Uncommon Clay (A Deborah Knott Mystery Book 8)

by Margaret Maron

  “Sorry,” he said, almost as shaken and white as she was. He took his foot off the accelerator.

  “You stupid idiot!” she raged. “Nothing’s worth getting killed for. Nothing!”

  “I said I was sorry, okay?”

  Libbet took a deep breath. “Okay.”

  But she didn’t really breathe normally till they turned in at the pottery and he brought the car to a standstill beneath the tall pines down by the sheds.

  Jeffy Gregorich was there, standing absolutely motionless on the board swing James Lucas had slung between a couple of the pines.

  “What’s wrong with the idiot now?” Tom muttered.

  “Hush! Don’t call him that,” Libbet scolded. “What if Miss June heard you?”

  “Oh, hell, Libbet. You think she don’t know he’s a dummy? Give it a rest.”

  “I mean it, Tom. And if Dad or Mom heard you—”

  Jeffy spoke a single word, but so low she couldn’t make it out.

  She got out of the car and went closer. “What did you say, Jeffy?”

  He said it again, but when she started to walk over to him, he yelled, “No, no!” and almost danced up and down on the swing, shaking the ropes. “Snake!”

  She looked down and there it was on the pine needles between them, no thicker than a pencil and less than a foot long.

  Libbet wasn’t crazy about snakes, but she did know the difference between harmless and poisonous ones.

  “It’s okay, Jeffy. It’s just a garter snake. It won’t hurt you.”

  Tom had come around his side of the car to peer over her shoulder. He didn’t like snakes, either, but now he stepped forward and pinned it to the ground with the toe of his boot.

  “Go get me a bucket or something,” he told Libbet.

  “Why? What are you going to do with it?”

  “Just get me the bucket, okay?”

  “Okay. But Granddaddy’s gonna kill us if Davis tells.”

  “Over a little old garter snake? Get real.”

  They carried the snake up to the loft and while Tom prepared his little surprise, Libbet was drawn to a sketch pad that lay open on the coffee table. There were her grandfather’s unmistakable gnarled hands, drawn in strong quick lines. The hands were cupped around a lump of clay and something about the way Davis had smudged those lines gave an impression of movement so that the flat, two-dimensional drawing captured the feel of a turning wheel.

  For a moment, she was almost conflicted about her hostility to the cousin who could draw like this, then Tom called from the doorway, “Come on, Libbet! I hear a car.”

  It had been a long day and Davis was exhausted. He hadn’t realized how much there was to being a potter. It wasn’t just standing at a wheel and shaping a piece of clay into an eating or drinking vessel. The clay first had to be put through a pug mill and de-aired—“Used to have to knead it by hand to get all the air pockets out,” his grandfather had said. Then the clay had to be sliced into precise half-pound weights. Kilns had to be unloaded, the bisque ware (he’d thought at first they were saying “biscuit” ware) had to be checked for imperfections, glazes had to be mixed from various chemicals and the bisque were dipped in, then set to dry in front of a large fan before getting a second turn through the kiln in a couple of days.

  To Davis’s surprise, when the Hitchcocks arrived this morning, his Aunt Betty turned out to be the potter and Uncle Dill was her gofer. She had gone straight to her brother’s old wheel, set the jigs so that she could work her way back into the right proportions, and began turning mugs with no fuss or big production. Even though she wasn’t quite as tall as James Lucas had been, she’d smiled and said it still felt familiar. “Remember, Dad?”

  “Yeah. You used to sneak down here every time his back was turned and try it out till we finally got tired of it and gave you your own wheel when you were, what? Ten? Twelve?”

  “Eleven,” she’d said.

  Tom had planned to work Donny’s old wheel, but Hitchcock pottery was proportioned just enough differently from Nordan that he couldn’t seem to get the jigs to work right and Libbet had soon taken over. Freed from the wheel, Tom had gone to pulling handles for the mugs and moved back and forth between the two sheds, keeping them caught up.

  With June minding the sales shop, the three younger men had kept hopping with all the support work, since Bobby hadn’t come back after lunch.

  “When are you going to fire his sorry tail?” Betty had asked. “You can count on Jeffy better than you can count on him.”

