The roar of the gun startled me. The bear jerked in the air and sprawled to my right. A double echo of gunshots resounded through the hills.
“Don’t touch him,” a voice shouted.
I looked up the slope. A Negro wearing a brown canvas jacket and mud-stained pants slowly sidestepped through the trees. He kept a rifle that dwarfed my twenty-two pointed at the bear. “His spittle got the disease. Get it on you and you go crazy too.”
He gave the motionless animal a wide berth till he stood at the head. In one motion, he shouldered the rifle and fired again. “That do him.”
The man walked over and looked at my leg. “Gotta carry you to a doctor.” He pulled a key from his pocket and opened a padlock linking two ends of the chain.
“Get my leg out,” I cried.
“That leg bleed more when I free the trap. I want to have you where I can tie it off.” He slipped the chain free of the trap. “I’ll try not to hurt you, but you gonna have to go up on my shoulder.” He squatted down and looked me in the eye. “What’s your name, boy?”
“Henderson. Henderson Youngblood.”
“The buryin’ man’s son?”
“Yes.”
He grabbed me by the shoulders and lifted me up, careful to keep my weight off the leg. Even as careful as he was, the pain forced me to cry out.
“That’s all right,” he said. “You holler all you want. Don’t have to prove nothing to me. That bear has a hole in his eye and it didn’t come from my gun.”
“But your shot knocked him over,” I said. “Stopped him from giving me rabies.”
“Maybe,” he said. “We’ll talk about that later.”
He stood with me slung over his back like a sack of feed.
My head started spinning. “What’s your name?” I mumbled.
“Elijah.”
He took a first step. I don’t remember the second one.
The next thing I heard was the gurgle of water. A cold wetness soaked my pants and I opened my eyes to see blue sky and the face of Elijah above me.
The intensity of the pain in my right leg made breathing difficult and I gasped for air.
“Lay easy,” Elijah said. “The water will clean the wound and the chill numbs the pain.”
I propped myself up on an elbow and looked around. We were on a flat mossy rock by a bold stream. Both of my feet dangled in the swift white water. “Where are we?”
“Never you mind. It’s a place you ain’t supposed to be, like where you were when that bear lit after you.”
“Biltmore. But you ain’t supposed to be here either.”
He shook his head. “I work the grounds and I’ve been tracking that bear ever since he started killing the livestock.”
The bear almost killed me, I thought. My twenty-two might have blinded one eye, but if the bear hadn’t mauled me to death, his rabies would have got me for sure. Elijah had saved my life. The vision of the charging bear swept over me like a black cloud. Again I fainted.
When I came to, I heard my father’s voice calling me. I found myself propped against Elijah on a mule. Then I saw my father and Mr. Galloway running across the timber clear cut at the Biltmore boundary.
Elijah dismounted and let my father take his place. Then he led the mule behind Mr. Galloway and told them the story. I buried my face in my father’s shoulder and sobbed.
Sunday, April 27th: I woke up in the hospital. Mother and Father were beside the bed. Mother held my hand in both of hers. I could see tears on her cheeks. I couldn’t feel my foot. I wrestled my hand free and lifted the starched sheet. My right leg ended in a ball of gauze and cotton. My foot and ankle were gone.
“May I get you anything else?” The waitress looked anxious and I realized she wanted us to leave. The restaurant was closing. I looked down at my full coffee cup and across the table at the empty pie plate in front of Nakayla. I had touched neither while reading the boy’s journal. Nakayla hadn’t interrupted me.
“No, we’re finished,” I said. “We’ll be going.”
When the waitress had retreated, Nakayla asked, “Did you find something?”
I slid the book back to her. “Yes. Tikima wanted me to have this journal because the boy writing it loses his foot. I guess she thought I’d find it inspirational.” As I said the words, I felt disappointed that Tikima had given me some warm and fuzzy story for motivation. I’d expected more from her.
