Isolation (29 page)

Chapter Thirty-six

From her vantage point under the old oak tree on the far west end of Joyeuse Island, Faye could see no evidence of the fire. If she had looked up, she would have seen waves lapping at a weedy narrow beach, but she was too excited to look up. She was busy with her camera, because there was no such thing as taking too many pictures of an exciting find.

Amande's plane was landing in seven hours. Faye hadn't been sure she would make it through those hours until she saw her daughter, so she had grabbed a trowel and set out to do the thing she did best—look for the past and the stories it tells.

Faye had imagined herself in Cally's shoes and, armed with all she'd learned, she had walked straight to the answer to so many questions. What was the source of the arsenic contamination? What was the story behind Courtney's Monster Man? Most importantly, what had happened to Elias Croft?

She had uncovered the Army-issue button first, nestled within a few shreds of a Union-blue uniform and of the sheet that had served the soldier as a shroud. This Yankee soldier had been buried with care, very near the tree that must have shaded the cabin of The Monster Man. She had a pretty good idea that the foundations of that cabin waited for her nearby.

Soon after finding the button and the bits of fabric, Faye had uncovered a skull. She'd stopped digging then, and not just out of respect for the dead and the laws that protected them. She was digging in arsenic-tainted soil, so she had augmented her usual protective gloves with a dust mask to keep out contaminated dust, but this skull spoke of another danger. The misshapen bones around its nasal opening looked like a textbook example of the ravages of leprosy. She didn't think bacteria could linger in the soil after all these years, but it wouldn't hurt to speak to an expert before she excavated further.

She had laid her trowel aside and snapped some photos to document the find, then she had stepped back to a distance that seemed both safe and respectful. Now she lingered, delaying the inevitable paperwork that came with uncovering human remains by taking just a few moments to commune with the body of Captain Elias Croft of the United States Army.

***

Oscar Croft looked okay. Faye knew that Delia's death had been a shock, but he didn't look like a man who had suffered an emotional gut punch. Not that he looked especially happy, either. His lips were pressed together tightly, like a man determined to squelch any passing emotion that might show on his face, but he seemed to be holding up.

When Faye told Sheriff Rainey that she suspected Delia of drugging Oscar, he had immediately sent paramedics to check on him. They had found the older man deeply sedated and brought him in to the hospital for observation. He'd been released that morning, and Sheriff Rainey had told her that the first thing he'd wanted to do was to talk to Faye and Joe.

Oscar had given Faye a funny look when he first saw her and she wondered whether he remembered fondling her arm.

As if reading her thoughts, he walked straight to her, stopping an appropriate distance away and saying, “I owe you an apology. I probably owe you a lot of apologies. Part of me wants to tell you that I haven't been myself since Delia started drugging me. Another part of me isn't so sure you'd like the man I was before she started drugging me, either. Maybe I don't have to be that man anymore. In any case, I hope you can forgive me.”

Perhaps the drugs Delia had fed Oscar had lowered the inhibitions of a man who was already known for appalling behavior. Faye couldn't say, and it didn't matter to her any longer, because Oscar was going home to Ohio. He'd come to say good-bye. Amande's plane was landing soon, so the good-byes would have to be brief.

Gerry Steinberg had come out to Joyeuse Island with Oscar for no reason Faye could discern, but she needed to thank him some more for helping save her home, so she was glad he was there. As Oscar settled himself, setting a tissue-wrapped package on the couch beside him, Gerry caught Faye's eye.

“We found Tommy. He got as far as Louisiana in that big boat he stole from his customer. These charges are going to stick, and I still have hopes of getting some money out of him for environmental fines, too.”

Faye was pampering her newfound emotional balance by pretending that there was no chance that she, too, was going to be saddled with an environmental bill, so she just smiled and nodded.

“You found my great-great-grandfather,” Oscar said. “I don't know how to thank you.”

Faye handed him a photo, taken close enough to its subjects to show every worn letter on their metallic surfaces.

Oscar held the photo close to his face. “A button from my great-great-grandfather's uniform.” He looked up with tears in his eyes. “You found him.”

He put on a pair of reading glasses and pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket. “I printed out your e-mail. This kind of story belongs on paper. I'll keep it with this picture of Elias' buttons and buckle that you found for me.”

“You can have them,” she said. “If I find any more of his personal effects, I'll send them to you. As his nearest relative, you're also entitled to choose his bones' final resting place.”

