Morgan James - Promise McNeal 02 - Quiet Killing Read online

  Also by Morgan James

  Quiet The Dead

  Quiet Killing

  Copyright © 2012 Morgan James

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 147505792X

  ISBN 13: 9781475057928

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-62111-706-3

  The Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn

  The sun is slowly sinkin’

  The day is almost gone

  Still darkness falls around us

  And we must journey on.

  The darkest hour is just before dawn

  The narrow way leads home

  Lay down your soul at Jesus’ feet

  The darkest hour is just before dawn.

  Like a shepherd out on the mountain

  A watchin’ the sheep down below

  He’s coming back to claim us

  Will you be ready to go?

  The darkest hour is just before dawn

  The narrow way leads home

  Lay down your soul at Jesus’ feet

  The darkest hour is just before dawn.

  Lyrics, Ralph Stanley and the Clinch

  Mountain Boys

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  About the author

  1

  “Wake up, girl. There’s fire on the mountain.”

  January McNeal’s plea was a hard whisper on the cold night air. If he had spoken louder the voice would give proof of a lingering Irish lilt, and the soreness of his mouth from the beating delivered by the High Sheriff’s deputy. But he didn’t speak louder. Not yet. He watched the midnight darkness beyond the jail window and held the swelling sound deep in his throat with enough force to bend the bars separating him from his home, wife, and child. By that force, that power, he willed his whispered words to travel time and distance until they fell into the ears of the sleeping Reba. “Git the baby and make for the cave. Hit’s fire you smell. And hit’s coming for you.”

  The wind turned, blowing a puff of burning pines into his face and he coughed on the bitter taste. Tears wet the stubble on his unshaven cheeks, stinging cuts left by the deputy’s fists. He pressed his body against the iron bars and stretched his right arm into freedom’s air; then with long fingers extended upward, his voice erupted, loud enough to wake the sleeping drunk sharing his cell.

  He commanded into the wind, “And the righteous shall know God, and be delivered from their enemies. Rise up, Oh Israel, and be delivered!” Lightning bull-whipped across the night sky, a cluster of devil claws convulsing along the top of the mountain, illuminating the fire as it marched up the slope, headed for his cabin. Thunder and his animal scream exploded behind the lightning, roiling and shaking the very ground where he stood.

  “All right,” I heard myself say to the empty bedroom, as I fought up from the dream. Had I heard thunder? I listened. An incessant, whooping, ear-piercing bark repeated from just beyond the bedroom window. “Whose dog?” I said aloud, and hit the floor with an angry thud. When I opened the shutters and stared into the predawn blackness of the back yard, I didn’t see a barking dog. What I saw was my hay barn burning like the fires of hell, orange and black flames licking skyward, and my goats, Minnie and Pearl, huddled together at the far right of their small pasture.

  There was no time to wonder whose dog was barking, and no time to call for help. I felt sure by the time the volunteer fire department navigated the eleven miles of two-lane, twisting, switchback, mountain roads, my hay barn would be left in cinders. I grabbed my dirty jeans and flannel shirt from the clothes hamper and put them on over my nightgown, then ran for my duck boots by the back door. As I stumbled down the porch steps and stood on the gravel walk from the house to the pasture, the cold March air and pumping adrenaline shocked me fully awake. I knew I needed a plan to contain the fire before it spread to the larger goat barn, and my house. How many feet of garden hose did I have? Would my well have enough water to do any good? And where the hell is that damn barking dog? I felt my heart pounding in my chest and blood singing in my ears. A plan? What plan did I have for a fire in the middle of the night? Just do something, my brain was screaming, just do something.

