by Sandra Hill
Tante Lulu’s kitchen was a charming room with cypress cabinets, an old white porcelain sink, red and white checkered curtains, and a matching tablecloth over a 1940s style enamel table. Off the kitchen was a large pantry holding all of Tante Lulu’s traiteur remedies. Through the single pantry window, dust motes danced off the butcher block work table. The pantry’s pungent scents wafted into the kitchen and beyond: hanging dried herbs and shelves loaded with floor-to-ceiling glass containers, some of them antiques, with everything from chicken hearts to alligator tongues, along with normal herbs like basil and mint. Very, very impressive. The eccentric old lady was definitely more than she appeared to be.
But Veronica’s mind had been wandering. She picked up on René’s words.
“See here, the bottom transparency is the way the network of bayou streams looked two hundred years ago before erosion and dozens of hurricanes,” René explained.
“It looks like a spider web,” Veronica observed.
“Or a lace doilie,” Tante Lulu added. “Actually, Remy says that from the air it looks like a sheet of glass what’s been shattered.”
“But see how it changed over a hundred years.” René laid a second transparency on top of the first.
Then he laid a third on top of those, from fifty years ago; a fourth from just before Hurricane Katrina; and finally one done last month. René was an expert on the environment, but also highly informed on the history and geography of southern Louisiana. Not to mention being a very handsome man. Not as handsome as Jake, of course, but still attractive.
“Holy shit!” Caleb noted. “Many of the streams have disappeared altogether and new ones have appeared. There’s almost no comparison, except for the major waterways, like Bayou Teche, and even those are different than they used to be.”
“Yep, the Louisiana coastline has been sinking for years, giving way to the sea at an alarming rate.
Experts have known for decades that a Hurricane Katrina–type devastation was in the works. It was inevitable. And, believe me, there will be more of the same, not just here in Louisiana but coastal lands across the country.” He pulled out a large map of the Gulf Coast and told them, “Anything that happens on the coastline has a rippling effect here on the bayou. Loss of the barrier islands, oil drillin’, man-made canals, levees, all of it combined is killin’ what some people consider just a swamp, but we Cajuns consider paradise. The bayou, she is a dyin’ thing.”
“René could go on fer hours ’bout the bayous and how us folks are destroyin’ ’em, but we’s here ta find some treasure,” Tante Lulu said.
“Point taken.” René laughed. “Okay, here’s the deal. See this old map that Tante Lulu claims is the site of the Lafitte treasure.”
Everyone leaned forward to study the crackly paper that Tante Lulu said she had received from a descendent of one of the pirates who had served under Lafitte.
“This whole venture could be a wild-goose chase,” John cautioned. “Most people think that if there was any treasure, it would have been on Barataria Island, Lafitte’s main stomping grounds.”
“It’s a risk we take every time we start a new treasure hunt,” Adam pointed out. “That’s partly what makes it so much fun.”
“Hey, maybe there’s a little bit of the gambler in all of us.” That was Jake, of course, standing in the doorway leading to the living room, their daughter Julie Ann in his arms sucking on a lollipop. That remark was a jab at Veronica because she had always been critical of his gambling.
She stuck her tongue out at him to show she’d gotten the message . . . and wasn’t offended.
He just grinned.
“This project, she is a gamble, yes,” John said then, “but there’s evidence that Loo-zee-anna does have buried treasure. Some of it is legend, yes, but it’s also part of our history going back to the days of Spanish galleons.”
“Good God! The redneck sex cop is giving us a history lesson,” Adam teased.
His back to Tante Lulu, John mouthed a foul word at Adam, then continued, “There’ve been many discoveries of buried and sunken treasures over the past two hundred years right here in southern Loo-zee-anna, but mostly explorers have learned to keep their discoveries secret, to avoid the inevitable pile-on.”
René nodded, then put a forefinger on the old map. “The treasure, according to this old map, would have been located deep in the swamps of Bayou Black, about a quarter-mile from René’s fishing camp, right about here. But based on what I’ve just shown you with the overlays, that spot was once on land, but is now underwater.”
