The Cutting Season (26 page)

“We try to offer what services we can,” Akerele reiterated.

“Here,” Ginny said, holding out a stapled stack of apartment listings and room rentals. It was three pages, typed. Caren flipped through it, the words blurring from one line to the next. Then she looked up, searching Ginny’s face, then Akerele’s. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why was she so determined to move?”

At this, Ginny pinched her lips together. It was a hesitation.

Akerele gave her a small nod. “It’s okay.”

“She thought someone was following her,” Ginny said, finally spilling it. On the farm road, in town, even out near the trailer park where she lived, she felt she was being watched. “I told those two police detectives. She was scared to death.”

Akerele added, “It had been going on for a week or so before she died.”

“Around the time she discovered the bone,” Caren said.

She looked at Akerele, wondering if he sensed a connection, too.

He made a face, considering anew this sequence of events.

“I told the sheriff’s men to look into it,” Ginny said. “But they said they had nothing to go on since Inés had never filed a police report or anything, which I had begged her to do. But she wasn’t having it. Said she was cursed, had been ever since that bone came up out of the ground. She didn’t want to get thrown in jail for not having any papers, not when she was so close to getting out of here. A few more weeks and she probably could’ve made up the money they’d lost during the rains.” Ginny let out a long sigh. “I wish to God she’d left when she had the chance.”

Caren felt a wave of nausea.

It was the incense and the drugstore perfume, making her stomach turn. And this: she now thought she knew why Inés was on the plantation after dark. “And you never found her a place, did you?”

Ginny shook her head. “A few days before she died, she just stopped asking, and I stopped looking. And, unfortunately, honey, that’s right where we left it.”

S
ome place cheap and clean and close to work.

Inés had been looking for a place to stay.

By the time Caren pulled back into the parking lot of Belle Vie, dark clouds had started a march overhead. Like chunks of ash after a steady burn, they crowded out any hint of light or color on the other side, the sun or blue sky. The wind had picked up, too, whipping cane leaves in the distance, the sound like the percussive whoosh of seeds inside a baby’s shaker. There was a storm coming, for sure, rolling up the Mississippi from the Gulf, gaining strength, bringing thunder and lightning, too. The air was sharp with it, the acrid smell of electricity lying in wait for a single, lone spark. Caren was determined to make it to the slave quarters before the storm hit, borrowing the golf cart from security and speeding to the west. Gerald was not on duty today, not on a Sunday. Except for weddings or private parties, the staff was not asked to work on the Sabbath. Caren was out this far on the property line alone. The plantation was a chorus of whispered voices. The wind in the tree leaves, the wind in her hair, and the long, green fingers of weeping willows dusting the grassy groves. Overhead, the shrieking whistles of mourning warblers could be heard as the birds fled the low branches of a nearby oak, flying out ahead of the rain. The machines had stopped in the cane fields, and the pastoral music of Belle Vie was all Caren heard as she approached the quarters.

She parked the golf cart as she always did, at the head of the dirt path, uttering a prayer the second her feet touched the ground. Only today, when she made the offering, she was thinking not only of her ancestors . . . but also Inés. It wasn’t Catholic, her prayer, but a hymn her mother used to sing, the lyrics to a Mahalia Jackson song, about somebody dying for your sins.

She wanted some place cheap and clean and close to work
, Ginny said.

And just across the fence from the fields sat these six cabins, where sugarcane workers, enslaved and free, once lived and loved and raised families for generations, cabins that Inés had likely laid eyes on every day she worked at the Groveland farm. Six surprisingly well-kept cabins, their history foreign to someone like her. Each and every one of them sitting empty through the night. The last one on the left not even a hundred yards from the fields.

Jason’s Cabin, Caren remembered.

There had been blood inside the gate, Morgan said.

And a knife just a few feet from the cabin door.

And inside, Caren had found candles, lots of them, votives burned to stubs.

Could Inés, she asked herself as she approached the cabin’s low-lying gate, could she have stolen onto the grounds of Belle Vie, like Owens did the night he and Caren met, and waited until sundown to sleep here, in this little slave cabin, where Jason had once lived, the place from which Caren’s whole family had sprung? Were they so different really, Jason and Inés, two cane workers separated by time and not much else?

As Caren stepped into the tiny yard where summer cabbage once grew, peppers and okra, where chickens pecked feed in the dirt, she thought how desperate Inés must have been to choose this, a home literally behind bars, behind gates locked each night.

