Tainted Harvest

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Tainted Harvest - book excerpt

Present-day Brooklyn, New York

“WELCOME HOME, MONI.”

“Home . . .” The taxi swerves around a sharp corner, tossing Simone across the back seat into the door, jarring her from sleep. Lost to her whereabouts for a moment, she lifts her gaze up the divider and across the confined space, to the in-cab TV, certain she’d heard her mother’s voice. She raises herself off theleather seat, unfurls her stiff body and jet-lagged mind, recalling the late-nightdinner party, racing to catch a flight to the States, and stumbling into the taxi half asleep at JFK Airport.

The drivereyes her in the rearview mirror.

Was it his voice she heard? “Did you say something a moment ago?”

“No, Miss.”His brows furrow at her confusion. “Long trip?”

She nods, “Yes. France.” Rubbing her eyes, sheglances out the rain-mottled taxi window at the approaching four-story brownstone. Home again, but there’s no one to welcome her back from her trip. Dark windows reflect the gray day and vacant interior as the cab comes to a stop. Comfort, which she often feels when returning from anassignment, recedes with the deluge that pummeled the taxi from the airport straight to her apartment stoop.

She steps into a curbside puddle with a silent expletive, splashing toward the turban-headed cabbieas he removes her luggage from the trunk to the sidewalk, pressing and jerking on the stubborn handle several times.

“Please, let me get that.”

“No, Miss, I got it,” he replies with a stronger tug.“There we go,” he says with a victorious grin as though he’d accomplished an intricate feat, placing the handle in her outstretched hand.

“Thank you,” she says, handing him a generous tip, which garners a gracious smile and a palm-to-chinbow from the Indian man.

“Namaste.Welcome home, Miss.”

“Thank you.” Though his welcome isn’t the intimate reception home she yearns for, it engenders a sincere smile.

“Taxi! Wait!”

“Another fare,” she says to the cabbie, pointing over his shoulder at the couple running toward the taxi.

He pivots his head toward the intersection, then back at her,pausing with an odd glare that causes Simone to frown and wipe her cheeks, afraidthere’s something other than rain on her face.

His lips purse then narrow. “Rain brings good harvests and much enlightenment,” he says with a nod of affirmation as if telling her fortune. “And it brings many passengers.” He smiles with a final bow, turns, and signals with a hand waveto the couple, angling his body into the driver’s seat.

Was that a customary Indian farewell? Too jet-lagged to consider his strange expression and words, she turns and glances up,catching movementin her bedroom window on the upperfloor. When nothing appears, she wonders if it was just birds flitting on a tree limb.

She looks away and pulls her luggage up ten steps and stops at the stained-glass doubledoors of the Brooklyn Heights brownstone she’s shared two years with three wayfaring roommates who travel for work as often as she does. The four-story flat, dubbed “the layover,” serves as a respite from their hectic lifestyles. For a week or two at most, their paths crisscross and the brownstone assumes a dormitory vibe―alive with music, chatter, and dinner parties―until work calls them elsewhere again.

“Layover” is a perfect description, given her roomies, Jude, Mitchell, and Stacy, could move to another city for work at any time. And the landlord, Eric Lawson, might not renew the lease next year. The Lawson family has owned the brownstonesince the roaring twenties when their ancestors migrated to the city with countless other immigrants during the Jazz Age.Eric,who lives in a larger home on Long Island, prefers rentingthe sandstone relic to selling it.He pops in once a month to check his property, always catching her off guard. She suspects he visits when they’re away but hopes he doesn’t snoop through their belongings.

Simone pulls the graphite-gray Samsonite luggage over the threshold and steps onto the “Welcome” doormat. Heeding the “NO SHOES ALLOWED” plaque, she slips off her sodden wellies, protecting magnificent bamboo floors from sidewalk germs and grime. She hangs her Burberry trench on the foyer rack and wipes rain from her brow, alert to the silence of the first floor as well as the upper floors.

Remembering the shadowshe’d seen from the stoop in the window, she calls, “Hello! Anyone home?” Her voice reverberates around the walls, disturbing the silent home with no response.

“Alone again,” she mumbles, placing the key on the foyer table and detaching her laptop bag from the Samsonite.

A fusty odor from the humid weather seeps from the upholstery in the living room, reeking of a seldom-visited cabin in a moss-laden forest. Moving toward the large sectional, she glares at the tranquil space, places the laptop on the coffee table, and saunters across the room, lifting the shades ofthree rain-fleckedfloor-to-ceiling bay windows to find a drearypicture of the tree-lined promenade and thick clouds mushrooming over New York Harbor and lower Manhattan's skyline. A three-million-dollar view worthy of the steep rent.

Letters and magazines fill Jude’s, Stacy’s,and her own mail slot in the rotating carousel on the sideboard created to organize their mail. Mitchell's empty compartment confirms that he was there last. Among a plethora of bills and junk mail, she recognizesa pink envelope with the HBM logo, suspectingit contains payment for last month’s assignment on fine dining in New Orleans,apiece she enjoyed writing, as she'd visited the city many times for Mardi Gras and knew most of the regular haunts and restaurants in town.

She slits the envelope flap open with her fingernail, finding a check creased between gold-embossed,ivory HBM stationeryedged in colorful, swirling flower bouquets—a letter from Happy Brides Magazine’s editor. Placing the banknote on the table, she drifts to the sofa and reads.

