Crimson Bayou

by C. L. Bevill

  Mignon blew a breath of air out through her mouth and saw it move a rampant curl that was hanging down the side of her cheek. She took another breath and fought for composure. “What about Robert?”

  “One of Dara’s boyfriends,” John Henry said succinctly.

  “Oh come on,” Mignon protested. “You’ve got to have more than that. I saw you asking about the damn knots on the pirogues. Were they the same as that one around Dara’s neck?”

  “Almost the same,” John Henry admitted grudgingly. “It’s not a very common knot. Most people tie a plain old granny knot if they tie anything at all. The rope was the same kind as that used on the dock where the pirogues were. But I’ll give you that it can be purchased in any Walmart within the continental United States. And they sell an amazing amount of it. Standard hemp. Not used too much commercially. More something for yachtsmen and climbers. You know, people who use boats. We found a length of rope in the back of Tomas’s father’s truck. We think it’s the same rope, but the truck is left in an open parking lot for hours at a time.”

  “Boyfriend and possibly the knot and possibly access to the rope,” she said precisely. “That’s still pretty weak.” But even as Mignon said it, she knew that she had thought the very same things herself and couldn’t hold it against him.

  John Henry’s head shot around. “And that’s why you should keep away from Robert.”

  Mignon’s eyes went wide open. “Robert’s on leave for another two weeks. Then I don’t know how long he’ll be gone. His mother is very sick. Cancer of some kind, and I can’t make that kind of promise.” She finished the last sentence very quickly as if saying it that way would make John Henry all that more amenable to her refusal to comply.

  “Dammit, do you ever listen to me?” He looked around and couldn’t find any of his clothing, and then he remembered they had disrobed in the bathhouse. In a maddened rush, they had shed clothing like it was on fire. A blush stained his cheeks, and he kept his head averted so Mignon couldn’t see the betraying emotion.

  “Bathhouse,” she said unnecessarily and smugly.

  “I know where they’re at,” he barked, and with an abrupt about-face that any well-seasoned soldier would have envied, he marched out of the bedroom.

  Mignon covered her head with a pillow.

  •

  John Henry got to use the shower but obstinately refused to try out the Jacuzzi. He left wearing the same clothing he’d come in the day before and with a set expression that spoke volumes about what he thought about her inflexibility on the matter of the Dubeauxs.

  After he was gone, Mignon found a clean pair of jeans and a clean T-shirt. It was late enough that the sun had set, and she was starved. She managed to make herself a peanut butter sandwich, swearing to run an extra mile the next morning in return, and made a cup of herbal tea. While she waited for the water to heat up, she checked her messages, listening to one from Nehemiah Trent and another one from her agent. She grimaced to herself and silently vowed to return calls the next day. Then she pulled the bag that had belonged to Dara Honore out from inside the Ben Franklin stove in the living room.

  The stove had been returned to its original position, and the weather had been too mild to set a fire in it. Tile had been set into the floor around it so sparks wouldn’t burn the wood flooring. Comfortable gliders had been placed on each side of the stove, and a large rag rug in a hundred shades of red, orange, and green dominated the floor. A few of her simple oil landscapes hung on the walls. She had wanted the rug to be the focal point. That and the large black stove that sat smack in the middle of the room were what visitors looked at first.

  Mignon ignored the inviting gliders with their oversized cushions and settled onto the middle of the rug. She needed room to spread out. Without hesitation, she upended the bag and watched a bundle of papers and photos spill onto the colorful rug. The thought that she could be destroying evidence by handling it crossed her mind, but Dara had handled these items, or she had taken them from other people, so fingerprints probably wouldn’t be an issue. Still, she considered, I should handle them as little as possible.

  The first thing Mignon saw was a photograph of Sister Helena. It was a telling item. It was another in the series that had been framed and sitting on her desk. The young woman with the platinum hair and vivid blue eyes was there again, but this time the sister and the young woman were kissing for the benefit of the camera. It wasn’t the kind of kiss that one would give a mere friend. It was apparent from this solitary shot that the pair had been lovers.

