In a Dark Season (37 page)

Chapter 53

Footprints in the Snow

Friday, December 29

S
he woke to the smell of herbs and honey and flowers and the rough scratch of wool against her naked body. She lay still, waiting for something to make sense.

And then the memory of the raft and the river, the icy water, the light in the woods swept over her.
But I’m here, wherever here is. I’m alive.

Opening one cautious eye, she peeked from beneath the gray blanket that she had pulled up over her head. A square of pale light—a single window, a table and a chair, a fireplace filled with ashes, a few simple shelves with crockery and tin cups. No sign of electricity, no sign of a phone. The air was frigid and her warm breath wreathed above her.

How did I find this place? It must be someone’s fishing camp. And why can’t I remember anything?

Before the cold fireplace, two ladder-back chairs were hung with her various garments, and her boots lay on their sides as if to dry in front of the nonexistent fire.
Obviously I took my clothes off. And had the sense to spread them out to dry. Did I build a fire?

She rolled out of the bed, pulling the top blanket around her. The floor was icy cold as she padded over to retrieve her clothing, dreading the fact of the still-wet fabric against her body.

But it’s all dry! Or almost dry. I
must
have built a fire. But I can’t remember…

She dressed hurriedly, suddenly thinking of her family, of Phillip—they were probably frantic with worry.
I have to get to the highway—I can flag down someone, maybe they’ll have a cell phone.

The memory of how she had come to be in the river flooded her mind in an instant, vivid flashback.
Nola. Oh, god, Nola! And Big Lavinia…

She pushed the dreadful pictures aside to concentrate on getting her feet into her still-damp boots.
Just get out to the road.

In the back of her mind an echo whispered,
I thought there was a light,
and she glanced around the little room, in search of an explanation for the vague memory, already dreamlike, fading in the light of day.
No electricity, just a couple of kerosene lamps.
On the broad windowsill, a puddle of dried yellowish wax seemed to indicate the remains of a candle.

Get going. You have no idea how long it’ll take. But if this is someone’s fish camp, there must be a road.

It was with a strange reluctance that she opened the heavy door and stepped out into the pale morning light.
This little stone house probably saved my life. I was absolutely at the end of my strength last night but now—it’s amazing, I feel wonderful—not even hungry.

Pulling the door shut behind her, she stood on the broad flat rock that served as a doorstep and surveyed her surroundings. Far off through the trees, she thought she could glimpse the sparkle of sun on the river, though no sound of the rapids could be heard. A thin coating of snow lay on the ground, already beginning to melt as the sun rose higher.

Elizabeth blinked and wiped her eyes. A trail of footprints led from the clearing to the step where she stood.
But…bare feet? Did I take off my boots and walk through the snow
barefoot?

She moved toward a particularly well defined print and turned to place her boot within it.
Within it.
The foot that had made the print was both wider and longer than her own.

Then she heard the characteristic rattle of a diesel truck, just beyond the house. With a final puzzled glance at the footprint, now little more than an ill-defined oval smear, she hurried around to the back of the stone house.

A shed, its bright lumber suggesting recent construction, and a narrow, lightly graveled road met her eyes. And a shiny red truck, making its majestic way toward her.

It rolled to a stop and a husky young man in brown insulated coveralls, an ear-flapped furry cap on his head, jumped out.

“Any chance you might be Miz Elizabeth Goodweather?” he called.

Her wide grin and vigorous nod answered his question, and he bounded to her, grabbed her hand, and shook it energetically.

“Praise the Lord, they thought you was drownded. They’s search parties out fer you since first light. That’s my daddy’s fish camp there, so I said as how I’d search this part of the shore.”

Restraining an impulse to hug the big man, Elizabeth beamed at him. “I’m so glad to see you—but tell me, there were two other women in the river. Have they…are they…?”

He dealt with her question kindly, laying a big hand on her shoulder. “Ma’am, I s’pose they’ll find ’em sooner or later. But I reckon more’n one miracle’s too much to expect.”

As they jolted down the gravel road, her rescuer slapped his forehead. “Doggone it, I told them River Runners folks I’d git their beacon for them and here I done gone and forgot.”

And then they were on the highway, heading for the sheriff’s department. Her rescuer—“Buddy Mace, ma’am”—looked at her curiously. “You sleep all right last night?”

