Morgan James - Promise McNeal 02 - Quiet Killing

by Morgan James

  I nodded and asked, “Why do you need a heavy duty flashlight and extra batteries in the daytime?”

  “I don’t know,” Mac answered. “What difference does it make? You want to know the rest?”

  “Sure.”

  “We think the rope the convict hogtied you with and the knife were also in the backpack.”

  “I figured as much, since the knife was the kind contractors use to cut vinyl flooring.”

  Mac cocked his head to one side. He seemed to be thinking about what he was about to say. “One other item was probably in the pack when he started his hike.” Daniel and I waited. A few seconds passed before Mac finished his statement. “We think he was struck from behind while he was sitting down on a deadfall pine tree. There was a paperback book on the ground beside him. Like as not, he was reading the book, resting maybe, and someone sneaked up and killed him. But that is just my country sheriff opinion. Those big shot state boys may come to a different conclusion, so don’t hold me to nothing I say right now about how he died.”

  “What was the book?”

  Daniel groaned with frustration, then snapped at me, “Good God, Promise. What difference does it make what the guy was reading? Just leave it be.”

  I huffed myself up to my entire five-foot-four height. “If it doesn’t matter what he was reading, then it won’t matter if Mac tells me, now will it?”

  “Lord-a-mighty Daniel. Let me tell her so she’ll leave us alone. I don’t remember the title, but it was about the outlaw, Lewis Redmond.”

  Did Mac say, Lewis Redmond? I was sure that was the name mentioned in Margaret Connell’s letter about my great grandmother Reba. I do not believe in coincidences. Just about now, Sherlock Holmes would have said that the plot thickens. I didn’t say anything. Both Allen boys already suspected I was jumping to conclusions. I’d wait until I knew more.

  14

  The Perry County Historical Society is housed in a narrow, red brick building. It was built around the turn of the century—the twentieth century. It began life as a dry goods store, selling everything a family in 1900 might want, or could afford. Today, the original twin oak and glass display cases and split oak open shelves, nearly reaching the ceilings, exhibit local artifacts—everything from a black leather surgeons bag, dated 1878, belonging to the first family doctor to practice in Perry County, to authentic Cherokee tools and household items. There is also a sizeable collection of rocks embedded with local rubies, garnets, and quartz. Rocks are important to this part of Western North Carolina where tourists swarm—well, maybe not swarm, but they do come—hoping to dig that one prize ruby that will make their vacation memorable, and perhaps even profitable.

  There is plenty to look at in the society’s museum. There is even a diminutive period mannequin wearing a civil war dress and bonnet. Local residents call her Miss Mary May. Since her face is frozen in a perpetual demure smile, it is thought she approves of the name.

  Susan and I shared an iron bench, perched in a small, carefully landscaped park adjacent to the Society. Here the dilapidated wood carcass of an abandoned dentist’s office was razed by the city, then donated to the Historical Society. By late May, red Knockout roses and golden daylilies would be resplendent, but now, in late March, a cold wind cut through my stylish wool blazer, and agitated budding leaves struggling to leave winter behind. In the western sky, a nasty black blanket dragged rain in our direction. We sipped hot chocolate, and waited for the Swiss clock atop the courthouse to complete the three o’clock chimes.

  Susan picked up her sentence after the last bong. “Geez, I already think of you as being someone able to take care of herself. I mean really, haven’t you had a career and done pretty much what you thought was best for yourself for a long time? And practically raised your son by yourself— without a man in your life? Why are you asking me this?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I still have a headache. Pain makes me depressed. It’s something my friend Brooks said to me recently— that I’m getting older and need a good man to take care of me. But being taken care of seems like a trade off to me. I like being my own boss.”

  Susan gave me a suspicious look. “Does this have anything to do with Daddy wanting to get married? Cause if it does, I know him better than anybody, and he doesn’t want to make you dependent on him. Hasn’t your generation ever heard of a partnership between people who love each other?”

  I know my face was flushed. This was too embarrassing. I should not have brought up Brook’s phone call. My generation? I had to think for a moment. What was my generation? I rarely expended valuable time thinking about that term. Though, Susan could have a point. “Well, now that you bring it up, my generation does sort of straddle the June Cleaver and Erica Jong realities. Maybe the partnership concept is new territory…”

  Susan looked puzzled. “Now who is Erica Jong? Should I know her?”

