Nightwalkers cr-4 Page 4

  My visit to Lawyer Lee's office had been brief. He'd been out of the office. His assistant said that he could take on the project, but probably not for two weeks or so. I asked her to contact Mr. Oatley to get the precise property description in question. She gave me a smile not unlike the county clerk's and told me that Whatley Lee was fully familiar with Glory's End, formerly Oak Grove plantation. Apparently my input for the title search was going to be limited to paying for it.

  Finished with my work for the day, I went home for supper, then got some single malt, and went into my study to read. The three shepherds came in, found their dog beds, and began to decorate them with dog hair. Frack, the oldest of the three, was showing a lot of gray in the muzzle, and even though he could get around on his three remaining legs, he was slowing way down.

  I never thought it was possible to smell a moving bullet, but you can if it's close enough. Its vapor trail gives off a brassy, coppery smell, somewhat like ozone but with a distinct flash of heat. Also, if it's that close, the shock wave will press on your eyes.

  The round that razor-cut the air in front of my face came through the window from the outside, but I didn't learn that until later. I'd been reading my book, not bothering anybody, when what turned out to be a. 30-06 soft point clicked through the window, burned into the kitchen, and smashed six coffee mugs into ceramic dust inside one of the cabinets. I remember hearing a distant boom outside, but I was too surprised to do much more than blink as I rolled out of my chair onto the floor and pulled the table lamp over with me, breaking the bulb and putting the room in darkness.

  I lay on the floor, wondering what would happen next, smelling expensive Scotch on the rug. A big piece of glass guillotined out of the window frame and crashed to the floor. A moment later I could feel a cool breeze from outside. I listened to see if anyone was coming up to the house, maybe to look inside, see if he needed to finish the job, but heard only the night wind. My nearest gun was in the gun safe in my closet.

  Then I realized that this had to have been a warning shot. Somebody with a long rifle and a scope had just put one between my nose and my book, and I didn't think it had been Horace. If the shooter was that good, he could just as easily have put it in my ear.

  Three cold shepherd noses were pushing into various places on my body, making sure I was okay. I crawled across the floor, found the phone, and called the cops.

  "Okay," Horace said. "This doesn't compute."

  "You mean Breen as the shooter."

  "Yeah. What are the chances of an ex-con, out, what, three whole days? Getting his hands on a thirty-aught and some ammo, finding your house, setting up a nighttime ambush, and then getting clean away?"

  There was silence around the office conference table. I could see that my troops were as skeptical as I was. The sheriff's office had found where the shooter had set up in the construction site behind my house in Summerfield. They'd even found a single spent center-fire cartridge and footprints leading out through all the red mud to the gravel construction access road. After that, nothing. No witnesses, no tire tracks, no dropped calling cards saying the Shadow did it. Nothing. They were stumped.

  "I mean," Horace said, "where would he get wheels? Did he buy the rifle? Steal it? Somebody just lend him one? Whatcha need a rifle for, Billie Ray? Not gonna murder some guy, are you?"

  "And why the warning shot?" Tony said. "Guy like that, takes a baseball bat to two women 'cause the baby was crying? You're talking some kinda single-cell organism, does that kinda shit. Give a guy like him a rifle, put him in position, he wouldn't shoot a warning shot."

  I nodded. "Yeah, that's what I think, too. Breen's definitely a POS, but I don't see him as a careful planner. It wasn't him."

  "So," Pardee said. "You maybe got more than one ghost out there?"

  I threw up my hands. "Would I necessarily know? It was a fluke that the people at Alexander State were able to warn me about Breen."

  "Have they grabbed him up?" Horace asked. "Squeezed him a little?"

  I nodded. Arlanda Cole had called first thing this morning after word got out downtown. Billie Ray had come in when called. He denied knowledge of any shootings, anywhere, anyhow. She'd said that, in her opinion, he seemed to have genuine parolee religion and that he was not about to put his freedom in danger just to scare me with a rifle. Besides that, his girlfriend could vouch for him at the time of the shooting. Of course.

