Long Night Moon (Bad Mojo Book 1)

by Sharon A. Austin

  BJ tiptoed to the end of the house, and poked her head around the corner. No cars in the driveway. She sneezed faster than she could stop it. Something to her right scurried for cover in the wooded area near her car, something that sounded too small to be much of a threat.

  I don’t have time for this.

  She clicked on the penlight. Ran her fingers up and down one side of the bathroom window. No paint. Too bad, in a way. Paint would be easy to remove. Nothing she could do about structural damage. She tucked the penlight in the front pocket of her blue jeans. Standing on the tips of her toes, she slammed her palms against the top of the wooden frame with an upward thrust. A short grunt, either from her or the frame, the window moved a couple of inches. Her hands hurt, but after several more tries she had the thing open wide enough to squeeze through. Thank goodness she was small boned.

  She remembered the bathtub was directly beneath the window only after she fell in and struck her head on the inner edge. “Ouch, dammit!” Knew nothing at all about the bigass spider web draped across the spigot until her hand went through it. “Gaaah!” She scampered out of the tub. Twisting, turning, squealing like a piglet, she smacked her body and tried to knock off the spider she was sure had gotten on her.

  She grabbed the wig, and shook the living hell out of it. Quickly clicking the penlight a half dozen times before it finally came on, she moved closer to the mirror over the sink. “Ova da zinc,” she’d heard her sous chef say a time or two. She stopped checking herself out in the mirror. A half smirk lifted the side of her face as fear drained out of her.

  Zinc? Drain? You’ve taken this madness to a whole new level.

  BJ squatted. Examined the bathtub with the penlight. “Aha.” A big ole hairy thing, hiding just inside the spigot, patiently waited for something smaller to pounce on. She’d lost her cool over nothing. She closed the window the best she could.

  Leaving the penlight on, she went to the living room. Tried not to let the sounds of things scurrying, in all directions, get to her. Tried not to turn on the houselights.

  She put the beam on the wall next to her. Cockroaches, too many to count, milled about as though trying to find the way back to the darkness. She immediately shined the light across the ceiling while flattening a protective hand on top of her head. Some bugs, but nowhere near as many as the wall. There’s definitely a hell of a lot more of them than there were the last time she was there. Damn filthy things reproduced at an alarming rate.

  She directed the light to her computer table. Winced at the sight of small droppings of fecal matter. Mice? Second thing she noticed, and couldn’t believe she’d left behind, was a slip of paper with the names and addresses of every television station in Houston, Texas. She recalled how angry Frank got over hearing his name linked with a serial killer.

  “Served him right.”

  BJ went to work trying to unplug the equipment. Using the penlight, she smacked the wires a few times to knock the bugs off. She calculated the size and weight of the items. Tried to figure out how to carry it all out of the house in one trip. She no longer had a use for the computer. She’d gotten everything she needed for her story, so there wasn’t any reason to continue sending bogus emails to her address.

  But the very thought of walking away and leaving it all behind made her uneasy.

  How long before the computer was traced back to her?

  She carried the monitor to the kitchen, set it on the floor to unlock and open the rear door. Poked her head out, made sure she was still alone before setting the heavy piece in the yard. Hurried back to retrieve the hard drive, keyboard, and the printer. Damn bugs totally freaked her out. Had she disturbed them enough they were now preparing to retaliate en masse? BJ played the light around the living room once more. She was never going to return. Learning her lesson with the house key, she searched once more. Not finding anything else of hers, she locked the door from the inside and pulled it shut.

  The very thought of putting the nasty equipment in her car was unsettling. If bugs were hiding inside she’d rather have them running loose in the trunk than in her back seat. She closed the trunk lid gently to keep from knocking any bugs out of the computer stuff, and thought of another idea. An idea for where to dump the computer where no one in his or her right mind would have the nerve to search.

  “A little swamp in Chalmette.”

  >+<|>+<

  Officer Wentzel noticed an oncoming car had come out of Caulfield Lane. He caught a glimpse of blonde hair. By the time he turned the squad car around, she, or he, had left the area.

  Jeff debated about sharing his observations with Northcutt and Cantin. Would it prove once and for all he has what it takes to become a detective? An idea on how he could contribute to the mystery surrounding Caulfield Lane came to him.

  CHAPTER 66

  Evelyn opened the window to a late morning breeze to air out the stuffy bedroom. She heard their voices seconds before seeing their faces. Two teenagers. Soon, very soon, they’ll break in and run upstairs to have sex. Damn. She couldn’t have picked a worse time to remember she’d planned to rig up a homemade burglar alarm by stacking tin cans in front of both doors.

  She rushed to the bathroom. Slid her arms and head through the dress she’d found in the attic a long time ago. She covered her face with fast drying white Halloween makeup. Using a fine-tipped red marker, she drew broken veins across her cheeks. Applied a thick layer of grayish blue lipstick. Circled her eyes with black eyebrow powder; smoothed and spread out the uneven lines with her fingertip. She took the rubber band from her dull black hair, shook it loose and let it fall over her shoulders and down to her waist. Their voices had grown louder and closer. She bent over and slung her hair forward. Stood straight and tossed it all back just enough to leave most of her face covered. Spritzed the front with hairspray. She stuffed a plastic set of vampire teeth in her mouth, and squirted small globs of fake blood in the corners.

