A Marked Man

by Stella Cameron

  He raised the full glass and drank it empty.

  Tossing his jeans on the counter, he started putting on his shorts.

  “For…Dammit all!” A small streak of blood smeared his penis and spotted the waistband of his shorts where it touched his groin.

  CHAPTER 11

  “I see you sneaking around out there, Madge Pollard,” Father Cyrus Payne said.

  The door to his office was partly open and he saw his assistant moving about in the hall.

  “Just takin’ Millie out,” Madge responded. “Won’t be a moment.”

  “Wait, I’m comin’.” Cyrus moved rapidly from behind his desk and opened his door all the way. “I told you this isn’t the time to be alone out there.” He avoided looking at Madge’s black and white puppy. “A woman’s missing in this town. Give me that hound. I’ll take her out.”

  “She’s not a hound,” Madge said and eased the front door open. Attached to a very long lead, the dog took off around the corner and Madge followed. “Have you finished your homily?” Her voice floated back.

  Cyrus wandered after her. Her legs flashed pale beneath the swishing hem of a dark blue dress. “You don’t get enough fresh air,” he said.

  “What?” The dog had wiggled under an azalea and Madge assumed a relaxed, waiting attitude. “Fresh air?”

  “You’re pale. I know I don’t always take as much notice as I should but you’re looking pasty. Get out in the sun—with a hat on—for an hour a day. You need the vitamins.”

  Madge didn’t say a word but he could feel her big, dark eyes on him and if he looked closer, she’d be grinning. “Someone has to look out for you,” he said. “You surely don’t take care of yourself. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you the same, and say you don’t get enough sleep because you work such long hours, too. You forget you have to add on the time it takes you to get back home to Rosebank in the evenin’. What’s that hound doin’?”

  “Millie’s a papillon—butterfly dog to you—and a member of the spaniel family. I’ve told you the same thing several times. Why don’t you like her?”

  He did, but he wasn’t planning to tell Madge. “If she was a real dog, I might like her. Under five pounds of nothing doesn’t count. Next time you take a good look at her, see if I’m not right. Maybe when she grows to full size she won’t look like a long-haired mouse. What is she doin’?”

  “Pooping.” Madge emphasized both syllables.

  “Under one of my azaleas?”

  “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. This is her favorite spot because she can really get into it without some nosey poke watchin’.” She giggled.

  “Nothin’ that small could take that long over—what she’s doing,” Cyrus said, getting close to laughter himself. He crouched on the gravel path beside the bed of azaleas and shifted branches until he could locate Millie. “She’s not poopin’. She’s sitting under there congratulating herself for getting you out of the rectory.”

  “She’s an ounce or two away from full-grown,” Madge said. “She’ll soon be a year old. And I’m shocked at you for encouragin’ folks to gossip about me. I like my work. And I like being here. Rosebank is just where I sleep.”

  Cyrus couldn’t think of a thing to say. He liked her here, too. All he needed to feel at peace was to know that while he went about parish business, Madge was nearby. And he wasn’t fair to her. Long periods passed when he could put aside the notion that he was probably standing in the way of her marrying and having a family, but it always came back. They were locked together by friendship…and love. The love wasn’t mentioned but they understood that it must stay in their hearts and be expressed only through kindness.

  He clapped his hands at the little dog. “Come on out, you. Come on, come to me.” Flattened on her stomach, the dog wiggled, commando-style, about an inch closer to him. Her white teeth showed in what he would swear was a grin. She loved to play—not that he was interested in playing with dogs. “Look at that. She’s disobeyin’ me,” he said.

  “You’re frightening her,” Madge said. “She’s hidin’.”

  Cyrus bounced to his feet. “I don’t frighten anybody. I reckon that’s the problem, I don’t get respect because you all think I’m a pushover. It’s time to change that.” He liked being trusted. Sure, he allowed himself to be used, but it was his choice.

  “Go back inside,” Madge said. “You’ve been busy in there. Don’t let me interrupt.”

