by Bailey Cates
“Oh, look!” I pointed to an alligator sunning itself a mere fifty feet from the road. It blinked at me slowly, and its craggy mouth seemed to smile. The thing seemed inordinately large.
“I bet they’re all over this place,” Cookie said. “I wonder how many animals live here.”
That gave me pause. Not only how many different species, which was what Wren was always talking about, but how many actual animals? Actual lives that would likely be lost if the golf course development went through. There I sat, encased in luxury and peering out the window at a big flock of ring-necked ducks on a small pond, geese paddling among them. Red cardinals flashed colorful plumage among the branches, and other waterfowl waded or swam or flew.
Bianca pointed to a foot-long fawn-colored bird with a long curved beak and speckled breast. “That’s a brown thrasher.”
“Pretty enough,” I said.
She caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “It’s the state bird of Georgia.”
“Oh. My bad. This is a birder’s paradise,” I said. Then, “Uh-oh.”
The NO TRESPASSING sign looked freshly painted.
Bianca drove right by it. “Wren said she’d been out here to talk with this Rickers guy, right? I think we can take our chances.”
“Yeah,” I said. “From what I saw online, he seems geeky rather than someone who would take after us with a shotgun.”
Cookie made a sign in the air.
Bianca’s eyes cut sideways, then returned to the ever-narrowing strip ahead.
“What was that?” I asked.
“A little extra protection.” Her words were clipped.
“I don’t know much about magical gestures yet.”
“I didn’t recognize that one,” Bianca said.
“It’s one of my little voodoo things,” Cookie said. She didn’t quite keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
The pavement ended, and Bianca slowed the Jag to a crawl on the dirt road. We rounded a curve to find a covered wooden bridge. It led to a small island surrounded by a natural moat. A log cabin sat in the middle, smoke curling out of the chimney like something out of Little House in the Big Woods. An old Chevy pickup was parked along one side. Planks rattled below as we crossed the bridge and came to a stop in the circular open space in front of it.
The nice GPS lady spoke. “You have reached your destination.”
We got out, and the smell of the swamp hit me hard. Cookie wrinkled her nose, and I realized I might be alone in my appreciation of the strong earthy scent rich with the musk of compost. To a gardener like me, it signaled fecundity, possibility, and the circle of life. Around us birds called and hooted. Everywhere you turned, bald cypress trees reached muscular, prehensile roots down into the water to steady their dark trunks. The arching canopy above, barren of green this time of year but draped heavily with the Spanish moss ubiquitous to the area, shattered the sky into small blue shards that seemed very far away indeed. The humid air thrummed with life energy.
“Do you feel that?” I asked the other two. They nodded.
The door to the cabin opened, and a man stood framed in the doorway. I recognized Evanston Rickers from his online photo.
“Can I help you?” His voice was a deep basso profundo.
Tall and angular, he wore jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, but that was where any resemblance to a lumberjack ended. His solid black wavy hair had grown out and now fell just below his ears. Gray threaded his Van Dyck goatee, and high cheekbones set off dark, almost royal blue eyes. Long fingers gripped the doorjamb.
I stepped forward. “Dr. Rickers?”
“Indeed I am. And who, if I may ask, are you?”
“This is Bianca Devereaux and this is Cookie Rios.” I indicated my companions.
“Ladies.” He nodded to Cookie and then turned his attention to Bianca. Their eyes met for a long moment, and then his attention flicked down to the ring finger on her left hand. When he looked away, she looked like she’d been hit with a stun gun.
Uh-oh. Perhaps her time spent on Savannah Singles had been a waste, but our trip to the swamp may have already been worth the drive.
Cookie saw it, too, and pressed her lips together as she tipped her head to the right and considered our new acquaintance.
“I’m Katie Lightfoot.” I stuck out my hand.
He squinted at me. “And?”
“I believe you know Wren Knowles. We’re also associated with the Georgia Wild environmental organization.” I left out that my association was entirely unpaid and my companions were involved only because they knew me. “We’re following up on the maroon bat sighting here in Fagen Swamp.”
“Where’s Wren?”
“She’s busy with other work,” I said, fudging.
One side of his mouth turned up in a half smile. “I thought the bats were a dead issue.”
I couldn’t quite keep the surprise out of my voice. “Did Wren tell you that?”
“No. The attorney for the investment group that’s planning to destroy this place. According to him the deal is going through.”
“But you saw the bats,” I said.
Rickers crossed the twenty feet of dirt between us. “Oh, yes. Three times I saw them, but I can’t prove it.”
“Of course you took pictures,” Bianca said.
Rickers nodded. “I managed a few. Wren said they weren’t good enough. They were either too blurry or looked like red bats. See, besides the deeper coloration, maroon bats have an extra bend in their third metatarsal. What you might think of as their third finger. I wanted to enhance the photos, but she said they could be called fake then.”
I spoke. “May I ask how you know so much about maroon bats? I mean, I’d never heard of them, and they’ve supposedly been extinct for at least ten years.”
He smiled. “I’m a zoologist.”
“But your specialty is snakes,” I said.
