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  Chapter Thirty

  It was late Saturday morning. Faye, feeling better than she had thought she would, but still far from her best, wandered around the bunkhouse with a cup of coffee, looking for Joe, who was certainly still suffering over killing Kiki. She didn’t want to intrude, but she did want him to know she was there for him. Probably he had gone outside—Joe never felt entirely comfortable indoors. She gazed out the frosted window in the kitchen; she had no desire to go out into that cold—ever.

  In the parlor, she found Bingham and Amory in quiet conversation with a couple of the technicians who had remained in the settlement for the weekend.

  “Faye,” said Bingham, standing up. “You’re looking well, considering the events of yesterday. We’re trying to make sense of all this, as you can guess. Why don’t you join us?”

  Faye was glad to comply. A dose of rational academic chatter sounded like a fine remedy for the surreal week she’d just survived. “Any news?” she asked, settling into a cozy chair.

  “The sheriff’s people have been all over the settlement since midnight. They’ve set up shop in Hanahan’s.”

  “That must please Jenny,” said Faye. “I hope they eat a lot. Does she carry doughnuts?”

  They heard the front door open. Brent and Elliott entered, hesitating when they saw the group in the parlor.

  “Come on in,” said Bingham. “We’re just having a little Rural Assistance Project get-together.”

  “Not hard to guess what you’re talking about,” said Brent as he sat on the sofa. He gave Faye a critical look. “I’m not happy about how long your wound was open. Any pain?”

  “No,” she said, her eyes on Elliott. The man’s facial expression was flat, and his eyes were blank. He moved like a sleepwalker.

  “How are you and Margie doing?” Faye asked.

  “Margie’s over with Amanda-Lynne and Irene. I’m…still trying to understand.” His face showed a bit of life as he peered intently at Faye. “I need to hear it from you—is it true? Kiki tried to kill you?”

  “Yes,” said Faye.

  “But why?” he asked, as if he thought that understanding what happened would make the tragedy go away.

  “Because, like an idiot, I told her that I knew she and DeWayne didn’t own the land the cell phone tower was on—the very land that she killed Carmen and Jimmie to keep.”

  “But she must have known she couldn’t get away with it!” argued Elliott.

  “My guess is that Kiki planned to kill me, and Ronya if she had to, and put the blame on DeWayne.”

  “Dangerous for her to turn on DeWayne,” said Bingham. “He might have been able to prove he was somewhere else.”

  “Not if she got rid of him, too,” said Faye. “Joe found him unconscious in his truck, alongside a rag soaked with a cleaning solvent that can also be used to knock folks out—the same stuff Adam thinks she used to keep Carmen from escaping the fire. DeWayne remembers Kiki holding the rag over his face, but he got away from her before he passed out. I’m sure she planned for people to think he set his dogs on me and Ronya. I also think it’s a pretty good bet she intended to give him a fatal dose and make it look like he committed suicide out of remorse. Nobody would have thought to accuse a sick woman. She’d be free of DeWayne, and the tower lease money would just keep rolling in.”

  “That’s a lot of ifs for a scientist,” said Amory.

  Faye shrugged. “I admit it’s just speculation, but it fits the facts. Kiki was already running on a knife edge. She’d killed two people, and I was getting ready to tell the whole world about her motive.”

  Elliott ran a hand over his face. “Poor Jimmie. How did he get involved in this?”

  “Adam and I think he saw Kiki the night of the fire,” said Faye. “Maybe he knew she set it, or maybe he was just suspicious. Either way, he must have approached Kiki about it. If he’d approached Adam, instead, he’d still be alive.” Faye shook her head. “It would have been Jimmie’s word against hers—she would have claimed to be out on one of her midnight rambles—but she couldn’t afford to take the chance that he could prove she did it. So she snitched Irene’s cell phone and sent him a text message to lure him to the tower.”

  “Wait a minute, Faye,” said Brent. “That can’t be right. Irene’s cell wouldn’t have worked here in the settlement. Kiki would have had to get halfway to Alcaskaki somehow, driving DeWayne’s truck—presuming he wasn’t off somewhere in it. She would have had to drive right past Jenny’s. Surely someone would have seen her.”

