Gathering Deep

by Lisa Maxwell

  Nine

  Most of Lucy’s family was still sleeping in their beds when I went into the kitchen to get something to eat and found Dr. Aimes already sitting at the table with a cup of coffee and the newspaper open wide in front of him.

  “Morning, Chloe. Did you sleep well?” he asked, barely looking up over his paper.

  “Well enough,” I said, skirting the truth.

  I poured myself a glass of juice and made some toast before I sat down at the table with him. Wordlessly, he offered me a section of the paper, but I waved him off. I still couldn’t shake the memory of the dream—I couldn’t stop thinking about that cold place or the voice that called to the man named Augustine.

  “Dr. Aimes?”

  He looked up over the paper and raised his brows. “Yes?”

  “You don’t know if anyone who lived on the plantation was named Augustine, do you?”

  Folding the paper, he frowned as he considered my question. “I don’t know off the top of my head that I’ve heard that name before. It definitely didn’t belong to any of Roman or Josephine’s children. They only had two girls, and neither made it to adulthood.”

  “What about a slave, maybe?”

  “That I couldn’t tell you offhand. Byron would know better.” He leveled a serious gaze at me. “Why do you ask?”

  “Uh … ”

  “Hey, Chloe.” We both turned to find Lucy coming through the door of the kitchen. “Morning, Dad,” she said, giving him a kiss on the top of his head.

  “You’re up early,” he said, smiling at her. Then he turned back to his paper, apparently forgetting all about the last question he’d asked me.

  “Hey,” I said to Lucy, relieved that her appearance had provided a welcome distraction.

  Her mess of hair was a fiery nest on top her head, and she looked barely awake as she walked over to the coffee pot and poured what was left into a mug. She started doctoring it up with cream and sugar, and then turned to me like she’d thought of something. “You already got some, right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, lifting my glass of juice in a small salute.

  “Did you ever hear whether Piers got in okay last night?” she asked after she took a sip. Her voice was casual enough, but I knew she was really asking if I’d heard anything about Mama Legba and the charm.

  I frowned, realizing suddenly that Piers hadn’t called me. “Actually, I didn’t hear from him,” I said. I pulled out my phone to check my messages and felt a little better when I saw a short text that had come in sometime early in the morning. “He must have gotten in pretty late.”

  “He didn’t say anything about the trip?” she asked, giving me a pointed expression over the top of her dad’s head.

  I shook my head, glancing at Dr. Aimes. I didn’t think he was paying any attention to the silent conversation we were having, but it wasn’t worth the chance. “Just that he got in and he’d talk to me later.” I shot him a quick good morning text, but I didn’t get an immediate reply. “If he was driving late, he’s probably still asleep. I’m sure he’ll call later.” If he wasn’t still mad about how we’d left things.

  Lucy frowned as she sat down with her coffee. She gave her dad an impatient look as he took his good time reading his paper.

  “I was thinking that I’d take a drive into town and see Mama Legba this morning,” she said in a too-casual voice. “I thought you might like to come. Especially if you didn’t hear from Piers?”

  “Sure,” I said. We needed to find out what they might have learned about the charm—and why no one had contacted us about it. “I want to stop by and talk to Byron first, if you don’t mind?”

  Lucy’s brows shot up. I knew she didn’t have much love for the guy, but I sent her a silent look, hoping that she’d understand that I would explain later.

  The meeting with Byron was a total bust. He was in a doubly foul and less than helpful mood because he had to deal with all of the museum interns on his own for the next couple of days. Piers had been handling most of that for him, but Piers was in Nashville.

  Byron had less than no interest in digging out the old plantation registers for us. He said we didn’t have the right training in archival preservation to handle them without supervision and sent us away without even telling us where they were.

  “So you really think this Augustine person could be linked to Le Ciel?” Lucy asked as we drove into the city.

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “But you see the past in your dreams, so maybe.” I shrugged.

  “But I see my own past.”

