Deep Down (I)

by Karen Harper

  He slapped the flap back down, then checked through Junior’s stash of food and clothing while the old man cursed and shouted. Nothing unusual in the clothes or cans, except that the shirts looked pressed and the cache of food wasn’t meant to last for long before it was replenished. The guy must have been back and forth to his house, only he hadn’t visited during Drew’s stakeout. Nothing was working out in this investigation. He just needed one little break—and breaking Junior might be it.

  “Pearl, let’s go in now!” Cassie yelled.

  The child had been playing quietly in the garden with Teddy and a doll her friend Sarah had loaned her while Cassie squeezed rainwater out of her moss on the line, just like she was wringing out clothes. If they hadn’t spent last night with Jessie, she’d have been here to get these inside before they got all soaked. No way the florists in Highboro or Lexington wanted sopping wet moss.

  “Pearl!”

  No answer. The girl had been real standoffish since she’d been sick, but then she’d been scolded bad for taking those herbs that had made her sick. Magic caves and magic writing, baloney! Sure, little girls had to have some fancies growing up, but one thing Cassie intended her daughter to learn was that the world was not the place you might wish it to be. But then again, she thought, recalling Tyler’s sweet words and kisses, maybe there were some happy-ever-after endings.

  Wiping her muddy hands on her apron, Cassie rounded the corner where Pearl had been playing. No Pearl. She must have gone into the house to the bathroom or to get something to eat.

  Cassie went inside. “Pearl? You in there? You sing out now. If this is a game, it’s not a bit funny, so you get right out here, my girl!”

  No answer, no sound.

  Cassie tore through the house, even looking in the forbidden closet. One thing Pearl never did was wander off. Not into the woods or out of the holler. But after that unwelcome visitor yesterday, she should have had another chat with her about not talking to strangers. She shouldn’t have passed the child’s father off as a salesman. She should have told Pearl there might be some sort of bear—a beast—loose in the forest, though she still wasn’t sure she believed Tyler’s scary photo one bit.

  Cassie ran outside, shading her eyes from the midafternoon sun. “Pearl! Pearl!”

  Panic made her heart thump harder than her exertions did. She ran this way, then that, all the way around the house. She looked in the cab and bed of the parked truck. She looked under the truck. “Pearl! Pear-r-r-l-l!”

  She almost collapsed with relief when she saw her, coming out of the forest, the doll and Teddy still in her arms. Cassie’s first instinct was to shake her and scream at her for scaring her to death, but the child had the strangest look on her face. Dazzled? Puzzled?

  Breathless, Cassie ran to her and simply asked, “What?”

  “I heard you calling, but…but that salesman was back. He whispered to me, but I told him to go away for you. I knew you were busy so I listened to him.”

  Cassie’s strength gave out; she fell to her knees, hugging Pearl hard. “What did he say—do?”

  “He said he’s not a salesman, that you were wrong. That he’s my friend, and he’s got a big surprise coming for me and you, too—Paris visits.”

  “What?” Cassie cried, setting Pearl back and gripping her shoulders so hard the child flinched.

  “He says tell you he’s going to get Paris visits to Florida for me where Disneyland is. But is Florida close to Paris?”

  Cassie glared at the forest, then stood and dragged Pearl so fast into the house that her feet almost left the ground. Inside, she bolted the door, then knelt before Pearl again. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?” she asked.

  “No—he’s really nice. Handsome, too, like a prince. He said I should ask you his name and who he really is.”

  The liar was so good at seduction, Cassie thought. Women, even little girls. So why did she have the icy-cold feeling he really hated women rather than loved them?

  She stood and ran into the back room, opened the old trunk, and dug under Big Bear for something else she’d locked up there. Her Daddy’s hunting rifle and—oh, yeah—a box of cartridges. Would this old thing even shoot? It smelled of mothballs as bad as the bearskin.

  “You call Sarah and ask her if you can come over for a while,” Cassie shouted to Pearl. “You remember her number. Hurry up now.”

  “But who is he?” she called from the other room. “He said he’s not magic and not an ogre or troll that lives in the forest.”