  He looked around. The night had a way of growing soft fingers and a whispery voice when trouble came around, and trouble had really slipped into town today. First he’d found Annie Duhon in the church, looking wild and fighting him like she thought he wanted to hurt her. Afterward she wouldn’t say much, although she’d promised to come back and talk to him. Then came the news of a stranger gone missing from the Majestic. Spike had said he’d call when Cyrus was needed for a search party. No call had come yet.

  “Cyrus?” Madge said softly. “You’ve got a lot on your mind. Time to get it on paper.”

  “No big ideas in my head. I was just fiddlin’ in the office. Is she ready to go in yet?”

  “Writing a homily doesn’t count as fiddlin’, Father. I just bet you were prayin’ for a diversion so you could get away from it.”

  He smiled a little. “No such thing.” He longed to put off writing the weekend homily. Dark as it was out here, a walk would be preferable—with Madge and the mutt as long as they didn’t make any noise. He needed to think, and hope he got some inspiration—pray he got some inspiration, that was. This was the first weekend of the annual pledge drive. God, send me a new way to beg—please.

  Millie emerged from her bower, her ridiculously small body whipping from side to side, her long-haired curly pig tail swishing over her back. Cyrus looked down into a pair of shiny black eyes. Why the creature thought she loved him, he had no idea, but despite the way she sometimes pretended otherwise, he believed she did.

  An engine ground unevenly in their direction.

  “Someone’s coming,” Cyrus said. Headlights appeared and the beams swung down Bonanza Alley.

  “Are you sure?” Madge said.

  What could a man do when his assistant had been with him so long she’d taken control? He smiled but didn’t respond.

  Rattles and bangs joined the rough engine noise and Wazoo’s van crunched onto the gravel parking lot above the rectory.

  “Hoo mama,” Madge said, sounding delighted. “This is something. Now why would Wazoo be comin’ here at this time of night? She can’t stand you.”

  “No such thing. Wazoo has a grudgin’ admiration for me. It comes out sounding rude, nothing more.”

  Madge cackled, there was no other description that would fit the sound she made. She cleared her throat and said, “Sorry. That wasn’t nice.”

  “You down there, God man?” Wazoo yelled, standing beside the open driver’s door of her liberally decorated van. Planets, zodiac signs, snakes, gators, an ad for her “critter therapy” and another letting the world know, “There’s no sadder singing than Wailing Wazoo. Your burial is my burial. Let me sing them into heaven—or wherever they going—for you.”

  “Hey, Wazoo,” Madge called. “We’re down by the azaleas.”

  Wazoo, who let it be known that she was available to offer helpful spells—conjures, as she called them—and that those in need of a little voodoo were always welcome, treated Cyrus with suspicion. She preferred to keep distance between them. Occasionally she ruined what Cyrus had decided was an act by turning to him for help. Or she ruined the act by going over the top into comedy.

  “Does she do her own paintin’ on that sorry vehicle?” he asked Madge, keeping his voice down.

  “Surely does. On the other side she advertises vehicle logos. Air brushing. Wazoo doesn’t believe in newfangled computer generated efforts, or wraps.”

  “No I do not,” Wazoo said, although she shouldn’t be able to hear them yet. “Inspiration, intuition and raw talent, that’s w
hat it takes to turn a vehicle into a rolling endorsement.”

  “Evenin’, Wazoo,” Cyrus said. “Nice to see you here after so long.”

  “It’s not nice to be here, but thanks. Me, I get the creeps when I get close to—” she nodded toward the church. “I put myself at your mercy. Protect me, Father. Don’t let the good fairies get me.”

  “Fairies?” Cyrus shook his head. “Are you coming in?”

  “Oh, no,” Wazoo said. “Me, I only drove here to frighten myself out of my red silk drawers.”

  Madge coughed and made a great deal of gathering up Millie, Millie who licked her boss’s face then leaped out of her arms before Madge could stop her. Millie landed against Cyrus with the innocent confidence of one who has never been dropped.

  “Will you look at that?” Wazoo said. “You better sign that dog up with me. And fast. She ain’t got no taste when it comes to people. Not good, Madge.”

  Keeping a straight face, Cyrus turned toward the rectory. “I’ve got a new wine I’d like you to try,” he told his visitor.

  “You ain’t used it for one of them hootin’ and hollerin’s you hold over there, have you?” Again Wazoo indicated St. Cécil’s.

