Shameless (The Contemporary Collection) (10 page)

What Reid had said was apparently the simple truth: nothing had been finalized about the sale. Representatives from the Swedish conglomerate had toured the mill as observers and had driven through the countryside looking at the reserves of timber acreage that were owned outright by Sayers-Hutton Bag and Paper, plus the vastly greater holdings held on ninety-nine-year leases. They had made arrangements for an independent accounting firm to check the financial operation, and a date had been set for that in two weeks. However, no formal offer had been tendered and no firm commitment made by either side.

Cammie listened to Reid's version of the events, concentrating not just on what he said, but the sound of his voice as he spoke. When he was finished, she sat back in her chair. Quietly she said, “This is why you came home, isn't it? To sell the mill.”

“I came home because my dad called and asked me to come, period. He had his massive heart attack the same night, and I have to wonder if worry about the sale didn't contribute to it. I won't say that the prospect isn't appealing, however, because it is. You must know that.”

Yes, she knew. She also knew that he could have mentioned the possibility of the sale when they had spoken about his taking over active management of the mill. He hadn't. Why? Was it because he wanted to keep it quiet until the business was completed, so that there could be no opposition? Or was it only that he had considered the sale his private business?

To be perfectly fair, the whole thing was none of her concern. Other than the interest controlled by Keith and his brother Gordon, the mill belonged to Reid. He could dispose of it as he saw fit. He had no real obligation to discuss it with her even as much as he had this evening. Regardless, there were larger issues at stake, other lives and livelihoods involved.

Placing her fingers on her wineglass, twisting it and watching the candle on their table make golden gleams in its depths, she said, “Have you thought at all about how this will effect Greenley and the rest of the parish?”

“I've thought of little else,” he answered at once. “Greenley is a dying town — or haven't you noticed? Half the shops along main street have closed. Two out of three of the local car dealerships have folded. There used to be three movie houses, seven or eight cafés, three or four barbershops. Now there are none. Where have they all gone?”

Cammie made a small shrugging movement of her shoulders. “A lot of places closed after Wal-Mart opened — the five-and-dime, the dollar store, some of the department stores — but Wal-Mart hires twice as many people as the combined payrolls of the stores that went out of business. The cafés closed when the fast food places came in, the barbershops turned into hairdressers catering to both sexes. Other than that, the problem seems to be that people are more mobile these days, they go out of town to the bigger cities where there's more choice to buy cars and clothes and to eat out. It isn't just a case of people leaving.”

“But they are going,” Reid insisted. “With the best will in the world to save jobs, the mill has had to automate to stay competitive in the paper business. That means fewer jobs than there were ten years ago.”

“There are also fewer children being born,” Cammie pointed out.

“True, but it isn't a factor, except that there's more money to go around, more to spend on college. Kids graduate with degrees, and they see there's nothing for them in Greenley. They go to New Orleans and Baton Rouge, to Atlanta and L.A. It doesn't have to be that way.”

“Maybe. What we need is different industry, not more of the same kind. Greenley has been a one-horse town, a paper mill town, for too long.”

“I agree,” Reid said seriously, “but it isn't going to happen until we have better access to national markets, which means a four-lane highway down the center of North Louisiana. That won't come about until there's more money in the state treasury. The treasury can't be helped a lot until the economy turns around and there's more money coming in. We're talking years. The Swedish takeover is now.”

Cammie's lips tightened as she leaned toward him. “They'll take out too much timber, even if they don't clear-cut it, which they easily could. Without the tree roots to hold the soil, the runoff from the rains will fill the creeks and branches, the bayous and rivers and lakes with silt. A lot of these waterways are just now recovering from the pollution of the forties and fifties; they won't be able to take on a new threat. The parish will lose as much from recreational spending as it will gain from expanded jobs.”

“The forestry service monitors the waterways,” Reid said with a trace of impatience. “Conditions would never be allowed to deteriorate that far.”

“Possibly not, but they never seem to mind losing a little stream or two here and there. It adds up.”

“In the meantime, two thousand jobs will be created. That's two thousand families that will stay put or move in, several thousand people with a better standard of living.”

“There's another thing,” Cammie persisted. “The only place this expansion can take place is behind the present mill. That land is virgin timber, some of the last tracts left in the state. There's never been development or improvement back in there, nothing cut except to open it for hiking trails and a few picnic and camping areas.”

Reid's mouth thinned. “I'm well aware of that, since my dad, and his granddad before him, went to great lengths to save it as a wilderness park.”

“Are you also aware it's one of the most important nesting areas for the red-cockaded woodpecker in the northern part of the state? Did you know that the red-cockaded woodpecker is an endangered species?”

“It isn't the only site.”

Cammie heard the defensiveness in his tone. Her voice was firm as she said, “No, but it's the best one. All woodpeckers need old timber that's allowed to decay naturally, but especially the big red-cockades. They can't make the size nests they need in young, strong-growing trees like those in the stands planted by the forestry service, nor can they find high-density insect populations there. They also require hardwood trees, not the endless forests of pulpwood pine that we have now — certainly not the expanded pine tree farms that will spring up if old forests are cut and the land put to timber use.”

“Since when,” he said irritably, “did you get to be an expert on woodpecker habitat?”

“I've watched them all my life. My dad was an amateur bird watcher. He used to call the big red-cockades Indian head woodpeckers.”

“So did mine,” he said. “And I have every sympathy for the woodpeckers, and every intention of protecting them where it's possible. But I have to tell you that people are more important to me than birds.”

“You're quoting the senator,” she said in exasperated disparagement. “You might at least be original.”