When she assured him that she had, Buddy raised his eyebrows. “Reason I asked, my daddy always swears that place is haunted.” He paused, considering. “No, that ain’t the way of it. Not to say haunted, but more, he says, like there’s spirits there—good ones.”

Buddy’s eyes stayed on the road. “Now I don’t put no credit in such but I’ll tell you a quare thing. My daddy used to be a real rip-roarer and he give my mommy a bad time ever since I can remember. But atter he heired this place and started spending time at the fish camp, seemed like he was more at peace with hisself. He’d come home from here with a string of fish and, iffen it was summer, he’d have picked some flowers for our mommy—they’s a world of flowers grows around that place. Hit was oncet a part of one of them old stands, and they say, back before the War Between the States, hit was owned by some quare dark people. But they pulled up stakes and left, is what I heard.”

The Drovers’ Road XIX

The Widow Barrett

All these years of waitin and the house at Gudger’s Stand is still held by Belle and Lydy’s line, whilst I scratch out a livin at Dewell Hill. At least Belle ain’t here no more to queen it over folks, for she died giving birth. Hit was a boy and she let on my daddy had fathered him, so it’s that boy now holds title to Gudger’s Stand, though he carries his stepdaddy’s name of Revis. His birthin was hard with a long dry labor and Belle’s death in a welter of blood at the end. They say she called down curses on many a one and that she bowed up like a cat and spat in the preacher’s eye when he come to offer comfort.

And I have a new name, for Luellen Gudger is the poor girl betrayed and murdered by the wicked drover boy. They even have a song about it. I fear Luellen must remain dead lest the true events of that awful night come out. But my girl and her girl know the right of hit. They are sworn to keep the memory of our claim to that land alive.

It might have been better, I sometimes think, to have cut loose from here and go west with Mariah and her Ish. When the war started, folks begun to turn against the Flores and such-like dark folk. Some set about the story that they was escaped slaves. There was mutterin against them, livin on their own land and runnin an inn like as if they was white.

Then come a day when a traveler offered a terrible insult to Mariah and Ish struck him down, never to rise again. No one saw, for the man had accosted Mariah in her house. But we feared it would come to light and we knowed what would be the outcome. That night, we gave his body to the river and we all slipped away, me and my baby Lyda and Ish and Mariah with all the household plunder they could load on their old wagon. Mariah wept bitter tears, to leave her tidy stone house and her flowers and her bees, and vowed that someday she would surely return.

By morning we was in Tennessee where no one knowed of any of us. That’s when I became the Widow Barrett, a dead soldier’s wife travelin with her babe and her two faithful slaves, goin to her daddy’s home in Kentucky. We kept movin along, always west and north for it was our purpose to get to Illinois where there wasn’t no slaves.

A long and hateful journey but the best deed I have done. When we parted at the great river, our tears flowed together and they begged me to come with them for they purposed to travel on, through the Free States, to the Far West.

But hit seemed to me then, as hit seems to me now, that a fine cord binds me and, was I to roam, hit would always be there, pullin at me, haulin me back. Hit’s a slender cord, spun of black hate, red blood, and bitter betrayal, and it binds me and mine to the house at Gudger’s Stand for all time.

Chapter 54

The Scene in the Library

Saturday, December 30

I
f I live to be a hundred, I don’t think I’ll ever have a happier moment than when I saw you getting out of that big red truck.”

Phillip pulled Elizabeth closer to him on the sofa. “And the second happiest might just be the memory of the look on Noonan and Holcombe’s faces when
they
saw you. Holcombe had been blubbering about his darling mama and how would he survive without her and what a saint she was, boo hoo. And then there’s Noonan: the strong, take-charge guy, on his cell phone or his—what are those things called—Boysenberries? Flipping that damn hair out of his face every few minutes and calling me
sir
all the damn time—and here you come. God
damn
but those two saw their future take a radical change the minute you showed up! And then you start talking, and you show Mac that hair you had in your pocket, and they’re falling over themselves to incriminate each other. I tell you, Lizabeth, it’s going to be a pleasure seeing those two go to jail.”

He looked at her and she nodded and smiled sleepily, then snuggled closer, laid her head on his shoulder, and drifted off to sleep.

