I parked in the scruffy grass about ten yards behind the truck. A bluetick coonhound rounded the corner of the porch, sat on his haunches and let loose a mournful howl.
“Better than a doorbell,” I said.
Nakayla unbuckled her seat belt. “Let’s get out and stand by the car where Harlan can see us.”
“In the rain?”
“Yes. He’ll see we’re harmless.”
“Or stupid.”
“Speak for yourself.” She opened the door.
I followed but stood behind my door, a ready shield in case Harlan was one of those mountaineers who greeted unwanted visitors with a load of birdshot.
The dog stopped howling and scratched one of his long floppy ears with a hind paw. He seemed to have discarded us as a threat.
The door to the house swung open and an elderly man stepped out. His long white hair was pulled back in a ponytail that hung below the nape of his neck. White whiskers draped to the chest of his bib overalls. If he’d had a guitar, he could have been an ancient member of ZZ Top.
He cocked his head and studied us a few seconds. “Can I he’p you folks?”
“We’re here to see Harlan Beale,” I said. “The movie people gave us this address.”
“Well, y’all are seein’ him. So, you can get back in your car or come in out of the rain and tell me what else y’all want.”
We hustled onto the porch with the coonhound trailing behind. Beale held the door open and ushered us in. The front room was sparsely furnished with a worn sofa with sagging cushions, mismatched armchairs, and a bentwood rocker. The dog went to a throw rug in front of a stone fireplace, shook the water off his back, and collapsed on his side.
“Don’t mind ol’ Blue. He just listens, he won’t interrupt.” Beale took the rocker and motioned us to the sofa. “Well, who are ya and why’d the movie people send ya?”
I nodded to Nakayla to take the lead. The house clearly lacked a woman’s touch and I thought Beale might be receptive to a little feminine conversation.
“Mr. Beale, the movie people didn’t send us. I’m Nakayla Robertson and this is Sam Blackman. We’re from the Blackman and Robertson Detective Agency in Asheville. We’ve been hired to learn what we can about a death that occurred in 1948.”
Beale folded his hands across his lap and started slowly rocking. “1948? Ain’t y’all a little late?”
Nakayla smiled. “The sister of the deceased has some questions, and, well, she’s at the age where she’d like a little more certainty about what happened, if you know what I mean.”
“Yep. She’s got to be close to my age and about to finish up. I reckon I can see that. Who is she, if you don’t mind me askin’?”
“Her name’s Violet Baker.”
Beale shook his head.
“Her maiden name was Weaver.”
He stopped rocking. “Weaver, ya say? My wife was kin to some Weavers over in Fairview. Of course, there’s Weavers all over these hills. Weaverville is loaded with them.”
I laughed but then realized Harlan Beale hadn’t said it as a joke. Ol’ Blue lifted his head off the rug and stared at me.
“That makes sense,” I said. “But Violet Baker was from Fairview.”
Beale resumed his slow rock. “It’s a pity my Loretta’s passed over. She probably knew this Violet girl. How old was she in 1948?”
“Eleven,” Nakayla said. “Her brother was Paul Weaver and he was twenty-three. He was a student at Black Mountain College. That’s how we came to see you. Roland Cassidy said you were his unofficial historian.”
Beale expelled a puff of air that lifted the whiskers around his mouth. “Hell, I ain’t no historian. I just lived through it all. In 1948, I was sixteen and I worked part-time at the college. I’d just started that summer so I didn’t know a lot of people.”
“What did you do?” Nakayla asked.
“I reckon you could call me a handyman. There was always stuff to repair and some of them folks had wild ideas, building new things. One guy tried to make this dome thing out of triangles. Everyone was real excited but it fell apart. Next year he came back and it worked.”
“Buckminster Fuller,” Nakayla said. “It was called a geodesic dome.”
“Yeah, The movie people were interested in that. As for me, give me a stack of two-by-fours and a keg a’ nails.”
“Did you build this house?” I asked.
“Yep. And I’ll confess I did learn some tricks from the school. But I don’t remember anyone dying there.”
“Paul didn’t die at the school,” Nakayla clarified. “He fell from an overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Coroner’s report said he’d been hiking.”
A glimmer of recognition flashed in his eyes. “Yeah, I do recollect something about that. And ya say he was local? Most of the students were from up North.”
“As local as you,” Nakayla emphasized. “And his sister says he knew his way around these trails in the dark. That’s why she thinks the whole story might not have come out.”
“Where’s this Violet Baker been all these years?”
“Albany, New York. The family moved to Pennsylvania after her brother’s death. She married a man from Albany and he recently died.”
“And she came back here to finish up,” Beale said.
Succinct and true, I thought.
“Do you remember if there were any troubles at the school?” Nakayla asked.
“Troubles?”
“Tensions. Conflicts between the students or the faculty.”
“There was always tension about money. The place ran on a shoestring. Sometimes I’d go a month or longer without getting paid. Or they’d pay me with leftover construction materials.” He looked around the room. “Half my house came from the school.”
