Mystery on Firefly Knob

By Don McNair

When Erica Phillips visits choice inherited property on a Cumberland Plateau knob overlooking a beautiful valley, she finds scientist Mike Callahan camped there to study unique fireflies. She needs to sell it fast to buy a new building for her antiques business, but he freaks out when a condo builder offers her a contract. Miffed, she tells him, “If I have my way, this place will be sold within the week. And, Mr. Callahan, I will have my way!”

Their budding romance plays out before a background of a murder mystery, distrust, and heart-racing hormones. Will it blossom into a lifetime relationship?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Don McNair
• Release date: Jan 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465824837

Don McNair

Don McNair, now a prolific author, spent his working life editing magazines (11 years), producing public relations materials for the Burson-Marsteller international PR firm (6 years), and heading his own marketing communications firm, McNair Marketing Communications (21 years). His creativity has won him three Golden Trumpets for best industrial relations programs from the Publicity Club of Chicago, a certificate of merit award for a quarterly magazine he wrote and produced, and the Public Relations Society of America’s Silver Anvil. The latter is comparable to the Emmy and Oscar in other industries. McNair has written and placed hundreds of trade magazine articles and three published non-fiction “how-to” books (Tab Books). He’s written six novels; two young-adult novels (Attack of the Killer Prom Dresses and The Long Hunter), three romantic suspense novels Mystery on Firefly Knob, Mystery at Mangolia Mansion, and Wait for Backup!), and a romantic comedy (BJ, Milo, and the Hairdo from Heck). McNair now concentrates on editing novels for others and teaching two online editing classes (see McNairEdits.com).

Book preview

Mystery on

Firefly Knob

By

Don McNair

Smashwords Edition

Copyright© 2012 by Don McNair

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews. All trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, and registered service marks are the property of their respective owners and are used herein for identification purposes only.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my three children, Gary, Amy, and Scott. It’s been a pleasure to see them grow to be beautiful adults so full of love for others.

Chapter 1

Erica Phillips blinked, moved the registered letter closer to the desk lamp, and re-read it:

Dear Miss Phillips:

This is to inform you that your recently-deceased father, Eric Lee Emerson, has willed you property overlooking the Sequatchie Valley southeast of Crossville, Tennessee…

She dropped the letter to her lap. Now that made no sense at all. Her father was Paul Phillips, and he died in an auto accident in Illinois four years ago!

She peered at the letter. Its address—Charles Connors, Connors Law Offices, Crossville, Tennessee—stared back in all its gold-embossed glory. A chill ran down her spine just as it had when she’d received another registered letter a month before, giving her ninety days to move her antiques business out of the old house she now sat in or, she presumed, she’d be carted off to the dump along with the building.

She sat back in her squeaky swivel chair. The day had started off normally enough. She’d jogged across Glen Ellyn, Illinois’ busy Duane Street, checked her pedometer as she entered the old, dilapidated two-story structure backed up against the Chicago and Northwestern railway tracks, and dodged among antique furniture and bric-a-brac shelves until she reached her stuffy office under the stairs. Moments later Joanne Capshaw, bright-eyed and flashing the same quirky smile she’d had when Erica inherited her with the shop six years before, brought her the mail.

And that’s when her day went south.

She re-read the registered letter and the chill repeated its trip down her spine, this time visiting every rib. Why, it was a hoax, of course!

She wadded it into a tight ball and tossed it at the wastepaper basket. It bounced against the rim and landed on the bare floor, opening slightly. The law firm’s name stared at her.

There ought to be a law against playing hoaxes like that.

In retrospect, she was sure there was one. She ought to call the district attorney in—she retrieved the letter and checked its address—in Crossville, Tennessee. The law firm’s name seemed to throb like those pods in the Body Snatchers movie she’d once seen.

Impossible, of course. Her father had probably never even set foot in Tennessee. And his name certainly wasn’t Eric Emerson.

Absurd.

She grabbed her cell phone and punched in the lawyer’s telephone number. A female voice answered.

Mr. Connors, please, Erica said. Tell him Patricia Phillips is calling. She reread the letter as she waited, formulating a response. He came on the line.

Mr. Connors? This is Patricia Phillips. I just got—

He started talking. She straightened in her chair, her mouth open. Outside sounds diminished as he talked for a full minute. Twice she started to interrupt. He finally paused. When could she come?

