Snakebit

by Linsey Lanier

  “My theory is she has no taste buds,” Parker said, grinning at her tenderly.

  Miranda gave him an I’ll-get-you-back-later look. He knew her taste buds better than that, but she wasn’t going to talk about their personal life in front of Wesson.

  Across the street, a tuba huffed out a peppy bass riff before being joined by the trumpet and sax of a Dixieland band who’d assembled on the pavement. As if called by a siren sound, the crowd on the street seemed to double as people began dancing and milling about back and forth, some of them coming close to their table.

  Music and partiers were everywhere in this town. But the swarm and the sounds brought Miranda’s mind back to why they were here. Suddenly she lost her appetite and put down her fork. They’d been here almost twenty-four hours and learned nothing.

  Time was running out for Dr. Boudreaux.

  She pushed her plate away and let out a tired groan. “I don’t know what else to do, Parker. We’re not getting anywhere with our hunt for Clarence’s mother, and Becker hasn’t gotten any hits on his search of the Katrina databases, either.” She’d called and checked with him before they ordered.

  Parker’s face went dark, but he didn’t say anything.

  She gazed out at the band and the revelers out in the street. “I feel like getting drunk.”

  Wesson put her chin in her hand. “Yeah. Let’s get sauced, take off our shirts and dance in the middle of the street like it’s Mardi Gras.”

  Miranda raised a brow at her. “You go ahead.”

  Wesson rolled her eyes. “I was just joking, Steele. Trying to lighten things up.”

  “Whatever.”

  Wesson tossed her napkin on the table. “You’re right. It’s impossible to do that now. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do for Dr. Boudreaux, either.”

  “Now who’s being a wet blanket?”

  “We have to keep trying,” Parker said, weariness in his voice. “Keep searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack until we find it.”

  Or until time ran out. There had to be a better way to find the woman they were looking for. But what it was, she didn’t know. Miranda had closed her eyes, trying to will a solution to pop into her head, when she heard a low voice with a thick Cajun accent near her.

  “Are you Mr. Wade Parker?”

  Parker turned around to view the tall pear-shaped man standing beside his chair. “I am. And you are?”

  He made a little bow. “Detective Alonso Labatte, at your service. I hear you have been trying to get in touch with me.”

  Miranda looked at Parker, then at Wesson. They were both just as shocked as she was.

  Detective Labatte seemed to be in his mid-fifties. He had a face that reminded her of the broken asphalt she used to shovel when she worked on the road crew back in Atlanta. He wore a bright purple shirt open at the neck and an old tan suit that he might have gotten at a thrift store.

  His scraggly dark hair was streaked with gray and needed combing. On his chin grew a matching goatee that needed trimming. There was a stain on his lapel that might have been Creole sauce.

  But the look in his sharp, deep-set eyes told Miranda he was the real deal.

  She glanced down the street and spotted a clunky-looking unmarked Subaru she assumed was his.

  “How did you find us?” she asked.

  “How could I not recognize the famous Wade Parker and Miranda Steele? I follow the Atlanta news keenly.” He turned to Wesson. “And you are?”

  “Janelle Wesson,” she said extending a hand.

  “Wesson is helping us on this case.”

  “I am very pleased to meet you. All of you.” He shook hands with each of them, his dark eyes glowing.

  It sounded like flattery, but Miranda had a feeling he was being sincere.

  She cleared her throat. “I meant, Detective, how did you know we’d be at this restaurant?”

  “Your husband left word at the station that you would be here.”

  She hadn’t heard him do that, the sneak. So he’d planned dinner way ahead of schedule. That was so like Parker.

  But Parker was eyeing the detective with a skeptical look. “I understand you’re on administrative leave, Detective Labatte. May I ask what for?”

  He rubbed his mustache and grinned painfully. “A disagreement with my boss. I have solved a lot of cases in my time, but the chief does not always approve of my methods. I must admit, at times, I do not care for authority.”

  Their type of guy.

