Where There’s a Will

by Beth Pattillo

Kate rose and helped Ellen to her feet. “Can you walk?”

  “Yes. No harm done, other than to my adrenal glands. I think they’ve gotten their workout for the year.”

  “Mine too,” Kate agreed.

  Together, they carefully picked their way back across the room to the outside door. Once they reached the steps, Kate breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, that’s about enough excitement for one day, I think. Should we head home?”

  To her surprise, Ellen shook her head. “I’m fine, really. More scared than hurt. And as long as we’re here, I’d like to look around.” She grinned. “I’ll try to stay out of harm’s way for the rest of the day.”

  “Do you want to head on up to the ironworks?” Kate asked. If Ellen wanted to keep going, Kate was game.

  “Sure,” Ellen said.

  They returned to the main road and followed it up the ridge. A few hundred yards ahead, they stumbled into a clearing that contained the blast furnace and the remains of some other outlying buildings.

  The air had become eerily still. Kate stepped forward as if she were as worried about dislodging ghosts as she was of encountering wayward reptiles.

  “It’s amazing.” Kate couldn’t think of any other word as her gaze took in the height of the blast furnace. It was almost as tall as the trees that surrounded the clearing.

  Piles of slack rimmed the area, the natural result of smelting the ore. Strangely enough, the abandoned ironworks had an almost holy feel about it, as if it were home only to its creator and the few wild animals that lived in its shadow. Kate could understand how Lela Harrington had been able to paint it in its original state, before the coming of man, even though she’d never actually seen it that way.

  Ellen walked ahead of Kate, pausing here and there to look more closely at the remains of the surrounding structures. “Those were the kilns,” Ellen said, pointing to two brick structures that had started to cave in. “And the puddling furnace was there.” She indicated the remains of a tall chimney that looked as if it was teetering on the edge of collapse.

  “I wondered what those other buildings were in the second painting,” Kate said. She hadn’t realized how complicated it must have been to mine the iron ore and refine it.

  “There’s a grist mill and a saw mill too...over that way.” Ellen nodded toward the ridge beyond the clearing. “Not quite enough room here for everything.”

  “I can see now why they needed a town,” Kate said. “It must have taken a lot of employees to keep the works running.”

  “Most came from around the ridge. They lived in the hollows and climbed up here to work every morning.”

  Kate marveled at the hardiness of the folks who had made the ironworks hum on a daily basis. Theirs had not been an easy life.

  “It’s a shame people don’t get a chance to see this,” she said. “So much history.”

  Ellen nodded. “I often imagine it as it must have been back then, bustling with people and horses and with the smell of the furnaces on the breeze.”

  Kate looked around the clearing, her expression troubled. She hated to add to Ellen’s burden, but Ellen needed to know about Oliver’s plans for the property.

  “I did learn something important when I talked with Oliver,” Kate began. “But not about the mystery.”

  “What was that?” Ellen raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun as she looked toward Kate.

  “He’s planning to take advantage of Carol’s majority interest in the property and sell it, but not to the state as a wildlife preserve. He intends to sell it to a paper company.”

  Ellen’s face fell. “Oh no.”

  “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”

  “A paper company? They’ll turn it into one of those plantations, where they only plant one kind of tree.”

  “He did mention the wildlife preserve. Maybe he could be persuaded to change his mind.” Kate doubted the possibility even as she spoke the words.

  Ellen shook her head. “He’ll never do that. It’s bad enough that Harrington has been abandoned all these years, but after a paper company gets its hands on the property, I doubt anyone will want to come up here for a long time.”

  Kate could see the other woman sinking into bleak thoughts. Between the floorboard accident and this news, it had been a distressing morning. She glanced at her watch.

  “You know, it’s almost lunchtime, and I’m starving. Why don’t we go back to the car and grab our picnic basket?”

  Ellen’s face brightened a little. “Okay. And I can show you the big house.”

  “The big house?”

