Family Issue

by Nat Burns

  Bone was beautiful, as usual, her amused sapphire eyes glowing and two-toned hair lustrous in the morning light. I wondered if she was thinking about the sensual, spiritual kiss we had shared the night before. My lips had now begun to crave hers. Did she crave me, as well? I would have asked her if given the opportunity.

  “Patty, can you find the insurance policies this morning? I’ll run them over to Robert this afternoon after the investigators tell me something,” John Clyde said at breakfast. He wasn’t eating much, but strong black coffee seemed to have become the lifesaving ring in his sea of hangover. His left eye had developed a painful-looking circle of purplish blue, and there was a scrape high up on his left cheek. His hair was askew and he was wearing an old paint-splattered T-shirt above faded, worn jeans. Clearly he was not in a caring mood.

  Patty nodded. I felt real concern for her well-being. Yolanda had been moved to the night shift for a few days and had not been able to be of much support. She was already asleep upstairs, leaving Patty to deal with the farm issues. Thank goodness, Ammie was there to help her with Kissy. Bone and I needed to have these problems solved before time to go home, for Patty’s peace of mind, if for nothing else. Though I knew I was finally over our relationship and its brutal end, I did still care for her. I looked over at her gaunt face and hollow eyes as she picked listlessly at her food.

  Impulsively, I reached out and laid one hand over hers. “Eat, Patty,” I said. “You’re gonna need lots of energy today.”

  She nodded again and ate one bite just to please me.

  Bone and Kissy, who had been working together to make faces on Kissy’s pancakes with raisins, bananas and bacon, looked at Patty. I could see concern etched into both their faces.

  “Enough of this,” Bone said. “The best way to get your lives back to normal is to smash the butt of the guy who is causing all this. It’s the only way. I think that Denni and I will work really hard today to see if we can’t get to the bottom of this.”

  “Hmph, about time,” John Clyde muttered. He rose and left the room, Human on his heels.

  Patty looked after him, a strange expression marring her features. “Asshole,” she whispered.

  Kissy giggled, and the air in the room seemed to lighten by several lumens. Patty smiled for the first time since the fire, and Bone and I looked at one another, our faces splitting into wide grins. Soon, the four of us were laughing like fools. Ammie came into the room with a carafe of fresh juice and stood staring disbelievingly. Soon she was smiling as well, and she carried the juice to the table, chortling merrily.

  “Well, if that don’t beat all,” she said as she took a seat at the table.

  After finishing breakfast, Bone pulled me into the sitting room. “Let’s snoop around a bit,” she said.

  “Sure,” I agreed, adding, “you know the fire inspector will be out there. And Officer Seychelles.”

  “Yeah, but I want to see where all the other stuff happened too.”

  “Ah, okay.”

  After donning good walking shoes, Bone and I checked in with Ammie, then took off, out across Price land. The sugarcane was waist high now, creating a striking deep green vista in fields off to our left. Fields of hay, fescue and alfalfa, just now beginning to top with wispy seed, created a lighter green carpet off to our right.

  “So tell me about Fortune Farm. You said it was a land grant?” Bone said as we meandered along the dirt road, heading toward the tractor barn.

  “Yeah, from the early US government. Dodson Price’s grandfather did some kind of heroic thing during the 1812 war and was given about two hundred acres of Cajun land for it. He had the house built and they’ve been here farming ever since.”

  “Wow. That’s pretty cool, I mean historically and all.”

  Bone was blushing and it wasn’t from the sun.

  “Yeah, I guess it is,” I agreed, studying her as we walked along.

  “I mean, I’m a city kid through and through, and if you have a little acre and house in the suburbs, you had something. I can’t imagine being responsible for two hundred acres and creating a livelihood from it. Just seems kinda…special somehow.”

  “Do you think that you’d like to live that kind of life?” I asked.

  She immediately shook her head. “Oh no, I don’t think so. I’m kinda suffering Starbucks withdrawal just being here two days. I like the notion of it, though, and am glad it still exists.”

