by C. L. Bevill
MIGNON RAN UNTIL her lungs threatened to explode. Glancing quickly over her shoulder, she could see nothing at all except deep shadows and trees that seemed to whisper at her. Mignon came to a tree with a deer stand, crudely constructed by some hopeful man anxious to eat a bit of venison, even if it was illegal to poach on national forest lands. She leaned against the tree, gathering breath into her tortured lungs.
Mignon knew she couldn’t run all night. She pressed more of her clothing against the wound and hoped that it would be enough, or that perhaps John Henry might come looking for her.
Shivering, she heard branches crackling as someone approached. Mignon peered around the tree but couldn’t see anyone. Then she heard his voice, calm and natural as if he were speaking with her at a tea party. “I left to get my car from Eleanor’s. I disposed of yours, by the way. Parked it back at the bed and breakfast you were staying at. Much better than the bayou we put Luc’s Mercedes in. My aide gave me a ride over there, and you’d think that girl would have learned not to ask questions. Of course, I can’t kill her, too. But she won’t put two and two together in case someone should ever stumble across your bodies.”
Mignon thought she could hear the smile in his voice. “I thought you were already dead. You certainly had bled enough. And here you are, lively as ever.” She knew that his rapacious nature would make him look over every tree and every bush, searching out her position so that he could take care of what he thought he had already done. He went on. “Eleanor didn’t have the bracelet. You lied to me, Mignon. For shame. All I wanted was to make sure that it didn’t point back to her. After all, it is such a rare bracelet. That master doesn’t make individual pieces anymore. He hasn’t for nearly two decades. So if you didn’t give it to her, then I was sure that you must have it. It wasn’t in your car, and you didn’t have a chance to go back to your room, and I searched the little farmhouse, as well. Not a sign of it. Consequently, it must be with you. On your very person.”
Jourdain was saying that he had to finish her off, because there would be a search for Eugenie St. Michel and Mignon Thibeaux eventually. Perhaps the two disappearances would be connected, but certainly not in the same way that Luc St. Michel and Garlande Thibeaux’s had been. John Henry might be suspicious, but he was going to be out of the picture before he raised too many questions. Jourdain added, “The other deputies won’t look very hard. Besides I have plans to have your little cistern filled in. With cement or such. But it will be your name on the order, and I’ll use a man who won’t look inside to see what he’s filling up. I was going to move their remains. But your elderly neighbor kept coming down to see what the lights were down at the old farmhouse. An interfering old man. Well, now it doesn’t matter, because no one else will renovate that decrepit heap of rotting wood.”
Jourdain went on. Geraud’s business would suffer as well. But all of that didn’t matter. Eleanor had to be protected at any cost. It was a shame that Mignon didn’t understand that. “And it doesn’t even matter about the so-called ghosts, or those damn dreams of Luc I’ve been having. I’ll be in Baton Rouge and I’m sure that I can convince Eleanor to move to her old residence there.”
The sun had slid behind the trees and the shadows began to elongate. Mignon couldn’t figure out why Jourdain was concentrating on this area until she looked down and found that she had left a trail of blood that led directly to her. It would only be seconds before he found her again. She glanced around and found there was nothing to be used as a weapon. Boards were nailed to the tree that held the deer stand, but they were securely fastened and she knew she wouldn’t be able to pry them loose quickly enough.
JOHN HENRY DIDN’T waste any time getting his Bronco out to the St. Michel mansion for the second time in twenty-four hours. Eleanor was waiting on the front veranda for him. He left the engine running and the door open as he bounded out and ran up the stairs. “Tell me again, Eleanor,” he demanded.
“Oh, my dear. Eugenie can’t be found anywhere. And Jourdain—” Eleanor put an elegant hand to her mouth, dismayed that she had to speak of such distasteful affairs. “He is acting so strangely. He came this morning. He left his car here for hours, and then returned again this afternoon. The gardener said a young woman dropped him off, but he rushed inside and … there was blood all over his shirt, John Henry.”
