In a Dark Season (30 page)

Chapter 39

Ragged Edges

Wednesday, December 27

A
manda called. She and Ben’ll be back around three. Evidently Rosemary and Laurel have hot dates in town. They’re staying at Laurel’s another night.” Phillip came into the room, trailing the cord of a power drill behind him. “And I rehung those doors that were scraping the floor. So, how was it? You find out anything?”

Elizabeth dropped the mail on the table. “Little Ricky
was
Nola’s nephew. And he was one of the children who died from that
E. coli
outbreak back in the fall. Big Lavinia thinks that’s what triggered Nola’s suicide attempt. But the most interesting thing was Tracy—she showed up at the reception after the funeral, carrying on like a banshee, shouting that Payne Morton took the easy way out.”

“Because…?”

“I don’t know—something about a promise he’d made. She was hustled out of there pretty quickly, as you might imagine.” She flopped onto the sofa, startling James, who had been napping at one end. With a reproachful look, he slipped to the floor and joined Ursa and Molly on the rug.

“Phillip—that note the pastor left, do you remember what exactly it said?”

“Nope.” He coiled the cord neatly around the drill and returned it to the bucket of tools by the front door. “But I have a copy, for what it’s worth.”

He disappeared into the guest room, where most of his clothes and sundry items had been stowed, awaiting a final decision on where he would be living in the coming year. In a few minutes he was back. “Here you go, Sherlock. The pastor’s last words. Good luck to you making sense of them.”

Picking up the bucket of tools, he whistled to the dogs. “I’m going down to the lower place; Ben asked me to put out some more hay for the cows. C’mon, pups, let’s go for a walk.”

There was an instant joyful response from Molly and Ursa, who rose and shook and made for the door. James didn’t move.

The copy was faint but legible. A wavering gray shadow like a backward
L
showed the raggedly torn edges of the original. The straggling phrases that the pastor had written in his last moments were disjointed and poignant—almost like a poem, Elizabeth thought.

After eleven years of agony and guilt

I am ready to pay the price

she was willing. God help me,

it was an accident. God help me,

I can no longer live

She stared at the copy, an uneasy feeling growing in the pit of her stomach. “Punctuation,” she muttered.

“‘I can no longer live…’” There was an echo in her memory.
I can’t go on…
A mystery…Agatha Christie?…A suicide note on a scrap of paper…torn edges. She scowled at the page, trying to decipher the source of her uneasiness. Her lips moved, trying different combinations of words and phrases. Still scowling, she reached for the phone.

“May I speak with Sheriff Blaine, please? This is Elizabeth Goodweather calling.”

The husky croak at the other end told her the sheriff was on another line and it would be a few minutes and then relegated her to the limbo of Hold. Elizabeth drummed impatient fingers on the dining table.

“Sheriff Blaine here.”

“Mackenzie, this is Elizabeth Goodweather. I—”

He broke in. “Is there a problem?”

“No, not as such. But I wanted to ask you something. You know the note Payne Morton left? Well, Phillip showed me a copy he had and something about it doesn’t seem right—”

“Ah, Elizabeth, could we—”

“No, really, Mackenzie, I think this might be important. I would have run it by Phillip but he won’t be back for almost an hour, and I really want to hear what you think about this. The punctuation in the note’s all wrong.”

“Elizabeth, that note was written by a man about to kill himself.” There was a distinct hint of irritation in the sheriff’s tone. “He’s not likely worrying about—god, what was it that old bat Miss Darien used to get me for?—comma splices, that’s it.”

“Mackenzie, please! Get the note and look at it.”

There was a heavy sigh. “Okay, Elizabeth. But it’s only because I hope you invite me to dinner again soon.”

He was back at the phone in minutes. “Okay, Miz Goodweather, I’m looking at the note. What’s your point?”

“Well, in the first place, look how neat the writing is. The handwriting isn’t any last-minute scribble—every letter is perfectly formed—”

“Before you ask, yes, we’ve checked it out; it’s definitely Morton’s writing.”

“But the thing about the
punctuation
is that it’s in kind of random places. It wouldn’t be so strange if he’d left it out altogether—or used dashes instead of commas. Particularly since these aren’t sentences at all—”

“I don’t think I follow you.” The weary resignation in Blaine’s voice warned her that it was only his friendship with Phillip that kept him on the line.

“Okay, look at the note, where the two edges are ragged, like they’d been torn.”

“They
were
torn. Lots of people use scrap paper.”

She ignored him. “Now what if the original,
untorn
note had read something like:

“I am ready to pay the price of my silence. He told me

she was willing. God help me, I believed him. He told me

it was an accident. God help me, I believed him.

I can no longer live with this lie. I must confess.”

There was a silence.

“Say that again,” said Mackenzie Blaine.

She said it again.

