"When was the last time you were at the Carlisle place?"

He retrieved his iPhone, punched some more b.u.t.tons, and said, "Two weeks ago. I went out there with Luther. We checked a couple of low places for a lake. Waterfront is where the money is in development. We found a couple of potential places, did some soil samples, then we left."

"Did you see anything unusual?"

"Tallest stand of cotton I've ever seen for this time of year, and an empty house that's going to have to be bulldozed."

"Why?" I asked. "The Carlisle House is historic. Surely someone would want to live there." I hadn't been there in years, but I remembered it as a beautiful, raised plantation house with a curved, double set of steps used for many a Zinnia High School annual photograph.

"Historic, haunted, and out of style. Folks want gla.s.s, more width and less height, and modern conveniences. Those old houses, heck, by the time you repair the central air and heat, the electrical systems, the plumbing, it's just easier to raze them and start from scratch. Cheaper, too."

My opinions weren't important, so I tamped them down. I kept a calm face and listened to a man who had no sense of history. "Where are you from, Mr. Janks?"

"Call me Jimmy. We're an old Mobile family. Born under an azalea bush and all of that." He waved it away with disdain.

Child of privilege, a notch above the "ent.i.tled" generation. "How'd you end up in the Delta?"

"Made some friends in college. Toke Lambert, Haney Thompson." His grin was boyish. "Those guys know how to party. Anyway, I came up here to dove hunt with them on some of their family land, and I realized this area was perfect to develop."

I knew the men. Sons of Buddy Clubbers, who'd inherited their land and never struggled a day to claim it or work it.

"When you were at the Carlisle place, you didn't see anything out of the ordinary?"

"Nice stand of cotton. Nothing else."

Janks wasn't a farmer, so he wouldn't appreciate the extraordinary maturity of the cotton. "And you didn't feel sick?"

He laughed. "I don't have time to feel sick. I've got irons in the fire."

"There's some thought that the illness that struck down Oscar Richmond and the others came from the Carlisle place."

He leaned back in his chair. "That's a troubling idea."

"Would it affect your plans for the land?"

"I don't think so. I mean, the development we've mapped out will take at least a year to initiate. At least three to finish. By then, all of this will be cleared up."

"Has anyone else shown an interest in the land?"

"Not to my knowledge, but Luther would be the one to ask about that. When you do, tell him he'd better not be plotting a double-cross." He laughed, but there was a glint in his eyes.

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Janks."

"Not a problem. Ms. Delaney, this area is growing. Like it or not, the human animal demands forward progress. We're like sharks. If we aren't swimming forward, we'll die. Keep in mind, I'm not as bad as some developers."

"I'll take that into consideration." I walked out. Janks might not be worse than others, but the end result was still the death of a way of life and a land I loved.

When I settled into the driver's seat, the car was hot and I was overcome with a lethargy that made me want to close my eyes and rest a moment.

I knew what was happening--I was trying to hide from the events unfolding around me. Illness, development, worry for my friends. The hot sun and the smell of clean leather were lulling. If I could just close my eyes for fifteen minutes . . .

A car horn tooted beside me. Cece sat behind the wheel of her s.e.xy new hybrid. Her window went down, and she signaled for me to do the same. "Taking up martial arts?" she asked.

"Interviewing Jimmy Janks."

His office door opened, and Janks walked out and around the building to the side.

"Is that Janks?" Cece asked.

I recognized the predatory tone in her voice and reconsidered Janks. He was tall, well built, and good-looking in a deliberate kind of way. Not someone I would normally think of as fitting Cece's taste, but what did I know?

"That's him." In a moment he drove around the building in a big Tahoe with "Janks Development" written on its side.

"He might be an interesting subject for a profile in the paper," Cece said. "I'll find out what his plans are really all about."

"Just an excuse for you to find out about him." I wasn't fooled by Cece's sudden journalistic ambitions.

"One of the perks of my job, dahling."

Cece made me smile, and that was certainly welcome. "Where are you headed?" I asked.

"Back to the newspaper. I saw your car and wanted to be sure you were okay. It looked like you'd fallen asleep behind the wheel."

"Resting my eyes. Mind if I join you at the paper?"

"Not at all. Research?"

She knew me too well. "I want to dig up the story of the Carlisles."

"I'll help." She backed up and took off, and I followed. For a hybrid, her little car had pep.

