by G A Chase
Though the suggestion of murdering someone so powerful shouldn’t have even been a consideration, Myles had to admit the idea had its merits. “We have seen the baron’s old possessions used to kill others, and even to me, the deaths looked like accidents.”
“I’m not killing anybody. Only I have control of the cursed objects, so you’re talking about me doing the deed, and I’m not doing it. End of story.”
He nodded. “It might not even work, anyway. The curse was aimed at the baron’s offspring, not the man himself. Even though part of Colin is made up of Lincoln Laroque, the man never seemed very worried about the items even after you’d modified the curse. I wouldn’t be surprised to find Delphine gave him a charm or something for his safety.”
She resisted the urge to get into another fight about Delphine and her motives. “So you agree killing him is out.”
“Returning him to Guinee wouldn’t solve anything. Baron Samedi said he was betrayed by someone in the afterlife. That person used Archibald Malveaux and Marie Laveau. Sending Colin to Guinee might only return the servant to the master. I was just saying Sanguine had a point, not that it was a good idea. But even if everything works perfectly and we get the cane back to Baron Samedi, what’s to stop Colin from trying something else? I wouldn’t put anything past him. We need to look beyond the next move and see this as a much larger game.”
Kendell didn’t need reminding that Myles had suffered a fate worse than death when the baron was in charge of his body. No other living person would understand better than Myles the depths the baron would sink to.
She sat next to him. “We have to stop him. I get that. I also understand Sanguine’s viewpoint that we have the upper hand, and that’s not a situation destined to last once we’re rid of the cane. What do you think we should do?”
“I wish I had an answer. It feels like we’re constantly reacting to something. Maybe if we can get our hands on that diary, we might finally understand our position better. There has to be more in it than how to take a headpiece off a cane. If all this drama in life is just a game being played out among the loas of the dead, we need to ensure Baron Samedi regains his full power. Getting the cane back to him has to be our first priority.”
Of all the activities Myles had listed, breaking into the Laurette mansion while it was being dismantled and rebuilt sounded the most foolhardy. Even if they didn’t get caught, poking around a building in even worse shape than it had been when Samantha Laurette owned it sounded like a good way to end up in the hospital.
“We’re going to need to get that journal before it lands in Colin’s office,” she said, “but the mansion must be crawling with workers.”
“I worked construction for a summer in college. That’s how I met Charlie. If anyone can get me on a demolition crew, he can.”
She wasn’t sure working around a bunch of burly thugs with sledgehammers and crowbars was any safer than sneaking in on their own. “What good will that do? They must be watching everything that gets taken out of there. If he weren’t out chasing after Sanguine for the cane, I bet Colin would be overseeing the operation. In his absence, he wouldn’t leave the excavation in the hands of someone he didn’t completely trust. Remember, Baron Malveaux was wandering around in your body. I’d imagine a lot of people might recognize your face.”
“He’s after the cane. He may not even know about the diary. And as for my appearance, I won’t be wearing expensive, outdated attire. He was pretty disgusted by my normal streetwear. First thing he did was get a new suit. Then he spent all his time with the high and mighty. No one in the trades is going to recognize me as a day laborer. As a member of the demolition crew, I’ll be able to find out if they’ve already found the diaries or anything else of interest.”
She didn’t like the idea of Myles being so close to Colin’s people. “But even if you are working and run across the journals, there’s no way you could sneak them out.”
“Not during the day, but as a worker, I can fix it so we can slip in at night when no one’s watching. Charlie will probably have an idea or two. When it comes to being sneaky, he’s my go-to guy.”
She could see how that could work. “Just be careful. Calling in the cavalry to rescue you again isn’t going to help keep our activities inconspicuous.”
53
Myles tugged at the legs of his tight jeans. Bits of paint and drywall mud that wouldn’t come out in the wash crumbled in his fingers. His worn steel-tipped boots were cramming his toes together. Only the T-shirt felt halfway decent, but by the end of the day, it would be destined for the trash.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said.
Standing next to him as they looked over the three stories of rotting wood, plaster, and history, Charlie sounded more enthusiastic. “Are you kidding? I’ve been begging to go on another treasure hunt with you since the day you found that WWII airplane.”
“I’m not expecting anything that cool today. Even if we do find something, we won’t be taking it to the newspapers.” Myles knew that the real reason Charlie reminisced rhapsodically to any woman who’d listen to his tales of daring adventure was simply to get her into his bed. Hanging around with Myles provided the Lothario with plenty of romantic ammunition.
“Doesn’t matter. Mystery, intrigue, ghosts, danger—you couldn’t keep me away if you tried. What’s your plan if we do find something?”
Myles knew the mansion well enough from his talks with Samantha while she was trying to clean up the property she’d inherited from her family. “There’s a dumbwaiter at the back of the house. It was installed for one of the old people who’d probably lived their whole life in the place. Anyway, it got wallpapered over decades ago. Up in the attic is a hidden crawl space that houses the pulleys. If we find anything, we can stash it in there. You wouldn’t happen to have an in with the night watchman would you?”
Charlie smiled at him in the mischievous way he reserved for an upcoming conquest. “You mean night watchwoman?”
