Wilmington, NC 10 - Much Ado About Murder

if we can save it.”
    Jon exhaled deeply. “Good. I need something to take my mind off that obnoxious kid. I was hoping he’d be able to tell us if Simon had family but there wasn’t a chance to ask him. What a jerk!”
    We went out on the porch and introduced ourselves to Dr. Matthews. She asked us to call her Susan. She was about forty, thin and wiry like a runner, with streaked brown and gray hair and black frame glasses that gave her a scholarly appearance.
    “As I told you on the phone, I’m on the City’s Tree Commission and I teach a class at the University. You’ve probably heard that the City Council has approved the reforestation of Market Street where we’re losing many of our old Laurel Oaks.”
    We strolled along the brick driveway to the backyard. Gazing up into the tall oak there you could see the tree was dying. “Is this a Laurel Oak?” I asked. “I can’t really tell the difference between a Live Oak and a Laurel Oak.”
    Susan smiled. “Most folks can’t. The Live Oak is a sturdy tree. Disease resistant. We’re planting those along Market. It’s a spreading tree whereas the Laurel Oak grows in an upright shape.
    “So yes, this is a Laurel Oak. And, yes, it is dying.”
    “What’s killing it?” Jon asked. “Can we save it? We’ve got young kids, we can’t have branches falling in the yard.”
    “Mostly they’re dying of old age, fumes from traffic, but primarily they’re dying from heart rot.”
    “What’s heart rot?”
    “Basically, it’s a fungal disease. The tree dies from the inside out, or from its heart. And it’s a slow process. The fungi enter the tree trunk through a wound or a hollow, where bare wood is exposed. Something or someone caused the wound. Could even be another tree falling against this one and tearing off a branch.”
    “And we can’t treat the heart rot?” Jon asked. “I love big old trees like this.”Susan smiled. “So do I . And this one is granddaddy. It’s been here for two hundred years or longer. But no. To answer your question, there’s no cure. If you don’t take it down, eventually it will fall down, piece by piece.”
    “That’s too dangerous for us,” Jon said. “As I said we have young children.”
    “Why are these mushroom growing on it?” I asked Susan.
    “Those are further evidence of the fungal disease. The presence of mushrooms or conks means the disease has progressed further along.”
    “And what about these areas that look like scars?” I rubbed my hand over a circular shaped, rough bulky area of bark that had grown like a scar over a wound.
    Susan reached up and rubbed her hand over the scar too. “The tree tries to heal itself. The bark grows like a scar over the wound, just as a scar grows over a wound on human skin. But the healing process for this tree came too late. Something caused a large hole here, maybe it was a hollow where small animals lived, but by the time the scar grew over the hole, the fungi had already entered the heart of the tree and the disease had begun.”
    “I’ll call a tree service,” Jon said. “We’ll take it down.”
    We walked Susan out to the sidewalk. “Sorry I couldn’t save your tree.” We shook hands. “I’m seeing too much of this, I’m afraid. Just goes with the territory. Old neighborhoods, old trees. If you can help with the funding to reforest Market Street, that would be great.”
    “We will,” I promised. “We’re committed to helping our town everyway we can.”

    Dalton Montjoy

    Dalton Montjoy was having an out-of-body experience. In his dream, he was sitting on a branch of the big oak tree in the backyard of his house. The oak tree he loved so much. In his dream, he was a kid again climbing a tree. In those days, the backyard was quiet. There was not the hum of traffic on the Cape Fear Memorial bridge . The bridge had not been built until the Seventies.
    But in his dream, he heard the bridge’s hum. So he knew he wasn’t a child anymore. There were three people below him, gathered under the tree. As he straddled the rough branch and looked down, he saw Ashley Wilkes and her husband Jon Campbell. And another woman he did not know.
    Ashley was rubbing her hand over the scarred place on the tree trunk near the ground. The woman repeated the motion.
    He could hear them speaking. They were discussing the tree’s wound. He heard the woman tell Ashley and Jon that something had caused a large hole. That perhaps it had been a hollow where small