Something Foul at Sweetwater

by Sandra Bretting

  The group linked arms around the fire, and everyone stared at the person who seemed to be in charge. She was a tall, African-American woman, who towered over them on a ladder propped against the pit. She wore a batik headdress, a speckled ivory scarf, and a wraparound skirt. When she opened her mouth, the reedy soprano I’d heard earlier poured out. Higher and higher she sang, the words hopscotching over one another:

  I—the Voodoo Queen,

  With my lovely head kerchief

  Am not afraid of tomcat shrieks,

  For I drink serpent venom!

  Every once in a while, the woman grasped her scarf and twisted it, as if it were a wet dish towel in need of wringing.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I flinched and turned.

  Ambrose stood right beside me, as unexpected as a lightning strike.

  “Don’t do that! You scared me half to death!”

  “Me? You’re not supposed to be here.”

  “Shhh.” The last thing we needed was to be spotted by the crowd. “Do you want them to hear us?”

  “What I want you to do is go back to the car.”

  I pointed at the singer. “But what’s she doing?” Maybe if I distracted him, Ambrose would let me stay.

  “Beats me.” He reached for something in his pocket. “But I have a feeling we can find someone who knows.” Out came his cell, which he turned to record by pushing a button on the screen.

  “Brilliant,” I said.

  Now the scarf around the singer’s neck began to writhe, as if it was folding inward to escape the heat. The woman held one end between her thumb and index finger, while the other end flailed.

  “My god,” Ambrose said. “She’s wearing a snake.”

  “She can’t be.”

  “I swear that’s a buttermilk racer.”

  Blithely, the singer plucked the racer from around her neck and began to swing it over the flame. All the while she sang:

  Ena! Ena!

  Akout, Akout an deye

  Jocomo fi nou wa na né

  Jockomo fi na né

  “Akou!” the crowd responded.

  As Ambrose’s cell captured the singing, I studied the faces in the firelight. Most belonged to middle-aged women dressed in batik cloth. Whorls of color and splashes of dye appeared on knotted head scarves, loose dresses, and flowing skirts swept to one side. A few of the women cradled drowsy babies on their shoulders. No one spoke, except for a shouted response or two.

  Behind the scene, almost hidden by an enormous oak, stood a lone figure. The wan teenager had dirty-blond hair and a slight build, and he wore the same sleeveless T-shirt and running shorts I’d seen before. At a derelict mobile home, wasn’t it?

  Hollis Oubre, Ruby’s grandson, stared at the fire pit, along with the rest of the crowd.

  When the singer arced the snake higher and higher, prepared to dash it into the fire, I lurched forward.

  “Don’t. Not yet.” Ambrose had clamped his hand on my shoulder.

  The poor animal thrashed. At the last second, the singer changed her mind and flung it into a clearing at the edge of the property, where it landed with a thud and then barrel-rolled away.

  No one moved. The only sound was the snap and pop of burning wood. Just when I thought the silence would go on forever, that we’d all stare at the fire until nothing was left but smoke and embers, a noise hummed next to me. A different noise, which began softly and quickly crescendoed. It was the opening notes of a trumpet melody. And it sounded suspiciously like the fight song for Auburn University.

  “Ambrose!”

  He’d downloaded that song as a ringtone only a week ago.

  Quickly, he slapped at the phone and the music died. But it was too late. The crowd turned in unison to stare at us. Everyone looked amazed, as if we’d been the ones who were conjured by fire and might disappear in a puff of smoke.

  Ambrose grabbed my hand. “Let’s go.”

  There was no time to think, no time to do anything but follow him as he pulled me away from the crowd.

  Thankfully, no one came after us. Then again, my heart beat so loudly in my chest that all other noise fell away. We ran through the front yard and barreled through the live oaks lining the walk. I stumbled on an exposed root and nearly fell but, thankfully, Ambrose steadied me.

  When we arrived at the Audi, he threw open my car door. “Hop in!”

  I jumped onto the seat and he slammed the door. Then he ran over to his side, jumped into the driver’s seat and engaged the ignition, before we finally roared away.

