Chapter 18 The Flashlight and the Gun
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The storm did not merely rattle Blackwood Manor; it seemed intent on peeling the slate shingles from the roof like dead bark from an old pine.
Outside the tall library casements, the Blue Ridge wind screamed down through the gorge, whipping wet rhododendron branches against the diamond-paned glass.
Inside, the blackout was absolute, save for the solitary emerald glow of the brass banker’s lamp we had hooked to Luke’s battery pack.
The green glass shade cast long shadows across the faded Persian carpet, across the towering walnut bookcases, and across the ancient, calfskin-bound volume laid open before me on the heavy library table.
Its yellowed rag-linen pages, dense with iron-gall ink and intricate Fraktur script, smelled of dried lavender, beeswax, and a century and a half of buried mountain history.
Beside me, Birdie let out a slow, tremulous breath, while Luke stood half a pace back, his large frame rigid, listening to the groaning timbers of the house.
Buster lay curled beneath the table against my clogs, his ears pinned forward, twitching in the dim green light.
Then, from the cavernous central hall, the floorboards groaned under a measured weight.
Buster didn't bark. A low rumble started deep in his chest—a sound he usually reserved for coyotes lingering at the orchard tree line or the county tax assessor walking up our driveway.
The heavy oak library door glided inward with a dry squeak that set every hair on my arms standing straight up.
A beam of light sliced through the darkness.
It was not the polite glow of a smartphone or an emergency candle.
It was the blinding blue-white cone of a commercial halogen hunting lantern.
The glare struck the polished walnut table like a physical blow, obliterating the emerald glow of the banker’s lamp and washing out the room in stark, freezing contrast.
"Don't reach for that poker, Sterling," a voice drawled from behind the wall of white light. "Unless you've developed an appetite for lead."
The lantern beam dipped just enough to reveal the man standing in the threshold.
Sterling "Sly" Gable looked like a drowned rat in a soaked sharkskin coat, rain dripping from his lapels onto the floor. But there was nothing comical about his right hand.
Gripped in his fist, steady and black against his dripping cuff, was a snub-nosed .38 revolver pointed directly at Luke’s chest.
Luke didn't drop the iron poker he'd snatched from the hearth. He held it two-handed across his torso, knuckles white, jaw set like granite.
"Lower the iron, Luke," Gable said softly, his voice silky with malice. "A two-foot poker against six rounds of hollow-point ammunition isn't the kind of arithmetic they teach in vocational school. A single bullet will solve all my problems."
"Sly," I said, forcing my voice into the brisk register I used when an out-of-town dealer tried to sneak reproduction milk glass onto the half-price table. "You’re dripping on a genuine Tabriz rug. Mrs. Vance would have had you horsewhipped."
"Eleanor Vance is six feet under the mountain clay, Maggie," Gable sneered, stepping into the room.
He kicked the heavy oak door shut behind him with the heel of a soggy loafer.
The latch caught with a sharp snap that echoed like a cell door locking shut.
"And whatever claim that dried-up old witch had on this county died right along with her. "
Birdie gripped my elbow. "You always were a loud-mouthed two-bit pickpocket, Sly Gable. What makes you think you can brandish a firearm at three citizens without Sheriff Lawson locking you in the drunk tank until your hair tonic expires?"
Gable laughed, a dry, rattling bark. The halogen beam danced across our faces.
"Lawson? Frank Lawson is four miles down the mountain road, standing in thigh-deep mud trying to clear a two-hundred-year-old chestnut oak across the switchback.
Took me fifteen minutes with a handsaw and tow chain to drop that timber across both lanes before the squall hit.
Black Walnut Cove is cut off. Nobody is coming up that mountain tonight. "
A cold knot tightened in my gut. The felled tree, the dead landlines, and the breakers cleanly flipped from the exterior box.
"So you staged the blackout," Luke said, his voice dropping into that dangerous rumble that meant he was measuring distances. "Just like you staged the break-in at the carriage house."
"Staged?" Gable’s lips peeled back from his tea-stained teeth. "I didn't stage a damn thing on Tuesday. That was pure bad luck. Or good fortune, depending on who holds the deed when the sun comes up."
The lantern light swung downward, hitting the cherrywood table where the open 1845 ledger rested between my hands. Seeing the faded calfskin cover, the hand-tooled Moravian stars, and the thick pages, a tremor ran through Gable's wet frame, his eyes gleaming with raw greed.
