THE SECRET OF CHEROKEE COVE (7 page)

By the time she’d locked her car door and turned back toward the main street, people had come out of the buildings to stand on porches and sidewalks, watching her approach. Nobody moved. Nobody smiled, either. There were men and women, old and young, all watching her through narrowed eyes as she neared the dusty walking path that led to the small grocery store.

“Hello,” she said, quelling the urge to check the ammunition in the pistol holstered beneath her windbreaker. “My name is Dana Massey—”

“We know who you are.” A thin man in his sixties stepped forward from the porch of the grocery store. He was dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, his clothes clean but his shoes crusted with dried mud. He wore a faded baseball cap with
Riddle Brothers Tractor
embroidered in blue on the front. The bill shadowed his weathered face, making it hard to read the intent in his eyes.

“Do you know why I’m here?” she asked.

“You’re nosing around in something you ought to let lie.” That was a woman, speaking from the concrete stoop in front of the post office. She was possibly even older than the man with the baseball cap, her silver hair wispy and fluttering in the breeze. She wore a cotton house dress beneath a thick wool cardigan, with flat canvas shoes on her small feet. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, but her advancing years seemed to have toughened her into steel and leather, all muscles and sinew. Here was a woman who’d worked hard all her life, and it showed.

“I want to know more about my mother.” She had to assume, from the rapid-fire spread of information about her arrival, that the people of the community had already known she was in Bitterwood. She’d been asking a lot of questions about her mother over the past couple of days. In a town this small, it wouldn’t have taken long for word to get around.

“Your mama brought trouble here. That’s all you need to know.” The woman turned and went back into the post office.

But nobody else moved away. If anything, they’d formed a phalanx, as if to wall the town off from her presence.

“What do you think she did to you?” Dana asked, frustration rising in her chest on a swell of anger. “She was a girl who lost a baby. She didn’t kill him.”

“You don’t know anything, city girl.” The speaker’s voice came from behind her. She turned quickly and found herself face-to-face with a bearded man around her own age. He wasn’t any taller than she was, but he was built like a barn, with broad shoulders, a chest the size of a rain barrel and massive arms and thighs. There was a little flab in his gut, but the rest of him looked hard and thick, like a football lineman.

He stood close enough that, for the first time since she’d parked in front of the store, she felt physically threatened. She might be able to outrun him, but if he got physical, she didn’t think she could outfight him.

And the last thing she wanted to do, in the middle of this increasingly hostile crowd, was to pull her gun on him, even to save her own life.

“I’m really not here for trouble,” she stated, backing toward her car. The man’s face cracked into a narrow-eyed smile, but he didn’t move after her.

Reaching the edge of the church’s gravel parking lot, she turned toward her car. And swallowed a curse.

The Chevy’s driver’s-side tires were both flat.

She didn’t know whether to be scared or mad as hell.

As she turned back to confront the gathered crowd, the rumble of an engine filtered past the low murmurs of the people watching her. Dana looked down the road, trying to locate the source of the noise. She saw several in the small crowd turn their heads, as well.

Around the curve just visible about fifty yards away, a motorcycle zoomed into view, its engine noise increasing to a loud growl. The driver was dressed in black, from a worn leather jacket to tight-fitting black jeans that hugged his muscular legs from his narrow hips to his boots. The bike was an old Harley-Davidson Sportster, similar to one her father had owned, all shiny black and chrome. It slowed to a crawl as it reached the clump of onlookers, rolling to a stop in front of Dana.

The rider flipped up the visor of his helmet, revealing Walker Nix’s coffee-colored eyes. Dana felt a flood of relief so powerful it made her knees tremble.

Nix’s gaze slid past her to take in the state of her car, then whipped back to meet her surprised stare. The look he gave her was equal parts regret and resignation.

“Get on the back,” he said, “and let’s get you the hell out of here.”

Chapter Seven

Nix couldn’t say why, exactly, he had kept his grandfather’s cabin a few miles up the mountain from Cherokee Cove. It wasn’t much to look at, inside or out, and as recently as twenty years earlier, the place hadn’t even had indoor plumbing. But some of his best memories of growing up in the Smokies had happened in that cabin, and when his grandfather died and left the place to him, he’d ignored his father’s advice and kept it.

