Chapter 9
Copyright 2000 by Elizabeth Delayne
Erica stood at the base of the stone steps and studied the plantation home. The stately smooth columns and polished second and third floor windows framed by white shutters were oddly the same as they'd been only a week ago. Somehow, she thought as the taxi driver unloaded her bags from the trunk, she'd expected it to be different, to look different, darker, dirtier.
But here it sat, regal reminder of the past, pristine in it's cleanliness, perfection and beauty in it's landscape.
A reminder of a dark time.
One of her mother's housekeepers came out to take her bags and Erica hurried inside with her carry-all, more from fear she would turn and leave then from courage to do the right thing. She opened the heavy doors and stepped into the front entry way. Baxley stepped forward to greet her. He looked tired, and for the first time she wondered what the accusations had done to one of her mother's closest friends.
"Welcome home, Erica."
She set her bag on the floor at her feet and stepped into his embrace gratefully. He smelled the same—an expensive, musky cologne he still had flow in from Paris after all these years. His suit was a cool, smooth silk weave—comforting because if was expected.
"How is she?" Erica forced herself to meet his gaze as she stepped out of his arms. When had he gotten old, she wondered. He would look the age of her father, she thought, if her father had been alive, but she'd never thought about him being old. His eyebrows were turning grey, his hair was already grey, thinning, his hairline not badly receding.
There were wrinkles around his eyes, his mouth, of age. And shadows of worry under his eyes.
"Erica, I—" he reached out, as if to touch her arm in comfort, then lowered it slowly. For a moment he looked helpless, hurt, bus as always he pulled himself together once more, hiding the feelings he'd carried for Lillian Caine for over a decade now.
"She really hasn't been talking to me. To anyone," he sighed deeply, sorrowfully, and took a step back to glance at a painting he'd seen thousands of times walking through the foyer. "I'm glad you're here. Maybe she'll open up to you."
Erica wanted to tell him she doubted it, but for the first time in her life, she really wasn't sure what to expect from her mother. But she would get answers, she thought, heading resolutely for the stairs. She would get the answers owed to her.
Lillian Caine sat in a pretty golden chair by the window, with the simplest of floral designs embroidered into the fabric. Sunlight was coming through the glass, highlighting the shadows and the grief. Her hair, pulled un top of her head into a simple knot had loosened a good bit. She was still in her dressing gown, though it was nearly lunchtime, and her face was bare of makeup.
Anyone who didn't know her would think she was a peace, simply enjoying the quiet of the morning, watching the carefully landscaped garden below.
But Erica knew better. It was rare for Erica to even see her mother without the mask of makeup and the perfection of a fitted suit or designer casual outfit.
Besides, Lillian Caine was rarely a watcher. The garden was her pet. Even though it was tended by gardeners, she put time into when she had it. It had been arranged, bedded, to her liking. The fragrances strong, the colors wild.
And if she wanted to enjoy her garden, she would never be content to just sit back and watch.
Erica stopped in the doorway and put her anger and hurt aside for a moment and simply looked at her mother. Like Baxley, she was looking older today. Lillian had never been able to grieve outside of solitude. Erica had only noticed the grief once or twice in her lifetime. Her mother had never opened up to her, had never even let her see this much of the grief.
Lillian glanced down at her folded hands, a movement that signaled to Erica that her mother knew of her presence.
"Mother—"
"Come in, Erica. Shut the door, please." Her voice was soft, pleading, barely above a whisper.
Erica obeyed silently, closing the door behind her and stepping into Bella South's sweeping master bedroom. It was more feminine then it had been in her younger days. The masculine furniture of deep, strong mahogany had been replaced years ago for a lighter, more ornate, feminine look.
Flowers were brought in, if not daily, then often. Flowers from her mother's garden, their fragrances mixing pleasantly with Lilian's scent.
And contrasted right now with her sadness.
But still on the table by her bed sat small, framed photographs, of Gordan, of Erica and of the family together.
