by Ritter Ames
“Revenge?” The idea of a ghost seeking justice was creepy. Jitty, with her constant nagging and sarcastic remarks, was bad enough. The focus here, though, was that Jitty loved Coker, and Coker was missing. Jitty was my family. I’d turn over every rock to find him. “What can I do?” It wasn’t like I could go to the Great Beyond and interrogate the various spirits there.
“Three days ago, Jim Red was killed in Cliburn Community.”
Cece, source of all hot news, had mentioned the drowning while we were sipping a few drinks and listening to the blues at Playin’ the Bones. “I heard about that, but no one said murder. Very ironic that he drowned. Jim Red was the last of the famous Red pirates on the Mississippi River.”
“That’s right.” Jitty was reverting back to her normal diction. “Coker’s disappearance has somethin’ to do with Jim Red’s death, and don’t go believin’ for a minute it was an accident. What I need you to do is find out what happened to Jim.”
If it was a case involving the living, I might actually be helpful. Ghost hunting was way out of my league. But I could try. “I’m on it, Jitty. I’ll head for Cliburn Community ASAP.”
“If you move fast enough, maybe you can leave half of that fat butt behind.”
I whipped around to give her a piece of my mind, but in typical Jitty fashion, she was gone.
I PICKED UP Sweetie Pie, my hound dog, Pluto the sleuthing cat, my partner in Delaney Detective Agency Tinkie Richmond and her dust mop detective dog, Chablis, and loaded everyone in my mother’s antique roadster. We drove west for the small community on the Mississippi River. Cliburn had once been a fairly active port, but it had fallen into disuse when Greenville, a port some twenty miles south, gained rail support. When cotton was king and rail and river transports were thriving, Greenville was a jewel on the Mississippi River. Now even Greenville was fading away; Cliburn was little more than a memory.
Tinkie, who wore a stunning cinnamon tunic with black dots and black leggings and boots, held Chablis in her lap. Chablis was small but she was mighty—just like Tinkie. The two were a formidable duo when someone they loved was in danger.
“What are we doing in Cliburn?” Tinkie asked. “Do we have a case?”
“Not exactly. It’s more of a personal matter.”
“Are you paying us?”
I gave her a sour look. “I’m driving. You’re riding with me because you have nothing better to do than torment your husband. Besides, you don’t need money, I do.”
Tinkie’s husband was president of the local bank—the only bank in town. Her daddy owned the bank. Tinkie was a child of privilege and a woman of great intelligence. And sometimes she was as much of a torment as my resident haint.
“So what’s the favor?”
“I need to find out what happened to Jim Red.”
“The old man whose great-great-great-grandfather was a slave on board a pirate ship who became master of his own ship?”
“That’s the one. Cece was just talking about him, remember?”
“Yeah, she did that feature on the history of Cliburn and the role it played with river pirates. Bodo Red, Jim’s ancestor, was one of the few African pirates on the Mississippi River. He escaped slavery. Why are so you concerned about what happened to Jim Red?”
“It’s a favor for a friend.”
“I’m your best friend and you’d better start talking.”
“I can’t break a confidence. Could you please just help me do this?”
“Sure.” Tinkie gave a satisfied grin. “I’ll find out. I always do.”
Her self-assurance terrified me. Not because I didn’t want to tell her about Jitty. I badly wanted to share with my partner, but I feared if I told anyone, Jitty would disappear. She was the link that held me to my past. I couldn’t risk she would abandon me if I spoke of her to anyone.
I popped in a Bobbie Gentry CD for the ride to Cliburn and tried not to worry about what I’d gotten myself into. Or rather what Jitty had gotten me into. Tinkie and I sang along with the music and in the backseat, Sweetie Pie accompanied with soft hound dog howls.
When we arrived at Cliburn, it was clear the town had died years before. The buildings on Main Street had fallen to ruin. Kudzu and scuppernong vines climbed through broken windows and wrapped sagging wooden beams. A lingering sense of sadness shrouded the area, blended with the delicious grape Kool-Aid smell of the kudzu flower. The kudzu always bloomed near Halloween, and for a week or two the aggressive vine most farmers viewed as an enemy produced a scent that brought childhood back to life.
