Old Wounds (6 page)

“Yeah, and undoubtedly your Miz Goodweather was over there playing Nancy Drew. Hawk, that little girl’s disappearance was thoroughly investigated by my predecessors. I spent a little time this morning going through the files to make sure. I don’t think there’s going to be anything new turning up at this point in time…or at any other point in time either.” Blaine scrutinized Phillip with knowing eyes. “How are you getting along with this so-called assignment, anyway? From what I hear, you’re not finding it too unpleasant.”

Phillip stared into the murky depths of his coffee mug. “Oh, hell, Mac, it’s getting complicated. She’s…I don’t know…she’s not what I expected.”

The sheriff let out a weary sigh. “No doubt. But what about your friend in DC and his concerns? How much do you think she knows?”

Phillip was silent as he tried to consider the questions thoroughly. Had his growing feelings for Elizabeth distracted him from the job at hand? Had he overlooked some vital—

No. He met Blaine’s gaze and held it. “I’d swear she has no idea…. Sam said he’d never tell her any of it. She has no clue about what went down in Nam.”

“Then that’s good. As long as she’s clueless—and as long as the other side doesn’t come looking for her—she can go on with her flowers and herbs and you can go on playing teacher at AB Tech.”

5.

T
HE
S
KUNK
A
PE

Thursday, October 6 and Friday, October 7

“I sure as
hell hope so.” Hawkins gathered up the mugs. “I wouldn’t mind making it a permanent thing—the teaching, I mean—once this thing gets resolved. You know what, Mac: I really like this part of the world.” He pulled open the dishwasher and added the mugs to an already crowded rack. “Living in a quiet little mountain town, teaching at a community college…it has its appeal.”

Blaine chuckled. “And, no doubt, the widow Goodweather has her appeal. She’s not bad, Hawk, for a woman her age. Maybe a little too much of an inquiring mind to suit me, but—”

Hawkins interrupted. “You want to tell me about this local bad old boy you think is hanging out at Mullmore?”

Blaine smiled at the abrupt change of subject. “Well, I’m pretty sure it’s a fellow called Bib Maitland. And there’s a kind of a tie-in with the whole Mullins case your Miz Goodweather is so interested in.”

“It’s her daughter who’s got the bug up her—” Phillip broke in.

“Yeah, whatever.” The sheriff waved aside the objection. “Bib’s been away for the past seventeen years—doing hard time for attempted murder. He got out a few months back and it looks like he might be up to his old tricks. See, nineteen, twenty years ago, he had a real war going on against all the transplants, all the new people moving into the area. Especially the Mullins. Of course, that was before I came here, but I talked to one of the boys who was around at the time and got the straight skinny. Seems Bib had married into the Ridder family that used to own the holler where the Mullins lived.

“Turns out, there’s this old family cemetery up there and the law says the Mullins have to allow reasonable access. They fought it—didn’t want the Ridders traipsing through their place. But they had to put up with it, at least now and then. So Bib takes his wife up there just before Decoration Day, and while she’s cleaning off the graves, he’s sitting there with a six-pack or so, looking around at all this fine property and getting drunker and madder every minute. He ends up by working himself into some kind of twisted fantasy that the Mullins have stolen the place from the Ridders.

“Then here comes Mr. Mullins, out with one of those long nets to skim leaves and stuff off the swimming pool down below the little knoll where the Ridder burying place is. Evidently the sight of this fella in his little short pants just sets Bib off and he starts pitching his beer cans down into the pool. He and Mullins get into a yelling match, but when Bib starts down the hill, Mullins runs for the house, threatening to call the law. Bib and the little lady take themselves off, no harm done, and Mullins thinks that’s the end of it. Probably even feels pretty good about how he handled it.

“Then, a week later, the Mullins find their fancy pedigreed cat floating in the swimming pool. They pull it out and see someone’s put a bullet in it. So the wife calls the sheriff’s office, blubbering like her mama’s died, and says someone’s shot Miss Fancy. Well, Sheriff Holcombe—he was before Frisby, who was the one just before me—Holcombe doesn’t wait to hear any more and he and two deputies take off for Ridley Branch, sirens howling and lights flashing. They’ve called EMS too, because all the information they have is that Miss Fancy’s been shot.” Blaine was grinning widely now. “See, they don’t know Miss Fancy’s a cat.”

Hawkins made a show of looking at his watch. “Is this going anywhere, Mac? If Bib, or whatever his name is, isn’t one of the people my friend is worried about—”

Blaine stood and stretched. “What I’m trying to tell you, Hawk, is maybe you do need to worry about this bad boy. He’s just out of jail and, from what I hear, he’s pissed at the world. His wife ran off and took their daughter with her, right about the time he got sent away, and he hasn’t been able to find out anything about them. I don’t know what Bib’s up to at Mullmore, but if I catch him there, I’ll notify his parole officer, for a start.”

The sheriff moved toward the living room and the front door, then paused. “Hawk, I know this isn’t what you and your boss—excuse me, your
friend
—are worried about, but if I were you, I wouldn’t just ignore Bib Maitland. That whole Ridder clan he’s married into is a shady bunch. They don’t give a damn for the law; they’ve always lived outside it. It’s a family tradition: the first Ridders to come into these mountains made liquor from the corn they grew in that big cove next to your lady friend. And what’s left of the family today, living over there in a bunch of ratty trailers on Hog Run,
that
crew has been into everything from marijuana to methamphetamines, and we suspect they’re behind a string of burglaries at some of the summer homes in the county. The decent folks won’t have anything to do with them, but the Ridders stick together, marry cousins, and don’t talk to strangers.”

