Cades Cove 01 - Cades Cove: A Novel of Terror (32 page)

John Running Deer had just finished his last tour of the day when David arrived at his small office in the visitors’ center. He motioned for David to join him at his desk, eyeing him curiously.

‘
Rough night?” he asked, his tone impish.

“‘
Rough’ isn’t the right word for it,” David replied. “I’ll tell you about it later.” He smiled weakly as he sat down across from John, sipping a cup of coffee from a lobby vending machine.

“
Well, I have some very good news,” said John, pulling out a three-page fax from a manila folder. “Here’s a report I received this morning from Diane Sellers, my contact at the census bureau.”

David pulled his chair around to where he could see it. Formatted as a summarized genealogy, it began in 1901 when Samuel and Esther McCormick first took ownership of a small parcel of land just east of John Oliver’s spread in Cades Cove. A blacksmith by trade, Samuel brought his wife and two daughters, two-year old Allie Mae and Emma Sue McCormick, just a few months old when the McCormicks moved from Ashville, North Carolina. Samuel also brought his mother, Virginia McCormick, with him to Tennessee.

Samuel prospered as a reliable smith and soon purchased additional acreage along with adding horses, hogs, and other livestock. The family continued to prosper until Samuel died in April 1918. The cause of death unknown, the Oliver clan purchased the McCormick property in February 1923 after Esther died that year of tuberculosis. Virginia McCormick had died of influenza back in 1917, six years earlier.

The report contained no additional mention of Allie Mae’s life or eventual fate. As for her sister Emma Sue, she married a local farmer named Lester Crockett, who also migrated from North Carolina. His family purchased a homestead on the eastern side of the cove, near where the visitors’ center stood today. They married in October 1921 and she gave birth to a daughter named Allie Esther Crockett almost two years later in September of 1923. Emma died from the same disease that killed her mother, tuberculosis, in August 1926, leaving her husband to care for their only child.

In June 1934, Lester Crockett moved out of Cades Cove, taking ten-year-old Allie Esther, along with his new wife, Loretta, and their three-year-old son, Joshua, to a small town fifteen miles north called Rocky Grove. Allie Esther married a local man from Rocky Grove named Milton Edder in May 1941. She bore two sons, the first named Ezra in November 1946, after Milton returned home from Germany in World War II. The second, Jacob, was born in August 1951. Ezra died in a car accident in 1962, and Milton passed away from a heart attack on Christmas Day in 1975. Ezra never married and had no known descendants.

Jacob Edder married Leslie Holmes from Knoxville in October 1982, and they moved to Johnson City, Tennessee in 1985. They have two sons: Michael, born in May 1988, and Vernon, who followed in July 1991.

“
Here’s the important thing,” said John, pointing to the bottom of the second page. “According to the latest documents Diane found, Allie Esther is still alive.”

“
She would be a rarity, it seems, based on everybody else’s lifespan listed here,” observed David. “She’d be almost ninety by now, right?”

“
Yes, she is,” said John, and then pointed to the next line. “Here’s her last known address and the phone number should be correct. According to Diane, she still lives in Rocky Grove, in the very same house her husband Milton purchased back in 1941.”

They both looked at each other in silence, afraid to make the next move. They had successfully tracked down Allie Mae’s closest living relative, but now hesitated to make contact.

“
Let me call her,” said David, after staring at the desk phone for nearly a minute. “I’m not sure exactly what to say, but I’m pretty good at speaking with strangers on the phone. Unless you’d rather handle this.” He looked over at John.

“
It would be best if you handle this yourself,” he agreed, standing. He motioned for David to take his seat next to the telephone. “I’ll give you a few minutes alone to talk with her, which will give me an opportunity to check on everything else around here. We’ve been unusually busy this week.”

He left him with Allie Esther Edder’s name, address, and phone number. David took a moment to think about what he wanted to say to Allie Mae’s niece. Then he picked up the handset and dialed her number.

His mouth went dry and his eagerness dimmed once the phone reached its fourth ring without an answer. He assumed he’d reach the number’s voicemail, but the phone kept ringing. Just before he hung up after the eighth ring someone answered.

“
Hello?” The voice soft and frail, it definitely belonged to an elderly woman.

“
Is this Mrs. Allie Esther Edder?” David hoped he achieved the warmth of a neighbor and not some cheesy telemarketer persona.

“
It is,” drawled the voice, in the accent once indigenous to the hills of eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as western Virginia and North Carolina.

“
Hi, ma’am, my name is David Hobbs. My family and I have come into possession of a keepsake we believe belongs to your family, and would like to return it to you.”

He smiled after saying this, hopeful he might actually be near the end of his plight. What he said came out much smoother than he envisioned, pleased she hadn’t hung up before he finished.

“
Oh?...What kind of keepsake are ya talkin’ ‘bout?” She seemed curious, clearing her throat.

“
It’s a little bag made from cloth with a leather strap on it, and it contains a sleigh bell, a blue ribbon, a gold chain with part of a locket attached to the chain, and a letter,” explained David. “It also has ‘Allie Mae’s Treasures’ stitched on the front of it in blue thread.”

He waited patiently for a reply that didn’t come. He thought he heard sniffling and worried she might be crying. Something fell loudly on the floor, like a cane or maybe the phone itself, and he heard the anxious voice of a young man shouting something inaudible, accompanied by heavy steps running toward the phone across a hardwood floor.

“
Granny? What happened??”

David heard the old woman groan as the young man, obviously her grandson, helped her up. The noise from a chair sliding on the hardwood floor, along with the light strain of the two struggling to get her back into the chair echoed from somewhere near the fallen handset. Allie Esther said something about a man on the phone between sobs and her grandson picked up the phone.

“
Hello?”

