Rebel Without a Cake Read online

  I nodded. “But Eskil says he’s innocent, and I believe him. Was Silas ever arrested?”

  Georgie put the pen down and pulled on her hair to tighten her ponytail. “He never took more than he needed to survive, so it’s not like he was out there every day. We’d drive out to his place and make sure he knew we were watching, but it was hard to catch him at it. I tried for a while to pin him down on the other side, maybe selling hides or hauling a gator to the buyer, but I didn’t have any luck. He lived off the land mostly, but you’d see him in town here from time to time picking up supplies from T-Rex. I don’t know where he got the money to keep himself in chewing tobacco and coffee, but he always seemed to have a stash of cash.”

  It was a puzzle for sure. Silas didn’t seem to have anything that anybody wanted. Not only that, it seemed he hadn’t wanted anything from anybody. Yes, there was Silas’s habit of poaching from his neighbors. But if he’d been doing that for two decades, why would anybody go off the deep end and kill him now?

  There was only one other motive I could see. For twenty years Eskil had believed that Silas was responsible for Uncle Cooch’s disappearance. There seemed to be no reason for Eskil to suddenly go crazy and take Silas out—unless he’d recently found evidence he wasn’t telling anyone about. The chances of getting Eskil to ’fess up were remote, but maybe someone else in Baie Rebelle could fill in the pieces. Of course, to follow up on that possibility, I’d have to stay in Baie Rebelle and talk to everyone I could.

  And that just wasn’t going to happen.

  * * *

  About an hour later I finished giving my statement and left the bar. Georgie stayed behind to talk with Nettie, and while I was interested in hearing what Nettie had to say, I didn’t want to spend even one more minute in that musty-smelling place. I popped the lock on the Mercedes and was about to get inside when a white Ford Ranger sped past me on the road. It reached the intersection leading to Aunt Margaret’s house and drove straight through.

  From where I stood, I couldn’t see the driver, but I sure wanted to know who it was. The way I saw it, I could do one of three things: Go back to New Orleans and ignore everyone and everything else, drive over to Aunt Margaret’s and check on Miss Frankie and Bernice, or follow the truck. It was a no-brainer really. I couldn’t just drive off and ignore the truck, and I was in no hurry to look Miss Frankie in the eye.

  I backed out as quickly as I could and gunned the engine as I pulled onto the road. My tires spun, then finally found traction. The Mercedes shot forward, spitting dirt and tiny rocks behind me. Yee-haw!

  I’m no expert on tailing someone without getting caught, but how hard could it be? I’d just hang back a bit, but not so far that I lost sight of the truck. If the driver noticed me, I hoped he’d just think I was checking out the scenery.

  Turns out tailing someone isn’t as easy as it sounds. The Ranger and I were the only cars on the road, which made it difficult to disguise the fact that I was in hot pursuit. I held back as far as I dared but the truck barreled along at a fast clip, and that made it hard to keep up on unfamiliar roads.

  We whipped past JL Charters and out into the country, where the houses were even fewer and farther between. The truck zipped over a narrow wooden bridge and I followed a few minutes later. On the other side of the bridge, the pavement ended and the road narrowed—a feat that I would have previously thought impossible. I wasn’t convinced that the dirt road was even wide enough for all four tires to remain on the track at the same time.

  I didn’t want to slow down and lose the Ranger, but I wasn’t confident enough in my driving skills to throw caution to the wind. And besides, the road dropped off sharply into deep ditches on both sides of the road. They reminded me of the terrain where I’d found Silas Laroche’s body, and I did not want to end up in one of them.

  Chewing on disappointment, I slowed down. That’s when I realized that the Ranger was kicking up dust as it traveled on the unpaved road and the dust didn’t settle immediately. That meant that I didn’t have to keep the Ranger itself in sight. I just had to follow the cloud of dust.

