by Morgan James
I pulled myself out of the dream, turned on the bedside lamp, and spoke to my great grandfather within the safety of the bedroom light. I asked him what he wanted from me, why he traveled the blue mists of eternity into my dreams. Alfie left the warmth of his rug in front of the great room fire and came to the sound of my voice. He rested his large soulful face on the side of the bed and whimpered. “I’m sorry big guy,” I soothed him. “Did I disturb your peaceful sleep? It’s okay, you can sleep in here if you like.”
The next morning, I felt as though I hadn’t sleep at all. Just as I was pouring my first cup of coffee, the phone rang. I answered only because the caller ID told me it was Susan.
“Hey. You’re not going to believe this, but that repulsive Tempi Jest just called me.”
I gave Alfie the chew-chew he’d been waiting patiently for and took the phone and my coffee out on the porch. The damp earth scent of hemlocks and pines was close and comfortable, like a well-loved wool scarf. Rolling thunder threatened rain. “You mean the son of the Little Person, right?”
“Yes, Dick Jest is definitely a Little Person. How politically correct of you not to call him a dwarf. Anyway, Tempi said to meet him and he’ll tell me what he knows about the people in the poster. He also wants a hundred dollars for his troubles.”
“A hundred dollars? Seven-thirty in the morning is a little early for extortion, don’t you think?”
“Are you kidding? That tattooed trailer trash is probably so whacked on weed he doesn’t even know what day it is, much less the time.”
“You think he was smoking pot yesterday when you went over to Hiawassee?”
“Well duh. Is Mike Huckabee a conservative?”
“Such a nice man. Don’t totally agree with his politics, but whatever. Still, a good man. I don’t think I have a hundred dollars in cash in my purse. Do you?”
“No, but I’ll drive through the ATM on my way out of town.”
“What do you mean ‘out of town’? Where are you meeting this guy?”
“Out sixty-four. Just beyond the Cut, before you hit Chunky Gal Mountain on the other side. I gotta go. I’ll call…”
That was enough for me to interrupt Susan. “Hold on. You are not meeting some pothead person alone. I’ll be at the bank when you get there. I’m leaving now.” I closed Alfie in the house and left Daniel a message on his cell phone. Fat raindrops were falling on my windshield as I drove out onto Fells Creek Road. Oh, shit, I swore. I hate driving over Standing Indian Mountain in the rain. It rises to more than five thousand feet, and I feel like the car is going to take flight over the side of the cliff. Some days I question if I’m truly meant for mountain living.
Susan drove my Subaru, at my insistence, because I thought it was safer than her top heavy Jeep Wrangler. We headed west on Highway 64 and climbed slowly along the switchbacks. Tennessee stretched somewhere to my right. Over a thousand feet below, the Nantahala River flowed along the valley floor. Though, from the car window, misting rain and low clouds tricked the mind into believing all that existed was the curtain of evergreens skirting the road’s edge.
I checked my seat belt and gripped the passenger safety handle above my door to keep from rocking about from the twisting and turning. More than once I asked myself why this rendezvous was a good idea. Wouldn’t it be smarter to give the information to Sheriff Mac, then go home and worry about my own life? Chasing information about a circus fire, in hopes of locating Missy’s mother was about as long a shot as I could imagine. Who knew if the fire was even connected to Missy? Fires happen all the time.
I looked over at Susan. Neither of us thought to grab a raincoat, and, to add misery, the temperature, in the rain, at this elevation was well below fifty degrees. Susan’s short denim jacket would be soaking wet one minute after she got out of the car. I considered asking her why she felt so strongly about meeting with Tempi Jest, but the hard look on her face stopped me. My question didn’t matter. We were here, and she was concentrating on the road and on what might happen when she stood face to face with him. Susan’s intuition was in charge. She believed Tempi had information that would help her MaMa Allen. That was enough for now.
She slowed down to a crawl just on the other side of the Cut—literally a deep gash through the mountain to make way for the road. Here, three-story high gray and black rocks, still oozing ice in late March, loomed to our left, so close you felt you could lean out of the car and trail your hand along the frozen surface. The rain had slowed, hesitant now, with ribbons of dull sunlight pushing behind us from the east.