  “May I?” He gestured to an empty chair next to Wesson.

  Miranda turned to Parker.

  He nodded. “Of course.”

  With a graceful move the detective seated himself. “I understand you are looking for a woman? Someone named Evangeline?”

  He spoke the name with such intensity, Miranda’s hopes rose at his tone.

  Parker gave Miranda a nod that told her she was in charge.

  “Yes,” Miranda told Labatte. “Her name is Evangeline Rossette. She lived here with a man named Armand Boudreaux. She left him forty-two years ago with her one-year-old son.”

  She told him the details of Dr. Boudreaux’s case. The western taipan his wife was killed with, the DNA found in her, his claim of innocence, what he had revealed under hypnosis.

  “I’m not sure if you can help us,” she concluded. “We’ve been all over the city searching for someone who might have known Evangeline Rossette and no one seems to.”

  “She may have been lost during Katrina,” Parker added darkly.

  Labatte sat back, rubbed his scruffy goatee, eyeing them as if they were suspects. “If she was ever arrested, she would be in our database. I can get you access to it.”

  Parker had already searched all the police databases in Georgia and Louisiana.

  “Do you have a photo of her?” Labatte asked.

  “We have a photo of her son. It was taken over ten years ago.” Miranda pulled out her phone and slid it over to him.

  As soon as he saw the picture, the detective sat straight up. His dark eyes went wide with recognition. The same expression they’d seen on that old bar owner’s face earlier.

  “Duval,” he said. “I suspected that might be the case.”

  Miranda blinked at him. “What?”

  “Not Evangeline Rossette. Evangeline Duval. She’s the woman you’re looking for.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Her maiden name was Comier. Rossette was probably a false moniker she took when she married her first husband. I didn’t know about him.”

  Comier, Rossette, Duval. What was he saying? “But you know about her?”

  Labatte nodded. He took out his own phone and handed it to Miranda. “This is her likeness.”

  It was an old-fashioned painting of a woman in costume. A beautiful woman with dark arched brows and long dark ringlets over her shoulder. Against a satiny background she wore a red plantation-type dress with a spreading hoop skirt and carried a fan in one hand. Her features did resemble Clarence’s.

  “She married a wealthy brewery owner named Duval many years ago,” Labatte continued. “It must have been shortly after she left her first husband. Duval was quite old when they wed. He died just five years later. We think he was involved with the underworld.”

  Underworld? A chill went down Miranda’s spine.

  “Duval adopted Evangeline’s son, and they both kept his surname after his death.”

  Now she was getting excited. “Then you know them. Where is she now?”

  “Dr. Boudreaux’s life depends on us finding her, detective,” Parker added.

  Beside Miranda, Wesson watched Labatte with wide, expectant eyes.

  The detective studied them each carefully, his beard bobbing as he jutted out his jaw. At last he spoke. “She disappeared. She is presumed dead. We’ve been looking for her body for almost ten years.”

  Before Miranda could process that, the detective picked up her phone again and studied it. “But her son, he is a different s
tory.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He dropped the Jean part of his name and goes by simply Baptiste. Baptiste Duval. He owns a riverboat casino docked alongside Lake Pontchartrain called Golden Dreams. He also runs a prostitution ring.”

  “Prostitution ring?” Miranda felt like she’d been punched in the chest.

  He nodded. “He has a bevy of young girls who service customers on the riverboat, but he also has them working in town at local establishments he has part ownership in.”

  Maybe like that old bar they’d been to.

  “If you know all that, why haven’t the police arrested him?”

  “He pays off some of the officers. His underworld connections handle the rest. His mother, though, is a different story. She was the original owner and manager of Golden Dreams. One day about ten years ago, she disappeared and Baptiste took over the riverboat and everything else his mother was into.”

  Ten years ago. The time Dr. Charmaine Boudreaux was murdered.

  Labatte tapped his fingers on the tablecloth. “We believe, or rather I believe, Baptiste is the one who killed her.”

