by Karen Harper
“Teddy ate most of it—in tea I made us,” she blurted. “The dried leaves in the treasure box. It’s on the shelf in your closest, like in a secret cave.”
Cassie gasped. She broke out into a sweat and her stomach cartwheeled. That’s where she’d stashed the poison plant parts she’d been hoarding.
She almost collapsed as she knelt next to Pearl and hugged her hard. Why hadn’t she locked that toxic stuff up, as well as hid it high? She could have lost Pearl, lost her baby! God must be warning her to get rid of that stuff, reminding her that murder was a foul sin and that vengeance belonged only to the Lord.
She’d flush that stuff down the toilet the minute they got home. She’d rip the rest of it out by its roots and thank the good Lord for giving her a warning and a second chance. But she prayed hard that her and Pearl’s deserter and betrayer would somehow die soon anyway. Then he could go face his Maker, who would sure make short work of him!
Jessie waited for Drew when everyone had pretty much gone. He carried his plate and cup over and sat across the narrow table from her to eat a late dinner. He’d been outside for a while, seeing to the grave and even conducting traffic when everyone left the small parking lot almost at once. Imagine, he’d told her, a traffic jam in Deep Down.
She watched him eat Audrey Doyle’s fried chicken—only a couple of thighs were left—and what must by now be cold potatoes and biscuits. Even his coleslaw looked bottom-of-the-barrel, and his coffee strong enough to make a spoon stand up straight. But this man, who’d claimed he liked to do Italian cooking and loved wine, was no doubt used to chow lines from his days as a marine, and leftovers as a poor kid from a big family. In the midst of all her worries, she amazed herself by wishing she were a better cook. Fast food had been her best friend, but when this was all over, here in Deep Down, she’d try to cook the way her mother had taught her years ago.
“So, how soon are you planning to work on the sang count?” he asked.
“Frank Redmond’s e-mailing me whatever he has of my mother’s previous counts and notes tomorrow, so, I figure, the day after next.”
He looked around as if to be certain no one could overhear them. Only the women who had helped serve the dinner still bustled around the buffet tables, so she and Drew were pretty much alone. Vern had finally departed. Cassie had looked so red-faced and watery-eyed when she’d left, Jessie hoped she wasn’t coming down with something like Pearl had.
“I know this is sudden, and you probably have a lot to do,” Drew said as he buttered a biscuit, “but I’ll volunteer to help you get your sunporch lab together if you’ll go with me to Lexington tomorrow to talk to Peter Sung.”
“Really? While you interrogate him?” she asked, leaning toward him with her elbows on the table.
“I’m going to chat with him—that’s all,” he said with a lift of his eyebrows that told her he didn’t mean it. “I thought, with you along, I’d be even less threatening, that he might be less nervous about it. I think we worked well together confronting Junior—until his little poison gas sticks tripped us up on more ways than one.”
“Did you know Mr. Sung was here today, hanging around outside?”
“He actually stepped into the service for a few moments when I was standing at the back. He looked really nervous, but I figured he hadn’t been to too many Baptist churches, so I didn’t put too much stock in that. I told him I’m interested in the Plott hounds he raises, which is true, and that I was hoping to get a hound or two myself, in case we have other missing person’s cases, which is not true.”
“Then why are you interested in his hounds?”
“Because that gets me into his house, where he’ll be willing to talk. And because about fifty feet from where we found Mariah, I stumbled on a dog collar, the kind that has a chip in it so the hound can be traced. I nearly told the guy off today for springing Junior on bail without asking me first, but I want to catch him off guard, so I kept my mouth shut about that.”
“Sung’s dogs weren’t used in the search for her, were they? He said not.” His mouth full, Drew shook his head. She went on. “But, with that vague timeline and his being in Highboro, are you thinking Sung was actually in the woods the day my mother went missing? Maybe he tracked her that day with his dogs. But he did tell me he’d run his hounds in those woods at other times, so that could account for the collar.”