“Help me look for Forest Service Road 120. There it is.” She eased the car off the highway onto a wide shoulder and stopped. “I can’t tell if there is anywhere to turn around once I get down the forest road. I don’t want to be trapped up here with tattoo boy.”
“Wait. Let’s think about this. What did Tempi tell you about the road?”
Susan blew out a heavy breath, and clenched the steering wheel until her knuckles paled. “I’m thinking. Just give me a minute.” She closed her eyes for a couple of seconds, then sucked in a deep breathe. “Okay, Tempi said the Appalachian Trail crossed the highway here—there was a parking lot. He said to wait at the parking lot.”
“Parking lot. Good sign. That means space to turn around. Ease down enough for us to see it. Leave yourself plenty of room to back out if it doesn’t look safe. Sound okay?”
She nodded. The Subaru moved forward, stopped, and then moved about another two hundred feet around a slight curve in the road. A narrow parking lot carved at the bottom of a slope lay ahead. I could make out the familiar Appalachian Trail hiker signs blazed at the head of the lot. She drove into a parking space and maneuvered the Subaru around so we were facing out toward the highway.
“Here’s what we do: I’ll get out and wait for him. That way, maybe he won’t notice you’re in the car.” She dug her cell phone from her jeans pocket and dialed. My cell rang in my purse. “Can you believe we have service up here? Thank you, Lord. Answer your phone and we’ll leave the line open.” I flipped my cell to answer. Susan punched her speaker button for hands free talking and slid the phone into her jacket breast pocket. “Now we find out if this iPhone was worth the money I paid for it. Keep your head down.”
With our plan settled, she got out of the car and ambled toward a lone oak log bench perched at the entrance to the Appalachian Trail, but some distance away from the car. A drizzling rain wet her face and hair, and she brushed the moisture away with her hand. Before she’d reached the bench, an army green Nissan truck turned down the road and drove along side her.
I saw her shake her head no, and nod toward the bench. Good girl. She was refusing to get into the truck with him. He said something I couldn’t hear. Susan shrugged and turned to walk back toward the car. He called out, “Wait.” She stopped. He parked, got out of the truck, and they faced each other. Susan shivered in her damp denim jacket. Our extortionist, decked out in a long black canvas duster, a brown scarf around his neck, looked toasty warm and dry.
Even in her low-heeled combat boots; Susan stood several inches taller than Tempi Jest. Good. Maybe her height would give her an edge. Could his real name be Tempi Jest? Who would name a child Tempi? Of course, when I thought about it—who would name a child Promise? I slumped down in the seat and held the cell phone closer to my ear. He was saying something. I think he was asking if she brought the money.
Susan nodded yes and unfolded the circus poster from her pocket. Her voice was muffled but easier to hear than his. “Answers first. What do you know about the Knoxville fire? And who’s in the poster?”
“Damn, I told the Old Man you’re a cop snooping around about the fire. I knew it all along. Okay, so maybe you’re a private cop working for the insurance company, but you’re still a cop, right?” His voice sounded excited, but not fearful. This boy watched way too much television as a kid.
“Whatever you say, Mr. Jest. Tell me about the fire?”
“Yeah, w
ell, you’re going to be disappointed there cause I don’t know nothing. We barn in Jacksonville over the winter, usually till April. This one-day the word goes out we’re doing an early date in Tennessee. Just two nights for some charity fund raiser. I follow my old man, like I always do, to work one of the garbage joints.”
“Garbage joints?”
“Yeah, you know, souvenirs and stuff.”
“So what about the fire?”
“I told you. I don’t know nothing. We did the shows and were packing up to leave. The fire bell blasted twice, then twice again. That meant it was the cookhouse on fire. I did what I was told to do and started moving everything I could away from the cookers. That’s it. Fire trucks came, put out the fire, and the next morning the place was picked over by cops looking to figure if it was an okay fire, or if the Fantell’s had maybe started it on purpose.” Before he continued with his story, he blew on his hands to warm them.
