French Quarter Clues

by Eva Pohler

  “You sure do know your history,” Sue commented.

  “The study of ghosts can’t exist without the study of history,” Carrie pointed out.

  “I suppose that’s true,” Sue conceded.

  “Anyway,” Carrie continued, “Voodoo practitioners were portrayed in newspapers as primitive people who sacrificed animals, conjured zombies, and committed other depraved acts of superstitious nonsense. Even today, most people don’t acknowledge Voodoo as a legitimate lifestyle or a true religion.”

  “We’ll be nothing but respectful,” Ellen promised.

  “I’m not the one you need to convince,” Carrie said as she took a card from her purse, jotted down a name and address, and handed it over to Sue. “Maybe if you tell her I sent you, she’ll listen to what you have to say.”

  Sue read the writing on the card aloud, “Priestess Isabel?”

  “The tour guides make up all kinds of stories about her,” Carrie said, “but she’s the real deal.”

  “If she’s the real deal, why do the guides make up stories?” Sue asked.

  “Because the real deal is less interesting.”

  “What will we tell Tanya?” Ellen asked Sue.

  Sue shrugged. “We’d better think of something.”

  Chapter Three: The House on Chartres Street

  Ellen and Sue were shocked when Tanya agreed to take a quick trip to New Orleans. Sue hadn’t even had to use the excuse of finding a potential house to flip before Tanya said that she’d been looking at one in the French Quarter online. Ellen suspected that the demon wanted them to go to New Orleans, and this scared the heck out of her.

  It was late afternoon the following day when they arrived at the Inn on Ursulines. Ellen was dragging after having had very little sleep the night before. Even though Sue had stayed in their hotel room and had even drawn a circle of protection around the two of them after Tanya had gone to sleep, they had tossed and turned in the too-small double bed in Tulsa all night long.

  Fortunately, this place had queen-size beds.

  As Ellen rolled her suitcase to one of the corners of the room, she said, “Anyone up for a nap?”

  Tanya shook her head. “I’m anxious to show you the house that I found.”

  Ellen supposed she wouldn’t get much sleep anyway—not with that demon still in the room. They needed to go see the Voodoo priestess as soon as possible, if any of them were to have rest and peace of mind.

  “I promised Lexi I’d buy her a Voodoo doll while we’re here,” Sue said. “Let’s do that first, to get it out of the way, and then, we can go and look at the house.”

  Leave it to Sue to think of a way to get Tanya to the temple.

  But Tanya would have none of it. “Let’s check out the house, and then I’ll come back and rest while you do your shopping.”

  Since the house was only a block away from their inn, they headed toward Chartres Street on foot. On the way, Sue spotted a French bakery and sandwich shop.

  “That place looks yummy,” she said. “Why don’t we rest for a minute and grab a bite?”

  “The temple closes at six,” Ellen said.

  “What temple?” Tanya asked.

  Ellen cursed herself. “The place Sue wants to go for the Voodoo doll. She Googled it while you were in the bathroom and said it closes at six, remember Sue?”

  “That’s right. We better wait and eat later.”

  Tanya asked no further questions, and Ellen sighed with relief, as they continued down Ursulines toward the vacant mansion Tanya had found online.

  Without a real estate agent, Ellen didn’t expect to see the inside. And she didn’t care to, anyway, since they were only going to placate Tanya. But that was before she got a look at the outside of the house.

  It looked exactly like the Mikaelson mansion in one of her favorite CW shows, The Originals. The two-story brick Creole house butted up to the property line, like most of the homes in the French Quarter. Four white French doors with green wooden shutters faced the sidewalk, and there were four more identical doors above on the second floor leading out to a narrow balcony with ornate cast-iron railings, from which four large potted ferns hung. Near the curb were iron posts cast in the form of horseheads, an icon on the CW show.

  Sue turned to them with a look of glee on her face. “I can just imagine Klaus Mikaelson looking down at us from that balcony. Can’t you?”

  “Or Marcel Girard,” Ellen said with a twinkle in her eye.

  “Oh, my gosh, this place is amazing!” Tanya said.

