by Karen Harper
“And?” he prompted. “Tell me the rest.”
“I thought—felt—someone was chasing me, when that was ridiculous. I ran back to the hotel and collapsed for hours—then your call woke me. The time zones are hard to figure, but I’m thinking that would have been around sunset here, the night she went missing.”
She walked ahead of him into the kitchen where he put the box on the table. He straightened, turned and put his gloved hands on her shoulders. Grateful, needful, she lifted her hands to grip his wrists, encased in the thin latex.
“So you’re thinking it was some kind of ESP from Mariah?” he asked. “Like she was in some kind of trouble right then? You’ve never had the mountain woman sixth sense, have you?”
“Never. I don’t really believe in it, even though my mother said her mother had that gift. I didn’t mean to sound crazy—I know we need hard facts.”
“I’m glad you told me,” he said, letting her go and pulling out a ladder-backed chair at the table for her. “If there’s anything else like that, let me know. But right now, let’s see if we can find something to really go on. I’d like us to check some of her deepest forest spots in a couple of hours, but I think it’s worth it to go through this stuff first. If you come across anything that seems even vaguely useful, tell me and I’ll write it down. Go ahead, Jess, okay?” he added when he saw her hesitate.
Why did she feel so afraid? She felt almost closed in again, as if a big, black box were shutting around her. Or a coffin with the thud, thud of soil hitting its lid. With a shudder, she dug into the jumble of papers and photos.
Chapter 6
6
“I never would have found this back road,” Tyler Finch told Cassie as they bounced along a rutted track in her old Ford truck.
“No offense, Mr. Finch, but even if you would have found it, that compact rental car wouldn’t get you back in where we’re going.”
“I’d like it if you’d call me Tyler.”
Pearl, squeezed in between them, piped up, “Finch is better ’cause it’s a real pretty bird. It crunches seeds in its pow-ful beak.”
“Pearl’s getting to be quite a reader,” Cassie said. “All right, I’ll call you Tyler and you call me Cassie, but Pearl has to mind her manners and call you Mr. Finch.”
“And I promise I won’t crunch any seeds,” he said.
Pearl found that funny. Her girl was warming up to this stranger fast, a good reminder for her mother to keep her distance. Poor Pearl, with no daddy—not one she knew, anyway. Shy as she was, she took to most men once she knew them. Pearl’s loss was even greater than her own, and another reason a certain man deserved to die.
“What’s this mountain ahead of us called?” Tyler asked.
“Big Blue, but the place we’re going for your first shots is right by Shrieking Peak.”
“Sounds haunted. Does a story go with that?”
“Not that I know of. When the wind blows, which is most of the time, it sounds like a woman screaming.”
“Your friend’s mother you were telling me about—”
“Mariah Lockwood.”
“Yes. Could she have wandered up into this area?”
“That’s one of the good things about working for you, Mr.—Tyler. We’re going to keep a good eye out for signs of her, as well as for pretty places for your photos. Mariah Lockwood wandered far and wide, that’s why it’s been so hellfire hard to find her. Oh, sorry for the cussing. Pearl, you just forget you heard that now.”
She parked the truck where the thick stands of oak and basswood began, and they hiked up toward the place she knew would not only suit Tyler Finch but awe him. Their pace was slow, because he didn’t seem used to the rough terrain and Pearl’s legs were still so short. Besides, might as well treasure their time together—the extra money, that is, ’cause he said he’d pay her each and every day.
“So,” she said, trying not to stare at him, “tell me more about your work.”
“There’s hard work and then there is joy work. Not that I don’t like my job, but I often have to go into the city—New York. It’s a bit too crowded and noisy for me, and I’m always fenced in by someone else’s ideas. For example, my assignment here is to get some photos of sites where TV ads for a power drink could be shot later—with live people.”
“Better’n dead ones. Ginseng power drinks?”
“Right. I’d like some really winsome ads, but we’ll probably have pro athletes hiking or rafting around here.”
Cassie wasn’t sure what winsome meant, but it must have something to do with winning. She nodded to encourage him.
