Deep Down (I) (17 page)

Tears blurred her eyes, making two bland, mute faces of her mother. It didn’t really look like her, despite the fact that Etta Merriman had done a reasonably good job with her appearance. Her graying hair was too smooth, her cheeks not smooth enough despite some beige cosmetic putty over the cut marks. The vitality, the very person was gone. No, she would not have an open casket at the wake or the funeral.

But the reality of loss comforted as well as tormented her. In that very second, Jessie decided she would do a sang count, at least a partial tally this year, in her mother’s honor. Her current sang notes had obviously been stolen from her backpack, but perhaps Frank Redmond, whom Mariah had reported to in Frankfort, had some sort of records that could be reconstructed so this year’s tally would have some basis for comparison. Her determination surprised her. She’d had no intention of actually doing the count until she stood here, so close to her mother’s body.

She pressed her stomach and hip bones against the side of the coffin, leaned closer and covered her mother’s folded hands with hers. Cool, waxy. She would place a spray of ginseng plants in them tomorrow. But had some speck of thought remained, hovering around the body? It was as if someone had whispered that she must finish the sang count.

“I’ll do it,” she whispered. “I’ll finish your sang count.”

Though she felt like a fool, Jessie leaned even closer and closed her eyes, trying to concentrate. She’d had a powerful insight in Hong Kong—the feeling that someone was chasing her, perhaps when her mother was in that very predicament. If only she could envision that again, could she possibly catch a glimpse of who had caused that fear—the fatal attack?

But, no. All she could see with her eyes closed was the picture Tyler Finch took of that strange, shadowy shape in the woods. Only she imagined it moving now, coming closer, snapping tree limbs and shuffling through the leaves…with—with something silver in one hand.

She opened her eyes and shook her head to clear the moving image. The picture in her mind had turned from still photo into a movie trailer. She couldn’t trust her own thoughts and fears. She had to bury them and face reality—the wake, funeral and burial, and then she must go on.

Jessie figured the word wake described the way the mourners stayed with the dead all day and night, as if to keep the deceased company. She was exhausted, so she kept dosing herself with G-Women power drinks or ginseng tea. That kept her alert as she greeted and spoke with a constant stream of neighbors and church members stopping by to express their condolences. As the day dragged on, Vern Tarver had stayed the longest.

“A fine woman,” he’d told her more than once, sometimes wiping under his eyes with a handkerchief, though Jessie wasn’t sure she’d seen tears. Finally, in a break from talking to others, she went over to where he’d planted himself at the foot of the casket, as if he were the grieving husband.

She took the folding chair next to his.

“I’ve decided to stay around for a while,” she told him. “For one thing, I’m going to finish the sang count for my mother.”

“That right?” he asked, stuffing his handkerchief in his back pants pocket. Unlike everyone else, who came in their workday clothes, Vern was more formally attired than the undertaker had been, in suit, tie, shiny shoes. “But she had so much of the count done—that’s the impression I got. And some of what she counted could be gone by now if you have to start over.”

“Her boss, Mr. Redmond, is going to have to make do with a partial, representative count and extrapolate from there. He’s coming to the funeral and church dinner tomorrow, so I’ll consult with him then.”

“You know, sometimes you still sound like a fancy scientist, Jessie—extrapolate and all that. But that’s great. I’m sure you’re gonna find the count high enough to tell that Mr. Redmond that Deep Down area sang is not endangered. ’Cause if it was, that’d be a disaster in all kinds of ways,” he said with his voice taking a new, sharper edge, as he leaned slightly closer.

If that was a subtle threat, she decided to ignore it. “I’ll be doing some lab work here, too,” she told him, “but I’m hoping I can take Cassie’s job at the Fur and Sang store, at least through your busy autumn season. Seeing what folks bring in to sell will give me an idea of what’s out
there, too. Cassie’s picked up some extra money taking Tyler Finch around for his photography—both for his company and his book.”

“Glad to hear that for her. Yeah, Mr. Finch asked to shoot some photos in the store and the museum. Won’t that be great to get some extra folks coming in to see the artifacts I have there, the history of Deep Down?”

“That will be great. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen them, either, but I’d like to.”

“You’re hired. Don’t pay much, but you’ll be easy to train since you been around sang all your life—well, mostly.”

“It’s a deal. Starting…?”

“You just come on in after you get settled, sooner, the better. ’Sides, I can use some help arranging my displays for Finch’s photos.”

“Excuse me. I see Cassie’s here. Pearl’s been ill, so I wasn’t sure Cassie would be around until tomorrow.”