  Ignoring the barking, now sounding inches away from me, I rooted around in the azalea beds by the house, came up with the garden hose, turned on the spigot, and pulled the long grey plastic coil with all my strength out toward the orange and black blaze. The hose length stopped just short of the fence. I opened the nozzle all the way out and raised the hose high into the air to maximize the flow. Water carried only as far as the side of the barn. I couldn’t even wet the roof, or the remainder of the structure. Off to my right, my beautiful, frightened goat girls stomped around and circled each other. I called out to them, telling them to stay where they were; they were going to be okay. With all my being, I prayed I spoke the truth.

  Tears blurred my vision and I had to wipe my eyes with my left hand, while holding the hose with my right. For all my efforts, the fire curled tight and fierce up into the darkened sky. And still, the barking continued like a hammer striking raw metal at my back. As I pulled the hose one more time to stretch it to the limit, I sensed movement off to my left. Fletcher Enloe, my neighbor and tireless commentator that city folks, like me, don’t belong in the mountains, emerged from the pine thicket separating our houses. A canvas, pork-pie fishing hat squeezed low over his thick gray hair, and his wiry body listed from the weight of a dark roll slung over his shoulder.

  “Gol-damit,” he carped, “might know you’d be nar prepared for anything excepting making coffee.” He jerked the garden hose out of my hand with such force that I staggered to keep upright. “Cut off the spigot so I can add this here piece of pipe to yourn.” Uncharacteristically, I didn’t argue with the irascible old man. You could say Fletcher and I have a love-hate relationship. I believe he loves to hate me.

  Once Fletcher connected his hose to mine, he climbed over my goat fence like a man of thirty, instead of one somewhere on the down side of seventy, and began soaking the hay barn roof. “Git a hoe and turn up that dry grass into dirt tween the barn and your girls, case this fire means to run along the ground.”

  I grabbed a hoe left leaning against the house and made my way into the pasture to dig a break separating the fire from the goats. Fletcher has at least twenty years on me. Nevertheless, I did not scale the fence. I let myself into the pasture by the farm gate. As I turned to drop the chain back into the latch, I saw the shadow of a crouching, barking dog under the porch steps. No time to worry about a dog. My job was to dig a firebreak. I struck the hoe into hard dirt for all I was worth, and had about six feet of earth turned up when I heard the siren. Loose gravel scattered as the volunteer fire truck sped down the drive. The dog stopped barking.

  Fletcher stepped aside and three firemen pushed ahead of him with “real” fire hoses and finished soaking the barn. As I watched from on the house
side of the fence, tendrils of ice hanging from the charred roof reminded me March is still winter in the mountains. My teeth were chattering from the cold, so I ducked into the house to get a jacket. Cat’s loud meow greeted me. The outside world might be burning to beat the band, but she cared only that her food bowl was empty. I shook dry kibbles into her bowl and refilled the Mr. Coffee to make a fresh pot. Fletcher’s hurtful words that I was only fit for making coffee came back to me. I winced, entertained the idea of not offering coffee, and waited for my Shoulda-Woulda-Coulda Girls Committee that sometimes meets in my head to give directions.

  The committee duly convened. The Shoulda Girl said: He’s just a bitter old man. You’re a counselor for God’s sake; be an understanding listener. The Woulda Girl gave her opinion: At least he came to help. My baser self agreed with the final committee member’s assessment: Sure he came over. You think he’d miss a chance to show you up?

  Still, I took coffee outside to the whole crew. I’m from the South, you see. We value cleanliness and good manners above most everything. I was glad I did. Everyone, including Fletcher, seemed grateful for something hot to thaw out the bones. Thank yous were said and we stood in the yard facing a smoldering, caved in barn as the sun hued to red and yellow on its climb into the morning sky.

  “You know what they say about red sky in the morning?” asked one of the firemen, a solidly built young man wearing an orange deer hunter’s cap and black, Buddy Holly styled, glasses.

  “Yeah,” answered one of his buddies, “we know: sailor take warning. You done told us that about a million times, and we still don’t have no sailors in Perry County.”

