Blackman's Coffin

by Mark de Castrique

  “What about a preliminary M.E. report?” Those usually take awhile, but we were talking about the murder of a police officer and everyone on the force would be chomping at the bit to get started.

  “You’re correct that the body was moved. We found a spot in a remote corner of the cemetery where the chain-link fence was cut. Two cars drove in from an adjacent recreational park. One was the Crown Vic. They knew the one spot where they would have clear access to a cemetery lane without being blocked by gravestones. The M.E. estimates time of Roy’s death at closer to 6 p.m.”

  “Nakayla and I were with Ranger Taylor.”

  Newland nodded. “Yes. He confirmed you were together.”

  “So he’s not a suspect?”

  “Not unless you planned this together.”

  “What about Rawlings and Matthews?”

  “We’ll handle the investigation.”

  That probably meant Newland hadn’t checked for alibis. He would proceed carefully and didn’t want me tromping through his case.

  I stood. “Am I free to go?”

  “Yes. But don’t leave Asheville. I’m holding you and Miss Robertson as material witnesses.”

  “All right.”

  Newland leaned forward, his hands braced on the table. “Watch yourself,” he whispered. “And stay out of my case. Someone might think you know more than you do. They could still want you dead.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Nakayla and I stepped out of the police station and faced a wall of TV cameras and reporters.

  “Mr. Blackman, what’s your involvement with the case?”

  “Miss Robertson, do the police have a link between Detective Peters’ killing and your sister’s death?”

  “Mr. Blackman, any truth that you’re a suspect?”

  The questions came fast and furious—a verbal gauntlet we had to walk to reach the parking lot where the police had brought Nakayla’s Hyundai. Neither she nor I said a word. I slammed the car door and nearly smashed a microphone in a reporter’s hand.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  Nakayla started the engine and backed up, sending cameramen jumping for the safety of the sidewalk. She sped from the lot, drove two blocks to Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, and then took a hard left down a hill and out of sight of the police station. She pulled over to the side of the road and stopped.

  Her whole body was shaking. At first I thought she was crying, but when she looked at me I saw fire in her eyes, not tears.

  “You know what that Detective Newland kept asking me?”

  “No.”

  “Had Tikima and I argued recently and what did I think of her friendship with you? He’s working on a theory that I was the jealous sister.”

  I understood where Newland was coming from. Nakayla had set me up in Tikima’s apartment and his initial lead was Nakayla and I standing over his partner’s body. I would have used the same tactic myself in an interrogation.

  “He tried to rattle you. Whoever killed Peters took the case file and Newland had nothing to go on. Once he got the copies of the journal and the Armitage files, and then checked out our story, he dropped his suspicions.” I doubted Newland had completely crossed us off his suspect list, but I didn’t want Nakayla to worry.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Newland and the entire Asheville police force will work this investigation hard. One of their own is now a victim.”

  “You mean we’re quitting?”

  I thought about Newland’s warning to stay out of his case and the fact that someone had tried to kill us. “Maybe we should give them a day or two. See what they turn up.”

  “Sam, they’re going to do just what you said. Look for whoever killed one of their own. If that leads to Tikima’s murderer, then it’s secondary. And what about Elijah? You think they’ll give a damn about an eighty-eight-year-old murder?”

  “Newland ordered me to stay clear. He thinks we might be in danger. And when our faces are plastered all over tonight’s news, people will be afraid to talk to us.”

  “Then we work the rest of the Armitage files this afternoon. Sam, you might trust the police, but somebody killed Peters and I know in my heart that motive goes back to Elijah. I can’t get that old photograph out of my mind, the police standing beside the Klan at a graveside service. You think some of the police weren’t under those hoods, not simply standing beside them?”

  I thought about the twins, Al and Ted. “Our father and grandfather were policemen,” Ted had told me. Maybe I was still on Detective Newland’s suspect list. So what? Now he was on mine.

