Snakebit

by Linsey Lanier

  “That’s brilliant, Steele. You’re right. Someone might recognize him.”

  Miranda was just digging into her pocket for her phone when it buzzed. It was a text from Parker—with Clarence’s photo attached.

  She grinned. “Parker came up with the same idea. He just sent me the picture.” She read the message and frowned. “He says he’s been showing it around, but no one has recognized him.”

  Wesson let out a groan. “Well, at least it’s something to try.”

  Ignoring her growing sense of disappointment, Miranda nodded. “Then let’s do it.”

  They headed for Bourbon Street again. Here the crowd was heavier and the bars noisier. They spoke to a woman dressed in a gold costume, complete with a shiny star-shaped hat. They questioned a man wearing multi-color long johns and a white top hat. A man on a yellow tricycle cart in a bowler stopped to juggle some rings for them, but he couldn’t tell them anything.

  None of them recognized the photo on Miranda’s phone. None of them had ever heard of Evangeline Rossette. It was looking more and more like the woman hadn’t been in the area for a long while.

  Wesson reached into the big pink leather bag she’d been carrying. “I got this in the cigar shop.”

  “What is it?”

  “A guide book.”

  She’d noticed her shopping while she was interrogating the old man on the stool. “That might help some. And here I thought you were buying yourself a stogie.”

  Wesson gave her a scowl.

  Miranda pointed at her handbag. “Now I’m glad you brought that thing with.”

  Wesson gave the pouch a pat. “My Coach Edie shoulder bag. I got it on Ebay for ninety dollars.”

  “Nice.” Miranda wouldn’t pay ninety dollars for a whole closetful of purses. “What does your guidebook say?”

  While Wesson paged through it, Miranda eyed another bar featuring two-for-one frozen daiquiris. Through the open door, she could see a raised floor full of dancing women pumping their fists in the air in time to music so loud she couldn’t hear herself think.

  She crossed that place off the list. She hadn’t had a drop of liquor, and already her head was starting to ache.

  Wesson held out her book. “Hey, look. There’s a bar down the street that’s been here since the town was founded.”

  Miranda’s hopes rose again. In a place like that, they had to find someone old enough to know Evangeline Rossette when she used to live here.

  “It’s supposed to have once been owned by a pirate, and some say it has a ghost.”

  “Maybe the ghost can tell us what happened to Evangeline.” She noted the address. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  After a five-minute walk, Miranda found the place.

  The Anvil bar was housed in an old building that reminded her of an English pub. It had a gray thatched roof, a white stucco exterior, and a window box filled with pink camellias. Not spooky at all, by the look of it. Miranda was starting to wonder about the accuracy of Wesson’s guidebook.

  Like all the other places, the doors were wide open, so with Wesson beside her, she stepped inside the darkened space.

  It look a few moments for her eyes to get used to the dim lights.

  When they did, there wasn’t much to see. Rough hewn boards made up the bar, and a row of benches along the walls served as simple tables, giving the place a cramped feel. It did seem ancient, though. A musty smell hung in the air and there was no music was playing. The only sound was the murmur of a pair of rough looking customers in a corner.

  In contrast, the single employee tending the bar was a young blond guy with a short blond beard that didn’t make him look any older. There was a rag on the counter in front of him that he probably should have been using to wipe it down. Instead he was sneaking a peek at his cell phone.

  As Miranda headed for the bar, he came alert and shoved the phone into his pocket.

  “What can I get for you ladies?” he said, grinning as if they were old friends.

  Must have had advanced customer service training.

  Miranda slid onto the stool in front of him. “How long have you worked here, young man?”

  He seemed taken aback at the question. “A couple of months, why?”

  “Do you know the other people on the staff pretty well?”

  “Sort of. Why?”

  “We’re detectives. We’re investigating a case, and we’re looking for someone who’s been in the area a good while.”

  “We understand this is an old establishment,” Wesson added, taking the stool next to Miranda.

