by Ann Parker
“At last!” Inez reversed direction, heading to the State Street doors. “I better see what I can do to help.”
“No!” Sol hurried out from behind the bar and then flapped his cloth at her like a white flag of surrender when she turned on him. “I mean, wait! That’s what Mr. Jackson said. His message had instructions for you and Mrs. O’Malley. He asked you both wait and not come down to help. I guess he has his hands full, and people keep coming by, asking how are…things going. He said he’s got Doc and Mrs. Buford, and can’t handle any more folks. As soon as everything’s…done,” again he seemed at a loss for words, “he’ll send word. He said Doc thinks nothing will happen for a while, maybe until the end of the day or tonight.” He looked sheepish. “Mrs. O’Malley wasn’t happy either, but hey, I’m just the messenger.”
“Did Bridgette come at you with a frying pan?”
“Nearly.” He went back behind the bar again. “I’m afraid to go in and ask for a cup of coffee. Hear her humming back there? That’s not a happy hum.”
Now that he’d mentioned it, Inez thought the humming did have the buzz of an angry bee.
“I’ll respect his wishes, then. No Mr. Stannert yet?”
“Not yet.”
She wondered if he might be busy trying to cover his tracks with the church board members regarding his role in Reverend Sands’ departure. As far as she was concerned, there was no magic rabbit he could pull out of his hat that could change the content of his damning conversation with Mrs. Terrence. “Rabbit” made her think of the next visit on her list for the day. She slipped up to the saloon office and opened the safe. There, tucked inside the moneybox from last night, was Percy’s lucky rabbit’s foot.
Lifting it free by its silver chain, she addressed the furry bit as if it were Percy by proxy. “Maybe you should have taken your good luck piece with you last night after all. Although I doubt it could have stopped a bullet or a garrote.” With a sigh, she counted out a few smaller-denomination gold and silver coins, closed the safe, and repaired to her chambers to prepare for a visit to Madam Labasilier.
For this expedition, she changed from her sober gray outfit to a well-worn walking suit which was more sensible for venturing into the lower end of Stillborn Alley. No reticule. Such little handbags were open enticements to cutpurses. Plenty of pockets were to be had in her faded brown flannel skirt and more still were available in the worn cloak hanging by the kitchen door.
She approached the genteel little marble-topped corner cabinet by her bed and extracted the poppet from deep within, pinching its threaded braid between two fingertips. Perhaps the rabbit foot and this nasty bit of work will cancel each other out. Such foolishness was not part of her usual thinking, but still.
She lowered the poppet on top of the rabbit’s foot in her pocket and gave the tiny doll a deliberate pat to demonstrate she meant no malice, before adding her few coins to the opposite pocket. The Smoot revolver would go in the cloak, where she could pull it out in a hurry if need be.
The cloak, however, was in the kitchen.
It required quick maneuvering on Inez’s part to avoid a lengthy session with Bridgette, who was positively bristling with injury that she was banned from the Jackson residence at this critical juncture. “Why, it’s not as if I haven’t been present and attending at many a lie-in over the years,” she announced the minute the passway door swung open. “And I made all these lovely biscuits, sausages, and gravy this morning—Mr. Jackson’s favorites! A basket of these, well-wrapped, would no doubt be a blessing to both Mr. Jackson and Dr. Cramer. They will want a spot of nourishment and goodness knows Mrs. Jackson is in no condition to cook for them! And I thought, well, since I’d be there, I could just take a wee peek and see how things were going, offer a little advice from someone who has had five boys, and none of them small, mind you. I always say, walking around as long as possible is a necessity. So many doctors insist on the poor mother spending her travail in a lie-down on her back, which is not helpful at all.”
Inez grabbed the cloak and escaped, assuring Bridgette she would return and, when word came, they would go together to see the new “baby Jackson” and congratulate the parents.