“So, we’re talking about a dive and a dig, both, right?” Veronica asked.
René shrugged. “Assuming there ever was a treasure. Assuming the treasure hasn’t moved with the current and various hurricanes over the years. Assuming what was buried wasn’t biodegradable.”
“Gold coins ain’t biode . . . bio-whatever-you-said,” Tante Lulu insisted. “And doan you be such a balloon pricker, René LeDeux.”
“A prick? Yer callin’ me a prick.” He grinned at his aunt, then ducked when she swung an arm to slap him a good one.
“A party pooper who’s allus prickin’ ever’one’s balloons,” she explained. “Behave yerself, boy, or I’ll whup ya so hard you’ll be burpin’ the first milk ya drunk as a baby.”
They all raised their eyebrows at that one.
“Listen, I know I’ve already said this, but I have real reservations about the effect on the bayou of a half-dozen adults trampin’ around the streams, cartin’ machinery. The least little thing can affect the balance of the ecosystem. And I’m not just sayin’ this because it’s my lodge.”
“We’re aware of your concerns,” Veronica said. “Please know we’ll do everything, and I mean everything, to leave that section of the bayou the way we find it.”
“Where did you get this old map?” Adam asked Tante Lulu.
“Lefty Delacroix from over Lafayette way.”
“Mon Dieu! Crazy Lefty . . . who claims he was once a pirate?” René was staring at his aunt with disbelief. To the others, he explained, “He even has an eye patch and a peg leg. Refused to get a prosthetic after the Korean War. Then, he lost his eye wrestlin’ an alligator during a drunken binge.”
“Thass prejudice,” Tante Lulu chastised René. “Makin’ fun of the handy-capped. Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
“That’s all we need. Two crazies on this project. The Dingbat Duo. Oh, wait, that would be three crazies.” Adam gave John a smirk. “I forgot about the crazy redneck sex cop.”
John mouthed another foul word at Adam, which his aunt couldn’t see.
But Tante Lulu wasn’t paying attention to them. She was still glaring at René. “Doan ya be puttin’
down ol’ Lefty. He knows stuff. And ya cain’t say there ain’t no treasures in Loo-zee-anna, boy. Men layin’ pipelines through the bayou fer the oil companies find pirate gold all the time.”
“I’ll give you that,” René conceded, “although it’s not all the time. Occasionally.”
“And there’s lots of buried treasure on those old plantations, too. Hidden when the damn Yankees was comin’. My apologies to you damn Yankees.”
The damn Yankees present took no offense.
Veronica hoped the old lady wasn’t thinking that Jinx would be digging on those plantations. She had jobs lined up for the next two years. Besides that, she’d only been here one day and already she’d seen enough gators to last her a lifetime. And Caleb, who had an aversion to snakes, claimed to have seen thirty-seven today alone, some of them hanging from trees. She hoped he was exaggerating.
“Okay, we got a bit off course. Do you have a timetable for us, Caleb?” Veronica asked.
Caleb had been with Jinx since she took over six years ago. Although it had been a while since he’d been a Navy SEAL, he still wore his hair military short. She laughed to herself as she mused that at least he wasn’t growing a long Amish-style beard like his twin brother Jonas.
Caleb pulled out
a clipboard. “Adam and I have already been out at the site, scouting the terrain.
René has agreed to rent us his fishing camp, which is actually more like a lodge. The original camp burned down a few years ago, and he built this bigger place as a vacation home. Anyhow, even though it’s in a remote area, there’s electricity, thanks to a generator, and running water from a cistern. The lodge has two bedrooms which can sleep five, a pull-out sofa in the living room, and we have some high–grade tents that will keep out mosquitoes, snakes and other small animals.”
“Snakes?” Caleb looked a little bit green.
