”No.” Vivian fell back against the refrigerator. “What is she saying?”
Maybe he just never would get the hang of women, Cyrus thought. “Hear her out,” he said and noted that Spike wasn’t smiling anymore, either. “If God can forgive the offense, so can you two.” He was getting angry.
“I should have come right out with it,” Wazoo said. “But I had a whole lot of violence around when I was growin’ up and it does things to you.”
“I hate that,” Vivian said, color returning to her face. “People who blame their own wrongdoing on what happened when they were children. Their parents were mean, or something, so they’re mean.” Her eyes glittered. “Or worse. Sooner or later a person has to be responsible for their own actions.”
“Hush, cher,” Spike said. “Start at the top, Wazoo, and let’s have it.”
“Start at the bottom, you mean,” she muttered. “Ellie Byron’s my friend. She treats me like I’m anyone else and there ain’t many who would. So what do I do? I steal from her, me. She know I don’t got the money for books but how I love the big, fancy ones with pictures of places and beautiful t’ings. She say I can borrow anything I want.”
Cyrus had already heard the story but could feel how badly she needed to tell it again.
“It was the silk bag,” Wazoo said, wiping at her eyes. “Yellow and orange and green and red stars all over it. And the shiny cord to close it, all gold and glittery. That’s what made me notice. Me, I never seen a book kept safe in a bag like that, so I knew it was special. All I wanted to do was look at it. That was just before you come here, Miz Vivian, and I heard Ellie say she was fixin’ to give it to you the first opportunity she got. So I borrowed it, only, Ellie was upstairs at the time and I left before I could tell her I was takin’ the book for a little while.”
Her eyes slid past each of them. “Oh, alligator poop. Who’m I tryin’ to boondaddle? I was afraid she wouldn’t want me to take somethin’ that good so I sneaked off with it. Vivian’s uncle Guy left it with Ellie. It was a present for you, Vivian. I should have given it back right away but I could tell what it was and what it meant, and I, well, I wanted to figure it all out and find that treasure for myself.”
This, Cyrus hadn’t heard. He smiled encouragement at Wazoo who had taken her tale into a make-believe realm. “It takes a strong spirit to be completely honest,” he told her. “Thank you for being so open with us.”
She glared at him, the old fire back in her expression. “Don’t you do that God man stuff to me. If you’re bad, you’re bad, and I’m bad, me. I come to you because I reckon someone put a hex on you so you can’t tell no one nothin’ after it’s bin told to you, that’s all.”
L’Oiseau de Nuit would take a special place in his personal memories. “That’s fine,” he told her. “And it was nice of you to agree to come here and tell Vivian and Spike. ’Specially since you only did it because you’re sorry for me.”
“Hah.” Wazoo turned her face from him. “So you make me tell it again myself.”
“As long as the book’s safe,” Vivian said, her arms crossed tightly about her, “I’m glad if you’ve had fun with it. But I really would like to have it back.”
“That the t’ing,” Wazoo said. “Someone stole it from me yesterday. Can you imagine the nerve of some people? Walked right into my room at Rosebank, where I got a right to guard my t’ings, and stole that book.”
Vivian wouldn’t appreciate a laughing priest when she’d just discovered something she wanted had been stolen from her…twice. “That’s terrible,” Cyrus said.
“Oh” was all Vivian said.
“You knew about this book?” Spike asked. He tilted his head and studied Vivian.
“Yes. Ellie told me, but I didn’t know it had anything to do with what Wazoo calls treasure.”
“Notes on some of them pages,” Wazoo said. “They was short notes. Okay, they was only two notes. Well, two and a bit, ’cause there was a torn one, too. And your uncle drawed a sort of picture in one place—near a picture. Not on it. Near it. I think it’s the treasure.”
Vivian scuffed across the kitchen, and retraced her steps again. Her crestfallen expression only made Cyrus feel more helpless.
“Ah, Vivian,” Spike said. “Is it so much of a deal now? I mean, how much do you and Charlotte—”
”Don’t.” She pointed her forefinger at him as if taking up position for a sword fight. “Don’t you dare make presumptions about me. I thought you knew me better than that. What I need, and what my mother needs, is what was intended for us and what we’d feel okay acceptin’. The other is blood money, conscience money, and we don’t want any part of it.”
