by Anne Frasier
The place was creepy even during the day.
Elise spotted a single set of footprints and followed them.
On the east side of the gray structure was a small cemetery, the ancient, moss-covered tombstones dwarfed by dense, spreading trees.
Under a canopy of leaves, the wind stopped and the protected area turned to twilight. As Elise walked, the sand gave way to packed earth and a soft layer of small brown leaves. Parallel ruts lined the ground, created years ago when coffins were transported by horse and buggy.
Elise followed the faint road, turning when it turned, slowing when she spotted a shadowy figure in the distance.
She approached cautiously, until she was near enough to make out a woman sitting on a cement bench near a large headstone.
Strata Luna.
The woman wore a long black dress and a wide-brimmed hat. For a moment Elise felt as if she'd stepped back in time.
With gloved hands, Strata Luna gracefully lifted the hat's veil away. "Hello, Elise."
Her face was regal, with high cheekbones and large eyes beneath thick, black eyebrows. Full red lips against ebony skin.
No one knew her age. Elise had done the math, and knew she had to be at least fifty. She looked much younger.
Regardless of the myth surrounding Strata Luna, the compelling aura she carried hadn't been understated. It was said that in her youth men froze in the streets when she walked by, unable to move until she'd passed. Elise believed it.
"So, you're the daughter of Jackson Sweet."
Strata Luna's voice was as mysterious and hypnotic as the rest of her. Deep, slow, metered, and melodic.
"It's a rumor. Folklore."
"Have you had the opportunity to test yourself? Has anyone passed the mantle to you?"
"I dabbled a little."
Elise stepped closer and sat down on the opposite end of the long bench, leaving several feet between herself and Strata Luna.
"Dabbled? That's not a serious word."
"It was years ago. I was a kid."
"But you gave it up for a life of practicality."
"Something like that."
"Come closer."
Elise remained where she was.
"You don't trust me."
"Trust and foolishness go hand in hand."
The older woman laughed, then reached into a deep pocket of her black cotton dress. She pulled out a small bundle of white fabric tied with a long, looped string. "I have something for you. A wanga."
A charm.
Piece of candy, little girl?
Strata Luna stood and approached. She was a tall woman, large but not overweight. Smiling, she slipped the wanga over Elise's head.
It smelled like herbs.
"It's a good root," the woman said. "It will protect you." She reached out and touched Elise's hair. "Your hair is like his. Dark. Straight. And your eyes. Let me see. . . ." With a graceful motion, she placed her gloved fingers beneath Elise's chin and tilted her face toward her.
Then, as if stung, she dropped her hand away.
"Those eyes . . . ," she said with discomfort. "They're very strange."
Elise was used to such responses, yet had expected more control from Strata Luna. "You undoubtedly know I was left on a grave because of them," Elise said, trying to make light of her past the way she always did.
"Almost every color in there." Still staring, Strata Luna suddenly seemed shaky and old. "And every color makes black." She turned away and sat down, as if unable to look at Elise any longer. Silence grew around them until Elise was afraid the woman wouldn't speak again.
"You knew Jackson Sweet?" Elise finally asked.
Strata Luna pulled in a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. "Honey, we used to drink together," she said, her voice now light and almost flippant, a woman of rapid mood swings. "And we used to fight together. Said I was too pushy for him." She glanced at Elise. "You're his daughter." She nodded. "No doubt 'bout that."
A shock went through her. Elise had never believed the stories. Not really. Not in her heart. Growing up, she'd only wanted to believe them. But now ... with Strata Luna seeming so certain ...
"Do you have any children?" Strata Luna asked.
"A daughter."
"Daughters ...," Strata Luna said distantly, in a remembering kind of voice.
Elise produced the photos she'd shown to Enrique. "Have you ever seen either of these men?"
Strata Luna stared at them a moment. "I think this one used to work for me." She tapped the face of Jordan Kemp. "I don't recall his name. I'm not sure about the other one." She passed the photos back. "I have a lot of people I support. Some of them stay. Some of them go. I don't always remember names."
"Jordan Kemp and Samuel Winslow." Elise pulled out another photo, this one of the body art.
Strata Luna examined it closely and smiled. "This work was done by Genevieve Roy. See how delicate the lines of the implants are? Not many people are so adept."
"Does it have a purpose?" Elise asked.
"It's a mojo," Strata Luna explained. "People who work for me often get it. I don't insist, but most of them want it. It gives them protection they wouldn't otherwise have."
"Apparently it's not providing enough," Elise said dryly.
"That's because the design has been stolen from me. People who have nothing to do with Black Tupelo are getting it."
"Status," Elise said. She could see that kind of evolution.
Strata Luna waved her hand. "Now it means nothin'. You have more questions? I must go soon. Enrique is waiting."
"We've had some unexplainable poisonings in Savannah. Victims killed with tetrodotoxin," Elise said, pressing forward, realizing this could be her last chance to talk with Strata Luna—at least in an unofficial, casual environment. "It's rumored that you drug your... employees to keep them complacent," Elise said bluntly. "And that you use a secret recipe with one of the ingredients being tetrodotoxin."