  That worked pretty well for a while, but eventually I dropped so far behind I was no longer eating the Ranger’s dust and the trees were so thick I couldn’t pick up the trail again. Hoping I’d spot the truck, I kept going for a few miles but the Ranger had disappeared.

  I hate losing and I hate giving up, but even I knew it would be a waste of time and gas to keep going. Unfortunately, figuring out how to turn around and go back presented a problem. I’d passed a couple of narrow dirt cutoffs that I just knew headed straight into alligator country. It had been a long time since I’d seen an actual road. The Mercedes was too big to make a U-turn, and I was afraid I’d slide into a ditch if I tried to make a three-, four-, or even an eleven-point turn.

  I wasn’t all that familiar with the geography, but I knew that Baie Rebelle sat on a narrow piece of solid land in the middle of water and uninhabitable marshland. I didn’t know how much farther the road would continue or what I’d find when I reached land’s end.

  After a while, I saw a slight widening in the road that I thought might indicate a path or a driveway. With a lot of concentration, I got myself turned around and headed back toward Baie Rebelle’s version of civilization. I’d done my best. Now it was time to go home and do something productive. Instead of chasing trucks through the swamp, I should have been looking for recipes that would whet the appetites of New Orleans’s elite.

  Just over the bridge, where the road widened into almost two whole lanes again, something large and furry darted out of the trees and into my path. I slammed on the brakes, hit a patch of gravel, and careened out of control.

  My parents died in a car when I was a girl, and I frequently have dreams of following them the same way. In a panic, I overcorrected and sent the Mercedes on a collision course with a stand of trees on the other side of the road. Time seemed to slow and my brain turned to sludge. Every thought in my head felt like it took half an hour to form.

  I told myself over and over to stay calm, but it was a losing battle. I pumped the brakes and cranked the wheel as hard as I could toward the middle of the road, but my tires hit more gravel and I watched in horror as my worst nightmare played out in front of me.

  The car slammed into a ditch, bounced from the impact, and hit the trees with a tooth-rattling jolt. The air bag deployed and the air around me filled with smoke and a strong sickly sweet smell. I reached for the car door, but I couldn’t see well enough to find the latch. Disoriented, I felt around where I thought it should be, but either I was hopelessly confused or someone had moved it when I wasn’t looking.

  The air bag deflated a bit and the sweet odor gave way to the smell of burnt plastic. My lungs burned with every breath and my head buzzed. The seat belt strained to hold me in place and rubbed a spot on the side of my neck so that it felt raw. I desperately wanted out of that car, but from the angle of my body, I suspected that might not be possible without help.

  A fresh wave of panic surged up inside and took over. I clawed at the door for what felt like eternity. I cursed and prayed and tried to rip off Mambo Odessa’s beads, which I’d kept forgetting to take off when I had the chance. I didn’t want to breathe, but holding my breath until help came wasn’t an option. After a long time, my fingers brushed the automatic window panel and I felt a glimmer of hope.

  I pressed, pulled, and hammered on the panel until one of the back windows eased down enough to let out some of that nasty chemical smoke. My vision cleared enough for me to see where I was. The good news was that my position wasn’t as precarious as I’d first thought. The bad? I wouldn’t be driving out of there.

  I tried to open the door but it was jammed shut, making escape impossible, or at least more difficult. With effort, I got all four windows down at least partway before the engine coughed a couple of times and died. I mentally compared the partially open
window with my hips and made a solemn vow to exercise more if I ever got out of there.

  With no way out, I did my best to stay focused on the positive. I was alive. That was a big plus. I leaned my head out the window so I could gulp some air. It was cleaner than the air inside the car, but it was still filled with air bag powder. After a few minutes I regained enough presence of mind to check my cell phone. It took ages for me to make out what was on the screen, but when I did, I wasn’t surprised. No service.

  I did some more positive thinking, but it’s not nearly as effective in a crisis as self-help gurus want us to believe. I didn’t feel positive, only slightly less negative. Until, out of nowhere, I thought about Edie and the baby and my promise to be the kid’s godmother. Sadness landed on my chest and pressed hard. I’d never had kids of my own, and now I might never even get the chance to see Edie’s baby.