“Darn my mouth,” Spike said. “I don’t know what came over me. I do know you better than that, not that it’s any of my business.”
“Isn’t it?”
Cyrus decided that any advice from him wouldn’t be well received. He also decided these two were definitely in love.
Spike tapped the heel of a boot on the worn linoleum and reminded Cyrus of a very overgrown boy who hadn’t been so good lately.
”Do it by the book,” Wazoo said loudly and sat very straight as if expecting trouble. “That’s what one of the notes said—the one what wasn’t tore. I’ve got a good memory, me.”
“Thanks,” Vivian said. “And I would if I could.”
”Check all your pineapples.” Wazoo delivered this line in ringing tones.
Vivian frowned at Wazoo. “I beg your pardon?”
“The other note. Check all your pineapples.”
Cyrus was hearing all of this for the first time.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Spike said.
“None,” Vivian agreed. “Uncle Guy was a joker. I guess I should have expected him to lead me on a wild-goose chase if he could. Although I did think he intended to make sure Mama and I could keep the house up.”
Laughter erupted from Wazoo in a high peal. “The goose that laid the golden egg,” she said. “What else would he do but lead you…on…a wild…Well, no, he didn’t. He did intend to provide for you. That man, he surely did. You got hundreds of pineapples, Miz Vivian. They all over that house. They carved on bedposts and chair legs and made out of bronze, and bone, and stone, and pottery, and painted gold and all manner of things. I know ’cause I been doin’ my best to find one with that fancy egg in it.”
“She’s sick.” Vivian got a glass of water and handed it to Wazoo. “It’s okay, we’ll take care of you.”
“Uh-huh. That book was all about these dolled-up eggs made for some rich Russian people what got knocked off. Some Frenchman made ’em special, lots of ’em. Your uncle just had the one, but it’s worth more money than you or me ever seen. Fabergé. That’s the name of them. Your uncle drew a picture of the one he reckons is inside one of your pineapples. Leastwise, I think that’s what he was tellin’ you. He wasn’t so much of an artist. But I know feet when I see em, ugly feet, too. This one had bumpy legs and ugly feet. And a tufty thing on top.”
“A Fabergé egg,” Vivian said with reverence. “A copy, I expect.”
“Uh-uh. It come out of some passageway under a palace in Russia where it got lost for a long time. If it was like the picture next to the drawing, it was one of the ones made real early, so it said. Someone died over it.”
Vivian shivered. She took another chair at the kitchen table. “Come on, you two,” she said to Spike and Cyrus. “Sit down with us. Seems to me we’ve got the perfect opportunity for our treasure hunt. With all this construction getting started again.”
Morose, Wazoo said, “And all those people pokin’ all over the place, prob’ly includin’ whoever stole my book.”
Vivian didn’t correct her on the ownership issue.
“A map inside the book showed how the house is. I used that ’cause there was crosses on rooms and I found pineapple stuff all over ’em.” Wazoo paused. “There was crosses on plenty of rooms. That map, one just the same, that’s what the ki
ller took from the lawyer’s bag that day. I got good eyes, me. Couldn’t see if he took anythin’ else though.”
“Wazoo,” Spike said carefully, digesting what she was telling them, “what do you remember about the man…that man?”
She shrugged. “He wear one of them masks over his head so I don’t see his face. Not too tall but big shoulders. Strong. And he move that knife so fast, all I see is a flash.”
Spike glanced at Vivian—who flinched—and Cyrus.
“The other one, the one who said to start the fire where they did, he wore a mask, too, only he was taller.”
“Taller,” Cyrus said. “You mean there were two men in masks?”
“I told that,” Wazoo said, sounding cross. “When the fire burnin’ I tell that.”
Two. “I didn’t understand that’s what you were suggesting,” Spike said. “Wazoo, are you sure these men weren’t pretty much the same height and weight?” he asked, thinking of the Martin brothers.
“Yes!” She glared at him. “I’m sure, me. I said what I saw and I saw it. They was different. It was the taller man who took Gil away. I recognized him when I see him again at the fire.”
