MacFarlane's Ridge Read online

  Emily’s death had made Cam realize her own mortality, so she decided to take the plunge and ask Seth to marry her. He seemed so nice and stable, with a respectable job in acquisitions at the Charleston Museum. She wasn’t passionately in love with him, but they had been together for four years, and she did care about him. But before she could ask him, he told her that he had been seeing someone else, someone he met at work, a soul mate with whom he “had more in common”, to be precise. She packed his things and tossed them out in the rain while he was at a New Year’s Eve party. She had gotten the locks on the apartment changed. Seth tried occasionally to contact her, drunkenly begging her forgiveness, after his so-called soul mate dumped him for a military school cadet closer to her own age. Cam simply got an unlisted phone number, and that had been the end of Seth.

  Then she had taken a week off work and returned to Haver Springs, where she had spent nine formative years of her life, to clean out the old Victorian house on Meador Street. She remembered first seeing the big red house when she was nine, after her parents had died. She hadn’t been with them when the car crashed, or she would have been dead too. Her only relative in the whole world was her father’s mother, Granny Emily, whom she had never even met. Emily opened her door and her heart to the sad, silent little girl, and loved her as though she were her own. Cameron was thinking about her when the shriek of the alarm broke her solitude.

  “So, you didn’t see anyone when you got to the front?” Troy asked.

  “Well, no. I mean, I came through the house, instead of going around the outside. I guess that would have been faster, wouldn’t it?” she added lamely.

  He assured her that she had done just fine, took a few Polaroids, and went on his way. Alice nudged her. “He was nice, Cam. Did you see the way he looked at you?”

  Cam shrugged. “He was nice. Not really my type, and about five years too young, but nice. But he wasn’t looking at me. And besides,” she said firmly, “I am not looking for a man. I’ve had my fill of them for a while.”

  She and Alice had become good friends ever since Emily’s death, and she had told the older woman all about Seth. It was odd, she thought. Living in Charleston, working at the bookstore, she never would have been friends with, and certainly never would have confided in, a person like Alice. Alice was coarse and loud, and dressed in sweat pants and a t-shirt most of the time, except on Sundays for church. She also had the kindest heart Cam had ever met. Her one flaw was that Alice had been happily married to her husband for nearly twenty years, and therefore felt that all women needed to be married. She had made it her mission to find a suitable match for Cameron, a man who would have met the approval of Emily Clark, who had been Alice’s dear friend.

  After breaking up with Seth, although maybe “getting rid of Seth” was a better way of putting it, Cam wasn’t looking. She was reasonably attractive, in pretty good shape, and took good care of herself. There was nothing wrong with her, she decided. It was just that the last man she had picked wasn’t right. Before Seth there had been a long, dry spell, and before that was college, where she had dated a grad student who had turned out to be far too clingy and needy. He had become so dependent on her that she had felt stifled and had ended it abruptly.

  Cameron began sweeping up the glass, and flipped the door sign around to “open.” Alice waved good-bye.

  “Gotta get back. I left Hal in charge and you know how he gets when things are busy,” she grinned. Cameron knew. Poor Hal. He loved Alice and tried to help out in her coffee shop, but the truth was he would rather be out fishing. Cameron wondered if he had known what he was in for when he married Alice. Probably not, but after twenty years Hal wasn’t going anywhere.

  There was a loud jingling. The sleigh bells hanging on the front door announced her first customer of the day. It was a woman in a polyester pantsuit with a freshly shellacked beehive hairdo and rhinestone earrings. Cam knew it was going to be a long morning.

  As was tradition, all the shops stayed open until four that Saturday. Normally they closed at one, but an exception was made for the kickoff of Antique Week. Cam finished up with the last of her customers and flipped the sign around, locking the front door. She collapsed onto the stool behind her counter. It had been a very profitable day, and tomorrow afternoon looked even better. Several people indicated they would be back for more the next day. A lady from Charlotte bought half a dozen horseshoes, and promised to bring her friend in to browse as well. The broken windowpane had certainly not detracted any customers from visiting Granny’s Goodies.

