[Bayou Gavotte 03.0] Heart of Constantine

by Barbara Monajem

  “Kind of you.” Eaton was borderline crazy, but so was Lavonia. In fact, much of Bayou Gavotte was on the cutting edge of weird, but the university community had to walk a fine line, in touch as it was with the ordinary scientific world. Marguerite added cream to her coffee. “If any reporters find out I was here, just tell them I rushed over first thing because I knew you’d be with Eaton all day.”

  “I’d better not be stuck with Eaton all day,” Lavonia said dourly. “I do have a life.”

  Marguerite grinned. “You have plans with Bon-Bon?”

  Lavonia visibly suppressed an answering grin with the mention of Al Bonnard, the handsome professor she was dating. “Don’t change the subject.”

  Marguerite blew out a breath. “I will do my best to find out who did this to me, but methodically and in private, with no suspicion falling on Constantine.”

  “Unless he did it.”

  “Right,” Marguerite said, and then the caffeine finally hit her brain. “But I don’t see how he could have. I don’t even remember the end of the concert, so I must have been drugged at the back of the crowd while he was at the front, singing.”

  “He could have paid someone to do it, just like he paid someone to poison his wife.”

  Marguerite threw up her hands. “Right, he beckoned to one of his roadies and said, ‘Drug some random chick and drag her on top of the mound. I want to do an unconscious woman tonight.’ Even if he were that perverted, he’s definitely not that stupid. I tell you, I know he didn’t do it.”

  Lavonia fumed silently, which meant she was gathering ammunition. Marguerite breathed in the warmth of coffee and life. “Mmm. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, but you’re taking an unscientific approach,” Lavonia said. “If you’re too attached to your hypothesis, you’ll interpret the results to support what you already believe.”

  Marguerite nodded and took a bracing swallow of coffee. “You’re perfectly correct, but you’re doing exactly the same thing, and you know it. Please do me this favor, Lavonia. Either you examine me, or no one does. It’s that simple.”

  Lavonia threw up her hands and motioned Marguerite into the bedroom. “When was the last time you had sex?”

  “Well over a year ago, and you know that, too.”

  Ten minutes later, Lavonia had her conclusion. “No. It’s unlikely you were raped. No residue, no bruising or chafing, no sign of forced entry or trauma to your cervix.”

  Marguerite let out a long breath and sat up. “That’s a relief.”

  “Still, it’s not proof positive. If you would let me send a sample to the lab—”

  “No,” Marguerite said.

  “This doesn’t prove he didn’t drug you or have you drugged, and it doesn’t prove he didn’t intend to rape you. Or murder you. Sacrifice you.” Lavonia’s nostrils flared. “Are you listening, Marguerite?”

  “It was almost dawn,” Marguerite said. “If he wanted to kill me, he had plenty of opportunity during the night. In fact, maybe it was Constantine’s presence on the mounds that stopped whoever really did want to light that fire from doing whatever… he had planned.”

  Lavonia pounced on the catch in Marguerite’s voice. “You are scared.”

  “Of course I’m scared, but not of Constantine!” Not really.

  Her friend glowered. “What happened to all the paraphernalia you described? I suppose, in your dippy fan-girl state of mind, you let him take it away.”

  “He didn’t have a vehicle with him,” Marguerite said. “It’s in my car.”

  The dense warmth of a Louisiana summer morning greeted them outdoors. Marguerite shed the throw and sipped her coffee, and the shaking subsided to the merest quiver in her gut. Lavonia gave the strange loot a once-over. “The cup looks vaguely familiar, but for all I know, they sell them at Walmart. The bowl, not at all.” She took out the bird mask, stroking the shining copper and the feathers. The beads winked in the sunshine. “It’s beautiful, but sort of scary. Look at that cruel curved beak! Where have I seen one like this? At the mound museum?”

  “It may have been modeled on an artifact on display there,” Marguerite said. “There’s also a book with paintings of what they think the original masks looked like, but no reconstructions, as far as I know.”

  Lavonia laid the mask in the trunk. “You said something about a knife. Where is it?”