  Like I said, I shouldn’t have brought up Brook’s phone call. “Let’s change the subject.”

  Susan seemed happy to oblige. “Okay. Except for the snarky remarks about you staying off the mountain, did Mr. Enloe say anything about what happened up there? The escaped convict and all?”

  “No, nothing. I think Sheriff Mac was probably right about Fletcher being more ornery than usual. I’d probably be ill myself, if I’d had to shoot a man to rescue some careless woman who didn’t need to be where she was.”

  “Oh pooh,” Susan said, and gave me an indigent scowl. “I can’t believe you’re buying into all that crap about it being your fault. You know better than that. Like a person can’t take a walk in the woods?”

  “I know. But it is Fletcher Enloe’s land. And he did tell me to stay off it.”

  Susan crossed her legs and hunched her shoulders against the wind. “Yeah, that’s another thing. Mr. Enloe sure does seem to be heavily invested in you not poking around Fire Mountain. I gotta wonder why. You know how he lost those two fingers of his, don’t you?”

  “I think your daddy told me a Ford engine block fell on his hand and severed the fingers.” I shuddered. “God, that must have been horrible.”

  “Yeah, a Ford engine for that hot rod in his garage. The same one he and his brothers used to run illegal whiskey from here to Atlanta, and wherever. Course that was back in the late forties. Way before my time. You don’t suppose he’s back to making moonshine up on Fire Mountain? Maybe that’s why he doesn’t want you up there.”

  I thought about that prospect for a few seconds. “No, I don’t think so. I think Fletcher is too old and too wrapped up in his EBay auction business to resurrect his bootlegging days. I see the UPS truck in and out of his property at least three times a week. Business must be very good. Besides, your daddy said Fletcher was a tripper, the deliveryman for the whiskey. Trippers didn’t actually make the stuff. At least I don’t think they did. Still, now that you mention it, he does seem to be heavily invested in keeping me off the mountain.”

  With all the hot chocolate gone, Susan was eager to complete our errand and get back into the warm car. “Okay, so tell me again why we are going to the Historical Society.”

  “Because I don’t believe in coincidences. Fletcher was involved in moonshine years ago. Mac found a book about an outlaw bootlegger, Lewis Redmond, near Shane Long’s body. Your MaMa Allen gave me a letter with a reference to a person with the same name as that bootlegger.

  “I went to the library this morning. They have one book about Lewis Redmond. The librarian told me it hadn’t been checked out for two years, until last week. She won’t say who checked it out, but when I asked if it was Shane Long, I swear her pupils dilated. Sure sign I hit pay dirt. Has to be him. She suggested I check the books for sale at the Historical Society, because, as she remembers, Lewis Redmond had family near Bryson City. She also said he conducted his whiskey business in this area for years, until the federal agents arrested him. Apparently, Redmond was some sort of local outlaw hero. And guess what? I went home and Googled Lewis Redmond. His wife’s name was
Adeline, and they lived near Seneca, South Carolina, for a long time. Just like in the letter Mrs. Allen gave me.”

  “Okay. I gotcha. Let’s go scope out the books. It’s freezing out here.”

  We left the historical society building with Bruce E. Stewart’s slim but informative book on Lewis Redmond, and without the thirty-five dollars I had squirreled away in my purse. I was now a paying member of the Perry County Historical Society. Not a bad thing for an interloping flatlander from Atlanta who wants to fit in with her mountain neighbors.

  Instead of going home and curling up by the fire with the Lewis Redmond book, Susan and I decided to surprise Mrs. Allen with a visit. I couldn’t get the memory of her and that elfin little girl out of my mind, and I think Susan wanted to hear, first hand, if her MaMa had been on Fire Mountain the day before. And if so, then why?

  Rain was coming down in cold, sideways sheets when we crossed the bridge over Fells Creek and drove up Mrs. Allen’s drive. We ran for the kitchen door, both of us wet and shivering by the time Susan’s MaMa opened it and pulled us inside. “Mercy me, let me get some bath towels. You’ll catch your death.” As I watched her skitter toward the hallway, I noticed the closet door in the tiny bedroom off the kitchen ease shut.