  That said, I couldn't think of anyone else who would do that. During my time I'd put more than one bad guy away, but so had all of us, and it was inevitably a team effort. The perps who came back as ghosts and acted on it usually did it by walking up in broad daylight, doing a remember-me, and then opening up with a barrage of some kind. They weren't thinkers, planners, or talkers. They were doers.

  "Okay, then," Pardee said. "Let's assume we're right about that. So who-and why the warning shot?"

  I drew a blank. Somebody from the hills, like one of the Creigh clan? Long guns were their specialty, but warning shots were not their style. If the hill people thought you owed them a death, they just flat took it. Fair's fair. And the vigilantes of cat dancer fame? I'd kept my part of that Faustian bargain and paid for it with my professional reputation. They had no reason to want my skin, assuming they were even still in business. There was another Billy, one with a y, down in Wilmington, who might qualify, but to the best of my knowledge he was in federal hands until the end of time for his part in the nuclear power plant sabotage case.

  "How soon's that old house of yours out in Rockwell County going to be ready?" Horace asked.

  I shook my head. "My ace restoration consultant says ten years to completion. I could get a trailer, I guess." A fleeting image of that flash of light and the disappearing horseman on the western ridge crossed my mind, but that didn't make sense, either. I hadn't been there long enough to provoke this kind of violence. Even the reenacting antebellum spinster across the road, strange as she seemed, had been friendly so far. "I don't know, guys, maybe I have to start sleeping days and then doing a little night recon for the next couple of weeks. See what we can turn up."

  "We?" Tony asked hopefully.

  "The shepherds and I. This guy comes back, I might miss him, but they won't."

  They looked disappointed. The secretary told me I had a call. It was my old boss, Bobby Lee Baggett, high sheriff of Manceford County.

  "Who'd you piss off this time?" he asked.

  "I might have a ghost," I said.

  "You probably have several," he said with a laugh. "Not to mention cat dancers and that wild bunch up there in the Smokies. But you said might-you don't think this is Mr. Breen?"

  Leave it to Bobby Lee to have been thoroughly briefed. "It seems improbable that he could get something like this organized so quickly."

  "On the other hand, he's had seventeen years to plan it and set it up. Getting out to your place and doing the deed would only take an hour."

  He had a point there, I thought. "That means helper bees," I said.

  "Yup, it does. Since it happened on my patch, I've got people pulling that string as we speak. You got someplace to go? I heard you'd bought a big plantation over in Rockwell County."

  "Jungle drums alive and well, I see."

  "Oh, absolutely. You know how it is-we keep track of our more notorious alumni. Seriously, give it some thought: We can work the cop side here, and you make it harder for the mopes to find you. You want me to talk to Sheriff Walker up there?"

  "I was going to do that myself," I said, "but an advance call wouldn't hurt."

  "You assume I'll speak well of you, Lieutenant."

  "As well as you can, boss."

  "You miss it?"

  "I miss the people more than the job."

  "You took a bunch of 'em with you, as I remember. Horace, Tony, Pardee. How's that going for you, your private snoop deal?"

  "Boring," I said. "The Wilmington case was interesting, but the bulk of it is waste management, just like it was on the Job."


  "Waste management," he said. "I like that. Slide your ass down a rabbit hole somewhere, Lieutenant. I'll be in touch."

  "Thanks, boss. I appreciate it."

  I meant that, too. The Manceford County Sheriff's Office was a tribe, and Bobby Lee Baggett was very much the chief. Their unofficial and often-denied motto was "Mess with the best, and die like the rest." I knew the sheriff would put a couple of tigers on this and dig hard.

  "I guess I need to go out to my new county," I told my guys. "Find me some temporary housing."

  "Make sure they take dogs," Tony said with a grin.

  "Make sure you take a weapon or three," Horace said, ever Mr. Practical.

  I drove out to the Rockwell County seat and made an office call on the county sheriff. His name was Hodge Walker, and he was a big-shouldered black man with iron gray hair, a deep baritone voice, and a wide smile. I'm no pygmy, but his hand engulfed mine like a gentle laundry press. I'd taken both operational shepherds into his office, and he thought that was just dandy.

