Jenny nodded. “Yeah. You’re not the only idiot around here that likes cold drinks in the wintertime.”
“In the bottle?”
“Do they come any other way?” Jenny pointed at a cooler, packed with ice, that sat near the checkout counter.
Faye fished five bottles out of the cooler and set them on the counter.
“You must be powerfully short on caffeine.”
“And sugar,” Faye said, piling the chocolate bars on the counter and laying a ten-dollar bill beside them.
Jenny gave Faye her change, then reached under the cash register and pulled out a cardboard six-pack carrier. After opening each bottle, she loaded the Cokes into the carrier.
She handed Faye the carrier, then put the candy bars in a small paper bag. “Faye will need help carrying these.” She dropped a piece of bubble gum in the bag and handed it to Zack. “There you go. Enjoy your nice nutritious lunch.” Zack laughed until they walked out of the store, highly entertained by the notion that there might be vitamins in his candy.
***
Faye’s crew, powered by a late morning jolt of sugar, carbonation, caffeine, and cocoa butter, worked straight through the noon hour. Every few minutes, Joe or Elliott stood up and unconsciously started the field archaeologist’s stretching routine—rolling his head, shrugging his shoulders, and twisting his back this way and that, trying to counteract a long morning of stooping over his work. Faye ached in all the same places they did, and her head hurt, too. She hoped Brent would take her stitches out soon.
When Adam’s truck pulled into the parking lot behind Hanahan’s, Faye rounded up the troops and barked, “Get some lunch. Those candy bars won’t keep you going forever.”
Elliott and Ronya headed to the concrete picnic table behind Jenny’s grocery store while Faye hurried to greet Adam, with Joe on her heels. When they reached him, though, she found herself awkward and tongue-tied, unwilling to just blurt out, “What are the odds that two people would die in this tiny settlement within four days?” Joe, taciturn as always, was no help.
“I heard about Jimmie,” were the first words out of Adam’s mouth.
“Already?”
“I live in Alcaskaki, the gossip capital of the Southeast. I heard about Jimmie before the coroner left home. And I heard that Leo and Jorge really laid into you last night, out by the cell phone tower. Do you think you could try to stay away from people who don’t like you, just once? At least until we figure out what’s going on here in the settlement to cause people to drop out of the sky or to burn to death? Have you had words with anybody else?” Adam leaned up against his truck’s fender and drummed his fingers on the hood.
Faye followed his lead, leaning up against the truck while she considered his question. The hood was still warm, which was a nice antidote to the afternoon’s chill wind. “Well, I fired Jorge and Fred and Elliott Monday afternoon. That wasn’t a real cordial conversation.”
“People don’t appreciate getting fired, even when they deserve it.”
Adam nodded to acknowledge the truth of Joe’s observation.
Feeling compelled to confess every unpleasant conversation, Faye added, “And a couple of days ago, Jorge and Leo talked like they might want to set DeWayne’s dogs on me. Again.”
“Woman, don’t you have enough sense to get scared now and then?” Adam demanded.
Joe emitted a snicker.
“Will you please try to stay close to people you trust?” Adam went on. “People like Joe, here. He’s big enough to look out for you. I don’t want to find myself picking pieces of you out of DeWayne’s dogs’ teeth.” Adam tried for a smile, but he didn’t quite manage it. “Why does Jimmie’s death make me think that somebody wanted Carmen dead?”
“Does it?” Faye asked. “I think so, too, but I couldn’t tell you why.”
“Then I’ll tell you why. Two violent deaths in one week goes against the grain of the Sujosa’s history: hundreds of years of peaceful, uneventful poverty. Not that my boss will be impressed by that as a rationale to keep this case active.”
“Surely your boss won’t take you off this case until you’re finished?” Faye was surprised at how abandoned she felt by the thought of Adam driving his truck into the sunset.
