“I know.”
“Who ordered them?”
Elias pointed.
The buyer’s name had been blacked out with ink.
Not crossed out.
Blacked out.
“Someone altered the ledger,” he said.
“Who has access?”
“Me.”
Rowan looked at him.
“And?”
“And Silas Crane.”
The name meant something.
Everyone in Caldwell Flats knew Silas Crane.
He owned the largest farm in the county.
Four thousand acres.
Cattle.
Wheat.
A feed mill.
Half the grain storage in town.
He employed more than thirty families.
People shook his hand carefully.
Rowan looked again at the ledger.
“Why would Silas Crane order goose eggs?”
Elias answered quietly.
“That’s the question.”
Rowan did not confront Crane.
Not yet.
Instead, she began watching.
And asking.
Carefully.
Old Mrs. Talley at the post office remembered seeing a letter from Northstar Waterfowl addressed to Crane Agricultural Holdings.
A stable boy remembered Crane’s foreman collecting unusual crates from the railway two days before the eggs appeared in the ditch.
A farmhand named Jesse admitted Crane had recently drained two ponds on his northern property.
“Why?”
Jesse shrugged.
“Boss hates marsh birds.”
“Since when?”
“Since spring.”
Rowan’s suspicion grew.
Then Elias found the answer.
He arrived at the Sink after dark carrying a newspaper clipping.
“Northstar is famous for breeding geese,” he said.
Rowan read the article.
The company had developed a rare hybrid known as Silver Marsh geese.
Hardy.
Fast-growing.
Exceptionally valuable down.
More importantly, the birds were used by several large farms for reclaiming waterlogged acreage.
Rowan slowly lowered the paper.
“They improve marshland.”
“Yes.”
“Like mine.”
“Yes.”
“Why would Crane destroy them?”
Elias did not answer immediately.
Then he asked, “Do you know what sits beneath your farm?”
“Wet dirt.”
“I mean deeper.”
She frowned.
“No.”
Elias spread a county survey map across her kitchen table.
The Sink sat inside a shaded strip extending north toward Crane’s property.
“What is that?”
“Old riverbed.”
“I know that.”
“Under the old riverbed is peat.”
Rowan stared blankly.
“So?”
“So last year a fertilizer company began buying peat rights in the eastern counties.”
He tapped the map.
“Good deposits are worth serious money.”
“How serious?”
“Thousands.”
Rowan looked toward the dark window.
Her ten acres.
Her miserable, unwanted ten acres.
“How does Crane fit?”
“His land borders yours on three sides.”
Elias’s finger traced the map.
“If your property stayed flooded and worthless, eventually you might sell.”
“To him.”
“For almost nothing.”
“Yes.”
Rowan’s pulse quickened.
“But the geese—”
“Could turn wet ground into productive pasture.”
She understood.
“If the Sink became valuable as farmland, I wouldn’t sell.”
Elias nodded.
“And if you discovered the peat…”
“I definitely wouldn’t.”
Silence settled between them.
Then Rowan laughed once.
Not because anything was funny.
“You’re saying someone bought hundreds of geese that could reclaim land, then deliberately destroyed the eggs?”
“I’m saying someone may not have wanted those birds reaching whoever originally ordered them.”
“Then who ordered them?”
Elias looked at her.
“That’s what I can’t figure out.”
Two days later, Silas Crane came to visit.
He arrived alone in a polished black carriage.
Rowan saw him through the kitchen window.
He was sixty-two, broad-shouldered, silver-haired, and dressed better than anyone had a right to dress on a muddy farm.
He surveyed the geese with no expression.
Rowan stepped onto the porch.
“Mr. Crane.”
“Miss Mercer.”
His eyes moved across the improved pasture.
“You’ve been busy.”
“They have.”
“Remarkable animals.”
“Yes.”
His gaze sharpened.
“I hear you may be interested in selling.”
“I’m not.”
