Relics Page 16

  “Let’s say somebody set the fire,” she went on. “We both think it. We might as well say it. If we’re right, it was arson, but what if it was more than that? An arsonist could have set the fire in the parlor where the heater was, or anywhere that nobody was sleeping, and it would have been a lot less risky if they’d done that. Instead, they burned Carmen’s bed, with her still in it.”

  “And they might have killed you and Laurel, while they were at it. It looks like Carmen was the arsonist’s target, but I’m not going to feel good about the safety of anybody in the settlement until I get to the bottom of this.”

  Faye was still trying to digest the notion that someone might have killed Carmen on purpose. “I didn’t know Carmen well, but she seemed like the nicest person in the world. Who would have wanted her dead?”

  ***

  After bidding a sober good-bye to Adam, whose parting words—“Be careful, Faye”—did nothing to settle her nerves, Faye went back to being an archaeologist. She helped Ronya finish up her work, then returned to the Lester site to help Joe and Elliott shut down for the day.

  ***

  Neon orange surveyor’s flags danced in the cold wind, echoing the brilliant color of the setting sun. Even the creek, usually a sober chocolate color, shot tangerine glimmers from every ripple. Faye’s day had been well spent, and she felt rewarded by the happy colors of sunset. Joe and Elliott had returned to the settlement to wash and store their equipment, and she was lingering at the site, enjoying the sense of having accomplished something that was her own. Squatting beside the neatly marked square of land where she hoped to strike archaeological gold, Faye perused Joe’s filed notes, clumsily written out, but complete. She initialed each page.

  Amanda-Lynne walked up to her and stood watching the sunlit color of the creek darken until it was once again a lustrous brown that matched her hair. “I could never leave this place,” she said as nighttime shadows crept over the gray and green hilltops and turned them black.

  Faye rubbed at the line of stitches on her head. They were starting to itch. She zipped her jacket to ward off the evening chill. “I feel the same way about my own home.”

  Homesickness tugged at her, gentle but insistent, like a tide drawing its waters away from the shore. Her people had lived on Joyeuse Island for more than two hundred years. Whenever she strayed, the gravitational pull of home went with her. Yet all the evidence so far said that Amanda-Lynne’s people had been established in this valley for generations before Faye’s family ever laid eyes on her treasured island. What sort of homesickness would ripping up roots like the Sujosa’s inspire?

  “I’ll live and die here,” Amanda-Lynne continued, “but Jimmie won’t. That’s the only reason I’m glad of his outsider blood. One day, he’ll be free to walk away. He won’t have to dig limerock or try to grow something in this worn-out dirt, and he won’t have to watch Irene get old and tired before she’s thirty.”

  Faye studied Amanda-Lynne’s smooth, taut facial skin. “You don’t look old and tired.”

  “I feel it.”

  “You mentioned Irene.”

  “She and Jimmie plan to be married, and Miss Dovey has given her approval.” Amanda-Lynne’s blue-green eyes lit up at the prospect.

  “Does everyone in the settlement have to ask Miss Dovey’s permission to get married?”

  “Lord, no, but sometimes it’s a good idea. She knows who’s related to who, and she’s stopped more than one set of second cousins from marrying each other. But even Miss Dovey can’t make a body love somebody they don’t. Why, she thought I should marry DeWayne, once upon a time.” The idea made Amanda-Lynne giggle.

  “I’d heard you were cousins, but Miss Dovey must think you’re not close enough kin to worry over.”

  “She says we’re fourth cousins, once removed, but DeWayne seems closer than that to me. I went to live with his family when I was eight, after my parents’ tour bus crashed. I just couldn’t marry him. It would’ve been like kissing my brother. He felt the same way.”

  Faye thought of the dead Charles and the dying Kiki. Everyone concerned might have been happier if Amanda-Lynne had been persuaded to marry her “brother”—although she would not wish the unpleasant Mr. Montrose on sweet-tempered Amanda-Lynne, no matter what Miss Dovey said. She changed the subject to happier times. “When will Jimmie and Irene be married?”

