Chesapeake Tide

by Jeanette Baker

  Chloe’s eyes welled up. “He was so sad, Mom. You should have seen him cry. I’ve never seen anyone cry like that.”

  “She’s all he had, sweetie. Not only has he lost his mother, he’s all alone. That’s hard for anyone, especially an eighteen-year-old boy.”

  “He has me.”

  Libby’s heart sank. “He knows that,” was all she said. She kissed both of Chloe’s cheeks and her forehead. “Good night, love. I’ll check on you in the morning.”

  When Libby returned to the living room, the scene had changed slightly. The police were gone and her father was sitting beside Bailey on the couch. She could hear the low, measured tones of his professional voice. The boy nodded.

  Cole looked at his daughter. “I’ll take Bailey into the kitchen for something to drink. I doubt if he’ll eat anything. You and your mother will wait for the mortician. He should arrive shortly.”

  She waited until her father left the room with Bailey. “God, Mama.” Libby rubbed her temples. “How did we ever get into this?”

  “I believe,” said Nola Ruth slowly, “that involving ourselves with unsuitable people runs in our family, at least on the female side.”

  Libby lifted her head and stared at her mother, eyes blazing. “How dare you say that? You, of all people. Neither Chloe nor I have ever been involved with anyone as unsuitable as your Anton Devereaux.” She spat the name from her lips, as if were a thing so repellant, so dirty, that she could no longer hold it inside of her.

  Half of Nola Ruth’s mouth smiled. “So, it finally comes out,” she said softly. “I wondered when it would happen. You’ve been so cool, so accepting. I wondered whether or not there was any of my Libba Jane left.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When you were a girl you had more life in you than a thoroughbred fresh out of the starting gate. You smoldered with it, just like Chloe does. I think you brought her back here because you were afraid, Libba. She wants what you wanted and you’re afraid she’ll be hurt the way you were.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  Nola Ruth, well into her reminiscences, ignored the question. “Lord, you were a handful. I wanted a little girl who kept her Mary Janes shiny and her ribbons tied. Your favorite thing to do was wade through marshes looking for tree frogs. I’ll never forget the time you came home with leeches stuck to every square inch of both legs.”

  “I was eleven years old, Mama.”

  “And remember when Tom Hadley planned to sell a portion of his groves to that private developer? You stood up at the town meeting and convinced everyone that condominiums and fast-food restaurants would be a disaster for Marshyhope Creek. It was the most eloquent speech I’d ever heard and you were sixteen years old. Even Tom had second thoughts, and when your granddaddy offered him a loan to make ends meet until the next harvest, he jumped at it. The land and the water were in your blood, Libba. They still are.”

  “What has that got to do with anything?”

  “Where’s the life, honey? You haven’t done any more than tell me yes ma’am, no ma’am since you got here— when you are here. Where were you all night, anyway?”

  Libby looked at her mother but she didn’t see her. She was remembering Russ’s words: “We play it out in the open, so that everyone knows about us, your daughter, mine, your parents, my ex-wife.”

  “I was with Russ Hennessey,” she said deliberately.

  Nola Ruth’s expressive eyes warmed with pity and something else Libby didn’t recognize. “Oh, Libba, will you never learn?”

  “Like you did?”

  Nola Ruth leaned forward. “Yes, like I did. I learned my lessons. I don’t make the same mistake twice.”

  “And I do?”

  “Apparently so.”

  “I’m not going to marry him. Besides, what’s wrong with Russ Hennessey?”

  “For starters, he’s divorced with a child, and if you think Tracy Wentworth will sit back and let you have Russ when she runs to him for every little thing, you’ve got another thing coming. If you must have a divorced man, why not look for one with an ex-wife who’s remarried and whose children are grown?”

  Libba stared at her mother in amazement. “I’m not looking and not everybody plans who they fall in love with, Mama. The most I hope for in my next husband, if there is a next one, is some compassion and a large dose of character.”

