Relics (23 page)

They sat beside each other at the table where she taught the children. Joe didn’t even try to force his knees under it. He just scooted his chair away from the table and cocked it back on two legs, like he did when he was nervous. Laurel spread several papers out in front of them, and every one of them was covered with tiny type that spelled out words like “auditory processing” and “dysgraphia” and “language-based learning disability.” This didn’t look good.

Laurel squinted her eyes at his face and swept the papers into a folder, tucking it into a desk drawer. “Never mind these,” she said. “What they tell me is that you are a very smart man whose brain is wired differently from other people’s brains.”

He let the chair’s front legs drop to the floor. “I don’t know much about the ‘very smart’ part, but I sure do know I’m wired different from regular people. Tell me something I don’t already know.”

“Your eyes and ears don’t communicate with your brain the same way mine do. I’d guess you use a whole different part of your brain to do some things. Maybe that’s why you’re more aware of things like birdsong and weather signs than the rest of us, but letters and numbers make you nuts. We can work with that, Joe.”

“Sometimes I just feel so stupid.” Hell. He hadn’t really meant to speak of the hateful thing that nested so close to his heart.

“That word—‘stupid’—makes me angry. You’re an intelligent man with a fine mind. You can’t help being put together differently.”

“I can read quicker since you gave me this,” he said, reaching in his pocket for the piece of paper he used to cover the line of type underneath the one he was trying to read.

“I know some tricks that will help you with math, too.”

“I thought of you this morning when I was making biscuits,” he blurted.

She looked at him with a question on her calm little face, but she didn’t ask him what in the world he was blathering about.

“I needed to make a lot of biscuits to feed all those people, but I didn’t have quite four cups of flour,” he explained, “so I couldn’t multiply the other ingredients by four. I had to figure out how much shortening to use with three-and-two-thirds cups of flour, and how much milk. I’m not sure I did the math quite by the book, but the biscuits turned out all right.”

She smiled. “They were delicious. They didn’t even need butter. Would you show me how to make them sometime?”

“If you’ll let me take you to a movie.” Joe was flabbergasted to hear the words come out of his mouth. He didn’t even know if Alcaskaki
had
a movie theater.

“I’d love that. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Is that good for you?”

Joe had been thinking of that very night, but he could probably use the extra twenty-four hours to locate the nearest theater. It had also occurred to him that neither he nor Laurel had a car and that he, himself, didn’t even have a driver’s license. Perhaps the extra day would give him time to figure out a way to get them both to Alcaskaki while still retaining his dignity. There was no way he was going to ask Faye for a ride.

Laurel put her left palm on the table, pushing herself toward a standing position as she reached for her crutches. She kept her eyes on Joe, rather than looking at what she was doing, and her fingertips barely brushed their metal shafts. Both crutches clattered to the floor. Laurel, thrown off-balance, nearly went with them, but Joe stretched out a hand and grasped her by the waist.

She clenched her fists. “Oh, what a stupid thing to do. I—”

“I thought that word ‘stupid’ made you angry. You can’t help it if your feet are crooked, and I can’t help it if my brain’s wired up wrong. We do the best we can.”

She looked up at him with eyes as innocent as a fawn’s. He had no choice but to lean down and kiss her. Her breath was as fresh as a sea breeze playing through the trees of his island home on Joyeuse.

Chapter Twenty-five

It wasn’t the first time that Faye had found a treasure buried in public records, and it wasn’t the first time that she’d looked around a shabby county office and wondered what skeletons would turn up if somebody took the time to go through every last file, page by page. But she had a specific task at hand that afternoon.

The clerk had located what she was looking for with only the usual amount of talk and flourish. Faye sat now at a small desk alone with her findings. Attached to the deeds for Amanda-Lynne’s and DeWayne’s properties were identical photocopies of Sam Leicester’s will. At the bottom of both copies was a gorgeous nineteenth-century signature. Today’s stylishly illegible signatures would not have gone over well in those days, when the ability to write was a mark of breeding.

The distinctive curl of Mr. Leicester’s capital “L” caught her eye. Patting herself on the back for remembering to bring a magnifying glass, she admired the man’s penmanship for a moment before recognizing the obvious. This signature didn’t match the one on the will she’d gotten from Dr. Bingham.

She laid the three wills side by side: Bingham’s version, Amanda-Lynne’s copy, and DeWayne’s copy. The differences were subtle but real. Bingham’s photocopy was different from the other two, but that wasn’t so surprising for a document written by a man without access to a photocopier or carbon paper. He had probably written out several copies of his will—one for his records, one for each of the children, and one for the court that would settle his estate. Faye steeled herself to do a line-by-line comparison.

The first page tracked perfectly. The same words were on the same lines. At first glance, they were nearly as alike as photostatic copies, until Faye’s magnifying glass teased out the inconsistencies that were the hallmark of anything made by a human hand.