“Good thing we have plenty of gas,” Tinkie said. “This place is deader than Deadwood.”
“Yeah.” I had driven the length of the town without seeing a single living soul. The air of abandonment was chronic. Cliburn hadn’t seen any action for a long, long time.
“What’s the plan?” Tinkie asked.
“I’d hoped to find someone in town.” Saying it aloud made me feel stupid. I hadn’t had a plan, which was now obvious. “Google Jim Red and see what you get.”
She whipped out her phone and went to work. “Nothing. Not a single hit. Not even a mention of his death. But there’s a pretty cool blog from someone in Memphis about Cliburn and how it was a bustling river town back in the early 1800s.” She read the story aloud, which detailed the beginning of the river city that developed as an offshoot of Cliburn Plantation. In the early 1850s, it had been one of the largest plantations in the South.
“The Cliburn family wielded influence in Washington D.C. and supported the succession of the South from the Union,” Tinkie read.
“Informative but not helpful,” I said.
“This is interesting. Local legend has it Ezekiel Cliburn, the patriarch, declared he would slaughter all of his slaves before he would free them.”
“What a stupid man.” I turned the car around and drove back through the town.
“Ezekiel married a young woman from New Orleans, Azariel Lewis. She was a great beauty, but there was talk she was linked to the practice of voodoo.” Tinkie’s voice had grown excited. “Azariel begged Ezekiel not to harm the slaves, but he executed three as an example to the others, and Azariel cursed him and all descendants of the Cliburn family. From that point forward, tragic things began to happen.”
Goosebumps danced on my arms though the day was plenty warm. “I guess the idea the family was cursed played a role in the town drying up. Nobody wants to live near a cursed family.”
“I guess.” Tinkie pointed to a dilapidated playground beside what had once been a small park. In the still morning, one lone swing moved slowly back and forth in the wind. “Creepy.”
I had to get us back on track before we scared ourselves. “We need to find Jim Red’s family.”
“Look, there’s someone.”
The woman who hobbled down the center of the empty street looked to be at least two hundred years old. She wore a red dress and shoes with holes cut in the tops to accommodate her corns. Her head was wrapped with a vibrant cloth, and she carried a basket.
As she drew close, the swing stopped. There was only an eerie silence and Sweetie Pie’s soft moan.
I’d put the top down on the roadster because the day was so gorgeous. The woman came right up to the car and shoved the basket in my face. It was filled with herbs, leaves, bones, animal teeth, and what looked like plugs of human hair.
“Buy a gris-gris, Missy. You need a charm to keep danger at bay.”
The basket smelled to high heaven. Tinkie almost gagged and I pushed back as far as the seat would allow. Sweetie Pie and Chablis, of course, were in doggie heaven. They loved stinky things.
“Pretty ladies buy a gris-gris. Ten dollars. Keep you safe from trouble.”
“Here’s twenty dollars,” Tinkie said.
“Pick the gris-gris that speaks to you,” the woman said.
“It’s okay. We don’t need a gris-gris.” Tinkie was a little green. Her stomach was more delicate than mine.
“I
f you don’t wear the gris-gris it won’t protect you.”
“We’re looking into the death of Jim Red. Can you help us?”
“Stay away from trouble.” She reached into the basket and picked up two multi-colored cloth bags that contained god knows what horrid things. “Protection from the curse. You take these.”
I put them on the seat and eased the basket out of my face. “I’m looking for Jim Red’s family. Could you tell me where I might find someone who knows him?”
The old woman, who had uncanny bright brown eyes, nodded. “Go down that way about a mile. Turn at the lightning blasted oak tree. It’s a narrow road, but passable. When you get to the end, you’ll find Jim Red.”
She walked away, mumbling to herself. I idled the car for a moment, then thought to ask her the name of Jim Red's relative. When I looked in the rearview mirror, the street was empty.
