High Country Fall

Book 10: A Deborah Knott Mystery

by Margaret Maron

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Publishers' Weekly declares that the "leaves of autumn are in full splendor, and so is Maron's talent in her 10th Deborah Knott adventure."

Judge Knott is finally ready to marry her long-time friend Deputy Sheriff Dwight Bryant and settle down--or is she? She jumps at a chance to fill in for a judge in the high country of North Carolina. But ugly murder haunts the beauty of the Smoky Mountains.

Release date: July 31, 2007

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 320

Sample

AUGUST

Fog was so thick in the lower elevations that Dr. Carlyle Ledwig had his windshield wipers on the slowest setting to swish away the fat droplets that formed on the glass and obscured the road ahead. With visibility almost down to zero, he crept along at thirty-five miles an hour, though he often hit sixty on these straight stretches in nicer weather.

From beside him, Norman Osborne chuckled. “All you need’s an orange on your license plate and they’ll think you’re from Florida.”

Ledwig grinned “I am from Florida. Remember?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Well, from New York then.” The big man sat back in the passenger seat of Ledwig’s SUV as if he were lounging in his leather executive’s chair down in Howards Ford and looked over at his friend. Ledwig’s hair wasn’t nearly as gray as his, but neither of them was young anymore. “Driving in fog’s like a foretaste of senility, isn’t it?”

“How do you mean?”

“Can’t see behind you, can’t see ahead.”

“Not the worst way to be.”

Osborne gave a sour laugh. “You ever wonder what your old age is going to be like?”

“If I got my dad’s genes, I’ll be playing eighteen holes of golf twice a week at eighty-five, the way he still does. If I got my mom’s, I’m due for my first stroke any minute now.”

“Not before we get home, okay?” said Osborne. “I don’t want to wind up one of those car wrecks off the side of this mountain, where they don’t find us for eight or ten years.”

He was silent for a moment, as if contemplating what such a death would mean to his wife. Then he shrugged. “Ah, what the hell? Dead’s dead, isn’t it?”

“Maybe. But we’ve both got a whole lot of living left to do.”

At that instant, Ledwig drove out of the fog and into sunshine. Above, the sky was a cloud-dappled blue. The road flattened slightly and curved west. To the right, the shoulder dropped off into white nothingness; ahead, tall trees lined the street, and the first hints of autumn colors were beginning to spread their sheltering glory above the immaculate houses on the front edge of Cedar Gap. A huge maple caught the light so that every other leaf seemed veined in gold, but beyond that, a two-hundred-year-old oak was still completely green. It was a scene right off one of the postcards sold in the souvenir shops along Main Street.

“God, I love this town!” said Ledwig.

“It gets prettier every year,” Osborne agreed.

“Worth every battle we had to fight,” Ledwig said complacently, remembering all the hours both of them had devoted over the years to getting a planning board in place. They’d had to twist a few arms and make a few enemies to convince local businesses to agree to some rules and restrictions for the greater good of Cedar Gap, but this was their reward: a prosperous and picturesque town whose beauty drew thousands of visitors from early spring to late fall, a mountain jewel whose desirability extended to enclaves of expensive vacation homes in the surrounding hills and hollows.

In gardens behind the low stone walls, summer’s zinnias had begun to fade while fall’s blue asters and clear yellow chrysanthemums headed for their bright peak. The houses became larger and closer together. Small green wooden signs neatly lettered in gold announced that here was an antique store, there was an upholstery shop selling designer fabrics, and over there, three Victorian bed-and-breakfasts in a row. So discreet were the signs, one could almost forget that these were now commercial establishments, no longer private homes.

Ledwig rounded the curve where Main Street formally began and his complacent smile darkened into a scowl as it always did the moment he saw that dilapidated log building on the right with its raucous red-and-white decorations that would clash horribly with fall’s oranges and browns when leaf season began. The shabby cedar siding, the rusting drink signs, the broken paving of the parking strip out front—everything about the place irritated him beyond all reason.

“Want to stop?” asked Osborne. “Make one more try?”

“That’s what you said last week,” said Ledwig, but already he was slowing and looking for somewhere to park.

The Trading Post was a blatant eyesore that sold fast food and tacky souvenirs. Like a slovenly old moonshiner who sits around in his dirty overalls and dribbles chewing tobacco on his yuppie daughter’s white carpet, the place was an embarrassment to the little town’s carefully cultivated image of taste and beauty, yet there was seldom an empty parking space around it. As if to mock him, a red Mercedes pulled out from the curb. Ledwig slammed on the brakes and immediately put on his turn signal to claim the spot. It took a little hauling and backing, but he eventually wedged his SUV into the tight slot.

