Morgan James - Promise McNeal 01 - Quiet the Dead

by Morgan James

  Lofty thinking for so early in the morning, I told myself, as I aimed my Subaru south to Atlanta for the second time this week. Did I still believe in synchronicity and our oneness with the universe? That was an easy question. Yes, I did. So what happened to me? When did walking the journey with a client to find the synchronicities stop being gratifying? That was a harder question. Somewhere along the way I began to doubt I had a gift for helping anyone, and was profoundly frustrated with so many long journeys and not enough destinations. Still, I was the one who kept a sign on my desk that read, “I am here for the journey, not the destination.” My nagging Should-Girl Committee member reminded me it was my own fault if I couldn’t focus on the journey—only the journey. I changed lanes to pass a truck heavily loaded with great orange pumpkins, then sipped my coffee and reminded myself that nobody “cures” anyone else. The person wanting to be healed does the job of healing. Yet, too often I sensed I was more invested in my clients’ wellness than they were. The stripped down, ugly truth was I became sick and tired of listening to so much complaining and so little willingness to take responsibility, to do the necessary work for healing, because like anything worthwhile, healing is hard work. I should know that from personal experience, being the evader of hard work that I am.

  As I remembered the frustrations, just before I closed my practice, I think the last straw was a client I’d worked with for several months—she of the “oh, poor pitiful me” variety—who, in my professional opinion, suffered from a lifetime of acute selfishness, and a severe absence of gratitude. I had the overwhelming urge to get right up in her beautiful pampered face and yell, “Just put on your big girl panties and deal with it. That’s what the rest of the world does.” A couple of days later, I found a ceramic bobble-head do-dad thing that said just that. So I replaced my “here for the journey” sign with the silly little woman tugging up her pink panties. Maybe I should have gotten therapy myself, instead of retiring. Certainly my education taught me that if my client were skilled at taking responsibility, she would not be my client. Ah well, for better or for worse, forty-five days later, I bought Granny’s Store and my house on the creek.

  My thoughts drifted back to Fletcher Enloe’s jabs about January McNeal. Could my great grandfather have lived in Perry County? Was I drawn to that Western Carolina location by something other than what seemed to be a good real estate deal? Was Carl Jung’s theory at work, again, in my life? I committed myself to some serious genealogy sleuthing as soon as this business with Paul Tournay was settled.

  I drove south; passed through Cleveland and picked up Georgia 400 just outside Dahlonega. My heart ached to hear Luke’s voice and know he was safe. No point in stopping back in Dahlonega though. He wasn’t there. All I could do was pray he would call me soon. I forced myself back to the Tournay case, and another verity of the human condition. We are all a stirring pot of desires and needs, and I could see those converging forces playing out with Becca and Paul. Both needed love, and then worked at cross-purposes for finding love. Becca’s angry defensive personality, desiring punishment for a son she should have cherished, resenting him for his place in her father’s heart, precluded her from love. Mitchell Sanders was needy for money and security he thought Paul’s five million dollar trust would provide. And Becca’s father, what had he needed? What had it been like for him to live with the knowledge he killed Stella? If indeed he had killed Stella. Would that act have crippled his spirit and diminished his ability to show love for his daughter? Then there was Stella, of course. Explosive, tormented Stella. What did she want from me? What motivated her to visit my dreams?

  How about Boo Turner? Where did he and his granddaughter, Angel, fit into the puzzle? I had a growing sense of a connection, one that began to flower the night before as Susan and I studied Paul Tournay’s book. I could not see the shape or color of that connection, yet I felt its breath as surely as I would a stranger’s standing behind me in the dark. After I learned what I could about the trust from Garland’s records, I’d have another talk with Paul. His grandfather may have shared more than he’d volunteered. I relished the last sip of lukewarm coffee and anchored my red and white Dunkin Donuts cup in the holder. My mouth watered thinking about a couple of warm, yeasty donuts. How could I even think about something sweet this morning after all the sugar I ingested last night?

