Chapter 6 Archives and the Rival Dealer
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To reach the subterranean domain of the Black Walnut Cove Historical Society & Archives, one had to descend a flight of creaky heart-pine stairs, skirt past a row of deactivated cast-iron radiators, and present oneself before an oak Dutch door bearing a hand-painted sign: *Inquiries Welcome. Frivolity Will Be Prosecuted.*
"Remember the protocol," Birdie whispered, adjusting her turquoise leather shoulder bag as we paused on the bottom landing Wednesday morning.
"Do not mention the word 'murder,' do not touch the microfiche reels without white cotton gloves, and for heaven's sake, Maggie, let the pastry do the heavy lifting. "
"I am a licensed appraiser, Birdie," I whispered back, brushing a stray fleck of golden retriever fur off my boiled-wool cardigan. "I don't need to bribe the town archivist with baked goods to access public county records."
"You clearly haven't tried getting a land grant out of Abigail Higgins since the Carter administration," Birdie retorted. She lifted a pristine white bakery box from Madame Claudette’s Patisserie on the town square.
From beneath its taped seams drifted the intoxicating aroma of toasted slivered almonds, clarified butter, and melted dark chocolate.
In Western North Carolina, moonshine may grease backwoods diplomacy, but French carbohydrates command true power.
Birdie gave the upper half of the Dutch door a crisp triple-tap.
For ten seconds, the only reply was the low hum of an ancient dehumidifier struggling against mountain damp. Then came the scrape of orthopedic crepe soles across concrete, accompanied by the vigorous, rhythmic crunching of a wintergreen peppermint.
The wooden latch clattered open.
Miss Abigail Higgins peered over the half-door like a barn owl inspecting a disappointing pair of field mice.
At seventy-eight, Miss Abigail possessed the posture of a steel fence post and the countenance of a woman who had never forgiven Thomas Jefferson for the Louisiana Purchase.
Her silver hair was coiled into a bun so tight it pulled her temples backward, and her horn-rimmed bifocals were tethered to her neck by an alarming silver chain strung with freshwater pearls and miniature brass paper clips.
"The archives are open to civilian researchers on alternate Thursdays between two and four in the afternoon," Miss Abigail recited without drawing breath, her voice raspy from decades of illicit cigarette breaks behind the boiler room.
"Today is Wednesday. Today is cataloging. Today you are trespassing."
"Good morning, Abigail, you marvelous creature," Birdie cooed, holding the pastry box aloft like a sacred offering.
"We were passing Madame Claudette’s just as the almond croissants came out of the copper oven.
Triple cream, imported marzipan, still warm enough to fog the box.
And I said to Maggie, 'Who in this county possesses the refined palate to truly appreciate Claudette’s butter laminations? '"
Miss Abigail’s gaze dropped to the box. Behind thick lenses, her pale blue eyes dilated. The crunching of the peppermint ceased. She sniffed once, deeply.
"Claudette uses too much almond extract," Miss Abigail said flatly. "It masks the provenance of the yeast."
"Naturally," Birdie agreed smoothly. "Which is why I had her pack two dark chocolate brioches as well."
Miss Abigail held Birdie’s gaze for three agonizing seconds. Then, without a word, she unlatched the lower door and stepped aside.
"Wipe your feet on the rubber mat," she snapped, turning her back on us. "If you brought that shedding hound of yours down these stairs, Callahan, I will have the sheriff impound him for biological warfare."
"Buster is sleeping in the sun on the antique barn porch under Luke Sterling's supervision," I said, stepping into the subterranean gloom. "Not a single dog hair crossed your perimeter."
"Small mercies," the archivist grunted.
The archive was a labyrinth of olive-drab steel shelving units, military-surplus filing cabinets, and long wooden tables illuminated by green banker’s lamps.
Along the perimeter walls, hundreds of gray Hollinger boxes were stacked like burial urns, each labeled in faded black ink: *WPA Writers' Project 1937*, *Transylvania Border Disputes*, *Cullasaja Timber Leases 1880–1910*.
Miss Abigail set the bakery box reverently beside a vintage Remington typewriter on her desk, cracked the lid to verify the chocolate, and reached into a drawer for white cotton gloves.
"Julian Croft is dead in Eleanor Vance’s carriage house," Miss Abigail said, tossing a pair of gloves at my chest. "Frank Lawson has yellow plastic ribbon strung across the rhododendrons like a cheap carnival, and the appointments at The Curl Up & Dye are three hours behind on account of the hysteria.