  “It wasn’t there.” Marguerite described the imprint on the chamois as she shut the trunk.

  Lavonia huffed. “Constantine must have hidden it because it would incriminate him. I bet there’s a cover of Rolling Stone where he’s brandishing that very knife. Why aren’t you terrified?”

  Marguerite hesitated. Because he kissed me? That wouldn’t cut it with Lavonia; it would only make matters worse. Because he seems headed toward self-destruction, and I can’t bear that? Lavonia would reply that if Constantine’s guilt was destroying him, it was exactly what he deserved.

  “That’s it.” Lavonia swiveled and made for the house again. “I’m calling the cops.”

  “I’ll deny everything you say.” Marguerite hurried after her, slopping coffee onto the paving stones.

  “Why?” Lavonia cried. “Even if Constantine didn’t do it, someone did.”

  “Right, so I want to find out where all the paraphernalia came from, especially the mask. I thought you might have some ideas.”

  Lavonia put her hands on her hips. “The only idea in my mind at the moment is that you barely escaped grave danger, and now you’re putting yourself right back in.”

  “It might be someone at Hellebore U,” Marguerite persisted. “At least half the people at that concert were students. Quite a few profs were there.”

  “Sure, but you should leave the investigation to the cops.”

  Must she be so stubborn? “Also, there’s another reason I don’t want anyone else involved.”

  “And what might that be?”

  Again, Marguerite hesitated. For obvious reasons, she couldn’t mention Zeb. If she did, Lavonia would go straight to his father, Al Bonnard. Zeb would feel betrayed, and any hope of getting information from him would be gone.

  “There’s nothing, is there? Stop trying to stall me.” Lavonia marched indoors.

  “I’m not stalling.” Marguerite followed her and shut the door, trying to sort things out in her mind. If some lunatic really had planned a rape or human sacrifice, how had Nathan found out? If it was just a setup to discredit Constantine, had they seriously expected Marguerite to back up their ugly story? Regardless, what did Zeb have to do with it all?

  Meanwhile, Lavonia’s expression would make a cactus wither. She wouldn’t just let this go. She picked up her phone.

  “We’ll both look ridiculous if you call the cops,” Marguerite said. “There really is something else, but I’ll look even more ridiculous if I mention it to anyone except you.” She’d been meaning to anyway. Maybe. “But you have to promise not to tell anyone.”

  “That depends on what it is,” Lavonia said.

  “And you’re not allowed to put my dreams in your journal.”

  Lavonia’s eyes widened, her nostrils flared, and she put down the phone. “You’ve had another prophetic dream?” Such dreams were one of Lavonia’s favorite areas of study, and finding people with verifiable prophetic dreams wasn’t easy.

  Marguerite grimaced. Being bombarded by auras was plenty bad enough, and she sure didn’t want this dream to come true. “I didn’t think dreaming Pauline would kill herself was prophetic, because she had tried it before. Although I believed she was recovering, underneath I was afraid for her, so it came out in my dreams. But then she did die.”

  “And now you believe the dreams were genuinely prophetic?”

  “I hope they weren’t. I’m having new nightmares, but in these I’m the one who’s going to die.”

  Lavonia plumped herself down on the couch. Tears welled in her eyes. “I don’t want you to have that kind of prophetic dream!” Then, furiously: “Wa
sn’t tonight warning enough?”

  “In the dream, I don’t get stabbed on top of a mound.” Marguerite sat next to her. The cat jumped onto Marguerite’s lap, waving its tail in her face and purring. She caressed it while deciding what to say; no need to describe the terror her dream evoked. “I get run over by a van. But the cops won’t take me seriously if I tell them about it. Even I don’t take myself seriously. I’m sure it’s only a jumble of stuff my subconscious is churning through.”

  Lavonia put an arm around Marguerite. “Just because you dreamed it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. We always have the power to change our fate.” She glowered at Marguerite. “All right, I won’t go to the cops just yet. Let’s have breakfast, and then I have to run and meet Eaton. We’ll get together later and try to figure this thing out.”

