Smoky Mountain Mystery 01 - Out on a Limb (13 page)

“Nope.”

“Anybody report seeing anything unusual?”

“No. Just some tourist stuff about seeing coyotes and thinking they’re
wolves,
and a guy who saw
Sasquatch
. The
Sasquatch
guy calls about once a week.”

Henry smiled at that. A big bear standing on its hind legs could make anyone think they’d seen
Sasquatch
. “Well, let me know if you hear anything, okay?”

On his way out Henry walked past an area where
Molyneaux
had set up a table and was showing something to several young people. Henry glanced at the specimens. They looked like brown bits of dust.
Molyneaux
looked up and gestured for him to come closer.

“These don’t look like any butterflies I ever saw,” Henry joked.

 “Oh, but you must let me show you. My work is with these smallest of the butterflies.”

“Dr.
Molyneaux
is a
nanolepidopterist
,” one of the volunteers said. “He’s a world famous expert in tiny butterflies.”

“Would you like to see them?”
Molyneaux
asked Henry. “Please, look.”

Molyneaux
gestured toward the stereoscopic microscope. Henry bent and stared through the eyepieces and was astonished. What looked like boring bits of brown lint to the naked eye were absolutely stunning, extremely colorful, under magnification and with illumination from the bright specimen
light.

 “They’re like hummingbirds, aren’t they?” Henry asks. “The colors, the way you can see
em
if the light’s right, but other times they don’t look like much at all.”

“Exactly,” says
Molyneaux
. “Nature can be sometimes shy. She does not easily reveal her secrets. We must be patient,
then
she will show us her true beauty.”

Henry nodded his agreement.

In the last room on the right before he reached the door, Henry saw a woman scientist take a giant bug out of a refrigerator. He stopped to watch what she was doing with it. He was startled to see her place it on the glass of what looked like a fancy copy machine and proceed to Xerox the huge insect. He stood in the hall and watched her repeat the process several times with other gigantic bugs. She’d take them out of the fridge, copy them, and then put them back.

“Excuse me,” Henry said, leaning in through the open door. “I was just
wonderin
, why you’re
copyin
bugs? And how come you keep
em
in the ‘
frigerator
?”

“I’m scanning beetles for our inventory,” she said. “We use this special biological scanner with a high depth of field to capture images of each specimen. I have to keep them cold or they crawl off the scanner.”

“They’re still alive?” Henry said, surprised.

“Oh yes. See these pincers?” she said, holding the bug so he could see its menacing jaws, “These really hurt, so I keep the beetles refrigerated. The cold puts them into a stupor so they can’t bite me.”

To be polite, Henry nodded with an understanding he didn’t really feel, and then walked away. He understood that people liked to study things, and he didn’t want anyone to get bitten, but he wondered how long insects could survive like that. He shivered at the creepiness of condemning any creature, even a bug, to a limbo of eternal cold.

Sometimes Phoebe saw patients who were not going to get well.

Her first call of the morning was on Mrs. Willard, a lady in the last stages of pancreatic cancer who didn’t want to die in the hospital. She wanted to live out her last days at home in the same house where she’d been born 93 years before. She was bedridden but was fortunate to have a nice family who were taking good care of her. There wasn’t much Phoebe could do, but she knew it was a comfort to the family if a professional nurse came by every so often to see how things were going.

Phoebe considered it an honor to attend to people at the end of their lives. She was deeply impressed with the grace and courage people demonstrated when their options were exhausted. Mrs. Willard was an interesting lady. She was tiny, barely five feet tall, with a fluffy halo of snow white curls. A kind disposition and good humor radiated from her despite her illness.

Phoebe bathed her thoroughly and carefully with a washcloth and basin, always keeping an eye out for pressure sores or any rashes, but there were none. She applied lotion to Mrs. Willard’s skin, and added a little bit of rose oil to suffuse the room with a pleasant, peaceful scent. Phoebe gently rolled her first to one side, then to the other, as she put on fresh sheets in the clever way nurses had of changing a bed with someone in it.

She plumped and adjusted the pillows to get her patient as comfortable as possible, then sat on the edge of the bed to chat. Mrs. Willard wanted to know all the most recent local developments and Phoebe entertained her with cheerful gossip.

“This is such a nice room,” Phoebe said. “You can
lay
in bed and see that pretty maple tree out the window.”

“This was the girls’ room when I was little.
Many’s
the year my sisters and
me’ve
laid
up in this bed and looked out on that tree. I wasn’t even born whenever
Grandaddy
planted it. I’m glad it’ll outlast us all.”

Phoebe smiled.

“I lived here
til
I was fifteen. Then, when I got married, I moved out to live with Joe in a little cabin over near Cosby, where the park is now. The cabin’s probably long gone by now. I heard the government lets
em
fall in cause they don’t want people
stayin
in
em
.”

