Sunrise Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Three

by Vivian Vaughan

  “Who is this man—Anatole Dupré?” Carson questioned.

  “Most wanted criminal in Louisiana,” Brady explained. “You may have heard of him in the Ranger service. They’re sure to have searched for him clear across the country. Even in Texas and beyond.”

  “What did he do?” Aurelia asked.

  “Murdered his wife and daughter,” Brady told them bluntly.

  The women gasped at the horror of Brady’s words.

  “Must’ve been from an important family,” Carson observed. “Telegram says Cameron has offered the Pinkertons help to the Governor of Louisiana.”

  “Governor Trainor,” Brady confirmed. “Way I understand it, Dupré’s wife, the murdered one, was Trainor’s sister.”

  “Delta didn’t run off with a murderer,” Ellie said. “He had to have kidnapped—” Her voice faltered and she pressed her lips together. Kale tightened his hold on her.

  “Cameron’s on his way to Baton Rouge now,” Brady assured Ellie. “Says he’s to meet his agent there and strike out after her.”

  “Is there any way we can get started from this end?” Carson asked.

  Brady shook his head. “No telling which way the trail leads. Dupré’s been missing for ten years. He could’ve struck out for anyplace, carrying along a hostage to make sure no one stands in his way.”

  “Well, I’ll damned sure stand in his way,” Carson barked. “How long will it take us to get to Baton Rouge?”

  “By train, four hours or so, depending on the stops.”

  Carson glanced around the courtyard as though looking for an answer to their distress. “Do you know the schedule?”

  “I’ll send Maynard.” Brady rang the bell for his houseboy as he spoke.

  Kale hadn’t said a word during the preceding exchange. Finally Ellie moved out of his embrace to study him more closely. They read each other’s thoughts, for one thing was foremost in their minds—Delta must be saved.

  Ellie took Kale’s hands and held them in hers. She turned them over and looked at them from all sides, hands that had not held a gun for nearly a year now. Not since his fight in the darkened cavern beneath their house had almost resulted in his death.

  Not since their wedding night when he promised her he had put his guns away forever—

  Or until together they decided the cause was just.

  “You must do it,” she told him.

  He nodded, lowering his face to kiss her tenderly on the lips. “For Delta.”

  Carson, meanwhile, picked up the telegram and studied it. “Wire Cameron,” he told Brady. “Tell him to wait for us at this Riverside Tavern where he plans to meet his agent. It’ll take us longer to get started that way, but if it’s the only way to pick up that bastard’s trail, then we’ll have to do it.”

  Aurelia tightened her hold on Carson, reminding him that she probably understood only the rudiments of what had transpired, so he turned to her, explaining in Spanish. “You and Ellie stay here with Cousin Brady, angel. Kale and I’ll return with Delta.”

  “And that criminal will finally pay for his terrible deeds,” she answered.

  “For all of them.”

  “For Delta, most of all,” Kale vowed.

  The house Brett had shared with his wife Nicole was located on a small finger of Bayou Teche, twenty miles south of his cousin, Marcellus Broussard’s home. And that house was where Brett determined to begin his search for the truth.

  The more he considered the situation the more he believed he was onto something.

  “If you’re right, mon nèfyou,” Pierre had cautioned, “you will need proof, and lots of it, certainement.”

  “Oui. That is why I must go back. The proof is there. In that house. I feel it.”

  Pierre scoffed. “Yourself, you didn’t dream it, like that little blue-eyed—?”

  “Hush your mouth, or yourself, I’ll knock out your teeth,” Brett warned, then added with a sheepish grin, “even if you are twice my size.” He turned serious again, his voice grave. “Those dreams held more truth than fancy, and they terrorized Delta.”

  And they brought us together, he thought. That, in the end, was the purpose of this last-ditch attempt to prove his innocence. Now he had a reason beyond himself to clear his name.

  For ten years he’d lived under the threat of being convicted for a crime he had not committed. For ten years he had believed what his mother told him, that his innocence could not be proved, that without the real murderer in custody, the governor would see Brett hang for the crime.

