House on Diablo Road: Resurrection Day (The McCann Family Saga Book 3) (16 page)

“
Mr. Monet?”

The old man finally turned and stared at Higgins with vacant eyes. Snake Eye moved forward and leaned down face to face: “My name is Higgins. I’m a friend of Buck Hennessy. He sent me to see you.”

“
Buck? Buck, you say?
Bon Dieu!
”

“Yes sir. I understand you and he were friends back in the Civil War days. He says you pulled cotton together on the McCann plantation on Diablo Road. Is that right?”

“
What do you want with me? Do I know you?”

“
Jesse McCann has hired me to retrieve his uncle’s remains. Can you help him with that, sir?”

“
Do I know his uncle ?”

“
Don’t you remember Cyrus McCann?”

“
Who’d you say you were again?”

Snake Eye took a deep breath and decided to go for broke: “I’m here to ask you
where
you hid the body of Cyrus McCann fifty-seven years ago.
Can you tell me
?”

Monet’s eyes went from blank to alert and back again. It was as if he had tuned out the static and switched off altogether. He turned to the window and ignored this man who would drag him into the real world where he did not belong.

“
No use asking more questions,” Phoebe said. “You caught him on a bad day. Might as well leave now.”

“
Is there anything
you
can tell me?”

“
He never told me, in all these years, where he took poor sweet Cyrus. He said it was best that way, so I’d never be involved. He tried to protect me.” Phoebe began to sob. “The good Lord knows I don’t know where that body lies.”

“
Do you think your husband had any reason to want Cyrus McCann dead?”

“
He had one good reason, but Louis could never hurt nobody, Mr. Higgins. You don’t know him...not like Buck knew him. That’s why Buck helped us get away from Morgans Bluff.”

Higgins looked about the ramshackle front room, and his eye caught and held on the old photograph of the cotton field workers in front of the house on Diablo Road.”

“
Who is the child on your lap here?”

“
That’s Baby Thomas. Of course he has grown children and grandchildren now. Seems like such a long time ago that he was little.”

“
Where does Thomas live?”

“
New Orleans. I couldn’t keep him out here, but I had no family to take him in. My family was from the African continent, and I was brought over here as a little girl. I was taken from my mother and father by traders. So there'd been only the Monets left to take Thomas in. The boy was sent to live with Louis’ parents when he was six years old, so he could go to school and have a normal life. He was raised in their Haitian Creole culture, and that troubled me, because of all their voodoo down there.”

“
Your husband did what he thought was best for the boy.”

“
I believe so. We couldn't keep him hidden with us in this thicket, and we couldn’t come out and live a normal life either. They would’ve hanged Louis the minute they saw him.”

“
Do you ever see Thomas?”

“The Monets used to bring him to see me, from time to time, and then he came by himself after he grew up. He sends us money from New Orleans, but we haven't seen him in a long time.”

Higgins was drawn back to the faded sepia photograph on the wall. He saw the images of Louis Monet sitting next to Phoebe and Baby Thomas sitting in her lap.

“
Your son was a handsome lad in this old photograph, but there’s something unusual about him. Maybe it's his eyes. They look much paler than yours and Mr. Monet’s, but it’s hard to tell from a picture. What color are Thomas’ eyes?”

“
What does that have to do with anything?”

“
Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Is he your
natural
son?”

“He is
my
natural son, and that’s all that needs to be said,” Phoebe declared.

Higgins let the subject go, but he stored a half formed idea in the back of his mind to pick to pieces later. He had just experienced one of his bulls-eye gut reaction.

It was time to trek back, and so, in parting, he handed her Jesse’s business card. “You can reach me through Cyrus’ nephew. If you or your son can get any information from your husband in a more lucid moment, contact Jesse McCann.”

“
Why is finding a pile of bones so important to the McCann family
now
, after all these many years?”

“
Jesse McCann wasn’t familiar with the history of all of his family. If you are a Christian, then you surely can understand the need to find whatever remains of the man and return him to the ground, where we all are meant to return.”

“
Are you a Christian, Mr. Higgins?”

“
What I am does not matter. I represent a family with traditional values. They pay me to do a job, and I aim to do that much and more, including clearing your husband’s name...if I find him innocent. Good day Ma’am.”

In the beginning the trail back was easy enough for Snake Eye—right up to one mile before Blue Hole, where Buck had turned back, machete and expertise included. Higgins pushed through, grunting and swearing loud enough to scare off all manner of wildlife. Deer and foxes scampered in his wake, and crows cawed in complaint. There was an intruder in their forest.

Higgins tumbled over hidden logs, ran into low hanging branches and scratched up his face in the underbrush—all the time chastising himself for not bringing the machete as Buck had suggested. The ground was so uneven that he turned his ankle before he reached the truck. When he at last arrived, Buck Hennessy was waiting and watching with folded arms and sleepy eyes. “I almost gave up on you. Find out anything?”