"Look at it," Gable whispered, almost reverently. "The real thing. Not that damn worthless notebook full of timber tallies from nineteen-twelve. The actual covenant."
"Is that what Julian Croft died for?" I asked, keeping my hands flat on the table, praying my tremor didn’t show. "An old surveyor’s book?"
"Julian Croft died because he was an arrogant parasite who wouldn't keep his hands off what belonged to this family," Gable spat, the veneer of slick professionalism sloughing away.
"You aren't family, Sly," Birdie snapped, her chin up despite the revolver lingering uncomfortably close. "Eleanor wouldn't even let you park your truck in the driveway when she was breathing."
"My mother was her sister!" Gable roared, his face mottling purple in the glare.
"A half-sister! Kept in the kitchen, paid a maid's wage for forty years while Saint Eleanor played Lady of the Manor and gave valley land away to weavers and apple farmers!
Martha gave her youth to this drafty mausoleum, and when Eleanor died, what did Ma get?
A five-thousand-dollar annuity and permission to live in the gatekeeper's cottage until the roof caves in! "
The puzzle pieces, rattling in my mind ever since Buster unearthed that tackle box behind the hydrangeas, snapped together with sickening precision.
"Martha," I whispered. "Your mother was in the carriage house on Tuesday morning."
Gable’s eyes flicked to me, dark and sharp.
"Ma has eyes in the back of her head. She spent fifty years watching Eleanor hide her secrets.
When that slick bastard Croft showed up with his silk scarf and his little brass pick-set, Ma watched him go straight for the secretary desk in the sitting room.
She knew Eleanor kept the key to the false-bottom drawer behind the grandfather clock face.
But before Ma could stop him, Croft had already jimmyed the catch and slipped out the side terrace toward the carriage house. "
"So she followed him," Luke said, his eyes never leaving the cylinder of Gable’s revolver.
"She followed him to get it back," Gable said, his voice dropping into a breathless rhythm.
"Ma thought she was protecting the covenant, hoping the Raleigh cousins would let her keep the homeplace.
But Croft laughed in her face. Called her an illiterate mountain servant and said the book was worth two hundred grand to an offshore buyer wanting to wipe out the township's historic trust."
Gable stepped closer, his lantern casting his shadow up to the ceiling medallion like a giant vulture.
"I was waiting out by the barn," Gable continued, his knuckles white on the grip. "I’d been tailing Croft all morning, waiting to corner him and cut my own deal before he skipped town. I saw him drag Ma into the tack room. I heard him yelling. When I came through the door, Croft had his hands around my mother’s throat, shoving her down hard against the grain chest. Ma’s coat sleeve caught on that old hanging beam scale—the big brass one from the 1880s, the one with the six-pound counterweight. "
My breath caught in my throat. "The verdigris."
"What?" Gable barked.
"The green corrosion on the cuff of your mother’s cardigan," I said, remembering the faint turquoise smear Lawson had noticed when he questioned Martha in the kitchen. "She didn't get that from cleaning lamps. She got it when she hit the scale."
"She hit the floor," Gable corrected, his voice reeking of damp wool and stale tobacco.
"And Croft turned on me. Reached into his blazer like he had a piece.
I didn't think. In a fit of greed and rage, I just reached up, snatched that 1880s brass beam scale right off the iron hook, and brought the counterweight down across the back of his skull from behind. "
A violent crack of thunder shook the library walls, rattling the diamond glass. The green light of the banker's lamp flickered, then steadied.
"You killed him," Birdie said, her voice dropping all its usual sarcastic snap, replaced by cold certainty. "In cold blood."
"It was self-defense!" Gable yelled over the thunder. "Until I saw what was in his leather satchel. That was when it became business."
He lowered the lantern beam directly onto the calfskin book before me.
"Croft had a bound book tucked inside his coat," Gable said, a bitter sneer curling his mouth.
"Bound in dark leather, with brass clasps. I shoved Ma out the back door through the brambles, telling her to go home, burn her shoes, and keep her mouth shut. She was terrified of going to the police because of that verdigris on her sleeve and being right there at the scene. I took the book, drove down to the overlook to see what I’d won, and popped the lock. "
He didn't wait for an answer.
"Tallies. Red-line timber tallies from nineteen-twelve. Eleanor’s grandfather logging oak and hemlock off the north ridge.
A decoy! The old woman had pulled the real ledger out of that desk decades ago and stuffed a worthless tally notebook in its place, just waiting for somebody like Croft to come snooping! "