to the flowers and gardens and firewood, and the last playing handyman. Miss Lilith, the maid, and the cook see to the kitchen and the house.'
'I've met Lilith. Pretty girl.'
Ransom wobbled his knot of a head. 'Not hard on the eyes. Anyways, last night, one of the men, George Lawson, was up Beechy Gap checking on the old Easley place. That was another of the original settler families. The last Easley girl worked at the house until she married off down to Charlotte with one of them artists a few years back.
'Well, my friend George, he went into that old Easley shack. I don't know what happened, I didn't find no tools or nothing, so I can't say he was doing carpentry work. But the whole blamed shack fell on him.' Ransom's jaw clenched. 'Died real slow.'
'I'm sorry, Ransom. What did the investigators say?'
'Like I said, they's rules of the world and they's rules of Korban Manor.'
Mason didn't understand. This place was remote, but an accidental death ought to require some kind of inquiry.
'George was a good man. And he wasn't stupid. Made it through Vietnam, so he must have had some kind of sense. He just crossed the wrong threshold, is all.' Ransom looked like he was about to add something to that last sentence, then changed his mind.
'Which way's Beechy Gap?'
Ransom jerked his head toward the north. 'Over the ridge yonder.'
'I wouldn't mind having a look sometime.'
'Nope. Guests ain't allowed up there.'
'Rough terrain?'
Ransom looked him full in the eyes for the first time since they'd left the tool shed. 'Some things just ain't part of the deal. You'll find a lot of places are off-limits at Korban Manor.'
Ransom pulled the charm from his pocket and motioned at the shed with it. 'Now, about that wood of yours. I got to be getting back soon.'
They gathered the tools and veered off the trail into the forest.
Adam walked along the fence, his head full of the wilderness smells. He felt sure that Manhattan's pollutants had permanently clogged his sinuses, but maybe the fresh mountain air would add a year back to the six the city had stolen from his life. The near-perfect silence was eerie, and he had almost gone through a physical withdrawal in the night as his sleeping self yearned for those constant sirens, car horns, and burglar alarms. And all this wide- open space was unnatural. No wonder hillbillies were stereotyped as crazed and grizzled outcasts. There was nothing to impose the insanity of civilization upon them, so they had to make up their own rules of order.
Paul was off somewhere shooting video, no doubt wrapped up in the latest project, the world reduced to the narrow scope of his viewfinder. That was for the best. Though solitude was kind of creepy in itself, especially in the sprawling expanse of the manor, he needed a break from Paul's company. He'd talked briefly with the weird photographer Roth on the porch, and had recognized the same artistic self-absorption that plagued Paul.
Adam saw a man by the barn dressed in worn work clothes. It wasn't one of the handymen who'd helped unload the van. Probably someone in charge of the stables, or else the tender of the long garden that stretched in stubbled rows in the low valley. The man waved Adam over. Adam stole a glance back at the manor a hundred yards away, then approached the barn.
'Morning, there,' the man said. His hands were tucked deep into the pockets of his loose-fitting jeans. A shovel leaned against the wall beside him.
'Hi,' Adam said.
'You're one of the guests, I reckon.'
'We just got in yesterday.'
'What do you think of the place so far?'
'It's… different from what I'm used to. But that's part of the adventure.'
'Yep, the unknown is always scary at first. But once you get used to it, you start to like it.'
Adam looked down at a set of wire-enclosed pens beyond the garden. A grunting sound rolled across the hills.
'Hogs,' the man said. 'About time of year to get out the boiling kettle and have us a slaughter.'
Adam's face must have shown his revulsion.
The man laughed. 'Don't worry, son. You won't get no blood on your hands. But meat don't get on the table by itself.'
'I prefer my meat boneless,' Adam said.
'Miss Mamie serves it up however you like. Careful, though, she's been known to take a shine to the guests. Especially them that's young and male. I reckon even an old crow like that needs a play-pretty once in a while.'
'Thanks for the warning, but she's not my type,' he said.
The man leaned forward like a conspirator, his face emerging from the shadows of the barn's overhang. 'Say, can you do me a favor?'
'What's that?' Adam looked back at the manor again. Smoke rose from its four chimneys, but other than that, it appeared devoid of life. Even the breeze seemed to have died.
'Dig me a hole. I'll pay you.'
'I don't want to get you in any trouble. Miss Mamie seems to have this thing about the guests being kept apart from the staff.'
The man licked his lips. 'Let me worry about Miss Mamie. But I got a sore arm and I'm a little down in the back. Pain's hellfire blue this morning.'
'Okay, then,' Adam said. He took the shovel and tested its balance.
The man took his right hand out of his pocket and pointed to the base of a dying gray apple tree that stood alone in a slight clearing. 'Right there between the roots,' he said. 'About big enough to hold a hatbox.'
The man followed Adam to the spot, and Adam slid the bright blade into the earth, turned the dark soil. In a couple of minutes he'd shaped the hole to the man's satisfaction.
'That's fine and dandy,' the man said. 'I can handle the rest. Appreciate it.'
'What are you burying?'
'Covering up for old Ransom. He's no-account, but he's been around so long he gets away with murder. I got to finish a job for him.'
'Well, have a good morning. I need to get back to my room.'
'Here,' he said, his right hand dipping into his pocket again. 'A little something for your trouble.'
'No, really,' Adam said, holding up his hands in protest. The shovel handle had heated up the flesh surrounding his palms, a hint of possible blisters to come.
'You don't want to hurt my feelings, do you?' the man said. 'Us mountaineers can get mighty prideful about such things.'
'Sure, then.'
The man held his fist out, then opened it over Adam's palm. A small green thing dropped into it.
'Four-leaf clover,' the man said.
Adam smiled. 'I'm going to need all the luck I can get.'
Adam started back toward the barn, then turned and said, 'I'm Adam, by the way.'
'Lawson,' the man said, now hunched over the hole as if his bad back had undergone a miracle cure. 'George Lawson.'
CHAPTER 9
Anna awoke with light slanting through the window, and for a few moments couldn't remember where she
