Uncommon Clay (A Deborah Knott Mystery Book 8)

by Margaret Maron

  “So, if I awarded it to Mr. Nordan, who sounds as if he wouldn’t mind having it back, and valued it in his column as only three hundred dollars, you would still agree that’s fair?” I asked with a pleasant smile.

  Her look of cozy solidarity turned to chagrin.

  “Let’s call it nine hundred and fifty dollars,” I said.

  “And I still get to keep it?” she asked sheepishly.

  “To the plaintiff,” I agreed.

  Wallace Frye smiled broadly as he entered the new figures.

  I went right on down Schedule B, hearing their testimony as to why I should agree with their valuations. Naturally I didn’t forget that it was to each one’s advantage to come out with the least dollar value on their individual possessions. Nordan was going to wind up with most of the big-ticket items connected with the pottery, as well as the marital home, which he’d inherited from his grandparents before the marriage but which still carried a hefty marital equity from all the improvements they’d made over the years. That meant he’d be trying to keep everything valued low on his side of the ledger and high on hers so that he wouldn’t have to pay her a huge lump sum at the end to make the division equitable.

  As objectively as possible, I tried to hit the middle ground on the thirty-year-old tractor Nordan used to haul firewood for the groundhog kilns ($1,500), the inventory pottery that was there on the d.o.s. and had since been sold by him ($1,900), her collection of Barbie dolls ($800).

  The only item on Schedule C was the pottery they’d collected together. Each had brought separate pieces to the collection from their own heritage and there was no question of ownership on those, but together they’d amassed a collection that was almost museum quality in its range and depth. Both agreed it was worth approximately thirty thousand dollars at today’s auction prices. Both wanted all of it and neither was prepared to budge.

  When it was clear that there was no hope of compromise, I said, “Then let’s leave C for now and move on to Schedule D.”

  D contained two riding lawn mowers neither party wanted and eighteen Hallmark Christmas ornaments that both did want even though their estimates of value were a couple of hundred dollars apart. After some bickering back and forth, they agreed to divide them. Since she particularly wanted the 1997 ornament, I let her take the odd years and gave him the even. I valued the orphaned lawn mowers at a hundred dollars each and split them, too.

  Schedule E listed two groundhog kilns, a car kiln (whatever that was), and three turning wheels that Mrs. Nordan contended were marital property, since they’d been built before the d.o.s. with materials she’d helped pay for. Mr. Nordan testified they were part of the real estate, which his father technically owned, since he himself only held a lifetime right to the pottery.

  “What’s a car kiln?” I asked, curious to know if it was shaped like an automobile or big enough to put a car inside or what.

  Both attorneys and Mrs. Nordan deferred to the expert.

  “Well,” said James Lucas Nordan, gesturing with his hands, “it’s like a little three-sided house built out’n firebricks. Ours is about eight foot tall and five or six foot deep. You’ve got three gas burners on two sides with baffles so your flames don’t hit directly on your pots. Then you’ve got a ware cart on steel wheels that run on two little steel tracks.” He held his thumb and forefinger apart to show me the narrow gauge. “That’s your car. The back end of it’s made out’n firebricks, too, like the fourth wall of your little brick house. So you load your setters with your glazed bisque ware, then push it in like a railroad car. Clamp it shut real tight and fire it up. You can get a higher temperature. We use the car kiln for stoneware and the groundhogs for salt glazing.”

  He looked at me doubtfully. “You do know about salt glazing, don’t you?”

  I’ve been told and I can speak glibly enough about it. I know that oral tradition traces the practice back to the Middle Ages when German potters threw some barrels that had held salted fish or sauerkraut into a kiln’s firebox and discovered it gave the clay an impregnable skin, but I’ve never really understood how common table salt can turn a plain clay surface into something hard and glassy. This looked like my chance to have it explained by a professional.

  “Pretend I don’t,” I told him.