“Or something along those lines,” she added. “You see how it could work. And the way the paper was torn, there could have been lots more at the end. And he would have signed his name if—”

“—if this was a letter, a confession. Instead of a suicide note.” The sheriff spoke slowly, as if struggling to process thoroughly this new point of view. “And what you’re suggesting is maybe someone didn’t want Morton to confess, so they killed him—”

“—and tore out just enough of the letter to make it
sound
like a suicide note—”

“—and that would be where the thing about the silo came from.”

There was a long, pregnant pause and then the sheriff said, “I won’t say you’ve convinced me, Elizabeth; the whole thing’s seriously sketchy. But I will say I’ll follow up on it. Happy now?”

There was a definite click on the line, just before Mackenzie hung up. Probably old whatsername in the front office, listening in. Now there’s a woman who undoubtedly knows where all the bodies are buried. What a great job for a blackmailer, if she were so inclined.

Elizabeth picked up the stack of Nola’s papers she had been working her way through—notes for the novel, copies of old newspaper or magazine articles, and the more prosaic ledger books from the stand, dating back to the end of the 1800s. Prosaic, but fascinating for the picture of an era.

The words “A Modern Day Circe” caught her attention and she paused at a copy of an old letter to the editor of
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine—
from Thos. W. Blake, Junior.

8th January, 1899

My dear sir,

Inasmuch as my dispatches from the Carolina Mountains have found favor with your readers, from the earliest in 1858—my sketch of a Melungeon stand-keeping couple—and proceeding through the troubled years of the lamentable War that pitted brother against brother to the Modern Day to the coming of the Railroad to these hidden wilds, I make bold to propose yet another sketch, set in the same bygone day and rustic demesne as my first.

N
OTES ON A
M
ODERN
D
AY
C
IRCE
by Thos. W. Blake, Junior

As the Turn of the Century approaches and I cast my gaze back two score years to my earliest days in these majestic mountains that will one day receive my bones, I am reminded of a time long distant when I was privy to the ramblings of a convicted murderer and I am struck, once again, by the singular qualities of the woman who, I make no doubt, led him to his ruin.

How I came to be in the company of young Lydy Goforth is a matter over which I shall draw the kindly veil of Time. His name has become a part of the lore of these mountains, thanks in no small part to the ballad I penned, now popularly considered to be of his own production. As if an illiterate agrestic could have—But I digress. My position in the community, my wife, my children—any of these are sufficient cause for me to avoid the smallest mention of my connexion with Lydy Goforth.

I shall, therefore, limit my remarks to Belle Caulwell—a woman whose fatal beauty had the power to transform a simple rustic lad into a beast, capable of the last extreme of violence. Pale of face and black of hair and eye, her exotic countenance was oft remarked upon in this land of blue-eyed folk. I have not been able to trace her antecedents—it is said she appeared at Gudger’s Stand as a child of thirteen, unaccompanied and unable (or unwilling) to say from whence she came. I could believe she had ridden on a dragon’s back straight from Aeaea, the island home of the original Circe, were it not for the fact that Belle spoke in the mountain brogue rather than Archaic Greek.

I have questioned more than one venerable in our community concerning Belle and all are agreed that we shall look upon her like no more. One aged farmer had tears in his eyes as he recounted his memories of Belle at her loom—how the drovers lingered ensorcelled as the sinuous thread of her song rose above the thump and clack of her loom.

The women-folk have a different tale. They call her pale skin “sallow” and speak of the “heathen” fashion in which she let her black hair fall loose and unconfined. They will allow her to have had a fine figure—a tiny waist, a deep bosom—but that is all they will allow. One ancient crone, lest constrained in her converse than others, whispered that Belle was known as one who could rid a girl of an unwanted child, through use of herbs and potions. “And she had an instrument, a silver rod with a hook on one end—” but at last modesty prevailed and the beldame would go no further.

The sound of the door opening called her back to the present, and Elizabeth looked up to see Amanda smiling apologetically. “Is it too late to go see that guy—the one who knew my brother?”

Chapter 40

Dead End

Wednesday, December 27

T
homas W. Blake was leaning on the parapet of the bridge, staring down into the turbulent river that swirled and eddied around the ice-covered rocks. He seemed oblivious to the approach of Elizabeth’s car, continuing his morose study of the churning water without looking up.

Elizabeth pulled to one side and, leaving the vehicle running and Amanda inside, she got out and went to stand beside the strange figure. “Good afternoon, Mr. Blake. I was just reading a copy of one of your grandfather’s letters—about a modern-day Circe. I found it in some of Miss Barrett’s papers.”

“Good afternoon, Miz Goodweather. Yes, Miss Barrett and I have, at times, combined forces in research. And, to be strickly accurate, tha’s
great-
gran’father.”