“Remind me what our last offer was,” Osborne said as they stepped aside for a knot of tourists munching on hot dogs.

“A million-three,” said Ledwig.

“You game for a million-four?”

“Hell, we’re neither of us getting any younger. Try a million-five and let’s lean on him, tell him what we did to Sam Tysinger.”

For a moment, Osborne’s mind blanked, then he grinned. He’d always had an infectious smile and several of the tourists smiled back.

They found the elderly proprietor at the back of the store shelving plastic souvenir moonshiner jugs filled with honey from local bees. He wore a red plaid flannel shirt, bib overalls, and clodhopper shoes, in a deliberate parody of a flatlander’s conception of a mountain hillbilly. As they tendered their newest offer, he continued to shelve the honey with unconcealed impatience until Ledwig made a less than subtle reference to the planning board.

“You threatening me?” he snarled then.

“Not threatening, Simon,” said Dr. Ledwig. “Just pointing out that the town commissioners are not going to let this situation go on forever.”

“I was grandfathered in,” Simon Proffitt said, swatting the air as if shooing pesky dogflies. “I’ve got the right setbacks. I ain’t encroaching on nobody’s property. Hell, I even took down ol’ Cherokee Charlie and he were a historical landmark, so you two can go screw each other ’cause you ain’t screwing me over another inch.”

“Think about it, Simon,” said Ledwig in his most persuasive voice. “You’re pushing eighty, you have no children. What’re you hanging on like this for? You don’t have to work this hard. You could take the money, go trout fishing every day, sit on the porch with your banjo, enjoy life.”

“I am enjoying life.” He turned to them with an evil grin. “Twisting you’uns’s tails gives me more pure pleasure than your million dollars.”

“Enjoy it while you can,” said Osborne, dark menace in his tone.

“I surely do intend to.” The old man opened his office door, reached inside, and pulled out a double- barreled shotgun. “Wouldn’t advise either of you’uns to come back here again. Ol’ Jessie here’s got something the matter with one of her triggers.”

The gun fell from his gnarled hands. It hit the floor and one of the barrels exploded, sending birdshot skittering across the floorboards into his office. One pellet ricocheted back out into the store and pinged off Ledwig’s shoe.

“Jesus, Simon!” he yelled.

Excited babble broke out at the front of the store, but the voice of a crotchety woman clerk cut across the exclamations. “Dammit all, Simon! You drop that thing one more time and I’m gonna wrap it around your neck ’fore you kill somebody.”

“Ain’t nothing but birdshot,” Proffitt called down to her. “Ever pick birdshot out of a man’s shin, Doc?”

But he was speaking to their backs.

“You’re just lucky it landed like it did,” his clerk scolded, coming with broom and dustpan. “You could’ve hurt somebody.”

Simon Proffitt just grinned. Luck had nothing to do with the way he’d dropped the gun. He took the broom the old woman shoved at him. Worth sweeping a little birdshot out of his office if it finally made them two think twice about pestering him to sell again.

Sunny waited for him on the large shaded porch with the makings of his favorite drink near the lounge chairs. Her eyes questioned him as he came up the steps and paused to give Ledwig a parting salute before turning back to her.

“Well?” she asked.

They had been married for more than twenty-five years, so Norman Osborne did not need to speak. She read the answer in his face.

“Oh, God!” she whispered, fear tightening around her heart.

“It’s gonna be okay, darlin’,” he promised, opening his arms to her. He held her close and breathed in the sweet fragrance of her hair. “It’s gonna be okay. I’ll call Bobby and Joyce tomorrow. Tell ’em I’m ready to deal.”

“What about Carlyle? Will he—?”

“Ol’ Carlyle doesn’t have to know a thing. Who’s gonna tell him? Not me. Not you. The Ashes’ll keep quiet till it’s a done deal, and after that—?” He shrugged. “After that it won’t much matter, will it? And if anybody ever asks, you didn’t know a thing. You got that?”

She nodded, trying to hold back the terror she felt, but tears streaked down her cheeks. “I only wish . . .”

Again he put his arms around her. “I know, darlin’. Me, too. But from here on, we suck it up and play all the cards we still got, okay?”

“Okay.”

“No more crying?”

“No more crying.”

“That’s my girl. Now let’s have that drink.”

CHAPTER 1

OCTOBER

The trouble with making a public announcement is that the public—in this case, my family—feels entitled to respond. Not only to respond, but to exclaim, to criticize, and, above all, to offer comments and advice. The tom-toms, the grapevine, and yes, the Internet, too, were all working overtime.

