In a Dark Season

by Vicki Lane

  Amanda looked out the window, watching the few pedestrians hurrying along Ransom’s nearly deserted sidewalks. “It was the strangest, most surreal experience, Elizabeth. For once, Papa wasn’t in a big hurry. He took me to Asheville to see the Biltmore House and to Cherokee and then we went to a big amusement park near Charlotte. It took almost a week to get back to Tampa, and all that time he let me cry and carry on and talk about Spinner. And I did too, all the way through North and South Carolina and Georgia. But when we got to Florida and stopped in Lake City to spend the night, Papa said that when we got home, I was never to mention my brother’s name again.

  “‘You’re going to have to be very grown up now, Mandy,’ he said. ‘Your mama isn’t dealing with this loss very well. Any mention of Spencer is painful to her, so I want you to promise me not to talk about him with her—it’s easier for her right now just to carry on as if Spencer never existed.’

  “So I came home to a house where there was absolutely no trace of my brother. Instead of his room with the dark green walls covered with posters and the jumble of books and magazines and tennis clothes, there was a guest room—all shiny yellow and white and smelling of fresh paint. Nothing of Spinner was left—even his furniture had been replaced.

  “My mother was changed too—a different hairstyle, a new hair color, and her face that had been soft and sweet had become thin and brittle. She hugged me, asked how camp had been, and then, before I could even get out the placemats I’d woven for her, she excused herself to go lie down. ‘A little headache,’ she said.

  “She had headaches all summer, and after that summer, my life was a succession of boarding school, summer camp, boarding school, summer travel, holidays with my parents but almost never at home.” Amanda’s brief laugh was humorless. “Wherever home was. When I came home the first Christmas, they had moved to another, fancier house and it got harder and harder to remember Spinner. I felt like I’d lost everyone—Spinner was gone, Mama and Papa weren’t the same, and I didn’t know anymore who I was.”

  “According to my sister, you were on your way to becoming quite well known as a model. That’s an achievement a lot of young women would envy.”

  Amanda shook her head. “It’s all smoke and mirrors, that world. There I’m just a hanger for the clothes. What I do now—actually creating beauty with my hands and brain—is much more satisfying.”

  She looked at Elizabeth and her eyes shone. “After so much unhappiness it’s been like a miracle to find myself here. I’m finally doing something I love, with someone I love. Don’t worry, Elizabeth—I’m totally serious about Ben. He’s the best thing in my life since Spinner, and in a way it’s because of Spinner that we ended up together.”

  Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. “I don’t understand.”

  “It happened last year, when I was staying with my parents for a few weeks until they left for Palm Springs. They always have this huge bash just before Christmas—you know, several hundred of their closest friends. Anyway, I was getting dressed for the party and managed to trash the only pair of pantyhose that would work with this really short dress I was wearing. So I went down the hall to my mother’s dressing room to see if she had any. Guests were already beginning to arrive and Mama and Papa were both downstairs and I was frantically pulling open drawers looking for pantyhose.”

  Amanda held up the little handful of flyers and junk mail she had taken from Box 1066. “This is the only kind of mail I’ve gotten so far. But I keep hoping for an answer to my ad because of what my mother had hidden from me—a manila envelope marked ‘Amanda’ and it was full of letters to me from Spinner—all but one were unopened and most of them were postmarked either ’94 or ’95—two years after he was supposed to have died.”

  The Drovers’ Road XI

  The Fine Thread

  Many would deem it an auspicious augury when the jurors’ deliberations are prolonged.

  Lydy paused in his endless circuit—a ludicrously curtailed three steps away from the window wall and three short steps back—to glance dismissively at his cell mate. Then he shifted his attention to the square of gray sky visible through the bars. The despairing slump of his shoulders suggested that he did not share the Professor’s optimism. He stood for a moment longer, then turned to continue his pacing.

  The Professor closed the small leather-bound book with which he had been attempting to divert himself and returned it to his breast pocket. Even Homer’s sublime words, he muttered, pall upon too frequent perusal.