  “Lord knows. Irene would never leave Kiki for DeWayne to look after, because he’s not up to it, but I don’t think Kiki will be with us much longer. After she passes, the only thing keeping Irene and Jimmie apart will be money, but that shouldn’t be a problem for long. Jimmie’s scholarship money will cover his schooling and his living, and Irene’s a hard worker. I’ll be surprised if they’re not married within a year.”

  Faye flashed back to the moment when she was skidding out of control down a deserted roadway, and a boy with magical eyes sat in a tree watching it happen. The events that had occurred since her football date had cast a new light on that near-tragedy. Had it been a football prank, or was it something more? “I’d like to meet Jimmie.”

  “Then you’re in luck. I came up here to invite you to dinner tonight. I’ve had spaghetti sauce in the crockpot since this morning. It should be good after cooking all day.”

  “I’ll stop by Hanahan’s and get a loaf of French bread to go with it.” Faye stood up and brushed the rusty red dust off her pants, and they headed for the truck.

  “That will be lovely,” Amanda-Lynne said. “Charles does love good bread.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Faye wanted to talk with Joe about the next day’s work, but he was nowhere to be found at the bunkhouse. She asked Amory to tell him that she’d be at Amanda-Lynne’s house, then hopped in the truck and headed out to Hanahan’s to pick up the bread.

  Oversized tires raised the project pickup so high off the ground that Faye had to toss the loaf of bread onto its bench seat to free both hands for her assault on the vehicle. Grasping the steering wheel with her left hand and the driver’s seat with her right, she planted a boot sole on the doorframe for leverage and yanked herself into the pickup.

  “You do that well.” The light from a gibbous moon glinted off hair that was silver-white, underlain with black. Faye was glad she’d showered away the grimy coating that characterized the working archaeologist, but she instantly regretted having accepted Amanda-Lynne’s dinner invitation.

  Brent didn’t appear to detect her brief mental detour. He kicked a monstrous tire. “You’d think Raleigh would have rented you a vehicle your own size.”

  “I’m used to being small in a world designed for six-footers. It only bothers me when I’m sitting next to an air bag. They’ve been known to kill small women, you know.”

  Looking down on a man was an interesting experience she’d rarely had. It gave her a feeling of power that she knew was unearned. Still, having done time in the presence of men who were convinced that bigger was always better, she enjoyed it anyway.

  “How’s your head? Are those stitches starting to worry you?”

  “Starting to, yes,” she said. “I wish I had time to talk, but I’ve got dinner plans.” She held up the loaf of bread as evidence.

  The easy smile faltered for less than a heartbeat, but Faye liked him better for it, now that she knew his confidence wasn’t completely imperturbable. She’d been purposely vague about her dinner plans, just to mess with his mind. As an act of kindness, she named his competition. “Amanda-Lynne Lavelle was kind enough to invite me.”

  “You did that on purpose,” he said.

  Faye wondered exactly how much psychology he’d taken during his pre-med years. She allowed him a “whatever-do-you-mean?” shrug and cranked the truck. “If I don’t hurry, I’ll never make it to the Lavelle house before the spaghetti’s gone. I’ve heard about how much teen-aged boys eat.”

  She put her elbow on the back of the truck seat and twisted to look behind her so she could
see to work her way out of Hanahan’s cramped parking lot, but he spoke quickly before she could ease the truck into gear. “Would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow evening?”

  She hesitated, not out of a calculated strategy that required her to play hard-to-get, but because her distracted brain was having trouble remembering what day it was. Wednesday. Yes, it was Wednesday, and she was indeed free for Thursday evening. “I’d love to have dinner with you tomorrow.”

  “What a relief. For a second there, I thought you were going to tell me you had a date with Raleigh.”

  Faye put the truck in gear, and said, “He dumped me for Miss Dovey. I’ll see you tomorrow night,” as she drove away. She had found that, whether the field be academics, politics, or romance, people held the warmest thoughts for the ones who left them laughing.

  ***

  “Hello,” Amanda-Lynne said as she opened her front door. She turned away without saying more, leaving Faye to come inside, uninvited, and close the door behind her. Faye thought this was unusually absent-minded, even for Amanda-Lynne.

