Something Foul at Sweetwater

by Sandra Bretting

  “I wanted to show my friend the studio out back,” I said. “That’s where we found her.”

  More writing on his part. “I know. Dispatch told us that, so my partner is out there now. We’ll start with that area and establish the chain of custody.”

  I nodded again. That was a term I was very familiar with, since I’d taken a couple of classes in police procedures as an undergrad at Vanderbilt. At one time I actually toyed with the idea of law school, until I took those classes and realized I’d rather spend my time with sketch pads than cops’ notebooks or legal briefs.

  “Did you see anything else unusual?” He finally lowered his gaze from my face.

  “Now that you mention it, I did.” Hadn’t I been surprised to see Herbert Solomon’s Rolls-Royce hulking outside the house earlier? The man lived in Baton Rouge, after all, which was almost two hours away. He didn’t say anything about having an appointment with a real estate agent and that seemed a little strange.

  “We ran into Herbert Solomon when we got here,” I said.

  Even though he hadn’t met Mellette, odds were good he’d know about Louisiana’s most famous billionaire.

  “I’ve heard of ’im. So he was here too. Coming or going?”

  “Going. Told me he couldn’t find the Realtor here. Didn’t even know if it was a guy or a gal.”

  “Did he seem upset?”

  I thought back to our meeting on the lawn. “More mad than upset. I assumed he wanted to buy this place, only he couldn’t find anyone to talk to.”

  “Anyone with him?”

  “No, that was it. But I did meet someone else on my first visit.”

  He squinted up at me. “First visit?”

  “I’m interested in buying this place too. But I had to drag my friend along so he could see it for himself.”

  “So you met someone else then?”

  “Sure enough . . . a caretaker by the name of Ruby,” I said. “Don’t think she liked me, though.”

  “Why’s that?”

  I shrugged. “Apparently it’s bad voodoo to visit someone around here first thing on a Monday morning. If you’re a woman, anyway. I’d never heard that before.”

  “You’re not from around here, are you?” Officer Hernandez seemed surprised—or was he amused?—by my ignorance.

  “No. I moved to town about a year and a half ago. I live down the road. Didn’t even know the mansion was for sale until this morning.”

  “Tell me more about the caretaker.”

  “There’s not a whole lot to say. She seemed to think they did voodoo ceremonies around here a while ago, or some-such thing. Said something about amulets and charms. Does that mean anything?”

  Now it was his turn to shrug. “It could. We get strange stuff out here. Think that’s enough for now. You’ll be free to go in a minute.”

  “But aren’t you going to ask me to come back with you to the station so you can write up my statement?” That’s how they explained it back in those classes at Vanderbilt.

  “Definitely. But we have to wrap up things here first. Get our report to Investigative Support Services. You can go, though. Do you have a ride home?”

  “I drove over with my friend.” That’s when I remembered Ambrose. Poor thing was still trapped in the shed with Mellette’s limp body and a police officer. “I’d better go find him.”

  I hastily said good-bye to the officer and stepped through the kitchen door. Somehow the sky seemed darker now than when we first arrived. I tiptoed along the garden path and met up with Ambrose about halfway down.

  “Hi, Bo. Did they ask you a lot of questions too?”

  “Sure did.” Ambrose looked drained. “The guy seemed surprised I didn’t know the lady lying on the floor next to me. Once he got past that, though, he said I could go. Said something about you and me heading over to the police station later.”

  I nodded. “I know. By the way, was she—”

  “Yes. She’s dead.” Ambrose stopped in the middle of the path, his eyes haunted. “But there’s something else, Missy.”

  “What is it?”

  “I saw something back there in the shed. Something strange.”

  I laid my hand on his shoulder. “We found a dead body, Bo. Of course you saw something strange.”

  “No, it’s not that.” He shrugged my hand away. Whatever he’d seen, it’d shaken him to the core.

  “Tell me. What’s wrong?”

  “Somebody left a cross back there. A black cross.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “I don’t know. But there’s more.”

