When Emory turned onto the gravel road leading to Mary Belle Hinter’s former property, he caught another glance of her right hand, which had been vise-gripped on the door handle for the past five miles. With her free hand, she pointed. “M’ driveway’s up ona right.”
Emory looked where she directed and noticed an obstruction. “There’s a chain across it. I’ll just pull off the side of the road up here.” He drove past her driveway before parking.
As soon as the car stopped, Ms. Mary Belle shoved the door open and fled like a teenage shoplifter. Emory grinned and stepped out of the car. The chilly mountain air gave visible form to his breath before the cutting wind dispersed it into nothingness. Although past noon, the ground on both sides of the road still glistened white from the morning’s frozen dew. Ms. Mary Belle’s property had no fence around it so the boundaries were unapparent. Not that it mattered. Everything in the immediate area now belonged to the TVA.
In her haste, the Crick Witch hadn’t bothered to walk back to the dirt driveway. Instead, she raced over the frozen wild grass toward a weather-battered cabin – or shack, however you looked at it.
Opting to forego the brush in favor of a clearer path, Emory headed back to the driveway. Once at the chain, he saw a sign posted in the center. “Notice of auction. Property and contents.” The sign gave a date of the coming Saturday.
Emory snapped a picture of the sign with his phone and texted it to Jeff with the message, “???”
When he caught up with his companion, he found her banging a rock against a padlock that had been placed on the front door. “Ms. Mary Belle! Ms. Mary Belle, we can’t do that.” As she raised the rock again, he snatched it from her hand.
“Someone locked m’ house!”
“I’m sorry, but we can’t go in there. I brought you here to say goodbye to your property, but we can’t break into the house.”
She jabbed a gnarled finger toward the door. “It’s my house!”
“Not anymore.” The words started her crying, and Emory fell into backtrack mode. “I’m sorry.”
“Kicked me outta m’ own home. Woke me up an’ dragged me out. M’ ’longings in there.”
“I thought your nephew got your belongings out.”
“He didn’t know what’s ’mportant. I got ’mportant stuff here.”
Emory frowned and let his eyes creep to the lock. “Maybe there’s an open window.”
“I cain’t climb through no window.”
“You’re right.” Emory glanced at the door and the rock in his hand. He hurled one mighty blow, and the lock clanked to the grey-wood porch. He opened the door for her. “After you.”
The house’s interior was better kempt than the exterior, but the homemade furnishings were less than aesthetic to the eyes. The place looked as if Ms. Mary Belle had just returned from a walk in the woods, although many of the cabinets and drawers were open, some half-emptied. Emory figured Luke must’ve just packed what he could in the amount of time the sheriff gave him and that he was smart to leave the furniture. He rubbed his hand along the rough, slatted surface of the kitchen table and was rewarded with a splinter to the index finger. His hand snapped up at the prick.
As he dislodged the wooden shrapnel from his finger, Ms. Mary Belle grabbed a tattered carpet bag from the hall closet. She pulled jars, bottles, rocks and objects Emory couldn’t discern from various cabinets and buried them in the bag.
“M’ nephew left all m’ potions an’ charms. Cain’t make no livin’ w’out m’ wares.”
Emory picked up an errant rock on the kitchen counter. “Charms? You mentioned you gave your Specter a charm to keep her from harm. Would one of those work for me to reverse the curse?”
The witch snatched the rock from his hand. “To’d you, you have ta die.”
“Not much for loopholes, are you?” Emory opened a cabinet and found a chicken-bone doll in the back corner. He pulled it out and asked, “What is this for?”
“It’s a blessin’ tal’sman.” Ms. Mary Belle took it from him.
“It’s for luck?” Emory glanced inside her bedroom to see a multi-colored, crocheted quilt on the dimpled bed. “Do you need any help?”
She grunted at him and continued her work. After a few moments, she closed all the cabinets. “I’m outta tea. Gotta go dig me some more. Where’s m’ ’andbasket?”
Dig tea? Emory pointed to a spool table in the corner. “Is that the handbasket you want?”
