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  Tar Heel Dead

  Tar Heel Dead

  Tales of Mystery and Mayhem from North Carolina

  Edited by Sarah R. Shaber

  Foreword by Margaret Maron

  The University of North Carolina Press

  Chapel Hill and London

  © 2005 Sarah R. Shaber

  All rights reserved

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Designed by Richard Hendel

  Set in Arnhem and Big Black types

  by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

  The paper in this book meets the guidelines

  for permanence and durability of the Committee

  on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of

  the Council on Library Resources.

  Frontispiece by Debora Greger

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Tar Heel dead : tales of mystery and mayhem from

  North Carolina / edited by Sarah R. Shaber ; foreword

  by Margaret Maron.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-8078-5604-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  1. Detective and mystery stories, American—North Carolina. 2. North Carolina—Fiction. I. Shaber, Sarah R.

  PS558.N8T36 2005

  813’.087208’09756—dc22 2004027176

  09 08 07 06 05 05 4 3 2 1

  Dedicated to the

  memory of “our beloved Liz,”

  Elizabeth Daniels Squire

  (1926–2001)

  I’m a Tar Heel born

  I’m a Tar Heel bred

  And when I die

  I’m a Tar Heel dead.

  —“Carolina Fight Song”

  Contents

  Foreword Margaret Maron

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction Sarah R. Shaber

  Dead in the Water Nancy Bartholomew

  A Star for a Warrior Manly Wade Wellman

  The Dissipated Jeweler O. Henry [William Sydney Porter]

  Murchison Passes a Test Toni L. P. Kelner

  A Pyrrhic Mystery Sarah R. Shaber

  Mr. Strang Takes a Partner William E. Brittain

  Killer Fudge Kathy Hogan Trocheck

  Susu and the 8:30 Ghost Lilian Jackson Braun

  Dogwalker Orson Scott Card

  The Corn Thief Guy Owen

  The Choice Margaret Maron

  The Soul of Deception Brynn Bonner [Brenda Witchger]

  Feasting with Foxes Clyde Haywood [David B. Sentelle]

  Maniac Loose Michael Malone

  Beauty Is Only Skin Deep Gallagher Gray [Katy Munger]

  The Wish Peddler Lisa Cantrell

  Spilled Salt BarbaraNeely

  The Dog Who Remembered Too Much Elizabeth Daniels Squire

  Foreword

  Margaret Maron

  North Carolina stretches from blue-shrouded mountains to a crystal coast, and the landscape of its imagination has been equally stretched by Appalachian folktales and stories of ghost ships doomed to crash forever onto our treacherous shoals. Although multigenerational gatherings on the front porch on hot summer evenings are almost as rare as un-air-conditioned homes these days, stories that used to be told at such gatherings still persist as tales told at bedtime, during long car drives, or around fires built now for “ambiance” instead of as a primary way to keep warm.

  Most of the tales are imbued with mystery, from the story of Tom Dooley (did he really murder Laura Foster?) to that of the Lost Colony (where did those first settlers really go?). Some are as ancient as the Brown Mountain lights, others as modern as East Carolina University’s haunted guesthouse.

  North Carolina is full of storytellers. We have Nobel Laureate candidates and those who publish in online E-zines read by maybe fifty people in a good month. Some North Carolinians joke that you can’t throw a rock here without hitting a writer, which brings us to another mystery: Why is this state home to so many good ones? What is it that gives us such literary richness?

  Webster defines a mystery as “something that has not been or cannot be explained … and therefore exciting curiosity or wonder.” All we can do is lay out the evidence—such as this collection of short stories—and wait for a scholarly Sherlock Holmes to gather up the clues and give us a logical answer.

  Acknowledgments

  I am grateful to Margaret Maron, who wrote the Foreword to this anthology and made many helpful suggestions.

  Many thanks to Alice Ann Carpenter and John Leininger, whose mail and online catalog Grave Matters contained a number of the scarce books and magazines I needed. Without their help, I couldn’t have located many of these stories. Jeff Hatfield of Uncle Edgar’s also found several rare stories for me.

  Years ago, I worked for the University of North Carolina Press in both the editorial and marketing departments. These were my first jobs in the real world, and my bosses, Malcolm McDonald, then editor in chief, and Johanna Grimes, who recently retired as sales manager, were wonderful to me. I have many fond memories of my years there, and now I am honored to be one of the press’s authors. This book would not exist if David Perry, current editor in chief, hadn’t called me to suggest that I edit it.

  Introduction

  Sarah R. Shaber

  There are two excellent reasons for compiling a book of mystery short stories by North Carolinians. The first is for the pure pleasure of reading the stories and taking delight in the literary success of fellow North Carolinians. The second is that it honors members of a vital part of our state’s literary community by gathering a representative sampling of their work in one volume.

  I have identified over sixty North Carolinians, both living and deceased, who could be called mystery writers. Obviously I couldn’t include stories by all of them. Many only wrote novels. Some permissions obstacles couldn’t be overcome. Others I just couldn’t fit into this book.

