“One bite, huh?” she said. I heard in her voice the hope that I’d get more interested in Jackson.
“Or maybe a second bite. His lips are mighty peachy. So what’s up with you?”
“Peachy, huh?” she said. “All I did was hang out with Madonna at the bar. But I did find out some interesting stuff there.”
She told me she called the Indian doctor. “He’s the third they call if nobody else is available to do a weekend coroner’s report. He never got a call. I didn’t tell him anything either. I asked as a reporter. He even checked the answering service to be sure. Nada. In fact, he never gets called much, because he’s got a bad habit of always finding mistakes the Magnolia County coroner’s office doesn’t, he claims. When he brings it up, he says they just get quiet. He says he feels a strange hostility there. You know the don’t-trust-an-outsider thing.”
“Hmm.” I said. “Sounds like I need to pay that funeral parlor guy a visit again. I think I let him chase me off too quickly.”
“Be careful,” she said. “Someone’s calling me anonymously and telling me to mind my own business then hanging up. They just say ‘mind your own business’ and hang up. I’ve tried to trace it, but it comes from payphones. None here in St. Annes.”
“Oh, god, yuk. We’re being watched. Laura, get off the case. I don’t want you or Madonna . . . You two just forget this case, okay?”
“Bullshit,” Laura said. “You must take us for a couple of pussies.” I had to laugh.
CHAPTER 27
I DROVE OUT IN THE FOG and dripping rain to Kiss-Me-Quick, an island in the St. Annes cluster of peopled islands. It was swollen with live oaks and moss dripping from the trees. Too bad it also held the most trailers per square inch of all the islands, and the highest percentage of broken-down cars, on or off blocks, in the southern U.S.
Mary and Cooter’s mobile home rested on the back side of the tiny island by the cove, in a formerly-saturated-blue now faded-by-sun single-wide. Not particularly poetic. It reminded me of where I could end up living divorced with two kids.
I banged on the front door, and Mary opened it. She wore a faded pink bathrobe spotted with stains. Her hair looked worse than a pelican’s roost. She held what looked like a vodka and V-8 juice. Not that I looked so much better in my faded U2 sweatshirt.
“Oh, hello, LaRue,” she said, backing up, taking a sip. “Come on in. I was just having a little breakfast.” She clinked the ice in her glass and led me to the table next to the kitchen. Sitting down at the small table, I saw no food. But the Smirnoff bottle sat on the linoleum countertop. She reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a wilted celery stalk and stabbed it into the glass. “Healthy,” she said, holding up the glass. “Want one?” I shook my head no. She shrugged and sat down hard. A bottle of anti-anxiety medication stood next to her salt and pepper shakers, a ceramic pig couple dressed in fishing attire.
“Mary, I know you’ve been seeing Fletch for years,” I said. She sat up and opened her mouth to speak, but I went on. “It’s not my business. I understand how marriages aren’t always so fulfilling,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Believe me, I’m no one to judge that. I’m wondering what you know about Fletch and ECOL?”
“ECOL?” she said. She stared blankly at the fishing pig couple on the table. She wasn’t bluffing. Sometimes our hometown girls often never imagined they might have to pay attention, learn things, go anywhere. I’d watched my own generation over time not giving directions to tourists, simply because they didn’t even know or care to know what was up the road or down the street.
“I know you and Fletch are working out on the east side of the Magnolia River on some kind of project,” I said. She sat up straighter. Her face hardened.
“It’s just a landfill thing,” she said.
“Landfill?” I said, leaning back in. Her deliberate ignorance infuriated me.
“You know, just putting some extra garbage—just getting rid of some—clearing some stuff.”
“What stuff?” I said. “What I’m getting at is that I know Mac is in on the land purchase, too. Somebody tried to kill Mac. Someone’s conveniently trying to pin the poisoning on me. And I could go to jail.”
“There are worst places,” she said, staring at the ceramic fishing pigs.
“I’m serious, Mary. Did somebody try to kill Mac because of ECOL? I’m afraid someone is going to try to kill him again. And I don’t want to go to jail.”
