“I have,” his mother said. “But you make me so crazy I need to hold one once in a while. Smelling it settles me down a little. My nicotine pacifier.”
She rolled the cigarette between her strong fingers. Craftsman’s fingers. Flecks of dry tobacco spilled from the ends onto her knee and she brushed them carelessly onto the floor.
“Was he?” Davis asked.
“Was who what?”
He added a pair of thick-soled sneakers to the duffel and turned to face her. “My biological father. Was he an asshole, too?”
She sighed and pushed back the hair that had slipped from behind her ear to follow the line of her strong chin. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to hear the answers to.”
He continued to stare at her relentlessly, one hand on his hip.
Nurture over nature, she thought. He’d picked that trick up from the despicable man who had not sired him.
“When you do that, you look just like Jeremy,” she said with deliberate malice.
He threw up his hands. “And you say I drive you crazy!”
“Okay, okay.” She laughed. “The answer is that I really don’t know. I’m sorry, baby. I wish I could say that he was the love of my live, that we had an affair that blazed across my skies like the afterburners of an Apollo rocket. Bottom line? I barely remember him. He was an attractive man in a pair of mud-stained jeans and he had magic in his fingers when he touched clay. He came over to do a demonstration class at the museum. There was another, younger woman in the class that could’ve been a clone of the student that Jeremy was sleeping with at the moment and she was all over Donald. Somehow it got muddled in my mind that if I could whisk him out from under her nose, it would be getting some of my own back from Jeremy and his flavor of the week. I felt I needed to prove something.”
She held the dried-up cigarette to her nose, then tossed it into his overflowing wastebasket.
“So I did.”
“Where? Here?”
“Yes. It was a rainy spring day. Not unlike today, in fact,” she said, glancing toward the spattered window overlooking a quiet street in Raleigh’s Cameron Park. “Your sisters were at school and Jeremy had made a point of saying he wouldn’t be home for lunch, that he would be meeting with some of his advisees about their term projects. That’s when he was still bothering to lie about it. I brought Donald Nordan home for a lunch meeting myself.”
“Where?”
A tilt of her head gestured to the big room at the end of the hall. “You were conceived in the master bedroom, in my grandmother’s four-poster. Just like Helen and Claire.”
Her son raised an eyebrow at that and she gave a rueful smile. “Okay, maybe not exactly like them.”
“Was he the first?”
“No. And before you ask, he wasn’t the last, either. But the others are none of your business.”
She stood abruptly, scattering more flecks of tobacco on the hardwood floor. “I wish you wouldn’t do this, Davis. There’s nothing for you in Seagrove. You’re not a potter. Biology isn’t destiny.”
“No? Maybe I need to prove something, too, Mom. You said I could have this semester.”
“I know, but I thought you’d go to New York. Or Europe. I sure as hell didn’t think you’d go to Seagrove.”
“Look at all the money you’re saving,” he said lightly as he tucked a couple of sketchbooks and a handful of drawing pencils in the side pocket of his duffel and zipped it closed. He looked around the room, then slung the bag over his shoulder. “I’m only an hour or so away if I need anything else.”
“Promise you’ll be careful,” she said, following him downstairs. “And don’t piss anybody off, okay? Just remember that somebody killed Donald’s brother.”
Unfortunately, it was reading about the murder in the News and Observer last week that had finally led her to tell her son the truth about who he was.
Okay, that and too much wine for dinner, she admitted to herself. Too late now to wish she’d kept her mouth shut.
“Listen to your instincts,” she urged. “If things start feeling weird, if you sense danger, get out of there immediately. I don’t want you in some lunatic’s line of fire. Promise?”
“I promise, I promise,” Davis said in that “yeah, yeah” tone he used whenever he felt she was nagging. “And I’ll call you as soon as I have a phone number.”
He leaned in to kiss her cheek, but she pulled him down to her level and gave him a fierce hug and when he was gone, she went looking for the newspaper article she had clipped exactly a week ago.