She hurried to the front door and hugged her friend. Jessie could see over her shoulder that Drew was still outside, talking to people, right now Tyler and the Baptist minister, Pastor Wicker.

“Such terrible timing that Pearl would get sick during all this!” Cassie said as they stepped apart but kept their hands linked. “She was throwing up for a while, and now the fever finally broke.”

“I’m just praying she’s over whatever it was.”

“Yes, yes, she is, but she’s still not eating worth beans—you know what I mean. Oh, a closed casket.”

“I had to, and not just because of the cuts on her face. It just didn’t look like her. She’s not there.”

“Sure, sure, I understand. I’ll pay my respects, then me’n Pearl will both be with you for the funeral and the covered-
dish dinner tomorrow. But I got to tell you something first. See, Pearl’s at her friend Sarah Castor’s till Tyler drives me back home. Right now, Tyler’s telling Drew something Charity Semple told us, and I figured I’d better let you know ’fore he comes steaming in here. Drew, I mean.”

Jessie glanced again over her friend’s shoulder. Whatever Tyler had told Drew had upset him for sure. “Tell me before he gets in here.”

“Charity says Junior got home yesterday afternoon. Peter Sung paid his bail in trade for a good price on the rest of their sang, which is being dug today. Junior was like to have gone crazy in that cell, and he’s still mad as can be ’bout you and Drew putting him there.”

17

J essie sat in the front row of the little church with Cassie and Pearl on one side and Vern, who seemed to have delegated himself as chief mourner, on the other. The slow, sweet sounds of the hymn “This Is My Father’s World” washed over her. She amazed herself that she still knew the words by heart. The Creator God had made a lovely world, but someone in it had killed her mother.

In the traditional last viewing of the body before the pallbearers carried the coffin to the front of the sanctuary, with Cassie and Drew at her side, Jessie had placed a spray of ginseng in her mother’s hands, then closed the coffin lid so it could be bolted down. Drew, Cassie and little Pearl now seemed the closest thing she had to a family. Cassie had her arm around Jessie’s waist. Drew stood close but at attention in full dress uniform—gold braid, brass buttons, striped trousers, sharp pressed jacket—as if he were a marine again and not a small town sheriff. She was especially grateful that Drew was sticking tight because they’d had a big blowup at breakfast, after he’d spent a second nervous night on her sofa.

She wanted to work with Drew, assist him, but he’d lost
his temper when she’d told him at breakfast this morning that she’d decided to finish her mother’s sang count.

“Are you crazy!” he’d exploded after the mourners who’d stayed all night had left to get ready for the funeral. “Working at Tarver’s store is one thing, but I can’t let you go out into the forest like she did, where someone can get to you. I can’t play bodyguard for all that, much as I’d like to.”

“Drew, it’s the right thing to do. I’ve decided.”

“Hell, you can just undecide. It’s the dangerous thing to do. If someone meant to stop her sang counts, you’d be a magnet for murder, too.”

“Obviously, I can only do a partial count this late, maybe a week’s worth of representative sites. I hope to get some of her old notes from her boss in Frankfort. I’ll get Cassie and Tyler to go along, if they can spare the time. I’ll pay for a babysitter for Pearl. I’m sure Tyler would like photos of sang in some of the deep coves for his book.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Drew, I want to cooperate, but I’m not in a witness protection program or something. You’re not my keeper or my hus—never mind.”

He’d jumped up from the table, stalked to her side of it and bent, stiff-armed down to rant right in her face. “Never mind? Listen, Dr. Lockwood, I’m not staking you out like—like some kind of poor little goat that—”

“Goat?” she’d cried and jumped up so as not to be at a disadvantage to his height, which she still was. Hands on her hips, she’d faced him down.

“Yeah,” he had gone on, gesturing wildly, “a scapegoat, waiting for a dinosaur to lunge out of the jungle to devour it like in Jurassic Park.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Dinosaur? I think Tyler’s
monster photo—which could be fabricated, for all I know about him—is warping your mind.”

“Right. You don’t know much about Tyler, do you? So you’re going to let him play bodyguard for you in the woods? With what? His camera?”

“Look, Sheriff Webb, I’m doing this for my mother and for Deep Down citizens who rely on the sang money. This isn’t about your investigation, and it’s not in your bailiwick or jurisdiction.”

Looking back on their yelling match, she realized now that was their first fight and maybe not their last. Still, he’d stuck by her today, his hand on her elbow from time to time, his eyes watching the mourners.

