Cypress Nights

by Stella Cameron

  Wazoo struck off to the left, away from the bayou. Both of her hands slapped obstacles away from her face.

  She stopped, bent over to hold her knees and let her head hang down. Her hair trailed to the ground.

  “Wait,” Roche said, mostly under his breath. “Give her some space.”

  “Why would she say she killed Mary?” Cyrus asked. “She couldn’t have meant that.”

  “Not unless she’s capable of making a hole in someone’s head with a drill,” Spike said.

  Roche studied the man’s face. Spike had seen too many unspeakable things. His features were set in stark lines, his eyes flat and hard.

  Cyrus crossed himself slowly.

  “Stop your whisperin’,” Wazoo said. “It’s up ahead.” She raised her head and nodded.

  Roche saw dense trees, their trunks green and Spanish moss trailing from their branches.

  “You stay behind me,” Wazoo said. “I’ll know if I’m right. But I should have come to someone for help. Me, I just didn’t believe a word she said. It was all silliness to me.”

  “We’re behind you,” Cyrus said. His expression suggested he took Wazoo seriously. “What are we looking for?”

  She climbed over rotting logs and led them between trees. “There,” she said. “Old Eugene Cashman built that.”

  A log cabin, rough-hewn and completely covered with moss and ferns, almost blended in with its surroundings.

  Wazoo gulped. Tears streaked her face. “Mary told me she could be in danger. I didn’t believe her.”

  Cyrus put an arm around Wazoo. “Lean on me. Slow down and give yourself time to explain.”

  “It was there,” she said, pointing to the right of the cabin. “An old pirogue, upside down. It had bags of dirt on it. I got the dirt in my shoes.”

  Spike tromped to the spot indicated. “No sign of any pirogue here,” he said. “And no bags of dirt.”

  Wazoo tore away from Cyrus and examined the ground. “You don’t know it wasn’t here and I’m tellin’ you it was. What d’you think you see there, lawman?” She pointed at the area.

  Bending over, Spike looked closely, and Roche did the same. “I think someone used branches to brush away tracks or marks—and piled junk on top.”

  Too easily, Roche remembered Mary’s grotesque corpse in the boat. “There was dirt under the body,” he said.

  “Mary, she fell over that pirogue,” Wazoo said. “She didn’t know she was going to die in it. You gotta go get…” She clamped her mouth shut.

  “Go get what?” Spike asked her. He pushed his Stetson to the back of his head. “Go get what?” he repeated.

  Wazoo shook her head.

  “Don’t hold anything back,” Cyrus said. “If you really know something, you’ve got to speak up.”

  “I’ve got to be sure, first,” she said. “It didn’t have to be him who did it.”

  Roche looked from Cyrus to Spike. None of them spoke.

  “I will tell you Mary was afraid someone would try to kill her. She asked me to come here with her at night and search for somethin’. She could only make guesses about what it was. We didn’t find anything, so we gave it up. We never thought anything about the pirogue.” More tears welled and ran over. “Why would we?”

  “You looked inside the cabin?” Roche said. He walked through the doorway into a one-room space with a table and benches. “If anyone slept here, it would have to be on the table—or the floor. What do you think Mary was looking for?”

  Wazoo shook her head. “A deed, I think. A letter, maybe. Something thin so it might be between the logs. There’s nothing like that here, though.”

  “From what I understand, Cashman must have died forty years ago or so,” Cyrus said. “Anything he left in here would be pretty messed up.”

  Windowless, the place was dark. Roche went to the closest wall and flattened a hand on a log. “It’s probably infested in here,” he said. “I can hear things crawling around.”

  Wazoo turned around. “Bugs don’t bother me none.” She walked behind the table and faced them again. She pointed behind her, and down. Her lips parted, but she only mouthed silently.

  Alarmed, Roche pushed forward to peer over the table.

  “Oh, my God,” he muttered, looking at what was obviously someone taped inside a filthy sack. He knew who owned the feet he could see. “Bleu!”

  “Wait,” Spike snapped, seeing what Roche had seen. “And stop movin’ around. We gotta preserve evidence.”