“Somebody said it started in the Dumpster beside the cookhouse tent. I don’t know. Wasn’t my job. The cops grounded us for a few days. Then Pokey, Mr. Fantell, put the word out they were headed somewhere to buy stuff that was burned up in the fire and would catch up with us in Hiawassee. The Old Man and I did what we always do—came on ahead to spread around the advertising paper.”
Susan raised the poster and pointed to the three figures. “Did these acrobats with the horse show up in Hiawassee?”
“Show up? Sure they showed. That’s Pokey Fantell and his wife Nan. You think they wouldn’t be there to boss the rest of us around?”
“Was Nan Fantell the blond haired woman I saw yesterday driving away from your RV?”
“Nan? Shit no. She don’t mix with the help. That’s her daughter. She and my Old Man are tight. Calls him Uncle Dick. He’s looked out for her since she was little. Nan and Pokey get on her ass and she hides out with us till it settles down. She don’t like me worth a shit, but who cares. She’s a tight ass with nothing I want.”
“Back to the poster. The little girl on horseback. Was she in Hiawassee?”
Tempi was silent for a few seconds. Thinking, maybe? Making up a lie was more likely. “Nah, come to think of it, I didn’t see her at the Hiawassee gig. Nan brought her to the Knoxville show, but she didn’t do none of her fancy donkey flips in Hiawassee.”
“Did anyone ask why she didn’t perform in Hiawassee?”
Tempi smirked. “Are you kidding? First rule of the Fantell Circus: Don’t talk to Pokey Fantell, or Nan, if you don’t have to. Second: Don’t ask questions, unless you want your face rearranged. They ain’t exactly the sweetest taters in the basket.”
“What’s the little girl’s name?”
“You sure are nosey about some little bitty twat. I ain’t never seen her until Knoxville. I told you that already. Knoxville’s the only time I saw the kid. I got no business messing with a little girl who don’t hardly speak English.”
He smiled and flipped his scarf over Susan’s head, pulling her against him. “Now you. You’re one sexy big girl. I do have business messing with you.”
This conversation was sliding down hill, fast. I sat up straighter in the seat and got an excellent view of Tempi tightening his grip on the scarf and licking Susan’s forehead.
Time seem to stand still. Susan said nothing. I debated with the Committee in my head whether I should move into the driver’s seat, start the car, and pull up beside Susan, or wait. I heard Tempi say, “My hard cock is seriously thinking about messing with you. How about it, big girl?”
Susan’s answer was swift. She stomped Tempi’s right foot, jerking out of his hold on her as he wailed in pain. Then she stepped forward, toward him, grabbed his hair with both hands as he bent to his wounded foot, and slammed his face into her raised knee. He crumbled face first to the ground without a sound. After she nudged him face up with her foot, Susan tucked the five twenties into his left duster pocket and walked back to the car.
22
Susan drove slowly past Tempi Jest’s immobile body. The only movement I noticed was a trickle of blood running out of his nose. Perhaps he was playing opossum, thinking it was safer to lie still on the ground, or less humiliating. “You don’t think he’s seriously hurt, do you?”
Susan’s eyes were wide, her hands shaking on the steering wheel. “Ask me if I care. Have you got a tissue? I need to wipe my face.”
I dug a pack of Handi-Wipes from the console and handed her a moist sheet. She scrubbed her forehead as though she’d been spattered with snake venom, handed me the sheet, and then took another from the package to repeat the scrubbing. “I can drive back, if you want me to,” I offered.
“No. That’s okay. I’ll be fine. Just give me a minute to calm down.”
I took the Handi-Wipe package and handed Susan a bottle of chilled well water we’d been sharing on the trip up the mountain. She said thanks and took a deep swallow. “Crap. I told you Tempi was a doper. He smelled so strong with the stuff my stomach was churning. One more minute and I really would have puked.”
“I can’t believe you actually gave him the money.”
She looked surprised. “What do you mean? Of course I gave him the money. I said I would, didn’t I? You think I’m unethical?”
“Unethical?” Under the circumstances I had to let the word, unethical, sink in. “No, of course not. It’s just…” It was becoming hard to hold back a smile. “It’s just, well, he, umm, sort of attacked you; and you sort of, probably, broke his nose…and…”
Susan was catching my smile. “Yeah, well, what’s your point?”
