“He told you himself? What you mean, he told you? That cannot be! Why would he say such a thing? It is madness! It is nonsense! It is a lie and you must not repeat it! It is a dangerous lie.” She had spoken in a hissed whisper but her words had the impact of a scream and Carole Ann again was rendered speechless, this time by the intensity of the woman’s reaction, and by the growing fear her voice and her eyes. She and Odile were standing outside the kitchen door of the restaurant in the lull between lunch and dinner, and Odile looked around to be certain that they were not overheard. Only half a dozen or so patrons remained in the dining room, lingering over a late lunch, and another six or seven were relaxing on the patio. The kitchen staff was eating at the bar with Viviene their centerpiece— Carole Ann had greeted her and had been warmly received before being directed through to the kitchen, where she’d found Odile seated at a surprisingly modern desk in a extremely well-organized and surprisingly modern office, checking receipts. Odile, too, had greeted her warmly if a bit warily, though the wariness quickly became fear-tinged annoyance when Carole Ann stated her purpose. Odile had jumped up from the desk, scattering papers and knocking her reading glasses to the floor, and looked hurriedly around the office as if it contained concealed recording devices. Then she had beckoned for Carole Ann to follow her through the kitchen and out to an enclosed and private patio.
“If Henri LeRoi is not Denis’ father, why would he tell me he was, Odile?”
“He would not,” she replied flatly.
She was out of patience, but Carole Ann knew that she could not react or respond with anger; to do so would send the other woman more deeply into her shell of denial. “But he did, Odile, and if it’s not true, then I need to know why he lied. Or why he thinks it’s true.” She had spoken softly and calmly and her tone had the desired effect. Odile relaxed. Her shoulders dropped and she unclenched her jaw and her face took on a thoughtful, musing expression. She smoothed her dress and the silk rustled gently, like a breeze in the tops of the coconut palms. And she retreated into thought while Carole Ann watched her, wishing that she could see inside the woman’s head, to read those thoughts. For surely if she could know what she imagined Odile knew, she would have a chance at unraveling the mysteries of Isle de Paix. Or at least those pertaining to Denis St .Almain, which, under the circumstances that could prove extremely helpful, because she was beginning to believe that Denis was more than peripheral to the events on Isle de Paix.
She recalled their last conversation. Odile had warned her not to divulge that she was working on Denis’ behalf while on Philippe Collette’s payroll. Now she was being warned not to repeat Denis’ own assertion that Henri LeRoi was his father. Why? Even though she was the man’s sister, would she necessarily know whether he’d fathered Simone St. Almain’s child more than thirty years ago, or was she merely protecting her brother’s honor and reputation? And what difference did any of it make at this point? Henri LeRoi was in exile and Denis St. Almain was a fugitive. Jake’s warning notwithstanding, Carole Ann was determined to understand why, especially in light of his presence in that marijuana field.
“Odile—”
She shook her head. “I need to think more and to talk with Viviene and...and others. You will dine with us on Sunday. We do not come to the restaurant on Saturday and Sunday. Those are family days, and Sunday is the day for quiet time. It will be peaceful and we can talk. Come, I will tell you how to find us.” Carole Ann followed her back into the kitchen and into the office where, on the back of a coral-colored SELECTIONS DU JOUR menu from the previous day, she drew a map with detailed directions to her home, for which Carole Ann was grateful because, as she observed the lines that indicated roads she hadn’t known existed, she knew she’d never find the place otherwise. She accepted the paper from Odile and took her leave.
She felt unproductive and restless and extremely out of sorts. What was she to do with herself? It was Thursday, late in the afternoon. She couldn’t endure another moment with either Roland Charles or David Messinger, and there was no reason for her to see Yvette Casson or Philippe Collette— she had nothing to tell them and they had nothing to tell her and she desperately needed information, the kind that quenched her intuitive thirst rather than her factual hunger. For instance, she could pay a visit to Maurice Collette, the president’s son the doctor and the director of the Isle de Paix health clinic, and learn exactly what caused the deaths of Paul Francois and the unidentified presumed drug dealer, which would serve no purpose whatsoever. She needed to know people’s secrets, people’s suspicions; and if she couldn’t know what Odile Laurance knew until Sunday, then the patron’s at Armand’s would be her next best source of information.
