Bayou Bodyguard

by Jana DeLeon

Justine shook her head. “Wheeler believed all that stuff—the prophecy. He kidnapped people and took Olivia hostage. How is that normal, even criminally so?”

  “The kidnapping and hostage part was desperation.”

  “And the other?”

  “You don’t have to have mental issues to know that something very abnormal is going on at that house. Olivia dreamed about the house and the murder before she’d ever laid eyes on it. Do you think Olivia is crazy?”

  “No. I don’t know how to explain what Olivia experienced, but it doesn’t mean Wheeler was sane.”

  “And it doesn’t mean he wasn’t. There are some very sane, very evil people in this world. Are you really going to limit your life, based on supposition?”

  “I guess if you put it that way, then, yes, I am. I’m not willing to put someone through the emotional roller coaster I’ve gone through with my mother.”

  Brian sighed. “I’m not going to pretend I know everything that’s going on in your mother’s case, but I’ve known people with issues. They take medication, watch their diet and they have completely normal lives.”

  “I know plenty of people live normal lives with mental illness, but you said it yourself, they take medication. Medication worked on my mother at first, but then over time, the effect wore off until it made no difference at all. Every time a new medication came out, the doctors thought it would be the magical cure, but the cure was always temporary. It’s not the solution for everyone.”

  Justine stared down at the counter. Damn, he was as stubborn as she was, and that was saying a lot. She hadn’t intended to tell him about the figure in white, but he was essentially insisting on proof of something abnormal before he’d give her fears any credence. “I’ve seen the figure in white—who I think is Marilyn Borque—aside from that first night.”

  Brian stared. “You’re just saying that to end the argument.”

  “No. I’m saying it because it’s true.” She described the white figure she’d seen and how the figure had appeared just as she finished reading the diary passages about the graveyard, then pointed her in the right direction.

  Brian listened without interrupting, but when she finished, he shook his head. “I agree that you saw something, but I think when all this shakes out, we’ll find a logical explanation for it.”

  “Like what?”

  “I think someone’s playing with us.”

  “You think someone magically knew when I’d read the exact passage in the diaries about the graveyard, then showed up in a white robe and pointed it out? Without leaving footprints…again?”

  Justine saw Brian’s jaw flex and she knew he wasn’t about to give up the fight. “The neighbor, Miss Bergeron, saw something white in the woods right after that rock came through your bedroom window.”

  “The woman next door? She’s probably got cataracts or imagined it.”

  “I don’t think so. She’s not young, but I get the impression she doesn’t miss much.”

  Justine threw her hands in the air, completely exhausted. “So what if she did see something? So what if it’s a real person and not a ghost? So what if I’m not crazy now? None of that is a guarantee that I’ll remain sane forever. I’m sorry, Brian, but this discussion is over.”

  She slid off the stool and walked down the hall to the bathroom, so tense that every muscle in her body ached. What she needed was a long, hot shower and some space between her and Brian. His argument was persuasive and logical, but she was in no position to gamble. Brian may be able to live with a mentally-ill partner, but that didn’t mean Justine could live with the guilt of turning someone’s world upside down.

  She’d gotten enough answers to satisfy her on her personal pursuit and probably justify a DNA test. Now, she needed to focus every ounce of energy and knowledge she had on finding the emeralds for Olivia so that she could leave Cypriere and forget she’d ever met Brian Marcentel.

  BRIAN REMOVED THE PHOTOS from the back sleeve of his notebook and scanned the room, making a mental note of the furniture. The ride to the house had been completely silent and the tension as thick as the morning humidity. The closeness he’d shared with Justine the night before was nowhere in sight; if possible, she was even more closed off now than the first day he’d met her. The whole situation had blown up on him so fast this morning that he still hadn’t quite processed it all.

  It didn’t mean he was being dismissive of Justine’s concerns. To be concerned was valid but to permanently limit your life because of it was a self-fulfilling prophecy… There had to be a way to change her mind.

  And then what?

  He tossed the notebook on the dresser in disgust. Damned good question. He’d been so hell-bent, trying to find a way to convince Justine she was wrong, that he hadn’t bothered to come up with a good reason for doing so. He had no way to prove that Justine would live a lonely, miserable life. His sister was single and perfectly happy with the occasional date of her choosing. An archaic belief about marriage hardly applied to today’s women, and Justine was definitely a modern woman.

  So he was pushing her to let her guard down for what? His feelings for Justine were definitely different than he’d had for other women, but that didn’t mean he was ready to promise forever. He ran one hand across the top of his head and blew out a breath. Then why the hell was he pushing her to change the course of her life, when he wasn’t even ready to change his own? The only thing he was certain of was that living in such close quarters wasn’t going to be easy for either of them.

  He took a look at the photos in his hand and tried to refocus his mind on the job at hand. He couldn’t solve the problems of Justine Chatry’s life, standing in the middle of a dusty bedroom in a derelict old mansion. Justine had requested an hour to do some research before they hiked out to the graveyard to investigate the tunnel in the crypt. It was the only words she’d spoken since leaving the kitchen that morning.