  Lydy, I beg of you, my young friend, relate to me more of your peregrinations. I collect you continued on the Drovers’ Road after your brief return to Gudger’s Stand; it was at a later date the unfortunate events leading to your incarceration occurred, if I do not mistake. Pray, tell me of your journey to South Carolina.

  At last the restless pacing ceased and Lydy dropped down on his bunk. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his big hands drooping.

  We was on our way early the next morning. I’d not had a word alone with Luellen but from the way she wouldn’t look at me when she was serving out the breakfast, I come to think she must have suspicioned what had passed betwixt me and her stepmother. Belle weren’t about that morning—and we had had but a few words the night before. But, like I said, I knowed that now there was nothing for me with Luellen. Right afore we left, ol’ Luellen come sidlin up with a poke of fried pies for me and begun to say something but I made out I had to be on my way and left her standin there with that little calico poke still in her hand.

  Belle’s scent was on me yet as we took to the road and I looked back to the house, where I seen her standin on that upper gallery, that dark hair of hern like a storm cloud around her head. She didn’t throw up her hand nor make nare sign but I felt the pull in my loins as if she’d bound me to her by a fine thread.

  Lydy closed his eyes. God help me, I feel hit yet, a-drawin me to her.

  The Professor cleared his throat. I have little experience of these stock stands. On my journey from Charleston to Warm Springs, I had occasion to put up just outside Asheville at a fine hostelry was called Sherrill’s Tavern. It, so I was told, served as a stock stand in the fall and winter months. But as I was there in the early summer, the custom was, in the main, from the Albany coaches. I found it a most commodious inn, set among pleasant fields, only somewhat marred by the muddy condition of the road leading to it. On the day I arrived, there had been a heavy downpour that morning and all the male passengers were obliged to remove from the stagecoach and push.

  Lydy roused from his reverie. I just called to mind a quare thing I heard about at one of them stands. They was a feller there named Aaron come in whilst we was there with a great pack of goods on his back: sewing notions and fripperies fer women-folk, razors and pocketknives fer men and all manner of things fer sale. He was a funny little dark-complected feller and he talked the quarest you ever heard. A man told me this Aaron was from someplace over the water and that most of the year he traveled the back roads where there weren’t no stores. He was said to be a Jew, like the ones in the Bible, but he didn’t wear no long robe, just an ordinary black coat and britches like anyone.

  He was a talky feller and he got to tellin about where all that he’d traveled and what all that he’d seen. He said as how he had come through South Carolina back in the spring and in a place called Mount Airy he seen two yaller-skinned brothers, joined at the breast by a band of flesh. They was born that way, he said, in some far-off land and hadn’t one never took a step without the other one had to come too.

  Now this Aaron told hit fer a true story and I might of believed him till he went on to say these brothers was married to two sisters and they had two houses and took hit in turns to pass a night in each house. He said they had any number of young uns, though wasn’t none of them joined nowhere. I believe he must have been a liar though. You can’t trust a furriner to speak the truth.

  As a matter of fact, Lydy, I believe your peddler was alluding
to Chang and Eng, the renowned Siamese twins. I myself, some years ago—

  A thump of boots and the rattle of the chain that secured the door of the cell interrupted the Professor’s observation. Lydy stiffened expectantly as the door creaked open a cautious few inches. A grizzled face appeared in the crack and a rough voice said, Lydy, there’s three of us out here come fer ye and ever one of us armed. You step out and come along peaceable like and they won’t be no trouble. The jury’s ready with the verdict.

  Chapter 34

  Something Like Fate

  Tuesday, December 26

  It was arson, all right—see how they set the mattress on fire—slashed it and the pillows open so they’d burn better—but at the moment I’m fresh out of motives.” Mackenzie Blaine rubbed his hands together and stamped his feet in an effort to warm them. The interior of the Gudger house seemed, somehow, at least ten degrees colder than the out-of-doors. “What d’ya think, Hawk? I suspect you and your lady friend mighta been discussing the subject.”