  “Bleu, Bleu,” Roche said, falling to his knees beside her. He reached for her and saw movement. “I’m here, sweetheart. It’s Roche.”

  Spike shoved his arms beneath Roche’s and hauled him to his feet. “I said, ‘Wait.’ We’ve got to be careful if we don’t want to lose—”

  Forcing himself around, Roche pulled back a clenched fist and landed it on Spike’s jaw. The sound of bone on bone made Wazoo gasp.

  Spike hit the ground.

  “Good Lord,” Cyrus said.

  Chapter 43

  Afternoon, the same day

  Madge pulled Roche aside. “Bleu’s settling down. I don’t know how I’d cope if that happened to me.” She frowned, watching his face very closely.

  They stood in the upstairs hallway at the rectory. Bleu, bathed with Madge’s help, her wounds dressed by Dr. Reb Girard, was in one of the bedrooms. Next door to her, Wazoo slept again, helped by a sedative Reb insisted on.

  “Bleu’s incredible,” he said. “I never met a woman like her before and I know I’ll never get so lucky again.”

  Madge nodded, without meeting his eyes.

  “You’ve got your reservations about me,” he said. “I know what the rumors were. Something did happen, but it was never the way it sounded.”

  He got a faint smile that suggested a thaw. Madge Pollard was a lovely woman. She and Cyrus were polite to each other, but the long looks that passed whenever one of them thought the other wasn’t noticing didn’t bode well for a peaceful future.

  “Bleu had a really nasty marriage,” Madge said. “Michael Laveau hid what he really was until after he got her to himself. I don’t know all the details, but it was bad. Bleu’s admitted that. I knew there were serious problems, when he stopped letting her see me. He cut her off from everyone.”

  “She should have left him,” Roche said, aware that his suggestion might not go over well around here.

  Madge surprised him. “I told her that. I was getting ready to take some action—not that I knew what it would be—when Michael was arrested. Cyrus would have helped me. He believes everyone deserves justice. He’s very open-minded about…” She turned the corners of her mouth up quickly. “He would always help me.”

  “I know he would,” Roche said, without taking his eyes from hers. “He’s an incredible man. One of a kind.”

  Madge didn’t look away either. “I know.”

  “You haven’t seemed happy.” He could afford to take a little risk. “Neither has Cyrus. You’re his right hand here. It might be perfect for both of you, but it’s not, is it?”

  “I’ll check on Bleu,” Madge said and limped past him. She looked back and added, “If she got hurt again, really hurt, I don’t think she’d ever let herself love someone else.”

  Madge carried on and went into the first bedroom on the left.

  He’d been warned, Roche realized.

  Madge and Cyrus’s issues had better wait until a killer was in custody. Roche knew what he wanted for himself. At least, he was just about sure. He thought Bleu wanted the same thing. What he wasn’t certain about was the timing.

  He wished he didn’t get scared of losing her every time he considered trying to slow things down between them. Not that he was sure he could.

  It would be unlikely, if not impossible.

  Dr. Reb came from the bedroom, her red hair piled up, haphazard but still managing to look lush and gorgeous. The mother of two kids, she was slim and fit. She and Marc made quite a couple.

&nbs
p; She put a finger to her lips until she drew close. “Bleu’s been through a nightmare,” she said. “The good news is that he didn’t sexually assault her. She’s in good shape physically, apart from bruises and some lesions where she tried to free herself. But getting over the shock could be longer-term than we’d like. She needs to be watched for delayed reactions…. You know what she needs to be watched for, Roche. Is that something you could take on—if you think it’s appropriate—or should I refer her to Sig Smith?”

  “Let’s see how it goes,” he said. “I’ll ask her what she wants to do.”

  “Don’t let her suspect you think she’s got a problem—or that you think she could develop one.” Reb turned a bit pink. “Sorry—there I go telling you your business again. That’s the thing with being a small-town practitioner—you end up dealing with everything, and you start to think you know more than you do.”

  “You’re modest,” he told her. “I know your reputation.”

  “Thanks. On to the other issue. Want to tell me what happened to Spike? If he walked into the doorjamb at that hut like he told me, he’d either need to be even taller than he is, or leaning sideways. Even then, catching himself under the jaw like that would have been some trick.”

