Morgan James - Promise McNeal 02 - Quiet Killing (22 page)

Walking back to the house, I remembered I had ice cream in my grocery bag. Daniel opened the gate of the goat yard to let me through. I fast walked to the porch, talking to him over my shoulder as I opened the kitchen door. He followed. “Thanks. Come on in. I forgot I had ice cream.”

“By your scowl, I’d say Fletcher managed to piss you off.”

“Nothing new about that.” I put the groceries away and refilled the cats’ crunchy bowl in the utility room. Cat and Junior rubbed against my legs in appreciation. Cats are so much less complicated than people.

Daniel got a beer out of the refrigerator and motioned an offer to me. I shook my head no. Didn’t want beer clouding up my head. He opened the cap, took a swallow, and looked pleased. “Those Mexicans make some good beer, don’t they?” It was a rhetorical question. No answer needed. “So tell me what you said to set Fletcher off.”

Why does it always have to be something
I say
to set Fletcher off? I put water on for tea and sat down at the table across from him. “Fletcher said he had to take The Red Bird to Waynesville tomorrow. Is he talking about that old car he used to run moonshine?”

A look of ecstasy, like my son, Luke, had as a kid when he fondled the latest Transformer toys at Target, nestled on Daniel’s face.

“The Red Bird. Yes ma’am, that’s what she’s named, on account of her being candy apple red and pretty much able to fly. 1937 Ford coupe, 3.6 liter, V8 flat head, engine. That was before Fletcher souped her up. No revenue man ever caught up with him in that baby. Got that sexy V-shape front grill and small rear window. Looks like she wants to roar. Every boy in Perry County knows that car. Set up to run a thousand pounds of shine, back when the Enloe brothers did that for a living. Now she’s show quality. Real beauty. Cost about eight hundred-fifty dollars back in the day.
Now she’s worth about thirty-five thousand. Pristine shape.”

“Umm. Fascinating. Sounds like a guy thing. We didn’t really talk much about the car. I was trying to quiz him about the story that Lewis Redmond hid gold over here in Perry County. Figured he would know about it, being the old gossip that he is.”

“Is this about the Lewis Redmond book Mac’s boys found with Shane Long’s body?”

“Yes. I can’t get the idea out of my mind that there is some connection between Redmond being mentioned in the letter Mrs. Allen gave me and Shane reading the book.”

“Do you think Shane saw the letter and jumped to the conclusion that Redmond’s wife was hauling gold in the wagon along with your great grandmother Reba?”

Daniel is quicker than I sometimes give him credit for being. “I don’t know. Maybe. The thought had crossed my mind. Though it does seem a little unlikely, doesn’t it? Fletcher insists everyone around here knows there was no Redmond gold. Also, Mrs. Allen doesn’t recall showing Shane the letter.”

The kettle whistled and I got up to make my tea. “However, she does remember the Goddard twins coming over a couple of years ago looking for civil war memorabilia. They went through the suitcase, and probably read the letter.”

“And that means what? I don’t get it.”

Dunking the tea bag with more force than really necessary, I said, “I don’t get it either. The whole thing is making me crazy. Whirling around in my head like
top. I just know the twins and Shane were friends, and whenever the Goddard twins are part of the deal, somebody is going to get screwed.”

“Don’t guess this has anything to do with you still being mad about the twins gulling you when you bought Granny’s?”

Alfie came to the door. I let him in and he plopped down beside Daniel’s chair. “Mad? Why do you think I’m still mad? The crooked twins led me to believe the store profits were legitimate, and then I find out the only reason they were turning any profit at all was because they were selling homegrown pot from the store. Why would I still be mad?”

Daniel smiled and raised his beer to me. “Then I’m proud of you for moving on with your life and not holding a grudge.”

Okay. He had me on that one. Maybe I was still mad.

“Well, let’s assume for a minute that you are right about the Goddard twins. You’re thinking maybe they told Shane Long there was gold up on Fire Mountain and that got him killed?”

