Chapter 44
The hollow between Cumberland Creek and Lynchburg was an odd little community. Called Jenkins Hollow, it was known for being backward. Some families didn’t have indoor plumbing, let alone a computer or the Internet. The same families lived there for generations, marrying among each other and bringing outsiders in from time to time—but residents rarely moved from the hollow.
“I really hate this place,” Beatrice said. “It plays into all the clichés about my people. Sometimes there’s a grain of truth to clichés, but I hate that people generalize so much.”
“What exactly do you mean? What kind of clichés are you talking about?” Annie asked as she turned left onto a narrow asphalt road.
“The folks in this community are mostly uneducated. A lot of them have never been out of the area, you know. The families are all related.”
“But Tina Sue is a teacher,” Annie pointed out. “She must be educated.”
“Yes, but I believe this is where her husband’s people are from. I don’t think she and Maggie Rae grew up here. But I’m not too sure about that.”
As they drove farther, the road became a dirt road, and the houses along the road became decidedly smaller and less kept up. They went around a curve in a road and spotted a house that waved a huge Confederate flag in the front yard.
“Nice,” Annie said.
“Hmph. That ain’t nothing, Annie. Look at that.”
Annie stopped herself from stepping on the brakes—someone had painted a huge swastika on the side of a garage. A swastika? Her heart leaped into her throat—a swell of anger, more than a hint of fear.
What am I doing here?
“Bea, it occurs to me that maybe we shouldn’t be here. Maybe we should call Detective Bryant.”
“Can’t now. Your cell wouldn’t work out here,” Bea said matter-of-factly. “Probably some young idiots painted that. Probably nothing for us to worry about.”
Still, Annie was shaken—between the drunken visit of Robert Dasher and the snarky sexism of Detective Bryant, she was already a nervous wreck.
Now, this—a swastika?
This was something she had only seen in history books and scribbled on underpasses by city teenagers. Bea was probably right. It might be that the person who painted it had no idea what it really meant. Maybe. But she couldn’t help but feel a surge of fear rip through her—call it an irrational, inherited fear. But it was strong. Her stomach clenched and her heart raced. She slowed the car down and pulled over to the narrow side of the road. She breathed deeply.
“Are you okay, Annie?”
She nodded. “I’ll be fine.” She drank from her bottled water and noticed an odd structure standing behind a house ahead of them.
“Is that an ... outhouse?” Annie asked.
“Oh, yes, you’ll see plenty of them here. Water’s a problem in this hollow.”
Annie took a deep breath. Okay. There were still places on the planet that didn’t have running water. She knew that, but she didn’t know those places were quite so close to home. Nor did she know that people still brazenly flew the Confederate flag or, worse, painted swastikas on buildings.
As she mulled over the situation, she realized it was quite possible that Tina Sue had killed Maggie Rae. Yet, it was difficult to believe. She had fooled Annie. Tina Sue had really come off as a supportive sister. Maybe
too
supportive. Annie’s instincts used to be finely honed. But not this time. She was definitely losing her edge.
The hollow was surreal—an incredibly lush place, with old trees and wildflowers scattered everywhere, beautiful old houses and barns, roads running right along the edge of steep hillsides, with breathtaking, sweeping views of the mountains. Yet, the ugliness was profound. Rusty old cars sat along a driveway. Old plastic toys scattered in a yard. Confederate flags. Swastikas.
“Did I tell you about the newspaper clippings?” Annie asked.
“No. What did you find out? Now, when you get up here, you want to bear right.”
A huge deer ran across the road and Annie slammed on the brakes. “Jeez,” she said.
“Yes. Take it slow. There’re a lot of animals out here. We may even see a bear or two. Now, you were saying?”
“I found out that Maggie Rae’s father was murdered when she was five. So you were right about that picture. Someone put his face on the other man’s body. I’m thinking it was the stepfather’s body. It adds up. Maggie Rae’s mother remarried four years later. Then she died a few years after that.”
“How sad,” Beatrice said. “You have to wonder about stepfathers. Sometimes it works out okay, but other times it’s not a good thing.”
“She must have wished he were her biological dad, which is why she changed the picture. God, that’s heart-wrenching and kind of, well, twisted. It all leads me to believe she might have been abused by her stepfather. Really, just a gut feeling.”
“Or maybe she just hated him. Plenty of reasons to hate a stepfather,” Beatrice said.
