by John Moore
At least the caffeine in coffee was natural and, according to the most current research, not bad for you. That is, unless you were suffering from hypertension and drank too much. One day I read the side of an energy drink container, curious about what gave people the energy buzz. Caffeine was the active ingredient, making me wonder where the caffeine came from, so I looked it up. I was shocked to find that it was refined from natural gas, a byproduct of making ammonia. I learned that most of the caffeine added to soft drinks and energy drinks came from manufacturing plants in China, refined from natural gas and converted into a white powder looking a great deal like cocaine. The powder was added to the drink formulas to create the buzz. Who knew? I haven’t had one since.
Tom sat up as I entered the bedroom, and blew me a kiss. Oh, what I would do to him if Piper weren’t only a few feet away sleeping on the couch. My stirrings made me think about what it would be like living in the condo in the Quarter. We would have the privacy necessary for me to jump Tom’s bones. Damn you, Bob Broussard.
“Good morning, pretty girl. You look sexy in my T-shirt, but I think I’d like you even better without it,” Tom said with that I-want-you look in his eyes. “Why don’t you close the door and come here?”
“What about me?” a small voice from behind me asked. Piper had woken and slinked behind me. Funny how a child’s voice can hit you like a bucket of cold water and extinguish any flame of passion. We all piled up in the bed like the happy disjointed family we were. Piper ran to the kitchen and made herself a cup of coffee and then hopped back in bed with us.
While she was gone, Tom said, “I forgot to tell you, my company has a crawfish boil planned for the July 4th celebration, and they want us to bring our families. It’s an all you can eat affair. It’ll be Piper’s first crawfish boil. We might as well start her Louisiana indoctrination right away.”
Piper returned, coffee in hand. “I’ve never been to a farm. What’s it like?”
“It’s quiet. You don’t hear the sounds of cars or airplanes moving around. You hear birds singing their morning songs and crickets chirping. The air is clean and fresh, with little or no humidity. Most of the time a gentle breeze bathes the fields, turning the corn stalks into wind dancers,” I said. “There always seems to be chores to do on a farm, and most of the time you are outside, taking care of or repairing something. Piper, it’s a slow-moving, close-to-nature life where the days blend together in a series of small tasks that make a fulfilling life. It’s a little boring, but pleasant.”
“Sounds kinda like Rose and James’s life in Northern California with the hippie parts removed,” Piper said. “I’d rather be in the French Quarter.”
She was right. I’d left the farm life years ago for a good reason: It was boring. Once again my mind revisited the anticipation of moving into our new condo in the Quarter. It was perfect for us, but how could I put the family in danger with a crazy serial killer stalking the streets? Maybe after Bob was caught, it would be safe to move.
My thoughts were soon interrupted by a call from Charlotte. “Good morning, Alexandra. Sorry to buzz you so early in the morning, but we have a little problem. Our stevia company needs attention if it is going to survive. I’ve been going over the books, and we will run out of cash if we don’t improve our sales. Can we meet?”
“Oh shit, Charlotte. I don’t know anything about finances. All that profit and loss stuff puts me in a fog. I do know how to promote the company though, and if it’s sales we need, I think I can help. I can’t meet today. We have to go to Indiana to deal with some farm business. I should be back in a few days. Will that be soon enough?”
“Sure, no problem. Ring me when you return. I’ll hold the fort down while you’re gone,” she said.
Business problems, that’s all I needed. I didn’t think Charlotte knew any more than I did about running a business. She got her degree from LSU in marketing. If she took business classes, the info passed right through her ears without staining her brain. I know I didn’t grasp any of it. We could be in some serious trouble. But whatever the problems were, they would have to wait till we returned from Indiana. I’d promised Zach and Maddy that we’d meet with Jason Crawford. I wanted to hear what he had to say about organic farming. Being an adult is a bitch, and worrying about supporting yourself is part of it. But failing wasn’t an option now that Piper was depending on me for support.
