“We know. You’re sure this is all there is?”
“It is.” And after a moment: “What’s the matter, Miss Bracken, do you think I’m holding back on you?”
“Are you?”
“Are you?”
Katie and I exchanged looks.
“I was thinking maybe…Amy’s gold locket,” she said.
Jimmy shook his head. “No jewelry found on the body.” He sat back in his chair again. Looked at us. “You aren’t convinced.”
“No?”
“I’ve gotten pretty good at reading faces over the years.”
“Good for you.”
“Come on, folks. What is it?”
Katie glanced my way again, then back to Olson. “No locket, you’re sure? Not even in his…hand?”
Jimmy gave us a long look. “There’s another way in, isn’t there?”
Katie brows went up. “Pardon me?”
“To the Robichou crypt, there’s another way in, an entrance other than the big door. Am I right?”
I didn’t stay silent long enough to arouse suspicion. “How could there be? You were there, you saw.”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. Is it hidden in the floor somewhere, like a trapdoor, something like that?”
We were silent.
“A secret panel maybe, in the wall? What were you two really doing out there last night?”
My mind raced. “Quid pro quo,” I answered, “Who made the phone-in about a prowler?”
Jimmy shrugged what looked like sincerity. “Anonymous. I really don’t know. Why?”
Katie placed the wallet back on the desk. “Nothing’s really anonymous, is it?”
Jimmy sighed, frowned, impatient but cautious. “I don’t understand…”
Katie nodded. “Neither do we. Nobody in town seems to understand. But someone does, don’t they, Jimmy? Someone does.”
Jimmy sat silent.
Katie pushed up from her chair. “Don’t they, Jimmy?”
* * *
Back in the car, Katie turned to me as I flipped the ignition, the big engine roaring to life. “We should have told him,” she said.
“About the trap door?”
She nodded rapidly.
“Risky.”
She lowered her head a bit, pinched the bridge of her nose with index and thumb, winced.
“Headache?”
“Trying for one.”
“I’ve got aspirin back at the motel, or we could stop.”
She shook her head, raised it again. “He wants us to trust him, it’s screaming from his every pore.”
“Is it? All of them?”
“Damn it, Elliot, we need to trust somebody. Somebody close to the inside.”
“How close? Inside of what?”
“Or at least the near the inside…closer than we are. Where are we headed?”
I pulled into the street. “New Orleans.”
She looked at me.
“To post Angel’s bail.”
Katie made big eyes. “That’s ten thousand dollars, Elliot! And you’re broke!”
I leaned left, dug into my front pocket, held up the engagement ring. “Soon.”
THIRTY-ONE
I found a jewelry store off Bourbon Street that offered me nine thousand dollars for Rita’s engagement ring.
The ring was worth fifteen and I needed ten to go Angel’s bail. We dickered. But I was fairly adamantine: there was no point in leaving the place without at least ten grand. The air-conditioning in the T-Bird had helped keep me dry and cool, but when I entered the shop I could feel immediately their system was down. It was 90 degrees outside and beyond humid; the shop owner was the one sweating the most in the end. In a huff of disgust he finally counted out ten grand between his cash register and safe, told me to have a pleasant day in a tone anything but pleasant and I hit the door a momentarily richer man.
I left Katie in the Bird, walked up the street to where I’d seen a BAIL BONDS sign above a little agency window.
Some guy named Pete McDonough and his brother Tom, according to the San Francisco News, founded the first Bail Bonds business in 1898. Pete was a product of the post-earthquake Abe Ruef days of SF civic corruption. During his years as the preeminent bondsman of the area, Peter McDonough was accused of bribery, perjury, suborning witnesses, tampering with judges, bootlegging, corrupting officials and paying off the police. Pete developed a network of wireless communications with outlying police stations. Within minutes of an arrest, Pete’s nephew was hailing a taxi to find a judge to sign an Order of Release form, and the client was back on the street. Today, Bail Bond agents are almost exclusively found in the United States and its former commonwealth, The Philippines. In most other countries bail is usually much less and the practice of bounty hunting is illegal. The prevailing argument for abolishing bail bonding for profit has to do with the low rates of pay-out to states when defendants jump bail. Currently, in many states, bail bondsmen owe thousands of dollars in forfeit fees.