WE FOUND THE turn off easily enough, and as the old woman had said, it was a path into the woods just wide enough for the car. Sweetie Pie put her head out, snuffling the air as if she’d caught the scent of prey. Pluto inched into Tinkie’s lap with Chablis. The animals were acting weird, and that made me uneasy. Something about the old woman had set off alarms. I glanced at the gris-gris bags Tinkie had nudged to the floorboard. Without spoken consensus we were both too superstitious to throw them away.
As the trees canopied overhead, shutting out the golden October light, the day cooled. It was Halloween, my favorite holiday of the entire year. Cece and her lover, Jaytee, were hosting a costume party and I’d already found an old tuxedo at the thrift store, some green leotards, green tennis shoes, and a top hat. With a bit of stage makeup in the perfect shade of green, I was going as Jiminy Cricket. Tinkie was going as Kristin Chenoweth going as Sally Brown from the Broadway musical, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. We planned on singing a duet. Sadly, neither of us could sing, but it wouldn’t stop us. Cece and Jaytee had hired a karaoke performance group.
We bumped down the narrow path, and I began to worry we’d simply dead-end in the woods that crowded so close to the trail. At last, we entered a clearing. I stopped instantly. We’d stumbled on a funeral service.
A handful of mourners, all wearing white, gathered around the fresh-turned dirt of a grave. In completely silence, they moved around the grave counter-clockwise, each taking a handful of earth and tossing it into the hole. They began to chant in a strange language. A rhythmic drumbeat marked the time for the graceful swaying of the mourners. It was one of the eeriest things I’d ever seen. Slowly the women filed away, disappearing into the woods.
“Why did you stop?” Tinkie asked. She looked around. “It’s an empty clearing. You’re pale, Sarah Booth, like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Wait here.” I slipped out of the car and walked to the mound of dirt. Sure enough, it was a grave in the middle of a clearing. When I looked down into it, I saw a body wrapped in heavy white cloth. No casket. No gravestone. And the canvas covering of the body was marked with strange runes and symbols. On the ground beside the grave was a drawing of a cross with smaller coffin shapes around it made from what looked like flour.
“It’s a combination green and voodoo funeral.” Tinkie had come up behind me with the critters following her like ducklings. “You think this is Jim Red’s grave? I’ll bet he wasn’t embalmed. In a green ceremony, the decay process is unhindered so the body can decompose naturally and return to the earth.”
“Is that legal?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Some places it is. I’m not going to report it, though. Are you?”
“No. What is this?” I pointed at the flour drawing.
“It has something to do with the Guédé spirits, the dead. I’ve seen it in New Orleans, and I believe it comes from Haiti. I’m not up on my voodoo.”
Neither was I, and I didn’t think I wanted to be. Voodoo wasn’t necessarily about dark magic, but the grave, the whole scene gave me the willies.
Tinkie looked around. “I presume someone will come and finish the burial. It’s so sad he’s just lying out here in a hole. Thank goodness it isn’t summer. Can you imagine?”
Tinkie was right about that, and I was also very aware she hadn’t seen the funeral procession that I saw. They’d dispersed, as if absorbed by the very trees that fringed the clearing. “I thought I saw someone in the woods. Let’s take a look.” I wasn’t about to tell her that I had seen voodoo practitioners—dead voodoo practitioners.
“Sweetie, Chablis, go search.” Tinkie gave the command. The dogs set off and we ran after them, Pluto doing his best to keep up. Pluto’s swinging kitty belly matched my jiggling thighs as we raced over the dying grass. An exercise plan for the two of us was imperative, but we would go at it more gently than sprinting the driveway.
When we ducked into the trees, we both stopped. There wasn’t a sign of a human being anywhere. Even the dogs seemed befuddled. Pluto arched his back and hissed. I looked around us. Strange ornaments hung from the tree branches. Most were fashioned from vines or wire with triangles, circles, tree-shapes, and jazzed lines. Voodoo protection.
“I don’t like this.” Tinkie wasn’t the superstitious type, but the whole scene had unsettled her. “We don’t even know this was Jim Red’s funeral. It could be anyone. There’s no grave marker or even a cemetery, and I’m not crawling down in that grave to examine the dead body. What if the person was murdered and we’re out here stumbling around, poking into it? Let’s get back to the car and call Coleman.”
