Long Night Moon (Bad Mojo Book 1)

by Sharon A. Austin

  CHAPTER 38

  BJ Donovan returned to her hotel room in New Orleans after having dinner in a little known café in Chalmette. She tried to watch TV but her mind was in turmoil. She tossed the remote control on the bed, paced to and fro in the narrow walkway at the foot of the two standard-size beds. The idea popped into her head the way most ideas do.

  She stood before the dresser mirror, observed her haggard reflection. The idea to try her hand at a nonfiction story took root. But, what kind of story? True crime stories sell pretty well, she thought. Whose crime? Wait. Any unsolved murder mystery will do. Perfect.

  “Now, where do I find one?” Turning in a tight circle, she scanned the room for a clue. Her wandering gaze landed on the phone.

  BJ packed her bags. Handed in her room key.

  She drove home at almost breakneck speed.

  Setting her purse and suitcase on the floor beside the phone stand in the foyer, the red light blinking on the answering machine caught her eye. She pressed the button. Frank’s voice boomed loud and clear.

  “My flight’s been cancelled. Some sort of mechanical problem. I’ll be home tomorrow.”

  She deleted the message.

  Dialed the number for the police department.

  “Cantin here.”

  “Hello, this is BJ Donovan.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Donovan. If you want to speak with Northcutt, you can’t. He isn’t here.”

  Why would he presume to know why I’m calling? “No, I’m calling for another reason. You can help just as easily, if you don’t mind.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  The guy’s attitude was a bit off-putting. She cleared her throat. “In case you don’t know, I am a published author. I write psychological thrillers.”

  “Yes ma’am, I know. I can see your book on Northcutt’s desk. Look, I’m kind of in a hurry. What is it that you want?” Lucas lit a cigarette.

  BJ kept a lid on her anger. “I’m starting another story. Nonfiction.” Cantin remained silent. “Um, well, this is going to sound silly, I’m sure, but I wondered if there are any unsolved murders in this area you could tell me about.”

  She grew more uncomfortable. His continued silence wasn’t helping. She wished she could see the expression on his face. She was still new at being a novelist, and she hadn’t acquired the kind of confidence the more seasoned writers have in seeking a professional’s help.

  “Detective Cantin? Hello?”

  “Hi, Mrs. Donovan. This is Detective Raynor Schein,” said Jeff Wentzel. “Detective Cantin had to go somewhere. He asked me to help you.” Some sort of plan tried to take shape in his mind, but at the moment it was still too elusive. He eased in behind Cantin’s desk, trying not to draw attention, and sat down.

  “I see,” she said, angrily. Cantin had made her feel small and unimportant. Pretty much the same way Frank treated her. No. Frank treated her as if she were invisible. A deep breath. “I called to find out if there are any unsolved murders in New Orleans, or the surrounding areas, I could write about. Any unsolved case that’s really old?”

  Jeff leaned closer to the desk and lowered his voice. “Really old? I don’t understand.”

  “I figured if the case is old enough, family members might not be around anymore.” She sighed. “I don’t want to get permission from anyone to write whatever the hell I want to write. I also don’t want family members or friends giving me grief over messing with their grief. Understand? Now, is there anything, any case,”

  “Matter of fact, there is. I’d be more than happy to tell you about it.” He forced a smile in his voice. “I’m your number one fan, by the way. Who knows, maybe you’ll consider dedicating your new book to me.”

  BJ’s head twitched for a second. She tried to assess whether or not she was being played.

  “Well, we can talk about it some other time, I guess,” said Jeff. “Okay, the case I have in mind took place around twenty years ago. At the time, though, the cops didn’t really view it as a murder.”

  “I don’t understand.” He had her full attention now.

  “I know you don’t, ma’am, but if you’ll just bear with me, it’ll all make sense shortly.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No problem.” Jeff scrutinized the room. Spotted Detective Dirck watching him. “Um, I need to use another phone. I’m sitting at someone else’s desk and they want it. If you’ll give me your number, I’ll call you back in just a couple of minutes.”

