High Country Fall (9 page)

“I take it Dr. Ledwig looked?”

“With a magnifying glass.”

By now we had made so many turns, there was no way I could have found my way back to Cedar Gap. All the turns ran together, except that each was onto a narrower road, until we finally pulled into a long graveled driveway that ran up a steep grade between trees that met overhead. We circled a thicket of hemlocks, then the ground abruptly leveled and the drive broadened into a huge circle of gravel in front of a long low house built of rough gray stones. From Jeeps and pickups to a couple of Land Rovers and one bright yellow Hummer, at least forty vehicles were parked beneath the trees.

The gravel drive turned to flagstones that led directly to a massive wooden door that stood ajar so that anyone could walk in. We passed through a large reception room, where the entire opposite wall was nothing but glass that looked out into the dark night. To one side was a three-foot-tall pottery jar filled with long branches of bright orange bittersweet berries. Overstuffed couches and chairs were clumped in conversational groupings before a stone wall with a fireplace spacious enough to roast an ox. A log fire snapped and crackled on the hearth. Above it hung a big oil painting that looked like it could be a Bob Timberlake original. It pictured an old-fashioned kitchen table during jam- making—gleaming jars of jellied fruit capped with squares of colorful calico, a copper kettle and ladle, and an earthenware bowl of luscious blackberries awaiting their turn in the kettle.

An oversize quilting frame and several chairs stood in front of the windows and a brilliant king-size patchwork quilt was a work in progress. Beautiful hand-thrown mountain pottery glowed beneath individual baby spotlights in the ceiling.

More patchwork quilts were draped over the backs of the couches, and I had an impression of space and rustic luxury. If this was the “smaller place” the Ashes had bought when they downsized, how big was their previous house that Billy Ed “took on”?

There was no time to speculate, though. This level was empty, and Billy Ed was already disappearing with my guitar case down a flight of iron and stone steps at the end of the room, so I hurried after him.

Like the courthouse back in town, the Ashes’ house was built down the side of a mountain. I saw another large room almost identical to the one above, complete with stone fireplace and a cheerful fire, except that here the wall of glass was punctuated with French doors that opened onto a wide stone terrace, and the painting over the fireplace was a romantic mountain vista. Unlike the first, this level buzzed with laughter, talk, the clink of silverware against plates, and the tinkle of ice in a variety of glasses. I smelled hot yeast rolls and the aroma of something savory that probably came from the copper chafing dishes on the loaded buffet table in the middle of the room. A bar backed onto the staircase and seemed to be better stocked than some I’d seen in restaurants. Two white-jacketed Latinos were busily filling drink orders.

As I paused near the bottom of the steps, my hostess detached herself from a group and came over with outstretched hands and a welcoming smile. “
So
pleased you could come, Judge Knott! Love your hat!”

“Call me Deborah,” I said, belatedly remembering that I was still wearing the grimy cap Billy Ed had handed me in the car. I pulled it off, laughed at the raunchy logo, which I hadn’t noticed before, and stuffed it into my shoulder bag. At least my jeans, white broadcloth shirt, and red wool cardigan were in sync with what everyone else here was wearing. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“Not at all. Let’s get you a drink and then come meet some of your colleagues.”

Joyce Ashe was as I’d remembered her: an easygoing, big-boned woman carrying about twenty-five extra pounds and comfortable with it. She had one of the bartenders build me a Bloody Mary (I hadn’t eaten anything since my chicken salad at noon and Bloody Marys always feel like food), refreshed her own bourbon and branch, then led me over to a group warming themselves by the fireplace.

“I hear you already know Lucius Burke,” she said as the circle opened to admit us.

“Yes,” I said, taking the hand the district attorney offered and trying not to fall into those incredible green eyes. The names of the two attorneys and someone who owned a ski lodge just on the other side of the Tennessee border went in one ear and out the other. To cover my lapse, I moved closer to the hearth to examine the picture. According to the little brass plate attached to the simple wood frame, it had been painted in 1903 by an artist named Genevieve Carlton. I read the title out loud:
“In Nature’s Realm.”

Joyce Ashe laughed. “Well, that’s what the artist called it. Bobby and I call it
The Mountains of Florida
.”

I looked at the painting with renewed interest. “I didn’t know Florida had any mountains,” I said, stepping right into it.