  Phillip looked around the wreck of the bedroom. The half-burned recliner lay on its side and the ratty little television’s tube was shattered. The old trunk’s lid was open and its interior was a mass of charred clothing. Every drawer had been wrenched from the chest of drawers and dumped into the center of the room to make another pile of tinder for the arsonist’s kerosene.

  Burn marks stretched across the floorboards of the bedroom and into the little hallway, marking the fire’s path. The stench of the wet, charred wood and plastic and cloth was strong, and he knew that it would linger in his nostrils and cling to his clothes for hours.

  “Lizabeth did suggest that both Miss Barrett’s niece and those RPI development folks would be happy not to have a historic building on their hands. You know how it is—once the historic preservationists get a bee in their bonnet about maintaining a place’s authenticity, all of a sudden there’re miles of red tape to untangle and everything has to wait till every single interested party has had their say and made their appeals. What if someone figured the place would be more useful as a development without the historic building? You said something like that yourself, back before Christmas when you were showing me around this place.”

  The sheriff kicked disconsolately at a jumbled heap of debris. “I know I did. And I’ve been quietly checking into the whereabouts of all those parties on the night in question. The niece and her boyfriend say they were back in Raleigh, but I haven’t been able to confirm that yet. And the RPI bunch all have alibis—hell, they were every one of them at a big do up at the Holcombe place, along with most of the politicos and movers and shakers of the county. Of course—”

  “Of course that doesn’t mean shit,” Phillip reminded him. “Folks like RPI don’t personally commit arson—they hire it done. But this was such a godawful amateur job—no, it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Nope, none of it does.” With a last look around what remained of the bedroom, they traced the blackened trail of the fire through the little hallway and into the onetime barroom.

  Mackenzie Blaine led the way to the back door. “The RPI folks say it’s radical environmentalists. Kind of a convenient catch-all phrase, like ‘outside agitators’ was back in the civil rights era. But there was a letter in the paper from some group called Black Bear Watches saying they’d torched the Hummer in protest of RPI’s plans. Only thing is, no one’s ever heard of this group.

  “Way too many unanswered questions, Hawk. Why’d Miss Barrett jump? Why’d Payne Morton kill himself? Whose bones are those in the silo? Who’s the damn mole in my department?”

  “About those bones,” Phillip trailed Blaine out the door onto the back porch. “Does the name Bambi Fleischaker ring any bells for you? She was a young woman who evidently went missing around that same October as the alleged gang rape occurred. Elizabeth is thinking that’s who it was in the silo.”

  As they began to follow the overgrown path around the house, looking once more for anything that might be a link to the incompetent arsonist, Phillip briefly outlined the story told by Thelma and Maxie, with the addition of the new information about the Bambi website. Mackenzie Blaine listened without comment till Phillip had finished, then began to shake his head slowly.

  “First of all, I’ve been going through the records—all the missing-persons reports and inquiries starting in mid ’95—and these records are what you might call badly incomplete. Of course, the department wasn’t fully computerized—hell, until Miss Orinda either retires or explodes because someone inadvertently lights a match around her, it’s not going to be fully computerized. Anyway, the paper records were damaged in some flooding a few years ago and there’re whole sections stuck together or washed clean of ink—it’s a god-awful mess.”

  Blaine prodded with his boot at a mound covered with leafless vines and dead vegetation. The square outline of a rusted metal roof lay half-buried in the pile of dirt and charred rough-sawn timber. “This must be what’s left of the outhouse that burned a little before Revis was murdered.”

  Feeling somewhat aggrieved, Phillip exclaimed, “What’s the matter with you, Mac? I’ve just given you—no, Lizabeth’s just given you a nice little late Christmas gift to pass on to the medical examiner. When they get around to looking for names to go with those bones, you hand ’em Bambi Fleischaker. Once that’s confirmed, we can start looking for the murderer.”

