Mystic Mischief

by Sally J. Smith

  "Oh really?" Quincy arched an eyebrow. "Famous for what?"

  "Why Roger's a director, Deputy—"

  "Chief Deputy."

  "Pharaoh's Ghost." Powell folded his arms smugly across his chest. "You saw that, right?"

  Quincy shook his head. "Don't think I know 'bout that one."

  I knew who Roger Goodwin was, or at least who he had been, a well-thought-of movie director. After Pharaoh's Ghost had lost upwards of a hundred million dollars over its production costs, he'd pretty much disappeared from the public eye.

  "I saw it," I said, wrinkling my nose. It had been a real stinker.

  Roger turned to me then, white teeth flashing in his bearded face. "My biggest film yet. Huge budget. You know. Lots of CGI. That stands for computer graphic imagery."

  "Actually," Harry interjected, "I do believe that's computer-generated imagery." He glanced around the group, smiling.

  Theresa Powell, looking more like Lara Croft than ever, stepped into what I figured was the camera frame and laid a slender hand on Quincy's arm. Unfazed, Quincy moved his arm so that her hand fell away. Theresa Powell might be built like a brick house, but she didn't even begin to compare to the luscious Catalina Gabor.

  "Chief Deputy," Theresa Powell said. "Roger is Mr. Hollywood himself."

  The deputies switched on the lights they'd set up, which was when I noticed Roger's cream-colored canvas peasant shoes. No socks. Theresa was right as rain. Definitely Mr. Hollywood.

  Roger Goodwin's question, by the turn of his head, included both Harry and Quincy. "So, what's going on out here? Word is you've found some indication of where the document might have been hidden."

  Quincy didn't answer right away, which allowed time for Percy Villars to step up. "Listen, Powells. You need to back off with this search and this"—he gave the camera a disgusted look—"film you're making. That letter is mine and my brother's." He stopped cold a few long beats before correcting himself. "Well, now it's just mine." The head of steam he'd been building up seemed to have gone cold. He hung his head.

  Archie Powell gave him a sympathetic look. "We heard about your family's tragedy. Our condolences for your loss. But, Percy, that document is going to belong to whomever puts their hand on it first. If it's you, then more power to you, but if we come across it before you do, then it's ours."

  Roger drew everyone's attention when he said, "I trust you people have no objection to our filming whatever it is you're planning to do here?"

  Quincy looked at Harry, who shrugged. Then Quincy shrugged too and said, "If it doesn't bother Harry, it doesn't bother me, long as you stay out of the way."

  Roger scrubbed his hands together. "Terrific." He turned to the Powells. "After we get some footage of the sheriff's deputies doing their thing, we'll shoot your and Theresa's reactions."

  Two of the deputies had been working at a hinged opening in the brick stem wall around the crawlspace under la petite maison. It wasn't very big. Not very big at all. If the letter was hidden somewhere under the porch, it wasn't going to be easy to get to.

  Roger and the Powells, as well as dozens of others who'd gathered by now, watched as the same two deputies propped open that small hinged door and shone their searchlights into the dark space beyond it.

  Roger asked, "And just what is it you'll be doing here, anyway?"

  Quincy took a minute to study the opening and have a look around at the people nearby. His eyes finally settled on me. He laid his hand on my shoulder and grinned. "Why, Mr. Hollywood director, we're gonna have a look-see underneath this house. For buried treasure, don't you know? And this is the little gal we're sending on the hunt."

  I looked around at him. Surely I hadn't heard him right. "Me?"

  Quincy nodded. Harry looked surprised. The Powells and the Hollywood director turned to me with interested expressions.

  "No," I said. "I won't go under there." My Grandmamma Ida had all kinds of bad things to say about what might lurk in the dark spaces under a house. Haints and monsters and beasties and all kinds of ugly things. And I, for one, had no desire to meet up with any of them. Harry's house had sat on that spot for well over two hundred years. That was plenty of time for any variety of evil, nasty things to take up residence under there.

  I cast a worried glance in that general direction. "Nope. Huh-uh. No way."

