The Mulberry Tree Read online

  By the time I hung up I wanted to ask the woman to negotiate my next book contract—if/when, that is. She said she would get the name of the town, but only if I agreed to talk at one of her women’s club lunches (“a reading would be nice and an autographing afterward”). In the end she set me up for three whole hours, and I was to get my publishing house to “donate” thirty-five hardcovers. All this for the name of a town in North Carolina. Of course I agreed.

  She called back ten minutes later and said in her best silly-me voice, “Oh, Mr. Newcombe, you’re not going to believe this but I don’t have to ask anyone anything. I just remembered that I already know the name of the town where Jackie’s story happened.”

  I waited. Pen ready. Breath held.

  Silence.

  I continued waiting.

  “Is the twenty-seventh of this month good for you?” she asked.

  I gritted my teeth and clutched the pen. “Yes,” I said. “The twenty-seventh is fine.”

  “And could you possibly donate forty books?”

  It was my turn to be silent, but I bent the tip of my pen and had to grab another one from the holder.

  I guess she knew she’d pushed me to my limit because she said in a normal voice, no ooey-gooey gush, “Cole Creek. It’s in the mountains and isolated.” Her voice changed back to little-girl. “See you on the twenty-seventh at eleven-thirty A.M. sharp,” she said, then hung up. I said the filthiest words I knew—some of them in Old English—before I hung up my end.

  Three minutes later I had the number to the Cole Creek, North Carolina, public library and was calling them.

  First, in order to impress the librarian, I gave my name. She was indeed properly impressed and gushed suitably.

  With all the courtesy that I’d learned from Pat’s family, I asked her about the devil story and the pressing.

  The librarian said, “That’s all a lie,” and slammed down the phone.

  For a moment I was too stunned to move. I just sat there holding the phone and blinking. Big deal writers don’t have librarians or booksellers hang up on them. Never has happened; never will.

  As I slowly put down the phone, my heart was beating fast. For the first time in years I felt excited about something. I’d hit a nerve in that woman. My editor once said that if I ran out of my own problems to write about, I should write about someone else’s. At long last I seemed to have found a “someone else’s problem” that interested me.

  Five minutes later I called my publisher and asked a favor. “Anything,” she said. Anything to get another Ford Newcombe book is what she meant.

  Next, I looked on the Internet, found a realtor who handled Cole Creek, called and asked to rent a house there for the summer.

  “Have you ever been to Cole Creek?” the woman asked in a heavy Southern accent.

  “No.”

  “There’s nothing to do there. In fact, the place is little more than a ghost town.”

  “It has a library,” I said.

  The realtor snorted. “There’re a few hundred books in a falling-down old house. Now if you want—”

  “Do you have any rentals in Cole Creek or not?” I snapped.

  She got cool. “There’s a local agent there. Maybe you should call him.”

  Knowing small towns, I figured that by now everyone in Cole Creek was aware that Ford Newcombe had called the library, so the local realtor would be on the alert. I said the magic words: “Money is no object.”

  There was a hesitation. “You could always buy the old Belcher place. National Register. Two acres. Liveable. Barely liveable, anyway.”

  “How far is it from the center of Cole Creek?”

  “Spit out the window and you’ll hit the courthouse.”

  “How much?”

  “Two fifty for the history. Nice moldings.”

  “If I sent you a certified check tomorrow how soon can it close?”

  I could hear her heart beating across the wire. “Sometimes I almost like Yankees,” she said. “Sugah, you send me a check tomorrow and I’ll get that house for you in forty-eight hours even if I have to throw old Mr. Belcher out into the street, oxygen tank and all.”

  I was smiling. “I’ll send the check and all the particulars,” I said, then took down her name and address and hung up. I called my publisher. I was going to buy the house in her name so no one in Cole Creek would know it was me.

  I knew I couldn’t leave town until after the twenty-seventh of April when I had to pay the blackmail-reading, so I occupied myself by reading about North Carolina. The realtor called me back and said that old Mr. Belcher would give me the house furnished for another dollar.

  That took me aback and I had to think about why he’d do that. “Doesn’t want to move all his junk out, does he?”

  “You got it,” the realtor said. “My advice is not to take the offer. There’s a hundred and fifty years of trash inside that house.”

  “Old newspapers? Crumbling books? Attic full of old trunks?”

  She sighed dramatically. “You’re one of those. Okay. You got a house full of trash. Tell you what, I’ll pay the dollar. My gift.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  The twenty-seventh was a Saturday, and I spent three hours answering the same questions at Mrs. Attila’s ladies’ luncheon (chicken salad) as I had everywhere else. My plan was to leave for Cole Creek early Monday morning. My furniture was to go into storage and I planned to take just a couple of suitcases of clothes, a couple of laptops, plus a gross of my favorite pens (I was terrified that Pilot would discontinue them). I’d already shipped my research books to the realtor to hold for me. And Pat’s father’s tools were on the floor of the backseat of my car.

  At the luncheon Mrs. Hun told me that Jackie Maxwell was getting married the next day. Smiling—and trying to be gracious and amusing—I asked her to tell Jackie that I’d bought a house in Cole Creek, and was spending the summer there, where I’d be researching my next book, and if Jackie wanted the job, it was still open. I even said she could ride with me when I left on Monday morning.

  Mrs. Free Books smiled in a way that let me know I’d missed my chance, but she agreed to relay my message to Jackie.

  On Sunday afternoon I was shoving my socks into a duffel bag when there was a hard, fast knock on my door. The urgency of the sound made me hurry to answer it.

  What I saw when I opened the door startled me into speechlessness.

  Jackie Maxwell stood there in her wedding dress. She had on a veil over what looked to be an acre and half of long dark hair. The last time I’d seen her, her hair had been about ear length. Had it grown that fast? Some genetic thing? And the front of her dress was . . . well, she’d grown there, too.

  “Is the research job in Cole Creek still open?” she asked in a tone that dared me to ask even one question.

  I said yes, but it came out in a squeak.

  When she moved, the dress caught on something on the porch. Angrily, she snatched at the skirt and I heard cloth tearing. The sound made her give an evil little smile.

  Let me tell you that I never want to make a woman so angry that she smiles when she hears her own wedding dress rip. I’d rather—truthfully, I can’t think of anything on earth I wouldn’t rather do than be on the receiving end of anger like I saw in Ms. Maxwell’s eyes.

  Or was this after the ceremony and she was now Mrs. Somebody Else?

  Since I wanted to live, I asked no questions. “What time should I be here tomorrow?”

  “Eight A.M. too early for you?”

  She opened her mouth to answer but the dress caught again. This time she didn’t jerk it. This time her face twisted into a frightening little smirk, and she very, very, very slowly pulled on that dress. The ripping sound went on for seconds.

  I would have stepped back and shut the door but I was too scared.

  “I’ll be here,” she said, then turned and walked down the sidewalk toward the street. There was no car waiting for her, and since I lived miles fro