His eyes narrowed, though the smile remained. “Indeed. But I’m still quite knowledgeable about other species. I have to be.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Bianca said. By now she was twisting a lock of her hair like a high school girl. Puck’s head popped out of her pocket, but Rickers didn’t seem to notice.
His mouth widened in a slow, appreciative smile. “Thank you, Ms. Devereaux.”
A splash to my right made me turn just in time to see a long slithery tail slip underwater. Too small for an alligator, and too long.
Speaking of snakes.
I was fine with spiders and salamanders, appreciated frogs and toads, mice, and even rats. But I hated snakes with a thoroughly unreasonable but primal passion, and I was in the middle of a swamp that was probably chock-full of them.
“Cottonmouth,” Evanston Rickers said. “Fagen Swamp has a lot of them, as well as brown water snakes, rainbow snakes, mud snakes—”
I raised my palm to him. “And birds.” Nice, feathery, pretty birds.
“Of course. That’s a white ibis.” He gestured toward a white bird on a log two hundred feet away. Its long pink beak curved halfway down its body, and you couldn’t tell where the face started—the eyes looked like they were set right into that pink beak. It stood on one leg, the other tucked underneath.
Rickers pointed up. “And there’s an osprey nest—plenty of those. Oh, and those are the neighborhood turkey vultures. They usually like more open habitat, but that pair seems content to keep me company on my little island here.”
Dark eyes blinked down from two remarkably ugly, featherless red faces.
“Can you show us where you saw the bats?” I asked. What the heck—it couldn’t hurt.
He blinked, hesitating, then said, “Don’t see why not. Follow me.” He took off for the bridge.
I trotted over the wooden planks and caught up with him, the other two behind me. “You rent the cabin?” I asked.
>
“For now. I’d offer to buy it if I thought it would do any good. But I can’t afford to purchase the whole swamp, and that’s what needs to happen in order to save it.” Passion leaked around every syllable. So despite being an outsider, he obviously felt genuine concern. “This is a unique and precious place,” he went on. “Autumn is trying desperately to find a buyer who will keep it in its natural form.”
“Another buyer,” I said. “Of course. That way Fagen will be rid of land he doesn’t want, and the swamp won’t turn into a golf course.”
I heard whispers behind us and looked back to see Cookie and Bianca with their heads together.
“Ms. Boles is doing a good job, but she has encountered a great deal of resistance from the investors who want to destroy this land,” Rickers said. “Still, she’s stubborn and smart. I’m glad she’s spearheading the conservation effort.”
The realization set in slowly: He didn’t know Autumn was dead.
“Um, Dr. Rickers? I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”
He slowed, leading us single file down a narrow path through the grasses and cattails gone to seed. The trees on either side grew closer and taller. I scanned the ground for anything that looked reptilian.
“What now?” he asked over his shoulder.
I decided it would be best to simply state the truth. “Autumn Boles was killed in the Georgia Wild offices two days ago.”
He stopped so suddenly I almost ran into him. Bianca did run into my back before catching herself. Pivoting to face us, Rickers said, “You’re kidding me.”
The look on my face must have been answer enough.
“Killed how?”
“She was strangled.”
A speculative expression settled across his handsome features. “Is that why you’re out here? Because you think one of the potential buyers came after her?”
The raw accusation surprised me. Of course, he didn’t seem to know Autumn was on the verge of giving up the fight for Fagen Swamp, which would effectively remove any motive from the investment group.
Except—if he didn’t know she was turning her attention elsewhere, it was possible that at least some of the investors didn’t know, either. Steve hadn’t been worried about the existence of maroon bats nixing the real estate deal, probably because his father wasn’t worried. However, someone in that group could still have had a motive to remove the founder of Georgia Wild from the equation. After all, there was that mysterious folded bat—times two.
I couldn’t tell Rickers about the origami. Detective Quinn would have a fit if I went around broadcasting details of his murder case, and with good cause. Plus, I didn’t know this guy from Adam.
I settled on saying, “We’re here to find out more about the extinct species of bats.”
He let out a long, slow breath and turned his focus to the wooded marsh around us. “So are you going to do something about the sale of this land?”
“I don’t know,” was my honest response. “We will if we can.” As unlikely as that seemed.
Cookie crowded up beside me. “Are you worried about having to leave this place if it’s sold?”
He shrugged. “I’m going to have to leave anyway, when my sabbatical is up in another six months. This isn’t personal.”
Perhaps that was why he’d seemed surprised but not terribly upset upon learning Autumn had been murdered.
He turned and continued on. We exchanged glances and followed in silence. A minute later the path opened into a clearing. The cypress trees were taller here, some reaching over a hundred feet over our heads. It seemed excessively warm for February, and I wondered if the swamp created its own microclimate. There was definitely some kind of energy at work here, but I couldn’t tell whether it was natural.
“There.” Rickers pointed at a dead trunk leaning against two live trees. It was gnarled and pocked from rot and animals looking for food. “Maroon bats aren’t cave dwellers like many other species. They roost in dead logs and under the bark of some trees. I saw two tucked into that crevice there. When I came back with my camera, they were gone. I started carrying my camera all the time after that and caught two more—or maybe the same two—jammed under that broken shard.” His finger moved higher.