  Roche leaned on the newel post at the top of the stairs. “Is that what he told you? He walked into something?”

  “Uh-huh. Lucky he wasn’t knocked out, but it shook him up.”

  “I hit him,” Roche said, examining telltale contusions on the knuckles of his right hand. “I saw Bleu and lost it. Spike wanted me to stay back, to cut down tampering with any evidence. I had to get to her.”

  That got him a long, long look. “I’d like Spike to get some sleep, but he won’t listen.”

  “Everything’s breaking open,” Roche said. “We can all feel it. There isn’t time to lay around now. He can collapse later. We all can.”

  “Yeah,” Reb said, but not immediately. “Bleu says she’s got to talk to Spike and to Cyrus. She’s agitated and very determined.”

  He didn’t miss that Bleu apparently hadn’t asked for him.

  Reb smiled. “You should see your face. She wants you, too. She also wants to get right up, because supposedly there are things she has to do. I’ve persuaded her to stay put for an hour or so.” The doctor slid off her rubber gloves as if it took great concentration. “You could go in and keep her company, if you like. But make sure she doesn’t overdo. Keep out anyone who doesn’t need to be there.”

  “Of course.” Try as he might, he couldn’t manage to feel chastised. “Where’s Spike now?”

  “In the sitting room.” She nodded down the hallway. “With Cyrus. I’ll tell Spike to hold off questioning Bleu until you give the all clear.”

  He smiled at her. “Thanks.”

  “Roche!” Bleu called out from the bedroom.

  Reb raised her eyebrows. “Her voice is mending really fast.”

  He went into the simple room where a single bed stood against one wall. There was a chest, a bedside table and a chair. White curtains fluttered weakly at the window.

  “Hey,” he said. She still smelled of lavender soap. “I’m going to sit here with you while you get some rest. Reb says you need to sleep for a few hours.”

  “I can’t sleep yet,” she said. Bleu gripped the sheet with both hands. “That noise is Doug clearing over at the old school,” she said. “We’ve got to stop it.”

  Her reaction puzzled him. He sat beside her on the bed. “No, we don’t. Anything that gets things started is good. Doug wanted to do it, so you’d see it was happening when you got back.”

  She wore a plain, white cotton nightgown and looked as appealing as if she were wearing a frothy piece of almost nothing. She didn’t look as appealing as when she wore nothing at all. “Can I kiss you?” he said.

  Bleu frowned, clearly agitated. Then she smiled at him and sat up, reached for him.

  Carefully, he stroked her shoulders, ran the backs of his fingers up and down the sides of her face and neck.

  She raised her chin in an invitation, and he accepted it. They kissed softly at first, but he’d known that wouldn’t last. He stopped himself after he’d thrown back the bed covers and slid a hand up her leg.

  “Sorry,” he said, resting his forehead on hers. “It’s all your fault for being so sexy.”

  Bleu caressed his face, pressed small, hard kisses on his lips and ran her tongue over his bottom lip. She teased out his tongue and his urgency began all over again.

  Panting, she pushed on his chest. “We wouldn’t like it if Cyrus walked through that door.”

  “He wouldn’t. Not without knocking.” He kissed her again, and held her. “You nearly killed me last night—I was afraid I’d lost you.”

  She lowered her eyelashes. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

  Bleu played her fingertips over his mouth, but pulled the covers back up to her neck. “I’ve got to talk to Spike and Cyrus. I’ve figured it all out. Or I’ve made a good start.”

  “The deaths? Tell me what you think.”

  “It’s what I know now. I don’t want to say it all more than once. I’ll get dressed.”

  “Stay here,” he said and went in search of the other men.

  They lounged on Cyrus’s old, green leather couch in the sitting room, but shifted gears fast when he told them Bleu thought she had a revelation.

  “I shouldn’t be here anyway,” Spike said. “I’ve got to get going.”

  Roche took him by the arm. “I didn’t have an excuse for hitting you.”

  “Yes, you did,” Spike said. “You wanted to get to the woman you love.”

  The bluntness startled Roche. “I shouldn’t have done it. I apologize.”

