Jackpot Blood: A Nick Herald Genealogical Mystery

by Jimmy Fox

  Nick ran back to Sheriff Higbee. “She hit my car, blatantly, and drove off! Aren’t you going to do anything about it? Give her a ticket. You saw what happened. That car’s a classic.”

  “Looks like a classic piece of junk to me, man, and I didn’t see nothin’. Consider yourself one lucky genealogist. Didn’t you notice how pretty that woman is? You crazy or gay or something? The ice been broken, you know what I’m saying? And my information is she doesn’t have a steady man. . . . Reminds me of how me and my wife met. She ran a red light over in Armageddon, plowed into a cattle trailer. I was on motorcycle duty that day, if you can believe it.” He slapped his substantial belly in self-mockery. “Nobody hurt, ’cept a few cows. But man, I never seen such a beautiful woman in my life. Now . . .” he glanced longingly at the stars, his smile of pleasant reminiscence fading, “now she look like a doggoned UPS truck. Big, brown, and noisy. They ought to put one of them beepers on her for when she backs up!”

  Nick laughed with the sheriff, and forgot his anger.

  “You’re right, Big John. It is a piece of junk.”

  Sheriff Higbee dropped into the driver’s seat of his car, which dipped substantially with his weight.

  “Say, Nick, keep that about the claw marks under your hat, all right? No sense getting everybody riled up about something that might not even exist. They might’ve been there before.” He started the car. “I’m thinking about what you said a minute ago, about that tribal myth, and something worries me. Tommy and Brianne got twins.”

  He slammed the door and drove off in a hail of gravel and red dust, leaving Nick alone in the parking lot.

  The lights inside Three Sisters Pantry went out.

  Like a pale apparition, Luevenia Silsby’s face appeared in a window of the darkened store and then was gone.

  CHAPTER 15

  Nick spotted Holly Worthstone’s van as he searched for his room at Greensheaves Court Motel. He’d convinced himself to take Sheriff Higbee’s advice on matters of romance—and on self-preservation.

  It was well past 11 p.m., but he saw lights on behind the seedy curtains of what he took to be Holly’s room.

  There were few other guests. The Greensheaves had seen much better days. He drove on according to directions the owner—a blowzy, ill-tempered woman in a frilly robe—had given him as he checked in.

  The motel consisted of three carelessly placed, boxy sections, each room named for a figure from pioneer and Western lore. For fifty years or so, the Greensheaves had served the area’s minimal lodging needs; now, in expectation of a casino-driven boom, at least eight hotel chains had surveying teams stealthily triangulating likely properties. Nick noted two out-of-state trucks, conspicuously logo-less, bristling with storage tubes and compartments that no doubt hid high-tech measuring equipment. The front-desk woman had reason to be testy: she was about to be inhospitably put out of business by the national hospitality industry.

  Nick parked in front of “Daniel Boone.” He opened the hatchback and grabbed his briefcase and his much-battered suitcase from the litter atop the folded-down backseat. The room door had been damaged many years ago. With a shoulder he shoved it open and then understood why trespassers weren’t a problem.

  “Daniel Boone” was water-stained, chilly, very small, and as musty as a two-hundred-year-old coonskin cap. Half a century’s dust, hair, and flaked paint caked at the baseboards. Husks of countless insects gave Nick a gothic chill of mortality. If the Western-kitsch decor was ever truly in vogue, he was thinking, now it was simply depressing—too depressing to remain in alone.

  He washed his face, splashed on some cologne and gargled mouthwash. Then he grabbed the cracked plastic ice bucket and two bottles of wine from his suitcase, slammed the door several times until it stuck, and set off toward the ice machine he’d seen near the office.

  “Who’s there?” the guarded voice said from the other side of crossed wooden-pistol cutouts on the door of the room dubbed “Annie Oakley.”

  “Nick Herald. The guy you ran into over at Three Sisters Pantry.” He stopped himself from adding “literally.”

  The window curtains moved. She opened the door as far as the chain allowed.

  He could have sworn he’d seen her on the back of a magazine, advertising hypoallergenic cosmetics. She radiated that kind of wholesome beauty.

  Holly Worthstone stood about three inches shorter than Nick. She wore tight black leggings above thick gray socks, and a long blue fleece pullover dotted with fanciful snowflakes. Her lustrous long hair was sunset red and gold in the deficient light of the room. She’d worn it tied back in a practical ponytail at the store, but now it cascaded freely to the front over her right shoulder to frame a high, full cheek and strong jaw line; on the left it fell straight back behind her ear, tossed there probably by habit. Through the narrow aperture she allowed him, Nick had a fleeting image of her dimpled mouth as two oversized, coalescing teardrops.

  Below graceful, thin, sorrel brows, her eyes were light green, like translucent quartz, repeating the motif of her pretty mouth. Eyes at once vulnerable, longing, and relentless. Nick felt himself getting lost in them. He concentrated on her slightly mannish nose; it alone saved her from being impossibly drop-dead gorgeous.

  He had no trouble deciding that her room was much more pleasant than his. Even though the decor was about as ugly, the company was the deciding factor. Now, if he could only convince her not to brain him with the wooden coat hanger she held raised in one hand.

