The Cutting Season (25 page)

“That’s when Abrams lost it, got pissy with her, screaming at her. At least three people heard the confrontation in his trailer, thought it had actually gotten physical.”

Caren finally told him about the earring she’d found in Hunt’s trailer. Had it somehow come loose in a tussle with Abrams? she wondered. Again, she cursed herself for being so careless. She should have led law enforcement
to
the dead woman’s earring, instead of putting it in her own hand—muddying a chain of evidence and weakening any case against Abrams. It wasn’t the smartest thing she’d ever done, and Owens didn’t disagree. But he didn’t dwell on it, or let it tear him from the story he had to tell.

“Abrams told Inés he didn’t want to hear another word about it,” he said. “Nothing about bones or a body in the fields. He had no intention of inviting scrutiny or having anybody come out and tear into his sugar fields. It was too much money on the line.”

“And this was, what, a week before she died?”

“Something like that.”

“So who the hell is buried out in those fields?”

“No, telling, ma’am,” Owens said. He ran the tin tab of the beer can along the surface of the table. “But you’ve been working right next to the farm for years, see all the folks out there coming and going. You know of any other disturbances, another cane worker who might have been there one week, gone the next?” Caren shook her head. She’d never noticed anything like that. But there
was
something else she’d seen.

“Come on,” she said, standing suddenly.

Owens followed.

Ever the gentleman, he walked her to her car outside.

Then, he climbed into his Saturn on the other side of the parking lot. As she pulled out onto the highway, Caren noticed that the red pickup truck was nowhere to be seen.

She drove north along the Mississippi, Owens following.

When they got within spitting distance of the plantation, she took a short detour, driving past Belle Vie’s parking lot, passing the main gate. She continued on the old farm road, stopping at the head of the dirt path, the turn into Groveland’s farm, where she’d been just this morning, before her walk through the sugarcane to Abrams’s trailer. She parked her Volvo so that the car’s headlights shone onto the open field nearest the road. Behind her, she heard the driver’s-side door to Owens’s car open and close. Within a few moments, he was standing beside her. “Look,” she said, pointing to the haphazard pattern of holes carved deep into the ground, where someone had clearly been digging. Sure, Hunt Abrams may have told Inés Avalo that he had no intention of tearing up his fields. But someone had, she said, turning to look at Owens. Someone had been out here searching for whatever it was that lay beneath the surface.

20

T
he following day was a Sunday, cold and cloudy. Caren made sure she was up and dressed by daybreak, in a solemn gray dress and dark tights. She braided her hair in the dark, as tightly as she could, before slipping downstairs in her bare feet. Only outside, having passed Eric’s sleeping form on the sofa, did she slide on her black pumps, the heels of which clicked on the bricks along the main road as she crossed the plantation to the parking lot. She followed the hymn that was playing in her head, had been for days, as she drove to the south, all the way to St. Joseph’s church.

The congregation was not very big.

There were the church ladies, the ones Caren remembered from the candlelight vigil, white women who sat together in the first two and three rows of the tiny sanctuary, elbows and thighs pressed together, seemingly bound together in fellowship and worship. And behind them were the field-workers from Groveland and other nearby farms, the ones who could get away for the day. The women wore ill-fitting dresses with satin ribbons in their hair, and the men sat with black cowboy hats resting in their laps, their starched cotton shirts buttoned to their necks, though not one of them was wearing a tie. This was Inés’s family here, the people who loved and cared for her on this side of the border. Caren searched out a seat in the bank of pews on the left side of the church. She sat alone, surrounded by voices singing, the congregation and Father Akerele, belting the words to “No Greater Love Than This.” Caren sat through the whole of the service, through the first and second reading, following the lilt of Akerele’s voice.

She didn’t take communion.

She didn’t know the words to the closing song.

And as the parishioners filed out of St. Joseph’s, shaking hands with Father Akerele on the front steps, Caren waited until she was the last in line. The priest took her hand, too, just as he had the others, his touch warm and friendly, his grip quite strong. He smiled at her, his black eyes a mix of mica and coal. “We found them,” he said.

Inés’s family, he told her.

“We found them, dear.”

At his beck, she followed him back inside the church, where he inquired about a small donation toward a fund to ship the body back to El Salvador. She emptied her wallet, forty-three dollars and a few quarters. There was a young church usher in the sanctuary, a teenage girl in a modest yellow dress with a lace collar, who was picking up discarded programs and replacing hymnals. But otherwise, Caren and Akerele were completely alone. “They’re heartbroken, of course,” he said. “But there is some peace in knowing she can come home.” Caren nodded, saying absently, “I’m sure.” The priest stressed that they were still planning a proper memorial service for her loved ones here.

