Relics (17 page)

Faye shook her head, conceding his point. “So we don’t know anything for sure, except that Jimmie was nearby on the night of the fire.”

“We know more than that,” Joe said. “We know he didn’t tell anybody that he was there, or what he saw, if he saw anything. Anyone who’s talking, I mean. And we know he got a phone call that upset him, but no one’s come forward to say they were the one that placed the call.”

Faye realized that, once again, she’d made a mistake that she’d vowed not to repeat—underestimating Joe’s gifts of perception.

“The sheriff will be able to track down the call. It may take a day or two, but he’ll get it done.” Adam shot Joe an appraising look. “Joe, I notice that you look more than you talk. Have you seen anything lately that I might want to know about?”

“That’s why I came over here with Faye. I wanted to tell you about something I heard. You see that pothole right near the bridge?” Joe said, pointing with his chin. “Can’t nobody drive through here without hitting it. I’ve almost gotten to know who’s coming into town just by the rattle of their car when they hit that pothole.”

“You have the ears of a whitetail deer,” Adam said. “Or maybe the ears of a deer hunter. I’d like to hunt with you sometime, soon as gun season starts.”

“From the sound of things,” Joe said, “I’d say it’s always gun season around here.”

Adam chuckled. “Not for me. I like to play by the rules. So tell me why you’re interested in the sound that pothole makes, before I get distracted and start talking about bow hunting.”

“I heard Jorge’s delivery van hit that pothole first thing yesterday morning, and again when he came home last night. The thing is, it was loaded different in the morning than it was in the evening.”

“I’m surprised it’s loaded at all. He only drives it two or three times a week, for his part-time delivery job. It wouldn’t make sense for him to drive a loaded truck home and let the goods sit.”

“No, it wouldn’t. And that’s not what he does. In the morning the truck was carrying a heavy load. In the evening, it was empty.”

Adam rattled his keys in his pocket. “What in hell was he hauling out of the settlement?”

Joe shrugged.

Faye asked, “Can you get a warrant to search the truck?”

“Based on what? Nobody’s reported anything missing. Is it a crime to clean out your truck?”

Faye and Joe were still puzzling over that observation when Brent walked past, carrying a box of books. Laurel walked beside him and she interrupted her slow progress to stop and raise a hand off one crutch to wave at Faye, Adam, and Joe. Brent, both hands occupied in carrying the large box, merely nodded in their direction as he and Laurel continued on their way.

Joe gave a disgusted grunt. “I told Laurel that I’d help her with those, but I slam forgot.”

“Looks like Brent’s taking care of things,” Adam said.

Joe didn’t answer. He stomped over to the picnic table and joined Ronya and Elliott.

“I guess I’m not the first person to underestimate Joe,” Adam said.

“Neither was I,” Faye admitted, “but I can’t seem to quit doing it. I wonder what Jorge is hauling out of the settlement. Garbage?”

“People have been throwing their garbage in the woods around here for years. They’re not going to suddenly start paying Jorge to haul it out of the settlement for them. It’d be too much trouble for lazy Jorge to be driving his own garbage to the dump two or three times a week. His employer can’t be shipping things out of the valley. It’s not exactly an industrial park, full of manufacturers. I don’t have a clue what he might be hauling.”

Adam reached in the truck window and grabbed a wrinkled fax off the passenger seat. “I don’t have a clue about much of anything, not yet, but I do have this lab report on the chemicals found in Carmen’s pillow. And I haven’t found Carmen’s briefcase yet. We’re definitely investigating an arson, and possibly murder.”

Faye nodded her head in silence. There was no real surprise. This was what she had feared; this was what her instincts had been telling her. Then she looked up at Adam. “Who’s ‘we’?”

“Walk with me. This wind is too cold to be standing still.”

They walked in a slow circle around the blackened timbers of the burned-out house. Adam’s eyes roamed over the ruins as he talked, always looking for clues he might have missed during his first hundred tours of the site.

“I’m not so sure I’m doing the right thing—sharing information about this investigation with a layperson.”

“Mama told me that Daddy always said that it’s everybody’s business when an innocent person is in danger. He was a soldier, so he would know.”

“And what if the innocent person is you?”

“I’ve always tried to be strong, for him. I like to think that he’s proud of me.”

“I suspect he is. Look. I’m not so stupid that I haven’t noticed that it was you who saw Jimmie doing something real strange a few days before he died. And it was you who noticed that Carmen’s briefcase went missing on the day she passed. Two people are dead, and you’re doing a better job of tracking down clues than I am. I just wonder how you do it.”

