No Mardi Gras for the Dead

by D. J. Donaldson

  “That one,” Kit replied, pointing.

  “Bubba, hold this.” Broussard gave the fragment to Bubba, who took it without enthusiasm.

  With Kit and Bubba close behind, Broussard walked over to the hole, removed the posthole digger, and used it as a support while he peered into the earth. The sun, now directly overhead, gave him all the light he needed.

  “A few inches to the right and we might never have known anything was down there,” he said.

  “Then there’s more?” Kit asked. Though part of her had known with certainty that there would be more, that this was not simply going away, she had been tending a small flame of hope that the dirt in her yard had been trucked in from some other place… hope that the rest of the remains belonging with the fragment in Bubba’s hand had already been discovered long ago… that this was old business… someone else’s business.

  “Oh, yes, there’s definitely more,” Broussard said.

  Suddenly, Kit found the midday sun unbearable. She fanned herself with her hand, her stomach turning sour.

  As uncomfortable as Kit was in the heat, she had to believe that with all the weight Broussard carried around and that beard, he had to feel worse than she did. But if he did, he didn’t show it. In fact, he seemed downright cheerful.

  “So what have we got?” a voice said from behind Kit.

  It was Phil Gatlin, ranking detective with the violent crimes squad.

  “Hello, Phillip,” Broussard said. “Kit and Bubba found part of a human mandible in this hole. Show him Bubba.”

  Bubba held up the bone and years evaporated from Gatlin’s heavily lined face.

  “Male or female?” Gatlin asked.

  “Can’t tell. If we had the whole jaw, I could make an educated guess. But even then there’d be…”

  “The rest of it down there?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “How old?”

  “You askin’ the age of the deceased?”

  “No. How long’s it been down there?”

  “Quite a while.”

  “Jesus, Andy, anybody’d think you were getting paid by the question. Three months? A year?”

  “Didn’t have any smell, so I’d say at least a year.”

  Gatlin’s shoulders dropped and the years that had left his face moments earlier returned. “Nuts,” he said, punctuating his disappointment with a quick nod of his head. Hands on hips, he looked away and muttered to himself. “Nuts… nuts… nuts.” He turned back to the group. “Who actually found it?”

  “To be strictly accurate, I guess Lucky did,” Kit said.

  “Who’s Lucky?”

  “My dog.”

  “Oh no. You’re not putting this off on a dog. I want human responsibility here, somebody I can get an apology from.”

  “For what?”

  “Three months ago, a can picker found two human ears in a Styrofoam burger box in a trash bin in Jackson Square. Male ears. Now that tells me there’s a body somewhere waiting to be discovered. And if there’s a body, there’s a murderer. I don’t like murderers. But I can’t do anything about this one until I find the body. So, when Andy called, I thought this was the break I was hoping for. Now, instead of helping me solve an existing problem, you’ve given me a new one.” Gatlin shook his head, then looked at Broussard. “Did you call French?”

  Broussard nodded.

  “What’d she say? When will she be here?”

  Broussard looked over Gatlin’s shoulder. “There she is now.”

  Coming toward them was a woman wearing loose khakis, a long-sleeved white shirt with the tails tied at her waist, and heavy work shoes. Her blond hair was tied back in a bun.

  “You got here quick,” Broussard said.

  “I was just sitting around the house wishing for a reason to get dirty,” the woman said. “Hello, Phillip. How’re things?”

  “Not as good as they were earlier.”

  Broussard made the introductions. “Victoria, this is Kit Franklyn. Kit is my suicide investigator. She also does psychological profiling for the violent crimes squad. Kit, Victoria is our consulting forensic anthropologist.”

  Victoria French’s handshake was firm and her skin was softer than Kit would have imagined for someone who did a lot of digging. She looked to be in her early forties. Despite her unglamorous getup, Kit could tell that French would be a knockout dressed up, the kind of mature beauty that would turn any man’s head. The fact she wore no rings solidified the instant bond Kit felt with her, because in Victoria French, she saw herself in ten years, or at least what she hoped she’d be: single, no family burdens, a competent professional that could still get a man’s attention when she wanted it.

