by Attica Locke
“Is there some kind of a problem here?” the store manager said.
“No, there is no problem,” the young woman said.
She quietly turned and walked out, the bell on the store’s door clanging behind her. When Caren finally reached the front of the line, she saw the items the woman had left behind. Shoved behind the cash register was the small basket she’d been carrying. Inside: a pint of milk, a bag of white flour, a gift box of pralines, a hairbrush and pink ribbon, and a white teddy bear with a red bow tied around its neck. Caren had completely forgotten about the run-in, the close encounter with the dead woman, until last night.
Letty asked her if she wanted anything to eat. “You hungry?”
“I’ll take coffee, if you made it.”
Letty nodded toward a carafe on the countertop. “You’re out of milk, though.”
Caren thanked her, rifling through the cabinets for a mug. Letty was shaking salt and pepper into the hot pan. “Make a list if there’s anything else you need.”
“ ’Preciate it, Letty.”
She couldn’t do any of this without her.
The coffee was hot and thick and perfect.
“How’s Artie?” Caren said, asking after Letty’s son.
“That boy,” Letty said, sucking air through her long front teeth.
She was a third-generation Mexican-American and locally born, south Louisiana through and through, sometimes mixing in grits with her eggs and chorizo. “Don’t you know by the time I got home yesterday he’s got his feet up on my sofa, playing Nintendo or PlayStation or Xbox or whatever in the world it is, like nothing’s wrong? No fever, nothing,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Bad, bad, bad,” she said playfully. “You just wait till this one gets to middle school.” She motioned across the kitchen to Morgan. “All of a sudden you have to watch them like crazy.”
“I’ll bet,” Caren said, smiling tightly.
Letty set a plate of steaming eggs in front of Morgan. She put one hand on the girl’s shoulder, leaning down to kiss the top of her head. Morgan didn’t flinch or move, so welcoming of another woman’s touch that Caren felt a flash of envy and an irrational impulse to separate them. Letty stood for a moment over the table, watching their girl eat. Then she snapped her fingers in the air, the line of gold bangles on her wrist chiming softly. “Oh, and bleach!” she said suddenly, opening a drawer for a pencil. On the back of an old Belle Vie brochure she started the grocery list. “It was nearly half a bottle in here yesterday,” she said, shaking her head. “But now it’s completely gone.”
Morgan finally turned to look directly at her mother.
The emptied bleach, the questions last night about a bloody shirt. She put the two together as easily as the math homework she had been doing when Caren walked in. Caren told Letty, “You know, I think I’ll pick up Morgan from school today.”
“You sure?” Letty said, excited by the prospect. “ ’Cause you know Gabby’s got midterms coming up, and I got laundry piling every which way around my house.”
“I’m sure.”
Morgan put her eyes down on her plate, pushing eggs around.
The conversation with her mother was far from over.
Letty folded her impromptu grocery list, tucking it into the cotton cup of her peach-colored bra. She glanced back at Morgan, before leaning in Caren’s general direction, her pencil-thin eyebrows raised.
In a whisper, she said, “La policía llamó.”
8
Donovan didn’t seem particularly surprised to see two police officers in Caren’s office. He paused only briefly at the threshold, just long enough to unzip his gray hoodie. He looked first at Detective Bertrand, who was standing just beside her desk, before glancing at Detective Lang, who was by the window, his hands on his hips.
Donovan looked at Caren last.
His expression was a mix of bafflement and disappointment—in her, a woman with no loyalty apparently—and he said nothing as he took the seat directly across from her desk, shoving his hands into the front pouch of his sweatshirt. He looked like a kid called before the principal. He reminded Caren of young men she’d met, clients whose cases she’d assisted on. Twice she thought to tell him to sit up straight, to not make this any harder on himself than it had to be. But she sat silent at her desk. She’d been instructed that the cops would do all the talking. Donovan was not her client. He was not her responsibility. He shook his head to himself, muttering, “This is bullshit, man.”
“We just want to ask you a few questions, Mr. Isaacs.”
“Yeah, all right,” he said.
“I’m Detective Jimmy Bertrand,” the big one said. “And this is my partner, Detective Nestor Lang.” He nodded across the room at Lang. “We’re with the Sheriff’s Department, the Criminal Investigation Division. You understand what that is?” Donovan looked at the two cops, his expression that of a man who didn’t like being made a fool of. “Well, if you already got my name,” he said, moving things along, “I’m going to guess you already know I’m well acquainted with the Sheriff’s Department.”
“That’s right,” Bertrand said.
Lang finally spoke up. “We’re not here to talk about your rap sheet, son.”
“Yeah, sure,” Donovan said, rolling his eyes. “Whatever you say.”
Detective Bertrand lifted a photograph that had been resting on the corner of Caren’s desk since they arrived, only a few minutes before Donovan. The cop held it in front of him, and Donovan pulled his hands from his sweatshirt’s pouch, rubbing his damp palms on the front of his loose-fitting jeans. Then he took the photo of the dead woman into his hands. “Do you know this woman, Donovan?”
