Whispers of the Bayou

by Mindy Starns Clark

  I didn’t even look at my watch as I headed toward Lisa’s room. Regardless of the hour, I needed to wake her up, to tell her all that I had discovered. I tapped on her door softly, not wanting to also wake my father who was slumbering overhead. Tapping again, I pushed the door open to see the bed, but the bed was empty.

  “Lisa?” I whispered, the sounds of rustling coming from further inside.

  Pushing the door open more, I saw that Lisa was awake and out of bed, though still in her nightgown. She was standing at the open door to the balcony, her hands clawing violently against Jimmy Smith.

  He in turn was facing her, his white hands wrapped tightly around her dark brown throat.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  A secret,

  Subtile sense crept in of pain and indefinite terror,

  As the cold, poisonous snake creeps into the nest of the swallow.

  It was no earthly fear. A breath from the region of spirits

  Seemed to float in the air of night

  I screamed.

  I screamed so loudly they probably heard me all the way to Little Tara. In an instant, my father was pounding down the stairs, Jimmy Smith was gone, and Lisa was collapsing onto the bed, gasping for air.

  I ran to the open door and looked out to see the intruder now running away in the moonlight across the lawn and then straight down the driveway toward the road. Lisa was making so much noise that I hesitated, but then AJ was there to take care of Lisa so I moved on outside.

  Out at the balcony railing, I dashed around the perimeter and finally spotted what I was looking for: a climbing rope with a hook on the top and thick knots all the way down about every two feet. My father burst onto the balcony as well, and when I showed it to him and told him what happened, he immediately went to the phone and called the police.

  While we waited for them to arrive, I asked my father to go downstairs and be ready to greet the cops at the door. Once he left, I whispered to AJ that I needed her to go down there too and make sure he wasn’t eavesdropping, because Lisa and I had to talk about what we could and could not tell the police about the intruder—a conversation that I absolutely didn’t want my father listening in on. AJ readily agreed. As she turned to go, I noticed that her eyes were puffy, as if she had cried herself to sleep.

  Once we were alone, Lisa repeated what she’d been saying since she found her voice and could talk. According to her, had I not come into her room when I did, she would be dead now. She said that she had been awakened only moments before by a knock at that outside door. Since the last person to knock on that door was me, in her half-asleep state, she had just assumed it was me again.

  “I know it was so stupid,” Lisa cried, her face in her hands, “but I didn’t even look outside! I just opened the door and there he was and the next thing I knew, he was choking me.”

  I didn’t say “I told you so” for her nonchalance in the face of danger. I was just glad I had gotten there when I did—and I hoped she had finally learned her lesson and would be more cautious in the future.

  The hardest part for both of us, I told her as she tried to calm down, was going to be finding a way to answer the police’s questions without revealing anything about the myth of the angelus or the symbol of the bell—for that was obviously what had brought this man here in the first place. I didn’t know why he wanted Lisa to die, but I knew we couldn’t tell the cops everything right now. In the end, we agreed to stick with a limited version of the truth.

  Lisa went to the bathroom to compose herself, not even yet aware of what I had uncovered with my night’s work. I planned to save that huge news until after the police were gone. In the meantime, as we all waited for them to come, I went to the room with the paintings, turned off the light, and closed the door. Then I went to the other sitting room and crossed to the window in the dark. Pulling back the curtain, I looked out into the night, watching for the arrival of the police, wondering where Jimmy Smith had gone when he once again ran from here.

  I looked out at the dark night, a light mist hovering near the ground. The moon was exactly half full, and it cast an eerie glow to the whole landscape down below. I tilted my forehead against the window, letting its coolness calm me. My own face reflected back at me, but suddenly it wasn’t the face of a thirty-two-year-old woman.

  It was the face of a five-year-old girl.

  My heart began pounding, but this time instead of grasping for the memory so hard that I would chase it away, I forced myself to relax and simply let it come.

  It was night.

  It was an upstairs window.

  I was looking outside at someone walking across the yard in the moonlight.

  Who was it?

  Was it Willy?

  The picture in my mind grew fuzzy, and in one moment it was Willy—Willy with a shovel in his hands—but in the next moment it was two people, their arms held tightly around each other as they walked. Then I saw Willy again, still with the shovel, still alone. Digging.

  Whatever I was remembering was no ordinary scene. I pressed my hands against the glass and saw my arms begin trembling. I felt the urge to run out into the night and do something, anything. I felt horrified. For some reason I wanted to go up high. Higher.

  I didn’t know what that meant, but I could see stairs, metal stairs with no backing to them, so that as I walked, I had to look straight ahead so I couldn’t see how far up from the ground I was.

  “Miranda? Are you okay?” Lisa rasped.

  “I’m having a memory,” I said as evenly as I could. “I’m trying not to lose it.”

  Understanding my situation, she didn’t speak again, but it was too late; my concentration had already been broken. I stepped backward and took a deep breath and hoped that soon, maybe once the police were gone, I might be able to get to that place of remembering again.