  "Chère," Quincy cajoled, his Cajun coming to the forefront. "It gotta be you, girl. Nobody else goin' fit that tiny hole."

  He was wrong if he thought I'd succumb to that bayou charm. I shook my head but made the mistake of casting a look around. Harry, Percy, and Nancy Villars were all looking at me with what I could only call hope on their faces.

  Harry's brows lifted in supplication.

  "Really?" I said.

  He shrugged and nodded. "I don't feel like there's any danger to you, Miss Hamilton. It would mean a lot to us to see what's under there. But of course you're free to choose for yourself."

  I looked down at my resort costume, a black gown with a high collar around the back. I indicated the flowing skirt with my hands. "But I'm not dressed for—"

  "No worries," Quincy said. "Deputy Washington there can go in the back of my car and get you a jumpsuit."

  Of course he'd come prepared. The Jefferson Parrish Sheriff's Office and the Boy Scouts. Interchangeable.

  I turned and stared at the hole in the stem wall and thought for sure I heard a voice, a voice that didn't speak to me but laughed—one of those long, low, evil laughs I'd heard in Scooby-Doo cartoons just before the monster jumped out at Scooby and Shaggy.

  Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The air seemed suddenly colder, and I had the urge to hightail it out of there. Yep, I was scared, and I wasn't too big to admit it.

  "Q, you know how I am about dark places." I tried to appeal to his kinder, gentler side.

  Q, his chosen nickname by those few of us who knew and loved him well enough to overlook his brutal frankness (that he preferred to call a propensity to be candid), was a good-looking man. No doubt about it. But his hair didn't seem to know how to lie flat, always sticking up all over his head, and the reckless gleam in his eyes could have easily been mistaken for wickedness. Those traits were part of what made him innately sexy and a little intimidating. Good thing Cat had him on a silken leash. Together they were the most striking couple in the sixty-four parishes.

  "Aw, come on, chère. Ain't nothing under there 'cept a few frogs and cucarachas. No boogie men." Okay, so Quincy didn't have a kinder, gentler nature.

  "Q, please don't ask me to—" I took a quick look around the crowd, hoping to find an ally. Neither Cat nor Fabrizio was anywhere to be seen. And the only beloved face my gaze fell on was that of Jack Stockton. Cap'n Jack. My Cap'n Jack, who was at the moment staring at me with concern on his face. His eyes locked with mine but only for a brief moment. Jack, I don't want to—

  My knight in shining armor suddenly looked down as the blonde threw herself against him, wrapped her arms around him, and looked up into his face. Her mouth was moving, but I was too far away to hear what she said. I could only see, and what I saw was my man staring down into her big stupid blue eyes.

  As Fabrizio would have said if he were there, my ire was up.

  Fine, Jack. I'll give you something to look at.

  Quincy's deputy had come back from Quincy's SUV. In his hands he held a folded khaki-colored garment with a pair of like-colored gloves on top of it. I snatched them out of his hands.

  "Haute couture, eh? Can I go inside the house to put this thing on?" I asked.

  Quincy nodded at Deputy Washington, who led me around to the front of the house, took loose a strip of the tape, and stood back.

  I went inside to a spot in the parlor where I didn't think anyone could see me through the windows, switched on a light, and changed into the jumpsuit. The horrific odor had mostly faded, but I could still smell it, or at least I imagined I could. When I finished zipping up the suit, I turned an
d checked out my reflection in one of the dark windows. Swell, the ugly thing has all the charm and sex appeal of an old gunnysack.

  Yeah, right, Mel. Didn't think this through all that well, did you? How do you think you're gonna show up Jack's petite little ex looking like a sewer worker?

  I stepped back outside. Deputy Washington was still there. Quincy probably told him to wait in case I made a break for it. Dang that Quincy Boudreaux. If he wasn't Cat's sweetie, I'd tell him exactly where to get off. I might anyway.

  I walked back around to where everyone was still gathered. Waiting. For me?