  I shrugged. “I guess I hoped there might be something in them that could help us.”

  Lucy frowned, but she didn’t say anything more.

  It was early enough that it didn’t take us long to find a parking spot near Mama Legba’s shop. But when we got to the door, it was clear something was wrong—the sign hadn’t been turned to open yet and the lights were all off.

  “She’s usually open by now,” I said as I peered through the windows at the empty shop.

  Lucy turned the knob of the door, and I think we were both surprised when it clicked open. We glanced apprehensively at one another. “Do you think we should go in?” Lucy asked.

  “I doubt she’d leave the door open if she wasn’t in there,” I said, but I had an uneasy feeling about it.

  We walked into the dark shop and waited as the bell fell silent behind us, but Mama Legba didn’t come out to greet us like she usually did.

  “What do you think’s up?” Lucy whispered.

  “I don’t know. Something.” Then I called out, “Mama Legba? You here?”

  There was a shuffling from the rooms beyond the hallway that had us exchanging nervous looks, but then we heard Mama Legba’s voice call out for us to come on back.

  When we got to her private rooms, Mama Legba was sitting on the low couch, her face in her hands. She looked to me like one of those ancient statues that lasts through wars and earthquakes and everything going wrong, but somehow survives.

  All around her, the room was in chaos. Chairs were overturned, their stuffing spilling out of knife-slashed slits. Cupboards were torn open, their contents shattered on the floor like jagged-edged puzzles that wouldn’t ever go back together. The back door’s frame was splintered and busted, and it stood wide open, spilling light into room.

  “Oh my god,” Lucy whispered.

  “Mama Legba,” I said, taking a step toward her. “Are you hurt?”

  Mama Legba raised her head then, like someone had just shaken her awake. I was relieved to see that the look in her eyes was as much anger as it was fear and uncertainty. “I ain’t been harmed,” she said.

  “Have you called the police?” Lucy asked, pulling out her phone.

  “No, and don’t you be calling the police into this now, neither. I’ve had about enough of them for today.” She stood and made her way through the mess toward the kitchen-side of the room. “That’s where I was when all this happened.”

  “You were with the police again?” I asked, still trying to take in the mess that someone had made of her home.

  “Was it another body?” Lucy asked in a strangled-sounding whisper.

  Mama Legba shook her head. “No, just more questions about the markings on that poor soul they found the other day. I told them before that I didn’t have no clue about what those were. Those marks ain’t nothing to do with Voodoo, but they didn’t want to be hearing that then, and they wanted to hear it even less this morning. Somehow they got the idea in their heads now that I might have had something to do with the killings. Thank the spirits for customers giving me an alibi, or I doubt they’d have let me go at all. And then I come home to this mess?”

  She crouched down to look under the sink. The piece of fabric that usually served as an apron beneath the basin had been torn away, exposing the ancient plumbing beneath. After rustling around for a moment, Mama Legba let out a muffled curse as she righted herself.

  “I really thin
k we should call the cops,” Lucy said again.

  “Put your phone away,” Mama Legba told her with a voice that meant business. “Ain’t nothing they can do about this. What are you girls doing here anyway?”

  “We came to see if you found out anything from looking at the charm last night,” Lucy said.

  “I didn’t look at no charm last night.”

  “Didn’t Piers bring it over?”

  Mama Legba frowned. “Was he supposed to?”

  “I thought that’s what he was going to do,” I told her. But I’d been so angry, I hadn’t really asked him. Maybe I’d assumed wrong. “Maybe he meant to bring it by on his way back from Nashville instead.” I pulled out my phone and sent him a quick message to confirm.

  “I don’t know,” said Mama Legba. “But we got other things to worry about now.” She gestured to the room, and then she grabbed her large, patchwork bag and was out the door in a matter of seconds.

  “Should we follow her?” Lucy asked, looking more than a little shell-shocked.

  I frowned. “I don’t think we should let her go off alone right now. Not with all this,” I said, gesturing to the mess all around us.