The newspaper office was contained bedlam. Most Delta papers had been bought by large chains, but the Zinnia Dispatch was still locally owned. The news stories focused squarely on Sunflower County, with minimal regional and national copy coming off the wire. With all the emphasis on local reporting, the paper, through the decades, was an invaluable source of history.

While Cece busied herself setting up an interview with Jimmy Janks, I went to the stacks and began pulling newspapers. I had a general idea of when Mrs. Carlisle died, based on Erin's age and my years in high school.

I found the front-page story without difficulty, then sat down on a stool to read.

Lana Carlisle, the former Lana Entrekin, of West Point, Mississippi, was considered one of the state's outstanding beauties. West Point isn't part of the Delta but is situated in the northeast part of the state in what's known as the Black Prairie, another area with exceptional soil. The prairie lent itself to ranching more than cotton. Lana served the region well, capturing the t.i.tle of Miss Mississippi during a time of strife for the nation and the South.

Though she didn't win the t.i.tle of Miss America, Lana had been first runner-up. In 1974, she put beauty pageants and the possibility of becoming a concert pianist behind her to marry Gregory Carlisle. The wedding, which united the powerful Carlisle family with talent and beauty, was big society news.

I leafed through page after page of fetes, soirees, showers, luncheons, shopping trips to New Orleans and Memphis, menus, details on dress designs and lace, and charming moments of a "royal" courtship. Reading the stories, I thought of the fairy tale wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles. In 1974 Mississippi, this was as close to the Cinderella story as one could get--Delta royalty finding a princess.

After the wedding, which made headlines in Memphis and Atlanta, Lana settled into the Carlisle estate.

Had she found the lull of farming in a flat, fertile landscape boring, or had her roots. .h.i.t the black soil called "gumbo" and taken a firm grip?

There were stories of her chairing the hospital charity drive and the garden club. She organized the Friends of the Library and other civic groups.

Through the 80s she was active, but in 1990, she announced her resignation from all civic clubs. There was a photograph of her at a farewell party at Tavia's Salon, a monthly gathering of intellectuals.

I studied the picture. She looked worn and . . . desperate. That was exactly the right word. As if something terrible hung over her head and she knew she couldn't avoid it forever.

Ten months later, she was dead.

"Beloved Delta Beauty Falls to Death" was the headline on the front page of the paper. Lana's death was ruled accidental by the coroner.

Gregory and Luther were quoted in the story and depicted as men devastated by grief.

"Lana was the light of my life. She was everything," Gregory said.

"My only regret is that Mother and Erin were at odds," Luther said.

A telling quote. Why air the family's dirty laundry in the newspaper at such a tragic time? And also untrue, if what Erin had told me was accurate. Whether Luther knew it or not Erin and her mother had patched up their breach.

Luther and Gregory had compounded the tragedy of Lana's death by failing to let Erin know that her mother was dead.

I pondered the implications of all this as I read the funeral arrangements. Burial for Lana Carlisle was in West Point, not Zinnia. Not in the Carlisle family cemetery, which would have been proper. Lana had gone home to West Point.

Gathering my notes, I returned the bound newspapers to their slots. There was no way to tell from the articles who'd arranged to send Lana's body to West Point--or why. But Sunflower County and the Delta had adopted the Black Prairie beauty as one of their own. It was almost unheard of for a woman who married into a wealthy family not to lie beside her husband in death.

If Lana had made the arrangements before her death--that was one story. Gregory and Luther shipping her off to West Point was something else again.

Shuffling the huge, bound editions of the paper, I found the one that contained details of Luther's death.

This story was also played on front page, but below the fold, which befitted the double tragedy of death by suicide. The exact coroner's ruling was "death by accidental hanging," a nice way to phrase it. The obvious facts were accepted. It appeared that no one considered the possibility of foul play.

Gregory Carlisle was buried in the family cemetery located on the estate.

Dusting my hands, I left the newspaper morgue and went to find Cece. As I drew near her office, I heard her on the phone.

"Well, Jimmy, I'd love to meet for dinner, and steak sounds wonderful. Carnivore would be a good description of me. Seven is perfect."

She was almost purring. I leaned against the door frame and listened without apology.

When she hung up, she flashed me a grin. "I'll find out what ever you want to know."