  Doubt shadowed the faces around Faye. Could she be wrong? Was a killer still among them?

  Faye shook her head grimly. “There’s one place in the settlement where a cell phone will work—up on the tower itself. It’s the only clear line-of-sight from anywhere in the settlement to the Alcaskaki tower. Standing on the ground, you’d never get a clear signal, but high up the tower? It would work, and no one would ever suspect Kiki—or anyone else who was in the settlement at the time. All she had to do was sit tight and wait for Jimmie to come, thinking he was meeting Irene.”

  “Um, Faye?” Elliott interrupted. “Irene doesn’t look much like her mother.”

  “If Kiki were sitting high in the tower, dressed in one of Irene’s old parkas with the hood pulled up, there’s no way Jimmie would recognize her, not until he climbed almost up high enough to see her face-to-face. Right before that happened, I think she just raised a boot sole, put it on his chest, and shoved him off the ladder. And the boots she was wearing were Jimmie’s gardening boots. That’s why all the footprints Adam found at the tower were his.”

  “Incredible,” said Bingham. “I mean—credible! Extraordinary work, Faye.”

  Faye shook her head. “I just wish I’d put things together sooner.”

  “Poor Irene,” sighed Elliott. “I can’t believe Kiki’d do that to her own daughter. One thing, though, Faye. Kiki and Irene slept in the same room. How could Kiki get out to set the fire with Irene right there?”

  “She worked at the dry cleaner for a long time, long enough to bring home all the spot remover a housewife could ever need. She had more than enough perk to make sure Irene and Carmen slept soundly that night, and enough left over to nearly kill DeWayne.”

  The room fell silent, as everyone tried to take it all in.

  “What about the deed we were talking about yesterday?” asked Bingham.

  “I reckon the confusion over the boundary line must have started when Lester’s Creek changed course. I don’t know if it was an honest mistake that Kiki took advantage of, or if she went out of her way to change the deed. Either way, she knew she would lose that cell phone lease, and the money that came with it, if the discrepancy were uncovered.”

  “But the money was going for her drugs…” Elliott’s voice drifted off. “She wasn’t spending it on medicine, was she?”

  “She stopped seeing Brent just when he thought his treatments were helping her—because they were. She just didn’t want him to know about it. A computer expert got into Kiki’s computer early this morning. She had a couple of good-sized accounts with an on-line brokerage, where she was taking advantage of her remission to squirrel away the money that DeWayne thought was going for medications. She’d even made a down payment on a condo in California.”

  “I wonder how much longer she would have kept it up before taking off,” said Amory.

  “If DeWayne were dead, she’d get the money anyway, no matter where she lived,” said Brent.

  “Bad luck for her that a bunch of egg-heads came to town and started poking around,” said Bingham.

  Amory pointed a finger at his colleague. “I think you’ve had a lucky break, Bingham. You were the one who found the deed. You might have been next, after Faye.”

  Bingham’s pale face went paler.

  “How did she ever find out that Carmen had the deed?” asked Brent.

  “Dumb luck,” said Faye. “Kiki was there when Carmen
interviewed Amanda-Lynne, and the subject came up. Carmen told her flat out that the deed was in her office. Adam thinks that Kiki drugged Irene. Then she went to Carmen’s office—which doesn’t even have a lock on the door—and stole the will. After she was sure everyone in the bunkhouse was asleep, she knocked Carmen out, using a rag soaked with cleaning fluid. Adam’s chemist found traces of it on Carmen’s pillow, where it dripped off the rag. Once Carmen was asleep, Kiki used the kerosene heater to set Carmen’s bedclothes on fire.”

  “My God,” said Elliott.

  “What I don’t understand,” said Amory, “is how Kiki knew you were at Miss Dovey’s yesterday.”