The Devols’ house was old and creaked a lot. In the hush that followed Wazoo’s curious comment, every board in the place made its presence known.
“Hoo mama,” Wazoo wailed, freshly stricken. “I say it. Now I live in the swamp, for sure.” She spoke to Vivian, “That night, the night when you found the lawyer, I should never have tried to cover it all up.”
Now Cyrus was confused again. She hadn’t mentioned anything about covering up the murder before. Or about seeing Gil taken away. “You saw Gil killed, too?”
She gave one of her ferocious shakes of the head. “No, I did not. I only see that other man take him away because he found him watchin’ while the first one killed the lawyer. I don’t know where he took Gil, but he surely did kill him later, didn’t he?”
They nodded but couldn’t look at one another.
“I’m greedy, me,” Wazoo said in a small voice. “And I know that’s not anybody else’s fault, even if I have always been poor. I thought I’d finally found a way to get some money and make a start and I wasn’t goin’ to let no dead man in a fancy car stop me. I thought Gil would be okay.” She scrubbed at her eyes and her wild black hair only made her white skin more luminous.
Spike got Cyrus’s attention and shook his head. “Hold up, Wazoo.” Spike was signaling that he couldn’t let Wazoo go on without hearing a Miranda. “If you’re gonna keep talkin’ to us I’m going to have to read you your rights.” He did so while her crying grew louder. “You need a lawyer.”
“I don’t want no lawyer. I don’t need no lawyer. I can’t afford no lawyer. How long will they lock me away for stealin’ a book and not tellin’ I seen a murder?”
Chapter 38
“Okay, so either I put my job on the line and go along with this scheme of yours, or I’ll lose the friendship of some people I really like.” Spike was beaten. The day hadn’t exactly been relaxing, and things had only gotten more strenuous later. He glanced at Vivian who was sitting with Wazoo, Cyrus and Madge in the upstairs sitting room at the rectory, and suffered a perverse hard-on.
The group mumbled what came out as, “S’right.”
The face Vivian turned to him didn’t help. A sleepy, tense, beautiful face that begged to rest on his pillow in the aftermath of making love again.
She smiled at him and he sank deeper in one of Cyrus’s comfortable old chairs.
He’d called Homer and, after discovering that Gary Legrain had packed up and taken off for New Orleans right after he learned he’d just come into his own law firm, asked his dad to remain at Rosebank till he could get there. Wendy was being put into Vivian’s bed and, so he was told, had suggested he not come for her until after tomorrow’s fete.
Spike sighed. “Wazoo, I think if you’re going to seek asylum with Father Cyrus until the morning, then hotfoot it over to Rosebank to make sure the fete’s underway before you speak to Detective Bonine, I’d better be tied up and locked in a cupboard to stop me from doing my duty and taking you in now.”
Vivian gave an explosive little laugh. “Just what I’ve always wanted to do to you. Promise you won’t fight me?”
He met her eyes. “Would I fight you, cher?” His smile was for her alone. She felt its power and made herself look away.
“All the right notes,” Wazoo announced, staring into space. “The torn note. That’s what Mr. Patin wrote there. All the right notes.”
Uncle Guy had been a wonderful but an eccentric man. Vivian had loved him since she was old enough to know she loved anyone, but tonight she wished he hadn’t had quite such a thing for riddles. “I’ll think about that,” she told Wazoo.
“There is something I think we’ve all forgotten,” Madge said. She’d been quiet since they’d arrived, quiet and watchful. “Did anyone clear this fete with Detective Bonine? Are they going to want dozens of people tramping around the grounds at Rosebank?”
“I thought of that, me,” Wazoo said. “I talk to that rude man but maybe I was wrong about him. He real nice to me this time and say the search at the house is over. Everythin’ happen on the same day, they reckon—Louis and Gil—and now there ain’t nothin’ left to find.”
Vivian wished she felt as sure of that.
“I guess that’s good news then,” Madge said. She shared a couch with Cyrus and he watched every word she spoke.