  I tumbled against the seat cushion. Could it be that only a few minutes earlier we’d arrived at Sweetwater on little cat feet, as that famous poet would say? We’d even doused the headlights for good measure.

  Now we careened down the driveway, the scenery jerking by my window. Instead of watching the trees, though, I stared through the windshield. The image of a writhing snake danced before my eyes, and then an awestruck crowd and a wan teenager who skulked in the background. What was Hollis Oubre doing there?

  More images came to mind. Flames that splashed white against the trees. The shock on Ambrose’s face when his cell phone sounded. And the way we’d crashed through the woods afterward.

  A giggle suddenly tickled the back of my throat. I gulped, trying to squelch it, but it refused to back down. After a minute, I gave in and burst out laughing.

  Ambrose eyed me as if I was insane. Then, gradually, his shoulders trembled and a laugh worked its way out.

  “Ambrose!” I couldn’t watch him and hope to catch my breath, so I twisted in my seat and faced the door. Ropey vines rolled past the window, the shadowy kudzu still devouring everything in its path. “Stop it! I can’t breathe.”

  “What?” He spoke between peals of laughter. “It’s. Not. My. Fault.”

  All the while we continued to drive, darkness blotting out the familiar sights.

  “By the way,” I finally said. “Who would be calling you at one in the morning?”

  “Hell if I know.” He took a deep breath. “Probably a crazy bride. Wants to change her hemline or something.”

  “You know they coulda roasted us back there. Forget the snake—we were next!”

  That brought on more laughter. Good thing he was an excellent driver and he maneuvered the steering wheel with one hand while he held his side with the other.

  “You’re hopeless.” Finally, I lowered my feet back to the floorboards. “What are we gonna do with you?”

  “Me? I remember telling you to stay in the car, where you’d be safe. No one asked you to come out like that.”

  “I’m glad I did. I wouldn’t have missed that for the world. A real voodoo ceremony. It was the queen Odilia told me about . . . Mother Belle. I’m sure of it.”

  “Queen?”

  I nodded, although he wasn’t watching me. “Odilia said there’s a voodoo queen around here who does something called black magick.”

  “She looked possessed. And that chant—”

  “Thank goodness you got it on your phone. I’ll play it for Ruby in the morning.” My thoughts returned to the caretaker and her derelict mobile home by the dock. The one with a mishmash of crosses and a sallow teenager in the kitchen. The memories quickly sobered me up.

  “I forgot to tell you,” I said. “I recognized someone back there.”

  “Who?”

  “The kid in shorts. Way in the back. It was Ruby’s grandson, Hollis. He lives with her.”

  “Guess he also goes to voodoo ceremonies.”

  “That’s the thing. It’s awful late for him to be out on a school night.”

  Ambrose shrugged. “Maybe he’s homeschooled.”

  “That’s what he said. But I didn’t see any textbooks or papers or even a computer at his house.”

  “Interesting.” Ambrose reached into the pocket of his jeans, and then he pulled out the cell and tossed it to me. “Maybe his grandmother can make some sense of this tomorrow.”

&
nbsp; I caught the phone warily, as if it might burn my fingers. Although I’d offered to hunt down Ruby and play the recording for her, part of me wished I’d never made that promise. I quickly glanced at the call log on his phone. “By the way, your call back there came from the 228 area code.”

  “Mississippi? I’ve got a bride from Gulfport right now. Crazy as hell. No doubt it was her.”

  “Okay, Ambrose.” I slowly lowered the phone. “I’ll go back to Ruby’s place. But now that I’ve seen an actual voodoo queen, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  Chapter 8

  I awok e the next morning to a soft knock on my bedroom door. Daylight slanted through the window and pooled beside me on the bed. Groaning, I rolled over and closed my eyes again.

  “You awake?”

  It was Ambrose, of course, speaking to me from the other side of the door. Why did I have to live with such an early riser?