Once outside, she silently thanked her foresight in having her sturdy walking boots dry and ready. The snow from Saturday’s overnight storm had thawed, hardened, and thawed again, leaving an indescribable mess of sludge where there were no boardwalks. She pulled the shabby cloak’s hood up for anonymity, and headed down State to Pine Street, approaching Stillborn Alley for the quickest access to the rear of the buildings and Coon Row. It was still early Monday morning, so everything was quiet. Only a few people were out and about, no revelers to speak of, everyone most likely sleeping off the weekend’s debaucheries.
Madam Labasillier’s lean-to, in the rear of a larger dwelling, was easily identifiable by a door on which was painted a jaunty-looking skull with a top hat. A wide plank, serving as a stoop, was thoroughly coated with the red dirt so prevalent in the mining districts around Leadville. Inez took a deep breath and rapped on the skull’s eye-socket. The thin panel shivered under her knuckles. Although she heard no movement inside, the door opened almost immediately. Madam Labasilier was wrapped so thoroughly in layers and layers of shawls and skirts, it was hard to tell her size. She craned her head up to view Inez from her crook-backed stance.
“Aaaaaah, Mrs. Stannert.” The “s” in Stannert escaped in a long sibilant hiss. “Bonjou. It is early in the day, eh?” She turned and shuffled inside. “Come,” she threw over her shoulder.
Inez took two cautious steps inside. Her gaze first fell, as no doubt intended, on what looked like a shrine that took up nearly all of the opposite wall. A yellow candle burned, and religious cards of the Catholic variety were propped up and about on the velvet-covered board, surrounding a statue of the Virgin Mary. A large painting of who she guessed to be Saint Peter, holding a set of keys, leaned against the wall close to the statue. Little oddities also populated the altar, including small baskets holding what-not, little wrapped candies, a child’s toy top, and what appeared to be a real skull complete with a real top hat and a stub of cigar clenched between its teeth.
Inez had been expecting…Well, what had she been expecting, exactly? She wasn’t certain. Perhaps black-feathered chickens squawking and running about, a cauldron of foul-smelling suspicious liquids. More of those little poppets, with pins stabbed through their eyes or hearts. The only faintly ominous thing she saw, besides the unnerving hatted skull, was a black cat, crouched under the skirt of the altar and eyeing her with deep yellow eyes.
Madam Labasilier stood by a small table covered with another red velvet cloth that looked the same vintage as the one on the altar. Her arms were crossed and, most surprising of all to Inez, she was smiling.
“Eh, not what you expect, yes? I see that look all the time from nonbelievers. But here you are. Asi vou. Sit.” She gestured to the rickety chair on the other side of the table. “So, you come about that man of yours, yes? You want him, what? To stay or go?”
Surprised, and stifling a desire to laugh out loud, Inez moved to the chair and sat as commanded. As long as she is being courteous, so will I. More flies with honey than vinegar.
“That is not why I am here, but I commend you on an astute assumption,” she said, arranging her cloak and skirts so that all items were near to hand, including the pistol in the cloak’s right-hand pocket. “So, is that what brings most of your female clients here? A request regarding a man?”
“With women, it is always the men. Or sometimes it is the children.” Labasilier shrugged and adjusted one of the shawls that had fallen off her shoulder. “Whatever breaks a heart is why they come.” She placed both hands, gnarled and knobby, on the table.
“My query is different.” She pulled the poppet out and placed it on the table between them. “Perhaps you can explain this to me.”
Madam Lab
asilier didn’t move her head, but instead looked down the length of her nose at the dirt-encrusted doll on the velvet cloth. She slid her hands into her lap.
Inez slid her right hand into her cloak pocket and tried to look blandly attentive and nonthreatening.
“So you took it.”
It was not a question, but Inez answered as if it was. “Yes. After I saw you smash it with a rock, bury it by Mrs. Gizzi’s shanty, and spit upon the door.”
There was a long silence. At last Madam Labasilier said conversationally, “For each answer I require payment.”
Inez noticed that the woman’s diction had slid into a slightly higher vocabulary, although still with that Creole, near-but-not-quite French tonality. Inez reached into her left pocket, pulled out a silver dollar, and placed it on the table. “Is this enough for the truth?”
