by C. L. Bevill
Miss Susie sat upon it and cut her little
Ask me no more questions, tell me no more lies.
- Children’s hand-clapping rhyme
Mignon sat in John Henry’s office in his most comfortable chair. It was high backed and made of leather as soft as butter. It sat next to an oak bookshelf that was jammed full of books ranging from Vonnegut to Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. She nervously folded her hands over her lap and wondered if the jeans and jersey she was wearing were too casual. The jeans were tight and faded and showed her hips’ and legs’ best attributes. The jersey was loose and didn’t do anything for her except to provide a shirt that she wasn’t afraid to get oil paint on.
A few minutes before, John Henry had marched her into his office, sat her in the leather chair, barked “Stay,” and marched himself back out.
Should I be offended? she wondered idly. Yes. I should. I should leap up, tell him to put his arrogance where the sun doesn’t shine, and let me do what I want to do. But…but, but, but. Oh, dammit to hell!
He marched back into the office and deliberately didn’t look at her. But she looked at him. He was over six feet tall. His hair was a dark brown; it was the exact shade of a seal’s burnished back as it sunned itself at noon. It was thick, and she loved to run her fingers through it. Although he kept it short, it perfectly framed his strong square face and his sherry-soaked eyes. He was about ten years older than she; most of that experience was saturated in regimented action. He was a West Point graduate and had spent years in the U.S. Army and more years in the New Orleans Police Department. He was divorced; his ex-wife moved with their daughter to Shreveport. His daughter was named Carolina after his grandmother, and meant more to him than anything. He visited her often, and occasionally, she came to La Valle, but Mignon hadn’t met her yet. She suspected that his daughter wasn’t emotionally ready for Daddy to have a serious girlfriend. John Henry hadn’t brought it up, so she hadn’t questioned it.
Mignon could tick everything that she knew about John Henry off on the fingers of one hand. He was a generous lover, a conscientious boyfriend, and solicitous of her well-being. He also genuinely cared for her. But her stubborn streak vexed him. Her independence could be the bane of his existence. It had reared its ugly head in the initial weeks of their first meeting, but there had been other isolated incidents. This was one of them.
John Henry stood with his back to her. He looked out the window, the light silhouetting his large body. He was standing in the same position that he had been in months before when he’d watched her leave after being arrested for fraud. The similarity didn’t escape her and wondered if he were thinking about it, too. She’d used him then and felt an inordinate amount of guilt over it. She didn’t want to use him again. It would hurt him, and John Henry was too clever not to know what she’d done.
“What are you doing?” he asked quietly after a minute.
It wasn’t the question she had been expecting, but Mignon didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Asking questions. There’s not a thing wrong with doing that.”
“No, there’s not,” he agreed tiredly. “Can I persuade you to not ask questions?”
“Do you suspect that the boy downstairs, Tomas Clovis, was the one who murdered Dara Honore?” Mignon winced as she asked the question, perversely glad that John Henry couldn’t see her face. She sounded like Jane Marple or Jessica Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote. Neither was exactly a flattering comparison. Nosy. Interfering. Dogged. These were the character traits of an individual who would have answers at any cost.
John Henry’s broad shoulders moved in minute repressed energy. Under his shirt she could see the anxious movement of his muscles undulating across his back. Irritation and annoyance all wrapped up in a potent package. It was bound to happen sooner or later she thought. After all, their relationship had been running pretty smoothly up until this point in time. They got along very well. They could usually talk to each other. But she also knew that every road traveled has its bumps. Some of them even had dead-ends.
“Do you know how angry I am with you?” John Henry asked mildly.
Mignon bit her lip. Pretty angry would have been her answer. So much for jumping up and telling him to stick it up his bum. I’m all talk and no action, she derided herself. What she really wanted to do was to stand up and step behind him so that her front barely brushed against his back, and wrap her arms around his trim waist while resting her head against his shoulder blades. The warmth of his body would seep into the anxious chill that had invaded hers like a pervasive virus. She missed him, and an isolated night in nearly a month wasn’t nearly enough. But she wasn’t sure if she had enough courage to take that step.
“Mignon?” he said again, and she marveled at how calm his voice was. But then John Henry rarely lost his temper. No, he kept it inside and worked it out when he ran endless miles on daily missions of exorcising the demons from his head.
“She was just sixteen,” Mignon said. “She lived in a foster home. The other girls probably play tricks there. Her parents didn’t want her at home. The only way she knew to express herself was to act defiantly. It was what she had to do. I pulled her lifeless body from the bayou because the thought of animals eating away her flesh made me sick. But what made me sicker was the thought that someone had dumped her there as if she were some piece of trash.” She stared at his back and fascinatedly watched leaping muscles. “How can I not have been affected by that, John Henry? Does your detective know that her boyfriend cried because she was found in the water? Does he know that, and does he think that Tomas is just some really good actor, smart enough to walk out because he knows that he’s not being arrested? Does he—”
“Enough!” John Henry roared and spun around. Before Mignon could sit up straight in the high-backed chair, he was in front of her, looming over her, his hands on each side of her head, pressed against the soft leather. He leaned in so that his face was only inches from hers. “I know all that,” he snarled, and in that instant he lost any pretense of civility. His Southern accent returned in full force. “Do you think we’re the stupidest people on the face of the earth here? Do you think we won’t do our jobs because this is rural Louisiana? Do you think you’re immune from all this? Do you want to get killed because you ask too many questions…again?”