  “Jenny told her. I’d been on the phone with Jenny, looking for Adam, so when Kiki called her looking for me, she didn’t think twice about telling her I was there with Ronya. Kiki must have been planning to use the dogs to get rid of me ever since I told her about the property mistake,” continued Faye. “She called us, claiming that DeWayne had beaten her up. Trust me, she was ready with the dogs when Ronya and I came to her rescue. She had tried to get DeWayne out of the way—getting him drunk and trying to knock him out just like he did Carmen—but he got away. Kiki knew she had to eliminate me as soon as possible, before I blabbed about the property dispute, so she went ahead with her plan, hoping to catch up with DeWayne after his dogs had eaten me and Ronya.”

  “If Joe hadn’t found DeWayne…” Brent said.

  “Then he might not have gotten back to Miss Dovey’s in time for her to give him her rifle and send him to our rescue. Miss Dovey knew that gunshot didn’t come from any hunter. The settlement men don’t hunt so close to people’s houses. Running in the direction of the gunshot got Joe close enough to pick up our trail. Joe can track anything.”

  Faye put aside her empty coffee cup and rose. She really needed to find Joe.

  “Has anyone tried to contact Raleigh?” Bingham asked. “It would be a good idea to have a staff meeting first thing Monday morning and agree on how all of this affects our relationship with the community.”

  Faye paused on her way to the hall. “I think you should take the lead on that, Dr. Bingham. You have a good relationship with the Sujosa, and, well, it may be a while before we hear from Raleigh.”

  “I second that,” said Amory.

  Faye went to the entryway and located the coat that Laurel had lent her.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” asked Brent in his doctor’s voice.

  “I need to find Joe,” she said. “He’s—this has hit him hard.”

  A peculiar expression came over Brent’s face. “He’s with Laurel. I saw them out walking about an hour ago.”

  “Oh.” Faye nodded. “That’s good. I’m glad he’s not alone. Thanks.” She hung the coat back on the rack and headed to the kitchen, wondering how much coffee she was going to have to drink before she felt human again.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  On Sunday afternoon, Faye finally got the chance to enjoy a slice of Miss Dovey’s jam cake. Adam, who had suggested the visit to her after Jimmie’s funeral service, attacked his piece with the intensity of a man who had tasted this particular delicacy before. The cake was flavored with a liberal dose of cinnamon that warmed Faye from the inside, and the cold spot in her chest that had lingered since her ordeal was threatening to thaw. Miss Dovey, who had lived a long time on this earth, had shown the good sense to withdraw into the kitchen, ostensibly to wash the dishes, but probably just to give the two of them a chance to be alone. Faye suspected that she had thrown more than one couple together in this room, only to leave and let them find their own way to each other.

  Faye needed to find a way to fill the silence. “I guess you want to see Miss Dovey’s treasures.”

  “Yes,” said Adam, “I do.”

  Miss Dovey had given Faye permission to handle her treasures as much as she liked. You’re a professional, child. You know how to take care of them. Faye went into the bedroom, reached under the bed and retrieved the package of Spanish fragments and some of the loveliest later pieces. She took them into the parlor and set them carefully on the coffee table in front of Adam, then she fetched the eclipse platter off the mantel and displayed it, too, like a child showing off her colorful toys.

  “Aren’t these gorgeous?” she asked, flinging her arms out to encompass the Sujosa’s glorious past. “And this is the prize of the collection,” she said, pointing to the eclipse platter. She lowered herself to the floor, so she could get closer to the beautiful artifacts.

  “I reckon that means it’s the oldest one?”

  It was a reasonable guess, but in this case, Adam was wrong. She held the platter up where he could see it better. “Look here in the middle. The artist obviously witnessed a total eclipse of the sun. Here’s the corona and the eclipsed disk. And these,” she said, pointing to dabs of lustrous gold adorning the blue surface, “would be the planets and brightest stars. They’re visible in the daytime during an eclipse. See these stars over here? If that’s not the Southern Cross, I’ll eat my telescope.”

  “And that makes it valuable?”

  “Don’t you see? It tells us that the Sujosa’s kidnapped ancestors and their English sailors didn’t come straight to Alabama. They were living in the Southern Hemisphere when this potter saw an eclipse. Considering that the word “Sujosa” seems to come from a Portuguese word but their pottery looks Spanish to me, I’ll wager they sailed from Spain, then spent time in Brazil. They probably lived near a port where they could trade for cobalt pigments,” Faye continued, “or the platter wouldn’t be blue.”