  “No. Go away.” Grudgingly, I popped one eye open and squinted at the clock on my nightstand. “It’s only been five hours. Let me sleep.” A second later, guilt kicked in. “All right. Come on in if you have to.”

  The door swept open and he entered the room with a heavy sterling tray. He’d loaded the antique tray, which we normally reserved for guests, with a stack of blueberry pancakes and a giant coffee mug.

  “Here you go, sleeping beauty.” He gently placed the bounty on the mattress beside me.

  I uncurled my legs and sat up. First things first. Steam rose from the coffee mug as I brought it to my lips. After two sips, I found my voice. “You’re too good to me, Bo.”

  “Probably. But we had a rough time last night.” He had eased himself onto a corner of the mattress, careful not to jiggle the tray.

  “Okay . . . I give up,” I said. “Why are we awake so early?”

  “Fair question. Remember that phone call last night?”

  “How could I forget?”

  He passed me a fork from the tray. “I was right. It was the bride from Gulfport.”

  “At one in the morning?” I took the fork and stabbed the top pancake. Sometimes Bo’s clients had no respect for his time. Even though he didn’t seem to care, I did. He was much too talented for that. “I hope you told her off.”

  “Really?” He arched an eyebrow. “That’s your secret for keeping customers? Actually, I called her back from the kitchen and made an appointment with her for this morning. Might as well get it over with.”

  “This morning? But Bo . . .” There went my plan to spend a few hours with him as I slowly recovered from the craziness of the night before.

  “I know . . . I don’t like it either. But she’s panicked. And I took a call for you right afterward.”

  “Me?” I bit into the warm pancake, the blueberry juice flavoring it perfectly.

  “It was Lance LaPorte. He’s at the police station and he wants to talk to you.”

  It seemed like days—not just hours—since I’d stood under the pale fluorescent lights at the station and talked to Lance about the coroner’s report. I’d pretended to focus on him, when what I really wanted was to grab the folder with its shiny seal from the St. James Parish coroner’s office and run. “How’d he get our telephone number?”

  “Your assistant must have given it to him.”

  Leave it to Beatrice to get to the shop at the crack of dawn. “Gotcha.”

  “Anyway, Lance wants to get together with you this morning,” Ambrose said. “Told me you should meet him at the substation.”

  “Then I guess I should go. But let me finish my breakfast first. It’s delicious, by the way.”

  Ambrose patted my knee as he rose. “Glad you like it. I’ll be gone a few hours, so don’t wait on me for anything. I’ve got a pretty big backload right now.”

  “That’s because everyone wants to work with you, Bo. They all know you’re the best.”

  “You must still be dreaming.”

  “No, I mean it.” I set my fork on the tray. While I loved to tease him, I’d never kid Ambrose about his work. He could’ve chosen to stay in New York at a big-name fashion house, but he came down to the Great River Road instead. We were lucky to have him. “Isn’t it time for you to hire some help? Yeah, you’ve got your seamstresses, but you need someone else. You can’t keep working yourself to death.”

  “We’ll see.” He grinned and tapped his finger against his chin.

  I took the hint and wiped some powdered sugar from my skin. “Thanks, darlin.’ And don’t forget to call me.”

  “Of course.”

  The minute he left the room, the delicious smell of his Armani cologne began to fade. I sighed and tucked back into my breakfast, missing him already.

  Once I finished breakfast, I clamored out of bed and set the empty tray on the ground. My gaze flitted across the room to my closet, where a tangle of summer dresses, pastel polos, and capris tried to muscle each other out of the way. Poor things probably needed some fresh air.

  It happened every wedding season. By August, my room looked like a hoarder’s, and I could never find two shoes that matched.

  I walked over and reached for a Lilly Pulitzer shift slanted on its hanger, which happened to be a personal favorite. After slipping into it, I headed for the bathroom, where I rubbed some concealer under my eyes, gathered my hair into a French twist, and brushed my teeth. Hopefully, I looked more respectable than I felt.

  I yawned and ambled into the kitchen with my breakfast tray. I continued to yawn all the way to my car, while driving down the road and, finally, as I pulled into the parking lot of the police substation. By then I didn’t even bother to cover my mouth.

