Whispers of the Bayou

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “We were all there when he died,” I said. “We watched it happen—and Lisa did everything she could to stop it.”

  “There were some irregularities in the autopsy,” one of the cops replied. “Questions with the lungs and such.”

  “But I saw him die of natural causes with my own eyes.”

  “Well, it seems that someone helped those natural causes along. He was given an inhalant.”

  “An inhalant?” I demanded. “The only thing Willy inhaled that day was oxygen.”

  The men looked at each other.

  “Was it the oxygen?” I asked, my mind racing. “Did someone tamper with it or change out the tank?”

  The detective seemed to be considering his words.

  “The coroner believes that a chemical was added to the humidifier connected to the oxygen tank. Unfortunately, though the tank and tubing are still here, the small plastic tank that holds the water for the humidifier is missing.”

  I thought about that, remembering how absolutely purple Willy had turned when Lisa had put the mask on his face there at the end. I went back and described how all of that had gone—how his body had responded so well to the oxygen the first time and not at all well the second time. They didn’t seem surprised by what I was saying, and I had a feeling that Lisa had told them the same thing.

  “Wouldn’t that mean,” I asked, trying to clear my head despite my illness, “that someone had to have added the chemical between uses? Like, at some point in the hour or so between when he used it once and when he used it again?”

  I was just thinking out loud, but the cops looked at each other and said yes, that was why they needed to take a DNA sample from me.

  “Wait a minute, I’m your suspect?” I asked, sitting up and then, as the room began to spin, thinking better of it and lying back down. “Are you kidding me?”

  “It’s not just you, ma’am,” the cop replied. “We’ve taken samples from the other two ladies, Mr. Benochet, and his driver. Everyone who was on the premises when Mr. Pedreaux died, with the exception of your little girl.”

  “Why DNA?” I asked. “What can that prove?”

  “There was…evidence. That’s all we can say at this time.”

  They called a technician to come upstairs, who pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and used a long cotton swab to roughly go around the inside of my mouth.

  “Can you tell us what you had for dinner last night?” one of the detectives asked when the tech was done.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your sick friend seems to think the two of you might have been intentionally poisoned by Miz Pedreaux.”

  I was about to object, but then I remembered Deena’s strange behavior last night, as she pushed her food around on her plate but never really ate any herself. Could she have done this horrible thing to us on purpose? If so, were we going to die too?

  Describing the food that had more than likely made us sick, I felt a new surge of nausea. I had a feeling they were going to confiscate what was left and whisk it off to their lab. I asked if they thought we should go to the hospital.

  “I’d call a doctor, at least. Better safe than sorry.”

  I laid my head back and looked up at the ceiling, trying to wrap my mind around the idea that we may have been poisoned.

  “There’s just one more thing,” the detective said, pulling on a pair of gloves himself as his partner brandished a flashlight and a camera.

  “What?”

  “We need to examine your head.”

  “My head? Where I bumped it?”

  The men looked at each other and back at me.

  “You bumped your head?” one of them asked suspiciously. “How?”

  I explained that I was upstairs earlier today and that I passed out and fell down, banging my forehead onto the floor. I couldn’t imagine what that had to do with anything, but the next thing I knew these guys were both inspecting the bump on my head.

  “I don’t see any broken skin,” one of them said to the other, his breath reeking of coffee.

  “Check the rest,” the other guy said.

  “Ma’am, could you please take your hair down so we can examine your scalp?”

  My pulse surged as I looked up at them, mortified at the thought that they would see the shaved part and the tattoo. Was that what they were looking for?

  “Is this legal?” I asked, holding a hand to the back of my head. “I don’t think it is. I think I want a lawyer before you do anything else.”

  The cops stood up straight and clicked off the light.

  “That how you want to do this? Fine. Let’s go down to the station and your lawyer can meet us there.”

  “I can’t go down to the station. I can barely walk.”

  “Your choice, ma’am.”

  It was a standoff, one we all knew I was going to have to lose.

  “At least can you tell me what you’re looking for?”

  “Broken skin,” said one.

  “A cut,” said the other.

  “Fine,” I replied, pulling the ponytail from my hair. “Have at it.”

  With deep shame, I simply sat up and leaned forward, trying not to recall my attack in the alley as I subjected myself to their inch-by-inch examination of my head. When they ran across the tattoo, as I knew they would, one of them let out a low whistle.

  “You live in New York, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “They do crazy things like this up there?”

  “Like what?”

  “This here tattoo.”

  “Of course. It’s all the rage, totally in fashion. Don’t you read Vogue magazine?”

  When they had gone over every inch of my head, they snapped off their light and left me alone. Feeling utterly violated, I quickly tugged my hair back into a ponytail.

  “Maybe I’ll get me one of those,” one cop said to the other as they left the room. “Charlene likes me to be in fashion. I could get Elvis. Just not fat Elvis.”

  After they went down the stairs, I rolled to my side and pulled back the sheer curtains to look outside. With the balcony in the way, I couldn’t see down to the ground, so I gathered my strength to get up and walk to the side window and look out there. From where I could see, there were several police cars parked along the driveway, and probably more out back.