  “Breathtaking,” Ellen agreed.

  A realty sign above them provided the name and number of the listing agent, along with the words “Courtyard” and “Reduced.”

  Sue pointed to the sign. “Maybe we should give Lionel Hurd a call.”

  “Can we get a better look at the courtyard?” Tanya wondered out loud as she peered over a gate on the right side of the property. “Oh, look. The gate’s open.”

  “Oh, wow,” Sue said. “Let’s check it out.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Ellen asked. “Isn’t that trespassing?”

  “We’ll be quick,” Sue insisted as she pushed the gate open and took the lead.

  Tanya followed before Ellen could object. Ellen glanced around the empty street and darted into the yard, closing the gate behind her.

  Inside the courtyard, the ornate cast-iron railing continued around both the balcony and the first-floor façade, where the white French doors and green shutters echoed the front of the building. Although the ground was mostly covered in brick pavers, there were flower beds lining the brick exterior walls of the mansion, creating a green border of lush palms, shrubs, and flowering vines around the courtyard. In its center was an elaborate fountain without water, and in front of a smaller house in back was an old-fashioned gas lamppost.

  “How quaint!” Sue said.

  “Look here,” Tanya called from where she stood near the house. “This door is open.”

  “I don’t think we should go inside,” Ellen warned. “Clearly someone is taking care of this place. Look at these flowers. What if someone’s at home?”

  Sue went to the door beside Tanya. “Hello? Anyone here?”

  When no one answered, Sue shrugged and pushed open the door. “What could it hurt?”

  Ellen sighed but followed her friends, her curiosity winning over the moral high ground she’d been about to take. It had been one thing to investigate an abandoned building in Tulsa without an agent, but this place might still be occupied. Even so, she followed Tanya though the door.

  Once inside, Ellen quickly changed her mind about the house being occupied. It stank to high heaven, and the only furniture in the front main room was a three-legged stool.

  “At least the place isn’t trashed,” Sue said through a pinched nose. “Not like other places we’ve seen.”

  The ceiling was at least twelve feet high. Dusty drapes hung over the windows, and a gilded chandelier with elegant crystals hung from the center of the ceiling. There was an ornate brick fireplace on the back wall, and, on the other side of it was a smaller living area—or parlor—leading to the street. Light from the front doors showed wooden floors in good condition, though the plaster on the interior walls needed repairing, as did some of the brick around the fireplace, which was open to both the front and back rooms.

  The parlor was flanked by a galley kitchen on one side and a library, still filled with books and a desk, on the other.

  “That’s a lot of books,” Ellen murmured, glancing over the titles, which included both fiction and nonfiction. Most of the books were about medicines, plants, herbs, and apothecary. The library led to another room facing the courtyard. Light poured in through two windows, revealing an old hat rack near one wall and another fireplace on the other. The ceilings were high in every room.

  There was a small bathroom next to the library and office, and these rooms were perfectly symmetrical to the kitchen, dining room, and laundry room
on the opposite wing.

  Between the parlor and the kitchen was a staircase leading to the second floor.

  “Shall we go up?” Tanya asked.

  “Why not?” Sue shrugged. “We’ve come this far.”

  Tanya, usually the most cautious of their group, led the way, and Ellen couldn’t help but wonder if it was the demon influencing her.

  They passed an open door leading to an empty bedroom, also with a twelve-foot ceiling and a set of French doors facing the balcony overlooking the street. Beyond the bedroom was a bathroom. Tanya stopped short, covering her mouth. Ellen peered inside to see what had caught her friend’s tongue. Sue gasped and covered her mouth, too. Ellen closed and opened her eyes to be sure she was seeing clearly.

  A free-standing, claw-foot tub stood in the back of the room, and two hairy legs and feet hung over the side of it. The feet were pale, lifeless, and crusted with dirt.

  “Is that a dead body?” Ellen whispered.

  “Oh my God,” Sue said. “Should we call 9-1-1?”

  “How will we explain our presence here?” Ellen asked.

  “And what if the police think we had something to do with it?” Tanya pointed out.

