High Country Fall

by Margaret Maron

  I saw a hat that would have looked good on Dwight except that I wasn’t sure of his size, and that bothered me. How could I possibly be planning to marry someone whose hat size I didn’t know? Yeah, yeah, it was crazy to get hung up over such a silly detail; all the same, I really needed to buy him that hat. Instead, I had to settle for a dark green crewneck sweater that would go nicely with his brown hair and eyes. That size I did know—XL, the same as several of my brothers.

  A regional crafts store next door featured handmade quilts and pillow covers in traditional patterns, and, considering the quality of their goods, the gift shops further along the street could have been attached to art museums. Glass, pottery, and wooden bowls evoked the mountains rather than proclaimed it. The only place I could find the Cedar Gap name was on the bottom of a bowl or vase, never splashed across the front.

  The sole exception to all this rarefied tastefulness was a ramshackle log building at the bottom of Main Street, something called the Trading Post. The moment I saw it, I immediately remembered walking around inside with Mother and Aunt Zell, the three of us sharing a bag of licorice jelly beans. I also seemed to remember an enormous wooden Indian that had stood out front with a peace pipe in one hand and a tomahawk in the other. He was gone now, probably a victim of political correctness.

  Inside were all the geegaws you’d expect to find in a mountain tourist town: Daniel Boone coonskin hats made of polyester plush, Indian war bonnets in neon-colored feathers, dozens of silly doodads labeled “Souvenir of Cedar Gap” or “High Country Heaven,” and plastic figurines of hillbillies shooting, fighting, whittling, and swilling moonshine. Part country store, it also carried jeans, bib overalls, work/hiking boots, washboards, kerosene lanterns, flashlights, and a hundred other necessities of bygone years and still useful today, I suppose, if you happened to live in a cabin at the far end of utility lines.

  The store was surprisingly crowded. On one side of the front door was a hot dog stand where people stood in line while the lush fragrance of hot chili and onions swirled around them. On the other side, even more people were browsing through a candy section where small wooden nail kegs were filled with lemon drops, sassafras sticks, peanut brittle—every old-timey candy imaginable. Customers were encouraged to fill a plastic bag with any assortment they wanted because the price per ounce was the same for all, and yes, I did buy an ounce of licorice jelly beans for old time’s sake.

  Back out in the cool evening air, the sidewalks were becoming less congested as twilight fell. Cars still jostled one another for parking spots, and couples dressed in resort-style chic converged on the restaurants. Old-fashioned streetlights glowed softly beneath the trees, and inconspicuous spotlights illuminated the bronze soldier in the middle of the traffic circle.

  When I reached the circle on my return walk back up the street, I veered off to check out the courthouse. A small arrow pointed to public parking down a sloping drive to the rear. On the side, though, I saw slots reserved for the various court officials, including one for Judge Rawlings, the judge for whom I was subbing while he sat court down at the coast, where gray trout were supposed to be running this week.

  According to Longmire, Rawlings had traded with a Beaufort judge whose wife wanted to see leaves. Unfortunately, it was discovered at the last minute that she needed major surgery, so he would be spending this week either sitting at her bedside or playing Mr. Mom to their two children. Because Rawlings had already rented a place on the beach and because the Beaufort judge needed a sub anyhow, the call had gone out about two hours before Minnie’s call for someone to replace Rawlings.

  “Pure serendipity,” Longmire had said, and standing here on the traffic circle in a town where no one was likely to come up and burble at me, I couldn’t agree more.

  I crossed the street, got in line at Roxie’s, and ordered a scoop of fudge ripple, which I savored all the way back to the condo.

  Darkness had fallen completely now and those steep steps were poorly lit. Halfway up, I sat down on a ledge to finish the cone, and when I tilted my head back, I saw that the stars had come out, sharp and crisp against the deep blue. I know the mountains have been having trouble with air pollution, smog, and acid rain, but tonight was so clear that even the Milky Way swirled across the sky more brightly than I had seen in ages, despite a moon that would be full in another night or two.