We both broke out in raucous, snorting laughter. It’s interesting the effect fear can have on a person.
On the way back into town, Susan pulled into the drive through of The Bean Hut; a coffee kiosk camped beside the Bi-Lo, and ordered two lattes. “And don’t give us any of that skim milk stuff. We want the heavy duty fat,” she said to the young man at the window. After witnessing Susan’s performance up on the mountain, if I’d been the coffee person, I would have been very careful to use cream and not skim milk. I was calm enough now to wonder where and why Susan learned the skills necessary to break a man’s nose. She handed me my coffee and pulled over into an empty parking space.
“Did you hear everything Jest said up there?”
“I think so. Basically, he thinks you work for the insurance company investigating the Knoxville fire. Doesn’t know how the fire started, and doesn’t know Missy’s real name. Actually, we don’t even know for sure if the little girl in the poster is Missy.”
Susan blew on her hot coffee and took a sip. “Come on, how unlikely is that? Missy looks like the child in the circus poster. There was a circus fire about two months ago, then she showed up here, and you saw her doing handstands on a goat’s back. I’d say, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, I think we have us a duck. And don’t forget, Tempi said the little girl doesn’t speak English very well.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Another one of those crazy coincidences.”
“Speaking of which, Tempi also said the only time he’d seen the child was at the Knoxville show. She wasn’t in Hiawassee. If she was the Fantell’s child, don’t you think he would have seen her before now?”
“So, if she isn’t their child, whose child is she? We still don’t know.”
“No, we don’t know for sure. But I’ll bet the Fantell girl with the electric yellow hair is the woman who dropped Missy off at MaMa’s house.”
“Yeah, could be. Remember Dr. Jeffcoat’s comment that a child who starts fires comes out of some terribly traumatic family situation?”
“Sure, I remember. If the Fantells are her parents, and she started the Knoxville fire, do you think they had the other daughter bring her over here to MaMa’s to keep the police from finding out about her?”
I sipped the warm. creamy latte and thought for a moment. “No, that doesn’t ring true. The Fantells don’t sound like the kind of people who would drop off a child with a stranger, e
specially if they thought she was a moneymaker for their show. No, they’d leave her with other circus people, someone they could control, until the questions about the fire died down. Then they’d go pick her up and put her back to work. No, I think you’d only leave a child with a stranger if you were trying to make her disappear.”
Susan nearly shrieked her next question. “Oh my God, you think the daughter left Missy with MaMa to keep her away from the Fantells, don’t you?”
I nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m thinking. Pokey and Nan Fantell wanted her as a novelty child act. Maybe the daughter realized they mistreated Missy, just as they mistreated her as a child, and used the fire as a diversion to get the child away. Didn’t Jest say the daughter would stay with them whenever life with her parents got too rough? That would explain why the yellow-haired girl is hanging back in Hiawassee with Uncle Dick—waiting for the dust to settle. She’s afraid they’ll figure out she took the child. But even if that were true, why wouldn’t the Fantells report Missy as missing? That doesn’t make sense.”
We sat drinking our coffee and thinking. So many possibilities. An attractive red-haired girl, driving a canary yellow Beetle, ordered at the coffee kiosk and waved at Susan. Smile like sunshine. Happy to see Susan. With only a slight suggestion of a smile, Susan returned the wave, and then looked away.
I was curious. “Who is that pretty person? All those long bouncy curls make me think of the little red haired girl in the Peanuts cartoon. Is she a friend from around here?”
Susan looked down at her lap, blotted at an errant drop of coffee. “Oh, that’s Sam. She’s a potter. I mean she has a day job, but she also throws pots. She’s from Asheville. Met her the last time the Pot Lickers played over at Baby Petree’s Barbecue in Sylva.”
Susan’s banjo and her singing are always popular when the band plays. Everyone loves her three-finger, Earl Scruggs, picking style, even me, and I don’t know bluegrass from fescue grass. “She was waving like she wanted to talk to you. Maybe it was important.”