We tilted our heads back, and in an instant I lost interest in the dead tree. Behind the cypress we were looking at another that loomed higher. Much higher.
“That tree has to be at least a hundred and fifty feet tall,” I breathed. “And old. It must be terribly old.” I lowered my gaze to Evanston Rickers. “How old do they get?”
“I’ve heard they’ve found bald cypress as old as twelve hundred years,” he said, still studying the white weathered wood of the trunk directly in front of us.
It was more than age and size that drew me around the alleged bat roost toward the cypress. It exuded power. What I had taken for the distilled life-energy signature of thousands of animals was actually coming from that tree. It felt foreign, but at least it wasn’t the sticky feel of decay like the origami bat or the dark rusted-metal sensation of true evil I’d witnessed once before. It wasn’t unpleasant at all, in fact. But it was most certainly the strongest pull I’d ever experienced.
“Ms. Lightfoot!”
Rickers’ voice stopped me.
I whirled around. “I’ll just be a sec.”
Cookie’s eyes were round with alarm. “Come back now, Katie. We need to get going.”
Bianca looked between us, puzzled.
“I was just going to warn you that there’s a cottonmouth den a few yards in front of you,” Rickers said. “I advise that you find another route.”
The cypress still called. For a brief moment I actually considered risking the snakes.
I’m thinking of walking through a den of cottonmouths? Oh, dear. Something’s oh-so-very not right.
“Katie, come on,” Cookie urged. She put some of her Voice into the words.
It ran off me like water off a ring-necked duck, but the fact that she had felt a need to use it was enough to get my attention. With an effort, I retraced my steps and led the way back down the narrow path to the bridge.
What was the deal with that tree? Had Cookie felt it, too? Even as I walked away, it tugged at me with its silent whisper.
The whisper lessened as I crossed back over the bridge and saw that a shiny black Land Rover was now parked next to Bianca’s Jaguar.
A Land Rover identical to the one Steve drove.
Chapter 13
When we reached the Rover, no one was inside. Rickers turned toward the cabin and saw the door was ajar. He strode toward it, fury written on his face.
I was surprised to see the man I’d seen in the Dawes Corporation stairwell come out of the cabin to meet him. Leaning to the side, I tried to see if Steve was inside as well, but Rickers reached out and slammed the door closed behind Logan Seward.
“How dare you enter my cabin without my permission?” Rickers fumed.
“It’s hardly your cabin.” The attorney reached down with his handkerchief to brush dust from his expensive-looking shoes. A gray flannel touring cap hid the bald spot I’d seen in the stairwell, and his sports jacket didn’t look like it was off the rack. Still, there was something unrefined about him. The accent was southern, but not local. I hadn’t lived in the South long enough to be able to identify where he was from. At least he wasn’t as creepy in full daylight with other people around.
“I may pay for the ownership month by month, but by God it’s mine as long as I do,” Rickers said. “Not even Fagen can just barge in there unannounced.”
“Well, that’s why I’m here, Evanston. To give you this.” Seward slapped an envelope into the other man’s hand. “Notice to evacuate within sixty days.”
Rickers stared down at the envelope and then back up at Seward. The muscles along his neck and jawlin
e worked. “I thought you said I’d be able to finish my work here.”
“Things have changed.”
Things. Had Autumn’s death made such a difference to the land deal?
He gave his shoes one last dusting and moved to the driver’s side of his car. Looking me in the eye, he tipped the front of the pretentious-looking touring cap. A narrow ray of sunlight glinted madly off a silvery pinky ring. “Ms. Lightfoot.” And to Bianca and Cookie, “Ladies.”
I inclined my head. “Mr. Seward?”
His hand froze on the door handle. “Yes?”
“Why are you driving that car?”
The smile almost reached his eyes. “Of course you would recognize it, wouldn’t you? It happens that I walked to work today, and when I found I needed to make this”—his eyes darted to Evanston Rickers and back to me—“unexpected journey, I borrowed the Land Rover. Satisfied?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked, resisting the urge to make a tart retort. Something about the guy made me itchy.
“Good day, Ms. Lightfoot.”
“Mmm-hmm,” was my tepid response.
“How do you know him?” Bianca asked as he drove away. Rickers eyed me with suspicion.
“We haven’t formally met. However, he’s driving Steve’s car.”
Steve must have told him who I was. He would have, of course. Because that ring on Logan Seward’s pinky finger was very similar to the one I wore around my neck. There was only one source for those rings. I wondered where he’d tattooed the druidic sigil each member of the clan sported.
I glanced at Evanston Rickers. He’d opened the envelope and was reading the contents, his face white.
“We’ll be going now,” I said to him. “Thanks for your help.”
He looked up, eyes blazing. “Georgia Wild needs to stop the rape of this land. No one else will help. Please.” Power echoed in the word. Magic? Simple passion? An echo of the power of the tree? His attention returned to the notice to vacate, and the moment passed.