  Yes, last night. It was dusk. I stood at the kitchen window looking out into the yard where a young stand of sugar maples, swaying in the rising breeze, was just beginning to show tinges of orange fall color. The previous night’s rain had sent drier browning oak leaves to the ground, where they lay billowed against the tree trunks. Winter was marching into Appalachia. In an hour it would be dark, cold enough for a fire in the fireplace and quilts on the bed. I wondered if the steady breeze would be enough to keep fog from forming. I hoped so; I was a little girl trapped in a dark closet when the fog smothered around me. Farther beyond the kitchen window my three resident crows assembled on the pasture fence rail to scream torments at each other for reasons known only to them.

  Daniel leaned against the butcher-block countertop, his booted ankles crossed, hat in one hand, holding a grocery bag stuffed with clothes and toiletries for Susan in the other. Her black bristled hairbrush protruded from the bag like a periscope. He was mounting an argument for Susan staying the night with me, but I found it hard to focus on his words. The cawing of the crows took me beyond the room and the expanse of my yard, deep into the shadowy forest climbing the mountain behind my house. I thought of the wagon I’d heard in the early morning. The sluggish metallic laboring of wheels and an image of a gaunt January McNeal standing in the bed of the wagon, gray mane of hair tousled by an early morning wind, was still fresh in my mind. My stomach quivered and I thought I smelled charred wood. I knew I would have to walk the abandoned road climbing Fire Mountain soon, to satisfy my need to know if the wagon I heard was real, or a dream layered in early morning consciousness.

  “Promise, are you hearing me?” Daniel asked.

  I physically turned to Daniel, leaving Fire Mountain behind. “Yes, Daniel. You’ll get no argument from me. I’m glad for Susan’s company tonight.”

  “Good,” he continued. “I doubt your prowlers will come back with another vehicle parked in the yard; but just in case I stopped at Fletcher’s coming over and told him the plan. He’ll be listening out again tonight, while he’s working late in his front room.”

  “Buying and selling merchandise on EBay, I bet,” I interrupted.

  Daniel frowned. “Lord, woman, I hadn’t figured you for the nosy type. Lucky for you he is up late, wouldn’t you say?”

  I was chastised. “Yes, lucky for me,” I replied and smiled.

  “Fletcher will call me if he hears or sees anything out of sorts. I can be here in fifteen minutes, but even fifteen minutes can be a long time if you are frightened, so leave the outside lights on and try not to panic. And don’t go shooting out into the yard. You might hit a deer, or shoot Fletcher. I told him to stay home, course that old man marches to his own drum, so I wouldn’t trust him not to come over here.”

  Susan came into the kitchen from the front of the house. “Hey Daddy. Who you talking about shooting somebody?”

  “Nobody is shooting anybody. I don’t even own a gun,” I announced.

  Susan and Daniel gave each other a knowing look and then shook their heads, as though in pity. “Miz P.” Susan spoke to me as she would a somewhat doltish relative, “You live twenty miles from nowhere. In the mountains. We got snakes, coyotes and bears. A girl alone needs a gun. Don’t worry, me and Daddy will get you a good rifle and teach you how to shoot it.”

  “No, I don’t want a rifle. I’d probably just shoot myself in the foot. I hate guns.” I noticed a burned thatch of weeds in Susan’s right hand and smelled a strong unpleasant brackish odor in the kitchen. “Susan, what is that stuff? It smells like singed hair.”

  Susan raised her weed filled hand, sending more burned hair smell i
n my direction. “This here is wormwood, witch hazel, and mugwort. You’ve got it growing all over the back of your property. I picked it while you were in the shower, and I’ve been making a circle around the house, burning it as I go. Smudging for protection, just like my MaMa Allen always does at her house. And you better believe no prowler ever crossed her door yard!”

  Daniel smiled indulgently at his daughter. Though repulsed by the strong order, I was fascinated. “Your grandmother taught you to do that? Is she an herbalist?”

  “Well, I’m not sure what you’d call her, but she knows everything about everything that grows here in the mountains. Actually, she’s my great-grandmother. She’s eighty-two. Sharpe as a whittled stick. You’d like her.”