Her friends from Lexington sat a few rows behind her. Driving two cars, they’d come laden with lab equipment, her clothes and personal items. Her refrigerator contained vials of breast cancer cells now. Though she hadn’t been away from her friends for more than two weeks, they seemed almost foreign to her. How long should she stay here in her other, earlier life? Or was this her real life now?

Jessie stared at the polished wood of the coffin with the spray of white roses atop it. She had not wanted to use Peter Sung’s flowers, though they were holding up well and still sat on Seth’s carved tree trunk at her house. On either side of the coffin, vases of fresh sang plants Seth had cut stood silent sentinel. She had not wanted him to feel ostracized, despite the fact Drew had said people in town were starting to blame the old man for her mother’s murder. Trying to keep her mind on the soloist’s lovely rendition of “The Lord’s Prayer,” her gaze drifted to the big arrangement of the exotic birds of paradise that Mariah’s boss, Frank Redmond, had brought.

Frank had stood, and was singing away in a good bass voice, just across the aisle from Jessie. Frank was the state’s official ginseng controller for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which, under the Endangered Species Act, determined whether the harvesting of wild ginseng could continue. He’d been thrilled to hear Jessie would do even a partial count. Unlike Drew’s reaction, Frank had cried, “You’re a godsend!” Arriving at the same time at the church, they had stood by Frank’s car as they talked. At forty-something, he was stocky and pale with a balding forehead and eyeglasses with invisible rims that made his eyes seem to pop.

“Since you said her current records are missing,” he’d said, “I’ll send her notes from the last couple of years to give you an idea of where to look. She included some notations of environs, like cove, hillside, maple cluster. I know this isn’t the time, Jessica, but I’ve got to tell you, the Chinese consulate, as well as scientists and health food corporations, have been hounding me for a couple of days. They’re scared to death that if I cross out the word not in the report, so it reads that the next harvest will be detrimental to the survival of the species, it will halt a multimillion dollar industry and tick off a lot of people. On the other hand, environmental groups, including the Appalachian Ginseng Foundation, are pressing for a low count to protect the future of the herb.”

“Mother told me all one hundred and twenty Kentucky counties, except for those with the big urban areas of Lexington and Louisville, have wild ginseng. Could you do without Lowe County’s records for one year?”

“No way, I’m afraid. Lowe County is the canary down in the mine, the bellwether for wild Kentucky ginseng.
You know,” he told her, leaning closer and glancing around as if he were about to share top secret information, “in places where the ginseng economy crashes, some locals are finally letting the hated loggers in just to keep financially afloat. With these stunning, hardwood forests on these hills and mountains, I wouldn’t like to see that happen here, so I hope you’ll get a decent count.”

She thought of the government road surveyor Ryan Buford. Drew had told her he planned road widening, and Seth had said the man “looked at trees with hungry eyes.” So who would profit from some logging on wilderness lands around here if the sang market crashed?

She was about to ask Frank’s opinion on that, but their conversation was cut short when Beth Brazzo, heading up the church walk, spotted her and hurried over. She didn’t wear her usual jogging attire, but a dark-green pantsuit with a plaid scarf pinned to her shoulder.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she began, turning to Jessie, “but someone said you’re going to continue the ginseng count. That’s fabulous, and I’m sure you’ll find a healthy crop of it out there!”

Jessie introduced Frank as a friend of her mother’s, hoping Beth wouldn’t learn who he was and pounce on him. “Vern Tarver must have told you of my decision to do the count,” Jessie said to her. After her fight with Drew this morning, she knew he wasn’t the one who’d been the messenger. “Yes, in her honor, I want to finish what my mother began.”

“A lovely way to think of it,” Beth cried, gripping her big hands together as if in prayer. Her huge gold hoop earrings bounced each time she talked. “See, that’s the truth of ‘deep down satisfaction,’ our new advertising
motto. Listen, I don’t want to hold you up on this sad day, but I just wanted to tell you that I would be happy to go along to help count ginseng in the next few days or so before my ad shoot team gets here—carry your gear, or whatever. Please, just let me know if I can help. I’m staying at Audrey Doyle’s B and B. So, Mr. Redmond, you were a friend of Mariah Lockwood’s?”

Although Jessie felt she was leaving poor Frank in a lioness’s den, she excused herself and went inside. Behind her, she could hear Beth giving the man her hard sell on her ginseng-and caffeine-laced power drinks. No, her first impression of the woman had been right. “Brazzo the brazen” was too assertive and ambitious, and Jessie didn’t like or trust her. Despite what a strong physical specimen Beth was, she was not desperate enough to take her out in the woods to help count sang.

