Carolina Crimes

by Nora Gaskin Esthimer

  Finally the silk rectangles frittered out, and I needed a new source. Our local quilt guild invited a speaker from Washington State who dyed silk fabrics using a specialized technique. First the fabric was prepared to remove its finish and a resist applied to produce a design. Dye was mixed and added to a liquid solution. The fabric was immersed in the dye bath, drained and the color fixed by steaming. Then, the silk was rinsed in cold water and line-dried. She supplemented her presentation with samples of her dyed silk that we were free to examine. I fingered the silk and rubbed it on my face. It was soft and smooth and cool to the touch. The jewel tones were intense, vibrant, intoxicating. Emerald green, ruby red, magenta, and royal blue. I had to have them.

  I tried to hide my excitement. “Are the samples for sale?” I asked the speaker.

  “No, they’re for demonstration only,” she replied. “You can sign up for my class, and I’ll teach you how to dye silk yourself.”

  Sure, I thought. Pay the class fee, fly to Washington, pay an additional supply fee, and spend three days up to my elbows in chemicals. No way. I wanted them now.

  What to do? I had to improvise. “How are you getting to the airport?” I asked innocently.

  Joyce elbowed me aside. “I’m taking her to the airport.” She helped the speaker pack her silk samples, yards and yards of them, into a dark navy blue travel case.

  I thanked the speaker vociferously, said grand farewells to women I hardly knew, and made my way to the parking lot. I made a show of smiling and waving to cars in front of me. I took my time, spending nearly thirty minutes in the parking lot until only one other car remained. I drove out, circled around the building, and hid my Subaru behind the trash bins.

  I took off one of my taupe support stockings and pulled it over my face. Not something I would want to do on a regular basis. If I had planned this in advance, I would have chosen a more loosely woven fabric for my mask, perhaps cotton gauze.

  I opened the trunk of my car and dug out the tire iron stored under the spare tire. I put on a pair of forest green stretch gloves I stored in the car for cold nights. I’d seen enough cop shows to know that I didn’t want to leave fingerprints.

  I waited until I saw two women leave the building, struggling with the navy blue travel case carried between them and walking in the direction of the only other car in the dark parking lot. My heart pounded, and sweat poured down my face and back.

  I approached them, waving with one hand and holding the tire iron behind my back with the other.

  “Let me help you with that,” I mumbled through my stocking. They looked in my direction. Before they could say anything, I rushed forward and hit the speaker on the top of her head with my weapon. She fell to the ground. Joyce screamed, backed away, and tripped. She struggled to get up but I yanked off her glasses and smashed them with my foot. Her screaming was getting on my nerves so I hit her on the head too.

  I tucked the tire iron under my arm and tried to pick up the case. It was too heavy for me to lift, so I grabbed one handle and dragged it across the parking lot to my car. The sound of the metal edges of the case scraping on asphalt was deafening, but I would not let myself stop. I maneuvered it into my trunk, pulled off the stocking and gloves, and drove away. What possessed me to attack those two women? I have never hit anyone before in my life. What madness had come over me?

  I had to get rid of the evidence. On the way home, I stopped at a thrift store parking lot where I emptied the case and ditched it. I drove home, pulled into my garage, and sobbed. Have I become incorrigible? After ten or fifteen minutes, I went inside and slept after ingesting twice my usual dose of sleeping pills.

  Roberta called me the next morning. But of course, you know that. Later I unloaded my valuable cargo from the car and spread it over my living room floor. I handled each sample and admired its beauty. My little dogs came over to investigate, but I put them in their crates. No dog hair on this gorgeous hand-dyed silk.

  It took eight trips up the stairs to move the fabric samples. I distributed them among my ten bins, all carefully organized by color. It felt good to have that part done, to have them where they should be.

  In the end, I wish there had been an easier way. But silk, really fabric in general, is much too expensive to pay for all I need. And it’s not like I killed anyone. Those women will be fine, and I bet that that speaker has a stash twice the size of mine. Three times!