John Henry frowned.
“It wasn’t … his blood,” explained Eleanor. “He wanted to know where the bracelet was. He was so insistent. He even shook me by the shoulders. Demanding to know what I’d done with the bracelet that Mignon gave me.”
“What bracelet?” John Henry asked.
“Mignon didn’t give it to me. She showed it to me. She said she’d found it.” Eleanor’s eyes were a little unfocused as she stared past John Henry’s broad shoulders. “It was Eugenie’s bracelet. She lost it when she was a child and Mignon found it someplace. She wanted to know what it meant to me.” She hesitated. “I believe she thought it was mine. Because it has an E on it.”
“And why would Jourdain want it?” John Henry’s voice was peremptory and clipped.
“I don’t know, John Henry, but Eugenie’s gone and … Jourdain got some rope from the groundskeeper before he left, and Mignon has the bracelet that he wants.” Eleanor’s shoulders seemed to slump. “I thought this was all over.”
John Henry cast her a look that said volumes about what he thought about her now, and ran to his Bronco. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed the bed and breakfast in Natchitoches. As he drove out of the St. Michel mansion, not even bothering to fasten his seatbelt, the landlady told him that Mignon’s car was in the parking lot and that a man had been driving it. A man in his fifties with gray hair who looked quite fit, except she was sure he’d had a terrible nosebleed because of all the blood on the front of his shirt. He had tried to cover it up with his jacket, obviously ashamed that his shirt had been so badly stained, but she had caught a glimpse of it.
Jourdain Gastineau. John Henry’s heart dropped into his stomach. The lawyer was making so many mistakes now. Too many mistakes. He’s lost it completely. Mignon … “What about Mignon?”
“The young lady? I haven’t seen hide nor hair of her today,” said the landlady.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” muttered John Henry and hung up.
MIGNON SUDDENLY REMEMBERED that the beautiful golden bracelet was still hanging from her mouth. She took it out and stared at it. It wouldn’t be enough. Jourdain had to kill her, too. The bracelet would only be a secondary motive now. She could hear Jourdain stealthily approaching the large tree.
An abrupt image of her father flowed into her thoughts. His large hands guiding her smaller ones, showing her just how to flick a weighted piece of string to aim at an insect. He had shown her a dozen times, and over the years she’d found she still had the trick of it. Mignon flicked the bracelet now, away from her and in the opposite direction from where Jourdain approached. She knew that she couldn’t damage him with a bracelet, but she might give herself a moment’s head start. The bracelet flew and ricocheted off a tree, thudding against it as if someone had scraped something against the bark.
Jourdain turned and trotted in that direction. “I can hear you, Mignon! I can hear you! And I’m coming to kill you!”
Glancing around the tree, she saw him disappear into a heavily wooded copse and she didn’t waste any time. She ran back to the farmhouse, trying to avoid loose branches on the ground and the brush that seemed to reach out with prickling fingers to snag at her skin and her clothing. She had gone perhaps a hundred feet before she heard the roar of her own gun, and a bullet hit a tree a foot away from her, shedding bark and raw wood in a tiny burst.
Mignon couldn’t help herself. She glanced back and found that Jourdain had only been fooled for a moment or two. He was after her now and there was nothing in the way but brush and trees. There was no rope to climb and no pepper spray to use. He was going to kill her and he didn’t have a bleeding gunshot wound to
slow him down. She ran as fast as she could.
Exploding out of the tree line, she emerged in the large backyard of the farmhouse. The sun’s light was brighter here and the house cast a long shadow over the cistern. She paused for a moment, her body growing ever weaker. Dancing spots appeared at the corners of her eyes and she could feel herself losing consciousness. She forced her body across the yard, thinking that if she could only cut across the fields to Miner Poteet’s place, she’d have a chance. She prayed that he had heard the gunshots and called the police. She would have to risk his life now. She had no other choice.
