Lawrence coughed and looked from his wife to me.
“I’ll leave you folks with your daughter,” I said and stepped into the hall.
I went home and checked my answering machine. The only message was from Marilyn, telling me the locksmith had fixed the broken door and the alarm was functioning again. She also mentioned that two new floodlights had been installed, one in front and one in back, and she hoped we’d get some use out of them before the utility company cut off our service for nonpayment. I thought of calling Cyn, restrained myself, then gave in and called anyway. The phone rang five times, six, seven, and finally I gave up.
The house seemed lonelier than ever after the family scene I’d just witnessed. There had been yelling and threats, but they had all arisen from love.
I left quickly and went to the office. It was just growing dark, but the floodlight already lent an unreal air, as if I were entering a movie set. I unlocked the front door, punched in the code to deactivate the alarm, and locked the door behind me.
Everything seemed to be in order. I didn’t know why I was there, except that I didn’t want to be at home. I went to my desk and saw a pink message slip with Marilyn’s handwriting:
Call Mr. Fontenot.
On the slip was his telephone number. I started to dial, then thought I might be taking him from supper. I’d be up there tomorrow, anyway, so I’d make it a point to drop by again. What I wanted to talk to him about was better said in person.
I went back out to the sorting table and looked at the trays. A new pile of potsherds had been brought in, and I went through them in a desultory fashion, noting some with ground-up shell as temper and others with hatchwork designs engraved on the clay after firing. A late assemblage, likely from somewhere near the mouth of the Red River. I was still contemplating them when the phone rang.
I picked it up.
“Alan?” It was Cyn’s voice, throaty and strong, as if she were in the next room.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“At home. Look, did you call earlier?”
“Twenty minutes ago.”
“God,” she breathed, “it really was you.”
“You were there?”
“Don’t get mad, but I heard it ring, and I thought, What if it’s him? I wanted to talk to you so much. Then I thought, What if it isn’t him? I couldn’t stand finding out it was somebody else, that you hadn’t called at all. Pretty stupid, huh?”
“So finally you decided to make the call,” I said.
She sighed. “Well, I just wanted to tell you that you left something here.”
“What?”
“Give me a while to invent something. Oh, damn, Alan, I’m so messed up. I keep thinking about last night and I feel so stupid …”
“Don’t.”
“Can’t we just start over again?”
“No need. It’s okay, really.”
“I don’t guess you had any plans to come up this way.”
But before I answered, the little envelope with the note from a minister intruded:
Dear Cynthia Jane:
I know that this is a difficult time in your life …
And that wasn’t the only thing I needed to ask her. There was much more. I needed to ask her about old Timothy and about her husband. I needed to ask her if Doug had ever said anything about a young man with a smirk who appeared one day from nowhere and asked to see Doug’s father. I needed to know if Cyn Devlin, formerly Cynthia Jane Brown of the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, had found out about a payment made to the young man with a smirk and had traced it through her husband’s business dealings. And most of all, I had to know whether the man someone had found lying on the sand last year had been killed by the woman he had taken out of poverty.
How do you ask a woman if she’s a killer and if those close to her have conspired in one of the worst crimes of the century?
“I didn’t have any plans to do anything,” I said. “I’m pretty tired.”
“Sure.” There was fatalism in her tone.
“Look, Cyn …”
“What?”
“Nothing. I’ll call you soon.”
“Yeah. Good night.”
“Good night.” I hung up, overcome by feelings of helplessness. I sat there for a long time, and it was only when the dusk had changed to full darkness that I realized the little light on the answering machine was blinking.
Without thinking, I pressed the Replay button.
La Bombast’s voice whined forth in all its mechanical authority:
“Alan, this is Bertha Bomberg. I have some time free tomorrow and I’ve decided to drive up. I want to see the progress of the survey. Don’t do anything special. And I mean it. I just want to see an ordinary day in the field. You can expect me at your office at eight. Please don’t leave before I get there. Goodbye.”
I got up slowly, feeling drained. How much more good news could I take in one day?
EIGHTEEN
It was quarter to nine when the white Corps of Engineers car nosed into the curb across from my office. The crew, which had been milling around for the better part of an hour, looked at one another, then at the car. The driver’s door opened, and La Bombast dismounted.
Square-jawed and big-boned, with close-cropped black hair, she wasn’t bad looking if you’d been at sea for three years. Or if you liked ice sculpture.
“You really need a parking lot,” she said. “Like Pyramid.”
“Then why didn’t you people give Pyramid a contract last go-round?” I shot back without thinking.
“I’m sure they’ll reapply,” she said with a smile that dripped venom. She looked around at the crew.
“Are all these people waiting on me? You don’t have any lab work they could be doing?”
David spoke then. “They were expecting to leave at eight.”
“So was I. I was up at six. But things happen. I won’t bother to try to explain.” She was in her field clothes, pants that were a size too small for her ample hips and a safari shirt that screamed Banana Republic. “Now, should I ride with you?”
