Hidden Scars Read online

  “This was my father’s,” she said. “He died thirty years ago and I put it on my bookshelf. I wasn’t a big church-goer and I never opened it. I kept it for sentimental value. But when I was packing to move south, I spent a few minutes flipping through it.”

  She set the Bible to the left of her plate and opened it about halfway through. A yellowed piece of paper lay folded between the pages. She handed it across the table.

  I examined it carefully. The document was a coroner’s report to the Buncombe County inquest, dated November 3, 1948. The deceased, Paul Clarence Weaver, age twenty-three, had died on Sunday, October 17, 1948.

  I studied the coroner’s comments. They weren’t the detailed analysis of a medical examiner’s report. The coroner called the death accidental, the result of a nearly one-hundred-foot fall from an overlook along the Blue Ridge Parkway. No autopsy was performed but the coroner noted that the funeral director in charge of the burial described bruising across the torso and thighs while the head and arms were relatively undamaged. From the undertaker’s point of view, it meant the family could have an open casket without the necessity for extensive cosmetic restoration. He also mentioned a puncture wound, apparently made by a stick that penetrated the trachea. Bark fragments were in the wound, but it was not the cause of death. General trauma from the fall was his conclusion. The corner’s findings were accepted by the inquest jury.

  “You’d never seen this before?” I asked.

  “No. And we left the farm before Christmas. My father sold it to some other family members so they could put in the spring crops.”

  “Why?”

  “My father told me it was for a new job and more money. My mother was crying a lot. She stopped going to church and they kept me out of school from Thanksgiving till we moved.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Aliquippa, Pennsylvania.”

  “Where?”

  “A town outside Pittsburgh. My father’s cousin had a job in the steel mill. He got one for Dad and we moved in with them till we got our own place. None of us ever went back to Black Mountain.”

  “Until now,” I said.

  “Yes. I met my husband when we were students at the University of Pittsburgh. He went on to get a law degree and practiced in his hometown of Albany, New York. Then I went for my CPA license. Mort and I never had any children.”

  “What about the relatives who bought your farm?”

  She shrugged. “When letters go unanswered for over seventy years, even when my father wrote that my mother had died, and no one so much as sent a card…” Her voice choked and she looked away.

  Captain and I sat quietly.

  She took a staggered breath. “Well, then I no longer consider them family.” She twisted her tea glass on the table and stared at the melting ice cubes a moment. “Do you believe in fate, Sam?”

  “I believe in pivotal events, ones whose consequences can’t be seen at the time. But I don’t believe things are predetermined. They are the result of choices, sometimes choices I’ve made, sometimes the choices of others beyond my control.”

  She nodded. “I believed that too. Up until about six months ago. My husband died and I had no family. More importantly, I had a tremendous sense of unfinished business. As I said, I’d been an accountant and worked my whole life making sure that books balanced. Well, there was a gap in my ledger.”

  “Knowing what happened to your brother,” I said.

  “Exactly. Once I felt that pull, I realized I had to act upon it. And then I found that coroner’s report when I easily could have packed the Bible without opening it. I came here and rented a cottage. I met Captain, and I learned about you from his harem.” A smile broke through the serious cast of her face.

  I glanced at Captain. The tough old veteran was blushing.

  “So, here I cross paths with a man who has worked with a private detective. I ask him about you and then did my own research on your successes. Very impressive.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I suspected Captain was not the only one blushing.

  She took back the coroner’s report. “I thought since this existed there might be other documents regarding my brother’s death. I’d thought about hiring a local lawyer, but I’m not sure I want to be quite so official, at least not at first.”

  “Why do you think your brother’s death wasn’t an accident?”

  “He was raised in these hills. He could have hiked those trails in the dark or even blindfolded.”

  “And the men who came to tell your father. Do you remember if they were police or sheriff’s deputies?”

  “I don’t know who they were, Sam. They came in a black car and wore black suits. They looked like the Bible salesmen who sometimes went door-to-door back then.”

  They could have been plainclothes detectives, I thought. But the sudden upheaval of Violet Baker’s family suggested something else was at play.

  “I know it’s not a pleasant alternative, Violet, but do you think your brother could have taken his own life?”

  She took a deep breath. “I’ve thought about that a lot. I don’t think so. He loved the college. He took me there one day when we had a school holiday. Why would he throw himself and his dreams off a bluff? It makes no sense.”

  I didn’t have an answer. Suicide is rarely a rational decision.

  “If it had something to do with the college, do you know if any of his classmates are still in the area?”

  “Probably not. Most of them were from out-of-state, and many have probably died.” She reached into her handbag again. “But I believe fate is driving me forward.” She pulled out a section of the Asheville Citizen-Times and slid it across the table. “This is what spurred me to have Captain call you this morning.”

  The headline of the newspaper article read, Black Mountain College to “Re-Open.” I noted the quotation marks around Re-Open and skimmed enough of the story to learn a movie was shooting, using the location of the former college as its setting. The producers were working with the Black Mountain College Museum and also welcomed information any local residents could provide regarding life at the school.