  “The bottle hasn’t been opened,” Cyrus told her.

  “That’s good then. Stop right where you are, God man.”

  Cyrus, with Millie on his shoulder, licking his ear with great concentration, did as he was told. “Yes, Wazoo? What now?”

  “You still drivin’ that disgustin’ old Impala, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Self-respectin’ folks don’t drive ancient red Impala station wagons with bent frames.”

  He had long ago decided, perhaps because he was getting ornery, that he would drive his reviled vehicle until it shuddered and fell apart while he was in it.

  “I’ve got the perfect solution,” Wazoo said. “You was admirin’ my van. And if I do say so—which I should—that’s one fine logo job I done there. I’m gonna do the Impala. I’m gonna put frames on the sides, the kind posters slide into, so we can change out the message from time to time. I could put the times of those hootin’ and—”

  “Hollerings,” Madge finished for her.

  “See if I don’t have folks pourin’ in on a Sunday mornin’. And money’s gonna pour right in with ’em. You’ll wonder why you didn’t do it before. There’ll be a permanent shout line that runs all the way around. At the top. Right under the roof. ‘Best donuts and coffee in town. Come gossip along with us. BINGO every night! BIG prizes.’” Wazoo drew up her shoulders. “I’m tellin’ you we gotta do it.”

  He had asked for guidance in the begging department but this wasn’t what he’d had in mind.

  Praying quietly, Cyrus went into the rectory and walked along a passage to the kitchen. In daylight, the big window gave a wide view of Bayou Teche and the rectory’s big back lawn, dominated by a two-dimensional bronze statue of five figures, some with flat braids flying, all capering. A gift from a previous housekeeper, the piece had a history and no one had the heart to take it away. At the moment, Ozaire Dupre, who worked part-time as a caretaker at the church, and part-time for Homer Devol, had attached goggle-eye glasses, with shocking blue eyeballs on springs, to each figure. This wasn’t because he was either a humorist or a practical joker, but because his prime entertainment came from infuriating his wife, Lil, Cyrus’s housekeeper.

  With Millie perched at the back of his neck, her winglike ears trailing long black fur, Cyrus was forced to lean forward to balance her while he found a bottle of Merlot and carefully removed the cork. “Glasses?” he said, angling his face toward Madge. “Don’t think I can manage them.”

  Madge took glasses to the big oak table by the window and the three of them sat down. Cyrus poured generous measures of wine and Wazoo made humming noises. They drank and she said, “To the missing,” before taking another big swallow.

  For the sake of his own skin, Cyrus carefully disengaged Millie’s claws from beneath his collar. He put her on his lap and she curled up at once. This could get sticky if Madge started to question her dog’s loyalty.

  “Confused,” Wazoo muttered, pointing a long forefinger at Millie.

  “Why did you pray for the missing?” Cyrus asked.

  “I didn’t. I toasted them. I don’t want to be here but I’ve got responsibilities to people I like. And I trust you.” She dropped her voice to an annoyed whisper on the last sentence. Shaking back her long, curling black hair, she frowned at Cyrus who thought what a lovely woman she was, despite all the affectation and attempts to shock.

  Madge got up and set her glass aside. “I’ve got a few things to finish before I go home to Rosebank.”

  “No you don’t,” Wazoo said. “This is your home. Rosebank is where you sleep and keep your clothes. A sad thing for a beautiful woman like you. Pining away for something that can’t be. Or it could be if someone sexy enough to melt fillings right out of you teeth would give in and do the things he wants to do.”

  Cyrus put his elbows on the table and swirled the wine in his glass. If Madge weren’t here, he could warn Wazoo that she had stepped way over the line, but Madge was right behind him and he would not upset her more than she already would be.

  “Would you mind stayin’, Madge?” Wazoo said in her sweetest tones. “I’ve got so much on my mind I can use all the help I can get, and I do appreciate another woman’s point of view. Cher, let’s face it, I need an interpreter here.”

  Madge returned to the table and slid into a chair. She kept her eyes down and her cheeks were pink. Wazoo wasn’t wrong when she said Madge was beautiful to look at. What the woman didn’t know was how special his best friend was on the inside.