“I don’t know, LaRue,” Mary said. She pulled out a cigarette and lit it with a plastic lighter.
“Trina was murdered,” I said. Mary looked at me and went pale.
“What makes you think that?” she said, looking out the window, then at a fingernail, nervously at me, then chewing on the nail. She downed the rest of her drink.
“Look, Mary,” I said. “You can talk or not talk. But I think you know more than you’re saying.”
“All I know is that the landfill development is a big secret. Trina knew about it, and something about it upset her. She threatened Fletch and I think maybe Mac, and she warned them that she’d let it out that they were—that something was going on. Some pollution thing.” She threw up her hands in disgust. “You know how those Magnolia Gardens people just keep complaining about their roads and all that. Trina said this new thing would affect them. This new development. And—” She got up and plinked more ice into the glass, pouring half the tumbler with vodka. I sat in the chair at the table not daring to take my eyes off her.
“Where were you the weekend Fletch and Mac were deep-sea fishing, the weekend that Trina was murdered?” I pushed.
She turned around, her face red, swollen, angry.
“You’re ruining everything, you and your hippie son and that spoiled rotten daughter. You had a good thing with that man, and then he left you ’cause you’re TooTall Panther. He found himself a young thing. A pretty blonde chick.” She could see that she was hitting where it hurt. I sat stunned. I couldn’t begin to ask her what kind of knife she used to stab her husband with. She pointed at me. “You look here,” she said, “I finally got what I need, and now you’re trying to ruin it all.” She was shouting and spitting as she spoke. “You just don’t want anybody else to be happy, ’cause you ain’t happy.” She pointed at me and then at the floor, the way drunk people sometimes do, just staring at something only they see. She continued. I thought about how the guys at the pep rally had pummeled each other that day. I clenched my fists and stood up. She stood by the refrigerator, glass in one hand, waving the other.
“Trina was an unhappy bitch too. And tried to make everybody feel guilty about everything. All she wanted was like all liberals want, to get our taxes raised so some people who complain all the time could get roads in and their water fixed. The world’s not perfect, you know. I’m not taking this shit anymore. Out!” She pointed her finger to the door.
Now I was mad enough to slap some sense into her. She opened the door and pointed again. “Get out,” she screamed as I stomped out like a giant, fe fi fo fum. Mary ranted on. “Just get out. Stop nosing around in business that ain’t yours, you hear me?”
I WAS DRIVING TOO FAST back towards town. But I figured when I got mad, I should use the adrenaline. I pulled up at the real estate office and bolted to the door. It was locked. I stood, breathing hard, fuming. I stormed down our Main Street of dusty old buildings towards Tiffany’s apartment across the street from mine, taking two stairs at a time. I banged on the door. Nothing. Banged again, harder, faster, longer. Feet stumbled to the door.
“Oh, hi, LaRue,” Tiffany blinked. “What’s wrong?” Her living room looked as empty as a small warehouse, had one easy chair with a TV stacked on cinderblocks. The dining room contained a circular table with one washed-out orange vinyl chair and one metal chair. She stood in her sexy little pajamas, blue velvet tank top and belly-showing bottoms.
I pulled out the now worn and crinkled fax of the coroner’s report. I pointed at the signature.
“That’s
your handwriting,” I said. “Why?”
She frowned and looked defensive. “Why what?”
“Why did you risk your record to go back to forging a doctor’s name? And this isn’t prescriptions. This is lying about someone’s death.” She was backing up, then stopped.
“Mac told me I wouldn’t get in trouble. Mac said—” She took another step back, away from me.
“Mac put you up to this.”
“He said it wasn’t a big deal, LaRue,” she said, shrugging. “He said I was just doing the doctor on call a favor.” As she said it, she turned her head aside, backed away another step, and I took one towards her. She stepped back again, and said, “I didn’t have anything to do with Trina. I don’t know what you mean about lying.” Tiffany was lying. Lying and shrugging her shoulders, her arms hanging, palms facing me. I had that maternal radar for lying young people. I’d done it myself in my youth.
“So you know she was murdered.”