  The cap guy was nonplused by the remark. He pushed his thick glasses up on his nose and dug a small pad from his back pocket. After fumbling around in his other seven pockets looking for a pen, Fletcher extracted one clipped to the side of his hat and gave it to him. I groaned silently, thinking only Fletcher Enloe would be prepared with a ballpoint pen at a fire. “Miz McNeal. We gotta make a report of our call over here. What started the fire?”

  I hadn’t thought about that, until now. What started the fire? Then I wondered how they knew there was a fire. “Did I call 911?”

  He shook his head no. “Mr. Enloe called it in Ma’am. Any idea how the fire got going?”

  “Maybe it was the lightning.” I answered, not at all sure.

  Fletcher spoke up. “I was up working in the front room when that damn dog commenced to barking. There ain’t been no thunder, or lightning tonight.”

  I stared at Fletcher, digesting his statement, and not doubting him. The story was Fletcher and his brothers ran bootleg moonshine in the forties out of the modified 1937 Ford he still housed in his garage. Some say he holds the record for driving time with a full load from Perry County to Atlanta. That was before Korea, his ten or so additional years in the army, and before he lost two fingers in a shop accident. Now he says he’s retired with just a few acres of hay he sells in the late spring and summer. But that’s not entirely accurate. I pretend not to know he augments his retirement check by buying and selling everything from Barbie dolls to racecar memorabilia on EBay—usually late at night when bored shopaholics tend to spend money. He pretends not to know I know. Yes, Fletcher would have seen lightning, and heard thunder.

  No lightning where I shivered in the early dawn, meant what I’d seen lived only in dream reality. In that world thunder cracked; blue-white lightning woke the night sky and a voice cried out: Git up! There’s fire on the mountain. With a flood of clarity, I knew the voice was my great grandfather, January McNeal, and the fire he saw burned long ago, up on the mountain I saw every day from my house. “No lightning?” I said. “Then I don’t know how the fire started. I’ve haven’t even burned leaves since fall.”

  “Well,” said the deer cap guy, “We haven’t had any cases of spontaneous combustion around here lately, so I reckon the sheriff’s department will pick up our call out here, and you’ll get a visit from the arson team.”

  “Arson? Why would anyone want to burn down my hay barn?”

  The cap guy shrugged, wrote a couple of sentences on his pad, returned the pen to Fletcher, and gathered his crew to leave. Fletcher fixed me with a gimlet eye, as though accusing me of somehow engineering my own fire by stupidity— or neglect. I wondered, not for the first time, if a neighbor like Fletcher Enloe was a blessing or a curse. True, living alone and knowing he was as close as the other side of the pine thicket was a comfort. However, this was the same neighbor who rarely expended a kind word. To Fletcher Enloe, and truthfully to many in Perry County, I was a flatlander from Atlanta— would always be an outsider— and fair game in any maneuver that kept the them and us hats on the proper heads. Like the episode with Fletcher and the goats.

  When I bought my house and property, I assumed the gamey smelling male goat patrolling our common fence belonged to Fletcher. When I complained about his billy eating my blueberry bushes, Fletcher announced that the infamous Goddard twins had abandoned the goat— the twins being the shady guys who sold me my house, along with the non-earning asset known as Granny’s General Store. Thus, according to Fletcher, the male goat, Hubert, was my responsibility. Enloe then explained he’d allowed Hubert to live in his pasture because he felt sorry for him. Felt sorry, my foot! Fletcher then demanded I move the two hundred pound monster back onto my property and pay him back room and board for the pasture space. I was not a happy camper.

  While I absorbed the prospect of Hubert being upwind of anywhere I might stand in my yard, the crafty old man offered me an alternative. He surmised Hubert was lonely since the Goddard twins sold the female goats, and no nanny goats meant no milk for Fletcher’s sour stomach; so the deal was he’d keep Hubert, if I bought a nanny goat. The lovebirds would tryst during mating season, no doubt produce babies, and there would be milk a-plenty.