Nakayla bit down on her lower lip and then wiped her eyes. “I’d hoped it would be something more. Something that would make sense of what happened.”
“I know.” I rubbed the aching stub of my leg. The world had stopped making sense for me too.
***
“Mr. Blackman.”
A hand shook me awake. I must have been dreaming about Tikima because I thought she was shaking me again.
The duty nurse stood over me. “The woman who called last night. She’s on the phone again.”
I was awake enough to notice daylight coming through the blinds. “What time is it?”
“Nearly seven. My shift’s over in a few minutes. Is it really an emergency?”
“Yes. Should I come out to the desk?”
“No. I can transfer her to the room phone.” She wheeled the bedside table closer and left.
I snatched the receiver up in mid-ring. “Nakayla?” I whispered.
“Mr. Blackman, it makes sense. It makes sense.” She was so excited she was nearly screaming.
“The journal?”
“Yes. Elijah was our great-great grandfather. In 1919, his body was found in the French Broad River. He’d been murdered.”
Chapter Four
Although I didn’t know how I could help Nakayla, I couldn’t dismiss the possibility that her sister had selected me for a specific reason. Around nine, I told the duty nurse I’d be working on my own for a few hours in rehab. Then, I slipped on my pants and Hawaiian shirt, and for the third time in two days, I made a break from the hospital.
Nakayla nearly ran over my good foot as she tried to save me from stepping down from the curb. I slid onto the seat and swung my prosthetic leg in without a problem.
“You’re getting better,” Nakayla said.
“In another twenty years, I might be able to walk on the damn thing.”
Nakayla drove forward without comment and I realized my whining was petty self-indulgence to a woman who had just buried her sister. The psych docs in Walter Reed had warned me that my emotions would swing through extremes—that was normal. But the more insidious development would be letting those emotions harden into bitterness. Not only would that eat away at my spirit but it would also distance others from me.
“Now if they could put a retractable wheel on the bottom,” I said, “like in those shoes the kids wear. You’ve heard the expression hell on wheels?”
Nakayla glanced over and saw what I meant to be a friendly grin.
“We could call you Scooter Man,” she said. “Get you a red cape.”
“I do have my Hawaiian shirt.”
Nakayla cut her eyes to the gaudy pattern and then accelerated onto Tunnel Road. “Take my advice. Send it back to the Hawaiians.”
I reached down, found the seat controls, and inched out a little more legroom.
Nakayla noticed my effort. “Sorry if you’re cramped. I started to bring Tikima’s Avalon but I’m not up to driving it yet.”
My investigative instincts kicked in. “Where did they find her car?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was it abandoned near the river?”
“No. It was in her parking spot at the Kenilworth.”
“The Kenilworth?”
Nakayla zipped the Hyundai up the ramp to I-40. “Her apartment building. Where we’re going now.”
“So someone picked her up.”
“That’s what the police think.”
I heard the skepticism in her voice. “You don’t agree?”
Nakayla glanced at the speedometer and set the cr
uise control. “Tikima told me she was going to meet someone, not that someone was picking her up.”
I approached the other possibility as tactfully as I could. “Is there a chance she might have had someone up to her apartment? Someone she didn’t want you to know about?”
Nakayla shook her head. “We were sisters. I knew every man in her life—even the jerks—especially the jerks. She’d just broken up with a guy two weeks before and she wasn’t seeing anyone.”
“This guy she broke up with, is he a suspect?”
“I gave the police his name, but I doubt he’s involved. He’s married with two kids. When Tikima found out, she dumped him.”
“How’d she find out?”
“I told her.” Nakayla stared straight ahead. At first her smooth-skinned face showed no emotion, but after a few seconds, her dark eyes welled with tears. “She was my big sister. She looked out for me. After her injury, I tried to do the same for her.” Nakayla turned to me. “My sister could be too trusting. I think she was about to put her trust in you.”
