by Jeff High
I pushed myself to a sitting position and rubbed the back of my head where a considerable knot was rising.
Christmas ornament lady bent over and held my cheeks between her plump, fragrant hands. “Oh, sweetie, I am so sorry. My silly pacemaker went off while you were holding my arm. The car tires insulated me, but the jolt must have grounded through you. You fell back and bumped your head on my Beemer.”
Connie, on the other hand, peered at me sternly through her gold inlay glasses. She spoke in her typical expressionless, no-nonsense manner. “Dr. Bradford, do you need medical attention?”
I sat there for a moment with my arms crossed over my knees and eventually looked up again at the two women, one with the face of an eager puppy, the other with that of a disapproving schoolteacher. I pondered Connie’s question and responded impassively, “Yeah, looks like I have a lump on my head. What say you kiss it and make it better?”
Connie rolled her eyes and regarded me with placid disdain. Her voice was absolute deadpan. “Why am I not surprised that you would use even this situation to exhibit some foolishness?”
I rose to my feet, rubbing the tender bump. “How long was I out?”
Christmas ornament lady responded, “Only a couple of minutes. I called Connie immediately. Fortunately she was only a block away.”
I stood for a moment, gazing back and forth at the two women. They were complete opposites in both manner and dress, but strangely, they looked similar.
“So, you two know each other?” I inquired.
This brought a shrug and giggle from the colorful one, while Connie tilted her head and regarded me with disbelief. “Dr. Bradford, have you two not met?” She exhaled with a tiresome frown. “Then by all means, let me introduce you. Dr. Bradford, this is my younger sister, Estelle Pillow. You two have something in common. She got her doctorate from Vanderbilt also.”
CHAPTER 2
Sisters
Connie drove her sister over to the clinic while I followed close behind in my Corolla. It probably wasn’t the brightest idea for me to drive after receiving the bump to my head, but then again, it was only four blocks.
Set in the remote hills of Middle Tennessee, Watervalley was a quiet farming community that seemed to breathe the air of a different century . . . a slower, more accommodating, more charitable time. I had arrived only six months earlier to serve as the town’s new and only doctor. In return, Watervalley was paying off my med school debts, provided I set up practice for three years. Having grown up in Atlanta, I found that life here brought a whole new meaning to the concept of social adjustment. It had been a bumpy start, but the place had grown on me. And in return, well, I had grown on them. Watervalley had become home.
It was Thursday morning, two days after Christmas. Since the clinic staff was officially off for the holiday week, Connie unceremoniously offered assistance, speaking in a motherly blend of irritation and worry directed squarely at her sister. Seeing little harm in this, I had her follow along into the exam room in case help was needed. Besides, in the odd chance of an emergency, Clarence and Leonard, the Watervalley EMTs, were only a phone call away at the fire station. That is, if they hadn’t become bored and slipped out to Fire Chief Ed Caswell’s house to watch the Bowl games. Ed had a big screen.
With Estelle seated safely on the exam table I went about the methodic business of placing the leads and performing the pacemaker analysis. Connie hovered nearby, providing sharp-tongued commentary that escalated into a rapid-fire exchange between the two sisters, each strangely oblivious to the urgent medical matter at hand. Furthermore, they talked to each other in the third person, as if the other one was offstage in a soundproof booth.
“Dr. Bradford, I’m truly sorry about my sister. She ought to have better sense than to be out shopping in her condition.” Connie spoke with great authority, clearly treating this as an opportunity for a teachable moment.
“Oh, pay no attention to my sister, Dr. Bradford. I was actually surprised that she was out and about. Usually she turns to stone if sunlight hits her.”
Connie was unfazed. “You know, Dr. Bradford, I can’t imagine anything sillier than someone coming to Watervalley to try to start a catering business, as if people can’t cook for themselves.”
“It’s a bakery and catering business, Dr. Bradford. Everybody has a sweet tooth, including my sourpuss sister. Of course with her, it’s just a working theory.” Estelle was now wearing a subtle but superior smile.