What do you two vultures want with my records? "
"We are trying to understand why Julian Croft was murdered, Abigail," I said, pulling the gloves over my fingers. "And specifically, why an 1845 Vance family ledger would be worth seventy-five thousand dollars to an unscrupulous collector like Sly Gable."
"Seventy-five thousand?" Birdie scoffed from beside a microfilm carousel. "Try ten times that, if the rumors about Gable sniffing around the carriage house are true. That oily little ferreteer wouldn't cross the street to spit on a burning church unless there was a six-figure appraisal in it."
Miss Abigail sucked in a sharp breath. The wintergreen mint returned to active duty against her molars.
"Sterling Gable," she hissed, the name dripping with venom. "That boy’s grandfather ran a counterfeit cherry-drop sideboard ring out of Waynesville in fifty-six. Dishonesty runs in the Gable marrow like rot in wet pine. If that little sycophant sets foot on my linoleum, I’ll take a yardstick to his shins. "
She smoothed her cotton gloves, marching down Aisle 4 with surprising speed.
"The Vance holdings," Miss Abigail murmured, pausing before a high shelf marked *Charter Grants & Perpetual Leases: 1830–1860*.
She selected an oversized buckram box tied with black twill tape and brought it down to an oak reading table.
"Folks in this town have short memories, Maggie.
They look at Blackwood Manor and see eighty-nine years of eccentric old Eleanor wandering the timberline in mud boots with breadcrumbs for the ravens.
They think the Vance family owned Blackwood Mountain because the name is on the road signs. "
"They don't own it?" I asked, stepping up to the table. "Eleanor's great-grandfather, Silas Vance, cleared that valley and built the manor in 1848."
"Silas Vance cleared timber, certainly," Miss Abigail said, untying the tape.
"And built his stone monstrosity on the crest. But Silas Vance didn't buy that mountain outright.
He couldn't. In 1845, that tract was five thousand acres of prime old-growth white pine and virgin hemlock, held jointly under a charter grant between early Scots-Irish settlers and Moravian cabinetmakers who came up from Old Salem. "
Birdie leaned in, her glasses slipping down her nose. "The Moravian craftsman who built the cherrywood desk."
"The very one," Miss Abigail said, lifting the box lid.
Inside lay folded legal documents on thick, brittle vellum, their edges darkened with age.
"Silas Vance had capital from coastal shipping, but the settlers held the charter grant.
They struck a covenant. A one-hundred-and-eighty-year timber and perpetual habitation lease. "
I did the mental arithmetic, and the cellar air suddenly felt thin. "Eighteen forty-five... plus one hundred and eighty years..."
"Brings you squarely to October of this year," Birdie whispered, her eyes widening. "Next week."
"Precisely," Miss Abigail said. She pulled a yellowed folio sheet from the box and placed it under the green lamp light.
"Under the terms of the 1845 covenant, the Vance family held residential and timber rights for exactly one hundred and eighty years, provided they maintained the parcel intact.
But upon the expiration date—October fifteenth—ownership of the entire five thousand acres does not pass to Eleanor's surviving kin.
It reverts automatically to a municipal conservation trust for the people of Black Walnut Cove. "
"Unless..." I breathed, my gloved finger hovering above the iron-gall script.
"Unless," Miss Abigail finished grimly, "the primary heir executes the renewal option recorded in the original 1845 master transaction ledger.
Silas Vance insisted on a private clause: if a direct blood descendant presented the ledger to the county clerk with a ceremonial payment of ten silver dollars before the sunset of the covenant, the freehold converted to absolute private ownership.
If no ledger is produced, the mountain belongs to the town trust forever. "
"Good grief," Birdie gasped, clutching her wrap. "Five thousand acres of prime Blue Ridge real estate. No logging restrictions, no state park easements... Gregory Vance could sell that ridge to luxury resort developers for fifty million dollars!"
"Fifty million on the open market," I said, the puzzle clicking together with sickening finality.
"Julian Croft wasn't brought in to appraise antique settees.
Gregory Vance hired Croft to find that ledger inside Blackwood Manor before Callahan & Company cataloged it.
If Gregory gets the ledger, he owns the mountain.
If the ledger is destroyed or stolen..."
"If the ledger is missing," a smooth, syrupy voice drawled from the shadows of the rear stacks, "then possession, my dear Maggie, becomes nine-tenths of a very lucrative reality."
The hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up.
From behind the tall steel shelving of the genealogical annex stepped Sterling "Sly" Gable.