  How could there be more? Already my legs felt like muscadine jelly, and I longed to sit on a garden bench or a backyard swing or even an overturned bucket.

  “There was something on the cross. Looked like blood to me. Fresh blood too.”

  “But that would mean . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Yeah. They must have killed her right before we got here.”

  I sagged forward, suddenly winded. Thankfully Ambrose caught me and steadied me against his chest. Why, oh why, did we ever come back to the Sweetwater mansion?

  We remained like that for several minutes, each of us lost in thought. Finally, some feeling returned to my legs, and I straightened.

  “Whatever we do, Bo, we’ve got to find out what happened. Mellette Babineaux and I went to college together. Same sorority and everything.”

  “Okay.” His eyes narrowed. “But you have to promise me you won’t go running off by yourself. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “I promise.” I raised my hand in the Boy Scout salute to prove it.

  “The only question is . . . where do we start?”

  “My granddaddy always said it’s best to start at the beginning and keep going ’til you get to the end.”

  Of course, my dear granddaddy stole that line from a famous picture book about a girl and a white rabbit, but that was neither here nor there at this point. Somehow, Ambrose and I had landed smack-dab in the middle of another crime scene. Time would only tell if we’d stumbled down a rabbit hole of our own.

  Chapter 3

  Once we finished up at the police station, Ambrose and I were free to go. We drove away in his Audi and soon pulled up to our rent house, where a bramble of butterflies met us at the garden gate and a half-eaten sack of beignets still sat on the kitchen table.

  After entering the room, I wandered to the sink and began to rinse a coffee mug. My heart wasn’t in it, though, and I sensed Ambrose when he walked up behind me.

  “You’re going to scrub that cup to a nub,” he whispered over my shoulder.

  Which was true enough. “I know, but I can’t figure out what to do next. It’s like I want to know what happened back at Sweetwater, but I don’t.”

  “Tell you what.” He took hold of my shoulders and twisted me around until I faced him. “You let that dish alone. Go on down to your shop and get some work done. It’ll be a sight more productive than moping around here.”

  Of course, he was right. “But what about you? I hate to leave you after everything that happened to us this morning.”

  He waved away my concern. “I’ll be fine. I’m going to answer a few e-mails and then straighten out my bookings for the week. We can meet up later at the Factory.”

  “If you insist.”

  The Factory was our nickname for the shopping center where we both kept studios. Even though the developers labeled it the Pepper Palace, since it was once a spice factory, no one ever called it by its given name.

  I glanced around the quiet kitchen, searching for my car keys. Like it or not, standing at the kitchen sink and worrying a coffee mug to death wasn’t going to do anyone a lick of good. After spotting them by the unread mail, I dropped the keys into my pocket. “Call me if you hear anything. Anything at all. Especially from those police officers.”

  He rolled his eyes, which I pretended not to notice as I left the kitchen and made my way to the car. />
  Thank goodness Sweetwater lay in the opposite direction from the Factory. I hopped into my VW bug—which I’d named Ringo, since it was a Beetle—and pulled onto the highway. After a moment, I drove by a sugarcane field, where row upon row of chubby plant stalks grew knee-high on their way to a September harvest.

  Another mile or so and my view changed. Now a Union Carbide plant burped steam high in the air, its bright silver tubes scaffolding the furnace stacks. The end stack always reminded me of a giant birthday candle with a hot orange flame that licked the sky.

  At this point, everything around looked slick and shiny. Especially since midday sun ricocheted off all of the metal and glanced through Ringo’s windshield.

  No wonder my shirt collar felt damp. Fortunately, the turnoff for Highway 18 appeared after a moment.

  Two more miles and I arrived at the Factory. Hallelujah, someone had saved the ancient building from the wrecking ball and converted it to a “shopping and dining destination.” With weathered bricks on the outside and original wide-plank floors on the inside, the Pepper Palace was now a showplace for brides and grooms. Crowning Glory lay on the ground floor, next to Ambrose’s Allure Couture, Brooke’s Bridal Portraits, and Flowers by Dana.