Higgins winced as he swung up behind the wheel. “Well, I don’t know yet.”

“Do you know
where Cyrus’ remains are, or not?”

“
Not yet, but there’s something more to learn about the killing itself.”

Buck sputtered. “Did I not tell you it was the Night Riders led by Jonathan Bonney? I’m plum wearing myself out telling folks. He and he alone had a reason and the means to carry it out. I ain't saying it again!”

Higgins did not comment. He was looking out the window of the truck, beyond the rope and straight down into the cavernous pool of blue water. “That’s a mighty deep hole there. See how the water darkens and becomes opaque?”

“
Yep. Ain’t nobody been even close to the bottom and lived to brag about it, as far as I know.”

“
There’s no telling what’s down there.”

“
Most folks don’t even know it’s here, and those who do say it’s cursed. A Native man told me that when I was a kid, but that didn’t make me no never-mind. I tried to reach bottom when I was about ten years old. Couldn’t hold my breath long enough. Might near drowned.”

Higgins started the engine. “Fascinating, but let's get out of here. My skeleton search has been a bust so far, and I sprained my ankle in the process.”

Buck snickered in response. “You ain't near as smart and tough as you let on, are you, Big man? Are you certain you're a real East Texan?”

On the morning the honeymooners left New Orleans, Annie loaded the wagon to prepare for the homecoming at the house on Diablo Road. With her was an unlikely crew: the boys, Granny Minna and her nurse, Rachel. Out from Morgans Bluff lay a long road and a bleak winter horizon, broken only by the starkness of bare hardwoods. Several miles out, the road narrowed into little more than a red rutted trail. Beyond that point, there was no evidence of human life-except for the occasional crack of a hunter’s rifle. Finally, they came to the vast Bonney property.

The house had seemed different at the wedding, when filled with colorful flowers and happy guests. What Annie had found charming, now seemed gloomy in the gray morning light. The house with its chimneys and spires jutting through a thick blanket of fog, seemed unsuited to time and place. The only illumination came from Elias Crow’s kerosene lamp as he approached the front door, large mocking mouth and single eye as cold and flinty as steel. Although he had covered the empty socket with a black patch again, in compliance with Nathan Bonney’s wishes, it did little to improve his demeanor.

Crow was a bad guy, as far as Tobias McCann was concerned. In the boy’s wish to avoid confrontation, he relied on the persuasive power of McCann blue eyes “Mama, may I
please
stay here in the wagon ‘till Daddy comes?”

Annie patted his cheek with a tender hand, knowing she could not give in. “Don’t you know your mama won’t let anyone hurt you, any more than your daddy would?”

Tobi climbed down and began to help Cal maneuver Granny into the wheelchair, even as he fretted in silence. Despite their efforts, the old woman refused to be wheeled inside and raised an unholy ruckus. Yet she had stayed at that very house during Civil War days, when doctoring the pickers’ children with whooping cough in the winter and malaria in the summer. It had been then that the house had belonged to Cyrus and Lucinda. All that now remained for Granny was a premonition of evil as sharp as the winter wind in her brittle bones.

Annie gave in to her grandmother for the sake of harmony. “Rachel, park her on the back porch and wrap her in the quilt. Stay right with her. She’s ornery today.”

“
Ain't no different than any other day,” came Rachel’’s quick retort. “The ol’ heifer won’t behave. Praise the Lord if Mr. Higgins finds Cyrus’ bones, and y’all get him buried proper. Maybe then she’ll be Miss Sunshine again.”

“
How do you know about the search?”

“
I overheard Mr. McCann and Mr. Hennessy talking, of course. I’m neither deaf nor dumb. Not only that…from what words I can understand, Minna believes a spirit is wandering around in this house. If you ask me, we oughtn't to be here.”

“
I’ll remind you that this is my daughter’s home now. As long as she and Nathan are happy here, we have no say...unless we see a clear danger.”

With the boys’ help, Annie scrubbed the floors and polished the silverware for the welcome home supper. Crow begrudgingly made a fire in the downstairs fireplace and opened the windows to the fresh crisp air. Even as he did, he groused under his breath about the “invasion of the McCanns” into his domain. Annie decided he needed a talking-to from her new son-in-law. Until Nathan or Jesse and Buck arrived, it was Annie’s lot to deal with the openly hostile caretaker. She had to wonder why Jonathan Bonney had hired the man, unless for the purpose of scaring away all the people he had detested—especially the McCanns. She had heard it said that Jonathan had loathed those he classified as “Unionists”. The Civil War had never really ended. It remained alive and well on Diablo Road.

Because Jesse and Crow had the run-in, Jesse had known how the visit would go. “Wait until I can drive you out there,” he had insisted the night before. “You need a
man
there with you. What kind of husband would I be to let you go alone?”