There was another roar as Jourdain burst out of the woods directly behind her. She looked back once and was horrified. He was only a few feet behind her, his face a twisted mask of rage. If he could have put his hands around her throat, he would have throttled her until her head separated from her body. That fresh rush of fear provided Mignon with new energy that propelled her feet to move. She ran across the yard and could almost feel his fiery, angry breath at her back, his crazed voice taunting her with mental images of what he planned to do to her, the touch of metal licking at her flesh as he pointed the Beretta at the center of her back.
Mignon leapt over the cistern, not even coming close to the opening. She leapt with the last bit of power that had been dredged from the depths of her soul. She leapt because she knew that if Jourdain pounded across the top of the weakened cistern he might very well finish what she had started at the bottom of the pit. It came to her that this was her very last chance. He was right at her heels and so angry that he might not be watching where he was going.
Mignon leapt like she had never done before. Ten feet past the cistern’s edge, she looked back and found that Jourdain had vanished. It was like he had never been. Her knees buckled and she hit the ground hard.
The cloud of dirt whooshed upward as concrete and mud hit the bottom of the cistern. It disgorged violently outward like a bomb had been set off. Mignon covered her face with her arm and tucked her face down, trying to avoid the heavy mass of cloud and cement-ridden debris that wafted up and out.
Eventually it settled. She lifted her head, and she was the only one in the yard, standing in the shadows alone, covered with mud, dirt, and blood. A large hole punctuated the area, a hole twice as wide as the cap had been. Beside the hole lay her Beretta.
Later Mignon would wonder why she’d done it. Jourdain might have survived the fall. He might even have had another gun hidden on his body, ready to shoot her as she stuck her head over the pit. But those cautions didn’t go through her mind as she approached the side of the hole and peered down.
There was just enough light spilling into the cistern for her to see the bottom. Jourdain stared up at her in the most malevolent manner possible. There was a single instant when Mignon was sure that her heart stopped. He was alive and waiting for her. Jourdain would clamber up the sides and descend upon her weakened self, choking her body until nothing but bruised flesh remained.
But the moment passed. She saw that he was half buried in the dirt and that there was something horribly wrong with him. His head faced her, but his back was toward her. His brown eyes were open and staring at her, his head and neck turned at a 180-degree angle to the rest of his body. At first glance he had seemed alive and ready to resume his murderous task. But he had broken his neck under the weight of the crumbling cement walls, and he was dead.
Nearby Mignon could see her mother’s bony face above the rubble, gazing at Mignon as if trying to tell her something. Long red hair, as bright and striking as the day she died, moved gently around her skeletal countenance, shifting in the breeze.
It took some time for Mignon to staunch her wounds again. She had to wait for the dots to vanish before she found the energy to move around to the front of the house, where Jourdain’s car was parked. He’d locked it, but she didn’t even hurt herself when she used one of the blood-soaked boards to shatter the driver’s side window. She reached inside and pulled out a cellular phone.
At that moment John Henry drove up, his face paler than a ghost’s, and she didn’t even finish her call before an overwhelming tide of blackness rose over her.
Chapter Twenty-five
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28–WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6
Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday;
This is the end
Of Solomon Grundy.
SOLOMON GRUNDY
WHEN MIGNON OPENED HER eyes, John Henry was standing over her in the ambulance. He seemed to be a lot more anxious than she was. At first she couldn’t quite understand why, but then she happened to glance down at herself and saw that she was soaked with blood. She was also surprised that John Henry had to be persuaded that the wound wasn’t fatal, but nonetheless he waited by her side for hours, holding her hand in his own. Jourdain’s bullet had ricocheted off a rib, leaving a wound that was more dangerous because of blood loss than anything else.
Later she was admitted into a small hospital outside Natchitoches. John Henry had finally left, and she relaxed, knowing that she had survived and would live to tell the tale. Then she fell into a deep sleep.
That night Mignon dreamed about Jourdain chasing her over the wide field of wild grass that lay behind the farmhouse. He was close on her heels and his pistol was aimed directly at her. He was about to pull the trigger.