  “Well, your groundhog kiln’s dug right into the ground with a rounded brick roof. Looks just like a big mole run. You’ve got about six or eight salt ports in the sides. They’re holes exactly the size of your bricks. When the temperature inside your kiln is hot enough, you pull your bricks out and throw your salt through those port holes. Your salt vaporizes, the chlorine burns off, and the sodium acts like a flux to melt the silica on the surface of your wares. That’s how you get your hard glassy coating like your old potters did it. You still got to stock salt-glazed earthenware. Folks like that old-timey look, but believe me, Your Honor, it’s a lot easier to load your ware cart and push it in than it is to crawl around inside a groundhog kiln to set your pots.”

  He spoke with an owner’s pride in a piece of efficient equipment, his big hands demonstrating the push/pull of moving a loaded cart in and out of the kiln proper. In animation, especially when he smiled, his eyes crinkled and his leathery face looked younger. The Nordans must have been a very attractive couple in their youth. After lasting nearly a quarter of a century, it was too bad they couldn’t have made it all the way. Not my business, though. My job was to stay neutral and finish the division they’d begun.

  “Are all three of these kilns permanent structures?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am.”

  “But you built them before you and your wife separated?”

  “Well, we rebuilt the old one that was there before she come and my brother and me did the work on the two new ones, but my daddy paid for all the material.”

  “Out of profits I helped make,” Mrs. Nordan argued.

  After listening to both sides, I ruled the two newer kilns and the turning wheels marital, but valued them at a somewhat lower figure than Mrs. Nordan’s.

  Schedules F and G were their separate contentions for an unequal division. He presented evidence that he’d been paying all property taxes for the last two years, along with paying down the marital debt, and that he’d also incurred maintenance and upkeep expenses on their property during this time. Her counterclaim cited his control of her income-producing property, namely her place of work, and her marital claim on income produced as a result of his lifetime right to Nordan Pottery.

  After ruling on the marital debt and allowing the defendant credit for an unequal distribution for his payment of property taxes, I further ruled that the division of the marital property as both had agreed upon would effect an equitable distribution. Since a distribution in kind was impractical—there’s no simple way to divide a kiln—I granted a distributive award to the plaintiff.

  Then we (or rather my laptop and the attorneys’ calculators) added up all the figures. When the numbers quit flying around, it looked as if Mr. Nordan would owe his ex-wife a little over forty thousand dollars.

  “But what about our pottery collection?” asked Mrs. Nordan. “You didn’t tell us who’s going to get it.”

  I looked again at the photographs they’d submitted for my examination and felt a little helpless. This was way outside my realm of expertise. If it were twelve place settings of mutually acquired silverware, I could simply split it down the middle and give six place settings to each. If he had been the collector and she were claiming it simply because she knew how much it would grieve him to lose it, then I’d accept their evaluation and give it all to him. But both of them argued with heat and passion and it was clear that each would be devastated to lose.

  I heard them out, then sat there silently, trying to decide. Again, I looked through the pictures. Even as an outsider, I knew that both of these people had roots that went deep into the red clay of Randolph County. Hitchcocks and Nordans had been making pottery here in a continuous line since the Revolution and
both of their descendants wore their ancestry proudly. These simple jugs and pots were the visible symbols of their heritage. How could I ask either to take the monetary value and give up a claim to those symbols?

  With a sigh, I realized there was nothing to do but go for the Beanie Baby solution, which is what I’d started calling it after I learned what a judge in another state had done in a similar situation. He’d had some three hundred of the couple’s stuffed toy animals hauled into court, then tossed a coin. The wife won the coin toss and got first choice, the husband got the next two picks, and then the two alternated till the entire pile was divided.

  “But that’s not fair,” both Nordans protested.

  “You’ve got an eighteenth century storage jar here that’s worth twice any other piece,” said James Lucas Nordan.

  “Then whoever chooses that one, the other gets to pick two,” I said.

  They still muttered mutinously to their attorneys.

  “Look,” I said finally. “You people have had two years to sort this out. You’ve tied up your lives, you’ve tied up the courts. One way or another, this is going to be settled today. You can either divide it as I’ve suggested or I’ll split the whole collection straight down the middle based strictly on the appraised value on the date of separation.”

