FEVER DREAMS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery

by April Campbell Jones

  “You are in the wrong profession, Miss Bracken.”

  Olson pushed open the storm door again with his hip.

  We re-entered the house together, Olson flipping the wall switch, changing the living room from dark and ugly to bright and ugly.

  We headed back down the hall to Roger’s room, where the deputy also put on the lights.

  He stepped in, nodded at the still-broken, still-bloody glass of the window. “Don’t suppose you folks thought of entering through the already-open window?”

  “We thought of broken glass and fingerprints,” Katie told him.

  Olson smiled. “Going to wipe down the front door when you left?”

  “Why? We’ve already been guests of this house, our prints have an alibi there.”

  Olson shook his head, grinned, “Smart lady. You must love your work.”

  “Unlike you, Jimmy?”

  Olson walked around the messy room, hands on his creaking belt, eyes surveying the walls, the floor. “Hard to become a New York or Chicago detective when you’re poor white trash from Lake Charles…”

  “What about Colgate?” I asked, joining him with Katie.

  He grunted. “That’s all crap. A blind to get me hired by Cormac.”

  “Work your way up, huh?”

  “Theoretically. In reality, it’s tougher to get out of Manchac than get in. Can’t climb a ladder where there isn’t one, y’know?”

  “What about Cormac?”

  Olson stooped and pulled a book from a Roger’s tilting bookcase: Huckleberry Finn.

  He paged through it. “Probably the best novel in the entire world. Too bad Roger never read it. Never read, period.” He replaced the book, stood again thoughtfully. “Cormac.” Shook his heaed. “Cormac wants out of Manchac more than I do. Only he’s got a ladder. Maybe even a senate seat someday if he’s not too late.”

  He turned, looked around the debris-strewn room, shook his head. “Want to hear something funny?”

  We nodded.

  “Roger Robichou was a smart-ass kid, a pothead adolescent and crack-addicted young man. He’d have an apartment now and then just to get out of the house. I visited him on one or two occasions, after this ruckus or that. One thing about all those places he rented…”

  “They were neat as a pin,” Katie said.

  Olson turned to her with a long look. Then looked over at me. “You really should marry this woman, Elliot.”

  “How much do you know?” Katie pushed.

  “About what?”

  “Come on, Jimmy. Little Amy, of course.”

  “Is there something to know? I’m only twenty-six, a kid playing Dragnet in Lake Charles when all that went down twenty years ago. It’s a closed case. Why would I know about it?”

  “Why are you standing here in Amy’s brother’s room—another closed case—when the ME determined it was suicide?”

  “Do you think I suspect foul play, Katie?”

  “Do you?”

  Olson turned, began walking around the junk-filled room, picking things up, tossing them back. “I’ve been over everything. Thoroughly.”

  Katie nodded. “Thoroughly, but not all that methodically.”

  Olson lifted a brow. “Oh? And why’s that?”

  “Methodical is inspecting every piece of evidence carefully, with gloves and a microscope if they’re handy. You put everything back exactly like it was, in its own sloppy place. As though it were a crime scene.”

  “I could have just taken photos.”

  “But you didn’t. My aunt Lucy had a ceiling lamp just like that one…” She was staring at the single lamp that lighted the room above our heads. “Same design, same kind of fluted glass—early 50’s. I used to lie in bed on vacations and read dirty books by it when the others had gone to bed.”

  “Fascinating,” I sighed.

  Katie nodded. “That one needs a new bulb.”

  Olson followed her eyes. “How can you tell?”

  “Should be brighter. I watched my Uncle stand on a chair and change Aunt Lucy’s once. It’s a two-bulb model. He was a sweet man, my Uncle Stanley. Didn’t tell a soul when he found my dirty books hidden up there…”

  I turned quickly to her, finally catching up.

  Olson was ahead of me, already dragging a chair under the ceiling light.

  Katie held the back of it while he climbed up, stretched to the circular antique light--the dim glass still over his head—reached up and felt around the inner bowl. He pulled something free in a small shower of dead millers: an over-sized book.

  He climbed down and began leafing through it.

  “What is it?” Katie asked.