Just as Mignon leapt over the chasm, she stared in front of her in disbelief. There was a blackened figure ahead of her, coalescing shadows in the darkness, much like the one that had appeared in her latest painting, arms reaching out to her, long red hair, the color of a tumultuous fire gone awry, flying out behind her shoulders. Her own mother beckoned her to safety. Her lips moved in her beautiful, glowing face, but Mignon could not make out the words. This time she didn’t need to look back because she already knew that Jourdain was dead. She reached out to touch her mother but the figure vanished.
Mignon woke up, sweat pouring from her face. It couldn’t have been my mother, whispering to me inside the cistern. It was shock and loss of blood. That isn’t possible. But what about what Jourdain had said about being haunted? And what about what had happened at the discernments?
The doctors wanted to keep her one more day and she didn’t feel like arguing. The loss of blood was a major concern and she had already received two transfusions. That afternoon, John Henry came and sat by her bed while they stared warily at each other.
“I brought your rental car to the hospital,” John Henry said, his voice calm and neutral, as if he did not trust himself. “I thought that maybe I could drive you to the airport.”
Mignon shook her head. “I can drive. See, they even took me off my IV yesterday. But in any case, I’m not going anywhere for a while.”
Did his expression change a little? Mignon thought that maybe it did. It became a little more hopeful. “I would have missed you.” His voice was hoarse.
“Regret, John Henry?” She kept her tone impersonal, although there was a hint of a tear welling up in one of her eyes.
“Yes, regret.” John Henry stared at her. “I think I understand now.”
“What do you understand?”
“I know that your eyes were pale green the other day, and now they’re brown,” he said.
“Contacts,” she said.
“And you knew that your mother’s eyes were pale green,” he went on.
“Yes, I remembered that much about her. Although I didn’t appreciate how similar we are because I never had a photograph of her.” Mignon smiled sadly.
John Henry nodded. He took her hand and held it the way he had when he thought she might be dying. “You came here to flush out your mother’s killer. You had determined that she was dead, and that maybe by playing some kind of game you could cause this person to ex
pose himself.” He laughed shortly. “I figured it out. All of it. You should know that. First, if I called Eleanor St. Michel and asked her, she would tell me that Terentia Jones contacted her first. Not the other way around.”
Mignon didn’t say anything. He was right, but she wouldn’t admit it.
He went on. “The ghost walking in the night was someone you planted. I can’t explain how they got away, but they left fear behind, and the smell of Cuban cigars, which Luc St. Michel used to smoke at every occasion. At the first seance you used some kind of chemical ice in your purse and disposed of it before I could find it. You knocked the table with your knee. Your shoes had steel toes in them, which explains how you removed your foot without me feeling it move. Special shoes, just like the ones sitting in your hospital locker right now. You made up all the stuff you said. Of course, your mother and Luc St. Michel were buried somewhere. What else could have been done with their bodies? Blackness, you said. Something crawling over your feet. Logical guesses that could easily be interpreted.”
John Henry wasn’t happy, but he continued to speak, his voice so low that she had to strain to hear. “At the second seance the chair was fixed. The arm could be lifted so that you could remove your hand and ring the bell, then lift the watch fob. I went back and checked all of the Chippendales and found the right one. I suspect that one of your accomplices put the ice on your face that night. And you acted out the rest, saying what you thought would smoke out the unknown murderer.” He paused and took a deep breath, about to say something else he didn’t like. “You used me. You used Eleanor St. Michel. You used all of us. You knew that I would be suspicious and that I would act on it.”
There wasn’t a lot to say. Mignon couldn’t tell him that what he had surmised had been the plan, that with the assistance of Nehemiah’s niece, the room had been prepared for the fraudulent acts. However, something else had interceded, something otherworldly, and she certainly couldn’t tell him that. In any case, Mignon liked John Henry, but she had used him. And John Henry wasn’t a man who took kindly to being used. “I couldn’t trust anyone from this parish, John Henry. I think you can appreciate that. I had to know what happened to her.”