Family Issue

by Nat Burns

  Seychelles shook my hand one more time and told me goodbye before disappearing toward the back.

  Cleo sighed as we watched him walk away. I nudged her playfully and she blushed. “The going away is just as good as the coming toward, isn’t it?” she muttered conspiratorially.

  I laughed, shook my head and slung my much lighter pack over one shoulder. “Cleo, I swear. You are something else, girl.”

  I stepped out into the Louisiana heat as her laughter followed behind.

  Chapter Twelve

  Studying the map I’d called up on my cell phone, I plotted out a path to the Holding Arms Cemetery, which was called Little John’s by all the locals. The tram, the Brethren version of a streetcar, stopped on Main just past the Denny’s Restaurant. I hopped aboard, dropped my coins into the slot, and settled in across from a trio of gum-cracking teens, girls, who watched me suspiciously. I tried to smile at them but any friendliness they could have had toward me was well hidden under a cloak of indifference.

  Brethren was laid out much like the cities of Baton Rouge or New Orleans, with beautiful courtyards hidden behind wrought iron or mud-block walls. I started out on Main, but this car’s path veered into crowded subdivisions separated by small, scenic parks. They were new and refreshing oases of green amid the clutter of old buildings.

  I thoroughly enjoyed the ride and was surprised, and almost disappointed, to see the stop for Iberia Commons so soon. I left the tram, with one more knowing glance back at fragile youth. I knew they would find something odd enough about me so that they could talk about it in furtive whispers once I was out of earshot. It was the way of youth, huddling together in a common mind of mockery, for safety’s sake and to better homogenize.

  I started walking north, glancing often at the phone clutched in my hand. Little John’s looked to be only about two blocks north of the commons, but it sure felt farther. Soon the low, plaintive bleat of trumpets assailed my ears and I knew I was close.

  Funerals in Louisiana are an entity unto themselves. They become, even while honoring death, a kind of living creature. There is the mournful music that precedes a grieving line of humanity, then the lift of sprightly jazz at the end of the funeral procession that assures the listener that it is okay to carry on. That though someone is gone and the void left is sad, life, light and laughter will soon come to fill that void. For that reason I loved the southern Louisiana language of death. I thought about my own mortality then and realized suddenly that this is where I wanted to have my funeral. In the Deep South, where those who came to mourn my passing would find new joy to carry on after I was gone.

  I walked away from the noisy funeral parade and to the right, where I could see the heavy marble columns and gleaming face of the mausoleum at the back of the cemetery proper. I walked past the raised concrete burial plots, so common in bayou country, taking note of the fascinating names as I meandered by: Roach, Thibideaux, Breaux, Chauvin, Boudreaux, Guillio, Foret and Molaison. The raised crypt of someone named Zeophile Babineaux brought me to a complete stop. I tried to say it to myself a few times. I could not even imagine trying to teach a child to spell that on the first few days of kindergarten.

  The huge mausoleum, twelve feet tall and covering at least two city blocks, was just across a white winding sidewalk from the raised burial plots. I came close to one marble-walled side, inset with thirty-two, four-stacks of crypts, two-foot-square iron plates covering each crypt, and pressed my palm to the stone’s coolness. Amazing how marble never really got that warm, no matter what the ambient temperature.

  I followed the scattered trail of antiseptic hothouse and silk flowers until I came to the first massive corner. I knew the Price section of this mausoleum faced east—I had been there before when Dodson Price was laid to rest. The Price crypts were in the second set of four vertical rows of crypts or the second set of eight vaults. Only four of the vaults had been used, the four on the left of the Price section. At the top was Guillaume Price, Dodson’s father, and then Marigne, his mother. Third down was Dodson himself and below him rested Megs. Four more doors had yet to be inscribed, their chambers empty. I knew who they were for and the thought of Patty dying rattled me and left me motionless for a good minute. I even imagined I saw her name on one of the iron plates. I shook my head hard to clear it.