  All of us catered to brides in one way or another. One of my favorites—outside of Ambrose’s studio, of course—was Pink Cake Boxes, on the second floor. And not just because the baker passed out samples every Tuesday and Friday afternoon between 1:30 and 2:00, mind you.

  I drove into the parking lot and pulled up alongside my assistant’s battered pickup. I’d first met Beatrice when she worked as a tour guide at Morningside Plantation. That was before Herbert Solomon bought the place and fired its staff lock, stock, and barrel.

  Usually I found Bea organizing receipts by the cash register, and today was no exception. She glanced up when I walked through the door, an enormous pair of rhinestone earrings brushing the collar of her Carhartt work shirt. That was Beatrice . . . hard and soft. Ironwood denim and sparkly jewels. A rusty Ford pickup she’d painted bubblegum pink.

  “Hey, I didn’t expect you to come in today,” she said.

  “I know. I was gonna take the day off. But you wouldn’t believe the morning I’ve had.”

  “What happened?” She patted the stool next to her.

  I dropped my purse behind the counter and slid onto the stool. “It all started when Ambrose got a hankering for beignets.” Amazing to think that such an innocent craving could lead to so much drama. “Only instead of going to the bakery, I stopped by the Sweetwater mansion.”

  She tilted her head. “I heard that one’s for sale now.”

  “Yeah.” Although, by now, that was beside the point.

  “My uncle told me about it. Said it’s a shame no one in the family wants it.”

  “That’s right. I forgot your uncle sells real estate.” Beatrice had once tacked a calendar in our break room that had his picture splashed across the front. He wore an amazingly gaudy shirt in the photo that was hard to forget.

  “I wanted Ambrose to see the house,” I said. “But we found Mellette Babineaux in the cottage out back. I’m afraid she was dead.”

  Beatrice’s hand flew to her mouth. “You can’t be serious.” She whispered the words through her fingertips. “Are you sure?”

  I nodded gently. “’Fraid so.”

  “What happened?”

  “I called 9-1-1 and got some police officers down there. They took over, so I really don’t know after that. Her body was all twisted, though, and her face looked gray, like someone had tried to polish it with silver cleaner. Strangest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Gray, huh?” Beatrice studied the floorboards beneath us while we spoke.

  “Yep, that’s what it looked like to me.”

  “Light gray or dark gray?”

  I was about to shrug when I remembered why Beatrice might ask that. She’d once studied chemistry at LSU. Until she read Pharmaceutical Analysis and decided she’d rather die than memorize API structures. She’d know what to make of Mellette’s skin coloring.

  “Light gray. Ashy.”

  “Sounds like someone poisoned her.” She finally glanced up. “Probably one of the acids.”

  “Could be. I didn’t see any wounds. And no one knows how long she’d been lying there.”

  “I still can’t believe it,” she said. “Who’d do that? I worked for Miss Babineaux one summer when she and my uncle were partners. Such a great lady. Can’t imagine someone would want to kill her.”

  “I thought she seemed nice too, when I met her this morning. We’re sorority sisters, you know. She went to Vanderbilt a few years before me. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Mellette and I had chatted about our time in college only a few hours before. We’d stood on those beautiful hardwood floors, which looked like still water beneath my feet, next to an enormous tapestry of herons two-stepping somewhere in the Gulf. I could almost taste the sweet tea Ruby had brought me.

  “Say, I met someone else. The caretaker. She got me some tea. But, boy, did she give me the heebie-jeebies.”

  “You must mean Ruby. She’s been there forever. And I know what you’re saying about creepy. She lives out back on the bayou . . . so there you go.”

  My eyes widened. “Do people really live out there?”

  “Heck, yeah. A bunch of people. All around the Atchafalaya River, where Miss Ruby comes from.”

  The last time I saw her, Ruby had watched Mellette and me from by the staircase. There was no telling what she’d seen or heard since then.

  “Think I should go talk to her?” I asked. “She might know what happened this morning, and the police didn’t seem interested in her when I brought her up.”