  This was Cam’s first Antique Week, and she discovered that enough items had moved out of the store already that she could bring down another trunk or two from storage and lay out the items inside them. She locked the door that connected the shop to the rest of the house, and headed upstairs.

  Cam loved the giant red and white Victorian and its history. It had originally been built as a home by her great-great-grandfather, Isaac Duncan, the first physician in Haver Springs. Isaac had been a prudent man, and when his wife had produced only one child, Isaac had converted the huge parlor out front into an office suite. Here he had examined patients and kept meticulous records, and eventually delivered his own granddaughter, Emily, in 1917. Emily’s father, Isaac’s only son, was killed just a month later, serving in combat in France as a medic. Emily too had been raised in that house, and after her own son and his wife were tragically killed by a drunk driver, she had never questioned taking in her only grandchild. Cameron was nine, and Emily had been nearly sixty at the time and thought her child-raising days to be over.

  At the top of the curved stair was Emily’s room. The house had five bedrooms in all, and Cam was using Emily’s as a sorting area, to rummage through the seemingly endless piles of memorabilia. She knew exactly what she was going to bring down first; it was a steamer trunk full of old clothes. Vintage clothing was back in style, and these were in reasonably good condition. She was handy with a sewing machine, another bit of Emily’s legacy, and thought she could unload the repaired bloomers and other “unmentionables” for a decent price.

  Up in Emily’s room, Cam pried the trunk open. She would have to carry the clothes down a few at a time. Even though she jogged and was in fairly athletic condition, there was no way she could lug that trunk down the steps without herniating a disc. Inside the trunk, as expected, were several layers of simple linen garments. Even the smell of mothballs had faded, thanks to several strategically placed apple sachets, and Cam shook out the clothes, which were slightly wrinkled. Suddenly she paused. She had heard sleigh bells. Someone was trying to open the shop door. She moved to the window, and peered out. She couldn’t see the front door from the bedroom because of the large covered veranda that wrapped three sides of the house.

  Flinging the window up, she called, “We’re closed! Come back tomorrow at one!” There was no answer, but the bells jingled faintly again. “I’m sorry, we’re closed for the day,” she yelled down. Still, she saw nobody. Obviously, whoever wanted to come in wasn’t leaving. Remembering the broken windowpane, Cam sighed resignedly. She hated to be unfriendly to a potential customer, but she didn’t wish to invite any more problems either.

  “Hang on,” she grumbled. “I’m coming.” She flung a handful of bloomers and petticoats over her shoulders and maneuvered downstairs. By the time she got the door unlocked and into the shop, her customer was nowhere to be seen. She checked the small square of plywood that Hal had thoughtfully used to cover the broken pane for her, and it was intact. Cam went out on the veranda and looked around. There were few people left on the street by now. Haver Springs was hardly a hotbed of excitement, and even with Antique Week happening, most of the tourists stayed in Bedford or Roanoke and drove into town during the day to do their shopping and trading.

  Haver Springs and the other towns of the county boasted no less than a hundred and ten antique shops. In fact, the county had more antique shops per capita than gas stations or churches, although in thi
s part of Virginia you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a church, Emily had always said. So once a year, Cam learned, all the merchants in the county held an Antique Week. Visitors came from all over the United States and Canada, descending on the shops like hoards of locusts, eagerly spending their money and bringing in trade goods. They even crowned an Antique Week Queen from the local high school. Wayne Sinclair boasted that he made as much money during Antique Week as he did the entire rest of the year, but she doubted the accuracy of that claim, considering the source.

  She kicked a clump of colorful leaves off the step. Fall here in the mountains was glorious…

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a bang and a shriek from behind the house. Sprinting around the veranda, Cam reached the rear garden just in time to see a figure duck into the carriage house that she used as a garage.

  “Hey!” she called. There wasn’t much of value in the garage, except her little Honda Civic, but maybe, she thought, she could just chase the intruder away without anything getting stolen. Besides, the shriek had sounded like a woman, and Cam figured she was fast enough that she could outrun her visitor if she had to. She picked up a large stick from the base of the great oak tree, and wielded it like a baseball bat.