Erica glanced at her desk calendar. This was Saturday. She was to attend an antiques auction the next day and run in the March of Dimes benefit race the next weekend. On Monday she planned to check out the newly-vacant Sloan’s Shoes building for sale on Roosevelt Road as a possible new home for her business. But—

I’ll drive down Monday, she said. I’ll see you the first thing Tuesday morning.

She closed the cell phone, pulled a road atlas from the bookshelf behind her, and opened it to the Tennessee roadmap.

***

Erica announced herself to lawyer Connors’ middle-aged receptionist at nine o’clock sharp on Monday morning, a day earlier than she’d told him. In moments a short, plump man appeared from the back-office hallway, flashing shiny white teeth below quizzical eyes and tented, bushy eyebrows. He wore a rumpled black suit and scuffed wing-tipped shoes. Salt-and-pepper hair surrounded his sun-burned bald spot and flowed back over his prominent ears. His pudgy hand perched as light as a bird on her own, then flew away as he turned down the hall and motioned her to follow.

I was expecting you tomorrow, ma’am, he said over his shoulder. I’m afraid the paperwork isn’t ready.

I cancelled my Sunday plans. I can come back tomorrow—

No, no—I have a few minutes. You can sign the paperwork later.

She followed his bouncing figure down the hall on a deep-tufted Oriental runner, past inlaid mahogany bookcases housing hundreds of look-alike leather-bound volumes. He opened a paneled door and motioned her to enter.

His office was large. A yacht-sized, bronze-trimmed mahogany desk was anchored in the far left corner, floating before large picture windows covered by vertical Venetian blinds. Connors gestured to a burgundy overstuffed chair that nuzzled the desk and Erica sank into it. He plopped into a leather desk chair, flashed his teeth, and intertwined his fingers on the leather-trimmed blotter. She gathered a deep breath.

I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake, she said. My father lived in Illinois all his life. She willed her clutched fingers to relax from the chair’s arms.

He leaned back. Miss Phillips, I know this is difficult. But your biological father is Eric Emerson. There is no question. I wouldn’t insist if the stakes weren’t so high, but this is a valuable piece of property. And it’s yours.

She said nothing. His fat fingers gripped the desk’s edge. Your mother and father—that is, Emily Morgan and Eric Emerson—were high school seniors together. Glen Bard West, I believe. In Glen Ellyn, Illinois?

Mom went there, Erica said, softly. She moved to Crystal Lake her senior year and married Daddy.

Connors held up a hand. Eric gave me a lot of details, and I’ve personally checked them out. Your mother became intimate with him in high school, and when her parents learned she was expecting you they sent her off to ‘visit an aunt.’ A year later he learned she’d acquired both you and a husband. A young salesman named Paul, I believe. Sold fats and oils to the baking industry.

She said nothing. Her parents were married before her birth. Everyone just assumed the man she called Dad was her biological father.

It would be easy to prove paternity, Connors said. DNA, if nothing else. But in her own way your mother has acknowledged the relationship.

Oh? And how did she do that?

What’s your full name, Erica?

It’s—why do you want to know?

Answer me, and I’ll tell you.

It’s Erica Leigh Phillips.

Connors nodded. Mr. Emerson’s first and second names are Eric Lee. Erica Leigh, Eric Lee. You’re both Eric Lee, however you spell it. Except, of course, for the gender change.

Eric Lee, she whispered.

She knew what the lawyer was saying was true.

She turned from him to the busy wallpaper pattern. Paul Phillips was her father and would always be. But she also had another father. She looked again at Mr. Connors, who loomed large as he leaned forward and peered as if trying to read her mind.

Okay, let’s say I’m convinced, she said. How did—how did he die?

He frowned deeply at the desk’s polished surface. An unfortunate accident. He was cutting down a tree on the property, and it fell on him.

He said nothing else for a few moments, apparently to let that information sink in. Finally he stood and waved as if to dismiss the accident conversation.

Let me tell you about your property, he said. He also left you a small bank account and his pickup truck and personal things, but they’re certainly small potatoes in relation to the real property.