I felt my face warm at what I took for a rebuke.
Nakayla saw the impact of her words and her eyes widened. “I didn’t mean it that way.” She shifted her gaze back to the interstate. “Just that she seemed ready to enlist your help when she hardly knew you.”
“But you think she checked up on me?”
“Yes. And if she liked what she found out, she would have moved quickly.”
“And if she didn’t dig deep enough, she could make a mistake, like dating a married man.”
Nakayla wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Something like that. But the words you said at her funeral prove to me she didn’t misjudge you.”
I felt my face flush again at the compliment. I stared out the side window at the ridges rimming Asheville and wondered if Nakayla could also be too trusting. What if Tikima had lied to her sister and hadn’t broken off her relationship? My years as a warrant officer, especially working with military prosecutors, had shown me how often people will say what they know someone else wants to hear.
“You don’t think it’s possible that Tikima’s plans could have changed after she talked to you? That her apartment could have been the meeting place?”
“She wouldn’t have met a business prospect there. Usually they’d meet at the client’s site or at a restaurant. Tikima would have called me again if her plans changed. I have a key to her apartment and sometimes I’d crash there to watch a video and stuff myself with popcorn.”
“But you didn’t that Saturday?”
“No. I had a date.”
“So Tikima knew that.”
“No.”
No meant Tikima wouldn’t have brought someone up to her apartment if she thought Nakayla might drop by. No also meant the sisters didn’t tell each other everything.
Nakayla flipped on her turn signal and eased the car into the right-hand lane. A green exit sign read Biltmore Village one half mile. I sat quietly, not wanting the questions swirling in my head to come out as an interrogation.
“I had a working date, not a romantic one,” Nakayla said. “I didn’t discuss the specifics of my work with Tikima.”
Working date? Who was I riding with? A hooker with a heart of gold?
Nakayla must have read my mind. “I’m an insurance investigator. I went out with a guy who’d filed a disability claim. We went clubbing and he was making moves his crooked chiropractor stated were impossible for a man enduring his alleged suffering and pain.” Nakayla laughed. “He endured suffering and pain all right. I could see it on his face when he realized I’d snapped several shots with my cell phone of him contorting like a pretzel.”
“You’re a private detective?”
“No. I work for a company called the Investigative Alliance for Underwriters. We work exclusively for insurance companies. The Asheville office covers western North Carolina. Most of my time is spent on the phone interviewing neighbors and co-workers of people we believe to be filing fraudulent claims. Once in a while I work in the field.”
My next question came without thinking. “Then why would Tikima come to me rather than you?”
Nakayla’s answer was quick and short. “Whatever my sister was investigating, she must have thought it was too dangerous to involve me.”
I said nothing. We both understood Tikima had been right.
The I-40 exit led onto Highway 25, the main road into Biltmore Village. In the left lane, traffic was backed up for several blocks, waiting to turn into the Biltmore Estate. I’d never been to America’s largest private residence, but the proliferation of billboards throughout North Carolina made the exterior of the mammoth home as familiar as the Eiffel Tower. Henderson Youngblood’s description of the surrounding landscape gave me a new connection, one that enticed me to walk on the property he had traversed eighty-eight years earlier.
Nakayla steered clear of the gridlocked tourists and we zipped through the village. The Biltmore mansion was not visible from the road, only the stream of cars disappearing into the forest through its massive gate. Perhaps that was the route Henderson Youngblood had taken on his pony.
A few miles farther, we turned right across from St. Joseph’s Hospital and began climbing a winding road through an established neighborhood. Homes were eclectic in style—from ranches to two-story and even three-story structures built along the slope. I didn’t see any apartment complexes other than an occasional duplex.
“Did Tikima live in an older residence?” I asked.
“You might say that.” Nakayla swung the Hyundai along a looping road that circumscribed the top of a wooded knoll.
Suddenly the trees gave way to a grassy clearing and I was astonished to see a huge building towering above bordering pines. “Good God, is this her place? It’s a grand hotel.”