“You think—” She stopped walking so suddenly that momentum carried Adam forward a couple of steps before he turned to face her. “Surely you don’t think I had anything to do with causing the fire or the wreck or Jimmie’s death.”

Adam put a hand on the small of her back and nudged her forward. “Walk. I told you it was too cold to stand still. No, I don’t think you’re a mad arsonist. And you weren’t anywhere near that tower when Jimmie fell. I just think your profession makes you a born investigator. I don’t know anybody else who would have thought to ask where Carmen’s briefcase was. Well, except maybe me, but I didn’t know she’d brought her work home with her that night, so I couldn’t ask the question. No, I think the Sujosa have trouble here in the settlement. Maybe you can help me find out what it is.”

Faye looked at the stark contrast between Adam’s fair skin and his reddish freckles and brows and lashes and hair. One of her grandmother’s sayings leapt to mind.
That boy looks like he swallowed a silver dollar and broke out in pennies.
She looked at the ground until the urge to giggle passed. “Why do you assume that the Sujosa are at the root of all the trouble? I can hardly believe that the white folks in Alcaskaki have always gotten along with their brown neighbors. Maybe they see the Rural Assistance Project pouring money into the settlement, and they think the Sujosa are getting rich. Maybe they’re trying to do something to stop it, or to get a piece of the action.”

It was Adam’s turn to look at the ground. “Honestly? I think racial relations in these parts improve all the time. Some of our older folks have rethought their attitudes, and we bury a few unreconstructed bigots every year. As for people our age and younger—we went to school with people of all colors. We’ve watched them on TV and idolized them on the playing field. I don’t see how any of us could possibly judge people on the color of their skin, not any more.”

Having been brown in America all her life, Faye had no trouble seeing how people of her generation might still judge people by their race, but she admired Adam’s goodheartedness. His lack of cynicism might hamper his effectiveness in law enforcement, but Faye could help him out in that respect. She had cynicism to spare.

“I was in junior high when the state finally closed the settlement school and bused the Sujosa to Alcaskaki,” Adam continued. “It was hard at first, but kids will like each other if they’re given a chance. I played baseball all the way through school. Brent pitched, I played shortstop, and Leo held down first base. Our team won the state championship twice during our high school years. We were like brothers.”

Their winding route had taken them around the church, and the pale green of the bunkhouse showed through the bare branches of an oak tree. Laurel and Brent were standing at the front door, wiping their feet before entering the house.

Faye found her eyes drawn to the back of Brent’s head. An inch or two of dark hair showed beneath the fashionable streaks that had made him into a blonde. She noted absently that he needed to touch up his roots—until her attention was caught by a swath of white hair that stood out clearly against his rather dark natural hair color. A depigmented area like those common to the Sujosa was clearly visible on the back of his head.

She tried to picture Brent without his artificially lightened hair. Suddenly, he didn’t look like a brunette Caucasian who’d been playing in a peroxide bottle. He looked like a Sujosa who was trying to hide from who he was.

Adam, seeing the direction of her gaze and the shock on her face, said, “He didn’t tell you, did he?”

“That son of a bitch.”

Adam looked shocked by the vehemence of her response and, for a second, she was shocked herself. She and Brent had enjoyed a couple of conversations and one date. Why should she expect him to spill his life history to her when they were just getting acquainted?

Because he’d had more than one perfect opportunity and he’d blown them all, that’s why. When she’d expressed discomfort at being the only non-white in a crowd of Alcaskakians, he’d kept his mouth shut. When he’d pontificated on how the twentieth century was dead, and racism with it, he’d neglected to share his personal experience of being brown in all-white Alcaskaki. And, worst of all, when he spoke of his work, he referred to the Sujosa in a sterile, scientific, third-person kind of way, never once admitting that he cared about the Sujosa’s health and their future because they were his people. Faye fairly shook with rage.

“Brent—”

Faye interrupted him. “He said he grew up in Alcaskaki, but he’s a Sujosa, isn’t he?”

Brent and Laurel disappeared into the house before Adam spoke again. “His mother came from the settlement, but his father was a white man from Alcaskaki. Does it matter?”

“Of course not. But I don’t enjoy being with people who are ashamed of what they are.”

“Brent chose to come home to Alcaskaki. He gives the Sujosa settlement thousands of dollars in free work every month. Everybody that lives here knows who his mama was. Maybe he meant to tell you, but it slipped his mind.”

“I don’t buy that.” She pointed to her own dark-skinned face. “Any fool would know that I, more than most people, would be interested in knowing about a heritage as rich as Brent’s. And he had plenty of chances.”

“His skin’s almost as dark as yours. Maybe he thought his heritage was obvious.”