  Daniel must have realized I was counting years. “My daddy’s mother died when he was nine. MaMa Allen is my granddaddy’s second wife. Married her when my Daddy was sixteen. She was closer to my dad’s age when she married Grandpa. Guess the idea of older men marrying young didn’t raise as many eyebrows then as it does now.”

  Raising my own eyebrows, I suppressed an angry thought about my ex-husband and his folly for young women. Bless his little black heart.

  Susan continued her thread of thought. “I think Granny and Miz P. would like each other. Don’t you think so, Daddy?”

  Daniel tilted his head slightly and gave me an intense look, hesitating just for a moment. “Well, maybe. They do seem to favor one another some. You know MaMa, Susan, she doesn’t suffer fools in silence.”

  I felt my face flush with anger. “Are you saying I’m a fool, Daniel?”

  Susan howled in laughter and poked gently at Daniel’s arm. “You put your foot in it now, Daddy!”

  Daniel slapped his Stetson back on his head and dropped the bag for Susan on the counter. “No, that is not what I’m saying. I swear, Dr. McNeal, you can’t see a compliment coming on a freight train. I’m leaving now. I got cows to tend.”

  Susan disposed of the remainder of her weeds, or should I say herbs. We warmed up left over pot roast from the refrigerator for an early supper, and about seven o’clock she drove down to Granny’s to call the phone number for Boo Turner in South Carolina. According to Susan’s report, an answering machine with a dusky, sexy voice, told her the Turners were unavailable and gave a cell phone number to call. She waited an hour and called again. Same message. When she returned, we got to work on Tournay’s book, Carolingian Art: Diverging Genius, taking turns reading the book aloud.

  I went first. After several scholarly pages of text laying out a historical landscape of Europe in the late 700’s, Tournay moved on to the crowning of Charlemagne as King of the Franks in 771, and his concerted efforts to consolidate fragmented regions of Europe into a unified Christian state. Tournay explained that Christianity at that time was primarily an eastern religion with the central church located in Constantinople. For the next twenty-five years after Charlemagne united the Franks in Europe, he mounted a series of bloody military campaigns against the “aggressive, pagan” Saxons, Lombardy, Westfali, and, apparently, just about any other non-Christian group he could march against. By 800 AD, the Carolingian Empire reached from Aquitaine in South West France to the River Vistula in Poland, and Europe was well on its way to being Christian. “Not bad for a king without heat seeking missiles or armored tanks,” I remarked, trying to lighten up the dry text. Susan was unimpressed. By this point she was fidgeting in her chair with boredom and I was not far behind. I turned the book towards her to give her a full view of a color portrait of the crowned, jeweled robed Charlemagne, described by the author as being handsome, well over six foot tall, of stout body, with beautiful white hair and beard.

  Susan raised a dark eyebrow. “Charming. Doesn’t look like a murderer of thousands now does he? Do you think he could have possibly misread Jesus’ message about compassion and bringing converts into the church?” Susan’s sarcasm was evident. She didn’t think any more of Charlemagne’s conversion tactics than I did.

  We both questioned what, if anything, Tournay’s book had to do with recent events. I didn’t have an answer to the question, but felt there was something singularly odd about Tournay choosing such an obscure topic for a book. The man was a cabaret entertainer in France, then a landscape painter and painting teacher for the remainder of his life. He was educated, but not a medieval scholar. This book seemed to be his only foray into antiquities. What was his interest in artifacts from Charlemagne’s time? I had spent too many years working with people to believe choices are random. No. Paul Tournay had a good reason for publishing a book devoted to antiquities. Scanning down a couple of pages, I picked up again, reading to Susan, “His dedication to the forceful spreading of Christianity gained him the title of Holy Roman Emperor when Pope Leo III crowned him on Christmas Day, 800 AD. The new Emperor’s passion for remnants of a previous Roman culture as the birthplace of early Christianity, his love for all things Byzantium born from Mediterranean culture, and a drive to carry the Christian message contained in the Latin Bible drove Charlemagne to find expressions of his spiritual view through talented artisans of the times. Thus, as Emperor, he had the means and opportunity to forge through those various artists what we know as Carolingian art.”

  Susan yawned and rubbed her eyes.