  I frowned. “I do too, but I fear farmers will become more scarce as our scientists figure out more ways to manufacture food-like substances.”

  “Eww,” Bone grimaced.

  We had reached the tractor shed, and I started telling Bone about what the Prices had told me happened there. She walked away from me to examine the walls of the huge structure with its seemingly endless file of tractor bays and I found myself admiring her intriguing slimness. Her body was almost waiflike, but I knew how strong she was after seeing her in action during the shed fire.

  “Were all of them sugared?” she asked, one hand resting on a structural timber.

  “I think so. Why?” I responded.

  “That would take some time, Denni. There’s like almost twenty tractors here. Plus he was working at night. In the dark.”

  I scrubbed at my chin with one hand. “Seems like it would be someone who knows the place. And someone who could take his time.”

  “Like Jimmy Thibideaux,” Bone offered.

  “Or John Clyde,” I added recklessly.

  She turned to study me, her eyes serious and somber. “Surely you don’t mean that, Denni. He wouldn’t sabotage his own business.”

  “I don’t know. I’m beginning to have my doubts. He’s really changed. He used to just adore Patty, but now he treats her like crap.”

  “To what end, though?”

  I sighed. “I’m not sure. Just a hunch anyway. Probably wrong.” I paused, then continued. “Maybe he is tired of the headaches of managing this big an enterprise. Maybe he wants out and feels like this is the best way to do it.”

  We fell silent and moved off across a large patch of scrub land. “Over here is where Kissy fell in the quicksand,” I told Bone, pointing off toward the Sabine.

  “Can you take me there?” She seemed strangely animated.

  We walked silently across hummocks of weed grass until we came to a wide sinkhole. “This is it. She was running with the dog and she fell in. It was terrifying…wait.” I studied the surrounding land and realized this was not the same place. “This isn’t it. This is another one, a newer one.”

  “Really?” Bone looked around curiously. “That’s interesting.”

  A sort of intriguing sulphur smell hung over this land stretching south of the Price farmhouse. I had noticed it after we’d been walking for some time. The odor was markedly stronger in certain areas and nonexistent in others. There seemed to be no pattern to it. Here it was powerful.

  Sulphur. I wondered if there was a significance, and if so did it have any bearing on the threatening acts made against the Prices these past few weeks.

  The search for clues continued as Bone and I walked around several more sinkholes. But there was not even a footprint, certainly not anything that screamed it belonged to the person who was terrorizing the family.

  Hot, tired and a bit discouraged, we headed back toward the house. On the way, we stopped at Ruddy Bayou, where I explained to Bone what I had found there. The Brethren police had been there already and had taken the boards that had been spilled along the bank. By the powdery residue on the mashed reeds, we could also tell that some casts of the tire marks had been taken.

  “That poor kid,” Bone said as she stared at the dark, insidious water. “Glad she was able to get out of the water.”

  “Not easy with these slippery sides,” I said.

  Bone was studying the landscape with a pensive gaze. I was watching her mind work. She was calculating something in that big brain of hers.

  “What?” I queried.

 
She looked at me as though I had startled her. “What? Oh, nothing yet. I need to check something. Where to next?”

  I took her hand in mine as we made the long walk back to the Price home. We talked easily about our families and the aggravating idiosyncrasies that they had brought into our lives. And we talked about work. She shared with me, telling me about the time she’d been unable to save a mother and toddler from an abusive relationship that had turned deadly. She admitted to the nightmares that had kept her awake for weeks after their deaths. I found myself hating anything that would cause her grief, yet I could tell how important her work was to her. And I also learned about her strong sense of right and wrong. It was that strong sense that led to her becoming a cop more than a decade ago.

  “So why are you an insurance investigator?” she asked, trying, I believe, to turn the subject away from her grief.

