After a time Beau sat up on one arm looking at me and asked me in French how I could think I could leave the bayou behind. I stopped laughing and looked over at him. When I did I saw that he had a serious look on his face. A look like my leaving had an effect on him that I never noticed. He moved his hand to the side of my face and brushed the hair to the side. When his fingers were behind my ear he started tracing them along my neck. He leaned forward and cautiously touched his lips to mine. I felt a warm sensation overtake my body and leaned in to kiss him back. He moved his hand behind my head and moved my face hard to his. I reached forward and felt his arms, warm and strong holding me to him. I let out a moan, and he pulled me hard onto him. When he did, I realized my leg was wedged between the boat bottom and the seat and a pain shot through my leg. Before I realized it I let out a shrill scream, and he pulled away. He saw my face and looked down at my leg.
“Damn, Fanchon. I’m sorry,” he said.
The lights flicked on in Jori’s house, and his mother came storming out to the dock.
“What’s going on out here, eh?” she said shining her flashlight on us in the bottom of the boat. She shouted, “Beauregard, you better not be forgetting your manners as a gentlemen at my house. I will call your mother, so help me.”
She lifted her flashlight to strike him, when I protested. “No, my foot just got caught on the chair. I am sorry I woke you.”
“Alright now,” she said calming down. “What you two still doing out here?”
In unison we both said, “Sobering up.”
“Well sober up but shut your mouths. And Beauregard, zip up your pants.”
After she went back inside it was quiet again. Then I heard a quiet zip.
I reached over and punched Beau on the arm. “I can’t believe you unzipped your pants. I never even heard it.” We started laughing again.
I recall being back in my bed just before the sun came up. I was only awake long enough to hear Beau stumble into Lisette’s room. That was the last thing that happened before I fell into a deep sleep. The brown haired girl visited me again that night. She was floating lifelessly in the water, but didn’t look dead this time. I was trying to figure out what was keeping her in the water. From the view I had she was not trying to get out. I wanted to see her face up close so I started swimming to her, but it seemed like the closer I tried to get the further away she got, like she was being carried by a current. I was kicking hard, and then I heard a muffled voice out of the water. I looked up and when I did my eyes opened for real. Abolina was standing over me. It was unbelievably bright in that room with all the yellow.
“It’s midday. I let y’all sleep long enough,” she said stealing my blankets. “You gotta go get your lawman friend at the airport.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked still groggy.
“Banyan. He is flying in today and said he’s got to talk to all of us a while,” Abolina said.
She walked out of the room and shouted, “Beau, get your butt out of bed.”
My head and leg were both pounding. I was hoping enough time had passed since my beers that I was ok to take my pain pills. I reached over to the nightstand and grabbed them and then shouted, “I need a ride to the bathroom.”
Clem came for me and gave me a ride. My crutches must have been in the boat still.
We headed to New Orleans to pick up Banyan. During the ride I felt a sense of giddiness about seeing him again. I was curious about what was bringing him out to visit so soon, but more than that I was just happy he would be here. I thought I had closed the door on thoughts of Banyan back in New York. My body betrayed me. My foot kept kicking around excitedly.
We waited outside the airport, and when I saw him I nearly jumped up. I took note of the very small suitcase he brought with him. It was only a carry-on, so this was not going to be a long trip. Banyan remembered from last time to throw his bag in the back and hop right in.
I was in the middle straddling the shifter, with my leg out at an odd angle. I didn’t mind. I felt very happy in that moment. I asked Banyan why he was there, and he told me he wanted to wait to talk to everybody about it together. We were just getting ready to turn onto the highway when I remembered the dream from the night before.
“Beau, take me to
Jackson Square while we are in town,” I ordered. “Fanchon, I’m not takin’ you to no
Jackson Square in all this damn traffic. What you want, to watch street performers?” “Beau, I want to talk to Claire Du’Ponde,” I said. “I need to ask her something. Banyan, you don’t mind, right?”
“I’ve got time,” he said.
Beau shook his head. “You guys are shittin’ me that you want to see a psychic right now?”
I answered, “Banyan don’t mind, and we got time. Where else do you have to be? Plus, if you stop there I will get you a beignet from the tourist bakery.”
He turned the wheel and headed back towards the center of town. “Get a bunch, ‘cause you know Clem’s going to want one.”
Jackson Square was the home of a beautiful gothic Catholic Church with an open, well-tended lawn that faced the Mississippi River. It was the center of the tourist district and as such was surrounded by little shops and eateries. It was nearly impossible to park there, so Beau dropped Banyan and I off and planned to circle the block. Madame Claire Du’Ponde was from our parish, but she spent weekdays in the city telling fortunes to tourists. She was a little old woman whose abilities I did not praise very highly until she rightly foretold that Josephine had been eaten by an alligator in New York. That was pretty darn accurate by my assessment.
Banyan helped me get out of the truck and grabbed my crutches for me. When we were without Beau I felt more comfortable saying hi to him. I was afraid if I said anything in the truck Beau might hear something in it and get jealous.