“It might not even be from his hounds, but I’ve checked and it’s a really expensive, state-of-the-art GPS tracking device collar. If the collar hadn’t been trampled by something heavy, it would probably still transmit, and Sung could track it to retrieve it.”
“Trampled by something heavy. Did you find a footprint?”
He shook his head and kept eating, switching to a remnant of broken apple pie, talking while he ate. “It was in the dark and under a lot of leaves. Whatever prints had been there—whether dog or something else—were washed out by rain or intentionally blurred, like the ones around my vehicle the night it got clawed.”
“Yes, I’ll go with you,” she told him. “I have a lot of legal work to do over my mother’s death, but Peter Sung has a great big motive for murdering her. I was thinking today that Beth Brazzo, maybe even Tyler Finch, do, too. Not to mention our chief mourner, Vern. By the way, Beth’s volunteered to go out on my counts with me.”
“How nice of her. Either to get you to pad them, or worse. Maybe your challenging me about whether our perp is a ‘he’ or not makes sense. We should take a closer look at her. She runs the forests daily.”
“I think she stopped to see my mother at the house, because there’s G-Women drink in the fridge. It’s actually not bad stuff. It got me through these two days.”
He frowned at her, but didn’t comment on that. “I just wish,” he went on, “I could have found Junior Semple today. I’ll check on him after I get you home.”
“The ever-generous Peter Sung’s paying Junior’s bail was probably just a way to get his hands on all that virtually wild sang, especially if sang harvesting is halted.”
He nodded, swallowed and cleared his throat. “Sheriff Akers had to go to Frankfort to testify in a big marijuana case or he never would have let Junior out of jail. But what’s really worrying me is the one guy I think is not guilty has ugly rumors floating around, making him look bad. Vern’s big mouth, I think, or maybe even Junior’s, is to blame.”
“Seth?”
“Seth. On the surface, everything points to him, but I don’t buy it. I think someone’s setting Seth up, with the patterns of berries we found in the woods and the damage to my Cherokee.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin. He’d eaten in record time. “I’m going to go take one look around outside, then I’ll take you home.”
“Who around here would consider that kind of clever symbolism—claw the Jeep Cherokee, frame Cherokee Seth?” she asked as she stood, too.
“Not Junior Semple, and I can’t see it being Peter Sung’s MO. Maybe Vern. I may have to get someone to protect you when you work for him, as well as out in the wilds on that sang count.”
He grimaced as he bent back to take a last swig of cold, likely bitter coffee.
“Again,” she said, “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Dr. Lockwood, I’m starting to think that without me, you’d nail a murderer. But you’d still miss me, like you did all these years we’ve been apart.”
“What makes you think I missed you?” she challenged, hoping she didn’t look as startled as she felt.
“Because,” he said, putting the cup down on the table and winking at her, “however warm Italian women were and however determined Audrey Doyle has been—before Ryan Buford arrived, that is—I was missing you, too. Come on, let’s take a last look at the grave, then go home.”
Go home, she thought, as she grabbed her clutch purse from the floor and went outside with him. Her girlhood home, her mother’s house. The place where she had to get her lab work going again. Yes, for now, at least, especially with Dr
ew at her side, that would be going home.
Chapter 18
18
A frantic knocking on her front door made Jessie’s pulse pound. Wishing Drew were here, she jumped up from the breakfast table. She hadn’t let him spend the night, but she was waiting for him to pick her up so they could drive to see Peter Sung in Lexington.
She raced for the front of the house. Cassie stood there in the morning mist with Pearl at her side and something in her arms. Pearl was still in her robe and slippers, and Cassie looked worse than when she’d seen her last night. Maybe she wasn’t the only one not sleeping, Jessie thought as she drew back the dead bolt and pulled the door inward.
“What is it?” she demanded. “Are you sick, too? I’m sorry, I can’t keep Pearl today because—”
“You wouldn’t want her anyway, after you hear what she’s done,” Cassie insisted as she came in, toting a square tin box.
