I’d like some really winsome ads, but we’ll probably have pro athletes hiking or rafting around here.”
Cassie wasn’t sure what winsome meant, but it must have something to do with winning. She nodded to encourage him.
“Our client puts caffeine and ginseng in their liquid sports aids,” he explained. “G-Man and G-Woman Drinks. Bailey and Keller, my advertising firm, helps a client build a brand name and tell their story.”
“Tell their story,” she repeated. “That’s important, I reckon, even for things, let alone for people.”
“Someday, Cassie,” he said, stopping and turning to face her, “will you tell me your story?”
She shrugged but smiled. “Not much to tell. Will you tell me yours then?”
“Yeah,” Pearl said with an impish grin. “Like you have to go first!”
He smiled at both of them, then got serious again. “On paper, my story is not important. I plead guilty to being an artistic workaholic unhappily wedded to the corporate world. Divorced, no kids, not much family left but some cousins—one who lives in Highboro, so I know the general area and love it. I make a good salary, but that doesn’t fulfill me. The joy work I mentioned is my own project, a book about Appalachia, mostly pictures, some text.”
“So these photos you want are for both your hard work and joy work?”
Their gazes snagged and held. The wind ruffled his short, sun-struck hair. He looked so wholesome—winsome—kind of like he belonged here and yet was some sort of alien invader. Don’t do this, Cassie told herself. Don’t go feeling all shaky about this man just ‘cause he looks like that and talks to you real heartfeltlike.
“Exactly,” he said when she’d forgotten what she’d asked and Pearl tugged at her hand. “Are we almost there? I think I hear the shrieking woman and something else—a roar.”
“It’s not a monster, so don’t worry!” Pearl put in.
Cassie thought of Mariah again, lost or hurt in these parts somewhere. Had Mariah called for help but there was no one to hear? Or had someone hurt her—or worse? Tyler was staring at her again, and Pearl was yanking her along.
“That roar’s Indian Falls,” Cassie said, as the world seemed to rotate back into place again. She had to keep shoving strands of her long red hair out of her eyes. “By the way, there’s a Cherokee man lives ‘round here you might like to meet if you want good stories for your book. He says his people believe waterfalls and large trees can capture your soul, and that the woods are a sacred but scary place.”
Even when they climbed to the crest of the open hillside and Cassie pointed toward Big Blue’s massive gray-and-purple shoulders shrugging off the crashing waters of the falls, Tyler Finch kept looking at her for a long moment.
“This takes my breath away,” he said as he finally turned to see the sights stretched out before them.
“I feel like we didn’t find a darned thing,” Jessie told Drew as they headed for Mariah’s door. She’d added one of her mother’s jackets and a pair of hiking boots to her jeans and sweatshirt. They had found no clue about where to start looking for a needle in this massive haystack of trees and hollows and hills.
Jessie’s feet and spirits were dragging now. Earlier, she’d been on a roller-coaster ride of emotions as she’d searched through her mother’s things in her metal box. The deed to this land, records of income tax returns. A large, dried ginseng plant—a five-pronger—pressed between pieces of wax paper had somehow gotten stuck in the big envelope with her parent’s marriage license. There had been old school photos of herself, skinny and gawky. “Man, you have changed!” Drew had said, looking over her shoulder. They had also found faded pictures of her parents in their courting days, a few of her father she’d never seen.
Also, copies of past ginseng counts, which had been pulled from another large envelope, then half-stuffed back in. But to their dismay, nothing hinted at particular sang counting sites, past or present. In haste, had her mother pulled what she needed from this envelope, then thrust the rest back in?
Jessie could tell Drew was upset, too, though he promised they’d spend days looking for signs of Mariah if they had to. His words echoed in Jessie’s head and heart. Signs, as if her mother had left a message behind, but wasn’t around herself anymore …
“What’s this behind the door?” Drew asked as he opened it for her to go outside ahead of him. He reached down to pick up a calendar that was wedged on its side, standing upright against the wall.
“Oh, a calendar I gave her for Christmas,” she told him as he handed it to her. “I thought she’d like all the photos of the flowers for each month. It must have been tacked on the wall behind the door and got bumped off.”
“Check it to see if she listed places she was going to count sang.”
She flipped back a page to Mariah’s major counting month of August and skimmed the entries. Vern Tarver’s name was listed about twice a week with the name of restaurants in Highboro. Mariah’s scrawling handwriting recorded a church covered-dish supper to raise money for Widow Winchester. “Look,” she said, pointing at a Wednesday in August. “This doesn’t say Sang but Sung—Peter Sung’s name!”
“Your hunch about talking to him sounds right on. I’ll have to check if he was in town then. Anything under the first few September dates?”
She flipped to the current month. Since her mother had disappeared on the fourth, not much was filled in but for Vern’s name—this time crossed off heavily, jaggedly, on the third. On the fourth, scribbled in light pencil, was Semples OK.
“Does that say samples?” Drew asked, reading it upside-down. “Maybe Peter Sung wanted some samples of wild ginseng to know the quality he could expect to buy this year.”
“No, see—the S is capitalized. Semples.”
“Junior and Charity Semple? They’re the only Semples in the area, and he grows raised sang up in the woods above his place. But would she count sang that’s not wild but cultivated?”
“I’m pretty sure she always kept an eye on his crop—technical name, virtually wild sang. The crop’s health is a valid indicator since, once he plants the seeds, Mother Nature takes over. He used to have a couple acres of sang, scattered throughout the woods above his house.”
“It’s worth a try, a place to start. And that notation is on the day she disappeared.”
“You’re sure she got that far—that is, left the house that day and wasn’t somehow taken from here?” she asked.
“A couple of people spotted her walking along the highway that morning—come to think of it, in the direction of the Semples’. I’ll go check on this at their place.”
“You?” she challenged, stepping ahead and turning to face him as he tried to pass her to head out the door. She raised her chin to look him in the eye. “I thought we were working together on this.”
“Jess, you remember Junior Semple. Believe me, he’s gotten more cantankerous and off-the-wall over the years.”
“Is