The dusty parking lot was full, as usual, indicating that inside would be busy, noisy and smoky— as usual. She removed her sunglasses and opened the door and was smacked hard in the nose by the pungent-sweet scent of marijuana. She faltered, momentarily thrown off balance. Had that always been the case here and she’d never noticed it? Or did she notice it now only because she knew that enough pot grew on this island to keep everybody who’d finished college in the 1970's high for the rest of their lives? Or had the pot field been discovered? She recovered her equilibrium and stepped all the way inside.
She knew instinctively that every conscious mind was aware of her arrival though only half a dozen pairs of eyes actually looked in her direction. Several men standing near the door stepped aside to permit her entry, and the crowd shifted imperceptibly as she made her way to the bar. She received greetings along the way— casual, off-the-cuff, and usually low-voiced. And when she reached the bar, a man stood, without speaking, and walked in the opposite direction. She knew that he hadn’t finished his drink because he took it with him. As she straddled the barstool, a bottle of Red Stripe and a bowl of plantain chips were placed before her. She smiled her thanks to the bearded, dreadlocked bartender, and he dipped his head in acknowledgement. But he did not smile or speak or in any way indicate any particular feeling about her presence. She could just as easily not be there. She took a long pull of her beer, then looked around, first left and then right. There were several vaguely familiar faces but she saw no one that she knew. Then she realized that she felt the same thing here that she felt at Aux Fruits de Mer: Not hostility but less than rejection and less than acceptance. She would not be mistreated in either place, but neither would she be befriended. No patron of this bar would come and sit next to her and engage in conversation. About anything. She finished her beer, put some money on the counter, and left.
Sunday afternoon. She wouldn’t see Odile until Sunday and it still was only Thursday. She sighed in frustration as she bumped in the Jeep down the rutted road, feeling a tinge of regret that her ambitious plans to pave this and the road to Little Haiti...Toussaint Remy! She could go see Toussaint Remy! Immediately her spirits improved. The old man would talk to her and so, perhaps, would his neighbors. She wasn’t sure exactly why she thought so, but she was proved correct almost immediately when she turned off the paved Coast Road on to the graveled secondary road that fed the rutted tributaries leading into the village of Petit Haiti: Everyone she passed lifted a hand in greeting. Most were women, traversing the rutted road with bare feet and baskets balanced on their heads and reminding her acutely of her Peace Corps years in the West African village that so much resembled this place. By the time she finally found Remy— she’d made three wrong turns along the way— she was much more relaxed.
The old man’s greeting was warm, though he did not even attempt to conceal his surprise at her presence. And she tried, though she suspected that she failed, to conceal her shock at his appearance. Both his hands and his right arm were bandaged and a large, ugly blister crawled across his forehead, and all the hair on the left side of his head was singed off. And he walked with the foot-dragging shuffle of an old person. All the spryness and agility were gone. He’d been sitting on his front steps when she arrived and she had to help him stand, his bony arm fr
agile and light as air in her hands. She all but picked him up, then followed him into his home, a tiny one-room structure that was spotlessly clean, aesthetic, almost.
He waved her over to the table and into a chair, and she knew that he planned to feed her; but before she could wonder how he would manage, there was a quick knock and the door opened to admit a woman who introduced herself as Madame St. Georges, Monsieur Remy’s neighbor for twenty years, and she busied herself with plates and glasses, talking and smiling the entire time. And though she’d understood practically nothing that old woman said, it was clear by her manner that Carole Ann was respected in this quarter of Little Haiti, and that brought her some relief.