The witch grunted and picked up a basket woven from thistle branches from the table. She reached behind the front door for a cane made of copper. “Let’s git.”
Emory grabbed her carpet bag and followed her outside. Shutting the door behind him, he tried to return the broken padlock to the latch, but each of his three attempts ended with it jangling back onto the porch. “Forget it.”
He looked toward his car but didn’t see his elderly companion. “Where’d she go?” He spotted her heading toward the woods at the side of the house. “Ms. Mary Belle!” He ran to stop her before reaching the edge of the tree line. “What are you doing?”
The witch twisted her head back while pointing forward. “I need to attend to m’ trees.”
As sweat grated through the pores on his forehead, the private investigator scanned the woods from side to side, trying to judge how expansive they might be. “How far are they?”
“Just yonder.” She pointed and continued walking.
Damn. I hate the woods. Emory reached for a pill bottle in his pocket before he realized it wasn’t there. I forgot to get a refill. He shook his head and forged ahead, following the old woman.
Wind whistled through the holes in the hollow cane clutched in the Crick Witch’s gnarled right hand, laying down an eerie score to their sylvan trek. They trudged over the frozen mud and occasional icy puddles between the trees. After a few non-verbal moments, they came upon a creek, frozen on top and running from a boulder with an unusual shape.
Ms. Mary Belle pointed to the creek. “M’ trees are b’hind Crow Rock.”
Emory snapped his fingers when she said the name. That’s what it looks like. The boulder was indeed shaped like a hunched-over crow with greenish water flowing from its beak, as if it were regurgitating food for an imagined chick.
He followed her around the creek to a grove of leafless sassafras trees in an area of land pockmarked with numerous shallow holes. “Was this all your property?”
She nodded toward a clearing several hundred feet away. “T’where the woods end.” The old woman dropped her thorny basket and steadied herself with the copper cane, waving aside Emory’s helping hand, as she dropped to her knees near the trunk of one of the trees. She ran her free hand down the tree trunk, along a large root that reached across the ground two feet before disappearing into the dirt. She gripped her cane with both hands and rammed it into the root.
What the hell is she doing?
She struck the root and the ground beside it again and again. Clink! The cane hit something hard, which she pulled from the dirt and tossed over her shoulder.
Emory picked up the lustrous blue and white rock that landed at his feet. Pretty. I wonder if this could be used for meditation. Maybe it’s good for healing or luck or fortune. Where do they come up with which rock is good for what purpose anyway? Maybe I should take up meditation. Emory dropped the rock and turned his focus back to the crazed digger before him.
Ms. Mary Belle drove the cane into the ground again and again, several times throwing aside other bothersome rocks. When at last she dropped the cane, she placed the pieces of the root she had chipped off into her basket.
Now that the cane lay silent, another sound came to Emory’s ear. It was faint at first, but it grew with the wind. He tilted his head to get a bead on the source. “Ms. Mary Belle, do you hear that?”
The old woman stood, clutching her full basket, and her face cracked into a grin. “That’s m’ Specter.”
The faint moaning quivered the air, wheedling goosebumps from Emory’s skin. His mind screamed as he realized she wasn’t imagining it. The spirit of her deceased love haunted the woods!
Emory watched Ms. Mary Belle close her eyes and embrace herself in proxy for her lost love. He found himself mesmerized by the witch as she swayed to the moaning of her Specter as if it were melodic. The wind gathered strength, blowing through her long grey hair and raising the hem of her brown ankle-length skirt. Her swaying morphed into slow rotations, and she raised her arms over her head before extending them at her sides.
The cell phone ringing in his pocket slapped Emory’s attention away. He glanced at the caller ID and walked away from Ms. Mary Belle before answering. “Jeff, did you see the picture I sent you?”
Still at Becky’s house, within earshot of both her and Randy, Jeff answered Emory over the phone. “Why would the TVA be auctioning off property after going through all that trouble to acquire it?”
“I have no idea, but we need to find out.”
Jeff waved to Becky and headed toward the front door. “I’m on my way to talk to Frank Belcher now. By the way, what are you doing out there?”