The courtly bow was somewhat clumsy and the words were slightly slurred, but Blake seemed happy enough to see her, so she persevered.

“I wondered if my friend and I could ask you some questions.”

A lordly wave of his gloved hand, the gracious gesture only slightly impaired by the holes in the gloves’ fingertips. “Ask what you will; I am yours to command. At leisure, one might say.”

“Do you think…that is, would you mind if we talked in your house? It’s a little cold out here for me. And I’d love to see how the cat and her babies are getting along.”

Mother and children seemed to be thriving. Still in the same box, but with a clean towel for bedding; still in the big cupboard, the little family was a picture of domestic contentment. Amanda crouched over them, crooning with delight and stroking the kittens’ tiny heads with a careful finger.

“They’re precious—do you think Ben would like a kitten? Or would it be a problem with your dogs?”

“Probably not.” Elizabeth ventured a cautious caress of the mother cat’s thin side and was rewarded with a buzz of pleasure. “The dogs are pretty laid-back.”

Thomas Blake stood watching, swaying gently. He had put a kettle to boil, unearthed three clean mugs, and bestowed a tea bag in each, as well as a generous tot of vodka in his own. His eyes did not leave Amanda.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Blake, I haven’t introduced you all. This is my friend, Amanda Lucas. Amanda, Thomas Blake.”

Elizabeth was struck suddenly by the absurdity of the formal introduction: the grizzled, slightly drunken man in his ancient, begrimed clothing and thick-lensed glasses bowing over the hand of the tall, exquisitely clean, exquisitely beautiful woman in the midst of this tumbledown, cat-crowded abode.
It could be a scene from
Beauty and the Beast
or maybe
Phantom of the Opera.

But the two played their parts solemnly, and when the kettle boiled and the mugs were filled, Blake ushered them to the living area of his warrenlike dwelling.

“You say your name is Lucas? And your home is…?”

“I live on Elizabeth’s farm. But I’m originally from Florida.”

Amanda’s impatience overcame her manners and she set her mug down on the table at her elbow, sloshing hot tea on a sleeping tabby’s tail. With a yowl and a sideways twist of its lithe gray body, the cat jumped to the floor, where it began at once to groom itself. “Mr. Blake, Elizabeth thought that you could tell me something about my brother. His name is Sp—”

“Spinner Greer. Yes, the resemblance is extremely strong. I was confused by the different surnames.” The thick glasses glittered at her appraisingly. “Yes, my dear, you’re very like.”

“Mr. Blake, I haven’t seen Spinner since 1993. My parents told me he was dead. But recently I found letters from him, written in ’94 and ’95. And the last ones were from Ransom.” Amanda’s eyes were imploring. “Please, do you know where he is? I know he bought property here…up on Bear Tree Creek. He said he was going to build a cabin.”

The man nodded. “Spinner had great plans. Your brother was enraptured with this county and its history. He used to stop in to visit and read through some of the documents and historical material I’ve held on to—and I grew quite fond of him. The poor boy seemed eager for a confidant and I was happy to give such advice and moral support as were within my poor powers.

“But no.” Blake shook his head. “I’m so sorry. I can’t help you. I haven’t seen your brother in years. Nor have I had any communication from him since our last meeting in…” He paused to consider. “…yes, in 1995.”

Amanda’s lips parted, then without speaking she slumped back in her chair, bitter disappointment in every line of her body.

“Mr. Blake”—Elizabeth gently stroked the calico cat which had just jumped onto her lap and was happily kneading her denim-covered thighs—“Amanda’s been advertising in the
Guardian
for months, looking for information about her brother. And there were similar ads before that, going back for years. Why didn’t you ever respond?”

Blake drew himself up and replied. “In the first instance, dear lady, I never read that provincial rag. In the second, had the advertisement somehow been brought to my attention, what could I have had to say? I had no information. One day the young man was here. He had come to bring me a Christmas libation and had stayed to help me drink it. The liquor loosened his tongue and soon he was pouring out his heart and soul—the next day he was gone, never to return. When weeks and months passed, I realized that he had repented his decision and, embarrassed by the confidences he had shared, had decided simply to move on. So many of them do.”

“And you have no idea where he might have gone?”

Amanda’s hopeful question hung in the air as Thomas Blake considered it.

“He had spent time in New York and in San Francisco as well. He claimed to regard both with loathing. But like the dog that returns to its vomit, he may have capitulated to the siren call of the lifestyle. And, of course, the medical options in those cities would have been far more extensive.”

“I don’t understand.” Amanda crossed her slender arms and hugged herself as if struck by a sudden chill. “Spinner wasn’t sick.”

Thomas Blake drained the last of his vodka-laced tea. “My dear, but of course he was—the last time I saw him, he’d just learned that he had AIDS. And after all this time with no word, I’ve come to believe he must have lost the battle.”