“You mentioned Shane and the Goddard twins were friends. Maybe they told him the story about the gold. Then maybe someone else, also looking for the gold, saw him up on the mountain and killed him. Maybe there really is gold up there. I mean there has to be a reason someone picked up a rock and smashed Shane’s head in.”

“How would anyone even know he was up there?”

It only took me two seconds to answer that question. “He parked his new motorcycle on the turnout
down on Fells Creek Road, remember? I saw it parked there the day I went into town and when I came back. Anyone driving by who knew Shane would have recognized the new Harley.”

“True. You have a point there. Course, I hate to remind you that Mac has ordered you to stay out of the investigation. As soon as the state boys get an ID on the fingerprints they found, I’m sure the mystery will be solved.”

“I’m working on family history, not messing in his investigation. But what if they don’t identify the prints? Then there is a killer walking around free.”

Daniel reached over and tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “Yes, dear. I hear you.”

We sat in silence, me sipping tea and him finishing his beer, until another thought settled in his mind. “Speaking of history, I saw Rev. Kolb, Mr. Methodist History himself, in town today. He said he enjoyed meeting with you. I don’t think you finished telling me what you learned from him.”

I looked away from Daniel, toward the back door.

“You hear something in the yard?”

“No, just the wind. I…umm… it’s a long and complicated story.” I was shuffling through the answer cards in my mind, looking for just the right one to show Daniel.

He leaned back in the chair, locking his hands behind his head. “Promise, why do I have the same feeling I used to get when Susan was little, and she was concocting a wild story to get me off track?”

“I don’t know why you would say that. It’s a complicated story, that’s all.”

“Complicated? As in quantum physics? Something like that?”

“No, of course not. It’s just, well, I learned my great grandfather was somewhat eccentric. He was caught up in the turn of the century Pentecostal-Holiness movement. Speaking in tongues and all that.”

“Why is that complicated? Lots of mountain folks took a liking to what the holiness view of Christianity offered. Lots still do. Didn’t several churches split from the Methodist back then to preach the Pentecostal ideas?”

“Well, yeah, I guess. But it was more than that.”

“Like what?” When I didn’t answer immediately, Daniel teased, “Don’t tell me your great granddad was one of those snake handlers—carried a croaker sack full of rattlers in his buckboard.”

Having a snake handler in the family would have been easier for me to accept…maybe. Though, maybe not. I retreated to the kitchen counter, occupied myself with Alfie’s supper, mixing dry food with left over ground beef. Alfie was grateful, ate every morsel, and licked the bowl. Daniel wasn’t ready to give up the conversation.

“So, was old January a snake handler? Is that what you’re so defensive about?” The humor in his voice was lost on me, but he kept on. “Seems like you don’t trust me enough to tell me the whole story. That really hurts. Didn’t I trust you enough to follow you to Atlanta last year to trap that Angel person, based on nothing but your intuition? And didn’t I help you get her arrested? It was a cockamamie scheme, but I went along. You know snake handlers are still around. I saw
a PBS special about them not long ago. Weird stuff. It’s illegal in North Carolina, so they’ve all moved to Tennessee, supposedly.”

“For crying out loud Daniel, will you stop that? January wasn’t a snake handler. Can’t we just talk about something else?”

“Well we could, but now you’re so all fired determined not to tell me, my curiosity is up. Seriously, is what you found out so awful, you think I’d judge you by somebody in your family three generation back?”

I don’t know how Daniel can spend his days either with cows or undelivered mail and be so perceptive. That was exactly what I worried about—being measuring by my great grandfather’s behavior. If January was an over the edge zealot, and a grave robber, what did that make me?

Was I harboring some latent crazy-person gene? Or worse yet, how about my son, Luke? Maybe the latent crazy-person gene was responsible for him running around the world working for some secret governmental agency and telling me he works for Acadian Oil. No, I knew better than to chalk up any aberrant behavior the McNeals exhibit to latent genes. At least in Luke’s case. His father, my ex, Randall Barnes, the macho-man Atlanta cop, is the reason Luke would step up to the plate and volunteer for a dangerous job— anything to garner respect and admiration from his dad. Just the thought of Randall Barnes gave me acid reflux. How could I have been so wrong about him?