And what would it have done to my life if you hadn’t made it?
With one careful finger he traced her eyebrows, dark and decided with a sprinkling of silver hairs beginning to show, her small, neat ears, the line of her chin, the sweet curve of her parted lips.
I’m lucky to have her back…and, by god, I’ll quit making conditions. If she decides marriage isn’t what she wants, then I’ll take whatever I can have. But I don’t want to lose this woman, ever.

“Hey, Phillip, is Mum asleep
again?”

Laurel and Rosemary had finished the dinner dishes and were taking their places on the little love seat. They both looked at him expectantly.

“She’s plumb wore out, as my aunt Omie would say. After everything that happened to her, she had to spend a good part of yesterday explaining to Mac exactly what went down. And losing her friend like that—there’s an emotional tiredness too.”

Laurel winked. “Pretty sensitive for a cop—ex-cop—whatever you are.”

Phillip nodded, then slid Elizabeth’s braid free and laid it gently over her shoulder. “Soon to be a cop again—I start next month working for Mackenzie.”

The sisters looked at each other and an unspoken communication passed between them. Then Rosemary asked softly, “Mum said she thought someone was overmedicating Nola—did that come out in all this incriminating I heard you say those two murderers were doing?”

“Matter of fact, it did. They dragged in Pritchard Morton’s name—the doctor whose brother supposedly shot himself. They said Pritchard was the one supplying Big Lavinia with the pills and Big Lavinia was paying an aide to give Nola a lot more than she should have. Guaranteed to keep Nola confused and physically uncoordinated.”

“Why? Why were they drugging her?”

“Once Lavinia knew that Tracy, Nola’s supposed niece, wanted to press charges about the rape, I think she was scared Nola would start talking too and then her precious Little Vance would be in danger. I think Lavinia figured if they could keep Nola confused and crazy, they could eventually get rid of her with no suspicion—crazy old lady in a nursing home dies—friendly doctor around to sign the death certificate…”

“But why did Nola jump in the first place?” Rosemary wanted to know. “Why try to kill herself?”

“What Tracy told us, when we finally got her in and heard the whole story, was that Nola blamed herself for two deaths—Randall Revis—”

“I thought those
guys
killed Revis, so as not to have to pay any more blackmail.”

Phillip nodded. “Yeah, Revis knew about the rape and was bleeding the Bad Boyz. But according to Little Vance, it was Noonan did all the killing: Noonan killed Revis because he didn’t want to pay blackmail the rest of his life; Noonan killed Spinner because Spinner was going to finger all of them in the rape; and Noonan killed Pastor Morton because Morton at a rather late date developed a conscience and wanted to confess his sins to the authorities. Unfortunately, Pastor Morton’s sins were so linked to Noonan’s that Noonan couldn’t let him talk.”

“What about the other girl?” Laurel asked. “The one with the weird name.”

“Bam-Bam? According to Little Vance,
her
death was an accident. Noonan got a little rough during sex and when she couldn’t be revived, he dumped the body in the old outhouse and torched it. Evidently the other Bad Boyz knew about it—”

“But why did Nola feel guilty about Revis?”

“I can answer that.” Elizabeth’s eyes opened and she yawned. “I’ve always wanted to be part of one of those scenes where they sit around in a library at the end of a mystery and tie up loose ends. And here I’m sleeping through it….” She yawned again and sat up straight. “I think, from something Nola said, back when she was in the nursing home and mostly talking cryptic stuff, that she must have come in on the old man shortly after Noonan had beat his head in. Maybe Revis was still alive or maybe she
believed
he was still alive. In any event, she put a pillow over his face and waited.” Elizabeth shuddered. “I thought of Nola as the sanest of women. But she was obsessed with the ownership of that property. There was a genealogy on her laptop—it all ties in with that ballad about Lydy Goforth….”

“Mum, did Nola actually have a claim to Gudger’s Stand? Was the old man really her uncle?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “No. That was another thing that was in the genealogy. Evidently Nola’s mother decided on a really practical approach to get the property back to their side of the family.” A yawn overwhelmed her. “It’s complicated—I’ll print out the family tree later—but that horrible old man was Nola’s father.”

She yawned again and put her head back on Phillip’s shoulder. As her eyes closed, she mumbled, “And the other reason…Little Ricky…tell them about…spinach…” A deep sigh escaped her and Elizabeth was asleep again.

“Spinach?” Rosemary’s eyebrows were raised. “What
is
she talking about?”