  “Well, before Patty and I got together, I was down here visiting my Aunt Josephine, who ran a little dress shop over in the town of Sulphur, a little ways east of here. She’d just been diagnosed with cervical cancer, and my mom had brought me with her down for the summer to help Aunt Jo out. I had taken my college basics but wasn’t at all sure what I wanted to do with my life so figured why not stay with family for a while.” I shrugged.

  She watched me as we walked a few steps. “What does that have to do with being an investigator?” she asked finally.

  I laughed. “Sorry, I was woolgathering. I met Patty shortly after that. She was buying a wedding dress from my aunt, but she was raising hell about marrying a man she didn’t love because her parents expected it of her. I was the only one who spoke up and said, ‘Wait, you don’t have to marry him. Make your own decisions.’ That cemented our friendship. We fell in love after that.”

  I quieted and sighed. “I switched to a small college over in Lake Charles, and we eventually got a place together. I finally settled in to studying criminal justice and forensic science. Just because that’s what I was interested in. After we broke up, I moved back north, to the area where I grew up and interviewed around. Alan Carter’s firm hired me.”

  Bone nodded. “So how did her parents accept you after you ruined Patty’s marriage? It seems like you had a really good relationship with them.”

  I laughed, remembering my own surprise when Dodson and Megs had welcomed me into the family. “Turns out it was a misunderstanding of sorts. They thought Patty wanted to marry Henry, and they were supporting her in that. They didn’t really care. And the whole sexuality issue didn’t bother them either. They just wanted Patty happy.”

  “Wow,” Bone said hollowly. “You don’t find that kind of unconditional love much. Not what I would have expected, that’s for sure.”

  “Yep, tell me about it.” I went on to share my own coming-out story and my parents’ reaction and encouraged her to share hers. Watching her speak, I badly wanted another kiss, but I was content to explore her fascinating mind for now. Getting to know the many nuances of Bone was becoming my new hobby.

  Climbing the slight rise along the road toward the house, we veered right and ended up at the location where the shed had once stood. Now it was just a blackened shell of wood and melted fiberglass. John Clyde, Seychelles and several other men, most likely the insurance inspectors, scurried about the wreckage. Patty was there as well, and she greeted us absently as we arrived.

  “Have they found anything yet?” I asked.

  “Accelerant. Most likely kerosene. They found a puddle at the back and also by the door. It was an amateur job, with no effort to try and disguise what they were doing. He knew enough to know that the chemicals would explode when exposed to enough heat, though.” Her eyes were haunted as she watched her brother.

  “At least insurance will cover the loss,” I offered in an effort to cheer her up.

  “That’s something,” she said, nodding.

  “Patty?” Bone moved closer. “That storm you had a few years ago, did it do major damage to the land?”

  Patty studied Bone. “How do you mean?”

  “Structurally, I mean.”

  Patty gave the question a good bit of consideration. “Well, it cleared out a lot of undergrowth from the bayou, opened up a lot of new waterways. The rain washed away some of our topsoil, sending it right into the Sabine. Why do you ask?”

  “Just an idea I had. I’ll let you know if I come up with something.” Bone looked toward the house. “Denni, I want to do a little research. I think I’ll go on back to the house.”

  “Wait, I’ll go with you.”

  I smoothed a palm along Patty’s back. “I’ll check on Kissy for you, okay?”

  She nodded. “Sure. Thanks. I won’t be too much longer.”

  On the way back we paused to look over the fenced goat lot just one more time. Nothing. Just a waste of time and energy.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I found Kissy at the dining table coloring in a huge activity book. She looked up at me when I came into the room and I could see the keen disappointment on her face when she realized it wasn’t either of her mothers. Her bottom lip even quivered before she lowered her head and resumed her task.

  “Where’s Bone?” she asked.

  “Using her computer,” I replied. “Can I color some?”

  She lifted her eyes and studied me a long moment as if making sure I wasn’t going to patronize her in any way. She sighed deeply and shoved a similar book toward me. “You can color in the fairy one. It’s got zoo animals in it.”

  I took a seat across from her and opened the book. Tinker Bell and all her fairy friends had gone to the zoo for the day. Flipping through, I saw that one of them had gotten lost. Her friends rallied and rescued her. How apt, I thought.