  “They’re recreating the college, Sam,” Violet said. “They’re going back sixty or seventy years, and maybe, just maybe, in their quest for historical accuracy, the truth about my brother lies waiting to be discovered. But I need your help.”

  Captain had sat listening to our exchange without comment. His fork clanged as he dropped it on his plate. “So, what’s to think about, Sam? Take the lady’s case.”

  I had to laugh. “Violet, I guess I’ve been given my marching orders.”

  Chapter Three

  “I thought I was through with the damn book.” Nakayla slid the newspaper article across the table to me. “Maybe Violet Baker’s right. It is fate.”

  We sat at Nakayla’s dining room table. She’d returned from Charleston an hour earlier and we’d opened my bottle of Pinot Noir to celebrate our new client. I’d given a detailed report on my lunch meeting with Captain and Violet Baker. Violet had made a photocopy of the coroner’s report and I showed it to Nakayla. Her ears perked up when I said we’d need to visit a movie location, but something in the newspaper story set her off.

  “What book?” I asked.

  “Love Among the Ridges—one of the book club novels we discussed this weekend. The author thinks he’s Asheville’s version of Nicholas Sparks.”

  “And it’s about Black Mountain College?”

  “It’s set there. That was the most interesting part. The school’s a legend. Albert Einstein was on the board of advisors. Buckminster Fuller taught there. I understand why Violet’s brother would have chosen it. The faculty had immigrants from the Bauhaus.”

  “The what house?”

  Nakayla frowned. “You’ve never heard of the Bauhaus?”

  “Maybe
I have, but maybe I forgot that I have. I’ve heard so many things.”

  “Yeah. Sure. In one ear, out the other. Well, since it’s now an integral part of our investigation, try to hold on to what I tell you, Sherlock. The Bauhaus was an art school in Germany that combined crafts with fine arts. They designed furniture, textiles, buildings, working in an entire spectrum of disciplines that kept the arts at their core—a concentration of very progressive thinkers whose impact was one of the milestones of design in the twentieth century.”

  Nakayla paused her mini-lecture for a sip of wine. “This is very good.”

  “See. I know some things.” I topped off her glass.

  “Of course, such creative forces soon ran afoul of Hitler and his henchmen. The Nazis declared the school a center of Communist intellectualism and, in 1933, its leadership closed it before Hitler’s regime exerted more aggressive action.”

  “And these intellectuals came to little ol’ Black Mountain?”

  “Some of them. Most notably Josef Albers and his wife, Anni. The founder of Black Mountain College had been fired from a school in Florida, and he, some colleagues, and a handful of like-minded students were determined to put their own revolutionary theories of education into practice. They started in an existing camp assembly that was dormant outside of summer and lured Josef and Anni Albers and other progressives to become faculty for not much more than room and board. It was a great experiment.”

  “A commune with classes,” I said.

  “Not a bad way to put it,” Nakayla agreed.

  “So, Love Among the Ridges was long on romance and short on substance.”

  Nakayla arched an eyebrow. “You’re saying romance is without substance?”

  I backpedaled as quickly as I could. “Certainly not our romance. I’m just agreeing with you about the book.”

  “The book you haven’t read.”

  “But you have. And I trust your literary judgment. I’ll stay clear of this purveyor of vacuous romance. Why waste time with cheesy fiction when I’m living the real thing?”

  She laughed. “You’re as full of it as L.T. Hart.”

  “Who?”

  “The author. At least that’s the pen name. L.T. He says it stands for ‘Loving Tender.’”

  “Oh, God,” I groaned.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, maybe you’ll get to meet him and have him sign your book. L.T. Hart. I bet he writes a little heart symbol in place of the ‘a’ in his name.”

  Nakayla raised her glass to me. “Smart boy. Sally in our book club bought an autographed copy at Malaprop’s. He wrote Hart with a heart for the ‘a.’”

  I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m the world’s greatest romantic detective. If the movie director meets me, he’ll probably recast the leading role.”

  “Sam, it’s not a comedy.”

  ***

  The next morning Nakayla and I left her bungalow and I drove us to Black Mountain in a drizzling rain. We didn’t know where the film would be shooting, if at all, but since the newspaper had reported the production was based at the former site of the college, we figured that was as good a place to start as any. Nakayla also did a quick online search for information at the North Carolina Film Office. We learned the executive producer was a local real estate developer named Arnold Osteen. I was unfamiliar with him, but Nakayla had dealt with his company on some insurance claims before we started our agency.

  “Would Osteen remember you?” I asked. We were about five miles out of Asheville and headed for Lake Eden, the only GPS target we had. The college had moved to its shore in the early nineteen-forties.

  “No. I only dealt with his legal team. They had some theft issues at one of their sites. We were investigating the accuracy of their reported losses and if proper security had been in place.”

  “And?”

  “The insurance company paid. Someone had cut through a chain-link fence at the far end of the site and hot-wired some of the construction vehicles. Drove them away out of earshot of the guardhouse. We figured the trucks went straight to a paint shop and probably wound up in Mexico, or machine guns were mounted in their beds by terrorist groups in Africa or the Middle East.”

