Under the Cajun Moon

by Mindy Starns Clark

  Suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I thought I spotted movement. I sat up, peering in that direction, but then I realized what I was seeing wasn’t one of the kidnappers, it was a deer that had ventured from the woods to nibble at some grass along the waterline. The sun was coming up, and all around us the sky was a beautiful shade of purple-pink. Time was running out for us, though, and I knew that this might be the last sunrise I would ever be alive to see.

  “Okay, so between the plaque and the photo and the pot holder, you were able to get those first three numbers,” Wade persisted. “I thought you said you had four. How did you find out the fourth?”

  “The fourth one was my father’s. It was included in the recipe puzzle I told you about, the one that was hanging on the wall in the restaurant.” I looked at Wade, something shifting in my brain. “How did you know Sam’s was on a pot holder? I didn’t tell you that.”

  “Sure you did,” he replied, his posture stiffening, a forced lightheartedness to his words. “When you was talking earlier.” He went on to talk about the coordinates and trying them out in various combinations, but all I could think was how clearly it all came together. I knew what I said and what I hadn’t said.

  Wade. The one who had been there the morning my father got shot.

  Wade. The one on who’s boat my father had been found a short while later, bleeding and unconscious.

  Wade. The one who had come to see me in jail and given me his number and told me the message that I was to “follow the recipe.”

  Wade. The only source of information we had about what was going on with Josie Runner and the Charenton police. For all I knew, everything had been a lie and she wasn’t even in custody and there was no boyfriend and his buddies with a treasure map.

  All along, I thought I had been framed for murder to get me out of the way. Now, with absolute clarity, I realized that it was the opposite. I had been framed for murder so that I would take on this treasure hunt. Unable to find the treasure himself, Wade had engineered everything so that I would do it for him. As Julian’s daughter, he must have hoped that I would have insider knowledge and thus a better chance of finding the gold.

  Once again, I had made the wrong choice and put my trust in the wrong person. I didn’t know where Wade’s gun was, but I had no doubt it was handy. Quickly, I considered my options, sorry that the oar had been put away at the front of the boat. I thought about jumping off the back, into the water, but for him that would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

  At that moment, as my mind scrambled for what to do, a boat came chugging down the river. I spun around and waved frantically, trying to get them to stop and help. Instead, the boat continued by, the men on board returning my desperate waves with their own friendly response. Obviously, they just thought I was honoring boat etiquette with my mandatory, if overzealous, waves.

  I would have to jump in and swim toward them. Surely then they would realize I needed their help. It looked like a boat of oil workers, heading off to a rig. Even from a distance I could see that they were big and strong and could easily turn things around.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Wade said from behind me as I was about to dive in. “Not unless you want to be Big Bertha’s breakfast.”

  I glanced back at Wade, who was pointing toward the water. I looked where he indicated, to see an alligator floating nearby. It was at least twelve feet long, its yellow eyes hungrily taking in its surroundings.

  The boat now passed, I again turned toward Wade, not surprised to see that he was holding a gun in his hand and it was pointed straight at me.

  THIRTY-NINE

  With his free hand, Wade reached into his pocket and pulled out a small walkie-talkie. Pushing the button, he spoke into it.

  “I got Chloe with me, on the boat. She figured things out, so I guess we have to move on to Plan B. Over.”

  “Copy that. Will meet you at the ponds with the others. Over.”

  Without another word, Wade forced me out of the boat and onto the dock. He moved in behind me, the gun’s barrel pressing into my spine. I knew I would be crazy to try and make a run for it. Instead, I simply went where he told me, up the path past the old, crumbling remains of the salt mine. Switching between several paths to zigzag our way across the island, we eventually passed the upended houseboat as well, the one that had been washed ashore during a hurricane. Near the tip of its bow, I could almost make out the remnants of its name, two words that started with a C and an M, though they weren’t quite readable because most of the other letters there had faded away.

  Eventually we reached a clearing and came to a stop there. In the clearing were three strange, round ponds. The water in them was a vivid bluish-pink, and a crusty, pinkish-white foam encircled the edges like salt around a margarita glass.

  Salt. Salt ponds. Of course.

  On the far side of the three ponds was a fourth one, though something looked different about it. It had the crusty foam around the edges, but there was no water in it. Instead, at the center, was what looked like a foot-wide gash in the earth, almost as if the stopper had been pulled from a sink.

  On this side of the ponds was a large hole in the ground with what looked like a rope ladder hanging down into it. That must be the old salt mine. Between that and these salt ponds, I realized that this really was it: My father’s source for the pink salt that was sold around the world and had helped to make him famous.

  I heard rustling off to our left, and then suddenly from another path emerged two of the men in black, their ski masks in place, my mother clutched between them. She looked terrified.

  Before either of us could react at the sight of each other, there was more rustling from the woods across from us, and then there emerged four more men in black. Together, they were dragging a bloodied, beaten, and bound Travis Naquin. At the sight of him, tears filled my eyes. I couldn’t begin to imagine what he had been through since our abduction hours ago. How could I have doubted him so fully, so quickly?