  “All right, come on out,” she called firmly. “I’m not going to hurt you, I just want you to go away.”

  There was a scuffling sound inside the carriage house, and what sounded like a sob.

  “Are you okay? Did you get hurt?” She had noticed that her patio table had been tipped over, as if someone had run into it. It was quite heavy, and could easily have caused some bruising if hit head-on. “I can call you an ambulance if you need it,” Cam added helpfully.

  There was silence again within the garage. Cam sighed.

  “Well, if you won’t come out on your own, I’m afraid I’ll have to call the police.” She hoped she sounded braver than she felt. As she neared the open garage door, a strange smell hit her, and she backed away. It was the smell of a person who had not washed in a long time. Had some homeless person found their way into her carriage house? Once, in Charleston, two men had used her car to sleep in. They hadn’t left too much of a mess, but there had been a definite aroma for weeks.

  “Okay,” she said decisively. “I’ll have to call the police now, and they’ll come take you away.” She backed up slowly toward the house.

  “Please,” said a soft, quavering voice inside the garage. This was not what Cam had expected at all. Maybe there was a lost child in there.

  “Are you okay? Please come out. I won’t hurt you,” she offered again, and waited.

  Finally, after what seemed like eternity, a small brown creature peeked around the door. Cameron realized it was a woman, a girl really, of about nineteen. She was filthy, her pale hair matted, and her eyes wild.

  “Please,” she whispered again, “d’ye ken where the gate is? I mun get back to Ian and my bairnie.”

  Cam strained to understand the strange speech. It sounded like the girl was speaking English, but her accent was thick and hard to comprehend. Cam shook her head.

  “What gate? I don’t have a gate,” she pointed out. “I have a hedge.”

  The girl waved her hands wildly in the air. “The Faeries’ Gate! Where I come through, to get awa’ from the savages! They took me awa’ but I tricked them and run! But I dinna ken how to get back to the gate after I come through it!”

  Cam was having second thoughts about not calling 911 in the first place. “What’s your name?” she asked politely. By now the girl had crept out of the shadows, and Cam was able to get a good look at her. She was wearing the tattered remnants of what must have been a long skirt at one time, a brown shawl, and worn moccasins. Cam couldn’t help but notice that her legs needed a good bout with a razor.

  Great, she thought, I have an escaped mental patient living in my garage.

  A thought struck her. “Are you the one who tried to break into my shop this morning?”

  The girl nodded, obviously terrified. “I saw Da’s sword, and Mollie’s book that she always be scribblin’ in. I tried to get them, but then there was a great fierce wailin’ sound…. I gashed me hand,” she said sadly. She held her hand up for Cam to see, and she had indeed gashed it. She had wrapped a stained rag around it, and Cam cringed at the thought of what bacteria could be lurking in the torn strip of linen.

  “Well, let’s get you cleaned up, then,” she offered, “and then we can figure out who to call to come get you.” The girl didn’t seem dangerous, just terribly confused. Cameron took her by the uninjured hand and led her up the back steps. Once inside, the girl gazed around in awe.

  “Ye ha’ lanterns that come on by their selves! Be it magic?” she whispered.

  “Um, no. It’s electricity,” murmured Cam, as she hunted for some clean gauze pads in the kitchen drawer. Maybe this girl had gotten lost, and come down from the mountains, Cam thought. She knew there were parts of Virginia and Tennessee where there was still no electricity or running water, and the residents still spoke a dialect much like the traditional Scotch-Irish of their ancestors.

  “Okay, miss, um, what did you say your name was?” asked Cam again.

  “Sarah. Sarah MacFarlane,” the girl murmured. She was staring around, terrified. “Ye’re a woman, then, are ye?”

  Cam was startled. “A woman? Of course I am!”

  The girl scowled. “Ye be wearing breeks on yer legs like a man. It ain’t fittin’. An’ yer hair is shorter than a woman’s.”