“Don’t worry. I don’t have to close the case, ever—though I might get a nasty call from the state Fire Marshal or the insurance commissioner, wanting to know when I’m gonna get back to work on one of the multi-million-dollar insurance fraud cases sitting on my desk. There’s no statute of limitations on arson. I’m not about to walk away and worry about leaving people at the mercy of a killer. People like you.”
“I’ve been wondering if Jimmie might have set the fire,” she said, looking down at her feet. “I noticed he was wearing boots a lot like mine when he died.”
“You have good eyes. We got a positive match on those boot prints this morning. I think we can conclude that Jimmie was walking in the woods near the women’s bunkhouse when it caught fire Saturday night. But that doesn’t mean he set the fire.”
“There’s something else. I know from personal experience that Jimmie was capable of pulling pea-brained stunts,” Faye said. “He strung a life-sized dummy over the road near his high school, with a sign on it saying ‘Devils Go Home.’ I nearly drove my car into a ravine. At first, I assumed the message was aimed at me, since a lot of folks in the settlement don’t care for outsiders—particularly the Rural Assistance team. Then I thought the effigy was probably one that he made for a pep rally, and I decided to give him a pass. But now…do you think he hung that effigy, then set the fire the next night, thinking that he could scare us outsiders away? Maybe he didn’t consider the possibility someone might actually die. Accidentally killing Carmen might be enough to drive a conscientious young man to suicide.”
“Nope.” Adam pulled out a pack of gum and offered it to Faye and Joe. “You’re contradicting your own theory. An act of arson that results in an unplanned death doesn’t fit with your observations of the heater and the briefcase. In fact, the evidence coming in supports the notion that Carmen’s bed was set on fire, with her still in it. Do you really think Jimmie did something that…well, evil is what I’d call it. Do you think someone who did something so evil would have such a drastic change of heart that he’d commit suicide a few days later?”
Faye shook her head, conceding his point. “So we don’t know anything for sure, except that Jimmie was nearby on the night of the fire.”
“We know more than that,” Joe said. “We know he didn’t tell anybody that he was there, or what he saw, if he saw anything. Anyone who’s talking, I mean. And we know he got a phone call that upset him, but no one’s come forward to say they were the one that placed the call.”
Faye realized that, once again, she’d made a mistake that she’d vowed not to repeat—underestimating Joe’s gifts of perception.
“The sheriff will be able to track down the call. It may take a day or two, but he’ll get it done.” Adam shot Joe an appraising look. “Joe, I notice that you look more than you talk. Have you seen anything lately that I might want to know about?”
“That’s why I came over here with Faye. I wanted to tell you about something I heard. You see that pothole right near the bridge?” Joe said, pointing with his chin. “Can’t nobody drive through here without hitting it. I’ve almost gotten to know who’s coming into town just by the rattle of their car when they hit that pothole.”
“You have the ears of a whitetail deer,” Adam said. “Or maybe the ears of a deer hunter. I’d like to hunt with you sometime, soon as gun season starts.”
“From the sound of things,” Joe said, “I’d say it’s always gun season around here.”
Adam chuckled. “Not for me. I like to play by the rules. So tell me why you’re interested in the sound that pothole makes, before I get distracted and start talking about bow hunting.”
“I heard Jorge’s delivery van hit that po
thole first thing yesterday morning, and again when he came home last night. The thing is, it was loaded different in the morning than it was in the evening.”
“I’m surprised it’s loaded at all. He only drives it two or three times a week, for his part-time delivery job. It wouldn’t make sense for him to drive a loaded truck home and let the goods sit.”
“No, it wouldn’t. And that’s not what he does. In the morning the truck was carrying a heavy load. In the evening, it was empty.”
Adam rattled his keys in his pocket. “What in hell was he hauling out of the settlement?”
Joe shrugged.
Faye asked, “Can you get a warrant to search the truck?”
“Based on what? Nobody’s reported anything missing. Is it a crime to clean out your truck?”
Faye and Joe were still puzzling over that observation when Brent walked past, carrying a box of books. Laurel walked beside him and she interrupted her slow progress to stop and raise a hand off one crutch to wave at Faye, Adam, and Joe. Brent, both hands occupied in carrying the large box, merely nodded in their direction as he and Laurel continued on their way.
