Chapter Twenty - One
Hot water from the shower washes over me until steam fills the entire bathroom.
It loosens the knots in my shoulders. Despite what happened at the levee last night, or maybe because of what happened at the levee last night, I feel better.
More in charge. I rub a spot on the glass and look out at the thermos on the bathroom counter.
Well, maybe not completely in charge. At least I slept.
The first full night of sleep I’ve gotten in days, exhaustion finally catching up to me.
The water loosens my mind as well, and my thoughts travel to the month after Mabry’s funeral. Mama was in bed. I had to force her to get up. I leaned her head over the kitchen sink and washed her hair, put fresh clothes on her. Then she hugged me. Pulled me in tight and sobbed into my neck.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, between sobs. “I shoulda done better.”
The shower water runs cold, and I yelp and duck away from it.
But I can’t duck away from the memory. The raw truth in Mama’s voice.
That moment of clarity when she was honest and vulnerable, not hiding behind her huge persona.
A dull ache spreads through my chest. A voice deep inside me, one I want to ignore, says, Sound familiar?
I step out to dry off, and that’s when I hear it.
A sound outside the bedroom. I freeze with my hair dripping and the towel wrapped around me.
There it is again. A creak. Like someone walking on old floorboards.
Then the sound is gone. I stay put for another minute and, when I don’t hear anything else, ease into the bedroom.
The room is empty. The bed still unmade.
Everything is as it was when I went to sleep last night.
The boxes and my duffel are in their same spots.
The old television still on the floor. The security tape, thankfully, gone.
I have a strong feeling it would have taken the place of Mabry’s voicemail if I’d let it.
The sound doesn’t come again, but I still grab my gun off the nightstand and take it with me downstairs. The house is bright and full of light. The storms have gone. Nothing looks out of place down here either. The front door is still locked.
My cell trills in my hand and I jump. “Holy shit.” I look down and see my mother’s name.
I swipe it open.
“Are you home yet?”
I look around the front foyer of Shadow Bluff. “Not yet.”
“Sweet girl, you’d better get on out of there.”
I want to tell her about my breakdown over Mabry. About the ashes. About all of it. I really want to talk. But I can’t seem to form the words. “I’ll be leaving soon,” I say.
“My doctor came by the other day.”
I walk onto the front porch and sit on the steps. “Oh, Mama, I left him a message and forgot to follow up. Things got a little . . . hectic . . . here.” Squirrels scamper through the puddles in the front yard and frogs croak from every shadow. Hot, salty air sits over the porch like a wet blanket.
“He wants me to try a new medicine.”
I don’t hear anything in her voice that sounds bitter, but I stay cautious. “I am concerned. I worry when you stop taking your medication. I want you to stay healthy is all.”
“Well, I told him I’d try it.”
This makes me sit up straighter. “You did?”
“I did. You know you’re not the only one who worries. I worry too.”
I let out a long breath. This is the clearest she’s sounded in months. I have a feeling she’s already started whatever he prescribed. “You sound really good, Mama. More alert.”
“Maybe not this morning. That friend of yours came by early. Woke me up. I’ve had all kinds of visitors.”
“Who? Amy?”
Mama coughs in my ear, clears her throat. “No. The other lady.”
My blood turns to cold sludge in my veins. “What other lady?”
“That fancy one who dresses like you. Rita Meade.”
“What!” I jump up from the steps. “What the hell?”
“That one’s quite the busy bee. She’s got lots of questions about my old car and you and some little girl named Emily.”
“Holy shit, Mama. What did you say?”
“I told her to get her fancy pants the hell out of my room.”
I smile. “Of course you did.”
“Who is that woman?”
“I’m sorry. She’s . . . I’m not sure what she is. We’ve been talking about some things. She’s a reporter.”
“We’ve already had this talk, Willamena. You don’t need to be talking to anyone. This is nothing to do with us. That idiot got out of the car. You said so.” Mama coughs again, and this time, it lasts until she coughs something up. I hear her spit.
“I hate that Rita came up there. She’s digging for her story, that’s all. But she should have told me she wanted to talk to you.”
Mama is talking about Rita in my ear, but I’m not listening. I open my text messages and type one to Rita.
What the hell are you doing?
The response is quick:
Almost back. Will explain. Meet me at Taylor’s in an hour.