“Even better. Tonight after everyone leaves, I’ll leave it to you to find a suitable distraction for her while I slip in to retrieve our booty.”
The rogue adjusted his overalls over his bare chest. “We’d better get to work. Once the humidity hits in full force, we’ll be sweating through the thickest denim.”
Though Myles dreaded the feeling of his jeans becoming more a second skin than protective covering, he knew Charlie would be looking forward to taking breaks outside while the neighborhood women ogled the glistening, muscular workman.
The foreman motioned for them to join him. “Most of my skilled workers are removing the walls in the upstairs bedrooms. We’re trying to salvage and restore as much of the original architecture as possible. I’m putting you two to work in the attic. Not much damage you can do up there. I need that space back to the studs by the end of the day. Don’t get hurt, don’t get lazy, don’t get sticky fingers, and we’ll get along fine.”
Myles remembered the drill. College guys were constantly looking to pick up some quick cash. What few of them realized was construction was a brutal occupation. Not many of the uninitiated lasted more than a day, so foremen seldom handed out assignments they didn’t think could be completed by the end of the shift.
The old mansion looked much worse than Myles remembered, which wasn’t a surprise. Ripping away the old wallpaper revealed only what old-fashioned décor the past generation wanted hidden. At least with the rugs gone, the rodent smell had diminished. However, the stench of rotting wood wasn’t a huge improvement. He let Charlie lead the way even though he’d been there enough to know the layout.
The overheard conversations on the third floor weren’t in English. Immigrant labor wasn’t only cheaper, it was more reliable.
“Jesus, they expect us to haul equipment up that rickety ladder?” Charlie was always braver outside, where women might overhear, than deep in the job site.
A stocky kid who looked to be the foreman’s son handed them a couple
of pry bars. “For now, this is all you’ll need. Start with the upper wallboards and work your way down. That way, if there’s any surprises, they run away rather than jump out at you.”
Myles recalled his summer spent pulling down hurricane-damaged houses. After years of being vacant, at least of human life, the run-down shacks were teeming with unwanted bugs and rodents.
“Any guesses on what they used for insulation?” he asked.
“It sure as hell ain’t fiberglass batting. I can tell you that.” The kid turned and yelled something in Spanish to the workers, who jumped to, as if he himself was the owner.
Carrying the heavy steel bar up the extendable ladder felt pretty iffy as it shifted from side to side. Once upstairs, without the noise of workmen and conversations, Myles tried to access any secretive human energy that might inhabit some long-lost artifact.
“Any thoughts on where we should start?” Charlie swung his pry bar like a baseball bat.
Myles knew he was really asking if he’d detected any treasure. “Start at the front and work our way back, I suppose. I’ll take this wall. You take that one.”
In the dust-speckled light filtering through the dirt-encrusted window, Charlie in his overalls could have passed for someone from another era. “Maybe if you took a load off, you might get a better feel for the room.”
Reading energy did require as calm a place as possible. “Lying down on the job when we’ve just started work doesn’t seem like the best way to keep this gig for the whole day. We’re going to have to do this the hard way, my friend.”
The boards came loose without a lot of undue force. The bigger problem was staying clear of anything the old timbers were keeping secluded between the rafters. As though he was trying to make out a single voice in a room full of conversations, Myles knew items were there to be found but had no way of knowing where.
“Wow, damn.” Charlie jumped back from the wall he was dismantling.
“Find something?”
He stepped aside to show an avalanche of cigarette butts that had recently occupied the wall. “And that’s just the third board down. There must be an emphysema-load of cigs in this wall. I think we just discovered how great-grandpa got sick after he’d sworn off smoking.”
“Pull off the bottom board next. That’ll give the butts somewhere to drain while you work from the top.”
That wasn’t the first secret smoking spot Myles had run into. How the old folks managed to not burn down their houses by stashing their butts in the walls was a mystery.
“Any luck on your side?”
Myles had resorted to knocking on the boards before yanking them off the wall. “Well, once I get these guys trained up a bit, I should have enough cockroaches to rule the world. Other than that, just enough dust and mold to give me asthma.”
“Hang on, I think I’ve got something.” The way Charlie reached his arm down into the wall made Myles very uncomfortable.
“Remember what the foreman said. Don’t go getting yourself hurt.”
“Yes, Mom.” Charlie reached down farther until his whole arm was inside the wall. “Got it. As the cigarette butts were draining out, I saw it slipping toward a gap in the outer wall siding. Didn’t want to lose it. Come here, and give me a hand. If you pry off the second board from the bottom, I think I can hand it to you.”
On his way across the attic, Myles discretely closed the hatch to the ladder. The last thing they needed was someone checking on them just as they were discovering their treasure.
“What do you think it is?” he asked.
“Why don’t you move your ass and open this wall so we can both find out? I hope I’m only imagining that something is tugging on the other side.”
“Right.”
The board crumbled as Myles put his weight behind the pry bar. Even when the board was clear, the space behind it was filled with the rotting remains of the half-destroyed wood. He bent down and started shoveling the debris away with his hands. At first, the wiggling dust made him want to reach for a hammer.