Of course, when he’d left the marine corps and moved back to Tennessee to finally assess the condition the cabin was in, he’d been tempted to apologize to his father. But he’d quickly seen that the cabin’s bones were solid, and little by little over the past five years, he’d begun to turn it into a home.

He found himself watching Dana’s face as she took in the rustic trappings of the old cabin, from the rough-hewn rocking chairs on the dusty wood-slat porch to the deer antlers that lined the plain oak mantel over the sooty fireplace.

“You hunt much?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No. Not a lot of time or need. There are people around these parts who hunt to eat. I leave the wildlife to them.” In fact, he thought, he’d gone into Cherokee Cove to talk to one of those people, but Dana’s dilemma had derailed his plans, at least temporarily.

“Inherited?” she guessed.

Nodding, he waved toward the sofa, one of the newer pieces in the place. “I’ll call Brantley’s Garage to go pick up your car.”

“I didn’t leave the keys,” she said, her voice more subdued than he liked. Her showdown with the crowd back in Cherokee Cove must have shaken her more than he’d realized.

“We’ll meet them down the road.”

She sat on the sofa, watching as he pulled a small phone directory from the drawer of the table where he kept the phone. “Won’t that mean driving back through there again?”

“Are you afraid to go back?”

The look she shot his way was sharp enough to cut. “No, I’d just prefer not to have to shoot anybody today.”

He stifled a grin.

“And I really don’t enjoy riding a motorcycle without a helmet.”

“We’ll take my truck.” He dialed the number of Brantley’s Garage and talked to Wally, telling him where Dana had parked her car. Wally agreed to meet them at Parson’s Crossing, where Cherokee Cove Road intersected with Parson Hollow Road.

As he hung up, Dana asked, “What were you doing in Cherokee Cove anyway?”

“Following up another lead.”

“You didn’t mention your other lead was in Cherokee Cove when I asked you to take me there.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Who did you come to see in Cherokee Cove?” she asked, not deterred by his attempt to end the conversation.

“You’re not officially on this case, you know,” he said.

“Do I have to call my brother?” she asked, a glint of humor in her eye.

“You’d really play that card?”

Her only answer was a slight twitch of her eyebrow.

“Fine. I came here to see a woman.”

Her face reddened. “Oh.”

“Do you want to tag along?”

Her eyes narrowed, making him grin. She flattened her lips to a thin line and shot him a hard look. “Sure, I’m up for it,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Let’s just hope I am,” he muttered as he grabbed his truck keys and headed outside.

* * *

T
HE
WOMAN
IN
question was a wiry, dark-haired woman in her late twenties who watched the truck’s approach through narrowed eyes. Her wary expression cleared when she got a better look at the vehicle, and she went back to what she’d been doing when they’d come over the hill, her hoe chopping up the rocky soil of what looked to be a fallow garden in front of her small wooden cabin.

She was a natural sort of pretty, with lots of curly black hair and a spattering of freckles across her tanned face. She gave a nod of hello to Nix and then, resting the hoe on the ground, she turned her curious gaze on Dana. “Hello.”

Movement on the porch behind her caught Dana’s eye before she could respond. There was a little boy rocking back and forth on a homemade rocking horse that had been carved from pine logs. He couldn’t be more than two or three years old, and the solemn gray eyes that stared back at her from a lightly freckled face were just like the woman’s, the color of the cloudy sky overhead—gray with a hint of gunmetal along the edges.

“Briar Blackwood, this is Dana Massey. Dana, this is Briar.” Nix moved past Briar and took the porch steps in one quick bound, reaching down to the little boy on the rocking horse. The baby grinned up at him and lifted his arms, rewarded with a swooping swing to Nix’s hip. “And this,” Nix added, “is my man Logan.”

“My son,” Briar added, unnecessarily.

“Nice to meet you both,” Dana said.

“Briar’s a dispatcher.”

“For the police department?”

“Police and fire,” Briar corrected with a little smile. “It’s a small town.”