  The terrorist possibility wasn’t as far-fetched as it sounded. I’d read the story of a man in Texas seeing his company’s logo on a pickup truck in Syria commandeered by ISIS.

  “Well, I’m sure security’s tight on a movie set,” I said. “We’ll have to talk our way in.”

  “With my brains and your looks, how can we fail?”

  “Let’s just say your chances are a hell of a lot better than mine.”

  The GPS led us over a few miles of rolling farmland that suffered pockets of new housing developments bearing witness to the growth of neighboring Asheville.

  A lake appeared on our left and the road narrowed. Pine trees lined the shoulders, signaling we were entering an area that had been landscaped long ago. A series of handmade posters on stakes read “L-A-R” and arrows indicated we were to proceed straight ahead.

  “L-A-R,” Nakayla said. “Love Among the Ridges.”

  “At least the ‘A’ isn’t a heart.”

  We were visually instructed to turn left at the far end of the lake and then signs proclaimed two choices for parking: one for deliveries/guests/extras and the other for crew. The deliveries/guests/extras route passed by a security guard seated in a metal folding chair and wearing a yellow rain slicker. The crew route went to a field that looked like an Army encampment. Eighteen-wheelers with CineVision Rentals logos on their sides were circled like covered wagons. I figured they held lighting, rigging, and camera equipment. Six or seven RVs sat near a large catering truck. I assumed these were those famous trailers where the movie stars retired to relax or pout, depending upon how their scene had gone.

  “What do you think?” Nakayla asked.

  “It’s clear the guard will stop us. Crew parking looks to be more open.” I saw people scurrying around the multitude of vehicles but no one seemed to be checking credentials. “I’m tempted to skip a formal approach where we’ll be told no and try coming through the back door with the crew.”

  “And if someone asks you what your job is?” Nakayla asked.

  “You watch movie credits. I’ll say I’m a grip or a best boy.”

  Nakayla cocked her head. “Best boy? Do you even know what that means?”

  “Sure. Someone who’s better than a good boy.”

  “Stick to what you know,” she admonished. “We go to the guard, flash our creds, and tell him we have some questions for Mr. Osteen. And the guard might be one of Nathan’s.”

  Nathan Armitage was a friend who owned Asheville’s largest security firm. The guard would probably recognize our names and at least treat us with a degree of courtesy.

  “Good point,” I said. “Act like we know what we’re doing.”

  “It’s a movie set, Sam. Everybody’s acting.”

  I drove forward. The guard got up from his chair, signaled me to stop and walked to my window. He was a stocky man, at least six-two and two hundred-fifty pounds. Some of that weight had gone from muscle to flab, but I could tell from the swagger in his stride that in his mind he was twenty years younger.

  The rain slicker parted enough for me to see his badge. It simply read “Officer.” The words “ACME SECURITY” were embroidered above it. He held a clipboard in his left hand and stared past me to study Nakayla in the passenger’s seat.

  “Are you two extras?”

  I wanted to say we were extra special but decided the man probably wasn’t into sophisticated humor. Instead, I flipped open my P.I. license. “Sam Blackman and Nakayla Robertson to see Arnold Osteen.”

  The guard scowled. “They called you already?”

  I looked at Nakayla. She gave a nod to play it forward.

  “W
hy wouldn’t they?” I asked.

  “The police left no more than thirty minutes ago. You’d think these Hollywood people would give them a chance to do their job.”

  I had no idea where this script was going so I fell back on my safest response. I agreed with him.

  “I know. What can I say?”

  “Well, a word of advice, pal. You could have been called without Mr. Osteen’s approval. He might just want the police to handle it. So, don’t be surprised if he says, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’”

  “Got it.” I winked at the guy like we now shared a closely guarded secret. “Where will I find him?”

  He turned and pointed up the road to a rectangular building near the lakeshore. “The movie people have taken over the camp’s administration offices. You can bet Mr. Osteen will be close to anyone writing checks.”

  We followed the looping blacktop as it curved left and ended at a grassy patch where about ten vehicles were parked. Most looked like rental vans and SUVs. A silver Mercedes angled closest to the building’s entrance. I parked behind it.

  “What do you think that was all about?” Nakayla asked.

  “Something must have happened earlier this morning. Something involving the police.”

  “I got that part. I meant about Mr. Osteen’s approval. The guard assumes we’re not going to be welcomed.”

  “Maybe it’s something minor and he thinks Osteen doesn’t want to shell out any money. Anyway, we’re here and we’ll play it straight, like you suggest.”

  I flipped the hood up on my rain jacket and got out of the CR-V. The precipitation had subsided to a fine mist that I thought must be playing havoc with the film gear.

  The building was made of wood and corrugated metal—clearly functional and economical construction. If the building had been made of Legos, there would have been one missing on the ground level because the first floor was only a part of the overall footprint. Beneath the second story, a concrete pad without sides created a versatile patio with overhead shelter. Nakayla and I crossed the patio and walked to the door with a temporary sign, “Production Office,” taped to its window.