  Cam ran a hand through her tangled dark blonde hair and glared back at the girl. “Oh, come on. Lots of women wear their hair shoulder length. And plenty of us wear pants too. Or have you not been out much lately?” She felt as though she was talking in circles, and moved casually towards the phone.

  “D’ye ken the way to the gate or not?” the girl demanded, lower lip quivering. “It’s been near a year since the savages come, and I mun get back to Angus and Ian and wee Hamish, if the babe still be living! Me other babe died…” She had tears in her eyes.

  Cam had pressed the speed dial on her phone.

  “911, what’s your emergency?” asked a tinny voice.

  “Oh, hello, yes, there is a young lady in my house who seems confused about where she is,” said Cam, watching the girl Sarah, who was examining a bowl of fresh oranges. She gave the information to the dispatcher, who said she would send an officer over immediately.

  “Would you like one?” asked Cam. The girl sniffed the fruit suspiciously.

  “It smells queer,” she murmured. She opened her mouth and took a tentative bite.

  “No, no!” Cam grabbed it away. “You have to peel it. Like this.” She peeled the orange and pulled off a juicy wedge, giving it to the girl. Sarah’s eyes widened as she tasted the sweet fruit. The buzzer sounded at the side door. Suddenly the girl cowered in the corner, like a frightened animal.

  “Demons!” she hissed, quickly making the sign of the cross. Cameron ignored her, made sure there were no sharp knives or other potential weapons visible in the room, and scurried along the hall to the door. It was the new deputy, the nice one who had taken her report earlier in the day.

  “Sergeant Adams, what a pleasure,” she smiled. Under her breath she whispered, “You are going to just love this one.”

  When they got into the kitchen, the girl was gone, her half-eaten orange on the counter. The kitchen door stood wide open.

  Cam frowned. “Maybe she went back out to the garage, that’s where I first found her hiding.”

  As they stepped out onto the back step, she heard from the street a sound she was sure she would remember for the rest of her life. There was a blaring of horns, a screech of brakes, and the startled cry of an onlooker. Cam and Troy looked at each other in horror. They raced to the front of the house, Troy beating her there by only a step. In the near lane of Meador Street, a pickup truck had stopped at an odd angle, and a crowd was beginning to gather. It was dusk, and the streetlights had no
t yet come on, but Cameron could still see the frail brown shape and the tattered moccasins peeking out from under the truck.

  Chapter Two

  Cam sat staring into her coffee at Alice’s place. Troy Adams sat across the booth from her, while Alice hovered nearby, her brassy orange hair a beacon in the fluorescent lighting.

  “Honey,” she drawled, “there was nothing you could have done. That poor girl didn’t have a clue where she was or what was happening. She’s probably better off now anyway.”

  Cam didn’t really think anyone was better off that had just been hit by a half-ton pickup truck, but she didn’t say anything. She knew Alice was just trying to help.

  Cam and the pickup’s driver had tried to save the girl with CPR, while Troy had radioed for an ambulance, but she had obviously been killed instantly. Her head had lolled at an unnatural angle, and Cam shivered at the memory.

  “Can you believe she had never even seen an orange?” she mumbled. “I had to peel it for her.”

  “Poor kid.” Troy shook his head. “She didn’t have any identification, and she doesn’t match any of my missing persons reports, although her name did sound slightly familiar for some reason. All we have to go on is what she told you. If no one claims her we’ll just have to have the county bury her.”

  Cam felt terrible. The girl would be buried in a pauper’s grave at the county’s expense, with no one to mourn her. And somewhere in the hills, there was probably some mountain family with no electricity, living in the old-time traditional ways, who were waiting for a lost daughter to come home. But she never would.

  “Maybe we could track down her people,” Cam suggested. “Even if she came out of the back hills somewhere around here, there must be a record of her, right? I mean, we know her name was Sarah MacFarlane, or at least we think it was, and she mentioned someone named Ian, and someone else called Hamish, and a Mollie. Maybe Ian or Hamish is her husband or her brother or something.”