Several large religious glass candles burned, subduing the atmosphere. Lucy May inched slowly to the bed and twisted to climb onto the mattress from the floor like a cat. She rolled onto the wrinkle-free spread, not feeling any Zen befall her yet. The throw pillows were perfectly placed, knitted with kitties that Lucy May imagined were skulls and crossbones.
Maybe if Lucy May hadn’t abandoned her mother, she wouldn’t have been murdered. Lucy May could have kept her mother on track to be patronne. A horrific death befell her mom’s husband - a man she refused to call daddy. But why would her mother remain in the horror? Because those walls were her own cage. She had been broken.
Lucy May took off her socks and tossed them gently in the corner hamper. While on her back, her cousin’s old high school jeans shimmied off while her core levitated in the air. It wasn’t hard for Lucy May to imagine her lover’s face between her legs as she stared down her abdomen. Her back fell flat again, and she threw her underwear toward the hamper.
Angel’s tight retro top came off next, and her fingers unhooked the black designer bra she wore for the first time. Lucy May didn’t feel as sexy as Angel but pretended all the same. Her fingers smoothed over the pinkish indentations the material left. She finally flopped over, hanging off the mattress to reach the hot chocolate for a sip.
Therapist Clint had introduced meditation into her therapy, and she found doing it while in a bathtub gave the best results, by his suggestion. She slithered off the bed to enter her private bathroom, turning off the faucet. She eased in ever so slowly, letting her skin get used to the hot water.
Once comfortable, sweat tingled Lucy May’s hairline as heat rose off the water. She swayed to imagined music. The muscle relaxer began its job. Her arms wrapped around her stomach, and her body heaved. She cried and lamented and let go of the day’s stresses.
After several minutes of release, she steadied. With her legs crossed, pressed against the sides of the tub, she controlled her breathing. Her heart rate dropped. The tears stopped. It had become less of a routine and more of a ceremony. It kept her sane.
She didn’t hear him enter and was startled when his hands pulled back her hair. She questioned him. “Why are you bothering me?”
“I miss you.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “I’m not ready. I mean it this time.”
He let go of her hair. “I apologized. C’mon, Lucy May. You bring me to the brink and then stop. How long was I supposed to wait?”
“Please leave.” She knew he wouldn’t. He always did what he wanted, no matter.
“Your new hairstyle looks like Angel’s.” He removed his clothes. “Just let me sit with you a while. I need a hot bath.”
“Okay, but just sit. I’m not ready to do that again.” Her eyes remained closed, but she scooted forward, making waves. She told herself to lock the bathroom door.
The water splashed as he climbed in behind her. He kissed her neck with his legs parallel to hers. His arousal pressed against her back.
“I said no.”
“And yet here I am,” he whispered.
Chapter 19
Two suitcases Angel had brought to the Bureau’s rented house were now in the bed of her truck. She lied to her parents about driving to New Orleans the night before to pack for a short stay. Her dad had requested she stop back at their house for some food to stock in Lorna’s refrigerator. He had cooked a good portion of red beans and rice and Angel felt an obligation to accept it graciously. A little grocery shopping was all she needed to do.
After a quick visit, she and her parents stood near the Rock to say goodbye.
“You need to do the right thing and give that house to Lucy May.” Her father stuck his thumbs in his waistband.
“Since when do you know the difference between right and wrong?” Angel half-joked.
He inhaled, looking at her with half-closed eyelids. “We do right by family.”
“Supporting your daughter might fall under that umbrella.”
“Enough,” her mom commanded.
Angel noticed Joe-Joe in the window of his house, staring. She raised her hand in a half-hearted wave. He closed the curtain.
She offered her mother a hesitant hug. Her dad got a peck on his cheek. As the Rock drove off the property, her anxiety lifted with distance. The dented yet defiant truck growled toward downtown Lemon Twig. It was where many residents spent their weekends at the movies, eating at the Southern Grill, or even shopping at her father’s hardware store. The tiny police station had two deputies talking on a bench. They were undoubtedly cousins, as Izzy wouldn’t have any outsiders on the payroll.