For once, I was perfectly willing to call the Sunflower County sheriff. Coleman Peters had no jurisdiction in Cliburn community, but he could alert the law enforcement who did. Someone alive needed to attend to the corpse in the hole. This whole scenario was out of my comfort zone.
We whistled up the dogs and headed back to the car. When I was fifty yards from the roadster, I stopped. A beautiful woman in a gossamer white dress with a white turban covering her hair stood beside the car. Another mourner, but this one had substance. Her bronzed skin reminded me of Jitty, but this wasn’t my haint, come to make sure I was working the case of her missing husband. This was a woman, flesh and blood.
Tinkie stopped beside me. “Who is that?” she whispered.
“I have no idea.”
The dogs, normally curious, sat down at our feet. Pluto arched and hissed. If we were going anywhere, we had to have the car. I took a breath and walked forward.
“You are seeking information about Jim Red,” the woman said in an accent that somehow included the smell of coconut oil and rum on a salty breeze. For just the merest fraction of a moment, I was transported to a white sand beach beside an aqua ocean. Behind me, volcanic mountains rose from the thick trees. Haiti. I knew it instantly.
“How did you know we were looking for Mr. Red?” Tinkie asked the woman.
“I am Leila.” She flashed beautiful white teeth. “I know many things. How? Because I know them.”
“Is that Jim Red?” I nodded toward the grave.
“No longer,” she said. “His essence is gone. Only muscle, bone, and skin remain in the ground.”
“Would you tell us what happened to him?” I asked.
“Why do you care what happened to a share cropper who leaves nothing behind but debts?”
Her accent was so lyrical, I couldn’t tell if she was angry or curious. “I’m looking for someone, and my missing friend has a connection to Jim Red.”
“A connection?” Her sidelong glance told me she knew more than I wanted her to. “I see. So your missing friend is linked to Jim. In life or in death?”
I knew exactly what she was asking, but I didn’t want to answer. “I’m not certain.”
“Keep your secrets, you.” She waved me away like a bothersome gnat.
“Will you tell us about Jim Red and what happened to him?” Tinkie asked, giving me a sidelong glare.
“I will. Give me a ride, please.”
“Sure.” I opened the passenger door and folded back the
seat. “I hope you don’t mind the dogs and cat.”
“Animals bring us many messages,” she said. “Drive back to town.”
Fifteen minutes later I was on the same empty street in the dead town of Cliburn. She directed us through town and down toward the river. The unpaved road I took was shaded by trees, and I recognized the familiar wisteria, lilies, hydrangeas and other plants that followed what had once been an elegant driveway.
When the pillars of the old plantation house rose in the distance, I slowed the car and inhaled. “Cliburn Plantation.” It was nothing but a ruin now, the pillars and five fireplaces all that remained standing.
“Yes, it is my home,” she said. “I am Leila Cliburn, the last heir.”
The plantation house was gone, but Leila lived in a small, neat cottage behind what had been the big house. Her home had once been a slave cabin in what would have been a small village serving the big house and working the fields. Her cottage, renovated and modernized with a new tin roof and fresh paint, was the only building remaining. The years had not been kind to the property that had once boasted one of the finest plantations in the South.
“You question my lineage,” she said softly. “Am I a true Cliburn heir, or a porch get.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tinkie said. “Not to us. You’re the person who lives here.”
We followed her up the porch and into the small cottage protected against dark magic with hex signs and more of the wire and vine hanging symbols we’d seen in the woods. “Are you a voodoo priestess?” I asked as she held the door open for me to enter.
“You have your secrets and I have my own,” she said.
The interior of the house was painted in bright orange with a blue ceiling. A small alter covered by a mesmerizing multi-hued cloth held candles and the bones of dead animals—I hoped. A jawbone was definitely canine, and one with horns might have belonged to a goat.
“Please, be seated.” She motioned to chairs clustered in a corner of the room. “I will make us some iced tea.” She brushed past us and disappeared into what had to be the kitchen.
