TWO
A COUNTRY TOWN
EVENING
Marie drove slowly, the Mustang’s headlights overly bright, tires crunching on gravel. The night was pitch-dark—a weightless, normal darkness. No streetlamps. The town—if you could call it that—wasn’t much longer than a city block. Squat, square buildings cast shadows. She didn’t see road signs or designated landmarks. She could be anywhere. Lost in a rural wilderness.
Die here and no one would know she was gone. Marie scowled. Her imagination was spiraling out of control. Or was it?
Adrenaline spiked; her pulse quickened.
Truthfully, nothing could surpass what she’d already seen.
She squirted windshield fluid, clicked on the wipers to scrape dead bugs flattened on glass. In the rearview mirror, she didn’t recognize her face, lit up by the green odometer’s glow.
On the left, she could make out a no-name bait shop; just BAIT in cheap neon, dangling in the window. Next to it was Bebe’s Grocery, dark, with rockers and an old-fashioned Coke machine, shaped like a deep freezer, on the porch. A few feet down, on the right, was a mechanic’s shed with a lot beside it filled with a seeming graveyard of Chevys, pickup trucks, and two high-speed airboats on trailers. Boats used for swamp tours. Extra income. Vivco Oil was next door, a two-pump gas station with a dull, spiraling, barbershoplike, red light.
Just a small town filled with working people, all in bed, because they’d be up at 4:00 AM for fishing, shrimping, salvaging, and trying to make old things work.
She’d driven to the end of the block. On the far left was a building with a dangling wood-burned sign, out of the old West: sheriff. A small glow radiated from inside. She parked.
Her need to pee came raging back in full force—her bladder urging, like the inevitability of birth water.
She half-skipped, half-limped across the street. Bars were on the windows. She pounded, then pushed open the door.
Someone—the sheriff?—had been sleeping at his desk, his head on his arms.
“Bathroom, please.”
“That way.” He pointed. She followed the direction of his finger.
Marie barely slammed the door, barely had time to pull down her panties and jeans, before her bladder let go. She hadn’t even turned on the light. Face flushed, part of her felt shame. She tried to dismiss it. There was always a mind/body connection. Her body felt safe (now that she’d found someone to tell about the crime), so her body did what it needed to do.
“Police offices aren’t public restrooms.”
The overhead lights were still off. Marie watched as the officer leaned forward in his chair, his face moving from shadow to light in the desk lamp’s glare. He was handsome, boyish, his cheeks still puffed with baby fat. A digital clock read 10:43 P.M. The fluorescent lamp buzzed.
“Sorry. I’ve been holding for a while.”
“Not good for you.” His voice had a southern twang.
“Tell me about it.” She flushed.
“Looking for someone? Room for a night? Passing through?”
“I was looking for you.” As soon as she said it, she knew it had come out wrong.
He walked toward her, an odd mix of easy, elegant grace with a hitch to his left step. She suspected a knee injury. He was young, barely twenty, she thought.
“Derek.” He extended his hand. “Folks call me Deet.”
She smothered a laugh. Only in the South would a nickname after an insect repellent not be an insult.
“Football. Tulane. Halfback.” He smiled, cocky, his head tilted as if he were wearing an imaginary hat.
“No one could touch you,” she said.
“Not ’less I wanted them to.”
“Are you flirting with me?” Any second, she’d laugh, hysterical.
He had brown eyes, almost puppy dog. Tight, curly black hair. Why not burrow against him? Since motherhood, it had been sexual feast or famine. Making love to Parks—no, admit it, part of her had deeply loved him—had been good. But no one had touched her gently, sweetly, romantically for almost a year.
Why not let the day unwind and forget anything had happened? Marie scowled—as if sexual afterglow could wash away murder.
She reached out, her fingertips tapping the nameplate beneath his badge. “Malveaux? Sheriff Malveaux?”
He grabbed her hand, kissing her palm as if they were at a fancy dress ball. Even in a faintly lit dusty jail, this young man was all outrageous confidence. A country boy acting like a city man.
Marie slid her hand gently from his grasp. Without question, she liked handsome men. But she liked smart men better.
“I’ve come to report a murder.”
“You serious?” His voice cracked, pitching high.