She must have thought she’d be safe here.

But someone had found her anyway.

Inside, it took a while for Caren’s eyes to adjust to the low light and the swirl of black dust kicked up by wind blowing through the open door. She tried to picture Inés here, the way she had many times tried to picture her own ancestors living within these four walls—with the candles and the tattered quilt and the straw pallet on the floor, the antique tools and, of course, the night she died, the cane knife still hanging in its usual place on the wall.

Beyond the cabin walls, Caren heard the first crack of thunder.

She felt the ground move beneath her, the earth shaking from the force of it.

It made her heart stop.

Is that it? she wondered.

Is that how it went?

Inés was out here all alone and something, someone, startled her?

Frightened, did she grab for the first thing at hand, the knife on the wall? And the killer took it away from her? It gave Caren the idea that the killer had entered the grounds without a weapon, that he maybe hadn’t intended to kill her at all, but some struggle had nevertheless ensued . . . and something went horribly wrong. The police had found no blood, no real forensic evidence inside the doors of any building on the entire plantation. Caren thought the confrontation, the moment her throat was slit, had to have happened outside the cabin, out by the fence, where Morgan saw blood. She turned, walking the last steps she imagined Inés took, from the center of the cabin to the front door, Caren’s right hand clenched around an imaginary weapon, the antique cane knife. She inched slowly toward the cabin door. But when she tried to imagine the last person Inés saw that night, the whole scene playing in her head simply faded to black.

She had no idea who had been stalking this woman, or why.

Outside, she felt the first drops of rain, cold water stinging her skin.

As she reached out to open the gate, it swung out on its own, clanging against the fence in the sweeping, blustery wind. The rain was coming down harder now, the clouds blacker than they were only minutes before. She turned to the dirt road and ran.

21

W
hen she walked into her office the following morning, Hunt Abrams was standing over her desk, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, casually studying the papers sitting out in the open on her desk. He didn’t start at her presence, didn’t inch away from her things. He was wearing a cotton button-down beneath his Groveland windbreaker. His hair was greased at the sides, and he smiled slyly in her direction.

“We meet again,” he said.

They were alone in here, and the feeling Caren had, creeping from her navel and spreading hot across her chest, was fear. She had a sudden disturbing thought about those holes in the ground out by the fields, the story of Abrams’s fight with Inés over what she had found. She swallowed hard. “Can I help you with something?”

“No, ma’am.”

In deference to decorum, he smiled politely, but his eyes didn’t move, and the effect was cool and masklike and wholly insincere. Abrams, it was clear, didn’t give a shit about being discovered like this, in her office. He wanted her to know that he, too, was free to come and go as he pleased; two could play the snooping game. He pivoted on the heels of his leather boots, casually perusing the antique furniture in the office, the floral wallpaper, and the stacks of books on the shelves, which included everything from yellowing agronomy texts to bound commemorative copies of
The Olden Days of Belle Vie
, and photo albums documenting every debutante ball and wedding and catered event held in the ballroom since 1972. Abrams took in the scene as he might an exhibit at a small roadside museum full of curios and knickknacks, all of it quaint but of no real consequence. She didn’t like his hands on everything, or the knowledge that he might claim all this one day soon. “The first tour starts at nine-fifteen,” she said, the words coming out thin and strained. “You’re certainly welcome to purchase a ticket. But otherwise I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Abrams smiled, but didn’t move.

He went back to poring over the items on the shelf, reaching up to take down a photograph, framed in silver and black, a picture of the Clancy boys, Bobby and Raymond, the two of them in their early twenties. The photo had been there for years, beside tins of aged molasses and two ceramic mugs from the gift shop, inside of which stood dozens of pencils and pens. The photograph showed the two young men, darkly handsome, and long and lean as twin stalks of cane. Bobby, the younger, had the same intense gaze she remembered from when they were kids, cocksure and strong, the look of a young man standing cliff-side, sure he can fly. Thirty years ago, it was Raymond whose entire countenance appeared disjointed and fragile in some way.

How things have changed, Caren thought.

Abrams stared at the photo for a few seconds, then left it on top of her desk. Behind them, there were heavy footsteps on the winding staircase. Caren turned to see Raymond Clancy ascending the top steps in a suit and tie, a plush wool coat buttoned at his trim waist. He nodded in her general direction on his way into the office, turning sideways to pass her in the doorway. To Hunt, he said, “Sorry, I’m late,” before removing his coat and tossing it onto a chair. He walked behind the desk, taking possession, and motioned for Hunt to have a seat. Only then did he turn and address Caren directly. “Have Lorraine send over a pot of coffee, would you, Gray?”

