High Country Fall

CHAPTER 11

I awoke Tuesday morning to the smell of coffee, sausage, and something sweetly fragrant. Wearing nothing except an oversize Carolina T-shirt that’s been through the wash so many times it’s almost handkerchief thin, I stumbled sleepily down the short hallway, stubbed my bare toes on a lamp base that protruded from the midden of furniture and clothes piled in the living room, and was fumbling in the cabinet for a coffee mug when someone rapped on the front door.

Without thinking the situation through, June went and opened it and I heard male voices, voices followed by the presence of three large male bodies in the kitchen. Two immediately eyed my T-shirt with unseemly interest; the third was Danny Freeman, who did a second take, realized who I was, and suddenly looked as startled as I felt.

“Paint crew’s here,” May chirped as she lifted a large casserole from the oven and turned to greet them. Her welcome died in mid-chirp as soon as she saw Freeman, and she darted a guilty glance toward me.

I was already heading down the hall with my coffee. She followed me into the bedroom and I glared at her. “You couldn’t have mentioned this last night?”

“God, Deborah, I am so, so sorry. We didn’t know Danny was coming with them. When we told Carla to send some guys up from school, we never dreamed she’d send Danny, too. I guess she thought it would help for him to do something physical instead of stewing about what’s happening. Want me to tell him to leave?”

Before I could answer, she climbed back on the same hobbyhorse she and June were riding last night—“He’s not a killer, though, Deborah. And you can’t really think so either if you let him out on bond.”

She had a point. But while I wasn’t afraid he would suddenly attack someone with a paintbrush, it was still awkward as hell and nothing Miss Manners had prepared me for.

“Do as you like,” I snapped. “I’m leaving for the courthouse as soon as I dress.”

“Without eating anything? We made Granny Knott’s baked toast.”

So that was the source of the familiar aroma. When chickens almost stopped laying in the winter and breakfast rations for her hungry brood were scanty except for milk and butter from their cow, Daddy’s mother created the dish as a way to stretch the eggs and to use up the bread ends before they got too stale and hard. She’d never heard of French toast, but this was a close version: thick slabs of bread are laid on a base of butter and brown sugar in a deep casserole dish, then left to sit in the refrigerator overnight in a batter of milk, eggs, and vanilla, and finally baked in a medium-hot oven till the edges crisp and the brown sugar caramelizes on the bottom.

Although she died long years before I was born and none of us keeps a milk cow anymore, her recipe was passed down and it’s still comfort food in our family. Mother used to make it at least once a week when several of the boys were still at home and that aroma drifting up to our bedrooms was enough to roust out the sleepiest head.

The twins must have put one together last night from the leftover bread they brought home from the restaurant.

By the time I was dressed and ready to leave, Danny Freeman was in the bedroom across the hall with his back to the door as he pulled furniture away from the wall. I went silently down the hall with my laptop in one hand and my judicial robe in the other.

At the dining table, there was one serving of baked toast left in the casserole and a link of cured sausage. June deftly transferred both to a plate and waved it under my weak-willed nose until I put down robe and laptop and took it from her hand.

The others had finished eating except for final cups of coffee, and they covered the strain of my presence by speaking of classes and professors and Parents’ Day, which I gathered was upcoming in another week or so. For some reason, the two guys thought it was funny that Beverly and Fred were coming up, too, and kept needling the twins about it until June flat told them to knock it off. I had the impression that my cousins had drafted extra help so that Beverly wouldn’t blast them for not getting the painting done by the time they arrived.

They introduced me to Gary, a blue-eyed, corn-fed, pre-law student from West Virginia, and to the dark-eyed psych major named Duc, although at first I thought they were saying “Duck.” “And you already met Danny, right?”

I looked up in dismay. Not realizing I was there, that young man had returned for another cup of coffee, and he halted in the archway as if unsure whether to retreat or keep coming.

He opted for brazening it out. “I guess this is the first time you ever ate breakfast with a killer in the house.”

“Danny!” May and June protested together.

“Aw, come on, man,” said Duc, who was clearly of Asian descent despite his southern drawl.

“Then you’d guess wrong,” I told Freeman, matching his cool. “Besides, you did plead ‘Not guilty’ yesterday.”

“But you didn’t believe me.”

“What I believed was irrelevant,” I said stiffly. “My job yesterday was to look at the evidence, listen to the arguments, and rule on whether or not the State had enough cause to take you to trial. They showed me that you were there at the right time, you had the doctor’s blood on your clothes, he was trying to end your relationship with his daughter, and you’d fought with him.”

“Hell, half the people in Lafayette County have fought with him!”

“Then your attorney will undoubtedly depose them and present that as part of her argument when it goes to trial,” I said, sipping my coffee with more calmness than I felt.

Tension was building in the room, and the others looked uneasy.

“If you were still a lawyer,” said June, “could you have gotten him off?”

