“The pirates an’ me, together,” Crazy Mary acknowledged.
“The pirates?” Brett stroked Delta’s hair.
“For truth,” Crazy Mary insisted. “Delta’s dreams about the pirates caused her to take passage on the showboat—and to believe in you, once she met you, even though others advised her not to.”
“I experienced a few dreams myself.” Brett squeezed Delta’s head tighter against his shoulder. “Dreams of some wispy blue-eyed woman.”
Crazy Mary’s eyes lighted with success. “Bien.” She beamed at Delta. “Oui, I brought her to you. The blue-eyed woman in your dreams.”
Brett laughed. Delta felt the rumble in his chest before it exploded from his throat. But when he pulled her face away from his chest and looked down into her eyes, she saw not humor but love. “I don’t care who takes the credit, long as I get the girl,” he whispered before planting a quick, all-too-chaste kiss on her lips.
Oblivious, Crazy Mary smiled at Delta. “Together we got him home, oui?”
Brett gripped Delta’s head, pressing it firmly back to his chest. “Oui,” he acknowledged, serious again. “Now we must discuss the consequences.”
Crazy Mary nodded sagaciously.
“First, let me warn you,” he added. “I’ve come back to clear my name, and I need your help, Maman.”
Delta’s eyes found Gabriel’s, just before Brett turned her by the shoulders and peered into her eyes as intently as he had looked at his mother when they danced. One hand left her shoulder and caressed her face.
Tears pooled in Delta’s eyes, but instead of blinking to stop them, she let them spill over and roll down her cheeks. “I have a plan.” She spoke quickly, lest he interrupt with objections. “We can leave here tonight. With your cousins and Gabriel’s cousins for guards, we can escape the bayou. I know we can. We can return to Canada and—”
His thumbs wiped the tears from her cheeks, his eyes pleaded with her to understand. “Non, chère. I must clear my name. I want to be free. For us.”
Crazy Mary took Brett by the arm, much as she had done Delta earlier. “Come. Sit yourselves down. We will discuss the difficulty, sure.”
They sat around a rough-hewn cypress table that was littered with dried plants Delta took to be herbs. Before sitting down herself, Crazy Mary poured coffee for all of them—the same thick, black café they had been served at Gabriel’s home. Then she proceeded to tell him the story she had related to Delta and Gabriel earlier.
Brett’s first question after his mother finished her tale was voiced in a monotone. “You’ve known it was Trainor all along?”
The strange woman nodded. “Suspected,” she corrected. “Not known so it could be proved.”
Without warning Brett jumped to his feet, sloshing coffee from every cup at the table, reminding Delta of the old Brett from the showboat, the man of mercurial temperament who was quick to explode. He braced his hands on the table’s edge and glared across at his mother. Delta watched, torn between the agony she felt for him and empathy for his mother.
“When you sent me off ten years ago, you knew who the murderer was?” His voice ricocheted from the thin, single-board walls like a cannon shot. Delta imagined it carrying through the gaps between boards all the way to the bayou, all the way to Baton Rouge and into that stuffy little office of the governor’s persnickety secretary.
“Anatole, you could not have prove’ your innocence.”
“I never had a chance to try.” Kicking back his chair he began to pace the floor.
“I tell you, my son, you could not have prove’ it, non,” she repeated.
Brett raged on. “I’ve been living in hell for ten goddamn years, and you sit here, knowing all the answers.” He stopped to glare at her again. “What right did you have? Tell me that. What right did you have to make such a decision for me?”
Mary Dupré didn’t give a hint at being crazy. She sat tall and straight, solemn-faced, neither defensive nor apologetic. Delta watched her, awed by the woman’s strength. “Me, I am your mother.”
“And I’m your son, your only child,” Brett charged. “I deserved the truth.”
“Brett—” Delta began.
He turned stormy eyes on her. For an instant his rage ceased. His eyes caressed her face, almost worshipping in their tenderness, but in their depths she saw ten long years of pain and loneliness—and guilt. Dear God, how she loved this man.
Abruptly he turned away. Facing a rear window, which was shuttered against the governor’s spies, he crossed his arms over his chest. Delta watched his shoulders tremble with his great inner struggle.