Not missing a beat, Connie responded in a lilting, breezy voice, “Well, when we’re done here, Dr. Bradford, I’ll need to take my sister to the Dollar Store to buy her some marbles because it’s clear she’s lost all of hers.”
“Dr. Bradford, my sister forgets that I have plenty of experience at running a business.”
“Mmm-hmm. If I remember correctly, Dr. Bradford, the only business my sister ever started involved painting happy faces on people’s toenails.”
Despite the broadsides they were firing back and forth, there was no actual tension between the two. The conversation lacked any real sting of hostility. It seemed that such banter was the norm for them. Even still, all their comments were being directed at me, begging my engagement. I offered only some casual nods of understanding, doing my best to assert neutrality, and remained appropriately focused on the pacemaker analysis.
Connie finally forced my hand, speaking to me with a direct challenge. “So, Dr. Bradford. Are you going to sit there and playact you don’t hear any of this conversation?”
I kept my eyes centered on the monitor screen and responded in a low, undistracted voice, “That was my plan.”
Estelle saw this comment as a small victory and her face lit up with smug and impish glee. She pressed her case.
“Dr. Bradford, you came from Nashville, where they had all those great shops and eateries down in the Village. I’d bet you’d love to have a bakery of that caliber right here in Watervalley.”
Actually she had struck a nerve. I had just spent several years in Nashville doing my residency at Vanderbilt, and I’d grown up in urban Buckhead, north of Atlanta. I was no connoisseur, but the idea of fresh pastries and maybe even barista coffee sounded like a slice of heaven. The closest thing isolated Watervalley had to offer was the commercial-grade coffee and packaged fruit pies at Eddie’s Quick Mart. Still, despite her stern exterior, Connie was a dear and beloved friend as well as my housekeeper. It would be unwise to take sides. I opted for evasive action.
“So, this bakery, or rather, this theoretical bakery. What are you wanting to call it?”
Estelle’s face lit with delight and animation. “That’s a good question! I’ve considered several possibilities: Scone Love, Nick of Thyme, the Pig and Pie, or maybe even Hot Buns Bakery.”
She squinted her eyes in thoughtful, deep assessment and turned toward me. “Then again, this is Watervalley and you know, sugar, that last one might give people the wrong impression.”
Connie responded immediately. “Dr. Bradford, given this foolishness, I think you should advise my sister to call it Half Baked. Or maybe since she’ll have absolutely no business to speak of, she should call it Roll Over.”
Estelle listened sourly to her sister’s remark. Turning back toward me, she whispered in confidence, “Don’t mind my older sister, Dr. Bradford. Bless her soul, she’s always been a little jealous of my culinary skills.”
This brought a prompt “humph” from Connie, who again spoke in a cadenced voice. “My, my, my, Dr. Bradford. Just know that if you’re ever in the kitchen when my sister is frying anything, you might consider wearing a hazmat suit.”
Fortunately Estelle’s pacemaker analysis was now complete and I was able to exact an easy solution. The heart rate threshold on the implantable cardiac defibrillator, the ICD part of her pacemaker, was set too low and was shocking her at the slightest acceleration of her heartbeat. I adjusted
it to an appropriate level, explained the problem to her, and just that quickly, I was done.
With her large, expressive brown eyes and an endearing smile, Estelle thanked me profusely, well past the point of making me feel awkward. I squeezed her outstretched hand as a gesture of acceptance, but she yanked me forward and wrapped me up in a lock-tight bear hug. After several embarrassingly long, self-conscious seconds I managed to disconnect gracefully and made immediate gestures of needing to do some work in my office. Connie seemed to sense my desire to retreat and spoke to Estelle with affectionate resignation.
“Come on, darlin’. Let’s get you to your car.” It was the first time she had addressed her sister directly.
As they were leaving, Connie turned back to me. “Dr. Bradford, I hope it’s okay, but Estelle is joining us for dinner tonight.”