“Ya cain’t come into the bayou without seein’ snakes,” John told him, adding a little too gleefully,
“Actually, there are three hundred species of snakes here. After all, it is a tropical setting, cher, but not to worry, most of them are non-poisonous. Except for the water moccasin, of course. And the Slim Jim Viper and the Crimson Slitherer and—”
“Shush, yerself, Tee-John,” Tante Lulu said. “I been livin’ on the bayou all my life and never been bit.”
“Actually, most snakes avoid people, and most snake bites take place when alcohol is involved,”
René informed them. “Usually preceded by the dumbass statement, ‘Betcha I could . . . ’”
“Stupid rednecks,” Adam muttered.
“Rusty says poisonous snakes can only strike their body length. So, you’re safe at five or six feet away,” Charmaine pronounced, as if that was good news.
“Not to worry. We have a fully-stocked first-aid kit, including snake bite antidotes,” Brenda told them.
“That makes me feel better,” Caleb said. “Not!”
“Now, all the legal details, permits, are taken care of, right?” Veronica asked.
Tante Lulu waved a hand dismissively. “I called my friend Easy Gaudet. Piece ’a cake.”
“She means Congressman Edward Gaudet,” René elaborated, obviously not happy that laws could be bent so easily.
“Thass what I said. Besides, finders keepers is what I allus say.”
“Oh, God!” Veronica murmured.
“I checked on all the environmental and historical requirements,” René elaborated, passing out some sheets detailing the dos and don’ts of their project.
“Who owns the property where we’ll be digging?” Caleb asked.
“No one,” Tante Lulu replied.
Several eyebrows rose at that.
“It probably belongs to the state. It’s hard to tell with some of these old deeds,” René told them.
“And that won’t be a problem?” Veronica was genuinely concerned. What they didn’t need was to find the treasure, then have someone file suit, claiming ownership.
“I tol’ ya. I got all the legal permissions ya need. Jist take my word on it.” Tante Lulu certainly looked confident.
Veronica glanced at John and René, both of whom nodded, apparently satisfied that the legal permits were in order.
They all agreed to meet at Remy’s the following day at eight A.M. Remy was a licensed pilot, a veteran of Desert Storm. He had a small hydroplane on the water and an honest-to-God copter on a helipad on his multi-acre property farther down the bayou. The hydroplane was one of those small Piper vehicles with floats or pontoons on each side, allowing it to land even on small bayou streams, provided there was tree clearance. He would be transporting the machinery and some of the team tomorrow, in two or three trips. Other than the hydroplane, the only way to reach René’s cabin was by pirogue, flat-bottomed canoes that could ride even in shallow waters, but that would take days.
After that, they toasted the new venture with Tante Lulu’s dandelion wine.
“Here’s to the Pirate Project, maties.” Veronica raised a St. Jude glass.
“Aye, aye, cap’n,” Jake said, winking at Veronica. “Want me to show you how I bury my treasure, lass?”
“Behave, you scallywag.” Veronica winked back.
“Merci.” Tante Lulu bowed, thinking he had meant her when he referred to “cap’n.”
“God help us all,” John murmured.
“St. Jude help us all,” Tante Lulu corrected. “God, too, of course.”
Note to self: Make sure Tante Lulu doesn’t put St. Jude figureheads on the prows on the pirogues.
And then the other shoe dropped . . .
John stood at Tante Lulu’s kitchen sink, his arms in soap suds up to his elbows, washing dishes. How he got stuck hanging around was a puzzle. He’d gone into the bedroom to make a phone call, and when he came out, everyone had left. Oh, it wasn’t that they hadn’t offered to help clean up, but Tante Lulu, bless her heart, had volunteered him.
She was setting him up.
“Tee-John,” she said in that honey-sweet voice that had every fine hair standing to attention on his body.
“What?” he asked, even though his common sense told him to run.
“I mighta done sumpin’ today that yer not gonna like.” She had this mock sorrowful look on her face, like she wasn’t at all sorry about whatever she had done.
Uh-oh. “Mighta?”
“Sorta?”
“Exactly what did you mighta sorta do today, Auntie?”
“Doan be mad.”
