Free The Rosewood Casket by Sharyn McCrumb Page A

artfully arranged on one mountaintop—owned and developed by Frank Whitescarver himself. There were no lovely mountaintops to be had for a thousand dollars an acre, because when such land went up for sale, Frank bought it himself, carved it up into five-acre lots, selling for thirty thousand dollars apiece, and had his construction firm put up two dozen houses. For an outlay of a hundred thousand dollars, he could expect a profit of close to a million.
    The would-be country gentry almost always found a house they liked at Boone’s Mountain or Deer Meadow or one of his other planned communities. Here were people like themselves, who drove the right cars and played golf and had upscale careers of their own—and they weren’t too close—five acres is a comfortable amount of living space between neighbors. By the time the husband said, “I suppose it isn’t a subdivision really,” it was time to produce the offer-to-purchase forms. The final deal clincher was Frank’s casual remark as he handed over his ballpoint pen, “And, one thing about living here, folks, nobody’s going to put a trailer up near your beautiful new home.” Frank knew that trailer park was Yuppie-speak for leper colony. The gambit seldom failed him.
    He parked his Jeep close to the ditch on an old logging trail, and got out to inspect the land. He saw a flock of Canada geese winging their way past the treetops, a sure sign of spring. The migrations had begun. Soon the subdivision people would catch a whiff of spring and begin their own migrations, and he would be ready.
    He had lived in east Tennessee all his life, so he knew most of the old families: who was likely to sell, and who might be forced to sell by the death of a parent or because of financial hardship. He kept a close eye on the courthouse records, too. You never knew what might turn up. He would be needing some new land soon. It was time for the old pioneers to move on and make way for the new.
    *   *   *
    “You’ve never talked much about your family,” said Kelley.
    Charles Martin Stargill shrugged. “I wouldn’t call us close,” he said. He flipped off the radio, much to Kelley’s relief. He always tuned it to a country station, and if they didn’t play his record within a half hour, or if they played certain other people’s records, Charles Martin would begin to tense up, and he’d frown, and sometimes forget to answer her when she asked him something. Sometimes, too, he drove to the tempo of the music, which terrified her, but she never complained about it, and she knew he wouldn’t let her drive. The sudden silence made her unclench her fists and take a deep breath. It was better to talk.
    They had decided that leaving at rush hour would have slowed them more than it was worth, and then Charles Martin got busy making phone calls, and rearranging things, so that it was past nine o’clock before he could approve Kelley’s packing. By then he was tired, so they went to bed, then got up at five so that they could get through Nashville before the morning commute got in gear.
    Kayla was asleep in the backseat, wrapped in an old quilt, and hugging Sally, the stuffed Steiff camel Charles Martin had brought her from a concert tour in Germany. She had fallen asleep just as they got on I-40 east in Nashville, lulled by the predawn darkness and the soft hum of the Lexus’s engine. Now the ride would be a peaceful one, and Kelley didn’t even want to stop for coffee for fear of waking the child.
    Kelley cast about for something else to say before Charles Martin noticed the silence and turned the radio back on. “But you got the guitar from your family.”
    He nodded. “The rosewood prewar Martin. I swear I think I was named for it.”
    The guitar was in its case in the backseat, on the floor behind the driver’s seat. Charles Martin always put it there, and he always warned Kayla not even to touch the case. Kelley didn’t like to touch it, either. She knew that the