  Holding the photograph by the edge with the tips of her forefinger and thumb, Mignon examined it. It was folded, and the fold appeared to be an old one. If she had to guess, and that was all Mignon could do at the moment, she would have supposed that the photograph hadn’t been framed with the others but put away in a draw or stuck in a wallet so that the sister could revisit her former love by viewing it occasionally. With the problems the Catholic church was undergoing, admitting to a lesbian affair in the past, even prior to taking one’s vows, would be the poorest of timing. Furthermore, Sister Helena worked with children. Not just children, but girls, and because her sexual preferences had been clear in the photo, it would be immediately perceived that she would be a threat to the students at Blessed Heart.

  However, Mignon had seen the sister at work. She had been watching the older woman with a keen eye because of her suspicions. There had been no inappropriate touching. There had been no insinuations from the girls. There was only the telling rhyme from Dara. “In her life boys are rare.” The obvious connotation was that it was because she was a nun, but Mignon knew differently now. Dara had found the photograph by foul or fair means and had taken it and then she had openly taunted the sister. Had she used it as leverage with the sister?

  Tomas’s words came back to Mignon. “She not like the other girls. She better than them. Like you, I reckon.” The comparison bothered Mignon. She had done things by hook and crook to find out what she wanted to know. She had done it and felt little guilt afterwards except to those who had been innocent bystanders; John Henry was a notable inclusion. Had Dara been in an untenable position? Had she wanted to keep their child so badly that she would have done anything to keep it? And was the photograph enough to cause Sister Helena to murder Dara, despite her petite size and frame?

  Putting the photograph aside, Mignon carefully went through the papers. She discovered the letter written by Linda Terrebonne to Father William. In childish handwriting, crisscrossed by countless corrections, it revealed her girlish crush but was rather tame in nature. As a matter of fact, hardly anyone would even lift up their eyebrows. If it had been a letter from Father William to Linda, that would have been very different, but adolescents often have crushes, and the letter was three years old.

  Clicking her tongue in rebuke of her own thoughts, she backtracked. It would be terribly embarrassing to a seventeen-year-old girl. As a matter of fact, Linda wouldn’t like to admit it at all. However, a child in foster care has few, if any, possessions and tended to hang on to the things they did own. Like a simple letter that had never been given to its intended recipient.

  There were some other photographs. Taken with a cheap digital camera and printed from some cheaper color photo printer, they showed the isolated cemetery and the forlorn crimson glass of the last window that remained there. Dara or Tomas had attempted to capture the way the light bent in the window. The photographer hadn’t gotten it quite right. There were a few shots of the gravestones and the way the stones were being slowly consumed by the bayous. One was actually a very good shot showing a wreath of Spanish moss swathed across a marker tilting into the silt.

  Then she started on the papers. Most of the papers were the same standard-sized sheets out of a spiral notebook, the same kind schoolchildren used everywhere. The edges showed that they had been ripped out, leaving a ragged perimeter of paper bits. Girlish writing talked about jump roping competitions. Apparently, it was one thing th
at Dara enjoyed about Blessed Heart: the accomplished jump rope team. Part of the competition was the inventiveness of the rhyme itself. The creativity involved with crafting a new rhyme had become Dara’s forte.

  Dara had worked on many. Many were crossed out in places and re-written in others. Some were fashioned on old classics. I like coffee, I like tea, Mignon read. I don’t like Blessed Heart. And Blessed Heart doesn’t like me.

  Interspersed with the rhymes were a few other letters. Some were the pretty letters that Tomas had written to Dara, the ones mentioned by Linda. These were boyish attempts at poetry and expressions of love that made Mignon feel a blush of shame for having to read them.

