With reluctance, Wilma and Grandma Ziegler gathered their things, then Petie’s cage, and exited the row of seats, following behind Tina and Harley in single file.
“We’ll see yinz later,” Grandma Ziegler said, waving to the audience.
“Sayonara, sons-a-witches,” Petie added.
Wilma shook her head, shuffling behind them in her muumuu. “That bird needs to find Jesus.”
On stage, Justin Wheeler continued to writhe in his trance, the intensity of his gyrations fueled by exultations from the audience-turned-mob.
Harley picked up her pace down the aisle, and they exited the community center. With a quick open and close of the front doors, they met the cold night. Scant snowflakes floated in the streetlights, and across Main Street, the last of the pedestrians made their way home, their coats buttoned to their chests, their scarves alight with the breeze.
“Now, that was some good theater,” Grandma Ziegler said.
“You didn’t buy what he was sayin’?” Wilma asked.
“Nah. Guy’s a jagoff. And not even that good of an actor, if you ask me.”
“That was like so ridiculous,” Tina said, rolling her eyes. “And this is comin’ from a girl whose favorite TV show used to be Fantasy Island.”
“But it doesn’t matter what we think,” Harley said. “Don’t you see? That crowd in there, they believed all of it, every single word he said. He fed them all those lies, and they just inhaled them—without question.”
“That guy’s really got it out for Beau,” Grandma said. “What do you think his problem is?”
“I don’t know. But I have to find out, and find out before it’s too late.”
“You worried about Beau?” Wilma asked.
“Yes, I am, Aunt Wilma. Very much. Something’s terribly wrong here, and I’m afraid … Anyway, let’s go. Let’s get y’all home.”
55
Odd Carolers
When Harley arrived at Briarcliffe as promised, a mob of people had gathered at the gates.
“Go back to L.A.!” one man yelled.
“More like go back to hell,” said another, “’cause that’s where he came from!”
“It’s his fault that ghost’s here!” cried a woman. “It’s his fault people are bein’ murdered.”
“And that trash of his … it’s takin’ over this town!”
Blue-and-white lights flashed in Harley’s rearview mirror, then a police siren wailed, as Jed Turner’s cruiser approached and tunneled through the mob.
He parked beside the gate and rose before them, illuminated by the car’s headlights. “Now, listen, I want y’all to go home.”
“Not ’til he leaves!”
“This is his property.”
“And he doesn’t belong here! He’s not one of us!”
“It’s not your decision. Now, I said go home.”
“Where’re our rights?” a woman cried. “We’re the real citizens of this town, not him, and we say we don’t want ’im here!”
“He’s a Sutcliffe.”
“And a greedy bunch they were, too. Raped the land, killed the Reeds.”
“It’s not your place to be makin’ judgments.”
“What do you know about our place, Jed Turner? You ain’t been the same since you left, since you had your big-time NFL career, got your big old head. A lot of good it did you too, didn’t it? And now here you are—back—thinkin’ you can tell us what to do.”
“Yeah, and I won’t be tellin’ you again,” Jed said. “Now, go home before every last one of you is arrested.”
Three additional police cruisers approached and parked alongside Jed. The crowd saw the reinforcements and realized Jed’s threats were in earnest. They departed, first in singles, then in pairs, and they made their way down the hill of Briarwood Avenue.
Jed motioned to Boonie who sat inside the security booth, and then to Harley. The gates opened, and the police officers stood aside as Harley’s truck passed through the entrance and the gates closed behind her. She waved at Boonie as she passed the security booth, and he acknowledged her with a single nod of his head.
She parked her truck beside the house, and Jed parked his cruiser alongside her. He opened the driver side door and hoisted his girth from the seat. His face was still flushed from the melee he had policed outside the gates. He closed the door behind him, and with his back pressed to it, he released a sigh of relief.
Harley joined him, and they walked side-by-side along the sidewalk to the house.
“You okay?” she asked.
“This crap hole of a day is turnin’ into a bigger crap hole of a night.”
“Did you get my message?”
“No, Harley,” he said, with a shake of his head. “I didn’t. Not with all this goin’ on.”
“I know who the woman was. Why she was here.”
“All right,” he said with a sigh. Harley could tell the disturbance earlier had tried him. “Go on.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I can tell you tomorrow.” She looked at him with compassion. “Just come by the store in the morning, if you can.”
“Okay.”
They climbed the porch steps, and entered the front door. Down the hallway, piano music lilted from an open room, and heightened the ascetics of the paintings, the tapestries, and the marble busts that lined the walls. The music grew more intense, and Harley and Jed followed a path of light to an open doorway where they looked inside.
Seated at a grand piano, as a fire roared in the hearth behind him, was Beau Arson. Waves of dark hair fell over his forehead, and his bearded face was cast in an all-consuming concentration as he played with closed eyes.
At first glance, one would have never thought he was the master of the house. He looked more like a transient, who had wondered in from the streets and found his way into the house.
And yet there he was, with his bulbous arms and his rough-hewn fingers, hitting the keys of a grand piano with such technique and precision, playing a song he’d likely written only moments prior.
