“Uh-huh. With a very perceptive agenda. I don’t like it.”
He was between me and the house, the swamp at my back.
“Mr. Robichou—“
“Why you wanna go and torture a fragile creature like Angel? Can’t you see she’s already ripped to shreds with guilt? That both of us are--live with guilt like a cancer? Kind of cancer that keeps growing through the years but never kills ya! Kind of guilt and self-punishment you ain’t never dreamt of—never experienced in the worst war! This house is haunted all right, Mr. Bledsoe-Bracken whoever-you-are, but not by a ghost…by the memory of a real live girl! The kind not you nor yer science,-magic nor God Hisself can evva erase! You unnerstan’ what I’m sayin’, boy?”
There was no more land to back up on. “I think I do, yes.”
“You think!”
And just when I was sure he was going to push me into the swamp, the fire in his eyes died slowly away and he stood there blinking at me as if for recognition, blinked too at the dancing fireflies and looked about his property as if suddenly recalling it from a dream.
The chicken chuckled again and kicked its claws at his arm.
He looked down at it, and in the scarce moonlight I could see his face was fallen with grief, his eyes had gone moist.
He finally lifted them and the chicken to me. “Sure you don’t want that bird? Fat and tender as they come…”
I tried a shaky smile. “Thanks, anyway. I appreciate the offer.”
The older man nodded then, a tear in the corner of his eye. “Best get to feedin’ Louis, then,” gave his wrist a quick twist and the chicken’s head departed from its body in a black squirt of blood.
I yelped and stepped back, felt water slosh my socks.
“Hey, Louis!” Dean called with cupped, streaming hands.
The headless chicken was running and flopping in demented circles between us. “Hey, Louis!”
Robichou turned to me almost apologetically. “Best step back, now.”
I backed up amidst still-slinging chicken blood until both socks were soaked. “No, no, not that way!”
The black water erupted beside me in an explosion of iridescent froth.
The big gator, all mouth—so much mouth it blotted out the stars with its pink jaws and amazingly white studs of polished teeth—was at least the size of a Tyrannosaur. I could see all the way down the cavernous gullet, like Pinocchio entering the whale.
You’re going to die. This is how you will die.
There wasn’t time to run, even if I could have, and I couldn’t—my legs were frozen cold like those twin banana popsicles I used to love. The stench of dead fish and other engorged things enveloped me as I awaited a gut-squeezing death I couldn’t imagine.
But the big jaws remained open wide in front of me as if to be photographed, the webbed feet firmly anchored to the flopping shoreline.
Robichou was at my side then with the headless chicken and in a white blur of movement tossed it into the gaping cavern. “Back off now, Louis!”
The jaws snapped closed with the crack of a Louisville Slugger and the enormous pebbled snout retreated and disappeared in a black swirl, like a bad dream.
When I could move again I found Robichou smiling toothily at me, incisors seeming only slightly smaller than the reptile’s. “Never seen a gator close up, huh?”
“Not really.”
He snorted a grin. “Hell, Louis ain’t nothin’, you should see some of them crocs down to Australia! And they don’t tame, neither, not fer shit! Lose yer arm and half yer head!”
I smiled, but it was twitchy with adrenalin.
“Elliot!”
I turned, half in a daze, and saw Katie rushing down the yard to me with the cat in her arms.
She skidded up short when she saw my face. “Elliot? What happened?”
“Jest feedin’ Big Louis,” Robichou calmed, “got a little close.”
Katie glanced at him, then urgently back to me. “Elliot, we have to go! Garbanzo’s sick!”
“Who--?”
She shoved the cat at me. “We need to go! Now!”
“Cat come over ill, has he?” from a concerned Dean, “not the food, I hope?”
Katie shook her head, eyes not leaving mine. “I don’t think so! He’s—we need to get him to a vet! Elliot? Do you hear me?
* * *
We drove to a Motel 6 I recalled seeing just outside Manchac.