  Cassie whispered to herself, “He’s the big, bad wolf. Oh, Pearl, I’ve done such a bad job with you.” Then she said louder, “I’ll tell you later, honey. You just call Sarah’s house right now.”

  Whatever that traitor’s game was, Cassie thought as she shoved Big Bear back in place, at least she could translate his message Pearl had garbled. He might not have told the child he was her father in so many words, but he’d promised he was going to get “parent’s visits.” There was no way she’d allow that. He was deliberately tormenting her and threatening her. He’d tempted her when he was here last time, and she’d willingly given in. Now he was daring her to stop him at any cost. She’d had to give up a plan to poison him, but no way was he going to poison Pearl with his sweet-talking ways.

  Cassie wrapped the rifle and cartridges in an old hook rug and slammed the trunk on Big Bear’s wide-eyed stare.

  As soon as Jessie had concluded her first deal to buy Deep Down sang from Emmy’s brothers, Clint and Amos, and they trekked out the door and drove off, she flipped the front window Open sign over to Closed. The Enloe brothers had said they liked Ryan Buford well enough, even though he was more worldly than their “little” sister. She’d gotten that endorsement out of them as well as a fair price, she thought. Since the Enloe boys thought Ryan was, as they’d put it, a straight shooter, that meant what he’d told her about Vern was probably the truth. Besides, she’d had the feeling from the first that Vern had lied about not arguing with her mother over her rejecting his marriage proposal. The way he’d looked so emotional at the wake and funeral might suggest a guilty soul.

  As she hurried up the narrow wooden stairs under the Deep Down Museum sign, she realized she should have visited Vern’s displays long ago. But she knew people who had lived within sight of the Statue of Liberty who had never taken the ferry out to see it or Ellis Island, either.

  The stairs creaked. She hoped Vern was taking his time buying sang from the Widow McGillan. Crazy Creek was a ways out of town, on twisting, washboard roads, but she’d still have to hurry.

  She passed the closed door to what must be Peter Sung’s room when he stayed here, no doubt a huge step down from his Lexington home. Maybe she’d have time to search there, too, but only after checking with Drew. She was tempted to try the door to see if it was locked, but she wanted to check out the Siberian sang hunting costume Ryan had mentioned.

  The museum door stood open. She turned on the only power switch; the lights clicked on loudly in sequence, from nearest to farthest. The two rooms were quite bright, a good thing, because most items had typed cards with information about the displays. Although the glass cases and wooden floorboards looked clean, she sneezed twice. The place smelled of sang, maybe mold, age—and, somehow, danger.

  Jessie walked quickly through the first room about the history of the town itself. Pioneer artifacts, rifles, mannequins dressed in calicos, buckskins and coonskin hats. Vern seemed to favor lifelike tableaus. She noted one small corner area focused on the early Cherokees. Vern must have studied their customs. Could he have used some of his knowledge to make Seth look guilty? She’d have to look at that display later.

  The second larger room had a sign over the doorway, The History of Sang, Here and Beyond. A rather grand title for so small and crowded a space. She entered and scanned the room. Nearest to the entry were lots of sang samples in glassed-in cases and displays of various sang-digging tools. Drew had once said it would be impossible to compare the
size and pattern of Mariah’s head wound to all the poachers’ spades, but maybe he could start with these.

  As in the other room, glassed-in mannequins in various garb on slightly elevated platforms stared down at her. In the first display case, a stunning, crimson silk Chinese costume Peter might have donated dominated the case with cards telling about Imperial jen-shen. When she didn’t see a display with the “big, fierce-looking thing” Ryan had described, she went to the fourth display, an empty case that had only a very tall, sheet-draped male mannequin.

  She skimmed the series of printed cards for Display #4. Yes, this was where the “Siberian Ginseng Hunter” had been, but the costume was gone. Perhaps Vern had been using it lately.

  Leaning close, she read the explanation and description as carefully and quickly as she could. Her pulse pounded; her knees began to shake.

