Combustible (A Boone Childress Novel) (22 page)

As those homes sold, the buildin
g expanded up the highways, hopscotching between existing farms to the land that had been sold out. Eventually, the frenzy found its way across the county, where it petered out on Highway 12 near Frisco. It appeared the western part of the county had escaped the sprawl, until the NC State Transportation Department announced a new bypass.

That's when the real buying frenzy began.

Developers who had concentrated on the coast turned their eyes to the family farms that blanketed the area covered by the proposed corridor, huge plots of land that made them drool. But the gold rush ended before it really began. Most of the deeds for the property surrounding the corridor had never been registered. Over the generations the land was left to children then grandchildren and then their own grandchildren. Ownership was so murky, no one knew who really owned what.

"That means the land will stay undeveloped,"
Boone said.

"Not so fast,"
Mrs. Yarbrough said. "North Carolina has a little provision called unencumbered interest, which allows the court to grant one part-owner the right to buy everyone else's shares."

"Whether they like it or not?"

"That would be correct. All you would need is the capital."

"That doesn't sound fair to me. The rich owner exploiting the rest of them."

She nodded. "That is often the way."

"Well,"
he said, turning his attention to the stack of books. Lamar would be ready to go soon. "It's a moot point, because nobody living in Tin City or Nagswood has the cash to buy that much land."

She smiled wryly. "Why do think it would have to be someone living there?"

"What do you—"

"
I told you earlier, I have several connections with Tin City. I am not the only faculty member who does. This is a library, and it is full of information. Perhaps you should look into it."

With another
ironic smile, she disappeared into the other room, leaving him to scratch his head.

For the next half hour, Boone poured over the materials she gave him. He fou
nd that the homesteads were created under the separate program, but they were dramatically different. Atamasco was a social experiment by a Greenville cotton baron who had diversified into electricity, railroads, and later, aerospace. During the Depression, he bought one square mile of farmland in central Bragg County and then sponsored hundreds of Dutch immigrants to settle the farms. Skilled laborers and farmers, they helped build a utopian farm village, complete with homes, stores, slaughterhouses, and granaries—everything a town needed to be self-sufficient. The baron then used his political clout with the Democratic machine to sell the idea of homestead farms to the Roosevelt administration. The government bought in, the baron cashed out, and the community survived.

The same wasn't true of the three homesteads. Logging
tycoon E.D.S. Landis tried to replicate the Atamasco experiment by selling three one thousand acre tracts of timber land to the government, creating Tin City, Nagswood, and Black Oak Hill by recruiting poor residents from New Hanover County and other parts of the Carolinas. The books didn’t mention much about the towns, except that they were not built to be self-sufficient and the residents were by and large not skilled laborers. Some farms succeeded, but most failed, and the government sold off the land at auction.

"Mrs.
Yarbrough?" Boone said as he closed the last book, collected his notes, and ventured toward the front of the house. "I'm ready to go."

She met him there and opened the front door. "Hope you found everything you were looking for."

"Sort of," Boone said. The information was interesting, but it couldn't help make the connection between the past and the present homesteads. "I was hoping for some more, though. I'm curious about the farmhouses that burned down recently in Tin City and Nagswood."

"Oh?" H
er ears perked up. "Were those houses built for the homestead programs?"

"I'm not sure,"
he said. "'They look a lot like this one, except they were two stories."

She clicked her tongue. "Why, that would be just terrible."

"Why?"

"Because if they were homestead houses, they would be historical landmarks, just like this house and the rest of the structures on the museum grounds. Destroying them is not only illegal, it is immoral, as well. I hope they catch whoever did it."

"Did what?"

"Burned them
to the ground, of course, along with that poor woman, may she rest in peace. Don’t look so shocked, dear, this is a small town. Word travels fast among the blue haired set." Her eyes twinkled. "Good luck with whatever direction your journey leads you."

Boone was reviewing the pages of compressed but neat handwriting in his notebook when he reached the Atamasco Volunteer Fire Department. The firefighters were washing down the pumper and doing an equipment check.

"Hey, it's the possum," one of them called to the others.
They all had a chuckle at his expense.

Boone rolled his eyes. He knew, though, that if he objected, he would never hear the end of it. Firefighters rode one another pretty hard. It came with the territory. So he waved
to them all and ducked inside the station.

Compared to the
Frisco station, the Atamasco station was a brand new building, with six bays downstairs, sleeping quarters on the second floor, and the captain's office to the side. It was there that he found Lamar.

Boone
took a seat in the bench outside the captain's office. The door was half open, and since the building was all steel and concrete, the sound of their voices carried well into the bays.

"What a firefighter does on his own time is his own
business," the captain said. "Especially a vollie. I ain't saying that I approve, mind you. He's got some old fashioned notions."

"
Old fashioned, huh?” Lamar said. “And you're saying that these notions don't keeping him from doing his job."

"I believe that's what I just said."

"That woman who died out in Nagswood might argue with you."

"We settled this
problem on the site, Lamar."

"But that was before the body was found. My stepson heard her screaming. I'm wondering why
Loach didn't."

Lamar’s
defending me now? Boone thought.

The captain raised his voice.
"What exactly are you hinting at? That those vollies had something to do with it?"

