Deep Down

What really captured her attention on the side wall with the other window—both windows were covered by neat, dark-blue vertical blinds—were two chrome-framed photos. One was of Drew with two other marines—oh, his younger brothers, Josh and Gabe—in sharp uniforms under a banner that read Semper Fi. The other picture was of him with Highboro’s longtime sheriff, Akers, pinning a badge on Drew’s chest. In the marine photo he wore a shiny dress sword at his side; in the police one, a sidearm. She tried not to gape, but to see Drew Webb standing so stunningly, stiffly at attention in crisp uniforms—a man who’s family had never heeded rules and regs—shook her to her very core.

Jessie sensed a full blush coming, just the way it had when he’d so much as glanced her way years ago. How foolish, childish and inappropriate, she scolded herself. Despite her exhaustion, she had to get control. She felt she was still rushing forward, in a plane, in a car. She needed a bed and soon, but she dreaded going home without her mother there.

“I will use your facilities,” she told him when he hung up. “I’ve been sleepless since Cincinnati and feel like a zombie. I hope I can sleep tonight without her there.”

She started to stand, but, dizzy, sat back hard. Drew rose and took her hands, pulling her up beside him, almost propping her up. She was five-eight, but she had forgotten he was so tall, maybe six-one or-two. In all those years she’d had her secret crush on him, she’d seldom been this close.

“You’ve got to be exhausted as well as strung out,” he said, keeping his hands under her elbows. “But I can’t let you back in Mariah’s house until we can take a careful survey of her property tomorrow. I used a search warrant to go through briefly today, then crime-taped the place.”

“Crime tape? It’s a crime scene? Is that agent from the big Chinese buyer still coming in here to buy sang at Tarver’s? What about the guys from the pharms and the ginseng-laced power drinks companies? I can’t see anyone around here hurting her, but those outsiders might do something to keep her sang count up so that—”

“Let’s go over all that tomorrow. The crime tape’s just a formality. Now, listen,” he added, his voice darkening as he gave her the slightest shake, as if to force her fears back down. “I’m going to phone Cassie, because I’m sure you can stay there tonight. Then, after we check out the house for any sort of clues—”

“For clues? You do think something awful has happened to her, don’t you?”

“Let’s not assume the worst for a woman who knew the woods so well. I’m sorry I can’t let you go home tonight, but we can keep your car here, and I’ll take you out to Cassie’s, then pick you up just after dawn. I’ll transfer your things to my vehicle now. You want to give me your keys, then I’ll help you to the bathroom before I call her?”

“I’ll be all right. But she has to be all right, too!”

Damn, she was going to cry. Her mother was missing, and she couldn’t go home. But neither could she have a meltdown. She had to focus on finding her mother, and that meant going along with Drew, in more ways than one.

“I’ll be all right,” she repeated, blinking back tears as she pulled away from him and fished her keys out of her purse. When she handed them to him, their fingertips touched; a jolt of lightning might as well have leapt between them. She thought he felt it, too, but his words came calm and steady.

“Stay strong, Jess. We’ll work through this together.”

Not trusting her voice, she nodded and went out of his office and down the hall, with both hands on the walls to stop the place from spinning. Neither of them was saying it, but they knew a lot was at stake in Mariah’s sang count and, therefore, in her disappearance. It was all tied in with mountain pride and worse—big money both here and abroad.

Jessie knew she had to deal with a new Drew, but then, she was a new person, too. One with a missing mother who might be as endangered as wild wood sang.

* * *

Drew had to fight the urge to pull Jess against him and hold her. It was an insane thought, considering the last night they’d been together and now this nightmare. Despite her obvious exhaustion and frustration, he was astounded at how beautiful she’d become, delicate and edgy, yet sturdy and strong. Tall, slender with tousled, curly blond hair and blue-gray eyes that bored right into you. Yeah, just as he’d remembered her and yet not the same at all. Filled out, at ease in what had once been a string bean of a body, self-assured despite her dilemma …

“Here, let me open the Jeep door for you,” he said as she stepped outside to join him on the porch.

“It looks more like a truck. Is this Deep Down’s version of a cop car?”

“It’s a Jeep Cherokee with a wired-off backseat in case I have a prisoner to transport. I’ve only got two small holding cells here.”

