Smoky Mountain Mystery 01 - Out on a Limb (16 page)

Phoebe tried to imagine Dale
Earnhart
Jr. cooking and wondered what NASCAR cuisine might be. She visualized frying bacon on an engine block, or a drive thru for cars going over a hundred miles an hour. Her thoughts were interrupted by
Waneeta
saying, “Carl can fix anything. He’s a genius with cars, plumbing, electrical. And
Wayne
’s the best babysitter you could ask for. But it
ain’t
all been a bed of roses, I’m telling
ye
. I went through a rough time after my second divorce. I hadn’t ever told anybody this story
cause
I was too ashamed, but I’ll tell you.

“It was bad enough to find out
Wayne
was
cheatin
on me with a woman who had the same name as me.
Prob’ly
the only way the
eejit
could be sure he wouldn’t mess up and call one of us the wrong name!
Wayne
is
not
a smart man.”

Phoebe laughed so hard she dropped the phone. By the time she had it back against her ear, she’d missed part of the story.
Waneeta
was saying, “… had to find a place of my own and I didn’t have no money. The best I could do was rent a used single-wide trailer. I’d always
swore
to myself that I wouldn’t ever live in no trailer, but there I was. I was
feelin
mighty low.

“The first time I went inside the thing I was
dreadin
what I’d find. But it turned out to be a nice little place and was as clean as a whistle. In that whole house, there was just one single item left behind by
whoever’d
lived there before.

“A
weddin
dress was
hangin
in a bag in the bedroom closet. Either it’d never been worn or had just come back from the cleaners. Whichever it was, the dress was in absolutely
perfect
condition.

“That dress turned out to be such a
blessin
. The mystery of
tryin
to figure out who left it behind, and why, gave me
somethin
to think about besides myself and my own problems.

“I never did find out whose dress it was or what’d happened to
em
, but I figured it was a woman who’d lived there before me and she was
leavin
me a present to show me there was a good future for me out there somewhere. And that, just like her, I wouldn’t always be
livin
there. It was like we was friends, but we never did meet.

“And that woman was right. Before long I was able to move out.”

“What a wonderful story,” Phoebe said, enchanted. “It’s like you were helped by an angel.
An angel in a trailer.”

“That trailer angel saved me some money, too,” said
Waneeta

“How?”

“I wore the dress for my third
weddin
!”

***

As soon as she hung up, Phoebe reached for the dog-eared spiral notebook she kept beside her seat. It was full of possible lyrics to country music songs. Her secret dream was to write a song for Tim McGraw. And
Waneeta’s
life was a constant source of great material.

She scribbled notes about the pristine wedding dress left behind in a trailer by some unknown person for a broken-hearted woman to find.

Maybe the woman who’d left it had been broken-hearted, too. What an interesting riddle. Just like
Waneeta
, Phoebe loved a mystery.

When Jill looked up she saw a flash of metal glinting in the sun and a patch of yellow. It looked like a piece of cloth. She moved a few steps to get a better view. It was a jacket worn by someone perched high up in a tree. They were sitting on a limb with their back against the trunk and their legs stretched out in front of them.

Whoever it was had colorful ropes running up into the tree above where they were sitting and also dangling down below them. There were bits of metal hitting against each other and jingling as the ropes blew in the breeze. This was the source of the tinkling sounds and the glinting.

Jill called out to the climber, but got no response. She moved around and parted the foliage to get a better look. The blond hair cascading around the slumped head made her think it was a woman. She called several more times,
then
finally she saw the person try to raise their head. One of their hands twitched and fell to the side, but that was all.

Clearly something was wrong. Jill needed to get help, but there was no cell service in the area. And there was no way for Jill to get to the woman or get her down by herself. She had no equipment and no climbing skills.

Jill had a strong impulse to hurry back to her car, but she made herself slow down and
find
a way to mark the place before she left. She looked around for something to use as a flag and for clues as to the climber’s identity.

But there was nothing.
Absolutely nothing.

Jill knew that animals would carry away food or anything with an interesting smell, but it made no sense that every last bit of the climber’s gear would be gone.

Surely the woman had brought more with her than she’d taken up into the tree. But who would’ve taken her things and left without calling for help once they got to the road? She knew approximately how long the woman had been up there because the flashing had started a day and a half ago.

This was highly suspicious. Maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe someone had hurt the woman on purpose. But who was it, how had they done it, and why?

