Chapter 3 The Sheriff Arrives
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The footsteps crunching through the gravel just outside the carriage house door did not belong to a spectral mountain apparition, nor did they belong to a ruthless killer returning to admire his handiwork.
They belonged to a pair of well-oiled, steel-toed Red Wing work boots.
"Maggie? You still poking through the horse stalls?
" Luke Sterling’s resonant baritone drifted through the splintered timber entrance, preceding him like a comfortable wool blanket.
"Brought an afternoon refill from the bakery. Martha swore she just brewed it, though knowing her, she probably dumped this morning’s chicory grounds into the urn and called it an artisan roast."
Luke crossed the threshold, silhouetted against the encroaching October fog that rolled down from the ridges. In his left hand, he juggled two oversized, dented stainless steel travel mugs; in his right, he carried a battered steel toolbox that weighed roughly the same as a newborn calf.
He took two strides across the cobblestone floor before the faint, metallic scent of iron and the absolute, frozen stillness of the room hit him.
His gaze snapped from me to the crumpled heap of camel-hair blazer and polished Italian loafers lying sprawled in the sawdust behind Eleanor Vance’s antique cider press.
The toolbox hit the cobbles with an ear-splitting, clattering crash that bounced off the high cedar rafters. The coffee mugs were abandoned on an inverted apple crate with a dull thud.
"Maggie, don't move."
In an instant, the easygoing, slow-smiling salvage carpenter vanished.
In his place was a man who moved with the swift, lethal certainty of someone used to structural timbers giving way without warning.
Before I could formulate an apology for my voice failing to work, Luke’s broad hands were on my shoulders.
His fingers were warm, rough with calluses from thirty years of planing chestnut and hewing pine, anchoring me to the earth when my knees were threatening a full-scale mutiny.
He spun me half a turn, shielding my sightline from the body, his hazel eyes scanning my face with fierce intensity.
"Are you hurt? Did somebody touch you?"
"I'm... I'm not hurt," I managed to squeak out, the words catching in my dry throat like thistle. "It’s not my blood, Luke. It’s Julian. Julian Croft."
Luke didn't let go immediately. He took a slow, grounding breath, his thumbs brushing lightly against the fabric of my canvas work apron, steadying the violent tremor running down my arms. Only when he was certain my legs wouldn't fold like a cheap card table did he step past me, crouching low beside the body.
He kept his hands strictly tucked inside his sleeves, hovering two inches above Croft's pale neck for five silent seconds.
"He's gone," Luke murmured, his jaw tightening into a hard, granite line. "Cold, too. This didn't happen two minutes ago."
He stood up, towering in the dim gloom of the carriage house, his shoulders squared against the horror. "We're getting you outside right now. Don't touch the doorframe. Watch your footing on the shavings."
He guided me out into the crisp mountain air with a firm hand at the small of my back.
The contrast between the stifling, tragic interior and the sweet, pine-scented breeze of the Blue Ridge was so sharp it made my head spin.
I stumbled onto the gravel turnaround, where the low autumn mist was already curling around the tires of Luke's flatbed truck like white ribbons.
My teeth began to chatter—a delayed, humiliating shock reaction that had nothing to do with the forty-eight-degree mountain temperature.
Without a word of fuss, Luke peeled off his heavy, fleece-lined navy canvas chore coat.
Before I could protest that I had plenty of layers, he draped it around my shoulders.
It was enormous on my five-foot-four frame, smelling deliciously of cedar sawdust, motor oil, and clove gum, and it radiated an immediate, restorative heat.
"Sit on the tailgate," Luke ordered softly, pointing toward his truck.
"I'm fine on my feet—"
"Maggie. Tailgate. Sit."
I sat.
Luke pulled his heavy-duty flip phone from his jeans pocket, punched a single speed-dial digit, and held it to his ear.
"Frank? It's Luke Sterling. I'm up at Blackwood Manor, down by the carriage house with Maggie Callahan... No, Frank, not a dispute over a cedar chest. We’ve got a ten-fifty-six.
Homicide... Julian Croft, the fellow from Atlanta...
Yes, dead as seasoned heart-pine. Get your lights on. "
He hung up, snapped the phone shut, and reached into the truck cab to pull out a clean thermos lid, pouring a measure of steaming black coffee. He thrust it into my shaking hands.
"Drink it. Two sips, slow."