  I’ll have to hunker down for a while until this blows over, but if I’ve learned anything from my experience it’s that I must find more creative ways to add to my stash. Maybe organizing a silk-dying competition. Possibly hosting a workshop.

  Back to TOC

  Murder at Carson’s Mill

  Don Marple

  Snow fine as talcum powder poured over the hill and across the highway, swirled in eddies of wind and wrapped around me. I turned my back to the highway, buttoned my jacket, and watched the snow whiten the concrete walkway and the tops of the foundation stones in front of me, all that was left of my grandfather’s general store.

  I imagined the front of the store that I saw as a boy, two large plate glass windows on either side of an entry door. The window on the left had O. C. Cunningham painted in an arc across its length, and General Merchandise was painted across the window on the right.

  Granddad, blue smoke rising from his pipe, would be standing in that door when my family drove in from Hartsburg, waiting for Martha and me to leap from the car and run to put our arms around him.

  “Come on in, you two. Pearl’s made some cookies and she won’t let me have any till you’re here.” He’d put an arm around each of us and we’d race up the stairs to Grandma Pearl’s warm kitchen for milk and cookies.

  I heard the crunch of footsteps on gravel and turned. A woman appeared, striding along the highway. She wore tight jeans tucked into leather boots and carried a canvas overnight bag over one shoulder. The hood of a black windbreaker covered her head and the bill of a cap stuck out from under it. She stopped and dropped her bag at the corner across from me, rubbed her bare hands together and looked up the road ahead of her.

  I waved. “Hello!”

  She looked up at me. “Is this Walker’s Creek Road?”

  “Yes, it is.” I bounced down the steps from the walkway and started toward her.

  She narrowed her eyes. “What’s up there?”

  “That’s where the Cunningham general store used to be. The store and the mill on this side of the road burned down ten years ago, in 1968.”

  She looked me up and down. “How do you know?”

  “It was my grandfather’s store.” I stuck out my hand. “I’m Ken Cunningham.”

  She shoved her hands into the pockets of her windbreaker. “Do you live here now?”

  “I live in St. Louis, but this is a special place for me. My sister and I spent summers here when we were kids.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “There’s nothing here now.”

  “Memories.” I picked up a piece of gravel and juggled it. “I stopped at the Baptist church to visit the cemetery and came here to see where Granddad’s store and farm used to be. I’m going to Hartsburg tonight for the twenty-fifth anniversary of my high school graduation.” I lobbed the stone into Walker’s Creek. “Most of my friends from the class of fifty-three will be there.”

  She picked up her bag and started up Walker’s Creek Road. “I have to keep moving or I’ll freeze.”

  “Are you going up the hill? So am I. Okay if I walk with you? I’m going up to see Granddad’s house and barn on the other side of the hill—if they’re still there.”

  “Come on, then.” We walked up the hill together, leaning into the slope.

  Walker’s Creek made a black streak in the snow-covered grass to our right and below us. She pointed to the wooden stanchions that rose from the ground on either side of the creek. “What was down there?”

  “The millrace for Boss Carson’s flour mill. I used to walk through it and watch the pulleys an
d leather belts running. One summer when I came back I heard a diesel engine roaring. Boss got tired of waiting for the creek to rise.”

  She pulled in a breath, still studying me. “Do you have friends here?”

  “Not anymore.” I held out my hand, trying again. “I didn’t get your name.”

  She stared at me for what seemed like a long time, then gave my hand a quick shake and release. “Mary Lockhart.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mary.”

  She stopped at the walkway to a house on the right side of the road. A mailbox on the post beside it said “Carson.” The two-story white frame house was dark inside.

  “Bye,” she said. “Enjoy your reunion.” She turned and went down the walkway to the porch, stepped across it and pushed the door open. She stood in the opening for a second, then disappeared into the darkness of the house.

  It was getting dark fast. The reunion was on Saturday, four days from now, so I could spend the night here, see the farmhouse and barn tomorrow in the daylight and drive on to Hartsburg after that.