Jill walked in a spiral around the base of the tree, widening her search. Then she saw it, a broken stick with a rubber knob on one end. She picked it up. The rubber tip had blood on it. She had no idea what the item was, but she suspected it had been used somehow to hurt the climber. She made a few more widening circuits of the tree, finding nothing, and then changed her mind about how best to help the woman.

She took off her jacket and tied it around a nearby sapling. Her gut told her the quickest and smartest way to get help was to walk to
Leon
’s. The log road would take her most of the way. And walking downhill straight toward
Leon
’s cabin would be faster than hiking back up to her car and driving out via the circuitous route she’d have to take.

Leon
lived on his family’s farm adjacent to the park. He’d had search and rescue and emergency medical training from the Park Service when he was a teenager. He also had experience recovering lost hikers as a volunteer. And he taught the Boy Scouts how to tie knots and how to climb and rappel.
Leon
would know what to do and he’d be discreet.

Jill was worried for the woman and wondered what had happened to her. But she wanted to wait
til
she understood for sure what the situation was before deciding how best to approach the authorities. The people of White Oak preferred to handle local matters among themselves.

Over a thousand local families had been thrown off their land in the 30’s to create the park and the feds has sent an arrogant gang of outsiders in to run the place like an occupying army. The locals had seventy-five years worth of reasons to dislike and distrust the invaders. There was no rush to bring them into this.

Bad blood could last a long time in the mountains.

***

At the same time Jill was making her way down toward
Leon
’s place, Henry was driving to
Knoxville
to talk to Ivy’s former boyfriend, Tim Cardwell. He wanted to ask him some more questions, this time without an audience.

Henry called Cardwell and made arrangements to meet him at
The Tomato Head
, a trendy vegetarian hangout on the old
Market Square
in the center of downtown
Knoxville
. It was not a convenient location for Henry, but he enjoyed the occasional opportunity to leave the damp mountain wilderness and visit a crowded, noisy, asphalt-coated urban landscape. It always reminded him why he loved his job.

Cardwell was sitting at a wrought iron table outside the café waiting for Henry. Seen here among city dwellers, Cardwell radiated the rude good health of a young man who enjoyed the outdoors. A tan set off his bright blue eyes and sun streaked brown hair.

Henry brought Cardwell up to date on his inability to get in touch with Ivy and then asked, “Remind me what you’re studying at U.T.?”

“
Bryophyta
.”

“Come again?” Henry said, smiling.

“Mosses and liverworts,” he said. “I’m third year in the Ph.D. program.”

“Is that the same as what Ivy’s studying?”

“We’re both in the Botany Department, but she’s in Mycology. She studies
Myxomycetes
,” Cardwell said, then remembered to translate, “She’s first year, in slime molds. “

“Slime molds?” Henry asked. “No offense, but why would a young woman be interested in
slime
?”

“Oh, like anything, it can be intriguing once you really get into it,” Tim said. “I don’t share her fascination, but it works for her, clearly. She was obsessed. It used to be all she’d talk about, but then one day she suddenly stopped.”

“How do you mean?”

“She changed,” Tim said. “She used to tell me about what she was working on and sometimes even ask me for help. Then she stopped telling me what she was doing, where she was going. She got almost, like, secretive, as if anyone cared about her gnarly molds. Then she pretty much stopped coming around. It got to the point where we hardly ever saw each other.”

“When was that?” Henry asked.

“
A
coupla
months ago,”
he said with a sigh. “She’s always spent a lot of time in the field, she’s crazy about climbing the most humongous trees she can find, but the last I knew,
she
was spending nearly
all
her time out in the most remote areas of the park.

“At least that’s where she
said
she was. I didn’t really believe her anymore. We fought about it, a lot. Then, a few weeks ago, she broke up with me.”

“Where do you think she’s been spending her time?” Henry asked.

“With butterfly boy,” Tim said, bitterly.

“
Molyneaux
?”

“Yeah, the chicks go for that French accent, I guess,” Tim said, shaking his head in disbelief. “
Gotta
be something like that, because that guy is
way
old.”

Henry was stung by the harsh view younger people tended to take of their elders, as if any years beyond one’s own age were calculated in dog years. If Tim thought
Molyneaux
was
way
old, that
meant Henry had to be
way
,
WAY
old. But he agreed that
Molyneaux
was too old for Ivy.

“Did the breakup make you mad?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“How mad did it make you?” Henry asked.

“You mean like you think I might’ve done something to Ivy, to hurt her?” he said, incredulous.