by Love, Aimee
“What’s going on?” She demanded.
“What’s going on?” The girl on the road repeated in that same eerie voice. Aubrey swung the light back to where she had been, but the girl was gone. Drake strained at the leash and growled again. Aubrey looked back to the girls in the trees but they too had vanished, melting away into the darkness. She heard a coyote howl in the distance and shivered.
“Good boy,” she patted Drake’s flank and rubbed his ears. “Such a good boy.” They ran all the way home.
As soon as she got in the door, Aubrey set the security system and called Vina.
“There are naked girls running around in the woods!”
“Is it August already?” Vina asked.
“Not for a few more days,” Aubrey told her. “Why? Is August naked girl in the woods month?”
“Yup,” Vina told her. “They must just be practicing.”
“Practicing what?!?”
“Witchcraft.”
“There are witches in the hills?”
“They aren’t real,” Vina told her brusquely, as if the idea of teenage girls running around naked playing at fake black magic were okay. “It’s just a bunch of kids who checked out a library book and think it’s cool to be evil.”
“At least one of them was really young, probably not even a teenager. Shouldn’t we try to find out who she is and tell her parents?”
“If her parents gave a damn about her they wouldn’t let her out unsupervised this time of night,” Vina pointed out. “I called ‘em in for trespassing the first few years they started this crap, but they’re all minors. The cops don’t give a shit. Their parent’s don’t give a shit. So what’s it to me if they wanna cavort with Satan? It’s freedom of religion. Of course, you ask me that shouldn’t apply if your religion is stupid, but try telling that to your congressman.”
“So August is cavort with Satan month?”
“It’s just because of the Lammas.”
“Ok, I went along with the woods containing psychopaths, endangered wolves, dead bodies, and even fake witches, but llamas? Tell me you’re joking.”
“Not the animal you idiot. It’s l-a-m-m-a-s. It’s some kind of festival in August. They dance around and paint each other with mud or something.”
Aubrey sighed.
“Is there anything else I should know? Is September pretend-you’re-a-zombie month?”
“That’s October. You gonna help me decorate for the party? What are you going as anyway?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” Vina’s Halloween parties were the stuff of legend. People started sending her gifts months ahead of time hoping for an invitation. Aubrey had never actually been in town for one, but she’d seen the pictures and heard the stories her whole life.
“You gotta get on the ball. I’ve already been working on mine for months.”
“I’ll think about it and get back with you.”
“I got a spare severed head from last year if you need it, though I guess maybe you’ve had your fill of those for this year.”
“Yeah,” Aubrey said with a grimace.
“You should get with Joe. You guys could do one of those cutesy couple’s costumes and then go home and role-play.”
On that happy note, Aubrey hung up and got ready for bed. She cranked open one of the little windows in the loft so she could listen to the crickets and the frogs in hopes that they would drown out the rising note of hysteria in her thoughts. Witches? What was next? Bigfoot?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Aubrey got cleaned up from her run, gave Drake a big bowl of food and water, and went out on the porch to wait for Vina. While she was waiting, Matt called to tell her that they couldn’t get a tech free to get out and check her system until early next week. Aubrey wondered what she was supposed to do about the question of Joe’s guilt or innocence in the meantime, but suspected Matt was the wrong person to ask.
She hung up and passed the time by thinking of various personalized plates that would never make it past the DMV. IH8DUNN was the best she had come up with when Vina rolled into her driveway at ten on the nose.
The drive to Morristown took forty minutes and all Vina would talk about was possible themes for the Halloween party.
“Zombies,” Aubrey suggested.
“Too narrow. Besides, we did undead year before last.”
“Superheroes.”
“Lame.”
“Superheroes are lame?”
“They are if you’re a girl. We’d have thirty Wonder Woman knockoffs. She’s the only one with a cool costume.”
“50’s icons.”
“Donna Reed and Elvis? No thanks.”
“I thought you’d already started work on your costume,” Aubrey said. “Shouldn’t you do the theme to match it?”
“I’ve been experimenting with a new kind of foam latex on account of last year my fake abs cracked half way through the party. It’ll work for almost anything though.”
“Favorite foods.”
Vina scoffed. “You tryin’ to be funny?”
“It would be different,” Aubrey told her defensively.
“Try to aim for something a little less PG-13.”
“Favorite X-Files monster.”
“Now that has potential,” Vina told her with a wicked grin. “That man-bat thing was cool.”
“How about circus acts?”
“Lame.”
“You’d have a good mix of costumes. Sideshow freaks and acrobats…”
“I could rent a big top for the back yard,” Vina added, warming to the idea, “and make the caterers dress as clowns.”
“That might be pushing it,” Aubrey pointed out.
“Last year we did a slasher movie theme and they all came as victims. Clowns should be easy enough to talk ‘em into.”
By the time they had pulled into the DMV parking lot, she had decided on the music and decorations and was working on food.
“You think hot dogs, popcorn, cotton candy, and roasted peanuts are enough? How about funnel cakes?”
“Everyone likes funnel cakes,” Aubrey assured her, getting out of the car.