Rather Katie drove while I held the cat. Apparently I looked too rattled to drive. The cat looked fine.
“What the hell happened to you back there?”
My heart was still slowing. “Gator. Big gator. Major gator.”
“It attacked you?”
I looked down at Garbanzo purring in my lap contentedly. “Look. He’s purring. He never did that with me! I thought you said he was sick.”
Katie punched the dash, turned on the brights. She was driving too fast on the narrow country road, like she was trying to get away from something. “He’s fine. I just used the cat as a blind to get us out of there.”
I was slowly returning to reality. I looked up from the cat at Katie’s anxious profile. “Did something happen back there in the kitchen? Did you see something? Katie? Did you see Amy?”
“Not exactly…”
“Well, what then?”
She took a hand from the wheel, reached into her front jeans pocket and dropped something on the Blackbird’s gearbox between us. The locket.
I shook my head, still feeling a little spacy. “I don’t understand…you stole this?”
“No.”
“The Robichou woman gave it to you?”
“No. I was helping Angel do the dishes, drying as she wiped. I excused myself a moment to use the bathroom. On the way down the hall I got this…strange feeling.”
“Like?”
She shrugged. “Strange. I don’t know what made me put my hand in my pocket. But when I pulled it out again I was holding the locket.”
“Amy’s locket?”
“Well, how many lockets have we seen today? Yes, Amy’s locket.”
“The locket that was under the iced tea pitcher?”
“The locket that’s supposed to be—according to Angel Robichou--in the little glass jewel box in her daughter’s room.”
I stared at her. “I don’t get it. Are you saying Amy gave it to you?”
“I’m saying I found it in my pocket.”
“Maybe you, uh…”
“’Uh,’ what! Uh, accidently? Uh, inadvertently. Uh, absently! I didn’t take the locket, Elliot; the last time I saw it was when you did, on the kitchen table under that pitcher.”
“Calm down.”
“Not quite there yet, are you, professor?”
“I guess not. Quite where?”
Katie blew out breath behind the wheel, tips of her knuckles white against it. For a moment she seemed to grow calmer. “Yes, it actually crossed my mind, maybe I really did subconsciously steal it somehow. But as I started back to the kitchen my mind wasn’t buying it. Just before I reached out to hand it over to Angel I had that strange sensation again, a sort of feeling of dread. I slipped the locket back in my pocket, picked up the dish towel instead and went back to drying.”
“So you didn’t give the locket to Angel?”
Katie shook her head. “No. And the longer I stood there beside her drying those priceless- looking antique dishes, the more something kept telling me to get the hell out of that house!”
I still wasn’t with her. “Why?”
She drew another calming breath. “Don’t you see, Elliot? They don’t trust us, either one of the Robichous! Angel may have called me for help, but I think she began regretting it almost immediately after she hung up. I mean…” she waved at the air impatiently, “she wanted help but she didn’t want help, you know?”
“Take it easy, you’re hyperventilating.”
She grabbed another breath, fingered back her hair. “As for Dean, well, he certainly d
idn’t want us there. He was outright hostile! God, I was so afraid something was going to happen to you down at that dock!”
Something almost did.
“Shit!” I said suddenly, staring down at the coiled locket on the gearbox. “He planted it on you! To make you—make us—look like frauds! In front of his wife!”
Katie shuttered a shrug. “Maybe! That’s what I thought at first. But this Angel woman, I don’t know, I can’t figure her, comes on warm, come on cool. Maybe she planted it on me, who the hell knows? Doesn’t really matter, either way I was trapped, right? They outsmarted me, stole my bishop when my queen wasn’t looking! The second I pulled that locket out of my pocket in front of them it would look to either one or both that I was stealing it. A phony paranormal thief!”
I nodded. “Or that you were trying to plant it somewhere else in the house for Angel to find later--beef up our credibility.”
“Exactly! Didn’t you notice how the air changed in the middle of dinner? Dean had Angel herself believing she was moving the locket around the house, sticking it here and there, either consciously or subconsciously!”