“Please do,” I said drily.
I waited until we were out of the city traffic to speak. “There’s a landowner problem,” I told her.
“You didn’t mention that.”
I shrugged. It was true that Cyn had agreed to let us pass, but I didn’t want to be in her debt until I could resolve the doubts that were plaguing my mind.
“We’re almost finished on the west side,” I said.
“Well, I want to see the site.”
I thought about the progress we’d hoped to make on the survey today. It would be better to get as much done as we could before the sun began to beat the crew down. And they’d be nervous as long as La Bombast was around.
“I thought I’d take you over to visit with Esmerelda at the West Feliciana courthouse,” I said. “Let you see what she’s finding about land ownership, then get a good lunch, and come back this afternoon and show you the site.”
Bertha gave me a doubting look.
“I really ought to …”
“And we need to clear a trail. There’re so many briars. Esme said there’s a good little place to get chicken-fried steaks …”
I was hoping I’d remembered her food preferences correctly.
“Well, if you think …”
“It’ll be an easier walk when we come back.”
“Alan, you’re not doing a number?”
“Bertha!”
There had to be a greasy spoon in St. Francisville that served chicken-fried steaks.
It took us thirty minutes to make the trip west to St. Francisville, a town two centuries old that perches on the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi and watches the river traffic come and go. The homes are antebellum and gracious, and the shops along Main Street testify to the power of the tourist industry. The plantations around it have names like Roselawn, the Myrtles, and Afton Villa.
We parked in front of the c
ourthouse, an ancient Gothic structure shaded by live oaks, and went in.
Esme was in the clerk’s office, her nose buried in a conveyance book.
She looked up and did a good job of hiding her surprise.
“Hello, Bertha. And Alan.”
I wondered what I’d have to do to make it up to her.
For the next half-hour Esmerelda patiently showed Bertha her notes and explained the chains of title for the two tracts. Bertha listened and asked some surprisingly cogent questions. I knew she respected Esmerelda both as a historian and a sister in arms.
Afterward I steered Bertha to the old Episcopalian cemetery across the street where she wandered happily among the graves, snapping pictures.
I excused myself to go back across the street, to use the facilities, but sought out Esme instead.
“Alan—” she began.
“I’m sorry. I’ll buy you lunch. Is there a place around here that serves chicken-fried steaks?”
Esme made a face. “I hope not.”
“What about old Timothy Devlin? Have you found anything out about him?”
“Him and his son both.” She waved some photocopies. “I have the probate records.”
My heart started to race.
“And?”
She shrugged. “Old Timothy owned a lot of land in this parish and some in Mississippi. I’d put his worth at about two and a half million when he died.”
Two million. How much would have been required to kill a president thirty-six years ago? A hundred thousand? A quarter of a million? A half?
“Look, Esme, did you find anything indicating he sold a lot of his land in 1963? Anything that showed he might have needed ready cash?”
Esme leaned on the counter, staring down her angular nose at me.
“Old Timothy Devlin was always buying and selling land. I didn’t see any pattern, but I wasn’t looking for any. You wanna tell me what this is about?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, you’d do better to look at his bank records for that time. Now his son, there’s not any mystery there.”
“Oh?”
“He was selling everything he could get his grubby little hands on from the day they put Timothy in the ground. The estate was divided between the two sons, and Douglas blew his in a few years. He even mortgaged the old home at one point, and it almost went at a sheriff’s sale.”
“And?”
It was her turn to shrug.
“On the day the mortgage came due, Douglas paid it off in cash. Two hundred and fifty-three thousand smackers.”
I blinked.
“Thanks, Esme.”
It all held together: the payoff to the assassin, the hiding of the money, then Douglas’s finding it later and using it to save himself. I thought of Clyde Fontenot and his strange machine.
It was a metal detector—I’d used them enough to know one when I saw it. But he’d had it hooked to a car battery, which made me believe he was trying to boost the power. So it wasn’t Oswald’s ghost Clyde Fontenot was concerned about, it was something more tangible. All the talk of ghost hunting was a convenient camouflage, because no one worried about a crazy man.
I thought of the pink message slip then.
Call Mr. Fontenot.
We ate at a place on Highway 61, just south of town, where the assistant clerk of court told me they served steaks the way Bertha liked. La Bombast seemed satisfied, cutting her meat into tiny portions as if it might go further that way. When we were done, I told Esmerelda goodbye, and we drove back over toward Jackson. But instead of heading up the narrower blacktop to the survey area, I kept going east. Bertha said nothing, perhaps because she was sated. Or maybe, I thought, she didn’t know the roads well enough. I turned into the Fontenot yard and went to the door.
There was nobody home.
I thought of walking around to the back, but there were no vehicles in the drive, so I gave up.
“What was that all about?” Bertha asked.
“An informant on local history,” I said.
“Oh. I’m glad you’re using them.”
“We try,” I said.
