High Country Fall

into it.

“Oh, Lord, yes! Florida’s got beautiful mountains.” She paused two beats. “They just happen to lie in North Carolina.”

I still didn’t get it.

“Floridians think they own our mountains,” the fortyish attorney—Liz Peters?—explained with a kindly smile.

“Think?” said a jovial silver-haired man who’d come up behind me. He was accompanied by a tall, heavyset man who sported a thick bushy mustache—Bobby Ashe. “There’s no think about it, Liz darlin’. Joyce and Bobby and me, we’ve personally sold about half of Lafayette County to ’em, so damn straight they own our mountains, right, Bobby?”

Bobby Ashe hoisted his glass to the man and grinned broadly. “I never argue with a partner.”

“Partner?” asked Ms. Peters, raising her eyebrows in surprise.

“Yep,” said Bobby Ashe. He put one arm around Joyce, the other around the man. “It took us two months to hammer out the details, but we signed the last of the papers last week. You’re looking at all three partners of the newly formed Osborne-Ashe High Country Realty.”

“Wow!” said the young male attorney whose name hadn’t registered on me.

“Wow is right,” said Liz Peters, looking impressed.

“Congratulations,” said Lucius Burke. He turned to me with a smile. “I may have to get you to refresh my memory on the statutes governing monopolies, though. Between ’em, they probably account for seventy percent of the property sales in this county.”

“More like eighty,” said the silver-haired man, giving me a puzzled look. “Have we met? You a new attorney here?”

“This is Judge Knott,” said Bobby Ashe, flashing me a welcome smile. “She’s sitting in for Tim Rawlings while he’s down east on a fishing trip.”

“Norman Osborne,” said the man. “Nice to meet you, Judge.”

“My pleasure. And please. Tonight, I’m just Deborah.”

“Lucius tells us you found the kid that killed Carlyle Ledwig guilty today,” said Joyce.

“Not guilty,” Burke and I said together. I smiled at him and explained to the rest that all I’d done was find probable cause to bind that young man over for trial in superior court.

“Same thing, isn’t it?” asked Norman Osborne.

“I hope so,” said Burke.

I shook my head. “Not necessarily. He’s still innocent until declared guilty by a jury of his peers.”

“Gonna be hard to find one of those up here,” Liz Peters said tartly.

CHAPTER 8

“Oh, come on, Liz,” said Joyce Ashe. “You’ll have Deborah thinking we’re nothing but a bunch of hillbilly ridge runners with a Klan robe in every closet.”

“Just stating the obvious,” said the unrepentant attorney.

As a district court judge who will never sit on a murder trial, and a flatlander to boot, I didn’t have a dog in this fight. From here on, Freeman’s guilt or innocence would play out in superior court. Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist asking as innocently as possible, “What’s the problem? Aren’t there plenty of educated young people in your jury pool?”

“I’m not talking age or education,” she said. “I’m talking race. You find me twelve black people in Cedar Gap and I’ll send a donation to the Lafayette County Republican Party in your name.”

I held up my hands in mock horror. “Not in my name you won’t.”

The others rolled their eyes and Bobby Ashe grinned at his wife. “Where’d you stash Liz’s soapbox, honey?”

“I’m with Judge Knott on this,” said the younger male attorney. Dotson? Dodson? “What’s the problem? Hell, Freeman’s just about as white as anybody around.”

I couldn’t quite place his accent but clearly it hadn’t been formed in North Carolina.

“Speak for yourself, Matt Dodson,” said the woman who had joined us a moment earlier. Mid-forties, tall and tan, with sunbleached blond hair, she had the healthy outdoor look of someone who ate six servings of fruits and vegetables a day and played at least two sets of tennis or nine holes of golf every morning. From the proprietary way she tucked her arm through Norman Osborne’s, I gathered that she was Mrs. Osborne.

“I am speaking for myself,” said Dodson. “Look at me.”

We did. Black curly hair, warm brown eyes, deep olive skin.

Mrs. Osborne waved her hand impatiently. “Don’t be silly, Matt. Your skin may be a little dark, but you know you’re Caucasian.”

“I’m also Spanish. At least my mother is. Matt isn’t short for Matthew. I was christened Matteo. And the Moors of North Africa were all over Spain. You think for one minute my family didn’t mix it up with a few blackamoors along the way?”

“Well, now, if you’re gonna go back hundreds of years,” said Joyce Ashe, “we’re all out of Africa originally, right?”

“Not if you believe the Bible, darlin’.” Norman Osborne’s grin implied that he didn’t necessarily. “The Garden of