Family Issue

by Nat Burns

  “Well, what happened? Did she get lost? How did she get away from the house by herself?”

  “It appears that someone whacked her on the head from behind and then threw her in the water to be eaten by gators. Luckily the water revived her and she made it to the side. Thank goodness Patty and Landa insisted on those swimming lessons last summer.”

  “I just don’t get it,” I said, studying the side of John Clyde’s face as though the answers resided there. “Why would someone want to hurt the little girl? That makes no sense.”

  “I think to get at Patty, or maybe Yolanda,” John Clyde mused. We were some miles south of town now, and he slowed to take the right onto Route 171, which would take us farther south to Pepperwood Trail and Fortune Farm.

  Wide green road signs proclaimed that we were now bypassing Brethren, Louisiana, home of the Flathead Catfish. Brethren, population just under one thousand, was a small, sleepy community set along the Sabine River. The main employer for the area was the hospital, named after lumber baron slash philanthropist, Ernest Glass, then the ConAgra factory and then the Gulf Oil refinery on the banks of Sabine Lake.

  It was a tourist’s paradise, however, and people flocked to hotels and restaurants on the outskirts of Brethren to fish or ski Sabine Lake or to save money as they played the gaming tables in Lake Charles. Hell, a lot of the residents commuted the half hour’s drive into Lake Charles for jobs where the easy money was just that much sweeter.

  I lowered my eyes from the boring highway scenery and thought about the things that had been happening. I wondered who Patty, John Clyde or Yolanda could have angered to such an extent. The Price family was one of the more well-connected and prosperous farming families and had garnered a good share of community respect.

  “Do you think it is a lifestyle issue?” I asked finally. “Like those women over in Ovett, Mississippi, who found dead animals hanging on their mailbox?”

  “Maybe,” he replied, studying me briefly. “The people around here all pretty much know about Patty and don’t seem to care.” He colored slightly. “I mean, you and Patty never had any trouble when you were together, did you?”

  When we were together. I allowed the memory of those days to overtake me. I usually avoided thinking about Patty and the way we had loved one another and was surprised now to discover the pain had finally lessened somewhat.

  A shrill sound fractured the silence that had grown between us. John Clyde reached between the truck seats and fetched the ringing phone that was plugged into the dash.

  “John Clyde Price,” he said after he flipped open the small, clamshell-styled phone. He listened a moment. “Goddamn,” he replied finally. “We’re almost there.”

  “Who was it?” I asked, worried by the grimness of John Clyde’s face after he closed the phone. This was a new face, one I’d never seen on him before. He was an affable man, generally, prone to laughter and pranks. This new, angry man was a stranger.

  “It was Paul. They got the goats.”

  “The goats?” I repeated, feeling stupid.

  “Patty’s baby goats. She was raising goats for cheese and to sell, but she couldn’t let go of the babies. Fell in love with them.” He lowered his foot on the gas pedal and restlessly guided the truck toward home. I felt a sour stirring in the center of my gut.

  “What happened to them?”

  “They’re dying.”

  Chapter Three

  Human, the Labrador mutt Patty and I had rescued from the animal shelter seven years ago, greeted the truck with a subdued trot as we passed through the white wooden wing gates of Fortune Farm. Slowly bypassing the sprawling white farmhouse, John Clyde pulled the truck around to the edge of the landscaped backyard, where a large fenced-in lot had been set up for the goats. Several farmhands had crowded around the tall, chain-link entry, but they moved aside quickly to let John Clyde and me through. One of the older hands, a man named Real, balding and distinguished, though smudged with rich, black Louisiana dirt, was gently trying to pull Patty away from the randomly scattered, fallen goats.

  “Come on, miss, you just let us handle this now,” he said, his somber, soothing voice carrying to me and causing sudden tears to sprout in my eyes.

  Patty allowed herself to be led to the gate, where her gaze fell on me. Then she was in my arms, her body convulsing as she sobbed her grief into the front of my T-shirt. I, momentarily taken aback, found memory the oarsman that guided my hands to Patty’s back, found an old voice that calmed the child in Patty. I lowered my face, permitting myself the luxury of closing my eyes and experiencing the welcome fit of Patty in my arms. John Clyde moved close to pass by both of us, and I suddenly remembered the here and now.