  Olson turned pages with interest, lingered, turned some more. “High school yearbook. ‘Manchac Raiders—1992, Property of Roger Robichou.”

  Katie and I waited patiently.

  Olson turned another pager. Another. Something slipped free and tumbled leaf-like to the floor. Katie caught it in her hands before it hit.

  I stepped up beside her. A polaroid.

  Deputy Olson craned toward us. “What is it?”

  Katie held up the snapshot of the two smiling adolescents, the taller one with his arm slung over the shorter one.

  Olson turned the photo toward him without taking it from his hand. “The short kid is Roger,” he nodded. “But who’s the taller one?”

  Katie held it close again. Finally looked up at us. “Cormac.”

  Olson blinked. “No shit?”

  Katie held the photo up. “The background behind them. That big wooden door. Looks like an old iron lock on it. Do you recognize it?”

  Olson handed the yearbook to me absently, concentrated intently on the old photo.

  “Look like any door here locally you might have seen?” Katie urged.

  Olson bit his lip reflectively. “Not sure…”

  “Listen to this!”

  They looked up at me. I had the yearbook cracked in my hands. “Here in the back, the ‘Friends Forever’ autograph section. Someone’s written Roger an inscription:

  “Toot sweet toot beet 4goten!”

  They were both staring anxiously at me when I looked up.

  “Is it signed?” from Katie.

  I nodded. “But it’s smeared. Either accidently or deliberately—only a couple of letters legible.”

  I held out the book to them, opened wide. “But I recognize that handwriting…”

  Olson jerked up at me. “You recognize it?”

  I nodded. “I’ve seen it somewhere. Can’t nail it, but I’d swear to it. And recently, I think.”

  “Think!” Katie insisted.

  I lowered my head, closed my eyes tight. “Wait a second…”

  “This is ridiculous,” Olson said, “you weren’t around back then any more than I was!”

  “Sh!” Katie urged, nodding at my upraised hand.

  I squeezed my eyes tighter, teeth gritted, pictured the yearbook handwriting in my mind.

  A desk swam up from the dark…a note pad of some sort…a parking citation warning signatures...

  The two signatures blended.

  I opened my eyes wide. “Cormac!”

  TWENTY

  Everything about the cemetery was creepy. A waking nightmare, really.

  Even the ancient cypress and willow forests surrounding it looked haggard and on the wane, a dun and withering six acres of land where Louisiana is usually green and lush. As if it presented itself like that on purpose; as if the dead preferred it that way.

  We arrived late. Angel Robichou’s scrappy directions may have sufficed for a local, but few of the serpentine marsh roads surrounding Manchac complied with anything like what Angel had described “as the crow flies.” More than once I came to wooded or swamp-locked dead ends, had to back up narrow, sometimes treacherous, cow paths, often at the tolerance of basking reptiles.

  The cemetery itself comes at you all at once at the top of a sandy ridge: a rusted-out, slowly disintegrating iron arch appears at th
e skyline, flanked on either side by a Renaissance tangle of iron fence, jutting spiked posts worn to nubbins by centuries of weathering. It took me a moment, as we passed under, to see the arches, generations-old wrought iron lettering peeking from the maze of creepers and Spanish moss. I ducked low at the dash, craned up but couldn’t make them out before the car’s roof obscured the overhang. I thought it read: --something Cemetery.

  “Was that first word Robichou?”

  Katie was checking behind us. “I think so.”

  “Yeah? The family owns the entire cemetery?”

  “Full of surprises, those Robichous.”

  I glanced out at the passing view of brooding headstones, looming monuments and sculptures, once alabaster white, now streaming rivulets of rust, some crumbling, some bearing solemn figures with beckoning arms, sightless eyes, missing limbs. “Decaying below and above,” I murmured. “The kind of place I dreaded I’d end up someday when I was kid. Only worse. Eerie…”

  Katie hunched down in her seat with a hooded look. “Haunted, I believe, is the word you’re looking for.”

  “Ever read any of those old horror comics from the 50’s, the creeping dead lumbering about the gravestones? I think this place was the artists’ inspiration.”

  “Probably not on the tourist’s information brochure. Didn’t they shoot part of The Omen here?”