  That got their attention.

  “But we can’t bring them all in today,” said Mrs. Nordan. “They’ll have to be carefully packed up and—”

  “How many pieces are we talking about?” I interrupted.

  “About fifty?” Mr. Nordan hazarded, speaking directly to Mrs. Nordan for the first time.

  “Not counting what belongs to him and what belongs to me, there’s forty-three pieces.”

  “Permission to approach, Your Honor,” said Wallace Frye after a furious thumb-through of the piles of paper in front of him.

  I nodded and he handed some papers to Nick Sanderson and to me. They were a set of inventory sheets with comprehensive descriptions of each piece of pottery, when and how acquired, and their current value. Several had been highlighted in red and were initialed SKN, others were marked in fluorescent yellow and initialed JLN. I counted the rest. She was right. Forty-three.

  “Does this agree with your client’s perception of the collection?” I asked Sanderson.

  “Yes, Your Honor. She already had a disk copy. This is an abstract of the records they kept on the pottery’s computer.”

  Of course. Low-tech meets high-tech. One of their groundhog kilns was eighty years old, the computer was only three (and, as I recalled, awarded on Schedule A to the defendant).

  “Where’s the collection right now?”

  “Out at the house,” said James Lucas Nordan. “Or rather at the shop. We built like a museum on the side with lighted shelves and all.”

  “And it’s all there, easily viewed?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Very well,” I said, glancing at the clock on the rear wall. “It’s almost twelve-thirty. We’ll finish up here, take a lunch recess, and, if everyone agrees, we’ll reconvene at your shop at two-thirty and get this done.”

  They agreed. As did the bailiff and the clerk, who were also required to be present.

  My action would be unusual, but not unheard of.

  I finished filling out the Memorandum of Judgment form and went through the ritual of asking both parties if their consent to the agreements we’d reached was informed and voluntary. After they agreed and signed, I dated and signed it, too, making it an official court order which I handed to the clerk to process.

  The bailiff offered me a ride down to Seagrove after lunch, but I declined. There’d be no need to come back into Asheboro after we’d finished, so I could go straight on to Fliss’s house.

  “Court will be adjourned until two-thirty,” I said.

  “All rise,” said the bailiff.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Most small family potteries could not support the needs of grown men as well as other members of the family. As each son reached about eighteen years of age he usually left home to find work elsewhere.

  —Raised in Clay, Nancy Sweezy

  Tommy Hitchcock slammed his senior English textbook down on the low wall that edged the school’s parking lot. “Old Lasater’s rode my ass for the last time,” he snarled. “I’m quitting.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Brittany Simmons. Her long blond hair gleamed in the spring sunshine as she reached for the lighted cigarette in his hand and took a small ladylike drag.

  “Oh, come on, Brit! What the hell I need Shakespeare for?”

  “You need it to graduate,” she said calmly, lighting a cigarette of her own.

  “I don’t need no high school diploma to turn pots.”

  “If a jackleg pot turner’s all you aim to be, working for your daddy and your brother all your life—”

  “I won’t be working for them. Nordan Pottery’s going to be ours someday.”

  “Someday,” she said scornfully. “Someday when your uncle’s dead and gone. It’s his till he dies, remember?”

  “Well, yeah, but he’s old.”

  She shook her head. “My mom was in school with him and she’s only fifty-two. Your granddaddy’s seventy-five. If James Lucas Nordan lives as long, you’ll be forty-two years old before the pottery’s ours. And you keep pissing him off, you won’t see a penny out of it as long as he’s alive.”

  “You saying you don’t want to marry me?”

  “I’m saying I don’t want to marry a loser with no options. It’s only a month and a half till graduation. You quit school now, all you can do is turn pots for somebody else the next twenty-five years. With a diploma, you could go to Winston-Salem or Greensboro. Get a real job. Make some decent money.”

  “Potting is a real job! Look at all the money Ben Owen must be making,” he said, citing one of Seagrove’s most successful craftsmen.

