Mostly Murder

by Linda Ladd

  “Nancy said to give her fifteen minutes, tops. Hope you like Meat Lover’s Pizza.”

  “You bet. Sounds good.”

  When Claire’s phone sang out the opening chords of Roy Orbison’s “Blue Bayou,” her brand new ring tone chosen in honor of her new digs, Black’s name popped up on caller ID. Her beau was checking in from Ye Merry Olde England.

  Claire moved out into the deserted hallway, punched on, and said, “Hey, cheerio, old chap, and all that rot.”

  “Cheerio, hell. I miss you. Catch the next flight over here and make me a happy man.”

  “Well, that’s good, and glad to hear you miss me. Ditto back to you. So, how’s it going over there? Any crazies running amok?”

  “I can’t sleep without you in my bed.”

  “Glad to hear that, too. Really, though, how’s your patient? Straitjacket on and all is well?”

  “He’s doing very well. I changed his meds. How about you? How do you feel?”

  Black, worrying about her again. Her coma had gotten to him big time and made him hover a whole lot more than necessary. “I’m fine, really. Feel good, in fact. I like it over here at Lafourche. Zee’s cool. Nancy’s great. It’s been pretty quiet, to tell you the truth.”

  “No headaches? No blurred vision?”

  “Jeez, Black, I’m fine,” I said. Hey, he was a good doctor. He covered all the bases. And he had one hell of a bedside manner—at least with her, he did.

  “No car crashes? Nobody’s shot you down? Beaten you up? Knifed you in the back?”

  Yes, he had sarcasm down pat, too. Although most of that stuff had happened to her at one time or another, except for the knife thing. She’d never been stabbed, thank God, not unless you counted one rather nasty meat cleaver attack. Black was joking, yes, but not totally. “Well, some jerk cut me off in traffic two days ago. Made me brake hard. That count?”

  “I hate to think what you did to him.”

  “It was a her, and I let her off with a polite police warning.”

  Quiet ensued for a beat. “So how is the new job, really? Like it? Please tell me you aren’t chasing any serial killers.”

  “I’m not chasing any serial killers. Yet. We’ve been lucky.”

  “You just made my day.”

  “Truth is, the only excitement around here today is the Saints game. And yes, I put it in the DVR for you. Zee’s a bigger Saints fan than you are, if that’s even possible. See how exciting my life is when you’re gone?”

  “I don’t particularly want you to be excited while I’m gone.” Short pause again. “Are you sleeping okay? Any more nightmares?”

  See? The guy is overly concerned. She guessed she’d fib a bit about the nightmares, though, just to give him peace of mind. “Nope. I’m definitely on the mend, at least ninety-nine percent and climbing.”

  “I miss you,” he said again.

  “Well, come back home then. I’m tired of sleeping in that big round bed in that big palatial house all by myself. The French Quarter’s great, but lonely with you gone. What’s taking you so long, anyway? Slumming it with Wills and Kate at Buckingham Palace?”

  “I wish. My patient is doing much better, but I’ve got to tie up a few loose ends. I should be home on Tuesday. Take that day off and the next one, too. I’ve got good things planned for us in that big round bed in that big palatial house.”

  Claire smiled. Sounded fine to her. Oh, yeah, definitely. “We’ll see, Black. Gotta go. Nancy just walked in with pizza and sodas, and the game’s about to start.”

  “Be careful, Claire. I mean it. Juan and Maria are there with you, right?”

  Juan Christo was Black’s new home security guard/gardener who carried a shotgun, and his wife, Maria, was their cook/housekeeper who probably carried a pistol, too, knowing Black. The middle-aged couple hailed from Guatemala and kept the house running like clockwork and kept Claire company when Black was gone. She liked them both a lot. “They’re fine, too, and hover over me almost as much as you do.”

  “Okay, then. Remember, duck and weave. Stay close to Zee.”

  The duck-and-weave thing was a private joke, his way of saying be careful. “Quit worrying. I’m fine. This place is a veritable no-crime zone.”