From my four brothers who live out of state, to the other seven and their spouses still here in eastern North Carolina—not to mention a slew of aunts, uncles, and cousins all up and down the Atlantic seaboard—half the country seemed to be showering advice on my head.

Real showers, as well.

Bridal showers.

It was early October, three days after I’d begun wearing the ring that once belonged to Dwight Bryant’s grandmother; two days after we’d told a couple of friends and both our families that we were planning a Christmas wedding.

I’m a district court judge here in Colleton County. Dwight is Sheriff Bo Poole’s right hand and head of Bo’s detective division, someone who’s known me since the day Daddy piled all the boys who happened to be in the yard at the time into the back of his pickup and hauled them over to the hospital to meet their new sister. Dwight’s always thought that gave him the right to act like one of my brothers, too. One of my bossy brothers.

We’ve both been married and divorced and—

Well, his marriage ended in divorce. Mine was merely annulled. (It was years before I learned that Daddy could have saved on lawyer’s fees since I’d inadvertently married a hound dog who was already legally married at the time.) Dwight has a little boy up in Virginia; I sublimate with a bunch of nieces and nephews.

I had sworn off men at the beginning of summer, and after yet another relationship went sour on him, too, Dwight proposed that we quit looking for nonexistent soul mates and turn our solid friendship into marriage. That was less than two weeks ago and it seemed like a good idea at first, especially since it turned out that we were surprisingly solid in bed.

With all the hoopla after we announced it, though, I was starting to have second thoughts.

My family’s so crazy about Dwight that you’d have thought someone had handed me a cool ten million and it was their duty to help me invest it before I threw it all on the nearest bonfire.

Take Aunt Sister, who about hugged the breath out of me the first time she saw me after hearing the news. “Thank God in glory! I thought you won’t never going to settle down before I died.” She looked at me dubiously. “You do aim to settle down, don’t you?”, which I think is a little sanctimonious for a woman who spends four months a year on the road in a Winnebago now that Uncle Rufus is retired.

Then there’s Nadine, my brother Herman’s wife, who belongs to a strict fundamentalist church and has never quite approved of me. “Of course, you can’t wear white, but there’re lots of pretty dresses in off-white.”

“Oh, nobody worries about stuff like that anymore,” said April, my brother Andrew’s third-time-lucky try at marriage.

Aunt Zell, my mother’s sister, couldn’t stop beaming. “Now I know you have Sue’s silver, crystal, and china,” she said, “so why don’t I give you a linen shower?”

“And I’ll do lingerie,” said Portland Brewer, my best friend and prospective matron of honor despite her advancing pregnancy. (Some of my brothers were making book on whether or not she’d deliver before the wedding.) “Black satin teddies. Red silk panties!”

“Kitchen goods!” said Mae and Doris.

“Well, what about ol’ Dwight?” said their husbands. “Maybe we oughta give him a tool shower.”

“So romantic,” sighed my nieces. “All these years of catting around with other guys, then bang!” They had taken to singing parodies of “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man” every time they saw me.

Maidie, Daddy’s longtime housekeeper, was writing out family recipes for my edification and Dwight’s well-being; while John Claude Lee and Reid Stephenson, my cousins and former law partners, were talking about a formal announcement dance at the Colleton County Country Club in Dobbs.

Dwight’s mother, his two sisters, and his sister-in-law had already booked a luncheon date at the University Club in Raleigh for all the women in both families.

Even Daddy. He didn’t say much, but his blue eyes twinkled whenever someone mentioned the wedding.

Dwight just laughed and took it all in stride.

I was starting to freak.

“They act like this is the love match of the century instead of a sensible arrangement,” I told Minnie.

Minnie is married to my brother Seth. She’s also my campaign manager. It was Minnie who advised me that it would be politically expedient to quit looking for the moon and settle down with someone respectably earthbound instead. She was surprised as hell that I’d taken her advice and as pleased as the rest that the someone turned out to be Dwight Bryant.

“Won’t hurt you at the polls to be married to a well-regarded deputy sheriff like Dwight,” she said, but when she started cooing like our nieces, I immediately disillusioned her.

“Romantic love has nothing to do with this,” I told her. “It’s pure pragmatism. Sure, we’re fond of each other, but it’s love based on friendship and mutual history, not romance. He’s as tired of channel surfing as I am, so it just makes sense.”

“Oh, honey,” Minnie said, looking bereft. “No real passion?”

“I didn’t say there was no passion,” I told her, unable to repress a grin.

“Well, thank goodness for that much,” she said, smiling back.