  All of which had been true at the time. Even though the facts were the same today, he realized how gullible he had been. If Nicole had been killed by a jealous suitor, as everyone believed, that man would have faded into his previous life in the bayou, and sooner or later he would have been found out. After the number of men Nicole slept with and led to believe she really loved, no one had been able to keep quiet the fact that he had murdered her.

  Except for the murder of the child, he thought. That was enough to seal a pair of lips into eternity. Brett clenched his eyes tightly over the vision, which, though it was ten years old, still remained so vivid he could smell the blood and see the cold, lifeless body of his beloved little daughter.

  Why would a jilted suitor murder a child? For fear of being discovered, his mother had said, and Brett had taken her word for it. His mother had insisted his own life was in danger, not only from this depraved suitor, but also from the distraught brother of his murdered wife, the demented governor of the state. Governor William Trainor who hadn’t had a civil thought for his sister since she ran away to the bayou.

  Crazy Mary claimed not to know the killer’s identity, and unless they could prove who murdered Nicole and Olivia, they could not disprove Brett’s role in the murder. So for ten years Brett had lived in hiding, as though duty-bound to save his life from a governor who sought his death in revenge for the murder of a sister he had long ago learned to hate.

  Five years ago when Gabriel joined him in Canada, he brought word from Crazy Mary that it was still unsafe for him to return.

  Year by year the chance of exposing this demented killer, thereby clearing his own name, became less and less probable. Brett had accepted it—until now.

  Until Delta became such an all-consuming force in his life that he knew he would rather die at the gallows for a crime he hadn’t committed than to live without her. He had to prove his innocence. He could offer Delta nothing less than that—his proven innocence. And to do so, he must expose the killer.

  The moment Brett’s intentions became clear, Pierre had objected. “Ah, in the bayou, things, they change fast. That house, it might not be there still.”

  “We’ll ask Cousin Marcellus.”

  “If it’s there, that house, it would not have stood empty all this time,” Pierre had reasoned. “Someone, they will be living in it, sure.”

  Brett had merely nodded, thinking, as the music from the fais-do-do floated in energetic drifts of sawing fiddles and whirling bodies.

  “Trainor, he knows you’re back,” Pierre told him. “Maybe he expects you to go there. Maybe he has the place under surveillance, oui.”

  “The house still stands,” Cousin Marcellus confirmed later that evening after Brett and Pierre followed the family home across the bayou.

  Before dawn the following morning Cousin Marcellus went ahead of them in his pirogue, while Cousin Ardon and Cousin Octave traveled through the forest on foot to determine whether the state troopers had the place under surveillance.

  As prearranged Brett and Pierre followed a couple of hours later in a pirogue, first Pierre poling, then Brett. Brett drank in the longed-for atmosphere of the bayou, feeling overwhelmed by actually being back. He scanned the forests of hardwoods to either side of the canal, wondering whether mink and otter were still plentiful, whether muskrats still brought top dollar, whether the market for moss had held steady since the war.

  The air hummed with life, both the creatures wh
o exposed themselves to the men, and those who burrowed into the liquefied earth. Overhead branches of the cypress trees rustled with activity, caws and calls, all repeated by the persistent mockingbird, until the air rang with their sounds.

  A cottonmouth slithered over a cypress knee and a bullfrog kroomped from a nearby stand of reeds. Here and there knobby bodies of alligators protruded from the still black water.

  He was home, back in the bayou after ten long years. He was home. And this time he was going to stay, at least long enough to clear his name.

  Afterwards he would find Delta. He would find her, and if she would have him, they would decide where to live, what to do. A woman of her gentle upbringing would likely feel threatened by such a wild place.

  He scrutinized his surroundings, absorbing them, as his body absorbed the steamy heat. It wouldn’t matter where they lived, not to him. He could love the bayou and not live in it. But he wasn’t at all sure he could love Delta Jarrett and ever give her up.

  Reaching the landing, Brett hopped out of the pirogue, then stopped, studying the mud-chinked, split-cypress cabin, the home he had shared with Nicole. Some home.