  So we took off after Mama Legba, through the back alley that led to a larger street and then east through the Quarter. She didn’t bother to pause at any intersections or pay any mind to the cars that almost ran her down. Marching on with her shoulders set and her arms swinging like a determined soldier, she crossed each street and let the traffic stop for her. Amazingly, it did.

  Lucy and I were a little more careful as we tromped along, following the determined path Mama Legba cut through the heart of the Quarter.

  The farther we got from Jackson Square, the quieter the streets became. Even with the humidity of the day pressing in on us, even with the worry clinging to my back, walking those lonely streets wasn’t all bad. Walking through the Quarter never is.

  Some places in this world might be well loved despite the grit and grime and age, but people come to the French Quarter because of it. Like a worn-out madam who still has enough sparkle to keep the fellows knocking on her door, there’s something beautiful about the way this part of the city has stood, steadfast and sure, over the centuries. Even with the usual smell of the puke and piss from the night before’s carousing, it’s a place people can’t help but want to be.

  But Mama Legba didn’t stop, and the farther east you go, the more the neighborhoods change. On the other side of Elysian Fields Avenue, things get a little more hit or miss—there might be a cute little shotgun house next to a building covered in graffiti. Or there might only be a row of rundown shacks. Once you pass the quaint homes in the wedge of streets that make up Marigny, you’re in Bywater, and then just beyond Bywater is the Lower Ninth Ward, which still hasn’t come back all the way from Katrina.

  They don’t bother marking those parts of town on any of the fancy tourist maps, but those places are home for a lot of people, even if the streets there have their problems. Still, I was starting to worry that Mama Legba might not ever stop walking.

  “Are you going to tell us where we’re going?” I asked when we made it as far as Bywater.

  She didn’t bother to answer, just shot me an impatient look and kept on walking. But after a few more turns, she slowed to a stop in front of a cream-colored house on Desire Street.

  It seemed like a nice enough place, but nothing fancy. It had an air conditioning unit drooping out the front window, the motor clicking away and dripping condensation on the ground, and one of the shutters was tilted off its top hinge, hanging like it was trying to decide if it wanted to fall down or to climb back up. In the window was a hand-lettered sign that said READINGS with a picture of something that might have been a cat beneath it and a phone number.

  Mama Legba didn’t hesitate. She marched straight up the steps and rapped a rapid-fire cadence on the door as she called, “Odeana! I need to talk with you!”

  “Who’s Odeana?” Lucy whispered.

  “Hell if I know,” I told her.

  Even though it sometimes felt like I’d known Mama Legba forever, I realized then that none of us had really known her long enough to have any idea who the other people in her life might be. She’d always seemed like this solitary figure to me, and I guess I’d sort of felt like Piers and I were adopting her rather than the other way around. But maybe I’d been wrong about that.

  After a couple of seconds, the curtains rustled and then, a moment after that, the door opened.

  “That you, Auntie Odette?” A boy who was a year or two older than me stepped out with a confused and then an almost pleased look on his face.

  “Odette?” Lucy whispered, her voice kind of high and strangled. She was still staring at the guy.

  I shrugged. I didn’t know what was going on, but I couldn’t blame Lucy for sounding the way she did—the boy was something to see. He knew it, too, if the swagger in his shoulders was any indication.

  He stood at the top of the steps with his hands on his hips and grinned at Mama Legba before he noticed Lucy and me waiting on the sidewalk below. His smile barely faltered as he took his time looking us over. When he caught me looking right back, he winked. That wink was so unexpected that I had to remind myself to scowl at him. Which, of course, made the teasing glint in his eye all the worse.

  I hated that he knew I’d been looking, but to be honest, it was kind of hard not to. The guy wasn’t wearing much besides some low-slung basketball shorts and a necklace around the base of his throat made from smooth wooden beads and bits of sharp shell. A blind woman would’ve agreed that his chest looked it was designed by someone who knew what a man’s chest should look like.