“Someone you knew?” Davis had asked casually, not really interested.
If only she’d answered yes, just as casually!
Instead, she’d had to smart-mouth and say no, which of course only whetted his curiosity.
The article was still lying on the dining room table. She picked it up and looked again for the name of the detective in charge of the investigation. There it was: Lieutenant Connor Woodall of the Randolph County Sheriff’s Department.
She frowned in concentration. Now, who did she know that might know Lieutenant Connor Woodall?
CHAPTER
17
Pots turned rapidly . . . tend to retain the first imprinting of the shape; the evidence of deft fingers on the malleable clay remains.
—Raised in Clay, Nancy Sweezy
I was finishing up the leftovers down at Makely Friday morning in a session as dreary as the rain I’d driven down in. One sad case of assault followed another—“I come in after working all day and she’s sitting there watching them trashy talk shows, the house a mess, no supper, the kids yelling, but she’s lying if she says I hit her with my fist. It was just a little push when she got in my face.”
Or, “She’s not a bad daughter, Your Honor, ’cepting when she’s drinking, and then she gets mean and my wife and me, we just can’t take it no more. We’ll keep on looking after the baby, but if you could maybe get her in one of those programs?”
Worthless checks seemed to have been written by everyone from migrant day laborers to prim little middle-class grandmothers, and I dealt with various shoplifters who between them had taken clothes, cigarettes, a pair of work boots, five flats of yellow rooster comb—“Everybody’s got red. Red’s common”—and three packages of rib-eye steaks that leaked a trail of blood through the grocery store and out the door, where the manager stopped him.
I listened to guilty pleas, not-guilty pleas, and, “Yeah, I done it but if you’ll just hear me out, Your Honor, you’ll understand why I had to.”
At the midmorning recess, a clerk found me in the hallway and told me I’d had a phone call.
“She said it was urgent.”
I didn’t recognize the Raleigh number she gave me and when I called it, an unfamiliar woman’s voice answered. I identified myself and she said, “Thanks for calling back, Deborah. It’s Jennifer McAllister. I don’t know if you remember me? We sat next to each other at that victory luncheon for Elaine Marshall last fall?”
Elaine Marshall is the Lillington attorney who whomped up on Richard Petty in the race for Secretary of State to become the first woman ever elected to North Carolina’s Council of State. And I certainly did remember Jennifer McAllister, popularly known around the Triangle as Jenny Mack, creator of one-of-a-kind costume jewelry. In fact, I even own a necklace that my brother Will brought home from a craft fair before she’d established a name for herself. Strands of flea-market beads, thin chains, and imitation pearls were suspended above and below an enigmatic female face that had been carved from resin, then subtly hand-painted. Will gave it to me half in jest for passing the bar. He told me it was an “I Am Woman” statement and I think he paid all of twenty-five dollars for it.
These days a Jenny Mack necklace like mine goes for three or four hundred.
“Of course I remember you,” I said. “You tried to buy back my necklace. And we had that great conversation about Fred Chappell’s books.”
(Thinking I n
eeded more culture, I’d just joined my sister-in-law April’s book club. One of the selections had been I Am One of You Forever, which Jennifer McAllister had recently read, too. I’d been rather pleased with myself for holding my own in an area where I don’t usually shine.)
“What I remember is that you referred to several friends in law enforcement across the state,” she said. “SBI agents, sheriff’s deputies, police officers from High Point to Wilmington?”
“Yes?” I said, curious as to where this was going.
“What I was wondering is, do you by any chance know a Lieutenant Connor Woodall over in Randolph County?”
I admitted that I did. “Why do you ask?”
“Look, it’s too complicated to talk about over the phone. Could I meet you somewhere? Take you to lunch?”
I explained that I was down in Makely and wouldn’t be finished till midafternoon. We arranged to meet for an early supper at a cantina just off I-40. It was a little closer to my house in the western part of Colleton County than to hers in Raleigh, but hey, she was the one who sounded in need of a favor.
