by Vicki Lane
Inside the chicken house, the survivors had recovered from their fright and were pecking and scratching unconcernedly around the unmoving gray and white body. Elizabeth picked it up gently, noting that the fluffy form was still warm. For a moment she thought there was a heartbeat, but then she realized that it was her own elevated pulse she felt. The chick’s limp and dangling neck, wet and elongated from the blacksnake’s attempt to swallow its prey, was obvious proof of death, but for another moment, she cradled the little body in her hands. Then, leaving Laurel to refill the waterer and scatter feed for the old hens, she carried the dead chick outside and tossed it too into the bushes, to await a scavenging coon or possum.
“Is Kyra still asleep?” Laurel emerged from the chicken yard and looked up toward the house. “I get the impression she’s more of a night person—”
“Kyra’s in Asheville, at her great-grandmother’s.” Elizabeth started up the road. “She—”
“But her car’s down at the workshop.”
“Ben and I drove her in last night.” Elizabeth stopped and sat wearily on a large flat boulder by the side of the road. “It’s a long story….”
* * *
When she had heard all the details of the attack on Kyra, Laurel hurried ahead, saying that she would call her friend at once. She moved more quickly than her mother, who, at fifty-three, was content to climb the steep gravel road in a deliberate and meditative fashion. Watching her long-legged daughter striding effortlessly up the hill, Elizabeth remembered how, when she and Sam had moved from Florida to the mountains, she’d despaired of ever getting used to the seemingly near-vertical land that was Full Circle Farm.
It’s all bloody up or down! she’d wailed after slipping on the slick grass or the loose road gravel yet another time. But she had learned at last to go slowly, to wear boots instead of sandals, and to stop and enjoy the view when out of breath.
Elizabeth watched as the three dogs met Laurel and followed her joyfully through the periwinkle-blue front door. The house that she and Sam had built looked much older than its real age. The board-and-batten siding had been left to weather and darken as it would, and the trees and shrubs that they had planted during those early years had attained full maturity. Most people, seeing the typical mountain look of the house with its capacious front porch and shiny metal roof, assumed that it had been an existing structure, added on to by the newcomer couple.
And that’s what we wanted. Sam and I never wanted to stand out. We tried to learn the old ways, plowing with mules, milking a cow, raising a garden, but we brought something of our background to add to life here. A quiet melding.
* * *
Laurel was coming out the door as Elizabeth stepped onto the porch. “Mum, I just talked to Kyra. I’m going to head back to Asheville so I can see her before I have to go to work.” She reached over to hug her mother. “Sorry I couldn’t stay awhile but I’ll be back out before long.”
Laurel hurried down the steps, then paused and turned. “Mum, Kyra said to remind you that she definitely did not want the police involved. She was kind of agitated and said that it was really important that you not call them.”
Elizabeth watched till the tall figure disappeared around the bend below the big barn. The heat of the day dissuaded her from going to her garden to battle the weeds. Like the poor, they’re always with us, she decided. I’ll go back down when it’s cooler.
She had just sunk into a rocker to consider her next chore when the insistent ring of the phone demanded attention. With her standard and slightly pessimistic mental response— What new adventure?—she sighed and pulled herself up.
It was Phillip. “Elizabeth, have you seen Aidan? Has he been out there yesterday or today?”
Her negative reply brought an explosive response. “Son of a bitch— I bet they’ve skipped. He was supposed to be staying at his mother’s place, so I went by there this morning to see what he could— or would— tell me about Boz. His mother owns this big old ramshackle place in the Montford area, and a girl who said she rooms there told me that— what’s her name— Rainbow—”
“Willow,” Elizabeth interjected.
“Whatever the hell it is— Princess Shiningstar Go-lightly or whatever she calls herself packed up last night and took off. Told the girl to take care of the cats and that she’d be in touch eventually.”
“What about Aidan— was he with his mother?”
“The girl I talked to said not. Said he’d been there for an hour or so in the morning, helping his mother pack up stuff, but left in a borrowed car around noon.”