  There was also a letter from a girl named Aimee. It was addressed to Dara and spoke about how angry Dara’s father was about what Dara had done. Mignon gathered that Aimee was referring to Dara’s pregnancy and the ensuing time spent in Blessed Heart. Aimee also mentioned that Dara would be married to a Creole boy of Noel’s choosing.

  Mignon thought that Aimee must be one of Dara’s siblings. She must be privy to what Dara was going through and knew exactly where she was at, although, from the tone of the letter it seemed as though she was restricted from talking to her sister on the phone or visiting her in person.

  Pushing the letter aside into a pile of other letters from Aimee, Mignon briefly closed her eyes. It sounded like something from a hundred years before. Only Dara and her family knew if Noel was serious, whether he had the capability. Sixteen years old, pregnant, forced to bear one’s child as if the act was innately shameful, and then threatened with a forced marriage.

  Desperation. Mignon had said it earlier to John Henry and never was it as true as it was at that moment. “…I don’t know if you realize what desperation will do to a person.”

  Mignon’s eyes began to scan over the other rhymes. At first she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Dara’s handwriting varied dramatically with her moods as if written by a half-dozen girls. Then Mignon saw something else. She almost forgot and grabbed the sheath of papers, then remembered and pulled away. The first rhyme that had gotten to her wasn’t so obvious. It read:

  Creoles in the bayou…pull them down.

  Blackie under the bed…shoo him out.

  Boys in the school…please, teacher, please teacher. May I leave the room?

  Paper on the floor…pick it up.

  White folks in a jar…shake ‘em out.

  Monkeys at the zoo…look, mama, there’s one!

  It was the “blackie” reference that first made Mignon blink. Then she began to go through the rest. Some were innocuous. Others were out and out racist. Slow realization made her comprehend that the person who had written these rhymes didn’t like anyone with dark skin. The words used weren’t polite, and the insinuations made Mignon shudder with distaste. The “N word” was used repetitively. The word Gullah was used as a slur of the worst sort.

  Memory came back to her. Her art student, Callie, had said that Dara had sung the rhymes to irritate people. She had been quick. “Sarah’s pretty and tall. Her skin’s like stone. She likes art and ya’ll. In her sleep she’ll moan.”

  There had been another one, the very first day of the art class. “I had a Gullah boy, he’s double-jointed. He gave me a kiss and made me disappointed. He gave me another to match the other. All right, Sharla, I’ll tell your mother, for kissing Terry, down by the river. How many kisses did he give you altogether?” It wasn’t telling by itself, but even so, Mignon had been taken aback. It was the cultural slant of the people who grew up there. This was the way they had been raised, and they didn’t see anything wrong with it. In fact, the girls probably weren’t even aware of what they were singing about.

  And there had been one the first day she’d come. Mignon had been too shocked to really pay attention. She had been thinking about the dead young woman she’d discovered in the bayou. She’d been thinking about how it really was in foster care. She’d been thinking about how easy it would have been for some terrible person to take advantage of the children under his charge. She hadn’t been thinking about what jump-roping rhyme the girls had been singing. But she concentrated, it was something very odd. The words drifted back to her. “Old Mister Henry is as black as night. He never comes out in the full sunlight. He married a girl with pale, pale skin. They had sixteen pairs of twins. One set was brown. One set was pink. One set was round. One set was the color of fresh-raised mink. How many children did they have?”

  Had the author of that one been the same as the ones under her fingers? Mignon thought it might very well be. Both Father William and Sister Helena had indicated that they had to watch what rhymes came out of Dara’s mouth. She had been quick, perceptive, and…a racist?

  The concept was floating past Mignon with the alacrity of a bullet train. Raised as a Caucasian with no concept that she was anything but a Caucasian, Mignon didn’t realize the implication before that very moment in time. She’d heard of reverse racism, people of color who were prejudiced against Caucasians. But this, this was so very strange.

  The individual who had written the majority of the rhymes was racist against people who had darker skin. The individual who had written the rhymes was herself a Creole, someone who was part black. She had been biased against what she was herself.