In the end, I finished court a little earlier than I expected; nevertheless, Jennifer McAllister—“Please! Call me Jenny”—was there before me. Indeed, she already had a frozen margarita in front of her that was half-drunk. It looked refreshing and I ordered one, too.
Liquor-by-the-drink is a relatively recent innovation in Colleton County. When I was a child, everyone had to brown-bag it. If you went out to dinner, you could order setups, but the liquor itself had to come from a bottle you brought yourself and kept under the table. Because the state was rather strict about open containers in a car, diners encouraged each other to finish the bottle so it wouldn’t “go to waste,” which, of course, only encouraged drunk driving.
(It also built a market for the product my daddy used to make. Shot houses were already illegal, so their proprietors didn’t think twice about serving the clientele untaxed white whiskey. Now that liquor-by-the-drink is legal, you’d think there’d be fewer shot houses and, for all I know, there are. All the same, shot house cases do keep turning up in my courtroom.)
Jenny McAllister looked as I’d remembered: a compact body, short once-blond hair that was now almost ash and styled by someone really good with the scissors, clear blue eyes above high cheekbones, and the alert air of someone interested and involved in life. She wore a simple sage green cotton tunic over a matching long skirt. Around her neck was a beaten bronze necklace that I instantly coveted.
“Do people buy things right off your body?” I asked.
She smiled. “They try to.”
As we read over the menu and ordered, we made small talk about the weather (rainy/mild/good for azaleas and dogwoods) and about the mushrooming growth in this part of Colleton County (rampant/unchecked/bad for overcrowded schools and roads). When the waitress had gone away with our order, Jenny leaned forward and said, “I don’t know if you saw it in last week’s paper, but a potter was killed over in Seagrove last week—”
“James Lucas Nordan,” I said.
She sat back in surprise. “You knew him?”
“Not very well,” I said neutrally. “Was he a friend of yours?”
“No, I never met him.” With a wry smile on her lips, she shook her head ruefully. “Sorry. A little moment of déjà vu. This is practically the same conversation I had with my son when I first read about the murder.”
“Oh?”
“He was my son’s uncle,” she said bluntly.
“Oh, I am sorry,” I told her.
“Don’t be. Not on my account anyhow. As I said, I never met him. Didn’t even know he existed till I read about it.” Again, she leaned forward and the lower rung of her necklace clanged softly against the table. “Look, judges and lawyers—you’re both discreet, right? Can I speak to you in confidence?”
I nodded, suddenly realizing that if James Lucas was her son’s uncle, then her son must be the illegitimate child Donny Nordan had fathered.
“Twenty years ago, I had what amounted to a one-night stand with Nordan’s brother, Donald. I never had any reason to tell Donald or my son, either, until a couple of years ago when my husband finally died. We’d lived separately for years, but never bothered to divorce. He didn’t want to be free to remarry and I didn’t want to have to give him half of what I was starting to make. Anyhow, my son was nearly grown and I decided maybe they both had a right to know. I drove over to Seagrove one day, found Donald, and told him. If he’d been unreceptive, I’d have dropped it right there.”
“But he was happy about it,” I said.
“Yes! How did you know?”
“A mutual friend told me about his death and how unlikely it was that he’d killed himself when he was looking forward to meeting his son.”
“Suicide?” She looked puzzled. “I heard it was an accident, that he got tangled in a cord or something. I never knew it was supposed to be suicide.”
No way was I going to be the one to tell her how her onetime lover had died, especially since it was only a guess on my part, a guess with no more confirmation than Connor Woodall’s bright red embarrassment when I tried to get him to talk.
“Only at first,” I said quickly. “But they soon got it right.”