  “The family home. My great-grandfather built the house here in town. It’s where my grandmother summered. It’s closer to where we parked at the other end of the town.”

  They made their way back to Kate’s black Honda Accord, its sleek modern design quite out of place in its current surroundings. Kate retrieved the basket from the trunk and followed Ellen in the opposite direction this time. They rounded a curve in the rough road, and there was the house, an imposing three-story Victorian that didn’t look much different from Oliver’s house in Pine Ridge. Except, of course, that this house hadn’t been painted or repaired in a number of years. And as things looked now, there was no hope it ever would be.

  Kate looked at Ellen, whose feelings were written all over her face. Even in its rundown condition, the home—and the town—clearly held a special place in her heart.

  The big house, as Ellen called it, certainly must have impressed the employees of Harrington Ironworks. Ellen led the way up the stairs to the wide wraparound porch. The house was in much better shape than the other buildings, most likely due to the fact that Ellen’s grandmother had continued to live there in the summertime until the family moved her to a nursing home.

  “I’ve missed this place,” Ellen said, trailing her fingers along the porch railing.

  Kate turned her gaze away from the house and took in a breathtaking vista. Perched upon a small rise, the house afforded a panoramic view of the valley below.

  “I can see why your grandmother didn’t want to abandon this place,” Kate said. “This view is worth a mint.”

  “Let’s eat our lunch here,” Ellen suggested. She eyed the dusty porch. “I didn’t think to bring a blanket.”

  “We can sit on the steps,” Kate suggested.

  They swept the leaves and twigs from the steps with their feet and settled down to enjoy their lunch and the extraordinary surroundings.

  “Don’t let me forget to take pictures before we leave,” Kate said as she poured coffee from the thermos into two cups.

  Ellen unwrapped the plate of sandwiches and opened the plastic containers of fruit salad.

  “You’d better have something to show Oliver, just in case, huh?” Ellen grinned.

  “Plus, I need them for my art-history project. The professor’s really tough,” Kate teased. “I’ll take all the extra credit I can get.”

  Ellen shook her head and laughed. “Am I really that bad?”

  “I think some of the freshmen are pretty intimidated.”

  “They’re supposed to be,” she said, a teasing glint in her eye. “This chicken salad is delicious by the way.”

  “It really should be on a fresh croissant,” Kate said, “not on one of these frozen ones.” She frowned at her sandwich. “One thing we could use in Copper Mill is a good bakery.”

  “Pine Ridge too,” Ellen said. “I miss all the little mom-and-pop stores from my childhood. SuperMart just isn’t the same.

  “What I really wish is that I could make this place here come alive again,” she went on, nodding toward the rutted road that led back to the center of town. “But barring that, I just want to see it preserved. If we can’t save the town, maybe we can at least save the trees.”

  Kate couldn’t have agreed more. “To do that, we’ve got to find that will. Does anything you’ve seen jog your memory about the paintings? Any thoughts about clues?”

  Ellen sh
ook her head. “I’ve been racking my brains, but nothing stands out. I almost wish we’d brought my painting and those photos with us.”

  Kate groaned. “I could have brought the photos, of course. But I was worried about the potential damage the outside exposure might cause to your painting. Plus, I figured if we don’t have all five paintings—”

  “Exactly. My grandmother was very specific about my needing all five.” Ellen scooped up another bite of fruit salad. “All the clues are in the paintings themselves. We might be able to spot the clues if we can just figure out how to find those paintings.”

  Ellen’s gaze met Kate’s, a look of urgency in her eyes. “Oliver has to be stopped, Kate. We can’t let him sell this land to a paper company. Now that I’ve seen the town and the ironworks again, I’m even more determined than ever to find my grandfather’s will. Oliver can’t act unilaterally if I can prove my claim to the property.”

  “I’m going to do everything I can to help,” Kate assured her. “Now that I’ve seen this place, I have a much better feel for the history these paintings portray. I’ll talk with my friend Livvy to see if she can help us track down your cousins.”