They’d shown Caren the picture, too, just moments before Donovan walked in. Unlike the somber police sketch, it was a candid photo—the dead woman in a flowered dress that hung past her knees, the layers of her dark hair dripping into her eyes. It was the same woman Caren had seen in the grocery store, just over a week ago. She was smiling in the photograph, an expression that caught Caren off guard. It cut lines into her face, deep as dry creek beds along the sides of her mouth. She had a dark mole above her right eye, and two of her front teeth were capped in gold. And she was wearing those star-shaped earrings, one in each lobe. The photo appeared to have been taken on the front lawn of the Catholic church on Lessard Street in Donaldsonville. Caren recognized the priest standing with the woman, a hand on her shoulder. It was the black man who had led the candlelight vigil just this morning. Donovan hardly glanced at the picture for more than a few seconds. “Naw, man,” he said. “I don’t know her.” He set the photo back on the corner of Caren’s desk. She was studying the blank expression on his face, almost as closely as the two cops were.
“Where were you Wednesday night, Donovan?” Bertrand asked.
Donovan shot a glance at Caren, something that didn’t go unnoticed by either detective. “School,” he said curtly. He’d had enough experience in this area to know that the less he said the better. Of course, the word school out of his mouth only served to stoke the cops’ suspicions. Just yesterday, Morgan had reported to all of them the latest plantation rumor going around—that Donovan had actually quit school.
“River Valley Community College?”
“Yeah.”
“Where you’re a student?”
Donovan hesitated for half a second. “Yes.”
“Okay, Donovan,” Bertrand said. He shot a glance at his partner. Lang stepped forward, clearing his throat. “Do you remember what time you got in, son?” he said.
Again, Donovan looked at Caren.
“Wednesday night?” he said, repeating the cop’s question and seemingly stalling for time. “I may have to ask my grandmother about that,” he said shrewdly, both avoiding the question and invoking, in his grandmother, a ready alibi, should he need one. Betty Collier would say just about anything to pr
otect her grandson.
Watch yourself, Caren almost said.
Be careful, Donovan.
“Actually,” Bertrand said, “we already talked to your grandmother.”
“You did?”
Bertrand nodded. “We have two officers over to her place right now.”
“She said you were at work on Wednesday night,” Lang added.
Donovan looked confused at first, then nervous. He rubbed his palms on the front of his jeans, shifting his posture to a more erect, attentive posture. “She did?”
“Betty Collier is in her eighties now, I believe,” Caren said suddenly, breaking Lang’s one rule. She wanted to throw Donovan a lifeline. “Perhaps she got confused about which day you were speaking of.” Donovan was not here on Wednesday night, none of the staff was. She’d already told the cops as much yesterday. “He wasn’t on the schedule.”
“That right?” Bertrand asked Donovan.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Which means you had no reason to be here that night, right?”
Donovan nodded.
There was a next question that naturally followed, and they all waited for it. Bertrand looked at his partner, who was clearly the one running things, no matter that he’d said very little during the interview. To his partner, Lang gave a small nod.
“Were you, Donovan?” Bertrand asked. “Here on Wednesday night?”
Again, Donovan looked at Caren, as if she were somehow behind the policemen’s questions, their presence in her office, as if he thought she could make this whole line of inquiry go away with a nod of her head. It was a look of helplessness that Caren recognized from her days sitting across the table from scared clients.
She swiveled in her chair and looked at Bertrand.
“Asked and answered, Detective,” she said.
“What was that?”
“You asked him the question, and he’s already answered it.”
She looked at Donovan. “You don’t have to say anything else.”
Bertrand looked at his partner. “What the hell, Nes?”
Caren could feel Lang’s glare at her back. Donovan was staring, too.
He wasn’t sure either what had just happened, if this was choreographed, some kind of a trick. He wasn’t sure he could trust her. He took a gamble and ignored her advice. He opened his mouth anyway.
“Naw, man,” he said. “I wasn’t here.”
Lang slid his hands into his pockets. “Son, why don’t you take a ride with us down to the station? We have a few more questions for you, and it might be more comfortable down there than in here.” He nodded at the surroundings, Caren’s overstuffed office. But she knew the idea was to get Donovan away from her. Lang was gentle with it, exceedingly polite, as if Donovan would be doing him a huge favor if he said yes. “We could get you something to eat, some decent coffee.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Lang smiled. “Son, we think we can get this all cleared and squared away in short order. You let us borrow a little more of your time, and you’ll be on your way.”
Caren looked at Donovan. She shook her head.
Don’t, she thought.
“So what do you say?” Lang asked.
To the cop, Donovan shrugged. “Yeah, all right,” he said. He stood, hiking up his sagging jeans. Bertrand walked out the door first, Donovan skulking along behind him. He stopped at the door, just long enough to turn and look back at Caren.
“You ain’t have to call the police,” he mumbled.
It was an odd comment, one the cops seemed to ignore.
Lang was still standing in Caren’s office after Bertrand and Donovan had gone. He lifted the photo from her desk and tucked it into the pocket of his gray suit jacket.
“Who was she?” Caren asked him.
