“You remember an old Finn named Erno Paavola?”
“Not well.”
“I did a little bit of PI work for him, three or four years ago. He couldn’t pay in money, so he brought me three full buckets of blueberries, the biggest I’ve seen around here. He was a man who liked his liquor, and he was a little drunk when he gave me the buckets. He told me they’d come from his own private blueberry patch near his cabin. He passed away not long after I did the work for him. He had no family left around here, so I figure it’s up for grabs.”
“Where is it?” Daniel asked.
“A few miles southeast.”
“What if somebody already picked everything?” Waaboo said.
“Don’t worry,” Cork assured him. “Erno told me his patch was protected by gnomes.”
“Gnomes?” Waaboo said.
“You know about Irish leprechauns, right? Gnomes are kind of like Scandinavian leprechauns.”
Cork drove the county road south, then east two miles on gravel, and finally turned in to the ruts of a dirt lane that cut through a stand of mixed pine and spruce as it mounted a hill. In a clearing near the top of the rise, a cabin stood amid tall wild grass.
“Paavola’s place,” Cork said.
“Looks run-down,” Daniel said. “Abandoned?”
“As far as I know. But it looked pretty run-down when Erno lived here.”
Daniel nodded toward a little structure off to the side of the cabin. “An outhouse?”
“Erno lived off the grid,” Cork said. “Kept things primitive. He was sure the end of the world was just around the corner, and only those who were prepared to live without all the modern crap, as he put it, would survive.”
“Where are the blueberries?” Waaboo asked.
“I’m guessing we might have to walk a bit,” Cork said.
“There better be blueberries,” Waaboo warned.
Cork led the way to the rear of the cabin, where the wild grass ran another thirty yards to the forest edge. He stood a moment, scanning the trees.
“What are you looking for?” Stephen asked.
“The gnomes,” Cork said.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Daniel said.
“Erno seemed pretty serious.”
“I’ll find them.” Waaboo ran ahead, bounding through the tall grass.
“Spread out,” Cork said.
The men fanned out, but before they’d taken more than a few steps, Waaboo cried, “Here they are!”
At the edge of the tree line stood two little gnomes, each four feet high, carved from the stumps of a couple of hardwood trees cut down long ago. They’d been brightly painted at one time but now wore only the faintest tatters of color.
“And there’s the path,” Cork said.
“Not much of a path,” Stephen noted.
“Let’s go.” Waaboo started quickly ahead.
They followed the little boy along the faint trace of a trail through the evergreens. A few minutes later, they came to another clearing, where the sun smiled down on a field of scrub undergrowth, a mix of pine seedlings and June grass and lupines. Among the other wild flora were squat green bushes on which berries hung like tiny bulbs on Christmas trees.
“Blueberries!” Waaboo said.
“Move carefully,” Daniel cautioned. “We don’t want to destroy any of the plants.”
“I’ll be careful,” Waaboo promised and wandered into the patch.
“Quite a find,” Stephen noted.
Cork grinned. “Wouldn’t have known where to look except for those gnomes.”
“And a drunk and cash-strapped Finn,” Stephen said.
They’d picked for a few minutes when Cork noticed Waaboo, who was a dozen yards away, kneeling on the ground beside his bucket, staring straight ahead, his lips moving as if he were talking with someone. Then the little boy stood and came to his father, who was not far from Cork.
“Daddy, she’s lost,” Waaboo said.
“Who?” Daniel replied.