“I brought Mary Belle Hinter here so she could get some closure.”
Jeff slipped into the driver seat of his rental. “I’m glad to see you took my advice. Is she going to lift your so-called curse?”
“Don’t poke at me.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I heard that tone.”
Jeff smiled at himself in the rearview mirror. “That was concern. Not ridicule.”
“Whatever. Apparently, the curse is set in stone.”
“She can’t break her own curse? What kind of witch is she?”
Emory glanced at the witch, who was now singing to the wind. “A very odd one.”
Jeff barged into Frank Belcher’s office without knocking or waiting for an invitation. “So the TVA is into flipping properties now?”
Hunched over his desk reading a document, the startled man gasped at the sound of Jeff’s voice. “What?”
“You just kicked all those people off their land for the expressed purpose of building a windfarm, and now you’re selling it?”
Frank removed his glasses and placed them on his desk. “Going after that tract was a decision made by my predecessor – one I never agreed with.”
“That’s great. Why not just sell the land back to the previous owners?”
“Unfortunately, I can’t reverse the purchase of those properties. They’re owned by the TVA now, and the only way we can unload property is through public auction. On the bright side, the previous owners can probably get the land back at auction for less than we paid them for it. I’m calling all of them today to let them know about the auction.”
“I suppose that’s good for them.” Jeff took a seat and relaxed his tone. “So you’re prepared to take a loss?”
“The added energy produced at the new tract will more than make up for any loss.”
“How did you choose the new tract so quickly?” Jeff felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.
Frank gurgled out what Jeff thought was a laugh, if not a well-executed one. “We always had two tracts we were considering.”
“That’s right. I remember Peter West saying something about that.” Jeff saw that Virginia was calling him, but he let it go to voicemail. “Was that common knowledge?”
“It was publicly shared knowledge. In the paper. On our website.”
“So why did you disagree with Corey’s choice?”
Frank sat back in his chair and interlocked his fingers over his sunken waist. “Corey had a tendency to make decisions with his gut instead of basing them solely on the facts at hand. A meteorological report comparing the two tracts clearly shows higher average wind speeds at the tract I chose.”
“Could I see that report?”
Frank tilted back toward the desk. “It’s publicly available information.” He shuffled through papers on his desk and handed Jeff the document.
Jeff glanced at the annual wind speeds for both tracts. “The difference is just 0.01?”
“Trust me, it’s significant.”
“I make it a rule never to trust someone who begins a sentence with those two words.”
Frank cleared his throat. “Ultimately, Corey said he chose the other tract because it’s flatter, and so he thought it would be cheaper to build on.”
“Is that not the case?”
“Yes, but we’ll make up the difference with the extra wind.”
“When we last spoke, you mentioned a report you get from a physical inspection of the land after you’ve purchased it. Could I see that report on the original tract?”
“It’s the survey report, and I actually haven’t received it yet. The contractor was supposed to give it to me yesterday. It’s a moot point now anyway.”
“Who’s the contractor?”
“We use a company called Rutherford Geophysical Survey Company. Why?”
Jeff rose from his seat. “Just curious. Thank you for your time.” He stopped shy of the door and turned. “By the way, did people in the office here know about Corey’s rooftop meditations?”
“He didn’t announce it, but I don’t think it was a secret. He had been coming in half an hour before the official start of the workday, opening his office and then disappearing with a gym bag for twenty minutes or so before returning to the office. There’s no gym in this building, so I asked him once where he went and he told me.”
“You must get here really early.”
“First to arrive and last to leave. I take my job seriously.”
“Thanks again for your time.” Jeff exited the office and pulled out his phone to call Virginia back when he saw that she had left him a voicemail.
“Jeff, this is Virginia. I think we should add Becky to the list of suspects. After that incident at her house, I guess you could say I took off my blinders. I did some digging, and it turns out the more I find out about her life, the less I know her. She told me that Corey had a small life insurance policy, and I figured it was just enough to pay the funeral expenses with maybe a little left over. Jeff, it’s for $750,000.”