More Rassmussen Plantation...

“Oh, Abram you mean. You a mean ole man.”

Abram huffed a little and turned back to the fire he was stoking. Cinnamon smiled and walked toward the pantry to inventory the supplies before she left work. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the jam jars and sighed. With her apron she attempted to wipe her face and then she pulled her red hair out of it’s limp bun, tossing it and running her fingers through it before re-tying the bun and pinning it back into place. What a sight she was. Twenty-five years old but by the reflections reckoning she could have been forty.

“You might yet be young and pretty had you been able to just shut your mouth,” Cinnamon’s inner nag reminded her, “Ma and Pa would’ve kept you pretty and spoiled if you had stayed home.”

“Yes.” Cinnamon’s defenses were quick to retort, “And you would yet be a dependent, ignorant little fool, without a will or voice of her own, playing their game of perfection until you go mad. So shut up and let’s finish inventory so we can get home before dark.”

She kept her head busy with the pantry from there, counting dusty wine bottles and sticky jam jars until she was satisfied, and took her report out to Abram.

“Pick up any change the polite gentleman leaves for me, will you Abram? And give this to Eddie if he comes back in tonight. If he doesn’t come around just leave it on his desk and he’ll find it come morning.”

“Yes’m. Boss said he’ll be comin’ this evening.”

“Yes I know that’s what he said. We’ll see if he makes it this time, eh?”

Cinnamon shared a knowing smile with her coworker over their boss’s well known tardy habits, then pulled off her apron, and headed out the door. She hadn’t quite made it to the front door when she caught her customer’s eye again, and he motioned her over. With a quiet sigh and a mental reminder to use the back door next time, she went over.

“Miss, do you know where I can find the Charlton Inn?”

“Why, sure. It’s the only Inn in this town. We don’t get too many folks passin’ through, you see.”

She saw his face start to get cross, so she jumped to the point.

“Main street, mister. Turn left when you leave here and stay on this side of the street, you’ll pass right by it.”

“Thank you, my dear. That’s all.”

Cinnamon curtsied and turned for the door, thankful to go. The air was warm and humid as she stepped out into the Louisiana evening. She liked this time of day, liked the sunset through the trees and the Spanish moss, the frogs croaking and the fireflies flashing, but her step was hurried as she walked. Night was coming soon after the pretty sunset, she knew, and that was a time of day she’d never cared for. Ashamed as she was to admit it, she was just plain scared of the dark. She didn’t even like to sit in bed with her lamp on at night; the darkness always seemed to be trying to get to her, seemed to fight the edges of her lamplight. She’d much rather do the same as she’d done nearly every night now for a year- head home, slip into her pajamas and go straight to sleep and wait for the sun to turn the sky from black to blue. Her little home was not much to look at- a battered little front porch attached to a battered little bungalow with moss growing all over it, and matching battered picket fence all around her tiny battered yard. Battered, but hers, she reminded herself as she rounded the turn on the dirt road that led her home. Battered, but tidy. Battered, but loved. Battered, but home. She hurried up the creaky front steps and fumbled for her keys. After a minute or two she found them, and she let herself in, then turned immediately and locked the door behind her. Out of habit she called for her cat, and then double-checked to make sure all the windows were locked also. The cat opened her lazy yellow eyes and mewed obediently from her usual place on Cinnamon’s bed.

“Oh, cat. I missed you. Did you miss me?” Cinnamon slipped her purse off onto a chair in the corner of her bedroom and sat down on the bed.

The cat purred contentedly.

“I knew you must have. Don’t be sad, dear. Mummy loves you.”

The words sounded ridiculous to her even as she said them, a reminder of her own acute loneliness. Her home with her parents had never been particularly loving, but it had been full of people, full of company. She had always liked having her brothers and sisters around her, and she felt their absence more sharply than any other regret she felt at leaving home.

“Reduced to seeking company from a cat,” she said, petting the cat’s grey head affectionately.

The cat had a name of course, Tybalt, but she rarely called him that. It was usually ‘Cat’ or ‘You darn nuisance’.

Cinnamon pulled her shabby dress over her head, and folded it neatly over the back of the chair her purse sat on, then slipped into her nightgown. She softly walked to her bathroom and watched her reflection as she brushed through her hair, then brushed her teeth and retreated to her bedroom just as the last lights left the sky. She pulled the covers over her head and the day ended as most days did- to the sound of her breath, and the distant chorus of frogs in the swamp.

Chapter Three

She didn’t have work the next day, but she had forgotten to turn off her alarm clock, and so she was awake at six-thirty the next morning. She sighed in frustration. This was the worst part. Awake now, she couldn’t go back to sleep, but she didn’t have anything to do all day. She could work on repairs around the house. She could start sewing a new dress. She could go shopping for things she could not afford. She could go to the dance hall and flirt with men she’d never consider being serious with. She could go skinny-dipping in the swamp with the gators.

She rolled over with a groan. If only there was some pressing occasion that could motivate her out of bed. Tybalt was mewing to be let out, so that would have to serve as the pressing occasion. Cinnamon rolled over again, right off the edge of her bed, and landed on her feet, then stumbled to get her slippers on and let the cat out.

The squeaking of the screen door reminded her that she wanted to fix the darn thing, so she went back to her bedroom and dressed for the day; overalls, a dirty sleeveless white shirt, and a newsboy cap. She pulled the tool box out from under porch, and started her repairs with the screen door. She squatted down next to it and began unscrewing the hinges. Tybalt hopped back onto the porch and started rubbing up against her arm.