  Can you spell blackmail? Here’s a clue: first word starts with F, second with E. And yes, it is a man’s name. That’s how I ended up with Minnie and Pearl, mother and daughter, two gorgeous soft brown creatures, every bit as elegant and sweet smelling as Hubert is not. Not that I’m sorry I own two goats; I’m not the least bit sorry. It’s the way Fletcher coerced me that sticks in my craw.

  The firemen turned their truck around in my drive and pulled out onto the paved road. Fletcher thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his navy chinos and sniped. “Well, I reckon you’ve got some gimcrack story about an investigating job you’re doing for that Chinaman down in Atlanta, and that’s how come the barn got burned.”

  My jaw clenched. The person of Chinese ancestry Fletcher referred to was my friend, and sometimes employer, Atlanta attorney, Garland Wang. Though truthfully, being friends with Garland is always a one-sided affair. If conversation isn’t about him, Garland loses interest pretty fast. “Mr. Enloe,” I volleyed back, “the man’s family has lived in Georgia since before the Civil War. He graduated from the University of Georgia. He’s as Southern as either of us, not a Chinaman. Also, I’m not working for Garland Wang at the moment; if I were, it wouldn’t be investigating. What I do is research and consulting; maybe talk to clients for him. I’m a Doctor of Psychology, not a detective.”

  “Uh huh, I recollect the time those crazy Atlanta folks nailed that big snake to your front door, and…”

  “Fletcher, please,” I interrupted. “I don’t want to talk about that. Just look at that burned patch of ground in the pasture. Minnie and Pearl could have been killed!”

  Fletcher squinted into the weak morning light and studied the goats grazing at the far end of the pasture. “Don’t look like it ruined their appetites none to me. Fetch me another cup of coffee, and I’ll go out there and haul them some feed for you.” I turned and walked toward the house to “fetch” his coffee. Anything for a reprieve from my good neighbor’s sharp tongue. Fletcher stopped me with questions. “Where’d that dang fool barking dog get off to? Is it yourn?”

  Half way up the porch steps I stopped and looked
down between the stair treads. Two limpid dark brown eyes locked onto mine. He cocked his head sideways and rated my worth as a human being on a scale from one to ten. “No, the dog isn’t mine. He’s over here, under the porch. Oh, poor baby. He looks terrified.” Sitting down, I spoke to the crouching dog. “Hey big guy, aren’t you the good boy to warn me about the fire. Come on out here and see me. Come on. Nobody’s going to hurt you. It’s okay.” The skinny red hound, ears hanging below his nose, slinked out from under the porch and slobbered a kiss on my outstretched hand.

  “Well, son of a bitch,” Fletcher said from behind me, “ain’t it just like you to have some no account coon hound take up under your porch. Just look at him; you can name every one of his ribs.”

  The dog continued to lick my hand. I patted his broad forehead and rubbed behind his ears. His body half dropped into my lap. “Poor guy, he’s exhausted. I wonder who he belongs to.”

  Fletcher came closer and the dog turned a wary eye on him. “Like as not, nobody. That there is a Redbone Coon Hound. Them hunters track bear and coons with’em, and if they’re good they are well prized. Pay good money for them. I heard tell it’s the long ears that scoop up the scent as they sniff along the ground. Hot nosed they call’em. Can run longer and harder than any man—if they’re any good. If they ain’t no good, some hunter is likely to shoot’em out of meanness, or turn them out to starve.”

  Fletcher knelt down, an arm’s length away, and gave the dog a good hard look. After a few seconds the dog turned away from him with heavy-lidded eyes and snuggled against my knee. “I’d say that there hound is one of the no-good variety. From the looks of him, most likely been turned out, or ran away. I’d also mind he’s been living off squirrels and road kill for a while. Stinks like one dead thing.” Standing up, Fletcher brushed off the knees of his pant legs and shook his head. “Yes ma’am, I’d say for sure that there is one of the no-good kind.”