“It was only magic and make-believe!” Pearl protested as she followed her mother in.
“What happened?” Jessie asked.
“You just tell her, you tell your aunt Jessie, Miss Pearl Keenan,” Cassie cried and collapsed in a chair with the box on her lap.
Jessie stooped, then knelt to Pearl’s height. “What was all magic and make-believe, Pearl?” she asked, putting one hand on the girl’s shoulder and tipping her chin up with the other.
“The cave where I kept the secret things, the food and magic writing.”
“Cassie,” Jessie said, turning to her, “just tell me. Drew will be here in a few minutes to pick me up to drive to Lexington, so what happened? What’s in the box?” She stood but kept one hand on Pearl’s shaking shoulder.
Cassie put her face in her hands, elbows propped on the box. Her voice came out muffled. “She balanced a stool on a chair to reach the top shelf in my clothes closet. She got my metal box, this box, full of strong herbs, off the shelf. She and Teddy had tea from the crushed leaves, just hot tap water, not boiled. Those toxic leaves made her sick and could have—could have…”
“Oh, honey,” Jessie said to Pearl, “you could have really, really hurt yourself!”
“I already did. But I hid the writing there, too,” she said, fidgeting.
Following Pearl’s sideways glance, Jessie looked at the box again. She reached for it, sat down in the chair next to Cassie’s and lifted the lid.
All that lay inside were a few pieces of lined paper covered with her mother’s distinctive handwriting. Jessie gasped as she skimmed the top page and shuffled through the others, seven pages total. “My mother’s sang notes!” Some of the pages looked wrinkled and dirty, as if they’d been scuffed in reddish soil. Pearl must have carried them around outside for a while, but she didn’t want to get the child in more trouble by questioning her about that. Besides, what did it matter? Like a gift from God, she had some of the sang counts back!
“Mariah stopped by to see us the morning she went missing,” Cassie said, her voice calmer now as she leaned back in the chair. “I should have told Drew, but what did it matter? It was just after dawn, and she was showing those to me while we had some oatmeal and toast, talking about how well she thought the count was going—”
“Well meaning it was a high count or that she was making good progress?” Jessie asked.
“Making good progress. She never gave a hint about how the count was coming along ’cause then a lot of people would jump on her—you know what I mean. She must have accidentally left or dropped these notes, and Pearl picked them up.”
“I pretended they were magic writing,” Pearl said. “I put them in the magic cave.”
“Which is what, Pearl?” Cassie cried, sounding distraught again. “Now, we been over this before!”
Pearl looked as if she’d burst into tears. “Your closet, where I can’t go anymore.”
“That’s right, ’cause you could have fallen off that rickety perch, and you almost poisoned yourself! Oh, I know I’m to blame, but can’t you just behave!”
“It’s all right, Pearl,” Jessie said and put her arm around her. “Cassie, it’s all right. Maybe this was meant to be. Now I have some of her notes—I don’t think they’re all here—before I start the count. If I can just figure out what she covered so far, I won’t have to spend a week tramping through the forests. Maybe I can just spot-check where she’s been. These are invaluable to me right now, so I thank both of you. Cassie, are you sure you’re not coming down with something? That toxic stuff couldn’t have gotten into your own tea or—”
“No, I questioned her about that.”
“It was only for children and magic beasts like Big Bear or ogres like in fairy tales, not for grown-ups,” Pearl said, hands on hips in a perfect imitation of her mother.
“Cassie,” Jessie said, “you know that some of those herbs you use for mordants to set the dye—even foxglove flowers for medicines—are deadly. Pearl’s too young to understand all that.”
“Yeah,” she said as she rose and took Pearl’s hand and plodded toward the door, with the metal box under one arm. “We’re all too stupid to get things sometimes, till it hits us right in the face.”