  The barkeep nodded. “Since the eighteenth century, so the story goes.”

  Miranda leaned an arm on the bar. “Then you might know someone who’s worked here several decades, right?”

  “Decades?”

  “That’s right. Is there anyone on your staff who’s been here that long?”

  Looking uncomfortable, he stared at her, then at Wesson. “Anyone—in particular?”

  Miranda shot Wesson a glance. Her face said she thought the kid was acting strange, too.

  “Actually,” she said, “we’re looking for a woman named Evangeline Rossette. She lived here some time ago.”

  He thought a minute, struggling for an answer. Then something came to him. “The current owner’s a pretty old guy. I think he’s still in the back. Why don’t you have a seat over in that booth while I’ll get him?” He gestured to an empty table.

  “I’m not saying no to that,” Wesson whispered and hurried to the booth.

  She slid onto the dark wooden bench, slipped her shoes off, and pulled a bare foot up beside her.

  Okay, Miranda thought, sliding in across from her. It was good to get off their feet for a few minutes. They’d been walking since breakfast, and it was almost time to meet Parker for lunch. And so far, they hadn’t gotten anywhere. With the clock ticking away, the lack of progress was as wearying as the walking.

  They waited for what seemed like ten minutes until a short elderly man came out from the back. His fluffy hair was long and gray, and matched a beard that hung to his chest. Stooped over, he walked with a limp and wore a long stained apron that dragged the floor.

  “Who is it dat wants to see me, Ethan?” he said to the bartender in a raspy Cajun accent.

  “The two ladies over here. I didn’t get their names.” He guided the man over to the table, grabbed a wooden chair, and sat him down at the end of the table between them.

  Miranda held out a hand. “My name is Miranda Steele and this is Janelle Wesson. We’re from the Parker Investigative Agency in Atlanta.”

  The old man stared at her hand a while and finally took it.

  His hand felt like a cold dead fish.

  In the dim light he squinted at her with dark, sunken eyes, the wrinkles in his lined face growing even more pronounced. “Investigative Agency? Dis bar has a notorious history, but it is all above board now. I assure you.”

  “I’m sure it is. We’re looking for a missing person who used to live in the area some time ago. Her name was Evangeline Rossette. She would be in her early sixties now.”

  Despite the gray hair and beard, the old man’s brows were black as coal. They drew tightly together giving him a sinister look as he began to stroke his beard and mutter, “Evangeline Rossette. Evangeline Rossette. De name does not ring a bell.”

  Miranda wasn’t giving up that easily. “Our information tells us she divorced her husband over forty years ago and lived in a house on Bienville Street. We visited there last night, but the owner doesn’t remember her. We thought she might have frequented this area during that time.”

  He continued to stroke his beard with his palm. “Many people come and go here. I have seen so many faces in my lifetime. I cannot remember them all.”

  “Evangeline had a son she took with her when she left her husband. He would be forty-three now. His name was Jean-Baptiste.”

  The old man stared at her for a moment, as if
he recognized the name. Then he shook his head with a laugh. “As I said, I do not remember de woman, so I would not remember de son.”

  Miranda reached for her cell phone, scrolled to the picture of Dr. Boudreaux. “Ten years ago, he would have looked similar to this photo. Do you recognize this man?”

  The old man stopped stroking his beard. As soon as he saw the picture, his mouth dropped open and his eyes bulged. Then he caught himself and shook his head with conviction. “No. I have never seen dat person before in my life. I am sorry, ladies. I cannot help you. Ethan!” He started to rise.

  The young bartender hurried over and took the man’s arm.

  Miranda shot up. “Are you sure you haven’t seen him?”

  He waved an arm in the air as he hobbled away. “I have nothing more to say.”

  She took a step toward him. “Are you sure?” she demanded.

