Chapter 18 The Flashlight and the Gun #2
"Eleanor was eccentric, Sly," I said softly. "She was never stupid."
"No, but she was a hoarder," Gable snarled.
"And I knew she would never destroy the covenant.
It was in this house, gathering dust while the lawyers and the city cousins circled like buzzards.
I've spent the last three days turning this mountain upside down searching for it.
And then you showed up, Maggie Callahan.
You and your high-and-mighty estate sale team. "
"So you searched the carriage house that night," Luke said. "Tearing up the floorboards."
"Looking for where Croft might have stashed the real one before I hit him," Gable admitted without shame.
"And then I watched you. I watched you and that overgrown mutt poking into the closets, digging through the attic trunks.
I knew you'd find it. You have that sickening knack for finding things people wanted buried. "
"And what did you think you were going to do with it, Sly?" Birdie asked, her chin lifting. "You're an antique dealer with three suspended licenses. Who were you going to sell a nineteenth-century mountain covenant to?"
Gable’s chest swelled under his soaked coat. "The Charlotte developers' syndicate. The resort consortium that’s been trying to buy Black Walnut Ridge for ten years. You know what that covenant does, Maggie? You read it. You know what's written on those pages."
I looked down at the open page under my fingers. The iron-gall ink was unfaded, the signatures bold: Ezekiel Vance, Christian Transou, Althea Vance.
"It deeds the entire four-thousand-acre watershed to the mountain families in perpetuity," I said quietly.
"A communal land trust. As long as this original charter exists, no timber company, no golf resort, and no commercial developer can ever pave a single foot of Black Walnut Mountain.
Not even the heirs have the right to sell. "
"Exactly," Gable whispered, his eyes blazing with manic triumph.
"Four thousand acres of prime mountain real estate, locked up in an 1845 communist pipe dream.
The Charlotte syndicate offered Julian Croft half a million dollars under the table just to authenticate the covenant, bring it to them, and let their lawyers drop it into an incinerator.
Without the original charter, the land reverts to fee-simple private property.
The Vance cousins get twenty million from the resort.
And my cut from the developers for delivering the ashes is two point five million. "
Two and a half million dollars—in Black Walnut Cove, an astronomical fortune enough to buy an alibi and a one-way ticket out of the country.
"You'll never get it down the mountain, Sly," Luke said, his voice flat as an anvil. "Even if Frank Lawson is stuck behind that oak, he's got state troopers at the bottom of the gap. The second you try to cross into Henderson County, they'll pull you over."
"They won't pull me over, Luke, because they won't be looking for me," Gable said, stepping another foot closer.
The barrel of the .38 shifted, centering directly between my eyes.
"They'll be looking for the tragic victims of an electrical fire.
Old timber mansion, sixty-mile-an-hour gale, a kerosene lamp knocked over in the library during a blackout...
it'll burn to the foundation stones before the volunteer fire department can even get their pump truck up the switchback. "
Birdie’s breath hitched in her throat.
Beside my leg, Buster’s low growl deepened, coiled like a steel spring against my calf.
"You don't want to do this, Sly," I said, keeping my eyes locked on his face, refusing to look down at the black bore of the gun.
"Julian Croft was a panicked mistake. You hit him because he shoved your mother. That’s manslaughter.
Any mountain jury in this county would understand defending Martha. "
For half a heartbeat, doubt crossed his slick, rain-streaked face. His knuckles eased on the revolver, just a fraction.
"A mountain jury?" he muttered.
"They know Martha," I pressed gently, keeping my voice low and soothing.
"They know what Eleanor was like. You tell Frank the truth.
You tell him Croft attacked your mother in that tack room, and you were trying to stop him.
If you pull that trigger tonight, Sly, there is no jury in the world that won't send you to Central Prison in Raleigh for the rest of your natural life. "
The silence was suffocating, broken only by the shriek of the gale and the drip of water from Gable’s coat.
Then Gable blinked. The doubt vanished from his eyes, snuffed out by a surge of venomous greed.
"Nice try, Maggie," he snarled, raising the gun until the sights lined up with the bridge of my nose. "You always were too smart for your own good. But Martha’s old. She’s got two years left, maybe three, in that drafty cottage. I’m not spending twenty years in a concrete box for Julian Croft.
Not when two million dollars is sitting right on that table. "
He took a final step forward, setting the heavy hunting lantern on the mahogany table so its beam blinded us, while his left hand pulled a brass Zippo lighter from his dripping pocket.
He thumbed the wheel. A bright, dancing yellow flame sprang to life, casting demonic, flickering shadows across his wet cheekbones. His eyes gleamed with triumphant madness as he stared down at the open pages.
"Toss it over, Maggie," Gable ordered, his voice trembling with a mixture of terror and triumphant adrenaline. "Slide the covenant across the table. Right now. If that book burns in the hearth tonight, the mountain is mine."