"I ain't hinting nothing, captain."
Lamar's chair scrapped across the floor. Boone guessed that he was now standing. "In this envelope is a formal complaint against your firefighters for dereliction of duty, refusal to render aide, and endangering the safety of a fellow volunteer."

Lamar filing charges against
another firefighter? Unbelievable.

The other captain's chair scraped on the concrete, too. "Lamar, you want to think about this good and
hard before you go after Eugene. He’s got friends, and this is a small town. Remember that."

"Yep," Lamar said, "I hope other folks remember that, too."

He came out of the office a couple of seconds later. His cap was pulled down over his eyes, and he was staring at the ground,
hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket.

Boone left the building hard on Lamar's heels but not so close that his footsteps could be heard over traffic noise. He was glad he had heard the captains' conversations, but he knew Lamar wouldn't like him eavesdropping
.

The truck was parked across the street underneath a row of live oaks. Lamar trotted out to the yellow line, waited for a car to pass and then crossed to the parking slot. The meter showed red, indicating that Lamar had been in the fire station almost thirty minutes.

Boone paused on the sidewalk to let several logging trucks pass. One sped by close to the side of the road, blowing dust and pine bark chips in its wake. It was a Landis Logging Company truck. They were infamous speeders, but the deputies always looked the other way because of the Landis name on the side. Boone wondered if Deputy Mercer would have the guts or stupidity to pull one over.

T
he instant a break opened, Boone made a dash for it. Halfway across the highway, his cellphone started ringing. On the centerline, he checked caller ID. It was Abner.

"Terrific timing, Doc,"
he said as he answered. "A logging truck's about to obliterate me."

"
I've got news."

"Hang on."
Boone jogged across the street. Instead of hopping into Lamar's vehicle, he ducked behind an appliance delivery truck. He wanted to finish the call out of the range of Lamar's ears.

"Did you
read the paper about the Nagswood victim? It said the medical examiner identified her."

Abner
scoffed. "Don’t believe everything you read. But that’s not why I called. That finger you sent? Meredith ran some tests, and it had some interesting chemical compounds on it."

"Like what?" Boone peeked around the side of the delivery truck. Up ahead, Lamar was kicked back in the cab of the truck, his hat pulled down to cover his face, the radio cranked to a rock station. The sound of an old Molly Hatchet song drifted down the street
.

"Alkali metal. Sodium, to be exact."

"Sodium?" He said. "Really."

"A significant quantity was also found on the body of the victim."

“You won’t believe this,” Boone said and explained about the theft of the supply from the college lab supply, as well as the find of the empty bag in the custodian's closet.

"
Good to know," Abner said, "We can get together later to compare notes. Listen, Boone, I've got a job for you. Some investigative work to see who might be setting these fires. You up to it?"

Perfect.
Finally, he could stop waiting around for the experts and take an active role in finding the arsonist and maybe, Consuelo Vega's killer.

"You bet.
You know, the sheriff is saying that Stumpy Meeks is a suspect in the arsons."

"The sheriff says lots of things
that aren’t true. You'll find that out real quick."

"
What do you need me to do? Collect more physical evidence?"

"I want you to interview a
Troy Blevins that teaches at your old high school."

"
The band director? Why him? I was hoping you’d want dirt on Eugene Loach."

"Never heard of him."

"He was the firefighter who let Mrs. Vega die. Lamar filed a formal complaint against him for dereliction of duty." Boone still couldn't believe he had done that. Maybe now, he will reinstate me, he thought. "He has to involved somehow."

"Maybe he is." The line was silent for a few seconds. "But I still need you to ask this band teacher some questions."

Boone sighed. "Email me the questions."

"Already did. Check your inbox."

Boone could hear the amusement in his voice and might have been annoyed if he hadn't noticed a patrol car roll by and then hit its lights. It swung into the parking place a few slots ahead of Lamar. As Boone peered around the delivery truck, Deputy Mercer climbed out. He wore the same pair of mirrored sunglasses and carried a ticket book tucked under his arm.

"Okay, Doc
," he said. "Anything else? There's a situation here. I've got to go."

"Just one more thing."

"What's that?" Boone answered.

"I need you
to lend me five hundred dollars and then come down to Stanford tomorrow morning."

"Why do you need five hundred dollars?"

"Bail money. I'm in jail."

"That jackass has more nerve than brains," Lamar told Boone as they rolled down Highway 12 toward Stanford. "He's giving tickets to god and everybody."

"What do you mean?"
Boone asked.

He tried to sound nonchalant. But his brain was functioning on high alert. Before he had hung up,
Abner admitted that he was in the county lock up for interfering with a police investigation. He wouldn't go into details, except that Hoyt had made the arrest himself. He also said that he was fine, and there was no need to hurry on his account because the arraignment wouldn't be until tomorrow morning.

Then when Boone got back to the truck, Mercer was finishing a parking ticket, as well as a noise ordinance violation.

"Wait just a cotton picking minute," Lamar had said. "You're a county deputy. You can't write me up for a city ordinance."

"Tell it to the judge."

"Come on now," Lamar said, his voice rising. "We're both in public service. How about a little professional courtesy?"

"Professional courtesy is for professionals."
Mercer clicked his tongue. "Maybe you vollies should learn to be real firemen, instead of little boys playing with water hoses."