Broad Street’s parking spots were barely a quarter full, but it was still early and the middle of the week. Three blocks later, she passed the iconic red and white striped barber pole before entering a stretch of houses the locals referred to as the skirts, shortened from outskirts.
She finally came upon the Glue Trap. The plight in the sparse community almost looked romantic on approach, with that haunted house at the end of the block, ominous for no reason other than Doug’s murder.
A pleasant surprise greeted Angel. Delilah waved from the front yard, having made the trip in her Camaro. It was a choice of car that told the world she wasn’t dull, or vanilla, as if biting Joe-Joe’s lip wasn’t enough. A cooler was on the hood, probably filled with beer.
Angel parked next to her, stepping out with open arms. “What the what?”
“Thought I’d help.” They swatted fingertips.
“When did you buy this penis extension?”
“A couple years ago. It was in an accident, and that’s when I first met Mechanic Teddy. Got it cheap.”
“Hold on to that guy.”
“Every creep hanging around outside watched me drive by.”
“I’ll bet.”
“You see Joe-Joe this morning? I’m still rinsing my mouth with gasoline.”
Angel frowned. “I saw him in his window like Norman Bates when I stopped at my parents.”
“That bouncer he attacked ain’t saying nothing. And Joe-Joe gets away with it.”
“That’s the way it is in Blondeaux Parish.” Angel led the way to the house with the red beans and rice in hand. “Nervous about going inside?”
“No. Yes.” Delilah secured the cooler.
She opened the door and flipped on the light, feeling the air conditioning immediately. “There’s going to be some smells we can’t identify.”
“Sounds like some of my dates.” Delilah’s eyes, thick with blue shadow and mascara, checked the space. “What do you plan to do with all her… stuff?”
“I don’t have to do anything, but I’ll donate it. To God’s Life.” She put the food in the fridge along with the beers before returning to the living room.
“That’s great.”
Angel patted the top of the sofa, releasing a puff of dust. “Reverend Trevor Healey…”
Delilah repeated the name, softly, with her hands in prayer. “Trevor Healey. I don’t go to that church. They’re too… I don’t know.”
“Reverend Trevor was the first call Lucy May made when she found her dad. He helped her through it.” Angel had never discussed Doug’s murder with Delilah. But she knew the generalities. The entire town did.
“I remember when you were here. We didn’t hang out too much, but Trevor was on the news a lot. So, what room you want?”
She pointed down the hall. “I think I’ll sleep in Lucy May’s old room.”
It didn’t take long to get situated in the first-floor bedroom. What would her cousin think of that? Lucy May had taken most of the smaller stuff but otherwise left the furniture and whatever she had outgrown. And Lorna hadn’t disturbed a thing.
After two hours of working at a nice southern pace, Angel and Delilah sat against the columns on the front step of the house with a cold beer and a sample of her dad’s red beans heated in the microwave. They enjoyed the rare breeze.
“Wasn’t so bad
,” Delilah said. “Not seeing a ghost is always a plus.”
Their attention shifted to a sheriff’s cruiser pulling into the driveway, easing behind the Camaro. Sheriff Izzy climbed from her own muscle car wearing a crisp, short-sleeved brown uniform and sunglasses.
She placed her large mounty-sized hat on while approaching. “Ladies…”
“I needed to do this, Izzy,” Angel proclaimed. “Lucy May is okay with me hanging here a while, so back off.”
“Lucy May doesn’t know shit, forgive me for saying.” Izzy looked around.
“This is my friend Delilah.”
“You work at the Frog.”
“That, I do.”
She turned to Angel. “So, Mark Senn met you at the Frog last night?”
“I’m not surprised you know that,” Angel responded.
“Set off Joe-Joe something good.” She shook her head.