  “Sorry about that,” I said to Lisa, who was standing there in her robe looking calmer than she had a few minutes ago. “I was just standing here looking outside and I had this flashback to the sight of Willy out there with a shovel.”

  “A shovel? In the middle of the night?”

  I studied her eager face, took one more quick look out the window, and made my decision.

  “I have something huge to show you,” I said. “Do you want to see now or after the police are gone?”

  “They’re not here yet. Show me now.”

  Taking Lisa by the hand, I led her to the room with the mural. Talking quickly, I moved from wall to wall, pointing out the story as I saw it taking place. When I was finished, I saw that her eyes were glistening with excitement, her terror at being choked already forgotten in this moment.

  “We have to do the rest of the walls out there,” she said. “One of them must show where Willy hid the bell.”

  “I know,” I replied. “But even if the walls don’t give us that particular bit of information, I think it might be stored somewhere in my brain anyway, the knowledge of where Willy was digging.”

  We heard voices from downstairs, so we turned off the light, shut the door, and went to Lisa’s room. We were just sitting down on the bed when my father and AJ came walking up, accompanied by two policemen. I could see lights flashing outside, lots of red flashing lights.

  For a small town, Oak Knoll sure had a variety of responders on the police department. First there had been Bubba, the guy who came to check out my report of animal abuse. Then there were the two detectives who had examined my scalp. I had been so out of it at the time that I hadn’t really formed an opinion about them or about their competency, though thankfully the two goofballs who had been guarding the crime scene were not around tonight.

  This time, two female cops greeted us, and they were obviously in charge this time. They were there a good while, questioning Lisa, gathering evidence from outside, interviewing the rest of us. Again, I couldn’t shake that feeling that they viewed us primarily as suspects, not victims. They seemed particularly unimpressed with the markings left on Lisa’s neck, o
ne of the cops even commenting that she’d seen a lot worse. That made me angry, that they would challenge the veracity of our claims based on how bruised Lisa was—or wasn’t, as the case may be. Because he had grabbed her seconds before I opened the door and scared him off, there probably hadn’t been enough time to cause significant bruising anyway.

  I told the policewomen that I had already given the detective a sketch of the man that morning, and they said they would use it to put out an APB. Hopefully someone would spot him soon and they could bring him in. By the time they were finished questioning me, the sun was about to come up. I wanted to return to my work on the mural, but they were still here, talking to my father for his version of things. Realizing that I had never gone to bed for the night, I stretched out on the top of my covers, just trying to rest my eyes until the police were gone and I could get back to work. As I drifted off to sleep, I could at least be comforted by what one of the policewomen had told me, that they’d gotten back the lab report on the potentially poisonous food confiscated from Deena’s kitchen, and it hadn’t been positive for anything more lethal than spoiled beef. At best, she was guilty of being a cheapskate—not to mention a bad cook.

  When I awoke, the sun was much higher in the sky, and I felt as though I had gotten some much-needed deep sleep. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I rubbed my eyes and looked at the clock to see that it was almost 11 a.m.

  Embarrassed that I had slept so late, I straightened the covers and grabbed a change of clothes and some toiletries to take down the hall to the bathroom. As I opened my bedroom door, it was to the sound of a machine whirring. Confused, I followed the sound into the hall and down a bit, where Lisa was removing the outer layer of enamel over the mural—by using an electric sander!

  “What are you doing?” I yelled, dropping my things to run forward and rip the plug from the wall.

  “Oh hey, Miranda, big news,” Lisa replied. “The police called a little while ago and the DNA reports came back. As it turns out, the DNA evidence found at Willy’s crime scene was not a match for any of us that they tested. Not you, me, Deena, Charles, or his driver.”

  While I appreciated that news, it wasn’t the most important thing on my mind at this moment.

  “How could you do this?” I cried in dismay, the wall a series of vicious gouges and scars.

  “Don’t worry, I haven’t come across anything important yet. So far, from what I can tell, they’re just languishing inside a prison camp and then heading to America and getting settled here.”

  Heartbroken at the condition of the artwork, I stood and surveyed this part of my grandmother’s mural. Though Lisa’s progress with the sander had certainly moved faster than my diligent peeling had, the handheld device had also taken its toll on the artwork underneath. The images were still intact enough to follow the story, but in many places, the layers had been removed or scratched so severely that the acrylic had been obliterated. I studied the newly revealed panels of the mural through the scratches and blank spots, trying not to weep at the damage that had been done. This picture showed the Acadian refugees in various stages of illness, suffering, and even death. In one corner of the prisonlike setting was a carved wooden box with carrying handles, a dirty, ragged cloth draped over the top and three half-melted candles on top of that. Inside the box that was now serving as an ad hoc bedside table was, no doubt, the bell. The angelus.

  I don’t think I had realized how important this mural was to me—not as a clue to a mystery but as a work of art, as a link to my forebears—until that moment. Feeling as if she had sanded off my own skin, or sanded away my past, I simply sank to the floor and put my head in my hands. Further up the hall, Lisa remained silent and still, and I could only hope that she understood the true cost of her impatience.

  “Why?” I asked finally, looking up at her. “Was it worth it?”