Daniel waited for me to explain, and by the determined set of his jaw, he’d continue to wait until I offered up something plausible. “Okay. He went
around town preaching about the Holy Spirit and The Second Coming…whatever. Apparently made a habit of interrupting church services to quote scripture and I don’t know what all else. From what Mr. Kolb says, he finally made such a nuisance of himself that he got arrested a couple of times. It seems one of his preaching points was no alcohol—a temperance man, it seems. No doubt that made him pretty unpopular in the land of corn liquor and apple brandy.”

“Sounds like a regular hardened criminal.”

“This isn’t funny. And it really does get complicated.”

“Okay. I’m listening.”

“Well, I think he was in jail when their first son died in a fire. Then he was off at a tent revival somewhere else in North Carolina when Reba died. The Sorley family—remember they raised Reba as their daughter—buried her in the Methodist cemetery before January got back to Perry County. I don’t know why, except he was about a hundred miles away, and they probably couldn’t reach him. It’s not like they had cell phones. And it was August, probably didn’t have fancy freezers in the funeral homes back then either— anyway, not long after that January was sort of asked to leave First Methodist Church.”

“Promise, slow down a second. That’s confusing. It also seems kind of harsh for Methodist folks. Not like the Methodists I know to turn a man out for street preaching against booze and attending a tent revival.”

It wasn’t fair to leave Daniel with such a negative impression of his Methodist brothers and sisters. Besides, he’d find out the whole story sooner or later anyway. While he waited for the other shoe to drop,
I poured hot water in my cup for a second cup of tea. As I reached for a tea bag from the cupboard, the cell phone beeped at me from the muffled depths of my purse. I dug the phone out, but hesitated before I hit the play voice mail message button. Might as well go ahead and own up to January’s misdeed.

“All right. If you insist on knowing, January wasn’t thrown out of the church for preaching. The church members, and probably the whole county, believed he dug up Reba’s coffin from the Methodist cemetery, along with the child who had died a couple of years before, and carried them up Fire Mountain. They asked him to leave the church because he was a grave robber. You satisfied now?” Daniel’s mouth dropped open. What was the word Susan used? Gobsmacked? That’s what Daniel looked like: gobsmacked.

I entered my password and Susan’s voice escaped into the kitchen. “Hey. It’s me. Listen, I tried to reach you, and Daddy. Neither of you are answering. When you see him, tell him what I found out about the circus fire, okay? I closed the store early. Decided to make a run over to Hiawassee and didn’t want to drive it in the dark. Who knows, maybe the Circus Fantell is still around. I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”

Daniel was up and out of his seat, grabbing the phone and punching in Susan’s cell number, before my mind could process her message. The phone immediately rolled over to voice mail, said the party was not available. She must be in a bad cell spot. Then her plans for going to Hiawassee dawned on me. She intended to drive over to the circus in Hiawassee and ask questions about a missing little girl with a talent for doing
handstands.
A bad idea
, the Shoulda-Woulda-Coulda Committee pronounced in my head. For once, I agreed with them.

Daniel’s daddy-radar was up and blinking red alert for danger. He waved the cell phone at me, as though I could coax more information from the tiny flat machine. “What the hell is she talking about?”

Oh crap. When it rains, it pours. I spent the next thirty minutes answering Daniel’s questions, retelling Susan’s theory about little Missy. He vacillated between wanting to charge out and follow Susan or not, and wore a path on the pine floor in the kitchen from pacing around. Finally, he called Sheriff Mac. Having a man-talk with his cousin calmed him down a bit, especially after Mac agreed to check out the Circus Fantell and the Knoxville fire; nevertheless, Daniel continued to dial Susan’s cell number every five minutes for the next two hours.

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