This is gonna be bad. Real bad. That look on her face . . . reminds me of the time she nominated me for People Magazine’s Sexiest Man of the Year . . . and I wasn’t even a finalist. He took his hands out of the soap suds, dried them on a St. Jude dish towel, then placed his hands squarely on his hips.
“Okay, spill.”
“I jist happened ta be talkin’ ta my ol’ friend Cletus ‘the snake’ LaFonte. He’s called ‘the snake’
’cause of the way he kin flick his tongue. Whooee! The stories I could tell ya.”
Oh, please don’t.
“Cletus usta be an editor. Actually, I was over Houma way healin’ his grandson’s colic, which was the worstest case I ever—”
“Aaarrgh! An editor of what?”
Her face flushed. It took a lot to make his aunt be flushed. “A newspaper.”
Oh, this was not good. “Did you mention the Pirate Project?”
“Of course not. Whatcha think I am? Stoopid?”
That question did not warrant an answer.
“I was jist askin’ Cletus if he knew any reporters on the Times-Tribune.”
“Like Celine Arseneaux?” He groaned.
“Oui. See, that wasn’t so bad.” She beamed. “And the best part is that I found out she ain’t married, but—”
“I already knew that.”
“Doan be interruptin’ me. She ain’t married, but yer gonna have a real uphill battle with that gal.”
“Tante Lulu,” he said on a long sigh, “there is not going to be a battle with me and Celine of any kind. Would you get that out of your head?”
“Will ya let me finish? Cletus tol’ me that Celine moved back ta Houma a few months back ta live with her grandfather James Arseneaux after he had a stroke. What I learned from Cletus is that James Arseneaux hates all the LeDeuxs ’cause of somethin’ yer daddy done to James’s cousin Josie Lynn.”
John’s eyes about rolled up in his head. “Just about everyone in southern Louisiana has a gripe against my father. What else is new? Besides, what does any of this have to do with me?”
“Doan be dense, boy. I gotta find out if she’s the one.”
“She’s not.”
“We’ll see.”
“We will not see. Forget about it. I mean it.”
She must have sensed his fraying temper. “Doan go gettin’ yer skivvies in a twist. What will be will be.”
That’s what he was afraid of.
Chapter 5
He made her an offer she couldnʼt refuse . . .
“A treasure hunt? You want me to spend days, maybe weeks, covering some screwball search for Jean Lafitte’s buried treasure?”
“It’ll be fun,” her editor, Bruce Cavanaugh, told Celine as they sat in his office.
She said a foul word under her breath, something about what he could do with his fun. “Don’t you think my talents are best utilized on something more . . . serious?” Celine gritted her teeth. It was a constant struggle for women in journalism. They were assigned the fluff pieces while men got the Pulitzer Prize–worthy stories.
“C’mon, Celine, you’ve worked nonstop on hard news the past few months. There’s nothing wrong with lightening up on occasion. Besides, you’ll find a way of making it a good in-depth piece. Hell, you could make a PTA meeting newsworthy.”
“Bruce,” she said tiredly, “another Jean Lafitte treasure hunt? Do you realize how many of these halfbrained schemes there have been over the years? They’re scams.”
He shook his head. “Not all of them. One of his stashes was found on Jefferson Island. There are authenticated letters from Lafitte saying that he hid $240,000 in gold somewhere on Catouche Bayou.”
“Who’s the contact person?”
“Veronica Jinkowsky from New Jersey. It’s a legitimate business.” He shoved a folder across her desk, which she flipped through. It did appear to be a bona fide treasure hunting company, with some impressive finds under its belt. “Look, you can go along with them to Bayou Black. That’s in your home turf, Terrebonne Parish, right? All you would have to do is watch and see how they go about retrieving the treasure. Get some historical background on Jean Lafitte; there are plenty of his descendents around and enough historical data to fill a library. What do you say?”
“Maybe.”
“What’s your problem?”
“My problem is that I should be past fluff pieces.”
“That’s your opinion . . . that it’s a fluff story. C’mon, Celine, you’re a professional. Act like one.”