Tin City Tinder (A Boone Childress Mystery) (18 page)

He was wrong, but I decided not argue. It was a waste of oxygen.

“What’s this trip to the museum for?” Lamar said.

“Research.”

“I figured that much. What kind of research?”

“North Carolina History class.”

“Extra credit?”

“Something like that,” I said. “What’s your errand for?”

“I’m meeting with the captain of the Atamasco VFD. We’re going to discuss personnel.”

6

Lamar dropped me near the entrance of Atamasco Farms. Like Dr. Echols said in class, Atamasco had thrived more than the other towns, and it was obvious even from the small collection of buildings that have been preserved. It was also obvious because Atamasco was still a small but growing town near the highway, while Tin City was a graveyard.
 

Literally.

I surveyed the house. It was in excellent shape even after fifty years. Clapboard siding, small porch, double hung windows freshly painted. An aluminum roof, a modernized version of the tin ones those once were ubiquitous in the county. A two hundred and fifty gallon propane tank stood nearby.

Mrs. Yarbrough met me at the front of the museum, which was a renovated homestead farmhouse expanded to include a collection of artifacts. She led me to a small library in the back.

“These will get you started.” She pulled several books from the shelves. “I realized when you left the library that I failed to provide the information you needed. Make yourself at home, and I’ll make myself scarce. But before I do, let me give you a history lesson.”

I checked my watch and hoped it was a short lesson.

According to Mrs. Yarbrough, Allegheny County was a land of sleepy ambition. It started life as part of a neighboring county, until it split off following the civil war. The new county was named in honor of Confederate General Codsworth Allegheny. After several failed attempts, the county seat was created in Galax, a dot on the map that grew slightly larger with the building of a courthouse and nearby jail. Allegheny grew tobacco, and the county begrudgingly grew with it.

Then the unthinkable happened. King Tobacco lost its crown. It was not a coup d’état, no quick overthrow and seizure of power. It began slowly, with the US government’s tightening hold on allotments, with subsidies that made it more profitable not to grow tobacco than to grow it. Finally, it was the creation of the Golden Leaf Foundation, which was funded with the billions that cigarette companies were forced to pay. The Golden Leaf was intended to change the way tobacco farmers farmed, but it also included buyouts for farmers unwilling or unable to adapt.
 

The beneficiaries were a new breed of carpetbaggers called developers. They bought huge tracts of land from farmers. Allegheny County awoke from its long slumber to a frenzy of neighborhoods being built across the county line.
 

As those homes sold, the building expanded up the highways, hopscotching between existing farms to the land that had been sold out. Eventually, the frenzy found its way across the county, where it petered out on Highway Twelve near Tin City. It appeared the western part of the county had escaped the sprawl, until the NC State Transportation Department announced a new highway bypass.

That’s when the real buying frenzy began.

Developers who had concentrated on the coast turned their eyes to the family farms that blanketed the area covered by the proposed corridor, huge plots of land that made them drool. But the gold rush ended before it really began. Most of the deeds for the property surrounding the corridor had never been registered. Over the generations the land was left to children then grandchildren and then their own grandchildren. Ownership was so murky, no one knew who really owned what.

“That means the land will stay undeveloped,” I said.

“Not so fast,” Mrs. Yarbrough said. “North Carolina has a little provision called unencumbered interest, which allows the court to grant one part-owner the right to buy everyone else’s shares.”

“Whether they like it or not?”

“That would be correct. All you need is capital.”

“That doesn’t sound fair to me. The rich owner exploiting the rest of them.”

“Welcome to North Carolina, Boone.”

“Too bad.” I checked my watch again. “It’s a moot point, because nobody living in Tin City or Nagswood has the cash to buy that much land.”

She smiled wryly. “Why would it have to be someone living there?”

“What do you mean?”

“I have several connections with Tin City, and I’m not the only faculty member who does. This is a library, and it’s full of information. Perhaps you should look into it.”

For the next half hour, I poured over the materials. I found that the farming homesteads were created under the separate program, but they were dramatically different. Atamasco was a social experiment by a Winston cotton baron who had diversified into electricity, railroads, and later, aerospace.