“Sorry, cat. I got things to do.” She stopped a moment to pat her pet’s head, “I got no time for cats and the like. Why, I gotta fix this here door and I’ve only got until sundown to do it. We ain’t rich folks no more, cat.”

She started again with the door, but Tybalt was still vying for attention.

“Well now, you darn nuisance, ain’t  we the fussy one today. But if you behave yourself today maybe tonight you and me can go out on the town. Maybe you and me and go to the dance hall and see if ole Jesse Robinson is there. Maybe we can go see if that lawyer man is still in town. He seemed like a pretty shifty one to me, cat. Got a funny feeling when first I saw him, and I tell you what, I don’t reckon …”

“Who are you talking to?” came a sudden voice from behind her.

Cinnamon was so startled her feet flew right out from under her and she fell to her bottom with a thud. She turned an about face quick as lightning and shouted at her visitor before she saw who they were.

“Creepin’! Creepin’ up to my house and scarin’ me to death, who in thunderation…” she stopped. “Oh. It’s you again.”

Before her stood a rather shocked looking lawyer, the man from the restaurant the night before.  

“I’m – I’m sorry,” he stuttered, “I’m here to see C. Rassmussen, if such a person lives here, or exists.”

Cinnamon looked at the lawyer. Then she looked at the ground, and then up again.

“Yep,” she said, “You found her. And whatever game this is, I know my folks set you up to it so you can run your lawyer be-hind right outta my gate. I got no time for nonsense and I got chores to do.”

 Cinnamon turned back to her door.

“Why, miss… miss I haven’t been sent by your folks. I’m here about an estate.”

“Yep.” Cinnamon finished unscrewing a hinge, and held the screws into her mouth for safekeeping. “Any estate you’ll need to see my folks about, seein’ as they’re alive yet and I’m not heiress to nothin’.” She waved the lawyer towards the gate, screwdriver in hand.

 “But I think there you’re wrong.” The lawyer said, pulling a paper out of his briefcase, “This is a very unusual circumstance. You see, this is a will bequeathing an estate to the first of his descendants to have red hair. It’s from your great-great uncle, and you are the redhead he’s waited for.”

Cinnamon tipped her newsboy cap back on her head and scratched her forehead, then took the screws out of her mouth and looked up at the lawyer.

“What!? I never heard of such a thing.”

“Neither had we. It was quite the entanglement, to see if such a thing was legal and henceforth… no one’s figured why, but the old man was a funny fellow, and sure enough, he’s left the place to you.”

Cinnamon stood up to face him properly. “You’re joshin’ me.”

“Miss, I would hardly come all the way to the middle of nowhere, and stay a night in a flea-bitten slum to ‘josh’ you. I’m perfectly serious.”

“Well, it sounds like trouble to me, and that’s a fact. I don’t think I’m interested.”

Cinnamon was just twenty-five years old, but she had learned enough to know that when something sounded too good to be true, it usually was.

“Miss Rassmussen! Really! Can’t we just go indoors and talk about it?”

Cinnamon thought for a moment. Talking with a lawyer sounded like a short road to trouble, but turning him away cold seemed like an even shorter road to stupidity.

“Alright, c’mon in. I’ve got a little lemonade leftover.”

And so inside they went. Cinnamon pulled out one of the two chairs she had at her table, then poured her guest a glass of lemonade.

“Don’t think I ever got your name, Mister.”

“Andrews. Mr. Oliver Andrews, Miss Rassmussen,” he stuck out his hand.

“Cinnamon,” she said, shaking his hand, and sat down next to him.

“Cinnamon. Have you ever heard of Eau d’Noir?”

“No, can’t say that I have.”

“No? That’s odd. It’s been in your family for generations.”

“My family is few and far in-between.”

“I see. Well, this is Eau d’Noir,” he said, pulling out a sketch from his briefcase, “More colloquially known as the Rassmussen Plantation.”

Cinnamon’s eyes widened as she looked over the sketch. “Why it’s a whole plantation. Hundreds and hundreds of acres!”

“And not just that. The pond is at this end here,” he indicated with his finger, “and the old slave cabins here. Stables here. A dovecote here.  And here…” he stopped a moment and pulled another paper from his case, “Is the Mansion. The finest of it’s day. You can see here, the conservatory, and here the grand balcony. It would be worth much more, but for about fifty years now it’s been empty. It’s unclear when it was abandoned, or why. But there it has sat, for years and years, waiting for you.”

Cinnamon hardly heard him. The mansion was magnificent. A porch wrapped around it’s two-story frame, and the gables and windows above it showed a third story. French style railing decorated it and old oak trees lined the road up to it’s front porch.

“There’s some fire damage in the ballroom, I’m afraid. Nothing terrible, but bad enough to be mentioned.  All in all, it’s quite an impressive estate.”

There was a tone in his voice that Cinnamon didn’t like.

“But what, Mr. Andrews? What are you not telling me?”

deny Mr. Andrews looked for a moment like he was going to it, but was stopped by Cinnamon’s arched eyebrows.

“Miss Cinnamon, I’ll be honest with you. This is a queer business; it has been from the start. I’ve been to the house, just looking it over, rudimentary things. It’s a strange place, the old furniture still in the halls and the bedrooms… And no one knows when or why it was abandoned… I can’t tell you quite why, but it’s unsettling. Have you got a minute, kid? I’ll tell you what all the locals told me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ve got a minute.” 

“Alright, listen here. Now, understand, this is all hearsay, just gossip and folklore.”

“Let’s have it.”

So Mr. Andrews related the story he had heard over and over as he had been taking care of the Rassmussen’s Eau d’Noir Plantation: