Page 86 of Poison Wood

11:42 a.m. CST

I have my phone open, and I’m taking pictures of Rosalie Adair’s license plate as I drive. I’ve covered enough traffic fatalities in my day to know just how dangerous this is, but too bad. I want that information just in case. Her car looks like the one I thought was following me the other day. The tides have turned.

I refocus on the road that takes us through the town of Piedmont. The speed limit abruptly drops to twenty-five, and I slow my dad’s truck. No parades today. There are a few cars at the Dollar General store, but other than that it’s quiet.

Rosalie puts on her left blinker as she approaches a small street, and I straighten behind the wheel. She turns, and I slow down and stop like I’m waiting on a car even though no cars are coming, giving her a chance to get farther down the street. Then I turn.

Up ahead, she takes another left.

I ease up to her street. It’s a dead end. I creep along it, hoping I’m not getting attention from the occupants of the small houses on either side.

Rosalie stops at a metal gate at the end of the street that looks similar to the one on the back of my dad’s property. She jumps out and opens it, then drives through and relocks it.

By the time I pull up to the gate and shift into park, her car is gone. I tell myself I have her cell number. I can call her. But then I might miss a chance to talk face to face.

And if she was following me recently, she may be more interested in visiting with me than she let on. I consider the headlights I thought were Debby’s the other night. Maybe Rosalie followed me farther than I thought. If that’s the case, we need to have a visit sooner rather than later. Besides, I can share any information I gather with Erin.

There, I think. Good convincing.

I hop out and slip through the slots of the metal gate. I am now officially trespassing, and as I start down the narrow gravel road, I really hope Rosalie isn’t gun happy. My lunch conversation with Kat and Summer comes back to me. Rosalie at Poison Wood, yelling at Crowley about money. Rosalie being fired in relation to a suspicious death.

I slow my pace. This, like going into the basement at Poison Wood, could be a knee-jerk reaction. I need to slow down and think, but as I do just that, a twig snaps. Or, rather, something snaps behind me. But it didn’t sound exactly like a snap. It sounded more like a shotgun being racked.

“Turn around,” Rosalie says.

I do, slowly, holding my hands out where she can see them and working to keep my breathing in check.

A shotgun hangs from her right hand, thankfully pointed at the ground.

“You’re trespassing,” she says.

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m leaving.”

“What do you want?” she says.

“I was a student at Poison Wood.”

She looks at me like I am a complete idiot. “You think I don’t know who you are?”

I’m not sure if she means who I am now or who I was then.

“Can we talk?” I say. I keep my eyes on her shotgun. If she raises it, I’m running.

She clears her throat. “My brother’s not here.”

“I know,” I say. “I want to talk with you.”

“I told you on the phone I don’t want to talk.”

“I know,” I say again. “But I saw you at the school just now, and I thought maybe you’d change your mind if I came in person. I’m trying to piece together some things from the past, and they’re not making much sense at the moment. Maybe you can help me. Five minutes and I’m out of here.”

She shifts on her feet. “Five minutes,” she says, and she starts walking.

Thick oaks and pines fan out on both sides of the gravel road as I follow her. The gravel driveway stops at a small clearing with a double-wide trailer sitting off to the right.

The area around it is mowed, and a fenced garden sits off to one side. This place is clean and cared for. Quite different from the Arceneauxes’ rotten house in Broken Bayou when I approached it. I think about what happened when I knocked on that door and shiver. I almost ended up dead in a bayou. And here I am, repeating the same mistake. But sometimes mistakes have to be repeated in order to get answers. Johnny certainly didn’t offer up any answers today. If anything, he just created more questions. And if Rosalie had wanted to hurt me, she could have done it already. “Stand your ground” is a law in Louisiana.

Rosalie walks up onto a wooden porch and leaves the door open after she enters.