  “Don’t Auntie Odette me,” Mama Legba told the boy, poking at his bare chest to punctuate her words. “Where’s your mama?”

  The guy gave a lazy shrug, the kind that’s all attitude without saying a word. His eyes lighted on Lucy and me again, and his full mouth kicked up into a grin.

  “Don’t even, boy,” Mama Legba said.

  The grin turned into a full-on smile, and I knew he was only playing. “Aw, Auntie. Don’t be like that.”

  “I’m not in the mood for your sass today,” Mama Legba said, but she looked like she was holding back a smile of her own. “Now, is you gonna let me in to talk to your mama, or do I have to make you?” She narrowed her eyes, but her mouth was definitely twitching with something like amusement by then.

  He laughed at that, a rich, rolling laugh filled with the same teasing humor that sparked in his dark eyes when he looked at me. I made myself meet his gaze without flinching and did my best to scowl some more.

  “I’d like to see you go on and try, but you best come on in,” he told her, stepping aside. “I don’t need you hurting yourself, Auntie.”

  Mama Legba smacked his bare chest as she brushed past. “Go put on some clothes. Like your mama didn’t teach you nothing at all, answering the door without a stitch on.”

  “I got more than a stitch on,” he said, running his thumb along the elastic waistband of his shorts, causing them to dip enough that I could make out the dark band of his boxer briefs. When I looked up, his teasing eyes were on me again.

  It took everything I had not to look away and let him know exactly how much that laughter in his eyes felt like a tickling in my gut. I gave him another purposeful scowl that seemed to make him smile even more, his eyes lighting with a challenge.

  “Y’all coming, too?” he asked.

  We weren’t going to stand there on the sidewalk all day, so we followed Mama Legba into the house. It had a welcoming, lived-in feeling, and it smelled like someone had been cooking something heavy with spices the day before. The air conditioner was whirring and rattling in the window, but it wasn’t doing much for the closeness in the air.

  “Where’s your mama, boy?” Mama Legba asked again as she looked around the house and seemed to realize it was empty. She ignored the boy’s indication that she should have a seat.
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br />   “Don’t know,” he told her, slouching into a well-worn easy chair and ignoring her order to put on some clothes. “I got back from the rig late last night, and I haven’t seen her yet today. But I’d ’preciate it if you would stop calling me boy, Auntie. In case you haven’t noticed, I outgrew that some years back,” he said, waggling his eyebrows playfully.

  Mama Legba glared at him. “You sure do seem to want everyone to know,” she said, gesturing to his still-bare chest. “You worried somebody’s gonna miss you, strutting around like that?”

  The guy laughed and ignored the question. “How you doing, Auntie O? It’s been too long since I seen you.”

  “That’s only ’cause you never come visit. Out there living in the middle of that water. You think you some sort of fish? A body’s meant for the dry land.” Mama Legba’s eyes softened a little then, and despite her blustering, the affection she felt for him was clear as day on her face.

  “Working on the rig is a good enough job,” he said. “Had to do something with myself.”

  “You could’ve taken yourself off to school, like your mama wanted.”

  The boy shook his head, his carefree expression faltering. “That wasn’t for me, Auntie, and you know it. I can’t stand being cooped up in a classroom just to someday be cooped up in an office. The rig suits me fine for now.”

  Mama Legba seemed to be examining him. “That’s true enough, I guess. You too wild for four walls to hold you in.” She smiled softly. “But what about for someday? You been practicing any?”

  “Some,” he said, but he made the word sound like “not at all.”

  Mama Legba nodded. “That’s what I thought. Well, as you said, you ain’t a boy now, so soon enough the question gonna be what you want to do about what you’ve been given.”

  The boy frowned. “I got time.”

  “Maybe you do and maybe you don’t … ” She paused for a moment, and something passed between the two of them that made the room buzz with tension. Then, all at once, Mama Legba seemed to let it go. “ You really don’t know where your mother got off to, Odane?”