Toussaint Remy did not eat. He cupped his glass of ginger beer between his two gauzed hands and took tiny sips while Carole Ann ate delicious gumbo that she assumed had been made by Madame St. Georges. He pressed a glass on her and she understood him to say that he’d made the ginger beer himself. It was delicious— strong and sweet, though it was non-alcoholic and she wasn’t certain why it was called beer. The whole while she ate, he talked to her, slowly and precisely so that she could understand him, and tears fell from his eyes and down and his cheeks when he spoke of Paul Francois. Yes, the men had worked on Saturday, to compensate for the days lost waiting for the equipment— and because so many of them had been without work for so long— but they had stopped just before five o’clock and had not planned to work on Sunday. But Paul had insisted that they return the vehicles to the site entrance, and backing up in the woods is no easy task, the old man recalled with a scowl. No, they had seen nothing unusual, heard nothing unusual, and all of the equipment had been working perfectly!
She listened intently, concluding that Toussaint Remy knew nothing that she didn’t already know, but she asked several questions of him anyway, which made him feel useful and made her feel slightly depressed. She made him smile and cry again when she told him that Roland Charles already had found new equipment and that they just had to figure out how to get it to the island, predicting that he’d be back to work in a matter of days. Then she left him, stopping to chat with Madame St. Georges and several other women who had gathered in the swept-clean, hard-packed dirt enclave where they lived. They were eager to engage with her and, utilizing a mixture of French and English, they enjoyed a spirited discussion of island life that lifted Carole Ann’s spirits. She received an invitation to return the following weekend for dinner at Madame St. Georges and was surprised at how moved she was by the delight in the women’s’ faces when she accepted.
She further surprised herself by going directly home when she left Little Haiti, instead of returning to her Government House office, but she still didn’t feel the need or the desire to talk to Roland or David, or to Philippe for that matter. She also didn’t have the energy to talk to Jake if he still was in the surly, pissy frame of mind he’d been in since Sunday, but she had no choice. So, before changing clothes or pouring herself a glass of wine, she went directly into the office and called him, receiving still another surprise: His mood was relaxed and expansive. He received her report with little comment except to agree with her that indeed Odile Laurance’s information seemed worth waiting for, and that torching a marijuana field in the middle of an island would be “a damn stupid thing to do,” not to mention the detrimental effect it could have on their contract. He promised to find a barge “by hook or by crook” if Roland Charles succeeded in getting the state of Georgia to donate its surplus excavating equipment to Isle de Paix. “If they give it to him, I’ll get it to him!” And in the meantime, he added, a hint of smugness in his tone attracting her attention, what he called “a little cat” was en route to them via Charleston. He explained that when he made cancellation noises to the pavement and gravel supplier who hadn’t yet agreed on a final price for the shipment to the island, the owner all of a sudden not only fixed a price, but when he heard the reason for cancelling the order, he threw in the small paver free of charge. “As I understand him, it’s a little thing, C.A., not much larger than one of those big riding lawn mowers, but it’s powerful and it paves and for the time being—”
For the time being it would help keep a dozen people busy and employed improving the island’s secondary roads, and, by extension, improve Philippe Collette’s reputation among his countrymen and women. It also would provide her with a reason for trekking about the island asking questions and looking for any remaining St. Almains; looking for likely associates of Denis St. Almain; looking for likely cultivators of marijuana; looking for places to hide marijuana until it could be safely shipped out, because there obviously was more to Isle de Paix than she had realized. This fact flashed neon-like in her face when she remembered peering over Odile Laurance’s shoulder while the woman drew the map to her home, realizing she didn’t know where it was, and she had bumped back and forth down the road to Armand’s and into Petit Haiti, all but certain that there existed other roads and paths branching off these roads, and just as certain that she had no idea where they led. Now, with Jake’s news, she had motive and opportunity for testing that belief, and she had Roland Charles to lend legitimacy to her quest.