  “Thank you, Kate. I know I keep saying that, but I want you to know how grateful I am.”

  “I’m glad to help. Let’s finish off this lunch and then take one last look around.”

  AS THEY MADE THEIR WAY through the town one last time, Kate took photographs and kept her eyes peeled for anything that might help her find the solution to the mystery at hand, but nothing stood out. She paused when they came to the ironworks again, and then she walked a little farther up the ridge on a small trail that led up into the woods.

  “Where does this go?” she called to Ellen over her shoulder.

  “There’s a lookout point just a little farther on.” Ellen joined her, and they followed the trail a short distance until it emerged at the top of a rocky crag that jutted out over the ridge.

  “There.” Kate pointed to the valley below on the oppo-site side of the ridge from where they’d come. “Is that the interstate?”

  “It is.” Ellen snapped her fingers. “I just remembered. This was the route our great-grandfathers wanted to use to build that railroad spur.”

  Kate eyed the steep incline dubiously. “How could that have ever worked?”

  “They wanted to build a narrow-gauge railroad, like the one in Chattanooga. But it would have been quite expensive.”

  “And that would have kept the ironworks competitive?”

  “Yes, but it would have taken years, maybe decades, to recoup the investment.”

  Looking down the side of the ridge, Kate could see why Ellen’s ancestor had resisted the idea. The task seemed impossible, even in these modern times. She couldn’t imagine how difficult—and how costly—it might have been more than a century ago.

  “So close and yet so far, huh?” Kate asked as they watched the cars and trucks moving along the interstate. From that height, they looked like toys.

  “Seems to be the story of the Harrington clan,” Ellen said ruefully, then she looked at her watch. “I guess we’d better be getting back. I didn’t mean to take up so much of your time.”

  “Nonsense! It was my pleasure.”

  Ellen’s expression looked a little too eager to Kate. She liked Ellen, but she still wasn’t entirely comfortable with her past—and maybe even present—affection for Paul.

  Ellen stopped and looked at her. “Kate, all I can say is that Paul is a lucky man.”

  Kate simply smiled in response and bit back the twinge of guilt she felt for her thoughts.

  She also knew that she was a lucky woman. She just needed to remember that.

  Chapter Eight

  The next time when Paul arrived for the chamber of commerce meeting, he knew what to expect. In fact, he’d spent the previous week doing a little research of his own, preparing for his second encounter with the mayor and his cronies.

  “Afternoon, LuAnne,” he said to the waitress as he walked through the diner to the corner booth where Lawton once again held court. “Just coffee today,” he added. He was determined to keep a clear head. And who could concentrate on anything else while devouring a piece of the diner’s heavenly pecan pie?

  The mayor, John Sharpe, and Fred Cowan had already arrived, but Paul saw no sign of Clifton Beasley in his ever-present gray coveralls.

  “Lawton.” Paul nodded to the mayor, then shook hands with John and Fred. “Good to see you, gentlemen.”

  “Good to see you too, Preacher,” Lawton answered, then slurped his coffee before adding, “Guess we didn’t run you off last time.”

  “Was that what you were up to?” Paul joked. “You’ll have to try harder than that, I’m afraid, if you want to get rid of me.”

  The men chuckled, and Paul knew he had been tentatively accepted by the group. He wondered if they’d feel so warmly toward him after hearing the ideas he planned to bring to the table that afternoon.

  “Where’s Clifton?” Paul asked. He’d never known the older man to be late for any event that included the certainty of food and drink.

  “He had to drive his wife down to a specialist in Chattanooga,” Fred answered. “Wouldn’t hurt if you’d say some extra prayers for her, Paul. Her heart’s been acting up again.”

  “Of course.” At moments like this, Paul was reminded that despite a man’s claim to power or influence—even as limited as those things might be in a town like Copper Mill—there was no escaping human frailty. These fellows might be the movers and shakers of their small town, but it didn’t mean they weren’t as vulnerable as anyone else.