Phoebe nodded.

“My children were born in that cabin.
Eight of
em
.
I’ve outlived
em
all and my husband, my friends. I’ve even outlived one of my grandchildren. It’s strange when nobody’s left who remembers the same things I remember. Nobody but
me’s
alive on this earth to remember Momma and Daddy. They wouldn’t believe
the things that’s
happened. They saw some changes during their lives, but not like the ones I’ve seen.

“
Everthing
seems to be
gettin
speeded up all the time,
don’t
it? You think things can’t get any more expensive or go any faster, but they keep on
doin
it.”

Phoebe murmured agreement.

“I’ve had a real good life and I thank God for it all, the good and the bad, but I’m ready. I’m not a bit sad or worried about what’s
comin
next. I’m
lookin
forward to it. Almost
everbody
who’s important to
me’s
on the other side, a
waitin
for me. I’ve made
em
wait a long time, too.”

“I thank you for
comin
,” she said and took hold of one of Phoebe’s hands. She held it in both of hers for a few moments, then she bent and kissed it in a gesture so sweet it made tears come to Phoebe’s eyes. Phoebe bent and kissed her on the forehead and said softly, “God bless you.”

Both women knew they’d never see each other again in this life.

As she drove away Phoebe thought about the difference in a death that was natural and expected and Sean’s death, which was neither.

And she wondered about the girl in her dream. Could there be a connection between the girl and Sean? If there was some connection, why hadn’t she dreamed about Sean, too? She hadn’t been able to help her boyfriend, but maybe she was meant to help the girl somehow.

Henry made several calls to the
University
of
Tennessee
before he was able to track down the person who was overseeing Ivy Iverson’s doctoral studies. It was Professor Conrad T. Whittington, a botanist who the department secretary said couldn’t take his call because he was away from the office. In fact, she said, he was inside the national park supervising a Fern Foray.

Henry called
DLIA
to get the exact location of the foray,
then
drove out to Big Creek to talk to the professor. He had to hike nearly a mile along a trail that ran through a lush fairyland of curling green fronds. Then he caught up with a group of about a dozen people who were in and slightly off the trail thrashing about in a thicket of briars. They seemed to be searching for something. “Is this it?” one of them called out.

 A large man crashed through the heavy undergrowth, squatted down, and disappeared for a few moments. Then he stood up and said, “No, this has opposing leaflets, a Christmas fern has alternating leaflets.”

The group stopped what they were doing and clustered around him. The teacher was over six feet tall and heavy, with muscle that was turning to fat in middle age. He was touching the plant gently as he explained something about spores.

He looked up when Henry approached and smiled in a near-sighted, distracted way. “Let the gentleman pass,” he told the
forayers
. “Please forgive us,” he said to Henry, “we’re dallying.”

“Can I watch?” Henry said.

“Of course,” said Whittington, and he turned back to the plant saying, “
as
you can see …” He was interrupted by a woman calling out, “Oh yuck, what’s that?”

The Professor turned to see what she was looking at. “It’s a type of fungus,” he said. “The Latin name is
Xylaria
polymorpha
.
The common name is
Dead Man’s Fingers
.”

“Good name for it,” the woman said. “It’s disgusting.”

The Professor went back to his lecture about the fern without seeming to mind the interruption. When he finished, the group, most of
whom
were scratched and bug-bitten from their efforts, continued along the trail. Henry said, “Professor Whittington, can I talk to you a minute?”

“Certainly,” Whittington said. “Do you mind walking with me? I dare not take my eyes off the group for fear of what they might get up to.”

“I hear
ye
,” Henry said, and fell into step just behind and slightly to the left of the big man because the trail wasn’t wide enough to walk alongside him. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about a student of yours, Ivy Iverson.”

“Ivy Iverson,” Whittington mumbled to himself, trying to place her, “Ivy Iverson … oh yes … I’m acquainted with the young lady to whom you refer. Has Miss Iverson done something she shouldn’t have?”

“I’m not sure,” Henry said. “Right now, it looks like she might’ve gone missing. I’m trying to locate her. You don’t happen to have any idea where she is, do you?”

“Me?” Whittington said, “No. I wish I could be of assistance. I certainly hope she’s alright, but unfortunately I have very little contact with Miss Iverson.”

“I thought you were her major professor,” Henry said.

“I am,” Whittington said, “but … are we off the record here?”

Henry nodded.

“Miss Iverson is not the most devoted scholar I’ve ever supervised.”

He called out to the group of adults, saying,
“
Stay together! Don’t venture too far ahead please!” He turned back to Henry and said, “It’s fairly obvious to anyone who is acquainted with her, that Miss Iverson enrolled at the
University
of
Tennessee
in order to have access to the trees in this park. She likes to climb them you see.