Now, with the creaking of the old wooden pews as everyone sat after singing, Pearl, perched between her and Cassie, reached over to take Jessie’s hand. The gesture brought tears to her eyes. Kids seemed to get sick and then well so fast. Her bout with the virus had drained the usual vitality from the child but she was still sweet little Pearl.

Pastor Wicker’s opening words of comfort and encouragement about her mother’s life and the Christian life drew her back to the service. He read from Psalms, her mother’s favorite book of the Bible, “‘As for man, his days are like grass. As a flower of the field, so he flourishes, for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.’ But many of us here will remember Mariah Lockwood, who moved so gracefully among us and through the forests, who loved the very grasses of the fields, the rich
bounty of our woods, which she counted to protect the ginseng. The Lord ‘causes the grass to grow…and vegetation for the service of man, that He may bring forth food from the earth.’ And, in Mariah’s case, the precious ginseng vegetation she tended brings forth medicines and supplements to strengthen the bodies of men and women.”

Pearl whispered to Jessie, and she bent closer to hear, “I should have some more vegetables, then, and my teddy you gave me should, too, ’cause I think the secret forest food he ate chopped up made him sick.”

Jessie nodded and squeezed the little hand tighter as another hymn began. She wasn’t sure she’d heard what the child said correctly, because she understood none of the babbling, but out of the mouths of babes…

The service slipped past and was over. Everyone stood as the steeple bell began to toll and the six pallbearers, including Vern, carried the coffin out. The pastor followed, then Jessie, Cassie and Pearl. The pews emptied behind them in order.

As she walked slowly out, Jessie noted Charity Semple was sitting partway back, without Junior. Jessie nodded at Seth, who sat on a chair in the far eastern corner, by himself. And why was Emmy Enloe, who had known her mother well, sitting so far back in the shadows by the exit on the west side? Maybe, she thought, it was because she was with Ryan Buford. Drew had said that Audrey Doyle, who was sitting much farther up, probably thought she owned Buford since he was rooming at her B and B. Drew seemed to steer clear of the sexy owner of the Soup to Pie, except to get some meals, and there was little choice about where to eat in Deep Down. She’d meant to question Drew more about his mentioning Buford and Cassie in the same
breath; Cassie, whispering to Pearl, didn’t even look Buford’s way. Maybe she hadn’t seen him.

By the back door, standing at attention, Drew waited as if guarding the entire congregation. Their eyes met, held; they looked away. She felt sad they’d had that argument over her sang count, today of all days. The bell tolled on as the procession turned and started up Cemetery Hill. Everyone seemed to step to its sonorous clang, clang. When she was a kid, youngsters who had memorized Bible verses got to ring that bell on Sunday mornings. It wasn’t the piercing tone they’d loved, so much as how, when you were little, the rope almost yanked you off the ground after you’d rung it.

And then Jessie noted Peter Sung was standing outside the fence at the edge of the cemetery, beyond the oldest graves. Since she’d put on her sunglasses, she wasn’t certain he saw her staring at him, but he gave a stiff, formal half bow, then walked down the path toward the parked cars and trucks. She wondered if Drew had confronted him yet about springing for Junior Semple’s bail. Pulling her gaze away, she wound her way up the center cemetery path amid the tombstones of Deep Down’s dead.

Dead…her mother was dead. Still, she couldn’t believe it. So sudden, so cruel, so unfair. But she’d find justice for her. With or without Drew, she would find the murderer.

She felt bad again about arguing with Drew. She knew he was feeling short-tempered because he hadn’t found Junior Semple, despite the fact his wife had claimed he was out in the woods somewhere, overseeing Peter’s diggers. For all Drew knew, the guy was guilty of more than using poison varmint sticks.

Despite her jumbled emotions over their fight, Jessie
believed she’d held up well today. But seeing the new grave gaping open next to her father’s headstone, seeing the pallbearers slide the coffin onto heavy leather straps so it could be lowered—her knees almost buckled.

Drew’s hand came hard and sure on her elbow. “Do you want to sit down?” he whispered. “I can get you a chair.”

“Thanks. I’m okay.”

He nodded. From the pastor, he took the shovel that those closest to the deceased would use to place soil onto the casket once it was lowered. It slowly descended with a winch one of the deacons worked. The straps were pulled up, so the coffin lay below, alone.

Jessie stared at the shovel when Drew handed it to her. Someone had evidently thought it appropriate to use a sang spade. Her hands trembling, she shoved the sharp tool into the pile of loose, reddish soil, lifted and dropped a spray of it onto the coffin. A hollow thud.