  I looked left and saw immediately what Patty had been talking about. Faint outlines of the slur words could still be seen, although it was obvious there had been an effort to scrub them away. I knelt on the white wrought-iron bench that rested just below the final two horizontal vaults and closely studied the writing for some time.

  Someone had left a huge white plastic basket of hothouse flowers beneath the Price section, next to the bench, and their scent wafted up to me as I perused the graffiti. I heard the ever-present hum of honeybees and took a few seconds to hope I wouldn’t get stung. I absently swatted a persistent bee away.

  Living near DC as I did, I knew graffiti well, and I also easily recognized a lot of gang and even personal tagging. This had nothing to do with any of that. These words—LIAR and, down lower, BITCH—had been written by one person using a Sharpie marker. The words, what I could see of them, were written sloppily and, most certainly, had been fueled by powerful emotion. I could tell this by the way the words slanted downward and by how the letters were hastily, angrily formed. The scribbled words told me a lot. First, the writing was by someone who knew Megs, or at least the Price family, well. It seemed intimate by the way it was written—LIAR boldly across the face, then BITCH as an afterthought. Secondly, the use of the slurs implied anger and feelings of betrayal. And maybe regret. Could Megs have been involved with someone at the time of her death? Funny, the idea of Megs with someone other than Dodson had never even occurred to me.

  Some investigator you are, I mentally chided myself.

  Turning, I seated myself on the bench, the side away from the flowers and the bees, and, resting elbows on my knees, thought about all the troubling occurrences at Fortune Farm. Looked at from an outside perspective, they all—sugaring the tractors, Megs’s personal items disappearing, even the attack on Kissy, though extreme—could very much be caused by rancor. And the markings here now led me to believe Megs was somehow directly involved.

  I sighed and shifted my weight to one side, lifting my bent leg, my thigh now resting on the bench as I faced sideways. I was laying out a course of action. And a course of thought. If I turned the situation around, assuming that the events plaguing the Prices were not directed at the family so much, but more at Megs, it gave me lots of food for thought. What secrets was Megs hiding? Maybe getting to the bottom of that would allow me to understand what was happening at the farm.

  My stomach grumbled loudly, and I realized I’d been woolgathering for quite some time. Sunlight was leaning heavily along the checkerboard of above ground crypts laid out before me. I rested the side of my forehead against the flat, cool marble between the Price crypts.

  So, Megs, I mused silently, can you shed a little light on this, please? Your kids need to know the truth so they can get on.

  I realized suddenly that the funeral music had stopped and had been silent for some time. I was surrounded by the drone of the bees and an occasional bird call. Nothing else. No doubt the funeral was over, and yet one more Brethren resident had bought a new home in this peaceful place.

  I stood and laid a palm against the iron door engraved with Megs’s full name and the dates of her birth and death. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to say goodbye,” I said aloud. “I will miss you.”

  A cool breeze stirred the flowers below me and cooled my brow. It was like a caress.

  I meandered slowly back the way I’d come. I wasn’t thinking about the problem I was here to solve but rather musing philosophically about life and death and how it can mean so many different things to so many people. Heaven, hell or a great void? Who knew for sure?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Roy Ketchum’s was crowded—unusual for
this early on a weekday. After about five minutes of eavesdropping, however, I realized why. A cooling cylinder at the local ConAgra frozen food plant had gone down, and the first shift had been let out early.

  Sipping hot, rich, chicory coffee, I studied the menu, eventually choosing an old favorite—the gumbo. Roy Ketchum’s had some of the finest I’d ever had. A familiar-looking but tired waitress took my order, studying me with curiosity. I’m sure she recognized me too, yet couldn’t quite place me. Four years is a long time. Giving up on the quest, she deposited some more coffee into my cup. I reached for sugar while my mind whirled with possibilities. I had less than a week to go of my vacation time so I needed to put on the old thinking cap in earnest.

  I had the incidents—John Clyde hiding something, someone sugaring gas tanks, the poisoning of the goats and the attack on Kissy. What clues did I have? A board and some tire tracks. Nasty notes written on a crypt. Not very promising.

