FEVER DREAMS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery

by April Campbell Jones

  “You’d know who. You took it, Diane.”

  She tossed the photo back at me, turned. Turned back and looked at the money.

  “What’s a packet of Ecstasy go for these days, Diane?”

  She looked down at me, pulled a handful of hair away from one side of her face, exposing bad skin.

  “Maybe I took it. About a million years ago.”

  “Where?”

  “Can’t remember.”

  “Whose door is that in the background behind them?”

  “Can’t remember.”

  I shoved the photo back at her, right side up this time. “Was it the door to the crypt? The one on the Robichou mausoleum?”

  “Does it look like that door?”

  “No.” I dropped another bill on the table.

  Diane looked at it a moment, finally sat again. “Because the old man replaced it. With a stronger one.”

  “Dean?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What can you tell me about Roger’s little sister?”

  “Who?”

  “His kid sister, Amy.”

  “She drowned.”

  “How?”

  She stared at me a moment, then tapped the two bills with a red nail. I laid down another fifty.

  Diane Murdock scooped them up neatly, stuffed them into her cleavage and stood up.

  “How?” I repeated.

  “Thanks for the drink,” she smiled a smile that melted immediately, turned and headed for the ladies’ room in back. There was a dark knotty pine staircase beside it. I got ready. Diane took the stairs.

  I left the bar, walked back to my car, slid in. The cat was asleep on Katie’s lap.

  “Well?”

  “Well, I’m poorer by two hundred bucks.”

  “Nothing, huh?”

  I sat back in the darkened driver’s seat, stared thoughtfully at the keys in the ignition, looked back up at Jimbo’s sputtering neon. “She admitted knowing about Amy.”

  Katie sighed, dropped back against the headrest. “Elliot, everyone knows about Amy.”

  I stared at the bar. “It wasn’t enough.”

  “Certainly wasn’t.”

  “My two hundred, I mean. She’ll score something small upstairs but it will only make her want more.”

  Katie pushed up. “She said that?”

  “Her eyes said it. Along with her dry mouth and tremors.” I glanced at my watch. “Let’s give it half an hour. She’s looking for a john with real money and she’s not finding one in there. Ten bucks says she’ll walk back out of that bar door within half an hour…”

  Katie dropped back on the headrest, closed her eyes. “You got ten bucks?”

  * * *

  “Hey. Hey!”

  Katie was shaking my shoulder. I’d dozed off.

  “Don’t turn around,” her eyes were glued to the rearview, “but Diane just left the bar.”

  I sat up slowly. The 4x4’s high beams fell across my back windshield, bright and revealing.

  “Shit!”

  Katie slid over quickly, the shadow of her face covering mine. “Kiss me! Quick!”

  She pulled me down to her mouth, turned our faces from the lights.

  When I opened my eyes enough to peek I was still squinting into glare. “Damn it,” I murmured into Katie’s mouth, “she’s just sitting back there!”

  Katie kissed my cheek, covered it with her palm, pecked my chin, my nose, closed her lips softly over mine again. I could smell the oil in her hair. Smell all of her running through me. I reached for her breast.

  “Hey,” she muffled against me, “I don’t think she can see that low!”

  “Why take a chance?”

  I cupped her breast, pressed harder against her mouth. She lifted her chin, panting. “That may be the best line of your life.”

  The truck’s tires made a crisp sound beside us as they passed. Darkness settled over the T-Bird’s front seat again.

  “She’s getting away…” Katie whispered against me.

  “Who--?”

  She reached over to the dash but I wouldn’t let go.

  I ran my tongue over hers as the ignition clicked and the motor caught.

  I finally drew back. Katie switched on the lights.

  She turned back and looked into my eyes. Then down at my lap. “Can you turn the wheel in that condition?”

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  “Elliot?”

  “What?”

  “Want to let go of my breast now--?”

  I sat up, took the wheel and the cat jumped into my lap. “Ow! Hey!”

