Crimson Bayou

by C. L. Bevill

  The priest cleared his throat and began the service. Mignon bowed her head with the others, and just before her eyes dipped, she caught Linda’s vigilant gaze from across the grave. Linda broke her gaze and looked downward with the others.

  When the service was over, the parents listened to the condolences of the people who had come. They lined up tolerantly and waited to hug and shake the hands of the parents. The children played in the background, touching gravestones and hiding behind crypts from each other. The mother paused to take something out of her purse and she gave it to the oldest child, instructing her to use it on the other children. Mignon realized it was sunblock, and she looked up at the sky, thinking it wasn’t going to be that hot of a day.

  No one spoke to Mignon, although many looked at her with varying expressions from recognition to avid curiosity. Robert held onto her arm good-naturedly and guided her into the line. Once there, he whispered into her ear, “They be good people, just real suspicious-like of them what ain’t been raised with them. I heard good things about you, so don’t you fret none.”

  Mignon’s lips quirked. Robert thought she was upset about being rejected by the Creole families. He reached Mrs. Honore first and said, “Apolline, sweetie. I’m real sorry about Dara. It shore ain’t right.”

  Apolline was an older version of her daughter. Her skin was a delicate golden brown that people wanted as a result of a tanning booth. Her eyes were the same shade of hazel, flecked with brown, green, and gold. In her middle thirties she was a lovely woman, despite the pain-swollen dark flesh under her eyes. She said, “Robert Dubeaux. You look right fine in that uniform. We’ll have a girl for you pretty quick.” Her hazel eyes cut to Mignon and added expectantly, “Unlessin’…”

  Robert chuckled. “Sorry. This here is my cousin, Mignon Thibeaux.”

  The friendly look on Apolline’s face faded quickly with the onset of recognition. “Mignon Thibeaux,” she said slowly, and welcome transformed her face. “You found my girl.” Her hand came out and took Mignon’s. “The po-liceman said you dragged her out of the bayou.” Then the older woman leaned in and kissed Mignon’s cheek with gentle lips. “Bless you. Dara dint like that nasty water much. She wanted to go someplace where it was dry.”

  Mignon hesitated and then whispered, “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  Dara’s father said, “Robert. You should come along more often. Don’t choo get off that boat none?”

  Robert turned to the man standing beside Apolline and said, “Noel. I’m right sorry about Dara. The po-lice will find that fella what done it as fast as rain, and then you can move on.”

  Noel Honore’s face crumpled. One ham-sized fist wiped a tear from his eye. He was a foot taller than his wife. His hair was dark brown in the bright light and his eyes almost the same shade as his wife’s and their daughter’s eyes. Abject sorrow made them seem huge in his face. After a moment, he looked at Mignon, and the same welcome was not reflected in his features. “Sister Helena tole us about you,” he said calmly, and Mignon took that to mean that he knew that she had paid for Dara’s funeral. “I’ll be speaking wit’ choo later.”

  Robert tugged at Mignon’s arm. Just as Noel Honore’s brilliant stare was about to cut a hole in her face, there was an uproar near where the cars were parked. Everyone turned to see Caraby and John Henry knocking a young man to the ground, taking him down in what seemed like seamless movements that didn’t tax the two older men at all. Several people cried out in protest, but behind Mignon, she heard Noel say, “That worthless carencro noir, that buzzard, that pig! He dare to come here!”

  Then she saw who Caraby and John Henry had arrested. It was the young man who had been Dara’s boyfriend, Tomas Clovis. He cursed at the pair who held him in their capable hands and struggled to free himself.

  John Henry said, “Calm down, son. If you’d come back to the station when we’d asked, we wouldn’t have had to do this.”

  “Fuck you!” Tomas screamed bitterly. “All I wanted to do was come to her funeral! Dara! Dara! I just wanted to, ah Jesus Christ.” He suddenly crumpled in their arms and began to cry.

  Noel Honore made a disgusted noise behind Mignon, and she heard him spit on the ground. “Worthless bastard,” he muttered. “They all are.”