"Mother—"
"You've come here for answers, you've come here for me to talk . . . I know you deserve the truth from me," she sighed deeply, looking out into her garden instead of at Erica. She nervously rubbed her hands together, "I've given you so little growing up. I just haven't had it in me to give."
Her mother's voice was quiet, grieving. Erica felt her feet moving, and she settled by the chair at her mother's feet.
Lillian's hand came to rest lightly n Erica's hair. She ran her manicured fingers over the soft tresses and sighed deeply. "I've wanted, since the news broke, to believe in the prayer that you seem to put so much stock in. I've wanted to ask . . . someone to tell me how to explain any of this to you. I've wanted the courage to talk about it as I've never talked about it. I don't know how."
She sighed and closed her eyes as Erica rested her head against her mother's lap. Lilian's fingers massaged her head gently. And for a few minutes they sat in silence and solitude. When she started to speak, her voice was light, having lost it's heaviness.
"I met your father when he visited my father at my family home for a business meeting while I was home on Summer vacation. I was living in Toronto with my parents. We both were from wealth, though goodness knows, I had never seen wealth like what your father had. The farm and factory were a good business, but it wasn't his love and he'd never put much interest into it. And the wealth appealed to me, not because of the money, but because he had risked everything that his father had given him to put together his architectural firm. He wanted the name Caine to be equated with more than the southern Cotton it was known for."
"I saw him often over the next summer, as he made further alliances into Canada and Northern America. My mother had already passed away, so it was up to me to entertain him while he was at the house. We talked, so many times, late into the night. And there was nothing romantic about the discussions . . . except that there were feelings leading toward romance. When the summer ended, I decided to change my course of study. I was going into architecture and make sure that I was so good that Gordan Caine needed me."
"He would have taken me as I was," she smiled slightly, lovingly, then sadly. "He visited me at college, eventually, though we would leave the campus. He was out of the college scene, ten years my senior. My college romps amused him, but he was so focused. Sophisticated. We were so very much in love. I fell in love with him, with his dreams, with everything that I thought he stood for."
"We traveled in the early years after we were married, and were home so little that I never noticed . . . other things. His father ran the farm and the factories, so we visited Harmony only for odd little dinner parties, to see friends, and holidays. We were married twelve years before you were born, and in those ten years, Bella South was never more than a stopover. If we were even in Louisiana, we were at the apartment in new Orleans, throwing everything we had into the business. And Caine Architecture grew to be a worldwide name."
"Then your grandfather died and we were forced to return to Bella South. Your grandmother needed help. She was a . . . hard woman. Very traditional. Very much into the Southern Social status. I didn't like the way she pressed your father, the way she pressured him. He made his own decisions, for they were his to make, but she was very . . . demanding of your father. I watched him change over those last few years. He came home with ideas, willing to change things—but his ideas always hit a wall. And sometimes they ricochet back, toward his family. His mother was furious and he was afraid. For me, for you. So he backed down. Sometimes fear is the biggest catalyst for change."
"His mother didn't get far with me, but apparently she impressed on your father the importance of maintaining the social position and safety. And she died not long after we returned."
She let out a painful breath, the emotional energy hard pressed inside of her, and lifted her hands to bury her face in her hands, "Oh, Erica. It's so hard even now to speak so of your father, to you, and while I've never forgiven him for so many things, I will always love him . . . for the man he was, for the man I fell in love with. I never wanted you to know. It wasn't how I wanted to raise you, thinking that such things were acceptable, because their not. And I never wanted you to have any reason to mix the good memories that you did have with the ones the truth is giving you now."
"So it's true," Erica muttered, needing to say it, needing to hear herself admit to the truth, watching the grief pass over her mother's face as Lillian used a lace handkerchief to dry her tears. And she understood that Lillian had always grieved the loss of Gordan Caine—not just the night of his murder, but obviously before, when she'd learned of his affiliations. And how hard it had been for her to battle the love with the hate, the questions with the answers, "It's all true."