  “And this is Bubba Oustellette,” Broussard said. “Bubba runs the NOPD vehicle impoundment station and keeps all my cars runnin’.”

  Though Broussard had said nothing particularly complimentary, Bubba blushed as he wiped his palm on his coveralls before taking French’s offered hand.

  “Bubba’s got the reason we called you,” Broussard said.

  Bubba gave her the fragment of bone. She examined it briefly, sniffed it, and said, “Been buried at least a year. From one of those holes?”

  “That one,” Broussard said, pointing.

  “How far down?”

  “ ’Bout three feet.” For Kit and Bubba’s benefit, he added, “Rare to find a body buried any deeper. Too much work.”

  “Any hints as to orientation?” French asked.

  Broussard shook his head.

  French looked at Kit. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to do some digging. We’ll try to take up the grass in sections so it can be put back, but I can’t promise how effective we’ll be.”

  “This whole area is eventually going to be a rose bed,” Kit said. “So it really doesn’t matter.”

  French turned and started for the driveway. At the same time, a slightly built young man with a long, narrow face came through the gate, two cameras around his neck and a folding table in one hand.

  “That’s Allen, my graduate assistant,” French said. “Over here, Allen.”

  French and Allen set up the table about fifteen feet from the hole that had produced the bone fragment. Allen put his cameras on the table and they both went back to the driveway, to reappear a few minutes later heavily laden with equipment. They put everything on the ground next to the table and began erecting an open-sided canvas tent over the area where they would be working.

  While French and Allen put up the tent, Broussard went to their supplies and picked up a metal pole with a T-shaped handle. He showed it to French and said, “Mind if I go fishin’?”

  “Don’t hurt yourself,” French said.

  Broussard came back to the small group waiting. “Kit, you object to me makin’ a few small holes in your yard?”

  “No, why?”

  “That’s what I want to know,” Gatlin said. “We’re already going to have one set of remains to identify. Why do you want to go looking for more?”

  “Guess I’m just irresponsible.”

  “It’s going to be a while before French has anything to look at,” Gatlin said. “So, I’m going to follow up a lead or two on some other cases. I’ll be back later for an update. And I don’t want to see her starting any more excavations. Kit, Bubba… I’m not going to forget this.”

  When Gatlin was out of earshot, Kit said, “Surely he wasn’t serious.”

  Broussard shook his head. “If I hadn’t volunteered to fish the lawn, he’d be doin’ it himself.”

  “What do you mean, ’fish the lawn’?”

  “I’ll push this rod into the ground and look for places where below the plow line the soil is relatively loose.”

  “And the plow line is…”

  “The first six to eight inches of dirt.”

  “Hope you don’t find anything.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Mind if Ah tag along?” Bubba asked.

  “Not at all.”


  “But if we find anything, you gotta tell Lieutenant Gatlin dat Ah had nothin’ to do with it.”

  Watching Broussard and Bubba work their way around the yard, Kit remembered old stories in the paper of bodies by the score being discovered in somebody’s basement up north. To get her mind off what Broussard was doing, she went over to where French was watching Allen remove sod.

  “Stack it over there, Allen, well out of the way,” French said. “That’s good.”

  At Kit’s approach, French said, “How are you doing? I’m sure you’re finding all this pretty traumatic.”

  “I’m coping so far. But this isn’t what I had in mind when I bought the place two months ago.”

  “Lagniappe,” French said.

  Kit smiled anemically. Lagniappe—the New Orleans term for something extra. It was sure that. “So, where are you based?” Kit asked, trying to blunt the edge on what was happening.

  “Tulane. The anthropology department.”

  “Really. I took the graduate cultural anthro course there four years ago.”

  “Not my bag, I’m afraid. If you’d taken physical anthro, we might have met.”

  “Would you and Allen like some iced tea?”

  Kit’s offer was as much to give herself something to do as extend a kindness. And even though French had brought a large insulated drink container with her, she said, “Yes. That would be nice.”