  “You can lose the hoods, guys,” Wade said, pressing the barrel into my back so I would move forward. “It don’t matter if they see us at this point.”

  All around us, the masks came off. I didn’t recognize any of them, though there was some common element to their features. My best guess was that they were brothers. Actually, looking more closely, I decided that they were Wade’s brothers.

  “Looks like the Henkins boys decided to take matters into their own hands against the Naquins,” I said, testing my theory.

  “That’s right, Chloe. Sorry things had to end this way, but like I tol’ you, this land was ours once. The Naquins, they owe us that treasure. We was here first.”

  My mother began crying, and between sobs she demanded to know what was going on. I wasn’t completely sure myself, but from the exchange between her and Wade that followed, I realized that she had been lured here by him under false pretenses. Apparently he had told her that I had asked for her to meet me here at Paradise and had arranged for her transportation by airboat. She hadn’t wanted to come, but Wade had said it was extremely urgent, a matter of life-and-death, and that I was ready to reveal who had shot Julian. Once she was here, however, Wade had called her on her cell phone and told her yet another lie, that Julian had suddenly come out of his coma and was fingering me as his shooter.

  “Wait a minute!” I cried. “Mother, are you telling me you never actually heard Daddy say those words himself?”

  Her face streaked with tears and mascara, my mother shook her head.

  “No, but Wade told me that’s what he said. I still don’t know how you could have done that, Chloe, not to mention that once you got me all the way out here, you went and snuck out of the house! Do you know how much water you wasted by leaving the shower running? That was so rude, to me and to whoever pays the water bills.”

  I couldn’t even dignify that with a response. But I did realize one thing, that my “escape” from the house had probably been engineered. By placing the
masked men around the house and the dock on the bayou side, I had been left with no choice but to make my way to the river. There, Wade had already situated himself in the perfect spot. His goal, no doubt, was to get me to do exactly what I had done: feel secure enough to tell him all I had learned about the treasure. Every action I had taken had played right into his hands. No wonder he had been concerned about my snakebite. Had I dropped dead from poisonous venom, all of his hard work up to that point would have been for naught.

  “You made me go through all of this just to find the treasure, but in the end you still don’t have it,” I said, shaking my head.

  “At least we’re closer now than we were before. I knew some of your father’s friends were involved, but I never knew about the poem and the coordinates until all this started. In fact, I think I got Ben Runner’s number yesterday, even though I didn’t know what I had until I was talking to you back on the boat. When my brothers were there questioning Josie Runner, they took some boxes of papers and other personal stuff from under Ben’s bed. I think I saw something in there about filé.”

  Before I could ask more of the questions that were swirling around my brain, Wade told the men who were holding on to Travis to get him “down in the hole.” I watched in horror as they dragged Travis toward the ladder and threw him on the ground. While three of them held guns pointed at him, the fourth one untied the ropes that were binding his ankles and wrists.

  “What happened here with my father on Monday?” I demanded.

  As we both watched Wade’s brothers handle Travis, Wade explained that he and his family had been taking turns coming out here to Paradise for months, searching for the treasure that they knew was buried somewhere on this land. On Monday, Julian had shown up unexpectedly and caught Wade red handed, wandering around down in the old salt mine with a metal detector. My father realized what Wade was up to, and he had flown into a rage, angry that Wade’s search for the treasure might end up jeopardizing his precious salt. Both men had come up out of the mine and continued their argument beside the ponds, and in the heat of the moment Wade had shot Julian.

  “I wasn’t no killer when all of this started,” Wade told me now, as if that made things any better. “Even after I shot him, I tried to think of some way I could straighten things out and make it right. But your daddy tricked me. He said if I would get him to a hospital he would tell everybody we’d been out hunting and I had shot him by accident. To prove that I could believe him, he told me where the treasure was buried and offered to share some of it with me if I’d go dig it up. While I was digging over in the woods in the place he told me to, that skunk managed to crawl out of here to the closest dock on one good leg and steal my boat.”

  Over by the hole, Travis’ bindings were finally off and the men were poking at him with their feet, trying to get him to get up and climb down that ladder into the mine. I wanted to help him somehow, but Wade’s gun was still pressing firmly into my back.

  “I had a feeling your daddy would head straight to the closest marina for help, so I ran up to the dock by the house here and took his boat since he had mine. I had to stop him before he could tell anybody what had happened. His boat—the one I was driving—was bigger and faster than my little fishing boat that he was on, so I was able to catch up with him and head him off before he could get there. After that, it was jus’ a matter of playing a little cat and mouse out on the waterways. He did better than I thought he would, but I still stayed pretty close on his tail. Then he had the brilliant idea to head up the little channel to Ben Runner’ house. I couldn’t get up in there with the big boat I was in, so I took out my gun and shot at him as best I could from there. Even though I didn’t get him, I had a feeling he would work his way farther up inside that swamp, maybe even get lost, and bleed to death before he could get back out. If he hadn’t had a cell phone with him, that’s exactly what woulda happened.”

  “You shot at him again near Ben Runner’s house?” I asked, thinking of the old lady and her booms. “So Josie Runner wasn’t involved after all?”

