Blackman's Coffin

by Mark de Castrique

  I passed him my handwritten statement. “Here’s the report of my conversation with Tikima on Saturday, June 2nd. I’ve also included a summary of my attendance at her funeral last Tuesday and the discrepancies of the handbrake, footprint, and sand particles discovered at her car on Wednesday.”

  Peters slid the sheets to the side without looking at them. He pointed to the folders. “What’s that?”

  “These are the files from Armitage Securities that my sister had in her apartment,” Nakayla said. “You told me you wanted them.”

  He nodded and I handed them over. We went through them one by one with Nakayla giving Peters the same background information she’d told me. I mentioned the connection between the Biltmore Estate, the French Broad River, and the Armitage guards.

  “You think there might have been internal work troubles at Armitage?” Peters asked.

  “Just an observation,” I said. “I don’t know enough about anything to venture an opinion. But, you told me Tikima’s body was found downstream of the Biltmore Estate.”

  “Does Nathan Armitage know about these files?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Nakayla made a list that we’re going to give him.”

  “Don’t.” His sharp tone was an order, not a request. “I’ll be speaking to Nathan personally.”

  “And you want to hit him cold with these companies. Read his reactions.”

  Peters smiled. “I forgot you played the game.”

  I doubted Peters forgot much of anything. “The game,” I said. “I’m only a spectator of this one, but I’d like to follow the score.”

  “From Birmingham?”

  “From Asheville. I’ve decided to hang around a little longer. Do some legwork.”

  Peters didn’t miss the double meaning. “If you’re going to practice walking, I advise you to stay clear of places where you’ll get under somebody else’s feet. My partner’s on vacation, but I don’t need a new one.”

  “I’m just a tourist,” I said, knowing all of the places in the folders except Golden Oaks were tourist attractions.

  “Where are you staying?” Peters asked.

  “The Kenilworth. Tikima Robertson’s apartment.”

  Peters looked to Nakayla for confirmation.

  “I’ll give you the phone number,” she said. “So you can reach Sam.”

  Peters slid back his chair. “Okay. So maybe you can buy me a cup of coffee now and then.”

  I lifted my hand like a policeman halting traffic. “Maybe you’d like a cup now and then we’ll show you what we’ve saved for last.”

  Peters stopped halfway up from his chair. Nakayla took the chamois-wrapped journal from her purse and set it on the table. Peters eased into his seat and leaned forward. He waited for the story.

  Nakayla described its discovery in the Elmore Leonard dust jacket, omitting my name on the Post-It note and saying she’d found it only the previous night. She summarized the content, setting the hook with the murder of Elijah. Then she pulled out the Wolfe biography and I showed Peters the handwriting similarity. A feral look came across his razor-thin face and I knew Tikima’s case had suddenly jumped up several notches in importance. Every cop likes the bonus of solving a cold case and Elijah’s eighty-eight-year-old murder was positively frigid.

  He picked up the journal and thumbed through it. “You say the dates Wolfe uses are the actual dates that match your great-great grandfather’s murder?”

  “Yes, or they’re near enough. I know he was buried in Georgia, though none of us had ever been to the grave.”

  “And you think this is what the burglars were after when they broke into your sister’s apartment the day of the funeral?”

  “Yes. Nothing else was taken.”

  Peters drummed his long fingers on the journal. “Why didn’t you report the break-in?”

  “Because I thought nothing was taken. I’d rather the police focus on finding a killer, not a burglar.”

  Peters looked at me. I shrugged, trying to appear sympathetic to the detective’s predicament. The burglary scene was now three days old.

  “How many people have been in the apartment since then?” he asked.

  “Just Sam and me,” Nakayla said.

  “Then I’ll want it dusted. And I’ll want both of you printed for reference. Maybe Tikima has prints on file from her military service.” Peters turned to me. “But as you pointed out the other day, any right-handed prints will have been made by someone else.”