"It is . . . but always remember that there was a part of him that despised the side of him I'm telling you about now. Always remember that he tried to do the right things . . . if it's possible." She sighed, mourning again.
"I didn't know at the time, and maybe it's because I didn't want to know. He was brought up in a home that was prejudiced, racially . . . but it rarely, if ever, came out in him when we were away from here. It was Bella South, or his parents maybe, that brought him back. Maybe his friends, just the social surroundings. I know he changed—or struggled against the change constantly. I know coming back took away the Gordan I knew so well. I know it made him unhappy."
"It took several years before I knew any of it—or understood where the unhappiness came from. Things were rocky at home, the firm needed me, the farm him. And I just didn't pay attention. If I had, maybe, I could have gotten him away from here."
"He was slipping out of the house for council meetings, or what I thought were town council meetings, and women weren't invited to them at the time. I was wrapped up with you, with my part in the architectural firm, which he was leaving more and more in my hands as he drove himself deeper and deeper into the farm and the factory. He was so unhappy. At war with himself. He'd escaped from here, from things that had always been considered right and he'd learned that those things were wrong. But here. Here . . . he couldn't seem to step away . . . ."
"One night there was an emergency at one of the buildings in California and I needed to find him. So I drove to the council meeting, only to find an empty building," there was still traces of shock and anger in her eyes from that single memory. "What I also found was the beginning of a Klan riot in town. Your father's car was there and I went with you without thinking, because I suspected—"
"And I got lost," Erica remembered, thinking of the dream. "Things fell a part and I couldn't find you. People were screaming. There was so much noise. Terror. I couldn't find you. And then daddy picked me up."
Lillian placed a hand on Erica's shoulder and hugged her closer, "I had always hoped you didn't remember."
"I didn't . . . but it comes back in my dreams," she glanced up at her mother, "you fought when you got home."
"We did. venomously. I threatened to leave him, to take you with me. Every bit of grief for loosing his father poured into the anger. We fought all night and through the next day until he walked out, taking nothing with him. He was gone for almost a week. The only contact I had with him was through his assistant. He was thinking, fixing things. That's all I knew."
"When he came home it was to tell me it was over. He wasn't going to allow me or you to grow into the bitterness that had eaten his mother up, and he had never, ever expected their plans to go as far as they had. And he hated, more than anything else I suppose, what it had done to him, how the anger had turned him against me, so that he said all that he said when we were arguing. The next day, he was gone."
"He died in a car wreck."
"He died in the way the sheriff said that he died. I only questioned things so far, though . . . or maybe because I knew the truth. I knew Gordan had asked questions, had made statements in his anger that had probably angered some. But I had you to worry about. And obviously, he had worried about you too. A few days after he died, a security crew came to the house under his orders, surrounding the made house with a privacy fence, a gate and security cameras."
"It was hard to trust anyone, beyond a few friends I still had in Canada who were so far away from it and from Gordan. It still is. Gordan had many friends and many . . . associates. I'm not sure I ever knew the difference. And I never wanted you to know."
"I always blamed you," Erica murmured, "and you always let me believe you were the bad parent."
"I was, and I never argued, because I was. When Gordan died, part of him died with me. And I was so afraid of being close to you, because I only wanted to protect you from becoming what your father had become."
Erica closed her eyes and leaned against her mother's lap, taking comfort in the gentle, soothing motion of her mother's hand gently caressing her head.
* * * * *
"She just seems so lost right now," Erica told Jonathon over her private phone that afternoon. She'd settled in her room after a time of walking and praying alone in the garden. "I've never seen my mother so . . . still. She hasn't left her room for long. She just sends Baxley away. I've never known her to do that before," she sighed, "If it were anyone else, you would think she was praying, but when I asked her this afternoon if she wanted me to pray with her, she said no."
"She's not willing to deal with something she hasn't dealt with before. Give her time."