“Here,” he said without stopping to think. “Elias' bones belong here, right where Cally Stanton laid them to rest.” Squinting at the message Faye had e-mailed him, he said, “It all fits together. Your explanation of our families' stories. Everything fits. The timing of your great-great-grandmother's story about Captain Croft visiting her home fits, because it happened just before Elias disappeared. The lesions on the skull you found confirm your theory that he had leprosy. The later story about him covering himself before going out in public during the yellow fever epidemic works, too, when you think about how a man with leprosy might have looked by that time. If he knew he had leprosy before the Civil War was over, he would have been pretty sick by 1888. And Cally even mentioned chaulmoogra oil…that's the most convincing evidence of all.”

“Well, there's the kerosene tank and the arsenic contamination,” said Gerry.

“You're right, Detective,” Oscar said. “The kerosene tank and the arsenic contamination are important clues. If Cally Stanton helped Elias while he battled leprosy, putting a roof over his head and making sure he had food and medicine, he would have needed kerosene for fuel. And if he bathed in arsenic-based medicines for the rest of his life, the arsenic would have had years to soak into the ground. You're the scientist, Detective. You're telling me that your lab would still be able to see that arsenic after all this time?”

Gerry nodded.

“May I see your great-great-grandmother's memoirs, Faye?” Oscar asked.

Joe fetched copies of the mimeographed sheets from their bedroom. Faye paged through them, showing him Cally's memories of the yellow fever epidemic and the day Elias Croft tipped his hat to her.

Oscar's eyes filled with tears again. He picked up the package sitting next to him on the couch and handed it to Faye. “This is only a piece of cloth, but it belongs in your family.”

She unwrapped layers of tissue paper and found the old bedsheet with its leafy green garland. Looking at the mottled fabric made her dizzy. The sheet had been made for the long-gone Turkey Foot Hotel. It had probably been used for years on the beds in the big house on Joyeuse Island. It had traveled to Ohio with Elias Croft's sword and stayed there for more than a century. And it had come home. Now there were tears in her eyes.

“Detective Steinberg says that you and Joe may have to pay a lot of money for cleaning up the kerosene and arsenic that my great-great-grandfather left behind.”

Faye was still trying to pretend that this wasn't going to happen, so she was starting to say something like, “Oh, it's nothing. We're made out of money. Really,” when he interrupted her.

“I've talked to Detective Steinberg about this. I'm assuming financial responsibility for the problem.”

Faye couldn't think of a thing to say. This didn't happen often.

Oscar kept talking, so it didn't matter that Faye was speechless. “I can't let you carry the burden of my great-great-grandfather's illness, not when your great-great-grandmother did so much to make his last years comfortable. I have more money than I need. Let me do this.”

She had been clenching the finely woven linen of Cally's bedsheet in both hands. When she let herself hear what Oscar was saying, she felt her fingers relax. Everything was going to be okay.

Joe was grinning like a man ready to go out and drop some money on Christmas presents for his kids. There was nothing left for Faye to do, beyond saying “Thank you, Oscar.”

***

It was going to be a tight squeeze, fitting Faye, Joe, Sly, Michael, Amande, and Amande's luggage into Faye's car, but Faye knew they could deal with it. Nobody wanted to be left out of the trip to pick up Amande at the airport, so nobody was going to complain about tight seating arrangements. The boat ashore had been full of happy, laughing people. Surely they could keep those smiles while they were crowded into a car going to the Tallahassee airport and back.

Faye stood on the dock while Joe tended the boat. She jostled a fussy Michael on her hip and watched Sly operate. For the first time since Liz's death, there were signs of life inside the bar and grill. Sly had walked over to check out the open door, and he'd gotten there just in time to see three people come out. Two of them had been men in predictable business suits, but one had been a revelation. Wilma cut quite a figure in a cobalt-blue dress and a pair of black pumps. Her hair was twisted into a bun on top of her head, and Faye was pretty sure she detected a swipe of taupe lipstick. She decided that she was interested, too, so she followed Sly as he went to check out Wilma's new look.

“If you're ready to buy,” one of the suited men was saying, “I see no reason why we can't push this deal through. The longer this place stands empty, the harder it will be to get the business going again.”

“I got some ideas on how to do that,” Wilma said, surveying the place like she owned it already. “Don't you worry about a thing.”

“Well, that's fine,” Sly said.

