But Kerry was in no mood to cede ground. “A hit to his head. And the rail dog was missing, then turned up just over there.” She pointed toward the woods. “As for his having passed, my family, our neighbors, we’ve seen our share of death.” She might have added that folks like her family, far back into the hollows, had no money to call for a doctor. And doctors, with their insistence on bleeding a patient who was already hanging to life by a thread, often seemed to snap the final fibers.
She did add, “And I’ve seen my share of head wounds.”
John Cabot turned like she’d just admitted to being part of a marauding band of outlaws. She met his eye.
But Doc Randall probably knew enough about her father to guess what she meant. She owed this Cabot no explanation.
Struggling to her feet, the sodden drag of her skirts pulling at her, she stood beside Randall. “Even before the law arrives, I wonder if we shouldn’t be thinking of who might have done this.”
Now hoofbeats approached at a gallop.
“The law’s here!” somebody called from the back of the crowd.
The rider, hatless and thick as an old stump through the middle, reined in a gray gelding.
Even before he’d begun to dismount, he was shooting questions into the crowd. More, Kerry suspected, to establish himself as in charge than because he knew what to ask.
Various spectators from the crowd began talking at once, volleys of information that sent his head whipping one direction, then the other. Spotting Kerry, the sheriff nodded in recognition.
Dr. Randall took him by the arm. “All right, Wolfe, let’s get you caught up.”
Listening as Randall summarized, the sheriff knelt to confirm the death.
Tilting his head toward Kerry, he added, “With all due respect to your past noticings . . .”
Rema patted Wolfe on the shoulder. “You say that like you was referring to cow turds, there, Donny. I know after all these years you’d want to be more respectful of my niece’s gift.”
“Even still, I know she’ll want to let the menfolk handle this here thing.”
Kerry continued studying the edge of the woods as Wolfe hauled the heft of himself back up to his feet. “So. Any of you folks see suspicious types lurking around?”
Kerry stroked her sister’s hair.
Eyes welling, Tully shook her head. “It was me that got to him first. But he’d already been knocked out flat.”
“You telling me you didn’t see nothing at all?” He looked from Tully to the rail dog and back, as if judging whether a girl of her build could’ve swung such a weapon. “Not much more than a rag doll of a thing, are you?” he said, which seemed to be his conclusion.
Now Wolfe strutted through the crowd. “Before y’all leave to go on home to your hearth fires, let’s hear did anyone know the victim personal-like.”
Silence. Kerry watched John Cabot open his mouth. Take a step forward, even. For an instant, he met Kerry’s eye. Then turned away.
Her gaze still on Cabot, Kerry raised her voice. “I spoke to him on the train, if that counts. About why he was coming to Asheville.”
“Might be a piece of helpful.” Wolfe looked doubtful, though. “Come see me after. Now, let’s hear from you folks. Who else could’ve been acting a mite suspicious?”
The woman in mauve gave a small chirp of distress. “Do you mean, sir, including the passengers who disembarked? Because there was that man on the train. In my car. The man in the peculiar tweed cap.” Suddenly spotting the offending item, she pointed. “That cap right there!”
Jursey, who’d just rescued the cap from a few feet away, where it must have fallen from Tully’s head, shrank under the stares aimed at him now.
“This here,” Rema began, “was a gift from the nice—” She stopped.
Kerry hurried to stand by her brother. “The cap wasn’t originally his.”
Jursey raised a hand protectively to it. “Wasn’t the nice man from the train who done the attack.”
But the woman in mauve wasn’t finished. “Suspicious is what he was. The man in front of me observed as much while we were still on the train. ‘All their kind is’—that’s what he said. The kind that cause all the crime—that’s what he meant.”
They all turned to the woman, her voice climbing an octave, gathering speed.
“And he disembarked all in a hurry.”
Wolfe gave her his full attention. “Where’d this fellow go? What’d he look like?”
“Foreign type. Shifty. Slinking away as fast as he could.” She turned to the crowd for confirmation of this.
Without a coat, Kerry’s arms caught the serrated edge of the mountain winds. She forced her shoulders still and wrapped an arm around Tully.
Wolfe sauntered to stand inches from her, his eyes nearly level with hers but his presence making him seem like he took up more space. Kerry had to force herself not to step back. She could smell the fish on his breath from his dinner. And wild onions, fried.
“Now, I’d hate to go assuming a man’d be guilty first thing out of the milking stall, but it sure ’nough sounds like we got us a likely suspect.”
Rema pushed forward. “He didn’t make a move for nothing out of my bag. And he had plenty of chance.”
All eyes traveled downward to Rema’s bag on the ground, the brown-and-blue satchel clearly handmade from a flour sack.
Kerry met Cabot’s eye as he looked from the bag to her aunt, and back to her. She knew what he must be thinking, he and his sort: What in God’s name would any thief want to steal from that old hillbilly’s sack?
A silence followed, and Kerry felt the cut of it.
“All’s I’m sayin’ is he had the chance,” Rema insisted. “I caught a few winks. The twins was entertaining theirselves. He didn’t so much as make a jab at it.”
The voice of the woman in mauve had gone shrill again. “Everyone in our car saw how he leaped to his feet and shouted like some sort of madman. The conductor had to threaten him. And the foreigner had something in his hand he was terribly protective of—and jumpy about. A weapon, for all we knew.”
“No’m.” Jursey spoke hoarsely.
All eyes turned on him again.
“It weren’t any weapon. I can swear to that. It was a sketch drawn up by hand was all. Of Biltmore.”
Madison Grant stepped forward. “A sketch? As in a kind of layout of the house?”
Eyes wide with confusion, Jursey shook his head. “A sort of layout, I reckon. I don’t . . . it was just the house.”
Wolfe’s forehead rumpled. “Now why would any foreigner type cart around a drawing of somebody’s house?”
“Unless,” Grant suggested, “that person meant trouble to somebody inside. I hesitate to cast aspersions, but such things do happen these days: prominent persons like the Vanderbilt family in New York and Newport being intentionally targeted.”
Tully smacked her brother’s arm. “Judas,” she hissed. “Judas Damn Traitor Iscariot.”
“I didn’t say he done it, Tuls. Only said he wasn’t carrying a weapon.”
Wolfe snapped his suspenders. “That’s it, then. Good a place as any to start in the searching. What’d he look like, this fellow? Italian, somebody was mumbling just now? Which way’d he set off?”