  Davis knew he should call his mother, let her know everything was okay and that nobody had taken any real shots at him. Although, he told himself, thinking of Libbet and her brother, if looks could kill . . . But he was too tired to go back to the main house.

  He stripped off to shower, remembered that there was only cold water, hesitated, and then said to hell with it and stepped in. The night was so warm that it wasn’t too bad, but he certainly didn’t linger beneath the spray.

  He dried off, hung the towel over the curtain rod, then padded barefooted over to the bed, which was looking better and better to him even though it was only nine o’clock. Sliding a CD into his portable player, he pulled back the covers and got under.

  Just as he reached over to turn off the light, something moved under his bare leg, and before he could react, he felt it wrap around his ankle.

  Davis yelped and jerked back his legs. Player and covers went flying and the lamp and table beside the bed crashed over as involuntary primeval survival instincts kicked in. He fell to the floor in time to see the snake wriggle under the sheet at the foot of the bed, leaving just a tail tip exposed.

  “Bastard!” he snarled out loud. “You asshole bastard!”

  Almost immediately he was struck by the wry humor in his choice of terms. Whatever else he might be, Tom Hitchcock wasn’t exactly the real bastard of the week. Thank God he wasn’t here. As Davis righted the table and lamp, he ruefully admitted that his reaction to the snake must have been everything Tom had hoped for.

  Which was ironic, considering that he’d had pet garter snakes from the time he was six till he went away to summer camp, where (warned by his sisters) he’d disappointed his cabin mates by making friends with the one they’d put in his bunk.

  He hauled the frightened snake out from its hiding place and held it up for closer inspection. It wrapped around his wrist and flicked its small tongue impotently.

  “Sorry, little guy,” he said softly, “but I’ve got another job for you.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  Each of these labels, in their various ways, conveyed a special meaning or identity to the purchaser and it became important to mark it on every piece of pottery. [One potter] never stamped his wares, though occasionally, on special request, he might incise his name on a jug with a nail or a sharp stick.

  —Turners and Burners, Charles G. Zug III

  Saturday was breezy and sunny, great for cleaning house, doing laundry, catching up with some yardwork, and just hanging out. In fact, the evening was so fine that a bunch of us—Portland and Avery Brewer included—drove over to Durham to watch the Bulls play the Toledo Mud Hens. Portland had gotten over her early-pregnancy nausea and was now into competitive eating. She downed hot dogs, root beer, peanuts, and pizza slices at the stadium, where the Bulls lost 4-2, and then she wanted to stop for hot Krispy Kreme doughnuts on the way home.

  “Anything that doesn’t eat her first,” Avery sighed.

  With nothing planned for Sunday I slept in, and by Sunday afternoon, I found myself lonely and just a little bored. I was too restless to settle into a book, yet I wasn’t in the mood to socialize with any of my brothers or their families, so when the phone rang, I let my machine take it. As soon as I heard Jenny McAllister’s voice, though, I picked up.

  “Oh, Deborah, you’re there. Good.”

  She told me that she’d finally heard from her son. Sounded as if he’d called about three minutes before she
was ready to send out a search party. He had described his quarters, the pottery workshops, the kilns, the people, and how he’d spent Friday night looking through old photograph albums of his newfound biological family.

  “He says everything’s fine,” she told me. “Says it’s a lot like summer camp and he’s learning more than he ever wanted to know about throwing pots.”

  “But?”

  “But something,” she agreed. “He won’t tell me what, though. Just kept saying it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle. He’s a painter, not a potter, Deborah. He’s really talented with a brush or drawing pencil, but he’s never had much aptitude for three-dimensional arts or crafts of any kind, yet Donald’s father sounds like he’s trying to brainwash him into thinking he’s a natural. I’ll be glad when you get over there.”

  I wasn’t due to hear the Sanderson trial till Tuesday, but I’d already scheduled a day of personal leave on Monday to get my hair cut and have my eyes examined. (Till now, reading glasses from the drugstore have worked just fine. Lately though, I’ve caught myself holding papers and books further away than usual.) Fortunately, there was nothing urgent about either, and yes, poking my nose into the Seagrove situation sounded like a much more interesting way to spend the day.