  Miranda’s mouth dropped open. “He killed his own mother?”

  “Oui.” Labatte held up Miranda’s phone again. “This man is the spitting image of Baptiste, only Baptiste’s face is not so friendly. Of course, we cannot prove anything about Evangeline’s disappearance. It is only my theory.” He slid the phone back across the table.

  Miranda took it and put it back in her pocket, her mind buzzing with everything the detective had just told him. This Baptiste Duval was Dr. Boudreaux’s twin brother? He ran a casino and a prostitution ring? He was involved with the underworld? He was some sort of crime lord? And according to Labatte, he killed his own mother? The woman they’d been looking all over town for?

  That explained the reaction of some folks to Clarence’s picture. It also meant that the twin brother would be capable of the crime Dr. Boudreaux was accused of. But if Clarence didn’t know about his brother, how did Baptiste know about him? Had his mother told him?

  It was Saturday night. The execution was set for Monday evening. They had less than forty-eight hours to prove Clarence Boudreaux was innocent. But even with everything Labatte had just told them, they had no real evidence of anything. They couldn’t get an appeal on theory and assumptions.

  Beside her, Wesson sat processing the detective’s words. Miranda was about to ask what she thought when she twisted around in her chair.

  “My bag. Where’s my bag?”

  “What?”

  “My Coach Edie shoulder bag. It’s gone!”

  Good grief. Miranda thought a moment. “You had it when we were canvassing Evangeline’s neighbor. Did you leave it in the car?”

  “No. I hung it right here.” She patted the arm of her chair.

  Putting it there was asking for it to be stolen. Wesson should have known better.

  Wesson began to wave her arm toward the street corner. “There it is. That girl over there has it. Hey!” She shot up and ran after her.

  “Wesson,” Miranda shouted. “Come back.”

  It was too late. Wishing Parker had never given her responsibility over another investigator, she took off after her.

  Chapter Forty

  Miranda ran after Wesson, pushing past restaurant tables and through the dancing, intoxicated merrymakers on the sidewalk until she finally caught up with her.

  “Where is she?” she gasped.

  “There.” Wesson pointed down the street.

  Miranda looked up in time to see the girl shoot around a corner. “C’mon.”

  They raced over the cobblestone walkway, past a yellow brick building, under an awning and a row of colorful flags to the spot, took the turn side-by-side and kept going.

  “She’s up there,” Miranda said, catching sight of the bobbing figure ahead of them.

  The girl was scantily clad in a skimpy black dress made of two narrow pieces of fabric held together with a row of straps on either side. Miranda wondered how it stayed on. The outfit’s color would have hidden her from view in the darkness, if hadn’t been for the light flashing from her sneakers.

  Sneakers. What Miranda wouldn’t give for a pair of those. But even in Wesson’s high heels, they would have caught up to her by now if they weren’t so footsore from the miles they’d covered today. She wasn’t going that fast. It was almost as if she didn’t want them to lose her.

  They raced up St. Louis Street, past apartment buildings and closed shops. At the next corner the girl turned left and sprinted through a gas station.

  They followed her over the asphalt and stopped at the fuel pumps.

  Miranda looked up and down the sidewalk in front of the station. “Where’d she go?”

  “I don’t know.” Wesson sounded heart-broken.

  “She has to be here somewhere.”

  “Maybe she had a boyfriend with a getaway car waiting.”

  For one purse? Didn’t seem worth the trouble, but she wasn’t going to say that to Wesson.

  “There.” Wesson pointed across the street.

  In the shadows of a stone wall the girl stood looking over her shoulder at them, as if waiting for them to catch up.

  That didn’t seem right. A warning bell went off in Miranda’s head, but she followed Wesson to the corner anyway. As soon as the light turned and they were through the crosswalk and headed down the sidewalk toward the girl, she scaled the wall.

  “Damn,” Wesson grunted.

  “Yeah.”

  They hurried over to the spot where the girl had disappeared.

  “Now what?”