“He does that to himself.” Angel offered some food. “My dad made it.”
Izzy shook her head. “Just wanted to drop by and check things out.” She tipped her hat, shading a hardened face. “It’s kind of fortunate, you taking the house.”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t know what Lucy May wants to do with the land, do you?” She folded her arms, still standing stiff.
“It’s a lot of land. What does she want to do?”
Izzy leaned in as if it was a secret. “She wants to donate it to Trevor to build a megachurch.”
“A megachurch?” Angel and Delilah said in unison.
“He was born to be a televangelist.” Angel continued, “Paulette paying for it?”
“I won’t comment. A megachurch may as well be a lighthouse for your fed buddies to see.”
“IRS, at the very least.”
Delilah asked, “Can he sustain a megachurch?”
“Filling the seats isn’t the objective,” Angel said.
Izzy continued, “The patronne ordered Lorna to sign over the land for the past year. She wouldn’t.”
“That’s motive if maw maw thought Lucy May would get the land in the will.”
“Speculate all you want. The rest of us want to keep the land in the family, without the attention of a church.” Izzy adjusted her crotch, bending her knee inward.
“Thong issues?” Angel couldn’t help herself.
Izzy ignored the comment. “Impress me with your deductive skills. Why do you think my sister, your aunt, would leave you the house?” She waited through the pause. “So none of us, especially Trevor, would get it.”
“That’s one theory,” Angel said.
“Don’t be so stupid, Angel. That’s the only reason. You can piss it away by giving it back to Lucy May, or you can sell it to me. Make some money.”
“And Lucy May?”
“The house is hers. She’ll always have it. I promise you that. But the woman is almost thirty years old. Your age. Until she decides to stand on her own, we have to treat her like a child.”
“I’ll consider it.”
“Talk to your new buddy Mark Senn about it. Talk to Lucy May and Trevor, too. Just be aware they’ll spin the truth. I’d expect a visit from your maw maw, and she won’t be happy if she has to come out here.”
Chapter 20
“You like the lawyer, right?” Delilah asked while shoving Lorna’s clothes in a trash bag. “Invite him for a sleepover.”
Angel considered her answer. “He’s a welcome change from the nothing I’m used to.”
“Nobody serious since that chick you lived with in college?”
“Maggie? No. That was… I sometimes think that was a response to Joe-Joe. I’m not into women, but I was into Maggie because the timing was right.”
“What’s gender, right?”
“Sometimes, I wonder if I like Mark because it won’t work out. He’s funny, though…”
“You owe it to yourself. Whatever happens, happens.”
Angel raised an eyebrow with a snarky grin. “Am I wrong, or did I sense a little something between you and Izzy?” Angel tied a knot in the garbage bag for the church.
“With the female Terminator? Jesus, experiment one time and you’re an expert.”
“Don’t deny the sparks.”
Delilah barked out a laugh. “Maybe if she wasn’t two decades older than me. And such a dick.”
“It’s the job. She’s a manipulator. She does and says what she has to, either to witnesses, criminals, or the press. If I were someone else, she’d be as pleasant as pie. That pseudo-crotch-shift was on purpose.”
“A deputy’s wife that comes into the bar says Izzy volunteers at fundraisers and visits sick children.” Delilah shrugged.
“Sounds like she enjoys others’ suffering.”
When they quit for the day, two bags of clothes, a plastic chair, various vases of all sizes and colors, and that odd wooden rocking horse sat in the bed of her truck. They should have called for a portable dumpster because Reverend Trevor probably wouldn’t want any of it.
The sun disappeared on the horizon. Angel rummaged through drawers as Delilah scanned old hard-cover books in the elaborately massive wooden bookcase along the wall. Most of the furniture was built to last generations.
“You know,” Delilah began. “Take out all the crap and exorcise the demons and this place wouldn’t be that bad.”
Angel backed onto the sofa in exhaustion. “They envisioned many houses like this in this subdivision.”
“This close to the prison?”