  After five minutes of small talk—“My, that smells good,” and “I do hope it tastes good,” and “I do like a hot plate of spaghetti on a cold evening”—Faye asked, “Will Jimmie be home soon?”

  The panicked look on Amanda-Lynne’s face told her that she’d stumbled onto the reason for the woman’s uncharacteristic lack of hospitality. “He should be here now. I don’t know where he is. His supervisor at the library in Alcaskaki called to check on him right before you got here. Jimmie got a call on his cell phone about five-thirty and left without saying a word. He never came back. It’s just not like him. He loves that job so.” She ripped the core out of a head of iceberg lettuce and thrust it under a stream of running water. “It’s nearly eight. It’s only twenty minutes from here to Alcaskaki. Even allowing time for him to do whatever was so all-fired important, he should be home by now. When I call his cell phone, I get a ‘Client out-of-range’ message, so he must be back in the settlement.”

  “Have you called Irene?”

  “I called her at the dry cleaners a few minutes ago, but they said she didn’t get any calls all afternoon and that she left at her regular time, seven-thirty. That means she’s not home yet and her cell phone’s out-of-range, too. DeWayne said he’d have her call me the second she walked in the door.” She dropped the head of lettuce in the sink. “I can’t stand it any more, but I can’t call all over the settlement looking for him, because it’ll tie up my phone.”

  “Call a friend,” suggested Faye, “and ask for help.”

  Amanda-Lynne nodded, and, hands still wet, dialed the phone. “Jenny? I’m so worried. It’s way past time for Jimmie to come home. Will you call around and look for him, so I can keep my phone line open?”

  Amanda-Lynne hung up the phone and silence descended. Faye had always imagined that a mother’s worries would ease as her child grew up and began assuming responsibility for his own well-being. Now she knew she’d been wrong.

  When the phone rang, Amanda-Lynne grabbed it with both hands.

  “Irene, honey,” she breathed into the receiver, “thank you for calling so quick.” She listened for a few seconds, then her shoulders fell. “It’s okay, honey, he’s probably on his way home now and we’ll all be laughing about this tomorrow. I’ll call you when I hear something.”

  She set the phone on its cradle, but it immediately rang again. Amanda-Lynne answered with an abrupt “Hello? Jimmie?” Listening quietly, a tear crept down her brown cheek. “Thanks, Jenny. We’ll be right there.”

  She hung up the phone again. “Jenny says that Elliott’s found Jimmie’s car in the woods near his house. She’s calling everybody she can get ahold of, trying to organize a search party. I need to get there, and I’m not fit to drive. Can you take me?”

  “Are you kidding? I’ve been sitting here, trying to think of a way to help. Let’s go.” Without thinking about it, Faye reached out and grasped Amanda-Lynne’s elbow, as if she were an old woman who needed help to rise out of her chair. The distracted mother allowed herself to lean on Faye, and they hurried to the truck.

  “Jenny said she could have a dozen people searching right away. That’s what she said,” Amanda-Lynne chanted as they barreled down a dark, curving road. “She said they’d have him found before I even got there. And she said his car looked fine, that he hadn’t been in any wreck. He does love that car. It was his daddy’s, and I would have sold it after Charles died, except Jimmie wanted it so bad. He’d go out and crank it every day. I got to where I’d let him drive down to the mailbox and back, just to keep that car in shape for the day when he was big enough to drive it.”

  Amanda-Lynne was shivering far more violently than the forty-degree evening warranted. Faye jammed the accelerator to the floorboard. Her rearview mirror showed a dense trail of dust tinted red by the tail lights. She took the curves smoothly, glad the deepening dusk hid the precipice dropping from the right side of the roadway.

  “I’d give my firstborn for a cell phone that worked,” she said, then she wanted to bite her tongue out.

  The other woman didn’t seem to notice Faye’s ill-considered metaphor. She sat twisting a deep brown curl around every finger on her right hand.

  The pickup continued its controlled plunge down the steep country road. Faye had only a vague idea where Elliott lived. Carmen’s notes said that his house was on a high bluff overlooking the river, and Ronya had told her that his house was past Great Tiger Bluff. Unfortunately, Elliott had also said that you had to go “the long way round” to reach his property by car, so Faye knew she’d never find it unaided. Amanda-Lynne would have to hold herself together long enough to help. “Can you tell me the quickest way to get to Elliott’s?”