Blaine’s eyes narrowed and he pointed an admonitory finger at Phillip. “I know that the folks you’re watching for make one tough redneck seem like chicken shit. But if it was
my
lady friend and Bib was hanging around just over the hill, I believe I’d worry.”

Elizabeth held the pillow to her face and breathed in deeply. It was still there—that smell of Old Spice and something else, something indefinable, that she associated with Phillip Hawkins. Only a week ago he had spent the night in this guest room. And she had lain in her bed just across the hall, sleepless for much of the time.
What if I’d just come in here and said, “Move over”? What if he’d come to my room?
She closed her eyes, imagining a quiet tap on her door, a gentle—
But he didn’t, did he?

“You fool,” she muttered, and shook the pillows out of their cases. She stripped the bed and left it to air while she wiped the wood of the bed frame with fragrant lemon oil. Friday had come at last and the room was ready for Rosemary, except for clean sheets. A thought struck her and she sniffed at the bare pillow. Yes, that enticing smell was still there, even without the case. She carried the pillows into her own room, hugging them to her, and tossed them onto her bed. Next, marveling at her own silliness—
Like a bloody teenager, Elizabeth
—she removed the cases from her pillows and fitted them over the pillows Phillip had slept on, noting that maybe it was time to get some nicer sheets for her bed.

A frenzied barking from the direction of Ben’s cabin caught her attention and she went to the window. Ursa was standing at the foot of the cabin steps, staring fixedly at the door. The burly black dog continued to bark, occasionally breaking into a high-pitched howl.

“Ursa!” Elizabeth shouted from the window. “Ursa! Ben’s gone to Asheville. All gone!”

Ursa looked briefly in Elizabeth’s direction, then resolutely resumed her barking. A squirrel skittered across the rusted metal roof and leapt for the Cherokee peach tree that grew nearby. Landing safely, it clung to a slender branch, flirting its tail and raising a mocking chatter that could be heard in the intervals of Ursa’s persistent alarm.
Idiot dog,
Elizabeth thought, taking her pillows into the guest room to replace the ones she had appropriated.

Almost home at last! But as she neared the Marshall County Consolidated High School, Rosemary Good-weather was seized by a sudden impulse. She pulled into the right-hand lane and turned up the familiar road leading to the high school.

The parking lot was all but deserted and she quickly made a U-turn and came to a stop at the top of the drive. Yes, just as she had seen it for her four years here: first from the windows of a lurching, rowdy, yellow school bus, later from her very own car—an aging, déclassé little Honda—Full Circle Farm lay in the hazy distance. Rosemary breathed deeply as she gazed at the beloved pattern of dark woods and lighter pastures on the slopes of Pinnacle Mountain, and at the silver speck that was the metal roof of her childhood home, shining in the center.
Like a lodestone.

She smiled, feeling the tug of home and family. Words from one of Shakespeare’s sonnets ran in her mind.
…it is an ever fixed mark / That looks on tempests and is never shaken; / It is the star to every wand’ring barque, / Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Behind Pinnacle Mountain rose still higher peaks, toward which the late afternoon sun was rapidly sliding, its pinks and golds and reds gilding the mountain peaks and the banked, curdled clouds above them.

Home for supper…and Mum and Laur and Ben…and all the memories. Good ones and bad.
Her eyes were wet with tears as she turned the car back toward the road.

Memories. Elizabeth looked around the table at her two daughters and her nephew, all eagerly assaulting the chicken cacciatore and all talking loudly. These three had grown up together for the most part, and although Ben had only spent summers with them, he was as much a part of the fabric of their life as any brother or son.

He had appeared in her kitchen shortly before the girls had arrived and asked Elizabeth not to tell Rosemary about the events of the previous week. “Not tonight, anyway. Let’s just enjoy ourselves and not get into all the heavy crap.”

That seemed to be Rosemary’s wish as well. No mention had been made of Maythorn as yet. Rosemary had parked her sensible hybrid car at the workshop and climbed the hill to the house, leaving her suitcase for Ben to bring up in the little utility vehicle they used for hauling firewood and mulch. She had burst into the kitchen where Elizabeth was browning the cut-up chicken in olive oil and garlic, embraced her mother fiercely, and plopped down on the floor to visit with each dog in turn.

“It’s so good to be home.” Her voice had been slightly wistful. “Chapel Hill’s terrific and I love my little house, but there’s something about coming home.”

Now the three cousins were indulging in noisy reminiscences of growing up on the farm, each seemingly untouched by past tragedies—though tragedies there had been. Laurel, whose recently cropped red hair formed an aureole of ringlets above her lime green turtleneck sweater, was the most vocal. As befitted the artist that she was, Laurel was dramatic and flamboyant at all times. Her sister, however, though always known as “the quiet one” of the two, was holding her own tonight. Rosemary’s shoulder-length dark brown hair had been pulled back into a careless ponytail and she had changed her preppy slacks and neatly tucked-in shirt for a pair of faded jeans and a dark red sweatshirt. Her eyes glowed with affection as she vied with her sister in trying to remember exactly which of them had been the first to try to scare their young cousin from the city with tales of a creature lurking somewhere in the woods.

“It was Cletus who told us about the Skunk Ape. You remember, Mum.” Rosemary turned to her mother for confirmation. “He swore he’d seen one in his roaming around—‘Big ol’ thing, taller ’n your daddy, and all covered up with black fur, walking on his hind legs like a man.’ Remember, Mum? You told us it was a folk legend, like the Abominable Snowman—”

“Or Bigfoot.” Laurel broke in. “But with a silver stripe down its back.”