  He turned and fixed her with his dark sunken eyes. “I have never been more sure of anything in my life.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  As planned, they met Parker for lunch at a bistro a few minutes away on St. Ann Street.

  Miranda didn’t really feel like eating, but she knew she needed the fuel, so she tried the catfish Po-Boy. With the bread crackly-crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, and the fish fried to a golden crunch, it turned out to be delicious, even if it could have used a little more spice. As Parker dug into his crawfish boil stew, he seemed pleased she’d found an appetite. Wesson too, was wolfing down a bowl of red bean and andouille gumbo.

  Tired and depressed despite their hunger, they ate in silence, and Miranda tried to think of what else they could do to find Clarence Boudreaux’s mother.

  “I feel like we’ve been everywhere with no luck, Parker,” she said pushing her plate away.

  Parker looked grim. “No one was able to tell me anything about the whereabouts of Evangeline Rossette, either.”

  She swallowed the last of her ice water and sat back. “There was one guy. An old man in the last bar we went to. When I showed him the photo you sent me of Dr. Boudreaux, I could have sworn he knew him.”

  Wiping her mouth, Wesson nodded. “If that wasn’t recognition on his face, it was a good imitation.”

  “But then he swore he didn’t know him and took off for the back of the bar. Refused to say any more. It was as if he was afraid of something.”

  Parker’s frown was intense. “I had a similar experience.”

  “You did?”

  “On Toulouse Street, just before I headed here. A woman in a shop looked as if she were about to faint when I showed her Clarence’s picture.”

  “And then she said she didn’t know him?”

  “She began cursing at me in French and demanded I leave the shop.”

  Miranda glanced at Wesson. “That’s fishy.”

  “As that sandwich you just finished,” Wesson agreed.

  Wondering what it all meant, Miranda played with her napkin.

  “So what now?” Wesson said. She seemed refreshed and ready to go another round.

  “Does your guidebook have a map?”

  Wesson nodded and pulled it out. Miranda found the spot where they were now, the ancient bar with the old man, and the shop where Parker had been.

  “We aren’t far from the house where Evangeline Rossette once lived. Maybe she did frequent this area.”

  “Or her son did as an adult,” Parker said.

  “And made some people afraid of him.”

  After all, they were looking for someone who might have murdered his brother’s wife. Though right now, that theory seemed pretty farfetched.

  She let out a frustrated huff. “Let’s go canvass the area around the house we went to last night. Maybe some of Evangeline’s old neighbors are still there and remember her.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Parker agreed.

  Parker paid the check and they headed for the lot where he’d parked the Mazda that morning.

  Miranda had another thought. “Before we go to Evangeline’s old neighborhood, let’s swing around to the police station and check on that detective.”

  At her side, Parker nodded. “Good idea.”

  Maybe this Cajun gumshoe could tell them why some folks seemed so afraid of Clarence Boudreaux’s picture.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Another long afternoon slipped by without anyone even marking the time. She marked it.

  Wanda Boyd gazed through the kitchen curtains of her home in Altoona, Iowa and inwardly sighed at the sight of the old tire swing hanging from the oak tree where her little girl once played.

  It had been three years since the morning she’d walked into her daughter’s bedroom and found her gone.

  She’d taken her keys, her purse, the money she’d been saving for books for college, and left without a trace. She’d been seventeen. Not the most popular girl in her high school, but she’d had friends. Her grades were good. She’d been accepted into U of I and wanted to study cinema there the next fall. She would have been a junior by now.

  At first, Wanda had blamed herself. She’d fought with her daughter two days before she left. It was over her prom dress. Wanda had thought it was too revealing. She’d threatened to ground her daughter if she wore it. They ended up screaming and yelling at each other.

  Wanda had gone over the scene in her mind a dozen times since then. If only she’d talked to her calmly. If only she’d tried to reason with her instead of getting mad.

  Her husband said it wasn’t her fault. But Wanda wouldn’t be comforted. She must have been a terrible mother for her daughter to run away like that. She must have done something very wrong. After three years, the guilt still gnawed at her. If only she could turn back the clock.