  Of course, this collection includes works by North Carolina’s bestselling mystery authors. But you’ll also find less well known writers represented here, stories that were essentially lost and required hours of research to uncover, and surprise selections by authors whom you might not know wrote mysteries at all. My intent was to include a variety of stories, some historic, some comic, some disturbing, some traditional, and some experimental. The oldest story was first published over a hundred years ago; the newest is my own contribution, written for this collection.

  Locating copies of some of these stories resembled a scavenger hunt. I traced them through indexes, reference books, libraries, used bookstores, and the Internet. Over many weeks, I accumulated boxes of tattered old mystery magazines and a stack of dog-eared anthologies. I never did find a copy of the 1945 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine that contained Manly Wade Wellman’s seminal story. Instead, I located it by chance in an anthology published in 1970. O. Henry’s “The Dissipated Jeweler” was apparently never reprinted after its first publication in 1896 in the Houston Post, except in his complete works, a battered copy of which arrived through interlibrary loan from a distant Wake County Library branch.

  We all know that North Carolina has a surfeit of excellent writers, and we all wonder why the state is blessed with such literary bounty. Is it our storytelling tradition, the mystical congruence of several fine universities, or a secret ingredient in the barbecue? Whatever attracts writers here is equally attractive to mystery writers. No single mantelpiece in the state could hold all of the Agatha, Edgar, and Anthony awards won by our mystery authors. But these prolific and award-winning writers have received little attention outside the community of mystery writers and readers. The reason for this omission appears to be the trend to classify general fiction as “literary” and genre writing as just “entertainment.” This is elitist nonsense. If “literar
y” means well written and meaningful, mysteries are literary too. As evidence, I offer The Great Gatsby, Crime and Punishment, and To Kill a Mockingbird, all crime novels!

  In fact, understanding the mystery genre is important to understanding modern literature. Since Edgar Allan Poe wrote The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841, the mystery has become the most prevalent storytelling medium in the world. It’s now the most viable written vehicle for exploring social issues, the subject of justice, and character.

  North Carolina’s well-known general-fiction writers have been featured in two previous University of North Carolina Press anthologies: The Rough Road Home and This Is Where We Live. Now Tar Heel Dead gives our mystery writers their due.

  It’s especially appropriate that an anthology of short stories should honor our mystery community. Until around 1950, the most popular form of mystery was the short story. Over 200 pulp magazines published crime stories by the thousands. The popularity of the novel slowly overwhelmed the short story, so that just a few magazines remain today, but we now see a resurgence in the form through anthologies like this one.

  Several years ago, when I was visiting England, I gave a copy of my first mystery, Simon Said, to an airline agent in gratitude for an upgrade. She was delighted, saying, “My favorite—I love a murder!” Why are mysteries so popular? Crime novels outsell all other categories of fiction except best sellers, many of which are mysteries or their near cousins, thrillers. Michael Malone, one of our state’s finest writers, has suggested that readers flock to mysteries in search of the stories they used to find in general fiction, which today tends toward introspection. Then there’s the puzzle element of the mystery, the mental contest between sleuth and villain and between reader and writer, that is so intellectually stimulating. I have another theory. I think that human beings are so obsessed with death that they gain some release from this anxiety by reading fiction about murder. I compare this to a child who, though terrified of clowns, plays at dressing up as a clown.

  Traces of the mystery can be found as far back as the classical Greeks. Dorothy Sayers, in her introduction to The Omnibus of Crime, reminds us of the mystery’s hoary origins by quoting one of Aesop’s Fables: “Why do you not come to pay your respects to me?” says Aesop’s lion to the fox. “I beg Your Majesty’s pardon,” says the fox, “but I noticed the tracks of the animals that have already come to you; and while I see many hoof-marks going in, I see none coming out. Till the animals that have entered your cave come out again, I prefer to remain in the open air” (quoted in The Writer’s Handbook, edited by A. S. Burack [New York: The Writer Inc., 1972], 223).

  While readers consume mysteries like popcorn at the movies, writers love to write them. What is so appealing about the form to a writer? Some mysteries concentrate on crimes other than murder, but most are about an unnatural death. Since death is the deepest mystery of all, it follows that murder is the greatest injustice one human can inflict on another. Murder creates chaos in a community, which then unites to unmask the killer and restore moral order. The justice system, delving deep into motives and suspects’ lives, uncovers secrets long buried within families and society. And the detective, whether a police officer or an unlikely amateur, often learns something important about himself or herself at the same time that he or she is fitting the puzzle pieces together. What luscious source material for a writer!

  The classic tale of detection, which is still being written and written well, is about restoring order to a once well-ordered world that was disrupted by violent death. But now there are as many kinds of mysteries as there are authors’ worldviews—from traditional whodunits to grimy police procedurals. Modern mystery writers emphasize internal character, motivation, and psychology more than the search for clues. You’ll find several stories in this volume, including those by Margaret Maron and BarbaraNeely, that focus almost exclusively on the psychology of the main character. Lisa Cantrell’s story is about the horror and finality of death itself.

  The mystery form appeals to writers because, as Baroness P. D. James tells us, the mystery genre provides both reader and writer with a strong, comforting framework but “still says something about men and women and the society in which we live” (The Mystery Writers of America Edgar Awards Program [1999], 223). This anthology contains stories by writers as diverse as science fiction author Orson Scott Card and award-winning children’s book author William E. Brittain.