  “Accepted.” Spike narrowed his eyes. “If you try it again, you’d better be sure it’s another sucker punch. If I see you coming, I’ll enjoy evening up the score.”

  Roche believed him.

  He knocked on Bleu’s door and she called them in at once.

  Bleu looked first at Roche. She loved looking at him. Even more, she loved feeling him.

  Just the thought started her skin stinging.

  “Hey,” Cyrus said. “You’re looking good, Bleu.”

  “Thank you,” she said, glancing at the dark bruise on Spike’s jaw. She’d been told about Roche swinging at the sheriff and was almost ashamed of her reaction. She liked it that he’d punch another man out to get to her.

  Shameful!

  Her exhilaration fled as fast at it had arrived. “We’ve got to stop Doug,” she said, indicating the window. It sounded as if more pieces of equipment than before had joined in the job of excavating and leveling.

  “We’re not stopping,” Cyrus said. “We’re taking very close precautions. The town is swarming with uniforms. But we’re not letting anyone scare us off.”

  “You and I didn’t die,” Bleu said seriously. “Yet.”

  Backing up each point as she went, she told them her theory about a deeply disturbed relative of one of the children who burned in the fire years ago.

  Spike pulled the chair forward and sat down. “That must have been way before my time. Kate Harper went to the school, though?”

  “Yes,” Bleu said. “She told us about it, and it was horrible.”

  “I hadn’t known the story before,” Cyrus said. “Probably no one wants to talk about it.”

  They became quiet.

  The sound of the machinery on the other side of the church roared on. Bleu rubbed at her arms and set her teeth. She wanted decisions, quickly. “What could it hurt if we said it had been decided that spot is just too small to be built on? You could tell everyone it’s being leveled to turn into a garden now and you’re going to the archdiocese to ask permission to find another piece of land.”

  Spike’s radio crackled. He got up and left the room quietly.

  “Cyrus?” Bleu said.

  He looked bemused. “I haven’t got any plans to go to the archdiocese abo
ut other land.”

  Bleu rubbed her temples, but didn’t miss the grin Roche sent her way. “No, no,” she said. “You haven’t. I was thinking ahead. But it would be all right to say the area’s only being leveled for now, wouldn’t it? We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen after that, do we?”

  Slowly, Cyrus shook his head, no.

  “There. That’s what we’ll do then. If I’m wrong about what I think, and I don’t believe I am, we can decide what to do then.”

  Cyrus didn’t look as certain as she would like him to, but he was wavering in her direction.

  A lot of noise came from elsewhere in the house. Banging. Laughter. Other sounds Bleu couldn’t identify. “Why would anyone be laughing?” she said.

  “Why not?” Cyrus asked. “Laughter’s good. We’re in the middle of a nightmare, I’ll take any laughing I can get.”

  After a scuffle, there was a loud knock at the door.

  “You don’t need to knock, Spike,” Bleu said, sitting straighter in the bed.

  It was Ozaire Dupre who entered the room. Two leashed dogs trotted in ahead of him. “Spike had to go back to the station,” he said. “Hope you’re feelin’ better. Seems like a good time to get this dog thing sorted out. Dr. Savage and me spoke about it last night—before you was kidnapped. He wants you to have a good watchdog, ma’am, so I’ve brought a couple for you to look at.”

  Cyrus looked benevolent. But Roche stared from Ozaire, to the dogs, to Bleu and back again. He didn’t seem happy.

  “This girl’s mostly Australian sheepdog,” Ozaire said, pointing to a large, shaggy black-and-white animal with a pointed nose, brown eyes surrounded by dark lines like kohl on an Egyptian queen, and a wiggling bottom with no tail. “I reckon she’s got a pretty good mess of somethin’ long in the mix, too. Look at her body.”

  The body was, indeed, long. Bleu held out a hand and the dog licked it all the way to her elbow. Resting her head on the mattress, she raised alternating brows while she watched Bleu.

  Jumping up and down like Shrek’s donkey, the other dog, a two-tone brown, as good as shouted, “Choose me.” It had not been bred for beauty. Bleu pointed at it. “Dachshund. Schnauzer. What else?”