  BJ hesitated.

  Gave him the number.

  “Talk to you soon.”

  Jeff approached Detective Dirck. Shook his hand, thanked him for answering his questions, a while ago, and for taking the time to talk with him about the detective squad.

  CHAPTER 39

  “Hello, Mrs. Donovan. It’s Detective Schein. I’m sorry it took so long to get back to you. Since I was already off duty I figured I’d wait and call you after I got home.”

  BJ checked the time. She’d waited more than thirty damn minutes. Her time’s every bit as valuable as those fucking cops. “No problem,” she replied sweetly, or sourly, depending on how the caller perceived the tone.

  Jeff asked. “Now, where were we?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “Oh yeah. Around twenty years ago during a particularly hot summer day, three preteen boys, um, I don’t have the file handy so I’ll just call them Tom, Dick, and Harry. Okay? Anyway, they sought excitement and adventure by exploring an old abandoned farm. To escape the late afternoon sun they entered the barn. Resumed playing catch with a baseball. When the ball was thrown to Harry he missed it by a mile. He ran off to retrieve it. Found it in the far left corner of the barn. He also found two floorboards weren’t lying flush with the rest of the floor. He called his friends over. Well, boys being boys, they had to know if the boards were hiding something. And if so, what? One of them suggested there might be a buried treasure. They dragged the two boards aside and stared in awe, they said. Tom ran to his bike. Dug around inside his knapsack, and found the flashlight under the sandwiches his mamma had packed for him. The sight of the food made him hungry, he said, but he knew he didn’t have time to eat. He shoved a candy bar in his hip pocket, and ran back inside. Standing shoulder to shoulder between his friends, Tom shined the light in the hole.”

  “The hole?” BJ interrupted.

  “Yes, it was obviously a man-made hole. The size and shape of a skinny grave, one of the boys said. Convinced by now there’s buried treasure down there, they got a ladder and lowered it into the hole. Dick found a small trowel. Harry snatched a coil of rope off a hook on a makeshift pegboard wall. Found a wooden bucket on the floor beside it. Dick, the slimmest of the trio climbed down the ladder. At Dick’s insistence, Harry kept the light on him, wavering once in a while to look over his shoulder to see what Tom was doing, thereby eliciting frantic shouts from Dick. Using baling wire, Harry attached the flashlight to a rake handle, then laid the rake sideways across the hole. Tom tied one end of the rope to the bucket handle. Kneeling beside the hole he lowered the bucket to Dick, who used the trowel to scoop up enough dirt to fill it. Tom raised the bucket and emptied it on the floor of the barn, while Harry sorted through the little pile. They continued this process until at least six inches of topsoil had been removed. Sweating profusely and feeling he couldn’t breathe any longer in the cramped area, Dick called for a timeout. He finished what he planned to be his last bucketful. Followed the bucket up the ladder. Harry wasn’t ready to quit. Tom, the chubbiest of the three, thought it best not to go down there. He sat on the edge with his feet dangling inside the hole, and scarfed down the candy bar. Harry took hold of the bucket and descended the ladder. Dick caught the free end of the rope before it disappeared over the edge. Harry stabbed the dirt and filled the bucket as fast as he could with large clumps of dirt. Haul ‘her up, he told them. Dick’s arms were sore from digging, so he passed the rope to Tom. When the bucket was a couple of feet from the opening
, Tom screamed and let go.”

  Jeff went to the kitchen with the cell phone still pressed to his ear. He reached inside the refrigerator and snagged a bottle of beer. Held the bottle under his bent arm and twisted off the cap. Downed nearly half of the contents before catching his breath.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, just got a little thirsty.”

  A sense of familiarity created a sudden sense of urgency. “Hurry up,” she said, “I’m dying to know what happened next.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Jeff smiled. He never knew he was a storyteller. Perhaps he would write a novel someday. He drank a little more beer. Stifled a burp. Recalled where he’d left off. “When the bucket was a couple of feet from the opening, Tom screamed and let go. Under the flashlight beam he had clearly seen the bony fingertips of a human hand.”