  “I don’t think you’ll need that. See?” he said, holding up the ice bucket containing the tapered green bottles. “I bring a gift of good will.”

  “Wow! You scared me.” Her relief was audible.

  She undid the chain and flung the coat hanger on a chair, where her faded blue jeans rested in a heap like a cast-off lover. A pair of well-used hiking boots lay abandoned on the floor. “Come in, Nick. I’m the one who should be making peace with you.”

  She stepped aside, shivering at the cool air flooding into the warm room. A lot warmer, in a different way, than his.

  “We haven’t formally met,” she said, closing the door and chaining it again. “I’m Holly Worthstone. But you know my name already, obviously.”

  “The obvious is vastly overrated.” They shook hands. Nick liked the feel of her firm, forthright grip. A modern woman, and you damn well better not forget it! “I wouldn’t be a very good genealogist if I settled for the easy answers, for hearsay and tall tales.”

  “Yes, digging in other people’s business seems to be your forte. You’ve made a lot of people nervous.”

  “That’s normal when family histories are dusted off,” Nick said. “I’m used to it.”

  “I suppose it’s a tribute to your abilities. And something tells me you like to stir things up. I don’t know, must be that naughty look in your eyes.” She nodded approvingly at the wine. “This place has room service? Why didn’t I know that? And the waiter isn’t half bad, either.”

  “I never travel without the little comforts that ease the nagging anxieties of existence.”

  “When a man whispers sweet existential nothings in my ear,” she said archly, “I go all mushy inside. What do you do now, quote Sartre to complete the seduction?”

  “Shakespeare usually works: ‘I shall see thee, ere I die, look pale with love.’ Much Ado about Nothing.”

  “Ooh. You’re right. But before I throw myself into your arms, you mind giving me a taste of that . . . whatever it is.”

  “New York Gewürztraminer,” Nick said, already using his indefatigable Swiss Army Knife to open a bottle. “Finger Lakes region.” He poured wine into two smudgy water glasses Holly held out.

  “Sounds like a rare breed of dog.” She took an exploratory sip. “Yum! Spicy. I like it.” She finished the glass. “More porridge, please.”

  “You may need the hair of a rare dog tomorrow. This stuff is deceptively strong. Best to drink it slowly,” Nick advised, sensing at the same time that sh
e wasn’t the type to take her pleasures in moderation.

  “Oh, give me a break! You’re talking to an LSU sorority girl. I minored in shooters, stomach hoses, and vomit buckets. And I despise being patronized. So don’t.”

  “Hey, just trying to be helpful. You don’t have to prove anything to me. I’ve seen you in action. Your hit-and-run style shows great confidence.”

  She blushed deeply and sought refuge in the wine, which she nevertheless sipped more daintily.

  “See all that?” she said, diverting the conversation from the uncomfortable subject. She walked over to two videotape machines hooked up to an editing controller and two monitors, all on a cheap table too flimsy for the load. “I set all this up, all by my ditzy lonesome. I’m living here, temporarily, trying to finish my Katogoula documentary. What a place, huh?”

  “Charming, for about half a second.” Nick had noticed the mess of extended motel habitation: dirty clothes spilling from luggage, bottles and tubes and a hair dryer crowding the tiny basin counter beside the bathroom, greasy boxes of recent fast-food meals stacked by the trash can.

  Holly said, “I wanted to talk to you earlier tonight, but I never got the chance. Except, of course”—she pursed her lips, a contrite little girl—“when I apologized for hitting your car. I was in a hurry to get back here and edit in the new footage I shot tonight; it worked perfectly, too. . . . Anyway, I may have some ideas for your genealogical research. General background stuff.”

  “I need all the help I can get.”

  “So, you, uh, mad about the car thing? Much ado about nothing, right?”

  “Forget it. Really. That’s not why I’m here. I didn’t feel like going to sleep just yet in Daniel Boone’s armpit.”

  “You’d prefer mine, right?” She smiled, challenging him to deny it.

  With some difficulty he stopped himself from giving full-throated assent to that idea. “I see you weren’t tucked in yet, either.” The video equipment gave off a low hum; yellow legal pads with full sheets rolled back lay around the machines. “What do you say we chat until the Moon of Falling Needles sets?”

  A slight smile and an eyebrow’s elevation told him she didn’t miss his use of the traditional Katogoula name for the season. She absently rubbed the rim of her glass across her lower lip before finally taking a sip. Nick felt he’d passed some secret test.

  “Sounds like a great idea to me,” she said.

  They sat down together, each claiming a wobbly arm of a vinyl sofa patched with duct tape. She curled her legs under her, getting cozy in her fleece pullover; he turned toward her, one knee on the sofa, one arm over the back.

