Morgan James - Promise McNeal 02 - Quiet Killing (27 page)

I called Daniel again, left a message on his cell phone to call Sheriff Mac, and put on my L.L. Bean boots. As I pulled on my jacket and shoved a flashlight into the pocket, the fog registered with me like a stone dropping into the hollow of my stomach. How could I walk out into that shadowy mist? I would be so exposed. God knows what could be hiding out there. Maybe I should wait for a sheriff’s deputy. But what if the deputy didn’t get there for an hour, or two hours? I opened the kitchen door for a closer look at the fog. Okay, it wasn’t exactly London pea soup. I could see the goats beginning to mill around in the pasture.

Alfie whined at my side and did a little two-step dance. He was ready to go, fog or no fog. “Well, all
right big guy. We’ll do it, but no barking and stay close to me. No running off to reconnoiter on your own. We’ll only get close enough to see what’s going on. Then let the Sheriff do his job. You got that?” The coonhound bolted outside as soon as I unlatched the screen door, then settled down next to me as soon as we were feeling our way across the yard.

Fog is sneaky. It not only distorts space, because you can see only what is immediately in front of your face, it also distorts time. With no reference point of where you started or how far you’ve come, time seems to bend, stretches out or tightens up, depending on visibility. That’s why I think I was surprised at how soon I stepped out of the pine thicket dividing my property from Fletcher’s and stepped into the cleared yard running beside his garage. To my right, Hubert was leaning over Fletcher’s pasture fence giving me the disgusted goat eye as he chewed his cud. Alfie trotted over to say hello; Hubert stomped the ground politely to return the greeting.

When I looked left, a breeze was blowing the fog up and scattering it against the side of the house. Soon the fog would be only a memory as the wind carried it out of the valley. I hurried to the back of the garage and knelt down against the wood siding, out of sight of the house, only to find the prowler’s flashlight beam escaping from the garage window just above where I crouched. Since I was at convenient doggie level, Alfie came over and licked me in the face. Big help!

From inside the garage, two voices drifted through the partially open window. One asked the other if he’s found anything. He replied, “Hell, no.” The first one
answered that maybe it was all told or maybe he said sold. It was difficult to hear. While I was stoking up enough courage to stand up and peak through the window, I heard the garage door being lowered. They must have gone outside. I prayed they were headed back to the house, or to the driveway, and not to the rear of the garage.

Alfie was quiet and seemed content with my squatting on the cold morning ground so he could give me slobbery kisses. He sat and waited for what other treats this new game would bring. I peaked around the corner of the garage a couple of times. The lights in the house were still on, but as curious as I was, I couldn’t see a way to cross the cleared distance between the garage and the house without the prowlers being able to see me. I decided to listen and wait.

After what seemed like hours, a hand lightly grasped my shoulder from behind. I don’t know what sound I swallowed to keep from screaming, but trying not scream caused me to sit down hard on my butt and roll over on the ground. Daniel reached down and helped me stand up. “Promise. Why are you hiding behind Fletcher’s garage?”

I swatted him on the arm and whispered, “Don’t scare me like that. Why do you think I’m over here? Didn’t you get my message?”

His smirking smile was proof that he enjoyed finding me hiding like a mouse in a hole. He whispered back. “Yes, I got your message. Why are we whispering?”

“We are whispering, you big fool, because there are two prowlers around somewhere, and we don’t want them to hear us. Hush. I hear a car.”

“Hush, yourself. I’m not the one talking.”

We peered around the corner of the garage. A vehicle had pulled into Fletcher’s driveway. By now, only errant strings of fog remained, making it easy to read the Perry County Sheriff’s logo on the side of the vehicle. Sheriff Mac was one of the two men who exited the Ford Bronco; the young deputy I’d seen at Fletcher’s accident was the other. Daniel and I stepped out into the open yard. Mac motioned for us to stay put. In two seconds the deputy was out of sight—maybe going to the front door?

Mac walked toward us then turned to the rear of the house and approached the back door. With his revolver drawn, he opened the kitchen door and pushed it hard against the inside wall. The door made a
thwack
sound as it hit sheetrock, rebounded, and nearly shut itself. No sound followed. He called out, “Come on out. It’s the sheriff. We got both doors covered.” We waited. Still no sound. Mac eased the door open again and went inside. We waited some more.

Finally, Mac came out of the house and walked over to us. “Nobody in the house,” he announced. “Tossed it up pretty bad, looks to me like they were hunting for something in particular, not just ransacking for anything to sell. No idea if anything was taken. Man-o-man, I sure hate to lay this on Fletcher, on top of the accident, and The Red Bird being just about a total loss.”

Now that the Sheriff brought up the subject, my curiosity kicked in again. “Were you able to tell if someone deliberately caused the accident?”

The young deputy joined us and Mac answered, “If you call somebody sawing the brake line about
halfway through a cause, then I reckon I’d have to say, yeah, someone deliberately caused the accident.”

“But Sheriff, how would that someone know that Fletcher was driving The Red Bird over to Waynesville?”

The young deputy huffed up tall and grinned. Mac turned to him and said, “Go ahead, before you bust a gut, tell’em how you solved that mystery.”

Without hesitation, the deputy told his story. “Yes ma’am. The sheriff was asking that same question. But you see, I read the Asheville paper every day. There was a piece a week or so ago on classic hot rods and how Fletcher and some other old guys were bringing their restored cars to Asheville the end of the month for a parade. Don’t remember the exact date, but anyhow, if a body read the paper, they’d know old Fletcher was going over Cowee Mountain pretty soon. Looks like whoever was wanting him over the side of the mountain got their wish early, with a little help from a saw edged knife.”