  Apolline didn’t say anything, and Mignon couldn’t help a shudder.

  Chapter Eleven

  Monday, March 10th – Tuesday, March 11th

  Amos and Andy, sugar and candy, flip, flop, down.

  Amos and Andy, sugar and candy, flip, flop, up.

  Amos and Andy, sugar and candy, flip, flop, stay.

  Amos and Andy, sugar and candy, flip, flop, away.

  - Children’s jump rope rhyme

  Like all curious human beings, the people at the funeral couldn’t resist watching a show. Although Mignon heard more than one say, “At least they waited until after the service,” they all stayed and avidly watched.

  But as Tomas Clovis settled down with the onslaught of being arrested on suspicion of the murder of Dara Honore, Noel Honore started an argument with John Henry. Robert and a half-dozen other men immediately moved forward.

  “Choo blaspheme my daughter here in this place,” Noel accused bitterly. “Choo should have waited. Choo should have not done this thing here. This is a place of peace, of paying homage to the dead. Cain’t choo let her be buried in serenity, wit’out all this?”

  John Henry nodded. “Yes, sir, and if there had been any other way, we—”

  With a loud noise of dismissal, Noel spit on the ground at John Henry’s feet and turned his smoldering glare on Tomas Clovis. The young man was locked in the back of a police cruiser. Investigator Caraby was speaking to a young deputy in front of the cruiser. Most of the people who had attended the funeral began leaving in fits and starts. The action was over, and it was evident that no one was going to be murdered on the spot.

  Robert tried to pat Noel’s shoulder comfortingly, but Noel angrily shrugged him off.

  Someone prodded Mignon’s elbow. She looked back and saw Linda Terrebonne. Linda leaned in and hissed softly at her, “I told you. Tomas didn’t do this thing.”

  “John Henry wouldn’t have allowed Tomas to be arrested if they didn’t have proof,” Mignon defended weakly, knowing that it was feeble justification at best.

  “You didn’t talk to him about where they used to go?” Linda persisted jerking her head toward where Tomas sat in the back of the parish car.

  Mignon stared into Linda’s face, a thought suddenly occurring to her, the continuation of one she’d had before. It wasn’t that Linda had a crush on Tomas; it was something else altogether. “Was there something there that belonged to you, too?”

  Linda’s pretty face looked away.

  Mignon persisted. “Is that why you want him free? So he can tell you where it’s at? Because now that Dara’s dead, only he might know? What is it?”

  “A letter,” Linda said finally. “A letter I wrote to Father William.” Her eyes were suddenly tortured, and she looked over her shoulder to where Father William was speaking quietly with Apolline Honore and the priest who had performed the service.

  Another fact dawned on Mignon. There was another group of people at the funeral. They stood with rigid backs and glared at John Henry and Caraby. Their skin was just as dark as Tomas Clovis’s, and Mignon realized that these people must be part of the group that Linda had mentioned. “What was in the letter, Linda?” Mignon asked, but she had been distracted.

  Linda caught her distraction and gazed in the same direction. “They’re Clovises, too. The Gullahs I told you about.” When she said the word “Gullahs,” there was enmity there.

  Mignon hoped John Henry would hurry the deputy along. She didn’t know why he kept engaging in conversation with Noel Honore. It probably had to do with his sense of propriety. He had a daughter not far from Dara’s age, and he could put himself firmly in the other man’s shoes. “What was in the letter, Linda?”

  “I w
rote it when I was thirteen,” Linda confessed, with an eye on the Clovis’s. “I had a crush on the father. There’s no shame in that.”

  “No, but I guess it embarrassed you,” Mignon said.

  Linda nodded. “Dara went through a box of mine and saw it. So she could have something on me. That was the way she was. She liked to keep the upper hand.” Her head jerked toward Tomas who was handcuffed in the back of the cruiser. “On him, too. But he wouldn’t have killed her. Oh no.”

  Mignon saw what Linda saw at the same time. The group of Clovises moved en masse toward the cruiser and John Henry and Noel Honore. Caraby and the deputy came around at the same time. She started to step forward, but a hand jerked her back.