“Used to be. That’s the Kenilworth Inn. Goes back to the 1880s. Then it caught fire and was rebuilt around 1913. It’s on the National Historic Registry.”
The stately old Tudor had to be five or six stories with wings rambling off a grand entrance marked by a high stone porte-cochere. Back in the day, hundreds of carriages must have unloaded at its doors.
“Hard to believe something like this still exists,” I said. “And it’s apartments?”
“Right now. A developer from the West Coast bought it. Saved it from being razed. Probably go condo someday, but Tikima liked to dream she was princess of the manor.” Nakayla followed the road around a wide expanse of lawn. An American flag flapped atop a silver pole at the center of the arcing driveway.
“Princess of the manor,” I repeated. “I can believe that.”
“I called her queen of the asylum.” Nakayla pulled into a parking space and yanked up the handbrake. “For most of its life, the Kenilworth Inn was a government hospital and mental institution.” She opened her door, and then turned back to me. “I have a feeling you’ll fit right in.”
I stood and leaned against the car, setting my leg and taking a deep breath.
“Don’t worry,” Nakayla said. “I’ll drop you at the front. You mentioned Tikima’s car and I thought we ought to check it.” She crossed behind her trunk and led me past a few vehicles to a silver Avalon. She reached in the pocket of her jeans for a key remote.
“Is that Tikima’s key?”
“No. Her purse was never found. This is the spare from the apartment. I told you I thought about driving her car to pick you up.” She double-clicked a button and the four doors unlocked.
“So the police didn’t check it out,” I said.
“They dusted for prints. The investigating officer theorized that Tikima might have been abducted as she started to get in the car. They looked for signs of a struggle, but found nothing.”
We stood on black asphalt and I looked down at a collage of oil drips and pine sap. The hard surface showed no scrape marks or gouges. Any blood stains not washed away by rain would have been discovered by a halfway decent mobile crime lab.
“Can I look inside?” I asked.
Nakayla opened the driver’s door. The interior was clean except for the expected litter of a few parking receipts and gum wrappers. The tan leather seats showed minimal signs of wear, but the gearshift in the console had undergone a change. A metal bolt had been attached to either end of the grip. It took me a second to understand this homemade modification had been done to accommodate Tikima’s prosthesis. The pinchers could be anchored in the hole of each bolt, enabling Tikima to squeeze the release button and slide the gearshift into position. Clever, and I guessed a hell of a lot cheaper than a factory installation.
The unset handbrake between the seats showed a similar customization. A third bolt had been fastened to the button on the end and a small eyehook protruded from a wooden block taped midway down the lever.
I leaned in the car for a closer look. Scrapes on the parking brake’s leather trim indicated Tikima had sometimes missed her makeshift device. I turned back to Nakayla. “You set your handbrake even though we’re on level ground.”
“Yes. Then you’ll never forget it on steep ground. Mother forgot once and the car started rolling with Tikima and me inside. Tikima was ten and jumped in the front seat. She couldn’t reach the brakes, but she steered the car past a tree and we crashed into a laurel thicket.”
I moved clear of the door. “Then would Tikima have always set her parking brake?”
Nakayla stared into the car.
“Were you with the police when they dusted for prints?”
She seemed oblivious to my questions. “Tikima had to have set the brake. She’s the one who hounded me to do it before I even turned off the ignition.”
I stepped closer and grabbed her arm. “Nakayla, were you here with the police?”
“No. I gave them the key. Why would they have released the brake?”
“I don’t think they did. But you need to ask.”
Nakayla searched my face for confirmation of what she must have suspected.
I nodded. “Yes. That’s an explanation. Someone else parked her car.” I edged between her and the vehicle. Since the police had found the doors locked, they probably concentrated their efforts on the exterior. They might not have even printed the interior.
Blackman's Coffin Page 4