  “C’mere, sugar,” Katie plucked him away, sat back with a smile and scratched his head, “daddy doesn’t want the pussy right now!”

  I groaned, pulled out into the street.

  * * *

  We followed the 4x4 for at least another hour, maybe longer.

  “What the hell--?” I groaned.

  “She’s certainly taking the circuitous route.”

  “Yeah, but to where?”

  “Maybe she’s onto us.”

  “She isn’t onto us. She isn’t on anything right now but dope…and getting more of it. She’s trying to think where, and the hour’s late.”

  Katie rubbed Garbanzo under his chin. “You’re running low on gas, Elliot.”

  “So is Ms. Murdock.”

  “Why is she driving in circles? She never really seems to leave the county.”

  “She’s thinking. Where can I get some dough?”

  “Well, if she’s looking for a john, she’s not going to find one out here in the sticks.”

  “Can’t really stand around on street corners either. I’m sure Cormac’s looking for any excuse to pick her up with that parade of needle tracks up her arm.”

  “Look! That’s the third time we’ve past that billboard.”

  “Maybe she’s thinking about hiking down to New Orleans, scoring something there--hold on!” I braked evenly as the 4x4’s own brake lights flared brightly ahead. The truck slowed, looked like it was making up its mind, then took a sudden skidding right through a thickly wooded area.

  “Isn’t that—“

  I nodded. “The road back to the cemetery.”

  Katie began to wake up. “She’s meeting someone!”

  “Yeah? Who?”

  “I don’t know. Someone she arranged to meet with on her cell phone?”

  I thought about it. “Damn…maybe she is onto us…”

  Now I had to drop even further back; any strange vehicle on the cemetery road besides Diane’s truck would stand out suspiciously at this late hour. Again, we lost her taillights several times around tight corners, but even with my low beams picking out the occasional side artery ahead, I had a gut feeling she’d pass it and stay with the cemetery road.

  When I saw her red lights bounce under the overhead wrought iron entrance, I cut my low beams and slowed to a crawl. It was hard picking our way through the bumpy darkness, the constant terror of colliding with a gravestone or crypt statue looming out of the mist, until I finally pulled over to the small shoulder and cut the engine.

  “What are we doing? She’s way up the road, we don’t even need the headlights!”

  “But she’s slowing down. If she stops and cuts her own engine she’ll hear mine.”

  “Oh.”

  And she did stop, did cut her engine, her headlights too. But not before they washed over Roger’s crypt.

  We sat in silence a distance behind her truck, listening to the crickets and the ticking of the cooling engine to see what happened next.

  Katie leaned toward me, whispering. “She came all the way back here just to pay her respects to Roger again?”

  I watched the dim outline of the parked truck ahead of us, saw the taillights wink out. “Maybe. I don’t see any other vehicle lights around.”

  “Maybe they’re already here! Waiting in ambush! I don’t like this, Elliot!”

  “Maybe I should hold you close again.�
��

  “Maybe we should get the hell out of here! It’s the middle of goddamn nowhere! If we run into someone now, someone with a gun…”

  I nodded. “That’s exactly why we should stay. Just make sure we avoid the gun. Look! Diane’s getting out of the truck. What is that? That thing in her right hand…?”

  Katie bent forward, squinting. “Her purse? No…it’s all wrinkly. Looks like a paper bag or something. What on earth is she up to?”

  I sat forward as Diane headed up the short stairs of Roger’s crypt. Diane paused a moment before the big mahogany door, looked both ways furtively, then turned the big brass knob.

  The heavy door opened slowly, smoothly under Diane’s straining shoulder.

  “She has a key!”

  I shook my head. “No. Why would she? Dean Robichou must have forgotten to lock it!”

  “He didn’t forget, Elliot! He was drunk, but I saw him lock that door after the mourners came out!”

  “Are you certain?”

  “I’m certain!”

  I chewed on it a moment. “Well, he sure as hell wouldn’t have given the key to Diane. This doesn’t make sense.”

  “Unless she filched it!”