The sun went behind a huge white cloud, making it a little easier to see the road against the sun.
“What I don’t understand is why Tina Sue would kill her... . I mean, what happened?”
“I know. On the one hand, it adds up. You saw her later that morning at the curb. But it doesn’t add up, either. We are still missing something.”
“I’m sure we’ll get our answers soon.”
Annie thought of her boys at home with Mike, who was able to get some time off today so she could do this—though he wasn’t thrilled with any of it. Even though it was Sunday, he had planned to go to the office and catch up on paper work.
“I can’t keep taking time off for you to do your work, Annie. That wasn’t the deal.”
“I know, Mike, and I’m sorry. But this is a major breakthrough.”
“Why not let the cops handle it?”
“You know why, Mike.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Annie. Your think he’s a sexist creep and needs to be put in his place. You can one-up him? Is it worth risking your life?”
“I’m not risking anything, Mike. I’m just going to talk to Tina Sue. I’m taking Beatrice with me.”
“Oh, like she’s going to protect you. How old is she—like ninety?”
“Don’t underestimate Beatrice,” Annie said, reaching for the car keys. “She may be old, but she’s brilliant. And I’ll take brilliance over brawn any day of the week.”
Mike rolled his eyes. “I give up. I know that look—it’s no use arguing with you. Be careful. Do you have your cell? Camera? Recorder?”
“Yes, I have everything,” she said, and kissed him quickly before heading out the door—not realizing she’d not have cell phone service in the mountains.
Annie now wished she held that kiss a little longer as she saw yet another swastika painted on a barn.
“You see that cluster of homes over there?” Beatrice pointed to a group of white clapboard homes, with a small white church in the center of them. “That’s the ‘Nest,’ my daddy used to call it.”
“What?”
“That’s where we’re heading. It used to be an Old Order Mennonite stronghold, but most of them moved on or died out. Some of the descendants are still around.”
“Old Order Mennonites?”
“Oh, yes. There are so many different kinds of Mennonites. But those are the people you see in the horse and buggy. They don’t use any modern conveniences. My daddy had several good friends that were Old Order, and he loved them fiercely—but they were a tight-knit bunch and you could only get so close to them. Now a lot of them are still in the church, but they are not Old Order. It’s a tough life.”
The closer Annie drove toward the community, the more frightened she became. Of course, Beatrice didn’t know how freaky she found these people. And she was sort of ashamed of that. Why should she have such weird feelings about this religious sect when her own people were so persecuted?
“That’s the driveway.” Bea pointed.
The house was a pretty two-story white clapboard home, with the shutters painted bright blue.
“Haint blue,” Bea said. “To ward off evil spirits.”
Chapter 45
Vera busied herself packing. New York City! She could hardly wait. She’d built plenty of time in for herself to shop and to see at least one play. The teaching seminar should be fascinating as well.
Where did she put her red paisley shirt? Oh, it was still in the dryer. She walked down to the basement, noticing that her iPod wasn’t hanging on the hook, where she usually kept it. She reached into the dryer and pulled out a ball of clothes—among the bunch was her red paisley shirt.
Now, where was her iPod? Darn, her mother had borrowed it. She glanced at the clock. Plenty of time to pop over there, and maybe have some lunch with Beatrice, too. Then she would come home and finish packing. Vera slipped on her clogs and left through the front door.
When she arrived at her mother’s house, Bill was sitting on the front porch, chatting on his cell phone. He held up a finger. She waved him off and went inside the house.
“Mama?” Vera looked around downstairs. Her mother’s impeccable kitchen, the dining room, not used in years, the library, the sitting room. “Mama?”
Just as she was about to go upstairs to find Bea, Bill came up behind her.
“Sorry, Vera, your mom is not home.”
“Where on earth is she? She’s still not supposed to be out for long periods of time.”
“She’s been gone ... ,” he said, and looked at his watch. “Oh, well, I hadn’t realized. She’s been gone about two hours.”
“Two hours?”
“Yes, Annie picked her up and they were heading to Tina Sue’s place.”
“Tina Sue? Maggie Rae’s sister?”
“Yes, she seemed excited, said something about remembering who placed those boxes out on Maggie Rae’s curb. Then she took off like a bat out of hell.”
The boxes? Hmm. Those boxes of pictures and scrapbooks. She remembered? Why would she call Annie? Oh, no, they wouldn’t. Vera’s stomach flip-flopped.