  ***

  An old prospector held up a gold nugget that matched the tooth in his wide grin. “Gold for the Taking” read the cartoon bubble coming from his mouth. I’d seen the picture in Tikima’s file. In person, the billboard towered over a parking lot nearly filled with cars and SUVs. License plates proclaimed a variety of origins from as far away as Oregon.

  Nakayla found a spot straddling the edge of the pavement and a gravel shoulder. “So, we’re going for the mineral angle, not security?”

  “Yes.” I’d starting thinking about new tactics sitting in the living room of Nakayla’s bungalow in artsy West Asheville. Nakayla had wanted to shower and change clothes before we set off on our final series of interviews. “If Tikima asked Luther Rawlings about mineral rights at the Biltmore Estate, she must have asked a mineral question here. I’ll say I was helping her when she was killed and she never got to tell me about her conversation. You’re my assistant and I won’t introduce you as Tikima’s sister.”

  “Why not?”

  “They might clam up if they think this has to do with a murder investigation. You’ve never met these people before?”

  “No. Once in a while my insurance investigations crossed one of Tikima’s clients, but not the Ledbetters.”

  Phil and Judy Ledbetter had been the names in the file. Now that the police held the Armitage folders, we were going from memory. Fortunately, Nakayla and I had reviewed the documents enough to remember everyone we planned to interview.

  “Gold for the Taking” more accurately described what the Ledbetters were doing to the tourists. People sat on benches under what looked like a giant picnic shelter. Instead of tables, they faced troughs of running water. Each person had a bucket of dirt and a wooden-framed screen sieve. A scoop of dirt went in the sieve and then the flowing water washed away the loose soil, leaving stones that the Ledbetters claimed could be anything from rubies to emeralds. Kids, parents, and grandparents meticulously fingered through the remaining pebbles in search of treasure.

  A poster at the entrance showed a girl in pigtails holding up what looked like green quartz. Underneath her photograph, the caption read: “Eight-year-old Jenny Pickens finds $25,000 emerald.” The discovery Nakayla had told me about. Inset beside her picture was a newspaper article from the Asheville Citizen. The story was ten years old, but Jenny’s smile still spurred on adults and kids alike.

  We went to a stand at the far end where a man stood behind a counter. Stacks of buckets lined the wall in back of him, categorized by the gemstones most likely to be discovered. There were buckets labeled sapphires, rubies, garnets, topaz, and emeralds. Prices ranged from twelve to sixty-five dollars depending upon the size and gems likely to be discovered.

  A disclaimer proclaimed: “Although all of our ore is from our gem-bearing sites, buckets have been enriched to make your prospecting more exciting.” At least they were up front about baiting the tourists. From the occasional squeals of delight I heard from the families hunched over the troughs, I’d say it was a fair deal for everyone.

  “Can I get y’all a bucket each?” The man in a full black beard and bib overhauls looked like he could have posed for the billboard. All he needed was the gold tooth.

  “Is Phil or Judy in?” I asked.

  “Phil’s up at the mine. Judy’s in the gift shop next door.” He jerked a thumb toward the concrete walkway that w
ent around his stand to the next building.

  A wooden railing ran along the edge. I used it to steady myself as we headed for the white stucco gift shop. On the other side of the railing, the ground sloped down to a wide stream running parallel to us. Several people waded in the clear water, scooping sand into round pans and then swirling the current across it.

  “Those must be the no-thrills prospectors,” I said.

  If the gift shop was supposed to feature mountain crafts and jewelry, then western North Carolina must have been annexed by China. Most of the merchandise was nothing more than trinkets. But along one wall, I noticed a glass case with both a motion detector and a security camera trained on it.

  Here lay the legitimacy for Gold for the Taking, photographs of unearthed emeralds, some of them over a thousand carats and worth more than a million dollars. Several uncut gems were displayed under the glass. Even in their rough, quartz shape, I could see the green coloring that would have me thinking dollars, not gold. The photos went back in time, shaving the years off the man identified in the captions as Phil Ledbetter. A few earlier ones showed his father, Jimmy Ledbetter, at the entrance of a mine, holding up a chunk of rock that could have been nothing more than a piece of gravel in the old black-and-white photograph.