  “Let me make a couple of phone calls,” I told her.

  “Impose? Don’t be silly,” Fliss said when I asked if I could come back earlier than I’d expected. “I have plans for dinner tonight, but I’m sure they’d love to have you, too.”

  “Don’t bother,” I told her. “I may have plans, too.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ll tell you when I get there. Has Connor Woodall arrested anybody for the Nordan murder yet?”

  “No, but something interesting’s happened. Remember I told you that James Lucas’s brother had an illegitimate child?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, the boy’s turned up and now everybody’s saying he’s going to change his name to Nordan and that Amos is going to give the pottery to him.”

  “Really?” I knew from Jenny McAllister that her son Davis didn’t go to Seagrove till day before yesterday. And Fliss had already heard this much about him? “I thought one of his daughter’s sons—one of the Hitchcock boys—”

  “Tom,” she said, supplying the name I’d forgotten.

  “I thought he was supposed to get it.”

  “So did he,” she said dryly.

  I told her I couldn’t wait to hear all the details and that I’d be over in about three hours.

  I left cancellation messages on the machines at the Cut ’n’ Curl and the optometrist. Next I rooted out the business card that Will Blackstone had given me. I tried both his office and his home but got answering machines both places. Well, it was unrealistic to think that such a good-looking man would be sitting by his phone, waiting for my call, on this beautiful Sunday afternoon. I hung up without leaving a message on either machine, threw some clothes in my overnight bag, stuck a couple of dresses and my robe in a garment bag, then headed west.

  As a change from Highway 64, I took two-lane back-country roads and came into Seagrove from the southeast, through Carthage instead of Asheboro. I never drive that route without wondering about the lofty aspirations of those earlier citizens who earnestly named their settlements Macedonia, Carthage, Samarcand, or Troy. (When I mentioned it to her once, Fliss reminded me that one can also travel around that area from Jugtown to Whynot to Erect to Climax with less lofty aspirations.)

  Since I’d made better time than I expected and Nordan Pottery was right on my way to Fliss’s house, I decided to swing past, introduce myself to Davis Richmond. And yes, despite what I’d promised Dwight about minding my own business, I was curious to learn if there was anything new on James Lucas’s death. Besides, I was minding my own business. Jenny McAllister had made it mine, hadn’t she?

  June Gregorich was tending the shop when I walked in. It was busy with customers, but she had time to give me a smile of welcome. “Oh, do you know Davis?”

  “His mother and I are old friends,” I said. (It sometimes worries me how glibly I can lie about things.) “Haven’t seen him in so long, though, that I probably won’t recognize him. Jenny says he’s grown at least a foot. How’s he settling in here?”

  “Fine, so far as I know. Of course, I haven’t seen much of him yet except at meals. Mr. Amos has kept him pretty busy since he got here Friday.”

  I watched her wrap a pair of purple candlesticks in newspapers and place them in a brown paper grocery bag. The next customer wanted to buy four place settings of the gray-and-purple ware and was dismayed when June explained that they weren’t set up for credit cards.

  “But I don’t have my checkbook with me,” she wailed, and went off to see if her friends had more cash on them than she did.

  In the lull, June told me that Davis was probably down at the main pottery shed, “but if he’s not there, try calling up the steps at the one next to it. He’s staying in Donny’s old loft.”

  “Oh, is the pottery open today?” asked a man who came up behind me with a cardinal red vase in his hands.

  “No, I’m sorry,” June told him. “Mr. Nordan doesn’t do any turning on Sundays.”

  I went out the back door, just as I had followed Sandra Kay a week and a half ago. As warm as the weather had been lately, the azaleas and rhododendrons had started to fade a little and dogwood petals lay on the pine straw like random snowflakes. A little ways down the slope, I saw June’s son Jeffy poking at something with a long stick. It was a small garter snake. A small dead garter snake.

  “See th’ snake,” he told me in his thick-tongued speech. “Tom an’ Libbet, they caught him yesterday. Tom killed it.”