  Opening my eyes, I saw Yolanda watching with a cool, shuttered expression as the eight or so farmhands followed John Clyde and moved past us to carry away the tiny carcasses.

  Yolanda Elliott had changed little in the years since she’d stolen Patty from me. She was still tall and slender, with blond, spiky hair, cropped very short. Her face was pleasant, but often vacant, and after the breakup, I had often wondered what had drawn Patty so forcibly to her. The few times I had swallowed my pride and actually tried to talk with Yolanda had been surprising disappointments; Yolanda seemed to lack even the most fundamental of conversational skills. Or maybe she just plain didn’t like me. We certainly had nothing in common. Except Patty.

  “I just can’t believe someone would do this to helpless animals!” Patty had pulled back and was watching the removal operation with sorrow, occasionally sobbing with an intake of breath. Human pressed himself against her thighs, clearly distressed by her anguish.

  “Well, what happened?” John Clyde asked petulantly, running fingers through his already tousled hair. He looked bewildered.

  Patty shook her head. “I can’t say, John Clyde. Paul came in the back door and asked me to come have a look because the goats were acting funny, like they were drugged or something. By the time Landa and I got out here Peaches was already gone.”

  Her face contorted with the memory, and I automatically grasped her shoulder to reassure and calm her.

  “Did anyone see someone strange hanging around the pen today?” I asked, studying the rapidly diminishing crowd of farm workers.

  “I already asked Real, and he said no one noticed anything unusual. The regular crew fed and watered them and about a half hour later they started stumbling,” Yolanda said, as she stepped forward and extended her hand to me for a cursory handshake. There was a nod of acknowledgment, maybe truce, and we both turned our focus back toward Patty.

  “Have you noticed anyone, or anything, unusual on the ranch, Patty?” I asked.

  Patty sighed heavily to express her exasperation. “No, Denni, no one, nothing. Just the vandalism. I really hope you can get to the bottom of this, otherwise I’m gonna lose my mind, for sure.”

  Chapter Four

  Seeing Patty’s growing distress, John Clyde and I exchanged a pointed glance and began herding Patty and Yolanda toward the back door. Entering the bright, spacious kitchen, I realized I fully expected Megs’s cheery welcome and motherly bustling. The lack was keenly felt.

  “I’ll get tea,” Yolanda said as she approached the sink. “Y’all go into the sitting room where it’s cool.”

  Before I passed into the interior of the house, my eyes drank in the familiar and some new, unfamiliar details. There seemed to be little that had changed overall. Much was as I remembered from those holiday family gatherings during the years Patty and I had been together. The kitchen was big and brightly lit from many large, strategically placed windows. The work areas had been modernized, with long lengths of counter interspersed with a deep sink and a stovetop, while a plethora of cabinets and a dishwasher rested below. The floor plan was open and two refrigerators towered on either side of the counters. It was spotless and I knew that it was from their lifelong housekeeper Ammie’s meticulous ways.

  It did smell differently, however. The heavy l
avender scent favored by Megs had been replaced by a lighter citrus fragrance, no doubt from modern plug-in air fresheners.

  I walked from the kitchen into the dining room with its large oval table and thick, heavy chairs. Age-darkened maple wainscoting separated the lower walls from pretty silk-striped wallpaper in muted tones of green and burgundy. There were no windows in this room but a lovely maple sideboard, laden with silver, provided a pleasant visual experience. The far wall bore a glass-fronted china cabinet that I knew had been in Megs’s family for centuries. Delicate china, discolored from much use, cluttered the shelves inside. The glass on the cabinet was so old that it was warped and waved like a fun house mirror.

  We passed through and on the other side of the dining room, across a short entry hall, we entered a large sitting room, furnished with a huge Oriental rug, two sofas set at ninety degrees and two easy chairs and a coffee table cradled within them for a comfortable conversation area. The front wall of the room featured a huge panoramic window that looked out over the Price cropland.