  Mrs. Allen busied herself with making tea. Susan and I dried off and I excused myself to the bathroom. On my way back to the kitchen, something about the darkened hallway brought back my dream of January, the Bible, Reba, and the small kneeling child. His words escaped from my mind as I sat at Mrs. Allen’s table in front of a steaming cup of Earl Grey. I said, to on one in particular, “Ezekiel 37.” Then realizing I couldn’t just leave that strange pronouncement in the air, I asked Mrs. Allen, “That Bible chapter keeps running through my mind. Is it a common chapter I should know from Sunday school? Something significant?”

  Susan gave me a tolerant, knowing look and stared into her cup. She probably wondered where I was going with this segue. Of course, I wasn’t going anywhere, just embarrassed and trying to cover my outburst with something that made sense.

  “Ezekiel 37? Does sound mighty familiar, now doesn’t it?” replied Mrs. Allen. There was a long pause while she added sugar to her tea and stirred. “I reckon I could find us a Holy Bible somewhere around here iffen you want to look it up. I can’t cite it verse and chapter for you. Don’t hold churching real high—too much blaming and guilt. The way I figure it, contrary to what a lot of preachers tell, a loving God who made so much beauty in this world wouldn’t occupy himself with thinking up ways to punish folks. He’d be smart enough to know what we do always comes back to us.”

  She made a good point. There was really no arguing with what she said, but January must have felt Ezekiel 37 was important enough to call it out to me in the dream. I needed to know what it said. I had a Bible at home. I’d look it up later. We needed to get back to the reason we drove over here in the pouring rain. Susan was grinning at me. I tapped her arm with my teaspoon. “What’s so funny?”

  Her smile was contagious. Now there were three grinning women sitting at the table. “Okay, here is the thing. I’m smiling because I spent a lot of time in Vacation Bible School as a kid…you know, cause Daddy was working and looking for anywhere to park me to keep me out of trouble. So I know all about Ezekiel 37. I can’t recite it, but I can sing it. You want me to sing it?”

  Mrs. Allen and I nodded yes. Susan took my teaspoon and along with hers began to tap out a tune on the tabletop. Mrs. Allen was right; it was mighty familiar. After a few bars Susan stood up and sang out, letting her arms and legs dance limp like a skeleton puppet. “And Ezekiel cried out, dem dry bones. Now hear the word of the Lord: toe bone connected to the foot bone; foot bone connected to the leg bone; leg bone connected to the knee bone. Dem bones gonna walk around. Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones, now hear the word of the Lord.”

  I could not help but laugh. By the time she sang all the verses I remembered the story. God brings the prophet Ezekiel to a valley strewn with dry bones. God tells him to prophesize to the bones, and when he does the bones rise and are made flesh. God tells Ezekiel something to the effect that His people will know him when He opens the graves and breathes his spirit into them. Was Ezekiel writing about the Second Coming of Jesus? Was this Old Testament writing part of the Second Great Awakening that Mr. Kolb was telling me about? Why was the Bible verse so important to January McNeal?

  When I remembered January was accused of digging up the graves of his wife and child, dem dry bones ceased to be funny. I stopped laughing at about the same time Susan stopped singing. Over our silence, we heard a muffled high-pitched laugh from the bedroom off the kitchen. Mrs. Allen stood up. When I touched her arm, she sat back down. I whispered, “I know. In the closet. Let’s just let her be for now.”

  Susan sat across from me and reached over to hold Mrs. Allen’s hand. “MaMa,” she said quietly, “a couple of days ago you and a little girl were up on Fire Mountain.”

  Mrs. Allen sighed and looked down at the tabletop. “Yes, me and little Missy. I’m ashamed I didn’t help you none, Miz Promise. I was so scared for Missy— and for me, I froze up. Couldn’t think of nothing to do. Then I seen Fletcher up on the rise with his rifle. We hid down in the laurels and when I knowed the man was shot and Fletcher was coming for you, we come on home. Missy was real upset about seeing that man.” Tears spilled behind her glasses and she wiped them with her apron.

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Allen. I wouldn’t have wanted you to put yourself or the child in danger.” I really meant what I said, and hoped she believed me.

  Susan continued. “What were you doing up there?”