Her face cleared. “We were waiting for the blood tests to come back before telling Davis. Donald didn’t see the need. He said my word was good enough, but I wanted them both to have scientific proof from the beginning. But before I got the results—”
She broke off as our food arrived—taco salad for me, a chicken burrito for her. Much as I hate seeing the building explosion here, the influx of migrant workers has certainly brought in great Mexican food.
“So before you got the results . . .?” I encouraged when our waitress finally assured herself that we had everything we needed and went away.
“Donald was dead. I called to let him know the tests were back and that they did confirm his paternity. I never got a chance to speak to him, though. Whoever answered the phone said he’d been buried two weeks before.”
“Must have been quite a shock for you.”
She shrugged. “Well, it’s not as if we’d had a real relationship.”
“Nevertheless . . .?”
With a sigh, she nodded. “As you say, nevertheless.”
She picked at her burrito, and I added some extra salsa to my salad.
“I’m guessing that you didn’t tell your son?”
“There didn’t seem to be any point after that and I let it ride till I read about this James Nordan’s murder at Nordan Pottery and realized that he must have been Donald’s brother.”
As we ate, she described how her son had picked up on it while she was clipping the article and how she’d blurted out to him that the dead man was his uncle.
“Unbeknownst to me, he drove over for the funeral this past Tuesday, then went back to the house and met his grandfather and aunt and one of his cousins.”
I was curious. “How did they react?”
“With open arms, apparently.” She did not sound happy about it. “He left this morning to go stay with them. His grandfather’s going to teach him how to throw pots.”
“And you want me to keep an eye on him?”
“You?”
She looked bewildered and I realized that in listening to her story, I’d forgotten that she didn’t know my connection to the Nordans or that I’d be going back to Seagrove next week.
“You found the body?” she exclaimed when I told her about being there the week before.
She wanted all the details and, under the circumstances, I decided she had a right to know them, so I told her everything I knew about the Nordans and what gossip I’d heard.
“And you’re going back this week? I can’t believe it!”
I nodded.
“Then would you tell me anything you hear? And would you ask this Lieutenant Woodall to keep an eye on Davis for me? I’m worried about him, Deborah. If there’s a k
iller running around that pottery . . .”
I could understand her concern.
“Sure,” I told her.
“You could tell Davis that you and I are old friends, so he won’t think I’m checking up on him.”
I had to laugh. “If he’s half as sharp as my teenaged nephews, that’s exactly what he’s going to think.”
CHAPTER
18
It is most important to realize that the central perception of the traditional potter is that his craft is a trade. This attitude governs the making of shapes in multiples without concern about repetition.
—Raised in Clay, Nancy Sweezy
It wasn’t that he’d expected a brass band standing on the front porch to welcome him, Davis Richmond told himself, looking at the closed sign on the shop door, but he’d certainly expected someone to be there. He peered through the window. All was dark inside.
He’d already knocked on the front and back doors of his grandfather’s house with no results. He’d even walked over to the second house, home of his recently buried uncle, and found no one there, either.
Baffled, Davis folded his lanky frame into his old Toyota and drove back toward town. At least it had quit raining, and from the way the sun was shining, the day was going to be another warm one, a sample of summer to come.
Samples of summer’s pests were already around. As he gassed up his car at a service station in Seagrove, two dogflies circled his head. Inside the air-conditioned coolness, he bought a ham-and-cheese sandwich and a bottle of tomato juice, which he ate in his hot car, then drove over to the Pottery Center to kill a little time before going back and trying again.
The modern building was light and airy, all blond oak floors and cases, and completely deserted except for a couple of women at the front desk, who collected his entrance fee and told him they’d be happy to answer any questions. He wandered through the display area, following the sound of recorded fiddle music and voices. At the far end of the hall, a television set was showing a tape about Seagrove’s history and some of its more prominent potters. As he sat down to watch, he suddenly heard, “. . . who, along with Nordan Pottery, began sending their wares all over the country. Amos Nordan, shown here with his young sons . . .”
Uncommon Clay (A Deborah Knott Mystery Book 8) Page 14