I thought about the pilfered supplies that morning but decided bringing it up could sound accusatory.
“And then there was tension with some of the town people,” Beale said.
“About what?” Nakayla asked.
Beale focused on me as if I would more likely understand his answer. “Mostly about the coloreds.” He lowered his head and looked at Nakayla through bushy eyebrows. “Sorry, Missy. That’s just the way it was back then.” He turned to me. “Our world was segregated. The college didn’t hold with that. Everybody mingled. Blacks and whites, with lots of Jews thrown in. Some of the town’s people didn’t cotton with that.”
“So, who was threatened?”
“Well, nobody threatened nobody specifically. You asked me about tension.”
The old guy was correct. Tension didn’t mean Paul Weaver had been targeted.
“So, there was no violence?” I asked.
“Nope. Just grumblin’. People who felt that way kept their distance.”
“What if Paul Weaver was particularly friendly to a black student?”
Beale thought a moment. “If it stayed at the college, no one would have interfered. People looked at it as another world—like goin’ to a foreign country. But elsewhere,” he shook his head, “it might not have gone over so well. Particularly if they were boy and girl. You know what I mean?” Again, he turned to Nakayla and repeated, “That’s just the way it was back then.”
“I know,” she said. “My family’s been here since the eighteen hundreds.”
Beale threw up his hands and rocked forward. “Well, there ya go. I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ you don’t already know.”
I thought about Violet Baker’s story of her brother getting into a fight at the American Legion post over not admitting black veterans. Had he dated a black girl in public to make a defiant, in-your-face statement? “Would there be any photographs from that era?” I asked. “You know—of dances or activities where Paul Weaver might show up?”
“Maybe. They’d be at the museum in Asheville. But if it was
a suspicious death, wouldn’t there have been some kind of police report? Not the Asheville police, but the county sheriff?”
“Yes. If they keep records that far back. That’s on our list of things to check.”
“I’ll ponder it myself. See what I can find. And I’ll check some of my kinfolk. Got a cousin still livin’ who’s in her nineties. She might have some recollection.”
“We’d appreciate it, Mr. Beale.” Nakayla handed him her business card. “If you think of anything else, please give a call. And do you have a phone where we could reach you?”
Beale unsnapped a chest pocket of his overalls. “Sure. Roland Cassidy got me a cell phone so he could get in touch.” He shook his head. “Didn’t know it would be all hours of the day and night. That man’s what I call a troublin’ mind. Everything’s high drama.” He handed Nakayla the phone. “Don’t never call myself. Find the number and write it down.”
“Nice iPhone,” Nakayla said.
“They tell me I can even use it to deposit checks in the bank. Don’t know about that. What if I dial a wrong number?”
“I’m with you, Mr. Beale,” I said. “I like to hand my money to a person.”
“Got that right. I did learn to take pictures. Comes in handy at the movie when we finish a set and want a record of how it looks. In case somethin’ happens to it.”
“Any idea what happened to those building supplies that went missing this morning?” I asked.
“Somebody stoled them. They’re probably down on the flatlands by now. Them security guards are about as useful as tits on a bull.” A tinge of red showed beneath his white beard as he thought about what he’d said in front of Nakayla, but he didn’t apologize. He’d pretty well summed up what we thought of the Acme Security men in their movie costumes.
Nakayla scribbled a number on the back of one of her own cards and handed the phone to Beale. “Thank you. I promise not to call you day and night.”
The old mountaineer took the phone. “For you, dear, you call whenever you want.”
Ol’ Blue got up and shook himself from head to tail. He’d heard enough.
Chapter Seven
“What do you want to do now?” Nakayla asked the question as we pulled out of Beale’s driveway.
“I’d like to see where Paul Weaver’s body was discovered, but there was no exact location for the fall mentioned in Violet Baker’s copy of the coroner’s report. Just a trail or overlook along the Blue Ridge Parkway.”
“There should be a police report or newspaper story,” Nakayla said.
“Then let’s go back to Asheville and split up. I’ll check the police department and you cover the archives at the Asheville Citizen-Times.”
“They were two papers back then,” Nakayla said. “A morning and an afternoon.”
“That’s probably good because it means there’s twice the chance it was reported.”
The drizzle became a heavy downpour and I flipped the wipers to high speed. “Good day for inside work. Let’s grab lunch someplace with close and easy parking.”
“And what barbecue place would that be?”
“Well, if you insist, I think Luella’s will be perfect.”
After Nakayla sensibly ate a barbecue chicken salad and I downed a platter of chopped pork and hush puppies that not only filled me but primed a rainy day afternoon nap, I had Nakayla drop me at police headquarters while she went searching for microfiche of the Asheville newspapers.
I recognized the duty officer seated behind a glass partition in the small lobby. Jake Barber smiled and waved me over as soon as I entered. Police and private investigators often clashed, but I enjoyed an exceptional relationship with the Asheville department. Several years earlier, I’d discovered the man who’d murdered one of their detectives, and I was as close to being a member of the force as I could be without carrying a badge. Plus, the partner of the murdered detective had become one of my closest friends.