“I’m gonna go cut off people taking their drivers test to see if I can make ‘em fail. I’ll swing by every once in awhile. Just wait on the bench out front when you’re done.”
Aubrey started to protest but Vina was already pulling away.
Two hours in the DMV got everything sorted out. She settled for NVR BRD for her tag, in honor of the web site that had earned her the money to buy it, her game store NeverBoard.com, but only because the woman behind the counter had the coloring and unpleasant demeanor of a Mosley in spite of the name plaque that read Eileen Collins.
As she sat on the bench out front, sweltering in the noon sun, her cell phone rang. She answered it and was immediately reminded of a saying Erma was fond of quoting, “To think of the devil is to invite him to tea.” It was Mitchell Dunn.
“I just got my tag and license plate fixed,” she assured him. “And I’m going to pay the fines tomorrow.”
“That’s good news ma’am, but it isn’t why I’m callin’ you,” he told her. His voice sounded odd to her at first, and then she realized it was because he was being polite, without the nasty condescending tone he usually used when he called her ma’am.
“Okay,” she replied warily. “What can I do for you, Sheriff?”
“It’s a question of what I can do for you. I know you’re an interested party in the Noah Mosley case, and I wanted to let you know that we’re revisiting it.” He didn’t mention that it was pressure from the FBI and Forest Service forcing him to do so.
“That’s good to hear, Sheriff,” she said in her most neutral voice. “There do seem to be some unanswered quest
ions.” Like why the sheriff is trying to cover up an obvious murder, she thought.
“I knew you’d want to do everything you could to cooperate,” he told her. Aubrey braced herself. Here it comes, she thought. “I was hoping we could meet and go over your statement. See if there was anything you’d remembered in the meantime.” Or anything I can help you forget, Aubrey heard the unspoken meaning clearly enough. She had no desire to sit down with Sheriff Dunn again, but she was curious about what details he might try to help her misremember.
“It wouldn’t need to be official,” Dunn told her. “We could just sit down over a cup of coffee and chat.”
“Okay,” Aubrey agreed after a thoughtful pause. “How about Monday morning at the Waffle House?”
“I was hopin’ to do it sooner, rather than later,” Dunn told her, obviously a bit put out that even when he was civil she wasn’t willing to hop to.
“I’m afraid I’m busy the rest of the week,” she lied.
“Well, Monday it is then. Does nine suit?”
Vina screeched to a halt at the curb in front of her and waved frantically for her to get in the car.
“Nine should be fine.”
She hung up without another word and gathered her purse and DMV paperwork. She got in the car and Vina sped away, giving her a dirty look.
“Took your time,” she snapped, but she was clearly enjoying herself.
“The line was long. It’s the end of the month.”
“I meant getting’ in,” she clarified. “How would it look if the instructor I just cut off pulled into the lot and saw me sittin’ right here?”
“I’d imagine it would look a lot like one of the rooms at The Home,” Aubrey told her archly. “Which is where they’ll put you if I can’t prove I’m a good guardian by keeping you out of trouble.”
Vina gave her a scathing look.
“You aren’t supposed to be keeping me out of trouble, on account of I’m perfectly capable of tending myself,” Vina reminded her unnecessarily. “You’re just a figurehead, like the queen. Only instead of millions of adoring people watching you in a parade, you only have to smile and wave for one senile old judge.”
Aubrey held her tongue, all too aware that Vina was not going to be cowed into good behavior.
“Joe coming this weekend?” Vina asked, changing the subject.
Aubrey nodded, not much liking that subject either.
Vina did a little dance as she drove down the hairpin turns that wove through steep, rugged hills and Aubrey closed her eyes to keep from having a panic attack.
“Lemme use your phone,” Vina held out her hand.
“Why don’t you wait until we get home? Or pull over and let me drive?”
Vina swerved around another bend, oblivious to the speed limit.
“I ain’t likely to wreck on this road,” Vina told her haughtily. “I used to race my Pa along this route when it was a dirt track and I always won, even though he made me ride the old mare.”
It was always hard for Aubrey to remember that Vina, with her Buick and her computer and her oh-so-informative answering machine had grown up in a house with no running water or electricity and used a horse to get from place to place.
“Why?” Aubrey asked, suddenly curious.
“Because it was fun,” Vina told her.
“I mean, why where you on this road? Where were you headed?”
“To see his folks. They wouldn’t tolerate Ma, on account of her being Melungeon, but they let Pa and me visit, on account of I got his complexion so the neighbors wouldn’t know I was mixed.”
Aubrey looked over at Vina, so pale she was practically transparent.
“Your mother had dark skin?” She had heard talk of Melungeons her entire life, since she and nearly everyone in the hollow was related to them, but she’d never heard that they looked any different than anyone else. To Aubrey being Melungeon was no different than being Dutch or German.
Vina shrugged elaborately, but at least she’d stopped dancing in her seat and was watching the road. Aubrey tried to keep her talking so they’d get home in one piece.
“Does your mother? Do you?” Vina asked, taking Aubrey by surprise. “Your mother is a full blood Melungeon.”