  Uncalled for, Tomas’s handsome features appeared in Mignon’s mind. The young man possessed skin that was like the bluest ocean on the blackest night. Next to his white teeth and the clearness of his eyes, it seemed even darker than it was. This was the man who Dara had spent endless hours with in an inaccessible spot where no one else could intrude. It was a place that she didn’t particularly like because of the bayous, but still she had gone, and she had gone to share herself with Tomas. She spoke to him about her dreams and he to her about his. They made love and conceived a child. It was a place where she had hidden her most prized possessions because of the very reason that Mignon already knew about, that there was no privacy in a foster home.

  Dara had been in love with that which she clearly showed herself to be bigoted against.

  Mignon shifted the dozens of rhymes around with the edge of her fingernail and tried to put it together into a pattern that would be comprehendible.

  But answers weren’t forthcoming.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sunday, March 16th

  Ten o’clock is ringing. Mama, may I go out?

  My young man is waiting, waiting to take me out.

  First he buys me apples, then he buys me pears,

  Then he gives me a quarter, to kiss him under the stairs.

  I wouldn’t take his apples, I wouldn’t take his pears,

  I wouldn’t take his quarter, to kiss him under the stairs.

  At last I took his apples, at last I took his pears.

  At last I took his quarter, and kissed him under the stairs.

  - Children’s jump rope rhyme

  Upon agreeing to teach a temporary art class, Mignon had been issued a blanket invitation to Sunday Mass at Blessed Heart. Father William held Mass three times on Sundays and reconciliation from 4 – 5 p.m. Families of students were encouraged to come when applicable. Other family members were prevented by law from coming within 500 yards of the school, like the little girl, Sharla, whose father had broken her leg with a sledgehammer. Mignon decided to attend the 11 a.m. Mass. After her morning run, she took a shower, and then dressed in attire suitable for church; a knee length dress with cap sleeves and matching pumps.

  On her way through the living room she noticed something lying on the rag rug where she had been working the night before. It was a small white rectangle, and she reached for it with ginger fingers not knowing what it was. Mignon held it cautiously between thumb and forefinger, studying it with a wary eye. It had been in Dara’s papers, she realized. Perhaps it had been stuck haphazardly to the back of something else, and she had initially missed it. But it must have fallen away to the floor when she had gathered everything together and r
eturned it to the original plastic bag.

  How Dara came to be in possession of it was a question that Mignon would have dearly liked the answer to. Minor and innocuous, it was only a photo identification card for someone’s insurance company. Mignon had seen them before but never one with a little picture of the member on it. She recognized the face without having to look at the name, although her eyes went to the name to ensure that she wasn’t seeing things.

  Linda Terrebonne had gasped upon seeing Investigator Simon Caraby for the first time after Dara’s death. Mignon remembered it, as it had struck her as odd. But then Linda had explained it, saying how the Creoles talked about the man. They called him that French name, Le Père des Cocodries, The Father of Alligators, as if he were something to be feared. And Mignon remembered her conversation with Miner Poteet. Miner had said that some people were poor and some were poor. He had been implying that those in the bayous had much more to lose from corrupt law enforcement officials. The previous sheriff had been such an individual, worse than the most obvious Southern stereotype, not above planting evidence or concealing crimes committed by those with the money to pay him off.

  The little plastic-encased card in Mignon’s hand denoted something else. Dara had gotten close enough to Simon Caraby to take this card from him, perhaps out of his own wallet, perhaps out of a drawer in his house. What did it say about the investigator? The obvious was that he had something to hide, just as most of humanity did. Perhaps he had more to hide than the usual suspect did. Had Dara had taken the card from him because she wanted some proof of her encounter with him or was it something else?

  Mignon carefully returned the card to the bag, and hid the bag inside the Ben Franklin stove. Then she made sure she hadn’t gotten any ash on her navy blue dress and brushed a piece of lint off her shoulder before leaving for the Blessed Heart School.