Under the Cajun Moon

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “Who shot him? How did the accident happen?” I asked, hoping Sam would confirm that it was indeed an accident and not intentional, as Kevin and I suspected.

  Sam set his drink down and met my eyes.

  “It was no accident, baby. Whoever shot your daddy, it sounds like they shot him on purpose.”

  “We were afraid of that. But why, Sam? Why?”

  “I wish I knew,” Sam said, looking from Kevin to me and back again. “He was calling from his cell phone when he left the message, so there’s a lot of static and skipped words and it’s hard to hear. You can sure make out that he’s been shot, though.”

  “Wait a minute, I’m confused about something,” I said. “My father always told us that Paradise didn’t get cell phone reception at all. One of the things he always liked about it was that no one could ever bother him while he was down there. Now you’re telling me that he made not one but two calls from there this morning? What happened? Did a new cell tower go in or something?”

  Kevin shook his head.

  “No, he called from the marina a few miles away. That’s how I first knew he was so excited, because he had gotten in his boat and driven it all the way there just to contact me.”

  I looked at Sam, who shrugged.

  “When Julian left the message for your mama, he was somewhere out on the water, from what I understand. Anyway, your mama made a bunch of calls and finally learned that he had been found alive but unconscious. She wanted to go down to the hospital at Morgan City, but they told her they would only be stabilizing him there and then airlifting him up to New Orleans, so she drove to Oschner’s and waited for him there instead. She called me from the car to tell me about the message and asked me to go by the house and listen to it myself and see what I thought.”

  “And?”

  “And it was pretty garbled. I listened to it about ten times and finally gave up. I ended up bringing the tape to a friend who has professional sound equipment, and I’m hoping he can clear up the noise and let us hear what your daddy actually said. My friend didn’t know how long fixing the sound might take or how much he would be able to recover, but he said he’d do the best he could. After I dropped the tape off with him, I drove on to the hospital so I could see your daddy and be with your mama. When I knew you were coming here, I thought I should come and tell you all this in person. Once we find out what else is on that tape, we’ll know a lot more about what happened.”

  “I wish I could hear it.”

  “Well, here. For right now you can look at this. I wrote down what I could make out from it.”

  Sam dug in his pockets, finally retrieving a folded piece of paper and holding it out to me.

  “Thanks, but I don’t understand,” I said, taking it from him. “What difference does the tape make now? Can’t my father just tell you who shot him?”

  “Oh, Chloe, I thought you knew. Your daddy’s still unconscious, baby. He has been since the paramedics got to him.”

  “But my mom said he survived the surgery and was in recovery.”

  “I’m sorry, Chloe. She should have told you. He’s alive, but he’s back in intensive care. He’s still in a coma, honey.”

  EIGHT

  The detective suddenly breezed back into the room, and I was about to tell him about Sam and my father’s phone message when he sat, looked me deeply in the eye, and spoke.

  “Okay, why don’t you tell me how this all really happened, Ms. Ledet? I’m thinking this Peralta guy drugged you and brought you here to his hotel room. He tried to take advantage of you but you woke up, and in defending yourself you accidentally killed him. That’s how it really happened, isn’t it? You fought him off, knocked him out, and then smothered him with a pillow?”

  I gasped, putting a hand to my mouth.

  “Is that how Kevin died? He was smothered with a pillow?”

  “Come on, let’s not play games. He was drunk, you were hysterical, it happens. You were only trying to defend yourself, right?”

  Looking into the detective’s eyes, I was silent for a long moment, wondering how so much could go so horribly off track so fast. This man was so sure I was guilty, but in my gut I knew I wasn’t. I couldn’t even kill a spider or a fly. How on earth could I possibly have taken the life of another human being?

  The phone message. My mind kept spinning around that phone message, the one my father had left for my mother, that Sam had then written down and shown to me last night.

  “I have to think,” I whispered, closing my eyes and pressing my hands against my temples.

  Last night. The restaurant. Sam had given me the piece of paper on which he had scribbled down what he had been able to hear of the message. Graze had shown up with my coffee at that moment, placing it and a small pitcher of cream on the table in front of me. After he left, I unfolded the page in front of me and read the words Sam had jotted there.

  Lola, it’s Julian. I’ve been shot! I need help! Pick up if you’re there. Oh, Lola, it hurts. Look, I was out at the camp work… remember…trying to steal…shot me…straight to bins, but… from there too…bins totter…I know exactly what’s…how many people are…but…why…you’re in danger too. Don’t trust anyone except Sam and Alphonse, not even the police… radio…finish the job. So much blood…coordinates…talked to Kevin a little while ago about a business deal…drawing up contracts. Now that I’ve been shot that deal is even more important than it was before. You have to act fast, Lola. Get that contract signed before they come after you too…think you know things you don’t…Chloe can handle the details… told you we had an insurance policy…recipe. I just didn’t know…get me killed…911. I love you, Lola.

  I had read it through several times, just trying to make sense of his words, to fill in some of the blanks with guesses.

  Don’t trust anyone except Sam and Alphonse, not even the police, he had said.

  Not even the police.

