A cab shuttled me back to The Manner as Pickering didn’t want to leave Savannah alone in the recently ransacked house. He had arranged for a security company to come out the next day and install an alarm system.
The evening warmth felt good after being in West L.A., where there was almost always a chill at night, even in summer. Never needing a jacket. Never even needing to sleep inside unless it rained or the mosquitos were bad. Never needing to close my windows. The whisper of crickets floated on the wind from the grassy hillsides. You could get lost in that easy rhythm and never do anything productive again. As the cab passed over the hill, I spotted the sea, shimmering in the faint moonlight. Many days I felt like slipping into the breezy worry-free life so many islanders enjoyed. Waiting tables or selling trinkets to tourists would pay the bills and keep food on the table. Easier and safer. Apparently, not my bag.
Chapter 23
The pile of crap Savannah and Pickering had dumped on me littered my desk. The vastness of the information in Kendal’s computer caused my blood pressure to spike. What was I looking for? His personal organizational system made no sense to me. I couldn’t help wondering if Pickering had bogged me down to keep me from solving this thing in under a week just so he wouldn’t have to make good on his bonus offer.
I started to call him and ask, but realized I was being ridiculous. The family was not giving me anything new. Another angle, that’s what I needed. Then I remembered the picture of the slaves working in the fields. Sugar cane. Rum.
THE BACON DISTILLERY and warehouse had a tour starting at a little after eleven. I’d purchased a bottle in the gift shop and went along on the tour as they explained the process of distilling and bottling rum. Little plastic key chains in the shape of bottles with the Bacon pirate skull on them were given to each of us. I bought a pint and nicked away at it during the tour, then examined the grounds afterwards. The place had a garden with a patch of sugar cane growing for examination and a woman in a shanty selling hunks of cane if you wanted to suck on them.
A group of tourists gathered around, grabbing pieces and handing her dollars. There were ten kids and seven adults milling about, touching the cane leaves and tapping on the hard reeds. I thought again of the reed painting from Francine’s room. “If not me, who?” A call to action that had gotten Francine killed. Then I remembered the second half of the quote: “If not now, when?” Indeed.
“You want a piece?” It was the woman selling the cane. She was holding one out like a baton in a relay race.
“Sure.”
I fished a dollar bill from my pocket and handed it to her. The sweet juice bathed my tongue as I gnawed on the bark. All the Caribbean markets sold sugar cane. I had often begged my mother to buy me a piece, and she often complied to shut me up. It back-fired in the end, because I wouldn’t stop stammering on about the toys I wanted or stupid observations about other cars and pedestrians I spotted as we drove home. The sugar rush turned me into a prattler.
“How long have you worked here?”
She squinted at me. She had almost no teeth, probably from sucking sugar cane. “I been here since da start.”
“Since 1969?”
“Yes sir. Since 1969 when dey open dis place.”
“What can you tell me about it that is more interesting than the tour?”
Her eyes twinkled.
“You want sweet juicy stuff?” Her lips curled in a mischievous smile. “I can smell you been,” she leaned her head back and forward like taking a drink. Out of nowhere she produced a highball glass and wiped it out with a yellow handkerchief. I poured a shot into the glass, took my own taste.
She sipped the rum. “What you want to know?”
“Anything you know about this distillery and the rum business. I don’t know, hit me with something interesting. Here.” I handed the remainder of the pint to her. She slipped it under the counter without hesitation.
“All right. I tell you one t’ing. All them casks in there, they just for show.”
“There’s no rum in them?” I asked.
“There’s rum in them. In the real storage. This place was open for tourists, but this ain’t the real operation. Not for making rum. This place for distribute da rum. They put these here mostly for show. They agin’ them, but have much more other places. Mostly here is for shipping and tourists. Gift shop is the money.”
“Is the rum business not good?”
“Nah man, I ain’t say that!” She swatted at the air. “What I sayin’ is St. Thomas got all the people.”
She waved her hand around at the surrounding area. People bustled about.
“Don’t they have sugar production in other places? Puerto Rico, St. Kitts. That’s what the website says.”
“Sugar. Ha. Don’t know what happenin’ there. Don’t know. Rum good. Who care where you get sugar? It all the same. No?”
“This seems like hard work,” I said. “Do you pick the cane and cut.”
“Yeah, I do it. This my sugar patch.”
A machete stuck out of a chopping block that had a couple reeds of sugar cane laid out, ready for the next customer.
“But you can’t cut da cane too early or it dry out,” she said. “All this fresh dis morning.” She dipped a hunk of the cane into her rum and sucked it off. “Like celery in a Bloody Mary, mi son.”
A man walked from behind the sugar cane patch. He had a neatly trimmed beard and wore a black shirt with Bacon Rum printed on the breast pocket. The woman dropped her glass into the large trash can along with the piece of cane.
“Florence, what have