“Could have been random,” Cyrus said, looking directly into her face. “A robbery gone bad. Someone passing through—apparently two of them working together—could have seen an opportunity to rob Louis but been interrupted by Gil—all without knowing Wazoo was watching. Now they’re long gone.”
“That would mean it’s all over,” Vivian said. “I’d be more than glad but it doesn’t mean they don’t have to find out what happened.”
Spike raised a single eyebrow. “I’m still gettin’ over the idea that there’s nothing left to find at Rosebank. That’s a crock and it won’t wash.”
The door opened and Lil, in curlers, stood there, panting from the exertion of climbing the stairs.
“You should have gone home hours ago,” Cyrus said and Vivian figured he wasn’t pleased that Lil knew exactly who was gathered there.
“Someone has to keep this place runnin’,” Lil said with a pointed glare at Madge. “There’s someone wants to see you, Father. A lady with a question. She come in one of them big, fancy cars with a man drivin’ and wearing’ one of them caps. Never saw her before and she says it’s confidential. Wouldn’t let me help her, that’s for sure. Can I show her up?”
Cyrus got to his feet. “I’ll go down.”
The sight of Wally Hibbs with a large, lumpy sack over his shoulder silenced everyone. He went directly to Cyrus and stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear.
“Okay,” Cyrus said when the boy had finished talking. “Sit down and wait till I get back.” He strode out with Lil behind him and his footsteps pounded down the stairs.
Wally took one look at Spike and immediately dropped his gaze.
The silence stretched.
At last Spike said, “So, what’s in the sack, Wally?”
“Evidence,” Wally said. Nolan Two hadn’t made this trip and Wally, in a baggy brown T-shirt and cutoffs, looked wan, nervous, but at home in the rectory. He said, “Father Cyrus knows the right way to deal with these things.”
Cyrus surprised them all by returning in only minutes. He went directly to a bar he kept locked and took out a bottle of brandy. He poured a measure into enough glasses for everyone present, except Wally. Wally got a glass of lemonade poured from a jug kept in a small refrigerator.
Madge helped Cyrus pass the drinks around.
“Take a good swallow,” Cyrus ordered. “Our waters are muddied even more but this could be a good thing. I’d never have thought of this in a million years but it explains a lot. We just have to stop oursel
ves from jumping to conclusions.”
Vivian shifted to the front of her seat, almost jumpy with wanting to know what he was talking about—now.
“It would be a mistake to start laying blame where it’s very unlikely to belong,” Cyrus said.
“Stop leading the audience and say what you’ve got to say,” Spike said. “What’s happened?”
“Have some more brandy,” Cyrus said.
”Cyrus.”
“Very well, but remember my warnings. The lady wanted directions. She had two business cards and said it was fine for me to keep one. I told her I wanted it in case someone asked for a referral. I know what you’re going to think but don’t jump to conclusions.”
“Argh!” Madge said. “You’ve already told us that. Cyrus, give us that card or I’ll take it from you.”
That brought a round of chuckles.
Cyrus gave the card to Vivian, who was closest to him. She read, turned cold, and passed the card on.
It finished in Spike’s hands and he whistled. “And you don’t want us jumping to conclusions?” he said.
Madge fell against the back of the couch and blew into a fist. Her dark eyes fixed on some distant picture only she saw.
“I don’t believe it, me,” Wazoo said. “Not that man. Women, yes. Murder, no. There’s a whole lot of woman trouble in this town, but not the other.”
“What does that mean?” Vivian said. Her nerves sent up white flags. She’d had enough intrigue.
“Women,” Wazoo said, unfazed. “We got sexy men. We got sexy women. What you think that means? And we got one mess what nobody wants to know about.”
“Okay,” Spike said. “What’s all this about?”
“Uh-uh,” Wazoo said. “I’m not tellin’, me. I’m in enough trouble. Someone else in this town needs to talk about a married woman who likes to share her tail. Not me. I ain’t talkin’.”
”What?” Vivian left her seat to stand over Wazoo. “That’s it. Please. Who are you talkin’ about?”
“Spike told me not to gossip. God man told me not to gossip. I ain’t gonna gossip. We found ourselves a killer, anyway.”
Kiss Them Goodbye Page 33