His calm tone didn’t do much to soothe her anger. “I thought he’d been hanging out in tanning booths.” She allowed her anger to spill over onto Adam. “I notice that you’re mighty quick to defend Brent. So you’re good buddies?”

“Hell, no. More like good rivals. I didn’t like it when he beat me out for valedictorian. I didn’t like it when he made the All-State team and I didn’t.” He looked at the freckled backs of his clenched hands. “I damn sure didn’t like having to compete with him for a pretty girl’s attention. And I don’t like having to do it now.”

It took ten seconds of baffled silence for Faye to realize he was talking about her. “I spent one evening at a ballgame with the man.”

“Women buzz around Brent like yellow jackets around a beer can. I’ve learned not to fight that.”

“Well, listen up and take notes. I’ve got a string of stitches across the back of my head. I’m having nightmares about fires and smoke and dying friends. And, last night, I watched a mother cry over her dead son. I don’t think it’s possible to feel less romantic than I do right now. But when this is over, I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”

***

There was a time when a man could get away with saying, “You’re cute when you’re angry,” but that time had passed before Adam was born. He might have said it anyway if Faye had stuck around instead of stalking off to watch her field team dig in the dirt, but God had saved him from his own honest mouth.

Son, there ain’t no call to tell folks every last thought that runs through your head
, his father had said more times than he could count. Maybe he had finally, at the venerable age of thirty-seven, learned to listen to the old man. His father had also warned him not to waste his time on stupid women, when the smart ones were so handy to have around.

Faye sure looked handy in those olive drab cargo pants, the kind with extra pockets sewn onto the legs at about knee level. All Faye’s pockets looked to be full of things like tools and brushes and measuring tapes. You could go on a spur-of-the-moment picnic with a woman like that. Between the two of you, somebody would have a map or a roll of paper towels stashed in the glove compartment. And if you had need of a bottle opener or a corkscrew, one of you would have a pocketknife that sported the necessary tool.

He could see that she’d misinterpreted his frustration over having to compete with handsome, rich, and dashing Brent. He’d been trying to tell her that when she’d seen past Brent’s façade, he would be there, but he’d pissed her off with his awkwardness. The lady had not dropped a dainty handkerchief; she had thrown down a gauntlet. When life returned to normal, she’d be waiting for him to ask her out. She had said as much. She didn’t, he had noticed, say that her answer would be “Yes.”

Chapter Eighteen

Faye was used to the all-out fatigue born of physical labor. Hour after hour of stooping, digging, lifting, and hauling would sap anyone’s endurance. Laboring until the large muscles in her arms and calves and thighs trembled with overwork, then forcing them to work some more, fed her fierce and competitive drive. Other archaeologists were bigger and stronger, but none of them were tougher.

She sat at the picnic table, digging through a pile of project paperwork and wishing it were a simple, uncomplicated pile of dirt. Keeping up with field notes and time sheets and triplicate acquisition forms made her weary in a way that physical labor never had.

Elliott, Joe, and Ronya were washing up a big pile of equipment. Their cleanup of Raleigh’s site was, for practical purposes, complete. The backdirt was back in the excavations it had come from, so it technically wasn’t backdirt any more. The site had been restored to a safe condition—nobody would be breaking a leg by stepping in an open hole, and time would send a fresh layer of leaves to cover the disturbed soil.

Faye was cold sitting out in the open, where the afternoon wind could get at her. She should be working in her office, which had two conveniences that would make her work go easier: a heater and a phone. Some of the university forms required her to provide budget codes, but nobody had seen fit to give her a list of the codes, and she needed to track them down. The lack of cell phone service in the settlement made it impossible to communicate with the world while working in the field.

Suddenly, her busy hands stopped straightening papers and let them drop to the table. She stared blankly into the distance for a moment, then rose excitedly and looked around. Where was Adam?

His truck hadn’t moved, but he was nowhere to be seen. She hurried toward the burned-out house. She knew he was drawn to it, despite all the hours he’d spent ferreting out its secrets, and she’d bet money that he was there. If anyone understood obsessive behavior, it was Faye. And there he was, walking up the path.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, which told her that her consternation showed on her face.

“Jimmie’s cell phone,” she said. “We don’t have to wait for the police to track down whoever it was that called him at the library yesterday afternoon. The answer is in the cell phone’s memory. Was it found?”

Adam shook his head. “No, there was no phone on the body.”

“You don’t suppose it dropped out of his pocket when he fell? I remember that his jacket was torn.”

“Could have. I’m sure the sheriff will send a deputy to look for it. Tell you what, though. It’ll be a nice trick if anybody can find it in that mess of kudzu. I wonder if there’s enough metal in that phone to—”

“I know somebody who can find it,” Faye said. She took a few steps toward the shed where her crew was working and bellowed, “Joe!”