  I walked back down the hill, got into my car and sat a while, staring at the snow dancing in the light of a pole lamp outside a gas station a hundred yards up the highway.

  I started the car and turned onto the highway, heading away from Hartsburg, hoping that the motel I’d passed still had the red neon Vacancy sign lit.

  It did.

  I got up at eight the next morning, showered, dressed, walked across the road and into the sounds and smells of breakfast—bacon sizzling and coffee brewing—at Lizzie’s Truck Stop. The restaurant was nearly filled with a group of men and women wearing blue and gold West Virginia T-shirts and a dozen bearded men in baseball caps with logos of trucking companies on them; they had to be the drivers of the semis in the parking lot.

  Lizzie took me to a booth by the front window and brought me a mug of coffee. “Hi, darlin’. Cream?” I ordered scrambled eggs, toast and salt-cured ham.

  Two deputies in gray uniforms with pistols and handcuffs on their black belts sat at the counter across from me, talking and shaking their heads as they ate their breakfasts. Customers and waitstaff came up to the deputies, spoke to them and walked away, their heads down. Others stood in clusters around the restaurant, speaking softly.

  Lizzie slid my plate onto the table and refilled my mug. “Anything else, darlin’?”

  “Everyone looks glum this morning. What’s going on?”

  “It’s awful. Mary Lockhart was killed last night.”

  My breath left me. I sat back and stared at Lizzie, dumbfounded. “Mary Lockhart?”

  “Up in Milton.”

  I couldn’t believe what she was telling me. “Killed.” I pulled in a lungful of air and let it out slowly.

  “Who would do a thing like that? Such a sweet woman.” She wiped her eyes.

  I looked at my plate, my appetite gone. “Lizzie, I saw Mary Lockhart last evening.”

  She stared at me for a second, then backed across to the deputies and laid a hand on the shoulder of one of them. “Bud, this fella saw Mary last evening.”

  He came to my booth, Lizzie at his side. “Good morning, sir. I’m Deputy Sheriff Walter Graham. You saw Mary Lockhart yesterday evening?”

  “Yes.”

  He took a black notebook from his jacket pocket. “Your name, sir?”

  “Kenneth Cunningham. I saw Mary on Walker’s Creek Road about six yesterday.”

  “Where on that road?”

  “I noticed the name on the mailbox, Carson. I saw her go into the house.”

  He slapped his notebook shut. “Mr. Cunningham, you need to tell the sheriff what you saw. He’s interviewing people at the high school. Finish your breakfast and I’ll take you there.”

  I felt sick. “I can’t eat anything. Let’s go.”

  Deputy Graham and I walked into the Brane County High School ten minutes later. I expected to hear chatter, laughter, and clanging locker doors, but the students were standing around, talking quietly. They stopped talking and watched us walk by them.

  A woman in a tan dress came out of a classroom. “Hello, Bud. If you’re looking for Luther, he’s in the office.”

  A few yards down the hall was a wooden door that had Office on its etched glass window. Graham opened the door slowly. Half a dozen adults were standing in a reception area. They greeted the deputy and stared at me.

  A thin little man with round glasses and a monk’s cap of gray hair opened the door to the principal’s office, leaned in and said, “Luther, Bud’s here with someone.” He pushed the door open.

  A stout man in a gray uniform came to the door. The silver badge on his jacket read “Sheriff.” He studied me for a second, then shifted his gaze to Graham. “Yes?”

  “Luther, this is Mr. Kenneth Cunningham. He saw Mary Lockhart yesterday evening.”

  The sheriff nodded to Graham, dismissing him. He looked at me. “How do you know Miss Lockhart?”

  “I met her yesterday in Milton.”

  “What time?”

  “About six.”

  I glanced around. People listening to us shook their heads and frowned—didn’t they believe me? The sheriff backed against the open door and extended his arm. “In here please, Mr. Cunningham.”