Strata Luna straightened, her thick brows drawing together in tempestuous irritation. "Are you accusing me of murder?"
"The male prostitute had your insignia on him and tetrodotoxin in his bloodstream. It's only logical that we would question you."
"Escort service. It can be an unpleasant occupation. Sometimes new recruits—and even seasoned workers—have a hard time dealing with the unpleasantness. Sometimes they need a little help to get them through the night. It can be one of many drugs. I help them, but never against their will. And I would never use poison from the puffer fish for that purpose. You're talking zombies and voodoo."
"Maybe someone is eking out his own brand of justice," Elise suggested.
Strata Luna shrugged as if the turn in the conversation was boring her. "You police are always lookin' for a reason, a motive," she said. "Why are you so unwilling to accept the truth?"
"What's the truth?" Elise asked.
"That evil doesn't need a reason to exist."
"I can't think like that. For me, everything has an answer."
The woman shook her head. "You'll change your mind someday."
Elise herself had seen a lot of evil in her job as a homicide detective, but she had the feeling Strata Luna had her beat.
Interview over, Elise got to her feet and handed the woman a business card. "Thanks for agreeing to meet with me. If you think of anything important, please give me a call."
Strata Luna stood. "I want to show you something. Come. Follow me."
Elise followed her deeper into the cemetery until they came to a small cluster of broken, moss-covered tombstones. The older woman stopped, not in front of the stones, but before a dip in the ground. Scattered around the indentation were a telephone, a mirror, a comb, some change, and a full bottle of whiskey.
"This is why I wanted you to come here today," Strata Luna said. "This is your father's grave. The grave of Jackson Sweet."
The air left Elise's lungs.
She stared at the indentation in the ground. In the distance, hi
dden in a dark place, hundreds of frogs spilled their secrets, the wall of sound hypnotically rising and falling.
"There can be no marker left on the grave of a conjure man," Strata Luna explained, her voice coming from a million miles away. "Otherwise people dig up his bones for mojos and spells. They wouldn't leave him in peace. But some of us know where Jackson is buried. And now you know. See the hole?" She pointed. "Root doctors come and dig here."
"Goofer dust," Elise said.
"And now we must both leave something. You cannot visit the grave of a conjurer without leaving a personal item."
Strata Luna pulled off her black gloves and placed them near the indentation.
At first Elise couldn't think of anything to offer. Cell phone? Of course not. She dug through her pockets. Notebooks. ID. Gun.
Her fingers came in contact with a pen. Just a regular, everyday ink pen. Maybe he needed to do a little writing.
She placed it on one of Strata Luna's gloves.
"I have one more thing for you," the woman said.
"I can't accept anything else."
"This ain't really from me." She pulled out a small leather case and handed it to Elise.
"Go on. Open it. It's something that belonged to your father. Something you should have."
The leather was cracked and black and extremely old; the small hinges were rusty.
Elise opened it. Inside was a pair of wire-rimmed glasses with dark blue lenses.
Conjurer's glass. Blue lenses that kept out evil spirits and allowed the wearer to see things others couldn't.
"Put them on. I want to see them on you."
She seemed so sure that Jackson Sweet was her father.
"You're alike," Strata Luna stated.
"How?"
"Your father was a cop."
"Jackson Sweet? No, he wasn't." Elise would have known if Jackson Sweet had been a policeman.
"Not by your rules, but by a root doctor's. He punished bad people and rewarded the good ones. That's better than the idiots with badges we have in Savannah."
A self-proclaimed man of the law? A man who scared the shit out of people, forcing them to mend their ways or face the wrath of a white root doctor? Was that why Elise had become a cop? Was it in her blood? Because she was the daughter of Jackson Sweet?
Intrigued, she removed the glasses from the case. The wire was thin and fragile. She carefully unfolded the antique frames and slipped them on.
Shadows turned bottomless black. The sky turned gray. Sunlight that fell through branches and leaves created a dappling of crescent moons on the ground.
Dizzying.
Disorienting.
Caused by the distorted lenses? Or something else?
At that moment, Elise believed what Strata Luna was telling her. She suddenly had a past, a history.
She'd been abandoned. She'd been thrown away, left to die. But if she came from a world of conjurers and spells, then her life could never have been what other people thought of as normal. Who wanted normal anyway? Instead, she'd met the world in an odd, sensational way.
He would have wanted her. Jackson Sweet had been on his deathbed when Elise was born. Otherwise he would have rescued her, kept her, raised her. She suddenly felt very sure of that.
What about Audrey? Should she tell her? What would she think? How would she react to the news that her grandfather was Jackson Sweet?
Standing in the center of the strange, colorless world was Strata Luna, beaming at her. "Look here, look here, Jackson Sweet," she said. The words were tossed to someone invisible, standing just beyond her shoulder. "You ain't never gonna believe what ol' Strata Luna brought you today."