“That’s me, by the way—just in case you were getting any ideas about decapitating one of my fingers.”
Myles felt around until he found the wax-paper-covered book in Charlie’s grasp. “This might be what we’re looking for.”
“You, maybe. I’ve still got my heart set on a trunk of Confederate bullion. Hell, I’d settle for a single bar stashed in this lovely wall.”
Myles didn’t wait for Charlie to get his arm out of the amalgamation of splinters that passed for boards. Pulling open the wax paper, he found layers of cotton and leather protecting the contents. “Whatever it is, someone went to a lot of work to make sure my army of cockroaches didn’t eat it.”
Charlie sat next to Myles on the bare wooden floor. “What does it say? Is it the journal you were looking for? If that’s all you wanted, I could just stash it down my overalls. No foreman’s going to go poking around down there after a hard day of work.”
“You really think Kendell is going to touch it once it’s been down your sweaty crotch? It’s not worth the risk. Plus, we still have that gold to find for you.”
By the end of the day, Myles remembered why he’d turned from construction to bartending. The party juice he had to clean off the counter and floor every night didn’t compare to generations of bug and rodent turds.
* * *
Kendell looked in her black backpack, a match to the one Myles had slung over his shoulder. “How much stuff are we stealing? I thought we were just after the diary.”
Without electricity to the mansion, the whole property was cast in shadows from the streetlights.
Myles in his black pants, shirt, and makeup looked every bit the stereotypical cat burglar. “Charlie stumbled across a couple of items he claimed as payment for his services. There’s nothing that would cross the line out of petty larceny.”
She hunched down in the bushes and peered at a woman in a security-guard uniform sitting on the porch. Since she had only a gas lantern for light, reading her romance novel must have been hell on her eyes. Charlie nonchalantly strolled up the walkway. Immediately, the woman put down the book, but instead of a stern rebuke for the interloper, she smiled welcomingly.
“How does he do it?” Kendell asked.
Myles shook his head. “I’ve been trying to figure that out for years. In all the time I’ve known him, I haven’t seen a single woman resist him for more than thirty seconds.”
Kendell pouted at Myles. “You sound envious.”
He smacked her on the butt. “I’m happier than he’ll ever be, but that contentment has been paid for with years of frustration and disappointment. We’d better get moving.”
With the guard sufficiently distracted by Charlie’s attention, sneaking into the backyard of the dark mansion was almost disappointingly easy. The heavy chains and padlocks on the doors, however, made Kendell reconsider her momentary complacency.
“How the hell are we going to get inside without alerting the whole neighborhood?” She turned to Myles, expecting an answer.
He was nearly out of sight, though, as he rounded a wall that jutted out into the backyard. “Stay low and keep quiet.”
She couldn’t quite make out what the small square projection, running up the side of the house, had been used for. At no more than three feet square, the interior would be too small to be a room or even a closet.
Myles yanked at a board in line with his head, which gave way without a sound. “We stashed everything in this dumbwaiter, but we didn’t dare try to use the pulley, with everyone poking around. Hopefully, the damn thing still works.”
She could barely make out two metal cables inside the opening. He gave a firm tug on the closer one. Nothing moved, but from the debris that cascaded down the three-story shaft, she figured the convenience hadn’t been used for some time. He used two hands for the second attempt. A muffled thud vibrated the ground at her feet.
“Shit. That must have been the counterweight,” Myles
said. “Give me a hand. This thing must weigh a hundred pounds. I can’t have it come crashing to the ground.”
She rushed to his side and grabbed the cable below his hands. “I think I’ve got it.”
“That’s better. We’re slowly going to let it down hand under hand. Follow my lead.”
The tendons in his forearms rippled his skin as his arm ascended the shaft then quickly darted below his other arm. Being right up against his side, she couldn’t help breathing in his manly aroma generated from his hard day’s work. Being attracted to the tough, rugged working type wasn’t like her, but that was Myles, after all. Being sexually turned on by her boyfriend wasn’t really a bad thing, but she figured the timing might not be optimal.
Though she could feel the weight on the cord, she wondered if she was contributing anything of real value to the endeavor. “Please tell me you loaded everything from the second story.”
“Sorry. We were working in the attic. We’ve got to lower this thing the entire height of the house. Just stick with me. We can do it.”
His confidence gave her courage if not strength. By the time the bottom wheels of the car appeared in the opening, her arms where burning from the exertion.
“That’s the back of the box,” she said. “We still can’t get the stuff out.” Frustration and unresolved sexual tension were making her wish she’d stayed at home with her faithful dog, anxiously waiting her hero’s return.
“Don’t fret. We loosened the plywood while we had it upstairs.”
The heavy wooden box finally came to rest against some stop inside the shaft.
“I hope Charlie appreciates what we had to go through for his greed,” she said. “He’d better be charming the pants off that security guard.”
“I’m positive he’s doing his best. When it comes to women, he seldom gives anything less than his all.” Myles pushed on the thin plywood, and it folded in half with a snap like cheap cardboard.
“You’re not afraid someone’s going to notice the hole in the wall tomorrow?”