During the Depression, the coot baron bought one square mile of farmland in central Allegheny County and then sponsored hundreds of Polish immigrants to settle the farms. Skilled laborers and farmers, they helped build a utopian farm village, complete with homes, stores, slaughterhouses, and granaries—everything a town needed to be self-sufficient. The baron then used his political clout with the Democratic machine to sell the idea of homestead farms to the Roosevelt administration. The government bought in, the Baron cashed out, and the community survived.

The same wasn’t true of the other three homesteads. Logging tycoon E.D.S. Landis tried to replicate the Atamasco experiment by selling three one thousand acre tracts of timberland to the government, creating Tin City, Nagswood, and Black Oak Hill by recruiting poor residents from other parts of the Carolinas. Some farms succeeded, but most failed, and the government sold off the land at auction.

“Mrs. Yarbrough?” I closed the last book, collected my notes, and ventured toward the front door. “I’m ready to go.”

She opened the front door. “Hope you found everything you were looking for.”

“Sort of,” I said. “I was hoping for some more, though. The farmhouses that burned down in Tin City and Nagswood, for example."

“Oh?” Her ears perked up. “Were those houses built for the homestead programs?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “’They look a lot like this house, except they were two stories.”

She clicked her tongue. “Why, that would be just terrible.”

“Why?”

“Because if they were homestead houses, they would be historical landmarks. Destroying them is not only illegal, it is immoral, as well. I hope they catch whoever did it.”

“Did what?”

“Burned them to the ground, of course, along with that poor woman, may she rest in peace. Don’t look so shocked, Boone, this is a small town. Word travels fast among the blue haired set.” Her eyes twinkled. “Good luck with whatever direction your journey leads you.”

7

I was reviewing my Atamasco notes when I reached the Atamasco Volunteer Fire Department. The firefighters were washing down the pumper and doing an equipment check.

“Hey, it’s the possum,” one of them yelled. “Save any more wild critters, Possum?”

I waved, playing along with the joke. If I objected, I would never hear the end of it. Like sailors, firefighters busted one another’s chops pretty hard. It came with the territory.

The Atamasco station was a brand new building, with six bays downstairs, sleeping quarters on the second floor, and the captain’s office to the side.
 

It was there that I found Lamar.

I took a seat in the bench outside the captain’s office. The door was half open, and since the building was all steel and concrete, the sound of their voices carried.

“What a firefighter does on his own time is his own business,” the captain said. “Especially a vollie. I ain’t saying that I approve, mind you. It’s just that he’s got some old fashioned notions.”

“Old fashioned?” Lamar said. “You’re saying that these notions don’t keeping him from doing his job.”

“I believe that’s what I just said.”

“That woman who died in Nagswood might argue with you.”

“We settled this problem on the site, Lamar.”

“That was before the body was found. My stepson heard her screaming. I’m wondering why Loach didn’t.”

“What exactly are you hinting at?” The captain raised his voice. “That my vollies had something to do with it?”

“I ain’t hinting—I’m saying it.” Lamar’s chair scrapped across the floor. “In this envelope is a formal complaint against your company for dereliction of duty, refusal to render aide, and endangering the safety of a fellow volunteer.”

The other captain’s chair scraped on the concrete, too. “Lamar, you want to think about this good and hard before you go after Eugene. He’s got friends, and this is a small town. Remember that.”

“Nobody knows that better than me,” Lamar said. “I hope other folks remember that, too.”
 

A couple of seconds later, Lamar came out of the office and walked right past me. His cap was pulled down over his eyes. He was staring at the ground, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket.

His truck was parked across the street underneath a row of oak trees. Lamar trotted out to the yellow line, waited for a car to pass and then crossed to the parking slot. The meter showed red, indicating that he had been in the fire station almost thirty minutes.

I paused to let several trucks pass. A Landis Logging Company semi sped by close to the side of the road, blowing dust and pine bark chips in its wake. Landis’ truckers were infamous speeders, but the deputies always looked the other way because of the name on the side.