He gave her a level look. “You might consider whether the senator could have been quoting me.”

She stared at him for a long, considering moment. Her hands were shaking with her anger and distress, and she clasped them beneath the edge of the table. “It doesn't matter who said it first,” she said on an uneven breath. “It's still an excuse to do what's best for you — and let what's right go hang.”

“Right in this case, it seems to me,” Reid said evenly, “is a matter of opinion.”

“Oh, very good. That should make it easy to satisfy your conscience while you take the money and run.”

Anger leaped like blue fire in his eyes. “There's nothing easy about it!”

“No, there certainly isn't going to be,” she said bitterly, “because I'm going to see to it. I'll form committees, organize petitions, call on the press. I'll create so much noise and opposition that you'll have to listen. You just may wish you had never heard of Sweden, much less a Swedish buy-out of your mill.”

He pushed his plate out of the way, sitting forward in his chair. He reached out as if to touch her, then drew back as she flinched from him. “Listen to me, Cammie,” he said earnestly, “if you're doing this because of what happened between us last night—”

“It has nothing to do with that!”

“Doesn't it?” he shot back at her. “I think you're scared. I think you've decided you want me out of your life, and this is as good an excuse as any.”

She sat with her back straight and her nails digging into her clasped hands. Her voice tight, she said, “If I wanted to be rid of you, I wouldn't need an excuse!”

“You might find it harder than you imagine. But there's no problem; I'm gone.”

“I told you—”

“So you did,” he interrupted. “I just don't happen to believe that anybody likes woodpeckers that much!”

The waiter, approaching from behind Reid, was unfortunate enough to choose that moment to ask if he could bring them anything else.

“Yes, the check,” Reid said, the words so deadly quiet and his eyes so opaque that they could only be shields for impulses too violent for civilized company.

His face whiter than the napkin draped over his arm, the waiter skimmed away to do what he could to speed them out of the restaurant.

Reid took Cammie back to the apartment, but he did not come in. He was not invited, though Cammie wasn't sure a gilt, deckle-edged invitation would have tempted him. She was glad, she told herself with fierce emphasis. She was not the kind of woman who was sexually aroused by anger. On top of that, she had no use for a man who cared more for money than for the natural beauty around him. She had been married to one of those.

As her anger seeped away, however, it was replaced by depression. She had thought, for a few short hours, that Reid was different. It hurt to be wrong.

The remainder of the CODOFIL conference passed in a blur. She attended meetings and served on committees, but she hardly knew what was discussed or decided. She met people and had drinks with friends, and could not recall afterward what she had said to whom.

She walked in the French Quarter, admiring the art work displayed by the itinerant artists around Jackson Square, stopping for café au lait and beignets at the Café du Monde, and buying a garnet bracelet at a store selling antique jewelry on Royal Street. She introduced a friend who had never seen them to the old houses of the Garden District, and shopped for a summer suit at Canal Place. She spent an evening at Pat O'Brien's doing her best to find the bottom of the enormous glass holding a drink known as a hurricane. All of it was pleasant; none of it absorbed more than the surface of her thoughts.

Her free time was spent scribbling notes about the things she would do when she got home, giving form and structure to her threat to Reid. Hers would be an opposition campaign like nothing he had ever seen. She might not change his mind, but when it was over, he would understand that he'd been in a fight.

It was a relief when the conference came finally to its end and she could begin the long drive home.

The last thing she wanted, when she pulled into the driveway at Evergreen late on Sunday afternoon, was to see Keith's Land Rover parked there. Annoyance mixed with trepidation washed over her. His vehicle was blocking her way to the garage. He had apparently let himself into the house.

He was in the kitchen. He was standing with the refrigerator door open, eating peach cobbler out of the pan with a serving spoon and drinking milk straight from the carton.

“Hey, I got hungry waiting for you,” he said, flashing his little boy grin as he saw the look of distaste on her face. “Besides, nobody makes peach cobbler like Persephone. “

Cammie set her overnight bag down against the wall. She tugged the strap of her shoulder bag of soft black leather from her shoulder and placed it on the nearest countertop. Her voice carefully controlled, she said, “How did you get in?”

He set the cobbler pan back on the refrigerator shelf, took a long swallow of milk before he answered. “I happened to see Persephone's husband turning in here, bringing your supper. I told him I'd put it in the house.”

He meant that he had cajoled and intimidated Persephone's husband, a veteran twice his age with an artificial leg, into giving up the housekeeper's key. She wondered how long he had been waiting and watching before Persephone's husband had come along.

She said, “The locks on the doors of this house are well over a hundred years old or I would change them. Since I'd rather not do that, I want Persephone's key back.”

He reached into his pocket, then hesitated, his eyes on her face. Jangling the big metal key on its ring, he said, “I'll trade you.”

“What do you mean?”

Removing his hand from his pocket, he took a last swallow of milk, then closed the refrigerator door and tossed the spoon he had been using onto the countertop. Taking a yellow paper from his pocket, he sent it skidding across the counter toward her. “I brought the estimate for the damage to the Rover.”

Cammie made a mental note to throw out the rest of the cobbler and buy a new carton of milk. Without touching the piece of paper, she said shortly, “Why is it I have the honor of seeing it?”

“Now, don't be like that, baby. You know you cost me a pair of headlamp assemblies, not to mention a new hood.”

She was not in the mood for this. She said distinctly, “I'm not your baby, I was never your baby, and, as you know perfectly well, I despise men who call women childish names. If you have problems with your Rover, it has nothing to do with me. I'm not responsible in any way for your debts.”