P Deutermann: Nightwalkers

I wandered around that big empty house again, wondering if I shouldn't just go back to the city and give this strange but fascinating place a pass. The more I thought about it, though, the more I wanted to do it-the house and Carol Pollard. Maybe I would run for sheriff one day when Hodge Walker packed it in; maybe not. Maybe I'd just walk the fields with my dogs, watching out for quicksand, abandoned wells, ticks, and sex-crazed teenagers, all the while restoring the house as best I could. I wanted to find the lost slave graveyard and restore that, too, and to do something about all those boys up the hillside. Heck, I might go buy a metal detector and go exploring for buried treasures.

I heard a noise above my head and looked up. A tiny bird had gotten into the house and was batting around the ceiling, that godawful ceiling with the patchwork of all the gaudy wallpaper, with its fantastic embossed beasts, the gilt edging on the individual panels, scrolls and swirls of antique writing, and the swooping numbers.

Large numbers. Lots of zeros.

I looked again at the individual panels and stared hard at those numbers. Then I began to laugh. I'd need a ladder to make absolutely sure, but now I thought I knew why the Lees had never just burned the house down with its incriminating inscription in the kitchen. They'd hidden the bonds here instead of at Laurel Grove, in plain sight all these decades, pasted to the ceiling. These were probably the last of them.

The approaching sundown was streaming golden light into all the rooms and positively illuminating the bonds, if that was what they were. I'd have to get one down and then find someone who could authenticate it. I'd been to England. I knew that people there held documents going back a thousand years and used them to prove titles and all sorts of things. If in fact they were still worth anything like their face values, I'd have to find some suitable charities.

Another item for the restoration project. Projects, plural, actually: my new life, restoring Carol Pollard, and, finally, restoring Glory's End. You said you wanted something to do, I reminded myself.

There was a sudden commotion in the main hall. The dogs had chased a squirrel into the house and were going hell for leather to capture it. Shepherds and Dobies were skidding over those wood floors like Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. I yelled at them, and they all, including the squirrel, blasted out the front doors and down the steps.

I went out onto the porch and dropped into one of the rockers. I sensed that I was on the cusp of a sea change in my life. My escape to the countryside had been turned on its head, with the countryside now firmly in control. I was going to stay here, but I had to play by the unwritten rules. I couldn't know how things would work out with Carol, but I was very fond of her and more than willing to re-engage, even help bring her back.

All of this, Carol, restoring the plantation, settling into the warp and woof of the rural south, would take a long time. I might have to give up the pursuit of bad guys indefinitely. Instead I would have to settle for the occasional tin cup of bitter coffee up at the high rocks with the major while we discussed the increasingly grave situation up in Richmond.

The dogs clattered back up onto the porch and dropped on the floor, panting happily. The squirrel laughed at them from a tree. Everything was going to be okay.