“Truth? Of course. So much easier than lies.” She didn’t touch the money. “It was business. The rows, these alleys, they have always been mine. Then she, that Mrs.-Gizzi-fortuneteller-of-futures, comes and starts with her ‘seeing’ and ‘foretelling.’ She had to leave. So,” another shrug, “I help her leave with just a little, what do you say, inducement?”
Inez regarded her calm, lined face. “Yes, I think inducement will do.”
“It worked,” said Labasilier. “She left, no? All is back as it was, as it should be. She has found another place, somewhere else.”
“She is dead,” said Inez.
There could be no mistaking the sudden jump of eyebrows, although the rest of her face stayed immobile. After another pause, she said, “I had nothing to do with that. The doll was to make her go away.”
“And exactly how was this poppet to induce her to leave?” Inez wanted to keep her talking, see if she said anything that would point to a more active role in Drina’s “permanent” removal.
“Oh, is only cloth, with a bit of her hair.” One arthritic finger emerged from her lap and pointed at the braid, “and a thread from the sash she always wore. Inside,” the finger moved to prod the doll, “dust from her footprints, dried gato krot…cat shit.” At this, the black cat emerged beneath the altar and began to prowl the perimeter of the room, tail held high as if proud of its contribution. “Red pepper, and sulfur.” The hand retreated back under the table. “How did she die?”
“You don’t know?” Inez asked, all innocence. “I thought you heard everything that happens here.”
She shook her head. “No. How?”
“She was strangled. Then her body,” Inez waved her free hand, “vanished.”
Madam Labasilier sucked in her breath. “Where was she killed?”
“She was found in her shack. I saw her body. Soon thereafter, she vanished.”
“That is an evil place,” the old woman said.
Inez noticed that the hunched-over curve of her back had disappeared. Madam Labasilier was sitting up as straight as any woman in a tight-laced corset.
“That woman, Mrs. Gizzi, she opened doors that should stay closed. She knew not what she did. Her place. It should be burned down, and the ground cleansed. And you,” the finger jabbed again, at Inez this time, “you should not have touched it. It was to make her leave, to send her away. Now, the spell may be attached to you.”
The conversation was beginning to wander into territory from which any useful information was unlikely to emerge, so Inez steered things back to a more fruitful direction. “You were there that night, then, at the time of her death or close to it. That doesn’t look good, you know.” She left the incipient threat hanging in the air. “Can you prove that you didn’t strangle her, then put the poppet outside?”
Labasilier actually laughed, a sharp bark. “Why I do that? And how? Look, these hands.” She held them up for Inez to see, the fingers gnarled with age. “No strength for strangling. Besides I have other ways, should I have wished to do her harm. I wished her no harm. Only to go away.”
Inez leaned back in the chair. The rails and spindles made small snapping sounds. Inez quickly straightened up. “Prove it to me. Where were you before that?”
“I was with the women of a woman you know, Miss Flo.”
“Flo Sweet?” Inez shook her head, trying to clear it. Flo had said she forbade her boarders to continue their consultations with Madam Labasilier and the like. “I don’t believe you.”
“Is true. As I say, truth easy. Lies lead to roads of much trouble and difficulty. You know that, eh, Mrs. Stannert?” She continued conversationally, “You want proof, talk to those silly girls with the silly names of the months.”
Inez thought back to her visit at the Jacksons’ home and even more recently to Susan Carothers’ studio. “You mean April, May, and June?”
A nod. “I was with them. And then, I went and set the spell for leaving. And then, here. I did not set foot in her place. Why would I want to go into a place so evil? Death walks there.”
Inez tried to switch the subject. “You may be right about that. Last night, someone else died in that shack.”
The watery brown eyes narrowed. “Who?”
“A gentleman visitor to the city. Someone well-bred, someone who was probably much out of his element.”
“The one with the rabbit’s foot?”
“You know him?” Inez asked, intrigued.
“He came to me, in the past. Every time to town, he comes and tells me about his rabbit foot and then asks what his luck will be with the women and the cards. That is what men mostly want. Charms to bring luck for the cards, the dice, the faro. Well, if they pay, I give. But this time, no rabbit-foot man. So, he went to that cursed place? And died?” She paused, thinking. “Ah yes! Last night I saw…” She stopped, and a calculating expression crossed her face. “To tell you what I saw, you must pay first.”