  Father William held her shoulder with an iron-firm hand. “Don’t. You’ll get hurt.”

  “But John Henry—” Mignon protested and stopped mid-sentence as she watched.

  John Henry directed Noel away from the other group with a voice full of steel. But emotions ran deeply like the river that had cut through the Grand Canyon. One man began to yell at the sheriff. Another one began to yell at Caraby. Blame was apportioned like a chef cutting up a large pizza. The blade of fault was quick and slashed in all directions. “Sheriff don’t need come to the cemetery to arrest a body!” “Unlessin’ he be a bald-faced murderer!” “My son ain’t no murderer!” “Murderer! Choo ain’t beat that chile enough!”

  The yelling quickly escalated. Someone threw a punch, and there was a rippling effect as two general groups merged into one. For about ten seconds it seemed as though there would be no end to it. But John Henry suddenly roared out a command like a coach at the Super Bowl. “Shut the hell up!” Then he added in a voice that brooked no denial, “People are going to spend the night in jail tonight, if you all don’t calm down quickly!”

  That silenced half of the group. A few shoves ensued, and John Henry barked out another set of commands. The groups were separated. Then Caraby was instructing some to drive away now before the sheriff changed his mind. Robert waved at Mignon and called to her that he’d see her on Friday about 4 p.m. so she could meet the rest of the Dubeauxs. The remainder straggled out of the cemetery, and when Mignon looked over to see Tomas Clovis’s face, she realized that someone had seen an opportunity and taken advantage of it.

  Tomas Clovis wasn’t in the back of the cruiser. Nor was he anywhere in sight.

  Linda reappeared at Mignon’s side with a satisfied smile on her face. She glanced at the older woman and said, “Hard times make a monkey eat pepper.”

  •

  Most of the Honore family left immediately after that. John Henry and Caraby immediately started to search the area. They even looked in the grave before the coffin was lowered, and two workmen started to fill it in. Mignon wanted to say something to John Henry, but the words were caught in her throat like an uncompromising stoppage in a drain. He had a bruise on one side of his mouth from a stray shot, and when she grasped that she was staring at him like she were a puppy dog and he were ice cream, she decided it was time to leave.

  Father William took Linda by the arm and directed her toward the school’s van. He stopped briefly to whisper in Caraby’s ear. It was intended as a whisper, but it carried to Mignon anyway, “You should have handled that better, Caraby.”

  Caraby didn’t even let an expression flicker across his face. Only one of his eyebrows went up. John Henry checked the Blessed Heart van and nodded to Father William. “And you,” said Father William accusatorily to John Henry, “you’re supposed to be a politician. Arresting that boy in this place, with both sides of the family like an armada waiting to pounce. God save us all.” He deftly directed Linda into the van and drove away.

  John Henry turned to Mignon. “Do you have anything to say?”

  Mignon checked her tongue and shook her head. She was already in enough hot water with him. It occurred to her that John Henry had been set up. The Clovis family probably knew very well that Tomas was the prime suspect. They probably had warned him not to come to Dara’s funeral, but when he’d insisted, they’d come to protect him. A diversionary fight was just the thing to get him out of the back of the cruiser. All three police officers had been more concerned that the two families would pull out one of their handy rifles from the racks in the back of their trucks and kill one another in a flurry of shots. Pointing this out to John Henry would have been overkill.

  “About the fais do-do,” he started to say. He was going to tell her that he couldn’t go, that he had too much work to do. Mignon looked at the ground in consternation. John Henry cleared his throat. “I just wanted to say that the Dubeauxs might not be what you expect them to be.”

  Looking up again, she caught the expression of concern that he quickly hid under a façade of neutrality. Mignon was trying to understand what he was saying and judiciously decided to change the subject. “Kid probably ran like hell for the tree line across the fields.”

  John Henry glanced over his shoulder at the distant trees. “Maybe so. We’ll get him later.”

  “You must have something on him to make the arrest here,” she said and wanted to immediately bite her tongue off.