  Impulsively, I pulled out my cell phone and called up the menu for Dwight’s number. It rang twice, then a recording informed me that “The wireless customer you have called is not available. Please try your call later.”

  I could call his pager, of course, but what was the point? Just to tell him I’d arrived safely? Or to ask him his hat size?

  It wasn’t as if we’d be murmuring sweet nothings in each other’s ear, and he’d think I was crazy if I said the only reason I’d called was because the moon was making me lonesome for the sound of his voice.

  When Dwight suggested that we get married, we had sensibly decided that long-standing friendship and newfound sex were all that we needed for a stable marriage. I told myself it would be childish and greedy if I started whining now because we didn’t have stardust and moonglow, too. Nevertheless, as I gathered my bags and trudged on up the steps, I couldn’t help sighing for all those times I’d been so deeply, desperately, insanely in love that I didn’t care whether or not the guy thought I was crazy for calling.

  The minute I opened the condo door, I realized someone had been there in the two hours I was gone. Lights were on in every room.

  “June?” I called. “May?”

  No answer.

  It seemed to me that there were now fewer jeans in the stacks piled atop the couch and chairs. Two more pairs of heels graced the cabinet that held the television and DVD player, and the empty hangers hooked over a floor lamp now held long black skirts and white blouses with ruffles around the neck and cuffs. It was as if the twins had come home from some dressy occasion, changed into play clothes, and gone off again.

  On the dining table was a note: Deborah—Sorry about the mess. We’ll be back around 12. M & J.

  Twelve? It was now only eight-thirty.

  In my bedroom, a red light on the answering machine blinked for attention. “Would whoever gets this tell May or June to call Carla?”

  I finished unpacking, took a long shower, then got into bed with a book, intending to read until they returned.

  I think I lasted all of three pages.

  The sound of the front door closing woke me. There was a moment of disorientation, and before I could clear my head, the bed was full of arms and legs, bear hugs and bounces.

  “Welcome to the High Country!”

  “You should’ve let us know.”

  “We’d’ve straightened the place up.”

  “Mom said—”

  “We heard—”

  “Are you really?”

  One of them grabbed my left hand.

  “Oh my God! It’s true!”

  “Look at the size of that rock!”

  “Mom said Christmas?”

  “Can we be in the wedding?”

  “Please?”

  Laughing, I disentangled myself and sat up. And did an immediate double take.

  All their lives, the twins had been so identical that even their own brother had trouble telling them apart. When they were five, though, May fell on a piece of broken glass and wound up with a tiny half-moon scar in front of her right earlobe that was so faint outsiders almost never noticed it. Family members were immensely grateful.

  Their faces were still photocopies of each other, but their shoulder-length dark hair had undergone radical changes since last I saw them. Both heads were now covered in short curls. One was the color of a new penny, the other was a deep dark purple, almost the same shade as an eggplant.

  They looked at each other and laughed at my reaction.

  “We’ll dye it back if you let us be in the wedding,” Eggplant said with a grin.

  “I would
n’t dream of it.” I was having too much fun picturing Doris or Nadine’s reaction to vaguely punk bridesmaids. On a one-to-ten scale for mild acts of rebellion, with green or fuchsia Mohawks, three facial piercings, and two visible tattoos as a ten, this barely qualified as a one, but my prissy sisters-in-law would see it as the first banana peel down that slippery slope to depravity.

  “You look darling,” I said, thinking again how the word “cute” must have been coined with these two in mind: small, compact bodies, upturned noses, the bubbly personality of cheerleaders, which indeed they’d been throughout high school. “Has y’all’s mother seen you yet?”

  “No, and don’t tell her. Please? We want to surprise them when she and Dad come up next month.”

  “Oh, they’ll be surprised, all right.” I looked at Copper Top. “May, right?”

  She smiled and nodded.

  “Although,” said June, “we’re not really sure. I could be May for all we know.”

  “Huh?”