  “We have to do something,” Sue said. “We can’t just leave him up here to rot.”

  “Where are his clothes?” Ellen wondered. “And his shoes?”

  “Someone must have dumped him here,” Tanya said. “Which means…someone must have murdered him.”

  Ellen peered over the tub to get a better look at the body. The man looked to have been in his forties. Curly dark hair covered his chest, legs, and arms. Straight brown hair, long and bushy, covered his head and hung to his shoulders. His face was unshaven—though Ellen recalled that body hair continued to grow after death. She wondered how long the body had been lying here.

  Just then, the man opened his eyes.

  Ellen jumped, nearly losing her balance. She had to grab a hold of Tanya to keep from falling.

  “Are you the cops?” the man asked her.

  Ellen shook her head, unable to find her tongue.

  “Did Marie Laveau send you?” he asked.

  Ellen shook her head again.

  The man promptly closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

  Ellen looked at her friends and whispered, “Let’s get out of here.”

  Tanya led the way down the stairs, past the parlor, and out the door to the courtyard, where she and Ellen stopped to catch their breath and to wait for Sue.

  “What do we do?” Tanya asked. “Shouldn’t we report it to the realtor?”

  “Are we sure he wasn’t a ghost?’ Sue asked as she caught up to them. “I mean, think about it. Where are his clothes and his shoes? Why would a naked man be lying in the tub of an empty house and asking about Marie Laveau?”

  “Who’s Maire Laveau?” Ellen asked. The name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

  “Only the most famous Voodoo queen in New Orleans,” Tanya said. “We should visit her grave.”

  “She’s dead?” Ellen asked.

  Sue wagged her finger. “That’s what I’m saying. Why would the living ask about a dead Voodoo queen?”

  Ellen crossed her arms. “But why would a ghost care about the cops?”

  Sue frowned. “Good point. Maybe we should call the realtor.”

  “Only if we’re interested in the house,” Ellen said. “Otherwise, I say we mind our own business.”

  “I’m interested,” Tanya said. “This place is amazing.”

  “But we don’t know if it’s haunted,” Sue said. “Our purpose is to heal haunted places, remember?”

  “This whole city is haunted.” Ellen took an EMF detector from her purse. “New Orleans is purported to have more ghosts than any other city in the country. There’s bound to be a spirit in need of healing here.”

  “You carry an EMF reader in your purse?” Tanya asked with surprise.

  “Don’t you?” Ellen asked.

  “I suppose we should, if we want to be serious paranormal investigators,” Sue said.

  Ellen noticed the meter fluctuating chaotically. “There’s definitely activity here.” She wondered if Tanya’s demon might be the cause of it.

  “Well, I’m open to doing some research on the place,” Sue said. “But first, why don’t we take a cab to that Voodoo shop, so I can buy Lexi’s doll?”

  “It’s not that far of a walk,” Ellen said, tucking the EMF reader back into her handbag. “Come on, there are lots of things to see on the way.”

  Sue mumbled a complaint about walking as she followed Ellen and Tanya through the gate to Chartres Street. A woman passed by but didn’t pay any notice to them. Ellen headed toward Ursulines, and the others followed.

  “Oh, look,” Sue said suddenly. “That’s the old Ursuline Convent. This is where the vampire lore is said to have originated from.”

  “I thought the vampire lore came from Anne Rice,” Ellen said.

  “Well, she helped it along,” Sue said, “but it began way before her, in the seventeen-hundreds.” Sue stopped in front of the convent to catch her breath. “When the French first came here, they considered this land to be strategic for trade but undesirable for living, because it’s below sea level, swampy, and full of mosquitos.”

  “It does feel rather like a steam room,” Ellen agreed—though, to be fair, it was August, she thought to herself, the hottest month of the year.

  “To maintain territorial rights,” Sue continued, “they settled the area with prisoners.”

  “Like a penal colony? Like Australia?” Tanya asked.

  “That’s right,” Sue said. “But there were more men than women, so the governor wrote to the king of France asking for French virgins to be married off to the settlers here. They were to live here with the Ursuline Sisters until a match could be made.”