For her alleged offense, Angel Robichou could end up serving time at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, also known as the “Alcatraz of the South,” also known as “The Farm” also known as simply “Angola.” It’s the largest security prison in the United States. Warden Burl Cain once said that the key to running a peaceful maximum security prison was “keeping the inmates working. All day. So they’re tired at night.” James Ridgeway of Mother Jones said Angola was “An 18,000-acre complex that still resembles the slave plantation it once was.” You really don’t want to go there.
Fortunately--for her--Angel Robichou was still in a holding cell at the New Orleans Police Department Headquarters at 715 S. Broad Street.
Katie and I were allowed in her cell while I filled out the papers posting her bail. From outside the bars, sitting on her jail cot, Angel appeared thin and wan, dispirited and slightly disconnected from reality. Once the cell door swung open, she looked up at us and fled clinging into Katie’s arms.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” burying her face in Katie’s breast and dampening her blouse.
Katie patted and smoothed back, finger-combed her tangled, white hair from her face.
“Oh, oh! My friends!” and she looked into my eyes as if having newly discovered me.
“How are you holding up, Angel? We’re here to pay your bail, set you free.”
Angel wiped the heel of her hand across her face and came to me, threw her arms about my neck. “I know, I know! Amy told me, last night! Oh, it’s so good to see you!”
I looked past her small shoulders into Katie’s eyes. Amy told her?
“We also come bearing some bad news, I’m afraid,” Katie said.
But Angel couldn’t seem to let go of me, clinging like a lost child, cheek against my chest. “Oh! Oh, I can feel her inside you! I can smell her! My poor baby girl!”
Katie came up behind us, put an arm around Angel, pulled her gently free. Still, Angel wouldn’t take her eyes off me. “Angel, come sit with me. Elliot has some papers to fill out, and…and we need to tell you something. It’s about Dean.”
She sat on the cot with Katie but kept staring at me against the steel sink, scribbling at the sheath of papers. “I know. I know about Dean, it’s all right. Bless his soul.”
I looked up at Katie again.
Katie held the frail woman. “You know? They told you, here at the—“
“Amy told me. Last night. I’ve had my cry, made my peace with God. He was a good man.”
“Yes.”
“But that heart of his…we all knew it was coming.”
Katie gripped the white fingers, rubbed them with her free hand. “We’re so sorry, Angel. This has been such a terribly difficult period for you. In just the short time since we arrived it’s…well, we are so very sorry for your loss, for all of them.”
Angel finally turned to smile at her. “They ain’t gone, Miss Bracken. My family ain’t gone. They’re sittin’ right here with us now!”
&n
bsp; “Of course they are.”
“Amy told me!”
Katie cleared her throat. “That’s…good. I’m glad. I so wanted to bring you her locket and chain. Mr. Robichou had it with him for a time, I believe, but—“
“The locket? Oh, I have the locket! Amy gave it to me last night.”
Katie resisted looking at me again. “I see. Well. That’s nice.”
Angel dragged her small purse over from her pillow, snapped it open. “She’s been out to Mama Grace’s place. Amy has! Wants us to come out there and see her!”
Katie nodded slow reluctance. “Mama Grace? For a séance?”
Angel dug through her purse. “Now where did I put that thing…?”
Katie couldn’t help it, turned to me with pained eyes.
“Well,” I said, “we can talk about that later. First let’s get you out of this place and back to your own home.”
Angel nodded at her purse. “Yes, yes…I’d like that. Sleep in my own bed with Dean. This place is awful.”
Katie hugged her. “We’ll have you back in a few minutes!”