  His searing gaze took in her face. “You think he didn’t do it. From talking to him for a minute or two, you’ve cracked the case, and you know that he’s innocent.”

  Mignon groaned inwardly. Why, oh, why can’t I keep my big mouth shut?

  John Henry’s voice became sarcastic, “And I suppose you have a suspect all lined up? Who have we got? Sister Helena? She must have gotten the jump on Dara something fierce seeing as Dara was taller than she was and outweighed her by about thirty pounds, unless you want to bring up the age difference, too?”

  His voice had lowered into an argumentative murmur. He wasn’t just mad at her, but he was angry with the situation he’d allowed himself to get into. A prisoner had escaped, right from beneath his own nose, and it looked bad for him. “Who else? Father William? The postman? A ghost maybe? Maybe it was one of those St. Michels come back to thwart you?”

  Mignon’s expression froze on her face. John Henry realized that he had gone too far the moment the words came out of his mouth. He knew what it was that had prompted him. He wanted to hurt her in much the same way she had hurt him. The lack of contact between the two was beginning to annoy him. He wanted her to fold, and knowing how strong her character was, he was beginning to suspect that she would not do as he’d hoped. As a matter of fact, he was exasperatingly proud of her for not caving. That made him feel guilt, a feeling that was distinctly at odds with the others.

  “I didn’t—” he started to say quickly, and she interrupted him.

  “Forget it, John Henry,” she said icily. “I’ve got things to do today.” Then Mignon turned and walked to her SUV. Her back was ramrod straight, and John Henry fought the urge to call after her. After she climbed into the Ford and put her seatbelt on, she started the vehicle without another look at him. She carefully turned the car around on the dirt road and headed back out to the highway.

  Caraby said, “Problems in paradise?”

  “Would you do me the supreme favor of zipping your trap shut?” John Henry said.

  “Why don’t you just tell her that girl was pregnant, and DNA tests show that the baby was the boy’s?” Caraby said. “That we found the rest of the rope that was used to strangle her in Tomas’s daddy’s truck? Maybe get her off your back, so you don’t have to worry about what she’s up to?”

  “It’s none of her concern,” John Henry stared out at the lingering dirt kicked up by the SUV’s wheels.

  Caraby ran a hand over his slicked-back hair, smoothing an errant strand into place. “Maybe not. But she’s making it her concern. Father William told me she’ll be teaching a class up at Blessed Heart this week.”

  “Teaching a class,” John Henry repeated through gritted teeth.

  “Art class,” Caraby confirmed with satisfaction. “She is a famous artist, no?”

  John Henry grumble
d. “Did you call the rest of the deputies and search and rescue?”

  “Yes, I surely did. They’ll be out here presently. Abe Jackson’s bringing his bloodhounds. If we work quickly, we can have Monsieur Clovis back before suppertime.”

  •

  On Tuesday, Mignon spent two hours at Blessed Heart with a group of ten girls. Their ages ranged from ten years old to seventeen. Linda Terrebonne was not among them. She began with basic art instruction. Drawing a still life in the form of fruit acquired from the cafeteria was the initial project. Charcoal and plain paper were their tools. Mignon would be donating most of the time and equipment for the girls. When she had suggested it to Sister Helena on her last visit, the sister was more than enthusiastic.

  As a matter of fact, Mignon felt somewhat guilty that she was here at all. She didn’t like this place. It reminded her of past events. It made her think of exactly what her childhood was like, and it made her look for flaws in the system of this school. She had forced herself to come this morning, and she had forced the smile on her face when she had encountered Sister Helena again. But as she adjusted to her surroundings, the smile became less of a trial.

  The eagerness of the girls in the class was addictive. They were happy and appealing. They wanted to learn how to draw and paint. They wanted to be creative. Some of them had never before had the opportunity. Even the little girl, Sharla, was there, carefully perched on the edge of a seat, with her cast in the aisle. “I want to paint my cast,” she announced joyfully.

  “We’re drawing today, but we’ll get to the painting quick enough,” Mignon said with a smile. “Maybe you can illustrate the book you’ve been reading.”