Simone,

Your New Orleans article last month was impressive. The team and I believe you're the perfect person to cover our upcoming July Southern Peach Edition. We need a Travel Writer to highlight a well-known Victorian Bed-and-Breakfast on the bluffs of Natchez, Mississippi, overlooking the River. Natchez boasts historical tourist attractions, antebellum mansions that serve as hotels, and Victorian B&Bs for a fabulous southern honeymoon getaway. I've heard the city has many peach orchards. It would be lovely to give our readers a taste of Mississippi. A wonderful peach dessert or drink at your discretion.If you’re interested in the assignment, please let me know soon so we can make travel arrangements.

Amelia and ParkerRandolph, the owners of the B&B, andold college mates, graciously offered free accommodations for your visit. As natives of the state, they possess a wealth of knowledge of the city's history, tourist attractions, or any information you need for the article.They’re a wonderful couple, and I guarantee you’ll have a fabulous time.

Simone, I know you will do a fantastic job. I look forward to reading your article.

Happy Travel Writing!

BridgetteWitcombe, Editor

Happy Bride Magazine (HBM)

“Another assignment? Geez, give me a chance to breathe,” she grumbles, surprised Bridgette’s granted more work before the submission of her current article. Three assignments in less than a month and having just returned from a trip to France, she can’t imagine hopping on another plane so soon. She stares around the quiet room and sighs, realizing she’ll soon feel captive within these walls and yearnfor another escape, as always. Removing the laptop from itsgray-turquoise case with a world map pattern, she opens the incomplete article on France. A final revisionand she’ll remit to Bridgette the next day.

Jet-lagged and yearning for something more comfortable than her rumpled travel clothes, Simone grabs her suitcase in the foyer, heads to her bedroom, undresses, and slips into her robe. She inspects her room, a smaller version of the living room, with octagonal walls and three floor-to-ceiling bay windows, smelling of sandalwood and lavender, remnants of candles, laundered sheets, and lavender sachets placed in the closet. Captivated by Moroccan décor on assignment in Morocco two years before, she purchased Moroccan pillows and rugs to center the arching window seat. Four tall rustic Moroccan lantern holders sit inside the firebox and two on opposite ends of the decorative hearth, giving the nonworking fireplace a fiery ambiance whenever she’s home.Over the mantel, in soothing turquoise ocean blue, hangs a lengthy Moroccan tapestry.

She catches her reflection in the wall mirror and combs her fingers through the new pixie cut, a rash decision made in France. Tired of fussing with unmanageable curls, she walked into Les Cocottes salon on rue de l’évéché in Marseille.

Thehairdresser with creamy milk-chocolate skin and thick auburn box braids stared in shock at her request, trying to change her mind. "Non, ce n’est pas vrai. Ces cheveux merveilleux. Je peux le style pour toi, non?” No, such wonderful hair. I can style for you, no?

Simone sat in the chic, pink-and-black hydraulic chair and demanded, “Coupez-le.”Chop it off.

The hairdresser sighed.“Comme vous le souhaitez.” As you wish.

Simone closed her eyes and listened to the Japanese shear's snip, snip, feeling her shoulder-length strands fall around her, wondering if she'd regret it later.When she heard the hairdresser’s “Ooh, aww . . .Magnifique,” she opened her eyes to the three-way mirror. Lily, her mother, stared back. She looked like a younger version of her mom, who’d worn her hair short most of her life. She studied her heart-shaped face, cinnamon-brown eyes, and the sandy brown pixie cut, knowing she’d made the right decision.

She strolled carefree and liberated through Marseille's uneven streets, admiring the shape of her head and long elegant neck inshop windows along the Rue Saint Ferreol. Unfettered by windblown hair, she wandered alongpebble beaches in Anse de Maldormé andsnapped photos of medieval hilltop villages and crumbling 10th-century castles at Château des Baux. Hair fanned above her scalp like grass in mistral winds. It was the boldest decision she'd ever made without regret.

She ties the robe sash around her waist, heads downstairs, and frowns through the living room’s variegated windowpanes at another downpour. The soggy weather affects a need for a hot cup of tea to dispel the damp chill.She drags her sluggish bodyinto the kitchen, feet scuffing against the wooden floor. Too tired to run water in the kettle or wait for it to boil, she microwaves a cup and steeps a blueberry chamomile tea bag in the steaming water.

A weary sigh deflates her chestas her sluggish legs carry herdriftingback to the sofa. She stares at the unfinished article on the laptop, recalling the luxurious suite she'd stayed in for two weeks. A life she could never afford on a travel writer's salary. But money hasn't been an issue since her mother, Lily,passed awayfour months ago. When her father disclosed the thirty-year-old policy from her employer and two personal insurances she'd purchased several months before her death, disbelief ensued.

Little had her mother known that six months later an unknown heart condition would claim her in sleep. Or maybe she had an inkling her time was short and that was the reason she bought additional insurance. Simone’s heart sinks, recallingher father’s distressed phoned call the day Lily died and how he had grasped for words, barely forming sentences.

“Simone . . . Lily . . .”he’d said with ananguished pause.

“Dad? You there?”

“She didn’t. . .”

“What's wrong? Is Mom OK?”

“She didn’t wake up this morning.”

"Is she sick?"

“No,she couldn’t wake up.”

"She’s probably working too hard and needs to rest a few extra hours. She needs this trip to France.I’ve booked the flight and hotel. All she needs to do is be ready to go. She’ll get plenty of rest and enjoy herself―"

"No, hon . . ." His voice tremored and cracked. He placed his hand over the receiver to muffle tears as he gathered his composure."Lily's gone . . .She passed in her sleep. The doctor said it was a heart attack."

His words snatched her breath from her chest and her legs out from under her. If a chair hadn’t been nearby, she would have collapsed in a heap on the floor. Remarkably enough, through her shock, she’dfound the wherewithal to question what was an improbable heart attack.