  A glance at his watch let him know that a whole seven minutes had passed since they’d entered the house. He’d thought that working upstairs might get his mind off everything else, and maybe it would, if he’d concentrate on the photos and not on Justine. He flipped through the photos until he located the three that depicted the room he stood in.

  The bed was featured in the first photo, and checking its placement against the back wall of the room, Brian noticed no difference. But the next photo was a different story. A decorative table that was centered on the side wall in a photo was offset in the room now. Brian double-checked the photo to make sure his visual was right, and frowned. The table was probably a good foot down the wall from where it had been.

  Which made absolutely no sense whatsoever, as that table rested on an outside wall of the house. It was the same situation as the bed in the last room he’d checked, but neither the floor nor the wall behind the bed had contained a hiding place for valuables, like he’d thought they might. And now he had a table relocated for no logical or apparent reason, and he wasn’t about to buy into the idea that spirits moved them just to get a rise out of him.

  He checked the photo again to be certain of the wall space the table used to cover and then pushed the table over a bit more to get clear access to the wall. The wall was covered with a smooth, white plaster, and Brian couldn’t detect a break anywhere in the pristine surface. Another dead end. If someone had hidden something in this wall, it had been plastered over, and no one had accessed it since.

  So why move the table? It was a decorative item with no drawers or shelves. The kind of thing women put a bowl of dead flowers on or a vase, or both. He peeked underneath but couldn’t see a secret panel. No envelope taped to the bottom, like you saw in movies.

  Deciding he needed a better look to be completely satisfied, he lifted the table up and placed it upside down on the bed so that he wouldn’t scratch the top. He ran his fingers across the bottom, but found nothing to indicate it was anything other than a solid piece of wood. This entire situation was starting to frustrate him. It w
as like a giant jigsaw puzzle, with the pieces scattered to the wind. None of them made sense individually, and the little sections he’d pieced together didn’t seem related.

  But something told him that when everything fell into place, the entire picture would contain every single piece and section he’d mentally constructed—Justine’s past, the tunnels, the cemetery, the moving furniture, the white figure, Olivia’s dreams. All of it was part of one big storm, with laMalediction at its center.

  He placed the table back against the wall and made an entry in the notebook that he’d thrown on the dresser. He pulled the rest of the photos from the back of the notebook. That was three rooms already where he’d found furniture out of place. A quick inventory should tell him exactly how mobile the objects in laMalediction had been lately. Maybe if he could identify all the objects that had been moved, he could piece together another section of the puzzle.

  Solving the mystery of the moving furniture had to be easier than figuring out how to fit Justine’s fractured life into his. Or whether he should even try.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Justine finished reading the diary entry and placed it on the stack with the others she’d already read. The information was interesting, and somehow it had to be relevant, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what it meant. Those pages were specifically removed from the journals and hidden by someone, probably Sissy, who thought they revealed too much, but Marilyn’s secrets were still safe, even though Justine had read through all but the last of the entries.

  She reached for her bottle of water and took a big drink. Her mind was cluttered with information, about laMalediction, the emeralds, her mother’s health, her own impending doom…and Brian. The last was the only one she felt she had any control over, at least in the action department. Her heart had already shifted too much in Brian’s direction for her comfort, but that didn’t mean her responsibilities ended. If anything, the fact that she cared for him created even more responsibility for her, to protect him from a future of watching and waiting for the disease to take over.

  Which put her right back to her original plan—find the emeralds and get the heck out of Cypriere. Sighing, she picked up the second-to-last page of diary entries, hoping it would provide a clue to the location of the cursed jewels. Her pulse quickened as she read Sissy’s words.

  August 19, 1862

  It has been many months since I was able to visit my cousin, and she was dismayed to learn of Marilyn’s actions. Bringing her lover here was risky enough, but I suppose it was worth it, as he succumbed to the fever. If Marilyn hadn’t sent for him, she might never have seen him again. Her happiness those few weeks was something I’d never seen in her.

  My cousin told me no good would come from summoning the child. That the dead would follow the living into Marilyn’s womb and enter this house at the birth. That the door opened that night would forever link all descendants of Marilyn to the past and to the other side.

  What the hell? Justine reread the passage to make sure she hadn’t misunderstood—that Sissy was saying Marilyn had used voodoo to create her pregnancy with a dead man. In all of her mother’s ramblings, Justine had never heard anything that outlandish. It couldn’t possibly be true, but apparently Sissy believed it, as did her cousin.

  Surely, Marilyn was pregnant before her lover died. The ceremony in the graveyard was just a coincidence. Marilyn could not have possibly summoned a fertilized embryo into her womb. It amazed her that anyone—even someone grounded in the old beliefs—could think such a thing possible, but clearly Sissy did. No wonder a negative tone hung over this house. Even something as joyful as the conception of a child was all hidden in secrecy and fear.

  Justine needed to find the lover’s grave. Marilyn would have trusted her lover’s spirit to protect her secrets. A clue to the missing emeralds might be contained at the grave-site. She checked the time on her laptop and realized the hour she’d asked Brian to give her was up.