“Our client puts caffeine and ginseng in their liquid sports aids,” he explained. “G-Man and G-Woman Drinks. Bailey and Keller, my advertising firm, helps a client build a brand name and tell their story.”
“Tell their story,” she repeated. “That’s important, I reckon, even for things, let alone for people.”
“Someday, Cassie,” he said, stopping and turning to face her, “will you tell me your story?”
She shrugged but smiled. “Not much to tell. Will you tell me yours then?”
“Yeah,” Pearl said with an impish grin. “Like you have to go first!”
He smiled at both of them, then got serious again. “On paper, my story is not important. I plead guilty to being an artistic workaholic unhappily wedded to the corporate world. Divorced, no kids, not much family left but some cousins—one who lives in Highboro, so I know the general area and love it. I make a good salary, but that doesn’t fulfill me. The joy work I mentioned is my own project, a book about Appalachia, mostly pictures, some text.”
“So these photos you want are for both your hard work and joy work?”
Their gazes snagged and held. The wind ruffled his short, sun-struck hair. He looked so wholesome—winsome—kind of like he belonged here and yet was some sort of alien invader. Don’t do this, Cassie told herself. Don’t go feeling all shaky about this man just ’cause he looks like that and talks to you real heartfeltlike.
“Exactly,” he said when she’d forgotten what she’d asked and Pearl tugged at her hand. “Are we almost there? I think I hear the shrieking woman and something else—a roar.”
“It’s not a monster, so don’t worry!” Pearl put in.
Cassie thought of Mariah again, lost or hurt in these parts somewhere. Had Mariah called for help but there was no one to hear? Or had someone hurt her—or worse? Tyler was staring at her again, and Pearl was yanking her along.
“That roar’s Indian Falls,” Cassie said, as the world seemed to rotate back into place again. She had to keep shoving strands of her long red hair out of her eyes. “By the way, there’s a Cherokee man lives ’round here you might like to meet if you want good stories for your book. He says his people believe waterfalls and large trees can capture your soul, and that the woods are a sacred but scary place.”
Even when they climbed to the crest of the open hillside and Cassie pointed toward Big Blue’s massive gray-and-purple shoulders shrugging off the crashing waters of the falls, Tyler Finch kept looking at her for a long moment.
“This takes my breath away,” he said as he finally turned to see the sights stretched out before them.
“I feel like we didn’t find a darned thing,” Jessie told Drew as they headed for Mariah’s door. She’d added one of her mother’s jackets and a pair of hiking boots to her jeans and sweatshirt. They had found no clue about where to start looking for a needle in this massive haystack of trees and hollows and hills.
Jessie’s feet and spirits were dragging now. Earlier, she’d been on a roller-coaster ride of emotions as she’d searched through her mother’s things in her metal box. The deed to this land, records of income tax returns. A large, dried ginseng plant—a five-pronger—pressed between pieces of wax paper had somehow gotten stuck in the big envelope with her parent’s marriage license. There had been old school photos of herself, skinny and gawky. “Man, you have changed!” Drew had said, l
ooking over her shoulder. They had also found faded pictures of her parents in their courting days, a few of her father she’d never seen.
Also, copies of past ginseng counts, which had been pulled from another large envelope, then half-stuffed back in. But to their dismay, nothing hinted at particular sang counting sites, past or present. In haste, had her mother pulled what she needed from this envelope, then thrust the rest back in?
Jessie could tell Drew was upset, too, though he promised they’d spend days looking for signs of Mariah if they had to. His words echoed in Jessie’s head and heart. Signs, as if her mother had left a message behind, but wasn’t around herself anymore…
“What’s this behind the door?” Drew asked as he opened it for her to go outside ahead of him. He reached down to pick up a calendar that was wedged on its side, standing upright against the wall.
“Oh, a calendar I gave her for Christmas,” she told him as he handed it to her. “I thought she’d like all the photos of the flowers for each month. It must have been tacked on the wall behind the door and got bumped off.”
“Check it to see if she listed places she was going to count sang.”
