Blackman's Coffin (26 page)
“Bring me the bracelet in the Bible, please.” I’d laid my prosthesis on the floor and didn’t want to hop across the room to her door.
She came out wearing one of her sister’s oversized tee-shirts and holding the bracelet. “What is it?”
“Get me some sheets of paper and a pencil.”
I copied the designs from the four segments of the bracelet onto four pieces of paper. Then I matched the drawings like dominoes, connecting lines wherever they lined up. The result yielded a circle with an X at the center and a series of lines and curves around it.
“What are we looking at?” Nakayla asked.
“The site of your great-great grandfather’s gold mine. He’d carved segments of it on the family tombstones and then duplicated it on the bracelet.”
“But where is it?”
I pointed to a thick line across the top of the joined papers. “I think this is the French Broad. The circle with BH split across the upper pages is the Biltmore House. This wavy line is the entrance stream and the circle with the X is the mine. It’s beside the spot where the stream veers to the right from the road.”
“On the estate?”
“Yes. The stream Elijah and Olmsted diverted. The one Elijah discovered held a secret in gold.”
“What do we do?”
“Tomorrow we check it out.”
Nakayla stroked the side of my head where Ledbetter had pounded me with his fist. “And tonight?” she whispered.
“We put this bracelet back in the bedroom.”
“We?”
I gently wrapped my hand around the nape of her neck and pulled her to me. “We.” I kissed her lips, then whispered, “if you’ll help me.”
The cell phone kept ringing, but I couldn’t tell its location.
When the Saints Go Marching In
seemed to be coming from everywhere. I sat up in bed. Light streamed through the window. The clock read nine. I’d slept for nearly ten hours.
I patted the sheet beside me. The warm spot told me Nakayla had been there only a few minutes ago. Then I heard the banging of pans in the kitchen.
The phone started again and I found the culprit on the desk by Tikima’s computer. “You want me to get that?”
“Yes. Tell them I’ll call back. How do you want your eggs?”
“Scrambled.” I snatched up the phone. “Hello.”
“Sam. Misenheimer just called.” Stanley sounded giddy.
“Yes.”
“There was a fax waiting for him at his office this morning. Six million dollars, Sam. Galaxy is settling for six million dollars.”
“An insult. I hope you told Misenheimer they could stick their offer where the sun don’t shine.”
Silence, as if Stanley had disappeared from the face of the planet.
“Hey, brother, I’m kidding.”
***
“So you want me to pick you up later?” The cab driver turned in his seat, hoping to secure a guaranteed fare.
“No,” I said. “You can take us back now.”
His eyes widened in amazement. “That’s it? You’re not going in for tickets?”
I looked out over the valley where the stream of cars and the stream of water split. Then I looked at the building beside me, constructed on land excavated and leveled from the side of the hill. Visitors flowed in and out in a non-stop procession, leaving money at the Biltmore ticket counters and buying a glimpse into the gilded age of days gone by.
“Some other time,” I said.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday. It’ll be even worse,” the cabbie warned. “This place is a gold mine.”
***
Nakayla parked her Hyundai in a Golden Oaks visitor spot. The day before, Stanley had picked up his minivan and left both her car and its contents. We’d leased a public storage place and in a few weeks I’d travel to New York City where gold and gem buyers knew a value and didn’t ask a lot of questions.
I clutched the plastic evidence bag close to my side and followed Nakayla into the lobby. Captain and his harem weren’t in their usual positions by the television. Just as well. Nakayla and I wanted to see Harry without any fanfare.
I knocked on his door.
“It’s open.” Harry called out the same greeting as the first time.
He sat on the sofa, the morning paper in his lap and his wheelchair within reach. His face lit up. “Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.”
“More like Laurel and Hardy,” Nakayla said.
“You’re not in the news today.” He tossed the paper into the seat of his wheelchair.
“It’s been a week,” I said. “The snarling pack moves on.”
Nakayla joined him on the sofa and I brought the evidence bag from behind my back.
“Detective Newland loaned me something. He’s violated policy so don’t say you saw it here.”
Harry stared at the bag, uncertain what to make of it.
“Detective Newland found this in a cigar box in Phil Ledbetter’s house. Something his wife said belonged to his grandfather.”
I opened the bag. The silver was black with tarnish.
Harry reached for the pocket watch, a slight tremor running through his hand. He pried open the case. I knew what he’d read inside: “For Luke on his eighteenth birthday. This watch is a gift from his parents. Time is a gift from God.” Harry ran his forefinger over the etching.
Nakayla and I let him cry. Even after all these years, the pain of knowing his father had been murdered must have cut through him like a knife.
After a few minutes, he handed the watch back. “Do you think they’ll give it to me?”
“Without question.”
“Sam made sure,” Nakayla said. “He’s receiving a substantial insurance settlement for his parents’ death. Part of the money’s going into a trust for Detective Peters’ children. The police will be very appreciative.”
Harry shook his head. “How many generations have suffered because of the Galloway family’s greed?”
“We can’t make the past right,” I said. “But we can do something about the future.” I glanced at Nakayla and she nodded her approval. “I’ll be using my money to invest in gems and precious metals. Over time, I’ll be able to launder the gold and emeralds for you.”
Harry laughed. “Over time? Like my father’s watch says, time is a gift from God. I think I’ve stretched his generosity as far as I can expect.”
“That’s why we’d like to set up a foundation,” Nakayla said. “Something that will outlive you. Sam and I were thinking a fund for amputees, veterans who need extra help with job training or rehabilitation. My sister would have liked that.”
“A foundation for amputees?” Harry leaned forward and the tears seemed to evaporate from his eyes.
“Yes. Sam and I will both contribute.”
Harry searched our faces. “Do you think we could include children? I’d want to help children.”
And in his bright eyes I saw the spirit of the twelve-year-old boy in the journal, shining clearer than any of Thomas Wolfe’s marvelous words could describe.
***
Nakayla turned the car left coming out of Golden Oaks.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“One more stop.”
We took the Hendersonville exit off I-26 South onto Highway 64 and followed the franchise-laden boulevard into town. Nakayla drove across Main Street and made a few turns until 64 headed toward Brevard. Suddenly, she pulled onto the wide shoulder and stopped. We were beside a cemetery.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Oakmont Cemetery. Come on. This won’t take long.”
“Seems like I can’t get away from graveyards.”
We crossed the two-lane blacktop and walked through the gravestones.
“That’s it up ahead,” she said.
A monument was cordoned off by a wrought-iron fence, not unlike the one around the Robertson plot in Georgia, but twice as high. Climbing over this barrier would be tough.
The grave dated from 1905 and marked the final resting place of the Johnson family. An angel topped the pedestal for Margaret Johnson, wife of Reverend H.F. Johnson. The elegant marble figure stood ghostly pale against the crystal blue sky.
“This is it?” I asked. “The angel Thomas Wolfe’s father had at his shop?”
“That’s the common wisdom. It made quite an impression on a five-year-old child.”
A five-year-old child whose love of stories would one day lead him to create a journal, a story he would never finish, but whose truth would bring healing through its completion. I knew that I was part of that healing, and that I was whole, if not in body, then in soul. I understood nothing else mattered.
“If the angel’s looking homeward, then why not to the sky?”
Nakayla took my hand and centered me directly in front of the angel. The sightless eyes gazed down on me and the smooth marble lips held the trace of a smile. The right hand was lifted to the heavens, not pointing the way, but blessing those beneath.
“Home is where the heart is,” Nakayla said. “She came from the stone of the earth. She is looking homeward.”
Just like me. I pulled Nakayla close.
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