  The house itself wasn’t bad. In the tradition of most homes built by the Acadians along the bayous of Louisiana, the house rested on cypress stumps well above the soggy land. That wouldn’t keep it from flooding in season, but the raised foundation lifted the house out of reach of most crawling things.

  He perused every detail from the palmetto-thatched roof extending low over the deep galerie to the window behind which he knew to be the bedroom he had shared with Nicole. He waited for emotion to assail him, but it didn’t. The demand to hurry did, however, to hurry and to succeed.

  “We have brought ourselves here,” Pierre grumbled. “Now what do we do?”

  Cousins Marcellus and Ardon met the men at the landing. “The Heberts who used to live in a shack down the way have moved into the house,” Marcellus explained. “Madame Hebert agreed to let you see the inside of the house. Octave is keeping watch north of the clearing. Ardon will go south, and me, I will take the bayou.”

  Brett and Pierre approached the house, with Brett still wondering what he intended to do. He was going by feel, and suddenly felt foolish for coming here.

  “Follow me,” he told Pierre. “I’ll speak to the residents, then we’ll look around.”

  “Ah, nèfyou, what do you expect to find right here?”

  “Something to spur my memory.”

  The lady of the house stood on the galerie, providing the first thing beyond the house itself to spur Brett’s memory. The last time he’d seen Madame Hebert had been the night of the murders, when he’d run to their cabin, desperate, searching for answers.

  The Heberts had seen nothing. Had heard nothing. He still recalled how their hollow eyes had riveted on his blood-soaked clothing.

  Madame Hebert greeted him, then followed them silently across the galerie. Brett stopped on the threshold leading to the living room. From there he could see through the house to the closed kitchen door at the rear. He tried to clear his mind, to recall that night so long ago. Not the part about finding them, that he would never forget. He focused on what could have transpired in this house before the murders. What could have happened here? For so long now, all he’d recalled, all he’d allowed himself to recall was the splattered gumbo. He strove to move beyond that mental barrier.

  The bodies had been cold when he arrived home after dark, and Nicole had clearly been expecting a visitor. That was what led to the theory that she had been murdered by a rejected suitor—she was home, awaiting the arrival of a lover, folks said. But to Brett’s knowledge Nicole had never entertained men in their home. He’d have to give her credit for that—he had never come home and caught her red-handed, not in their own home, not in their own bed.

  And Olivia had been home that night. Brett recalled going over all these questions with his mother. Nicole never left Olivia home alone, so if she had been planning to go out later, she wouldn’t have picked Olivia up from Crazy Mary. Brett had gone there first instead of coming directly home, so sure had he been that Nicole would be out and Olivia would be waiting for him at his mother’s.

  The deep pangs of sorrow that always filled his heart when he thought of Olivia slowed his investigation further. Olivia, only three years old, had never had a chance.

  Beautiful, blue-eyed Olivia. He clenched his jaws and entered the front room. Pierre stepped inside after him, followed by Madame Hebert. The house was neat as a pin. Brett almost complimented the lady on it. Nicole had never kept the place straight, much less clean. He walked through the front room, stopping at the door to the kitchen. As was the custom in Acadian homes the kitchen door was kept closed except during mealtimes to keep heat from escaping into the rest of the house. The bayou was steamy enough without adding man-made heat.

  Behind this door was where he had found Nicole and Olivia. In the kitchen, which was always closed off except when cooking or at meal time. In the kitchen, when he couldn’t recall Nicole ever willingly preparing a meal.

  The gumbo proved she had been cooking though—for a visitor, local opinion held. He glanced around the room, at the table, the tablette, the cabinets, the cook-stove. Nothing unusual. Everything ordinary, familiar.

  His eyes fixed on the spot where he had found them, on the floor near the tablette, while Olivia’s little blue eyes swam in his vision. He reached for the door frame to steady himself.

  Angrily he had questioned his mother’s assertion that Nicole was preparing dinner for a guest. “She’s never cooked a meal for a man in her life,” he had stormed. “Nor for Olivia.”

