A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose #2)(58)

I began to feel even more uneasy than I’d been, and that was saying something.

We’d been jouncing around on a dirt road that had not been leveled in a long time. Eli had not given me any signals in a while. I hoped we were nearing the end of our drive.

I caught a flicker out in the field on my left, and I leaned forward to look. A cluster of black people were walking through the cotton. They were empty-handed, most of them, and they were all heading for town. In a hurry. Surely taking the road would have been easier; maybe longer, though.

Eli hadn’t spoken this whole time except to say “left” or “right.” But now he said, “Stop.”

Where Eli said to stop, there was a graveled driveway to our left leading to a huge white house, two stories with an attic. The windows all had green shutters. A broad front porch extended the full width of the house, and there were pillars supporting the porch roof. As we approached, I could see a big terrace at the back of the house, a sort of patio. Then there was a line of trees and bushes, planted as a screen.

Beyond that, there were little white cabins, planted all around with flowers, to make poverty pretty. There was a huge vegetable garden and an equally large woodpile. There was a long, low building that might be a garage for farm machinery or cars, or both.

This had to be the Ballard plantation. I had never seen the like.

Here was the oddest thing: at first glance, nothing was stirring. There wasn’t even a breeze making the leaves flutter on the pecan trees. Not an old man rocking on the porch, not a bird flying across the grass.

Eli was coming back to himself, but I could tell it wasn’t easy. I began talking to give him some time. “No way we can sneak up,” I said. “Even if we got out of the car and crawled on our bellies. Probably someone in the house watching right now.”

“They’re there,” Eli said, from a far distance.

“Harriet and Travis are in that house?”

“We must go find them,” Eli said. He seemed stiff, like the long spell had taken away his sap.

“So here we go,” I said, though I didn’t want to even go close to that place.

I felt like… I felt like we were going to a hangman, as I turned the car to glide down the driveway. There had been no rain for a while, and the driveway was baked into a crust. The car’s tires turned up a cloud of dust.

As we parked in front of the house, I saw I had been wrong about the place being empty. There was a black man standing by the blooming bushes that decorated the front of the house. He was clipping them with hedge shears. He had to have seen and heard us, but he was pretending we were not there.

I got out of the car first and faced the man squarely. I had one of Harriet’s guns in my right hand, the one I’d pulled from my pocket. I’d kept the other in my purse, but if I had one on show, I might as well have the other. Wasn’t doing me any good in the purse. I pulled it out. I was saving my guns and my rifle in the trunk.

Slowly, unwillingly, the gardener turned to face us, and I saw he was shaking.

I didn’t draw the guns to the gardener’s attention, but he saw them, all right, clear as I saw the hedge shears.

“Yes, ma’am? Can I help you?” he said, evenly enough. He was a tall, wide man with a broad face, very dark. I thought he was bald under his wide-brimmed hat. His clothes weren’t rags, but they weren’t too far off.

“Some people we know are here, and we want to talk to them,” I said. “Harriet Ritter and Travis Seeley.”

“I don’t know anyone of that name,” he said. “Either one.”

He hadn’t done anything to me and I didn’t want to shoot him, but I would if I had to. It occurred to me it might shake up his memory if I told him that, and I did.

“Why would you shoot me? I ain’t done nothing to you,” he said reasonably. There was a quaver in his voice, though.

“You are not telling me the truth. I want to see the two people I mentioned,” I said. “Just so you know, shooting one more person isn’t going to burden me any.” That might not be the whole truth, but I wanted him to believe it was.

There was a long moment where nothing happened, and I was sure I’d have to kill him. But just when I decided to raise the gun, the screen door squeaked open and a woman appeared, wearing a gray uniform that didn’t do her glowing brown skin any favors. The woman was scrawny, stiff with fear, and she held open the door to let Harriet Ritter follow her out onto the porch.

Harriet’s nice clothes were rumpled as if she’d slept in them. Her face was bruised. Though Harriet looked at me directly, I could not read her face.

“Lizbeth,” she said, without any expression. “Why are you here?”

“The hotel asked us to find you. They want to know whether you’re giving up your room or not.” I had hidden the gun in the folds of my skirt. I held it out a little now, to show Harriet I was armed. “I can go back to pack up your stuff. You let me know what you want to do.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Another woman stepped out of the darkness of the house. Her iron-gray hair was rolled up behind her head. Her face was wrinkled and her eyes pouchy, but she wore a pearl necklace and earrings. Her dress was a limp print, dark green with light yellow butterflies. She was anything but a butterfly. More of a locust, or a scorpion. She had an ancient pistol in her left hand. She said to the black woman, “Myra, go back in the house and see to Mr. Holden.”