  "Bobby Lee Baggett called me earlier," he said. "Didn't know we had us a lawman celebrity up here in little ol' Rockwell County. You're the one broke up that terrorist deal down near Wilmington, right?"

  "I had some competent help." I said.

  He shivered. "Nuclear stuff gives me the heebie-jeebies," he said. "The North Carolina Sheriffs' Association toured the plant near Raleigh one time. We didn't see the reactors, of course, but they had 'em this big pool with some evil shit glowing down at the bottom."

  "Moonpool," I said. "That's what the bad guys went after."

  "I hear you've just bought Glory's End?"

  I'd have been surprised if he hadn't known. I said yes.

  "Beautiful old place," he said. "Some sad aspects to it, too."

  "The train robbery."

  "And the people who made it beautiful," he said, gently reminding me of the county's slave-soaked history.

  "Yes," I said. "I'm fully aware of that aspect, too."

  "So," he said. "Somebody took a shot at you over in Summerfield last night."

  "Somebody did," I said. "Based on how it was done, I believe it was a warning shot. Did Sheriff Baggett tell you I've just acquired a ghost?"

  "He did, and he also said you didn't think this was him."

  I shrugged. "They'll find out, I suppose. In the meantime, I'm looking for someplace to go to ground up here while my restoration project gets under way. Any decent B and B's do long-term rentals here?"

  "We've got two in town," he said, "but two big dogs like these are probably out of the question. Your new neighbors, now, the Lees? They have an old stone cottage on the millpond at Laurel Grove that they rent out from time to time. You want me to call Ms. Hester for you?"

  I thought about it for a moment. It certainly would be convenient, but I wasn't all that anxious to drop back into the 1800s. He saw my hesitation and smiled.

  "They're all right, those two," he said. "A little bit crazy, but of course I say that in the southern, which is to say complimentary, way. The major, now, is crazy in the medical sense, or at least that's what folks say. And I don't think they'd care about these two guys."

  "Then, yes, please," I said, knowing full well the value of a referral in a small southern town from the county sheriff. We talked law enforcement for a few minutes, and then I became aware that one of his officers was waiting to see him, so I made my manners and left.

  I went back to the purple house for lunch. The sheriff called me there on my cell. He told me that the stone cottage was available and that I should go out there and speak to Ms. Valeria.

  I drove up to the big house at Laurel Grove and found Valeria waiting for me on the front porch. She was wearing a different-colored version of the full-length puffy skirt and a blouse with long sleeves and lace cuffs. I got out of my Suburban and admired her for a moment. Standing on the veranda of the big house, she looked perfectly appropriate, if something of a stage prop.

  "Ms. Valeria," I said, honoring the southern tradition of address. "We meet again."

  "Why, yes indeed, Mr. Richter," she said in that throaty voice. "We understand you would like to engage the stone cottage for a spell?"

  "I think so," I said. "May I see it first?"

  "Of course, sir," she said, coming down the dozen wooden stairs in a rustle of silk and petticoats. "The cottage is a few minutes' walk from here. Shall we?"

  I agreed and opened the door for the shepherds. They bounded out, took one look at Valeria, and went over to her with tails wagging and ears submissive. She bent down and addressed each of them, and they responded enthusiastically. "These are your guardians, Mr. Richter?"

  "Precisely, Ms. Valeria. Where I go, they go."

  "Just as it should be," she said. "It is their duty, if I'm not mistaken."

  "Please, call me Cam," I said. "I'm not used to all this formality."

  "It will grow on you, Mr. Cam," she said, granting me half an inch. "Formality allows a certain distance, the better to make appraisals, don't you think? The cottage is just this way."

  We set off down the circular driveway and then turned left onto a gravel lane that led down a gentle slope toward a dense grove of willow trees. The shepherds ranged ahead, happy to be loose in the fresh air after being shut up in the Suburban. I decided to be quiet and enjoy the scenery. This seemed to suit my hostess just fine as we walked apace down the hill toward the willows. At the bottom of the lane was a low stone dam, which backed up a millpond of about an acre. To our right were the foundations of what had probably been the gristmill. To the left, on the other side of the pond, was the stone cottage, partially screened by more willow trees.