Joe gave a disgusted grunt. “I told Laurel that I’d help her with those, but I slam forgot.”
“Looks like Brent’s taking care of things,” Adam said.
Joe didn’t answer. He stomped over to the picnic table and joined Ronya and Elliott.
“I guess I’m not the first person to underestimate Joe,” Adam said.
“Neither was I,” Faye admitted, “but I can’t seem to quit doing it. I wonder what Jorge is hauling out of the settlement. Garbage?”
“People have been throwing their garbage in the woods around here for years. They’re not going to suddenly start paying Jorge to haul it out of the settlement for them. It’d be too much trouble for lazy Jorge to be driving his own garbage to the dump two or three times a week. His employer can’t be shipping things out of the valley. It’s not exactly an industrial park, full of manufacturers. I don’t have a clue what he might be hauling.”
Adam reached in the truck window and grabbed a wrinkled fax off the passenger seat. “I don’t have a clue about much of anything, not yet, but I do have this lab report on the chemicals found in Carmen’s pillow. And I haven’t found Carmen’s briefcase yet. We’re definitely investigating an arson, and possibly murder.”
Faye nodded her head in silence. There was no real surprise. This was what she had feared; this was what her instincts had been telling her. Then she looked up at Adam. “Who’s ‘we’?”
“Walk with me. This wind is too cold to be standing still.”
They walked in a slow circle around the blackened timbers of the burned-out house. Adam’s eyes roamed over the ruins as he talked, always looking for clues he might have missed during his first hundred tours of the site.
“I’m not so sure I’m doing the right thing—sharing information about this investigation with a layperson.”
“Mama told me that Daddy always said that it’s everybody’s business when an innocent person is in danger. He was a soldier, so he would know.”
“And what if the innocent person is you?”
“I’ve always tried to be strong, for him. I like to think that he’s proud of me.”
“I suspect he is. Look. I’m not so stupid that I haven’t noticed that it was you who saw Jimmie doing something real strange a few days before he died. And it was you who noticed that Carmen’s briefcase went missing on the day she passed. Two people are dead, and you’re doing a better job of tracking down clues than I am. I just wonder how you do it.”
“You think—” She stopped walking so suddenly that momentum carried Adam forward a couple of steps before he turned to face her. “Surely you don’t think I had anything to do with causing the fire or the wreck or Jimmie’s death.”
Adam put a hand on the small of her back and nudged her forward. “Walk. I told you it was too cold to stand still. No, I don’t think you’re a mad arsonist. And you weren’t anywhere near that tower when Jimmie fell. I just think your profession makes you a born investigator. I don’t know anybody else who would have thought to ask where Carmen’s briefcase was. Well, except maybe me, but I didn’t know she’d brought her work home with her that night, so I couldn’t ask the question. No, I think the Sujosa have trouble here in the settlement. Maybe you can help me find out what it is.”
Faye looked at the stark contrast between Adam’s fair skin and his reddish freckles and brows and lashes and hair. One of her grandmother’s sayings leapt to mind. That boy looks like he swallowed a silver dollar and broke out in pennies. She looked at the ground until the urge to giggle passed. “Why do you assume that the Sujosa are at the root of all the trouble? I can hardly believe that the white folks in Alcaskaki have always gotten along with their brown neighbors. Maybe they see the Rural Assistance Project pouring money into the settlement, and they think the Sujosa are getting rich. Maybe they’re trying to do something to stop it, or to get a piece of the action.”
It was Adam’s turn to look at the ground. “Honestly? I think racial relations in these parts improve all the time. Some of our older folks have rethought their attitudes, and we bury a few unreconstructed bigots every year. As for people our age and younger—we went to school with people of all colors. We’ve watched them on TV and idolized them on the playing field. I don’t see how any of us could possibly judge people on the color of their skin, not any more.”