I considered everything I’d heard yesterday. “Given the circumstantial evidence and lack of a more viable suspect, he would have still had to stand trial, but yes, I can see all sorts of issues that could raise enough reasonable doubt to ensure a not-guilty verdict.”

“Then you don’t think Danny did it!” May exclaimed.

I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what I think.”

“See?” Freeman said, looking around the table with a fatalistic air. “The baby’s going to grow up thinking I killed its grandfather.”

“Oh, it is not!” snapped June.

“No, he’s right,” said Duc, already sounding like a psychologist. “It’s human nature. They don’t find out who really used that hammer, then even if Danny’s lawyer gets him off, people are always going to wonder.”

Freeman nodded. “I don’t want my kids looking at me the way O.J.’s kids must look at him.”

“It’s a mess,” Gary agreed. “The police think they have their man, so they’re not going to look for anybody else unless you do get off. And even then …”

“You mean they’re not still investigating?” May asked indignantly.

She and June fixed me with accusing eyes, as I lifted the last forkful of Granny K’s baked toast to my lips.

“Don’t look at me,” I said. “I have absolutely no connection with the sheriff’s department here.”

“You couldn’t get Dwight to give ’em a nudge?” asked June.

“Sorry. He wasn’t even sure who the sheriff of Lafayette County is.”

“But somebody should be working on this,” May protested.

“Ms. Delorey said I ought to hire a private detective,” said Freeman, “but my mom’s already taken out a second mortgage for her retainer and—”

“You reckon we could do it?” asked June.

“Chip in for a detective?” May said.

“No, I mean do some investigating ourselves.”

I about strangled on my coffee. “What?”

“Well, why not?” she asked stubbornly. “Between us all, we know a lot of people here in town.”

“We might could ask around,” May said, falling in with her twin’s suggestion.

“—get Carla and Trish to tell us who had it in for their dad—”

“—check their alibis—”

“Duc volunteers at his geriatrics clinic once a week—”

“Well, yeah,” said that young man, “but—”

By now the twins were picking up steam and they rolled right over his objections.

“Hey, wait a minute,” I said. “This is too serious for you guys to start playing Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.”

“We wouldn’t be playing,” said June.

“And if we did hear anything, we’d tell Danny’s lawyer right away. Let her handle it.”

Gary looked interested and said to me, “I think it’s cool you’re a judge. Most killers that show up in your court, what did they kill for?”

“I’m not that kind of a judge,” I said. “The only time an accused killer comes to district court here in North Carolina is for a first appearance or probable cause hearing. The actual trials are in superior court. Mostly, though, it’s either a drug deal gone bad or a domestic situation that gets out of hand or when somebody gets dissed and loses his temper.”

“But what about something like Dr. Ledwig? When it isn’t domestic or drugs?”

“In law, we usually ask cui bono? Who benefits?”

Gary had heard the term. “Like Carla’s mother?”

“Or Carla and Trish?” asked May.

“That too,” I told them. “But there are benefits other than inheritance. Was he gouging somebody for a lot of money, for instance? Was he planning to block someone from making a lot of money? Did he know something that someone didn’t want made public? In other words, whose life is going to be easier with him out of the way?”

“Not Carla’s,” Freeman said promptly, “and not mine either. Once I get my degree next spring, we can make it on our own. Besides, Carla loved him and I think he really loved her. Yeah, he was freaked about us once he heard I had black blood, but she says he would have come around. She never saw any sign that he was a bigot when she was growing up.”

He saw my skeptical look. “Yeah, yeah, I know. A lot of people can talk the talk till it affects them personally. But this was a guy who always voted a straight Demo-cratic ticket and didn’t care who knew it.”

Since Lafayette County has gone Republican every election since Eisenhower, he had a point. It takes a committed liberal to swim against the strong tide of conservatism out here.

“Listen,” I said to the twins, “if it makes y’all feel like you’re doing something constructive to ask questions while you’re out and about between your classes and your jobs, fine. But would you please remember that it’s not as clear-cut as television cop shows make it seem? People aren’t going to roll over for you just because you ask nicely, and you could be putting yourselves in danger. Whoever hit Ledwig probably didn’t mean to and probably regretted it the instant it was done, but all the same, it’s somebody who gets violent on impulse, so no one-on-one confrontations in lonely places, okay?”

“Okay,” they promised.

As I went out the door, June said, “See, Danny? I told you she doesn’t think you did it.”

If only it were that simple, I thought. Clearly the twins and those other two boys thought Freeman was innocent, and he was certainly giving off innocent vibes. But I’ve seen too many people who, in the heat of the moment, have done things so bad that they’ve gone into instant denial—Only a monster could do this. I am not a monster. Ergo, I did not do this.

Was that Danny Freeman?

Thank God I don’t have to make life-and-death judgments. Give me the speeders, the shoplifters, the druggies, the check kiters, the shoving matches, the DWIs any day of the week.