Miami Midnight

by Davis, Maggie;

  “She doesn’t want to go.” Gaby was so tired she was light-headed. Fright, revulsion, the awful excitement of the police searching her house for intruders, had drained her. “You heard what the doctor said. He can’t forcibly admit her. Maybe,” she added, not really caring anymore, “Dodd can reason with Mother.”

  Jeannette, they’d discovered, was not injured in any way, only drunk enough to pass out in the front hall by the door. According to the police, her mother might have heard a disturbance outside and gone to see what it was. Now, conscious but hardly sober, Jeannette was making life miserable for anybody who tried to persuade her to go to the hospital, even overnight for observation.

  Dodd was waiting, Gaby knew, to tell her that this was their chance, at last, to get her mother hospitalized for an evaluation and possibly treatment. Gaby supposed it was, but at that moment it was wildly unreal to be sitting in the living room at well past midnight, surrounded by uniformed policemen, detectives, the ambulance crew, the Brickell family doctor, listening to Detective Lopez explain to Dodd what the police believed had happened. From what she gathered, it was all being blamed on the Escuderos, Elena and her son Angel.

  The night was still sweltering. Detective Lopez, in a rumpled business suit, was perspiring slightly. He’d learned, early on, that the call to investigate a suspected breaking-and-entering involved two employees of Miami’s second largest newspaper—one of whom was the daughter of the once very well-known Paul Collier—and an angry family friend who had just driven up to find out what in the hell was going on.

  Detective Lopez had instantly recognized the family friend as an influential Miami lawyer and businessman, the son of a former city councilman, a partner in one of the city’s most prestigious law firms, and a descendant of a Florida pioneer family that had virtually founded Old Miami society. Dodson Brickell III also had an honorary VIP police pass. And he was, he told Detective Lopez immediately, shocked, angry, and disturbed about the effect of the night’s events on Mrs. Collier and her daughter. Especially the business about the dead dog.

  “We run into this every once in a while,” the detective explained. “Last year we had a regular epidemic. It turned out to be some sort of fight between rival priestesses.”

  He looked across the brightly lit sala to where his partner, Detective Andriado, was kneeling beside the living room coffee table, putting chicken feathers taken from the Colliers’ back door into small plastic sandwich bags. The alleged victim, Mrs. Jeannette Collier, was sitting up in the armchair as the doctor checked her blood pressure again.

  “Usually,” Detective Lopez went on, “the complaints are about the goats and chickens and stuff used in the—ah, the rituals. The Department of Health forwards them to the Miami P.D., and then we go in and clean out the premises where the alleged problem exists.”

  Dodd only stared at him. The detective continued, a little uncomfortably. “Officially the city’s attitude is that Santería, voodoo, shango, whatever these people want to practice is harmless, just so long as it doesn’t create a health hazard.”

  “You call this harmless?” Dodd was incredulous. “Women scared out of their wits, the house smeared with blood and garbage, a family pet strangled?”

  “Allegedly strangled,” the detective corrected him. “Mrs. Collier’s not able to state that she heard or saw anything. The dog wasn’t a nuisance, there’ve been no complaints from the neighbors, so we can probably rule out that someone would want to do away with it.”

  Gaby watched the second detective stack his sandwich bags in an ordinary brown paper grocery bag. There had been chicken feathers and blood smeared all over the sun porch door, but the police had found no evidence of forced entry. No one had come inside the house and nothing, as far as anyone knew, was missing. Her mother was not hurt, only embarrassingly drunk.

  “Nobody around here would kill an old dog,” Dodd said. “People know the Colliers. They don’t have any enemies.” He gazed around the room. “What the hell else did you find?”

  Detective Lopez indicated the sun porch. “You can look outside if you want to. They killed the chicken, spattered the blood and feathers out there.”

  Gaby wrapped her arms around her body and shivered. It had been hours since she’d had anything to eat and she was exhausted. She was still worried about David Fothergill. When the police had arrived, they’d asked for her identification and Crissette’s, even their Times-Journal employee passes and their driver’s licenses, almost before they did anything else. If David had been there they would have arrested him, surely, as an illegal alien.