  “Not much of an agenda today,” Lawton said after LuAnne had brought Paul’s coffee. “Thought somebody might be leasing that empty store on Sweetwater Street, but it turned out to be nothing.”

  “How long has it been since we had a ribbon cutting around here?” Fred Cowan’s brow creased. “Not many new start-ups these days.”

  Paul nodded in agreement but kept his mouth shut. Better for those observations to come from a well-established member of the group. Maybe he’d planted a few seeds at the last meeting.

  John fiddled with the spoon he’d used to stir his coffee. “We’ve been over this before. Not enough people to attract new business, and not enough businesses to keep folks here.”

  Silence fell on the corner booth, punctuated by the clank and clatter of silverware and plates around the diner. Lawton glanced at Paul, and Paul realized that this was the moment to put his ideas on the table, so to speak.

  “I had a couple of questions after the last meeting,” he began.

  Paul knew better than to start off spouting his own opinions. He’d learned that as a young pastor in his first church board meeting, and he had never forgotten the lesson. Curiosity was always more well received than anything that might be perceived as criticism.

  “Ask away.” Lawton leaned back with his arms crossed over his chest, ready to pontificate.

  “I’m wondering what brings most new people to Copper Mill. Do you gentlemen have a sense of what’s the biggest draw?”

  All three men looked puzzled for a moment. Paul could see he’d stumped them, and that was only his first question.

  “Never gave much thought to it,” Lawton said at last. “People tend to leave more than arrive.”

  “If we get new people,” John Sharpe said, “it’s not to work in Copper Mill. Most homeowners’ policies I write are for folks who are retiring to the area. Or maybe working over in Pine Ridge at the SuperMart.”

  “What about new industry?” Paul asked. “How long has it been since anyone seriously looked at putting a plant here?”

  “I don’t know,” Fred Cowan said with a frown. “I had to let one of my part-time clerks go this week. Just not enough for her to do. Most of the time, I can get by with just me and the little gal who’s my pharmacy technician. It’s been too long since there was new development here—”

  “Now, wait just
a minute here,” Lawton interrupted, his cheeks turning red. “I see what you’re getting at, Paul. But you don’t know the whole story. Quality of life is just as important as bringing in new business. Like we told you last week, we’ve seen what happened over in Pine Ridge when those chain stores came in. Franchise restaurants too. You can’t separate out the growth from the effect on already-established merchants. We don’t want to risk losing people like Loretta”—he nodded toward the kitchen—“or John or Fred here. Sometimes you have to protect what you already have.”

  “I agree.” Paul nodded for emphasis. “We don’t want to lose any of the local businesses. I’m just wondering how many everyday people—especially people outside of Harrington County—even know about Copper Mill. We’re close to the interstate and have good schools, and as you say, the quality of life can’t be beat.”

  “We had some brochures printed up one time,” John said. “Not sure whatever happened to them.”

  “I think they’re in my basement,” Fred said. “Who were we going to give them out to? I can’t remember.”

  Paul bit his lip to keep from chuckling. These men had good intentions, but like the leaders of so many small towns, they were in a quandary. How could they grow their town without sacrificing the qualities that made it so special? Paul knew there were no easy answers, but he also knew that nothing was impossible with God.

  “Have you ever considered creating a Web site?” Paul asked. He’d decided beforehand that the suggestion was innocuous enough to start off with. “When folks are looking to move or small businesses are scouting locations, I’d think the Internet would be one of the first places they’d look.”

  John nodded. “I just had my nephew set up a site for the insurance agency. It’s brought in some extra business, but not a lot. I don’t think it would be the answer to our problem.”

  “I agree, but it might be a start. Do you think your nephew would consider developing a site for Copper Mill?”

  “That isn’t in the budget,” Lawton said with a growl. “Every dollar of our promotion line item has already been accounted for.”

  Paul took a sip of his coffee. Yes, the budget was accounted for, he was sure, but somehow buying T-shirts for the golf scramble or signs for the craft extravaganza didn’t seem like the best use of those dollars.