“You’re so kind, both of you! Amy told me to trust you! Said, ‘now you put your trust in Miss Katie and Mr. Elliot, but especially in Mr. Elliot!’ Said, ‘He knows me, Mr. Elliot does! Mr. Elliot, he’s got the key!”
Katie nodded against the pale cheek. “Uh-huh…the key…”
“Yes! She told me! Oh! Here it is!”
And she drew the gold locket and shimmering chain from her purse.
* * *
Back in Manchac (after a cramped, slightly acrobatic trip in a two-seat sport car wherein Katie and Angel continually switched laps), Angel collected her husband’s effects at the station and we drove her home.
Katie and I came in with her for a few minutes to make sure she got acclimated again in the now-empty house, a no doubt much bigger-looking house to Angel.
“Would you two like some coffee? Iced tea?--if there’s still some in the fridge.”
“I’ll get it,” Katie smiled.
After that Angel began wandering the old house, moving from room to room slowly, like walking on eggshells, head tilted like a listening robin’s.
I followed behind her, silently and at an unobtrusive distance.
Finally she came back into the kitchen where Katie had made and poured all of us glasses of iced tea.
We sat at the kitchen table, but Angel ignored her glass for the most part and her eyes continued to wander the kitchen with curiosity, lingering on familiar walls and the window fronting the back porch. She seemed smaller somehow. Even more frail than she had in her cell. I couldn’t repress the feeling she wasn’t to be with us much longer.
“It’s strange, isn’t it?” she marveled, glancing about, “…so empty…”
What could one say to that? Or do but nod sympathetically?
But the wispy woman’s eyes kept darting about like a questing bird’s, as though she didn’t quite know the place. “I don’t understand it…”
Katie and I stared silently at each across the table.
“…I don’t see her anymore…”
Katie looked up from her tea. “See her?”
“Amy. I don’t…feel her anymore. Her presence. The way I used to.” She turned to me with those dim eyes. “Even with Mr. Bledsoe here…and she fairly radiated from him at the station…”
“You…just need to get used to it,” I offered lamely.
But Angel kept searching, moving about in half-trance, fingering the gold locket constantly in her fat-veined hand, skinny fingers, as though waiting for it to talk to her.
“Why don’t you come sit and have some cold tea?” Katie suggested.
Angel turned to her quickly, wan face expectant, as if seeing Katie sitting there for the first time. “What--?”
Katie held up Angel’s full glass, smiling.
Angel shook her frail head, turned away. “No. No thank-you,” and wandered off again.
“Would you like something to eat,” Katie asked after her, “I could fix something…”
Angel was standing by the kitchen window staring out sightlessly at the backyard, the dark swamp beyond it. “Where’s my husband?”
I felt a well of impotent sympathy from my stomach. “Mr. Robichou has passed away, Angel.”
She turned to me. “No. I mean, where is he now?”
I was about to tell her “here with us” when Katie supplied the sought-after answer. “He’s still at the coroner’s office, Angel. They’ll want you there to claim the body eventually, but it can wait till tomorrow, I’m sure. When you’re rested.”
“I want to go today. Now. I want to see Dean now. Please!”
I nodded at Katie. “Sure. We can do that.” Took a final sip and stood. “If you’re sure you’re up to it. As Katie said, there’s no rush—“
“Want to go now!”
We took Dean’s old Ford truck, noisier and bumpier but definitely roomier.
Angel sat between us, not saying a word all the way there.
Katie insisted on staying next to her in the morgue room.
“What’s that?” the older woman pointed, as the sheet covering Dean’s body was pulled back.
The coroner nodded at the yellowish bruise spot on Dean’s white sternum. “Yes, I was aware of that. Could have resulted from his fall on the stone floor. It wasn’t mentioned in the police report.”
“Why not?” I wondered immediately.