He stared at Caren for a while, reading something in her expression.

He slid his hands into the hidden pockets of his robe.

“But that is not why you came,” he said.

“Donovan Isaacs was arrested this week,” she said, surprised at how quickly the words tumbled out of her mouth, how bothered she was by what had happened to Donovan. Akerele sighed wearily. He turned and asked the girl—Megan or Mary or something like that—to please excuse them. He and Caren both watched in patient silence as the girl shuffled her patent-leather flats down the center aisle, eventually disappearing behind a floor-length velvet curtain that led to the church’s back offices.

The sanctuary was empty now, just the two of them.

Akerele said, “You work with him, yes? The young man they have in custody?”

“Yes.”

“The reporter,” he said, explaining how he came to know this particular news. “The day you were here, you and Mr. Owens, I made an assumption about the two of you, I’m afraid. But, no, he told me that you are not together, that you run the plantation . . . this ‘Beautiful Life,’ ” he said with a wry smile. It was presented as an inside joke between two colored souls, separated by a continent and a few tricks of fate. “And, of course, then I remembered you from the prayer vigil in the fields,” he said, his voice temperate and kind. “You were touched by Inés . . . I can see that about you.”

“I don’t think he killed her.”

Akerele raised an eyebrow. “You and the reporter,” he said. “Your
theories
.”

Then he let out another weighty sigh, thick and morose, a sound all the more distressing for what it implied about the limits of what one man’s heart could take, God or no God. “As if I didn’t know,” he said. “We have this in my country, too, you know. Anywhere there is work to be done, someone somewhere will be standing with a boot to the neck of the one who must get down in the dirt and do it. Cane, cotton, rice . . . it is all of it the same. I did not need a reporter to tell me that Mr. Abrams is not kind to his crew.”

“She found something in the fields,” Caren reminded him.

Akerele stared at her for a long time. Outside, dark clouds were circling ’round, blackening the stained glass and painting the carpeted floor a deep red. “Yes.”

“Someone was buried out there?”

“That was her belief, yes,” he said. “It was an unsettling experience for her, to say the least. It haunted her for days, in fact. I urged her to make a full disclosure, to tell her employer, Mr. Abrams. But he took no action, told no one, as far as she could tell. And he grew angry after her repeated questions about the matter. She was frightened. A manager wields a great deal of power in the fields. He can, and has, docked her pay.” He shook his head slightly, remembering. “It was very upsetting for her, the idea that she had possibly disturbed a grave site. She only wanted to know that they were doing right by God.” The clouds darkened further and the light changed again, throwing shadows over Akerele’s round face. He pulled his hands from his pockets, clasping them behind his back. “The sheriff’s men, they have made me to understand that the Isaacs boy has had troubles with the law, that he is not without some criminal impulse. He was on the plantation without permission, yes? He was there at the crime scene.”

Caren wanted to get back to Abrams and the bone in the fields.

“Did
you
tell the police detectives what Inés found?”

Akerele nodded. “They did not seem to place much significance in it. It appeared to be very old, easily damaged. Inés and a small crew had been out on the edge of the fields, near the farm road, digging to lay posts for a fence, when the blade of her shovel hit the bone. The policemen seemed to make of it what Abrams had when he’d learned of it. It was an artifact of some sort, they assumed, nothing more. Certainly nothing connected to Inés’s death.”

“That’s it?” Caren said. “They never investigated any further?”

She found this striking, this pointed lack of curiosity on the part of the cops about just what in the hell had been going on in the Groveland fields. “What about the other workers?” she said. “Did they talk to them? Were there ever any questions about Abrams and acts of violence or cruelty against the men and women working for him, stories of someone who may have gotten hurt . . . or gone missing, even?”

Father Akerele stared at her, a weary look on his face.

“The newspaper reporter, Mr. Owens, he asked me the same thing.” He shook his head. “I can only say what I told him, that I have tried to cooperate and assist the police officers in every way I can. Their questions for me, however, had more to do with her last day, the last hours of her life. I told them what little information I had. Wednesday had not been in any way extraordinary. Inés was at work, and then she came by the church, as she often did in the afternoons, when she could get a ride.”

“Wait—she was
here
?”

“Well, yes.”

“Are you sure?” Caren said, confused. All this time, she had assumed that Inés had been taken by force as she was leaving work in the fields that day. But according to Akerele, Inés had left the cane farm . . . and then
returned
to Belle Vie, sometime that evening, after the sun had set. And Caren couldn’t imagine why. It was a fact that had continued to nag at her. Why in the world, on the last day of her life, had this woman ended up on the plantation grounds after dark? It was possible, Caren thought, that somewhere in the answer to that question lay a path toward clearing Donovan’s name.