“We had no time to find evidence, Anatole,” his mother explained. “Trainor, he would not have allow’ us time. The troopers, they came no more than an hour after you left. Me, I convince’ them you had gone the opposite direction so you could escape, sure.”
“Escape? I’m innocent, goddammit,” he spat. “I deserved a chance to prove it.”
Crazy Mary repeated her reasoning. “You would have had no chance, my son. Don’t you know sendin’ you away was the hardest thing I ever did? You had three years with Olivia, yet losin’ her broke your heart. You had been part of my life for twenty-five years. Oui, you were my only son, all I had. Your life was worth ever’thing to me, even if it meant sendin’ you away forever.”
“All right,” he conceded. “I had to go away for a while. But why ten years? Why not one or five or—”
“You would have had no chance before now, non. Trainor, he had no soft underbelly.”
“And he has now?” Brett challenged. “Trainor wants me as badly now as before. I’m still number one on his Most Wanted list. And the evidence, if there ever was any, is ten years old.”
Delta watched Crazy Mary thread her long, worn fingers in and out between each other, making what Ginny told the children was a church with a steeple and a door. Then tearing down the structure, she rebuilt it and tore it down again, speaking, explaining to her son.
“Don’t mistake what I say, Anatole. Me, I love you as much as ever, sure, but the time has come to stop that man. He is too powerful. His threats, they don’ bother me. It’s the principle. Drivin’ people away on a whim. No man should be so powerful. Today it is me, or those he calls Voodoos. Who will it be tomorrow? And tomorrow? With ever’ success he becomes more powerful.”
“And you want me to be the sacrificial lamb?”
Crazy Mary’s eyes followed her son, as he crossed the room and sat again beside Delta.
“I tell you, no one else holds such a black-black secret over him.”
“Non? He has come this far, murdered his own sister and niece, and done nothing else a man could hold against him?”
Crazy Mary shrugged and in that innocent gesture Delta found a word that described this strange woman: elegance. Not the kind of elegance found in fancy drawing rooms or governor’s mansions, but an elegance of spirit. It shone like a star in all she did—in her words, in her gestures, in the manner she accepted her son’s accusations, in the way she had danced with him and gazed into his eyes, in the way she had straightened the cross on her granddaughter’s grave. Mary Dupré was a woman of elegance.
“A man who can speak against him?” Crazy Mary quizzed. “Or a man who will? Like you say he prob’ly has committed other crimes. But me, I have seen no one willin’ to call his hand.”
Brett stared into the empty depths of his coffee cup. “He sets his traps as carefully as I.”
Rising, Gabriel carried the heavy pot around the table refilling cups. “Your traps are for pelts to earn your living, mon ami. Trainor’s traps, they are for people who get in his way.”
Brett rested his elbows on the table, threaded his fingers through his hair and supported his head. “How did Nicole get in his way? Or Olivia?”
“Me, I don’t know the truth.” Crazy Mary tried to explain her theory. “Nicole’s lifestyle embarrass’ her family, sure. She would have been a big-big problem, her brother runnin’ for gov’nor.” Sh
e paused, finding her son’s eyes. “Olivia, who can say what prompt’ such a tragedy? Perhaps he didn’t expec’ her to be home.”
“Or perhaps Trainor, he wanted to cut all ties with the bayou,” Gabriel offered.
“Never mind the reason, the bastard deserves to die for that alone,” Brett hissed.
His words fell like stones in the ensuing silence. Suddenly he reached for Delta’s hands, grasping them, holding them against the tabletop. His eyes found hers, piercing into her soul. “Ah, chère, you found yourself a real nightmare, coming here.”
“It’s where I want to be.”
“For truth,” he muttered derisively.
She moved her hands until she was clasping his. “With you. That’s where I want to be. Wherever that is. Whatever it means.”
“I told you what it means.”
She attempted to smile, but knew she didn’t quite succeed. “We’re already halfway through. We know who did it.”
His hands tightened their grip, but she watched his eyes soften. His mouth moved into that thin line of a smile she recognized from the showboat. She knew now how that smile could explode into laughter. And now that she knew, she wondered when she would ever hear him laugh again—and what ghastly occurrences they would face before she did.