  A sense of place is essential to the mystery, even more than to other fiction. Setting creates atmosphere, illustrates character, holds clues, and contributes to the tension crucial to detective fiction. Evoking a sense of place exercises all of an author’s descriptive muscles. What opportunities North Carolina offers a writer! From today’s New South of the Triangle to the ancient Appalachians thick with laurel and pine to the coast saturated with the odor of salt spray, our state offers settings galore. North Carolinians’ historical link to the frontier, the tragedy of the Civil War, and our obsession with family, race, and religion provide more than enough emotional material to last any writer a lifetime.

  I won’t review all of the stories and their authors in this collection since you’ll be reading them yourself shortly. No two are alike. Enjoy!

  Tar Heel Dead

  Dead in The Water

  Nancy Bartholomew

  One of the things I hate most about Sunday mornings is opening up the Bait and Tackle Shop for Freddy. On those Sundays when he’s out fishing, hoping to finally get good enough to turn pro, I get stuck with the shop. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’d do most anything for Freddy. I saw him through his divorce, didn’t I?

  After I unlock the door, cut off the alarm, and turn on the lights, it’s time to clean out the bait tank. I gotta grab the net and scoop out the floaters who didn’t make it through the night.

  There they are, bodies distended, eyes glazed over, swirling around the surface. I pick each slimy minnow up and toss it in the trash. The fish stink. Maybe it’s fish fear. All those minnows, swimming in a tank, waiting to be used as bait, they gotta be scared. I know, you’re saying they can’t think like humans. Maybe not, but fish are mighty smart, else they wouldn’t be so dang hard to catch. Just look at all the lures and plastic worms we sell. Even with the best equipment, you gotta have technique. Fishing’s a skill. So tell me them fish ain’t smart.

  On this one particular Sunday morning, I set the coffeepot on to brew and headed for the back where we keep the live bait. I figured the hot coffee would be a reward for cleaning the fish tanks. By the time I finished, the coffee would be ready. There can never be too much coffee at six o’clock on Sunday morning.

  I flung open the back room door, reached around for the switch, and started screaming. There, floating in a tank full of reddish water, was Freddy’s ex-wife, Eaudelein. Her hair was fanned out around what had been the back of her head. It was now a bloody mess. I stared and screamed, turned and ran to the tiny bathroom, and heaved into the commode. I was shaking and crying, “Oh my God, oh my God.” There wasn’t a soul to hear me. I hadn’t even switched on the “Open” sign yet.

  I ran back out to the front, around behind the counter, and grabbed the phone. For a moment I couldn’t remember how to dial 911.

  “Oh Jesus, God,” I screamed into the phone. “Get somebody over here quick. Eaudelein’s dead.”

  There’s only two cop cars in all of Barrow, and they both raced into the parking lot with lights flashing and sirens screaming. They don’t get many chances to use their lights around here. I don’t believe Wallace County had ever had a killing, at least not as long as I’d been there, and that was all of my forty-five years.

  Randall Vaughn was the first one to get to me. He was the duty officer. Raydeen Miller came a close second. She wasn’t on duty but keeps the police band on all night in her bedroom. She don’t like to miss much. This was just the kind of situation she’d been waiting for all of her professional life.

  “Patsy,” called Randy, “you all right?
What’s this about Eaudelein bein’ dead?” He was a comforting presence as he reached out to touch my shoulder. Randy’d been on the force for years; we all knew him, of course. He and I’d been in school together and even dated briefly in high school.

  I finally got it all out, how I’d found Eaudelein in the bait tanks. As soon as I told him, he and Raydeen headed for the bait room.

  “Oh my God,” breathed Raydeen, turning white. Randy, also looking quite pale, said, “Don’t anybody touch anything. I guess I gotta call the crime lab and get them to send out a mobile unit.” Wallace County isn’t big enough to have its own lab.

  The next couple of hours became a blur of activity. The state boys arrived and started taking pictures, fingerprinting everything, including me. Then, after the medical examiner arrived, they hauled Eaudelein out of the water.

  Randy and one of the investigators from the State Crime Unit, Detective Mertis, made me tell them the whole story in detail, over and over. They wanted to know who had keys to the store. I said I did and so did Freddy, of course, and Hank, Freddy’s partner. There were a couple of part-timers who had keys, Willie Smith and Jim Roy Learner.

  “Did Eaudelein have a key?” asked Randy.

  “I really don’t know,” I said. “I doubt it, since she and Freddy are divorced. Maybe she still had a key, but I can’t imagine her coming in here.” She and Freddy hated each other.

  “Where was Freddy last night?” asked Randy. Detective Mertis looked curious.

  “You know, Randy, he was with me. We saw you at Blockbuster Video last night. We rented a video, went home, and watched it, then we went to bed around ten. Freddy got up around 3:00 A.M. so he could go fishing. The largemouth were supposed to be biting, and he’s gettin’ in as much time on the water as he can before the Bass Master Classic. He’s tryin’ to turn pro,” I said in an aside to Mertis.