here?” Todd asked with a grin.

      “Tarzan? Of the apes? Not because you oversee all these strong men who—”

      “Not that. In my spare time I climb trees. I mean way up, sometimes swinging from branch to branch on mountain-climbing ropes. Started that in the days I cut down trees, before Grant took over from his dad and hired me as foreman. There’s nothing like a view from a tall tree.”

      “So you’re in mourning for his bird’s-eye maple, too.”

      “And on the lookout for who did it.”

      “Then consider my feelings toward Guru Monson this way. He’s cut down four of my family members. But I’d love to see you climb someday. Did you ever take Grant up with you?”

      “Naw, not his thing, though he loved the tree house.”

      “Did I hear my name?” Grant said, appearing around a pickup truck in the parking lot with his car keys in hand. “I put out the word that everyone’s to watch for anyone selling bird’s-eye maple. You can’t pass that off as something else.”

      “Someone may just try to hide the tree for a while until things cool down,” Kate said.

      “Hard to hide something that big uncut,” Todd said.

      “But another good suggestion,” Grant said, taking her elbow to steer her toward his car. “Nothing like a beautiful woman who’s also bright. Todd, I’m going to hire her as a consultant,” he called back to his friend.

      “Better pay her good,” Todd said with a grin and a wave as he headed back into the mill.

      Grant guided her into his car and closed the door. When he got in the driver’s side, he turned to face her. “I’ll think of some way to repay you.”

      She almost said that a real close-up look at Mason Mound in daytime would be a start, but for once, she didn’t push that. He’d been reluctant before, so she had to be careful what she said. “Dinner uptown will do,” she said. “I’m buying.”

      “Dinner, yes, you buying, no. This is small-town Ohio, Professor Lockwood, not the ivied halls of higher learning or London, England. And tomorrow afternoon I will drive you to Paul Kettering’s art studio so you can talk to him about ordering your special project.”

      They pulled out of the mill parking lot, just as a huge, loaded lumber truck pulled in. Grant waved to the driver. They immediately passed another car, which honked its horn.

      “That’s Brad,” he said, sounding surprised and craning his neck. “In a Porsche, no less, when his company just went belly-up.”

      “Do you want to go back to the mill?” she asked. “For the truck or to talk to Brad?”

      “No, Todd can handle it. Brad made himself useful on Friday when Todd was away, so I don’t think they’ll clash. They’ve been friends for years, though Todd doesn’t know that Brad had the gall to ask for his job. But getting back to us...”

      He turned down another road toward town. Getting back to us, she thought. There’s an “us”?

      “What do you have in mind for Paul to carve?” Grant asked.

      She shifted slightly toward him. He seemed far away across the console in the big car. “Since he likes to do mythical beings, it will be perfect,” she told him. “There are several Celtic creatures from their artwork I’m trying to link to the Adena culture to prove a splinter group of Celts became the Adena.”

      “No kidding? So they had the know-how to sail to the New World?”

      “They did. The creatures are mostly shaman animal heads, maybe used in burial rites. My favorite is an antlered animal, similar to a deer, but with a very frightening face, and— What?” she cried as Grant swerved the car. “Was an animal on the road? I didn’t see anything.”

      “No. It’s okay. I—I didn’t, either,” he said, but his hands began to tremble before he gripped the wheel tighter. “It’s just—when you said ‘deer,’ I remembered I almost hit one that darted out here not long ago. Muscle memory to swerve, I guess.”

      She didn’t know Grant Mason very well, but she was pretty sure he was lying.

      * * *

      That night, Grant could not get Kate Lockwood out of his head—her or that mythical beast he could picture all too well. The wedding had been great, he’d talked to a lot of folks, but that woman kept clinging to his thoughts. Though there was nothing but yard and thick forest out behind his house, he kept his bedroom curtains drawn as he changed into his jeans and T-shirt with his company slogan—Mason