“But it’s turning into a three-ring circus. Even at the courthouse. Clerks go out of their way to stop me in the halls and tell me how nice Dwight is. Like he’s got a halo and they don’t think I’m good enough for him. It’s bad enough that Aunt Sister and Nadine and Doris think like that, I don’t need it at work, too. Paul Archdale even had the nerve to ask me if I was letting personal considerations color my judgment when Dwight testified against his client this afternoon.”

“Were you?”

“Of course not,” I huffed. “Paul knows his client’s guilty as sin. He was just trying to get a lighter sentence. I may be thinking about marrying Dwight, but that doesn’t mean I’ve quit thinking.”

“Dwight’s ring on your finger means you’re more than just thinking about it,” Minnie said gently.

We both glanced down at the ring, an old-fashioned square-cut diamond flanked by two smaller stones. I pulled it off and balanced it on the palm of my hand, where it gleamed and shot out sparks of color in the sunshine.

“I don’t know, Minnie. I’m beginning to think this marriage is going to cause more problems than it’ll solve.”

“No, it won’t,” she soothed. “You and Dwight will be good for each other, and it would embarrass him to death if you back out now, so you put that ring right back on your finger where it belongs. A lot of people care about both of you, so the two of y’all getting together’s bound to be a nine-days’ wonder. They’ll settle down once they get used to the idea.”

“Another week?” I asked glumly. “I don’t know if I can take it.”

Happily, I didn’t have to.

That very evening, there was a message from Roger Longmire, Chief District Court Judge in our district. When I returned his call, he said, “Got anything sensitive or pressing on your calendar?”

“Not that I know of,” I told him.

“Good. I’ve been asked if I could spare someone to hold court up in Cedar Gap.”

“Here am I, Lord, send me,” I said prayerfully. Cedar Gap is ’way the other side of the state, a good five- or six-hour drive from Colleton County.

Longmire snorted. He knows the Bible even better than I do. “When did you turn into Isaiah?”

“The minute you offered me a legitimate reason to head for the hills.”

“Getting a little hot for you down here in the flatlands?”

Was that a chuckle in his voice? I considered for a moment. “Minnie called you, didn’t she?”

“Good woman, your sister-in-law,” he said blandly. “I owe her a lot. Did you know she was head of the Colleton County Democratic Women the first year I ran for the bench?”

CHAPTER 2

After Judge Longmire’s call on Friday evening, Dwight and I spent half of Saturday walking around my small two-bedroom house out here on the family farm, trying to decide where to add on a new and larger master bedroom so that we could keep my old one in permanent readiness for his son. I hadn’t seen Cal since Dwight told him about us, but he’s a nice little boy and we get along just fine every time Dwight brings him out to swim in the pond or to ride the horses or the four-wheelers my nieces and nephews are variously addicted to.

Even though my house sits a half-mile off the nearest road, I’ve never had a chance to feel isolated. The farm is crisscrossed with dirt lanes that the whole family use as shortcuts or racetracks, and April spotted us on her way over to Daddy’s with a sweet potato pie still warm from the oven. April moves walls the way other women move furniture, and my brother Andrew grumbles that he never knows from one month to the next whether he’ll get up some night to go to the bathroom and find their bedroom moved to the other side of the house before he can get back. Nevertheless, she made some sensible suggestions about water lines and septic tanks before she left, and so did Seth and Will when they came by after lunch looking for Haywood, who showed up a few minutes later on one of the farm’s smaller tractors.

Will’s the one who actually built my house, and Seth can find his way around a blueprint, too, but Haywood knows precious little beyond the basics. Didn’t stop him from telling us what he’d do if it was him, though. Or Robert either, who had tired of waiting for Haywood to bring the tractor over and had come to find him.

I excused myself to go do laundry and they were still at it two loads later.

Carrying a fresh jug of iced tea and a half-dozen plastic cups, I rejoined them in time to hear Robert say, “—and build it from right there.”

“Or we could just build a new house in Maine,” I said, setting the jug and cups on the back of the tractor.

Will and Dwight laughed as I perched cross-legged on the open tailgate of Dwight’s pickup to pour them tea. Robert and Haywood didn’t get it.

“Maine?” said Haywood. “Now why would you want to build a house ’way up yonder?”

“Get your cup and let’s go,” Seth told him with a big grin. “I’ll explain it to you over at Robert’s.”

“Sorry about that,” I said as the last of my brothers disappeared down the rutted lane.

“Why?” Dwight asked. “Think I don’t know the way they like to help and give advice? Besides, you didn’t have anything special planned, did you?”

“Well, when you called this m. . .