  I walked into an office with a walnut desk and three leather chairs. Plaques and group pictures decorated the walls. The sheriff came in behind me, dropped a notebook on the desk and sank into the chair behind it. I sat across from him.

  “Mr. Cunningham, I’m Luther Triplett, sheriff of Brane County. I need to talk to you about Miss Lockhart.”

  “What happened to her, Sheriff?”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a few questions. Then I’ll tell you what I know.” He put one hand on top of the other. “How did you meet Miss Lockhart?”

  I told him where I lived, why I was visiting the town, how and where I’d met Mary, what we’d talked about, where we’d walked, and when I’d left her.

  He leaned back. “What was your father’s name?”

  “John Lincoln Cunningham. Linc.”

  “One of O.C.’s boys.” He squeezed his chin. “What was his sister’s name?”

  Was he trying to trick me? “He had two. Serena and Margaret Ann.”

  “Brothers?”

  “Three. Burke, Mason and Will.”

  I must have passed the test. He flipped his notebook open and picked up a pencil. “You’d never seen Mary Lockhart before yesterday?”

  “No, never.”

  “Was she carrying anything?”

  “An overnight bag.”

  “Huh.” He scratched his head with the pencil’s eraser. “Was there a light on in the house when you got there?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Yeah. Not a light on anywhere.”

  “Did she turn on a light?”

  “If she did, it was after I left.”

  He wrote something in his notebook. “Was the door to the house locked?”

  “No—she went right in.”

  “Did she lock it behind her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Could you see her after she went inside?”

  “No. It was dark in there.”

  “And you didn’t go in with her.”

  Why’d he ask this? “I already told you I went back down the hill.”

  Triplett leaned forward on his elbows. “Mary Lockhart didn’t show up at school this morning. The principal phoned the Carsons’ house where Mary rents a room and got no answer. She knew the Carsons were away, and she was afraid Miss Lockhart might be sick or hurt, so she called and asked me to send a deputy by.” He leaned back and frowned. “He found Miss Lockhart’s body.”

  “How’d she die?”

  “Don’t know yet. I’m waiting to hear from the coroner.” His blank expression told me he knew more than he was letting on.

  “That’s awful.”

  “She was a good woman and a good
teacher. She hadn’t been here long, but everyone loved her. I don’t know why she’d be carrying an overnight bag. She was in school yesterday and was going to be here today.” He tapped his lips with his fingers. “Describe her for me.”

  I closed my eyes. “I’d say she was five-six or seven.”

  “Un-huh.” The sheriff stood up. “Excuse me.” He went to the door and spoke to someone outside. He put his head back into the room and said, “Just a minute.” When he came back to the desk, he carried a framed photograph of a round-faced, blue-eyed, smiling woman. “Is this the woman you saw?”

  “No, it’s not. Who is she?”

  The sheriff squeezed his lips into a straight line. “Mary Lockhart.”

  Did I hear him right? “That’s not who I saw.”

  “Mary was a chubby little woman. Maybe five-three, maybe a hundred fifty pounds. Cheerful. She had a high-pitched voice and laughed all the time.”

  “This is crazy. I’ve never seen that woman.” I tilted my head. “Then who was the one I saw?”

  “I’d like to know, too.” He scratched his head again. “We’ll get the coroner’s report and one from the crime scene in a day or two, and I’m sure there’ll be more questions for you. I’d like for you to stay around for a few days if you can. Otherwise, you might have to come back.”

  “I have to be in Hartsburg by Saturday for my high school reunion.”

  “You will be. The county will pay your motel bill while you’re here and give you seven dollars a day for meals.”

  The motel room had been cleaned when I got back. The bed was made, fresh towels were on the racks in the bathroom, and the wastebaskets were empty. I was in the center of the room before I saw her standing in the far corner, barely visible in the shadow of the dark drapes—the woman I saw in Milton yesterday.

  I backed away, toward the door. “You! What are you doing here? You’re not Mary. Mary’s dead!”