  The wild ginseng hunters of Siberia roamed the forests of Northeast Asia until at least the 1930s. With their characteristic oversized height and girth, they were dedicated to their task from infancy to old age, walking hundreds of miles through trackless wilds. To mark their passage, they left broken branches, so their “brothers” would know the area had already been explored.

  They lived wild and solitary lives, carried a long stick to part leaves and grass, and wore the distinctive clothing seen in this display: a leather apron to protect themselves from dew, a head covering of birch bark, which made their head look large and misshapen, and shoes of tarred animal skins. Badger skins sewn together hung behind them on a belt, which let them sit on wet ground, and they slung badger fur with dangling claws over their shoulders to protect themselves from rain.

  They viewed ginseng as sacred, the source of universal energy and invisible life, possessing a supernatural force. If anyone dared to steal it, the thief would be found dead with huge, blurred tracks and dead ginseng leaves around him. Although no murderer was ever caught, it’s believed the forest hunters smashed their victims’ skulls with their bone spades, and sometimes made ritual incisions on their faces with long, flexible knives they carried to cut roots from the ground or with the badger claws attached to their garb.

  Jessie realized she was on her knees before the case with her hands raised on the glass, as if she worshipped at some strange shrine. She had slid down as she’d read the cards and left sweaty, smeared handprints on the glass. She’d been holding her breath; now she gasped in air, panting like a trapped animal.

  Staring, horrified, at her own distorted reflection in the glass, she knew her mother’s murderer had to be Vern. He’d taken the idea and the costume from this case. He had been furious with her mother, stalked her, planned to kill her, but couldn’t face her, couldn’t bear to let her know it was him, so he’d worn the costume. Later, maybe when he was stalking Cassie because she’d seen her mother before her death and feared Mariah had told Cassie that Vern was angry with her, Tyler had caught him in a photo frame.

  But even before that, almost at her moment of death—maybe when her mother had seen the beast Vern had become in more ways than one—Jessie had psychically glimpsed him, too, somehow through her mother’s eyes. She had to get to Drew, tell him all this, tell him the costume was still missing.

  But as she scrambled to her feet, she realized where Vern might be keeping it. This was the fourth tableau—Display #4. Vern had those big boxes in his office closet labeled Sang #4.

  She tore out of the museum, thudded downstairs, into Vern’s office. She dragged over the closest chair so she could manage the big boxes. Badger fur hadn’t made sense before, but it did now. Vern had tried to put the blame on Seth by using animal claw marks instead of a sang-digging knife. He figured no one would realize it was badger claw marks instead of a bear’s. He’d tried to turn the town against Seth and someone—maybe even Vern, if he was quick enough—had burned down Seth’s house.

  The top box was heavier than she expected. She almost went off balance but managed to heft it onto Vern’s desk. It displaced air that blew his neat paper stacks awry, but she didn’t stop to rearrange them. As she lifted the big box lid, she gasped to see within distinctive grayish-reddish fur. The badger skin—no, a series of skins sewn together—were folded next to a long, double-edged knife. Worse, badger claws were still attached by the paws, just as with a bear rug.

  Evidence! Proof that Vern Tarver was a murderer! And the smell from the skins: it was so reminiscent of the strange scent she’d encountered in the Hong Kong ginseng market, which must actually have emanated from her nightmare of her mother’s death. She had to let herself remember all that again, because maybe the vision went even further. Instead of thrusting it away, she should let it come and maybe glimpse Vern in that costume.

  She lifted down and opened the next box: thick-soled shoes wrapped in some kind of oilskin and a hump-shaped hat made of tree bark, though it wasn’t birch. No wonder the creature seemed so tall and left blurred footprints. No doubt the other boxes held some sort of bodysuit and mask, maybe even the sang spade that had smashed her mother’s skull—perhaps Beth Brazzo’s, too. Surely, Vern had some motive for wanting to eliminate the power drink woman, too, but right now, they had to get him for her mother’s murder.