"I am. I just . . . ." wanted everything to be over, to be normal, Erica thought, to be better.
"Do you know what's she's going to do now?"
"My mom's a smart woman, Jonathon. She's kept all of this inside for twenty years because of me—because of what the news would do to the only memories I have of my father. Now that's not an issue. I think I know her well enough to know that she'll help bring justice to my father and the other two men that are being investigated as well."
Jonathon nodded on his own end of the line in St. Paul as he looked through the one-way mirror to the aged questioning room and thought of his own kind of justice. They'd planned for months, detail after detail, and their key player for the rest of the drama had walked into their waiting arms that afternoon.
Jonathon remembered the man—though he'd aged much more than his years. He'd been there that night, a teenager on the edge of the crowd, and because he was a survivor, had risen in the ranks. Not everyone lived to be twenty-five.
And now that this key player was about to be put in his place, they would have to wait some more. It would take time, enough for him to make sure everything was really alright at Bella South, and to check in on that investigation; enough for him to confide in Erica about the whole mess of his life before the investigation went down.
Paige had already pushed him toward the door—hours ago, now. They'd argued a bit. He still felt obligated here—but it was Paige in the room asking the questions. It would be Paige going through the follow up. He felt responsible, but he'd cut his losses along time ago.
There was nothing for him left to do until the rest of the stage was set.
Erica deserved to know the entire story, and it was time.
So he told her, without telling her anything, "It looks like things are tied up around here for awhile. Would you mind if I came to visit?"
"How soon?"
"I should be able to pull in tonight."
Erica smiled, "I wouldn't mind that at all."
* * * * *
"Green seven, over the river and through the woods into the corner pocket."
Which meant it would snap the blue and slide gracefully by the green, angling toward the corner pocket.
Erica looked, Jonathon thought, as classy as she had the first night they'd played pool, but instead of the floor length gown, she wore jeans and a tee-shirt. Instead of her hair framing her face in large waves to her shoulders, it was pulled back in a pony tail. She wore glasses tonight. By the looks of her eyes, she'd been crying some.
But there was still a simple grace and class that was just Erica. She didn't just play pool. She studied it carefully, adding wit to her game.
And she was tired. They both were. Which was why she'd suggested that they play pool, to relax, and to remind them both of where things had started.
She leaned over the table and shifted the cue stick slightly through her fingers, calculating, measuring. Then she snapped it through. The balls cracked and bounced, and the green seven slid smoothly into the corner pocket.
She moved on, walking around the table, calculating the angles. Her eyes were focused, serious, and she was so very pretty, striking . . . and his.
He liked watching her like this. Comfortable, at home in her surroundings. Her eyes were a mixture of concentration and thought.
"You should put this in your book."
"What? That Whitney beats Peter in pool? He might prefer that I killed her off."
"Mmm," she leaned forward on the cue and studied the setup momentarily. "How's it coming?"
"The book?" he asked as he watched her walk around the table. "It's coming."
She leaned over to measure the cue through her fingers, then slowly pushed herself back up to look at him eye to eye.
"Would you tell me if it wasn't?"
"Words come and go. Chapters start out one way and end up another. If things are on the back burner right now it's not because of you."
"Would you tell me then what is bothering you?" she asked, not backing down. She had taken an offensive position, he thought, shifting her feet apart just slightly for balance. She was digging in. Holding her own. "There is something."
"I'd tell you anything, Erica. It's not that . . ." he sighed and leaned back against the pool table feeling helpless, "I've never told anyone before. I've never said . . . my dad, Paige, for a long time were the two most important people in my life. They knew. My pastor heard from other people. They understood. Amy doesn't know. I think she suspects, but she's never pressed."
"So you're saying I shouldn't press."
"No, I'm saying . . . I'm not saying you shouldn't press. I'm saying that it isn't as easy as just opening my mouth and telling you what's in my memory," he looked around frustrated, not sure what he was looking for, and finally pushed himself up onto the pool table. "Maybe you should sit down."