  They hung up just as Nancy put down the pizzas on Claire’s desk and said, “Does this smell scrumptious, or what? I got us some cheese bread, too.”

  Yes, indeed, it did smell wonderful. Claire opened the lid and chose a nice big piece as Nancy pulled an ice-cold Pepsi off the plastic rings of the six-pack she carried. She handed it to Claire. “Oh, God, look, they’re interviewing Jack Holliday. Man, is he hot, or what?”

  “Yep, number eleven, Tulane jersey retired,” Zee agreed. “Best college quarterback who ever threw a football, in my humble opinion.”

  “Best looking, too,” Nancy added.

  Claire took another bite. “So he doesn’t play for the Saints?”

  “One season, then he blew out his knee. He lives here in New Orleans, though, and was the biggest star Tulane had ever seen, so everybody loves him. Now he represents most of his former teammates and is making tons of money.”

  Nancy rolled her chair up beside Claire. Nancy Gill was just gorgeous. She looked like some Amazon warrior of old, very tall and beautiful, with long reddish brown hair and eyes the exact same russet color. She was top-notch at her job, too, almost as good as Buckeye Boyd, Claire’s ME up in Missouri. Nancy had been trained at the NOPD, too, by some of the best CSI techs in the country and was ultra-meticulous about her crime scenes. She had become a good friend, especially when Black was off jet-setting around the Continent and Claire could actually spend some time with her.

  The pizza tasted delicious, and up on the screen, the stadium in Dallas was alive with thousands of insane fans screaming for blood. The Saints were on the field, milling around, all in gold and black, and the Dallas Cowboys were, too, all of them no doubt just waiting for the head-on, bone-cracking collisions to ensue. Claire had run into a few of those, too, and had the residual scars to prove it.

  Just as the Saints completed pass one, Zee’s cell phone rang. His ringtone was the voice of the suave and sexy Usher, of course crooning a love song called “Here I Stand” that no doubt had caused many a lady’s heart to flutter. Zee mumbled a mild curse and kept his eyes glued on the game while he answered. “Yeah, what’s up? C’mon, game just started, dude.”

  Claire and Nancy watched him grimace. Then he hung up and growled, “Patrol’s got a body. Down near where you’ve been staying, Claire.”

  Claire frowned at that news. She had been spending quite a few nights on a houseboat while Black was out of town, which happened to be something that Black didn’t know and that she didn’t want him to know. It was down on the bayou in Lafourche Parish where she’d lived for a while as a foster child with the LeFevres family. The LeFevres’ house had been partially destroyed by Katrina years ago, but their houseboat had been taken inland and saved. Since Claire had moved to New Orleans and reconnected with some of the remaining LeFevres brothers, they’d offered her the use of the boat when she was down in the parish. She’d jumped at the chance. It was one of the few pleasant memories in her horrific childhood so she cherished the place.

  Zee looked mightily perturbed. “We got big trouble. They found a dead girl down there, and they said the scene’s real creepy. They want you out there, too, Nancy.”

  “Okay, let’s get going,” Claire said, feeling the familiar surge of excitement and realizing that this was what she’d been waiting for. Despite her recent injuries and the dangers she’d faced in the past, homicide investigations happened to be her passion. She was already pumped up and raring to go.

  “Where exactly is it?” Nancy asked Zee, grabbing another pizza slice and closing the box.

  Zee picked up the whole box to take with them, apparently not one to waste good food. He looked at Claire. “From the sound of it, Claire, it’s right there on the property where you’re stayin’ sometimes.
In the ruins of that house just up from your boat. You sleep out there last night?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t hear anything, and I sleep with the windows wide open. Nobody drove up to the house, or I definitely would’ve heard the car. You know how sound travels out there on the water.”

  “You didn’t see anything this morning when you left, either?”

  Claire shook her head. “Nope, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. You sure it’s not some other place? There are several dilapidated houses along that part of the bayou. Maybe it’s one of them.”

  “He said it’s the old LeFevres place.” Zee unlocked his top drawer, pulled it open, and retrieved his Beretta from its black leather belt holster.