  I gulped when my gaze landed on the colorful soul who ran the resort's voodoo shop, Mambo Bon Magie. The voodoo "priestess," as she liked to be called, stood at the edge of the crowd. Mambo was a short, stout Creole with beautiful shiny black skin. The glare from lights the deputies had set up glinted off the enormous amber stone in her yellow turban with big purple polka dots. Her hands were folded over her round belly, and she was staring straight at me.

  Almost as if she'd called my name, I felt the urge to go to her. So I did, stopping to stand right in front of her. She slipped a bead bracelet off her plump wrist and onto mine, mumbling some words I didn't understand as she did.

  "You take this, child. Loa Eshu goin' protect you 'neath there."

  I stared at her. "Under the house? There's something under the house I need to be protected from?"

  She didn't answer.

  "What? What is it I need protection from?"

  She just patted my hand and smiled serenely.

  I gulped and turned around to where Quincy, Harry, Percy, and Nancy Villars stood near the house by what I'd decided to call "the hellhole." Feeling like a condemned killer taking that last walk to sit and sizzle in old Gruesome Gertie, I pulled myself all the way up to my full five foot three inches, thrust my shoulders back, and went over to it.

  The hinged opening in the stone stem wall wasn't very big at all, which was why I guessed Quincy had singled me out to be the one to take it on. I got down on my knees.

  Quincy held out a small high-intensity penlight to me.

  "You need to see where you gonna be going," he said. "Now in the page from the notebook, Belle says she hid the whale-skin pouch containing the document holder and Lafitte's important paper under what's now the porch in a hidey-hole where the second beam crosses the center. Understand?"

  I nodded, took the light from him, and got down in the lush damp grass surrounding la petite maison, stretching out full length toward the dreaded gaping hole.

  "You got this one, chère," Quincy said, giving me a thumbs-up.

  I felt the presence of someone else behind me and twisted my head around.

  The boom mic dropped into my field of vision, and I found myself staring into the eye of the movie camera.

  Looking back up at Quincy, I said, "Really? You're going to let them film this fiasco? From behind?" I thought about what my rear end would look like in the stupid jumpsuit.

  Roger Goodwin, aka Mr. Hollywood, rushed over and hunched down beside me. "Miss…? Sorry, I didn't get your name."

  "My name doesn't matter," I said, suddenly anxious to get this show on the road and be done with it before I lost what little nerve I did have. My grandmamma and my mama would scold me for being impolite, but there it was. I'd also hear about it from them if they ever got wind of this stunt.

  The director went on. "I just wanted to let you know that if we use the footage of you retrieving the letter of pardon from under the house, you'll be credited." He beamed at me. "What do you think of that? Eh?"

  "Good to know." I narrowed my eyes and glared at Quincy then faced ahead into the opening, trying to ignore the dank, rotting smell drifting from it. It was dark under there—darker than dark. I quivered. "If the camera guy's going in with me anyway, why don't you just send him after the letter?"

  It was Mr. Hollywood who answered. "Miss, surely you can see he won't fit all the way in. He'll go as far as possible, but that isn't a very big opening."

  I sighed. He was right. The camera dude's shoulders would probably not even make it through.

  Okay. "Well, here goes," I said to no one in particular as I clamped the penlight between my teeth, dug in with my elbows, and scooted myself, extended arms first, into the opening.

  Behind me a cheer went up from the crowd. Huh. Take that Sydney Baxter. But that smugness evaporated when I looked ahead into the darkness. The cheers and applause quieted, and I was at the point of no return.

  Twisting and turning, pushing, huffing and puffing, even grunting a little, I wedged myself in and finally through the opening. I was alone under a building that, across more than two centuries, had known life and death, pain and turmoil, cruelty and kindness, war and peace. Suddenly overwhelmed, my stomach and throat tightened with emotion, and I nearly gave in to the tears. Nearly but not quite.

  Once I'd squeezed all the way in, the space opened up, and I could raise myself a little higher, which made movement a lot easier. I crawled forward ten feet or so.

  Dampness soaked through the jumpsuit, giving me the shivers. It was quiet under there and as dark and tomb like as Hades must have been once the dead crossed the river Styx. What little light I did have suddenly closed off, and I felt utterly alone. I looked back.