Before she could utter a response, Abrams crossed to the office door and slowly closed it in Caren’s face, leaving her on the other side.

She could hear their muffled voices, the hushed, somber tone.

But she had no idea what they were discussing in private.

Well, there was no way she was walking to the kitchen for Raymond. He should have known better than to ask. Instead, she stepped out onto the gallery to wait him out.

The balcony’s lacquered floor was still wet with morning dew, and she could smell a loamy, damp wind coming off the Mississippi. In the distance, there was the low, steady hum of Luis’s riding mower. And to the south, Caren had a clear view of the plantation’s parking lot. Eric’s rental car was gone. Letty’s van, too. Caren and Eric had yet to come up with a game plan; they weren’t even communicating, really, Eric exchanging no more than a few words with her this morning, telling her that
he
would drive Morgan to school. This left Letty with little to do, and Caren had happily given her the day off. The river breeze rolled over the treetops. A patch of blue sky closed over with clouds, and Caren felt a chill.

Staring across the grounds of the parking lot, she noticed something else for the first time: Donovan’s car was missing. Detectives Lang and Bertrand must have come and grabbed that, too.

“Gray,” she heard behind her.

Raymond was calling her name.

By the time she stepped off the gallery, Abrams was already making his exit, breezing down the winding staircase, leaving behind a scent of Brylcreem and damp leather. He was whistling, the notes blowing through the main house like a cold draft.

“Shut the door, would you?” Raymond said, as she crossed the threshold into her office. He was standing behind her desk. He was on his feet and in his hands was the framed photograph of him and his brother, Bobby. Raymond seemed distracted, preoccupied with the image, staring at it as if it were a found artifact, something that might take years to dust off and make sense of. Then, for whatever reason, he set the frame on the desktop, face down. He put his hands on his hips, looking at Caren. He looked tired, but in a good mood. She could see a hint of glee in his eyes, and he did a poor job of masking it with a hangdog expression of contrition.

“Well, I guess I can’t put any damn thing past Lorraine,” he started. “She was right, I might as well tell you. She was telling the truth about Belle Vie.” He waited for some reaction, but Caren said nothing, forcing him to spell it out, to say the words out loud, here in his father’s old house. “We’re selling it,” he announced.

“When?”

“I talked to Jack Beverly at the statehouse this morning,” he said. “We’ll bring our relationship with the Tourism Department to an official close by the end of this month. But I want to shut down all operations well before then. Groveland is taking over the whole place, and some of the corporate honchos from headquarters are coming out this way. They’re ready to draw up plans as soon as possible. We’re just waiting for this business with the girl to die down.” He motioned toward the desk, on top of which Caren noticed he’d laid open the insides of several newspapers. She recognized the
Donaldsonville Chief
and the daily papers out of Baton Rouge and Monroe, even the
Dallas Morning News
and the
Gazette
out of Texarkana. Each contained a small post about the death of a migrant worker, a temporary employee with Groveland. Inés remained an unnamed figure in each story; it was Groveland that had made the headlines.

But Inés was no longer a nameless figure to Caren.

She felt oddly protective of her, even in death, keeping her secret from Raymond, the fact that Inés had been living on his family’s land before she died. She didn’t trust how he might spin the information, painting the woman as a criminal, a girl who was asking for trouble.

Raymond was rocking back on his heels.

“This is just a minor setback,” he said. “This deal is going through either way, Gray.”

“You’re just going to let them tear it all down?”

He bristled openly at the suggestion that he was being careless with a legacy. “This was Daddy’s deal, not mine. I did what I could with the place. I think you know I’ve tried my best to preserve every little bit of the history. But hell if I want to be tied to this thing for the rest of my life. I don’t know what people expect from me.” He wanted so badly not to be seen as a villain in this; he seemed to so resent the power he held that Caren actually wondered about his fitness to hold political office.

“You know, we have the Whitman wedding next week,” she said, because signed contracts were something she thought Clancy would understand. There was the staff to consider too. “They deserve some kind of notice, a chance to find other work.”

They deserved something better, she thought.

“The Whitman deal, sure,” he said. “We’ll go out with a bang.” He was smiling now, picturing it. “It’ll be one to remember. You can tell Lorraine to go all out, on me.”