  “You’re losing it, Denni gal,” I muttered to myself. Twelve weeks of fraud investigation school just wasn’t coming through for me. Neither was the copious studying I did each month about new and ever-growing fraud possibilities. The main lesson I’d learned was to gather information. If you gathered enough information the facts would start linking themselves together and would wait for you to see them. I knew this. Obviously, I was still at the gathering information stage, because no links had shown themselves, that’s for sure.

  The second step was to help that process along by sorting and analyzing the information and then drawing lead-up conclusions from that info. The conclusions were then balanced against the motive list—usually money in the insurance industry—then the motives used to zero in on the perpetrator. Voila, fraud solved. This, though, was a tough one. I had come to believe that the one person who knew what could be causing the havoc was already dead.

  I tried going back to my original thinking. Who would most gain from discrediting John Clyde and Patty? It simply had to be a competitor who wanted them out of business. Unless revenge was indeed involved. Then it could be an old enemy—or, if it was concerning Megs, perhaps a scorned lover. I knew that often those closest to someone will turn on them the quickest.

  The waitress broke into my reverie by sliding a bowl of steaming gumbo across the table. It landed in front of me as if choreographed. I inhaled the incredible earthy fragrance of true Louisiana gumbo and dug in. Halfway through the bowl a familiar shock of short white blond hair off toward the front of the restaurant snared my attention. Yolanda. She was barely visible behind the high side of my booth, but I could see she was talking to someone animatedly—more animated actually than I’d ever seen her.

  Chewing slowly, I leaned to my left and saw that Landa was talking to a really gorgeous woman.

  Tall and almost too thin—I’m talking sixties’ Twiggy thin—the woman was leaning forward, listening intently to what Landa was saying. Every now and then she would nod her head, an act that caused her long hair to move across her bare shoulders like satin sheets sweeping across a mattress. Landa was expounding grandly as if instructing the woman about something.

  I took my time studying the sleekly defined woman, which turned out to be a thoroughly pleasant experience. She was dressed in low-slung, hip-hugger jeans with a wide dark belt bordering the top and had a dark purple muscle shirt tucked into the jeans. A tattered denim jacket dangled from one hand. It took me several minutes to determine what was unusual about her hair. Then it hit me. The hair was dyed to be two-toned—a long layer of jet black underneath with a somewhat shorter layer of white blond on top. The effect was startling and certainly warranted a second irresistible look.

  The two women turned and I ducked back into my booth and took another bite of my cooling gumbo. Who was she? And what was she doing here with Landa? Especially when we all assumed Landa was working at her job as a health coordinator over at Ernest Glass Hospital. No, wait, it was her day off, but she was supposed to be spending it with Kissy.

  I peeped carefully around the back of the booth again. They were at the counter and Landa was buying two sodas to go. They were laughing and seemed really at ease with one another. My heart lurched in pain and anger, because I knew that if Landa was cheating on Patty, Patty would soon be going through the same heartache I’d felt when she’d met Landa and chosen her over me. I suddenly didn’t know how to feel or whether I should poke my nose into it and reveal what I’d seen.

  Another thought caused my stomach to roil and the gumbo to press hard against my insides. Suppose it was Yolanda who was causing all the problems at Fortune Farm? And this was an accomplice?

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Oh, my stars. It is you. I told Emma—you know my friend Emma, Dr. Rigger’s secretary? Well, I told her it had to be Denni Hope practically back from the grave. Where you been, my se-weet little galfriend?”

  I recognized the voice and nonstop patter right away and was thrilled when the heavily fragranced figure swept into the seat opposite me. I took her delicate hands in mine in an awkward embrace. The scent of lily-of-the-valley lotion mixed incongruously with Estée Lauder perfume washed across me, a welcoming trigger of memory.

  “Solange, you old dear, how have you been? I’m glad to see you’re not at the bottom of a pond somewhere.” I gazed into bright blue eyes fondly. Today she was wearing a beautiful mint green satin tunic shirt with three-quarter length sleeves. Her silky blond hair—a wig, of course—had been meticulously styled and blended with her own short bleached curls. Her cosmetics were a bit overpowering but had been applied with expert care.