Mac flicked his thumb toward the deputy. “You can tell he’s pretty proud about knowing that little piece of information. Being the big town newspaper reader that he is.”

I resisted being a smartass and saying:
wonderful, that certainly narrows the field of suspects. Now all we have to do is check out everyone who reads the Asheville paper
. Who in the world would want to hurt Fletcher? And why? Did his mumbling about trespassers after the accident have something to do with the who part? Were the prowlers wielding flashlights in the early morning fog Fletcher’s trespassers?

“All right, back to business,” Mac said, pointing at his deputy. “You, go on inside and see if you can lift some decent fingerprints. I’ll take Miz Promise’s statement.”

After a yes sir, and a half salute, the deputy went back to the house, leaving Daniel and me alone with Sheriff Mac. I told him about lights going on, then off in Fletcher’s house, seeing a flashlight beam through the fog, and hearing two male voices talking in the garage. “You know, what I didn’t hear was a vehicle driving away. Did you hear anyone drive away, Daniel?”

Daniel answered, “No. No vehicle. Not until Mac drove in. They were probably gone by the time I got here.”

“Could have parked a ways down the road and walked in,” Mac said and reached for the two-way radio transmitter clipped to his shirt. It awakened with static like angry bees. “Pam, you there? I need units around Fells Creek to be on the lookout for two suspicious males in a vehicle.” Through the static, Pam replied with a remark I didn’t understand, but Mac obviously did. “Yeah, I know, half of Perry County. Very funny. No, don’t have a make on the vehicle. Just put out the request. We might get lucky. Thanks.”

Almost immediately after Mac disconnected, his radio crackled alive again. He connected with, “Go ahead.” Over the bee buzz a voice said something about calling Mrs. Allen. An emergency. “Affirmative.” He signed off and complained, “I don’t know what’s going on. Pam says MaMa’s hysterical. I gotta call her from the cell phone. It’s in the Bronco.”

We followed Mac to his car where he reached for the phone through the driver’s window and dialed Mrs. Allen. She did all the talking until he said, “I’m on my way,” and hung up. He tapped the silent phone several times against his chin and stared off into the distance, then shoved the phone into his jacket pocket and commanded with all the authority his office demanded, “Stay.” Daniel and I looked at each other and stayed. Alfie, who was already doing a brilliant job of staying by leaning against my right knee, continued to follow orders. We watched Mac sprint into Fletcher’s house calling out for his deputy.

Daniel, knowing his cousin like a brother, reassured me there was a good reason why we were told to remain where we were. “Mac’s getting a plan together.”

Before I could ask: A plan for what? Mac emerged from the house. “Daniel, you ride with me. Promise, go home and call Susan. We need her. MaMa says a man and a woman came to the house and tried to take Missy, then hightailed it. I’ll put a BOLO out on them when I get more information, but right now we got a bigger problem. Missy ran off. MaMa’s searched everywhere close to the house. She’s afraid the child’s headed up on Fire. I don’t have enough deputies to comb the whole dang mountain. Especially today. That means we all hunt.”

I was thinking Nan and Pokey Fantell were probably the would-be kidnappers and Missy was running from them, but we didn’t have time to chat and speculate. “Mac, Mrs. Allen says that child knows the woods better than any of us do. Why the panic? Is she hurt?”

Mac was getting into the Bronco as he answered. “Not yet. MaMa says she’s wearing her pink teddy-bear pajamas and yellow rain boots. No jacket. Maybe you didn’t hear the weather this morning. Temperature’s going to drop like a rock during the day. We’re in for six, maybe eight, inches of snow by dark. Wait at the house for me to call. We’ll divide the mountain into sections. No use in all of us covering the same piece of ground. Let’s go cousin.”

Daniel gave my hand a quick squeeze and got into the passenger side, just as Mac backed up to turn around. He waved as they spun gravel in Fletcher’s driveway. Six, maybe eight, inches of snow in the last week of March? Welcome to the Western North Carolina Mountains.

25

There is helplessness in waiting. Adrenaline pumping. Ready to fight. Hands tied until a clock you have no control over chimes the hour. Susan was dressed for the cold in a down parker, sensible boots, and Tashi Sherpa hat, complete with earflaps and multi-colored tassels. My outer gear wasn’t quite as stylish, but we were both ready for Mac’s prediction of snow. She paced the same route on my kitchen floor that her dad had covered a couple of nights before when she decided to play detective over in Hiawassee. I picked up the phone about forty times to make sure it was working. Still no call from Mac.

“We should go on and head up the mountain,” she said.

“Let’s wait a little longer. Mac is right. It makes no sense for all of us to cover the same ground.”

She took her coat and hat off and tossed them across a chair at the kitchen table. “If you were her, which way would you go? Where would you hide?”

I’d been chasing the same questions around and around in my head. Fire was a small mountain by comparison to Standing or Wayah, but there was still enough forest and brush to swallow a little girl forever. From my effort to climb the upper ridge through tangles of laurel, I’d learned my side of the mountain wasn’t the easiest climb. I wasn’t sure how heavy the growth was on Mrs. Allen’s side, but we knew Missy and Mrs. Allen had climbed to the plateau where January’s cabin stood. I’d seen them on the terrible day when the Georgia convict attacked me. Was that day really less than two weeks ago? How could that be? So much had happened since then….the phone finally rang.