Akerele, who was still thinking back to that last day, said, “We are a safe place for fellowship. Our doors are always open. Ginny, our secretary, she sets aside a few hours in the afternoons, when work in the fields is done, to assist the workers. We try to help with child care, for those who have their families with them, or we help them find a doctor if needed, one who will take cash and ask few questions. Inés spoke passable English. She could get by. The others need a lot of hand-holding. Finding a landlord or a place where they can wash their clothes or send packages home. There can be a lot of fear in a foreign place, especially if there’s been any kind of trouble.”

“Was Inés in some kind of trouble?”

The priest looked down at the tips of his shoes, which were not expensive dress shoes, she saw, but black sneakers. Then he patted Caren’s arm and said, “Follow me.”

Behind the velvet curtain there were two rooms, divided by a thin, cloth-covered partition that did not reach the height of the ceiling. On one side, Megan or Mary was sitting on the floor, reading a social studies textbook. Beside her were boxes of copier paper and colorful church programs folded and stacked in neat piles. The girl looked up as Akerele escorted Caren past, but she didn’t say anything and quickly went back to her schoolwork. On the other side of the partition sat Ginny. She was the woman from the candlelight vigil, the one who had pleaded with Deputy Harris to do something about Hunt Abrams. Today, she was dressed in khaki slacks and a burgundy blazer, large curls framing her face. Her lips were pink and her eyes a pale blue. There were square, black reading glasses tucked into the front of her shirt. She looked up from behind her desk, which was covered in notepaper and letter stock and cans of Diet Coke. Father Akerele began introductions, realizing only as he turned to Caren that he didn’t, in fact, know her name.

“Caren Gray,” she said.

Ginny stood, smoothing her blazer.

The tiny room, no more than ten or twelve square feet, smelled of her perfume, Shalimar, and incense, small, black cones of which lay in open boxes on top of a filing cabinet behind her desk. Ginny took Caren’s hand in her own, which was plump and baby-soft. “You’re out on the plantation, right?” she said, as friendly as could be. “I finally took my daughter last spring. I’ve lived in Ascension Parish my whole life and had never been to Belle Vie, if you can believe.” Caren remarked darkly that she felt as if she’d never left, stealing a look at Akerele as she explained that her family, in one form or another, had worked the land for generations. “It’s beautiful country out there, just outrageously beautiful,” Ginny said. “You should be really proud.”

Across the room, Akerele pressed his lips together, keeping his feelings about the plantation to himself. He said, “Ms. Gray had some questions about Inés.”

“Oh, honey,” Ginny said. “Did you know her, too?”

She was still holding Caren’s hand.

“Ms. Gray works with the Isaacs boy.”

“Oh.” Ginny let Caren’s hand slide from hers. She scrunched the pad of flesh between her eyebrows and wrinkled her nose. She looked back and forth between Akerele and Caren, her priest and a virtual stranger. She seemed not to understand the turn this meeting had taken. “Well,” Akerele said eventually. “It appears that Mr. Owens is not the only one who thinks the detectives do not have their man.”

“Hmph,” Ginny said, folding her arms across her chest, pushing the blazer’s shoulder pads up toward her ears. Her painted mouth was pulled into a tight line.

She leaned in and whispered, “I never liked Hunt Abrams either.”

Akerele shot Caren a look.

To Ginny, he said, “Ms. Gray expressed curiosity about the fact that Inés had come by the church on the day she died.”

“Did Detectives Lang and Bertrand ask you about that?”

“Only inasmuch as they were trying to establish a timeline. I told them exactly what I told you, Father. She was here on Wednesday afternoon, for about an hour, leaving around six o’clock. But they didn’t get into it much more beyond that.”

“And do you know where she went after she left?”

“Home, I assumed.”

Caren nodded, but she didn’t think this was true.

She asked why Inés had come to the church that day.

“She was hunting about a place to stay.”

“Inés . . . was homeless?”

“Oh, no, she stayed out in town with her boyfriend.”

“Gustavo?”

Ginny nodded. “That’s right.”

“Was there some kind of problem, between the two of them?”

“No, ma’am, that wasn’t it at all,” Ginny said, shaking her head. “She and Gustavo were a real pair. It was real for them. I wanted her to stay with him. He was good to her, you know, real kind. And any dollar she spent on renting a room somewhere else was money she couldn’t send to her kids. Lord knows she was trying to get back to them. I mean, it’s hell being away from your kids, you know. I told her to save her money, but she was serious about finding some other kind of living arrangement.” She turned around to fish for something among the mess of papers and files and tattered periodicals on a table pressed against the wall behind her. “She wanted some place cheap and clean and close to work, she said. We went through some listings, friends of the church, you know. I really tried to find her something.”