“A Cherokee? I’ll bet Seth Bearclaws likes that.”

“I tried to give him a lift the other day, but he won’t ride in it. Says it’s just another thing ripping off his people’s heritage.”

He went back to the office, turned out the lights and locked the door before he got in the driver’s side of the front seat. He was proud of this silver, four-wheel SUV he’d been issued when he’d taken the job. It had made his measly salary sound a lot better. It was a sturdy vehicle for the mountain roads. It didn’t have a light bar, just a single red light he put on the roof if he had a pursuit or an emergency. Traffic jams were nonexistent here. He’d been tempted to have Sheriff stenciled on both front doors, but realized it might make some folks in his jurisdiction nervous or even trigger-happy. Still, with some characters in the outlying areas, he felt as if he had a bull’s-eye on his doors and on his back. Could Mariah have run afoul of any of them?

“One of my little causes around here,” he told her, “is reminding people to lock their doors. The times, they are a changin’’ round here.” She seemed very far away, not just across the console; she looked as if she was glued to the outside door. “Seat belt,” he reminded her, then had to help her click it in the unfamiliar lock.

“Lots of locks. So big-time crime’s coming in here?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. In the four months I’ve been on the job, it’s hardly been cops and robbers,” he admitted, as he turned on the headlights, pulled out and headed toward Cassie’s. “I broke up a fight between the Talbots and the Enloes so that feud wouldn’t restart.”

“As I recall, that feud went back to the Civil War. If the truth were known, probably to the old clan wars of Scotland. So that was a good day’s work. What else?”

He was touched that, despite her own problems, she seemed genuinely interested. About half the local population insisted there was no need for law enforcement here. He almost confessed to her how hard it had been to see the sneers and overhear the snide comments about Drew Webb, of all folks, from all families, coming back to uphold what the government said was right.

“I arrested a guy from Frankfort for letting his six-year-old son chase deer on a noisy ATV. The dad was hopping mad, said he’d sue—he was a lawyer, no less, who should have had some brains. The kid could have been killed with the ridges and rills around here. I deal with a lot of pranks from kids who are just plain bored,” he told her. “I think we can both sympathize with that.”

A moment’s silence stretched between them.

“Yes.”

“I do a lot of knock-and-talks, playing counselor as well as enforcer. The things I thought would cause me the most problems, drinking and policing illegal patches of marijuana, haven’t taken much time. Hardly anyone makes their own moonshine anymore, and when I find pot patches, I destroy them. But I don’t make an arrest or apply to have the land legally confiscated if I’m not sure who planted it.”

“Unless you catch them in the act, you’re never sure.”

“Right. Besides, like sang spots, a lot of it is planted far outside of town.”

“I’m sure sang is even harder to police,” she told him, slanting her body slightly in his direction as he turned off onto the side road toward Cassie’s. “I mean,” she went on as they began to bounce down the long, rutted lane, “sang’s more of a heritage here, a God-given medicine and moneymaker.”

“That’s exactly it. Local diggers and foreign buyers alike don’t give a damn what the endangered species laws say.”

“And your knock-and-talks?” she asked. Again, it really got to him that, as whipped and upset as she was, she was focusing on what he’d said. He hadn’t realized he’d been so lonely, coming home to Deep Down.

“I’ve arrested two guys and driven them into jail in Highboro for domestic violence. I owe my mother that much. Above all else, I took this job because I can’t stand guys who rough up their women and kids, and there’s still a lot of it in these patriarchal parts. I—I almost lose control—again—when I see that. Sometimes I think life was easier in sunny Naples, Italy, when I was MP—military police. I was in charge of the brig for drunken sailors and marines. They didn’t expect favors from a onetime bad boy from a hellfire family.”

He realized he sounded angry. He hadn’t really let loose with anyone since he’d been here, not even with Chuck Akers. He’d been walking a fine line between building bridges and enforcing the law.

Cassie’s house came in sight, pouring light into the darkness of Fancy Gap Hollow where she’d been raised. Her form appeared at the window, then disappeared before her front door opened. In a long, ghostly white nightgown, with a shawl around her thin shoulders, she came out on the porch as they pulled up. Jess opened the door before he could get out.

“Jessie!” he heard Cassie cry as she embraced her friend. “Despite the troubles, welcome home!”