  Marguerite drove first to the supermarket. Lawless, the little black-and-white sheepdog mix who had belonged to Pauline, would be all right a while longer because he had a doggy door, but she had run out of dog food—and people food, too. Pauline had been a difficult roommate, but she’d done most of the shopping and cooking. She hadn’t been such a great cook, but her aura had so plainly said she needed to control whatever she could that Marguerite had acquiesced.

  She swerved into the Chicken Bin drive-through for a breakfast sandwich—not for herself but for Lawless. He loved Chicken Bin, but people food for dogs had been against Pauline’s rules. She sent up a silent apology to Pauline’s spirit, hoping that maybe in the next life, whatever and wherever that was, there was no need for all those rules. Marguerite didn’t have an affinity for dogs, and she didn’t know much about how to take care of one, but she did know they liked company. Maybe a treat would make up for being gone all night.

  “Hey, Miss Marguerite.” The kid at the window, she remembered suddenly, was a friend of Zeb’s.

  “Hey, Jimmy. Is Zeb still working here?”

  Jimmy grinned. “Nope. Fired for cussing out the boss.”

  This was how Zeb lost almost every job. “Where does he work now?”

  “No idea,” Jimmy said so glibly that it had to be a lie. She paid for the sandwich and left, wishing it weren’t so obvious where Zeb must be working. Some of the clubs in town weren’t all that picky about checking the ID of underage workers, and although Zeb was only seventeen, he looked eighteen or older. If he didn’t want to be recognized, he would sign up to be one of the painted messenger boys who set up sexual contracts between patrons in the sex clubs. With his physique, they’d hire him in a snap.

  The last thing she wanted was to cruise the sex clubs, and she didn’t even have entrée to some. Not that a pretty, scantily dressed girl couldn’t get in if she chose—but at a potentially horrendous cost.

  She and Pauline had hired Zeb for heavy chores before. If he had no work, he might be available to mow her lawn—hopefully today—so she could question him about what he’d been doing on the mound and why he’d taken the knife.

  On the way home, she stopped at the bookstore for a cappuccino. A display at the front of the store featured the most recent Constantine Dufray biography. She resisted temptation and went to look at the romance shelves. After spending fifteen minutes not making up her mind, she gave in, picked up a copy of the biography, and sat at one of the tables in the cafe. The author claimed to have dated Constantine in college. Hopefully her memories weren’t entirely accurate, particularly not the bit about his thirteen-inch penis.

  Not that it mattered to Marguerite one way or the other. Despite that kiss, she wasn’t really involved with the rock star, and she wasn’t going to be.

  “Good God, Marguerite,” said an irritable male voice behind her. “Tell me it’s not true.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Constantine wrapped his arms around the huge branch on which he sat and laid his cheek against the roughness of the resurrection fern that covered its upper surface. From his vantage point high up in the live oak at the top of Papa Mound, he could see all three mounds and the museum. Over by Mama Mound, his people were clearing what little trash remained from last night’s concert. He’d had them remove the firewood and kindling from Papa Mound first. The disgruntled Myra, after bitching at them for a few minutes, had retreated to the museum.

  His guide, still in the form of a crow, perched twenty feet away at the end of the branch. It didn’t say much; it didn’t need to. The damned crow radiated self-satisfaction. One would think, judging by its glee, that it and not Constantine had kissed Marguerite.

  It had also convinced itself that a torrid affair would soon ensue. You may even marry her, it said.

  He refused to rise to that bait. Another marriage was even more impossible than casual sex. He had to get his mind under control first. The only way to avoid hurting the woman was, quite simply, to avoid her altogether.

  For the umpteenth time, he wished he could get rid of the damned bird. Far too often, its advice was cryptic and contrary to logic and common sense. During his worst periods, he’d taken potshots at the current manifestation, but the guide always showed up again, patient, persistent, and, in retrospect, usually correct.

  Always, the crow said.

  He refused to get into that argument either. The guide wasn’t infallible, but it saw patterns that Constantine couldn’t, and its timing wasn’t always right. Now and then, they managed to work in sync. The guide had pestered him to hold that impromptu concert at the Indian mounds, and everything had gone well enough, or so he’d thought… until this morning, when it became all too obvious it hadn’t.

