The obscure little notice touched something in me. Had Adams enlisted secretly, then died overseas as one of our many unknowns? Had he returned, surprised his neighbors with tales of Italy or France, then gone on to live his life? Had he falen from a cliff? Run off to Holywood? Though I searched for a folow-up, nothing more on Adams's disappearance was reported.

The rugged terrain had also claimed its victims. In 1939 a woman named Hilda Miner left home to deliver a strawberry pie to her granddaughter. She never arrived, and the pie tin was discovered beside the swolen Tuckasegee River. Hilda was presumed drowned, though her body was not located. A decade later the same waters took Dr.

Sheldon Brodie, a biologist at Appalachian State University. A day after the professor's body washed up, Edna Farrel was thought to have falen into the river. Like Miner, Farrel's remains were never found.

I leaned back and rubbed my eyes. What had the old man said about Farrel? They should have done better by her. Who were 'they'? Done better in what way? Was he referring to the fact that Farrel's body wasn't recovered? Or was he unhappy with the quality of Thaddeus Bowman's memorial service?

In 1959 the fauna claimed a seventy-four-year-old Cherokee named Charlie Wayne Tramper. Two weeks after his disappearance, Charlie Wayne's rifle turned up in a remote valey on the reservation. Bear tracks and spoor suggested the cause of death. The old man was buried with ful tribal ceremony.

I'd worked on victims of bear attacks, and knew what had remained of Charlie Wayne. I shook the image from my mind.

The list of environmental hazards courtesy of Mother Nature went on. In 1972 a four-year-old girl wandered from a campground in Maggie Valey. The little body was dragged from a lake the folowing day. The next winter two cross-country skiers froze to death when caught in a sudden blizzard. In 1986 an apple farmer named Albert Odel went searching for morels and never returned.

I found no reference to Prentice Dashwood, to the Arthur property, or to the officers of the H&F Investment Group. The closest I came was a May 1959 spread on a fiery crash on Highway 19. Six hurt, four kiled. Pictures showed tangled wreckage. Dr. Anthony Alen Birkby, sixty-eight, from Culowhee, died three days later of multiple injuries.

I took note. Though the name was not uncommon, one C. A. Birkby was listed on McMahon's fax.

By noon, my head pulsed and my blood sugar had dropped to a level incapable of sustaining life. I slipped a granola bar from my purse, did a stealthy peel, and munched quietly as I cranked my zilionth spool through the viewer.