We finally got it together and caught the flight to Indiana, and I was a little anxious to see the old home place. It was, after all, where I’d started my journalistic career, as feeble as it may have been. It was where Mom stroked my hair and Dad rode me around town in his old pick-up trucks. Butit wasn’t my home anymore. No, New Orleans was my home with its collection of misfits, musicians, and monsters. Maladjusted, for certain, but I loved it.
When we pulled up to my old house, I barely recognized it. Maddy and Tom had painted the exterior an eggshell beige color and added dark green, almost black, shutters to the windows. The yard was manicured, and flowering plants decorated all of the beds. The old home place had taken on a new life like a marathon runner catching his second wind. It was fresh, and so were Zach’s and Maddy’s two smiling faces as they stood in the front door to greet us.
“Oh my God,” I said. “This place looks great. It hasn’t looked this good since I was a little girl.”
“Come in and see what else we’ve done,” Maddy said. “We’ve stripped all of the ancient wallpaper from the walls and painted them light gray. Do you like it?”
I loved all of the improvements they’d made. The wall colors matched the new sofa and chair they’d placed in the family room. The freshly stained, wide pine floors shined a rich dark brown color, clear-coated with a non-toxic floor finish. Maddy and Tom scrubbed the bathroom fixtures and made them lookas good as the day they were installed.
I fought back tears as I took it all in. “I think it looks amazing,” I said, my mind wandering to my younger years.
“Jason Crawford will be coming over at eight o’clock tomorrow morning to meet with us,” Zach said. “Tom, he’s an amazing guy, andyouwill relate to him well. He is an environmental activist like you. He wants to help us choose the right crops to grow to preserve the land.”
“I can’t wait to meet him,” Tom said, admiring the floors that Maddy and Zach had refinished.
Piper had wandered off with her new computer, bored with our conversation. She had been commandeering my computer regularly, so I bought her a laptop of her own so I could use mine again. Spending an afternoon with her in the computer store had been amazing. She knew more than the salesmen (no surprise) and was more psyched than a three-year-old at Christmas.
She found my old bedroom and claimed it for our stay. I must admit it made me feel good to think of her as a mini-me with Technicolor hair and a geeky computer brain. She’d win the county science fair too if we stayed here. But if boredom could be terminal, she’d be doomed to a slow death if she stayed.
Zach and Maddy spent the rest of the evening telling us about their plans for the farm. I had no idea Zach was so handy with farm equipment. He’d made deals with some of the old farmers who still kept their finger in the business, to borrow their equipment on the condition he’d repair it. He wore the grease under his fingernails as a badge of honor, taking to farming like a flock of ducks to a bucket of worms.
We had a fine country breakfast to start our day, with true free-range chicken’s eggs, scrambled to perfection. I’d brought some good old Louisiana Community Coffee with me to plug into our Keurig. I mean, after all, we weren’t living like savages.
My phone rang and I excused myself from the table to take a call from Jess Johnson. “Hi, Jess.”
“Good morning, Alexandra. Let me get right to the point. Demetre Baker tells me you received a call from that maniac serial killer, Bob Broussard. Is that correct?”
“Yes, it’s true. He called
me out of the blue to tell me I’d see him around the neighborhood,” I said. “He spoke with a whimsical tone in his voice, nonchalant, like it was no big deal escaping prison. The call really unnerved me. Is Bob responsible for killing the two women discarded in the Quarter?”
“I’m not really sure. Demetre wouldn’t tell me any of the details of the murders,” Jess said. “He’s being cautious,still feeling the sting of the chief coming down on him for getting you in to see Susan McAllister in jail. He doesn’t blame you. He just doesn’t trust the brass in the department. New Orleans, nothing but politics. He did let slip that the killings were ritualistic in nature. No other details.”
“Ritualistic, that’s spooky. I wish I knew more. We aren’t moving into the condo we bought from Bob till he’s caught,” I said.
