High Country Fall (12 page)

“We weren’t holding hands. He was giving me back my guitar.” I walked over to my car and put it in the trunk while June unlocked the door to the condo and held it open for May, who carried a large plastic cake box.

“That looks interesting,” I said, but they weren’t ready to climb down quite yet.

She dumped the box onto the kitchen table. “It’s just leftovers. Didn’t the luscious Lucius feed you?”

“Would you please stop that? What’s wrong with you two?”

“We heard what went on at the courthouse today,” said June.

“Huh?”

“Lucius Burke told you that Danny Freeman killed Dr. Ledwig and you believed him.”

“You should have seen how stupid that was and turned Danny loose.”

“Wait a minute. You know Daniel Freeman?” Before they could speak, I answered my own question. “Of course. Carla. It was his girlfriend that left a message for you to call, wasn’t it?”

“She’s having his baby. They’re going to get married. You think she’d be stupid enough to hook up with a killer?”

“Look,” I said. “Nobody knows they’re going to be a killer till they actually do it. The man called him a
nigger
and—”

“Oh, shit, Deborah! If Dwight Bryant’s mother called you a piece of juking redneck trailer trash, would you smash her over the head?”

“Of course not. But—”

“No buts!” June said hotly. “You wouldn’t and neither would Danny. He’s one of the most grounded guys we know. He doesn’t run from labels.”

“He invites them,” said May.

“They just validate the point he’s trying to make.”

“Strangers think he’s white.”

“Then when he says he’s black—”

“—it makes people question their own prejudices.”

“Messes with their minds.”

They were falling back into twinspeak again, finishing each other’s thoughts.

“All well and good,” I said. “But the doctor was messing with their lives. He wanted the baby aborted and he wanted Freeman out of his daughter’s life. Or else.”

“Or else what?” they asked scornfully. “He was going to cut off Carla’s allowance? Big whoop.”

“
And
have Freeman’s scholarship revoked,” I said. “He was also going to forbid her to see her sister.”

“Oh please,” said June, and May rolled her eyes as she opened the cake box. “Do you really think he could get a foundation to revoke a scholarship because his daughter got pregnant?”

“Or keep Carla and Trish from seeing each other?” May took what looked like a slab of homemade bread from the box, sliced off several thick pieces, and popped them into the four-slot toaster.

June set a small tub of some sort of chopped salad on the table and brought out lettuce and a jar of Duke’s mayonnaise from the refrigerator. “She inherited fifty thousand from her grandmother when she turned eigh-teen, and they’re both working part-time at a business they helped start.”

“If her dad had followed through, though, she was going to drop out of school and work full-time till Danny finishes, then go back after he has his degree and the baby’s in day care,” said May, smearing mayo on the first round of toast and passing them on to June, who added lettuce and salad, cut the sandwiches into triangles, and passed a couple to me.

Ambrosia! The texture and flavor of the toasted bread, the teasing familiarity of something not quite identifiable in the meat—

“Cedar Gap must be the chicken salad capital of the state,” I said. “I had a good one for lunch at the High Country Café and I was told there’s a tea room in town that’s even better, but this is the best I’ve ever eaten. Even the bread’s almost as good as something y’all would make. Which restaurant are you working at?”

“The Mountain Laurel,” said June.

“Are they open for lunch?”

“Sure are,” May said, “and I don’t know who told you the Tea Room was good, ’cause we’ve eaten there and the chicken salad stinks.”

“Yeah,” said June, nodding. “Not worth wasting your money. The Laurel’s better.”

“Do I need a reservation?”

“During leaf season? Oh yes.”

“Enough about food,” May said sternly. “Tell us why you let Burke talk you into finding Danny guilty.”

I sighed and once more explained the difference between a probable cause hearing and a true trial. “If I’d actually found him guilty, he wouldn’t be out on bond right now, and for what it’s worth, he’s only charged with voluntary manslaughter, not first-degree murder.”

“How long could he get for that?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” June said impatiently. “He didn’t do it.”

“Then who did?” I asked, taking another bite of that delicious sandwich. “Carla? Her sister? Their mother?”

