Crimson Bayou

by C. L. Bevill

  “Fine. Then take me home.”

  Making a face that denoted Elvis knew that he would be in some way blamed for not finding Mignon Thibeaux earlier or for not immediately bringing her tout de suite to the sheriff, he reluctantly assented but picked up the microphone at the same time.

  Fortunately for Mignon, John Henry wasn’t in immediate listening range of the police band when Elvis called in his discovery. Mignon cringed and sank as low as she could go in the seat in the parish car. At least, she thought, it will keep him from coming to her straight away.

  Ten minutes later, John Henry’s strident voice came over the radio. He called Elvis by name and demanded to know what condition Mignon was in. Elvis glanced at Mignon before picking up the microphone. They had just turned into the long dirt lane that led to her farmhouse. “Uh, she looks fine, sheriff. Not a hair out of place.”

  Mignon ran a hand through her hair. That wasn’t exactly true. It was standing on end in a few places. She turned his rearview mirror and looked at the image that stared back at her. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and her nose was an angry pink. There was the lingering residue of chemicals working their way through the flesh of her body, and she felt as though she had been dragged through the bottom of a filthy gasoline-filled pit. Why anyone would want to sniff gasoline completely escaped her.

  “Not a hair out of place?” John Henry repeated ominously.

  “Uh, uh, uh,” Elvis babbled. He was desperately trying to think of what to say when the sheriff asked for their exact location and why Mignon wasn’t being taken to the hospital to be checked out by a doctor. “Little muddy around the ankles. Shirt’s dirty. Smells like gasoline.” He let the button on the mike go for a second and said to Mignon, “Sorry, Miz Thibeaux, you do smell like gasoline.” Then he pushed the button again. “Don’t look hurt at all.”

  “What’s your position?” John Henry’s next question blasted out like a gunshot.

  “Uh, oh crap,” Elvis said before he let go of the button and then said again, “Crap, I said crap on the police band. I’m gonna get pinged for that one.” He depressed the button again and said, “I’m taking her home.”

  Bone-chilling silence was their only answer. Mignon winced. “Really sorry, Elvis. Tell him I really, really stink.”

  Elvis stopped the parish car behind her Explorer and John Henry’s Dodge. The deputy said firmly, “Maybe you ought to get inside real quick. I’m thinking he’s been up all night. Mostly looking for you. Called out half the parish to search Kisatchie Bayou for you. Had half the Creoles up in arms and the other half pulling out their hounds.” He ran an anxious hand through his bright red hair. The pinkness in his cheeks was all but obscuring the freckles there. “Maybe after he gets some sleep he’ll be in a better mood.”

  Before Mignon had a chance to escape, John Henry’s voice finally issued forth out of the radio. “You’re sure she isn’t injured, Elvis?”

  Elvis said into the mike. “Yessir. Tired, I reckon. I’m thinking she got a little lost.”

  “Make sure she doesn’t leave the farmhouse,” John Henry instructed severely. “Stay there with her. Block the road so she can’t drive anywhere until I get there. Got that, Elvis?”

  Elvis’s shoulders slumped. “That’s a ten-four, sheriff.” He keyed the mike off and looked contritely at Mignon.

  “Want some coffee, Elvis?” Mignon asked politely. She opened the door and got out with the plastic bag still in her arms. She would put it away, maybe have time for a quick shower, and then be halfway composed before John Henry could make it to the farmhouse. He would want to know all the details. He would want to know what happened and why it happened. Then he would want to strangle her slowly. She sighed.

  “No, ma’am,” Elvis croaked. “I’ll stay out here and wait for the…ulp…sheriff.”

  “Yeah, well,” Mignon said. “We all do what we gotta do.”

  Elvis took a deep, refreshing breath and suddenly said, “You know, since you been out in the bayous, you probably got a few red bugs on your legs. That gasoline smell reminds me.”

  “Red bugs?”

  “Chiggers. My pappy keeps a rag in the back of his tool box, just so he can dip it in gasoline. You swipe it over where you got the little red marks on your legs and it’ll kill ‘em.”