4

Cassie Keenan had known Jessica Lockwood her whole life. Both only children, a rarity in the area, they had clung together like sisters, however different their personalities. Cassandra and Jessica—Cassie and Jessie—their lives had seemed to rhyme like their names, until Mariah sent Jessie away. If folks thought Mariah did that just because of Drew Webb, Cassie knew they were wrong, ‘cause Mariah had always wanted a different life for her child.

Still, however distant their lives had become, Cassie treasured how they could pickup where they’d left off, just like they hadn’t been apart a long time. Though Jessie hadn’t visited Deep Down this August as usual, she’d been here last Christmas with all sorts of gifts for her and Pearl. But things might be different now with Mariah missing. Desperate to help her friend get through this, whatever befell, Cassie hugged Jessie hard, then led her inside while Drew followed with her suitcase and matching smaller bag.

“I hope we won’t wake Pearl,” he said as Cassie sat Jessie down at the plank table, shoving potted herbs aside to make a spot for her. She’d meant to straighten up the little house a bit when she heard Jessie would spend the night, but there was nowhere to put her precious plants unless she carried them outside with the others. Herbs, both live and dried, covered the floor, walls and ceiling. It was like a grotto in here, Elinor Gering had said, when she’d come to record Cassie talking about life here in Deep Down.

“Now don’t you all fret about making noise,” she told Drew. “Once that little angel’s out, she sleeps like the dead.”

Cassie saw Jessie wince at that. She scolded herself for not thinking ahead of her mouth. “This here’s ginseng tea with a touch of chamomile,” she told her friend as she set a cup before her. “Gives you energy and yet makes you sleep. Drew, you want some coffee? Won’t take a minute.”

“No, thanks. I’m coffeed out for the day and need to hit the sack myself for a couple of hours.”

Looking beyond exhausted, Jessie wrapped her hands around the hot cup, then lifted it to her lips.

“I’ll be going,” Drew said. “Jess, I’ll be here at eight sharp, though I know you need the sleep.”

“What I need is my mother back,” she said, turning to face him. Then she added, “Sorry about the heavy bag. I didn’t repack at home, just got my car and headed out.”

Cassie watched the two of them talk, both tipping their heads in the same direction and leaning slightly toward each other as if they were straining against a fence. She recognized the wild wind between them, the kind you couldn’t hold back. She’d figured both of them still had feelings for each other, and now she knew it. Tarnation, she understood that sort of pull, that turning toward the sun as if it were the source of life itself.

“‘Night and thanks, Cassie,” Drew said as he started for the door.

“Come a few minutes early for pancakes,” she told him. “I’m gonna put a good, hot meal in Jessie first thing tomorrow, so you come, too. Thanks for that bag of groceries you brought me back from Highboro the other day,” she added, hurrying after him to the door. “Me and Pearl’s beholden to you, ‘specially for standing up for my right to keep silent. I heard what you told Vern Tarver.”

“You’re only beholden for a pancake breakfast,” he said. He stood at the door as if he hated to leave, then looked past her to Jessie again. “We’ll find her, Jess,” he said and went out into the night.

“Whew-ee,” Cassie said as she went to sit across the narrow table from her friend. “I know you two will find Mariah. But for now, least you found each other.”

“Except for the fact I need his professional help—” Jessie’s voice came real sharp “—our past has nothing to do with the present situation.”

“Listen, my Deep Down sister, don’t you go lecturing ‘bout things of the heart, even if you are way smarter’n me,” Cassie scolded, shaking her finger at Jessie like she did at Pearl. “My girl’s daddy may be out of my life and hers, but she was a love child.” Afraid she’d say more, she pinched her lips tight.

“Of course she is. I never said otherwise.”

“So I know it when I see it, even if I don’t have it no more.” Cassie made herself sit back and calm down. No way did she want someone clever as Jessie catching on to who Pearl’s daddy was or what she had planned.

“I don’t know which way’s up, that’s all,” her friend said, taking another big swig of the tea. “What you’re seeing and hearing is sheer exhaustion. I just feel so weak—helpless.”

“I got some mushroom soup and corn bread, if you’re hungry for that kind of food ‘fore you go to bed.”