He stepped to a big Tennessee relief map on the wall behind him, the kind with bumps and grooves that represented hills and valleys, and thumped a raised, flat mountain area that slanted from northeast Kentucky across Tennessee and into Alabama. We’re here. On the Cumberland Plateau. Ever hear of it?

She nodded.

Here’s Crossville, he said, pointing. And here— he lowered his finger to a golf tee-like knob at the top of a deep valley cut into the Plateau’s southeast edge—here’s your property.

She squinted to make out the site. The Plateau resembled a person’s right hand pressed palm against the wall, closed fingers pointed down with the thumb separated from the rest to form a valley between them. Connors touched a circular bump on the web between the thumb and forefinger.

This is Rymer’s Knob, he said. It pokes up eighteen hundred feet from the Sequatchie Valley floor and is attached to the Plateau with a thin strip of rock. A natural bridge, as it were. Eric left you two hundred acres on the south side of the knob, overlooking the valley. Choice property, I assure you.

She stepped to the map and rubbed her fingers over the knob. Does anyone live there?

Your father lived there. In a small cabin built back in the thirties. I’ll be happy to take you there tomorrow. Unfortunately, I have meetings all day today.

If you give me the keys and a map, I’ll find it myself.

He frowned. You sure? The road’s not great. And you’d have to walk uphill the last few hundred feet from your car. The drive up the hill has been overgrown for years.

I’m in pretty good shape.

He nodded. Oh, I forgot. A condo builder is interested in the property.

Thank you. I will be selling it, Mr. Connors. You don’t know what a Godsend this place is.

Give me your cell phone number, and I’ll pass it on. And Erica?

Yes?

I’ve known Mr. Emerson a long time. You can be proud that he was your father.

***

Erica pulled her four-year-old GMC extended van off Highway 127 onto Burkhardt Road. She drove slowly on the rocky lane’s swayback ridge as it dipped through a tree-choked area, and breathed a deep sigh when it turned back up and ended in a clearing on Rymer’s Knob. She parked under towering trees that edged the knob, got out, and patted the vehicle in silent thanks that she’d made it.

A burgundy-colored Ford Ranger sat between large laurel bushes on the left, its tailgate down and folding aluminum ramps laid from the truck bed to the ground. Beside it was a rusty old Ford 150 pickup complete with gun rack and a thick dust coating. The lawyer said Emerson owned a pickup, so this must be it. She touched the Ranger’s hood. Warm. Whoever owned it had parked there not long before.

She locked her van and stared into the undergrowth ahead until she made out ruts. She stepped under the dark canopy of trees, some so huge she couldn’t have reached around them. The ruts twisted over and around rock formations as they ascended the knob, on what at one time was obviously a passable road. A skeletal tree lay across the trail ahead, most of its limbs rotted away. Narrower parallel ruts apparently made recently by all-terrain vehicles—that would account for the ramps on the Ranger—skirted the fallen tree. She followed them until they again hit the larger trail, and trudged upwards on the drunken path they made until the trail finally leveled. Bright sunlight filtered through the trees.

She stopped. Ahead was the rear of a log cabin, its chink lines glaring white between aged logs. A lean-to stood against it, with rough-sawn lumber protruding. Beyond the cabin’s left end stood a large, moss-covered concrete block building, with two pairs of padlocked vertical-swinging doors showing years of neglect. A carriage house, she realized. Proof that the overgrown path was at least passable for cars seventy years ago.

To the right of the lean-to, two waist-high propane gas cylinders snuggled against the cabin wall. Knee-high weeds grew between her and the cabin, hiding who-knew-what. She picked up a small limb and held it before her like a club as she stepped high through the weed patch and around the cabin’s right end.

Warm sun hit her face. The forest had opened onto a large clearing, nude except for a sprinkling of leaves and twigs. Starting not far beyond the front door the ground sloped steeply down into Sequatchie Valley, separated from it only by an aged split-log fence.

She walked to the fence and stared into the valley. What scenery! Why, she could see down it forever, as if it were a runway to heaven. To both sides, on almost vertical valley walls, dark evergreens peppered forests of deciduous trees, shooting poker-straight trunks into the white-clouded blue sky. Trees farther away molded into a fog-laced mass. Between the valley walls was flat country divided into postage-stamped fields populated with toy houses, barns, and ant-like animals. Connors had said the valley floor was eighteen hundred feet below where she stood. Far off, smoke from an unseen fire spiraled lazily up, becoming one with the fog. From somewhere came the faint pock! pock! pock! of an ax biting into a tree. She could envision early pioneers cooking meals, chopping wood, and—well, doing whatever else it was pioneers did. Now she saw a river, far below to the left, winding toward the horizon.

