Like Mother, like every other woman in her generation, Aunt Sister had tried to pass the art of breadmaking down to her daughters and granddaughters. I can make decent biscuits, but that’s about it for me; and Beverly’s not much better. For some reason, though, the twins took to baking like hogs to a mud bath. Whole wheat breads, rye loaves, pumpernickel, sourdough, Irish soda bread, puff pastry—if flour is involved, the twins can make it.
The yeasty fragrance when I opened the plastic bag made my mouth water and reminded my stomach that it hadn’t had lunch. I fixed myself a salad, snitched two of those rolls, and carried my food and the High Country Courier out to the deck off the dining room. The view was so amazing that for several long minutes I just sat on the lounge chair and stared. Through the hemlocks, looking due east, I could see almost the whole length of Main Street. The sun had begun its slide toward the crest of the ridge behind me, causing long dark shadows in the far hollows down below, but straight ahead, all the near mountaintops blazed in flaming, sunlit colors. Further out, the colors muted until they melded together into a blue smoky haze so that I couldn’t tell where the hills ended and sky began.
I will forever be more partial to the coast, but as always happens each time I do venture west, I start to understand again why so many are drawn to the mountains.
Eventually I turned back to my food and to the front page of the little newspaper. A full half of that page was taken up by a single story. The heavy black headline read “Family Friend Charged in Doctor’s Death.” Beneath were two pictures. The first was a studio portrait of a pleasant-faced man who appeared to be in his early fifties. The second was a candid picture of two uniformed officers as they led a young man in handcuffs into the sheriff’s department here in Cedar Gap.
According to the paper, it was originally thought that Dr. Carlyle Ledwig, fifty-six, had accidentally fallen to his death about two weeks ago while repairing a deck that overlooked Pritchard Cove, wherever that was. “Working with wood helped Dr. Ledwig relax,” the paper informed me, lest I should think the late doctor couldn’t afford a carpenter.
From the deck to the first rocks below was a thirty-foot drop. His body had been discovered by a Daniel Freeman, twenty-one, a student at Tanser-MacLeod and a friend of the family. He had immediately called 911, but it was too late.
An autopsy disclosed that the doctor’s fatal head wound had come not from his fall but from a hammer blow, and a search of the ravine eventually located the hammer, its head still caked with blood. A week later, Daniel Freeman was arrested when a bloody fingerprint from the deck proved to be his. Traces of Dr. Ledwig’s blood were also found on the trousers and sneakers he’d been wearing. If the sheriff’s department had a theory as to Freeman’s motive, they had declined to share it with the High Country Courier. Freeman had been released on a $25,000 bond.
Having no hard facts about Freeman other than that he was from Durham, was a senior at Tanser-MacLeod, and had been dating Dr. Ledwig’s older daughter, the Courier fell back on recapping Dr. Ledwig’s life.
I read of his birth in Florida, his degrees from universities in Chicago and New York, his early practice in Florida, his decision twenty years ago to relocate to Cedar Gap, where he headed up the geriatrics department at the local hospital and founded a geriatrics clinic in association with the hospital. His civic involvements seemed to include everything from town and county commissions to sitting on boards here and in Howards Ford. Among other things, he had funded the newly opened Carlyle G. Ledwig Senior Center, had taken active stands on environmental issues, and, according to the reporter, “had possessed the ability to persuade opposing sides to compromise and work together for the common good of Cedar Gap. Even those who disagreed with his stand on certain issues always agreed that he truly loved his adopted town.”
I’ve seen enough of small-town life to read between those lines. The Courier evidently considered Dr. Ledwig basically decent, a man who involved himself in community affairs, a man who contributed time and money to good causes, yet also a man who thought he knew what was best for everyone and wasn’t above using his influence to get folks to go along with him.
But to be hit with a hammer and thrown from his deck? I cast an uneasy look at the railing where my feet were propped. Was this something else the twins were supposed to be working on? I gave it a good push with my foot.
Rock solid. Well, that was one good thing.
The rest of the paper was the usual assortment of local announcements, ads for rental property (exorbitant!) and real estate (half a million for that dumpy little clapboard house?), and for several restaurants. Eating this late, I could skip the restaurants, but images of that hand-dipped ice-cream shop down on Main Street kept floating through my mind.
Surely a single scoop wouldn’t be too self-indulgent?
“Not if you’re gonna be walking up and down mountains,” said the preacher, for once in complete agreement with the pragmatist.
CHAPTER 4
Despite the long drive out, my unexpected bout of housecleaning, and those steep steps, I still felt fresh enough to walk the length of Main Street, browsing the windows, stepping inside the more interesting shops, even buying a sort of burnt orange fall jacket that picked up the gold tones in my tawny hair and didn’t fight with my skin when I tried it on. The jacket almost jumped out of its bag when it spotted a handcrafted topaz and beaten copper necklace two windows down, a necklace that cost almost as much as the jacket. They so wanted each other, though, that I immediately whipped out my credit card.
Except for Dwight (or, more precisely, except for sex with Dwight), I hadn’t treated myself to anything new in months and I figured I was due.
I managed to resist the designer silk scarves in fall leaf patterns and colors that filled the window of a dress store, nor did I let myself go into the leather shop although a pair of snakeskin heels winked at me beguilingly from beneath straight-cut leather pants. For a tourist town, there was little that was tacky and tasteless. Even the strictly souvenir stores offered wares a cut above the usuaclass="underline" the Tshirts and sweatshirts were 100 percent cotton and came dyed in restrained earth tones with motifs that were embroidered rather than stamped. If an item could be made of wood or leather instead of plastic, then it was.
I saw a hat that would have looked good on Dwight except that I wasn’t sure of his size, and that bothered me. How could I possibly be planning to marry someone whose hat size I didn’t know? Yeah, yeah, it was crazy to get hung up over such a silly detail; all the same, I really needed to buy him that hat. Instead, I had to settle for a dark green crewneck sweater that would go nicely with his brown hair and eyes. That size I did know—XL, the same as several of my brothers.
A regional crafts store next door featured handmade quilts and pillow covers in traditional patterns, and, considering the quality of their goods, the gift shops further along the street could have been attached to art museums. Glass, pottery, and wooden bowls evoked the mountains rather than proclaimed it. The only place I could find the Cedar Gap name was on the bottom of a bowl or vase, never splashed across the front.