  Tears burned my eyes and regret put a thick lump in my throat. I cried until my nose was too stuffed to breathe, which meant that I had to dig around until I found the stack of unused napkins I’d stockpiled from clandestine trips to fast-food restaurants. Yes, I’m a foodie but I’m not a snob.

  Clearly feeling sorry for myself, I mopped up the tears and blew my nose, and then I decided to do something more productive than wallow in self-pity. I should take stock and list what I had on my side and what was working against me. Maybe that would help me find a way to escape.

  Number one: I was stuck in the middle of nowhere in a car that wasn’t going anywhere, holding a cell phone that didn’t have a single bar of service. (I lumped them all together because I knew that separately they’d overwhelm me.) Either way, they landed firmly in the “against” column.

  Number two: I was surrounded by wildlife that might or might not eat me for lunch. Definitely against.

  Number three: I hadn’t eaten anything since I left New Orleans hours earlier when I’d scarfed down an Asiago cheese bagel smeared with cream cheese. More against.

  That brought me to my final conclusion: I was going to die.

  The “for” column remained annoyingly empty, but if I didn’t want to die (and I didn’t), I would have to do something.

  It took some work, but I finally got the seat belt unbuckled. Now that I was free, I slid down the seat toward the passenger’s door, but dug my feet in and stopped myself from smashing into it.

  Okay. That was good. Next step: Find food. I was almost positive I had a Halloween-sized Snickers in my purse. (Don’t ask.) The candy wouldn’t sustain me for long, so I scrounged in the glove box to see if I had anything else I could call food. There I found three linty breath mints, which I set aside in case the other supplies ran out. The best find of all was half a bottle of water, which apparently had been dislodged from under the seat during the crash. I didn’t know how long it had been hanging around in the car. I hoped it was mine and not water left over from when this was Philippe’s car, but beggars can’t be choosers.

  For a long time I sat there alternately contemplating my demise and the best way to remove lint from mints of indeterminate age. The sun had moved toward the west and shadows leaned across the road. A small flock of monarch butterflies flying south fluttered around for a while, and I tried to remember encouraging passages from the Bible. They always seemed to help Aunt Yolanda, but it had been a while. Besides, “Fear not,” the only thing I could call up from memory, had to do with walking through the valley of death. Considering where I was, I didn’t find that particularly comforting.

  After a long time a strange noise caught my attention, but it took a little while to recognize it as a car’s engine. I sat up as straight as I could and noticed dust floating up above the trees. A few minutes later the white Ford Ranger rattled over the bridge and came to a stop beside me.

  Its driver, a young man with shaggy brown hair, leaned across the seat and called out to me. “You all right, ma’am?”

  I blinked back fresh, hot tears and said, “I’m not seriously hurt, but I don’t think I’m going anywhere and I can’t get the door open.”

  He pulled off to the side of the road and came back to help me. My knees felt like rubber and my head felt as if someone had put it in a vise. My lungs and chest hurt like crazy, but at least I wasn’t going to die in the car and turn into alligator bait. All things considered, I was a pretty lucky woman.

  Twenty-one

  My rescuer wasn’t carrying any spare toilet tank lids in the back of his truck. I know because I checked as he helped me up the road and into the front seat. There were three paint cans, though, and a number of other dangerous-looking implements he could have used to end my life if that’s what he wanted to do.

  In spite of my aching lungs and throbbing head, I pulled together enough logic to reason that if he wanted me dead, he would’ve only had to drive on by and leave me where I was. That made me feel a little better.

  In the side mirror I saw him lean into my car. A minute later, he jogged up the road toward me and handed me my keys. “Figured you might need these.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” I slipped them into my pocket and wondered if the fissures in my skull were obvious from the outside.