“No, I just know you came in here and said she was,” she said, her brow wrinkling. She stepped back again and looked to the doorway.
“And it didn’t occur to you that maybe there was a connection between his asking you, someone who’s not authorized to sign a death certificate, to sign it? That it was illegal? That he might be covering something up? He asked you to put your neck on the line for him.” I was shouting. I was furious at women who’d risked their own sense of self, women like the woman I had been with my ex.
“I don’t know,” she said. “He’s my boss. I did what he asked. I’m just trying to do my job!” Now she was yelling.
“You’ve trusted the wrong people, Tiffany,” I said, lowering the fax. “Do you know who poisoned Mac?” I said.
She shook her head, still not looking at me. “I don’t understand why you’re asking me any of this.” She sounded smug all of a sudden.
“Do you know about ECOL?”
“It’s a group of people who purchase property for disposal purposes,” she said. “What’s the big deal?” She tucked her leg under her and plopped into her chair.
“The big deal is they’re willing to kill people, Tiffany,” I said. I paced as she sat.
“I don’t believe it,” she said, folding her arms. “Mac is the nicest man I’ve ever met. He’s done a lot to help me out. You, too. You should be grateful.”
“Right,” I said. “Right.” I left and slammed the door behind me. The whole building shook. How had it withstood all those hurricanes, I wondered.
“LOOK, COULD YOU JUST STAY OUT OF IT for a couple of days? I think we’re headed somewhere.”
“Jackson, ever the cautious cop,” I growled into the cell phone. I was driving towards Wellborn, now passing the turnoff to the mound road, wooded wetlands where Indians used to throw their garbage. Only with no oil products like plastic bags. Now I cut through the expanse of wetland, the bayous most people never see. The tin-roof shacks and the beat-up mobile homes along the way. A bald eagle soared way overhead. It was noon and gorgeous, and I was dangerously hungry.
“LaRue,” Jackson sounded impatient. He slowed down his speech. “Now that I’ve got the match for blood, I think I can subpoena for an autopsy. In a court of law, we need evidence. You do have Tiffany’s signature, yes. And what the garbage collector thinks he saw? What you think you saw through binoculars?” Jackson said.
“I didn’t think I saw, I saw!” I shouted into the cell phone.
What was Randy really up to, and what had he been up to with Trina? Why was Mary in such denial? What was making my son so angry he’d explode things and obsess about karate chops and try to scare even me in the dark? And Tiffany—she’d bought into the whole men-with-money-can-save-you idea.
“Why would anyone want to destroy this?” I said, my voice starting to shake. “Why would they want to upturn the cabbage palms, the old Indian mounds?” I said, distraught. “They’re going to destroy everything that was beautiful about this place.”
“LaRue—”
“None of this answers who’s trying to kill Mac,” I said. “It’s not going to be easy to get me off the hook, Jackson.”
“Wow, who woke up next to the bear?” he said.
“Whatever, Jackson,” I said.
“LaRue, I’m trying to keep you from getting into deeper water. You’re messing with people who will hide a cause of death at the very least. Murder probably. If someone’s trying to kill Mac, they will try again. Maybe again when others are around so that the killer will be hidden in a crowd of people. And they wouldn’t think twice about killing you, too, or trying to peg you again. You’re mad as a nest of wasps, and this isn’t the time to use your analytical skills.”
“Shut up,” I said, as I hit the steering wheel. I rolled down the windows.
He didn’t. “And don’t think I don’t know about the phone calls someone’s making to Laura, and next it will be Madonna. You don’t want your friends in danger, do you? Lay low, I’m telling you.”
I said nothing. I was more determined than ever to not lay low.
“Hey, I’m looking forward to seeing you this weekend, right?” Jackson said hopefully. I was passing the pit now, regretting so many things. Ever marrying, not knowing a good guy from a bad one. Jackson was a great guy. That fell on me like a pile of lime rock. He was putting up with my saying “Shut up.”
“What EVER!” I sounded like Taylor. I didn’t want to. “After this talk with Trina’s son, I will stop. I promise.”
I turned off the cell and threw it into the passenger’s seat.
