The Buzzard Table

CHAPTER

11


A group of vultures is called a “Venue.” Vultures circling in the air are a “Kettle.”

—The Turkey Vulture Society




Sigrid Harald—Wednesday afternoon (continued)

It was nearing three o’clock before Sigrid and Anne finished eating and were ready to head out of town for the farm where Martin Crawford was camped.

“Anne? Anne Lattimore? Oh my goodness!” a matronly gray-haired woman exclaimed as they were paying their lunch tab. “I swear, you haven’t changed a bit since high school! Well, maybe a little bit of snow on the roof, but nothing on the waist.”

The woman patted her own ample waist and enfolded Anne in a hug before she could sidestep it. The face was vaguely familiar, but high school was more than forty years in Anne’s past and she had not attended any of the reunions. Nevertheless, she made herself smile as if in delight and say, “How lovely to see you again after all this time! You’ve met my daughter, haven’t you?”

From attending exhibits of her mother’s photographs, Sigrid realized that Anne didn’t have a clue as to this woman’s name, but she recognized her cue and dutifully stepped forward with her hand extended. “Hello, I’m Sigrid Harald and you are—?”

“Mavis Trogden,” the woman said, beaming. “Mavis Rainey, that was. Your mom and I were in the same homeroom the whole four years of high school.”

She signaled to a short stout woman who had preceded her into the tearoom to claim a table near the back. “Alice Jean, look who’s here! Anne Lattimore!”

Several minutes of “Remember when?” and “Here’s a picture of my oldest grandchild” passed before Anne could disentangle herself gracefully.

“Maybe we should go ahead and stop by the bank while we’re this close,” Sigrid said when they were finally out the door.

The bank was on the next block and it was a replay of the tearoom, this time with a gray-haired executive who came out of his office to take Anne’s hand with shy pleasure, before turning to Sigrid. “You cannot know what a crush I had on this girl when I was sixteen.”

“Ah, Bobby,” Anne said, automatically dimpling. “If only you’d said something back then.”

He shook his head. “No, you were always out of my league. And then you went off to New York to study photography the day after graduation and never looked back, but I’ve followed your career, Anne—the Pulitzer, your exhibit at the art museum, that gut-wrenching story you did on poor Somalia a few years ago before it was on the news every night. What a life you’ve led!”

Eventually, he escorted them back to Mrs. Lattimore’s box. He seemed to know about her condition but was restrained in his sympathy. “One of the old guard,” he said with a slow shake of his head. “We’ll not see her like again, I’m afraid.”

Anne had brought along a canvas tote and they soon transferred everything from the box. The only thing they opened was a velvet jeweler’s bag that was heavier than expected. When Sigrid loosened the drawstrings and looked inside, she saw a handful of gold coins. “Can’t wait to hear the story that goes with these.”

“Don’t look at me,” her mother said as she closed the box and slid it back into its slot. “I never saw them before.”

The bank executive was in conference with someone else when they emerged from the vault area and they managed to get back to the car and lock the tote bag in the trunk without being waylaid again.



With Anne behind the wheel, they drove out of town on Old Highway 48, then turned onto a nearly deserted secondary road that took them through a part of the county that was still mostly farms.

Here in February, the fields had a locked-down air as if waiting for spring rains and warm sunshine. The ditchbanks were scruffy with dead weeds and the occasional litter of plastic soda bottles, beer cans, and plastic bags half hidden by the dry brown leaves.

Although she could discuss blood spatter patterns and blunt trauma wounds knowledgeably, Sigrid Harald was, as a rule, oblivious to nature and its cycles. She knew that the sun and the moon rose in the east and set in the west and that water usually flowed downhill, that winter required heavier clothing than summer, that daylight lengthened in the spring and shortened in the fall, ergo the nuisance of daylight saving time. If pressed, she could distinguish a rose from a daisy and a fir tree from an oak, and she could even recognize magnolias because one grew in her grandmother’s front yard. Its branches spread out from the base of the trunk and continued upward for sixty feet. She knew that the thick leathery leaves stayed green year round and were made into wreaths and garlands at Christmastime, even though the huge white blossoms of summer were unsuitable for indoor bouquets.

As far as she was concerned a more intimate knowledge of nature seemed superfluous. Anything else could be Googled. Wasn’t that what the Internet was for?