  “I think that was just a set, not a real place.”

  “This is a real place? God, I’ll never sleep tonight.”

  “There’s Cormac’s patrol car...”

  “Where--?”

  I pointed. “Parked over there by that Cadillac hearse. Now I wish I hadn’t had the T-Bird painted black.”

  “Are those dreary-looking people beside the cars mourners?”

  “No, I’d say they’re pretty much already dead…”

  “George Romero.”

  “I loved that movie.”

  “Me too, ‘till now. Look how old they all are. You’d think there’d be some younger folks in attendance as well at a younger man’s funeral.”

  “Roger didn’t have many friends, apparently. Maybe he’ll make some here.”

  “That’s incredibly disrespectful, Elliot.”

  “Funny, though. And this place could use some laughs.”

  We pulled up behind the Tangipahoa Parish patrol car and I set the brake.

  Katie kept craning around with quick little jerks like a nervous squirrel.

  “What is it?”

  She finally turned to me. “Nothing. All those sculptures among the trees...”

  “It’s the light. It only looks like they’re moving.”

  “Thanks, Elliot, I needed that.”

  “You’re supposed to be the analytical mind here.”

  “Doesn’t mean I’m without an imagination.”

  We got out of the car, Katie looking suddenly small, pulled into herself. “I hate a gathering where you don’t know anyone.”

  “Especially when the gathered look already dead.”

  “You know the Robichous.”

  “I don’t see them, do you?”

  “Isn’t that Mr. Robichou over there… just to the right of that mausoleum?”

  Katie craned past the small host of wrinkled faces, black, wrinkled suits and dresses. “Yes, that looks like Dean.”

  “He doesn’t look good.”

  “What do you expect, Elliot?”

  “He looks drunk. Is that Cormac with him? I wonder if Deputy Olson came.”

  “Deputy Olson is with him!”

  We turned to find Jimmy climbing the hill toward us. “Good morning, folks. Though I suppose that’s mostly rhetorical today, isn’t it?”

  He wore a newly pressed uniform, service cap carried before him respectfully in both hands. Not looking his usual chipper self, but who was?

  We shook hands and I glanced around us. “Impressive place.”

  “Did you say ‘depressive’?”

  I smiled without mirth. “That too. Does this whole, enormous cemetery belong to Dean or did I misread the sign coming in?”

  Jimmy Olson looked back over his shoulder furtively. “I love that wrought iron entryway…always reminds me of shots I’ve seen of the entrance to Auschwitz. Work Or Die.”

  “Little late for these inmates,” I said.

  “Little late for the inmates of Auschwitz,” Katie put in.

  The deputy nodded. “Yeah, it belongs to Dean, him and his entire family tree, which goes back considerably from what I’ve heard. Before the Civil War even. Most of the vaults or mausoleums were constructed in the 19 century.”

  Katie gazed around us. “And most above ground, it seems. Is the soil really that porous?”

  Olson grunted. “Not really. It’s more folklore than fact.”

  Katie hit me with a told-you-so look.

  “It’s more French and Spanish tradition and custom rather than water table problems. These old stone-and-marble vaults are actually pretty airtight.” He gestured with his cap. “See that brownish line on the Robichou crypt? That’s Katrina.”

  I was amazed. “A waterline?”

  Olson nodded. “The cemetery received some serious flooding, but the tombs remained virtually untouched damage-wise. Built to last. I think one of the founding Robichous was an architect—knew his work.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Yeah. But St. Louis Cemetery down in New Orleans is the really interesting one. Small by comparison, only one square block, but home to thousands of deceased, including probably the area’s most famous. Dutch Morial is buried there, first African-American mayor of New Orleans. Bernare de Marigny, who brought the game of craps to America. Barthelemy Lafon, one of Jean Lafitte’s pirates. A number of notable jazz musicians. Renowned Voodoo priestess Marie Laveau—“

  Katie perked up. “I thought the swamp woman Mama Grace held the top honors. In fact, don’t some think her an incarnation of Marie Laveau?”

  Olson shrugged. “Don’t know about incarnations, but Marie Laveau, I believe, is interred at St. Louis—the Glapion family crypt, I think.”