  We turned to each other. “She’s a drug-head, Elliot—probably an expert pickpocket!”

  Under moonlight, Diane closed the heavy crypt door behind her, but left it open a crack.

  “Now what?” from a visibly wired Katie.

  What indeed. “I don’t know. If she really is just saying good-bye to Roger—“

  “With a paper bag?”

  “—it would be rude to break in on her. Let’s give her a few minutes.”

  Katie kept craning around.

  “You’ll get a crick in your neck.”

  “This place reeks of bad vibes, Elliot! I’ve got a horrible feeling…”

  “Relax. Look at Garbanzo.”

  The cat was curled up asleep between us.

  “Stupid cat.”

  I grinned. “I thought you said felines were brimming with mystic powers and secret passages to other dimensions.”

  “Not while they’re asleep.”

  “Here comes Diane…”

  Katie jerked around. Diane was easing back through the crack in the crypt door, turning again and pushing it tight, sealing the mausoleum. I could see the glint of the key in her hand. I could also see the brown paper bag.

  “Flowers…” Katie murmured.

  “What?”

  “For Roger’s grave. Sorry—‘vault.’”

  I peered closer in the dark. “You take flowers in to a crypt, you don’t them out!”

  “You bring the withered ones out.”

  I shook my head. “So where’s the fresh ones she brought with her?”

  “In the bag?”

  “That flat ‘wrinkly’ bag? C’mon, Katie!”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Diane practices Voodoo—there’s ceremonial gris-gris in the bag.”

  I made an unconvinced face, nodded at my windshield. “Look, she’s leaving, heading back to her truck.”

  “If you’re going to run and confront her, now’s your chance, Elliot.”

  I sat back. Then vaulted forward, nearly honking the horn. “She dropped something!”

  “What? Where?”

  “Couldn’t see…something in the grass.”

  “On purpose, you mean?”

  “Couldn’t see.”

  “She’s getting back in her truck, Elliot, are we going to question her or what?”

  I put my hand on the car door--hesitated, sat there. “No. We can always pick her up later. I want to have a look at that mausoleum.”

  “Why?”

  I waited until the 4x4’s red taillights vanished over the cemetery ridge, then pushed out of the T-Bird. “C’mon.”

  As I came traipsing around the front of the car I realized just how feeble the moonlight was tonight. The arms of the cypress and willows were barely visible overhead, more discernible by their rustling than visibility. Katie was still rattling at the passenger door.

  I turned back to her impatiently, keeping my voice low even though the feeling of isolation out here was palpable. “What are you doing?”

  “Leaving a small crack in the window for Garbanzo.”

  “Don’t happen to have a flashlight with you, do you?”

  “That’s right,” she said, joining me, “I don’t happen to. Got a cell phone, though.”

  I reached for my own, “Good idea.”

  I shone the small phone light ahead of us on dark grass and weeds, the occasional bone-pale wedge of tombstone.

  “Watch where you step!”

  Katie followed, two weak pools of light barely making a dent in the gloom.

  “What are we looking for?”

  “That thing she dropped,” I cast my slim glow around me, “on the way back to her truck.”

  We moved in random circles, drawing closer to the silent bulk of the mausoleum.

  “Hey!”

  I shifted my light. Katie was bending to the sandy soil.

  In a moment she held up a slip of paper: a fifty dollar bill.

  She handed it to me as I came up. “You bribed her in the bar, right?”

  “She dropped this by accident. If she dropped it. Could have been someone else, someone at the funeral today.”

  Katie made a noncommittal sound, went back to sweeping the ground around her with the feeble phone light. “This thing’s not bright enough…”

  “Bright enough to find that bill. Hey, what’s this--?” I stooped, retrieved a short length of dully gleaming brass, its edges brightening as Katie’s light spilled over it too.

  “The crypt key! That she accidently dropped!”

  “Apparently.”

  I turned the key over slowly in my fingers. “Accidently…”

  Katie’s nervous features glowed in the phone lights. “What? What’s the matter?”

