"Well, you're at least the conservator. What happened to all these trees?"
"I think it's a lightning patch," I said, and then I had to explain that term to her.
"Great view from up here," she said. "Next time let's ride it, though."
"My knees still haven't recovered from the last time," I said. "I may get me a four-wheeler, though."
"Don't you dare," she said. "This land was meant to be ridden over, not torn up by one of those horrible, noisy things. The Lees would evict you if you showed up at the cottage with a four-wheeler."
"Gee, I wonder if I should stop using the electric lights in the cottage so much, too."
She gave me an exasperated look, and then Kitty woofed. We turned around, and there was the major in all his glory. Neither one of us had heard him coming across that carpet of soft pine needles in the forest, and Carol gave a little squeak when she saw him. He doffed his big hat and nodded politely at her. He looked older than the first time I'd seen him, but his eyes were in shadow under that broad-brim hat.
"Overseer," he said to me, "there's Union cavalry about. You should return to the house at once. They are burning the fields across the river."
"Yessir," I said, looking across the river, where indeed there was a column of smoke some miles distant. "We'll go right away."
He nodded again, tipped the brim of his hat at Carol, swung the horse around, and trotted off into the pines.
"Oh. My. God," she said when he was gone, a hand at her mouth. "You're so right-that was spooky."
"Try it in the moonlight," I said. "That old boy's truly down the road and gone around. See what I mean about the tape just replaying each day? Apologies accepted, by the way."
She shook her head. "That was amazing," she said, "and, yes, I'm sorry I ever doubted you. I can still hardly believe it. The uniform. That huge sword."
My cell phone rang. It was Tony, calling from the office. The connection wasn't wonderful. "Trouble in River City," he said.
"Who's dead now?" I asked and saw Carol blink.
"We had a breakin last night," Tony reported. "Nothing taken that we can see, but whoever it was, he left you a message."
"I'm all ears."
"It's a single. 30-06 round. Hundred eighty grain, at least. Somebody took the trouble to engrave your name on the cartridge. Left it on your desk."
"That's self-explanatory," I said. "How'd he get in?"
"Can't tell," he said. "We have that alarm system, which apparently he spoofed. All the computers were turned on, but it looks like he didn't get past the opening screen passwords. We had the city cops in, and you know how that went."
"Right," I said. "I'll be down early afternoon."
"What now?" Carol said after I closed up the cell phone.
"No more bodies, if that's what you're worried about." I looked around. It was a beautiful day in the country, and I would have much preferred to stay out there with Carol. "Something's come up," I said. "Let's get back to the house before that marauding Union cavalry shows up and hangs us."
A bullet with your name on it. I'd heard the expression, but this was the first one I'd ever seen. The guys had slipped it into a clear plastic bag, and I held it in my hand like a baby snake.
"Notice the rim?" Tony said.
I looked. There was a tiny dent on the back edge of the cartridge. "That's an extractor nick," I said. "So it's been in a rifle, but not fired."
"Maybe the same rifle that sent Billie Ray to the big trailer park in the sky."
"Quite a calling card you got there, boss," Horace observed.
We were sitting around our informal conference table in the coffee room. Tony, Horace, and Pardee were present for duty, along with my two fuzz balls, who were hoping for a doughnut.
"So some guy broke in here, without activating the alarm, and went around to all the desktop computers, looking for-what?"
"Your new address, maybe?" asked Tony.
"I took that tracking device out to the plantation, so what's he need an address for?" Then I remembered I'd sold that Suburban.
I asked them to tell me what they were working on and how things were going with H amp;S Investigations. There was nothing exciting to report. Then I filled them in on what had been happening out in the countryside, including the sheriff's fascinating inventory of dangerous features at Glory's End, and said that I was beginning to have second thoughts about life as a country squire. Tony didn't say I told you so, but he was clearly thinking it.
"On the other hand," observed Horace, "you can't stay in Summerfield, not after you whacked that Guatemalan guy. You might as well hole up in Rockwell County. At least there, a Guatemalan with a thirty-aught will stand out."
"Whereas in Triboro, he wouldn't?"
Everyone smiled except the mutts, who still hadn't detected any doughnuts.
Pardee picked up the plastic bag with the thirty-aught round in it. "This is personal," he said. "He told you that you owed him a death, remember? So who's died in the recent past who was tied to you? Or to whom you were important?"
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "My ex-wife and your favorite judge, Annie Bellamy, courtesy of a bomber or bombers unknown. Then, let's see, White Eye Mitchell, up in the mountains, when his pet mountain lion kicked his guts out after I wounded it."
"There's Allie Gardner down in Wilmington," Pardee said, leaving unspoken the fact that we had almost added his own name to that list.
"Or that crooked sheriff whose daughter was all set to knife you, up in Carrigan County?" Tony said. "Except he died, too, when he and his partner shot it out with street sweepers."
"And Kenny," Horace said. "Kenny Cox."
That name rocked me. I could still picture his dying moments in that icy river up in the Smokies, his face getting whiter even as the water got redder. Kenny Cox. Probably my best friend on the Job, until I found out he'd become a vigilante cop.
Who had a brother. No, wait: His brother had committed suicide. I myself had heard the shot up there in that mountain cabin, and Bobby Lee Baggett had said he'd get Surry County to pick up the remains.
"Anybody know somebody out in the Surry County Sheriff's Office?" I asked.
Horace did.
"See if you can find out whether or not they ever picked up the remains of one James Marlor, who shot himself in a cabin out there."
The three of them looked at me. They all knew who James Marlor was, or had been, and it brought back some bad memories of the cat dancers case.
"I know," I said. "If they retrieved a body, then we can scratch him. If they didn't…"
"I thought you saw him ice himself," Tony said.
"I heard him do it," I replied. "From a hundred yards away, on a dark hillside, with snow blowing. One shot, sounded like a. 45."
"You didn't go back to check?"
"It was dark and a blizzard was moving in. There was nothing I could do for him at that point, one way or the other."
"So he could have faked it," Pardee said.
"Or Kenny could have taken care of the body, once he found out."
"Go make the call, please," I said, suddenly hoping that I didn't have a Kenny Cox loose end here. If my ghost was James Marlor, I was in truly deep shit.
Pardee handed me the rifle bullet. "You ought to keep this," he said. "It might ward off the evil it represents."
I drove out to Summerfield after rush hour to check on the house. The lawn had been mowed, so my money-hungry teenager was still on the job. One neighbor waved as I went by; another just stared. I had half a mind to go into the backyard and unload the SIG into the hillside, just to keep them all on their toes. On the other hand, who could blame them?
I let the dogs out and told them to go check out the yard. They both went up on the porch and curled up. So much for canine discipline. There were no signs of forced entry or any other disturbance in the house itself. I'd left the power and the security service on. The mailbox was full, but it was all junk mail addressed to Current Resident or Dear Occupant. I told the mutts to get back in the Suburban, but now they decided to go check out the yard. I was getting ready to yell at them when the neighbor across the street, another retired cop, came over with a package in his hand.