  Only two cars sat on the hot asphalt lot so early in the morning. Then again, it was a Tuesday, so maybe things were getting back to normal after a busy weekend.

  I pulled up next to Lance’s buggy squad car, walked around it, and then made my way into the building. Lance noticed me as soon as I arrived.

  “Hey, there. You got my message.” He stood next to the low counter, a navy splotch in a sea of beige.

  “Yeah, Ambrose told me.” Briskly, I rubbed my arms. “Heavens to Betsy. Why does it always feel like a meat locker in here?”

  He chuckled. “You’re complaining to the wrong guy. They set the temperature at headquarters.” He pushed the secret button beneath the counter and the gate popped open. “C’mon back.”

  I followed him into the room, past file cabinets the color of warm toast and Formica desks dotted with cheap picture frames. A few crayoned drawings hung from the fabric walls; mostly stick figures with enormous heads and no feet.

  Lance stopped behind one of the messier desks, of course. A slew of folders lay on its top, and darn if one of them didn’t have the shiny foil seal of the St. James Parish coroner’s office. It was different from the one I’d seen yesterday, though. Here we go again.

  “I’ll drive us to breakfast.” Lance twirled a key ring in the air, obviously unaware of my wandering gaze.

  “Uh?”

  “Breakfast. I thought we’d get something to eat. My treat.”

  “Hmmm. I’d go with you, but I’m pretty full. Ambrose made me a stack of pancakes this morning.”

  Lance smirked. “Do tell.”

  “What? We’re just friends. Good friends. He has his room and I have mine. Honestly. Get your mind out of the gutter.”

  “Whatever you say. Let’s get going. You can have some coffee while I eat.”

  “Give me a minute.” Casually, I pulled over a chair that belonged to a neighboring desk and sat. “Do you mind if we chat for a second first?”

  Lance wouldn’t bring the coroner’s report with him to breakfast, and I was so curious about its contents I could’ve burst. I’d already burned holes in the cover with my staring.

  “But I was kinda hoping to catch up with you,” he said. “You know, talk about old times.”

  “Sure, we can do that. In a minute. By the way, I saw your mom last night.”

  Reluctantly, h
e sank into his desk chair. “All right, we’ll do it your way. I’m not that hungry. How’s my mom?”

  “She’s great. And her food was terrific.” I eyed my old friend. “And I can chitchat with you about her restaurant until the cows come home. But you and I both know what I really want.”

  He followed my gaze to the folder, which lay between us. “I know. But just once I’d like to chat with you about something other than police work.”

  “We will. Once we start figuring out what happened to Mellette Babineaux. I promise.”

  He nodded at the report. “I know you’re upset about it. But I can’t figure why her murder has you so worked up. It’s not like you two were family or anything.”

  “Yeah, she was family . . . in a way. She and I were sorority sisters back at Vanderbilt.”

  Lance dismissed the comment with a wave of his hand. “I wouldn’t know about any of that stuff. Never got involved in that whole fraternity, sorority thing.”

  “Well, I got into it. They were like my sisters.” My mind immediately reeled back to the faces of my pledge sisters, some of whom I hadn’t seen in ten years. There was Darcy, who jogged ten miles every time she had a hangover, which ultimately earned her a spot on our school’s track team. And Savannah, whose rich grandaddy flew her to South America every other weekend, while I scraped together quarters for Taco Bell. Or Blaire, who ended up owning an internet company and probably ruled half the world by now.

  “Mellette Babineaux would have done the same thing for me.”

  “Okay, okay. Whatever you say. So you two were tight.”

  I shook my head to clear the memories. “Not tight, exactly. But I still feel like I owe her; like I should help her if I can. But I don’t want to get you into trouble here.”

  “Don’t worry, you won’t.” His hand stilled over the folder. “And if this is what you want . . . I have some bad news. The coroner didn’t find anything.”

  “I knew that was an autopsy report. How’d they finish it so soon?”