  “You?” Beatrice began to chuckle, but she stopped when she saw my face. “Missy, I don’t mean to disrespect you, but it’s kinda wild on the river. You can’t go out there in high heels and expect anyone to take you seriously.”

  “Why not? I’m sure I can manage.” I tried to not sound hurt, even though my pride had been wounded for the second time in one day. Sounded like no one was interested in finding out what had happened to my sorority sister, and that struck me as downright shameful.

  “Most people paddle a pirogue out there. Do you even know what that is?”

  “A pir-what?” I’d never heard the term before.

  “It’s a boat. A long, narrow one. Please tell me you’ve seen a picture somewhere.”

  “Can’t say that I have. How do I get one?” My stubborn side had kicked in, and now I was determined to speak with the gal from this morning.

  “Well, they rent ’em out to people who hunt for wood ducks and deer. But then they’ll want to give you a full tour. Course, you can always borrow one. My uncle has one. He bought it so he could figure out the property lines around here.”

  “Think he’d loan it to me?”

  “You’re serious?” she asked. “You want to float the Atchafalaya and find Miss Ruby?”

  I drew back my shoulders so at least I’d look confident. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll ask him. He’s got a flatback with a motor, so you wouldn’t even have to paddle.”

  “Whatever you say.” Truth be told, I knew as much about a flatback or a pirogue as I did about a wood duck. “I could use a tour guide, though. Wanna help me?”

  Now it was her turn to look surprised. “Me? But then who’ll watch the shop?”

  “You let me worry about that. I’ll forward the calls to my cell—” I paused. For some reason, the pocket that usually held my cell felt unusually light. I patted the material, which lay flat against my leg. Empty as a drum.

  And then I remembered: the kitchen at Sweetwater. I’d tossed the phone onto the counter once the police officer arrived.

  “Sugar!” I said. “I must have left my cell at Sweetwater.” No matter . . . I could always get it later. “Right now you call your uncle while I put a note up in the window. We don’
t have any appointments this afternoon. I already checked. Let’s get out of here before I change my mind.”

  * * *

  Next thing I knew, Beatrice and I had arrived at her uncle’s house. The turn-of-the-century cottage had a pitched, shingled roof, baskets of flowers hanging over the front porch, and a lush side garden. A wood canoe sat on blocks in the driveway.

  I parked Ringo and we both walked over to it. The seats were made of white oak slats and a five-horsepower Honda motor perched at the very end.

  “How do you suppose we get it in the water?” I asked.

  “My uncle will help us. No way we can carry it with that motor.”

  Just then, a man emerged from the house and joined us. He wore a different shirt than the one I’d seen in the calendar—praise the Lord—but I’d recognize him anywhere.

  Deeply tanned, with a square jaw and thick black hair, he was handsome in a rugged kind of way.

  “Hey, Beatrice.” He gathered his niece in a bear hug.

  “Uncle Hank,” Beatrice squeaked. “This here is my boss, Missy DuBois. The one I told you about.”

  “Course. Of course.” He finally let go of Beatrice and stuck out his hand. “I’ve heard all about you and your store. Don’t worry, it’s all good.”

  I shook his hand, which felt surprisingly rough. “Well, that’s nice to hear.” I thought Realtors spent their days inside, typing contracts or filing folders or whatnot, but this man’s hand was as tough as an alligator’s back.

  “Bea here says you want to go on the bayou this morning. Good day for it. Wind’s down and the weather’s tolerable.” He pointed at the pirogue. “Let me give you a lesson.”

  Beatrice stepped in front of him. “That’s okay, Uncle. I’ll steer, so she doesn’t have to. We’re headed out to Miss Ruby’s, about three miles in, from what I could see on the parish assessor’s website.”

  He beamed. “This one here’s quite the detective. We used to give her MoonPies, back when she was a little thing, for digging up records at the county courthouse. ’Til she outgrew her blue jeans. Ain’t that right, Bea?”