“My system’s so screwed up from time zone changes and I have stomach cramps from being afraid and grieved—”

“And on edge back with Drew again. Like most men, he may be dense as a wall on that, but you’re not. Anybody like you who can look in a microscope and find a way to stop killer cells can—”

“Can find a killer?” Jessie blurted and, to Cassie’s dismay, burst into tears. She banged the cup down and covered her face with both hands. Her shoulders shook and the curly blond hair Cassie had always thought was way better than her own straight red hair bounced against her hands. “It’s just,” Jessie got out between big, choking sobs, “I think something awful—might have happened—to her. She knows the woods, she’s always safe in the woods …”

Cassie jumped up and went around the table to hug her from behind. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to set you off, and I shouldn’t bring up Drew like that. I promise, I won’t say no more about it till you’re ready to admit it.”

“You’re so damned annoying and stubborn, Cassandra Keenan.”

“That’s me,” she said and went back to her place across the table as Jessie reached in her purse, looking kind of surprised to find it still over her shoulder, and took out a tissue. “‘Member how Elinor told us that Cassandra in some old Greek stories was a woman who always told the truth, even predicted the future, but no one believed her?” Cassie asked.

“Elinor said a lot of things,” Jessie muttered and blew her nose. “She once made me read a book she loved called You Can’t Go Home Again, and here I am. And I hated the book.”

“Jessie, anything I can do to help, I will.”

Jessie reached across the table, past the plants, to put one hand on hers. “I’d better get to sleep. Morning and Drew will be here early.”

“I’m gonna sleep with Pearl, and you take my bed. Want to wash up?”

“In the morning. Right now, I just need a couple of things out of my carry-on bag and a bed.”

Cassie rolled Jessie’s big suitcase into her bedroom, the one that had been her grandparents’ and parents’ room before it was hers. In truth, she was glad to give it up, ‘cause after watching the smothered desire between Jessie and Drew, she might be too het up and not sleep well in there tonight. Too often she didn’t, remembering her own sweeping passion in that bed and then how the midwife had helped her birth the result of that there.

She’d buried that love and lust now, put it away and closed up all her wounds, though they still festered under the surface. Sure as rain, she was laying plans to make him pay for his betrayal of her and Pearl. She knew people whispered that she never spoke his name nor hinted who he was because she was too shattered over the desertion, still so much in love that she was giving him a pass, protecting him.

Well, they were all dead wrong. As soon as she got her herbal potions mixed, no matter how important a man he was, he was the one who was gonna wish he was dead.

Something woke Jessie instantly. A shifting sound. Movement. Shadows huddled in the room. As out-of-it as she was, she became instantly alert with her pulse pounding in her ears.

Was that noise inside or out? Yes, another sound, but from where? Someone sneaking in through the door she’d left ajar? Had Cassie locked the outside doors? What if someone who wanted to stop her mother from handing in her ginseng count had heard Jessie was back and thought she knew more than she did? What if …

She didn’t move, didn’t breathe, concentrating, straining to listen. Yes, something outside. Maybe a branch scraping or tapping against the glass. She wished Cassie had a clock in the room.

With a groan, she got out of bed and shuffled to the window, shifting the left edge of the homemade drapes slightly aside. Black as it was outside, a half moon etched the bizarre backyard in faintest silver.

The usual clutter stretched across the back of the house between two herb gardens. Jessie saw the solid, black silhouettes of the old iron kettles where her friend boiled the natural dyes she used to make wild plant mordants, which weavers used to set colors in cloth. Above that, lines of barbed wire dangled from tall post to post, not to keep people out but to dry moss Cassie sold to florists and craft stores for about five dollars a sack. Humps of moss were draped there now, looking like the tops of furry heads peering over the wire at the house.

Then one of them on the top wire moved. It rose, turned away, then disappeared.

No. No, she could not have seen that. It was just the breeze moving the moss, the slant of moonlight or even her tired eyes playing tricks on her.

She squeezed her eyelids tight, then opened them to look again. The moss-heavy barbed wire shifted in the breeze, gilded by moonlight, that was all. Surely, she had not heard something scratching on the window or seen a big, hairy head move. She was getting back in bed at least until dawn or until Cassie, ever an early riser, woke her up. Even now, her stomach did a little roll and plunge to think that Drew was coming for her, even if it was to find out what dreadful thing must have happened to her mother.