  “Wow.”

  “Tom shouted for Harry to get out of there. One side of the rusty bucket handle broke loose. Harry was about to ask how come when the contents rained down on his head and back. A human hand hovered above his eyes for a split-second. He opened his mouth to scream and it dropped flat on his face, coating his tongue with loose dirt. Harry jerked his head downward to knock the thing off, and then swiped his hands across his cheeks several times. Spitting and sputtering, he tried to clean out his mouth. Unintentionally crunched grit between his teeth. He jumped onto the ladder but caked dirt on his shoes made his legs slide through to the other side. He scraped each sole over the bottom rung as he anxiously searched for the hand he imagined was lumbering toward him on its fingertips, the middle finger sticking up, looking like a tiny flesh-eating dinosaur. He tried to climb faster, slipped, hit his chin on a lower rung. Tasted blood. He tried to kick his shoes off without untying them. In a moment of shocking clarity Harry became aware he had been standing on top of a dead person all that time. He freaked out, hollered for someone to help him, started believing he sees bloody hands sprouting up all over the ground. He’s sure they’re trying to grab his ankles and pull him under. Screaming and crying, he somehow managed to get a good grip on the ladder and hang on long enough to clamber to the top. He lifted his left leg and set his foot down on the barn floor, then swung the other leg over the top of the ladder, and fell onto his side. His quick movements shoved the ladder away where it struck the rake and sent it tumbling to hell. The flashlight went out, plunging the barn into semidarkness. He crawled away from the hole so fast he skinned his bare knees. About to tell the others what he’d seen, he discovered they weren’t there. Too afraid to look back, he ran through the open door. Found Tom and Dick sitting on their bike with Harry’s bike between them. They hollered for him to hurry. Then they all hightailed it over to Homer’s Quick Mart convenience store a little ways up the state highway. A cashier called the police. The boys were told to go home and stay there. Officers were dispatched to the barn. Long story short, it turned out to be the body of a woman. Down in the hole. The hand belonged to a woman.” Jeff lit a cigarette. Smoke swirled up lazily and stung his eyes. The plan he sought earlier had arrived.

  “I understood the first time.”

  “Okay, well, this is the strange part, at least to me. After an extensive investigation they concurred the woman had died accidentally. The detectives believed she’d come in the barn, for whatever reason, and then fell in the hole. The biggest detail the cops sidestepped, though, was the fact that the body appeared to have been naked. No clothing, or any kind of cloth, was found in or near the hole. The C-O-D, er, the cause of death, was a broken neck.”

  Jeff finished the bottle of beer. Hurried to get another one.

  “Seems plausible to me. Three by eight? Yeah, I could see someone breaking their neck, if they fell in sideways.”

  “Sure, but there were still some unanswered questions. First, where the hell were her clothes? I don’t why, but I don’t believe she wandered around the barn in the nude deliberately. Anything’s possible, I guess. The barn is fairly isolated. Second, who covered her body with dirt? Who covered the body, the dirt, and the hole with two floorboards?”

  “Good questions. Why didn’t someone ask them back then, when it mattered?”

  “My point, exactly. There’s clear evidence the barn sustained a bit of damage from a tornado. The left side, if you’re facing the barn, has a gaping hole where a tree limb or some other projectile crashed through the loft. The consensus was, years of wind and rain brought dirt to the hole. And since the floorboards had to have been set aside for her to have even fallen in, in the first place, they somehow concluded strong winds buffeting that side of the barn must have pushed the boards over the hole and partly covered her up. Remember, the boys said the boards weren’t flush with the rest of the floor. No one’s lived there for years, so any explanation seemed plausible.”

  “Wow.”

  Wow? That’s all she’s got? Not much, coming from a writer. Whatever. The plan was clear as a whistle. “Look, I’m not working on anything special right now. How ‘bout I give you a hand with this new story? Nonfiction type crime stuff. Right up my alley.” Jeff frowned over the wording of the last sentence.

  BJ gasped, lightly. “I-I don’t know.”