“Sure. Fine by me. Should I bring a referee whistle?”
Connie lowered her head with a look of quiet reprimand. “Just bring an appetite, and leave your foolishness elsewhere. And don’t worry about the groceries. We’ll take care of that.”
I folded my arms and leaned against the doorframe. “I shall look forward to every bite.” Pausing for effect, I quickly added, “And snippet.”
I watched them exit via the large front entry, arm in arm, talking in low but lively tones.
I adored Connie Thompson. She was a remarkable, brilliant woman. Sometimes I believed she still knew every fact from every book she had ever read and even a few she had only walked by. After her husband had passed away seven years ago, she’d taken his pension and focused her incredible intellect on the stock market. Now she was quite wealthy.
Soon after I had arrived in Watervalley the previous July, she had volunteered to come serve as my housekeeper and help me get started in my new life. Her deeply held convictions of faith and service had governed her offer when clearly she didn’t need the money. She was not one to be swayed by fortune.
Yet in the previous months that I had known Connie, I had never seen anyone affect her so pointedly as her sister. I was not convinced that her opposition to the proposed bakery was as light as their banter suggested. It seemed, instead, to be rooted in something deeper. I shrugged. The sisters shared a strange bond of contention and connection.
Having a few hours to kill, I decided to tackle a project that had been nagging at me for several months. That was when I discovered the first incredible piece of paper.
CHAPTER 3
A Peculiar Discovery
In the 1930s, the town had purchased this stately antebellum home and converted it into the county medical clinic. The physician’s office had previously been the mansion’s library. With its high ceilings and wall-to-wall mahogany bookshelves, it was opulent almost to the point of embarrassment.
Except for the excitement of the last couple of hours with Estelle, the two days since Christmas had brought time to a standstill. Life in the town and surrounding hills had slumbered. Within their modest homes and farmhouses, the families of Watervalley had drawn inward, lazily embracing the small joys of the season. The clinic, courthouse, and downtown shops were all closed with only the drugstore, the bank, and the grocery store keeping regular hours. Seemingly, the people of Watervalley were the descendants of bears and had gone into hibernation.
So after Connie and Estelle left, I decided to begin the task of cleaning out the vast stacks of old journals and patient files left untouched for decades in the solemn confines of my office. It seemed that the staff had for years regarded this room as a kind of sanctuary, a holy of holies to be left undisturbed, in keeping with the reverence the small town placed on my profession. The languid pace of Watervalley life had so permeated me that this mundane endeavor filled me with a sense of anticipation and discovery. My threshold of thrill had dropped off the charts.
Normally a cacophony of life and sound, the clinic felt strangely asleep, a quiet stage of orderly rooms, sparse daylight, empty halls. It was an edgy, unfamiliar silence. And yet suddenly I felt an echoing presence, not of a chilling or ominous nature, but rather one of a sublime distant conversation. As I pushed open the door to my office, it seemed I was moving deeper into the curious and spellbound air of ancient whispers.
Three aged wooden filing cabinets filled the far corner of the imposing room. Having cautiously glanced into them a few months earlier, I knew that they contained patient medical records dating as far back as the 1930s.
To my delight, what I found was mesmerizing.
I discovered documents with familiar names, the ancestors of people I had come to know. Carefully handwritten narratives of visits, illnesses, and assessments were meticulously detailed on the faded paper: lists of medications, billing charges, summaries of small surgeries.
I had intended to place these ancient files in boxes for storage elsewhere. But I was captivated, engrossed in reading about these distant, forgotten lives, these ghosts of persons long past and buried in the numerous lowly cemeteries that dotted the community’s frozen farms and fields.
And somehow, knowing the people of today’s Watervalley, their voices, their faces, and their stories, made their ancestors in these dusty records come alive. Oddly, I found a subtle contentment in this exploration, a rich feeling of connection with the charitable, uncomplicated people in my small world.