She had a strong accent, Dana noticed, as thick as those of the people she’d spoken to on Cherokee Cove Road outside the post office. She supposed Briar’s cabin was still in Cherokee Cove, but she and Nix had gone off the main paved road not far from where they’d met Wally from the garage to hand over Dana’s keys, traveling a narrow, winding road into the woods for almost a mile before they’d reached this small clearing where Briar and her son lived.

“Starting a garden?” Dana waved toward the hoe and the broken ground.

“Yeah. It’s finally gotten warm enough that I can start putting stuff out for the summer without worrying about a deep freeze.”

“What do you grow?” Dana asked as Nix crossed to where they stood, still bouncing Logan on one hip.

“Tomatoes, green beans, okra, squash, peppers—pretty much anything we can put up in the freezer or can,” she answered. “Do you garden?”

“I did when I was a kid,” Dana answered. “But I live in an apartment in Atlanta now. Not really much time or space for gardening.”

“That’s right. You’re a deputy U.S. marshal.” Briar’s lips curved into a toothy smile. “Hell, you might have brought in some of my kinfolk. I come from a dicey bunch.”

“Apparently so do I,” Dana murmured.

Nix’s lips twitched as he caught her comment. “Speaking of your dicey kinfolk, Briar, I heard that one of your cousins is a member of the Blue Ridge Infantry.”

Briar turned to look at Nix, her expression cautious. “You mean Blake?”

“That’s the one.”

“He hasn’t been around here in months. We don’t want his kind of trouble.”

“I hear he was up around Purgatory the other day.”

Briar looked genuinely surprised. “He’s an idiot, then.”

“Friends of mine think he might be trying to recruit folks from around here. With the economy like it is and some of the stuff coming out of Washington—”

“I won’t say there aren’t some fool-minded people around here who’d fall for that kind of sales pitch, but I haven’t heard anything about it, and I generally hear just about everything that goes on in these parts. Like just a few minutes ago, I got a phone call tellin’ me that there was a Cumberland in Cherokee Cove, like I was supposed to run and take cover.” She slanted a look toward Dana. “I reckon they meant you?”

“People there were really not happy to see me.”

“No, I don’t suppose they were.” Briar nodded toward the cabin. “Y’all come on inside. It’s time for Logan’s nap, and I’ve got a pitcher of iced tea in the fridge.” She didn’t wait for them to agree, just plucked her son out of Nix’s arms and started up the porch steps to the cabin.

Nix rested his hand against the small of Dana’s back and gave her a light nudge forward. She pretended to ignore the quivering response of her skin to the heat of his touch and followed Briar into the cabin.

Inside, the place was small but neat.
Efficient
was the better word, Dana thought. Everything in the house seemed to be there for use rather than show, from the old-fashioned juice press on the kitchen counter to the row of colorful root-vegetable bins lined up on one side of the tidy kitchen, full of onions, potatoes and turnips. Daylight seeped in the windows through a prism of color—one-and two-quart Mason jars full of pickled cucumbers and okra, deep red tomatoes and the bright jewel tones of peaches, blueberries and strawberries, all lining every available windowsill and shelf in the place.

“I don’t have a whole lot of root-cellar space,” Briar explained as she returned from putting her son down for a nap and spotted Dana looking around the place in wonder. “I have to put the jars up high, where Logan can’t reach them, or he’s likely to pry a jar open and start munching.”

Dana grinned at the picture Briar’s words evoked. “My mother used to can every chance she got. She said it was relaxing. My dad always teased her about it, saying she had pioneer blood.”

“He was right. Cumberlands have been in these parts since the first settlers came down from Virginia.”

“Not anymore.”

Briar took a deep breath through her nose, as if steadying herself for what was about to come. Dana found herself doing the same, girding herself for whatever the young woman was about to tell her.

“Your mama was the cause of that,” Briar said.

Nix touched Dana’s back again, his hand warm and firm against her spine. “Why don’t we sit down?” he suggested.

“You want any tea?” Briar asked as Dana sat on the small, neat sofa under a window full of Mason jars.

“No, thanks.”

“Me, either.” Nix sat down beside her, sticking close, as if to offer support. She wondered if she was going to need it.