  “Ah,” Mignon said understandingly. That’s why Tomas happened to have a gas-soaked rag around. He didn’t want the parasites on his legs any more than anyone else did. But she didn’t say anything else, and Elvis was left alone, sitting in the parish vehicle, waiting.

  •

  Checking for little red bites on her legs, Mignon fortuitously found none. She showered, using soap liberally, and washed her hair not once but three times. When she had finished she silently thanked Horace Seay for his good work on the bathhouse. The shower was better than the Jacuzzi. When she was done, she sniffed at her forearm for gasoline aroma, and all she could smell was the vanilla fragrance of her soap. She wrapped a fluffy towel around her still-steaming body and was grateful for the momentary respite.

  When she stepped out of the shower, Mignon stopped abruptly.

  In the moist bathhouse, John Henry stood like a stony sentinel. His arms were crossed over his chest. He was wearing the same clothing as he had been wearing the day before. A wrinkled Saints T-shirt, dirty Levi’s, and muddy cowboy boots. No hat. A full day’s growth of beard showed prominently on his chin. His eyes were rimmed with fatigue.

  And he’s, as she had thought he would quite rightfully be, angry.

  For a long moment, all John Henry did was stare unflinchingly at her. His sherry-colored eyes catalogued the faint bruise on her upper cheek and the scrape across her shoulder. She didn’t know where she’d gotten them. The night had been blurred by the inhalation of the gasoline soaked rag. Tomas probably hadn’t been as careful as he should have been.

  Mignon knew that she should have been livid with Tomas Clovis because of his actions. But she could see with the young man’s anguish-filled eyes, from his desolate perspective, and he had done what he thought he had needed to do. He didn’t dare trust Caraby. He couldn’t risk trusting the sheriff. Who could a poor bayou Creole trust?

  There was only person who seemed to care enough to seek the truth; Mignon herself, for asking questions about Dara, for daring enough to delve into the powerful plantation family that had once controlled the parish. Tomas was gambling with his fate. The skeptic in Mignon whispered the forbidden questions in her ear while she waited for John Henry’s wrath, What if Tomas is really guilty? What if you’re wrong about him? What if he’s a very clever actor who’s got the cojones to manipulate you something good?

  Finally, John Henry’s eyes broke away from Mignon’s face. His iron gaze swung around the bathhouse and studied the oversized bathtub, then glanced over the marble floor and back to the shower with its glass block walls. He wasn’t sizing up the bathhouse even though this was the first time he’d seen it. Instead, he was trying to get a rein on his temper.

  Her mouth opened and then shut. Mignon wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Who took you?”

  For another moment, Mignon thought she had imagined the words. They were so low-pitched that it was almost a whisper of breath. His stare had come back to settle fully upon her face. She didn’t dare look away.

  “Who. Took. You,” he repeated, emphasizing each word when an answer didn’t immediately produce itself.

  Mignon wasn’t going to lie. After all, Tomas was positive that he wouldn’t be caught by the St. Germaine Parish Sheriff’s Department. Wouldn’t or couldn’t, whichever one would prefer to believe. “Tomas Clovis,” she said.

  “Did he hurt you?” John Henry’s volcanic glare burned her to the core.

  “No,” Mignon answered. Tomas hadn’t meant to cover her with a gas-soaked rag. And she didn’t think she would suffer any kind of lingering damage from it.

  John Henry’s eyes narrowed dangerously. Her face was too expressive and he knew that
she was keeping something back from him. He knew he would get it sooner or later.

  “Why.” It wasn’t exactly a question, but Mignon knew what he meant.

  “He wanted to tell me about Dara,” she said. Her eyes slipped to the window. The glass was special. It could be blurred or cleared, depending on which way Mignon wanted it. Right now it was blurred because she had been showering. But if she reached out and flipped a switch she could make it clear so that the forest could be seen. Not far into the thick vegetation was a bayou that fed into larger bayous to the south and east. It wasn’t a large bayou, but it was very similar to the one that Tomas was hiding in. “He didn’t think you or Caraby would listen.”

  The muscle in John Henry’s cheek twitched portentously.