  “And what happened?” Ellen asked.

  “The king sent about twenty French orphan girls. They arrived at night, pale from being below deck for two months. Some of them got tuberculosis and were seen with blood on their mouths. They each carried a small chest, called a casquette or cassette, resembling a miniature coffin, to hold all their things. Rumors quickly spread that vampires had arrived.”

  “I’ve heard of the Casquette Girls,” Tanya said. “But there’s a more interesting story this way. Come on.”

  “Wait,” Ellen said, pointing at the house across the street from the convent. “I’ve heard of this place. Have you? The Beauregard-Keyes House?”

  “No, but I definitely feel something strange about it,” Sue said. “Is it haunted?”

  “That’s what they say,” Ellen said. “By the ghosts of Civil War soldiers.”

  “Come on,” Tanya said again, in a more assertive tone. “I want to show you why I brought you here.”

  Ellen and Sue exchanged looks of confusion.

  “Why you brought us here?” Sue repeated.

  “What?” Tanya kept walking. “Come on, slow pokes.”

  Alarmed, Ellen and Sue followed Tanya to the corner, where they turned up Governor Nicholls St.

  “Did the demon bring us to New Orleans?” Ellen whispered to Sue.

  “That can’t be,” Sue said. “Carrie French suggested it.”

  Ellen scratched her head. “The demon couldn’t have known that you’d call Carrie.”

  Sue’s eyes opened wide. “I thought you called her.”

  Ellen shook her head. “You texted her, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but she never replied. When she showed up at the hotel, I assumed you had spoken to her.”

  “Here we are,” Tanya said, stopping before a mansion similar in style to the one they’d just toured—except that this building had three levels and arched doors on the bottom floor.

  “What is this place?” Sue asked.

  “It was once a place of torture,” Tanya said. “They call it the Lalaurie Mansion.”

  “A place of torture?” Ellen asked.

&nb
sp; “Yes,” Tanya said. “But not in the way most people believe.”

  “Where did you hear about that?” Sue asked.

  Tanya blinked. “Where did I hear about what?”

  “About this being a place of torture,” Sue repeated.

  “What are you talking about?” Tanya asked.

  “Come on,” Ellen said, her stomach forming a knot. “Let’s get to that Voodoo temple.”

  Chapter Four: Priestess Isabel

  The Spiritual Voodoo Temple on North Rampart was not what Ellen had been expecting. She had supposed it would be more like a church. Instead, it looked like a souvenir shop specializing in Voodoo dolls and other paraphernalia. It smelled of lavender and rose.

  The fact that it resembled a shop more than a temple might have accounted for the ease with which Tanya walked into the building.

  “Where are you all from?” a black woman in her seventies asked as they entered the shop.

  “Texas,” Ellen said.

  “All my exes live in Texas,” the woman sang and then laughed.

  Ellen lifted her brows in surprise. A high Voodoo priestess who sang George Strait? Maybe this was just the shopkeeper and not the actual priestess.

  “I see you brought a friend,” the woman said to Tanya.

  “Excuse me?” Tanya asked.

  “Hello, there,” the woman said, her dark eyes shining.

  She seemed to be looking at empty space beside Tanya.

  Ellen glanced at Sue and then asked the woman, “Are you Priestess Isabel?”

  “That’s me,” the woman said, still smiling.

  Ellen hid her surprise. With short, curly hair, dainty earrings, and a belted colorful dress, she looked like an average businesswoman from suburbia.

  “We were hoping to tour your temple,” Sue said.

  “My body is the temple,” the woman said. “This place is just a building.”

  “I like that,” Ellen said, not sure what else to say.

  “I’m shopping for a Voodoo doll,” Sue said. “Can you help me pick the best one for my daughter?”

  As Sue engaged with the older woman, Ellen distracted Tanya with some of the paraphernalia on the wall. They were being carefully watched by a younger, quiet woman in her twenties with fair skin, blonde hair, and dark eyes, from where she sat behind a counter in front of a computer.