  Claire never took off her weapons, not anymore, not after her last case. Even at night, she kept her weapons handy under her pillow. Being unarmed had not been healthy for her in the past. And that was the understatement of the year. Her trusty Glock nine-millimeter was snug in her shoulder holster, and the sweet little .38 snub nose that her best friend and ex-LAPD partner, Harve Lester, had once given her for Christmas, was strapped to her right ankle. She grabbed her lightweight black hoodie and looped the chain holding the silver Lafourche Parish Deputy Sheriff badge over her head.

  “I guess I better call Sheriff Friedewald. He needs to know a homicide’s gone down.”

  Nancy said, “Let’s take my Tahoe. I’ve got my equipment with me. Looks like I’m going to need it.”

  Claire said, “If it’s that bad, we need to hurry it up and get out there.”

  So hurry it up they did. Minutes later, they were in Nancy’s white Tahoe, headed out to the crime scene. Claire’s blood was singing. A murder wasn’t exactly what she’d expected on such a nice sun-spangled Sunday afternoon, but she was ready, her instincts telling her something wicked had come calling. And Claire always trusted her gut. Especially when it involved murder and mayhem and raving maniacs. More troubling, she was thinking that if the murder had occurred near her boat, and when she was probably there, was it somehow connected to her? Nope, Black was not going to be a happy camper when he heard about this case.

  Chapter Two

  Ten minutes later they were barreling down a bayou road on their way to the LeFevres property, dust billowing up behind them like a tornado riding their tail. The LeFevreses had lived in a remote corner of the parish, on a bayou stream that most people never got to see, much less dwell on, but to Claire it was a quiet, beautiful sanctuary. Wooded and full of birds and wild animals, true, but she had felt safe there when she was a girl, after living in a host of foster homes where she hadn’t felt safe at all.

  When the LeFevres brothers offered her a chance to stay on their houseboat, she’d jumped at the opportunity but hadn’t used it overnight until Black left for Europe. Fate had brought her back to the swamps again. Now death had returned there as well, probably following her around, which was usually the case.

  “There’s the turn, Nancy,” she said, pointing out a gravel road up ahead.

  Nancy took a hard left into a rutted entrance that wound through a stand of two-hundred-year-old live oak trees, all draped funereally with the coarse and creepy, gray Spanish moss so prevalent in the bayous. Once the road opened up onto the grassy yard surrounding the old Caribbean-style house with its wide veranda and open breezeway, she saw the two white Lafourche Parish patrol cars sitting there. Beyond the driveway covered with white shells and down farther on the banks of the slow-flowing bayou, the houseboat sat silent and undisturbed. Other than the police cars, everything looked exactly the way it had that morning when Claire had left for Thibodaux.

  They pulled up beside the other vehicles and then got out and walked across the front yard. The house was a big two-story structure, clapboard, once white but now peeling and gray. Some of the roof had collapsed, but most of the bottom floor was still intact. The giant river stone chimney was crumbling some now, but it had been a wonderful home once, full of laughter and love and happy children. Bobby and Kristen LeFevres had made it warm and safe for their own two children and the multitude of foster kids they’d taken in through the years.

  Bobby LeFevres had been an NOPD detective then and had found Claire, her face and arms bruised, hiding in a city park pavilion after she had wandered away from her abusive foster family. He had taken her home with him and fought for her to stay there, until Family Services had seen fit to move her to a new family up around Baton Rouge. But the LeFevres house held only good memories. Until now.

  Inside the house, they found the first floor was still in pretty good shape, but the second floor, where Claire had slept in a bedroom with the LeFevreses’ darling little daughter named Sophie, was in ruins, the roof caved in, the wood floor water damaged. They stopped outside the front door, put on protective booties and blue latex gloves, and then moved carefully through the living room and joined the officers at the dining room pocket doors. They stood there a few minutes and observed the crime scene. It was not a pretty sight. In fact, it was downright shocking.