  Katie nodded past us. “Here comes Angel Robichou…”

  I turned with the deputy, who bowed slightly to a drawn, waxy face, underscored by the black dress, hat and veil. “My deepest sympathies, Mrs. Robichou.”

  “Thank you.”

  Katie took her hand. “How are you holding up, Angel?”

  She shrugged small shoulders gone nearly frail. “Better than Dean, I think.”

  I glanced past them. Sheriff Cormac had his arm around Dean’s shoulders as if for support, Robichou turned away like he didn’t want to acknowledge the big stone crypt.

  Angel placed a cool hand over mine. “Thank you so much for coming. Elliot. We’re just about ready to start…if you…”

  “Sure.”

  An ancient-looking priest attended by a small black Bible stood solemnly, head down, before the crypt entrance as the mourners—what there were of them—gathered around.

  “Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth…”

  And after all that (delivered with senatorial sincerity), the Good Book was closed, the priest’s bald head and watery blue eyes rose to the group of mourners. “I did not have the pleasure of personally knowing Roger Herbert Robou…”

  I groaned inwardly. The same lame introduction I’d heard at least a dozen times by a minister-for-hire and revealing that neither Dean nor Angel nor their offspring were church-going people. A formality. From her place beside the crypt door, and from his own place half-hiding around the side of the structure, I could imagine what both mother and father Robichou were thinking as the priest droned on: where are you now, God: where were you back then?

  There was some further delay; though he tried, the father just could not bring himself to take hold of the brass rod that carried his son into the vault. Cormac took his place and we lifted, three men to a
side, a weighty, solid mahogany coffin--luminous with luster, intricately carved and beveled and decidedly expensive-looking—from the back of the hearse. I got a good grip and we strode forward, two stone steps up, and entered the cool, limestone-smelling crypt.

  It was basically a twenty-by-twenty foot room of solid stone, floor to ceiling, with a slight pitch to the roof. At room’s center was a marble plinth atop which had been placed a single marble tomb; there was no time to check it out but I assumed it belonged to a very senior member of the Robichou family, perhaps the very first interred. The entry wall was blank stone centered by what looked like an extremely heavy door: nearly black mahogany and brass hasps that had defied the humidity and rain for decades, maybe centuries. The only thing the least new looking about it was the shiny steel lock and plate, which required someone to fetch Dean to open it with a heavy, brass key. I thought for sure an additional two or three men would be needed to nudge the cyclopean door inward but it swung in smoothly on well-oiled hinges.

  The east and west interior walls were more grey stone, lined with evenly spaced rectangles of vault doors, each holding the remains of past family members of the Robichou line. A brass nameplate attached with thick studs held them in place at the exact center of each vault door; below each, a small stone shelf protruded with a small, simple vase for placing and replacing fresh flowers. Some held fresh arrangements, others blackened twigs, still others none at all. I hadn’t the time nor inclination to stand there counting, but I’d guess each wall contained maybe thirty or so burial vaults, rather like a Medical Examiner’s office. Another odor mingled with the smell of limestone, which I guessed was some form of mildew retarder.

  Dean Robichou did not enter the crypt. Angel stood quietly to one side while Cormac took momentary refuge from the casket handle to roll open the family vault with Roger’s nameplate. I let my eyes travel over the vault opposite, discovered Amy’s nameplate amid the rows of other vaults: 1986-1992 but the deceased’s death date was blemished, raked over and scored with wild gashes from a chisel or other blunt instrument in what appeared to have been a hasty, emotional attempt to cross out the deceased date, which wasn’t ever truly confirmed.

  The very heavy crypt door and need of the brass key ruled out any vandalism notion in my mind; who and why would anyone wish to desecrate a child’s last resting place? Which left only a family member for a suspect, Angel Robichou, I guessed. She had, after all, summoned Katie’s help, and from the moment I’d set eyes on her I was convinced Angel still held out hope her eight-year-old daughter yet lived. There were fresh flowers in the shelf vase below the child’s vault: violets, their fragrance more noticeable the longer we stood. It was Amy’s fragrance; from violets picked, I had little doubt, from the marsh behind the Robichou house.