  “That’s very nice, Libba Jane. What about practical matters like earning potential, security and no previous baggage?”

  “When did you get to be so cold?”

  “When did you get to be so naive?”

  Libba shook her head and stood. “How did we get to this subject, anyway?”

  “By asking that very question.”

  The doorbell interrupted them. Relieved, Libby left her mother in the living room and answered the door. A neat man in a black suit smiled at her. “I’m Harvey Madison. Sorry to disturb you at this hour, but Mr. Delacourte asked me to come out and remove Mrs. Jones.”

  “Of course.” Libby stepped aside. “Please, come in. I’ll call my father.”

  Cole was right behind her. “How are you, Harvey?” “

  Fine, thanks, Mr. Delacourte.”

  “Come with me.”

  Libby watched the two men walk down the hall and into one of the downstairs bedrooms. She shuddered to think of Chloe and Bailey lifting Lizzie’s lifeless body into the truck and driving with it between them on the single bench seat. Guilt assailed her. When her daughter was facing the crisis of her young life, Libby had been with Russ. Chloe’s whereabouts had been the furthest thing from her mind.

  Nola Ruth’s New Orleans Catholicism raised its superstitious head. Chloe’s experience was retribution, a warning sign. Libby was a mother. She had no business finding pleasure in a man’s bed, especially a man who wasn’t her husband.

  She walked slowly back into the living room. “It’s late, Mama,” she said wearily. “I’ll take you to your room.”

  “When will you be ready, Libba Jane?”

  “For what?”

  “For the rest of the truth.”

  Libby sighed. “There’s more?”

  “There’s a great deal more.”

  Libby pushed her mother’s wheelchair across the carpet and down the hall into her bedroom. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe she didn’t belong here in this place where dark secrets crept slowly to the surface, like parasites eating away at stones and tree bark. She didn’t want to learn that her mother was human, and a less-than-perfect human at that. Libby loved her mother, revered her opinions, respected her decisions. A flawed mother didn’t fit her image of what a mother should be. Suddenly her eyelids felt heavy. “Will it keep, Mama?” she asked. “I don’t think I can take any more tonight.”

  “It’ll keep. It’s kept for forty years now, but it has to be said.”

  “Then another night won’t matter.”

  Nola Ruth sounded tired, defeated. “It won’t matter at all, Libba Jane.”

  Libby settled her mother in her bed and closed the door behind her. On her way up the stairs she met her father coming down. He held her close for a minute and kissed her cheek. For the first time he looked old and it frightened her. “Are you all right, Daddy?”

  “I don’t know what we’re comin’ to, Libba Jane.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He smiled and instantly she was reassured. “Never mind, honey. How’s Chloe?”

  “She’s sleeping now, but she’s worried about Bailey.”

  “That girl’s got good instincts. We should all be worried about him.” He patted her shoulder. “That’s all I’ll say now. By the way, the charges against Drusilla Washington have been dropped. There are conditions, but she can live with them. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Will there be an investigation?”

  “Only if we can link the fetus’s condition to the problems we’re having in the bay. Is that possible?”

  Libby frowned. Sh
e knew her father and it seemed as if his question was more than casual. “I’m not sure,” she said slowly. “It could take years.” She smiled tentatively. “Verna Lee must be pleased.”

  “Very pleased.”

  “And grateful, I hope.”

  He grinned. “Maybe I’ll never have to pay for another latte again. Sleep well, Libba Jane.”

  She climbed the stairs to her bedroom, switched on the light and walked into the bathroom. Shedding her clothes, she poured bath gel into the tub, turned on the tap and sank into the soothing bubbles. The night had been a long one and her head reeled with half-finished thoughts. Foremost in her mind was the phone call she would make to Ventura County resigning from her former job. She was needed here in Marshyhope Creek, and after tonight’s meeting she wouldn’t desert the watermen who believed in her. The problem of Chloe was resolved, although Libby wished it had happened differently. She wouldn’t leave Bailey Jones, not now when he had no one. And there was her mother. Nola Ruth was determined to make a full confession, and whether she wanted to or not, Libby had been appointed to hear it. She supposed it all needed to be said, that, and more. Libby had some questions of her own. Real peace would never be found without the answers.