  I studied the key thoughtfully. Finally shook my head. “Diane didn’t drop it key accidently. She picked Dean Robichou’s pocket, came back here and used the key to open the crypt door, then dropped it in the grass on purpose.”

  “To make it look later like Dean accidently dropped it.”

  Katie started toward the crypt door. “Where are you going? Katie? Hey! No! I’m not going inside that thing!”

  “S’not a ‘thing,’ it’s a sacred resting place on consecrated ground…”

  “I’m not going in there! I’m…mildly claustrophobic!”

  She stepped up to big mahogany door with the key. “Fine. Stay out here then.”

  “Alone? Like hell I will! Katie, what do you hope to accomplish with this?”

  “To find out if it’s the right key, for one thing.”

  It was. The lock opened easily under her hands.

  She turned to me, her face dimmer under my light. “The battery’s getting low on my phone. Shut yours off in case we need a back-up.”

  “I haven’t agreed to go in yet!”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  “Katie, goddamnit!”

  But I clicked off my cellular and followed her inside. One step at a time. Slowly, phone held out before me like a weapon.

  “Oh Christ this is creepy…”

  “And amazingly dry.”

  “Dry!”

  “For this far south.”

  “I hate that weird echo in your voice.”

  “I’ll try to stop it.”

  “Thank you.”

  Even our soft footfalls echoed.

  “This is just plain weird, Katie!”

  “I don’t think it was built with tea parties and crumpets in mind.”

  “That cloying reek of flowers! Smells like a…a...”

  “Funeral? Those are violets you’re getting stoned on. From Amy’s vault over there. See?” She shone her phone light.

  “Freshly placed.”

  “Angel, no doubt.”

  Katie crept to the little vault, bent closer, sw
itched her phone light back on. “’Amy Robichou…our true Angel.’ 1986 to—hey! The year of death’s been scratched away!”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s plain desecration! Of a child’s grave! Who’d do such a…oh.”

  “Yep.”

  “Angel, right?”

  “Be my guess.”

  “Poor thing. Still holding out hope because of an empty vault…”

  “It’s not the only empty one. Few more tenets still waiting…” I moved my fading light to the opposite wall, played it over the seamless steel vault fronts of Dean and Angel Robichou, plus a few cousins or uncles I didn’t recognize.

  “Sad…” Katie whispered. “A sad little place.”

  I turned the light on Katie’s face. “Why is the idea of death suddenly sad for you?”

  “For the Robichou family. Roger would have been the last one to keep the legacy alive.”

  I watched her a moment. “And here I thought you were an atheist.”

  “Did you? I never said that.”

  I shone my light around, let it play over the crypt walls. “People die, sweetie. We’re all just passing through…prisoners of the flesh ephemeral. ‘We cannot be made of stone like thee…’”

  “Is that The Bard?”

  “That’s Elliot Bledsoe via mangled Victor Hugo—deformed Quasimodo’s lament to the deformed gargoyles of Notre Dame.”

  The next thing we heard was the kind of sound you (hopefully) only hear once in a lifetime, but never, ever forget.

  The sound of a heavy mausoleum door slamming tight behind you.

  And you on the wrong side.

  TWENTY-TWO

  We pounded and called for a good twenty minutes.

  Katie for even longer, I think.

  There was no interior keyhole for the door. Just a blank plate of brass.

  I was an idiot.

  We should have checked it when we entered, but who thinks of such things? Which was no doubt the whole point.

  Katie yelled until she was hoarse. The dimming glow of my phone light showed blood tracing her knuckles.

  An abject swooping dread fell over me along with a bleak vision of our future. I grabbed Katie and pulled her close, held her flailing wrists. “Hey. Stop now. No one’s out there this time of night, it won’t do any good.”

  But her normally pliant form was all elbows and angles. “I can’t believe it! Diane locked us in here! She must have been onto us all the time! Lead us right down the garden path! The cemetery path! That homicidal little bitch!”