  Just as she closed her laptop, he knocked on the library door and stepped inside. “Are you ready to go?”

  “Sure, but before we check the tunnel, I need to find a grave.” She explained the diary passage and her thought on the lover’s grave, then passed the diary page over to him to read.

  Her description drew no visible response whatsoever from Brian, even when she explained divining a baby from a dead man, nor did his expression change as he read the diary entry. Either he was mad or he was respecting her wishes and had put up his own wall.

  His detachment should have been a relief, but Justine felt a wave of disappointment pass over her that he was giving up so easily. Which was foolish. They’d spent one night together. It was hardly the basis for an attachment worth fighting for. Unfortunately, no one had explained that to her heart, or ego, or whatever was inside her that caused that feeling that she’d lost something important.

  “That’s fine,” Brian said. “I also want to check the outside perimeter of the graveyard for another path or road. If someone was using the graveyard tunnel to gain entry into the house, there has to be another access point.”

  “That makes sense. Are you ready to go?”

  “Sure.” He handed the page back to her. “Oh, man. I’m sorry. My hands must be dirty from moving furniture and I smeared some on the page.”

  Justine glanced at the brown smudges as she placed the entry in a pile with the others. “It’s no big deal. I don’t think the documents have any historical value except to the family, and maybe not even then. I doubt Olivia is any more interested in carrying this past around with her than I am.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” he said. “Let me go wash my hands and we’ll go. I’ll meet you out front.” He turned and left the room without so much as a backward glance.

  Justine sighed and hoped for the millionth time that morning that she found the emeralds soon.

  AFTER A FULL HOUR of thrashing in the underbrush, Brian spotted the path behind the graveyard. He bent down and picked up a piece of dirt from the tire track on the ground. “It’s recent,” he said.

  “What kind of tire made that?” Justine asked.

  “ATV—a four-wheeler.”

  “Where do you think the path goes? Do you think it connects with the one behind the caretaker’s cottage?”

  “It may. Or it may continue to a road large enough for a vehicle. Either way, someone would have an opportunity to come and go without having to use the main road.”

  “Someone who owned one of those cabins or knew about an alternate road,” Justine pointed out.

  “Or someone who borrowed a cabin on a regular basis.” Brian blew out a breath. “I wish the sheriff hadn’t interrupted my conversation with Tom Breaux. I might have found out who owned those other cabins.”

  “Maybe it’s been Tom all along, and he’s trying to throw you off. He might have seen John and Olivia that day when they snuck up behind the cabins. I get the feeling he’s smarter than he’s letting on.”

  “He’s ex-military and he’s seen action. You don’t get through that by not noticing things. Whether he’s involved, I don’t know. Seems a strange time to sell the cabin, if he was using it for nefarious reasons, but then I only have his word that he sold it to begin with.” Brian shook his head. “We don’t have time to follow this road today. I want to get a look at that tunnel, and we still need to find that grave first.”

  It took another exasperating thirty minutes to locate the grave.

  “This is it,” Justine said and pointed to a single grave in the section with Sissy’s family. The headstone was a simple slab of granite with no fancy adornments.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “The eye engraved at the top of the tombstone. It’s supposed to give the dead the ability to see into the realm of the living. All the rest of Sissy’s family have the magnolia on their tombstones. It was probably the family symbol.”

  Brian looked at the creepy eye on the top of the tombstone and shook his head.
“I guess that makes as much sense as anything else. So if the emeralds were here, where would they be?”

  Justine studied the tombstone and frowned. “I think if they were actually around the grave, Wheeler would have found them, but I was hoping to find something…a clue. Anything that gave me a direction to look in.”

  Brian leaned over to study some markings down the side of the tombstone that appeared as if they’d been scratched into the granite after it was in place. “What are these markings here on the side?”

  Justine stepped closer to the tombstone and leaned over to inspect the etchings Brian had indicated. Her bare arm brushed against Brian’s and she mentally cursed her body when her skin began to tingle. She shifted just enough so that their bodies no longer touched, and studied the scratches. “It’s uniform, which means it’s deliberate, but I can’t tell exactly what it is. Teardrops maybe? It looks like a line of teardrops down the side of the tombstone.”

  “Maybe Marilyn did it. Her tears for her lost love.”

  Justine felt her heart catch in her throat. The thought was so sad but so beautiful. She ran one finger down the row of tears and willed her own to stay at bay. It was hard enough to live life denying yourself what you wanted, but Marilyn had it and had lost it. Tragically so.

  “I don’t think there’s anything here that can help me,” Justine said.

  Brian nodded and pointed to the gray clouds moving over the swamp. “We’d better get moving on to the tunnel. I don’t want to be caught out here in a storm.”

  Justine glanced up at the sky then nodded. She didn’t want to be caught out in a storm, either.

  They accessed the crypt and Brian pressed the trigger to open the panel that hid the tunnel. He handed Justine a flashlight from his backpack and grabbed a spotlight for himself. Justine couldn’t help but notice that he’d also tucked his pistol in the waistband of his jeans. He’d probably noticed her pistol tucked in her jeans under her hooded jacket, but he hadn’t commented.