by Scott, D. D.
“Brigitta Baby, I need to make an international call. Be a doll and get my cell phone out of my trousers, would you please?”
What I would give to have those trousers on right now. But, yeah. So much for dreaming. Thanks to Liza, I had nothing but nightmares. Very bad, Voodoo-based nightmares.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Let’s go get you cleaned up. Then we can discuss this,” I said, putting my arm around Liza and leading her up the back drive in the direction of her old pickup truck.
“I hope you’re not thinking about taking that shotgun with you.”
Judging by the sound of Nicky’s voice, he wasn’t kidding.
“I second that. In fact, I think I’ll just hold onto it,” Captain Allen said.
Go figure. I’m worried about what Liza’s already done, and those two crime stoppers are already stewing about what she’ll do next. Although, I couldn’t blame them for their concern. The woman was a total instigator of major disasters.
“Don’t worry. I’m not touchin’ Sweet Pea. I’m just taking care of Liza,” I said, then opened the passenger door so she could climb in.
Sweet Pea was Liza’s nickname for the arm cannon that accompanied her everywhere she went. Leave it to her to have a name for her shotgun. But I’d be willing to bet that Sweet Pea wasn’t the moniker either Nicky or my Captain would have chosen. Liza and Sweet Pea were nothing close to a Mary and her little lamb partnership.
“Why don’t you be a good host and get everybody else settled in for the night?” I suggested to Nicky.
He shook his head and kicked some snow, but then he did as I recommended and started to steer everyone back to the house. At least that was settled. Now, onto the witching hour maestro.
I’d expected Liza to raise holy hell when I suggested that I drive, but she didn’t make a peep. I guess she was in more than just a mild state of shock, which didn’t make me feel any better about this situation.
Actually, if all of this wasn’t so surreal, dangerous, and possibly deadly, it might be funny. For all of the chaos the woman causes, there’s usually a ton of good laughs to be had too.
I settled in behind the wheel. Unlike most city gals, I do know how to drive a stick shift. But inside the cab, this damn thing looked like a big rig. I swear the shifter had to be three feet long. It appeared that wanting to drive Liza’s baby blue 1968 International pickup truck and actually driving it were two different things.
We lurched into first gear and started to roll down the steep drive. No power steering. Holy shitballs!
It took everything I had to guide us onto the plowed-out path without crashing headlong through deep snow banks into the woods across the road from Nicky’s farm.
No wonder Liza was so damn strong. Her truck wasn’t intended to be driven by the likes of me or any average woman. This ride was fit for no less than Zena, Warrior Princess.
Unfortunately, the turn into Liza’s drive was a helluva lot sharper than the rest of the turns I’d somehow managed to make. But I made it. Now, we had to wind our way up a steep hill and then slice to the right.
I had my hands full, but I was determined. And when I set my mind on something, I always find a way. Besides, I had to thaw out this woman’s troublesome mind and figure out what she’d done to our exes.
We slid to a stop under a giant Sycamore in front of her house. Fact was, her place was completely surrounded by massive grey and white trees. Their tops looked like huge skeleton hands. Given the subject we were about to discuss, that wasn’t the most welcoming thought. Hell, it was just downright eerie.
“You get yourself cleaned up and warmed up, and I’ll make us some tea,” I said, getting out of the truck and motioning for her to do the same.
“Thanks, Samantha. I appreciate you caring about ole’ Aunt Liza. I know I’m a little out there, so to speak, so it’s nice to know that I’ve got you in my corner.”
“Don’t mention it. We women have to stick together. Now, let’s get you into the house.”
With Liza safely in her master bath, I busied myself with the tea. The kettle was just starting to whistle when my phone rang.
It was a New York number, but I didn’t recognize it. Maybe it was a new client.
“Hello.”
“Mrs. Aldredge?”
“This is Miss Samantha Aldredge. Not Mrs,” I said, immediately pissed off about the glaring error and wishing I hadn’t taken the call.
“I’m calling from NYU Medical to inform you that Harold Aldredge has been admitted to our facility.”
“Okay. But why are you calling me?” I asked, having the distinct and unsettling feeling I was about to learn part of what “a spell going awry” meant.
“His provider has you listed as his emergency contact.”
Feeling rather numb and way off balance, I reached for the countertop to steady myself.
“Well, we’re divorced. I shouldn’t be his…wait. You said emergency contact. What kind of emergency?”
Screw the mess-up that I was still married to the bastard, I had to know what Liza had done to him.
“Mr. Aldredge experienced a serious choking episode.”
Add to the numbness in my limbs a now queasy stomach.
“How long ago did this episode occur?”
“They brought him in about an hour ago.”
An hour? That was just about the time we heard Liza’s explosion. I seriously needed something a lot stronger than tea.
“Is he going to be alright?” I know I asked the question, but it came out in such a soft squeak I could barely hear it myself.
“I’m sorry…what was that?”
“Is he going to be alright?” I repeated the question, still scared shitless to hear the answer.
“Yes, ma’am. He should be released within a day or so.”
“Thank you for letting me know,” I said, somewhat relieved.
“Just doing my job, ma’am. Have a good day.”