The instant a break opened, I made a dash for it. Halfway across the highway, my cellphone started ringing.

“Terrific timing, Doc.” I answered. “A logging truck’s about to obliterate me.”

“I’ve got news.”

“Hang on.” I ducked behind an appliance delivery truck. “Did you read about the Nagswood victim? It said the medical examiner identified her.”

“Don’t believe everything you read,” Abner scoffed. “The finger you sent? The hyphenated lady ran some tests and found some interesting chemical compounds.”

“Like what?”
 

I peeked around the delivery truck. Lamar was kicked back in the cab of the truck, hat covering his face, the radio cranked. The sound of Molly Hatchet drifted down the street.

“She found alkali metal,” Doc said. “Sodium, to be exact.”

“Sodium?” I said. “Really.”
 

“A significant quantity was also found on the body of the Nagswood victim.”

“You won’t believe this.” I told him about the theft from the college lab. “Some coincidence, huh?”

“Good to know,” Abner said, “We can get together later to compare notes. Listen, Boone, I’ve got a job for you.”

“What kind of job?”

“Investigative work. You up to it?”

“What do you need me to do? Collect more physical evidence?”

“I want you to interview a man named Troy Blevins. He teaches band at your old high school.”

“Thought you’d want dirt on Eugene Loach.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He let Mrs. Vega die. Lamar filed a formal complaint against him for dereliction of duty. Loach has to be involved somehow.”

“Maybe he is. I still need you to ask this band teacher some questions.”

“Text me a list.”

“Already did. Check your phone.”

A patrol car rolled past me and hit its lights. It swung into the parking place a few slots ahead of Lamar. Deputy Mercer climbed out. He wore the same mirrored sunglasses and carried a ticket book tucked under his arm.

“Got to go, Doc,” I said. “There’s a situation here. Anything else?”

“Just one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I need you to draw five hundred dollars out of my bank account and bring it down to Galax tomorrow morning.”

“Five hundred bucks? What for?”

“Bail money,” he said, sounding very pleased with himself. “I’m in the Allegheny County jail.”

8

Before I had hung up, Abner admitted he was locked up for interfering with a police investigation. He wouldn’t go into details, except that there was no need to hurry because the arraignment wouldn’t happen until morning. I agreed to wait, even though I hated the idea of leaving him in a cell overnight.

When I got back to the truck, Mercer was finishing a parking ticket and a noise ordinance violation.
 

“Wait just a cotton picking minute,” Lamar told him. “You’re a county deputy. You can’t write me up for a city ordinance.”

“Tell it to the judge.”

“We’re both in public service,” Lamar said, his voice rising. “How about a little professional courtesy?”

“Professional courtesy is for professionals.” Mercer clicked his ink pen. “You volunteers ain’t real firemen. Just overgrown boys playing with your hoses.”

Mercer sauntered back to the prowler and pulled right in front of a logging truck, which had to lay on its brakes to keep from pancaking him.

“Almost wish that truck had kept going,” Lamar said when I got in and he pulled out behind the logging truck. “I’ve got to talk with Hoyt about that boy. Power’s gone to his head.”

“Mercer knows how to spread the love around,” I said.

Lamar clicked the radio on. A commercial was playing for a new development, Autumn Hills, the same one that I had seen in Landis’s office.

Lamar shook his head. “Building in the flood plain. Hope they know how to swim.”

“Isn’t that illegal? How did they get the permits?”

“Autumn Hills Development Company has Trey Landis on the board. That’s the only permit they needed.”

“I thought Mom was the family cynic.”

“When you’re born and bred in Allegheny County, it ain’t cynicism. It’s called the Way Things Work.”

I leaned forward to turn the volume lower when an Emergency Broadcast System message came in.

“Authorities in Allegheny County,” the computer-generated voice said, “have issued a Silver Alert for Henry James Meeks. Last seen in Galax North Carolina wearing overalls and a light blue shirt. Anyone knowing his whereabouts, contact the Allegheny County Sheriff’s Office.”