“Oh, shit.” Elizabeth took a deep breath. “Phillip, someone attacked Kyra yesterday afternoon.”
She quickly outlined the details of the incident and explained that Kyra had been insistent that the police should not be called. “It was weird; she was adamant about it. She said if I did call the sheriff, she’d deny that anything had happened and say that she’d cut her hair herself. I backed off because she was so emotional and—”
“Jesus Christ— I’m not believing this. And Kyra’s with who now?”
“Her great-grandmother. Out in Biltmore Forest in a house like a fortress. And with a housekeeper who combines the elements of a perfect servant, a mother hen, and a tigress.”
“And would it be too much to hope that nobody’s tidied up the crime scene?” Phillip spoke with exaggerated politeness. “I’d like to take a look.”
“I’m pretty sure nothing’s been touched. Ben had deliveries this morning and Julio’s—”
“I’m on my way.”
* * *
Forty-five minutes later, from her shady seat on the low rock wall beside the workshop, Elizabeth could hear the crunch of gravel and the sound of an approaching car. Hawkins’s anonymous-looking gray sedan pulled to a stop next to the little bridge that led to Julio’s house. Elizabeth stood and walked over to the car.
Phillip was scowling behind his dark glasses as he emerged and slammed the door behind him. “You still think nobody’s messed with anything since the attack?”
“I’m reasonably sure nobody has— do you want me to show you what we saw?”
She walked him through the various pieces of the puzzle— the overturned coffee cup in the workshop, the window where Kyra was standing when the attack occurred, the little pile of torn clothing, the scissors and the hair clippings, as well as the container half-full of used motor oil. Hawkins examined everything without comment, silently picking up the scissors with a pencil and dropping them into a paper bag. The corncrib elicited the most intense scrutiny— the dry dust under its attached shed was trampled with footprints, a muddle of overlapping marks.
“I don’t guess any of this is very helpful; Ben and I were both here helping her out of the crib.”
Hawkins mumbled something under his breath as he scanned the dirt. Suddenly he bent down and pointed to a rusty object. “This the nail that was in the hasp? You said Ben opened the door?” From his pocket he took a plain white envelope and scooped up the nail. “I doubt they could even get a partial from this but you never know.”
Shoving the envelope into his pocket, he turned his attention to the crib itself and to the hasp that had secured the small square door. Squinting, he studied the worn wood surrounding the ancient piece of hardware, then shook his head in disgust. “This old oak is so tough— it’s not likely to show anything.” He stood a little longer, considering and scowling. Elizabeth waited silently.
“Oh, what the hell.” Phillip sighed and began to squeeze his way through the little door of the corncrib. Once inside the storage area he sneezed twice and grumbled something about mold. Elizabeth watched as he examined floor, ceiling, and walls of the cagelike room.
“You got some holes in the wire here and there,” Hawkins informed her, “but none very big. I don’t see how the hell…” He pulled the door shut and she could see one finger probing at a hole near the hasp. “Nope.”
“What are you— Can you possibly think K
yra locked herself in?” Elizabeth pulled open the door and stared at Phillip, who was sifting through the sad pile of ancient corn shucks that were all that remained of the corncrib’s onetime bounty.
He sneezed once again. “Just wanted to see if it was possible. But you said she was naked when you two pulled her out, and I’m assuming you would have noticed if she’d had a long piece of wire or some such in her hand.”
“Yes, I think even I would have noticed. But then, we were mainly trying to help her out and get her up to the house where she could get clean. And I guess it never occurred to us that someone would go to such lengths to…to…do what?” In spite of her effort to remain calm, Elizabeth’s voice rose. “I do not understand you, Phillip. I thought you suspected Aidan—”
“Hang on there, Elizabeth.” Hawkins was awkwardly climbing back out the narrow door, after a last look at the area inside. “I just wanted to rule out something.”