“Hi, Fanchon,” he said smiling. “It’s really good to see you.”
We lingered for a moment looking at each other. Then he asked, “What’s a beignet?”
“It’s a fancy fried pastry, way better than doughnuts. You will love them. Everybody loves them.”
We worked our way past tourists looking at the statues and the cathedral to find Madame Du’Ponde’s table. When she saw us she immediately perked up. She rushed through the fortune she was telling and told the next person in her line they would have to wait.
“There is a beautiful woman on crutches. We would not have her standing, no?” The man in line nodded his head in agreement and stood back for me to take the chair.
When I did, she scooted her chair all the way toward me and grabbed my hand, “Oh, Fanchon. I have been trying to see you. I have needed to see you for days and days. But you know Clem and Abolina are keeping everybody at bay. There is so much to tell you.”
Banyan moved closer, too. He was here for her last prediction, so I assumed he put some stock in her words as I did.
“Okay, let me tell you what I am seeing. I am seeing you floating in the water and the spirits tell me you have seen this, too.”
“I have,” I said, and Banyan raised an eyebrow.
She held her hands to her temple. “Okay. The spirits say this is Fanchon in the water, but the timing is off. They are screaming the timing ain’t right.”
“What do you mean the timing ain’t right? Is this going to happen to me? Am I going to be drowning and not know what to do?”
“Listen, girl. The spirits say the girl in the water is you, and they warn you that the timing ain’t right. But there is more, Fanchon. The spirits told me you were not supposed to go back to New York, not ever. Now that you have you have set yourself in danger and it cannot be undone and for that I am sorry I did not tell you sooner.”
“What do you mean? In danger from who?”
“They say you are now in the greatest danger you will ever know, but they do not give me a name. They assure me that you will be okay, because de Chabert women watch over you.”
Now I felt like she was
getting into the vague fake psychic crap talking about Josephine and Lisette. Your friends and loved ones will watch over you. That hurt. She saw my expression change.
“It is true, Fanchon. They do watch over you,” she implored.
“Hand me my crutches, Banyan,” I said.
“No. What I say is true. They do watch over you. I would never lie to you, Fanchon. Please, you are in danger.”
I got up and started away when Madame Du’Ponde said, “Fanchon, wait. Lisette told me to tell you that she took the picture you are looking for. She said it is very important that you find it again. But when you do, be on guard.”
That stopped me in my tracks. Did she mean the picture over Josephine’s bed? I turned to look at her.
“See? What I tell you is true, Fanchon.”
“Did she tell you where I would find the picture?” I asked.
“She said to start at the plantation.”
“Which plantation?”
“Ah, but you already know.”
After my encounter with Madame Du’Ponde I was shaken yet again. Banyan and I went to the French tourist café and plunked down a good amount of money for a dozen beignets. While we waited for them to be fried up fresh and powdered with sugar, I asked him what he had been up to in New York. He told me he had been working. When I tried to pry out information about whether or not he had a dating life he stayed tight lipped. I did get him to tell me that he had family in New York and he was born and raised on Long Island, but that was all I could get out of him.
During our ride back, it was quiet until Banyan asked what I had seen in my dreams that Du’Ponde was talking about. I confessed it out loud for the first time. I told him I had been dreaming about a girl in the water, and that she looked like me. He asked when I started having those dreams, and I told him it was just after my surgery. He told me trauma could do strange things to people. He saw it a lot in his line of work.
When we arrived at Clem and Abolina’s house, Banyan was taken aback by the cleaned up state of the house. He was even more shocked when he walked in and saw Clem cleaned up a bit. His hair was still red and wiry and his shave was a few days out, but he was mighty improved from the few meetings Banyan had with him after Josephine died.
Clem’s mood was even brighter when he saw that we had brought him a sack of pastry.
“I have a sweet tooth something awful,” he said opening the bag and grabbing his first one.
We all sat on the porch over the water, and Abolina brought us tea. Banyan kept swatting at his legs as the invisible bayou bugs nipped at him, and Abolina made sure to mention to Beau that he had not installed her screen yet.
“Well, lawman,” Clem said with powder in the whiskers on his face. “What you come all the way down here to talk to us about?”
Banyan sat up in his chair and looked at us. “That alligator of Jason Stepwald’s came from here. It had a tag under its skin from Louisiana Animal Control that had it as a registered rescue animal housed at the Alligator Sanctuary.”
“Oh my,” Abolina said. “And what does that mean?”
“It means I don’t think Stepwald finding Josephine and Fanchon in New York was as much a fluke as we thought. I think he knew they were there and sought them out.”
Beau got agitated and jumped out of his seat. “That son-of-a-bitch Thibodeax had a hand in it, I’ll tell you that.”
Banyan opened his mouth to say something, and I interrupted him. “Hold on. Just because he got his alligator from here doesn’t mean he was seeking out Josephine and I to kill us. He was a psychopath, and what about the other charms I saw in that box of his? Josephine and I were not the first girls he tried to do this to.”
