“Of course not,” said Piper. “What time?”
“Ten o’clock at Our Lady of Guadalupe. We could meet there.”
“Sure. Whatever works for you.” Piper nodded, admiring Marguerite’s courage and hoping that that strength would stand her in good stead in the painful days to come.
Piper locked the door behind Marguerite, then immediately went to the closet, pushed back her clothes on the rack, and made sure the door to the dumbwaiter was closed tight. Though the police had called animal control to remove the snake, just the thought of the slithering reptile made Piper’s skin crawl.
Next she called Jack. She was bummed when she got his voice mail. He was probably in some Manhattan bar with his FBI buddies throwing a few back for St. Paddy’s Day.
She left a message.
“Jack. It’s me. Just wanted to hear your voice and fill you in on the latest. Call me.”
She looked at her watch. It was after eleven. Piper thought of calling her parents but decided against it. They would be beside themselves with worry if she told them what had happened. They would have to find out eventually, but what was the point of telling them now and having them spend a sleepless night? There was nothing they could do from New Jersey anyway.
Piper knew that she wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep. She walked out onto the balcony and looked down. The police cars were gone, but there were still plenty of pedestrians on the street. The Gris-Gris Bar remained open.
She didn’t want to be alone.
There were fewer people in the bar than there had been earlier in the night. Most had gone home after the events across the street had taken much of the excitement and celebration from the evening. But when Piper entered, she was greatly relieved to be with the living, breathing human beings who remained.
Falkner was the first to notice, beckoning her to come over and join him at the bar. She gladly sat next to him. Wuzzy immediately came over and took Piper’s drink order.
“I’ll have a Sazerac,” she said without hesitation, remembering the strength of the drink. No genteel white wine for her tonight. With a little luck, a potent cocktail would help her sleep later.
“The good news is you won those candlesticks you wanted,” said Falkner.
Piper managed a weak smile.
Falkner waited until she took her first swallow of the Sazerac before beginning to ask her questions. “So? What happened over there?”
Piper shook her head and sighed. “You don’t want to know. I hope I never see anything like that again.”
She described going into the bakery and finding Bertrand on the floor, trying to revive him, knowing it was too late, his neck impaled by the flower nail, told them about the flour and the egg, the live snake with the beady red eyes. When Piper finished, she realized that a small audience had gathered around her, hanging on her every word.
“That’s Damballah.”
Piper looked up. The clarinet player was standing behind Falkner now.
“Damballah,” Cecil repeated. “Those are all signs of Damballah, one of the most important of all the voodoo spirits.”
Everyone turned and stared at the musician. Piper noticed that the radio-show host Aaron Kane was also in the gathering. She thought she detected a strange gleam in his eyes.
Chapter 60
Perfect.
Aaron listened to the musician make the voodoo connection to Bertrand Olivier’s murder and only wished his radio broadcast hadn’t concluded for the night. How great it would’ve been to have this guy on the air, connecting the dots between the details found at the crime scene and the voodoo spirit!
Aaron knew immediately what he was going to do. He waited until Cecil drifted away from the bar and went to pack up his clarinet. Aaron followed him.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I’m Aaron Kane, and I do a radio show every weeknight. I was wondering if you would be a guest on my show tomorrow evening. I think my audience would be very interested in your views.”
Cecil pushed his porkpie hat farther back on his head and studied Aaron’s florid face. “I don’t know,” he said uncertainly.
“I think you have something very important to say,” Aaron insisted. “Let’s face it, voodoo and hoodoo don’t get much respect. The general population has many misconceptions. You say voodoo and all they think about is sticking pins in dolls, crazy curses and spells, and people chanting, running around in circles, and whipping themselves into frenzies. You and I know there is so much more to voodoo and hoodoo than that.”
Cecil listened.
“You could educate people,” continued Aaron. “You’d be doing a good thing.”
The uncertain expression on Cecil’s face signaled he remained unconvinced.
“Listen,” said Aaron. “You don’t have to prepare a thing. All you have to do is show up. I’ll ask you some questions, and you’ll answer them any way you want. There will be some callers with questions, too, of course, but if you don’t want to respond, you can just let me know and I’ll carry the ball. Really. There’s nothing to it. You’ll be doing a public service and a service to your beliefs as well.”
Aaron waited while Cecil considered his words. When the musician finally agreed, Aaron could hardly contain himself. He knew that a second murder committed by the Hoodoo Killer along with Cecil’s commentary would make the ratings for tomorrow night’s show spike through the roof.
Everything was playing right into his hands.
Tuesday
March 18
Chapter 61
It was past midnight.
After she had downed her second Sazerac, Piper knew she should stop. She got off the bar stool and stumbled, Falkner catching her before she fell. When he insisted on escorting her across the street back to the apartment, she accepted the offer.
She fumbled with the key, unable to slide it easily in the gate’s lock. Falkner did it for her.
“Want me to come up and help you get settled?” he asked.
Piper looked at him quizzically.
“I promise, Piper. I’m a gentleman.”