“Probably planned on having it house a lot of family.” Angel shrugged like it would’ve been fine. She took in the bookcase as a whole, seeing the one anomaly. “What’s that one sticking halfway out?” She pointed.
Delilah followed her line of sight, reaching for the protruding book. She read the cover. “Paul’s Early Period by Rainer Riesner.” She tossed it to Angel. “Religious shit.”
“Why would this be the only book out of place? Like it was the last one she was looking at.”
“What’s it about? Jesus? Spotlight on Paul?”
Angel flipped through it, seeing many passages highlighted from start to finish. Too many to have been meant for her. “I guess. I don’t know.”
“Okay, I have to go.” Delilah bent over and gave Angel a peck on her cheek with stretched lips. “Got a date with the mechanic.”
“I saw how concerned he was at the Frog. Is this serious?”
“I don’t want to strangle him yet, so maybe.”
The entire day had been spent pilfering through a fraction of Lorna’s belongings, deciding what to toss and what to donate. Nothing to indicate she had a hand in the missing players.
Angel spent the rest of the evening surfing the web, watching television, and nibbling on more red beans. Agent Ruby received a quick video conference update about the megachurch. Ruby reminded her to get the surveillance cameras operational.
When a goodnight text came in from Mark, she sent an emoji face blowing a kiss back to him.
She eyed the clock every fifteen minutes, getting later and later. She tried to turn on the video recorder’s hub, but it wouldn’t power on. Too tired to fiddle with it, she gave up. It could wait until morning.
Going to sleep for the first time was more of an event than she had imagined. She wouldn’t be any more alone in Lucy May’s old room than on the sofa. Instead of going to the bed, she set the timer on the television in the living room and laid her head back, pulling the plush throw over her torso.
Chapter 21
Bang.
Angel’s head sprung off the pillow in the dead of night. Where the hell was she? Oh, the house. Yes. She eased her legs off the sofa, adjusting her sight to the gray objects around her. Had she heard something? Parched, and having to pee, she blind-walked her way to the front door.
Locked. Good.
Each of the windows was closed and the back door was secure. Satisfied, she headed to the bathroom. Her Uncle Doug might’ve made an appearance since ghosts haunted at n
ight for some reason.
She let the water run from the faucet before she smelled, taste-tested, then wet her mouth. Random thoughts of the water tower came to mind - the pre-planning - the ambition for the future… and the futility.
Her boxers fell to her ankles so she could ease onto the toilet seat. She rested her forehead in her palms. Could the house be settling? The tile floor warmed under her socked feet. The moonlight’s muted hue across the bathroom’s features made it look like a 1950s insane asylum.
Bang!
A blast of urine jettisoned into the toilet bowl as she straightened her back. Her skin tightened. She clumsily stood, pulling up her boxers. It was impossible to tell the sound’s origin. She rushed to retrieve her gun on the coffee table. Her eyes rose to the ceiling. Did it come from the room? Or the basement?
She made a quick run to the front window to scout the yard. Nothing was there except her truck and the magnolia trees. This time with her firearm, she climbed the illuminated stairs, hesitating at the summit. At the secured door of the murder room, she took a stance with her ear close to the ceramic Jesus.
The knife had risen and fallen so broadly that blood coated the ceiling.
She waited. And waited some more. Her feet grew numb, and her adrenaline eased. What the hell made that noise? While still on the second floor, she opened a window facing the front yard. The limbs of the nearest oak were just feet away. A fat lumbering animal scratching the bark forced her to train her weapon for a kill shot.
It was a raccoon.
Feeling silly, she said, “Did you see what made that noise, my friend?” The raccoon responded with a curious glare, then trotted up the limb and jumped onto the roof.
An anomaly in the front yard caught her eye. The Rock’s windshield had a spiderweb pattern, and the side window cast no reflection. They’d been smashed. How stupid not to think the noise could’ve come from outside.
Blood Parish Page 7