  The kid started the truck and we lurched back onto the road. “I can take you back into town. That okay with you?”

  I could call Aunt Margaret’s house from there so I said that would be fine.

  “You new around here?”

  I tried to shake my head and quickly decided that any movement from the neck up was a bad idea. Also from the neck down. “No, I’m just passing through.”

  He looked surprised. “There ain’t no through road out this way. Where’d you come from?”

  Seriously? He hadn’t noticed me tailing him before? “I, uh—I took the wrong road out of town, I guess. I realized my mistake and turned around, but then something ran in front of my car and I—” I waved a hand vaguely over my head. “Well, the rest is history, I guess. I’m Rita, by the way.”

  “Kale,” he said with a grin. “You’re lucky I came along when I did.”

  Double-lucky. Too bad I was so out of it—what were the odds that I’d be rescued by one of the people I most wanted to talk to? “I know how fortunate I am,” I said. “I’d almost finished planning my funeral when you came along.” Too late, I realized how callous my little joke had been. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean—you just lost your father and that was a really insensitive thing to say.”

  Kale’s smile vanished. “You know who I am?”

  Oops. Note to self: Never try to interrogate a suspect on the sly when your brain has just been put through a blender. “I assumed,” I said. “You said your name was Kale, and I was here in Baie Rebelle when your father died.” I mumbled an explanation that wrapped up my connections to Bernice, Miss Frankie, and Aunt Margaret without going into detail.

  Kale didn’t say anything for a while and I started wondering about all those tools in the back of the truck. “So are you the lady who found him?” he asked, finally breaking the silence.

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought you went back to New Orleans.”

  “I did. But the sheriff’s department needed my statement, so I came down today to give it to Georgie.”

  Kale’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “They said he was in the ditch. Is that right?”

  My heart ached for him, even as my brain wondered if that was a real question or one designed to make himself sound innocent. I didn’t know if he was a murderer, but I hoped he wasn’t. I did know that he was a kid who’d just lost his father. I understood how confused and alone he must feel. I wanted to say something that would make it easier for him, but what would that be? I decided to give it to him straight. “Yeah. He was. In the ditch.”

  His eyes flickered toward me. “Was there blood?”

  “Not that I could see, but it was dark. The sheriff’s deputy said he’d been
hit on the head and that’s what killed him, so I’m guessing there must’ve been some.”

  Kale nodded and chewed on that information for a few minutes. “Do you think he suffered?”

  “I don’t know. I never saw his face.”

  Kale’s expression turned to stone. “No? That’s too bad. I hope the sonofabitch died a slow, painful death.”

  Maybe his response should have frightened me. At the very least, it should have made me nervous. But I’d been angry with God and everyone on the planet for a long time after my parents died. I wasn’t going to take his reaction at face value.

  “Were the two of you close?” I asked softly, knowing the answer.

  Kale let out a sharp one-note laugh. “Close? Me and Silas? No. Haven’t you heard how he walked away from us when I was two?”

  “I’ve heard,” I admitted. “I know that your uncle Junior stepped in and did what he could to take Silas’s place. But I also saw you talking to Silas on Saturday night outside the bar.” Okay, so I hadn’t actually seen Kale’s face, but I’d seen his truck and I was taking a not-so-wild guess.

  “So what? You think I killed him?”

  I turned my head a fraction of an inch, thinking it might be smart to watch his face more closely. Pain zinged along my spine, and the pressure in my head made it feel as if it would explode any second. “No,” I said. “No, I don’t.”

  He shot a belligerent look at me. “I could have, you know. I should have. Most of my life I wanted to.”

  “I’m not surprised. I can’t even say that I blame you. But you didn’t do it, did you?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Who else knew where he lived? Who might have gone there to see him?”

  “Everybody knew where the house was,” Kale said. “That wasn’t a secret. The still, though. That was different.”

  Thoughts were churning slowly inside my head so it took me a while to realize what he’d just said. “Silas had a still? Are you sure?”