  “Okay, now we get to the pretty colored pictures,” I offered, and opened the book flat on the table. Even though it was a slim volume, just one hundred and ten pages of text and color plates, the photographs were excellent. With informative paragraphs accompanying each color picture, Paul Tournay made a skillful argument that this period was innovative and seminal for the creation of later Romanesque and Gothic art.

  Susan’s interest was sparked by a color plate of a enameled three part panel of Jesus enthroned in gold, his halo bejeweled in reds, blues and yellow, his eyes piercing black stones, which seem to look into eternity. Seated apostles turned toward Jesus filled each side panel. “How did they do that?” she asked. “The figures are painted head on, sort of flat looking, but the faces look three dimensional.” I had to agree, the artistry was phenomenal.

  As we moved through the book, Tournay pictured intricate illuminated Bible manuscripts, enamels of Biblical scenes, metalwork objects used for churches and private households, carved ivory book covers, alter pieces fashioned from gold, filigreed enameled incense burners, and elaborate enameled encrusted crucifixes. Each text for the pictures brought the reader forward in time to compare like works of later periods given root in the Carolingian period. Cluny, Limoges, Rheims, and Tours were cited several times as origins of some of the later more accomplished works. Limoges appeared over and over again. “Susan, Paul Tournay was from Paris, or thereabouts. He spent the war in Paris, anyway. Isn’t Limoges near Paris?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Why does that matter? Tournay studied art in France. He was French. France is a relatively small county. Over there, everything is close to something else famous. Believe me, I’ve been to Europe. A person gets historical overload in about twenty-four hours. Their cities were ancient when we were still trying to drain the swamps to build Washington, DC.”

  “Umm. I guess. You know this book was published in the early sixties. Where do you suppose he got the photographs? They are so, so good.”

  Susan drew the book closer. “I think an author usually makes a credit for the photograph below the picture.” She studied several photographs and turned a couple of pages forward. “That’s funny. There are no credits with the pictures. Oh, wait,” she flipped to the end of the book, “Here it is. He’s numbered the photos and then matched the numbers with acknowledgements for them at the back.”

  We scanned down the list of photo credits matched with the numbered color plates. “Interesting. Look at that, Susan. Six, ten, fourteen, twenty. Twenty of the photos say they are by the author. And look, if you go back to the pictures, he gives you the origin of each piece, but not always the current location. You know, such and such museum or whatever. None of his own pictures c
ite current locations. Why would he do that? Doesn’t a credit usually tell you what museum or collection currently owns the piece? Why give some locations and not all?”

  “I don’t know,” Susan answered. “Maybe he didn’t know where they were. Honestly this whole thing is so boring I’m having trouble caring about any of it.” She rose and paced the kitchen, arms crossed and mouth pursing from side to side, thinking. “Still, it’s like you said. Why did Tournay choose such an obscure subject? He could have written about landscape painters of the nineteenth century, or Dutch Masters, something he knew more about. Maybe he did his masters thesis on old Charlemagne.”

  “I don’t think so. That wasn’t in the info I found about him on the Internet. You’d think if he was some authority on medieval art, the bio would have said so.” I was mulling over Tournay’s possible motives for writing the book, so I did what I do to get my mind focused on a stubborn puzzle. I retrieved a half-gallon of Turtle Tracks ice cream from the freezer and two spoons from the drawer.

  Susan and I sat silently and ate the delicious concoction of vanilla, chocolate and caramel flavors from the carton until she spoke again. “You know, Miz P. I can’t think of any reason he left out some locations of the art pieces, unless…” Susan licked the back of her spoon before diving in for another turn.

  “Unless,” I repeated and finished her sentence, my spoon overflowing with melting ice cream, “unless, he didn’t want to say where the art pieces were located.”

  She nodded in agreement. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  “Tournay obviously knew all of the art pieces well. He knew who owned them, and where they were located. Otherwise he couldn’t have taken the photographs. What if….?” My mind skipped ahead.

  Susan’s eyes narrowed as she began to grasp where I was going. “You mean, what if he didn’t have to look very far to photograph some of the stuff?”