Brett turned at last to his mother. “How d’you propose I stop him?” He winked at Delta. “You could drive him mad with nightmares, like you almost did Delta.”
“Me, I did not bring Delta those nightmares,” Crazy Mary declared. Turning solicitously to Delta, she asked, “You know tha’, for truth, pichouette?”
“For truth,” Delta responded with verve, eager to reassure this woman who had so recently been berated by her son.
“Whatever we do,” Gabriel put in, “one thing’s clear. We have to prove Trainor’s guilt. If we try the innocent-till-proven-guilty approach, you, mon ami, will fin’ yourself swingin’ from the nearest oak limb, certainement.”
Delta flinched, and Brett tightened his grip. “Then we’ll prove it,” he snapped.
“First thing we do,” Crazy Mary said, “we mus’ get Trainor to the bayou, away from his own surroundings.” She ran a finger back and forth along one of the long grains on the table top. “We get him out here, oui, then we scare the truth out of him.”
“The man won’t scare easy,” Brett warned. “Else someone would have tacked his hide to the barn door long before now.”
“It won’t be easy, non,” his mother agreed. “But we mus’ try, even if we don’ succeed.”
Delta’s mouth went dry.
“We’ll succeed, Maman,” Brett responded, but Delta suspected his show of optimism was for her benefit.
Crazy Mary continued to plan. “We’ll gather folks from up and down the bayou for a séance. That will worry him, non?”
“I wouldn’t bank on it,” Brett argued.
“Oui, if we set him up first, like he set you up, Anatole. We’ll convince him the devil’s out to get him. That’ll loosen a man’s tongue, for truth.” She rose and refilled their coffee cups again, speaking all the while. “Gabriel, you and Pierre will go to Baton Rouge and spread the gris-gris.”
Again Brett doubted. “It’ll take more than a few bags of tricks to frighten Trainor. We need evidence—or something he thinks is evidence.”
“For truth,” Crazy Mary agreed. “A special kind of gris-gris.” Rising again, she rummaged through one of the cabinets at the far end of the room, returning with a small wooden box. When she withdrew a gold chain, Brett’s eyes fastened on it.
She held it forth, but Brett made no move to touch the small charm that dangled from it.
“Olivia’s,” he muttered.
“Oui, it was aroun’ Olivia’s little neck,” Crazy Mary agreed, “when they brought her here for burial.”
Delta watched Brett purse his lips between his teeth. After a long moment, he reached for the chain, cradling the charm in the palm of his hand, studying it, lost in dreams.
Or nightmares? Delta wondered. When he looked up, tears glistened in his eyes.
“It belonged to Olivia.” He held the charm for Delta to read the inscription: Olivia. May 9, 1866. “The date of her baptism,” he explained. “This is the crest of the respected Trainor family. This particular charm has been worn by the oldest daughter in the Trainor family for generations. It belonged to Nicole. When William Trainor saw it around Olivia’s neck at her baptism, he became enraged, said it besmeared the family name for her to wear it.”
“A baby girl?” Delta whispered, unable to contain her shock.
Brett nodded, still staring at the charm that swung from his fingers. “How will this help?”
Crazy Mary withdrew another item from her box. A gold stickpin for a man’s tie.
“Madame Hebert said she found it,” Brett said, his voice confused now rather than accusing.
Delta looked closely at the crest on the stickpin.
Brett explained. “The Trainor family crest, same as on the charm. There were two of them, the stickpin and the charm. Nicole never wore her charm. I suspect the only reason she put it on Olivia for the baptism was to anger her brother. William Trainor was never without his.” He squinted at his mother. “How did it come to be in my house?”
“No one knows for sure,” Crazy Mary acknowledged. “Madame Hebert brought it to me. She found it lodged between two boards in the kitchen when they moved from their shack into your house.”
Brett inhaled, holding his breath behind pursed lips.