She flipped back a page to Mariah’s major counting month of August and skimmed the entries. Vern Tarver’s name was listed about twice a week with the name of restaurants in Highboro. Mariah’s scrawling handwriting recorded a church covered-dish supper to raise money for Widow Winchester. “Look,” she said, pointing at a Wednesday in August. “This doesn’t say Sang but Sung—Peter Sung’s name!”
“Your hunch about talking to him sounds right on. I’ll have to check if he was in town then. Anything under the first few September dates?”
She flipped to the current month. Since her mother had disappeared on the fourth, not much was filled in but for Vern’s name—this time crossed off heavily, jaggedly, on the third. On the fourth, scribbled in light pencil, was Semples OK.
“Does that say samples?” Drew asked, reading it upside-down. “Maybe Peter Sung wanted some samples of wild ginseng to know the quality he could expect to buy this year.”
“No, see—the S is capitalized. Semples.”
“Junior and Charity Semple? They’re the only Semples in the area, and he grows raised sang up in the woods above his place. But would she count sang that’s not wild but cultivated?”
“I’m pretty sure she always kept an eye on his crop—technical name, virtually wild sang. The crop’s health is a valid indicator since, once he plants the seeds, Mother Nature takes over. He used to have a couple acres of sang, scattered throughout the woods above his house.”
“It’s worth a try, a place to start. And that notation is on the day she disappeared.”
“You’re sure she got that far—that is, left the house that day and wasn’t somehow taken from here?” she asked.
“A couple of people spotted her walking along the highway that morning—come to think of it, in the direction of the Semples’. I’ll go check on this at their place.”
“You?” she challenged, stepping ahead and turning to face him as he tried to pass her to head out the door. She raised her chin to look him in the eye. “I thought we were working together on this.”
“Jess, you remember Junior Semple. Believe me, he’s gotten more cantankerous and off-the-wall over the years.”
“Is he the one who tied copperhead snakes around his sang patch?”
“No, but he’s paranoid about poachers. He’s been in trouble before for his belief that the best defense is a good offense. I’ll take you with me whenever I need help finding a sang site, but not out to the Semples’.”
They faced each other squarely in the doorway, half in, half out. She didn’t budge. “I realize the man used to be trigger-happy,” she conceded, “but he might tell you more if I were there. It would be like a daughter just looking for her mother with your help, not some official investigation. You’d probably spook him, now that you’re sheriff here.”
“I don’t want you getting hurt. You should be here, in case word comes about Mariah’s whereabouts.”
“You mean I’m allowed to stay here now?”
“Yes, but don’t make this—”
“Difficult? It is, Drew! I’m going with you. Please, or else you can just lock me up in your jail cell!”
He opened his mouth to say something else, then just shook his head and raked his fingers through his hair. “All right. You just might be of help. But if Junior pulls anything, you do exactly what I say.”
“Sir, yes, sir!”
He cocked his big head and squinted down at her. “You been around marines, ma’am? Then you know the chain of command is not something to mock or ignore. Let me have that calendar,” he said, taking it from her and glaring down at it instead of her. “It may just be our first piece of evidence, not only because of Semples being listed here. Her crossing out of Vern Tarver’s name, after this long string of dates, looks really angry. And if she was upset, maybe he was, too.”
No one answered Drew’s “Hello!” or knock at the Semples’ one-story clapboard house back in Crooked Creek Hollow. Jessie hadn’t been here for years, but the place boasted a typical scattering of buildings—not as ramshackle as she recalled—with deep forests hunkered above. Actually, the house looked newly painted, so maybe raised sang had paid for that. Her eyes took in the chicken coop with no chickens, the old rundown, roofless barn, sturdy smokehouse, and a work shed, all strung up a narrowing valley. Tombstones like broken teeth guarded a small family graveyard, the kind not allowed anymore. She couldn’t read the dates on the mossy limestone markers, but the pioneers buried here had probably known Daniel Boone and Seth Bearclaws’s ancestors, when all of this territory was their hunting ground.