The two women stood there in the dark, listening to the frogs. Finally Elise told Strata Luna good-bye. She removed the glasses and walked in the direction of the church and the cars.
Strata Luna watched her go, a feeling of loneliness suddenly engulfing her.
Loneliness and fear.
She thought about unwelcome evil and was reminded of another time, a time she tried not to think about—the night her youngest daughter drowned....
Strata Luna had run from the house, a sheer white nightgown billowing around her. Down the flagstone steps, past the hedges and roses and weeping magnolias, her bare feet already whispering that it was too late.
The night sky was a cobalt blue; the trees were black silhouettes standing silent and unmoving. What she saw caused her heart to stop beating for several minutes.
Something floating in the water.
Fabric.
A nightgown.
Ebony hair.
The most beautiful, shiny, ebony hair a child could possibly possess.
No!
The night sky reflected on the water, a child's hand reaching for the moon and stars. Strata Luna tumbled into the pool, the surface shattering like glass.
She grabbed the body of her daughter. The water tugged, fighting to hold the child, to keep her. Strata Luna finally pulled her free and turned her over.
Dead, dead, dead.
Some people claimed she'd killed the angel herself, with her own hands, holding her under the water until her lungs filled with water. Sometimes Strata Luna thought it was true, since she hadn't been able to foresee her death.
But evil was a part of life.
It was the shadow that followed her. The shadow she feared had returned.
Chapter 16
David Gould was scheduled for an early flight out of Savannah that would get him to Suffolk County, Virginia, in an hour. From there his lawyer would pick him up and they would drive to meet with his wife and her attorney in order to get the divorce papers signed and finalized. If all went smoothly, he would be back to Savannah by early evening.
It was still dark when he boarded the small commuter jet, carrying nothing but a briefcase with copies of the divorce papers plus some notes on the TTX case. He tried to tell himself that once the papers were signed everything would be over. He wouldn't have to think about Beth again.
Right.
The flight departed ten minutes ahead of schedule.
As David leaned his forehead against the window and watched the airport shrink below him, he tried to empty his mind, a trick he'd learned from a man who taught transcendental meditation. It didn't work this time. Come to think of it, he wasn't sure it had ever worked, because he now understood something he hadn't understood at the time: He could really fool the shit out of himself.
A guy had to be careful about creating his own reality. Because you could get lost in it, so lost that it was hard to get back to the real world.
He had two excuses for his early infatuation with Beth: youth and hormones. Those things together could slant a person's perspective more than heavy drugs.
David Gould and Beth Anderson had been high school sweethearts. That in itself should have been a warning, because at age sixteen most people aren't who they're going to become. Often, they aren't even close.
But you think you are. At sixteen, you think you know everything, and when sex is part of the equation it's hard as hell for a guy to think straight.
Now that he was an adult, David could see his relationship with Beth for what it had been—a purely physical attraction, as shallow as that was.
The shallowness was something he would never have admitted at the time. On the outside, Beth was the perfect woman, with the attributes a male looked for in a potential mate.
It had been biological, all about the continuation of the species, with no logic involved. She had the requisite full lips. She had the correct waist-to-hip ratio. Dark hair. Blue eyes. Great skin, full breasts. And so healthy. Vibrant. His mate radar was saying she would be a good mother who would produce healthy, beautiful children.
And she did.
A boy. A beautiful baby boy.
It was a tedious, unremarkable story, almost embarrassing in its plot. He was in his second year of college, and she was a high school senior when she became pregnant.
Had she become pregnant on purpose?
These were all questions he'd asked himself over the years, but at the time of her announcement there was no question, only the answer to what they must do, what they had always planned to do anyway, which was get married.
Two days after she graduated from high school, they were married and she immediately joined him at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. And when the baby came, a beautiful boy with blond hair and blue eyes, David was happy. Blindly happy.
Warning signs had been there, but he'd missed them. Beth attended to Christian's needs, but didn't cuddle with him or laugh with him. She seemed to resent her own child, blaming him for an unsatisfying marriage.
David got his degree in criminal psychology and joined the FBI. Beth had been proud of that, and by the time he made it through training, they began to talk of having another child.
His beautiful boy ...
Reading him a bedtime story by lamplight.
Tucking him in, trusting little arms wrapping around his neck, fine hair that smelled like newness and innocence.
As an FBI agent, his schedule became erratic. He worked long hours. Beth was bored. Deeply depressed. She didn't get along with the other FBI wives, so she had no one to confide in.
An FBI agent's marriage could go either way. Sometimes the job made for a strong relationship at home, and sometimes it was a recipe for failure. David's fell into the failure category.
"You never make me laugh anymore," she once complained.
"I can. I will."
But it was too late.
Beth had an affair.
And one affair just seemed to call for another.
David had been willing to stay together for his son, afraid he might lose Christian, but she'd insisted upon a divorce. Because of his job, she was granted custody, just as he'd feared. Christian could visit every other weekend, plus rotating holidays.