The second page, however, was a different matter. The handwriting on Bingham’s copy took up more of the page, which seemed unlikely since it said the same thing, word for word. Or it should have. Shifting her magnifier back and forth between the pages, she quickly determined what part of the text was missing. All references to the “Injun” mound, the homestead, and the cemetery had been removed. Instead, the reader was instructed to
Begin at the source of Leicester’s Creek, travel downstream three hundred feet, then travel due south until reaching Raccoon Branch.

Faye pondered the consequences of removing all references to landmarks other than bodies of running water, which were notorious for changing their course. This could explain why Amanda-Lynne and DeWayne both thought that the property line ran between the homestead site and the mound, when one of the original wills clearly stated that it didn’t. The current property boundaries were almost certainly wrong.

A professional thrill went through her when she realized that Amanda-Lynne owned the mound as well as the homestead site and the cemetery. She was going to be able to excavate where she had intended, after all. DeWayne might fuss, but what did it matter, really, which piece of worthless property was his? All of the Sujosa were land-poor, paying taxes on land they couldn’t farm and couldn’t sell. And Faye’s romantic side liked the idea of restoring the property boundaries to the places Sam Leicester/Lester intended all those years ago.

But as she ran through the rest of the document comparison, her ardor cooled. There was nothing else of interest—no lost inheritance, no buried treasure—no motive for the murders of Carmen Martinez and Jimmie Lavelle.

***

Back at the settlement, Faye whistled tunelessly as she threw her coat on the back of her desk chair. Despite her lack of success, she had enjoyed her time digging through historical photographs, looking for cool stuff like old homesteads and older mounds. It was probably a form of mental illness, but it was a cheaper and healthier addiction than, say, alcohol or nicotine. When Adam spoke, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Sorry to scare you. You might want to think about putting a lock on that door.”

“Jenny says the lock on the outside door is good enough, thank you very much. She also says that she keeps an eye on everybody in her store, which cuts down the shoplifting problem significantly, and she’d know the second anybody opened my office door.”

“Well, here I am.”

“Jenny probably thought you were safe, being a lawman and all.”

“Maybe so.” He sank into the desk chair that had been Carmen’s and looked at her with a face that said
I have news. Ask me.

She cooperated. “What’s up?”

“Joe and his superhuman talents found the phone. He looked for you, but came to me when he couldn’t find you.”

“I knew he could do it. He was probably just too polite to ask us to get out of his way yesterday. Was there anything useful on it?”

Adam rocked the chair backward. “Useful? Only a text message saying, ‘Meet me at the cell phone tower.’” He let the chair flop back to its default position. “Well, that’s not exactly what it said. It was something more like, ‘I can’t go on like this. Meet me at the tower to say good-bye.’ Signed—”

“Irene?” Adam nodded, and Faye’s mouth went dry. “Have you talked to her?”

“The sheriff and I went over there straight away. She says she didn’t send it, but when we asked her to produce her cell phone, she couldn’t find it.”

“Do you believe her?”

“Maybe. The poor kid seems torn up with honest grief. But she has admitted that sometimes she and Jimmie went up to the tower—to be alone together, she said. She says they stopped it months ago, when their parents found out and raised holy hell. Maybe she was overwhelmed—God knows she doesn’t have an easy life—and sent the message. Then maybe she chickened out and Jimmie fell by accident. Or maybe someone stole her cell phone and she was never there at all.” He ran a hand through his ruddy hair. “I do know one thing: whoever used Irene’s cell to send a text message to Jimmie’s cell wasn’t here in the settlement at the time.”

Faye nodded. “Because it’ll be months before they get cell coverage here.” She knew what he was thinking—she was thinking it herself. Who had been in Alcaskaki Wednesday afternoon? Irene was there, working at the dry cleaners. Jorge was God-knew-where, driving his delivery van. Brent could have been in his Alcaskaki office or his settlement clinic. Then there were DeWayne and Fred to consider, and a host of others. There were more people who didn’t have alibis than there were people who did.

“I’m going to have a chat with Jorge,” said Adam casually.

“Is it okay if I talk to Irene?”

“She’s not officially a suspect. I don’t see how it could hurt the case.”

Faye wasn’t thinking about the case. She was thinking about Irene. The poor girl had been through so much, and now she’d found out that a message purportedly from her had led to Jimmie’s death… If Irene was able to talk, Faye would listen. The girl might need to talk to someone who knew what it was like to have a sick mother and nobody to turn to. If she couldn’t talk, then Faye would simply be there with her.

“Anything else?” asked Adam.

Faye hesitated, then shook her head and turned away.