“You got any memories about where Junior’s sang patches are?” Drew asked her in a low voice. He kept shifting his narrowed stare, especially up into the deep shadows under the trees where a ragged dirt path zigzagged upward.
“No, but the patches will be on the northern exposure side of a gully, steep hillside or cove. Ginseng loves its privacy and leaf litter intact. Maybe in a woodlot with a beech or maple canopy overhead and maidenhair ferns and goldenseal to tip us off. I’ll spot it if we walk up in there a ways. See, you do need me.”
He turned and gave her a look that made her knees go weak. She hadn’t meant to goad him. Was he just ticked off, or was that fierce look something else? He put a finger to his lips to signal silence as they went on.
After about a five-minute walk, they heard something before they saw anyone. A thud, crunch, thud, crunch. Someone digging. Maybe digging sang. Though Jessie had been leading, Drew seized her wrist and pulled her back behind him.
“Me first, now,” he whispered as he unsnapped the holster on his belt and pulled out his gun.
Drew noticed a couple of .22 caliber casings on the ground, the choice of rifle shells around here. Junior was one of the few men in the area who didn’t keep coonhounds, so he was grateful they didn’t have to fend those off.
Up ahead, on the breeze, he heard the digging sounds again. Ever since they’d opened that old, black box of Mariah’s, stashed in her closet, he’d had a foreboding feeling that they hadn’t found her because someone had buried her. Talk about Jess maybe having a sixth sense on this! The only capital case he’d worked over in Highboro was when a man killed, cut up and buried his wife in cardboard boxes in about ten different places. That whole investigation still haunted him.
Drew realized whoever was making the noise would hear them soon. Too many dried leaves on the forest floor and this path now, even though the trees hadn’t shed this year’s bounty yet. He’d love to get the drop on whoever it was, but it was probably Junior. He didn’t want any trouble with Jess in tow, so he decided to sing out.
“Junior? You here ’bouts? Drew Webb with Jessie Lockwood. Need a word with you!”
All was silent. Then Junior appeared to their side, not where the sounds had been. But Drew had seen many a
mountain man move through the woods softer than a panther.
“Hey, now,” Junior said. He had a rifle in his arms, at ease, not cocked. “Don’t you know better’n sneaking up on someone like that?”
“That’s why I yelled for you, like we did down below.”
“Jessie,” Junior said with a nod of his worn, backward baseball cap as he shuffled out from behind the tree. “Any word on Mariah?”
“That’s why we’re here, Junior,” Drew said before she could answer. At least she seemed to be letting him take the lead. “Mariah had a notation on her daily calendar that she was coming up here the day she disappeared. So, did she get here—Tuesday, that is?”
Junior narrowed his eyes under his thatch of thick, gray eyebrows as if he had to consider his answer. Though he was probably about forty-five, his shaggy, salt-and-pepper hair made him look at least a decade older. He was tall and wiry but with big shoulders. He had a pronounced lazy eye, which always made it seem he was looking two places at once, both at you and past you, as if someone else might be sneaking up behind. Years ago, Drew and his brothers used to laugh about that cross-eyed look, but now it just made him nervous.
“Yeah, Mariah stopped by that day,” Junior finally said after he made both of them swear not to talk about his sang patches to others. “She always does a count of a patch of my raised-up sang. To compare almost wild to the real wild, she says.”
“So,” Drew said, holstering his gun slowly, but leaving its cover unsnapped, “where and when on Tuesday, the fourth?”
“Right after dinnertime, ’bout one o’clock. Set a piece with Charity and me, had some Arizona iced tea Charity bought ’cause it has sang in it that could be our’n. Then Charity went to see her mother in Highboro, so Mariah counted the spot where I was ready to dig.”
“Would you mind showing us that spot?”
“But I’m telling you, not to breathe no word of any of this layout. Got me a friend other side of Big Blue guarded his forest sang spot like the dickens, but the one weekend he went away all summer, poachers hit and cleared him out of a $200,000 plus harvest. Don’t trust no one,” he said and turned away to hack and spit behind him. “Still, I know you got to look for Mariah.”