  “You folks look too dry to have been seeking your fortune.” A woman in a calico dress that could have been a costume or straight out of her closet walked over to us. Her gray hair was pulled back and her tanned, weathered face had seen at least sixty summers.

  “These pictures want me to buy a bucket of dirt,” I said.

  “Then you might want to sign up for a site dig.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You pay fifty dollars and Phil takes you to one of our more promising digs. You keep what you find. That’s how little Jenny got her $25,000 emerald. Damndest thing. She stepped on it.”

  “What about gold?” I asked. “Is that just in the name?”

  “No. Gold’s what got this business started. Gold’s what the creek scavengers, that’s what I call them, are panning for. Phil’s people bought over a hundred acres back in the 1920s looking for the vein that dumps flakes and nuggets into the stream. Tough luck. All they found were emeralds.” She laughed with the throaty rasp of too many cigarettes.

  “So, the reverse hasn’t happened? They haven’t found the gold vein while looking for emeralds?”

  “No. Different geological conditions produce gold. The more emeralds you find, the less likely you’ll find gold. That’s why buying so much of this mountain turned out to be the best thing. They got it cheap because the slopes were too rocky and steep for farming. They bought it for protection in case the gold vein traveled out rather than down.”

  “Why bother with the tourists?” I asked.

  “Takes money to operate a mine. Significant emerald finds are few and far between. And when you hear the prices, they’re usually after the gem’s been graded and cut. Retail prices. Believe me, they’re a long way from where we sell them.”

  I offered my hand. “You must be Judy. I’m Sam and this is Nakayla.”

  She smiled. “Sorry to talk your ears off. Is that how you knew my name? My motor-mouth reputation?”

  “I work for Tikima Robertson.” In my mind the statement was true.

  Judy’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, my God. What are you doing here?”

  “Tikima told me she was going to talk to you. She wasn’t able to file a report, and I thought maybe you could help us.”

  She looked at Nakayla and then at me. “What a terrible thing. She was such a nice person.”

  “And Tikima spoke highly of you,” I said. “That’s why she knew you’d be a big help to our mineral questions.”

  Judy tucked her lower lip under her tongue. She seems uncertain how to reply.

  “I don’t mean to put you through her whole interview again. I just want the conclusions you reached. It means a lot to our client.” I was at the end of my fishing line and afraid if I guessed at something more specific, Judy would realize I was a fraud. “Maybe we should talk to Phil,” I added.

  “No. Phil wasn’t here. I talked to her.” Judy sighed. “It’s kinda painful to think about, you know, with what happened.”

  “I understand.”

  “Tikima wanted to know about gold and precious gemstones. What we were just talking about.” She eyed me suspiciously like I’d been pumping her for information all along.

  “Right. About the conditions under which they might be found.” I made a leap. “What did you think about the Biltmore Estate?”

  Judy took a step back. “The old days?”

  “Old and new.”

  “That was years ago and several mountains over. Our land might as well have been a hundred miles away.”

  “So you don’t know if any precious minerals were ever found on the estate?”

  Judy shook her head. “No. Like I told Tikima, the Vanderbilts had so much money they probably didn’t bother to look.”

  The gift shop door opened and a wiry, gray-haired man in dirty dungarees entered. I recognized Phil Ledbetter from the newspaper articles in the display case.

  “We’re back,” he said. “Charlie’s unloading the buckets.”

  “Sorry, I’ve got to run,” Judy whispered. She moved like a skittish deer and intercepted her husband. He stared at us for a few seconds and then both of them left the store.

  “You get the feeling she didn’t want to introduce us?” Nakayla asked.

  “Yes. Maybe she didn’t want Phil to know what we were talking about.”

  “Or maybe she didn’t want him to know she’d talked to Tikima.”

