High Country Fall

“Messes with their minds.”

They were falling back into twinspeak again, finishing each other’s thoughts.

“All well and good,” I said. “But the doctor was messing with their lives. He wanted the baby aborted and he wanted Freeman out of his daughter’s life. Or else.”

“Or else what?” they asked scornfully. “He was going to cut off Carla’s allowance? Big whoop.”

“And have Freeman’s scholarship revoked,” I said. “He was also going to forbid her to see her sister.”

“Oh please,” said June, and May rolled her eyes as she opened the cake box. “Do you really think he could get a foundation to revoke a scholarship because his daughter got pregnant?”

“Or keep Carla and Trish from seeing each other?” May took what looked like a slab of homemade bread from the box, sliced off several thick pieces, and popped them into the four-slot toaster.

June set a small tub of some sort of chopped salad on the table and brought out lettuce and a jar of Duke’s mayonnaise from the refrigerator. “She inherited fifty thousand from her grandmother when she turned eigh-teen, and they’re both working part-time at a business they helped start.”

“If her dad had followed through, though, she was going to drop out of school and work full-time till Danny finishes, then go back after he has his degree and the baby’s in day care,” said May, smearing mayo on the first round of toast and passing them on to June, who added lettuce and salad, cut the sandwiches into triangles, and passed a couple to me.

Ambrosia! The texture and flavor of the toasted bread, the teasing familiarity of something not quite identifiable in the meat—“Cedar Gap must be the chicken salad capital of the state,” I said. “I had a good one for lunch at the High Country Cafe and I was told there’s a tea room in town that’s even better, but this is the best I’ve ever eaten. Even the bread’s almost as good as something y’all would make. Which restaurant are you working at?”

“The Mountain Laurel,” said June.

“Are they open for lunch?”

“Sure are,” May said, “and I don’t know who told you the Tea Room was good, ’cause we’ve eaten there and the chicken salad stinks.”

“Yeah,” said June, nodding. “Not worth wasting your money. The Laurel’s better.”

“Do I need a reservation?”

“During leaf season? Oh yes.”

“Enough about food,” May said sternly. “Tell us why you let Burke talk you into finding Danny guilty.”

I sighed and once more explained the difference between a probable cause hearing and a true trial. “If I’d actually found him guilty, he wouldn’t be out on bond right now, and for what it’s worth, he’s only charged with voluntary manslaughter, not first-degree murder.”

“How long could he get for that?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” June said impatiently. “He didn’t do it.”

“Then who did?” I asked, taking another bite of that delicious sandwich. “Carla? Her sister? Their mother?”

I was immediately shouted down with “No, no, no!” but I turned a deaf ear to their objections.

“You may not like it, but this was not a drive-by shooting. This is where someone was able to walk right up to him while he was practically hanging over the edge of a cliff and he didn’t feel threatened. That means he knew his killer. So what about Carla’s mother? Did she and the doctor have a good marriage?”

Both of them shrugged. “What difference does it make? She wasn’t even there. She played tennis at the country club with some friends that afternoon and then picked Trish up at school. The police were there before she was.”

“I still think it could’ve been someone after drugs,” May said stubbornly.

“Was he known to keep drugs in the house?”

“No, but—”

“Maybe it was one of his crazy patients,” June suggested.

“I thought he specialized in geriatrics?”

“He did, but some of them are gaga, so senile they don’t know what year it is.”

“Yeah, remember the time Carla said that old man thought she was his big sister?”

“And that weird woman who threatened to run him over with her car because he testified for her son when her son was trying to get her power of attorney.”

They looked at me with hope in their eyes. “It could be somebody like that, couldn’t it?”

“If he’d been killed at the hospital, maybe, but people that gone wouldn’t be running around the mountains loose, would they?” I thought of the comments dropped at the party tonight and said, “It could also be some of the businesspeople he pissed off around the area. People mentioned the gem mines, the Trading Post—”

“Not Simon!” they chorused.

“Who’s Simon?”

“Simon Proffitt. Owns the Trading Post. Dr. Ledwig wanted to close him down.”