I’m at Taylor’s Marketplace, sipping coffee, when Rita walks in. She waves to me as she clips to the back counter. She orders a coffee and sits next to me. She still looks perfect even though she must have driven nonstop to get back to Broken Bayou so quickly.
I face her. “My mother? Really?”
“Sorry. I should have told you.” Her coffee arrives, and she takes a giant sip. “I like your mother. Fiery, that one.”
“Start explaining.”
Rita leans in. Her eyes are bright, pupils dilated.
This story is her drug, and despite her smooth hair and shiny lips, I see it’s getting the better of her.
Something about her seems off. She’s too put together, too intense.
“I had to talk to her. Your mother. I had to talk to the woman who owned that car. I wanted to hear her side of what happened the night she told you to get rid of it. I wanted to see her face when she told me, experience it with her.”
“And how’d that go?”
“Not well. She told me to march my fancy ass to the door.” She laughs.
“I could have saved you the trip.”
Rita sips more coffee even though, judging from her shaking hands, that’s the last thing she needs. “I just want to make sure I look under every stone. This story is a monster. A whale. And I’m reeling it in.”
I study her hands again. “How many hours have you slept in the last few days? Seems to me, the story may be reeling you in.”
She smiles, but the smile looks manic, unhinged. I know the feeling. The last two times I saw my reflection, that’s what looked back at me. This place has a way of doing that to a person.
“Nothing’s reeling me in,” she says with a glazed look. “I’ve had a lot of time in the car, driving. A lot of time to just think. And something’s not sitting right with me.”
I lean in.
“Doyle,” she says.
“What about him?”
“I don’t know. But something’s not right. I keep going over everything the investigator has told me and our talks, and everything points to him. Now, there’s the sand thing.”
“What sand thing?”
She fidgets with a stray hair in her face and tucks it behind her ear. “Some of the barrels, the newer ones, had sand residue in them.”
I vaguely remember hearing something about that from one of the press conferences.
“I did some digging,” Rita says with another smile.
“Shocking,” I say.
“Did you know there are dozens of types of sand? There’s river sand, desert sand, sea sand.” She ticks them off on her fingers. “So many types, it’s crazy. But do you know what type my source says was in some of those barrels?”
Then it hits me. Doyle’s job. I think of the piles of sand I saw from the bedroom window at his house. “The kind used to fill playground sandboxes?” I say.
“Bingo. And on top of that, guess what I just found out?” She doesn’t wait for me to say what. “Doyle’s prints were all over that missing teacher’s license plate.”
My pulse quickens. Doyle left that plate for me. When I asked Eddie about it, he said it was a secret. He knows his brother is up to no good. I sit back in my chair. “Then what’s not adding up?”
“The police are keeping something quiet.” She leans in. “There’s talk at least some of the victims were drugged.”
“How would they know that? Based on the . . . condition of the victims.” I shake the thought away.
“The schoolteacher.” Rita’s eyes are wide and bright. “Her autopsy is providing some interesting information.”
“They can’t possibly have that information already.”
Rita nods. “You’d be surprised how fast you can get information when a senator is involved.
” She lowers her voice. “There’s something else.
That investigator is questioning the way the sheriff’s office handled that stolen barrel report back then.
Apparently, the paperwork was filed incorrectly, possibly on purpose.
Like someone deliberately filled it out wrong to create problems later on if it ever got brought up again. ”
I think of all the law enforcement swarming the bayou. All wanting a piece of this pie.
Rita sips her coffee. “Anyway,” she says. “There’s something else.”
“Christ. What?”
“Really, someone else. Emily.”
“What about her?”
“After we talked, I contacted Tom Bordelon about her. Like you said, she seemed important. Could be, she is. My source called me this morning. They want a DNA sample from Liv Arceneaux or one of the brothers.”
“For what?”
Rita rests both her arms on the table and leans closer. “To compare to the bones found in the trunk of that car you dumped.”
The air in Taylor’s Marketplace suddenly feels too thin to breathe, like I’ve elevated to an altitude well above sea level. My chest heaves. My stomach constricts into a knot. “Please, no.”
“Look, no question little Emily was buried on her family’s land. The question is, did she stay buried? They’re working on a warrant to find out.”
If Doyle followed us the night I dumped that car, and saw where it was, he could have relocated Emily to that trunk. But why would he do that?
“Walk me through this again. The dates. When did she die?”
“October 1999,” Rita says.