He was trying too hard, she thought.

“Aw, hell, Gray,” he said sheepishly. “I know I should have said something. I should have been up-front with you. But all the ink on this deal wasn’t dry, and I didn’t want to get out ahead of myself. You understand, don’t you?”

She didn’t, not really.

“When are you going to tell the staff?”

Raymond’s posture sank, making him look like a sulky, difficult teenager. He picked up a pencil and tapped it against the desktop. “Actually . . . I was thinking you ought to be the one to tell them.”

“Me?”

“The truth is, they don’t know me from Adam, Caren, not really. I’m hardly ever out here. I just think it would go over better if they heard the news from someone they work with every day, someone they actually like.” He dropped the pencil on the desktop and shoved both hands into the pockets of his wool slacks. He turned slightly, looking out the window at the grounds of Belle Vie: the rose garden and the old schoolhouse and the rows of sugarcane in the distance. Something in his posture told her it was already done, all of it. This had all been decided a long, long time ago.

“So you’re really going to do it, then, make a run for Senate?”

Clancy raised up a finger, very nearly wagging it in her face, coming just short of a scold. “Now, wait a minute, Gray, just wait,” he said. “There’s nothing set, not a thing decided. Don’t you go breathing a word of it, hear? Larry Becht’s got a way he wants this done, a proper announcement and all that.” He stopped here, catching himself. “I mean, that’s if, Gray,
if
I’m even running. There’s nothing set,” he said again, trying to appear a good deal more relaxed than he was. He lowered his pointing finger and shoved his hands again into his pockets. “I’m just considering it right now, just trying to think of what’s best for Louisiana.” He turned and glanced once more out the window at the sugar-rich land, the lush landscape. “I mean, the truth is . . . Katrina was a wake-up call,” he said, playing with his words, the pace and cadence of his voice, as if he were writing a stump speech off the top of his head. “We can’t ask the coast to carry the whole state anymore, not economically. Folks don’t like to say it out loud, but that oil and gas thing ain’t gon’ last forever. The coast can’t take it. And anyone who tells you any different is just selling snake oil. It’s a way of life that’s on its way out, no doubt about it. I mean, we’re losing land mass down there at an ungodly pace. Another ten, twenty years and those wetlands, the whole coast, will be gone. But sugar, that’s here to stay. Agriculture is good business, Gray, always has been. Cane, cotton . . . they built this state in the nineteenth century . . . hell, maybe they can
save
it in this one.”

He paused, so caught up in his reverie and his ideas about how all this might play to a crowd that Caren thought he actually heard the applause in his head before he remembered it was just the two of them in this room. He took a long, deep breath. “It’s just that we’ve got to broaden our thinking about what’s possible for Louisiana. This deal is just a start. There’s no telling what a company like that can do for the state’s economy. And that’s a hell of a lot more important than keeping another tourist trap open.”

“What does your father say, about the sale?”

Raymond glanced over his shoulder at her, but never directly answered the question. It was the first time she saw any hint of regret.

“He’ll come around,” he said.

“Bobby, too?” Caren said, remembering his snooping around the place, his sudden interest in his brother’s business dealings. “Did he sign off on this, too?”

Raymond waved away the thought.

“This doesn’t concern Bobby,” he said. “And I wouldn’t let him influence any decision I make, anyway. He doesn’t understand business, doesn’t think about the future, what’s best for everybody. Leave it to Bobby and he’d still be sleeping in his old bedroom, right down the hall,” he said, pointing to the suite of bedrooms on the other side of her office door. “Bobby would put his feet up and live off Daddy’s money for the rest of his life.” Something seemed to occur to him then, and he swung around suddenly, startling Caren, and asking, “Why? Did he say something to you?” Caren stared at Raymond, wondering why the mention of his brother had got him so heated.

“You’d do well to watch yourself around Bobby,” he said.

“Funny, he said the same thing about you.”

Raymond rolled his eyes.

Caren again tried to appeal to his sense of loyalty, saying, “Lorraine, Pearl, Ennis Mabry . . . some on the staff have worked here a lot longer than I have. Luis was handpicked by your father years and years ago. Are you sure you don’t want to speak to them on behalf of the Clancy family, to let them know their service has been appreciated?” Raymond had his back to her again, his gaze cast on the manicured grounds outside. “I just think they’ll take it better coming from you,” he said flatly.