"And a whole lot more than that," I said. "I'm heading over to the sheriff's office to check the reports filed on the Carlisle deaths."

"Have you heard from Tinkie?"

My cell phone, that troubling implement, had remained silent. "No calls from anyone."

"I'm on deadline, but I'll meet you later."

"Sure thing."

As I left the newspaper, I had the strangest sense that everything that had happened in Hollywood was only a dream. The movie world seemed a million miles away, and I couldn't be certain if it was a good thing or a bad.

Coleman wasn't in the sheriff's office, and the new dispatcher showed me to the cubbyhole where old reports were kept. Since I had the dates of death for Lana and Gregory, it didn't take me long to locate the paperwork.

Nothing in the reports offered any insight into what had really happened at the Carlisle home.

In fact, the reports were nonexistent. There were no diagrams of body placement, no interviews, no real information at all.

Since I was going to the hospital to see Tinkie, anyway, I stopped first at the health department to check out the CDC facilities. Beaucoup and Peyton had taken over the back office of the clinic, and I was pleased to see what looked like high-tech microscopes and other equipment. A hint of relief whispered along my neck. Maybe Peyton and Bonnie would come up with a solution that would save the lives of the four sick people.

"h.e.l.lo, Peyton!" I called out as I stood around in the main office. The door hadn't caught properly, so the lock hadn't engaged. My first thought was to make sure everything was okay.

"Peyton! Bonnie Louise!"

The place was empty.

My second thought was to make sure the CDC team was sharing information. I went to the back room, where two desks had been set up. Beaucoup's was easy to spot--it was the one with everything neatly stacked and arranged. Peyton's desk was buried in paperwork.

Since he was the senior CDC official, I plowed through the stuff on his desk first. There were reports filled with language I didn't understand. I saw a notation regarding Mississippi Agri-Team and a phone number for Lester Ballard. Peyton was following the same leads that Coleman and I were pursuing.

My a.s.sumption--which was correct--was that the computers in the office were linked with the CDC network. Firing up the one on Peyton's desk, I did a bit of basic background work: I pulled Bonnie Louise's work record. She'd been with the CDC two years, and her service was filled with laudatory comments from her supervisors. Before the CDC, she worked with the World Health Organization. She'd been around plague, famine, and disease plenty.

I brought up Peyton's file. He'd only been with the CDC for six months, but his private research credentials read like a blue-chip portfolio. He must have been earning in the high six figures in private industry, but the bad economy had sent a lot of folks scurrying for government jobs. There was nothing else noteworthy.

I shifted to Beaucoup's chair and began to read through the papers on her desk. Reports had flown between the field office in Zinnia and the main office in Atlanta. Beaucoup was a meticulous note-taker and she made it a point to keep her superiors in Atlanta abreast of everything.

She was also thorough. And detailed. And organized.

On the negative side, she didn't have a lick of taste. A tacky keychain, all pink cubic zirconium-emblazoned alphabet letters BLM, served as a paperweight. But I hit the mother lode when I opened her desk drawers. One contained clothes--tight jeans, a slinky pullover, flimsy underwear, and nice shoes. She was a woman with dating on her mind, and I knew whom she intended to wear those clothes for. I closed the drawer.

I didn't know what I'd hoped to find, but it appeared from the reports I read that Peyton and Beaucoup were shooting straight.

I reached for the last bundle of papers when the small note torn from a yellow legal pad fell into my lap. Coleman used such a pad.

"Dinner tonight?" were the only two words written.

Rising slowly, I replaced everything and left the office, taking care to latch the door firmly. The bright sunlight gave me a sudden headache, which resulted in a churning stomach.

While I was a snoop, I wasn't the kind of person who threw up in public. After a few moments, the urge to hurl pa.s.sed. I wiped my clammy face and tried to find that mindset where I could sincerely wish happiness for Coleman and Beaucoup.

9.

After a depressing two hours at the hospital, Tinkie refused to leave, and I finally went home. I wanted to do some research on the Internet, and I couldn't bear watching Oscar and Gordon and the two women who suffered in their gla.s.sed-in sick ward. My head was still pounding, and I saw no improvement in any of the patients. As Doc had pointed out, though, the longer they hung on, the better the chances they would outlast the illness.

I'd just sat down at the computer when the telephone rang. I answered it without even checking caller I.D.