But she was very much aware of her mother’s deepening sadness as Grandmother Lattimore’s condition deteriorated day by day; so when Anne remarked on the beauty of a bare-twigged tree silhouetted against the winter sky, she was willing to keep the conversational ball rolling. “Is that an oak or a maple?”

“Oak,” said Anne, who could even distinguish the pines, which all looked alike to Sigrid.

“What about those?” Sigrid asked when they passed a group of trees shrouded in gray, dead-looking vines. “Grapevines or poison oak?”

“Neither. That’s kudzu. Did I forward you that picture that someone sent me last summer? The vine that went up a light pole and then leafed out at the top and along the wires on either side?”

“The one they said looked like Christ on the cross?”

“That’s the one.”

Sigrid smiled. “I guess if they can see the head of Jesus on a grilled cheese sandwich, why not on a power pole?”

“Don’t laugh. This is our heritage,” Anne said. “And speaking of our heritage…”

She slowed and turned into the drive of a large white house, then came to a stop as soon as the car was off the pavement. The driveway continued on past tall magnolias and ancient oaks and curved up to a set of tall fluted columns that ended in Doric scrolls.

“Tara?” Sigrid asked dryly.

“Gilead,” her mother answered. “Your grandmother could say when our Gilberts branched off from the ones who inherited the place. I think it was her grandfather who was the younger son. He got money while his brother got Gilead, back before the Civil War.”

“Who owns it now?”

“Kate Bryant’s adopted daughter.”

“Really? How did that happen?”

“It’s a long and complicated story and I forget most of the details. Get Kate to tell you if you’re interested.* Short version: Mary Pat’s mother was a Gilbert and the house was falling to pieces when she married a man with a ton of money. He restored it as a wedding present.”

“Some present,” Sigrid said.

* See Bloody Kin.

“Both died before Mary Pat was four,” Anne said sadly. “Kate was the child’s closest relative through the father’s side, which is why she was given custody. Everything’s in trust for the little girl, including Gilead.”

“Poor kid,” Sigrid said.

Anne shook her head in wry amusement. “Not everyone considers a large inheritance a burden, honey.”

She backed out of the drive onto the road again, drove about a hundred feet, then turned left into a rough dirt lane that cut through fields green with winter rye.

“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” Sigrid asked as they bumped over the rutted track.

“Sorry, but this is the only way I know how to get to the Ferrabee place.”

The lane dipped down past a boxy wooden structure and Anne explained that they were now on Kate’s farm. “This used to be a packhouse, but Kate’s converted it into a studio for her fabric designs.”

There was no sign of Kate and the lane continued straight through the far side of the wide yard to exit onto another road. Anne pointed to a smaller white farmhouse off to the right. “That’s where Rob and Dwight’s mother lives.”

She made a left, then a right that took them through stands of head-high pines that were planted in uniform rows. “This used to be all tobacco,” she said. “Now it’s pulpwood. Not much has changed on this side of the creek, though.”

As they passed a mailbox, she gestured to a well-tended lane that was lined with a double row of young bare-branched trees. Sigrid realized that a house probably lay somewhere beyond those thicker trees.

“I think Dwight and Deborah live down there,” her mother said.

Sigrid twisted in her seat to look back, but nothing could be seen of a house. “Why do I have the impression that Deborah comes from a large family?”

“Because she does,” said Anne. “Ten or twelve brothers, all older, and she was the only girl.”

The thought of sharing a house with that many brothers made Sigrid feel slightly claustrophobic. “Did you know them when you were growing up?”

“I knew who the boys were, but they went to school out here in the country and I was at the school in town. Besides, the older ones dropped out of school early and the others were younger than me. I think we’re distantly related to Deborah through her mother, but most of her brothers are from her father’s first marriage. He was a bootlegger, you know.”

“What?”

Before Anne could elaborate, they came to a stop sign and she looked around in surprise at a cluster of unfamiliar buildings that had sprouted in what used to be soybean fields. There was a gas station directly opposite them. Behind it was a large parking lot that fronted a NutriGood grocery store. An Italian restaurant, a hardware store, and some smaller shops lined the left side of the lot. “What the hell’s a strip mall doing way out here?” Anne asked.

Cars zipped back and forth and Sigrid smiled. “Look at all the rooftops over there. Sorry, Mother, but I don’t think this is ‘way out’ anymore.”

On a corner to the left of them, tasteful signage indicated that the houses that could be glimpsed behind the expensively landscaped berms were part of Grayson Village. A smaller sign, equally tasteful, discreetly announced that homes were available “from the low 450’s.”