“Thanks,” she said, “but I’ll be all right.”
She took the brass candlesticks he was carrying for her and climbed the stairs, getting the key into the apartment lock this time. She headed straight to the bedroom, kicking off her shoes and pulling off her jeans as she went. Collapsing onto the bed, she immediately fell asleep.
When her cell phone rang, Piper didn’t hear it.
Piper was sipping a cocktail, but she couldn’t taste it. Her sights were set on the tattered cloth doll. It was dancing frantically, tangled in yellow police tape. The more the doll jerked, the more snarled up it became, until, finally, the strangled doll collapsed motionless on the floor.
She watched the pool of blood seeping out slowly from beneath the doll, the wet redness growing, coloring everything in its path except for the knotted police tape. Eventually the tape began to unravel itself, and its snakelike yellow tendrils started slithering toward Piper.
She wanted to get away. Her mind willed her body to move. Nothing happened. She was paralyzed. There was no escaping.
Her fear soaring, Piper tried to call out, but no words came from her mouth. Only a desperate, whimpering sound emanated from deep inside her throat. The yellow snakes slid closer, finally merging into one that changed colors, with big red eyes springing from its head.
Piper opened her eyes. Breathing in short, shallow gasps, she stared into the darkness and struggled to get her bearings. Slowly it came to her. She was in a bed in New Orleans. She’d been having a nightmare.
But the terrifying feeling of not being able to move was all too familiar. It was how she’d felt last month a
s she lay paralyzed on the hotel floor in Florida after ingesting the poisonous fish. Poison that had been purposefully fed to her. It was how she’d felt just a few days ago at the movie shoot. Though the crypt had been fake, the trapped feeling when she’d been lying enclosed inside had been all too real.
She lay there in bed now, thinking about the rest of the dream and trying to decipher its meaning. The cocktail could be the Sazeracs she’d drunk just a few hours before at the Gris-Gris Bar. The images of the yellow police tape came from both the murder scenes on Royal Street. And the red blood . . . Piper winced. She didn’t even want to think about finding Bertrand that way.
But what about the cloth doll? Was her brain making the connection to words the street musician had uttered? Voodoo. Hoodoo. The only thing Piper associated with those practices were voodoo dolls, those figures that people stuck with pins when they wanted to harm someone the doll represented.
Or did the doll represent herself—tangled, terrified, and powerless as she tried to break free from a force that wanted to destroy her? Was the doll’s struggle just her unconscious trying to work out the life-threatening trauma she’d endured?
She’d read somewhere that the word “nightmare” was derived from the idea of a female spirit who beset people at night while they slept. Piper also knew that spirits played a central role in voodoo and hoodoo. And, according to Cecil, the whipping that Muffuletta Mike had endured and the serpent found near Bertrand’s corpse were expressions of the spirits.
As she tried to fall back asleep, Piper couldn’t allow herself to think that those kinds of spirits really existed. But she did believe there was evil in the world. She had witnessed it firsthand. Evil committed by human beings. Though they might claim that spirits made them do unspeakable things, people committed the atrocities themselves.
Piper wasn’t afraid of Cecil’s spirits. She was terrified, though, of the person who could have perpetrated two such horrific, cold-blooded murders.
Chapter 62
Terri had already left for work, and Vin Donovan was down in his basement man cave preparing to paint the old rocking chair. It seemed like only yesterday that he was looking down first at Robert and then at Piper as they lay in his arms while he rocked them, their little mouths moving up and down as they slept. Now he was going to be a grandfather in a few months.
He’d been surprised when Robert had told him that Zara was interested in using the rocker for their baby. Vin never figured his daughter-in-law to be the sentimental type. Everything had to be the newest and the best for Zara. In Vin’s opinion she spent way too much—money the couple should be saving, especially now that they were expecting a baby. As he pried the lid off the can of white paint, Vin hoped perhaps now Zara was changing her priorities.
While he painted the rocker spindles, Vin listened to the reports coming from the small television set perched on his workbench. He looked up when the weather report came on. The map showed it would be in the high seventies in Louisiana today. Lucky Piper. Her trip to New Orleans meant that she was missing cold, dreary days up north.
Vin turned his attention back to the rocker as the newscaster began her report. Another showdown between the president and Congress, more fighting in the Middle East, Wall Street stock prices reaching an all-time high.
“Finally, in New Orleans this morning, police are investigating the murder of well-known pastry chef Bertrand Olivier.”
Vin stopped painting midstroke. He rested the brush on the rim of the paint can and turned his eyes to the television again.
“Olivier, award-winning baker, cookbook author, and owner of Boulangerie Bertrand in the French Quarter, is seen in this clip from an appearance on the Food Network. His body was found on the floor of his bakery last night by his wife.”
Vin’s jaw dropped as he watched the video that appeared on the screen now. A vinyl body bag being wheeled out of the bakery on a stretcher. Then a woman with short dark hair was shown exiting the store. She was accompanied by a younger, taller blonde.
Piper!
Vin ran his hand through his white hair as the newscaster wrapped up.