Back in bed, she tossed and turned. She didn’t think she slept again, but she must have because she saw strange shapes of huge, hairy ginseng roots come to life and chase her, through the trees, through the Hong Kong market …

“Aunt Jessie?” came the tiny voice and then the little face peered up over the side of the bed in the graying room. “I heard you was coming. But why isn’t Mommy here in this bed ‘stead of you?”

“Pearl, sweetie, how are you? But your mommy’s in with you. She let me sleep here for the night.” As her head cleared, she helped the child climb up beside her. “You mean she’s not in bed?” she asked.

Pearl shook her head, making her reddish-blond hair swing. “Maybe she’s in the bad part of the garden. Even in the dark, she’s there.”

Jessie frowned at the child’s babble, but covered her up with the blanket, then got out of bed to be sure that Cassie was around somewhere. Surely, those nearest and dearest to her weren’t just disappearing.

She glanced out her window first at the drying moss and iron kettles. Yes, that’s what she’d seen last night, nothing else.

“Stay here,” she whispered to Pearl. “I’ll be right back.”

She checked the bathroom—empty—then peered out a side window. In the first dusting of dawn, Cassie was in her eastern garden, gone to riot in late-summer growth. She was cutting herbs with a long, curved knife, hacking away as if she were angry at them. Jessie knocked on the window and waved. Startled, Cassie looked up and held up a finger to indicate “just a minute,” then bent back to her work.

Her friend had always been a hard worker, but then she’d had to be, especially lately to eke out a living for herself and Pearl. Cassie would not take donated money. But why work out there in the dark and chill of morning? Maybe she’d gotten behind, since, like so many Deep Downers, she’d spent time looking for Mariah.

Jessie padded back to the bedroom, checking her watch as she went by the dresser. Seven. She had to get moving to take a bath—no shower here, just a big, old claw-footed tub you could almost swim laps in—and get ready for a grueling day before Drew arrived.

“She’s outside, just like you said,” she told Pearl, who looked like a little elf in the middle of the big double bed. The child had a pert, freckled face; her pale complexion and reddish hair were a clear heritage from her mother. No hints of who might have sired her in the child herself. If Mariah didn’t have a clue who might have made Cassie pregnant—or so she’d said—no one but Pearl’s parents must know.

Mariah and Cassie had also been close for years. Sometimes, Jessie thought with a pang, it was as if, after Cassie’s mother died and her father left the area, Cassie took Jessie’s place. Besides digging some sang, both Mariah and Cassie made their livings from wildcrafting for seasonal moss, ferns, morel mushrooms and herbs to sell to craft and floral shops, health stores and dyers in Kentucky towns. But Cassie had said, just before they went to bed, that she had not been to most of Mariah’s sang sites with her and she couldn’t find a trace of her in their usual wildcrafting areas. Jessie could only pray she’d find some of her mother’s notes in the house or that she’d recall the sang counting sites once she was out in the woods with Drew.

She snapped open her big suitcase and pulled out two of the silk scarves she’d bought in Hong Kong as gifts for friends and coworkers—and for her mother, as strange as it would be to see her in silk. The jade-hued one she tied around Pearl’s cotton nightgown like a sash while the child was all big eyes, so excited at the gift. The scarlet one she kept out for Cassie, since that was her favorite color.

“Now you just stay snug as a bug in a rug in that bed until I take a bath, and, after I get dressed, you can help me set the table for breakfast,” she told Pearl.

She bent back down to her tightly packed suitcase and dug past her two business suits and the array of blouses she’d taken until she found the single pair of clean jeans and a long-sleeved sweatshirt that, unfortunately, was emblazoned with a Phi Beta Kappa key. Not that most Deep Downers would know or care what that was, but what had seemed so right for the conference was all wrong here. She decided she’d just wear it inside out and find something of her mother’s to wear later—if Drew let her touch anything in her house.

“You from the Highboro Herald or another paper?” Drew asked the blond guy with the expensive camera equipment. The stranger was leaning against Jessie’s car, in front of the police office, to steady himself while he took a picture down the street toward the bridge. He looked almost Nordic—like a Viking—with light blue eyes and white-blond hair.