Erica did, because he asked, but she moved carefully, not wanting to distract him from this moment of truth, and hopefully a move toward healing.
He was silent for several minutes, but Erica didn't question him. She sat silently, praying, and wondering if it really was none of her business.
"I was a good cop. I've always thought that I was born to be a cop."
She'd known that—or guessed it. He was too much of a thinker, an analyzer—like his father's character in the book—not to be.
He pushed himself off the table, paced to the door and stopped, watching the images in her head. "I grew up watching my dad . . . think like a cop. He was in the classroom, but he was a master . . . is at thinking the entire investigative operation, the entire questioning process out. Patient. He was always so patient. I don't think there was ever a moment that I didn't want to grow up and be like him. Even when I was a teenager and I disagreed with him more than I agreed with him I still wanted to be a cop like him."
He turned around slowly. "I loved my job. I had the beat on the streets around the high school, the day shift—almost from the start. My life was keeping those kids alive, safe, helping them stay out of trouble. Keeping them in school, getting to see them graduate from high school. Getting them into church, getting them saved, and watching them grow in their relationship with Christ. It was nothing like what my dad had done, had been, but it was so vital . . . ."
"Then . . ." he sighed, frustrated even now with how things had turned over. He paced the room, working around the frustration. "I ended up working on a case several miles out of my beat, working with cops from another precinct. It was a different case, a narcotics assignment I fell into through a twisted path of evidence. Dangerous. Organized to the immaculate degree—for the first time I found myself in the place my father had been. I had handled narcotics and gangs before—busted plenty of kids. I had shot with the intent to kill when a mother and her child were threatened. I had been shot at—all of those rare occasions."
"But this was different. And it changed in intensity when one of those kids at that beat showed up at church with one of mine—recognized me almost immediately, heard from one of the kids that I was a cop. He became an informant, working with me on a daily basis, wanting to turn his life around . . . looked up to me as he found Christ. He was so thirsty for more."
He paced to the window and looked out at the immaculate grounds of the front of Bella South. The long drive led a straight path through the trees and circled around the front. A gardener leaned over the bushes, trimming the branches with quick, controlled snaps.
And the sun was shinning. He felt the warmth from the rays on his face. It always amazed him that the sun would shine when his memories of that night were so dark and cold. "I wanted him out—but he thought he needed to stay in absolution for everything he'd done. It was the one point I couldn't get him to understand. And I should have pulled out, stepped away when it all became personal.. But it was important to him . . . ."
Erica came up beside him and reached around him to hold on. He slipped his arm around her as he let himself remember one more time.
It had been in a dirty warehouse, very little light. He'd been there several times. Had watched from an upstairs office as transactions never took place.
This night had been different. He'd known it from almost the beginning. More walked through the darkened rear entrance than had entered during the other incidents combined. They grouped together in the center. He'd called for backup almost immediately, sensing the vibes, but it was to late. There was commotion . . . a leader stepped forward. Yelling, arguing . . .
Then gunfire.
He'd had his eye on Johnson, his boy, from the beginning. And saw when he fell. Watched the stunned expression, and the reality of death—no chance to shut his eyes.
He'd fallen, innocent, with his eyes open. Eyes surprised, eyes meeting their end.
"A rival gang showed up—it was a set up. Five teens died that night," he closed his eyes and dropped his head so that his forehead rested against the glass. "It didn't make the news."
"And you couldn't do anything."
He hadn't been able to move. He'd sat their in shock, having seen death, knowing the horror of what was going on not thirty feet away because he'd experienced it before.
But never on that level.
Never that personally.
He sighed and turned his head to look at Erica, "How late does Millie's stay open?"
It took a moment for Erica to crawl out of the image and the horror. She blinked and forced herself to take a breath, then glanced at her watch. "Not this late."
"Know where we can get us a milkshake?"
"I know a few tricks of my own. But we'll have to go to the store."
"Perfect."
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