***

Faye had not intended to have her womanly chat with Irene while standing in the Montrose driveway, but she was lucky to get a chance to speak with the girl at all. Irene was on her way to work. Grief and loneliness didn’t stop the bills from coming.

“Irene,” Faye began, “are you sure you want to go to work?”

“I’m sure,” she said.

The tears were gathering on the rims of the girl’s eyes, poised as if they needed to spill over. Faye didn’t want to be the one who made them fall. “Do you know that Jimmie was the first Sujosa I laid eyes on? He was perched in a tree over the road the day I arrived.”

“He told me what he did. He was so scared when he thought you were going to crash. Then, when he saw that you were going to be okay, he got more scared that he was going to be in real trouble. He ran away, but he lost sleep over what might have happened to you. He didn’t mean anything….”

“I have to wonder, would he have done anything else really stupid? Like maybe set a fire?”

“No. Oh, no.” The horror on Irene’s face said that she’d never even considered that possibility. “Jimmie was a gentle, gentle soul. He was just…” She hesitated, so Faye helped her out.

“Irene, I know what Ronya is doing, and I know that you and Jimmie were involved.”

Irene looked more relieved than surprised. “He was just worried that Ronya might have to shut her business down, that’s all. If that happened, his friends would have lost out. It was them that he was worried about—and me—more than himself.”

“Did he ever talk to you about the fire?”

“No. I tried to talk to him about it. I guess I just wanted to make sense of what happened. I never understood why Carmen would want a heater in her room, anyway. It wasn’t so cold. But he wouldn’t listen to me. He said it would only make things worse to talk about it, and he didn’t like to see me upset. That’s the way he was…” The tears in the girl’s eyes finally overflowed.

Faye had never been a physically affectionate person, but she’d been brought up by her mother and grandmother, two women with powerful arms and shoulders made to be leaned against. She could think of nothing to do for Irene but to throw her arms wide and let the young woman walk into them.

***

As Irene drove away, Faye stood, irresolute, in the Montrose driveway, eyeing the house. The new information she’d gained at the property assessor’s affected her professional relationship with DeWayne Montrose. DeWayne might not like it, but he wasn’t going to be able to stop her from excavating the mound he’d been so adamant about protecting from her dirty archaeologist’s hands.

She climbed the porch steps and knocked on the door. Kiki opened it and stood leaning weakly against the doorframe. Lank curls the color of flame framed her pallid face.

“Is DeWayne home?” Faye asked.

“He went to Hanahan’s for groceries. Can I help you?”

Faye considered. It might be good to have DeWayne’s wife on her side during the inevitably tense discussion with the man himself. She decided to present her case to Kiki—quickly, before the frail woman collapsed. “Yes, I think you can. Should we sit down?”

Kiki sank right down on the doorstep, clearly intending to have this conversation on the front porch, so Faye did the same. “I asked DeWayne for permission to dig on his land when I stopped by the other day.”

“I bet he said no. DeWayne is funny about his possessions.”

“You know your husband well.”

“We’ve been married a long, long time.”

Faye pulled copies of both versions of Sam Leicester’s will from her briefcase, telling the story in as few words as possible. “These documents show that there’s some question about who actually owns some of the land up on the river bluff. I’m pretty sure that Amanda-Lynne really owns the piece near the old mound, and that’s the part I’m interested in. Now, I’m not a lawyer, but I imagine DeWayne and Amanda-Lynne can work this problem out without going to a lot of legal expense. I’m hoping I can get permission to dig while they sort things out. I won’t do any harm to the land, Mrs. Montrose. I promise. Will you talk to your husband?”

Kiki nodded, then looked over Faye’s shoulder.

Faye turned, expecting to see DeWayne approaching, as fierce and frightening as his bloodthirsty dogs. Instead, she saw Brent striding up the front walk, an uncomfortable smile fixed on his face.

Kiki rose so quickly that Faye feared she might fall. “I don’t want to talk to you,” she cried, with more vim than Faye would have thought possible. “I don’t have anything to say to you. You know that.” The sick woman slipped through the front door, closed it, and shot the deadbolt home.

Faye and Brent looked at each other.

“Guess she doesn’t want to see you,” said Faye. “Can’t imagine why.”

“She’s refusing treatment,” said Brent. “Spending all her money buying miracle drugs over the Internet, hoping against hope. She doesn’t realize those quacks are robbing her blind. Lately, she won’t even let me see her.”

“Too bad she’s not Sujosa. She might never have gotten sick at all.”

Brent shook his head. “I thought I had her in remission—I thought she was getting better. But then she began to slip away. I keep coming by, hoping she’ll let me help her before it’s too late.”

“Would that make you feel better about yourself? Money didn’t do it. A big house didn’t do it. My guess is that it’s going to take you a long time to find what you’re looking for—simple pride in who you are.”

Brent turned away without a word and headed to his car.