  Evelyn ran to the master bedroom. Parted the sheers with both hands, leaving her arms above her head. Standing close to the window she stared down at the teens, stretching her eyes as wide as possible.

  The girl screamed. Ran to the field.

  The boy looked at the frightening apparition then at the backside of his girlfriend. Acted as though he couldn’t decide which was more important. Investigate the house so he’d have something to brag about to his friends? Go somewhere else and have sex with his girlfriend so he’d have something better to brag about?

  His libido won. He hightailed it out of there.

  “Works every time.” She returned the sheers to their original position.

  >+<|>+<

  Evelyn awoke from a late afternoon nap. Her head still hurt a little from staying up later than usual. She’d spent the night drinking alone in a bar near her job.

  The transmission on her car had died. She didn’t know what she should do. Didn’t even know about it until after her boss waved goodnight and drove away. The store was locked up tight. She didn’t have a key. She wandered into the bar to have a place to sit and think. Or was it sit and drink? Should she spend her savings to get the car fixed? Or leave it at her place of employment until her boss either raised holy hell or quietly had it towed away?

  Once she stopped stressing over it the decision was easy.

  She already had enough money to make the trip to Maine. Waiting until she had enough to get her own apartment was the thing that was taking too long. She could stay with her sister if she had to. A few kids and cats couldn’t be as bad as what she currently lived with. She never belonged here. Not in this house. Not in Louisiana.

  If she spent the money on a repair bill, a bill she knew would be inflated just because she’s a she, it could be another six months to a year before she could afford to leave. She didn’t think she could go on much longer without the comforts of electricity and running water. She remembered someone recently pointed out the baldness of her tires. Another expense to put up with, if she wanted to drive t
o Maine.

  Once she found the solution to her problem, she couldn’t believe she didn’t think of it sooner. A Greyhound bus ticket would cost a whole lot less than parts, labor, gas and oil for an old junker that probably wouldn’t even make it out of the state. And if it didn’t, then what? She doubted she could hoard up somewhere else.

  Humming a Janis Joplin song, Evelyn carried her cup of coffee out to the back yard. “Freedom’s just another word for… um, nanna-na-na-na,” she sang. She refused to let the gloomy gray sky bother her. Leaving town was as close as her next paycheck.

  An unusually large raven swooped down and landed close by. He hopped forward three times. She backed up. He seemed to be trying to put a little distance between her and the house.

  Caw, caw, caw

  He flew up high, circled above her three times. Headed east.

  She heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. Ran to the corner of the house and looked to her left, the same direction the psychotic bird had gone. She saw a trail of rising dust from a fast-moving vehicle. Evelyn pitched the coffee on the ground. Ran to the kitchen. She threw the cup in the sink, heard it crack. The cup or the sink? She didn’t know or care. Running toward the stairs, her gaze swept the partially furnished living room.

  Taking the steps two at a time, she tried to visualize the personal stuff the visitor was about to find. Newspapers with the current dates. The half eaten pie wrapped in tinfoil on the kitchen table. A trashcan full of take-out containers.

  She ran to the master bedroom. Peered through the sheers, careful not to do anything to make them move. Her heart stopped. He stared at her window from the open loft. She leaned back, reflexively. For the first time, she was grateful her car had broken down. Otherwise, it would’ve been in the barn where she had started parking it after teenagers and nosy little boys began invading her privacy. Evelyn looked closer at his face. A sharp intake of breath. She recognized him.

  CHAPTER 67

  “Hello,” She couldn’t bring herself to say his ridiculous name. “This is BJ Donovan. You haven’t returned my call, so I can only assume you’re no longer interested in helping me with my nonfiction story. That’s fine. I no longer want your help, anyway. I’m going to the farmhouse some time this afternoon. I, um, I know where the place is, so I-I don’t need a tour guide. Thanks for the story idea, though.”

  She didn’t care whether or not the message was too long for Schein’s answering machine. She did care, however, whether or not he got the message. At long last, she would know the identity of this very mysterious, very phony, detective. She counted on his inflated ego bringing him to the farm.

  She dug through the closet and chest of drawers until she found an outfit suitable enough for traipsing around an abandoned farm.

  While tying the laces of a scuffed pair of hiking shoes, an idea took shape in her mind. She’d swing by the library on the way to the farm and search the archives for articles about the body. Perhaps she’d run across old newspaper accounts of other unsolved mysteries she could use in future stories.

  From the closet shelf, BJ took down a dark green cloth tote bag with a bloody knife and a red rose embroidered on the front, given to her by the local writers club when her short story took first place in a writing contest. She stuffed the bag with pens, markers, paper, and a handgun. Unsure if the library had one of those deadly weapon detector things, she removed the gun. Better to hide it under the driver’s seat. Always be prepared. Lots of lowdown dirty snakes creeping around farms these days.