“Shit.”
“In any case, the moment I figured out what one or both of them was up to I had to get us the hell out of there before someone supposedly realized the locket was missing from the table. Then it was only a matter of time before one of them proposed a strip search! So I pretended the cat was sick and ran to get you. I doubt if they bought it. Not when they find the locket missing.”
I sat there in the gently rocking sports car, wanting to turn to Katie and suggest we just keep on driving all the way back to Texas. But something stopped me.
Katie looked askance. “You’re thinking the same thing I am, aren’t you, Elliot? You’re thinking of a third possibility!”
“That maybe it was Amy who put the locket in your pocket?” I said.
To warn you, I said to myself.
ELEVEN
I checked us into a mom-and-pop motel on its last legs just outside of town.
Though it was not even 11:00 p.m. yet, I was exhausted, fumbling cross-eyed for my wallet.
“It’s my case, Elliot, you’re just helping out,” Katie brushed me aside, sliding her credit card across a tired plastic counter top. I was too beat to argue.
A grumpy-looking gray head festooned with neon pink curlers frowned down at Katie’s card, hunched up the shoulders of her Indian bathrobe obstinately, not looking at all pleased to see what could only have been the rare guest out here in the sticks.
“Don’t take credit cards.” Terse as an old school marm with halitosis.
Through the door behind the rumpled owner I could hear the discordant conversation of TV voices, but I think we’d woken the old woman dozing before her set.
“That’s a Visa,” Katie told her, “everybody takes them.”
“Don’t take credit cards.”
“Well, I don’t have the cash.”
A standoff.
“Try Tucker’s Inn down the road off Lake Pontchartrain.”
“How far down the road?”
“Eighty miles as the crow flies.”
“Oh, Christ,” Katie moaned and the old lady arched a menacing brow.
“Might they take to blasphemin’ down at the Lake but we don’t cotton to it here! Ner cussin, ner fussin,’ ner drinkin’,’ ner loose women. You two married?”
I pulled a fifty from my wallet, pushed it toward the old bag. “We’d like separate rooms.”
The bill was snatched up and clawed away like a magician’s trick, and the squat Indian robe turned to the key behind the counter. “All’s I got clean is 105 and 106 right next to each other.”
“That’s fine,” I nodded, barely awake.
I got the arched brow again, like it wasn’t fine at all, like maybe there were connecting doors a “loose woman” or “drunken man” might exploit, but she shoved the keys at us. I waited for change, got a venomous stare that said I’d wait for it all night, took Katie’s arm and exited the little, shingle-sided office.
* * *
“Sleep tight,” I said, twisting the key in my lock, “don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
Katie pushed into her own cabin, slapping at her neck. “I wouldn’t worry about the bed,” she yawned, “but I’d keep my window shut.”
I did. All night. And it was just as stifling as I imagined it would be.
And even so the musical whine of wings played kamikaze with my head all night unless I pulled the damp, wrinkled sheet over it, and I could only do that until I ran out of oxygen. Not that there wasn’t an air conditioning unit, it was just missing the control knob. I twisted until my fingers bled, even got down on my knees and tried with my teeth; it wouldn’t budge.
Back in bed, I would almost find a nanosecond between whining wings and suffocation; then the cat would wake me up by walking over my face.
“Bonzo, lie down!”
He finally settled in the crook of my knees. I got the sheet over my head, felt myself begin to drift toward blessed oblivion, then felt soft, obtrusive paws traversing my face again.
“Goddamn it, go to sleep! What’s your problem?”
I rolled over, found the cat sitting restlessly at the foot of the bed staring out the single cabin window. He looked like an Egyptian statue of old, a corona of yellow moonlight caressing his intently staring outline. His big eyes shone luminous, wet and other-worldly as a creature of stygian vaults and haunted sepulchers. I, uh…tend to get a little purple when I’m exhausted late at night.
