JUST SEEING CAVE SPRINGS Primitive Baptist Church gave me the willies all over again. Even the mortar between the stones seemed to ooze menace. I swung the truck wide in the parking lot so I could glimpse the opening of the cave. The heavy steel grate remained in place—secured with a shiny new padlock, which seemed odd, since the cave-in had left the tunnel impenetrable anyhow. Although it was midday, I switched on my headlights and flipped to the high beams. Within the blackness of the opening, the light grazed the fringes of the rubble pile that had nearly entombed Art and me.
Circling back to the other side of the parking lot, I parked the truck near the house that adjoined the church. Art and I had guessed that this was the parsonage, where Reverend Kitchings and his wife lived. Most Knoxville ministers these days lived miles from their churches, in upscale suburbs where they blended invisibly with the doctors and lawyers and accountants, but I suspected Cave Springs had more in common with nineteenth-century Knoxville than twenty-first-century Knoxville, and that the pastor—“shepherd,”
the word originally meant—still hovered close to his flock. I wasn’t sure I’d catch Reverend or Mrs. Kitchings at home, and if I didn’t, I’d have made a long drive for nothing, but it seemed risky to phone ahead and announce my arrival—either to the couple or to their two excitable sons. The house reminded me of my grandparents’ home, a simple wooden farmhouse built in the 1920s. A broad covered porch ran the full width of the front of the house. The angle of the roof changed, the slope lessened, where the tin flared above the porch. A dormer window broke the roofline above, letting light into an upstairs bedroom or, judging by my grandparents’ house, an attic crammed with musty furniture and fading mementoes. I wondered if any of those mementoes were of Leena.
The wooden steps had once been gray, but now the paint—where paint remained—had turned the murky color of used mop water. The ends of the porch’s floorboards projected an inch or so beyond the joist that supported them; each weathered end tilted and warped with a mind of its own, giving the edge of the porch the appearance of a mouthful of crooked teeth. Two rockers—a high ladderback and a lower, spindle-backed one—flanked the front door on either side. The rockers of the ladderback were worn and blunted at their tips, suggesting years of vigorous rocking. The other chair’s rockers were worn in exactly the opposite pattern, ground nearly flat in their central region.
The screen door was slightly ajar, having sagged enough over the years to drag across the floor, etching a pale, paintless quarter-circle to mark decades of comings and goings. I imagined some of them: The family headed to church every Sunday, Tom and Orbin first as toddlers, then as rambunctious boys, then as sullen teenagers. A procession of troubled parishioners—philandering spouses and injured parties, problem drinkers, delinquent youths. A movable feast of roasts, stews, casseroles, cakes, and pies, tasty enough to offset the long hours and low pay that define a country parson’s life.
I tugged open the screen door, adding my own modest mark to the history etched on the floor. The door’s rusty spring screeched at exactly the same hairraising pitch my grandmother’s screen door spring once wailed. My knock on the front door rattled the pane of glass, whose glazing putty was shrunken and cracked with age.
There was no response, so I knocked again, then closed the screen door so as not to seem too pushy. After a pause, I heard slow, creaking footsteps. A lace curtain was pulled back a fraction of an inch, then released, and I heard the click of an old-fashioned lock being opened. An elderly woman frowned at me through the dusty screen.
“Yes?”
“Are you Mrs. Kitchings?”
“Yes, I am.”
“I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am, but I was hoping I might talk to you for a few minutes. My name is Dr. Bill Brockton, and I’m up here helping your son Tom with a case.”
“What kind of case?”
“Well, it’s an old case that’s just now come to light. The death—the murder—of a young woman I’m told was your niece.”
“Oh, yes—Evelina. Tommy told me Leena had been found. Strangled. After all these years. What a shame.”
“Yes, ma’am. Would you mind if I come in and talk to you about it?”
“Well, I’d have to think about that. Tommy’s the sheriff, and I done told him everthing I know. She just run off one day. We never did know why at the time. Tommy says you figgered out she was expectin’. I reckon that explains it. We never did see her again. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Mrs. Kitchings, I know it’s been a long time, and it might be hard to remember details, but if you wouldn’t mind a few questions, you might just remember something that will help us.” The flimsy screen door was like an impenetrable force field between us.
“Would you mind if I come in for just a few minutes?”
She shook her head. “Not meaning any disrespect, Doctor, but my husband ain’t home, and I don’t let strange men in my house when I’m alone.”