  “Right before we came back here in August, we put Band-Aids on our faces so they couldn’t see May’s scar—”

  “—and we challenged Mom and Dad and Phil to say which was which—”

  “—and they couldn’t,” both girls chorused, reminding me all over again how attuned to each other’s thoughts they were.

  “There was wine,” said June.

  “Mom got a little tipsy,” said May.

  “And she confessed that she used to mix us up when we were babies.”

  “Then Dad said he had, too.”

  “And even Phil said he used to switch us in our high chairs just to see if Mom would notice. Sometimes he forgot to switch us back.”

  “So for all we know,” said May, “I might really be June.”

  They didn’t seem to be very upset about the possibility.

  “Oh, well,” I said. “‘What’s in a name?’”

  “Credit cards?”

  “Driver’s license?”

  I had forgotten how literal-minded they could be.

  “‘That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet,’” I quoted.

  They looked at each other blankly.

  “Dickens?” May ventured.

  “Don’t tell me you never read Romeo and Juliet,” I said.

  June’s face brightened. “Shakespeare!”

  May shrugged. “I think we were sick that day.”

  I laughed. I had never been a scholar, but compared to these two?

  “So why are y’all up here goofing off instead of studying in the library down at Tanser-MacLeod?” I asked, getting serious for a moment.

  “We’re not goofing off,” June said indignantly. “Mom and Dad are paying us to paint the place.”

  “I hope they’re not paying by the hour,” I said. “Those brushes have been in that bucket so long that at least an inch of water has evaporated since the last time they were touched.”

  “We’ve been really, really busy.”

  “Studying.”

  “Midterm exams.”

  “Yeah, and papers were due.”

  “But we were going to get on it this weekend—”

  “—only something came up.”

  “Some thing or some one?” I asked.

  “Um, well … see, we’re earning extra money by waiting tables up here.”

  “But we don’t want Mom and Dad to know because they think we should spend every minute hitting the books,” June explained.

  I held up my hands. “Hey, I’m not up here to rat you out.”

  “So why are you here?” asked May.

  I told them about the judges trying to swap courts for a week and how I’d been asked to substitute for the one who was subbing for the Beaufort judge, only he—They started to look blank again.

  “Never mind,” I said glancing at the clock. “It’s late. I want to be down at the courthouse by nine and you need to get to bed, too, if you’re going to make your first class.”

  “It’s not until ten,” May said hastily, “but you’re probably tired. We’ll be quiet tonight if you’ll be quiet in the morning.”

  “You’re spending the night here?”

  “Yeah, late as it is, we’d just wake up everybody in the dorm if we went back now.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” I said. “Somebody named Carla left a message for y’all to call her.”

  “The phone’s fixed?” asked June.

  “Cool,” said May. “It hasn’t been working since Friday night.”

  I decided there was no point in telling them it always helps to put the receiver back on the hook rather than on the floor.

  “See you in the morning,” I said, lying back on the pillow.

  June switched off the lamp and they tiptoed from the room as if I were already asleep.

  Minutes later, I was.

  CHAPTER 5

  Neither twin made it up before time for me to leave next morning. I rapped on the door of one bedroom and stuck my head in. The face beneath purple hair blinked at me groggily, rolled over to tilt the bedside clock so she could read it, then moaned, “Just another half-hour, okay?” and pulled the quilt back over her bare shoulders.

  “Will I see y’all again before the end of the week?” I asked.

  “Mmmff,” was my only answer.

  Happily it was none of my business whether or not they got to class on time.

  With my judicial robe slung over one arm and the strap of my laptop looped over the other shoulder, I let myself out into a fall morning so picture perfect it had probably been ordered up by the Cedar Gap Chamber of Commerce: turquoise blue sky, one puffy white cloud, and a bit of a breeze so that brown, gold, and orange leaves floated down and swirled around my feet as I crossed the drive. The air smelled fresher and cleaner than the fusty humid air I’d left in Colleton County and its slight nip of fall encouraged me to walk briskly down the steps to Main Street. I was feeling virtuous as hell by the time I reached the courthouse.