Finished with the call, I somehow made my way into the living room, although I couldn’t even feel my feet touching the hard wood floors as I walked. All of this was beginning to feel like a dream. Unfortunately, it was too early to tell if it would be a good dream or day or a very bad one.
Needing to clear my head, I stared out Liza’s large picture window, trying my best to let my mind wander toward a solution.
Before I reached a satisfactory conclusion, I was distracted by a splash of color out of the corner of my eye. I turned toward the brilliant kaleidoscope. Dolls. Voodoo dolls. Dozens of ‘em. Arranged inside a glass front display case.
Each one was dressed in its own distinctive way…except for a little group that immediately stood out because they were all male, wearing the same clothing, and had a whisp of wild hair that appeared to be heavily waxed. There was no question who those bad boys were supposed to be - Liza’s ex.
Crap. This guy was doomed. One of these days, one of her spells would work. And then he’d be toast!
Apparently, this wasn’t the first time she’d pulled this sort of stunt. She had her own little cottage industry with the sole purpose of making her ex’s life a living hell.
Not to say that I wouldn’t be interested in something similar for The Hankster, but only if I could guarantee the results weren’t deadly. Where Hank was concerned, I was shooting for inconvenient and misfortunate occurrences, not lethal actions.
“Sa-man-tha?” Liza was calling me from the kitchen.
She sounded even more rattled than before, which couldn’t be good for anyone.
“In here,” I said, taking a seat on the couch, continuing to study her Voodoo doll collection to see if I saw any others dressed like Hank.
She came in, handed me a cup of tea and sat down next to me on the couch.
I was right. She was definitely rattled at an even more disturbing level than when we returned from the scene of her last crazy stunt.
“Liza, what is it?” I asked.
Her china cup rattled agai
nst its saucer.
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“Don’t bullshit a bullshiter. What’s the matter? I heard your landline ring a few minutes ago, and you’re clearly upset.”
“It’s Darryl.”
“Who’s Darryl?”
Yeah, I asked. But I had a pretty good idea who Darryl would turn out to be. Her phone call had to be related to mine. I just had to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.
“Darryl Riley, my no good, twenty-timing asshole ex-husband, that’s who!”
“And?”
“Well…he sort of had a little accident.”
“A traffic accident?”
“Not exactly.”
“Let me guess. He got a piece of food stuck in this throat and almost died.”
Her head cocked to one side. “No. What would make you think that?”
“Funny you should ask. I just got a call from a hospital in New York. Would you like to guess why they were calling me?”
“No!”
She cupped her hands over her mouth, and her eyes grew as wide as our tea saucers.
“Yes! But I have to say, I’m surprised that you’re surprised. Actually, I’m pretty much freaked out that you’re shocked by this.”
And I was freaked out! How could she just toss out these spells without knowing there would be consequences?!
“It was never my intention to really hurt Darryl…or Hank. I just…”
“Listen, Liza. I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday. You’re talking to a New York City gal. You can’t tell me you haven’t done this before.”
“Of course I’ve hexed people. This ain’t my first rodeo. It’s just the first time things got so damn messed up.”
“Messed up?”
“Yeah. I mean…I just like to play around with Darryl. He’s such an asshole, and he deserves all the bad mojo he gets,” she said swatting at the air as if this were no bigger deal than a pesky fly buzzing our tea party.
There was no way I was going to sit here as if I was just blowing all of this way out of proportion.
“Liza?”
“Okay…so, I mess with him a lot. But I’m not a total psycho. I’m just trying to level out his karma field.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Level out his karma field?” I asked.
“Well…It’s just like it sounds. Darryl is a no-good asshat who’s led a mostly charmed life.”
“Okay. But…”
“No buts. He doesn’t deserve to lead that kind of life. So, from time to time, I help karma a little bit. You know, make the universe a more balanced place in which to live.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what did he do that was bad enough to make you want to dabble in his karma field?”
Liza’s karma dabbling reminded me of a saying on one of the Bitchy Signs I collect: Dear Karma, I have a list of people you missed.
Except there’s one major difference. I simply collect the signs, while apparently, she acts on them.
“Oh, I don’t mind sharing at all. I could plum talk your ear off about his sneaky little ass.”
And she did. It didn’t take long for me to realize that Liza had good reason to be meddling in the life of her ex. He put her through a world of shit.
Oh, he was a real charmer. Swept her right off her feet, but it wasn’t long after they were married that old Darryl was off pursuing other women like it was his primary occupation. And yes, I said women. Plural. When it came to Darryl Riley and the opposite sex, there was no reason to employ the singular.
“He wasn’t even careful about hiding it,” Liza said. “It was like he just didn’t care if I knew. Of course, he would always deny it and turn on his charm, but it was just so damn obvious. He drove me crazy.”
“I can sure relate to that,” I said and meant it.
My ex could also be stamped an “asshat” in Aunt Liza speak.
“But how did the whole Voodoo thing start?” I asked, thinking it had to have gotten worse than this in order for Darryl to have his own shelf full of Voodoo dolls.
“We were living in New Orleans. Darryl was stationed in Belle Chasse with the 3rd Battalion 23rd Marines. There I was, a young military wife, living far from home, with a philandering husband.”