  Peters stood, taking the journal and files with him. “I’ll want to review these before talking to Nathan Armitage, and I’ll have the crime lab at the apartment as soon as I can. I’ll need you there to let them in.”

  “It’s Sam’s apartment now,” Nakayla said.

  Peters shook his head. “Whatever.”

  ***

  Peters had us printed before we left the police station and we’d then gone straight to the Kenilworth, careful to leave our copies of the journal and Armitage files locked in the Hyundai’s trunk. The mobile crime lab arrived a little after one and sent us scurrying to escape the powder, brushes, and lifting tape that would sweep through the apartment.

  With a bottle of root beer each, Nakayla and I sought refuge in the shade of the side yard and the comfort of the Adirondack chairs. We watched tenants and visitors slow their cars as they looped around the expansive lawn and saw the police vehicle parked alongside the stone porte-cochere.

  “I guess I’ll be well scrutinized by my neighbors for the next few days,” I said. “I’d hoped to live here unnoticed.”

  “The building’s big enough that you’ll soon be indistinguishable from the lobby furniture. Tikima said the place offered the anonymity of a New York City residential hotel in the setting of a mountain cabin.”

  “Your sister lived in New York?”

  Nakayla laughed. “Only in her mind. She’d visit friends in Manhattan at least once a year. She liked the theatre.”

  I remembered the brief encounter in my hospital room. “She could be quite dramatic, I bet.”

  “When she wanted to be. But in a crisis, there was nobody calmer.”

  We sat in silence for a few minutes. I suspected Nakayla shared my thoughts. What had Tikima’s final crisis been like? Had she seen her assailant or the 38 caliber pistol the medical examiner claimed to be the murder weapon?

  Nakayla sighed and took a sip of her drink. “We’ll need to get some groceries after the police leave.”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “With what? Grazing on the lawn? I cleaned out the refrigerator last night. You don’t have any wheels and it’s a pretty far hike to Ingles.”

  “Okay. A few groceries. Guess I’d better rent a car tomorrow.”

  She glanced at my prosthesis. “Are you cleared to drive?”

  “Not a stick shift in the Indy 500, but an automatic transmission should be no problem.”

  “I’m hanging with you tomorrow and Sunday for sure. Let’s wait till Monday. No sense paying more than you have to.”

  I tipped my bottle of root beer to her. “The practical Robertsons.”

  “Damn straight. And Monday we’ll have the make, model, and tag number of your rental so the resident manager can add it to her file. I forgot to tell you she gave her blessing for you to sub-rent under the terms of Tikima’s lease.” Nakayla toasted her bottle to me. “You’re now an official tenant.”

  I raised my bottle to the old building. “Don’t you mean I’m now an inmate in the asylum?”

  “That goes without saying. Anybody sane wouldn’t get involved in this case.” She took a deep breath. “Thank you, Sam.”

  “Well, I might be crazy, but we’ll need to approach this investigation logically. And I’d like to stay clear of Peters for as long as we can.”

  Nakayla set her bottle on the armrest and folded her fingers under her chin. “Then let’s go back to the beginning.”

  “When’s that?”

  “When Frederick Law Ol
msted enticed Elijah Robertson to leave Chicago and help him create his landscape masterpiece. I think tomorrow we should pay a house call on George Washington Vanderbilt.”

  “I can guarantee he won’t be home.”

  Nakayla gave me a sly smile. “Maybe. But with over a million visitors traipsing through George’s bedroom each year, I can guarantee that we’ll escape detection by Detective Peters.”

  I shook my head. “Not in my experience. We’re more likely to meet George Vanderbilt coming out of his bathroom wearing only a toothbrush.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Those are the smallest golden arches I’ve ever seen.” I pointed to a wooden sign where the McDonald’s logo had been carved into a background of rusty red. The roughly four-by-five-foot sign stood beside the entrance to the fast-food restaurant whose understated exterior made it unique among the thousands of McDonald’s franchises I’d seen in my life.