  Jessie was desperate to put these boxes in the trunk of her car before Vern returned, then get out of here to find Drew. Or should she put them back in place, then call Emmy to have her track Drew to get him to arrest Vern here with the proof on his property? No, she couldn’t stand to be near him now that she knew the truth.

  She gasped when she heard the front door—which she’d locked—open and close. Vern called out, “Jessie, I’m back. You okay? Why’s the door locked and the Closed sign out?”

  When she rushed to get the heavy boxes back up on the shelf, she dropped the top one. The badger skins spilled out on the floor as his footsteps crossed the front room and headed down the hall.

  Chapter 25

  25

  J essie ran out of Vern’s office to meet him in the hall. Trying to look calm, she stood in the middle of it to block him from going directly into his office, where he’d see the box open, the spilled badger skins and his once neatly stacked papers in disarray on his desk.

  “Oh, Vern, glad you’re back. I bought some sang from the Enloe brothers,” she said, forcing a smile, “but I got such a roaring headache I needed to take some aspirin and sit down for a couple of minutes, and my purse was in your office so—”

  “Sure, that’s fine. Wait till you see the grade A stuff I got from Addie McGillan,” he told her, giving a big wooden box a shake. It sounded loaded with roots. “She’s been hoarding them for her old age, as if it were a retirement fund in a bank. Man, Peter will want a couple of these babies for his precious root-in-a-bottle collection.”

  He took a step toward his office; her mind raced. It took everything she had not to scream at him that he murdered her mother, but he might attack her. She had to get the evidence to Drew, get Vern locked up.

  Then it hit her. She could lock him in the sang storeroom right behind him. “How about you put it in here, so I can take a look at it?” she suggested. “I saw how neat your desk is, and I’ll bet that sang’s dusty.” She unbolted and opened the storeroom door for him. With a nod, he carried the box in. Feeling both horrified and justified by what she had to do, Jessie slammed the door and shot the bolt.

  His voice came as muffled as it was mad. She hoped the single, small vent would not let him be heard outside. He pounded on the door, shouting her name. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” she made out as she threw her bag—her mother’s bag—over her shoulder, shoved the badger fur garment back into the open box, and carried it to her car.

  She put it in her trunk and went back for the other boxes. Again flipping the Closed sign to the outside, she looked up and down the street and sauntered to her car, though she wanted to run to its protection. She not only had the proof who killed her mother, but she had the murderer locked up! She had to get to Drew, bring him here, let him tak
e over before someone let Vern out. Thank God, it was only a short distance to the sheriff’s office. Even if he wasn’t there, Emmy could call him on his two-way.

  She was behind the wheel of her car before she saw a small, folded piece of paper jammed under her windshield wiper. Not Drew’s handwriting, she thought, so whose? She unlocked the door, leaned out and pulled the paper inside. Slamming the door, she locked herself inside before she unfolded the note. In large print, it read,

  Jessie: Sheriff and me are heading to the tree where we found Mariah’s body. I found more proof there of who killed her. He said that you should meet us at the old logging road. We’ll go in together.—Seth

  At least she knew where Drew was now. With her proof and whatever Seth must have found, they’d have an airtight case. She just hoped Vern would keep until she told Drew. Once Drew saw the costume in her trunk, he might even want to head back to town to arrest Vern right away.

  Trying not to speed the way she wanted to, thankful she didn’t pass any other cars on the road, Jessie headed for the old logging road entrance under Snow Knob.

  Cassie saw Drew’s police vehicle parked beside the road as she drove to drop off Pearl at Sarah’s house. It was still there on her way back into town. So he’d gone after Junior Semple, but evidently hadn’t found him yet. At least she knew he wouldn’t see her speeding. She was in a big hurry, only slowing down when she hit the Deep Down limits.

  She parked in front of the police station and rushed in. Emmy Enloe was there, but not Ryan. Why she’d thought he’d run right to Emmy after talking to Pearl, she wasn’t sure. Maybe she’d been afraid that his idea of parental visits would mean he’d be settling down with a new wife who could help him take care of a visiting child, that’s all. Pearl had sure enjoyed the time when Emmy had taken care of her yesterday.