  With all that was going on outside, Kit did not want Lucky in the way. To keep him from getting out accidently while she was coming and going, she shut him in her bedroom, an act that, judging from the whining coming through the bedroom door, Lucky found wholly unacceptable.

  By the time the tea was ready, Broussard had finished his search. “Looks like there’s just one,” he said, taking a glass from the tray Kit offered him.

  “Thank God,” Kit replied, holding the tray out to Bubba.

  Under the tent, the dirt in a large rectangle had been removed to a depth of about five inches. Off to the side, Allen added a bucket of dirt to a growing pile on the ground. French was on her knees in the excavation, scraping the soil with a mason’s trowel.

  “If you’re ever in the market for an anthropologist, ask to see their trowel,” Broussard said. “If it’s a Marshalltown, hire ’em. Otherwise, send ’em on their way, ’cause they’re an amateur.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “A Marshalltown is the only kind strong enough to take years of that scrapin’ motion. After she’s got a flat surface, the difference in texture and color of the dirt will allow us to see the outline of the pit… the grave.”

  Allen was now shoveling dirt from the pile into a box with a hardware cloth bottom.

  “How about a tea break, you two?” Kit said.

  Allen looked up, obviously taken with the idea, but French said, “Maybe in a few minutes.” Allen went back to screening the removed dirt and Kit put the tray on the folding table.

  “This is a slow business,” Broussard said. “And watchin’ won’t hurry it. I’m gonna follow Phillip’s lead and get a little work done at the office. When they get everything pretty much exposed, give me a call.”

  Broussard went out the gate and Kit turned to Bubba. “Doesn’t look like there’ll be a rose trellis going up anytime soon around here. So, if you’d like to…”

  Bubba looked shocked. “Leave? Why would Ah wanna leave? Nothin’ Ah got to do is good as dis. Fact, Ah never do anything good as dis.” He blushed and looked at the ground. “Did’n mean to invite myself to stay…”

  “Of course you can stay.”

  Bubba grinned like a happy chipmunk and took his drink to one of the chairs under the oak. With nothing to see in the excavation, Kit did the same.

  For the next few minutes, Kit and Bubba sat in the shade, drinking tea and watching Allen and French work—in Kit’s opinion, as though digging up bodies was some sort of surrealistic entertainment.

  Soon, French stepped out of the excavation and surveyed her work. Kit and Bubba joined her.

  “Can you see the pit?” she asked, standing aside and running her finger around a geometric outline in the air.

  As hard as she tried, Kit couldn’t be sure. “Maybe…”

  “Sometimes it’s easier than this one,” French said. “Here, I’ll show you.” She stepped back into the excavation and drew an irregular rectangle in the dirt with the tip of her trowel, then stood up and said, “Allen, tea break.”

  French waved off Kit’s offer to replace the almost-melted ice in the tea and French and Allen were soon ready to resume work.

  French rummaged in her toolbox and brought out two pieces of white painted wood—one in the shape of an arrow, the other marked like a ruler. She placed the arrow in the center of the pit so that it pointed north. The measuring scale went on the grass at the pit’s near end. Allen consulted a notebook and wrote FA91-51 on a small chalkboard that he propped up on the grass at the far edge of the pit. They took a Polaroid and a 35mm shot of the site and went back to what they’d been doing before the break—French scraping with her Marshalltown trowel, Allen screening the dirt she produced.

  All this was quite different from what Kit had imagined it was going to be like when she’d first called Broussard. After all, hadn’t she seen bodies being dug up with a backhoe on TV?

  She watched French work for a few minutes, then walked over and watched Allen.

  Then she went to her chair and watched from there.

  Not content to merely watch, Bubba offered to help and was put to work with Allen. After awhile, Kit walked back to the excavation, which was now about a foot deep.

  “Victoria, I’m going inside. If anybody needs anything, just come on in.”