  Nakayla eased her car forward as traffic trickled through the main intersection in Biltmore Village. “There’re even marble counters in the restrooms. The town’s restrictions dictate all buildings comply with architectural standards compatible with those used when Vanderbilt constructed All Souls Church and other village property.”

  “So what’s their burger called, the Big George?”

  Nakayla slipped through the yellow light and we approached a mammoth brick archway towering over our lane. “No. Since McDonald’s swallowed the building code, the public gets to swallow the Big Mac.”

  We passed underneath the arch of Biltmore as one in the procession of cars slowly flowing beside a rippling stream. The lush vegetation of the landscape contained a variety of plants: tall hardwoods and pines, islands of rhododendron and ferns dotting a sea of moss and wildflowers, and patches of bamboo that appeared and disappeared like Chinese screens masking the sparkling whitewater. The morning sun, high enough to clear the mountain ridges, sent shafts of light through the leafy canopy. The richness of gold and green made me feel like I was traveling through an Old Master’s painting.

  “Is this the entrance that your great-great grandfather helped build?”

  “Yes. The stream was diverted at several places to accompany the road. Before Vanderbilt bought the land, loggers and farmers had clear-cut and decimated the forest. Everything you see now was specifically planted by Olmsted. Hundreds of thousands of plants were grown in the Biltmore nursery or transplanted from elsewhere.”

  “It doesn’t look landscaped.”

  Nakayla laughed. “That’s the point, Sam. To show off Mother Nature at her natural best.”

  The scenic lane continued for several miles before crossing into a valley of open pastures. We reached a crossroads where a security officer waved some of the cars straight ahead and others up a left-hand lane to a large brick and stucco building.

  “Passholders can just enter,” Nakayla said, “but I need to get you a guest ticket.”

  She parked the car and we went into the Visitor Center. I followed her past a scale-model displaying the locations of the house, winery, hotel, and stables. Then we hit a crowd of people vying for the shortest line in front of at least ten ticket windows.

  “Quite a business,” I said.

  “This is nothing. Sometimes you have to buy a timed admission. You can only enter the house on the quarter hour stated on your ticket.”

  “How much is it?”

  Nakayla waved her hand dismissively. “I’ll get a discount with my pass. You can buy me lunch.”

  We waited about ten minutes until the woman behind the window said, “Next please,” and we stepped forward. Nakayla showed her pass and asked for a guest ticket and two audio tours. Nakayla handed her a credit card as the woman rang up the total. I owed Nakayla a very nice lunch.

  When we returned to the car, Nakayla said, “Let’s tour the house first. That takes a couple hours. We’ll use the audio headsets because you’ll get a crash course in Biltmore history that way.”

  The road meandered between woods and pasture for a few more miles until a parking attendant waved us into a lot. All I saw were trees bordering it.

  “Where’s the house?” I asked.

  “We’ll take a shuttle.”

  “You don’t think I can walk?” An edge crept into my voice.

  Nakayla opened her door. “I wasn’t thinking about you. The road is so steep that I prefer to use the shuttle. I’ll meet you at the entrance, Daniel Boone.”

  Chagrined, I followed her to the pickup point.

  The shuttle bus held around twenty-five and the ride was long enough to prove Nakayla correct. We drove through another gate, immediately turned right, and before me lay the largest house I’d ever seen.

  A long esplanade stretched more than several football fields in front of it. The house ran perpendicular, and its central entrance aligned with a wide circular fountain spouting in the middle of the manicured lawn. Alongside the grand doorway rose a spiral of windows that must have enclosed a huge stairway ascending four or five stories to the roof. The exterior of the house appeared to be grayish yellow stone with ornate carvings around the windows and eaves. The steep roof had a bluish tinge broken by countless chimneys. Behind the house and blending with the roof lay a wall of the Blue Ridge Mountains, hazy in the summer’s morning air. I was struck that I saw no other manmade edifice between this French castle and the Appalachians.

  As we rode along the esplanade, Nakayla said, “What do you think?”