Aubrey pulled down the visor and looked at herself in the tiny makeup mirror, searching for some sign of her Melungeon roots. She saw dark, wavy hair, olive skin, and eyes of such a dark green that they were often mistaken for brown. If anyone ever wondered about her ancestry, she imagined they probably thought she was Hispanic.
“Do I look Melungeon?” She asked.
“You look just like your Grandma and my Ma and your own until she started dying her hair. If you’d been born in my mother’s day, they wouldn’t a let you vote.”
“Melungeons couldn’t vote?”
“Melungeons were labeled FPCs,” Vina informed her. “They couldn’t vote and they couldn’t bear witness against a white.”
“FPC?”
“Free Person of Color.”
“Mom said Melungeons were just a mix of Cherokee and early settlers,” Aubrey told her. “I didn’t realize…”
Vina shrugged again.
“Indians weren’t counted much different than blacks. Besides, the reason nobody can decide who the Melungeons were is ‘cause they were everybody. They were just a band of mix breeds who took in anybody that didn’t fit anywhere else. Right now, bein’ multi-racial might be hip, but back in the day it was sin and cause for a lynching. At least a black or an Indian knew his place. Melungeons weren’t accepted by anyone, that’s why they stuck together for so long. Nobody else would have ‘em.”
Aubrey had always pictured the Melungeons as a hapless community of Europeans befriended by local Indians and semi-integrated. It hadn’t occurred to her that the stew continued to add ingredients or that the people had been maligned for their racial tolerance.
“You know where my farm is?” Vina asked.
Aubrey nodded. Vina owned extensive lands outside the hollow which she leased to local farmers.
“Ever wonder why the house is in the hollow and all the rest of the land is on the other side of the river?”
“Because the hollow has clean water and is protected from the elements?”
Vina shook her head. “Because my Ma didn’t want folks in town to see her and talk. She never left the hollow from the day my Pa brought her there. If they’d a known what she was, they wouldn’t a sold to me or Pa at the general store, they wouldn’t have let me in church or school, and I’d a had to marry another Melungeon or stay a spinster.”
Aubrey felt suddenly adrift. As a child of the seventies, the kind of racism that Vina was talking about had never seemed real to her.
“Is that why they burned down our house?” Aubrey asked quietly.
Vina shook her head.
“That was The Bitch, and she’s as Melungeon as they come. I told you, she was just mad because your Grandpa wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with her.”
“But Grandpa was a Melungeon too, and so was Grandma…”
“He didn’t not want her because she was Melungeon. He just didn’t like her. In the beginnin’, she’d just hint around to your Grandpa that he should marry her, but after a while she took to rantin’ at him, sayin’ he wanted to marry a white woman so his kids could pass. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that rantin’ at a man an accusin’ him of bein’ a bigot is no way to win his heart. When he went up to Newman’s Ridge and came back with a Melungeon bride, she was livid. She’s been takin’ it out on the world ever since.”
Vina pulled the car up in front of the cabin and Aubrey got out, sighing with relief because she was spared the trauma of mentioning that she was having coffee with the woman’s grandson on Monday.
She imme
diately went into the carriage house to put the temporary tag on the Mini so she could go and buy groceries in town. Only after she had taped it in place and removed the old tag did she see the misprint. Instead of NVR BRD, the tag read RVR BRD. She went inside to call the DMV, forgetting about Drake until he had hurtled into her.
She pet him and reminded him he was the best dog ever, then took the phone out onto the dock so he could have a swim while she waited on hold. Thirty-five minutes later, when she finally got an actual human on the phone, she was informed that she would need to come back to the DMV and pay another fifty dollars to have a new tag issued. When she protested, the woman pointed out that she’d been asked to check the information on the form before okaying it, and that the clerks couldn’t be held responsible for her negligence.
She had pop tarts for dinner, unwilling to show her car in town either with or without its new tag. Had the clerk really been a Mosley? Could it possibly be a coincidence that her tag now said “River Broad” when she lived only a few miles from a whorehouse with a remarkably similar name?
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The next day Aubrey spent two more hours at the DMV, driving herself over with the temporary tag taped crookedly inside the back window. She made sure that the first three letters were hidden below the line of the hatchback, and decided that if she got pulled over she’d just say that one of the tape corners fell off.
When she was done and her new tag was in place, she drove halfway to Knoxville to meet Matt for lunch at a truck stop Wendy’s. He filled her in on the little they’d found and she told him about her upcoming meeting with the sheriff. She told him if he hadn’t heard from her by noon on Monday, he was to send in the National Guard. He, in turn, expressed a very keen interest in what the good sheriff might have to say to her.
He also hinted that he’d like to see her that weekend so they could do their catching up. While they didn’t have plans, what with her accusing him of infiltrating her security system and all, she did remember Joe asking if she was busy this weekend and her telling him no. She deflected Matt. Even if Joe’s guilt were confirmed and their relationship ended, she wasn’t sure she would be interested in Matt. Every time she looked at him she thought of Jason.