  John Clyde settled Patty, with muttered assurances, into a corner of one of the heavily padded sofas, then moved to the back wall of the paneled room. The entire wall was an elaborate bar setup, with a polished wooden sideboard and long shelves lined with liquor bottles.

  “Tea just ain’t gonna do it for me,” he announced to the room. “I need something a little bit stronger. Anyone else?”

  I shook my head and Patty remained silent, so John Clyde shrugged and poured himself a healthy shot of scotch. Single malt, I noted with absurd clarity.

  “Patty, are you going to be all right?” I moved to sit across from Patty on the other cushion-filled sofa. I leaned forward so I could see her face.

  Patty lifted eyes filled with frustration. “I suppose I’ll have to be. It’s all so wrong, though. Know what I mean?”

  “I know, hon, I know. What do you think is going on here? You didn’t really specify a lot on the phone, just said that someone was trying to hurt the family. I don’t understand what that means. Do you have any idea who it is?” I lifted one hand and crumpled my hair in frustration.

  Patty shifted to one side and stared at my shoes. “Everything was okay until Mama died. We had the funeral and people came from just everywhere to pay their last respects. She was cremated and put into Little John’s and life went on. We were grieving but getting on with things.”

  She lifted her gaze. “Then I got a call. From Little John. Someone, some bastard, had gone over to the mortuary and defaced her crypt.”

  “Defaced? Defaced how?” I looked over at John Clyde, wondering why he hadn’t mentioned this. His gaze was elsewhere, his attention on the other side of the big bay window that dominated the sitting room.

  “Well, the flowers were all broken and scattered, and someone had written LIAR across the front of the identification plate. Right there in front for everyone to see.” Patty’s voice hitched as sobs threatened to return.

  “Don’t forget BITCH,” John Clyde offered dully. He was now watching Patty with vacant eyes.

  “‘Bitch’?” I asked.

  Patty nodded. “That too. It was written on the marble below. It took me and Landa a whole afternoon to scrub it all off.”

  I sighed. “And then what happened?”

  “Someone dumped sugar in the tractors and we had to clean and replace all the tanks and filters. It was awful. And no one saw anybody do it, which is weird,” Patty replied. “You know how many people are here on this farm.”

  “It was during the night, about a week or so later,” John Clyde explained.

  I nodded. “And then your little girl was hurt?”

  “Yes.” Patty sat up straighter and her eyes flashed with fury. “Some son of a bitch hit her with something from behind, smacking her right into the bayou. I was looking for her, because she had wandered off, and I get down there by the bayou and see her walking toward me, blood running all down her face and neck…” She shuddered at the memory. “I will kill whoever did it, if I’m given half the chance.”

  “Here we go,” Yolanda said as she entered the room. “I fixed Earl Grey. Hope that’s okay with everyone.” She placed the tray on the coffee table and sat next to Patty.

  “How are you holding up?” she asked softly.

  Patty’s expression eased as she smiled at Yolanda, and I was struck by the rightness of their relationship. Old tensions unwound just a little as I finally found a way to accept that fact.

  Yolanda poured steaming cups of tea and passed them around.

  “Yolanda, can you think of anyone who would want to do this?” I asked. I took a tentative sip and felt unusually fortified by the strong, fragrant brew.

  “What? You mean kill the goats? Trash the tractors and push our baby into the bayou? No, no one comes to mind. I can’t imagine anyone being so vicious.”

  “Patty? I mean if you had to guess someone.”

  “No, no one. The poor goats had to have been poisoned and that means access to their food. Or water. We’ll have to test both of them and…and do an autopsy on one of the…them.”

  “Why would someone poison them? It’s crazy. Seems like someone wants to hurt you personally,” I mused.

  Patty sighed, pensive herself. “I’ve been tormenting myself about that. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to be so heartless to me…to us.”

  “Could it have been someone angry with your mom? Or even your dad?” I asked.