He stood there, brushing the dust and bits of corn shucks off his clothing and sneezing repeatedly. Pulling a red bandana from his hip pocket, he wiped his eyes and blew his nose loudly. Finally the sneezing subsided.
“Those old corn shucks are moldy,” he explained. “My only allergy.” He glanced at Elizabeth, who was standing with her arms folded, waiting.
“Yeah,” he conceded, “it could have been Aidan. He may think she set him up to be arrested.”
“But she did…they did. It was the plan. And Aidan was in jail when the house burned. Why couldn’t it have been the guy she calls the nanny?”
They were standing there glaring at each other when the putt-putt of the farm’s little four-wheeler could be heard coming down the road. Julio was returning from his work on the line fence at the top of the mountain.
Julio had worked at Full Circle Farm for several years and had recently moved into the small rental house across the branch from the workshop. If all went according to plan, his wife and their two young children would eventually join him, leaving their home in Chiapas for the better life offered by the States. Ben and Elizabeth had come to rely on this hardworking man whose rough toil-worn hands could do seemingly anything, from delivering a calf to stringing barbed wire to transplanting delicate seedlings. He had become an integral part of the farm life as had so many migrant workers in Marshall County.
As more and more of the county’s young people found jobs in Asheville or farther away, farm labor was increasingly being done by workers from Mexico and Central America. The old family farm, a modest holding that, with the labor of parents and their numerous children, had produced all its own vegetables, meat, milk, and eggs, with extra to sell, as well as an acre or two of tobacco as a cash crop, was rapidly giving way to entrepreneurial farmers who, with leased acreage and hired labor, might grow thousands of pounds of tobacco or some other crop but get their food at the grocery store.
Most of the workers were seasonal: men like Julio who had left families in Mexico; but as time went on, more and more of these migrants began to find year-round work and bring their families to the States. The local grocery store now featured such exotica as tomatillos and nopalitos, and slowly the newest of the new people were being absorbed into the community.
“Buenos días, Elizabeta. Buenos días, Señor Felipe. Qué pasa? I come back for more fence posts and the chain saw.” Julio pulled off his pale straw cowboy hat and wiped his shining brown face on his shirtsleeve. “Un árbol grande—a big tree is rompe—is break the fence.”
“Julio, I know Ben told you about what happened yesterday,” Elizabeth began.
Julio’s face fell and he began to twist his hat in his big hands. “Lo siento mucho. I should have been down here— that way nothing happen—”
Elizabeth interrupted his apologies. “It’s not your fault, Julio. But Phillip’s looking around to see if he can find out who might have been here.” She turned to Phillip to explain. “Julio was at the ridge yesterday when it happened.”
“All the way at the top, Julio?”
“Sí, the fence is a piece of crap, like Ben say, and I am putting new metal posts for the old ones de madera—of wood. They are crap— no good.”
Phillip Hawkins gazed thoughtfully up at the partially wooded slopes of Pinnacle Mountain. “You can see a long way from up there, can’t you? Elizabeth, when you and Ben took me up there last year, I remember how we could see all the fields and the road. We could even hear a log truck coming around the mountain.” He smiled at Julio. “Of course, that was back in the winter with the trees all bare. Now you probably can’t see much of the road.”
Julio considered. “Un poco. Can see the road by the mailbox. Recuerdo que—I remember that I see Ben and the truck going out.” He scratched his nose and added, “Ben say the truck is a piece of—”
“Did you notice any other cars?” Elizabeth interposed quickly. “Or trucks?”
“That Shane Roberts come home; I see his truck. And another car turn up the road to the old cementerio… the place for los muertos. And when I stop to drink water, I see a car I don’t know.” Julio struggled to frame his thoughts. “It go slow at mailboxes.”
“Did it turn up our driveway? Was it a—” a black car? Elizabeth bit off the end of her sentence and began again. “What kind of car was it— where did it go?”
Julio shrugged. “Yo no sé—I don’t see where it go. Just then goddamn cows come along and go through where fence is down. I go after them, run them back. Don’t see car no more.”