  She deliberately avoided all thoughts of Russ. Russ Hennessey had been deliberately relegated to the think-about-it-later part of her brain. She would admit there was chemistry. There had always been a powerful adult attraction between them. She thought, when she was younger, that the blind, absorbing, thick-tongued kind of love she felt for Russ was because he had been there for every significant first in her life. Later, she knew better. The magnetic pull she felt, that pulsing rise of tension and the slow, sweet anticipatory slide from wanting to absolute desire was because Russ was Russ, and the plain truth of it was, for her, there had never been anyone else with the same combination of unconscious charisma and personal charm. There still wasn’t. He was quite capable of getting her to do just about anything he wanted, although he didn’t know it and never would since she had no intention of giving him such an advantage by telling him.

  All of which were very good reasons for not falling in love with him all over again. Loving Russ would be a disaster. She would be forever insecure, always jealous of other women, forever worried that he would leave her for someone else because she wasn’t interesting enough or smart enough or good enough in bed. That had been her Rubicon once already. Images of Shelby and Russ, her best friend and her true love, had sent her on a downward trajectory of pain and rage and retribution that led her out of Marshyhope Creek and the tree-lined shoals of the Chesapeake to a place where it never rained enough to turn anything green and more days than not the horizon was smeared with a mustard-yellow haze. The fact that five years had passed by the time Mitch told her about Russ and Shelby and that the two had been no older than Chloe made no difference. The hurt was still bitter. She tried to resurrect it, testing the images. She felt nothing. She tried again. Still nothing.

  She shrugged. There were far more important things to think about, such as how and when she would begin to provide a home for Chloe. She couldn’t live with her parents forever. It wasn’t healthy for Chloe to see her mother as a dependent and it wasn’t what an adult would do.

  As often happens when a sleep pattern is disturbed, Libby woke earlier than her usual time. The rest of the house was silent, shrouded in lowered shades and curtains pulled against the light. Soundlessly, she pulled on her shorts, a sleeveless T-shirt and running shoes. Then she tiptoed out the door and down the path toward the water line. There, she started her run.

  A smoky blanket of mist settled over the wetlands, covering all but the spiky tips of the tall southern pine, colorless in the early gray morning. It was already warm. Libby breathed in the moist air flavored with smells of peach, salt, water and mineral-rich soil. She ran past the dock, across the flat, open road and out past the fields filled with sharecroppers bent in half, hoisting boxes filled with produce to their muscular, sweating shoulders. Road stands spilled multicolored fruit and vegetables and trucks hauling tomatoes, oranges, onions, coriander, cabbage and lettuce passed her by.

  When the sun burned away the clouds, bringing the distinctive blue color to the bay water, she stopped, bent over, breathed deeply and checked her watch. It was only seven-thirty. She turned around and jog-walked home. Verna Lee’s red car was in the driveway. Once again, Libby checked her watch. Why would she be here at eight in the morning? Fearing another unpleasant surprise, Libby slowed her steps to a crawl. She stopped at the door, drew a deep, steadying breath and opened it quietly. The house was silent. She frowned, stooped over to untie and step out of her tennis shoes, picked them up and walked down the hall.

  Voices pierced the silence. She heard her mother’s, slow and deliberate, coming from the sitting room. Then she heard Verna Lee’s higher one. It was angry and insistent. Libby was both fascinated and repelled. She wanted to know more and at the same time she wanted no part of the truth she’d guessed for some time now. The fabric of what she had believed was a well-structured childhood had been rent from top to bottom until it bore no resemblance to the memory in her mind. The one constant of her life, her perception of her childhood, was being destroyed, and she wasn’t sure how much more she could take. Electing to pass by the room quickly and hope she wasn’t seen, Libby moved quickly past the door and started up the stairs.

