Murder Takes to the Hills (14 page)

“And just what is your business, Twig?”

Branch managed a parody of his winning smile. “Why, real estate, honey. I told you earlier. Mr. McCurry and I are helping to develop a wonderful nature lovers’ community all along the crest of Crooked Creek Mountain—that’s this mountain here.” He waved up the mountainside behind the cabin.

“Yeah,” Mickey agreed. “If you ever get off your ass and get clearance for a road.”

“That’s all moving right along,” Branch soothed. “And I think we should do the same, Mickey. These ladies have had a long drive. Good-night ladies, good-night.”

He stood and actually bowed. I smothered a grin. Bowing and scraping in his absurd clothing, he looked more like the Court Jester than a hotshot realtor. They both finally got off the deck and down the steps, Cindy clicking her makeshift castanets to urge them on.

As Branch fumbled for his keys and for the ignition, I could hear Mickey hectoring him.

“…the hell away from them. They’re too damn sharp. All
them
questions—you’d think they was cops. And I can tell you, that dog is a killer.”

Fargo the Killer Dog and I sat on the deck, lights still blazing, just to make sure our company had indeed moved on. In a few minutes Cindy put a platter on a nearby table. Fargo and I didn’t have to be invited to move over to it. We had scrambled eggs with a slice of acorn-fed ham, the best around. There was toast and some kind of homemade jam I couldn’t identify but found sweet and tangy and good. Cindy returned with coffee and mugs and a sweater for me, all of which was quite welcome.

“What do you think of that little scene,” Cindy asked.

“I think they were genuinely shocked to find us here. I think they are as crooked as our musical mountain stream over there, and I wouldn’t want to buy a condo or cabin from either of them. I think new condo owners would find out that Branch’s road washed out with the second rain. But that wouldn’t matter much, because the plywood condos will have washed away with the first one. And Mickey will have skipped with their down payments.”

“Uh-huh.” She poured us more coffee. “Mickey looks like a hit man.”

“A facial scar will do that for you,” I temporized.

“I’m afraid of him.”

“Darling,” I
urged,“don’t
be. Even if he is some sort of tough guy, lots of people in the ‘development’ business are. But we are no threat to him. It’s just his way, he has no reason to have anything to do with us.”

I moved around the table to share her picnic bench and put my arm around her.
 
She tilted her head onto my shoulder.

“Alex, lately I’ve been kind of afraid of most men I don’t know…and even a few that I do. I think that stalker business has got me really screwed up. I hate feeling like this!”

“Now, angel, it’s no wonder that you—”

“No!” she said sharply. “Listen to me. Last month…remember all the trouble they had at home along Commercial Street with that broken water main—they couldn’t find the last, smaller leak? The street was torn up for weeks.”

I figured this was just background and simply nodded.

“Well,” she continued, “it was right between the bank and downtown where I usually went to have lunch, or do a little shopping, or just walk a bit. There were always three or four young, wet and dirty idiots working there, and they always called out something silly—overgrown boys. I pretended to be deaf and went my way.”

Her voice grew a little shaky at the end. She cleared her throat and sipped her coffee. I remained silent, not wishing to interrupt her thoughts.

“Sometimes there was an older man there…maybe a supervisor. He wore some kind of name badge. One day, one of the kids yelled something that struck me funny. I didn’t turn around, but I laughed and waved as I went. Then I heard an older voice say something. A car was passing and I didn’t get it all. But it was something about throwing me in a van and giving me a good fucking. I turned around—I couldn’t seem to help it—and looked straight at him. He had an absolutely evil grin on his face and made that gesture with one hand on his bicep and his other fist going up and down.” She demonstrated.

“My sweet girl, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was afraid. Afraid he really planned to do it. Afraid you might go after him and get hurt. Afraid Sonny would go after him and he would kill me when he got out of jail. I saw him everywhere. Watching, planning.”

She was crying now and I pulled her closer.

“Cindy, this will be settled within an hour after we get home. Even if he never followed you a foot, he threatened to rape you, and that’s a crime. The bastard
will
pay.
 
And one thing is for sure—he ain’t in
Beulaland
! I’m freezing. Let’s go in.”

We took two snifters of Ken’s VSR brandy to bed with us, and I must say it worked wonders for both of us. I made a mental note to invest in a bottle when we got home.

CHAPTER TWELVE

We decided to have breakfast out and headed the mile or so down the road to gay, mad, metropolitan
Beulaland
.

Along the way we passed several houses, each with a barn or two, larger than the house. One pasture area was filled with square-built Black Angus cattle, augmented by two or three lovely little Jerseys, which I assumed kept the family and employees in plenty of milk and butter. Real butter.

Across the road, breakfast was being enjoyed by nearly a dozen handsome horses, nibbling almost daintily on tender-looking grass—or forage—or whatever you called it.

I didn’t think it was hay while it was still growing. The horses came in a variety of colors, and except for some obvious colts, looked quite tall and wonderfully graceful to me. I wondered what breed they were.

Cindy solved my mystery. “Look at those beautiful Tennessee Walking Horses! I haven’t seen any in ages!”

“Walking horses? They take their time in Tennessee?”