Crazy Mary continued. “Earlier, the afternoon of the funeral to be specific, M’sieur Hebert had seen someone approach the house.” She turned to Delta. “That was before the Heberts moved into the house themselves.” She continued her story. “When he went to investigate, he saw William Trainor through the open tablette. Trainor was on his hands and knees searching for something. When he heard M’sieur Hebert, he hurried to his feet, mumbled something about paying respects to his sister by visiting the scene of her death.”
Beside her, Delta felt Brett exhale his pent-up breath. His fist connected with the table of a sudden, setting the cups to rattling. “It all adds up,” he fumed. “Trainor was at the house that night; he had the troopers on me before anyone could have reasonably known about the murders; he didn’t stay for the funeral, but turned up at the house again that same day, searching the floor; later Madame Hebert finds this.” He squeezed the stickpin in his fist. “It all adds up. If I’d known one of these things, just one—”
“You would have gotten yourself killed,” Crazy Mary interrupted.
Brett breathed in and out in great heavy drafts.
“And you wouldn’t be here today, sitting at my table with this lovely pichouette by your side …” she added.
Without looking at her, Brett reached for Delta’s hand, clasping it as tightly as he had the stickpin a moment earlier.
“… with the chance to clear your name, at last,” Crazy Mary finished.
For the longest time silence reigned about the table. Finally Brett asked. “How will you use these things?”
“I won’t use them alone,” she explained. “We’ll cover Trainor with gris-gris, like dirt on his coffin.” Gathering momentum, she spoke to Gabriel, planning aloud. “You will take these things to the Voodooienne in Baton Rouge, oui. Olivia’s charm, it goes in a little sack with some dirt, to be left among Trainor’s underclothes in his dressing room. I’ll cook up a bowl of congris to set under that oak tree in front of Trainor’s fancy house. Somewhere I have a dried toad to place inside his pillow. Dirt mus’ be sprinkle’ aroun’ a line of pebbles tha’ will lead to a pluck’ rooster with nine silver pins stuck in its breast. The rooster, he mus’ be hung in a tree in Trainor’s backyard.”
Delta listened, her despair growing. “I don’t doubt your powers,” she said at length, “but how can Pierre and Gabriel accomplish all this without the governor discovering them. His servants will see—”
“It is his servant
s who will aid us,” Crazy Mary explained. “Me, I’ve been in contact with a true Voodooienne who counts several of the gov’nor’s servants as clients. They will do anything she tells them and keep their mouths shut. For truth, they would be afraid not to.”
Delta’s eyes swept the room, taking in the rows of brown jars and the bunches of dried herbs. Her head swirled with all she had seen and heard, with the necessity to free Brett from the hold Governor Trainor had on his life. But she felt caught in a vortex of something strange and mysterious. They were play-acting, when they needed to face reality. What would her family, whose feet were planted firmly on the ground, think of attempts to solve a person’s problems by black magic?
“Don’t worry, chère,” Brett told her. “Maman knows about these things. Most people, even if they don’t believe in psychic powers, are frightened enough of their own death to fear black magic. Maman doesn’t practice black magic, but she knows those who do. She can pull this off, if anyone can.” He fingered the little gold charm. “I still don’t understand—”
“William Trainor, he believes we buried Olivia with this charm aroun’ her neck.” Crazy Mary’s voice sent a chill down Delta’s spine. “Trainor, he came here for the funeral, oui, but he did not remain for the burial. Now we know he went back to that house to search for his lost stickpin.” She smiled at her son. “Me, I know you do not believe such things, Anatole, but before they close’ the coffin, somethin’ told me to take this little charm from aroun’ Olivia’s neck—for you. Now I understand, it was not for a keepsake, for sure. When Trainor finds this charm in a sack of dirt, he’ll think it came from her grave, certainement.”
“Graves are used to put curses on people,” Brett explained, although by this time Delta had decided their explanations were falling a little short. She would never understand such things. She was almost afraid to try.
“Pierre and Gabriel, they will take themselves to Baton Rouge, oui. They will leave the gris-gris with the Voodooienne,” Crazy Mary planned. “The following morning they will arrange for Trainor to find a warning—from Olivia, I think—written in chicken blood on his back doorstep. It will instruct him to find his matching piece of jewelry on her grave. He will bring himself out here, right quick.”
Sunrise Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Three Page 32