  “Now, just what do you mean by that that, Miss Denni? I’m hurt.” Solange, whose birth name was Russell Otis and whose most sacred secret was tucked between her legs and covered under an hour’s worth of padded clothing, feigned bewilderment.

  “I worry about you and that penchant you have for the bad boys,” I responded with a mischievous grin.

  “They’re not all bad, honey. In fact, some are very, very good,” she joked, adjusting her amethyst bracelet on her smooth, hairless arm. “Some are just that good,” she added in a sly whisper.

  “Oh no! No more information, please,” I said, laughing helplessly and pushing aside my empty bowl. “You want some gumbo?”

  “No, no, Emma and I just finished a good platter of oysters and shrimp. So well done here.” She paused and watched me keenly with her heavily mascaraed eyes. “What are you looking at?”

  I blushed, realizing my attention had not been focused entirely on Solange. “It’s Yolanda. Patty’s partner? She’s here talking to someone when she’s supposed to be somewhere else.”

  Solange drew in an excited, scandalized breath, “No! Has Patty hired you to spy on her? Are they having trouble?”

  I could see the juicy delight in her face. “Stop, silly. I think they’re fine, much to my dismay.”

  “Then you look at me,” she said, tapping one long, perfectly manicured nail on the tabletop. “I get all your attention, please.”

  I smiled. She always was a demanding wench. “Okay, Solange. You’re doing well? Have you had the surgery yet?”

  Solange shook her head in the negative. “Oh my, no! Do you have any idea what that costs? It’s a hundred thousand dollars to take that little floppy doodad from an outie to an innie. It just ain’t going to happen. And all that testing. They make you feel like a criminal. Do you really think my emotional stability, or lack thereof, would pass? I’m thinking not.”

  She sat back, like the cat that finally got that canary. “I am in love, though.”

  I was not surprised. Solange fell in love weekly. “With whom, may I ask?”

  “His name is Rainerd and he has the most beautiful eyes. And his washboard belly…I can’t begin to tell you…”

  I snuck another peek at Yolanda and saw that she and her companion were leaving. The white-haired woman looked back toward Yolanda, and I was struck by the even beauty of her features. Fishing in my pocket, I drew out a twenty and
used the empty bowl to anchor it to the table.

  “Walk with me, Solange,” I said in a tone that allowed no protest.

  Solange swallowed her surprise and rose gracefully. “You never do change, darling. Obviously, you’re still working all the time. Is this an insurance case?”

  “No, I’m on vacation. Sort of.” I nodded my head toward Landa and the mystery woman. They were moving slowly through Alabaster Square with the two of us falling far behind on purpose. “Patty has me down here snooping around because someone is sabotaging Fortune Farm. That one in the purple shirt there is with Yolanda, and, as I said, Landa seems to be acting a little suspicious today. I’m beginning to wonder if she has something to do with all of the vandalism.”

  “Ah,” Solange was intrigued. She squinted against the midday glare and fished her sunglasses from her oversized purse. “Who is that pretty, skinny gal?”

  “Good question.”

  We moved along slowly, allowing Landa to maintain a good lead. The two were still talking animatedly, I swore to myself that it was more than I’d ever seen Landa talk, and they finally disappeared into a shadowed alley.

  “Where’s that go?” I asked Solange.

  “It’s just shops. But it comes out onto Saint Timothy’s.”

  I peered around the corner of the alley and saw spiky blond hair disappear into a side shop.

  “Petit Mal, a hoodoo shop,” Solange said just behind my left ear. Though she was just over five feet five inches tall, her high heels made it seem as though she towered over me.

  I flattened my body against the wall, studying Solange’s long features. “Why would they go in there?”

  Solange clicked her tongue at me. “It’s a tourist place is all,” she paused, “although…”

  “Although what?”

  “They do say that Genevieve is the most powerful hoodoo mistress around.”