The coroner turned to a stainless steel table beside him, picked up a clipboard, studied it. “Don’t know. Sometimes minor markings are left out of the reports, small, inconclusive things. I’ve confirmed the cause of death here as acute thrombosis.” He looked up from the clipboard. “If you like I could send a tissue sample to the lab. You know, just for confirmation. Don’t think it will tell us much but I’d be happy to.”
“Yes,” I nodded, “we’d appreciate that.”
“Fine.” He jotted on the board. “Where would you like to have the body sent?”
We turned to Angel.
“What?”
“Mr. Robichou’s body, Angel,” Katie said gently, hands on the thin shoulders.
“Oh. Um. Oh, dear, let’s see. Mosher Funeral Home will be fine, I think.”
Nod and jot from the coroner.
* * *
“You can just drop me at Stubby’s dock,” Angel said in the truck.
We hit a pothole and jounced a foot in the air. “The boat rental dock?” I asked.
Angel nodded. “Got to see Mama Grace.”
“Now?” from Katie.
“Amy told me last night—“
“Yes, I know,” I interrupted, “but it’s getting a little late to go out on the swamp, isn’t it?” I bent down to the steering wheel, peered up through the grimy truck windshield. “And I don’t like the look of those clouds.”
“It won’t rain,” Angel said simply.
And when she didn’t add to that, I asked: “How do you know, Angel?”
“My legs know. Always do. Please just drop me at Stubby McGuire’s boat rental, if you don’t mind, that is.”
“What if the old lady—if Mama Grace won’t let you in?” Katie called above the squeaky cushions.
“She’ll let me in, don’t fret.”
I looked over at Katie.
Who rolled her eyes.
I parked the truck at the curb atop the short hill above the rental dock and Katie and I escorted Angel Robichou down to the little boardwalk office fronting the swamp.
“You really don’t have to do this…” from Angel.
“It’s okay,” I said, “we left my car at your place anyway.”
“Take the truck. I can catch a taxi back to home.”
“Does Manchac have a taxi service?” Katie asked.
“Oh, yes!” Angel assured her.
“I was joking,” Katie smiled.
“Oh. I see.”
I was busy scanning the empty planks of the rental dock for
the bronzed kid with the Haitian accent. I spotted him the same moment he spotted me. A moment after that he hightailed it out of there.
“I don’t think anyone’s around to escort you to Mama Grace’s shack,” I said. “Anyone reliable, that is.”
“Oh, I know the way,” Angel assured me.
Katie and I were weary of exchanging cryptic looks and just went with it.
In his little office, fireplug Stubby took down a set of keys from the pegged bison board behind his counter. “Skiff number 10! New painted and caulked!”
“But does it float?” from Katie.
Captain McKenzie gave her a guarded look.
“Look, “I admitted, “I have to tell you, I’m not exactly an expert with an Evinrude outboard.”
“That’s why I’m giving them to her,” Stubby grumbled, handing the keys to Angel.
Angel smiled thank-you.
I looked out the little station window at the empty dock. “Where’s the kid today?”
“Oh,” Stubby turned to the cash register, giving me his broad back. “Around, I ‘spect.”
“Uh-huh.”
Angel walked happily ahead of Katie and me down the dock to slip number 10.
She refused any help getting into the skiff, ripped at the cord once to kick life into the noisy motor, and backed us out neatly and into the maze of swamp waterways like she’d been doing this all her life. Probably she had.
The buzzsaw motor kept conversation to a minimum until we reached the cypress grove and the cloaking shadows that concealed the old woman’s hut and most of the crooked warped jetty jutting from the tangled branches.
It still looked like rain to me as I jumped out, tied up, and helped Katie up the creaking planks. Mrs. Robichou didn’t request help.
We knocked at the door of the gingerbread house—I mean, the little shack--and waited.
Please God, don’t let her be in, I was thinking, but I could tell from her posture Katie was looking forward to this.
I knocked again.
“You kin leave thet infernal animal outside!” came the croak from within.
“The cat’s back at the motel!” I called.
A mutter, a rustle and the door opened.
FEVER DREAMS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery Page 32