  Naturalists can preach till they’re blue in the face about the vital role snakes play in the ecology. Most of the people I know are still going to grab a hoe as soon as they see one and chop it in half. This harmless little snake seemed to have had its head stomped to a bloody pulp.

  Two white Toyotas, both almost equally banged and dented, and a shiny little red Sunfire were parked within a few feet of each other down by the shed. When I pulled the latch and opened the door, I found two teenagers. A tall, unfamiliar youth and a very pretty, very blond girl were working at an electric grinder. They seemed to be taking the rough spots off the bottoms of a table full of purple-and-gray lidded jars.

  “Sorry,” the boy said, giving me a less-than-welcoming stare. “This building isn’t open today.”

  “Are you Davis?” I asked tentatively.

  For some reason that seemed to make him scowl even more. “No, I’m not. I’m Tom. Tom Hitchcock.”

  So this was the dispossessed grandson. Also the nephew whose whereabouts his Aunt Sandra Kay had questioned the day James Lucas died.

  I stepped across the threshold. “I’m Deborah Knott. I was here when your uncle was found.”

  “You’re the lady judge?” the girl exclaimed.

  I nodded.

  “Cool! I thought you’d be older.” She wiped her dusty hand on the back of her jeans and held it out. “I’m Brittany Simmons. What’s it like being a judge?”

  “I think it’s pretty cool, too,” I admitted.

  “How come you asking about Davis?” Tom asked abruptly.

  Again, I ran through my tale that he was the son of an old friend and how I thought I’d look him up while I was here since I hadn’t seen him in so long.

  “He’s gone over to the Rooster Clay with Tom’s mother,” Brittany said. “She had some pictures she wanted to give him. I’m sure it’d be okay if you went over, too, right, Tom?”

  He gave a truculent nod. “And if you see him, tell him I’m going to beat the shit out of him when he comes back.”

  “Tom!” She looked at me apologetically. “He doesn’t mean that.”

  “The hell I don’t!”

  “You know good and well he thought you’d be the one to find it. He left before I got here, remember? Even you didn’t kno
w I was coming here this afternoon.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he snapped.

  “Davis,” she said, in that patronizing woman-to-woman voice meant to chasten any males within hearing distance. “He put a snake in one of these jars. I guess he thought he’d scare Tom. When I picked up the vase just now and turned it over to start grinding, the snake fell in my lap, nearly gave me a heart attack. It’s a wonder I didn’t break more than two pieces trying to get it off me.”

  Tom made a low growling sound, very like a dog about to lunge.

  “How do you know it was Davis?” I asked, trying for logic.

  Brittany rolled her eyes. “Because Einstein here put it in his bed last night.”

  I had to smile. So that’s what Jeffy meant when he said Tom and Libbet caught it yesterday.

  “Sounds like you two are even, then,” I told Tom.

  From the glare I got as I left, it was clear he didn’t agree.

  I walked back up the slope to my car. The garter snake still lay beside the path, making Sunday dinner for the flies and ants that had found it. There was no sign of Jeffy until I rounded the shop and saw him swinging on the front porch. As I got in my car, he waved goodbye and cheerfully called out something that sounded like, “Come see us again.”

  I waved back, thinking how unfair life was for some people. Yet, if June Gregorich had to have a mentally handicapped son, she was lucky that he’d been born with such a sunny, friendly disposition.

  The pragmatist who lives inside my head nodded in agreement. Think if he had Tom Hitchcock’s surliness.

  On the other hand, said the preacher who shares headroom with him, that Brittany seems to have her head on straight and they are spending this beautiful Sunday afternoon working for his grandfather, aren’t they?

  Maybe they’re just taking care of business, looking after their own interests, said the pragmatist, forever the cynic.

  Not being familiar with the lane that was supposed to lead over the rise to the Rooster Clay Works, I took the highway around, turning left onto Felton Creek Road, then looking for the big glazed rooster that marks the entrance to their drive. Unfortunately, tendrils of scarlet honeysuckle had twined themselves around the rooster’s neck and I didn’t spot it till I’d run past. I pulled in at the next drive to turn around and go back and realized that the woman out picking daffodils was Sandra Kay Nordan.