  >+<|>+<

  The trip to the library had been fruitful. In her mind she scratched out fruitful and wrote successful. Gah! Stop that.

  About to strap on her seatbelt, she leaned forward to see the sky, which had grown considerably darker in the past few minutes. “Rain? Pa kounye-a!”

  She turned off a state highway and onto a dirt road that competed for space with the surrounding growth. Driving fast, the top of the house soon came into view.

  “Speckled with mildew, the old white farmhouse resembled an alien mushroom growing amongst the Joe-Pye weed.”

  Okay, so you’re no poet.

  She checked the time. Four-thirty.

  Approaching the house, facing west, she could see the line of thunderstorms stretching the length of the horizon. Distant jagged bolts of lightning lit the sky. She cracked her window a little so she could hear better.

  No sound of thunder. Yet. Nighttime won’t be far behind, either.

  She slowed her car, and then stopped. Slouched down enough to view the house through the passenger window. House of the Rising Sun? No. Hotel California? Hm.

  She got out. Rested her arms on the top of the car. Wondered why she had acted so glib about the place. “Because. They may’ve bruised my body and battered my soul, but they never broke me. I’m still here.”

  Thunder rumbled across the sky. She could feel a slight tremor under her feet. Sheet lightning flashed on the upstairs windows. She cocked her head. Continued to stare. The image didn’t reappear.

  “Jeebus Christ, no wonder everybody went nuts.”

  BJ continued driving west until she was at the far end of the property. Steering to the right, she drove through tall grass and weeds, and parked in the field. Got the penlight out of the console. Hoped the batteries were still good. She trudged back to the house.

  “Lightning continued to put on a great show, followed by the raucous applause of thunder.”

  A blasé shrug.

  I definitely don’t have a poetic nature. But I know a lot about poetic justice.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she said in a low singsong voice.

  CHAPTER 68

  Jeff Wentzel had been unsuccessful, ever since he was a teenager, in maintaining a successful relationship with girls, and then later with women. Kelly Murphy had been the only girl in his life who seemed to sincerely love him. He continued wandering across the back field. Marveled over how the Joe-Pye weeds had grown so thick and tall they each resembled a genetically altered cornstalk.

  He was alone and lonely when he met BJ Donovan on the Internet. In the beginning he toyed with her until he got her full attention. But he was careful about everything he said to her.

  He had unburdened his soul to another online. After being together in real life for a couple of weeks, she hooked up with her old boyfriend. Her actions hurt him far more than he thought possible, and made him gun-shy by the time he met BJ.

  Falling back on old habits, he escalated the relationship between him and BJ because he desperately wanted to meet her. Once again, he’d made all the mistakes of an over-achiever.

  Jeff picked up a stick. Absentmindedly flogged the stems of the weeds as he passed by. He still had strong feelings for her, and found it next to impossible to leave her alone. He’d poured his out his heart and soul in his emails, but in the end she rejected him.

  He only knew one way to be.

  Lightning illuminated the sky. He turned west.

  If she’s coming, she damn well better hurry. Storm’ll be here soon. So will the night.

  His thoughts returned to her last phone message to him. She couldn’t have been any snottier if she tried. He envisioned the candid shots he’d taken of her and Northcutt. Recalled missed opportunities for photos. Them walking down the plank of the cruise ship. The cozy little scene in Sonnier’s kitchen.

  Fuck it. The second I see her I’m going to let her know just what I think of her.

  Out of the corner of his left eye he caught movement. Saw little snippets of blonde hair flickering in and out of the shadows between the weed stems as the person walked very quickly in the direction of the house.

  “Hey,” he called out.

  CHAPTER 69

  BJ stood rooted to the spot a minute longer, thinking she’d heard someone call out to her. She couldn’t see the person, but she did see the squad car parked on the left side of the barn.

  Quarter-size raindrops pelted her. She sprinted toward
the dirt road, changed her mind at the last second and plowed through the thick maze of Joe-Pye weed. Above the sounds of the storm she could hear someone chasing after her.

  >+<|>+<

  Jeff reached the dirt road in time to see her before she veered left and disappeared from view. He ran forward trying to keep track of the exact place where she turned even though the sky had grown considerably darker.

  Arriving at the spot where he thought she’d ducked in, he focused on the thick-stemmed weeds. The wind moved the weeds in one direction, while a few moved in another direction.

  It’s her. She’s heading for the state highway?

  Brilliant bolts of lightning rippled across the sky in the form of static electricity, immediately followed by a deafening thunder boom. The next flash of lightning provided enough light for him to see she hadn’t changed course. He remained on the dirt road, running parallel to her. Nothing stood in his way, unlike her with weeds and brush to contend with. Jeff was confident he’d be the first to arrive at the end of the road.

  Torrential rain transformed the dirt road to a slippery sheet of mud. His feet went out from under him. He fell flat on his stomach. Automatically wiped his face with a muddy hand.

  “Damn you,” he shouted, shaking a fist at the sky.