Jess paused for a moment and cleared her throat. “I want to stay on top of this story, so if you get any more calls from Broussard, let me know. And . . . watch your back.”
In patented Jess fashion, she ended the call abruptly. Watch my back. What did she know that she wasn’t telling me? Did she get a call from Broussard too? There was more to this story; I was sure of it. When we got back to New Orleans, I was determined to get it out of her.
“Jason is here,” Zach yelled.
We all piled into the living room. A trim figure with wavy brown hair walked to the door, his stride steady and confident. He smiled as he greeted Zach, revealing his straight white teeth and three-day beard concealing his smooth tan complexion. He was a strikingly handsome man, not in the way of the brooding, movie-star-gorgeous Victor Ivanovich; more like a California version of the boy next door meets swimsuit model.
We sat on the couch and he perched in the chair across from us. He had an easy manner about him, comfortable in the teacher’s role. “It is quite a pleasure to finally meet all of you,” Jason said. “Zach and Maddy shared a great deal about you with me. Piper, I hear you are a rock star with a computer.”
Piper blushed and turned her head to the side. I noticed Jason wore boots and jeans, the kind you wore to work, not like weekend rhinestone cowboys dressing to party wore in city honky-tonks. Tom was the first of us to speak.“Jason, tell us about your plan for the remediation of the water well. What exactly is involved, and how long do you think it will take?”
Jason’s eyes narrowed, and his hands moved like an orchestra conductor’s as he laid out his plans. “When I took the job, I had my lawyers contact ACC to set the parameters of the job as well as the payment schedule. I didn’t want any misunderstanding about my mission. ACC are slippery bastards, not to be trusted. Sure enough, they tried to minimize the remediation, hoping to do a surface job, not completely eliminating the entire contaminated area. My legal team has battled them before, and after non-stop negotiating, ACC agreed to pay for the removal of all of the contaminated area, and its replacement with healthy soil. We will bring in heavy equipment to dig out and truck the contaminated soil to a hazardous waste dump. The process will take more than two months. We will drill a few monitoring wells around the property down into the aquifer to make certainwe removed all of the contaminated soil and that your water is safe. These wells will also monitor any seepage of toxic chemicals onto your land from the Aggrow land. Your land should be ready for planting in the spring.”
“What crops will we be able to grow on the farm?” Tom asked.
“Your farm can support a wide variety of greens, such as cabbage or vegetables like bell peppers and zucchini. Of course, you can also grow corn and potatoes, but they are a little more difficult to sell. In the fall, a sure winner is pumpkins. Everybody loves to carve a pumpkin. In this part of the country, pumpkin pie is a must-have for the Halloween season.”
“I love Halloween,” Piper interjected.
Jason smiled at her. “I can see you have a creative spirit.” It was the kind of remark that could have been patronizing, but wasn’t. I felt proud of Piper for staying true to herself. Was this what it meant to be a mother?
“How do consumers know the products are grown organically?” I asked.
“The US Department of Agriculture offers a certification program that verifies a farm’s compliance with its organic farm standards,” Jason answered. “We’ll definitely get you signed up.”
“Do we have to use pesticides?” Maddy asked.
Jason chuckled a bit, revealing his dimples. “Organic farmers are only allowed to use chemicals that have been approved by the Organic Materials Review Institute, but you don’t need to use them. I will show you how to grow your veggies without pesticides or fertilizers. We can make the land more fertile, and it will replenish itself if handled properly.”
Zach sat back on the couch with his arm around his sister. He had a contented expression on his face,a slight smile lifting the corners of his mouth. I didn’t believe I’d ever seen him so relaxed. I knew he’d stayed off the drugs, but I wondered what could make such a radical change in him. The Lois Lane in me was insisting I corner him later and ask him.