I buried my head again, waiting for the next tread of paws softly squashing my nose, gently gouging my eyes.
Nothing happened, and waiting for it to just kept me awake with expectation.
“Shit!” I threw back the sheet and looked for something to throw at the cat; like an anvil.
He was still sitting in the same position, those big shiny eyes fixed on the window…or something beyond the window.
I slowly put down the shoe I’d intended to launch, dropped my legs over the mattress and crept silently up behind the cat under a sudden distant chill. I looked past the feline’s unmoving head, saw nothing but darkness and a complicated tangle of darker woods. “What is it, boy? A deer? A woodchuck? I think you’re out of your league here.”
The cat remained silent.
I stared until my eyes watered, started to turn away when I jerked back to the dark panes, certain I’d seen something move out there…
I bent closer, pressed my forehead to the cool glass.
The little girl stood at the edge of the woods staring at me.
I held my breath, blinked back terror and saw the wooden handle of the knife jutting awkwardly from her small chest…the black bloom of spreading blood…
The cabin lights went on in a rush of white.
I yelped, jumped reflexively like a poked rat, my shins striking the bedpost painfully, ankles tangling with the bedclothes and slamming me awkward-hard to the motel floor, the dark Army blanket settling over my head like a shroud of finality.
I sat there in abject terror under the mildewed blanket and listened to the soft tread of little feet creaking across toward me from the door. They stopped beside me.
The blanket was yanked away unceremoniously.
Katie, bent at the waist, stared into my face. “It’s a stump.”
I untangled myself, accepted her hand and allowed her to hoist me. “What--?”
“The little girl in the backyard. It’s just an old tree stump with a train of Spanish moss on top that looks like blowing hair. Saw it out my own window. Are you all right, Elliot?”
“Why the hell didn’t you knock?”
“I did.”
“When?”
“Before I came in, of course. You didn’t hear me?”
“No!”
“Huh,” she said. Looked me up and down. “You look terrible.”
She looked great.
She wore a blue N.Y. Mets jersey almost t
o her knees and her hair was slightly tousled from the pillow; face warm and patient and sleepy-sexy. I kept wondering if there were panties under the jersey.
Katie came around me and picked up the cat. “He’s prowling, right?”
“Mostly in my mouth, yes, how did you know?”
“Male cat. Or maybe you snore.”
“Never got the chance between the mosquitoes and the Budweiser Clydesdale there.”
Katie stroked the flat, burnished head, scratched between his ears and carried him to the door. “Cats prowl at night. Didn’t you notice at home?”
“Rita took care of him at home. And my own bed is looking more and more inviting.”
“With Rita in it?”
“Where are you going with him?”
She flipped off the light and carried the cat to my door. “I’ll take Bonzo for the night.”
“Katie, you don’t have to do that…”
“S’okay. I like to have a male around the place. Try to get some sleep, huh?”
“Hey—“
She turned in the doorway.
“After tonight we only have two more days, you know...”
“Speaking of Rita.”
I sighed.
Katie smiled, turned with the cat, turned back again. “Oh, Elliot--?”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s pick up some Off tomorrow, huh?”
“’Off’?”
“Insect repellent.”
* * *
Next morning we woke early, found a harmless-looking greasy spoon in town (“Lotta Eats”— subheading:“Awful Good Food”) and, over grits, eggs, hominy, bacon, grits, orange juice, hot cakes, coffee--did I mention ‘grits’?—I mostly listened while Katie talked about the unsolved Amy Robichou case, or what she knew of it up to now.
“Amy was taken—apparently out her bedroom window—sometime between 12:00 a.m. and 3:a.m. August 2, 1992. This was discovered by her mother, who didn’t think to write down the exact time. You have egg on your face.”
I wiped my chin. “And probably more to come. Taken out her bedroom window. Like her brother, twenty years later.”
“Except no broken glass, Amy’s window was up. It was in the report.”
FEVER DREAMS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery Page 10