He wanted to begin immediately but Carole Ann persuaded him to wait until the barge hauling the gravel and the paver arrived. He understood that it would be preferable to have residents of a community return home from work one day to find their rutted street smoothed out and passable instead of promising that it would happen but not being able to say when. Or worse, not being able to deliver on the promise. What they could do, however, she suggested, was decide where the barge would dock to offload its cargo of gravel, sand and asphalt, and where, consequently, the storage sheds would be built. He agreed and they spent the next two days cruising the circumference of Isle de Paix, exploring coves and inlets, discovering beaches that were accessible only by water, and cruising in and out of the caves that eons of tidal shifts and hurricane winds had carved into the cliffs on the eastern side of the island.
The de Villages clan controlled this section of the island and had, without interruption, for a century and a half. When Isle de Paix won independence from France forty years earlier, part of the arrangement for turning over control of the island to its native inhabitants specified that Deauville remain under the control of the de Villages, and so it had. Roland piloted their cabin cruiser skillfully around the island’s point, affording Carole Ann her first view of Isle de Paix from the north, along with a breath-taking glimpse of the de Villages manse. Though it appeared to be constructed of the same stone or slate as the cliffs, it did not seem to be something that belonged naturally to or on the cliffs, and were it not in so magnificent a location, the structure would be called ugly. It was vaguely castle-like, though of no specific design or period, and it caused Carole Ann to speculate that the first colonizer of this cliff may have been a man of means, but obviously not one of taste. A pirate, perhaps? Or a smuggler? Or a drug dealer?
Roland steered the boat in closer to the coast line, revealing a small private beach and a steep stone stairway. She could not determine if it led all the way up to the house, but if it didn’t, why was it there? As they rounded the top of the island, Roland cut the engine and they bobbed in the wake they’d created like a piece of driftwood, Carole Ann still peering back at the cliffs, thinking that she’d glimpsed the red-tiled roofs of other Deauville buildings, when Roland made a sound that caused her to turn toward him. Coming toward them, speeding toward them, was a craft substantially larger than theirs, riding high on the waves. They bounced up and down as the larger vessel circled them in tighter and tighter formation until, almost with a screech of brakes, it coasted up beside them, rising out of the sea above them, revealing half a dozen men pointing assault rifles at them.
“What is the meaning of this!” Roland Charles bellowed, startling Carole Ann and the pirates, for that was the first and most immediate thought that entered her mind when she saw them: They were dark skinned, though not of African descent,
and dark- haired and dark-clothed and, all except the spokesman and obvious leader, they wore dark glasses. They were modern-day pirates.
“You are trespassing on private property,” their leader called out in Island-accented English, and two of them, still cradling their weapons, clambered down into the smaller cabin cruiser. Carole Ann backed up a step and Roland stepped forward.
“You are mistaken!” he bellowed, rage causing the veins of his forehead to protrude dangerously. “And you will release us immediately or I will have you arrested!”
“This is the private property of Monsieur Hubert de Villages.”
“Monsieur de Villages owns the land, he does not own the sea, of that I am certain. I am the Minister of the Interior of this island and I assure you that I know exactly who owns what and the government of Isle de Paix owns— if such a thing is even possible— the sea surrounding this island for five miles in all directions.” Roland’s voice, still quivering with anger, did not cease its bellowing. “You will remove yourselves from this craft immediately and remove yourselves from our path, as you are hindering official government business.”
“And what business of your government—” his lips turned slightly downward when he said the word, not bothering to conceal the mocking contempt, “brings you to this end of the island, and so close to shore?”
More veins popped out in Roland’s forehead and neck and sweat poured down his face. Carole Ann reached out but he slapped her hand away before she could touch him. “The business of my government is none of your business. My government does not answer to you,” he snarled, and in a movement so quick that she would not have believed him capable of it had she not witnessed it, he lunged for the nearest pirate and dropped him to the deck, seizing his weapon in the process. “I know how to use it and I will use it,” he said, chambering a round to prove it. “You,” he said backing up and pointing the weapon at the second assailant on the boat, “drop your weapon, pick him up, and get off my boat.” Without looking to his leader for permission, the man followed Roland’s orders, and when both had re-boarded their craft, its powerful engines whined and it shot forward, drenching Carole Ann and Roland in its wake.
Paradise Interrupted Page 17