  It was a step in the right direction, the crow said.

  Toward controlling the powers of his mind, yes. Toward identifying his Enemy, maybe.

  Toward getting laid, the crow added predictably.

  He tried to address the bird with logic. He didn’t trust Marguerite. Well, he didn’t really trust anyone—but he couldn’t let her come to harm. “If I don’t get involved with her, she’ll have a better chance of survival. I’ll head out west, disappear into the mountains, and become a hermit. If I’m not around to be accused of anything, the Enemy will leave her alone.”

  Silence. The crow gazed into the distance.

  “It’s not a cowardly approach,” Constantine insisted.

  The bird ruffled its glossy black wings.

  “I’m trying to protect her, damn it all.”

  The crow picked at its breast feathers.

  Once again, Constantine wondered what he had done to merit the persecution of such a persnickety creature. “He won’t risk harming her if it doesn’t affect me.”

  The bird didn’t reply. A squirrel scolded, and Constantine snapped at it, driving it away to the tip of a branch, where it chittered rudely before leaping to another branch below. The crow stared coolly for a moment or two, flapped its wings, and sailed off. Back in the day when Constantine had deliberately ignored his guide for months and ended up in that catastrophic marriage, it had first hammered at him until he had almost gone insane and then left him completely alone and bereft. Now they had a better working arrangement. Once the bird had made its point, Constantine wished it away, and it went. When it had something useful to say, it returned.

  Constantine took out his cell phone and made a call.

  “Yo,” came the sleepy voice of Detective Gideon O’Toole, followed by a jaw-cracking yawn. Gideon was a good friend and the closest thing to a liaison between the police and the Bayou Gavotte underworld.

  “Kid keeping you up nights, sport?” Constantine said.

  “I would have done fine last night,” Gideon retorted, “if you’d gone home after the concert. The curator woke me up not ten minutes ago to pick up where she left off at midnight. Said you’d been on the mound all night, which is against park regulations.”

  “That’s all? What about the rape and human sacrifice?”

  “Jesus, Constantine. Where did that come from? Even you wouldn’t encourage that sort of story.”

  “Someone else kindly did it for
me.” Constantine recounted the morning’s events, omitting mention of the guy who’d taken the knife.

  “Marguerite McHugh,” Gideon mused. “If there wasn’t a connection between you and her roommate’s death before, there sure is now.” He blew out a long breath. “There was no reason to believe Pauline’s death was anything but suicide, but it didn’t feel right. Not that she went outdoors—she loved her garden—but that she wandered into the street and just happened to get run over. It seemed a little too macabre to be real. Nice to know my instincts are working.” Pause. “Not so nice to know it might have been a murder.” Another pause. “I suppose I shouldn’t be glad that this almost certainly means your ‘Enemy’ is real.”

  “Finally beginning to believe me?” Constantine rasped. He’d had to suppress all his instincts to force himself to discuss his Enemy with Gideon. He didn’t usually get along with cops, and he preferred to work alone.

  But someone had been trying to destroy him for over two years now, starting with the poisoning of his estranged wife. Sheer luck had taken Constantine out of town the same night she was killed, or he would have been the prime suspect. The media, led mostly by Nathan Bone, had refused to let go, and unsolved crimes—and even some solved ones—were attributed to Constantine in the tabloids, and the methods described were all too possible for one of Constantine’s abilities.

  Those very abilities were the big issue. Nathan didn’t know enough to understand what Constantine really could and couldn’t do. Someone else did, though, and Constantine had squeezed a confession from Nathan that he had an unidentified source. That had led to suspecting every other vigilante, every bodyguard and roadie and friend—anyone who might have figured out more—but the search had led nowhere.

  Constantine’s fury and frustration had come out in his songs and then in his concerts. He’d lost control of his telepathy, blasting violence and hatred, death and destruction, and fans had been killed. Then the long hiatus, when he couldn’t bring himself to perform. He’d meditated and prayed. He’d done sweat lodges and healing ceremonies with the bird’s help. Gradually, he had seemed to improve.