Her friend sounded so despondent that Jessie rushed to her as she opened the front door. “Until Drew comes, I can fix you something to eat,” she volunteered. “I’ve got breakfast all out. I was just so shook when I saw these papers I wasn’t thinking—”
“We can’t stay,” Cassie interrupted, forcing a smile that didn’t match her sad eyes. “Tyler’s coming for us later, and I got things to do. I understand about my girl playing make-believe. Lord knows, I done it enough, even grown-up, and no good came of it. I just got so het up ’cause I could have lost her.”
Lost her. Those words hung heavy in Jessie’s mind as she watched them get in their old truck and head out. She’d lost her mother, but here were some of her notes, a piece of her precious work. Jessie closed and relocked the door, then put her mother’s notes in a zip-top plastic bag. She’d keep them in her mother’s old denim pack she was using as a purse and look through them as they drove to Lexington.
Leaving the forested mountains near Deep Down and heading toward the rolling green grass of Lexington, Jessie and Drew hashed everything over again. Then she read her mother’s sang notes aloud to him in case some clue about who could have wanted to harm her was imbedded in the tightly written pages.
“Once I get her notes from the last couple of years from Frank Redmond,” Jessie said, “I’ll be able to tell if the numbers are down much this year. I’m hoping this challenge will be much easier than I expected.”
“Go on. Keep reading.”
“I just don’t want you to fall asleep at the wheel. This is not scintillating stuff.”
“Police work often isn’t.”
“Okay. To continue, ‘maple wood cove, 44 three-prongers, under S.P.’”
“That could mean under Shrieking Peak,” he said. It was obvious that Mariah abbreviated the places she counted, often using natural formations as a guide, though many of her notations hadn’t made sense to them.
“Right. She did counts on both sides of the river. The next one says, ‘n. rocks w/ golden s. and cohosh under old man—poached but 6 two-prongers.’ Goldenseal and cohosh often grow near sang, but ‘under old man’? You know, Big Blue does have a rock formation that looks like a hunched old man.”
“I’ll bet that’s it.”
“If I can just find one of those places to match what is growing there to these numbers, it may give me something to average out for Frank.”
“Is that the end of her notes? That’s the last page, isn’t it?”
“Just a little more. Oh, this one mentions Seth.”
Sucking in a sharp breath, Drew stiffened his arms on the steering wheel, then relaxed them again. “Don’t tell me it’s something to incriminate him. It’s tough as is, keeping the lid on people blaming him.”
“It just says, ‘poplar stand w/ Seth.’”
“Oh, great, j
ust great! Does that mean he went out to count with her or was going to? He said he never did that. If he’s lying, maybe he’s outfoxed me. Do you know if he has a stand of poplars on his property?”
“On the far side of his house. I think it’s where he cut the fresh sang for the funeral. But Seth hated the idea of the sang count, of her reporting it to the government, so I’m surprised he either helped her or let her count that site.”
“Maybe I’ve been wrong about Seth, and we should head back to Deep Down before he hides out like Junior evidently has.”
“But we’re almost to Peter’s, and you haven’t even had a chance to question him yet. We can’t turn back now.”
“No,” he said, reaching out to cup her knee before putting his hand back on the wheel, “we can’t turn back now. Finish reading.”
“My eyes are about ready to cross. This last one is written up the side of the page, real small, as if it were an afterthought or an addendum,” she said, holding it up to catch more light. She glanced out her side window to rest her eyes a moment. Neat white fences blurred by. Sleek horses grazed or ran within many of them; emerald lawns, cut like velvet, surrounded cleanly painted stables, old black tobacco barns, or large, pillared, plantation-style houses. Her life here came flooding back: the town house she’d shared with Elinor, studying on campus, football games and friends and homecoming dances…homecoming…
The gently rolling, affluent Lexington region had always calmed her, but not today. Again the differences between this area and the sharply wooded hills of Deep Down struck her. She loved both places, but which was home? It seemed so strange to be here with Drew, who, in her heart, belonged so completely to that other world. She jolted back to reality and squinted at the tiny words again.