Joe’s long-legged lope brought him to her side in seconds. Faye had seen him project the erratic flight of a fluttering bird accurately enough to drop that bird with a stone arrow shot from a handmade bow. Here was a twenty-first century use for his Neolithic talents.

“Joe, if Jimmie’s cell phone dropped out of his pocket when he fell—”

“Might’ve dropped out if he hit the tower struts on the way down. Or a tree branch.”

The thought made Faye cringe. “Either way. Do you think you could find it?”

“Well, there’s only so many places it could be.”

Faye looked first at Joe, then at Adam, and said, “Gentlemen. Shall we take a hunting trip?”

***

Joe stood high on a bluff overlooking the Broad River, beneath a mammoth tower, looking for a needle in a kudzu patch. Faye hadn’t said why she wanted him to fetch Jimmie’s cell phone out of the wilderness it might have fallen into, but he’d told her he would try.

He began his search by standing at the base of the tower, looking toward the spot where Jimmie’s body had landed. He looked up at the tower. It rose like a weapon into the sky, making nature’s trees look squat and soft. In his mind’s eye, he could clearly see the arc Jimmie must have taken, plunging downward like an eagle diving for sunfish. If the phone had fallen straight down, it was only a matter of hunting through the undergrowth around the base of the tower until they found it. But if the phone had bounced off the tower struts or a tree, the search area would be much broader.

Joe’s chest tightened when he thought of Jimmie’s fatal fall. It sickened him to think that the cell phone, and the information stored in it, was far more likely to have survived its flight. Its hard plastic shell had been designed to shrug off severe impacts in a way that the human body was not.

He walked to the thicket of loblolly pines where Jimmie was found, a haven of green in the gray winter landscape. He doubted that the phone would have nested in the pines’ high flexible branches. The first branch it struck would have bent under its weight then, like a medieval catapult, flung it in an unpredictable direction, where it might have encountered a second tree limb, and even a third. It would eventually have hit the ground, but finding it would take some time. Having set in his own mind the most likely places where the phone might have landed, Joe divided the area to be canvassed between Faye, Adam, and himself. They began walking the ground, inch by inch.

Two hours later, dwindling daylight forced them to give up the search and head back to the bunkhouse.

***

The promise of a damp, freezing night sent Faye to Hanahan’s in hopes that Jenny stocked longjohns and flannel pajamas. Laurel went with her, and Faye was glad of the company, especially when the presence of Amanda-Lynne and Irene brought the evening chill right into the store. Faye felt her throat freeze shut. What could she possibly say to them?

As it turned out, any conversation that Faye or the other sympathetic souls in the store might have offered would have been extraneous, anyway. Amanda-Lynne talked enough for everyone. She chattered about how Charles had been cooped up in the house for weeks because the cold bothered his rheumatism. She confided that she’d be glad when spring came, because it surely was a trial to live with a man who never left the house. She said that she’d left a chicken stewing in the crockpot, since Charles enjoyed chicken soup in the wintertime.

Faye knew that everyone in earshot was gritting their teeth in anticipation of hearing her speak of Jimmie in the same way. If Amanda-Lynne were to start musing over which of the colleges fighting over Jimmie should be the lucky one to win him as an entering freshman, Faye knew that her bottled-up tears would overflow. As it turned out, she was able to keep a solid grasp on her composure, because never—not once—did Amanda-Lynne mention her dead son.

Jenny stemmed the flow of words by turning to Irene, who had stood silent through Amanda-Lynne’s torrent of nonsense. “Have you slept at all, honey?”

“No, but I’m used to that.”

Amanda-Lynne chimed in with an explanation that no one needed. “Irene’s mama is real sick, and it’s scrambled her normal day-and-night rhythms. Sometimes she’s up all the night long, and that means Irene’s up, too. She has to be, because if Kiki wakes up and there’s no one to stop her, she’ll wander the woods in her nightgown.”

“The whole settlement lives in fear that we’ll find Kiki at the bottom of Great Tiger Bluff one morning,” said Jenny with a sigh.

“Irene gave up her chance to go to college to take care of her mother, you know,” Amanda-Lynne said, putting a hand on the girl’s shoulder.

There was an awkward silence; even Jenny had nothing to say.

But Irene stepped smoothly in. “That’s right,” she said, taking Amanda-Lynne’s hand and leading her toward the door, past the stricken bystanders. “I take care of her. And I’ll take care of you now, too.”

The door closed behind them, leaving the store under a pall of silence.

Excerpt from an Interview with Irene Montrose, October 30, 2004

Interviewer: Carmen Martinez, Ph.D.