Briar took the armchair across from them. “Let me start out by saying, there’s many of us around here who don’t think your mama was to blame for anything. That story about her killin’ the baby, well, there were people who got their own benefit from lettin’ that story circulate, you know what I mean? And not just some of the folks around Cherokee Cove who’d gotten sideways with the Cumberlands, either. There were others, folks who wouldn’t care to step foot into this hollow, who had their own agendas for makin’ sure the Cumberlands couldn’t cause anyone any trouble.”

“You mean the Sutherlands and Hales, don’t you?” Dana asked.

Briar’s eyebrows ticked upward. “How’d you find out?”

“She’s a deputy U.S. marshal, remember,” Nix answered for her.

“So you know your mother was found in the basement of Maryville Mercy Hospital with Nina Hale’s newborn son.”

“That’s what I hear.”

“I think that much of the story is pretty much the truth,” Briar said. “But the part about her killin’ her baby? I think it’s hogwash. Oh, it makes for a better story, I’ll grant you. And people like drama in their stories. But when you dig through all the storytelling and get to what people really remember about Tallie Cumberland, you find out she wouldn’t have harmed a bottle fly.”

“That sounds a lot more like the woman who raised me than any of these other stories do,” Dana agreed.

“You have to understand, long before Tallie lost her baby, the Cumberlands were trouble in these parts. Tallie’s daddy was a moonshiner, her mama was prone to takin’ lovers, and all three of Tallie’s brothers had criminal records. Hell, her uncle Dawes Cumberland was on death row for killin’ two men for their drink money in a bar down in Chattanooga. You’ll hear folks around here say none of the Cumberlands is worth a damn, and for the most part, they’d be right. But your mama was an exception.”

“You’re too young to have known her,” Dana said.

“I am,” Briar agreed. “But my mama knew her. And she’s the one who told me not to listen to what people said about Tallie Cumberland. Because they didn’t know what they were talking about.”

Even though Dana had known the stories about her mother couldn’t be true, it was a relief to hear someone else in town agree. “I’d love to speak to your mother.”

A hint of pain darkened Briar’s eyes. “I’d love to talk to her, too.”

“Briar’s mother died of cancer three years ago,” Nix murmured.

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.” Briar took a long, slow breath. “You know, when I was a kid, I think I was the only girl around these parts who was friends with a Cumberland. My friend Nadine was a distant relative of your mama’s, from a group of cousins who hadn’t even lived here in decades. Her family moved back to this area after her dad lost his job in Memphis. They lived south of here a ways, but we went to the same school in town. I used to invite her to come to my house, but she refused to step foot in Cherokee Cove. She was afraid the folk around here might try to kill her just for being who she was.”

“That’s crazy,” Dana said.

“Welcome to Cherokee Cove,” Nix murmured. He looked at Briar. “Nadine’s family didn’t stick around long, did they? I don’t remember much about them.”

“You were already in high school, and all of their kids were younger,” Briar explained. “And no, they didn’t last long. They moved back to Memphis within a couple of years.”

“Did all the Cumberlands leave when my mother left?”

“Within a year of that time, yes,” Briar said with a nod. “And who could blame them?
Cumberland
might as well have been a swearword around here. Any wildfire, blizzard, rock slide, tree blight or fish kill in these parts seemed to get blamed on the Cumberlands, long after they’d moved away. I guess people thought they cursed the ground before they left or something.”

“And you haven’t talked to Nadine since she left?”

“I still talk to her, sometimes. On the phone, mostly. She and her family never came back here again, especially not after—” Briar stopped suddenly, her eyes narrowing as she looked at Dana.

“Not after what?” Dana asked.

“Briar—” Nix looked at the younger woman, his expression hard to read. Dana suddenly realized there was a whole conversation going on between the two of them, without a word being spoken.

“What don’t you want me to hear?” she asked Nix.

He looked at her. “I don’t want you to hear rumors that can’t be proved.”

“I’m old enough to know the difference,” she snapped.

His nostrils flared, but he sat back, giving a little wave of his hand as if to tell Briar to proceed.