  French glanced over her shoulder and waved her trowel. Allen and Bubba didn’t even look up. Figuring she should stay close to the back door, Kit got a yellow legal pad and a pen and sat down at the kitchen table. At the top of the page she wrote, “The Troubled Adolescent,” which was to be chapter eight in the still-untitled book she was writing on suicide.

  A half hour later, Kit had only written three sentences, her concentration being broken every few minutes by the mental image of a rectangular hole in the ground. Of all the times for Teddy to be on a business trip.

  Teddy, was Teddy LaBiche, La capital B to distinguish him from the small b Labiches who did not have Teddy’s aristocratic ancestry. Though they’d never discussed his finances, Kit had always assumed something had gone wrong somewhere, because Teddy made his living operating an alligator farm 125 miles west in Bayou Coteau. Every Saturday, he drove to New Orleans and he and Kit would spend the day and usually the night together. Beyond an unspoken understanding that they were not seeing anyone else, there were no strings and no promises on either side, which was just fine with Kit. Teddy hadn’t come over today because he was out on the West Coast until Friday lining up buyers.

  There was a knock on the back door and Victoria French put her head inside. “May I use your telephone?”

  “Of course. I’ll show you where it is.”

  French pulled off her dirty shoes on the back steps and followed Kit through the kitchen into the wide hall that had made Kit want the house the moment she’d seen its tall oak columns and Victorian beadwork.

  “Great house,” French said. She gestured at the temporarily displaced furniture. “I thought I smelled varnish.”

  “I just had the living room floor done. There’s the phone.”

  French entered a number and waited for an answer. “Oh hi, it’s me. Look, I’m going to be here the rest of the afternoon. Can you take Johnny to his trumpet lesson? And pick Jessica up at Barbara’s? Good. Thanks. I thought we’d have spaghetti for dinner, okay? Great. See you soon.” She made a kissing sound into the receiver. “Kids,” she said, hanging up. “They’ve got a busier schedule than I do.”

  Kids. Victoria French had kids… and a husband. Of course she wasn’t wearing any rings. Who would with her job? Already off balance from the
events outside, Kit now felt confused, because Victoria French had kids… and a husband. And she seemed to be doing just fine with everything.

  “Maybe while I’ve got my shoes off, I should visit the powder room,” French said.

  “Sure, it’s down there,” Kit said in a daze. “Across from the kitchen.”

  Still thinking about French and her family, Kit took some ice and the tea pitcher outside and checked the excavation. Two bony protuberances now visible in the center of the pit got her mind back on the more pressing issue. Shivering despite the heat, she refilled everyone’s glasses and went back inside.

  “The rest of the afternoon,” French had said. It was pretty clear that there was no point in continuing to work on her manuscript. Instead, Kit went to the bookshelves in her study and got the Pat Conroy novel she’d bought a few weeks ago but hadn’t had the time to start.

  Having seen those two pieces of bone in the pit, Kit found that she didn’t feel much like looking into it again. So she mostly stayed inside and read, avoiding the pit when she went out every thirty minutes to refill the tea glasses. Her reading was interrupted once by Allen looking for the same room that French had needed, and by Bubba seeking it, as well. In Bubba’s case, though, she had to guess what he wanted because he was too embarrassed to ask.

  Finally, around five o’clock, French stuck her head inside and said, “This would be a good time to call Andy.”

  3

  “Four feet, three and a quarter,” Allen said.

  The two anthropologists had driven a gutter spike into the ground at one end of the pit and had hooked the end of a tape measure over it. Allen was in the pit with the other end of the tape. While French scribbled the measurement onto a graph-paper sketch, Kit tentatively approached the pit and looked in. Broussard had been right. There was indeed more. What appeared to be an entire skeleton lay sprawled in the bottom of the hole. Above the bones, a good-sized tree root passed from one side of the pit to the other. Despite the presence of the root, French had skillfully removed the soil between the bones and around the circumference of the skeleton so it rested on a pedestal of dirt that varied from one to six inches in height. Surprisingly, the ribs did not form the barrel she had expected to see but were collapsed.