Banyan took a deep breath. “Fanchon, I don’t think Stepwald was planning to kill you at all. I think he set out to kill Josephine and since the two of you had the same profile he came across yours and thought you were Josephine. The website gave you fake user names, so there was no way for him to know you were not her until you told him. Terry was obsessed with Josephine, which was common knowledge. I think he shared his obsession with Stepwald and it caught him. I don’t think it was random anymore. What I need to find out is how Stepwald came to get an alligator here. I need to see if he had any connection, because we still can’t find him. I know he had some money, and he is on the run. I came down to check the connection, and I would appreciate it if you guys would tell people to talk to me.”
Abolina agreed she would. Then he said he also wanted to make sure Stepwald wasn’t connected to anybody on the bayou.
That reminded me of last night. I told Banyan about the person I thought was following us on the banks. He asked Beau to take him down the river to where we saw it.
The two of them rode down river and the rest of us stayed on the porch, minus Clem, who had excused himself to have a fit in his room. When Banyan came back he confirmed my suspicions. Somebody had definitely been there that night, and there was not a drop of moonshine to be found.
The Photograph
Banyan went back out towards the city to stay in a hotel, this time outside of New Orleans. He did not care for the raucous nightlife he experienced last time he stayed in the French Quarter. I was trying to think of a good excuse to go out that way to see him, but I couldn’t. And I didn’t dare ask Beau to give me a ride to town to just hang out with Banyan. So, I was stuck on the bayou yet again. Beau moved me to the front porch so I could watch him while he installed the screens. Abolina had really taken to the new porch and bought an old hammock at a garage sale earlier that week. Getting into it was a real chore, but once I was in it, I felt at ease.
The morning was quiet and only briefly interrupted when old man J.B. came down the swamp to fish. He sat there with his pole in the water for at least an hour and caught nothing. By the afternoon the screens were all the way up, and between the screen, and the new hammock, I thought that porch would be my new favorite place to be.
Beau and I had lunch together, and I remembered the picture. When I thought of it, I asked Beau to run and grab it. He did, and we sat looking at it. I asked Beau if he would take me out to Oak Alley, the plantation where the picture was taken. He was surprisingly happy to go, excited even. He packed up all of his tools, washed up, and before I knew it we were on the road, headed to the plantation.
Oak Alley was my favorite of the Plantations, partly because I used to play there when I was young. My mom worked down the street doing laundry for a big manor house, and I would walk down to the plantation and climb the oaks with the little girl from the manor house, Helene Baxter. I used to love going there while my mom worked, and I remembered being quite sad the day Helene was gone from the world. That was also the day my mom and I stopped visiting.
That was back before Oak Alley was a tourist destination, and they made it fee for visit. They decided to make money off of it because it was the most famous of the plantations. It was famous for its hundred-year-old oak trees that lined the entry driveway. They framed the house perfectly. It was even more famous later because the movie “Interview with the Vampire” was filmed there, and it was all anybody could talk about that Brad Pitt was going to do a scene riding amongst those oaks.
We stayed away from the plantation for years after Helene’s death. As soon as I could, when I was a teenager, I got close to Oak Alley again. Josephine and I were greeters for the tour. We would flirt with visitors in our hoop skirts and bonnets. We made sure to charm them for tips using our best over the top Scarlett O’Hara southern twang.
When we drove by the entrance of the plantation and I looked past the gates it was just as beautiful as I remembered. It felt strange parking on the lot meant for visitors and paying to go in. I used to walk the halls of that house as if I owned the place.
The new generation of greeters looked so young compared to my memories of Josephine and I. The greeters were two girls with sweet faces. They were wearing the exact same hoop skirts that Josephine and I used to wear. When I saw them, I told
them all about how I used to work there and how to get the best tips. They were far less interested than I thought they would be, and they didn’t even put on overdone accents. They were amateurs.
We walked the exterior grounds and through the gift shop. I was looking for something with Brad Pitt on it, but they must not have loved him like I did. I left empty handed. After a walk through the oaks, Beau wanted to take me on the house tour. The house was a big two story white colonial, with beautiful wrap around porches on both levels. The rooms on the inside were smaller than they looked like they would be from the outside. I always had to remind myself that people were smaller back when it was built, so the proportions would have been considered grand. The tour guide made a point to show us how tiny the furniture was. It was made for ladies that stood less than five feet, normal back in those days.
After the tour they let us roam the house on our own. I remembered the porches well and the view from the second floor was beautiful. I asked Beau and the tour guide to help me to the second floor so I could see it again. Beau and I went out the double doors in the middle of the open hallway and had the second floor veranda to ourselves. We watched the long lane of oaks sway with the breeze. The purple orange sunset shining on the trees was breathtaking. Beau slid his hand across the railing and let his fingers touch mine. I pulled away.
“What’s that about?” he asked.
“I just don’t want to hold hands is all,” I said.
He put his hands on his hips, “Well, what about the other night, Fanchon? I thought we was having a good time together.”
All Saints' Secrets (Saints Mystery Series Book 2) Page 6