  Had the whole world turned upside down?

  The cops had said they would be searching the house for the humidifier tank, and I couldn’t imagine what would happen next if they found it. I thought of Deena and her complaints about how long it was taking the medical supply company to come and pick up the rest of the equipment, and I wondered if she had a reason to be so impatient.

  I was trying to decide if I had the strength to go downstairs and see what they were doing now when Lisa appeared in my doorway, still wearing her nightgown. Her brown skin was ashy gray, her eyes blood red.

  “Can you believe this?” she said. “It feels like we’re in an episode of The Twilight Zone.”

  We discussed the situation, trying to reason out who could or would have killed Willy. Lisa felt certain that it was Deena, though the only motive she could come up with was her jealousy and anger about being excluded from the conversation he had wanted to have with Lisa and me.

  Somehow, as awful as Deena was, I had trouble seeing her as a murderer. For that matter, I couldn’t imagine that Charles or Lisa would be capable of something like that either. That left only the driver, Emmett, whom I hadn’t really gotten to know at all. As for motive, I couldn’t begin to imagine why someone would want poor old Willy dead. The only reason I could think of was to keep him from telling us whatever it was he had been trying to say.

  “Do you think we should go to the hospital?” I asked.

  “Not just yet. Let me make some phone calls first.”

  She went back to her room and I drifted off to sleep, only to awake ten minutes later to the sight of Deena, who was standing in the doorway, eyes blazing.

  “W
hat were you thinking?” she demanded.

  “What?” I struggled to lift myself up to my elbows.

  “Those policemen insisted on taking last night’s goulash as evidence of a crime! Do you honestly think I poisoned you?” She took a few steps away, to Lisa’s doorway and demanded, “Lisa, do you?”

  I closed my eyes. I didn’t have the strength to deal with this right now. Still, Deena ranted and raved for several minutes, calling us selfish and liars and betrayers—and finally murderers.

  “You probably killed him, Lisa, with all your fake nurse knowledge. You’re no nurse! Your whole reason for being here was a lie!”

  Moving over into my room, Deena pointed a gnarled finger at me.

  “And you! I told those cops how I caught you leaning over Willy’s body. You was in there all by yourself, long enough to set things up so he would die.”

  I wanted to defend myself, but I could feel the now-familiar pressure of bile rising in my throat, so I didn’t dare speak. Instead, I merely leaned over, grabbed the trash can, and threw up.

  Disgusted, Deena marched to the top of the stairs, where she stopped and turned, looking from Lisa’s open door to mine.

  “I’m leaving this house!” Deena announced. “The two of you can fend for yourselves for all I care.”

  “I don’t think the police will let you get too far,” Lisa called from her room.

  “Far, schmar, I’m going to my cousin’s house in town,” Deena replied. “I’ll send for my things later.”

  With that, she clomped down the stairs, slammed a few doors, and then all was silent.

  “Miranda, can you hear me?” Lisa called from her sick bed.

  “Yeah?”

  “I talked to my friend Mike. He’s a lab tech. He’s going to come over here and take some blood to run a toxicology screen.”

  “Should we go to the hospital?”

  “Let’s wait and do this first. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any health insurance. And I wouldn’t trust my dog to the local charity hospital.”

  After that, I drifted in and out, dreaming I was in a long line, waiting to check into a hospital. Along the sidewalk were the poor and homeless, all sick or injured or having babies. At one point, I opened my eyes—to see Jimmy Smith standing at the window next to my bed, looking in at me.

  Jimmy Smith?

  I let out a bloodcurdling scream and he ran away. By the time I got up and threw open the balcony door—not even thinking until after I had done so what a stupid move that might be—there was no one there. I pounded on Lisa’s outside door and then ran around the perimeter of the balcony, looking down. There was no sight of him on the lawn. Finally, her door pushed open and she stood there looking as though she had been pulled from a deep sleep.

  “Jimmy Smith was here! The man in the drawing! The one who came to my office with the painting!”

  She studied my face, probably wondering if I were hallucinating.

  “I’m not crazy!” I yelled. “I woke up and opened my eyes and he was standing right here, right outside my window.”

  I walked to the place where he had stood, but there were no obvious signs that anyone had been there. I examined the window itself, but it did not look as if anyone had tampered with it in any way.

  My body was so full of adrenaline that for the moment I felt much better. Still in my nightgown, I pulled on my robe and ran downstairs to get a cop, but was I shocked to find that they were all gone. Every car had left.

  Lisa and I were here alone.

  I wondered what we could do to protect ourselves. Step one might be to go around and make sure all of the doors and windows were locked. That I did as quickly as I could, starting with the front room so I could grab a fireplace poker to us as a weapon. I checked the doors and windows of the entire first floor, hesitating at Willy’s room, which had a yellow tape across it. Summoning my nerve, I twisted the knob and pushed open the door to his room, knowing that there was a good chance the cops had left the French doors to the outside unlocked.

  As I stepped in, I was both shocked and relieved to find someone there, a uniformed cop who was standing at those French doors, his back to me. When he heard me enter, he spun around, suspicion clouding his puffy features.