“Did she tell you she thought it was Tina Sue?” Vera finally asked Bill.
“No, but since that’s where they are headed ... ,” he said, and then his eyes widened. “You don’t think that old fool went out to the Nest, thinking they were going to get some kind of scoop or confession, do you?”
“Why else would they bother?”
“Why didn’t they just call the police?” Bill asked. “Why would they do this?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Bill, get the car. I’m calling Detective Bryant,” Vera said, pulling out her cell phone. She told Bryant her concerns about her mother’s whereabouts.
“Let us deal with this,” the detective told her. “You don’t need to get in the middle of it.”
“Now, just hold on one minute. My mother, who has recently been stabbed, is out there in that hollow. Don’t think for one minute that I’m not going.”
“Then you’ll need to stay out of the way. Damn, I wish I had the use of the chopper,” he said.
“Oh, Detective, I don’t think you could land a chopper up there. What is the matter with you? Haven’t you been to Jenkins Hollow?”
“I have. And I think Annie Chamovitz might be in more trouble than she could imagine.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ll talk later. I need to get going on this,” he said, and hung up.
Vera felt the hair on the back of her neck raise, prickling around her shoulders and neck. She didn’t like the sound of that. Annie was visibly different from most of the population around Cumberland Creek. Surely, the people in that hollow were a good sort. At least one or two students drove from there every week to dance. All the talk of ignorance and inbreeding was just talk. The Klan was nowhere in this area anymore.
She shuddered when she remembered the last incident in her memory. She was a child when her father tended a young black man who had been beaten nearly to death by local Klansmen—most of whom lived around Jenkins Hollow, among (but not part of) the large Mennonite population.
“Did the Mennonites do this, Papa?”
“No, sugar. They are good God-fearing people. They believe in peace. I know they look different, but you can’t judge people by the way they look. The people who did this are just plain evil. And the law tells me they got them, and they shouldn’t bother anybody anymore.”
He never mentioned the Klan after that. And Vera assumed her father was right. She’d never heard another word of it.
Bill punched the buttons on the radio as they drove along out of Cumberland Creek proper into the hills.
She glanced at the speedometer. Fifty-five. “You pick a hell of a time to go the speed limit, Bill. My mother’s up there confronting a murderer.”
“We don’t know that, Vera. Why would Tina Sue kill her sister? It’s ludicrous.”
“I don’t know why anybody would kill anybody, Bill. Murder never makes sense to me, unless you’re protecting yourself or a child. Even then, I’d hope for a better way than to kill.”
“Well,” he said after a moment, “you’re right. None of it makes sense. The world is a crazy, messed-up place sometimes.”
They sat for a while listening to Willie Nelson crooning on the radio. Vera felt like Bill was traveling twenty instead of fifty-five. Everything was moving too slowly for her. They passed the red barn with the
Wilcom
sign on it. Hadn’t they passed that already? God, she was going to jump out of her skin if she didn’t see that her mother was safe. She could almost feel the mountains closing in on her.
As she mulled over the idea of Tina Sue killing her own sister, it left her with an uneasy feeling. If she could kill her sister, God knows what she was capable of doing.
“The detective was concerned about Annie,” Vera said. “I wonder why.”
“Well,” Bill said, “maybe it’s because of all the swastikas up here.”
“Swastikas? In Cumberland Creek?”
“It’s not exactly Cumberland Creek, Vera. One of my clients’ barn was painted, and they thought they caught the young man who did it, but it turned out not to be the person. Someone is painting them all over the place. Nobody knows exactly who is doing it.”
“It’s not the KKK, is it?”
He sighed. “To tell you the truth, someone I know is investigating that possibility, but nobody knows.”
“I thought they were long gone.”
“You would have no reason to know about them, would you?”
Vera thought about that and she supposed he was right. At one point in time, when her father was the town doctor, her family knew the secrets of all of the residents. Medicine offered no judgment, her father used to say. When a person is a healer, he heals. It’s that simple. She didn’t know this to be true, but she supposed her father even had tended a few members of the KKK.
Vera shuddered. She thought that part of the South’s history was long gone. People had evolved, hadn’t they? Surely, even the folks who lived in the Hollow had heard of civil rights and freedom of religion, freedom of choice. Nobody was that secluded anymore.
Maybe it wasn’t seclusion. Maybe it was a choice. An ill-formed and uneducated choice.