  “Nah, but my brothers scared her good, showing up in uniform and demanding to know what she had seen and heard on Monday. Lucky for her, she did have one little secret, but she confessed right quick. Turns out she didn’t see or hear a thing because on Monday at noon she had left the old folks there at the house all by themselves and had gone into town to do some grocery shopping. That’s why she looked so guilty to you, not because she knew anything about the shooting but because she left those people there alone. Seeing as how she didn’t know nothing, my brothers didn’t have to kill her after all.”

  Poor Josie! I felt horrible, realizing that if she had indeed been a witness to Wade’s pursuit of my father out there on the bayou behind her house, then she would be dead now—and it would be my fault because I was the one who called Wade and turned her in.

  “You people are insane,” I said, looking from one brother to another. No one bothered to reply, as they were all focused on Travis, who had finally managed to get up on his hands and knees. From there, he moved to the ladder and climbed on, though I could tell by the way he was favoring one arm that he wasn’t just injured on the surface; he likely had some broken bones as well. Still, we watched as he managed to climb down, all alone, disappearing into the darkness inside. Not once did he look at me, not through any of it, and then it was too late.

  “Her turn,” Wade called to his brothers, gesturing toward my mother.

  She shrieked and then tried to fight off the men as they dragged her toward the hole. Cursing Wade and his entire family, she called him just about every name in the book. He had a few choice words for her as well, and I could tell from their angry exchange that he knew all about her Bourbon Street past and that he found it pretty ridiculous that a girl who came from such humble origins had the nerve to look down her nose at him for the past thirty years just because he was from the bayou.

  “So after you lost sight of my father,” I said, trying to get Wade back on track with his tale, “what did you do?”

  “The only thing I could do. Came back here and constructed an alibi. It helped a lot, being a cop. I knew what the police would need to see and hear to believe my story.”

  “So there never were any drunken fishermen? No blackberry bushes that needed clearing? No trip into town for groceries?”

  “Nope.”

  “What happened then?”

  He shrugged, watching as my mother struggled fiercely with his brothers at the ladder, swinging at them even as they laughed at her.

  “I went to the hospital where they took your daddy. I knew I had to stay close to make sure he kept quiet if he regained consciousness. But with him in ICU and your mama calling around trying to hire a bodyguard, I knew I wouldn’t be able to get near him. I stayed there a couple hours anyway, listening to her making plans with the lawyer and the restaurant and you, and then I came up with a different approach. Lucky for me your daddy stayed in a coma.”

  “But how did you engineer what happened at Ledet’s? Who drugged us? Was it Graze? The waiter? Someone at the party?”

  “No, that was all me. Don’t forget, Chloe, that I’d done security gigs there for years. I knew how to get around the restaurant without being seen. I grabbed me some Georgia Home Boy from the station on the way, and then I slipped into Ledet’s and went to the security room. The place was mostly empty, so it was easy just to sit there and watch things unfold on the cameras.”

  “Georgia Home Boy?”

  “Sorry. GHB. Gamma hydra something. The date rape drug. I got it from a raid we did last weekend. Anyway, at that point, I just wanted to get a look at all that paperwork you and Kevin were going through, hoping it had information in it about the treasure. I figured once you and Kevin and Sam were out of it I’d sneak in there, grab the briefcase, and take off. I really didn’t plan on killing anybody. But then stupid Kevin came back in the room and caught me fooling with the drinks, getting a good look at my face when he did
. I made up a quick story about why I was there, but I knew I’d have to do something about him later.”

  My mother finally gave up the fight and gripped at the ladder to keep herself from falling down the hole. Then she climbed downward into the mine, cursing all the way.

  “I didn’t have time to put the GHB into every drink on the table, and I had to stop once Kevin came in. It still coulda worked out, though, excepting my plan got messed up even more when Sam grabbed the wrong drink first, one that didn’t have any of the drug in it. Watching on the cameras, I knew what was happening. Soon as you passed out, I got to the room real quicklike and took over, before Sam could yell for help.”

  Pressing the gun into my back, Wade now urged me toward the ladder and the hole. He kept talking as we went, his tone almost proud of the elaborate scenario he had managed to construct and execute.

  “I didn’t know what to do about poor Sam, but at that point I kinda had no choice. I told him to turn off the light and shut the door and tell the staff you and Kevin were gone and he had cleaned up the room. He did exactly as I said, because I stayed there in the dark with my gun to your head and told him if he didn’t do that and then wait for me outside the back door, I would kill you.”

  We reached the hole and I looked down into the darkness, the sounds of my mother’s sobs echoing from within.

  “I slipped out of the restaurant right after that,” Wade continued as his brothers took over with me and began pushing me at the hole. “Went up to Sam’s place. Tied him up. Tried to get him to tell me what he knew about the treasure. Again, I really didn’t plan to kill him, but he made me so mad.”

  Wade sounded furious just talking about it, and I remembered what he had said to me the other day, that he had always had a problem with his temper.

  “Go down on the ladder or we’ll push you in anyway and you’ll fall,” one of his brothers said now as I struggled against them. With no choice, I reached out with shaky hands and grabbed hold of the rungs.