  “What are you doing in here?” he demanded, striding forward. “This is a crime scene!”

  As calmly as I could, I tried to explain what was going on, that I had woken up to see a man watching me through the window and that since I didn’t see any police cars still here, I was going around trying to lock the place up tight, to protect myself. He remained silent through my entire explanation, the set of his chin telling me that he didn’t believe a word I was saying. When I asked him to go outside and see if he could find this guy, he just shook his head and told me that he had to remain at his post.

  “Where is everyone else?” I demanded. “Where’s your car? Are you even a real cop?”

  That was probably a mistake. With deeply controlled anger, the man told me to get out of the room or he would arrest me on the spot for tampering with evidence. Quickly, I retraced my steps out of there, but I stood at the threshold, the door still open, and questioned him further until he admitted that his partner had taken the car to get something to eat but that he would be back very soon. Just then, said partner appeared at the French doors, a McDonald’s bag tucked under his arm, a prisoner in handcuffs at his side.

  “Hey, look what I caught prowling around out there,” the cop said to his partner as he walked in.

  “I wasn’t prowling,” the prisoner said in a steely voice.

  “Hey, lady, is this the fella you were talking about?”

  “No.”

  The man in custody was not the short and pale Jimmy Smith at all, but instead a tall black man in a T-shirt and jeans.

  “I came here at the request of my friend Lisa,” the prisoner said tightly.

  My eyes widened.

  “Are you Mike? The lab tech?”

  “Yes. Are you the other one who’s sick? I’ll be with you in just a moment. My stuff’s outside. This overzealous bigot took one look at me walking up to the door and decided to arrest me.”

  “You had needles and things,” the arresting officer said defensively. “I didn’t know what you was gonna do.”

  “I was coming to draw blood. I’m a phlebotomist.”

  “Is that something kinky?”

  “A phlebotomist works in a medical lab,” I explained. “He’s here to draw blood for some blood tests.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?” the cop asked with a grunt as he set down his bag of food and uncuffed his prisoner. “You’re free to go. But you gotta walk around the other way. This here’s a crime scene.”

  I watched in dismay as the cop then lifted his bag of food, pulled out a pack of fries, and handed them to his partner, spilling several onto the crime scene floor in the process.

  I met Mike at the back door, brought him in, and led him upstairs, all adrenaline now gone from my body. In its place was sheer exhaustion, misery, and more nausea. Upstairs, he drew Lisa’s blood first and then mine, promising that some of the results would be back quite soon. From the description of our symptoms, however, he said he didn’t expect any of it to be positive, that it sounded like good old regular food poisoning to him. On the other hand, he added, if our hair started falling out or our gums began to bleed, we might want to head to the hospital.

  After talking a bit with Lisa, who felt sure Jimmy Smith’s appearance at my window had been a figment of my delirious mind, I washed my face and brushed my teeth in the bathroom, checking my gums for good measure. Back in my room, I cleaned up all traces of my earlier sickness and began to wonder if maybe she was right after all. Maybe I had dreamed the sight of Jimmy Smith. If he had been there for real, I told myself, there was no way he could have disappeared that quickly. Just to be safe, I hung a blanket over the window so he couldn’t see in and propped a chair against the door so h
e couldn’t get in. Then I climbed back under the covers and slept some more, wishing I knew how to pray.

  Around dusk, I awoke feeling somewhat better. I was still shaky and weak, but the nausea seemed to have passed, at least for now. I was sitting up on the side of the bed, wondering if I should try to eat something, when Lisa came up the stairs, carrying two plates of toast and some ginger ale.

  “I’m a little better. How about you?” she asked, setting everything on the table next to my bed.

  As we ate and drank, we compared symptoms and rehashed the misery we’d both been through. Lisa said she had hoped to go to the viewing, which would be starting soon, but that she really wasn’t up to it. I was surprised that they were still having it as scheduled, considering that Willy had been murdered.

  “I called to check, but they said that the body was finally released today, in time for the funeral home people to do what they had to do.”

  “What’s the status downstairs?”

  “Cops all gone, house locked up tight. I’m not scared with just the two of us here alone tonight, are you?”

  I thought of Jimmy’s face looming in my window and nodded.

  “Just a little. Maybe I’ll go down and get the fire poker just to have as a weapon.”

  “Suit yourself,” she replied, yawning. “I’m turning in.”

  I was ready to go back to sleep as well. After brushing my teeth one more time, I went and got the fire poker and then for good measure grabbed the ash shoveler and the bellows as well. Back in my room, after making sure that all doors and windows were securely locked and blocked, I laid my weapons within easy reach, climbed under the covers, and turned out the light, feeling about as safe and protected as I could, given the situation.

  My fears thus allayed, I reached for my cell phone and opened it up, thinking how Nathan and I had been playing phone tag since I got here. While that was helpful for the general exchange of information, it did nothing for either of us emotionally. For the first time ever, I began to feel the weight of our separateness in a tangible way, and it wasn’t a good feeling. I was lonely, bereft, anchorless.