“Julio,” Phillip asked, “what did the car look like?”
“Big, probably SUV. White.”
CHAPTER 12
ASSUMPTIONS ARE DANGEROUS
(SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, AND THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8)
WHAT COLOR CAR DID YOU SAY THAT NANNY fella was driving?” Hawkins asked as soon as Julio had left to load the four-wheeler with more fencing materials. Elizabeth looked at Phillip suspiciously but his face wore an expression of purest innocence.
“Black,” she said. “Kyra said black.”
“Do you know what kind of car Aidan has?”
“I think the van was his— when they were all living at Dessie’s house, there was a beat-up yellow pickup, Kyra’s fancy green sports car, and a kind of anonymous beige van. I’m pretty sure the pickup belonged to Boz and the van to Aidan. But—”
Phillip put up his hand. “Wait a minute. Let’s go sit in the shade and think about this.”
They sought the low wall outside the workshop. Above it the graceful wild dogwood’s twisted trunk stretched out from a steep wooded slope. Lush variegated hostas and pink and white impatiens flourished in the pool of shade beneath the old tree. Phillip dropped gratefully onto one of the smooth capstones of the wall, and Elizabeth sat down beside him.
“Okay, let’s look at the various possibilities here.” Phillip raised two fingers. “Start by considering two things— opportunity and motive. Elizabeth, who do you think did this to Kyra?”
“Well, I would have said the nanny— but it was a white car Julio saw.” She reflected. “But we don’t know that the white car had anything to do with this, he just saw it going slow at the mailboxes— it could have been someone leaving a flyer or someone looking for an address.”
Hawkins nodded approvingly. “Yeah, forget the white car. Or, don’t forget it; just put it on the back burner. So you vote for the nanny. What would his motive be?”
“According to Kyra, he works for her father. So maybe Mr. Peterson sent him to scare Kyra into moving back to Asheville…. If that was the case, it worked.” She frowned. “But I don’t know— it seems like a more…more vengeful act. Maybe it was Aidan. You said he was out of jail— and that he left his mother’s house around noon. He would have had time—”
“Motive?”
“Like you said— maybe he thought she set him up. I don’t know— I guess it’s possible.”
“Keep going.”
“What about the guy at the junkyard— didn’t you say he’d dropped out of sight? What
about him?”
“And what would—”
“I know, what would his motive be?” She frowned. “I have no idea…. Say he is involved in a meth lab out here and maybe Kyra knew about it…could he be trying to intimidate her into keeping quiet?— That could explain why she was so insistent about not calling the sheriff.”
Phillip’s eyebrows lifted but he said only, “Go on.”
“I can’t think of anyone else— unless we assume that this might be the person who murdered Boz.”
“Assumptions are dangerous but let’s hear who’s on that list.”
Elizabeth laughed. “I think you’re getting some advance practice for your upcoming criminology classes, Professor Hawkins. Okay, I’ll play the game— how about Carter Dixon? Maybe he wanted Boz dead for…oh, say personal reasons. I know he didn’t like Boz. Say he thought Boz’s death would contribute to the success of the show at the QuerY…though I can’t see how an attack on Kyra…No, scratch Dixon. For one thing, I can’t imagine him messing with the motor oil. He might ruin his nice clothes.”
“Anyone else who could have wanted Boz dead?” Hawkins was smiling now.
“There’s Rafiq— it was his crushed-car sculpture Boz was in. That’s the opportunity part. But motive— no, not a clue. I’ll have to ask Laurel if Rafiq and The 3 were connected in any way.”
“You’re doing good, Sherlock. You got to keep an open mind and consider all the possibilities—”
The roar of the farm truck interrupted Phillip’s words. Ben pulled to a stop and began unloading the various coolers he had used for his morning deliveries of fresh-picked herbs and flowers.
“Afternoon, folks.” Ben paused on his way into the workshop. “Aunt E, you did explain to Phillip that Kyra didn’t want the police in on this—”