  I thought about it. “Tikima was their security expert. If I were sitting on gold and emeralds, I’d want to know what she had to say.”

  ***

  Nakayla had to circle the block three times before she found a parking space. Haywood Street in downtown Asheville was a happening place. The small park at its intersection with Patton Avenue had become an impromptu amphitheater with bands of bluegrass musicians vying to out-pick one another. Tourists took advantage of the sunny afternoon to roam the streets, soaking up the wayward fiddle and banjo notes and congregating at Malaprop’s Bookstore and our destination, the old Woolworth’s that housed an eclectic collection of artists and artisans.

  We hurried from the car concerned that Sunday business hours might be shorter. Three people were on our list: Andy Culpepper, Malcolm Grant, and Herman Duringer. Nakayla doubted Culpepper would be there if he worked for the building’s owners and we didn’t know if the other two were employees or artists.

  “There’s usually a steady stream of browsers,” Nakayla said. “If Grant and Duringer have booths, neither one will want to spend time talking with us.”

  “Then we’ll need to get right to the point.”

  The store had preserved the original Woolworth exterior from the 1960s, but inside, the gutted space had been subdivided into a maze of booths like three-walled rooms—some with display cases between them and all using their wall space for hanging paintings, carvings, jewelry, fabrics, or photographs. We went to the main counter just inside the front door where people were lined up paying for their purchases.

  “This will take too long,” I said. “Let’s ask one of the artists.”

  “Pottery by Delores” read the banner stretched across the back wall of a nearby booth. The middle-aged woman I assumed to be Delores saw us approach and nodded a greeting. She stepped back to give us room to admire her bowls, goblets, and pitchers without our feeling forced to speak with her.

  Her work had a unique quality of imperfection. A slightly misshapen handle on a pitcher, a bulge on a chalice stem. The effect gave pieces in matching sets a distinguishing trait, a mark of originality. I liked what I saw.

  “Do you ship?” I asked, though I had no address to give her.

  “I’m sorry. Too risky. I have bubble wrap if you’re traveling.”

  I laughed.
“When I figure out a destination, I’ll be back.”

  Delores winked at me. “I can tell any destination will be fine if you’re traveling together.”

  This earth mother thought Nakayla and I were a couple. I felt my face blush and became more embarrassed. I’d never had an interracial relationship, but I didn’t want Nakayla to think I had any prejudices against her.

  “I don’t believe I could get her to leave Asheville,” I said.

  “Gets in your blood,” Delores said. “I came for a brief stay twenty years ago. They’ll bury me in my own clay.” She ran a strong stubby finger across the lip of a bowl.

  “We actually came to see Andy Culpepper. Is he here?”

  “No. He usually comes by on Saturdays.”

  “How about Malcolm Grant or Herman Duringer?”

  “I know Herman’s here.” Delores pointed down the aisle. “Go all the way to the back, past Leroy the dulcimer maker. Turn right. Herman’s the second booth on the left. Malcolm’s two beyond him. Sometimes he’s called away for a patient.”

  “Malcolm’s a doctor?”

  “A dentist. That’s how he got into designing jewelry. From working with gold in his dental practice. Now he spends more time designing jewelry with Herman than with his patients.” Delores gave Nakayla a sly smile. “A gemstone from Herman and a gold setting from Malcolm.” She looked at Nakayla’s ringless fingers. “Might be enough to lure you out of Asheville.”

  We left the matchmaker potter and wormed our way through the crowd.

  “Gold and gemstones,” Nakayla whispered.

  “I’d say we’ve discovered the focus of Tikima’s inquiry. She must have read something into the journal that we missed.”

  “I don’t remember anything that gave the location of a mine. The Ledbetters’ site is too far away and the Vanderbilts never had a mine.”

  “Unless the Vanderbilts never knew about it. Luther Rawlings said he has eight thousand acres to patrol. Maybe Elijah discovered gold and mentioned it to the wrong people. He was killed before he could tell Mrs. Vanderbilt.”