  “Maybe. But seems if that were so, John Clyde and I would remember some mention of it. We discussed that possibility early on, after the tractors, and neither of us can remember any suspicion of it when they were alive.”

  “She’s right, everyone seemed to love Dodson and Megs and thought it well-deserved,” John Clyde said. He was still standing at the bar, now idly stirring the amber liquid in his glass with an index finger.

  I sat thoughtful for half a minute. “Any competition? Whose business might y’all be stepping on?”

  “There’s only one other producer close in this area and that’s Taylor Morrissey,” John Clyde replied.

  Patty eyed her brother with a tolerant expression. “And you know Taylor would never allow this sort of crap to go on. He and Daddy were best of friends, had been just about forever. They even went to school together before Taylor moved away.”

  “Hell, I wouldn’t put it past him,” John Clyde disagreed. “When it comes to money, friendship is thin milk.”

  “John Clyde, why do you say such things, much less even think them?” Patty cried.

  He laughed softly at her angry scowl, as if thinking it much better than the sadness of a moment ago. “Mainly ’cause they’re true!” he replied.

  I sat back. “Well, we’ll have to investigate him. His competitor status definitely marks him as a suspect.”

  “Not necessarily,” Patty countered. “It could be one of his hands or anyone who hates us. Hey, maybe it’s Alejandro, our new hand. He scares me a little.”

  “Scares you? Why?” I leaned forward again, interested.

  “I don’t like the way he looks at me. It’s like he knows something I don’t. I don’t think he likes women in power,” she explained.

  “Patty,” John Clyde interjected, “there’s a lot of people like that in the world. He’s a good worker and I’ve had him checked out. You shouldn’t judge before you know him better.”

  Patty ignored John Clyde. “I have no idea who’s doing this. Why poison helpless goats? That has nothing to do with the hay or sugarcane business. I was going to sell the milk and the babies but decided to keep them as pets instead.”

  “It does appear to be a personal attack directed to you,” I reiterated quietly.

  John Clyde nodded his agreement and poured himself a second drink.

  Patty rose and tugged the hem of her T-shirt. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Those poor babies stumbling around like that. It just tears my heart open. John Clyde, I want you to get a sampling of t
hat water and food and we’ll take them over for testing first thing in the morning. Landa, has Ammie gotten back from the store?”

  “Yeah, when I was making tea. She’s working on dinner.”

  Patty smoothed her dark hair back from her face and smiled thinly at me. “Well, welcome, Miss Denni. Looks as though you got a big job ahead of you. Let me take you on into the guest room and get you settled. I’m afraid I’m not a very good host today.”

  “Believe me,” I replied. “I won’t hold it against you. It’s perfectly understandable given the circumstances.”

  I rose and took one more lingering look around the room, reminiscing. “Let me get my bag. It’s just outside.”

  Chapter Five

  Moving back through the kitchen after stowing my bag in the guest room off the downstairs back hallway, I took advantage of an unusual opportunity—finding Ammie Mose standing in one place—and gently grabbed the waist of the woman who was peeling vegetables at the sink.

  “Oh Lord, look what the cat done brought in,” the elderly woman exclaimed as she spun and spied me. She pulled me into a long, hard hug. “It is so good to see you. Miss Patty said you were coming to help us. I don’t know what you were thinking moving back up north like you did.”

  “It’s nice there. I like my job too. Alan Carter’s been good to me.”

  “But it’s so cold up there, baby. You need to be down here where it’s warm and all the people love you so much.”

  “Yeah, the people—and the bugs! I get eaten up every time I come down here. Look here.” I held out an arm, showing where a small red mark had risen just above my wrist.

  “Them skeeters, they love the sweet meat, don’t they?” Ammie chuckled at her own joke as she pulled a pinch of tiny thyme leaves and a few smaller basil leaves from herb pots growing in the larger of the two kitchen windows. She mixed them with something from a bottle, something that smelled a little like vinegar, until the substance was a creamy paste. She rubbed a small bolus of the paste into my mosquito bite. “Don’t scratch it now; you’ll ruin the magic.”