  And this was a place he couldn’t afford to go.

  “I am scared to my bones,” Wazoo said. She peered around the old-fashioned kitchen. “Lil isn’t here, is she?” she said as if expecting Lil Dupre to emerge from one of the white-painted cupboards that reached from floor to ceiling.

  “No,” Cyrus said. “Lil is never here in the evenin’.”

  “Whew.” Wazoo swept the back of a hand over her brow. “Now you know how I detest gossip.”

  He and Madge said, “Mmm,” in unison.

  Wazoo made circles on the table with the base of her glass. She drank slowly and licked her lips. “There’s something bad goin’ on in this town. More than one bad thing. Could be more than two.”

  Cyrus sat back in his chair and pushed his hands into his pockets. “If you think there’s something I can do to help, you know I will.” Millie didn’t move.

  “It wasn’t easy to come to you,” Wazoo said. “If I wasn’t worried sick about those Devol men I wouldn’t be here. Except I should see what we can do about Annie. Now there’s a woman who could turn into a tragedy if we don’t get lucky.”

  “Wazoo—”

  “It’s all wound in with those Savage brothers. Max, anyway. I tell you, them who’s supposed to keep us all safe ain’t doin’ much of a job ’cause they’re all fouled up with they own problems. That is, some got problems, some only think they got problems. Hoo-ya-ya.” She wound her head slowly from side to side. “Question is, who’s at the top of the list? Who’s most likely to get ruined first? I’ll tell you—this is one heavy burden.”

  Madge had turned her face to the black window and stared at nothing. If he dared, Cyrus would take hold of her hand. They lived so close to, but so distant from each other. For too long he had begged her to make a life with someone who could be what she wanted a man to be for her, but she insisted she had chosen to be as near to him as he would allow. Madge wanted what little they could have together and refused to consider changing courses.

  And Cyrus went to battle daily, wedded to his vocation, loving Madge in a celibate relationship that tore him apart.

  “You were praying for someone who’s missing,” Madge said. “I could tell.”

  Wazoo slanted a glance at her. “And you could be right. But I’ll get t
o that. I don’t like to make any trouble but it would be good if someone who spends time here didn’t repeat things they overhear.”

  Cyrus lifted Millie and gave her to Madge. “If you don’t have something definite to say, don’t say anything.” He didn’t need more of Wazoo’s nonsense tonight.

  “That’s all I’m sayin’ about it, me. Except you could make a big mistake if you look for this one in the most obvious place. If it’s mentioned again, it won’t be by me, no sir. The Devol men are makin’ fools of themselves over somethin’ I can’t repeat, but they’re makin’ themselves miserable. They’re gonna make all kinda people miserable before long.”

  “You can’t say what the problem is, but you want me to do something about it?” Cyrus could feel Madge’s awkwardness and he was tempted to tell Wazoo that office hours were over.

  “All you gotta do is tell Homer and Spike—not together though—tell them that you know a person told Homer a lie about him and Spike and they should forget it. Me, I don’t want Vivian upset when she’s this far gone with the baby, and she could be. She’s doin’ well, except in her mind sometimes. If you set it all straight, they’ll listen.” Wazoo crossed her arms tightly. “They won’t believe me, that’s what I’m sayin’.”

  The phone rang and Madge got up to answer. “Rectory,” she said. Then, “I’ll tell him you need him in the mornin’. Night, Spike.”

  Wazoo’s lips parted. She stared at Madge, clearly waiting for her to say why Spike wanted Cyrus in the morning.

  “Thanks, Madge,” he said quickly. “I’ll be there.” He didn’t even ask the time Spike wanted to see him. He and Madge shared an understanding glance.

  “I don’t think I can talk to Homer and Spike,” Cyrus said. “Even if I knew what you were talking about, I wouldn’t interfere.”

  “You’ll have to in time. Longer you wait, worse it’ll get. Was Spike calling because that woman’s gone missing? The nurse or whatever she was? They gettin’ up a bigger search party?”

  This wasn’t the first time Wazoo had shown uncanny insight into something she shouldn’t know about. “If that’s true,” Cyrus said “who told you?”