Maybe he was saying it to Wilma. Maybe he was saying it to the air. Faye couldn't tell.

Sly kept talking. “I been looking for a place to buy me some eggs in the morningtimes. Breakfast always tastes better when a pretty woman cooks it, I always say.”

Faye was glad Joe was busy with the boat. Watching his father chat up women made him want to crawl in a hole and die, but he might as well get used to it. Sly Mantooth was going to like the ladies until the day they put him in the ground, but Faye had to admit that he treated them all, bartender to wealthy widow, like great ladies. He talked to them like a man who was interested in what they had to say. He respected their space. He made them laugh. Joe and his dad were not as different as her husband might like to believe.

Sly waved good-bye to Wilma and ambled on. The woman's cheeks had pinked up under her carefully applied makeup, but she was cementing the deal of her life. She stayed focused on the men in suits who wanted to sell her a marina. Faye nodded in Wilma's direction and left the woman alone to seal a business agreement.

“I got some jokes I want to tell you and Joe in the car,” Sly said, walking like a man who planned to be fully alive for another fifty years, at least. “I need something to say to Amande till I get to know her. I laid awake all night, thinking up jokes I learned on the road, but I need to check 'em out with you and Joe first. I want to make sure none of 'em is too dirty, but I can't have her thinking her granddad is old and boring, neither.”

Faye thought that this was unlikely. She also thought that she wanted to be out of earshot when Amande started telling Sly the jokes she'd learned while growing up among fishermen and offshore oil workers. In her pocket, wrapped in a napkin, was the wishbone she'd saved from the chicken Joe had fried for her on a night when she wasn't sure she had what it took to keep going. As soon as Amande got off the plane, she was going to give it to the children so that they could make their wishes and pull.

Joe was finished with the boat and it was time to go. Faye was so ready to get to the airport and get her arms around her daughter. She couldn't wait to get Amande in the car, where she could see up-close whether the girl looked healthy and happy. She was even looking forward to an hour spent listening to Sly's not-too-dirty jokes.

She couldn't wait to get them all home.

Guide for the
Incurably Curious

This is the place where I share tidbits from my research, answering the kinds of questions I usually get about Faye's adventures. People always want to know how much of the story is historically true, so I'll begin with arsenic and chaulmoogra oil. They were both used to treat leprosy in the 1800s, but no effective treatment was available until well into the twentieth century, so Elias' slow decline would have been the likely outcome of contracting the disease when he did.

According to the Center for Disease Control, Hansen's disease (the more modern term for the disease long known as leprosy) is a long-lasting infection caused by bacteria. Though once feared as a devastating contagious disease, it is now rare and treatable. With early diagnosis and treatment, patients can avoid its disabling effects. In Elias' time, patients were isolated in leprosariums. Faced with losing his freedom in this way, it is not inconceivable that he would have grabbed the chance to live out his life in isolation on Joyeuse Island, sparing his family from the stigma attached to the word “leper.”

As I considered a plot that would ask Cally to endanger herself to help a man preserve his dignity and freedom, I asked myself, “Would she take that risk?” Cally has been in residence inside my head for nearly fifteen years now, so I have a very clear image of her, and I decided that she would. As a former slave, she would have recoiled from the thought of a man entering a leprosarium, never to emerge into freedom again.

Another quality that I imagine a former slave would have is a certain disdain for the law and for social conventions, a quality that Faye sometimes shares. Cally lived for seventy years after she was emancipated, but she would not have been lulled into believing that her society could be trusted to treat her justly. She would have been past eighty before women were allowed to vote, and she did not live to see the end of Jim Crow. I think she would have felt a certain pride in helping a man keep his freedom. I also think that it is quite reasonable that Faye idolizes her.

This is the third Faye Longchamp mystery, after
Artifacts
and
Findings,
in which Faye learns important things about her family's past by reading Cally's reminiscences. The Works Progress Administration, commonly known as the WPA, really did sponsor a Federal Writers' Project that sent writers out to interview former slaves. Those transcribed interviews still exist today, preserving a part of American history that would otherwise have been lost.

I don't know whether Faye will need to dip into Cally's memoirs again in future books, but I did enjoy revisiting them for
Isolation.
Sharp-eyed readers will notice that one of the passages from
Artifacts
appears again here, tying the two stories together by repeating the story about the Yankee captain who could have left Cally and all the people of Joyeuse Island without food, but didn't. In
Isolation
, we see that he was rewarded for his kindness.