“What? No murders here?”
“Never.” His affected charm gave way to thrilled awe. “Most we get is bait shop robberies. Rods and reels stolen. Coke machines busted up. Parts—carburetors, spark plugs, tires ripped from dead cars, airboats. Small town.”
“Small-town cop,” she replied.
He bristled. “Might as well say it—stupid. That’s what you’re thinking.”
It was. But she didn’t reply. She didn’t usually stereotype. She knew better than anyone else how stereotypes demeaned. “Wicked witch.” “Satan’s child.” “Devil.” She’d been called all that and more.
She flushed. “I’m sorry. An entire family was murdered. About forty, sixty miles back. You’ll need forensic analyses. A full postmortem.”
Deet kept staring at her. Then he turned, his gait more stiff legged. No need to woo and appear smooth. The knee injury must have ended his football career. Her heart constricted.
At least Deet still had his life.
He flipped on the overhead light.
Marie winced. She knew she looked a mess—blood, mud, and dirt on her jeans. Scratches on her arms and hands. She was angry for feeling self-conscious, vain. She shifted her weight, easing the strain on her sprained ankle.
Deet stared, openmouthed.
She grimaced wryly. He was probably regretting he’d given his best pickup line to such an unappealingly dirty, battered-up woman.
“Look. I’m sorry. I’m behaving badly. Rudely. I think . . . I’m in shock. I’d give anything to be back in the city,” she rushed, words tumbling out of her mouth. “New Orleans. Start over. Have this day never happen. Three dead. Brutally murdered.” She exhaled. Marie fidgeted, wishing she could sit.
Deet kept staring.
A drunk tank was in the far corner. An overweight red-haired, red-freckled Cajun was passed out on a cot, a flannel blanket twisted about his chest. His jacket was balled into a pillow.
The only chair in the jail was behind the cluttered desk. There was a second cell, now empty. There was a bookcase filled with old telephone books, field guides, and racing manuals. A bulletin board had layers of the FBI’s most wanted flyers posted with thumbtacks.
“Sheriff, is there someone else I could talk to?”
“Deputy.”
“What?”
“I’m the deputy. My brother’s in charge.”
Her fists clenched. She wanted to scream.
“You were in the papers,” Deet said, stubbornly. “I saw your picture.”
Can you even read? Marie nearly shouted. But that wouldn’t be fair. This wasn’t New Orleans. No urban crime or gangs. No modern police department. Who would expect someone to walk into a small town—no, not even a town, a ramshackle village—insisting that three people were unnaturally dead?
“Can you get your brother—?”
“You’re that—”
“—the sheriff. Please. There’s been a crime.”
“You remind me of Nana.”
“Don’t you understand? There’s been a horrific murder.”
“She said you’d come.”
Marie cocked her head. The boy was crazy. But she noticed that he’d stepped back, lengthening the distance between them, as if she was the crazy one.
“She told us. Told us. Said you’d come. Aaron didn’t believe her. I did.”
“Shut de hell up,” came roaring from the corner. Marie, startled, clutched her chest. Definitely a shock reaction. Her hands and feet were growing cold.
“Shut up, Baylor.” Then, to Marie, “Drunk. He’ll be fine shrimping tomorrow.”
Deet opened the front door. Night air laced with crawfish, algae, and salt wafted in. “Baylor!”
“What?” Baylor growled, pummeling his jacket pillow.
“I’ll be back. Come on.”
“You’re talking to me?”
“You wanted the sheriff? Aaron won’t mind me waking Nana. Least I hope not.”
“What are you talking about?” Real people were sometimes harder to deal with than ghosts.
“Nana said the Voodoo Queen was coming. Said you’d be here. Nana knows. Knows everything,” Deet said, his head nodding, his hand wiping sweat from his brow. “Aaron didn’t want to believe her. I did. Wanted to see the famous queen. See the woman who’d taken Orleans’s hoodoo, by storm.” Even the Times-Picayune talks about you. ‘Just like they talked about Marie Laveau,’ said Nana. ‘People, newspapers, spreading your glory.’
“Come on.” He limped down the steps to a blue Ford pickup truck.
Marie smiled ruefully. Both of them were lame. Her right ankle had swelled to twice its size.