“Oh, Lord, yes! Florida’s got beautiful mountains.” She paused two beats. “They just happen to lie in North Carolina.”

I still didn’t get it.

“Floridians think they own our mountains,” the fortyish attorney—Liz Peters?—explained with a kindly smile.

“Think?”
said a jovial silver-haired man who’d come up behind me. He was accompanied by a tall, heavyset man who sported a thick bushy mustache—Bobby Ashe. “There’s no think about it, Liz darlin’. Joyce and Bobby and me, we’ve personally sold about half of Lafayette County to ’em, so damn straight they own our mountains, right, Bobby?”

Bobby Ashe hoisted his glass to the man and grinned broadly. “I never argue with a partner.”

“Partner?” asked Ms. Peters, raising her eyebrows in surprise.

“Yep,” said Bobby Ashe. He put one arm around Joyce, the other around the man. “It took us two months to hammer out the details, but we signed the last of the papers last week. You’re looking at all three partners of the newly formed Osborne-Ashe High Country Realty.”

“Wow!” said the young male attorney whose name hadn’t registered on me.

“Wow is right,” said Liz Peters, looking impressed.

“Congratulations,” said Lucius Burke. He turned to me with a smile. “I may have to get you to refresh my memory on the statutes governing monopolies, though. Between ’em, they probably account for seventy percent of the property sales in this county.”

“More like eighty,” said the silver-haired man, giving me a puzzled look. “Have we met? You a new attorney here?”

“This is Judge Knott,” said Bobby Ashe, flashing me a welcome smile. “She’s sitting in for Tim Rawlings while he’s down east on a fishing trip.”

“Norman Osborne,” said the man. “Nice to meet you, Judge.”

“My pleasure. And please. Tonight, I’m just Deborah.”

“Lucius tells us you found the kid that killed Carlyle Ledwig guilty today,” said Joyce.

“Not guilty,” Burke and I said together. I smiled at him and explained to the rest that all I’d done was find probable cause to bind that young man over for trial in superior court.

“Same thing, isn’t it?” asked Norman Osborne.

“I hope so,” said Burke.

I shook my head. “Not necessarily. He’s still innocent until declared guilty by a jury of his peers.”

“Gonna be hard to find one of those up here,” Liz Peters said tartly.

CHAPTER 8

“Oh, come on, Liz,” said Joyce Ashe. “You’ll have Deborah thinking we’re nothing but a bunch of hillbilly ridge runners with a Klan robe in every closet.”

“Just stating the obvious,” said the unrepentant attorney.

As a district court judge who will never sit on a murder trial, and a flatlander to boot, I didn’t have a dog in this fight. From here on, Freeman’s guilt or innocence would play out in superior court. Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist asking as innocently as possible, “What’s the problem? Aren’t there plenty of educated young people in your jury pool?”

“I’m not talking age or education,” she said. “I’m talking race. You find me twelve black people in Cedar Gap and I’ll send a donation to the Lafayette County Republican Party in your name.”

I held up my hands in mock horror. “Not in
my
name you won’t.”

The others rolled their eyes and Bobby Ashe grinned at his wife. “Where’d you stash Liz’s soapbox, honey?”

“I’m with Judge Knott on this,” said the younger male attorney. Dotson? Dodson? “What’s the problem? Hell, Freeman’s just about as white as anybody around.”

I couldn’t quite place his accent but clearly it hadn’t been formed in North Carolina.

“Speak for yourself, Matt Dodson,” said the woman who had joined us a moment earlier. Mid-forties, tall and tan, with sunbleached blond hair, she had the healthy outdoor look of someone who ate six servings of fruits and vegetables a day and played at least two sets of tennis or nine holes of golf every morning. From the proprietary way she tucked her arm through Norman Osborne’s, I gathered that she was Mrs. Osborne.

“I
am
speaking for myself,” said Dodson. “Look at me.”

We did. Black curly hair, warm brown eyes, deep olive skin.

Mrs. Osborne waved her hand impatiently. “Don’t be silly, Matt. Your skin may be a little dark, but you know you’re Caucasian.”

“I’m also Spanish. At least my mother is. Matt isn’t short for Matthew. I was christened Matteo. And the Moors of North Africa were all over Spain. You think for one minute my family didn’t mix it up with a few blackamoors along the way?”

“Well, now, if you’re gonna go back hundreds of years,” said Joyce Ashe, “we’re all out of Africa originally, right?”