Anne waited for a gap in the flow of traffic and sped across the intersection. After a mile or two, she shook her head, perplexed. “I don’t recognize anything. Maybe I should have taken a left back there.”

Suiting action to words, she executed a U-turn, and soon they were back on the busier road. She glimpsed a fingerpost and slowed to read it aloud. “Four miles to Highway Forty-Eight. Okay, this is right. And there’s the road!”

She flipped her left-turn signal and cut the Lincoln in front of an oncoming vehicle so quickly that Sigrid cried, “Watch out!” and braced for impact.

“Sorry, honey.”

Almost immediately, they heard the wail of a siren and, glancing behind them, saw a patrol car, its blue lights flashing.

“Oh, hell,” Anne sighed and pulled onto the shoulder.

Before she could switch off the engine, the car shot around them, kicking up gravel and even a little dust despite last night’s rain. A moment later, a second patrol car passed them, its siren wailing, too.

When the way behind was clear, Anne eased back onto the road and followed. “What do you suppose that’s all about?”

They rounded two more curves and came upon a cluster of official vehicles, all lights flashing. A tall uniformed trooper guarded the entrance to a rough track that branched away to the left from the dirt road. It had been cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape.

Sigrid frowned as her mother slowed to a stop beside one of the squad cars. “Is this the Ferrabee place?”

“No, that’s on down further, but see that kid with the camera? Jeremy Harper.”

With her foot on the brake and the engine running, she rolled down her window and called to the boy, who loped over as soon as he recognized her. To Sigrid, he resembled an early Dr. Who, right down to his skinny height, an exuberance of fuzzy blond curls, and that long striped scarf.

“I’m not trying to get past the tape, Ms. Harald, honest,” he said in one of the deepest bass voices Sigrid had ever heard. She stared in fascination that such a voice could come out of such a long thin neck. He had a camera case slung over one shoulder and an expensive-looking digital camera around his neck.

“Good,” Anne said sternly. “Why are you even here?”

“Somebody called in a dead body about an hour ago. I heard it on my scanner.”

“You have a scanner?” Sigrid asked.

“Didn’t I tell you that Jeremy’s a reporter, too?” Anne said. “This is my daughter, Jeremy. She’s a homicide detective in New York.”

“Wow! You gonna help with this investigation?”

“No, she’s not,” Anne said, “and neither are you.” She glanced at her watch. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Dobbs right now, prepping with Richard Williams for your first session with the disabled vets?”

“I was almost there when I remembered something I’d forgotten at school,” he said, wrapping that striped scarf tighter around his neck. His nose and his bare ears had turned a bright red in the chill wind that whipped up the hill.

He gave a sheepish grin as his new mentor gave him a jaundiced look. “Okay, I heard the call for more backup, and since it was so close to where we used to live, I thought I’d just run back and—”

His eyes dropped before Anne’s steady gaze. “Okay, okay. I guess I’m going.”

Anne waited until the boy got into an old blue Toyota and drove off in the opposite direction, then took her foot off the brake and continued on down the road. The road itself ended in yet another of those ubiquitous lanes that Sigrid was beginning to know and dislike.

“You do remember that this is a Lincoln Town Car and not a tank?” she said as tree branches brushed their windows.

“Something bigger’s already been back and forth here,” Anne said. “See the broken twigs?”

“You never mentioned that you were a Girl Scout,” Sigrid muttered, sinking back into the cushioned seat.

Anne laughed. “Oh, honey, there’s a whole bunch of stuff I never mentioned.”

The brush gave way to an open pasture. To the left, a banged-up black truck was parked beside a wooden tenant house badly in need of paint. The house sat on a slight rise and the land sloped down from it to a line of trees and bushes in the far distance.

“That must be the buzzard table Deborah told us about,” Anne said, pointing to the ruins of an old foundation a few yards from the creek.

She drove on over to the house, but before they reached it, Martin Crawford emerged from inside and waited for them on the porch.

“Sorry I didn’t call before coming,” Anne said in cheerful greeting, “but we forgot to exchange numbers last night. Hey, you shaved off your beard!”

“I told you it came and went with the seasons,” he said. “Hullo, Sigrid. Did you come to see the vultures? I’m afraid they’re not here right now.”

He pointed back the way they had come. High above the treetops, they could see four of the big creatures circling around and around.

“They seem to have found something over there that interests them more than my squirrels. But do come in. I’ve just put the pot on for tea.”