  Opening my eyes, I looked at Detective Walters, a strange calm coming over me. I wasn’t sure how or why, but at that moment I knew without a doubt that I had been framed.

  “I’m sorry, but I have nothing further to say without a lawyer present.”

  The detective’s shoulders slumped visibly, intentionally, as if to say what a disappointment I was to them all.

  “Very well. I’ll be back. Don’t use the phone and don’t go anywhere.”

  The detective left the room, and once again I was alone with the cop standing guard. Terrified, I leaned my head back and closed my eyes and thought about praying for help. I believed in God, but I had never seen Him as the sort of entity who got involved in day-to-day things, more like an all-powerful Creator who sat up on some heavenly throne and directed the after-death traffic. You donated money to good causes, so you’re in. You helped a little old lady across the street, so you’re in. Oops, you coveted and lusted, so you’re out.

  To me, people who turned to prayer only when they had no other hope seemed like the kind of friends who showed up at your door only when they needed something. I wasn’t that kind of person, not even with God.

  In fact, I realized, the last time I had prayed was probably around Christmas, when I went to a big church in Evanston to hear my neighbor sing in a cantata. The pastor had closed the service with a lovely prayer, and I had found myself caught up in the moment, joining in with his words in my mind. But that had been more of a responsive thing and not of my own volition. Here in this hotel room, though I would have liked to ask God for some help, it didn’t seem…well, very polite of me. I hadn’t spoken to Him in a long time, so I had no right to call on Him now.

  Instead, on my own, I tried to think through the ramifications of all that was going on. I desperately needed to get to my father. I also needed to find out more about the missing words from that tape. My heart lurching, I knew that most of all I needed to find Sam and see what had happened to him and make sure he was okay.

  How had I ended up on a bed in a strange hotel, the handsome young l
awyer I had just met last night dead on the couch in the next room? Poor Kevin, smothered by a pillow! Surely it was obvious that whoever had done that would have had to have been much stronger than I. Kevin was tall and very muscular, judging by the cut of his suit last night. I was also tall but quite petite, and there was no way I would have been any match for him, even if I was hysterical, as the detective proposed.

  Then again, if we both had been drugged, that would have made things simpler. In theory, I might have been strong enough in that situation to hold a pillow over his face until he stopped breathing. Nauseous at the thought, I opened my eyes and sat up straight, knowing in my very core that I hadn’t done it.

  I hadn’t killed anyone, hadn’t done anything wrong at all.

  Sitting there on the couch, my mind went back and forth over all I had been able to remember thus far, again and again, until finally more began to come back to me. I remembered reading the scribbled phone message several times, finally looking up at Sam in astonishment and then thrusting the paper back toward him.

  “I’m sorry, but I have to get to my mother,” I had said frantically, pushing my chair back and standing up. “I can’t believe you left her at the hospital alone! Can’t you see from this that she’s in danger?”

  I had run from the room and through the dark main dining room toward the front door. As I went, I tried to calculate how long it would take me to get my car from the parking garage and drive back toward to the airport as far as Jefferson, which was where the hospital was located.

  Both men were calling after me, but they didn’t catch up until I was at the front door.

  “Chloe, please!” Sam said, reaching out a hand to stop me before I could unlock it.

  “Sam, I’m sorry, but I have to go. My mother shouldn’t be alone right now.”

  “Your mother hired herself a bodyguard, baby. I stayed with her until he got there.”

  “I still have to go, Sam. I need to be with her and with my father.”

  “I know, but if I let you walk out of here and something happens to you, I’ll never be able to live with that. If she’s in danger, you could be too.”

  Defeated, I looked down at the floor—at the gorgeous rose aurora marble that simply screamed wealth and elegance the moment patrons walked in the door. If my father ever came back to us, I would ask him if it had been worth it. When a single bullet could take it all away in a flash, was any of this worth it in the long run?

  Sam placed a hand on my shoulder, and that one simple touch was all it took to make me lose it completely. I burst into tears as the anxiety and desperation of the last few hours finally began caving in on me. Once again I turned into Sam’s embrace and buried my head against his shoulder. Through half-closed eyes, I was grateful to see him waving Kevin away so that we could have some privacy. My sobbing went on for a while, and all I could think of as I cried was how furious my father would be if he were here right now to see me make such a scene in his restaurant. Never mind that it was empty. The hard-and-fast rule at Ledet’s was simply that there was never to be any drama in the front of house. All histrionics were to be reserved for back of house only, behind the closed doors leading to the kitchen.

  When I finally pulled myself together, Sam handed me a cloth handkerchief and waited as I cleaned myself up. Though Sam had always been a loving presence in my life, his wife had usually been the one to dry my tears. After Eugenie passed away, Sam was all I had left. At her funeral, he and I had cried on each other’s shoulders.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  “Hush now, baby. You just needed to let out a little steam.”

  “Sam, why is all of this happening?”

  He took a deep breath, shaking his head from side to side.

  “I don’t know. Why don’t we go back and sit down and try to figure out a plan for keeping you and your mother safe until we hear back from the fellow who’s transcribing the tape? After he does that, we might have a better idea about what happened to your daddy.”