“
Hello,” David replied, swallowing hard, not knowing how to continue now that his contact with Allie Esther had been interrupted.

“
What the fuck do you want?” her grandson demanded, his tone menacing.

“
My name is David Hobbs, and I—.”

“
I don’t give a flyin’ fuck who you are, you goddamned cock sucker!” said the young man, whose venom seemed far worse than warranted.

“
I have something that belongs to you!” David hoped he would pause long enough for him to explain about the bag.

“
Ain’t you listenin’ to me, asshole?”
he shouted into the phone.
“I don’t care why you called, just don’t do it again!”

“
It belonged to your grandmother’s aunt!” Desperation took hold of David, and he looked anxiously over his shoulder when John returned, who appeared worried.

“
I don’t fuckin’ care!!”
A moment of silence followed, and then the grandson continued, his voice hushed but shaking as his rage continued to boil over. “If…you ever call us again, mister, I swear to God I’ll find you and tear your heart out and feed it to you while you lay dyin’. You got that? And don’t even think about comin’ to see us, or I’ll shoot your ass dead where you stand!”

Before David could say anything else, the line went dead. He stared absently at the cursed bag resting inside his briefcase on the desktop while he listened to the dial tone. It wasn’t until the operator recording broke in that he looked at John again, who stood beside him.

“
I take it you spoke to someone in the household,” said John, his tone compassionate. “I heard you from the lobby.”

“
Sorry about that,” whispered David, descending rapidly into despair. The spirit’s words from last night rang true. Too late to give the bag back, indeed. “I spoke to Allie Esther, and I think she collapsed once I told her about the bag. The next thing I know, her grandson threatened to kill me if I ever tried to contact her again.”

John nodded while he moved over to the other chair and prepared to sit down.

“
I’m sorry to have bothered you with this,” said David, getting to his feet and closing his briefcase. John stopped him.

“
I’ve got an idea,” he said. “The people who lived here before the park was created were an honest, hardworking lot. A handshake meant far more than a paper contract ever did, and important personal business was always best when face to face.”

“
What are you suggesting?”

The grandson’s threats repeated in David’s head.

“
I don’t think it’ll be hard to find her address in Rocky Grove, although there are quite a few older dirt roads and hidden hollows up that way,” said John. “If you and I went there together in my park cruiser, they might see we’re coming to them on official business and not just a pair of panderers. Besides, seeing an old man like me might make the grandson hesitant to shoot…at least the old man.” He cracked a wry smile.

“
Yeah,” said David, smiling weakly. “It would probably be better to wait until tomorrow, I imagine.”

“
Definitely tomorrow,” John agreed. “I have two tours in the morning and another at one-forty-five in the afternoon. We can plan to leave around three if you like.”

“
All right,” he said. “Did you want to meet here?”

“
It would work better if we meet at the park station, since it will be less of a drive from there,” advised John. “We could be in Rocky Grove by three-thirty at the latest. It would be best if we found her place before the sun goes down.”

He didn’t have to explain why. If violently disposed as the young man seemed on the phone, two strangers creeping around in the dark would be asking to get shot.

David gave John his phone extension at the Whitestone. He also gave him his mobile number, and John gave him his office numbers and his home listing. John explained how his granddaughter tried to purchase a cell phone for him, but since he was never far from either his radio or office he couldn’t justify having one.

David returned to Gatlinburg, and after stopping for dinner at the same steakhouse he and Miriam visited two weekends ago, he returned to his room at the Whitestone. The room still reeked of mildew and stale cigarette smoke, but at least the maid service had put forth a better effort to cover these odors with a cinnamon-scented deodorizer. Even so, the unmistakable blood scent from the previous night’s misadventure hung in the air above the bed he slept in.

David set his coat and briefcase on the table and turned on the heater. He left the TV on CNN with the sound barely audible, he moved over to the phone on the nightstand and sat down on the opposite bed. With his back against the headboard he stared at his reflection in the dresser mirror across the room while he waited for Miriam to pick up on the other end of the line.

“
Hello, baby.” Her voice sounded softer than usual.

“
Hi, darlin’,” he replied, aroused by how she addressed him.

“
How did everything go today?”

“
Well, Allie’s niece seemed upset once I told her about the bag, and then her grandson threatened my life,” said David. “But the beef vegetable soup from the lunch bar at Shoney’s was real good.” He chuckled at his own lame joke.

“
I told you the idea of contacting her family wasn’t a good one!” Her tone changed to worry. “Why don’t you take the bag back where we originally found it and be done with this whole mess?”

“
I need to try one other idea first,” he said. “John and I are driving to Allie’s niece’s home tomorrow afternoon, and we’re taking his official park cruiser. It should make her and her grandson more receptive to us.”

“
And if the grandson tries to kill you, then what?” she asked, more fear than irritation in her voice. “Is John bringing Chuck Norris along, too?”

“
That’s not a bad idea!” He laughed. “Don’t worry. If it gets too hairy, I promise we’ll leave immediately. I’ll take that damned bag straight to the ravine and head down to Chattanooga.”

“
You promise?”

“
Yes, I promise,” he agreed. “So…. Is anything new on the home front?”

The line grew silent, and for a moment he wondered if she had set the phone down. He could hear Janice playing with Jillian and Christopher in the background.

“
Miriam?”

“
I’m here,” she said. “David, those detectives stopped by here this afternoon. Sara was present when they came.”

“
They did?” He hoped the detectives would wait long enough for him to return to Denver before showing up again. Dismayed this wasn’t the case, it also brought his grief back to the forefront “What did they want this time?”

“
I think before we spoke today, they considered you a likely suspect in Norm’s death,” she told him. “I told them everything about Allie Mae’s ghost and what our family went through last week.”