Oh, my God, that’s gorgeous, she murmured. Absolutely gorgeous!

It sure is, a man’s voice behind her said.

Erica whirled around. A tall man stood between her and the cabin, his booted feet planted slightly apart. He wore worn blue jeans and a loose-fitting plaid shirt. A leather Outback hat shaded his eyes.

Who are you? Her stomach finally left her throat area, and her senses came back on skittery feet.

Mike Callahan. He removed his hat to reveal curly brown hair and penetrating blue eyes. He stepped closer, and she jumped back. He stopped.

I didn’t mean to scare you, he said.

Well, you did!

He returned his hat to his head. If I’d said nothing, you’d have been even more frightened. Wouldn’t you?

She stood frozen. She should have waited for Mr. Connors! She remembered the stick in her hand and tightened her grip. I know how to use this, she said, in a tone she hoped would sound convincing. I played softball in high school.

Wrinkles formed at the corners of his eyes. Whoa! No need for that club. Look—I’m harmless. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.

Well—well, who are you, and just what do you want?

Her arm relaxed, but still held the club before her. She glanced about for an escape route and saw a large yellow tent pitched off to the side near where the knob’s edge dropped off into the valley.

Mike Callahan, like I said. He followed her glance to the tent. It’s mine. I’ve been here two days.

But—but aren’t you trespassing? The club inched down another notch.

Nope. Eric said I could camp as long as I wanted. I heard you coming and thought you might be him.

The limb touched the ground and slipped from her fingers.

You knew him?

Well, not really. I met him maybe six months ago. I wanted to study the fireflies here, and he said to come ahead.

Oh, study the fireflies … What kind of nut case was this?

He must have read her thoughts because the grin he’d tried to hide broke out. They’re a special variety, he said. You know how flocks of birds and schools of fish turn instantly together? That’s called ‘synchrony.’ Well, fireflies don’t blink together like that, except in three spots in the whole world. At a place in Southeast Asia, around some Great Smoky Mountain cabins, and—and guess where else.

She eyed him. Here?

Yep. Right here. Apparently just a small group.

She gazed at his camp. It sure wasn’t a simple overnight Boy Scout thing. The tent was at least ten feet by ten feet, and had a canvas porch that extended another eight feet. Wooden boxes were stacked off to the side, partially covered by a tarp. The scene could have come from a movie about white hunters in Africa.

Mike stuck his hands into his jeans pockets. I’m a behavioral neurophysiologist, he said. "I teach at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and am on assignment to Oak Ridge, an hour northeast of here. I’m here to research the Photinus carolinus—those particular fireflies."

Oh. Whatever a behavioral neu—what he said was, or did, she had no clue. You don’t know, then.

He glanced up. Know what? There’s something I should know?

Mr. Emerson died. I’m his—a relative, here to take care of his things.

Oh, I’m sorry!

He stepped to within inches of her and extended a hand. She took it and, not thinking, leaned into his chest. His musk filled her nostrils, and his gentle breath raised goose bumps on her neck.

Wait—what was she doing? She jumped back and rubbed her hands together as if to remove every atom of this man from her person. She looked away, toward the cabin.

Mr. Connors said it was an accident, she said. A tree he was cutting down fell on him.

Again, I’m so sorry. He glanced to his left, at the tree line. I guess that’s the tree there. You can tell it’s freshly cut.

She followed his gaze to a huge tree lying on the ground. A four-foot section had been rolled to the side, she assumed to free his body. She shivered and turned back to Mike. His aroma still lingered. Her gaze went past a broad chest and muscular arms to his knock-out handsome face. He was definitely a hunk. If she were to pull his shirt up she’d probably see a fantastic six-pack of abs. Why, if he put those thick arms around her, she was sure—stop it, Erica!

Well, you—stay as long as you need to, she said, in her most official voice. If you’ll excuse me, I—uh, have things to do.

He followed her as she stalked to the cabin door and eyed the large padlock. His shadow engulfed hers, and the sun’s heat lessened.