“Not at all. Let’s get you a drink and then come meet some of your colleagues.”
Joyce Ashe was as I’d remembered her: an easygoing, big-boned woman carrying about twenty-five extra pounds and comfortable with it. She had one of the bartenders build me a Bloody Mary (I hadn’t eaten anything since my chicken salad at noon and Bloody Marys always feel like food), refreshed her own bourbon and branch, then led me over to a group warming themselves by the fireplace.
“I hear you already know Lucius Burke,” she said as the circle opened to admit us.
“Yes,” I said, taking the hand the district attorney offered and trying not to fall into those incredible green eyes. The names of the two attorneys and someone who owned a ski lodge just on the other side of the Tennessee border went in one ear and out the other. To cover my lapse, I moved closer to the hearth to examine the picture. According to the little brass plate attached to the simple wood frame, it had been painted in 1903 by an artist named Genevieve Carlton. I read the title out loud: “In Nature’s Realm.”
Joyce Ashe laughed. “Well, that’s what the artist called it. Bobby and I call it The Mountains of Florida.”
I looked at the painting with renewed interest. “I didn’t know Florida had any mountains,” I said, stepping right into it.
“Oh, Lord, yes! Florida’s got beautiful mountains.” She paused two beats. “They just happen to lie in North Carolina.”
I still didn’t get it.
“Floridians think they own our mountains,” the fortyish attorney—Liz Peters?—explained with a kindly smile.
“Think?” said a jovial silver-haired man who’d come up behind me. He was accompanied by a tall, heavyset man who sported a thick bushy mustache—Bobby Ashe. “There’s no think about it, Liz darlin’. Joyce and Bobby and me, we’ve personally sold about half of Lafayette County to ’em, so damn straight they own our mountains, right, Bobby?”
Bobby Ashe hoisted his glass to the man and grinned broadly. “I never argue with a partner.”
“Partner?” asked Ms. Peters, raising her eyebrows in surprise.
“Yep,” said Bobby Ashe. He put one arm around Joyce, the other around the man. “It took us two months to hammer out the details, but we signed the last of the papers last week. You’re looking at all three partners of the newly formed Osborne-Ashe High Country Realty.”
“Wow!” said the young male attorney whose name hadn’t registered on me.
“Wow is right,” said Liz Peters, looking impressed.
“Congratulations,” said Lucius Burke. He turned to me with a smile. “I may have to get you to refresh my memory on the statutes governing monopolies, though. Between ’em, they probably account for seventy percent of the property sales in this county.”
“More like eighty,” said the silver-haired man, giving me a puzzled look. “Have we met? You a new attorney here?”
“This is Judge Knott,” said Bobby Ashe, flashing me a welcome smile. “She’s sitting in for Tim Rawlings while he’s down east on a fishing trip.”
“Norman Osborne,” said the man. “Nice to meet you, Judge.”
“My pleasure. And please. Tonight, I’m just Deborah.”
“Lucius tells us you found the kid that killed Carlyle Ledwig guilty today,” said Joyce.
“Not guilty,” Burke and I said together. I smiled at him and explained to the rest that all I’d done was find probable cause to bind that young man over for trial in superior court.
“Same thing, isn’t it?” asked Norman Osborne.
“I hope so,” said Burke.
I shook my head. “Not necessarily. He’s still innocent until declared guilty by a jury of his peers.”
“Gonna be hard to find one of those up here,” Liz Peters said tartly.
CHAPTER 8
“Oh, come on, Liz,” said Joyce Ashe. “You’ll have Deborah thinking we’re nothing but a bunch of hillbilly ridge runners with a Klan robe in every closet.”
“Just stating the obvious,” said the unrepentant attorney.
As a district court judge who will never sit on a murder trial, and a flatlander to boot, I didn’t have a dog in this fight. From here on, Freeman’s guilt or innocence would play out in superior court. Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist asking as innocently as possible, “What’s the problem? Aren’t there plenty of educated young people in your jury pool?”
“I’m not talking age or education,” she said. “I’m talking race. You find me twelve black people in Cedar Gap and I’ll send a donation to the Lafayette County Republican Party in your name.”
I held up my hands in mock horror. “Not in my name you won’t.”
The others rolled their eyes and Bobby Ashe grinned at his wife. “Where’d you stash Liz’s soapbox, honey?”
“I’m with Judge Knott on this,” said the younger male attorney. Dotson? Dodson? “What’s the problem? Hell, Freeman’s just about as white as anybody around.”
I couldn’t quite place his accent but clearly it hadn’t been formed in North Carolina.
“Speak for yourself, Matt Dodson,” said the woman who had joined us a moment earlier. Mid-forties, tall and tan, with sunbleached blond hair, she had the healthy outdoor look of someone who ate six servings of fruits and vegetables a day and played at least two sets of tennis or nine holes of golf every morning. From the proprietary way she tucked her arm through Norman Osborne’s, I gathered that she was Mrs. Osborne.
“I am speaking for myself,” said Dodson. “Look at me.”
We did. Black curly hair, warm brown eyes, deep olive skin.
Mrs. Osborne waved her hand impatiently. “Don’t be silly, Matt. Your skin may be a little dark, but you know you’re Caucasian.”
“I’m also Spanish. At least my mother is. Matt isn’t short for Matthew. I was christened Matteo. And the Moors of North Africa were all over Spain. You think for one minute my family didn’t mix it up with a few blackamoors along the way?”
“Well, now, if you’re gonna go back hundreds of years,” said Joyce Ashe, “we’re all out of Africa originally, right?”
“Not if you believe the Bible, darlin’.” Norman Osborne’s grin implied that he didn’t necessarily. “The Garden of Eden was in Iraq. Mesopotamia, not Africa.”
I gave a mental groan. Surely I hadn’t risked my life with a maniac driver just to spend yet another evening debating evolution and creationism?
Fortunately, Liz Peters wasn’t that easily sidetracked. “Whether he’s mostly white, Chinese, or Mesopotamian, the fact remains that Daniel Freeman calls himself an African-American, and there are precious few in Lafayette County.”
“Not my fault if they don’t want to live here,” Bobby Ashe said. “Joyce and me, we don’t care about the color of any client’s skin, long as their money’s green.”
“Have you sold a single house in Pritchard Cove to any blacks?”
“As a matter of fact, we did. Remember the Gibsons?”
“Oh right.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “One season fighting those damn flamingoes, then they gave up and bought a place outside Asheville.”
“Flamingos?” I asked.
Joyce Ashe shrugged her ample shoulders. “Someone kept planting plastic flamingos along their drive and—”
“Every lawn jockey isn’t in the shape of a pickaninny,” said Liz Peters.
“It was a joke, Liz. Not a good joke, but not racist.”
“Some things aren’t funny if you’re on the receiving end,” she snapped. Turning to me, she explained: “The implication was that the Gibsons were black Florida trash and didn’t belong in Pritchard Cove with white Floridians.”
“Floridiots!” said a short bald man, who’d been listening silently. “They can all go to hell.”