  “Libba Jane.” Her name on her father’s lips stopped her short.

  Slowly, she turned around. He stood at the entrance to his study, his retreat where, except for Chloe, the women of the family never ventured.

  “Good morning,” she said softly.

  “I’d like to speak with you when you have a chance.”

  She looked down at him, a vital, lucid man, even though he was nearing seventy. She swallowed. “I have time now, Daddy.”

  “It can wait until you’ve cleaned up.”

  She nodded and continued up the stairs, checking on Chloe on the way. She was sleeping soundly. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat, but her breathing was slow and even and she hadn’t moved from the position she was in when she’d gone to bed last night.

  Libby showered, washed her hair, changed into clean clothes and walked down the stairs to meet her father. Chloe slept on and the voices in the sitting room were muted, almost friendly.

  She stepped into her father’s study and closed the door. “What’s going on in there?” she asked.

  Cole marked his place in the book he was reading and looked up. “Your mother and Verna Lee have an issue that needs settling. I imagine they’ll let us in on it when the time is right. What I have to tell you is much more serious.”

  Libby felt the cold fist of fear in the pit of her stomach. “Where’s Bailey?”

  “Bailey didn’t do much sleeping,” her father replied. “He wanted to go home as soon as possible. I dropped him off about thirty minutes ago. Now I’m not sure I did the right thing by letting him go.”

  “Why not?”

  “Lizzie Jones was murdered by asphyxiation. The coroner says someone held a pillow over her head and smothered her.”

  Libby’s hand flew to her mouth. “Dear God. Who?” Suddenly, her father looked old and tired.

  “Bailey is the only suspect the police have.”

  Twenty-Six

  “What are you going to do?” Libby asked. Her voice was hushed, shaken.

  “If Bailey is charged, I’m going to represent that poor boy,” her father answered.

  “Why would he do such a thing?”

  Cole Delacourte shook his head. “I won’t know until I ask him. My guess is that his mother was suffering and they couldn’t afford the medication to keep her pain free. She may have even asked him to do it. Lizzie Jones was wedded to that land. It’s been in her family for generations. More than anything she wanted to leave it to her son.”

  “I can’t imagine a mother doing such a thing. Surely she knew he would be blamed.”

 
; “Lizzie was a simple woman. Her mind wasn’t whole. I doubt if she knew how sophisticated forensics has become.”

  Libby was cold for the first time since she drove her rental car out of the air-conditioned airport in Richmond into the wet heat of a southern afternoon only two months ago. She rubbed her arms and began to walk back and forth across the room. “This is awful. We never should have come back here. Chloe will take this on. Clearing Bailey will become her special project. I know it will. She’ll feel as if she has to rescue him. Oh, God, Daddy. What am I going to do?” “

  Calm down, Libba Jane. Chloe will have to answer some questions. Although she’s not directly involved with Bailey and his mother, she was probably the last person to see the two of them together. They trusted her. She’ll be asked about their relationship.”

  Libby stared at him, horrified. “She couldn’t possibly be considered an accessory, could she?”

  Cole smiled. “No, honey. No one would even consider it.”

  Libby’s heart pounded. Every instinct told her to take her daughter and run as far away from Marshyhope Creek as four wheels and a manual transmission would take her. “What will I tell her?”

  “The truth, Libba Jane. Always fall back on the truth. If everyone would just follow that path, we wouldn’t spend so much energy on trying to fix it later on.”

  A soft knock interrupted them. Chloe’s voice followed. “Mom, I need a note for school.”

  Libby opened the door. “Come in, sweetheart. Are you sure you’re up to going in today? Under the circumstances, it wouldn’t hurt to stay home this time.”

  Chloe stared at her mother in amazement. “You never let me stay home, not unless I’m throwing up.”

  “I thought you might like to for once.”

  Chloe shook her head. “It’s the second day of school. Will you drive me?”

  Libby smiled brightly. “Of course. Let me get my purse and I’ll meet you out front.”