Then, while working through the drawer labeled “1940,” I came across a most unusual find. It was an oddly titled folder containing a single piece of yellowed paper, and it told a fascinating story—one that didn’t fit this sleepy and isolated community. The file tab read simply: “Autopsy Report, Murdered German.”
The document described a man in his midthirties who had died from blood loss sustained from multiple stab wounds. His body had been discovered near the old bandstand on the edge of Watervalley Lake. No wallet or identification had been found on him. While performing the autopsy, the doctor accidentally uncovered the only hint of who he was.
I read the words aloud, slowly. “Telegram written in German found in victim’s suit lining believed to be indication of nationality.” An inscription on the inside of his ring was also in German. Dr. Haslem Hinson, the county physician during the forties whose distinguished picture now hung in the long row down the main hallway, had signed the report.
I spoke in a low whisper. “Murder in Watervalley?” The words were at polar ends. The town was a quaint collection of homes, shops, and churches, a small island of life and commerce set inconspicuously in the middle of a broad, fertile plain of endless farms. The people here lived peaceful lives driven by the simple traditions of work and crops and family and faith. Threads of common values wove their world together and daily life was simple, routine, safe. Violent, grisly murder happened in faraway places, not here.
The minutes began to merge together. This fragile piece of paper pulled me deeper into a lost trance, prying at me with infinite questions. I read and reread the autopsy report several times, absorbing each word, hoping to satisfy my scant understanding of what had happened. But there were too many unanswered questions. What did the telegraph say? Who was this man? Who had stabbed him? Why? Most of all, how did this crime happen to occur here?
I stared vacantly, hypnotized. Steadily, the faint chatter from earlier became more pronounced. Low voices were humming in a muted overture from decades past. In a curious and enchanted way these forgotten files were brimming with the murmurings of long-ago lives, passions, hopes—with the unadorned chronicles of generations. The voices echoed with the hearty laughter, the robust energy, the symphony of rural life. And yet now, so it seemed, a singular tone of discord had blended in, hissing slyly of the gruesome business of murder.
In time I emerged from the spell of this peculiar discovery and looked at my watch. Two hours had drifted by and only part of one filing cabinet had been cleaned out. It was a poor showing. But the remaining drawers would have to wait until another day. I stared
blankly at the folder for a few moments and decided to take it with me. I wanted to find answers, to know more, and immediately thought of one person who might be able to shed some light.
I grabbed my coat, locked up, and fired up the old Corolla. I was headed up to the high woods to see John Harris.
CHAPTER 4
Ancient Rumor
Turning off Fleming Street, I passed a multitude of downtown shops. Stacked side by side in something of a cereal box architecture, the decades-old buildings varied in style and color. Despite its years, Watervalley’s downtown had a confidence, a sense of sureness about itself, a presence that was fresh and vibrant and welcoming. In the center square, the courthouse was framed by a broad lawn and tall maples that in summer would be lush with foliage. On this cool, bright December day the trees were bare and silent, serving as dormant sentries around the wide steps and limestone columns.
Despite the sleepy pace of the holidays, there was a delicate energy in the air of the idle downtown shops, a charming sense that life was still close at hand. Even when the townspeople were absent, their laughter and engaging kindness, which I had come to know, permeated my day. I was in high spirits.
After driving several miles deep into the hills, I pulled the old Corolla onto John’s long brick driveway. The sweeping beauty of his incredible stone-, glass-, and wood-sided house never failed to impress. An architectural wonder with a breathtaking view of the entire valley, it enjoyed a splendor far beyond the simple frame houses that dotted the landscape below.
John Harris could be the most intimidating man I had ever met. Wealthy, retired, and in his late fifties, he held a doctorate in chemical engineering. He was tall, muscular for his age, and had a ruddy handsomeness that radiated sheer presence. In decades past he had been an icon of quiet strength and selfless leadership in town, but the tragic loss of his wife, Molly, to cancer two years earlier had left him a brooding and temperamental recluse.