  Okay, so I was as contrary as Mistress Mary, but at that point I welcomed the sight of Goodwin's cameraman with just one shoulder and elbow squeezed through the opening. He switched on a lamp and began to film me from behind. Jumpsuited backside and all.

  But I didn't care anymore. Just knowing he was there and would be able to tell the world of my supreme sacrifice if a haint or the rougarou jumped me made me feel a tiny bit better. He switched on the camera and a light, and suddenly I could see, sort of.

  The camera's light cast a hazy glow around and beyond me a ways, but as I moved farther under the roughhewn support beams and over the soft earth that had been reinforced here and there with small patches of uneven concrete, it grew suddenly darker. And I felt as if I were the last person alive on earth. Looking behind me, it was obvious the cameraman had withdrawn.

  I made a noise in my throat that sounded a lot of like a whine, stopped crawling, took the penlight from between my teeth, and turned it on then put it back.

  Off to my right something scuttled, and when I jerked at the sound, I bumped my head.

  "Ow!"

  As the penlight dropped to the ground, so did I, and my face nearly collided with the squishy earth.

  I shuddered as something several inches long with pokey, prickly feet stalked across my fingers. The beam of the penlight caught it. Roach. Really, really big roach. I jerked, sending it flying.

  Keep on a'goin'. It was a male voice in my head. A voice I recognized. Whenever I heard it or fancied I heard it, I always thought of it as my Granddaddy Joe who'd taught me most of what I know, if I could claim to know anything at all. Crawling around under a house with all things that slithered made me wonder if I did know anything. But there was the voice again. You're doing jes' fine.

  I could see what I figured was the spot up ahead—few feet in from the front of the stone stem wall and just about dead center side to side, right where two heavy beams met.

  I scooted along a little faster to get to it.

  The dark. The closeness. The odor. It was getting to me pretty good. And then there was that sound. It sounded like an irritated baby. Uh-uh-uh. The sound went lower. Oh-oh-oh. I'd never heard a rougarou, so the sounds stopped me dead. I turned my head this way and that, hoping to God the beam of light didn't land on the vicious, gruesome, God-awful ugly hairy beast. It did land on a hairy beast, but it only turned out to be a big, old, fat swamp rat coming to see the fool human crawling around its domain. It sat there, its beady little eyes red and devil-like in the harsh beam of my little light.

  "Get!" My hand settled on a small rock, which I chucked, and the thing scurried away—well, sort of. It was a bit too roly-poly of a swamp rat
to do too much scurrying.

  "You okay in dere, chère?" It was Quincy.

  I didn't answer but aimed the penlight at my destination, now only a few feet in front of me, and continued my slow progress.

  "Chère?" Louder this time.

  "Get lost!" I yelled back.

  I heard him tell someone. "She okay. Don't worry none."

  And then I was there, the place where the beams met, the place where Quincy had said I'd find something important, something so important one man had already died trying to find it, and others had spent gobs of money to come here to look for it.

  Propping myself on one elbow, the light held in the same hand, I could see the dark squarish shape against the lighter-colored beam. The whale-skin pouch.

  Despite my lack of enthusiasm for my assignment, my heart began to beat a little faster, and I started to breathe a little harder. After all, this was a part of history, something worth getting excited about.

  I felt like Nicolas Cage holding the Declaration of Independence in his hands in National Treasure. Pretty heady stuff.

  Up close now I could see the whale-skin pouch Quincy had described was old and brittle. It had been nailed to the beam—the nail was solid rust, but it still held. The top flat of the pouch looked to be intact and closed. I shone the light around the thing, inspecting every inch of it.

  My inspection came to a stop when I got a good look at the bottom of the pouch. It was shredded to the point of being nearly nonexistent. Ripped completely open.

  I took my penlight, and using it as a tool at the bottom of the pouch, I separated the front of the pouch from the back. The beam of light lit up the inside—the empty inside. There was nothing there—nothing at all. Neither the leather document case nor Jean Lafitte's letter of pardon the mixed-race slave had stolen were there.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Quincy squinted at the monitor. "Can we see it again?"