Her mouth opened, and John Henry pulled back to stare at her lips. Before she could say anything he pressed his lips against hers in an urgent kiss. His arms wrapped around her body and pulled her up into a frenzied embrace. His strong arms pressed her up against him so that for a moment her toes weren’t even touching the ground, and in that moment, Mignon forgot to breathe. When he broke away, they were both were trembling with reaction. He stepped back, and Mignon sat down helplessly because she couldn’t do anything else. Her knees were shaking, and she could feel a thousand butterflies fluttering madly in her stomach.
Only John Henry had this effect on her. Only he did, but she didn’t know how to tell him that. Obviously, she had a similar effect on him because he was at a sudden loss for words. For a long minute, he stared down at her with an unreadable expression on his handsome face. His eyebrows pulled together into a fierce frown as he labored for a sense of equanimity.
“Don’t do this, Mignon,” he said warningly, or was it pleadingly.
Mignon grappled herself for composure. She found it deep within her reserves. “My cousin came to see me Wednesday,” she said tentatively.
Taken back, John Henry’s head jerked as if she had just said she was secretly a princess from outer Mongolia and there on a mission to find the aliens who had crashed in Roswell in ’47. “Your cousin,” he repeated. “I didn’t realize you had relatives left in the area.”
“His name is Robert Dubeaux. He’s been away. On board a ship in the Gulf.”
“Dubeaux,” he said thoughtfully. “A sailor? I’ve met a few Dubeauxs in my time here.” The tone didn’t give anything away, but Mignon thought she recognized the message behind th
e words.
“I never said I came from a family that was as pristine as the driven snow,” she said with bitter amusement.
Eyes narrowing dangerously, John Henry stared down at her. He was standing only a yard away, towering over her as she sat in the chair. “That’s not what I meant.”
“They’re having a welcoming party for him. The family, that is. He wants me to come,” Mignon said quietly. “He knows about you, as well. You were included in the invitation.”
John Henry was taking it in with sudden aplomb. She found his transformation fascinating. “Do tell,” he said.
This is what it must be like for a psychotherapist. Trying to read every meaning, trying to read every nuance. I don’t like it much. Mignon crossed her arms over her chest. She hoped the action would mask the shaking tremors of her muscles. “Are you shocked, John Henry?”
“Shocked that you have relatives?” he repeated incredulously.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said firmly.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Then what did you mean, Mignon?”
“You know what they are,” Mignon said, and the words were almost polite.
“Good people, most of them,” he said without hesitation. “Like some other people in the parish, some of them like to drink too much. A few of them beat on each other. They like to keep to themselves. I don’t think poorly of them because of their level of poverty or because some of them live in shacks.”
“My mother was a Dubeaux,” she said, and her eyes were locked on his features.
His anger surged again. “You’re asking me if I’m a bigot,” he stated disbelievingly.
Mignon opened her mouth to protest and discovered that he was correct. She wouldn’t have said that asking him if he were a bigot had been the words she would have used. In fact, when the exact words came out of his mouth, they had shocked her silent. What she really wanted to know was, if being what she had recently discovered herself to be was going to be a problem with him. Her face twisted in dismay. An agonized word tumbled out, “No.”
“No what?” John Henry stepped back. He had been annoyed before, teetering on the edge of anger. Now his face was as cool as a country club’s ice sculpture.
Mignon’s heart sank in her chest. She wasn’t handling this very well. What could she say? She wasn’t used to having a relationship with a man. She hadn’t had many. There was Nehemiah Trent, who was her adopted father, and there had been a few male friends. But there had never really been anyone like John Henry. Generally, she could rely on her quick wit and intelligence for the astute conversations with the people she socialized with. But like everything else, it was different with him. So very different. “I didn’t mean that,” she murmured, and not only did it sound weak, it was weak.
John Henry didn’t say anything. The gap was beginning to widen like an impassable chasm. The earth was beginning to shudder in place. Mountains would form, and lava would spew a thousand miles. All of which she would have to cross if she wanted to reach him again.
Leaping to her feet, Mignon said quickly, “No, I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. I just wanted to know if—” she cut the words off because every completed sentence that ran through her mind sounded awful. She couldn’t figure out how to say what she needed to say without sounding accusatory or sounding as if she were a bigot herself. She’d had a day to get used to the idea. Mignon knew what she was no matter what label was slapped across her forehead. But she was still unsure of their relationship. She would have said that it wouldn’t have mattered to John Henry, but she thought he should know.
“If it matters to me,” John Henry finally finished for her.
He put his hands on her shoulders and stared down into her face. For a moment, he searched her face for something and then he stirred. Mignon could feel the warmth of his hands through the material of her jersey and relished it for a moment, until she realized that he was urging her to move. John Henry guided her to the door of the office and gently pushed her out. Then the door shut behind her, and Mignon was left staring into the wide open eyes of John Henry’s secretary, Louise.