  Adam shook his head, saying, “That’s a lot of information for one little plate to carry.”

  “Wait. It gets better. I’ve got an astronomer friend whose computer can use the star and planet patterns to tell me the day and place that this eclipse occurred. We know from Miss Dovey’s song that the Sujosa left Spain after 1560. Jimmie told Carmen that the Sujosa were already here in time for the great meteor storm of 1833. And now we’ll be able to get a precise date when they were in Brazil. This is why I came here in the first place—to find out who the Sujosa are and where they come from.”

  Faye wanted to hug the platter, but she was afraid she’d scratch it with a shirt button, so she refrained. She continued her ecstatic monologue. “And look at this one,” she said, holding up a white platter ornamented by fine golden brushstrokes radiating from a single point, a color combination that reminded her of the lone glimpse she got of the potsherd that Jorge crushed. “This has to be a representation of the meteor storm of 1833, but the sky is white because the painter couldn’t get cobalt pigments here in Alabama.”

  “This is all real interesting, Faye, but—”

  “Adam, you don’t understand. All these little pieces of evidence tell us so much. Now we know that the Sujosa’s ancestors came from Britain and Spain, probably Manises or Malaga. They likely intermarried with Brazilians of European descent, and possibly also with native North and South Americans. And they may have African blood from Moorish Spaniards, or from slaves held in Brazil or the United States.”

  “Impressive,” Adam said. “I’m sure you’ll get a publication out of it. I know how important that is to you academics.” His tone was cool.

  “Yeah, publications are important and all, but solving puzzles about people and how they live is the exciting part of my work.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I do every day. Solve puzzles. Why did this building burn? Did somebody set that fire on purpose? Why would they do such a thing? I like getting those kinds of answers.”

  The platter in her hands felt heavy, cold, fragile. She put it down carefully, and sat in silence. What did he want her to say?

  “We got Raleigh,” he said, with less enthusiasm than the arrest of a criminal should have merited. “He was in Atlanta, waiting for a plane to Spain, just like we thought. He’s talking, but he insists he had no contact with anyone other than Leo. They’re both in big tro
uble.”

  Faye said only, “I’m glad you got Raleigh.” She let the silence deepen.

  Adam broke it. “Faye, I cannot believe that Leo conned Ronya and the others into making those pots for him without them realizing that his business was illegal. They’re smarter than that. Leo says he was taking orders from Raleigh and giving them to Ronya, but everybody knows that she’s smarter than he is. If I had to guess who was the mastermind of this operation, I’d say it was her. And I think you know it.”

  Faye said nothing.

  “Faye, it would be Ronya’s first offense. The judge probably won’t come down too hard on her and all the others, but it’s not my call to make. It’s not yours, either. You need to tell me what you know. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the law.”

  Faye thought of the laws that had barred Sujosa children from attending school with their peers. She thought of poll taxes. She thought of her great-great-grandmother Cally, who was born a slave. There had been a time when the law smiled on all of these things. By what logic should she trust the future of Zack’s mother to the tender protection of the law?

  Faye thought of Raleigh, raking in a fortune from Ronya’s work and paying her a pittance. She thought of Ronya, sharing with her community the outrageously small sum he gave her for museum-quality work. She thought of Leo, who was accepting the full blame for all their crimes, deliberately shielding Ronya and his friends from the punishment in store for him. She thought of little Zack.

  She didn’t say a thing.

  There was disappointment in Adam’s eyes, and judgment, and anger. He said, “I have work to do,” and left her sitting on the floor alone.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Friday, December 16

  Faye was eager to get home. Christmas on Joyeuse was a quiet and comforting thing. Joe would cut a small tree from her own island and they’d hang her mother’s ornaments on its branches. The gulf and the sky would be winter-gray, but the breeze would be gentle and warm. This year, it appeared that there was a possibility they might enjoy company for the holidays. She sat on her suitcase, forcing it to close, then wheeled it outside and put it in the trunk of the Bonneville.