Page 7 of The Christmas Tree Farm

‘Hey, everyone.’ They gave a little wave before launching into their story. ‘So, the Connors owned that farm for generations and when the youngest child Edwin took over, sometime in the eighties, he opened it up for families to come and cut down their trees for Christmas. It grew from there into the business a lot of you were familiar with for years. Edwin and his wife, Ellen, never had kids but they ran the farm for about forty years together. Well, Edwin was rather eccentric and rather … unpredictable.’

‘Scary, you mean.’ Someone shouted out from the audience.

‘Gave me the creeps for sure.’

‘Me too!’

‘Anyway,’ Alex went on, clearing their throat. ‘After his wife died, people saw less and less of Edwin and the tree farm took a downward turn. When he died a few years later, a letter was found in the house.’

‘This is the good part,’ Noah whispered, loud enough for everyone to hear. Alex smiled at him.

‘Right, so the letter claimed that he had buried something important, somethingpreciousto him on the farm, but it didn’t say what or where. Plenty of us have wanted to search up there, but the land was left to some cousin, who was pretty adamant about not letting us snoop around. Highly suspicious, if you ask me.’ Alex shrugged. ‘So the legend is left unfinished.’

Bennett shook his head. ‘And you all think the thing he buried … was a body?’

‘His murdered wife, specifically,’ Jacob filled in for him.

‘What?!’

‘She just disappeared one day! I think he buried her for sure.’

‘No way, I still think it’s something else. Some kind of treasure,’ Noah argued.

‘Treasure? Keep dreaming, sailor boy,’ an old man yelled from a few rows ahead of them, making Noah chuckle.

‘It could be money, though. He didn’t have any family left. Maybe he hid all his cash instead of putting it in the bank,’ Kaori suggested.

‘A bit of a crazy theory.’

‘Crazier than a murdered wife and a dead body? Please.’

‘I think…’

‘But what about…’

‘Wait a minute!’ Bennett raised his voice over the cacophony of theories. Everyone shut up in surprise. ‘What the hell does any of this have to do with Kira?’

He heard a snort from the end of the row. ‘You don’t want to know,’ Logan muttered.

‘We wouldn’t want our newest resident to experience the trauma of accidentally stumbling upon a horrific scene,’ the mayor explained like this was all very normal. ‘So we just thought…’

‘You thought I could stumble over it instead?’ Bennett said, an eyebrow raised.

The mayor winced. ‘We just thought you could pay her a visit or two and help smooth things over. She’s reopening the farm and we’re so pleased. We just don’t want any surprises.’ He wrung his hands in front of him. ‘And she won’t let any of the rest of us past the front porch.’ The mayor’s face lit up. ‘But you … you were able to get right in there! Jeanie told us you walked your dogs through the fields and chatted with her so … it seems you’re the perfect candidate for the job!’

Bennett pinched the bridge of his nose and fantasized about researching flight information for the first plane back to San Francisco.

‘I can’t. I have to work.’

The mayor and every face that turned toward him looked highly skeptical of this.

‘Remote work is still work.’

‘But it’s flexible, right?’ Jeanie asked. ‘Like you could just pop up there a few times before the farm reopens? Just to make sure there’s no, like, skulls lying around or anything?’

Bennett looked at her and tried to convey just how much he wanted to buryherbody right now, but she was completely serious about this. And when he looked around the room, so was everyone else.

The entire town was recruiting him to go to their beloved Christmas-tree farm and what? Scan for dead bodies? Find a secret stash of money? Solve the town mystery?