  “It’s up to you, ma’am, but as you know, nonfiction is based on real facts. With fiction, you can just make the shit up as you go along.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you would stop calling me ma’am.”

  He noticed she didn’t respond to his offer of assistance.

  A lengthy pause.

  “Okay, scratch that idea,” Jeff said, grumpily. “You clearly don’t need my help to write a book. How ‘bout this? One of these days, and only if you’re truly interested and only if I have as much time on my hands as I do now, I’ll drive you to the farm so you can view the crime scene firsthand?”

  “I know you mean well. I’m just not too wild about the idea of going out there.” BJ chewed her bottom lip. She felt very uneasy. No idea why.

  Jeff had grown weary of her whining and indecisiveness. Before, she seemed so much older and wiser than most twenty-six-year-olds. Now....

  A loud sigh. “It’s up to you, Mrs. Donovan, but if you ask me, I think the story would read a whole lot better if you described the place through firsthand knowledge rather than relying solely on your imagination. Get it? But, what the hell, it’s your story not mine.”

  BJ caved. He thought she would.

  “From your perspective, well, it does make more sense. How can I write effectively about a place I’ve never seen.” Or have I? Something hiding in the dark corners of her mind refused to reveal itself.

  “Good. Let me know when. Maybe I won’t be tied down with a new case.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that. I’m not quite ready to see the place. I mean, I need to outline the story, do some other research. Get a general idea on what I’m doing...” BJ frowned, unable to believe her own bullshit. “I’ll get back to you A-S-A-P. Is this good?”

  “I’ll be waiting. In the meantime, I’m not sure what else I can tell you about the place. If you need any other information, police procedurals, that kind of stuff, feel free to call me.”

  “Thanks, Detective Schein. You were far more helpful than Detective Cantin.”

  “The pleasure was all mine.” Said the spider to the fly.

  CHAPTER 41

  BJ brought Tomi along for a stroll around the neighborhood. The day was crisp and clear.

  She planned to work the dinner shift at Wild Capers. Until then, she wanted to complete another chapter in her new novel. Out of habit, she checked email first.

  Dear Suite Sue,

  There’s something going on that troubles me. I believe it’s this story you’re working on, the nonfiction one. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be poking your nose in places where it doesn’t belong. Drop it. You’re a writer. Find something else to write about.

  Heed my warning, or else you might just find yourself floating in the Mississippi—in bits and pieces.


  She wondered if she should say anything to Detective Northcutt about the email.

  Her door buzzer sounded. The unexpected noise made her heart stand still.

  She crept downstairs. Peered through the eyehole. A deliveryman. He held a long white box in his hands and a clipboard under his arm.

  She signed for the package, thanked him, closed and locked the door. She knew it was flowers, but from whom?

  Frank had never given her one flower, much less a dozen.

  The cop wasn’t close enough to her. Yet.

  Jeff? Doubtful.

  No one else knew her address.

  BJ slid the red ribbon, which bound the box, down to the end by her lap. Lifting the lid, she breathed in a vanilla-like fragrance. She set the lid beside her on the couch. Not a dozen roses, but several stems of Joe-Pye weed.

  CHAPTER 42

  Detective Northcutt spread the newspaper open on his desk. Read the short article on page two about the death of Attorney Richard Gravois. His housekeeper found him slumped in his chair. “Bitten by a snake.” Gary never had the opportunity to question him about the house on Caulfield. “And now I never will.”

  Many years ago a friend of his died from snakebite while they were on a camping trip. Gary recalled how his friend’s body looked when he found him lying on the ground in the woods. He pulled his mind away from the gruesome death that easily could’ve been his own if he had been the one who’d gone off to search for firewood instead of staying behind to assemble their pup tents.

  It’d been a while since he talked with BJ Donovan. He gave little thought as to why he’s calling other than just wanting to hear her voice. He dialed her number.

  BJ told him about the email and flowers. When he mentioned the word fingerprints, she said, “I’m sorry. How careless of me. I burned the flowers. Box, ribbon, and all.”