“Nicky never told me you lived in New Orleans,” I said.
I love that city and its amazing food too.
“Well, I’m not surprised he never mentioned it. My memories of that place and time are mostly bad, but I did pick up a couple of things down there that’ve come in handy over the years.”
With a faraway look in her eyes, she reached over and patted a box of shotgun shells sitting on her coffee table.
Every surface in the room had a box of shells. And yes, it disturbed me that shotgun shells seemed to be her decorative accessory of choice.
“Old Sweat Pea, for example. She was a gift from Darryl. He wasn’t always an asshole. Sometimes he could be the sweetest man alive, and others…”
She gave her head a little shake, left the past, and came back to the present. “Not long after we were married, he gave me Sweet Pea along with this snubnosed .38 revolver.”
And damn if she didn’t pull out the revolver from underneath the sofa cushion.
“Plus, he taught me to shoot,” she continued, caressing the gun as if it were one of her multitude of cats. “Of course, I grew up around guns on the farm, but Darryl shared some pointers he picked up from his Marines marksmanship training.”
“Don’t the Marines use rifles?” I asked, wondering how many more guns she kept around.
“Yes, primarily, but he thought the shotgun would be better for home defense. You know, covering a wider area and plenty of stopping power.”
She sure as hell wasn’t kidding about that. Possibly the understatement of the century. A .10 gauge shotgun wouldn’t have a problem stopping a grizzly, let alone some happless human intruder.
“And I’m guessing the other thing you brought back from Louisiana was Voodoo?”
I couldn’t help myself. I had to get her back onto the topic at hand and get that revolver out of her hands.
She nodded, and I carefully took the .38 away from her and set it on the table next to my end of the couch.
“Most of the time, I was alone down there and bored out of my mind. So, I took long walks. My favorite thing was to wander through the old cemeteries and take in all the lovely tombs.”
In association with the word tomb, lovely isn’t the first notion that would pop into my head. But, anyhoo…
“Cemeteries?”
“There’s so much history and…” She folded her hands in her lap before continuing. “It doesn’t matter. The point is that I met someone.”
“Go on,” I said, hoping we were getting closer to her Voodoo experiences.
“My favorite place to visit was St. Louis Cemetery #1, and I visited often. I kept running into the same person. An older woman named Marie. We’d always say hello, and eventually, we fell into conversation. As it turned out, she was dealing with the same kind of man troubles that I was.”
I made a mental note that learning Voodoo must begin with tomb walking and man troubles.
“Marie was a wealth of knowledge. I learned a great deal about the history and characters of New Orleans. After many weeks of her random lessons, she stopped in front of a particular tomb.”
“Whose tomb was it?”
“The name on the stone marker was Glapion. It was a family tomb, but the most interesting person lying inside was Marie Laveau.”
A second Marie, I noted. Apparently, there are lots of Maries in the Voodoo world.
“That name rings a bell, but I can’t place it,” I said, searching my head for a connection with Marie Laveau out of the years of research I’d done for my writers.
“Her name’s been used here and there in popular culture, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve heard it. Marie Glapion Laveau was a powerful Voodoo priestess who lived in the 1800s.
Her and her daughter were hugely famous. Thousands of people would gather to watch them perform their rites.”
Damn, if all this wouldn’t make a great story, I thought, making another mental note to see to it Nicky included his Aunt Liza’s background in a future book. I sipped my tea, ready to hear more.
“That’s not all I learned that fateful day. The Marie I was walking with was the great-great-great granddaughter of the original Marie Laveau.”
“Wow! Fascinating! So, I take it you began to learn Voodoo from your Marie?” I asked, needing to rush this history lesson a bit to get to the gist of what she’d done to our exes.
“Yes. That’s when I first began to play around with it. At first, Marie only shared bits and pieces, but as she got to know me better, she began to open up more.”
“Maybe we should start with how these spells work,” I suggested, honing in on the exact scoop I needed to begin to figure out how to fix this hex mess.
“Work? Well, they’re all supposed to work in different ways.”
“What do you mean in different ways?”
“Just what I said. Each type of spell has its own peculiarities. But…I’m not always certain how they’re going to work out.”
Nice. Real nice. So, you just cast a spell on some poor sucker and don’t have a clue as to what the consequences will be. That’s comforting.
“How about filling me in on the particular spell that you were using earlier today?”
“Well…”
“What is it, Liza? Why are you hesitating? Because of your spells, we’ve got two guys in the hospital who are lucky they didn’t end up in a cemetery.”
“It’s just that Marie asked me not to share information about the spells. She said that if the details fell into the wrong hands, then terrible things could happen.”
Wrong hands? That’s rich coming from Liza, I silently harrumphed. I wondered if Marie had any real notion of the type of person she’d decided to share with back in New Orleans.
Knowing I needed to put Liza’s mind at ease in order to drag this information out of her, I decided not to voice my concerns regarding Marie’s lack of discretion.
“Listen, Liza, I don’t need you to tell me how you go about casting these spells. I’m sure not looking to get into the Voodoo business any time soon.”