It was not quite two o’clock when we got out at the staging area.
Bertha squinted up at the glaring sun, started to say something, and thought better of it.
“I’ll take you over to the site now,” I told her, clipping my canteen to my belt.
She grabbed her safari hat out of the Blazer and stuck it down over her head. We headed downhill and when we got to the creek, I splashed through the water, then turned around on the sandbar.
“It’s not deep,” I said, calculating that it was just deep enough to drown her half boots.
Her mouth tightened, and then she followed, splashing like a water buffalo. I stopped on the other side and waited. But when she reached the bank, she kept going.
“Come on.”
She was taking it as a duel.
We reached the top of the hill, and she started for the woods and the cabin, but I pointed to my right.
“This way.”
We started along what was now a fairly well-marked path through the brush.
“I thought you had somebody clear this today,” she accused.
“They were supposed to.”
Ten minutes later we reached the site, and I set about explaining exactly what we had found and where. She listened intently, asked questions, and seemed reasonably satisfied. From somewhere in the distance I heard a shout and knew the crew was at work.
I unfastened my canteen and held it out to her.
“Water?”
“No. Thanks.”
I shrugged and took a long drink.
“Cold, just like it ought to be,” I said.
Her eyes darted to the canteen and she licked her lips.
“You sure?” I asked, thrusting the canteen her way again.
“I’m fine.”
I hooked the canteen back over my belt, and she started down the trail ahead of me. I caught her stopping several times to wipe the perspiration from her face and smiled grimly, then chastised myself for my thoughts. After all, the last thing I needed was for her to have heatstroke. It would be a logistical nightmare to drag her out.
It was three-thirty when we reached the place where the trail led up to the cabin. This time when I held out the canteen she accepted, though she was careful not to take more than a couple of gulps.
“So where did this murder you told me about take place?” she asked.
I smiled. So she was human after all.
“Right down there,” I said, pointing to the creek. “In fact, from what I’m told, we passed the spot.”
I explained how Doug Devlin had been found sprawled on the sand, just on the East Feliciana side, with his feet still in the water.
“Well, maybe his wife did it,” she said, and I felt a stirring of anxiety. “Most violence is in the family.”
“Yes.”
All at once I wanted to get away from here, get across the stream and up on the other side, to the vehicles.
But Bertha was clearly intrigued. “It was a while ago, you said?”
“Last year,” I told her.
She started to pick her way downhill.
“I don’t see why they couldn’t have found the person that did it. Especially with modern technology.”
“I don’t know,” I said, as she reached the bottom.
“They probably don’t have a scientific laboratory in these rural communities,” she opined.
“I think that’s a safe bet.”
She bent over to scoop up water with her hand, but most of the water leaked out.
“I’m going down here where it’s deeper,” she said, pointing upstream.
“Bertha, I’d be careful—”
“I can swim, for God’s sake.” She started across the sandbar toward a deeper pool in the distance.
“I’ve heard there’s quicksand,” I said, following.
“That�
�s ridiculous.” She reached the end of the bar and, to my surprise, stepped down into the water. I saw it rise to her calves.
“Bertha, there are holes. You could step into one that’s over your head.”
She turned to fix me with a glare.
“I’m the government,” she said.
I shrugged and watched her splash forward, the water rising up toward her waist.
“This is wonderful,” she said.
Little alarm bells were going off now, but mainly because she had stopped in her tracks, as if something was wrong.
“What’s that over there?” she asked, her voice suddenly shaky.
I looked past her to some bushes on the west side. Some red-colored cloth seemed to be caught in them, floating on the surface like an old laundry bag.
“Alan …”
I waded toward her, and when I glimpsed her face I saw it was ashen.
“What’s that?” she demanded.
“Stay here,” I said and started toward the far bank.
The water was to my waist now, and I could feel the stirrings of a current. It was the current that had brought the laundry bag here and nested it against the cut bank in the bushes.
Except that now I could see that it was no laundry bag, and my stomach began to do flip-flops.
I came up to the bank, the water receding to my knees, then my calves. I didn’t want to keep going, because I could see now what it was, and it wasn’t a laundry bag, as I’d hoped, but something else.
“Alan!”
I ignored her cry, my eyes fixed on the object under the bushes.
It was a human body, male, judging from the shortness of the hair. He was dressed in a long-sleeved red shirt and a pair of blue jeans. The ears projected from the head like flags.
I stared down, not wanting to touch him, knowing what I would find. Little ripples from my steps were still lapping at him, making him rise and fall in the water like a baby being rocked to sleep, and I thought for an instant that he might come loose from the bushes and float away.
“Alan!”
There was nothing else to be done. I reached down, grasped his shoulders, and turned him faceup. As I did, I stumbled in the water, and the body wrenched out of my grasp. As it floated downstream toward Bertha, I heard a shriek, and at the same time caught sight of the dead, fish-colored face.
Assassin's Blood (The Alan Graham Mysteries) Page 12