Inez found the end of the silver chain in her pocket and slowly pulled it out, allowing the rabbit’s foot to emerge. She held the object up, spinning at the end of the chain, then gently lowered it to the table.
“His?” A note of suspicion.
“He gave it to me for safekeeping. Perhaps he should have kept it.” Inez added softly, “We were friends.” She continued, “You know about this talisman, do you not? He told everyone about it, all the time. Let’s see if I can recall his words. It’s from New Orleans, I know that. As for the rest,” Inez rattled it off like a catechism. “It’s the left hind foot of a rabbit killed in a country churchyard at midnight, during the dark of the moon, on Friday the thirteenth of the month, by a cross-eyed, left-handed, redheaded, bowlegged Negro riding a white horse.”
The weathered hands leapt to the tabletop, gripped into loose fists. She leaned forward over the amulet. “We,” she said, which sounded close enough to oui for Inez to get her drift.
Inez nodded. “That’s right. Tell me what you saw and it is yours.”
“It is powerful,” said the old woman, looking at her narrowly. “Why you give up such a power?”
“As you said, I’m a nonbeliever. It means nothing to me, but I can see it means something to you. So, let’s do a little horsetrading. The lucky foot for information.” She leaned forward. “What did you see last night?”
The hand crept forward and covered the furred object. “I saw the Devil. Tall, in a top hat and smoking a cigar. Talking with rabbit-foot man. The tall one is like Baron Kriminel, the Ghede, but with pale skin. He was not a Ghede, not one of ours. He was one of yours.” The last word was expelled vehemently as if she was tossing something repulsive to Inez. “An evil man, and they went into that evil place. Together.”
Inez tried to gather the essence. “Top hat? Cigar? Tall? Anything else? Mustache, beard, glasses, a cane?”
“One of yours. Pale,” she answered stubbornly. The rabbit foot was gone, already secreted beneath the shawls.
Inez sighed, thinking that the description could fit many men of Leadville, includin
g three-quarters of those who had been at the Grand Central Theater the previous night. “Would you let me know if you see him again? I want justice for my friend.”
Madam Labasilier nodded. She stood, as if preparing to escort Inez out the door. But Inez had one more question. The description the voodoo woman had provided certainly fit all the Lads, as well as Doctor Gregorvich, and Mr. Alexander, if he had a top hat. Which he probably did. About the only male of interest who was left out of that description was the drummer, Woods.
“One more question,” said Inez, not moving from her chair. “And I think the rabbit’s foot should cover payment for this as well.”
Madam Labasilier looked at her. Waiting.
Inez said, “There has been a man around the rows, a drummer of women’s goods. Small, russet hair. His name is Woods. He also died recently, but not in the ‘cursed house,’ as you call it. Do you have any knowledge as to when or how he met his end?”
The bent posture had returned, the head cocked up, peering thoughtfully at something above Inez’s head. She said, “For an answer, you must ask the neighbor.” She took up an ornately carved wooden stick, which had been leaning against a three-legged washstand, and banged on the wall behind the statuary. Almost immediately, there was the heavy thud of feet crossing a wood floor on the other side of the wall, the crash of a door opening, more rumbling down a short set of stairs, and a loud voice outside the door said, “You all right?”
Without waiting for an answer, the speaker heaved Madam Labasilier’s door back so violently that Inez feared it would fly off its rickety hinges. The black cat escaped between the feet of the giantess now blocking the exit. With apprehension, Inez realized she was staring at someone who could only be Kate Armstead. Tall, taller than Inez by far, Kate was regularly vilified in the Leadville papers when the reporter wanted to describe the horrors of Coon Row and the plight of its denizens and those who ventured there. A woman of strong arm and strong features, Kate was imposing and, Inez had to admit, highly unnerving in appearance despite the fact that she wore a frilly cotton houseshift sprinkled with tiny blue flowers.