Having been brown in America all her life, Faye had no trouble seeing how people of her generation might still judge people by their race, but she admired Adam’s goodheartedness. His lack of cynicism might hamper his effectiveness in law enforcement, but Faye could help him out in that respect. She had cynicism to spare.
“I was in junior high when the state finally closed the settlement school and bused the Sujosa to Alcaskaki,” Adam continued. “It was hard at first, but kids will like each other if they’re given a chance. I played baseball all the way through school. Brent pitched, I played shortstop, and Leo held down first base. Our team won the state championship twice during our high school years. We were like brothers.”
Their winding route had taken them around the church, and the pale green of the bunkhouse showed through the bare branches of an oak tree. Laurel and Brent were standing at the front door, wiping their feet before entering the house.
Faye found her eyes drawn to the back of Brent’s head. An inch or two of dark hair showed beneath the fashionable streaks that had made him into a blonde. She noted absently that he needed to touch up his roots—until her attention was caught by a swath of white hair that stood out clearly against his rather dark natural hair color. A depigmented area like those common to the Sujosa was clearly visible on the back of his head.
She tried to picture Brent without his artificially lightened hair. Suddenly, he didn’t look like a brunette Caucasian who’d been playing in a peroxide bottle. He looked like a Sujosa who was trying to hide from who he was.
Adam, seeing the direction of her gaze and the shock on her face, said, “He didn’t tell you, did he?”
“That son of a bitch.”
Adam looked shocked by the vehemence of her response and, for a second, she was shocked herself. She and Brent had enjoyed a couple of conversations and one date. Why should she expect him to spill his life history to her when they were just getting acquainted?
Because he’d had more than one perfect opportunity and he’d blown them all, that’s why. When she’d expressed discomfort at being the only non-white in a crowd of Alcaskakians, he’d kept his mouth shut. When he’d pontificated on how the twentieth century was dead, and racism with it, he’d neglected to share his personal experience of being brown in all-white Alcaskaki. And, worst of all, when he spoke of his work, he referred to the Sujosa in a sterile, scientific, third-person kind of way, never once admitting that he cared about the Sujosa’s health and their future because they
were his people. Faye fairly shook with rage.
“Brent—”
Faye interrupted him. “He said he grew up in Alcaskaki, but he’s a Sujosa, isn’t he?”
Brent and Laurel disappeared into the house before Adam spoke again. “His mother came from the settlement, but his father was a white man from Alcaskaki. Does it matter?”
“Of course not. But I don’t enjoy being with people who are ashamed of what they are.”
“Brent chose to come home to Alcaskaki. He gives the Sujosa settlement thousands of dollars in free work every month. Everybody that lives here knows who his mama was. Maybe he meant to tell you, but it slipped his mind.”
“I don’t buy that.” She pointed to her own dark-skinned face. “Any fool would know that I, more than most people, would be interested in knowing about a heritage as rich as Brent’s. And he had plenty of chances.”
“His skin’s almost as dark as yours. Maybe he thought his heritage was obvious.”
His calm tone didn’t do much to soothe her anger. “I thought he’d been hanging out in tanning booths.” She allowed her anger to spill over onto Adam. “I notice that you’re mighty quick to defend Brent. So you’re good buddies?”
“Hell, no. More like good rivals. I didn’t like it when he beat me out for valedictorian. I didn’t like it when he made the All-State team and I didn’t.” He looked at the freckled backs of his clenched hands. “I damn sure didn’t like having to compete with him for a pretty girl’s attention. And I don’t like having to do it now.”
It took ten seconds of baffled silence for Faye to realize he was talking about her. “I spent one evening at a ballgame with the man.”
“Women buzz around Brent like yellow jackets around a beer can. I’ve learned not to fight that.”
“Well, listen up and take notes. I’ve got a string of stitches across the back of my head. I’m having nightmares about fires and smoke and dying friends. And, last night, I watched a mother cry over her dead son. I don’t think it’s possible to feel less romantic than I do right now. But when this is over, I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”
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