And the piano was not even his primary instrument. No, the electric guitar was, and when he picked one up and set to play, it was as if the clouds had parted, and the heavens opened. Music rained down like manna from above, providing nourishment for the soul.
As usual, Beau was where he felt most comfortable—alone—with the quiet of his thoughts, thoughts many were never privileged to know. And Harley thought he looked more tired than usual, the product of several sleepless nights.
“Is there anything he doesn’t play?” Jed asked beside Harley.
“Not that I know of.”
“How about the kazoo? Does he play the kazoo?”
“Maybe, and if he doesn’t, he’d probably learn how to after a few minutes.”
Jed turned to Harley. “I need to ask him some questions. You mind bein’ about your business?”
“Will do.”
Jed made his way into the music room, approached the piano, and stood over Beau. The music stopped, and the two men’s eyes met.
“I think you know why I’m here,” Jed said.
“I heard.”
Jed removed a plastic bag from his pocket, and showed Beau the Rolex watch. “This your watch?”
“Looks like it.”
“You know how it wound up in Briarwood Park?”
“Somebody must’ve taken it.”
“You ever take it off outside the house?”
“No. But then again, I hardly ever wear it.”
“How about when you’re inside?”
“No. I keep it in a box in the table by my bed.”
“And have you had any visitors here? Any builders, decorators, or repairmen, anybody who might’ve had access to it?”
“The renovations haven’t started yet, and my security team doesn’t allow anybody from the outside to be left alone.”
“Well, is there anybody else who could’ve taken it?”
Beau paused, and for the first time,
a hint of uneasiness seemed to permeate his demeanor. “I don’t know.”
“What was your relationship with Jennifer Williams?”
“There wasn’t one … not more than professional anyway. She was valuing the antiques here—for insurance purposes.”
“Nothin’ more?”
“Nothin’ more.”
“I know about your reputation, Mr. Arson.”
Beau met his accusing glare. In a calm voice, he said, “Jennifer was a widow—devastated over her husband’s death. I never would’ve …”
He lowered his gaze to the piano keys, and his body sank on the bench. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Jed said. “Sorry for what?”
“Sorry she’s dead. She seemed like a good person.”
Harley continued down the hallway and took the stairs to the third floor, then entered the east wing. After traversing the long hallway of windows, she located her room.
Just as she placed her bag on the bed, her cell phone rang.
“Hi, Aunt Wilma.”
“I need you to stop by the office first thing tomorrow. Opha Mae’s got your dress ready.” Before Harley could respond, she said, “Well, I better let you go. Your Uncle Buck and I’ve got our weekly date at the VFW club. Bingo Night. And he likes to get there early—get the fresh markers. He don’t like them ones that’s all dried out. Don’t make a good circle on your card.”
“Have fun.”
“You get some shut-eye tonight, you hear?”
56
Greensleeves
After she made drinks at the bar, Harley retreated through the French doors to the veranda in search of Beau.
The mountains had receded into shapeless forms after sunset, melding into a dark mass of foothills and forest. Only stars, like silver pinpricks, stippled the night sky, the moon having abandoned them behind a hedge of clouds.
Harley closed the French doors behind her, watching her breaths turn to fog in the night air. The limestone tiles at her feet were smooth and salted, free of ice and snow, and only one point of light shone in winter’s darkness, that of a fire pit in the veranda’s center.
Beau sat before the fire playing “Greensleeves” on an acoustic guitar, the flames casting shadows on his face, causing the whites of his eyes to glow like orbs. He had changed out of his black leather vest and into a heavy-weight flannel shirt. A black wool cap covered his head, his dark hair falling in a loose ponytail down his back. He looked like a lumberjack resting after a hard day’s work, felling trees and transporting them miles through the snow.
And yet Beau Arson, by birth, had descended from a long line of wealth, culture, and privilege, a heritage belied by his childhood misfortunes and his chosen lifestyle. By his own talents, he was wealthier now than his family had ever been, yet he still carried himself like the common man, the penniless orphan he once was. This was part of his charm, Harley realized, and the reason he resonated with so many of his fans.
“Have a seat,” he said with a smile, pausing from his music. “What’d you bring me?”
“A Rusty Nail. That’s, um, blended scotch and Drambuie with a twist of lemon.”
He accepted the glass from her, resting it on the table beside him. “I’ve always liked scotch by the fire.”
Harley took a seat across from him and warmed her hands by the fire. “I think it’s the peat. It has a smoky taste … like you think a fire would.”
“I think you may be right.”
Harley turned her attention to Beau’s guitar.
“I don’t think I’ve seen that one before,” she said.
He smiled, admiring the guitar. “I decided to bring out one of my oldies tonight.” He angled it on his lap so Harley could examine the finish, the mahogany glowing like amber in the firelight.
“It’s so beautiful,” she said.
“And the tone’s incredible.”
“What kind is it?”
“This, kiddo,” he said with pride, “is a 1937 Martin 9-18, in mahogany and Adirondack spruce … but you probably know it as Appalachian spruce.”
“Red spruce, then?”
