“So your foot belongs to whoever went soupy inside the wall.”
“And it wasn't any jive deer.”
“Who was it?”
“I'll bet the farm it was Jeremiah Mitchell.”
“The black Cherokee.”
“Yes.”
“Now what?”
“I'm waiting for a call from the Swain County sheriff. With the DNA match, a warrant should be a piece of cake. Even from that medieval moron of a magistrate.”
“Nice alliteration.”
“Thanks.”
Over dinner, we decided on Wild Dunes at Thanksgiving. The rest of the time Anne described her trip to England. I listened.
“Did you see
“Caves.”
“Caves?”
“Totally bizarre. This guy named Francis Dashwood had them dug sometime in the eighteenth century. He wanted a Gothic atmosphere, so he had this corny three-sided stone structure built around the entrance. Cathedral windows, doors, and arches, a stone-bordered portal in the center, and a black wrought-iron fence at each side. Creates a sort of courtyard. Gothic chic, complete with souvenir shop, cafe, and white plastic tables and chairs for the thirsty medieval tourist.”
She took a sip of wine.
“You enter the caves through a long white tunnel with a low, rounded ceiling.”
“Why white?”
“It's all fake. The caves were chiseled out of chalk.”
“Where are they?”
“West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. It's about an hour's drive northwest of London. Someone told Ted about the place, so we had to stop off on our way to Oxford.” She rolled her eyes. “Tempe, these caves are mondo bizarro. Passages meander all over the place, with little rooms and crannies and side branches. And they're filled with all sorts of creepy carvings.”
“Creepy?”
“Most of the engravings look like the work of kids, but they're way too grotesque.”
“Like what?”
“A face with a cross gouged into its forehead, another wearing a sorcerer's hat, the mouth and eyes perfect O's.”
She gave what she must have considered a ghostly grimace.
“Tunnels split, then rejoin, then change direction for no reason. There's a Banqueting Hall, and a River Styx, complete with fake stalactites, that you have to cross to enter a chamber called the Inner Temple. My personal favorite was a winding passage to nowhere stuffed with tacky mannequins of Dashwood and his cronies.”
“Why did Dashwood dig the caves?”
“Maybe he had more money than brains. The guy's mausoleum is there, too. Looks like the Coliseum.”
She drained her wine, swallowed quickly as another idea struck her.
“Or maybe Frank was an eighteenth-century Walt Disney. Planned to make millions opening the place as a tourist attraction.”
“Didn't they provide an explanation?”
“Yeah. Outside the cave there's a long brick corridor with wall hangings that give the history. I was taking pictures, so I didn't read them. Ted did.”
She rechecked her glass, found it still empty.
“Just down the road, there's an elaborate English manor called Medmenham Abbey. The place was built by twelfth-century Cistercian monks, but Dashwood bought and renovated it to use as a country getaway. Gothic walls, crumbling entrance with engraved motto arching above.”
She said this in a breathy voice, moving her hand in a semicircle above her head. Anne is a real estate agent and sometimes describes things in Realtorese.
“What did the motto say?”
“Damned if I know.”
Coffee arrived. We added cream, stirred.
“After our phone conversation the other day, I kept thinking about this guy Dashwood.”