Phillip settled Elizabeth more comfortably against his arm. Then he said, “That’s the heartbreaker. The catalyst for all of this, the thing that sent Miss Barrett mad, was the death of her great-grandson—”

“Nephew.” An academic precision was evident in Rosemary’s polite correction but Phillip shook his head firmly.

“Nope, Lizabeth found all this in that genealogy she was talking about. Tracy’s mother was Lenore—Miss Nola’s illegitimate child, born when Nola was in college. Nola and her mother managed to pass the child off as Nola’s mother’s and Lenore grew up believing she was Nola’s sister. That makes Tracy Nola’s granddaughter—and Tracy was another illegitimate child, for what it’s worth.”

His face grew somber as he told the story. “So here’s Tracy, victim of a violent gang rape in ’95. She’s sent away to boarding school and then to nursing school, all with the proceeds of the money Lavinia’s paying Nola to keep quiet about the rape. Somewhere in this time, Lenore, Nola’s daughter and Tracy’s mom, dies and Nola’s all alone, with plenty of time to think about what a rotten deal life has handed her.

“Now, fast-forward to 2002. Seven years after that night in the bus, Tracy has let herself trust a man. She and Stone move in together. He’s the first and the only man she’s been with since the rape. Things are going good and when she gets pregnant they’re both ecstatic. And back home, Nola’s thrilled—buying toys and clothes and books it’ll take years for this baby, her great-grandson, to be old enough for.

“And when the little boy’s born, it’s all so wonderful, but then after about a year and a half, the baby stops growing and stops gaining weight. The doctors run a million tests and no one can figure out what’s wrong till some bright intern thinks of testing for HIV.

“And that’s it—Little Ricky has HIV. They test Tracy and so does she. She just hasn’t had any symptoms yet. They test Stone and he’s clean. That’s when Tracy finally tells about the rape. Well, if only they’d known, there would have been prenatal testing but…

“So Tracy, who’s carrying a real load of guilt now, decides to be the best mother in the world to this sick little boy. He’s prone to colds, which can easily lead to potentially fatal pneumonia, so she’s a demon with the vitamin C. He’s severely immune-compromised, so she’s Mrs. Clean incarnate; and he’s generally puny, so she gets into health food, organic food, whole foods, natural foods, raw foods—”

Rosemary lifted a stunned face. “I see where this is going. When did Little Ricky die?”

“Back in September. He had just learned to enjoy the green smoothies his mother concocted to build his strength—pineapple, papaya, apples, and—”

“And raw spinach,” Rosemary said softly. “The
E. coli
outbreak. Little Ricky was one of the victims. It was the knowledge that her insistence on silence had probably caused her great-grandson’s death that turned Miss Barrett into a madwoman.”

“We brought in those two fellas who used to work for Big Lavinia this mornin’. Asked about a few things and among others, they admitted setting the fire at the stand. They said they’d been sent to find some little green-backed books and when they couldn’t find them and saw what a mess they’d made, they decided to burn the stand down to cover up what they’d done.” The sheriff looked at some papers on his desk and pulled one out. “Not the brightest matches in the box, ol’ Arval and Marval. I told you that wasn’t a professional job.”

“How about the Hummer? They did a better job there.”

“Nope, not them.” Blaine passed a paper over to Phillip. “Manifesto of an ecoterrorist group committed to destruction of outsize SUVs. They’re claiming responsibility.”

The sheriff leaned back in his chair and swung his feet up on his desk. A smug smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “By the way, Hawk, I’ve done a little early spring-cleaning at the department. A few of the holdovers from the previous sheriff are on their way out—I finally caught them in some questionable dealings—and praise god, Miss Orinda and her gut are retiring!”

“I thought you said she’d never retire.”

“Well, she changed her mind.” The smile widened. “I set a little trap for her—left some confidential paperwork about Arval and Marval, the blunder boys, on my desk and locked my office door. Told Miss Orinda I’d be gone for a couple of hours and left. I gave it a few minutes, then slipped back in and caught her in my office, sitting at my desk and going through those papers. When I confronted her she broke down—said she just wanted to protect Big Lavinia’s memory, that she’s always done her best for the Holcombes.

“And that’s why she stole Tracy’s letter about the rape
—she’s
the mole I was worrying about, Hawk. With Miss Orinda gone, we can all breathe easy.” A delighted grin split Mackenzie’s face. “I couldn’t ask for a better way to start the New Year.”