I was immediately shouted down with “No, no,
no
!” but I turned a deaf ear to their objections.

“You may not like it, but this was not a drive-by shooting. This is where someone was able to walk right up to him while he was practically hanging over the edge of a cliff and he didn’t feel threatened. That means he knew his killer. So what about Carla’s mother? Did she and the doctor have a good marriage?”

Both of them shrugged. “What difference does it make? She wasn’t even there. She played tennis at the country club with some friends that afternoon and then picked Trish up at school. The police were there before she was.”

“I still think it could’ve been someone after drugs,” May said stubbornly.

“Was he known to keep drugs in the house?”

“No, but—”

“Maybe it was one of his crazy patients,” June suggested.

“I thought he specialized in geriatrics?”

“He did, but some of them are gaga, so senile they don’t know what year it is.”

“Yeah, remember the time Carla said that old man thought she was his big sister?”

“And that weird woman who threatened to run him over with her car because he testified for her son when her son was trying to get her power of attorney.”

They looked at me with hope in their eyes. “It could be somebody like that, couldn’t it?”

“If he’d been killed at the hospital, maybe, but people that gone wouldn’t be running around the mountains loose, would they?” I thought of the comments dropped at the party tonight and said, “It could also be some of the businesspeople he pissed off around the area. People mentioned the gem mines, the Trading Post—”

“Not Simon!” they chorused.

“Who’s Simon?”

“Simon Proffitt. Owns the Trading Post. Dr. Ledwig wanted to close him down.”

“Thinks it’s too trashy.”

“Of course, Simon
did
almost shoot him,” May reminded her twin.

“No, he didn’t,” said June. “That was just to scare him. Besides, Dr. Ledwig wasn’t shot, remember?”

I licked the last of the chicken salad off my fingers and shook my head when May offered me more. “Seriously, though, if Danny Freeman really didn’t do it, what about your friend Carla? She had the same set of motives and she could have walked right up to him out on the deck. What’s her alibi?”

“She was with us,” June said. “We were studying for a test—”

“—in the library,” said May, as usual, finishing the other’s sentence, except this time June finished her own sentence at the same moment: “—in her room.”

“So which was it?” I asked.

“Both,” June said promptly. “We started out in the library, then finished up in her room.”

“All afternoon,” said May.

They were lying, of course. The question is, how deep were they in? “Is that what you told the police?”

They nodded.

“Did they ask you to sign a statement to that effect?”

“Um, yes,” said May.

“Not smart to lie to the police in writing,” I told them.

“We didn’t lie to them,” June said indignantly. “She really was with us all afternoon.”

Her indignation sounded real, but I was too tired to pursue it. “Have it your way. I’m off to bed. I suppose you two are staying over again?”

Another nod.

“At this rate, your parents ought to ask the college for a rebate on your room and board.”

May looked at me with guilt all over her pretty young face. “We’re not in your way, are we?”

“Cramping your style?” asked June, going on the offensive. “Would you have asked the luscious Lucius in for a drink if we weren’t here?”

“Dwight’s an awfully nice man,” May observed solemnly.

“Yeah, I really like him, too,” said June.

“Too trusting, though.”

“Lucky for him that we
are
here.”

“Chaperons.”

“Defenders of chastity.”

With two sets of twin brothers, I know when I’m being double-teamed, but I was too sleepy to stay and hope to figure out what it was they were trying to keep me from noticing.

Instead, I yawned and headed down the hall to my bedroom. “Don’t forget to put the cat out,” I called back over my shoulder.

“Cat?” I heard May ask.

“She’s got a cat here?” asked June.

I’ve really got to start remembering how literal-minded they are.

CHAPTER 11

I awoke Tuesday morning to the smell of coffee, sausage, and something sweetly fragrant. Wearing nothing except an oversize Carolina T-shirt that’s been through the wash so many times it’s almost handkerchief thin, I stumbled sleepily down the short hallway, stubbed my bare toes on a lamp base that protruded from the midden of furniture and clothes piled in the living room, and was fumbling in the cabinet for a coffee mug when someone rapped on the front door.