  “’Fraid not, Hawk. I talked to the ME’s office this morning. They won’t be doing a full workup for several weeks yet, but the young lady I spoke to let drop one interesting bit of information. She said that the ME took one look at the pelvis and said the bones were definitely male. So our skeleton’s not your Bambi.”

  “The letter that had been opened was postmarked San Francisco and written in December of ’93, almost six months after Spinner supposedly died. He wrote that he wanted me to know that he was alive and that eventually there’d be a way for him to see me. There was something about breaking a promise to Papa and that he should never have made that promise.”

  Amanda was shivering as she told the story—how she had snatched up the letters and run to her room to read them, only to be interrupted by her father’s voice calling to her to come downstairs.

  “I pulled on a silk top and a long velvet skirt—I never had gotten those pantyhose—and shoved the most recent letter into the skirt pocket. Once I made my appearance downstairs, I thought I could slip away and read it.

  “As I went down the stairs into the crowd of people milling about the entrance hall, I knew that I was no longer the same person who’d climbed those stairs an hour before. Mama and Papa were in the hall welcoming guests, and when Papa beckoned to me, I can remember looking down at him—at them—and wondering if I’d ever really known them at all. They seemed changed too. Mama’s face was more like a mask than ever, and the sound of talk and laughter and the smells of dozens of heavy perfumes and the odor of the food that was being laid out in the dining room all rushed up at me. I remember thinking that if I could just get through the party, then I’d do whatever it took to find Spinner.”

  Amanda tilted her head as if to gauge the reaction to her tale. Elizabeth nodded. “You didn’t run screaming down the stairs, waving the letters to confront your parents in front of the assembled company like someone in a soap opera. I completely understand. That Southern Lady thing of never washing family linen in public dies hard, thank god. So you waited.”

  Amanda nodded. “I did. And I was rewarded for it. If I’d made a big scene that night, the party would have broken up and I might not have met Ben.”

  She had played her part, meeting and greeting at her parents’ side. Finally, when the stream of incoming guests had abated and the crowd had scattered to various rooms throughout the house, Amanda had slipped outside, past the swimming pool to the garden house, where clusters of candles in hurricane lamps flickered invitingly. None of the guests had yet found their way to this secluded spot and she took advantage of her solitude to
pull out the letter, rip it open, and read the last message her brother had sent her.

  “He said that Mama and Papa still hadn’t come round and he doubted now that they ever would. But he wanted me to know that he was buying some property in the mountains and hoped to settle down there. I had read just that far when Ben walked into the garden house.”

  “Had you met him before that? I know Gloria was doing her best to get him interested in, as she put it, ‘the right sort of girl.’”

  “No, I’d been away for some time, doing photo shoots here and there. Mama had mentioned Gloria’s handsome son and how I would just love him, so naturally I was ready to dislike him. The minute I saw him I knew who he was. But, like you say, the Southern Lady stuff dies hard. So I introduced myself and asked all the right questions and before I knew it, we were having a great conversation even though I was dying to finish reading that letter.”

  Amanda’s perfect face blossomed into a disarming lopsided grin. “Fate or karma or something led me to Spinner’s letters. But fate or karma wasn’t done with me, because when I asked Ben what he did, he said he was getting ready to go back to his aunt’s farm where he lived, a farm in the mountains of North Carolina. ‘Near a little town called Ransom,’ he said. ‘You’ve never heard of it.’

  “Oh, but I had. The letter in my pocket was postmarked Ransom, NC.”

  Chapter 35

  “I Have No Heart”

  Tuesday, December 26

  So you came to Ransom to look for your brother.”

  Amanda nodded. “It was all so perfect—I was tired of modeling and ready to find out what I really wanted to do with my life; I was attracted to Ben—after the men I’d known, he seemed so real—and I thought if I came to Ransom, maybe I could find someone who’d known Spinner—or maybe even find Spinner himself. In that last letter, he said that he’d bought property here and wanted to build a little cabin.