  The victim was a woman. She had on some kind of long white velvet robe. Her hands had been placed in her lap, but were completely hidden inside the robe’s wide flowing sleeves. Her face had been painted to resemble a skeleton. White paint had been applied all over her facial skin except for the eye sockets, nose, and chin, which were painted black, but that wasn’t the worst part. The killer had pierced a needle through her white lips and sewn her mouth shut with large black vertical stitches. White thread had been sewn in a large X on each of her eyes. The victim’s hair was hidden under some kind of white silk turban with lots of charms and feathers sewn on it. Small bones had been thrust through slits cut into her earlobes. Dried blood had run down her neck and now looked black and crusty.

  There was a multitude of candles surrounding her, all white and all covered with thick drippings, burned all the way down to the floor. Some of them, the ones encased in tall glass containers were decorated with pictures of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. One was still burning. More religious pictures, small plastic icons as found in Catholic churches, feathers, and bones made a shrine that encircled the chair. Several human skulls were affixed with white candles. And the smell of death permeated the air, cloaking everybody and everything with the sickening odor of putrefying flesh. Bluebottle flies had found her and buzzed and landed and crawled all over the exposed face.

  “Holy God,” Zee muttered softly, crossing himself and stepping back away from the victim. “That’s a voodoo altar. See the cornmeal spread around down there on the floor. That design traced in it? That’s called a Veve. They draw that stuff before the ceremony begins. Don’t step in it. Don’t touch it. Damn, I don’t like this kinda shit.”

  Claire pulled her gaze away from the altar and stared at Zee. “How do you know this stuff, Zee?”

  “Hey, I was born out here, remember. And Mama Lulu is into voodoo. She can tell us what all this means. And it all means something bad, I guarantee it.”

  “Who’s Mama Lulu?”

  “My grandmama. She lives up this very bayou a little ways, and she’s got a voodoo shop over on Bourbon Street in the Quarter. This’s serious stuff, Claire. Don’t let anybody touch anything, or God knows what might happen.”

  “Told you this was super creepy,” one of the officers said. Claire remembered that his name was Clarence Dionne. She didn’t know him very well yet. He was young, slender, with big brown eyes and dark hair longer than the sheriff really liked his patrol officers to wear. He was from the parish, born and bred, and knew nearly everybody who lived in Lafourche. She did know that much about him, and that was probably going to come in handy in the investigation.

  Yeah, it was super creepy, all right. More than creepy—bizarre and horrible, Claire thought. She turned to Officer Dionne. “Do you recognize the victim?”

  “Can’t tell, ma’am. Not with her face painted up like some kinda zombie like that. She looks young, though. I might be able to identify her after Nancy get
s her cleaned up.”

  “You didn’t touch anything, did you, Dionne?”

  “No, ma’am. I know better’n that. Nobody touches voodoo altars ’cause they might get cursed.”

  “Who found the body?”

  “Don’t know. Desk got in an anonymous call to check out this house for a possible homicide. Gave pretty good directions, too. Used a burn phone so there was no trace.”

  “Are those the exact words the caller used? Told you to check for a possible homicide?”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s what dispatch told me.”

  “That sounds like somebody in law enforcement. Did they get the voice on tape?”

  “Operators at 911’s got it, if you wanna listen to it, but they said it was muffled and hard to understand.”

  “Thank you, Officer. You observe anything suspicious at the scene when you first got out here?”

  “No. No tire tracks except for one that led down to the boat. Looked like an SUV of some kind.”

  “That’s probably my Range Rover. We’ll get casts made, though.”

  “You got a Range Rover?” Dionne said. He gave an appreciative whistle, impressed, to be sure.

  “It belongs to a friend of mine.” That would be Black, of course. He just loved big powerful toys, and he loved her to have them, too. And as an extra wow factor, he had fitted her fully equipped SUV with every tracking device known to man, as he had on her phone and computer and the St. Michael’s medal she always wore around her neck. In the past, he’d had trouble finding her on occasions when she really needed finding so he no longer took any chances. So the bells and whistles on her vehicles and personal property suited her just fine. There were times when she definitely wanted him to locate her, and the faster, the better.