  She could hear Detective Lopez on the sun porch explaining that the black chicken feathers and blood were being taken downtown to Miami police laboratories to be tested, but there was no reason to believe it was other than what it appeared to be—animal blood, not human. And they were certain now Mrs. Collier’s collapse was due to alcohol intoxication, not foul play.

  Gaby wanted to put her hands over her ears. She knew what was coming next. Detective Lopez was going to tell Dodd that Jupiter’s death and the bloody mess at the back door probably somehow involved the Escuderos living in the garage apartment.

  Santería. She’d heard of it before. After all, she’d grown up in Miami. In Little Havana there were shops called botánicas full of plaster statues and ingredients for voodoo charms, but she had never paid much attention to something so far removed from her own world. It was nothing short of grotesque to find it there, now, in her own house on Palm Island.

  Worse, Elena and Angel Escudero were gone. An examination of the garage apartment showed they had taken a few clothes with them, but not much else.

  Detective Lopez came back into the living room. Dodd, wearing jeans and an old jogging top he’d obviously thrown on when Gaby had called him, followed, looking angry and frustrated.

  “It’s voodoo with the Haitians,” Detective Lopez was telling him. “Everybody knows what that is, I guess, from the movies. We have problems with that too. The Cubans and Puerto Ricans are into Santería. The Jamaicans and the other islanders practice what they call shango. Down in Brazil they tell me it’s macumba. It’s all related.”

  Dodd rumbled a question Gaby couldn’t hear. “Not me,” the detective said quickly. “I’m third-generation American. I don’t even speak Spanish. But you’d be surprised at the people who really believe in this stuff.”

  Crissette took Gaby’s hand in hers. “Tired? They look like they’re winding it up.”

  Gaby watched the second police detective pick up more bloodstained black chicken feathers from his pile and stick them one by one into yet another plastic bag. She fought down the same feeling of panic she’d had when she’d seen the black limousine pull away from the curb a few hours ago.

  No one would believe any of this, she thought. She needed so badly to confide in someone without sounding like a mental case. Luckily, she’d known better than to blurt out anything about drug dealers and being followed to Detective Lopez.

  Now she wasn’t so sure even telling Dodd was such a good idea. His reaction would probably be the same as Crissette’s: a comment about how hard she’d been working and worrying about her job, about her mother. That she’d been under lots of stress. And that people saw strange things every day in Miami.

  “Ordinarily,” Detective Lopez went on, “you wouldn’t find Santería in a residential area like this. Except, of course, that there are Hispanics living on this property.

  Dodd scowled at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  The detective’s expression was bland. “Well, Santería is used for a lot of things. Revenge, coercion, threats, sometimes just a spell to get lucky and win at the horse races or jai alai. Or a lover. The bad stuff, like the black feathers and chicken blood, is supposed to be very powerful. The red cord used to strangle the dog is really big magic. Something like this isn’t for an amateur. A santera, the priest or priestess, usually sets it up.”

  Dodd rubbed his forehead, exaspera
ted. “There ought to be some law to take care of this nonsense!”

  “For some of these people it’s a religion, Mr. Brickell. Any law against it would be a violation of the Bill of Rights. Freedom of worship, specifically.” Detective Lopez turned away. “Anyway, even if the mother and the boy show up there’s nothing to charge them with. They might have been the targets, not the perpetrators.”

  Dodd planted his hands on his hips, his big head thrust forward. “I never see a damned police patrol car out here on Palm Island. If you people can’t get a regular patrol in here to keep this from happening again, I’ll damned well go through the mayor’s office.”

  The patrolman and the detective exchanged looks. “Mr. Brickell,” Detective Lopez said, “I’ll be glad to file a report of trespassing and malicious mischief by person or persons unknown. I’ll even leave a number where I can be reached if Mrs. Collier and her daughter are bothered again. I don’t know about a regular patrol out here, but in my judgment if the Cubans are gone, they probably took the problem with them.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  Detective Lopez actually smiled. “I’ll tell you one thing I can do. If Miss Collier can find a plastic garbage bag, I’ll have one of the officers put the dog in it. Just leave it out by the curb and Animal Control will pick it up in the morning.”