Louise’s mouth opened and closed in shock.
Mignon blinked, trying to force the obstruction from her throat, and then walked out of the sheriff’s department with as much poise as she could.
•
Investigator Simon Caraby tapped on John Henry’s door a few minutes later. He did it even though Louise had shaken her head warningly at him.
John Henry barked out something that Caraby interpreted as an invitation to enter. So he pushed the door open and stepped inside. The sheriff was sitting behind his desk, a storm cloud darkening his face, and his long fingers wrapped around a framed photograph. His eyes flickered up at Caraby and then back to the photograph. “What the hell is it?”
Caraby didn’t back down at much in his life. Despite poor beginnings and questionable parentage, he’d persevered and accomplished what he’d dreamed of as a child. He’d become a police officer. Eventually, he’d become one of two investigators for St. Germaine Parish. It was a coveted position, and one that allowed him a great deal of freedom. Most of the felonies he looked into were mild in nature. Burglaries, assaults, and grand theft auto were common for him to investigate. Deaths were less common. Homicide was almost nonexistent. As a matter of fact, the last murder had been when Mignon Thibeaux had pressed the St. Michels for answers about her mother’s disappearance. And when it had been all said and done, it was only a matter of writing up the paperwork in triplicate. She had forced the answers, and there hadn’t been any remaining doubts.
“Say, John Henry,” Caraby began, trying to judge the level of the sheriff’s irritability.
“Simon,” John Henry said promptly back. “Are you going to tell me what you want or just shoot the shit?”
Caraby’s expression didn’t waver. John Henry wasn’t prone to swearing. He only did so when he was really angry. “Maybe I should come back later, John Henry.”
John Henry made an indistinct noise. He put the photo on the desk and pushed it away from him. “Sorry, Simon. Not the day to stop drinking coffee for me, I guess.” He waved a hand at a chair. “Sit down if you want.”
Caraby was thinking that if the coffee looked anything like Mignon Thibeaux, then maybe John Henry was correct. He looked at the leather chair and wondered if she had been sitting there just before she’d walked out of the department as if her world had just fallen apart. Shaking his head about the seat, Caraby pushed a piece of paper across to John Henry. “Doc just faxed this. Thought you might want to know.”
John Henry looked at the paper. “Is that right?” he asked mostly of himself. “We can do a DNA comparison, right?”
“Yes. It’ll be a relatively simple process, and it can be facilitated to ensure a speedy return.” Caraby paused. “Before anyone has a chance to disappear.”
Wearily, John Henry looked up at Simon’s black eyes. He thought about it for a moment and speculated how a man with such pale skin could have black hair and black eyes. Not that it mattered because no matter what his color of skin was, Simon Caraby got the job done. He was calmly effective, and he didn’t argue with John Henry. He almost laughed at the thoughts going through his mind. What would Mignon think? It didn’t matter in the least to John Henry about the color of a man’s skin, only that he was capable of doing the job. It really doesn’t matter…
“You’re going to have to wait for the funeral,” John Henry said. “We’ll have a few deputies there. Try and wait until after the service.”
“If the individual doesn’t run,” Caraby agreed. “They see us, you know, they might just up and haul ass. Maybe they don’t even bother to show up for the funeral.”
John Henry’s eyes came up again. “So you’re going to go out to the bayous and start messing around out there? They’ll hear you coming a mile away. Maybe further. You’ll get a load of rock salt across your hindquarters.”
A chilled smile flickere
d across Caraby’s face. “You forget where I came from.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” John Henry said coolly.
Caraby shrugged. “We’ll get the perp. Aren’t a lot of questions about cases like this. Probably fold like cheap luggage when we show ‘em that paper.”
John Henry looked at the solitary fax sheet again. Questions that he didn’t want meandering around in his head were doing just that, gnawing away at his brain like bloodsucking parasites. “It doesn’t mean that he’s the one conclusively.”
Caraby tilted his head a little. “No, but you’re aware of the statistics in cases of this nature. Significant others account for the largest proportion of suspects, and the stats are usually verified in a court of law.”
“I know the statistics,” John Henry snapped. “I don’t want any kind of mistakes here.” He rapped the paper with his knuckles. “Make sure of it. No errors. No oversights. No suspects shot trying to escape. No unanswered questions. You got that?”
One of Caraby’s eyebrows went up in silent rebuke. He nodded while saying, “I got that, but you know I don’t take shortcuts.”
John Henry’s eyes went to the photograph he’d pushed away. “Neither do I.”
Caraby could see the picture now. A group of men and one woman stood in front of a downed missile that seemed as long as a bus. They were all dressed in desert camouflage and were laughing into the face of the camera. He couldn’t tell if one of them was John Henry but knew that the sheriff had served in the army for many years. But that was all Caraby knew about it.
Sitting back in the chair, John Henry relaxed his large frame and looked at Caraby again. “Just make sure there isn’t any stone left unturned.”
Caraby didn’t say anything else. He nodded and left the office.
John Henry stared at a wall in silent contemplation.
Chapter Nine
Saturday, March 8th