She got into the truck. Why not? The entire day had been her fa, fate. She was a doctor, solving crimes; a voodooienne, healing spiritual riffs. For both, you gathered clues, followed leads. Explored. Delved into the unknown. Not much difference in methodology, Detective Parks had taught her; and she had taught him that for a voodooienne, intuition could be divine grace.
The Ford turned right off Main Street and the gravel gave way to a narrowing, one-lane road. They bumped along, the truck rocking from side to side, past immobilized trailers on concrete blocks, shacks on stilts.
The Gulf was on the left and Marie could see mast lights, sparkling like Christmas, on shrimp trawlers, moored fishing boats. Not a single pleasure boat. But the boats with the lap, lap of the sea were more inviting than the dark, seemingly abandoned homes.
Deet didn’t say a word and she didn’t either.
In rural Louisiana, streetlamps, lights, and air conditioners were a luxury. Electricity was needed for freezing shrimp and catfish, and fueling backup generators during hurricanes. Unfortunately, decomposing bodies did just that, they decomposed.
She checked her cell. No signal. “Does this town have a name?”
“DeLaire. Used to be a plantation. Dating back to the seventeenth century. Most folks related.”
The truck jerked; the front-left wheel hit a small crater. The truck made a sharp turn. Marie’s head hit the side window. She cried out.
“What I tell you?” Deet’s hand slammed the wheel. “There’s Nana. She knew. Knows everything. Told Aaron. Told him. Nana knows everything.”
The truck bounced, shaking erratically, its headlights glaring, appearing, disappearing, and zigzagging among trees.
“See. There she is.”
“Where?” Marie peered. She saw the shack’s outline. Steps. A porch. Then she sat back, unnerved by a rail-thin figure—a seeming white-haired ghost in a flowing, white nightgown. One hand was wrapped about the post; the other held on to the rail tight, as if fearing the wind would blow her away.
“Nana knows everything.”
Marie kept silent, studying. The woman had Muskogeen in her—high cheekbones, long, straight hair. In Louisiana, slaves and native peoples had been intermarrying, intermingling blood for centuries.
Gears shifted into Park. Deet pulled the hand brake and cut the engine. “Nana,” he shouted out the window. “You knew, didn’t you?”
“Hush, boy. You want to wake the gators?”
Deet hop-skipped out of the truck, up the porch steps. Marie imagined that, as a toddler, he’d rushed toward his grandmother with the same delight.
She slid out of the car; her muscles had stiffened. She winced; it was difficult to put weight on her foot.
“You should be in bed,” said Deet, lifting Nana off the ground, giving her a hug.
Nana slapped his hands, saying, “Let me see. Let me see her.”
Marie hopped closer, wanting the woman to get a look at her. No surprises.
She stopped short.
Nana was blind, her eyes blue-gray with cataracts.
Nonetheless, Marie swore the old woman saw her. Saw her lean frame, her hair tied back, pants torn, blood and dirt on her clothes.
There was a portable oxygen tank on Nana’s left, and, drawing closer, Marie could see the clear plastic tube twisting upward to the clip on her nose.
A small dog barked from behind Nana’s nightgown. Marie stooped, patting its head. It was a pug with a wrinkly, smashed-in face, suede-colored fur, and black eyes. Its stubby tail wagged so hard, its whole body shook. Marie couldn’t help thinking the dog was ugly enough to be cute.
“Beau,” said Nana. “This be Beau.”
“Two years ago, he just wandered into our yard,” said Deet, “Attached himself to Nana.”
Beau licked Marie’s hand. She rubbed his ears.
“I dreamed you.” The voice was barely a whisper, cracking and strained.
Marie straightened, stared into vacant eyes.
“Last three days. Dreamed you were coming.” Nana gripped her hand. “Never expected you in my lifetime. Never expected the all powerful. To be here. In front of me.”
Marie cupped Nana’s wrinkled face. Beneath tissue-thin skin were spider veins, purplish, blue. Her palms felt the life inside the woman—the intelligence, the questing spirit.
Marie blinked: She saw Nana dead. Levitating skyward, arms outstretched, with wires, tubes in every orifice.
She gasped, stepping backward.