“Details are being withheld pending investigation, but sources say police think Olivier’s death may be tied to another Royal Street shopkeeper’s gruesome murder last week. They are also looking at a possible voodoo connection to both crimes.”
Vin snapped off the set, ran upstairs to the kitchen, and grabbed the telephone.
Chapter 63
Piper was groggy with fatigue. The nightmare had left her deeply unsettled, unable to fall back into restful sleep. She’d drifted in and out all night. When she heard the muffled sound of her cell phone, at first she couldn’t place it. The iPhone rang six times before she remembered she had left it in the pocket of the jeans crumpled on the floor.
The ID screen revealed that it was after nine o’clock and that the call was coming from her parents’ house. It was probably her father, since her mother would be at The Icing on the Cupcake by now. For a split second, Piper considered not answering. She had to shower, dress, and meet Marguerite at the church in less than an hour. But she knew that her parents would worry if she didn’t answer, especially since she hadn’t spoken to them in a few days.
“Hi, Dad.” Piper made an effort to sound cheerful and alert.
She could hear the urgency in her father’s voice. “What’s going on down there, Piper? Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she answered. “How are you?”
“Don’t how-are-you me,” Vin said sternly. “I saw you on the news this morning. What have you gotten yourself into the middle of now?”
She hadn’t counted on the video taken outside the bakery last night making it to the network broadcasts.
Piper recognized the inflection in her Dad’s voice. When her father was truly worried about something, his anxiety translated into harsh tones.
“I don’t know, Dad. I’m not sure what I’m in the middle of, but believe me, I don’t like being here.”
Her voice cracked as she described what she had seen the night before. In a way it was a relief to tell her father. Even though she didn’t want to worry him, she also knew he had seen a lot in his career as a New York City cop. He could take it.
“Come home, Piper,” he said when she was finished.
Piper could hear Emmett, their Jack Russell terrier, yapping in the background. She’d love to be there, petting her beloved dog, secure and safe in her parents’ house.
“I want to, but I can’t come home, Dad, at least not for a few more days. I have to go to the police station today and give a statement, or answer questions, or whatever they want me to do. And there are two cakes to make for a couple who are getting married. With Bertrand gone, I would really be leaving them in the lurch.”
Piper knew as she spoke that her father was going to understand her decision to stay in New Orleans for a while. He was all about cooperating with police investigations. He was also going to approve of his daughter’s desire to honor commitments and not let down a bride and groom. But she also knew that her father was going to be plagued with worry until she was back home safe again.
She felt the same way herself.
Chapter 64
A traditional Catholic funeral Mass for Muffuletta Mike was conducted at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. Wearing a simple black dress and clasping her rosary beads, Ellinore listened to the familiar prayers. As always when she attended a funeral, she was reminded of Ginnie. She could still remember the ripping ache in her heart as she followed her daughter’s white casket up the aisle and the years of grief that followed. Even now it hurt to think about it.
Ellinore doubted she would have been able to survive her daughter’s death without Nettie. Her steady, loving prese
nce in the house had provided Ellinore with comfort. When Ellinore lay unable to move in her bed, Nettie quietly came in and covered her. When Ellinore could barely eat, Nettie made soothing broths and soups, sometimes sitting on the edge of Ellinore’s bed and spooning the nourishment into her mouth. When Ellinore wept, Nettie held her.
It was unbelievable to think that Nettie wasn’t going to be with her anymore. But it was another heartache that must be borne. The idea that voodoo had been practiced in her house absolutely repulsed Ellinore. Nettie had defiled her home and destroyed the trust Ellinore had in her.
As Muffuletta Mike’s casket was carried out, Ellinore stood with a heavy heart and watched his wife and son walking behind it. The son supported his mother, faces etched with grief. Once they passed, other mourners started streaming from the pews behind them.
Ellinore was touched to see that so many of the Royal Street family had shown up. The haberdasher, the jeweler, the candy-store owner, even the fortune-teller—all of them were there. Ellinore was impressed as she observed Marguerite Olivier, only the day after her own husband was killed. She was accompanied by a tall, pretty blonde whom Ellinore didn’t know.
Her nephew, Falkner, barely nodded to her as he passed. So did the owner of the bar next to her shop. Ellinore suspected that both men might be wishing they were attending her funeral today. Having her out of the picture would leave her antique shop wide open for Wuzzy Queen’s bar expansion. And Falkner had been livid when she told him he wasn’t going to inherit her estate. He demanded to know who was, but Ellinore hadn’t told him. There would be time enough for Falkner to resent Sabrina after Ellinore was gone.
Sabrina and Leo stopped when they saw Ellinore and escorted her out of the church. The music from the pipe organ inside was replaced by the slow, somber strains of “The Old Rugged Cross” played by the jazz musicians gathered on the sidewalk. Ellinore watched as pallbearers slid the casket into the back of the black hearse that would carry the body the short distance around the block to the cemetery. Mourners gathered behind the hearse to follow on foot, escorting Muffuletta Mike to his final resting place.
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