  Amanda-Lynne’s head swiveled on her neck, and her bottomless and empty eyes moved toward Faye’s face. Nothing else moved, except for her lips, which said, “I can get us there. First, you want to head for Miss Dovey’s, only don’t take the turnoff to her house. Just keep driving down the Alcaskaki-Gadsden road until I tell you different.”

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” said Faye. In other circumstances, she would have believed it, too, but given her own experiences as the newest member of Raleigh’s team, her words sounded hollow. She reminded herself that Jimmie was a local boy who had nothing to do with the Rural Assistance Project.

  Faye stomped the gas, and her tires flung gravel skyward as the truck jumped into a higher gear.

  ***

  There were six cars parked in Elliott’s front yard, but the house was empty. Jenny had said that they’d found Jimmie’s car in the woods. Elliott’s house and yard were surrounded on all sides by trees and dense undergrowth, so “the woods” was not going to be sufficient information to take them to the car or to Jimmie.

  Faye jumped out of the truck and clambered into the back to access the tool box. Groping blindly, she came up with a flashlight. She flipped it on and quickly located a second one for Amanda-Lynne. Slamming the box shut, she rushed to the passenger door and found Amanda-Lynne’s seat empty.

  Her flashlight beam caught Amanda-Lynne’s back as she walked across Elliott’s neatly mown lawn and onto a narrow footpath that led into the woods. Trusting Amanda-Lynne’s local knowledge, Faye hurried after her. Soon the pale gleam of flashlight beams could be seen in the distance. The people searching for Jimmie were close by. She wondered why they weren’t calling for the missing boy. The footpath led down a dry and ancient creekbed, then up the side of a hill.

  The trees ended, and Faye took in the scene. There were dark figures ahead, gathered beside a behemoth that reached for the silent stars. It was the cell phone tower, standing on the flat crest of the hill.

  Rising high above the trees that blanketed the hills around the Sujosa’s valley, its modernity clashed with the softness of the natural world. A ladder crawled up its metallic flank, punctuated by landings that would provide rest for tiny humans who m
ight climb it. High above the ground—A hundred feet up? Two? More?—metal arms reached out, ready to grab conversations out of the air.

  The searchers were on the far side of the tower with all their flashlight beams focused on the ground. Some of them also held lanterns that added their own faint illumination to the moonlit scene. Amanda-Lynne was walking toward them slowly and with grace, almost gliding.

  “Elliott!” Faye cried, “DeWayne! Amanda-Lynne is coming!”

  A large man detached himself from the silent watchers and ran toward Amanda-Lynne. He wrapped both arms around her and lifted her kicking feet off the ground.

  “Where’s Jimmie? What’s everybody doing over there? Let go of me right this minute,” she shrieked, but DeWayne hung on. “Somebody’s got to tell me what’s happening!” she screamed.

  As Faye sprinted past the struggling pair, she heard DeWayne pleading, “Honey, you don’t want to see this. I’m not going to let you see this.”

  The beam of Faye’s flashlight combined with all the others as, together, they illuminated Jimmie Lavelle’s body. He lay broken in a copse of trees near the base of the tower, arms outflung, boots twisted beneath him. At his side knelt Brent, who shook his head when he saw her.

  The darkness surrounding Jimmie seemed opaque; the trees above him were enveloped by a strange shroud. Playing her flashlight over the scene, she saw that a vast mat of kudzu blanketed the area between the tower and the river. Its bare stems, leafless for the winter, hung in the air like a vegetal net that should have broken Jimmie’s fall, but didn’t.

  Genetically programmed to reach up for the light, the kudzu had killed tree after tree and was still reaching out for more. If the vines ever reached the monstrous tower looming over the scene, they need never know shade again. Turning her flashlight toward the tower, Faye shone its beam on one of the uprights. She saw that a metal ladder, which should have been locked into position out of reach, had been pulled down to within a few feet of the ground.