Smoky Mountain Mystery 01 - Out on a Limb (15 page)

“Okay,” said
Waneeta
in a huff, “Then don’t tell me what you’re
doin
consortin
with the hillbilly mob.”

“I was
gonna
tell ye, ye just kept interrupting me!
I’z
tryin
to help Henry.
He’s
lookin
for somebody who
mighta
gone
missin
in the park, so I asked
em
if they knew anything.”

“Think they’d tell
ye
if they did?”

“Not straight out and certainly not in front of each other, but yeah, one way or another, they’d tell me what they could.”

“Those two are scary. They’d cut
yer
heart out for a nickel.”

“I know they’ve done some bad things, and thank God I don’t know exactly what, but honestly, they’ve always been good to me. I’m not afraid of
em
. They got a code they go by and I can sorta understand what it is. They’re not
crazy
.”

“It’s funny,” said
Waneeta
, “we can find a way to get along with the criminals we know, but we want the other ones locked up.”

“Nobody’s all good or all bad. People aren’t that simple,” said Phoebe. “That’s the thing I love about White Oak. Everybody’s got their place in the community. Nobody
gits
left out.”

“Nobody except the whole rest of the world!”
Waneeta
crowed.

“If you can still remember,” Phoebe said, “would you mind
tellin
me why you called?”

“Oh, I almost forgot,” said
Waneeta
. “It’s Nerve. She’s
bein
a real pill today. “The family’s
askin
for
ye
.
Accordin
to the daughter, you’re the only one left
Nerve’ll
recognize. That says loads,
don’t
it?”

Minerva Langston, called Nerve by everyone who knew her, was suffering from dementia. She’d never been easy to deal with, thus her nickname. And if a vote had been held she’d have been voted by the whole community to be the person most likely to go senile in a way that would make her even
more cranky
.

“Doc always says when people get old, especially if they get
senile,
they just become
more
of whatever they’ve always been.” She didn’t add that he’d told her that when she’d asked him about an old man she saw beating his elderly wife with an aluminum quad-cane in front of the grocery store.

A bystander had intervened before the old coot could kill her, but
Phoebe’d
always worried about what went on at home when nobody was there to help the woman. She hoped the old lady had put a cast iron skillet upside that mean old man’s head.

“Nerve’s no problem,” said Phoebe. “I’m not far from there.”

Phoebe found Nerve interesting. She was crazy and mean, but Phoebe still loved to talk to her because she’d come out with some of the most fascinating things sandwiched in with the ranting. It was like the devil and the angels were at war in her head and if you listened to her, you could hear both sides. Like a radio tuned to the Apocalypse.

***

When Phoebe got to the house, Nerve’s oppressed daughter-in-law, Teresa, nearly collapsed with relief and gratitude. Phoebe hugged her and asked how things were going. She learned that Nerve was refusing food and medicine, staying up day and night, ranting, and accusing everyone of trying to poison her. “Give me a few minutes,” Phoebe said, “Then bring her food in. I’ll try to
git
her to eat and take her meds.”

She went down the hall to Nerve’s room. It was easy to tell where she was because she was shouting in a harsh nasal twang, “Who the hell’s that? Whoever it is, tell
em
go to blazes. They can
git
the hell
outta
my house. I don’t give a damn
who
it is.”

“Hey there Miss Minnie,” Phoebe said, coming into the bedroom where Nerve sat in a rocking chair next to the window. “Hope it’s not a bad time. I was
missin
ye and thought I’d come by for a visit.”

Nerve instantly quieted when she heard Phoebe’s voice. She held out a gnarled hand to her. Phoebe took it and pulled a beautiful old cane-bottom chair over to sit beside her. They sat like that in silence for several minutes
til
Phoebe could feel Minerva relax.

Teresa crept into the room and set a tray on the bed. She slid it close enough for Phoebe to reach. “This is some pretty good
lookin
vegetable soup, Miss Minnie,
whaddya
say?”

Nerve, it seemed, had run down. She had nothing at all to say. She let Phoebe feed her like a small child and then took her medicine. “Do ye think you might be able to rest now?” Phoebe asked.

Nerve closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the high-backed rocker. Phoebe waited, hoping
Minerva’d
be able to drop off to sleep. As she sat there, her mind wandered to her grief over Sean’s death and then to her sadness over never being able to make her relationships last.

Without opening her eyes, Nerve spoke in a soft voice, saying, “Honey,
they’s
only one
kinda
woman who’s a
lookin
fer
a husband … and that’s one who
ain’t
never had one before.”