  There only seemed to be one choice. Miranda stood on tiptoe and craned her neck, trying to see over the wall. In the shadows she spotted the tops of stone crosses and monuments.

  “Uh oh.”

  Wesson’s eyes were full of panic. “What?”

  “This is a cemetery.”

  “A what?”

  “A place where folks around here bury their dead above ground. Parker pointed it out yesterday. A voodoo queen is supposed to be buried in there.”

  Wesson stepped back shaking her head. “I’m not going in there, Steele. My guidebook says there are ghosts in this city. I’m sure some of them are in there.”

  Miranda shrugged. “It’s your Coach whatever bag.”

  Wesson glared at her, jaw jutting, teeth grinding. Miranda thought she was going to slap her.

  Then she rolled her eyes. “Okay. You win. Give me a leg up.”

  They grunted and growled their way up the wall. Wesson tore a stocking and Miranda nearly got mauled in the face by Wesson’s high heel. But at last her cohort was on top of the stony surface. She extended a hand, and Miranda climbed up after her.

  She was at the top, just about to go over when she looked back and saw Parker and Labatte rolling up in the detective’s unmarked Subaru. As Parker got out of the passenger side, she nodded toward the cemetery and waved for him and Labatte to follow.

  With a look of clear disapproval, he nodded.

  He was just trotting toward the wall when she jumped down into the yard.

  Chapter Forty-One

  It took a few minutes for Miranda’s eyes to adjust to the dim light. Once they did, she didn’t like what she saw—or felt.

  The air here was dank, the ground moist and squishy, and the rows of above-ground crypts with their shadowy silhouettes of crosses and Gothic arches were creepier than a haunted house on Halloween. A full moon overhead only added to the atmosphere.

  Her skin crawling, Miranda tiptoed past the mausoleum-like structures. As she groped her way along, her fingers touched some of the engraving on the stony surfaces, making her heart nearly stop. Names of the deceased, inscriptions about them.

  She swallowed down her nerves and went on.

  Where the heck was Wesson? She and the girl had disappeared completely. Maybe they’d both been swallowed up by some purse-hungry ghoul.

  “Wes
son,” she hissed, listening for her cohort’s footsteps.

  Nothing.

  “Wesson,” she said again. This time a little louder.

  “Over here.”

  Miranda followed the sound of Wesson’s voice through another row of tombstones to a palm tree next to one of the taller monuments.

  There Wesson stood with the girl, who was still holding her purse.

  “What’s going on?” Miranda whispered, as if some ghost might overhear her.

  Wesson waved her hand at the girl. “She wants to wait until everyone gets here. Did Mr. Parker follow us?”

  Miranda nodded. “Yeah, he should be right along.” She hoped.

  “And that detective?” said the girl.

  “He’ll be here, too.” Although she had her doubts about Labatte making it over that wall. “What do you think you’re doing, stealing my friend’s purse?”

  “I had to get your attention.”

  The girl folded her arms as if to cover the bare parts peeking through her dress, and stared at her with liquid, deep blue eyes, laden with thick makeup. Her hair was black as the night around them. She was young. Couldn’t be much over twenty. She made Miranda think of Mackenzie and suddenly she wanted to protect the kid.

  “And why was that?”

  “I overheard you talking to that detective. I know the man you’re looking for.”

  Labatte’s voice rang out from the darkness. “Were you soliciting, young lady?” he called between puffs for air. “If so, I will need to take you in.”

  Miranda turned and saw the detective and Parker making their way through the maze of crypts. “She says she knows the man we’re looking for.”

  “And who would that be?” Parker said in his rich Southern tone.

  “Baptiste,” the girl said without hesitation. “I was working the street near the restaurant where you were eating and I heard you talking at the table. I work for him.”

  Finally catching up to them, Labatte leaned a hand against the tree trunk and sucked in air while he studied the girl. “So you were soliciting.”

  “You know that already. Listen to me. I think Baptiste killed my friend. And you’re right. He did kill his mother.”