  “I think I’d hate to heat this place.”

  As we entered the grand foyer, an attendant handed us each a brochure, took our audio tour tickets, and directed us to a cart where headsets and players were being distributed. A quick lesson showed me how to follow the room map on the brochure and dial up the accompanying narration. Nakayla and I proceeded to the first room, the Winter Garden, and I began a journey into a world of art and luxury that was overwhelming. Occasionally, Nakayla and I would exchange a few words, but most of the time, I was mesmerized by what I saw and heard. I wasn’t alone. Often I stepped around people frozen in the rooms and halls, their eyes focused on some painting or piece of furniture, their hands clutching their audio devices, and their mouths hanging open.

  One woman in the enormous banquet hall stood like a traffic cop, her arm pointing here and there. I realized she was reenacting what the narrator was saying, repeating his words to herself. Her finger went to the carvings over the mantel above the huge fireplace, swung to the flags of the original thirteen colonies displayed along the length of the walls, and then swept to the loft opposite the fireplace where a pipe organ was playing. A man who had to be her husband stepped beside her, pulled one of the earpieces off her head, and said above the notes of the pipe organ, “Winnie, they built the house faster than you’re taking the tour.” She nodded, put the earpiece in place, and started pointing again.

  Two things made a strong impression on me. The chess set and table owned by Napoleon Bonaparte was fascinating enough, but when the narrator said the table had held Napoleon’s heart for three days before his burial, I really took a closer look. The music room, finished later than other rooms on the first floor, caught my attention because the narrator said priceless art from the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. had been stored there during World War II. An enemy bomber certainly would have had trouble navigating through the mountains in search of a target.

  Off the music room, Nakayla and I stepped onto a wide stone terrace. The view of the mountains was spectacular.

  “See the tallest peak to the left.” Nakayla pointed out the distant summit. “That’s Mt. Pisgah, the heart of Pisgah National Forest.”

  “Nice to have a national forest next door,” I said.

  She turned to me. “George Vanderbilt owned that mountain. When he stepped out on this terrace, he wasn’t looking next door.”

  “Impressive. So he gave it to the government?”

  “His wife Edith sold the land after his death to the U.S. Department of Agricul
ture. She knew protection of the forest would have been her husband’s goal anyway, and she chose the best way to make that happen.”

  We walked back inside, and I noticed from the brochure that our tour continued on the second floor. As I’d thought, a wide, suspended staircase rose just off the main foyer. I stood in the middle of the spiral, looking up at an ornate wrought-iron chandelier held in place by a single bolt in the ceiling four stories above my head. Not only did I get dizzy, I got nervous thinking about all the weight that could come crashing down on me. I saw the multitude of tourists going up the stone steps that had no underneath support but simply stuck out at right angles from the wall. Yet, these architectural designs that defied gravity paled in comparison to the effort it would take me climb the staircase.

  Nakayla watched from the foot of the banister. Her smile was warm and understanding.

  “Is there an elevator?” I asked.

  “Yes. Mind if I tag along?”

  The rest of the tour covered a series of bedrooms, servant quarters, salons, and sitting rooms. Then we took the elevator to the basement. The windowless stone hallway led us to a strange open space called the Halloween Room. The story goes that one Halloween the Vanderbilts threw a party and everybody came down to this basement room to draw on the walls. The floor to ceiling canvas must have brought out the child in everyone, for the drawings were plentiful and some were actually quite good. Many appeared to represent some narrative story that might have developed on the spot. Sort of like cave paintings by the rich and famous.

  Although the walls were interesting, attention soon became focused on the old photographs displayed in cases interspersed through the room. They documented the clearing of the property and construction of the house until its opening on Christmas, 1895. Nakayla motioned me over to one photograph. The caption identified George Vanderbilt and Frederick Olmsted standing on a dirt road in front of a crew of what must have been nearly fifty men. Black men and white men not separated by race. The workers wore rugged clothes and shoes. Some looked uncomfortable posing for the camera.