“What can we do you out of, Sam? Or are you here to turn yourself in?”
“Wondered if Newly showed up for work.”
“You his parole officer?”
“Talk about cruel and unusual punishment. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
Jake laughed. “He’s in the pen. I’ll buzz you through.”
The “pen” wasn’t the penitentiary but the bullpen, the open space where the detectives worked as paired partners. Curt Newland, known to everyone as “Newly,” was the senior detective on the force. He could have retired a decade ago, but he once told me his wife didn’t want him underfoot. She’d hound him to get a job at Walmart, if it got him out of the house.
I spotted him at his desk doing what consumes the time of most law enforcement officers—filling out some report on his computer.
“Doing some creative writing?” I slid into an empty chair at the desk across from him.
He looked up from his keyboard. “Oh, hell, just when I thought the day couldn’t get any worse.”
“Good to see you too.”
Newly ran his fingers through his thinning, graying hair. “Better to be seen than viewed, my friend. This a social call?”
“Always. But now that I’m here, I need—”
“A favor,” he said in unison. “What are you fishing for?”
“I’m looking into a suspicious death.”
Newly’s eyebrows arched. “Did we miss something?”
“Maybe. Where were you in October of 1948?”
“Good question. It depends on if there’s life before birth. You want to fill me in?”
I shared my conversation with Violet Baker, showed him a copy of the recently discovered coroner’s report, and summarized that morning’s interview with Harlan Beale. Newly listened without interrupting.
When I finished, he tapped the coroner’s report lying on the table. “If there’s no evidence that Weaver’s death occurred within the city limits of Asheville, then I doubt I’ll find anything in our archives. Your best bet would be the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office.”
“But they don’t love me like they love you.”
“You’re right. I bet every morning the sheriff scans the newspaper for my obit and is disappointed. We’ve had jurisdictional fights that Don King could have promoted.” He pulled a notepad from his desk drawer and scribbled a name. “Here’s the administrative assistant in charge of their records. Gladys Daily.”
“Why will she help me?”
“Her best friend is Roy Peters’ widow. Say nothing more than your name and that you need help.”
Roy Peters had been Newly’s partner until he was assassinated in cold blood in Asheville’s Riverside Cemetery. I’d not only tracked down his murderer, but Nakayla and I had made sure Peters’ family had been financially taken care of. Our involvement was supposed to be confidential, but maybe it hadn’t been kept as quiet as we’d wished.
“And I’ll see what I can dig up,” Newly said. “But I’d like a favor in return.”
“Like what?”
“Like you discover anything that could blowback on our department, you give me a heads up.”
“Newly, it was almost seventy years ago.”
He shook his head. “When it comes to embarrassing the police, there’s no such thing as a statute of limitations.”
The rain had stopped so I decided to walk to the Sheriff’s Department in the county office building on the other end of Pack Square. I could not only drop in on Gladys Daily but also visit the archived records department next door and see Paul Weaver’s death certificate.
Getting into the courthouse was like going through a TSA pat-down at the airport. Once cleared, I rode an elevator to the fourth floor and stepped into a well-appointed lobby. When I asked for Gladys, a deputy told me she was in a meeting and should be out in thirty minutes. I told him I’d be back but didn’t
leave my name. No sense tipping my hand that the famous Sam Blackman was on the prowl.
In the meantime, I left the courthouse and walked half a block down College to the Register of Deeds office, where I hoped their vital records would include Paul Weaver’s death certificate. Although there was only a slim chance that the cause of death would be more detailed than the coroner’s report, I needed to pursue all possibilities.
The woman at the desk looked like she could have attended the building’s official ribbon-cutting in 1928. She frowned when I gave her the date. “The funeral home might have easier access,” she said.
“I don’t know the funeral home or even if it’s still in business.”
She peered at me over reading glasses thick enough to be bullet-proof. “Have you tried, sir?”
I fought back my rising temper. “The police department told me your records are impeccable. This is a pending police investigation.” Technically, I’d talked to Newly so I wasn’t lying.
She was torn between being officious and demonstrating the superiority of her records.
“What’s the name, sir?”
“Paul Clarence Weaver. His date of death was October 17, 1948.”
“Excuse me. I’ll need to go to our central archives.” She turned away and I found an unoccupied bench along a wall.
I sat there for twenty minutes, wondering whether the woman was actually looking for my document or just being a pill by making me wait while she drank a cup of coffee.
“Mr. Blackman?” The woman frowned at me from behind the counter.
I walked over to her.
“Are you sure about the date of the death? October 17, 1948?”
“Yes.” I unfolded the photocopy of the coroner’s report. “Here’s the record of the inquest.”
She studied it. “Where did you get this?”
“The deceased’s sister. Her father was given a copy.”
“So, you have proof that Mr. Weaver died.”
“That was never in doubt. But the police are reviewing the cause of death and I’m representing the family. The documents are available to the public.”
Hidden Scars Page 5