  When she and Gaby were finally alone, Crissette was adamant. “I don’t want to hear it, Gabrielle.” They were sitting at the kitchen table drinking hot tea in the hope it would help them to sleep. “I don’t want to hear about drug dealers and you being followed by weirdos in big black limousines. What you got here,” she said decisively, “is a bunch of crazy Cubans playing with voodoo. You told the detective yourself, you and your mother offered to let some of the Marielitos live here years ago through the church program. You know there’s no connection with all that stuff that’s been bugging you. Unless you really are a paranoid chick.”

  Gaby knew Crissette didn’t mean it, but the intimation that this might just all exist in her head was making her feel worse. Shock, horror—it had all had its effect on her. During the past few hours while the police filled the house, she had had wild thoughts about the men who dealt in drugs who might have done this obscene thing to frighten her, to seal her lips about what she’d seen in the Santo Marins’ garden.

  Or, she thought with a shudder, it might have been James Santo Marin himself.

  Before she could answer Crissette, they heard David Fothergill scratching at the kitchen door.

  “You must have been watching the house,” Crissette said, letting him in, “to get here this quick.”

  “I’m develop-een skills, love, I never knew I had.” The big Trinidadian came into the kitchen, smiling his good-natured smile. Which faded when he saw Gaby sitting with her head propped in her hand, staring numbly into space. “How’s lovely Miss Gabrielle? She all right?”

  Crissette rummaged in the cabinets for another cup. “We just got back from the hospital. I asked some creep in admitting to give Gabrielle some sleeping pills, but he wouldn’t do it.”

  “I’m all right,” Gaby said. “I’m just too tired to be sleepy, that’s all.”

  David eased himself into a kitchen chair. “It was a very bad thing, this. I’m sorry it happened to you. How is your mother?”

  “All right. She’ll be in the hospital overnight for observation.” Gaby was still trying to come to terms with her last sight of her mother, looking strangely old and wasted against the white sheets of the hospital bed. “Crissette is going to stay here tonight. It was the only way we could get rid of Dodd.” When he looked at her inquiringly, she said, “The man you call my boyfriend.”

  “Good,” he said promptly, “I’ll stay, too.”

  Crissette whirled on him. “Now wait a minute, David—”

  “I’ll sleep downstairs on the sofa.” He kept grinning. “There is a sofa, yes, lovely Miss Gabrielle?”

  Dodd had tried hard to persuade Gaby to spend the night at his condominium in town. He’d only given in when Crissette volunteered to sleep over. Now Gaby found the idea of big, soft-spoken David Fothergill staying downstairs strangely comforting.

  “Is Dodd the big man who came in the Porsche car?” David asked. “He looks very rich, love.”

  “I grew up with him.” It was beyond Gaby, at the moment, to explain about Dodd. “He’s an old childhood friend.”

  “But not a lover?”

  “David, will you leave her alone?” Crissette said. “I’m trying to get her calmed down so we can all go to sleep.”

  Gaby looked at David through a fog of fatigue. She had always loved Dodd. It was impossible to think of him any other way, and it was too hard to explain. “David,” she asked softly, “do they have voodoo in Trinidad?”

  For a moment he looked startled. “Ah, so they know what the blood and the feathers mean, the police.”

  “You knew right away, didn’t you? You knew when you saw poor old Jupiter. Oh, David, why didn’t you say something?”

  He glanced at Crissette. “I thought somebody only plays jokes,” he said uneasily, “notheen serious.”

  “David, they killed my dog!” Gaby burst out. “Don’t you call that serious? The detective said it was because somebody was trying to put black magic on the Escuderos, the Cuban family who live over the garage.”

  “Do not say black magic,” he said quickly. “That could mean anything. This is African religion, very old, very mysterious.”