“Hah! They could probably give the Derby winner a run for his money—they’re part Arab. But when you ride them, they have three gaits. A slow walk, which is self explanatory, a running walk which is about as fast as a trot, but
smoo-oo-th
. And they can keep it up all day, and you will not have a single ache tomorrow. Thirdly, they canter, called the rocking chair gait, because that’s what it looks and feels like. You don’t go very fast but it is fun to do and pretty to watch—almost like dressage.”

Pulling in front of a rather long, gleaming white concrete block building entitled Gertrude’s Gourmet Coffee Shoppe and
Delly
, I said “Goodness, love, I didn’t know you were a horse expert.”

“I’m going to spend a couple of hours on one of those while we’re here. One way or another,” she answered enigmatically. My Cindy—ever a surprise. For all I knew, she could ride bareback while turning summersaults.

The food at Gertrude’s was also a surprise. A wide choice of flavored coffees, which pleased Cindy. A wide choice of hotcakes, which pleased me. I settled for regular coffee and buckwheat cakes with wild cherry syrup, while Cindy reveled in Kona coffee with a dollop of real Jersey whipped cream. Plus of course, some grass clippings and small roots which she called cereal and topped with skim milk.

The place was fairly full, mostly, I thought, with locals in for the morning coffee break. A few, like us,
furriners
from the scattered cottages and cabins around.
 
Only one person looked familiar.

Lou Jackson stopped by on her way to the cash register. She looked tired and admitted she had been up very early to visit a sow who had delivered a “pretty little litter,” but whose milk had not come down, so she had had to go out and give her a shot—and wait around to make sure it worked. It did, she laughed, and said the hungry little piglets weren’t even coming up for air when she left.

“By the way,” she added, “My partner Gale said if I ran into you, to be sure to remind you of the buffet and dance Saturday night at the Bromfield Inn. If you don’t have other plans, why don’t we reserve a table for four and meet you there around eight o’clock?”

Cindy and I looked at each other, and Cindy said, “That sounds very nice. How thoughtful of you both!”

Lou smiled, “Well, it’s kind of stodgy, but this ain’t New York.
 
We do have a couple of young lawyers who are gay—and forgiven by our Bible Belt contingent for the same reason we are…we four are the only veterinarians and lawyers within about fifteen miles, and we’re good. Of course, there’s Clay Rodman and Carl Bromfield but they usually take their pleasures in Bristol or Knoxville. And they come from old families. Around here, that covers a multitude of sins.”

“I wonder how the local Bible Belters would feel about personal financial advisors and private investigators,” I smiled, silently wondering at the accuracy of her gaydar.

Lou laughed. “No problem. A lot of us could use the first one and the other could run for sheriff—
Jeffie
Johnson has an IQ about the same as the
Beulaland
speed limit and a belly that ain’t gonna fit under the steering wheel much longer. As the man said, C’mon down! We’ve a few gays renting or building out here now. We’ll get a majority yet.”

She looked at her watch. “Oops, I gotta go. We’ve got surgery this morning on a real sweetheart of an English setter. He got his foot caught in a trap. We’ll be lucky to save the leg.”

“What a shame!” Cindy cried. “Is there much of that around? Do we need to watch our dog?”

“No.” Lou was counting out the money for her breakfast. “Very little, actually. The Rangers, and all of us really, keep a close look, and it’s quite rare that some fool even sets one. This one is strange, too. Jasper had an electronic collar to keep him in his yard. It was found neatly unfastened at the edge of the property. Like somebody called him over and took off the collar so he could get past the signal. I reported it to the sheriff but he says he’s not the dogcatcher. And by then so many people had handled the collar, fingerprints were impossible. Well, ’
bye
now.”

“Good luck with Jasper!” I called after her.

A surprising number of heads turned toward me with approving expressions.

We had decided over breakfast to take a look at Ken’s fishing tackle and, if it wasn’t too complicated, to try our luck for a couple of trout in Crooked Creek. When we
 
got to the cashier we saw the register was manned—or I should say—
womanned
by a hefty woman of about sixty whom I judged to be the proprietress.

I had earlier noticed a number of nature photos framed and hung on the walls. A few were excellent, others I felt I would have handled differently and maybe better. Behind the cashier was a very good photograph of a big gray owl with piercing eyes and a large beak. I did not comment on the strong family resemblance, but contented myself with asking the woman I presumed to be Gertrude if we needed a license to fish and if so, where did we get it.

Yes, we needed one, there weren’t no oceans here where you could just wade in and kill fish. We could get them at the Post Office down the street if we wanted to waste the money on them. We probably wouldn’t catch anything anyway.

Cindy mentioned she had seen a bunch of fish Tommy Blackstone had caught in the lake yesterday, and that her cousin had assured her Crooked Creek was rich in trout.

Gertrude issued what may have been a laugh and opined that there was a far cry from what Tommy and Ken would catch to two city women who would probably just catch their lines in the seats of their pants. She handed me my change and muttered a barely audible, “
Thankyoupleasecallagain
,” lending new profundity to the word “insincere.”

Walking toward the Post Office, a tiny clapboard building with a sagging door and worn paint, but a bright flag waving proudly on a clean white pole in front of it, I asked Cindy why Gertrude didn’t like us.

“Oh, that one is easy. We didn’t ask for separate checks and she heard at least part of our conversation with Lou. She managed to be near our booth almost the whole time Lou was there.”