“You ain’t seeing nothing that I ain’t seen,” murmured Nana.
“You know?”
“Know what?” asked a gruff voice. “What’d you see?”
Marie turned, seeing a larger man—Deet’s uncle? older brother?—rising from behind Nana.
“You’ve scared Nana,” said Deet.
“Hush, Deet, Aaron. No one scares me. Never thought I’d live to see this day.”
The frail woman trembled, as if too much emotion had shaken her core.
Marie felt her magic. This woman was her—rather, who she’d be in fifty years. Similar height, weight, and spiritual gifts.
“I’ve seen my death,” Nana said, flatly, her hands squeezing Marie’s shoulders.
“What’re you talking about?” asked Deet.
“No,” said the other man, standing tall. Just a stubborn defiant “No.”
Nana pulled back, the moonlight illuminating the map of wrinkles on her face. “Everybody dies.” She caressed Marie’s unlined face. “Seen you, too. You came before it was too late. We ain’t the same, don’t be thinking it. I’m just an old hoodoo woman. You’re the Voodoo Queen.”
“You’re thinking of Marie Laveau, my ancestor.”
“Laveau never died. Don’t be thinking different. You’re you. But fa brought you here, you’re the bloodline that survived. You survived to put things right.”
Nana opened her arms; Marie stepped into her embrace.
Fear, doubt drained from Marie, leaving her body limp, her soul elated. Since coming to New Orleans, she’d tried to honor her calling. Her mother, buried in a Chicago grave, had disowned her heritage; and her grandmother, whom Marie had disowned, sold tawdry spells for profit, pandering to every tourist’s thrill-seeking stereotype.
“You were meant to do good in this world.”
Marie wanted respite, wanted to feel forever this elder woman’s love. She wasn’t sure she was ready to solve another set of murders.
“Nana, you should be back in bed,” said a gruff voice.
“My brother, Aaron, the sheriff,” said Deet. “He’ll help you.”
“A few miles back,” Marie murmured. “A family’s been murdered.”
Aaron stiffened, stone faced like Medusa’s victims.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“We know,” said Nana, softly. “Signs been everywhere. A bird’s nest fell from that very tree. Even though I can’t see, I saw it when it fell. Inside my head, the eggs rolling, rolling . . . them speckled eggs broken, cracked wide open. Baby birds dead.”
“Sheriff, I’ll take you to the scene.”
Aaron raised his hand. “I’ll get to it. Once I get Nana to bed.”
“We’ve wasted enough—”
“Nana, let’s get you into bed.”
“Plenty of time for bed,” said Nana stubbornly. “Every day’s not like today.”
Aaron grimaced. He was used to his orders being followed; but Marie could see his concern as he gently touched Nana’s arm.
“He’s right,” she said, pushing aside her worry about the crime scene degrading. Delay or not, the outcome wouldn’t change. The bodies wouldn’t resurrect. “You need your rest.”
“If you say so, child,” said Nana, her mood lifting, her voice crackling with laughter. “Never thought I’d see this day. My, my. Maman Marie.”
“You’re chilled, Nana.” Deet wrapped her woolen shawl about her shoulders.
“She wouldn’t sit, relax, until you came,” said Aaron. “Wouldn’t let me care for her.”
“Hush, Aaron. Sometimes I think you’re the old woman.”
Marie suppressed a smile.
Aaron led Nana, shuffling, into the house, as Deet followed, rolling the oxygen on wheels.
At first glance, the home seemed as straightforward as Nana—uncomplicated, uncluttered. A rugged oak dining table with a tin coffee mug and a blazing kerosene lamp. A coal-burning stove on the left. A teapot on the grill. Smells of rosemary, thyme, and leftover roast chicken. The fireplace burned a small stack of green wood. Past the fireplace, in the far-left corner, was a cot.
“Over here,” said Deet.
Marie, one hand on Nana’s back, turned right. Astonished, she felt she was back in the ER. A hospital bed was raised high, like a metal crane, in the far corner. Beside it was a rotating tray with a plastic cup and straw. Next to it was an IV tree. A respirator. Even a heart monitor. A portable defibrillator was nailed to the plank wall.
The Legend of Marie Laveau Mystery Trilogy Page 43