  “Tell her about it,” Crissette said, dropping wearily into a chair. “She still thinks it’s drug dealers.”

  “It is real religion,” David said almost somberly. “In the bad old days when the slaves were brought to the islands they want to worship their own gods, but the white masters say no, that is dangerous, they don’t like it. Then black people worship their gods in secret because the white masters punish them very severely if they don’t be Christian.”

  David pulled the cup of tea toward him. “Must we drink hot tea, love, in this very warm weather? Have you no cold bottle of beer, not even a little one?”

  Crissette gave him a hard look. “Water or tea, man, take it or leave it.”

  He sighed and lifted his cup. “In Haiti, the priests of voodoo had to hide in the forest, play the big drums that call the gods to come down. So the voodoo it stay in the hills very hidden from the white man. But in Cuba the slaves are more clever. They don’t go into the woods. They take the Catholic saints from the churches and make them same as their old gods. So if the white masters come around looking for African religion, the slaves say they are doing nothing wrong, only praying nicely to Saint Barbara, Saint Lazarus, the Holy Virgin, all of them. But the Cubans will tell you Saint Barbara is really Chango, who is god of fire and lightning. Saint Lazarus is Babalu-ai-ey, the healer of the sick. And the Holy Virgin is sometimes Oshun, the goddess of love and money, and sometimes Yemaya, who is Mother Goddess. Depending if she is Nuestra Señora de la Caridad or la Señora del Asunción.”

  Both women were staring at him. Crissette said, “Man, you don’t believe in all that, do you?”

  “But they do practice black magic, don’t they?” Gaby said quickly. “The detective said killing poor old Jupe was some sort of spell, to threaten the Escuderos.”

  David lifted his eyebrows. “I don’t know none of that, love. Santería is not a Christian religion, it is African, and the gods are very different.” He looked away. The iyalochas, the priestesses, will make spells and charms for you that be sometimes good, like if you want luck to gamble. Or sometimes bad, if you want to hurt an enemy.”

  “David, you jungle bunny,” Crissette sputtered, “you were really into this down in Trinidad, weren’t you?” She reached over and grabbed his cup and saucer. “My family’s right, I must have been out of my mind to ever have anything to do with you!”

  “Please, you two.” Gaby couldn’t bear to listen to them wrangling again. “Do you suppose Angel and his mother were in some s
ort of trouble,” she said musingly, “and we didn’t know anything about it? I wish they had said something. Maybe we could have helped.”

  Suddenly, she couldn’t hold back a convulsive yawn. She looked at them sheepishly. “I’d better look for some clean sheets so we can make up a bed for David down here.” When Crissette turned to her, frowning, Gaby said, “I want David to stay. I’d really feel a lot safer with him down here.”

  Crissette looked around one of the Colliers’ usually closed-up guest bedrooms, this one with Scalamandré gauze curtains that were virtually rags, and a Louis XIV four-poster bed with a tufted satin spread.

  “This is some place, Gabrielle,” she said appreciatively. “It blows my mind. I’d like to get in here sometime and set up my cameras, do a photo-essay on this old house.” She fingered the satin spread thoughtfully. “And maybe some others on Palm and Star islands, too.”

  Gaby yawned again, her eyes drooping. “My mother loves satin and mirrors. This room used to have a wall-to-wall white fur rug. My father always said the upstairs bedrooms were decorated in ‘Jean Harlow Ultra-Baroque.’”

  Crissette kicked off her shoes and sat on the edge of the bed. “It would be kind of strange to live in. Listen, if you get scared, Gabrielle, you can come sleep in here with me. Or I’ll go down to your room, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Scared?” Gaby hadn’t even considered it. “I think I’m so exhausted I’ve blanked out. I’m not feeling a thing.”

  Crissette followed her to the door and stood there, watching as she went to her own bedroom down the hall. “If anything bothers you, Gabrielle,” she called after her, “just yell.”

  Once in bed, Gaby shut her eyes, positive sleep would come quickly, she was so tired.

  It didn’t.