  Mignon broke first. The words came out in a worried effort to reassure, placate, and mollify him. “I’m sorry, John Henry. I didn’t even know that he would know I would be there. All I wanted was to speak with the Dubeauxs and get to know them.”

  Nothing.

  Swallowing nervously, Mignon wondered how she could have allowed herself to descend into a state of witlessness. With John Henry, she either wanted to simper or to yell.

  “I don’t suppose,” John Henry started slowly, “that it matters that over a hundred people were searching for you this morning. Some of them Dubeauxs. Many of them Creoles.”

  “I didn’t have the opportunity to leave a note,” Mignon gritted.

  “Did he take you, or did you go with him willingly?” His eyes slipped down to where her hand was holding onto the top of the towel wrapped around her body. Without being able to help it, Mignon’s eyes went down to where he was looking. There was a red mark around the outside of her wrist where the ropes had chaffed her flesh.

  “Jesus Christ,” John Henry cursed. He crossed the small area of the bathhouse in two strides and wrapped her into his arms in a bone-crushing grip. Mignon didn’t know whether to struggle or to simply stand still. After an eternity of indecision, she chose the latter. Her head was tucked into his shoulder, and she could hear the insistent, heavy thud of his heartbeat. “Tell me,” he insisted. “Tell me he didn’t do anything to you.”

  Mignon pulled her head back and looked into his troubled face. “He tied me up. Covered my head with a rag. He lifted me into the pirogue. Then he lifted me out. Some of it I can’t remember.” She barely restrained a groan at her loose tongue. The last sentence would be the only thing that John Henry would focus on.

  “Why not?” he snapped.

  “The rag was soaked with gasoline,” she said quickly. “Tomas didn’t realize it until later. It made me dizzy.”

  “That’s why you smelled of it,” John Henry said slowly.

  “My clothes,” she said, gesturing with her other hand. His eyes shot to the other wrist. She knew without looking that there was a similar mark there.

  John Henry shuddered, and he closed his eyes. Mignon was frozen by this abrupt change in his state. He shuddered again; muscles quaked visibly in his wide shoulders. When his eyes re-opened there was an expression there that she couldn’t quite identify. He was again trying to control his fury at what she had undergone. Although she wasn’t angry, he was, and it was a chillingly cold ferocity that loomed warningly on the horizon like an immense tidal wave.

  Hastily wrapping her arms tightly around his narrow waist, Mignon tried to comfort him in the only way she could.

  “Why do you do this to me?” John Henry muttered fiercely and cupped her face in his hands. His head dipped, and he pressed his lips to her in a turbulent kiss. “Mignon,” he said and, he repeated it in a softer tone.

  By the time his lips reached her collarbone, Mignon couldn’t have remembered what they had been discussing previously, nor had any desire to remember it. A moment after that, her towel hit the floor, and neither one said another word for a very long time.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Saturday, March 15th

  I like coffee. I like tea.

  I like the boys. And the boys like me.

  Yes. No. Maybe so.

  Yes. No. Maybe so.

  - Children’s jump rope rhyme

  John Henry lay on his back on Mignon’s bed. A hand-stitched quilt was pulled up to his waist. He lazily observed that it was in a log cabin pattern. The only reason he knew that was because his mother had been fond of quilting. It was remarkably old-fashioned of Mignon to have it in her bedroom, but then, the entire house was antiquated. With the exception of the bathhouse, she had maintained a sense of where the farmhouse had originated – nineteenth century rural Louisiana. The floors were wooden plank, polished and gnarled with knots that displayed their character. The bed was a handsomely hued wooden four-poster. The colors on the walls were rich and warm. Colorful crocheted throws adorned the rocking chair in the corner. It was all another facet of Mignon’s varied personality.

  He turned his head slightly and saw the curve of her back. Naked as the day she was born, she slept on her side, facing away from him, one arm pillowing her head. The same quilt that was covering him reached only to the rounded arch of her buttocks. Her skin glowed like an exquisite cameo in the muted light from the window. Beautiful, alluring, attractive. They were all adjectives he could use to describe her. Willful, stubborn, and obstinate also popped into his mind. It was all part of the big picture that was Mignon.