  “Yeah, like you’re a Ben Owen,” she said scornfully as the bell rang for their next class. “He’s gone to college, studied pot-making all over the world, and you can’t even suck it up for a month?”

  She dropped her cigarette on the gravel, crushed it daintily with her sandal, picked up her textbooks, and handed him his. “You quit school, we’re finished.”

  “Yeah? Well, if that’s all you think of me, maybe we’re finished now!”

  “Fine,” she said, dropping his book on the ground before turning to walk inside.

  “Fine!” he said, and kicked the book halfway to Christmas.

  When he peeled out of the parking lot two minutes later, the tires on his old white Toyota laid down twin strips of rubber.

  “She’s not getting my Runcie bird jar,” James Lucas said tightly as he towered over Wallace Frye on the sidewalk outside the courthouse. “I’m the one heard about it and tracked it down, and I’ll be damned if she’s getting it.”

  “You’ll get it,” his attorney said soothingly. “If you win first pick, you’ll have it. If she wins, she’ll take the 1798 storage jar and you’ll still get your bird jar, plus the next-best piece to boot.”

  Wallace Frye had grown up in Charlotte and he’d moved to Asheboro as soon as he passed the bar exam. The slower pace suited him and he liked having the zoo close enough that he could slip off with the kids whenever he wanted. In the eight years he’d lived here, he’d met a lot of potters, but he’d never fallen under the spell of their wares and he didn’t really believe clay pots of any vintage were worth as much as some of his colleagues were willing to pay. A couple of attorneys here in town had practically turned their homes into museums and would lecture on long-dead indigenous potters versus modern practitioners at the drop of a coffee mug, so he recognized a collector’s passion when he saw it and he was exasperated though not surprised by Nordan’s response to logic.

  “But I want that one, too,” his client protested.

  “Then you’re just going to have to figure out which pieces she particularly values and pick enoug
h of those that she’ll trade you for them,” Frye said. He glanced at his watch. “Lunch?”

  James Lucas shook his head morosely. “No, I’ll grab a burger and head on back.”

  “Fine,” Frye said briskly. “I’ll see you out at your shop at two-thirty.”

  The back door of the sales shop opened and Amos Nordan’s stooped length almost filled the frame. “Ain’t it about time James Lucas was getting home?” he asked for the second time in the last hour.

  He was getting as bad as Jeffy waiting for a clock’s little hand to reach a certain hour, June Gregorich thought irritably. It annoyed her to think his mental faculties might be going, that he might be entering second childhood this soon. She wanted to tell him to get a grip, that he was only seventy-six, with at least another ten years ahead of him if he’d just set his mind to it.

  Instead, she kept her voice patient. “Soon as he comes in, I’ll send him on down to the shed. Isn’t Bobby back from lunch yet?”

  “Naw, and it gets lonesome down there by myself,” the old man grumbled as he watched her wrap the bright red vase a happy tourist had just bought for her Florida home.

  Even before she went to work for Amos Nordan, June had been told that Donny was his favorite son, but she’d only seen them together twice before that November day two years ago when she’d called 911 after Mr. Amos found him dead. She didn’t know if he’d been as emotionally dependent on Donny as he’d become on James Lucas since his stroke, but he’d certainly grieved enough. Hardly a day passed without mention of Donny. Some people thought it was morbid, but June understood exactly what he’d lost. She knew what it was like to keep on mourning for unrealized potential. Wasn’t Jeffy a constant reminder of the hopes and dreams she and his father had envisioned when she was carrying him thirty-one years ago and the future spread out brightly before them?

  Not that she ever talked about her losses the way Mr. Amos did his. What was the point of weeping on somebody’s shoulder? She hadn’t done it in California, even after Ted walked out on them with all their assets, condemning her to a life of menial labor that would let her give Jeffy a life outside the walls of an institution, so why burden the new friends she’d made here? With their soft southern accents and quick sympathies, they could only offer assurances she didn’t need and no longer wanted. She knew very well that Jeffy’s condition wasn’t her fault. She’d done everything her obstetrician advised—vitamins, diet, organic foods, exercise. If only—