Lang pressed his lips together, deciding how much he wanted to share. “Well, it’s not like we got any real papers on these folks, no fingerprints on file.” He reached into the same pocket, pulling out what appeared to be a torn-off piece of a church program, where a few notes had been scribbled in pencil. “All we’ve got right now is the woman’s name . . . Inés Avalo.” He tucked the church program back into his pocket, his manner somewhat distracted, his mind already somewhere else. Pulling his cell phone from his waist, he checked an e-mail or a text message, reading silently, before returning the handheld device to its case. “You know, Donovan’s grandmother swore her grandson was here on Wednesday night. She said you could vouch for that. She made a point of saying we should ask you about it.” He lifted his tie, smoothing it down the front of his shirt, a thing with him. “Which means I’ve got Mrs. Collier saying he was at work that night, and you saying he wasn’t, and Donovan swearing he was at school,” he said. “Now, there’s no way all three of you are telling the truth. I can’t see how that’s possible, can you?”
The phone on Caren’s desk rang twice. She let it go to voice mail.
She’d had five messages from reporters on her office line this morning, and two more calls on her cell phone. The Donaldsonville Chief and the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, even the Morning News in Dallas. She’d ignored them all.
“The night that gal was killed, you told us none of your staff was on the premises.”
“That’s right. None of the staff was on schedule. I believe I said that, Detective.”
“ ‘Asked and answered,’ yes,” he said.
He didn’t like her, she could tell. He didn’t think she was on his side. “This isn’t a courtroom, Tulane. And this ain’t New Orleans. You remember that,” he said.
“I know where I am.”
“You told me no one was on the property that night. You were very clear on that,” he said. “Near as I could tell, we weren’t having a conversation about who was supposed to be here on the night the Avalo woman was killed. That’s not what I asked.”
“Donovan was not here. I don’t care what his grandmother said.”
Lang nodded, glancing down at his watch, pausing, as if he were giving her a minute to correct herself or change her story while there was still time. Outside, the cops in uniform were still fanned out across Belle Vie. She could see them through the window, running cameras over the ground, past a curious and rather confused-looking tour group led by Bo Johnston in costume. One of the tourists, a man in khakis and a ball cap, was snapping photos of the police activity with the camera on his cell phone. “You know, if there’s anything else you want to tell me . . .” Again, Lang paused, offering one last chance. “Now would be the time,” he said.
She thought about the stain on her daughter’s shirt.
She thought about the dead woman in the supermarket, the fact that she’d inadvertently lied to detectives when she said she’d never seen her before.
Neither of which would be easy to explain away.
So instead she offered up the one thing that would shift his piercing gaze in a different direction. There was something he should know, she said, something she’d discovered just this morning, down by the quarters. “There’s a cane knife missing.”
Detective Bertrand was instructed to travel ahead of Lang to the police station.
Lang stayed behind, watching two uniformed officers at work inside Jason’s Cabin, the last one on the left. The men had heavy flashlights in hand, their beams crisscrossing the black, dusty air, shining hazy light on the insides of the ragged shack: the rusted sugar kettle, the tattered quilt folded beside the straw bed, and the small tin cup waiting on the pine tabletop, as if Jason had just stepped out for a few minutes, instead of a hundred-plus years. The place felt strangely lived in. Caren felt a human presence here, where her great-great-great-grandfather had lived a life of labor, had raised a family within these four walls. She wondered if the cops could sense it, too. She was hanging back, standing in the doorway. It seemed impossible for m
ore than three of them to be in the small shack at the same time. One of them was taking pictures, noting footprints on the ground, many of which Caren recognized as her own, the mark of her boot heels in the dirt. “How long has it been gone?” Lang asked.
He was pointing to the empty space on the wall.
Caren had provided him with a picture of the missing cane knife, torn from one of the coffee-table books they sold in the gift shop. It was a photograph of the exact same slave cabin. In it, the antique tool—a relic from the days when all sugarcane was cut by hand, by men like Caren’s ancestors—was hanging on the wall, in the very spot where Lang was standing now. The cop with the camera took his shot. The flash lit up the blank spot on the wall, shooting like a bolt of lightning through the room, and then everything went black again.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“But it’s recent?”
“Yes.”
“And Donovan would have had access to this cabin?”
“As would any member of the staff, or Danny for that matter, or any of the tourists who come through. We get over a hundred people here a week, Detective. No one is supposed to be back here unsupervised, but it happens.” For all kinds of reasons, she thought. She’d known lovers to hide away in Belle Vie’s most private corners—stealing kisses, and much more, in the cottages or the storage shed and, yes, even the quarters—which she’d always thought a strange and twisted choice, but perhaps no stranger than choosing to marry, to seal a hope, on the grounds of a plantation. Belle Vie was a cipher, really, a place in whose beauty one might find pleasure or pain, leisure or labor. People saw, in its iced columns, in the magnolias and aged oaks, what they wanted to see, what their own history told them to. She had answered the cop’s question honestly, but Lang seemed to regard this as further evidence of her taking sides. He let out a small sigh, made a note in his pad, clicking his ink pen two times.
“You think that’s what killed her?” Caren asked.