  The Lafayette County Clerk of Court wasn’t around at the moment, but someone in her office had been watching for me.

  “Judge Knott? I’m Mary Kay Kare,” said the woman, who looked to be about ten or twelve years older than me. “I’ll be clerking for you this week.” Short and blond, she wore a bright yellow cardigan over black slacks and a white shirt, with a string of purple beads around her neck.

  “Is it Mrs. Kare or Ms.?”

  “Well, it’s Mrs., but you can just call me Mary Kay.” She was as cheerful as sunshine as she handed me the day’s calendar. “Is there anything else you need?”

  “A cup of coffee?” I said hopefully.

  “Already waiting for you,” she said, beaming as she led me downstairs.

  Most courthouses are built up. Lafayette County’s was built down. Entering at street level got you the usual Register of Deeds, Board of Elections, Clerk of Court, and so on, then the building literally went downhill from there. The lobby outside the two courtrooms on the level below had floor-to-ceiling glass walls that overlooked breathtaking vistas.

  The bottom level housed the sheriff’s department and county jail, Mrs. Kare told me.

  I followed her through a door marked “Official Personnel Only” and down a hallway to an office behind the courtroom I’d be using. An insulated carafe sat on the desk with a business-size mug. “Judge Rawlings drinks coffee all day long, so we’re in the habit of keeping it full for him.”

  She pointed to a tiny refrigerator built into a low bookcase. “There’s half-and-half, if you use it.”

  “I don’t, but thanks.” A photograph of a chubby middle-aged white man and an equally chubby woman and boy stood on the desk. I thought he looked familiar from various conferences we’d probably attended together, but he wasn’t someone I could say I knew. “Is that Judge Rawlings?”

  She nodded and her blue eyes misted over. “Bless his heart, this is the first vacation he’s taken since his wife and son died.”

  “Died?” Sta
rtled, I looked again at the photograph, my automatic condescension washed away by the tears in Mary Kay Kare’s eyes. Yes, it was a picture of three Teletubbies, but from the way the two adults smiled at each other, the photographer had also captured an aura of love that seemed to wreathe them.

  “She was broadsided by a drunk driver two years ago, taking their boy to Little League practice. Guy ran the stop sign. Both of ’em were wearing seat belts, but they were still killed instantly.”

  “What about the driver?”

  “Barely scratched. He’d been cited before, though, so this time it was prosecuted as vehicular homicide and he’ll be in prison another few years. What made it so bad for Judge Rawlings is that he’s the one that turned the kid loose with community service the last time he was up for DWI. Felt sorry for him. Two weeks later—”

  It’s a judge’s worst nightmare in these days of budget deficits that spawn overcrowded penal institutions and overextended substance abuse programs: balancing the need to protect the community with the need to believe that offenders can reform themselves before they hurt someone else. Rawlings must have spent the last two years replaying his courtroom decision a million times, begging God for just one do-over.

  I’ve been there. I know. God doesn’t bargain and He doesn’t give do-overs.

  According to Mary Kay, I was the only judge hearing cases here today. The calendar held the usual Monday morning assortment of DWIs, assaults, and simple possession of marijuana or drug paraphernalia. From the coast to the mountains, it’s the same predictable catalog of minor sins, and when I looked out over the people sitting there on the benches in front of me, it was the same panoply of wary, embarrassed, defiant, or defeated faces, although … ?

  There was something different about this group, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

  Was it the assistant DA? Most ADAs are young men or women at the beginning of their careers. William Deeck had to be at least fifty and his rumpled blue suit was that of a man who didn’t care about looks or labels. He sounded cranky and his facial expression struck me as dour when he stood to call the first case, but I soon realized that there was a twinkle behind his rimless glasses and that he had an exceedingly dry wit. More to the point, he was efficient and single-minded, presenting the state’s cases so concisely that we had cleared more than half the day’s calendar before the morning break.