“The organic food market has been expanding at a 20percent increase per year for quite some time now. The industrial farm operations and the chemical companies don’t like it. They fear it will someday cut into their market enough to hurt them. Most of them consider it the natural course of business, something they can adapt to, and join if necessary. Not ACC. They are convinced the organic market will severely cut into their worldwide profits. They will do anything they can to cripple the movement, and you have to stay vigilant to protect yourselves from them. ACC has partnered with Aggrow to spread their brand of farming, which includes poisoning the land and the people who live on it, to get more yield per acre. They don’t care who gets hurt in the process.”
Tom and I could easily relate to what Jason had to say about ACC. We knew exactly how treacherous they could be. They used their operative, Bart Rogan, to try to stop us from finding the truth about their Colombian coca field poisoning. Now Rogan was out of jail, and I worried that he would reappear as one of ACC’s operatives.
We spent the next couple of days discussing plans to complete the remediation, and mapping out our strategy to deal with ACC. Zach took charge, totally committed to making the organic farm work, ACC or no ACC.
I was anxious to get back to New Orleans. I needed to meet with Jess about the Quarter Killer and find out what she knew about Bart Rogan’s whereabouts.
Chapter Three:
Decision Time
I felt confident we were on the right track with the farm, and Zach and Maddy had it together, both loving the work. I really liked Jason as well, confident that he knew what he was doing. He was a good man, and was easy on the eyes too, but back in New Orleans, things weren’t going so smoothly. Both Tom and Piper wanted to move into the condo in the Quarter, despite the threat of Bob Broussard looming in the air. Being the only one worried was difficult, making me question whether my fear was paranoia or justified.
Was I afraid I’d have to shoot someone again? The scene of the Scorpion attacking Piper and me kept playing over and over again in my mind. That look on his face when he knew he was dying haunted me.
Tom took Piper to his place so I could go see Jess. She always knew what was happening on the streets of New Orleans. I walked into her office, having helped myself to a cup of coffee. “Damn, girl, where’s mine?” Jess asked, disappointment in her voice.
“I’m sorry, I’ll go get you one,” I said.
She laughed and lifted a pink mug with her name inscribed boldly across the side. “Just teasing. They know around here to keep my cup full if they want peace.”
She could suck me in and fool me every time. I couldn’t tell when she was teasing and when she was deadly serious. I noticed her voice was a little raspy, as if she’d gone to a Saint’s game and yelled at the referees, one of her favorite pastimes. “Damn zebras never get it right,” she’d say.
“Have a seat,
Alexandra. I want to tell you what the street talk is about that Broussard prick. Word on the street is your friend Mandy Morris is helping him hide out. The working girls and street musicians in the Quarter say she’s got some kind of cult going around him. They are into the black arts, their twisted version of voodoo drawing some weak-minded people to them. Weird-ass shit, if you ask me. Something to do with zombies.”
“Holy shit,” I said. “When Piper and I went on the cemetery tour with Mandy, she had about eight or nine of her friends with her. They were all dressed in black, and I thought they were just dressing up to get into the spirit of the tour. I had no idea they were part of her group. They took direction from her like recruits in boot camp, chanting and whispering to each other. Are they a cult?”
“That is exactly what Demetre thinks. He believes they are helping Broussard kill the women in the Quarter. He said it’s different this time, because he’s not knifing them in their lower regions. He’s doing something else, but that damn Baker, he won’t tell me what.”
“Jess, I’m afraid to move into the condo in the Quarter we bought from him, thinking maybe he sold it to us to set me up to kill me. Or maybe he has it in for Tom because we are together,” I said.
“Well, you never know about psychopaths like him, but he seems to be on another path. He hasn’t really threatened you, has he?”
“No. He just said he’d see me around the neighborhood,” I said.
“He’s a wacko to be sure. But I don’t think he’s after you. Still wearing your pistol?” Jess asked.
“I’m having nightmares about shooting the Scorpion,” I said, avoiding her question.