Up ahead I saw again the bright tiny turquoise vision of Grandma Happy on the side of the road. She was stooped over picking something. Thistle milk, she had said, was good for your skin. Maybe she was collecting a winter skin potion. Even though they’d pierce you in a second with their prickly thorns, the flower looked like a burst of purple prism.
I couldn’t not pull over.
“Grandma, what are you doing?” I asked, breathing fast.
She turned around slowly, her turquoise and orange beads as always layered waterfall-like down her slender neck. A thin tidy bun on her head, mostly salt with some pepper. Gleaming in the sunlight. Even though I was mad and disappointed and afraid, I had to admit, she was a beautiful old lady.
“You in trouble,” she said, pointing a bony finger at me through the passenger side window.
“Oh, no, not that again, Grandma,” I said. “What are you doing out here on the road? I don’t want you to get run over.”
“You ain’t got the sense I reared you with,” she said stepping slowly towards the car. “You think I’m gonna walk out into the road? Goddang it—”
“Can I give you a ride back?” I said, not wanting to hear her disappointment in me. She was holding a bag of something.
She looked around. “No. I got things to do. Just picked this. Good for a stomach ache. Tastes like lemonade, good for a cold, too. Used to just grow in the Everglades, but it’s warming up here. I found a patch in a sunny spot. You be careful or there’s gonna be more killing.” A chill went down to my toes. She opened the car door to climb in.
“Grandma, I’m just going out to Wellborn to talk to someone. I’ll be back this afternoon,” I said.
She pointed her bony, arthritic finger at me again. “Call Taylor on that moving phone. Tell him to come out this afternoon. I got some things for him.” I knew not to contradict her.
“Okay. You sure you don’t want a ride back? What are you growing this winter, anyway?”
“Something.” She said it firmly and then opened the car door and sat slowly down. This calmed me somehow. “You stop at my place,” she commanded. “You need to drink some chamomile and kava tea before you go to town. Mixed in with a little passionflower. Calm you down. I see you’re mad at yourself and everybody else. Won’t do no good that way.” I was turning the car around too fast, and she hung onto the door. “Slow this killing machine down,” she said. I did.
“Grandma, I don’t want to
calm down or to slow down,” I said. “You know I don’t get upset, but now I’m very upset. They’re destroying the river just up from the Indian Mound. They’re somehow putting poison in the water. I have to figure this out. I need this anger to drive me to—”
She grinned and chuckled. “That’s the Indian,” she said. “You got the panther warrior in you now.” She beamed. “Stop this car.” I pulled off. She grinned back at me, all five of her teeth showing. “Using that fire to make bread. You don’t need no tea. You got the fire under control now. You finally listening. I been telling you that water’s poison.” She opened the car door and began to get out with her mystery bag and purple thistle.
I hated it when she was right. “Grandma, please get back in the car,” I said.
“You turn around and run fast up there to that Wellborn. You know your ancestors used to go there in the harvest season to live and grow crops. They knew better’n to be on that water in a hurricane. They’d come back down to the coast in the winter.”
I had heard this story a bajillion times.
“They was smarter’n you think,” she said. “They didn’t drill no holes a mile down the water, neither, messing up the whole world, not asking the ocean permission.” She handed me a Swiss Army knife. “For luck. Now go. Tell that boy to come see me today. Soon as school’s out.” She slammed the door and twirled her fingers to say, Turn around and go. I did as I was told.
I WAS HEADED TOWARDS STONEY BLUFF by the river, where divers had found Indian artifacts, proving that a huge civilization used to live there. Pipes, pottery, bones, arrowheads, the stuff of whole nations, buried. A history about 15,000 years old. This made the Bible of my youth seem infantile at about 5,000 years old. Maybe Grandma could smell the wind and know what animals were passing through. Maybe she did know what potions worked.
“OV had interesting information,” Madonna said. I was thinking so hard I didn’t answer. She’d called me on the cell. I passed into the bluff’s higher ground with oaks and grass, hardwoods just past bayou country, then past fresh pretty water on the St. Annes River where you could easily launch a boat.
Cutting Loose in Paradise Page 27