  All of her and nothing less. Would he truly want her to be less than what she actually was? John Henry puzzled over that one. After they’d made love and slept, he was in an improved frame of mind. She was safe. She didn’t even sound as if she had been put out. He was more inclined to be lenient with Mignon but not with Tomas Clovis.

  And there was the paint sample he’d pressed into Simon Caraby’s hand before he’d gotten into the rescue helicopter. John Henry’s simple instructions had been, “See if it matches the paint chips found on Dara Honore.”

  Caraby had glanced inquisitively at the paint chips in the baggie and nodded. Then upon being questioned about Robert Dubeaux, he had confirmed that Mignon’s cousin’s name was indeed on the list of names of men who had dated Dara Honore.

  John Henry ran his hand down the supple line of Mignon’s back, relishing in her soft skin. How could she have possibly imagined that her heritage would make a difference to him? Once upon a time, he’d discovered that being in the army meant that he had to forget what it was like being raised in the Deep South. The military tried like the very devil to become colorblind. Unlike democratic America it succeeded more often, than that which had created it. And the practice had made John Henry a better man for it. He tried to teach the same attributes to his daughter, Carolina, because he thought the lesson was so important. He often took it for granted that other men would follow his lead, and it antagonized him because he would forget where he was – rural Louisiana, where long-ingrained habits and mores died hard.

  Mignon stirred and rolled over onto her back. John Henry repressed a sigh of pure appreciation. Her eyes fluttered and then opened, meeting his squarely.

  “You’re going to charge him with kidnapping?” she said ever so softly.

  “Yes,” John Henry said somberly. “Don’t deny it. He did do it.”

  “The reasons were there.”

  John Henry’s good mood started to disintegrate. “You’re going to tell me that kidnapping is okay when you have a good reason.”

  Mignon bit her lip. “No, I’m not going to tell you that.” She hesitated and added, “But I don’t know if you realize what desperation will do to a person.”

  It was John Henry’s turn to bite down on his lip. There was something he needed to tell her. He didn’t want to tell her. But she needed to know, lest she inadvertently put herself in another position where she could be endangered. He’d brought up the issue of Dara Honore yesterday and asked her to drop it for the evening, but then his dogged nature hadn’t allowed him to do so, and he suspected that Mignon’s similar nature hadn’t allowed her to do so either. It hadn’
t been her fault that Tomas had come for her, but he didn’t doubt she was thinking about Dara in terms of the Creoles once she was at the fais do-do. And he had an idea that Mignon might have asked a question or two, judging by her guilty disposition this morning. “There’s something else,” he said calmly. His hand traced the smooth convex abdomen.

  Mignon stared at him. She shoved a pillow under her head. Then, she brushed away his wandering hand and pulled the quilt up to her neck.

  Pity, John Henry thought reluctantly.

  “What is it?” she said, and there was a note of anxiety there.

  “It’s Robert.”

  “Robert?” she repeated, and it was his turn to be a little confused because there was a note in her voice that revealed she wasn’t surprised he was bringing her cousin up.

  “Robert,” John Henry said again. Mignon is smarter than I often remember. She already suspects him. “You might be right about Tomas.” That was the reason Tomas had taken her, to convince Mignon of his innocence, but she was already convinced.

  Mignon sat straight up in the bed, clutching the quilt to her chest. She didn’t want to play dumb, but neither did she want to admit out loud what she had already conceived in her mind. “What exactly do you mean?”

  John Henry shrugged and swung out of the bed. “I mean, Tomas isn’t the only one we’re looking at.”

  “You arrested him,” she stated accusatorily.

  “On suspicion only,” John Henry said. “Wanted to question him only while we gathered information. What we didn’t want was for him to slip off and vanish into New Orleans or somewhere equally distant from St. Germaine Parish before we’ve made a more solid case.”

  “Well, he didn’t go far,” Mignon snapped.

  “Why the hell are you mad at me?” John Henry snapped back. “I’m not the civilian who’s poking her big fat nose into police business. I’m not the one who doesn’t give a damn that she’s putting herself into dangerous situations.” He stood up, oblivious to his nakedness. “I asked you not to do this, and what did you do, you ran right out and did it anyway!”