  I selected a picture and reached for the yellow crayon. “How are you holding up, Little Bit?” I asked. “I know this is a really rough time for all of you.”

  “Yeah,” she said softly, and I watched, my heart breaking, as a tear slid from the end of her nose onto the page she was coloring. “I’ve been a really good girl,” she said softly. “I don’t know why all these bad things are happening to us.”

  “Oh, honey, this has absolutely nothing to do with you. Nothing, I promise. I don’t know why all these bad things are happening either,” I replied slowly, my inexperience with children daunting me. How much could a four-year-old understand?

  “It’s ’cause of the oil,” Kissy explained, tapping her full bottom lip with the end of a green crayon.

  I chuckled and shook my head. “You shouldn’t listen so much to what Miss Ammie says,” I cautioned. “She does carry on so.”

  Kissy eyed me with a superior air. “Wasn’t Miss Ammie, was Uncle. He was talking with the fat man the day we were at the toy store. The fat man said they weren’t going to wait forever, and Uncle said the Price oil wasn’t going anywhere. Do we have oil, Miss Denni?”

  Sudden sourness roiled in my stomach. Was this insanity all about oil? Greed? At gut level, I believed Kissy. Why would the child lie? My head, however, played devil’s advocate, knowing that John Clyde would never be involved in anything that would hurt his sister or injure the family in any way.

  “No, I don’t think so, Kissy. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding,” I answered absently.

  “Aren’t you going to color the giraffe?” Kissy was studying me with intense curiosity.

  I smiled, even as my mind whirled, and I bent my head over the coloring book. “Pass me that orange one, will you?”

  * * *

  “It’s oil,” Bone said some time later. I’d found her in the sitting room, bent toward the laptop open on the coffee table.

  I stared at her open-mouthed. “How do you mean?”

  “Rita, that last storm, it somehow opened a vault of oil in the soft shale bedrock below this area,” she explained.

  I sat across from her. “But that was years ago. I was here then and we didn’t see any oil.”

  “Right. But it doesn’t work like that. Fro
m what I’m reading here, Rita’s flooding, when it receded, undermined the bayou and it’s been sinking ever since. That’s what the quicksand is all about and those little saltwater pools inland. Also that sulphur smell. Oil is infiltrating the land, seeping up from that vault.”

  I sat back. “Oh, my god. Now it all makes sense. And Isaac in 2008 probably made it worse. So what…you think that John Clyde might be trying to get out of the farming business and into the oil business?”

  She shrugged dramatically. “I don’t know. You tell me. I definitely think this warrants a conversation with the man. We need to find out what he’s up to, if anything.”

  I thought a long moment as Bone studied her computer screen. “I think we should talk to Patty first. She needs to be on the same page we are about this.”

  “Okay by me,” Bone said. “But explain to me, though, why sabotaging the farm would help in any way.”

  “So he could give up on it. The business has always been amazingly successful, and I’m sure he couldn’t just decide one day to walk away from it, even for something as profitable as oil. Too many contracts, too many commitments.” I was angry at the idea of John Clyde’s subterfuge. He should have been man enough to come out and admit what was going on.

  “Snake,” Bone said, mirroring my thoughts.

  “You know, I was just talking to Kissy. She told me that John Clyde had been talking to a fat man about oil. I bet that was Taylor Morrissey. That jerk lied to me, as well.” I was really angered now.

  Bone laid a calming palm on my arm. “Don’t get mad, sweetness.” She smiled at me in a way that made my anger fade and my heart swell. “We’re not one hundred percent sure of any of this. It just makes sense, is all. We could be dead wrong.”

  “I’ll tell you who will be dead if Patty finds out that John Clyde hurt that little girl.” I paused. “Or was responsible for it somehow.” I was still having a hard time believing that John Clyde was involved in this, though it sure went a long way toward explaining his drinking and mood changes. Probably guilt, I thought.