“Not if you believe the Bible, darlin’.” Norman Osborne’s grin implied that he didn’t necessarily. “The Garden of Eden was in Iraq. Mesopotamia, not Africa.”

I gave a mental groan. Surely I hadn’t risked my life with a maniac driver just to spend yet another evening debating evolution and creationism?

Fortunately, Liz Peters wasn’t that easily sidetracked. “Whether he’s mostly white, Chinese, or Mesopotamian, the fact remains that Daniel Freeman calls himself an African-American, and there are precious few in Lafayette County.”

“Not my fault if they don’t want to live here,” Bobby Ashe said. “Joyce and me, we don’t care about the color of any client’s skin, long as their money’s green.”

“Have you sold a single house in Pritchard Cove to any blacks?”

“As a matter of fact, we did. Remember the Gibsons?”

“Oh right.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “One season fighting those damn flamingoes, then they gave up and bought a place outside Asheville.”

“Flamingos?” I asked.

Joyce Ashe shrugged her ample shoulders. “Someone kept planting plastic flamingos along their drive and—”

“Every lawn jockey isn’t in the shape of a pickaninny,” said Liz Peters.

“It was a joke, Liz. Not a good joke, but not racist.”

“Some things aren’t funny if you’re on the receiving end,” she snapped. Turning to me, she explained: “The implication was that the Gibsons were black Florida trash and didn’t belong in Pritchard Cove with white Floridians.”

“Floridiots!” said a short bald man, who’d been listening silently. “They can all go to hell.”

“Bite your tongue, Tysinger,” said Osborne. “They’re our bread and butter.”

“Yours maybe, not mine,” he growled.

“What do you have against Floridians?” I asked.

“I’m sorry,” said Joyce. “Deborah, this is Sam Tysinger. And you didn’t meet Sunny Osborne either.”

Mrs. Osborne and I nodded to each other and murmured politely, but I was curious about Sam Tysinger’s attitude. “What’s wrong with Floridians?”

“Depends on whether they’re seasonal or tourists,” he said.

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“Lord, no, child!” said Sunny Osborne. “Seasonal people have wealth and education. They buy expensive second homes here and that gives them a vested interest in preserving and maintaining our community. Tourists merely come to have fun and don’t care how much they trash up the place because they’ll be gone in a week.”

Sam Tysinger snorted. “At least the tourists spend money. Seasonal people just drive up everybody’s property taxes, and don’t add a damn thing to the local economy except for real estate commissions and cluttering up the ridges.”

“Of course they contribute,” said Bobby Ashe, stroking his outsize mustache. “We wouldn’t have such a large office staff without them.”

“That’s right,” his wife chimed in. “We hire people to clean their houses, take care of the yards—”

“Minimum-wage crap,” the little man said scornfully. “And even that dries up during the off-season.” He took a swallow of the drink in his hand and said to me, “Seasonal people want to pull up the drawbridge as soon as they’ve got their piece of a mountain. They want to live in a quaint little old-timey setting. Stop development. Turn back the clock. They’d like it if the roads weren’t paved so the tourists would be discouraged from coming.”

“Quilt and jelly. Quilt and jelly,” said a stylish older woman who’d turned to us from a nearby conversation. “They think that’s all we mountain women do. Quilt and jelly. I was having my nails done back in the summer and some woman at the next station wanted to know where I went to pick blackberries because she wanted to make herself some authentic mountain jam. I was the only local in the shop at the time and I guess she heard my accent.” Her exasperation gave way to a nostalgic smile. “I sent her down to Potter’s Bottom, where the chiggers and the mosquitoes are thick as fleas on a hound dog. Gave her a
real
sample of authentic mountain life.”

“Now wait a minute,” Sunny Osborne objected. “There’re always going to be those who think we’re dumb because we speak with a twang, but most of them want second homes here because they love it. And a lot of them give as much as they take. They contribute to the library and to the hospital and—”

“Things they use,” Tysinger said with a cynical snort. “They don’t want any kind of industry here. There’s almost nothing for the young people. And—”

“And I say it’s time we stopped boring Deborah to death,” said Joyce. “She doesn’t want to hear this.”

Matt Dodson shrugged. “All I’m saying is, Freeman probably has less Negro blood than me, so why did Dr. Ledwig get so bent out of shape over it?”