  I nodded and began walking back through the dark main dining room, asking Sam why he hadn’t just given the tape to the police.

  “Because of what he said, that your mother was not to trust anybody except me or Alphonse Naquin, not even the police.”

  Taking my seat, I apologized to Kevin for my behavior out in the lobby, but he just waved my words away.

  “Tha’s all right. You had a tough day,” he said, his speech slightly slurred.

  Judging by the empty glasses in front of him, I could see that he was on his third Sazerac. Considering that just one could put a grown man under the table, I had a feeling he was well on his way to being plastered. With a deep sigh, I had to admit that once again a fellow who seemed promising upon first impression was not going to work out. Getting drunk in an elegant restaurant was bad enough, but doing it in the midst of a business dinner was something else entirely.

  Trying to ignore Kevin’s inebriated state, I asked Sam if he thought I should hire myself a bodyguard too.

  “I’ll guard your body,” Kevin slurred, “with pleasure. Oh, I’m feeling dizzy. Excuse me while I put my head down.”

  With that, he pushed aside his empty plate and rested his head in his arms on the table, his actions sounding the death knell on any possibility of a relationship with me. Looking equally aggravated, Sam turned around and glared toward the main dining room until Graze passed by. Sam called to him and asked if he would please bus the table.

  Graze did as Sam asked, quickly gathering our empty plates and glasses.

  “And don’t bring the man any more alcohol,” Sam added. “Can’t you see he’s had more than enough?”

  “I only brought the one round, sir,” Graze replied defensively.

  “Somebody else brought in more from the party,” Kevin said from his position on the table. “He said they were left over.”

  Before any of us could even respond, Kevin began to snore.

  Good grief. I could sure pick ’em.

  Once Graze had left, and with Kevin asleep, Sam and I were able to talk in private. I asked him how we needed to proceed, both to ensure my safety and that of my mother while allowing me to go down to the hospital to be with my father. Graze had taken away our water glasses, so as we talked and Sam drank his Sazerac, I found myself sipping my coffee, even though it was barely warm at that point.

  Soon, however, I began to feel woozy. I blinked, studying Sam’s face, which was suddenly going in and out of focus. I put down the cup, wondering if Graze had misunderstood and spiked it with a little alcohol or something. It had tasted kind of odd, but I just figured that’s because it probably had chicory in it, which I never really liked.

  I was about to ask Sam if he was feeling strange too, but I couldn’t get the words to form correctly in my mouth. Instead, what I wanted to say came out sounding like gibberish. Sam looked at me, startled, his brow wrinkled in confusion and concern. I wanted him to know that someone had tampered with my drink, but unable to speak, all I could do was point at my cup and then at myself. Before he could even catch on to what I was trying to show him, everything faded to black.

  The drug had been in my coffee.

  One of Kevin’s drinks had obviously been drugged too.

  I had no doubt that we had both been unconscious ever since. If so, then there were no more memories left to tell me what had happened next. All I had to go on from here on out was a dead body. That, and some dried blood and tissue under my fingernails.

  Feeling suddenly cold, I shuddered to think of what had been done to us once the drugs had kicked in last night. Obviously I had been framed, but why? Had someone literally dragged my nails across Kevin’s face as both of us snoozed away, unconscious? Aching in the pit of my stomach, I thought of Sam. Had he been drugged too? More than anything, I hoped he was all right, but I had a sick feeling that he wasn’t, not at all.

  Before I could do anything about this final bit of recovered mem
ory, Detective Walters came bursting into the room with a gleam in his eye. He produced a pair of handcuffs.

  “Chloe Ledet, you are under arrest for the murder of Kevin Peralta.”

  “I was framed.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve got evidence. Get up.”

  “What evidence?”

  The detective didn’t answer but again told me to stand. As I did, he instructed me to turn around so he could handcuff my wrists behind my back.

  “I want a lawyer,” I said, bile rising in my throat.

  “You’ll get your lawyer,” he replied, locking the cuffs firmly in place.

  Putting a hand on my elbow, he led me out of the hotel room and into the busy courtyard, reciting my Miranda rights as we went. Standing tall, shoulders back, I ignored the curious and scornful gazes of all of those around me. I simply looked straight ahead and told myself this would all be straightened out soon enough.

  I allowed myself to be escorted to the police car that was waiting out in front of the hotel. The detective opened the back door of the vehicle and gestured for me to get inside, and then he placed a hand on the top of my head and pushed me down. At first I thought he was trying to force me for some reason, but then I realized he was merely protecting me from banging my head against the low curving side of the door frame.

  Worse than the walk of shame through the hotel courtyard and lobby was the time spent sitting in the car while waiting to leave. I was looking around and trying to get a better idea of where on Chartres we were exactly, but as I did, I realized that every single person who walked by made a point of looking in at me. The whole scene was so surreal, in fact, that I did the only thing I could do: I closed my eyes and pretended I was somewhere else, somewhere safe and quiet and peaceful, where the biggest problem I had was figuring out what rules of etiquette might apply.

  NINE