"I was supposed to catalog the harness room," I whispered, staring down into the swirling black liquid. "We had the estate preview scheduled for Friday at ten. Birdie printed three hundred flyers. She bought customized price stickers shaped like little Victorian teapots."
Luke leaned against the truck bed beside me, his shoulder brushing mine, a solid, immovable mountain against my spiral of absurdity. "Birdie can print more stickers, Mags. Right now, you just breathe."
We didn't have to wait long. Sound carried far across the hollows, and within six minutes, the wail of a county siren echoed up the serpentine gravel driveway. Twin beams of strobing red and blue sliced through the oak canopy, bouncing wildly off the limestone facade of the manor before a white Ford Explorer bearing the insignia of the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Department skidded to a halt in the turnaround.
Sheriff Frank Lawson stepped out of the driver's side.
At fifty-four, Frank possessed the weathered, leathery complexion of a former high school football coach who spent his weekends hunting wild turkey and his weekdays mediating fence-line wars between feuding moonshiners and wealthy summer retirees.
His khaki uniform was pressed with military precision, though his belt sagged slightly under the weight of his sidearm and county radio.
Trailing behind him from the passenger side was Deputy Tyler Briggs, a boy of twenty-four with ears that stuck out like jug handles, hair clipped into an aggressive high-and-tight, and an expression of desperate, terrified eagerness.
"Luke. Maggie," Frank said, his boots crunching heavily on the stones. His sharp gray eyes took in Luke's lack of a jacket, the oversized canvas coat swallowed around me, and the closed doors of the carriage house behind us. "Tell me nobody’s in there trying to perform chest compressions."
"Nobody's breathing in there, Frank," Luke said quietly. "Bludgeoned. Behind the cider press."
Frank grimaced, adjusting his Stetson. "Tyler, get the crime scene tape out of the cargo hatch.
Yellow ribbons around the entire carriage house perimeter, fifty-foot radius.
Touch nothing, disturb nothing, and if you drop your flashlight in the mud again like you did at the Henderson barn, I'll have you directing traffic at the preschool crossing for a month. "
"Yes, sir! On it, Sheriff!" Tyler squeaked, fumbling with a heavy roll of yellow plastic with all the grace of a golden retriever puppy tangled in Christmas lights.
Frank turned back to us, unbuttoning his pocket flap to produce a small spiral notebook and a chewed Bic pen. "Alright, Maggie. Take your time, but walk me through it. When did you find him?"
I pulled Luke's coat tighter around my collar, forcing my voice into its customary practical cadence.
"Three o'clock sharp, Frank. It was on my inventory schedule.
I had the keys to the carriage house—eleven brass mortise keys on an iron ring.
When I unlocked the side deadbolt, the door was already unlatched.
I stepped inside to flip the breaker box. That's when I saw him."
"Did you touch him?"
"No. I didn't need to. He was lying face down, and his head..." I swallowed hard, banishing the image of fractured bone and dark mahogany stains. "There was a four-foot antique balance beam scale lying across his shoulder blades. The heavy brass pan had blood on the rim."
Frank’s pen paused over his notepad. He looked up, his brow furrowing. "A balance scale? One of those old mercantile counter weights?"
"Lot thirty-six from Eleanor's summer kitchen," I confirmed, my professional cataloging memory firing automatically.
"Eighteenth-century English manufacture.
Cast brass pans, forged iron lever arm. Weighs at least fifteen pounds.
It was sitting on the staging workbench by the tack room this morning. "
"Meaning anybody inside could have grabbed it," Frank muttered, scribbling notes. "Any sign of forced entry on the windows?"
"The carriage house has four double-hung casements on the south wall," I said. "Two of the latches have been broken since 1974. Eleanor used to hold them shut with wooden wedges. Anyone who gave the frame a solid shove could have slipped in."
Frank tapped his pen against his knee, staring past me toward the heavy oak doors. "And what about the row you had with him this morning, Maggie?"
The question landed like a bucket of ice water down my spine.
Beside me, Luke straightened up, his easy stance stiffening instantly. "Now hold on a minute, Frank. That was a business disagreement over an appraisal. Don't go fishing in mud puddles."
"I'm not fishing, Luke, I'm doing my job," Frank replied, his voice calm, measured, and devoid of malice, but completely immovable.
"The two boys from the Raleigh moving company were down at the general store eating sandwiches an hour ago.
They told half the lunch counter that a high-and-mighty appraiser from Atlanta screamed at Maggie Callahan that he was gonna have her business shut down, and that Maggie told him he wouldn't live to see the week out. "