Jill was cleaning the restaurant when she glanced out the window and saw another flash. Any sign of human in an area like that, particularly prolonged signs in the same place were so unusual she decided to take a walk around Greenbrier to see if she could get a better look.

Like most people from the area, Jill loved the mountains. She’d
knew
she’d never be able to be happy living anywhere else. And she wasn’t afraid of the woods. She’d spent her whole childhood and youth roaming around by
herself
or with friends, building little cabins out of sticks and carpeting them with moss.

She felt safer in the woods than she did a city. The forest was so peaceful.
So beautiful.

Jill drove as close to
Laurel
Mountain
as she could, then got out to walk the rest of the way. There was an old logging track that
sidehilled
, ran parallel to but below the ridgeline. She made her way downhill through the woods, knowing she’d intersect it eventually.

She walked a few minutes until she heard a faint sound like wind chimes, but it was gone before she could be certain she wasn’t imagining it.

Moments later, she stepped down onto the old track worn smooth by mules pulling wooden sleds loaded with lumber. The trail wasn’t maintained, so it wasn’t easy to travel along it, but it kept to a gentle grade that hugged the side of the hill.

 She heard the tinkling sound again. She was sure of it this time. The track was leading her toward it.

The tinkling grew louder. She walked
til
it was coming from somewhere above her. The footing was uneven, so she walked a few steps, then stopped and scanned the canopy overhead, listening, then walked a few more steps and scanned again.

She could tell she was zeroing in on the source of the sound. She prayed for a moment that the Lord would show
her whatever
He needed her to see, then she looked up again.

***

During the lunch hour, Phoebe called her office.

“Hidey there sister, it’s Phoebe.
Anything
goin
on?”

“Nothing you’d
wanna
know about,” said
Waneeta
. “Remember what the politicians say, it’s all about plausible deniability.”

Both women laughed heartily at
Waneeta’s
wit.

At the sound of
Waneeta’s
rowdy laughter, Bruce heaved himself out of his chair and came to stand in the threshold of his office. He was hesitant to encroach on
Waneeta’s
physical space, but his obvious eavesdropping provoked
Waneeta
to issue one of her trademark
non sequiturs
, asking Phoebe, “Is the blood bright red, or is it black?”

“Are you on a personal call?” Bruce asked, with narrowed eyes.

Waneeta
kept the phone to her ear and shook her head. Bruce didn’t move. Okay, she’d have to ramp it up to get rid of him. Speaking as if trying to reassure a frightened patient, she said, “Honey,
they’s
all kinds of reasons you might be
seein
blood in the toilet.”

Her verbal gambit had the desired effect, Bruce ducked back into his office, but he left the door ajar. In case he was still spying on her conversation,
Waneeta
added, “Is the blood mixed right in with the stool or is it just
floatin
out by itself in the toilet water?”

At that Bruce’s door slammed.

“
How’s things
goin
with that cute ranger?”
Waneeta
said, as if they’d never been interrupted. “I heard he’s single.”

“I
ain’t
lookin
to
git
married and anyway, he’s married to his job, or so I’ve been told,” said Phoebe.

“You two are pitiful.
Just pitiful.”

“I’ll be perfectly happy to find a kind
fella
to be friends with. That’s all I’m
lookin
for these days. I am
over
romance.”

Waneeta
let out a huge sigh.

“A lot of marriageable women don’t
wanna
get married,” said Phoebe.

“Name
one
.”

“Queen Elizabeth I, Greta
Garbo
,
Coco
Chanel
. None of them would’ve had a bit of trouble
findin
a husband.”

“Doris Day got married four times,” said
Waneeta
, “Cleopatra was married four times, twice to her own brothers. And then there’s Elizabeth Taylor.”

Phoebe was momentarily confused, thinking Cleopatra
was
Elizabeth Taylor. She didn’t want
Waneeta
to get away with double counting. “Haven’t you ever wanted to give up?”

“Oh,
hell
no!”
Waneeta
said, laughing. “You fall off the horse, you
gotta
git
right back on or else ye might lose
yer
nerve. Men can smell fear,
honey,
you can’t let
em
git
the upper hand.”

“I thought it was horses that could smell
fear,
or maybe animals in general.”

“Men
is
animals,”
Waneeta
said. Over Phoebe’s
laughter
she added, “I’m
serious
.”

“I
ain’t
getting married!”

“Oh well, marriage
ain’t
always what it’s cracked up to be.
Or divorces neither.”

“You get more work out of your ex-husbands than most women get out of men they’re still married to.”

“That’s true. Jimmy’s a great cook. Lately he’s been
cookin
everything off Dale
Jr.’s
website.”