  I expected to see guilt radiating from her face like a neon sign. Instead, the angle of her chin was defensive, and as I watched she returned to the wall outlet and plugged the sander back in.

  “A man tried to kill me last night. We’re out of time. We can’t do it your way anymore.”

  She was about to turn the machine back on, but I jumped up and crossed to her, nearly trembling with rage.

  “You may be the other gardien of the angelus,” I said in a low, even voice, “but Twin Oaks is my house. This wall is my wall, and it represents more than a set of clues. It’s one of the few connections I have to the family I lost. Do you even understand what you’ve done here?”

  “Miranda, I—”

  “Lisa, please. Just go.”

  With that, she put down the sander, walked back to her room, and shut the door.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Silent a moment they stood in speechless wonder, and then rose

  Louder and ever louder a wail of sorrow and anger,

  And, by one impulse moved, they madly rushed to the doorway.

  I headed downstairs, my heart heavy, to see where everyone was. I could hear some sort of activity in the back of the house, and when I got there, I realized that Deena was there with a moving van, and two workmen were loading up her possessions. I was standing in the hallway talking to Deena, explaining who really paid for the upgrade to Willy’s casket, when Lisa suddenly opened the door and brushed past, suitcase in hand.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “You don’t want me here. Fine. I’ll leave.”

  I closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose.

  “I didn’t mean you had to move out. I just meant for you to leave the mural alone.”

  She shook her head, tears filling her eyes.

  “I know when I’m not wanted,” she muttered.

  Then she turned on her heel and simply left.

  “Long live the queen,” Deena snarled after her. “The drama queen.”

  In the distance, I could hear the back door open and close.

  Deena returned to her packing, and I took a deep breath, shook off the unpleasantness of the confrontation with Lisa, and walked into the kitchen, where I found AJ quietly making sandwiches at the counter. Beautiful and perfectly put together as usual, she was dressed in an elegant gray blouse over black slacks, a hammered silver belt circling her narrow waist, with matching hammered silver earrings dangling from her ears like shiny twin icicles.

  “Where’s my father?”

  I asked her. “I don’t know, but when he left here, he was carrying his suitcase.”

  I considered that, wondering if he had left town without even saying goodbye—or if he was merely clearing out of my immediate vicinity before I was given notice that my right of inheritance was going to be challenged.

  “Can I make you a sandwich?” AJ asked, waving vaguely toward the fixings in front of her. She seemed subdued—almost depressed—and for a moment I thought about our conversation several days before, when she warned me not to come here for the sake of my mental health. I was surprised to see that the same could have been said for her. She was not doing well, and I realized that for AJ this whole place represented, primarily, pain.

  “No thanks, but we do need to talk,” I said to her now, thinking of the conversation I’d heard last night between my father and his brother. Though I should have been angry with her, she was so downcast that I didn’t have the heart to be all that mad, at least not yet.

  “What is it?” she asked, spreading fat-free mayonnaise on a slice of whole wheat bread.

  “Not here. Can you take a walk?”

  “Give me just a second.”

  AJ finished making the last sandwich, wrapped it in plastic, and placed it in a paper bag along with a bag of chips and some soda. Satisfied, she wiped her hands on a nearby towel and followed me outside.

  “This might not take long,” I said as we made our way around the side of the big truck and then briskly walked toward the bayou. The longer I stayed around here, the more I was drawn to the cement bench there with its lovely view of the water. “I
overheard a conversation last night I shouldn’t have between my dad and Holt.”

  AJ looked at me, eyebrows raised.

  “Sounds like my father is going to challenge my grandparents’ will. He wants Twin Oaks for himself.”

  “Challenge the will?” she scoffed. “On what grounds?”

  “Paternity. It seems he neglected to tell my mother he was sterile. Yet somehow she miraculously ended up pregnant anyway. Do you know anything about that?”

  I said it all quickly to catch her off guard, and my ploy seemed to have worked. AJ blanched, frozen to the ground, her mouth practically agape. Unfortunately, at that moment Deena chose to emerge from the house, her packing finished, her time here done. I had no choice but to excuse myself from AJ to give Deena a final farewell, one of the workmen carrying the sack of sandwiches AJ had made. By the time the truck was lumbering down the driveway and I had returned to AJ on the bench, she had managed to collect her thoughts and recover from the shock of my words.

  “How certain are you that this is his intention?” she asked me.

  Before I could reply, another car appeared in the driveway. Standing, I watched as it parked by the house, the door opened, and Charles Benochet climbed out.

  “Looks like we’re about to find out,” I replied.

  AJ and I greeted Charles at the back door, and we all went inside together. There, sitting around the kitchen table, Charles informed us that he’d just learned Richard Fairmont was about to file suit against Miranda Fairmont Miller for the estate known as Twin Oaks, claiming that sterility prevented him from being the father of his wife’s twin daughters and therefore the surviving daughter could not be the rightful heir to his parents’ fortune. Charles explained to us how it was going to work, how DNA testing could settle the matter quickly, depending on the results. Finally, however, AJ interrupted him and said simply, “Bring him here.”