  It was a square building with a slate roof over gray stone walls. There was a low porch across the front and two large chimneys on either side. We went inside. The cottage smelled of wood smoke laced with lavender. There was a single large room just inside the front door and a small kitchen at the back left. On the right-hand side was a very spacious bedroom and bathroom, with a second, much smaller bedroom next to it. The cottage had two huge stone fireplaces, one in the main front room and a second in the main bedroom. The furnishings were all made of dark wood. Overhead were some antique chandeliers, and I couldn't tell if they were electric or perhaps gas lamps. Brass sconces were mounted on the walls, complete with candles. The floors were of polished pine with ancient oriental rugs here and there. I asked about heat and air-conditioning.

  "There's no need for air-conditioning in the stone cottage, Mr. Richter," she replied. "These walls are solid stone, as the name implies. They are almost two feet thick, and the temperature in high summer is as it is now. Heat can be had from the fireplaces. The wood stores are out back on the porch. Unfortunately there is no telephone service, since we have not found a use for one here at Laurel Grove. There is a washing machine set in the alcove behind the kitchen."

  I remembered the carriage driver's cell phone. "The lights: Are they electric?" I asked.

  The barest hint of a smile crossed her face. "Yes, there is electricity. The cottage has its own well, as does the main house." She hesitated. "You must understand, Mr. Richter. We are not Luddites or ignorant of modern facilities. It's just that these buildings were built to be lived in long before electricity, telephones, and central heat and air. We choose to take advantage of that fact."

  "This all suits me just fine," I said. "I'll be spending most of my time across the road, and these days, the nighttime seems best suited for sleeping. It's okay to have the shepherds?"

  "Oh, certainly, Mr. Richter. We have two ancient dogs up at the house, and they keep us excellent company. A loyal dog is better company than many humans, in my experience."

  I was suddenly curious. "Do you have significant experience of humans, Valeria? Out there in the big bad world?"

  "It's Ms. Valeria, at least for now, if you please," she said, "and being both a Lee and a Marion, my family history is replete with experiences of all manner, past and pre
sent. Shall we go back now?"

  Suitably chastised, I decided once again to be quiet. We walked back to my Suburban and I put the dogs on board. She said she and her mother would instruct Mr. Oatley to draw up a lease. She nodded graciously, looked forward to seeing me again, and then went up the stairs and back into the nineteenth century in a swish of voluminous skirts. I got into my ride and withdrew to the real world, wondering what the hell I'd gotten myself into this time. I had visions of the carriage man clopping into town with the draft lease, a piece of rolled parchment sealed in red wax that was still warm. Maybe that was why so many of the older buildings in town still had hitching posts out front.

  Just for the heck of it, I pulled across the main road into the driveway of Glory's End-and got a surprise. There were now two tall iron gates suspended on those stone pillars, and a big bright lock and chain securing them.

  Not knowing what else to do, I called Carol Pollard.

  "Hey, there," she said. "Seen your surprise yet?"

  "I believe I have-I'm parked outside the gates and was wondering how to get in."

  "Come by and I'll get you the keys. Believe it or not, those are the original gates. I did some snooping in town and found this old boy who had them, and got them for three hundred bucks. They're wrought iron, and they're worth more than that, but he thought they should go home."

  "Well, I'm delighted, Carol," I said. "Great job. FYI, I've rented the stone cottage across the way at Laurel Grove. Something's come up over in Summerfield, and I need to escape to the country. That seemed the perfect place."

  "Well done yourself, Lieutenant. Those two won't let that place to just anybody."

  "I had Sheriff Walker make a call," I said, "and I'd already met Valeria. Excuse me, Ms. Valeria."

  "Don't you forget it, either," she said with a laugh.

  "As she pointedly reminded me," I said. "How are we coming with contractors and other undesirables?"