Without thinking the situation through, June went and opened it and I heard male voices, voices followed by the presence of three large male bodies in the kitchen. Two immediately eyed my T-shirt with unseemly interest; the third was Danny Freeman, who did a second take, realized who I was, and suddenly looked as startled as I felt.

“Paint crew’s here,” May chirped as she lifted a large casserole from the oven and turned to greet them. Her welcome died in mid-chirp as soon as she saw Freeman, and she darted a guilty glance toward me.

I was already heading down the hall with my coffee. She followed me into the bedroom and I glared at her. “You couldn’t have mentioned this last night?”

“God, Deborah, I am so, so sorry. We didn’t know Danny was coming with them. When we told Carla to send some guys up from school, we never dreamed she’d send Danny, too. I guess she thought it would help for him to do something physical instead of stewing about what’s happening. Want me to tell him to leave?”

Before I could answer, she climbed back on the same hobbyhorse she and June were riding last night—“He’s not a killer, though, Deborah. And you can’t really think so either if you let him out on bond.”

She had a point. But while I wasn’t afraid he would suddenly attack someone with a paintbrush, it was still awkward as hell and nothing Miss Manners had prepared me for.

“Do as you like,” I snapped. “I’m leaving for the courthouse as soon as I dress.”

“Without eating anything? We made Granny Knott’s baked toast.”

So that was the source of the familiar aroma. When chickens almost stopped laying in the winter and breakfast rations for her hungry brood were scanty except for milk and butter from their cow, Daddy’s mother created the dish as a way to stretch the eggs and to use up the bread ends before they got too stale and hard. She’d never heard of French toast, but this was a close version: thick slabs of bread are laid on a base of butter and brown sugar in a deep casserole dish, then left to sit in the refrigerator overnight in a batter of milk, eggs, and vanilla, and finally baked in a medium-hot oven till the edges crisp and the brown sugar caramelizes on the bottom.

Although she died long years before I was born and none of us keeps a milk cow anymore, her recipe was passed down and it’s still comfort food in our family. Mother used to make it at least once a week when several of the boys were still at home and that aroma drifting up to our bedrooms was enough to roust out the sleepiest head.

The twins must have put one together last night from the leftover bread they brought home from the restaurant.

By the time I was dressed and ready to leave, Danny Freeman was in the bedroom across the hall with his back to the door as he pulled furniture away from the wall. I went silently down the hall with my laptop in one hand and my judicial robe in the other.

At the dining table, there was one serving of baked toast left in the casserole and a link of cured sausage. June deftly transferred both to a plate and waved it under my weak-willed nose until I put down robe and laptop and took it from her hand.

The others had finished eating except for final cups of coffee, and they covered the strain of my presence by speaking of classes and professors and Parents’ Day, which I gathered was upcoming in another week or so. For some reason, the two guys thought it was funny that Beverly and Fred were coming up, too, and kept needling the twins about it until June flat told them to knock it off. I had the impression that my cousins had drafted extra help so that Beverly wouldn’t blast them for not getting the painting done by the time they arrived.

They introduced me to Gary, a blue-eyed, corn-fed, pre-law student from West Virginia, and to the dark-eyed psych major named Duc, although at first I thought they were saying “Duck.” “And you already met Danny, right?”

I looked up in dismay. Not realizing I was there, that young man had returned for another cup of coffee, and he halted in the archway as if unsure whether to retreat or keep coming.

He opted for brazening it out. “I guess this is the first time you ever ate breakfast with a killer in the house.”

“Danny!” May and June protested together.

“Aw, come on, man,” said Duc, who was clearly of Asian descent despite his southern drawl.

“Then you’d guess wrong,” I told Freeman, matching his cool. “Besides, you did plead ‘Not guilty’ yesterday.”

“But you didn’t believe me.”

“What I believed was irrelevant,” I said stiffly. “My job yesterday was to look at the evidence, listen to the arguments, and rule on whether or not the State had enough cause to take you to trial. They showed me that you were there at the right time, you had the doctor’s blood on your clothes, he was trying to end your relationship with his daughter,
and
you’d fought with him.”