  As soon as they discovered she was gone, Wanda and her husband had called the police, but there was only so much the authorities could do. They questioned her friends and the faculty at the high school. Tried to find out where she might have gone. A week later an officer found her car forty miles outside of Des Moines. It was out of gas.

  If she had hitchhiked, they told Wanda and her husband, there was a good possibility she was dead.

  Wanda refused to give up. Over the summer and into the fall they distributed flyers, sent out bulletins, followed leads that went nowhere. Wanda and her husband even appeared on TV with a plea for her baby to come home.

  Nothing worked.

  Officers hunted for a body for months, but hadn’t found a trace of her. After a while, she’d been relegated to the cold cases. The months and years went by. Birthdays, holidays, special occasions. Wanda missed her so much. Her husband said they needed to get on with their lives. Wanda had two younger boys who needed her attention. She tried to take care of them, tried to be a good mother, but she couldn’t forget her daughter.

  She created social media pages and discovered there were other parents out there looking for their children. She spent hours chatting with them online, commiserating with them, hoping with them.

  Her husband and sons didn’t understand, but she didn’t care. Wanda would never give up hope. She felt it in her bones. Her baby was alive. She was out there somewhere.

  And someday Eileen would come home.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Several hours ago Miranda had ridden a streetcar with Parker and Wesson to the lot where they’d left the Mazda, then gone to the police station they’d visited last night. There had been no word from the detective named Labatte, so fighting the mounting sense of dejection, the three of them had headed back to the white Victorian two-story with the charming dormer windows where Evangeline Rossette had once lived.

  There they split up again to canvass the neighbor.

  They talked to everyone who was home in the four-block area around the lost woman’s last known address. Elderly women, elderly men, parents herding their kids from the car to the house after a Saturday afternoon shopping trip. Couples, singles, widows, divorcees. Everyone was polite and wanted to be helpful, bu
t nobody remembered a lady in the white house named Evangeline Rossette or her son. There was no reaction from the photo of Dr. Boudreaux.

  The detectives had reunited on the corner of the block north of the house, and were heading into a seedy looking area when Miranda’s feet gave out.

  “Hold on,” she said, leaning against Parker’s arm to loosen her shoe. “I think my blister just got a blister.”

  “Mine had babies hours ago,” Wesson complained. Of course, she was wearing her fancy heels.

  “You should wear more comfortable shoes for this kind of work,” Miranda told her.

  “You’re the one who just gave out.”

  Ignoring the bickering he knew came from fatigue, Parker scanned the area. It was dark and deserted. Empty warehouses, rundown buildings. The sun had gone down over two hours ago. Miranda would press on until she dropped, but they needed a break.

  “I don’t think we’ll find what we’re looking for here,” he said. “Let’s go to dinner. I have a place in mind.”

  Miranda was too tired and hungry to argue over that. Her Po-Boy sandwich from lunch was a long distant memory.

  “Sounds good,” she said, easing the shoe over her sore foot. “Right now I could eat one of those carriage mules.”

  “Me, too,” Wesson agreed.

  “Let’s head back to the car.”

  The place Parker had in mind was a fancy four-star seafood restaurant on Dauphine Street.

  They sat outside in the café area, ordered a ton of food, and ate like pigs. Who knew hiking for miles around an ancient historic city looking for someone who probably wasn’t there could spark such an appetite? Parker indulged in a thick juicy sirloin, while Wesson had a big plate of Cajun jambalaya pasta. Miranda ordered a combination gumbo and crawfish etouffée with shrimp and alligator sausage in a spicy Creole sauce on the side. Everything was flaming hot, just the way she liked it.

  She offered Wesson a taste of the sausage.

  After taking a bite, Wesson had to gulp water and fan her mouth. “I don’t know how you can take that spice, Steele.”