  She held on to her apron tail and began to twist the corner. “It was that dang blue stuffed elephant of hers. She was running the mountain all morning and then came in without the thing. Nothing would do but for us to go fetch it.”

  Susan frowned and pressed her fingers against her eyelids. “Oh MaMa, you know that little girl shouldn’t roam around the woods alone. Nowhere is safe like it was when Daddy and Mac were kids. And another thing, you’re eighty-three years old. You got no business hiking up that mountain.”

  “Well, don’t you think I know how old I am? And don’t be telling me what I got business doing, and what I ain’t. You think I’d just turn her loose on her own to get shut of her. I told her to stay close to the house. She don’t mind like she should. Leastwise, not yet. But she’s a good little girl, all and all.”

  “Okay, okay,” I interjected, “Let’s just leave that for now. It won’t help to get angry with each other.”

  Mrs. Allen cut her eyes at me; her body huffed up with righteousness. “I ain’t angry at nobody else. I’m purely upset with myself that I didn’t do nothing to help you. If you could forgive me, I’d be much obliged.”

  “I do forgive you. You hear me? I mean it.”

  After a few seconds, she answered, “Yes, ma’am. I hear you. Thank you. Thank you kindly.” The twisted apron went back to dry more tears.

  Susan shifted in her chair and took a sip of tea. I was waiting for her to ask the really important question, and I didn’t have long to wait. “All right. We need to get something straight. I’ve been thinking about this, MaMa, and it seems to me that the whole time you say you’ve had this Missy child as a visitor, you haven’t brought her to Granny’s store, not even once. I haven’t seen you in town with her, at all, and neither has Daddy. Nobody has. How long has she been here?”

  Mrs. Allen puckered up her mouth in concentration and then answered. “I make it nigh on six, maybe seven weeks.”

  “Seven weeks,” Susan repeated. “Pretty long time for a visit from a long lost cousin.” Her statement hung in the air like a line of rain soaked laundry. “Doesn’t that seem like a long visit to you, Miz P?”

  I cleared my throat. “Well, yes. Now that you say so, it does.”

  Susan got up and closed the door into the bedroom. “You want to tell us how you came to have little Missy for a visitor, MaMa.
Cause I’m thinking you don’t have a cousin in Tennessee that might have a granddaughter named Missy. And I’m also thinking you don’t bring her to town because you don’t want her seen by anyone.”

  Mrs. Allen fiddled with the tablecloth, brushing up imaginary crumbs into a neat pile. “Well, I don’t for sure know her name is Missy. She comes to it when I call. But she’s a quiet little thing so I don’t rightly know her true name.”

  I looked from Susan to Mrs. Allen, then back to Susan. Susan was giving me her—go ahead and jump in— look, so I did. “Does she talk at all?”

  Mrs. Allen looked at me as though she wanted to argue, but didn’t. “Well, I hear her out in the yard singing little made up songs sometimes. Can’t tell iffen them’s words or not. Lets me know what she needs, but not many outright words. That’s why I don’t take her to town or nowhere. I don’t want folks to think she quare, or simple, cause she ain’t.” Her look to Susan seemed to be pleading: give Missy a chance; you’ll see; it will be all right.

  “She’s a real smart little girl, Susan. Sits and reads all those books you left here when you growed too old for them. And I know she’s really reading cause I can see the gladness in her face when she follows the words. And Lordy, wait till you see her running and jumping around. She can do handstands, summersaults, and climbs up trees like a little monkey. She’s a loving child; hugs me every night afore she goes to sleep.”

  Susan patted her hand and asked, “MaMa, how did Missy come to be at your house? Who brought her here?”

  After she removed her glasses, and cleaned them on her skirt, she told her story. “Well, it was like this: back this February it was wicked cold outside. There was a crusty little snow on the ground, and I was in the side yard there at the bird feeder putting out more seed. A little white car come slipping and sliding up the hill. Then a young woman rolled the window down and hollered out to me if I was Honoree Mullins Allen. Well, not many folks know my given name is Honoree, and fewer still remember I was a Mullins, so I reckoned she must be kin of some kind. I allowed I was Honoree and told her to get on out of the car and come on in the house where it was warm. She come up on the porch holding little Missy, asleep in her arms.”