  “You must calm yourself, Anatole,” Crazy Mary had said. “You are in danger, oui. Grave danger. They will arrive soon to arrest you. You will never be able to prove your innocence. Never. They will hang you for this, certainement, if you live to go to trial.”

  “That isn’t the way of justice, Maman,” he had retorted. “They must prove my guilt.”

  “Non. This time you will have to prove your innocence.”

  Retreating from the kitchen, Brett retraced his steps to the front room, then to the room opening off it, the bedroom, which he had saved until last.

  The furniture was different. An iron bed, where theirs—his and Nicole’s—had been a moss-filled mattress on the floor.

  He thought of Nicole, from a proper home, reared with luxuries. Nicole, who preferred the rugged life of the bayou, the rugged men of the bayou.

  That was what had attracted her to him in the first place, but her interest hadn’t lasted beyond a week or two of marriage. As soon as she discovered that he wanted a regular home and family, she told him how things were going to be.

  He had even tried to persuade her to return to Baton Rouge. But she would have none of it. Nor had she wanted them to go their separate ways. On hindsight it would have been better had he gone into the swamps to trap and never returned.

  His biggest regret, however, was Olivia. Dear, beautiful Olivia, who never had a chance. That was his fault—his for fathering her, his for allowing her to remain in the same house with her mother.

  Abruptly he turned, bumping into Pierre, and left the room. On the galerie he stood, staring out at the bayou, at the bearded cypress and tupelo trees, at the wilderness beyond, the country he had loved since childhood. He had been wrong to come here. Nothing had been gained. Nothing. Gathering his wits, he thanked Madame Hebert.

  “I have often wished I could have done something to prevent the tragedy, livin’ so close,” the old woman surprised him by saying. As if in an effort to confirm that she had tried to help, she asked, “Did your maman send you the stickpin I found after we moved here?”

  Brett frowned at her, not understanding, then shook his head.

  “We have not been to Crazy Mary’s,” Pierre explained.

  “Bien,” Madame Hebert said. “When you go there she will give it to you. I knew you would want to keep it, since it matche
d the gold locket little Olivia always wore.”

  Again Brett thanked the woman, although he still wondered what she was talking about. After conferring with his cousins he and Pierre climbed into the pirogue.

  Brett took the pole and did not speak again until they had traveled several miles through the misty bayou wilderness.

  “Maman knows more than she’s told me,” he said aloud, surprising even himself.

  “Crazy Mary?” Pierre questioned. “Why would she keep anything from you.”

  In his mind Brett saw the gold locket Madame Hebert mentioned, the one Olivia always wore around her little neck. “Because she knew what I would do if I suspected the truth.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  One sight of Crazy Mary, and Delta knew where folks got her appellation. It wasn’t so much the woman’s looks—she was nice looking, if a bit strangely garbed. A tall woman, somewhere in her late fifties, her wrinkled skin stretched like fine tanned leather over prominent cheek bones and a wide forehead. Her hair was black, streaked liberally with gray, and pulled into a tight bun at her nape. But there ended all resemblance to little old ladies with buns.

  Crazy Mary’s bun was pierced with several stickpins crowned by colorful wooden figures. Large gold hoops hung from her ears. She wore several strands of beads around her neck—gold, glass, and one made with dozens of tiny bells. Her clothing was different, too, from what city women would deem proper—a long, full skirt of bright colors and a blouse with no collar and scant sleeves.

  Delta had scanned the forests to either side when they approached the house.

  “My cousins, they are watchin’,” Gabriel had assured her.

  She relaxed a bit, studying the house to divert her mind from the dangers around them. It looked like the houses of Gabriel’s relatives, except for being raised above the ground on stumps. Inside, however, she now saw nothing even vaguely familiar. Crazy Mary sat cross-legged on a carpet on the floor, surrounded by a ring of lighted candles. Pebbles of various sizes were strewn about the carpet, as were small dishes filled with colored powders and dried objects, the identities of which Delta refused to speculate on. From outside the house she had heard singing, and when they stepped through the open doorway, she discovered Crazy Mary to be the source. The strange woman sat with her eyes closed and her face lifted to the rafters, crooning.