He nodded and smiled. “And who knows, maybe even my family—way back when—felled the very same tree that gave birth to it.”
She looked past him to the dark layers of forest surrounding the house and grounds, and thought that beauty could indeed come from destruction.
“Anyway,” he said, “since World War II, guitars like this have been kind of hard to get.”
“How come?”
“The wood. There’s been a shortage of Adirondack spruce since the war—until recently anyway. The trees hadn’t had time to mature to the right age. Plus, the logs are kind of small to begin with, makes it harder to craft from them.”
“Must be worth a whole lot.”
“Just a little,” he said, then winked at her. “And now here I am playing to these mountains, just one in a long line of many.”
The Smokies did have a long history of music, Harley thought. When the Scots-Irish and English settlers migrated there in the 1600s, they brought the folk ballads of the Old World with them, appropriated them to the Appalachian landscape, made new songs, calling it ‘mountain music.’ Then those songs blended with African-American gospel music and blues, adding in the banjo, and leading to the birth of modern bluegrass.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Beau said. “How organic music is, universal, speaks to the soul, the human experience. I guess that’s why I’ve always loved it.” He angled the guitar back on his lap and started playing “Greensleeves” once more, but this time in a quieter tone, so that his voice was easily heard above the music. “Do you know that this was my very first guitar?”
She shook her head.
“Got it when I was eight.”
She leaned toward him with interest. “How’d you get it?”
He continued to play, speaking as he did so. “You remember that grandmother I told you about last night, the one who used to listen to Garrison Keillor on the radio?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, her name was Grandma Anne, and this was her late husband’s guitar. He was a World War II vet. And anyway, after I’d been staying there at their house for a while, she started taking an interest in me. She was a retired schoolteacher, knew kids pretty well, and she thought I was just a little too much on the melancholy side. Brooding, she called it.” He looked up at Harley and gave a wry grin. “Now, I don’t know where she would’ve gotten that impression.”
Harley grinned back at him. “I wouldn’t know either. I was never a melancholy child.”
They laughed at their respective sarcasms, and Beau said, “Anyway, Grandma Anne thought I needed a hobby, something to pull me out of my funk. She said, ‘Beau, you need to create something. You need an art, something you can put yourself into, something you can create beauty from.’ And I took her words to heart, and I told her I would. But after a lot of consideration and trying out a lot of different things, I couldn’t come up with a good art to take up. I loved to read, as you know, but I wouldn’t say I was much of a writer—not of books anyway. And then as for art, well, I pretty much sucked at drawing and painting, too. I told Grandma Anne about my conundrum, and she said, ‘Beau, why don’t you try music?’ She said I could practice on her late husband’s guitar.”
“And that’s how it all began?”
“That’s how it all began. I started out by watching Grandma Anne’s music programs on TV—The Grand Ole Opry, The Carter Family Fold, Cas Walker. They had the absolute best pickers in the world. Earl Scruggs, Lester Flatt, Bill Monroe … and then there was the blues man, DeFord Bailey.” He shook his head and smiled. “Man, oh man. Anyway, I found that if I just listened long enough to those guys, I could mimic what they were doing on the guitar, that I could play it by ear.”
“And here you are,” Harley said, “an amazing guitar player with so much life experience from music.”
“I’m okay.” The smile dwindled from h
is face, and he stopped playing. They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the fire as it spat and popped. At last he said, “But I’m just now coming back to myself.”
He gazed down at the guitar and in a lowered voice, he said, “Anyway, about a year after that, Grandma Anne died. Then the family had another baby not long after, decided they couldn’t afford another kid, so I went back into the system. Things got a little rough from then on out, but I like to think back on that year, knowing I had it good at least for a little while.”
He rested the guitar across his thighs once more, then took a sip of his cocktail. “I’m trying to save what little that’s left of me, Harley, what little I can still recognize.” He lowered the glass back to the table and looked at her in earnest. “I haven’t been a very good person. Haven’t been what I set out to be all those years ago when you met me under that oak tree. I’ve changed.”
“I don’t think so.”
He shook his head. “No, I have … Everything I’ve done ’til now, the music I’ve made, the choices I’ve made, they’ve all been for selfish reasons. I wrote songs just for the commercial success, the money … I used people, I used women. … And I did it all because it was easy and because I could.” He sighed. “But I’m trying to do better, trying to be better … but now, after all of these years, I feel like there’s not much left … not much left but the parts of who I used to be.”
“That’s why you left L.A.”
“I had to. The lifestyle—it was poisoning me, poisoning my soul. Nothing really meant anything anymore, you know. It was all … just going through the motions.”
“And that’s why you came here.”
He nodded. “This place, these mountains … there’s innocence here … beauty here … or at least I thought there was. But now … now I’m hearing all these stories about my family, their greed, their ruthlessness … and I can’t help but think that maybe everything that’s happening now—if it’s some kind of repayment for my sins, my father’s sins, and his father’s sins before him. Maybe they’re being revisited on us. All those ghosts we left behind over the years—and Margaret Reed’s just one of them—maybe they’re finally catching up to us.”
The Ghosts of Notchey Creek Page 18