  “Moon of Falling Needles. Such a poetic heritage. I envy the Katogoula.” She parted the curtains right behind them and looked up into the night sky. “We’d say something prosaic and sterile like ‘October moon,’ or ‘full moon,’ and go to an almanac to check out the rising and setting times.” Her jewel-like eyes focused on him. “American Indians retain that beautiful concept of connectedness, of timelessness. The sky, the earth, the animals and plants, the spirit world, themselves—all interacting!” She crossed her legs Indian style and reached for the bottle on the coffee table before the sofa. “We’re all science and money and malls. False things. They’ve kept an essential beauty in their lives, in spite of all we’ve done to homogenize them.”

  She refilled their glasses.

  Nick was noticing her own essential beauty, which she wore with unaffected grace. He had known people blessed with great physical or mental gifts, who used their genetic luck to manipulate others, who flaunted it like a big bank account, or who fell into a bog of self-gratification. Holly was not one of these. She considered her quietly stunning looks simply as lagniappe, the thirteenth oyster in that dozen-on-the-half shell of life. And, as she told him a little of her past, Nick discerned a strong personality seeking a cause to build a crusade around, searching for something larger than the merely physical.

  “I’ve been working with the Katogoula for about six months now,” she was saying. “At LSU I was an anthropology major—my real minor, by the way, was Spanish, not drinking. I got hooked on the history and culture of Louisiana Indians. I graduated, and then screwed around for another year or so, doing independent study, thinking about getting a master’s. No real program. I just knew I loved learning about us”—she patted the soft blue fleece at her breastbone—“mankind. It felt, oh, I don’t know, relevant.

  “So I did a few archaeological digs with the department, some museum volunteering and a little paid work on my own, started audio and video recording of stories from the old members of various Louisiana tribes . . . that kind of thing. Usually with graduate students I knew.” She gave a worldly laugh. “I also partied a lot.”

  She took a thoughtful sip from her glass. Nick understood the self-reproach in her eyes. The pleasures of youth had palled early for her, but she’d continued to chase them.

  “Eventually my parents laid down the law, in a nice way: ‘Get a job,’ basically. So then I ended up working at a television station in Armageddon. My parents knew someone who knew someone. You know how it goes. At first as cameraperson, then reporting. The station was small and understaffed, so we pretty much had to do everything. Looking back, it wasn’t such an out-of-the-way field for me. As a reporter, I was exploring contemporary culture instead of dead ones.”

  She shook her head and laughed, as if she were describing a younger, very foolish, sister. “God, when I started, I didn’t know a thing about it. But I learned, got pretty good. Won a few state press awards. Television journalism sort of grows on you. Like a wart, we used to say in the newsroom. After five years I’d had enough. I moved back home to Baton Rouge.”

  “Idealism meets stark reality,” Nick said. “I’ve been there.”

  “That, and a couple of scuz-wad department managers were forever trying to get in my pants. Unbelievable what schemes those guys tried!” A big sigh of good riddance. “Anyway, I wanted to produce a documentary on the unrecognized tribes of Louisiana. I’d done a story once on the Katogoula; that’s what gave me the idea. So, I got a proposal together, and boy was I floored when the Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism approved it. LSU’s anthropology department is helping me with the research end.”

  “Government sometimes fouls up and does something right,” Nick said.

  The strong wine was acting as truth serum for both of them. Nick told her of his youth in Southern California, surfing, toking joints, infuriating his parents; of his discovery of the wonders of language and art; of his college years; of his briefly blissful career as an assistant professor on his way to associate status at Freret University; of his love for New Orleans; and finally, of the fortunate fall that landed him in the business of genealogy.

  “My life story sounds more boring each time I tell it,” he said. “I’m not the greatest leading man, I guess.”

  “Maybe you need a leading lady.”

  His turn to change the subject. Thoughts of commitment made his heartbeat go irregular. “Show me what you’ve done so far. You mind?”

  Holly seemed to enjoy watching him squirm. At last she said, “Love to.”

  She hopped up eagerly and led the way to the table feebly supporting the videotape machines. She moved the room’s one chair to the side and sat down; he sat on the end of the appealingly rumpled bed, a little behind her.

  “This is newsroom-reject stuff; I’d like to have state-of-the-art equipment, but, you know, it’s all I could swing at the moment. I had to change the concept a little when the tribe received recognition. This is just the rough edit. No dissolves or wipes, just straight cuts . . . that’s television-speak for visual transitions. I do the final version with a good post-production house in Baton Rouge. There’s no music at this point. I haven’t even finished the script yet. I’ve done my own narration, but later I’ll hire a better voice—”

  “Are you going to apologize all night or show me?”

  �
��Sorry.”

  She rolled the tape.

  The Sacred Cougar myth was first. Holly’s imaginative camera work at sunrise on Lake Katogoula set a nice mystical tone for the introduction. Nick had only read the myth; its true haunting beauty came through in the spoken word and the images of the genuine physical setting. He listened carefully to the myth of the Twins of the Forest, read over footage of the Golden Trace; for this, Holly had held the camera at shoulder level as she walked, giving the sequence a nice immediacy.

  A simple graphics unit had allowed her to add some titles. In a section she called “Hidden Heritage,” Nick learned that “Shawe,” Tommy’s surname, meant “raccoon” in Mobilian K, the Katogoula’s evolving version of the creolized pidgin language of the Southeastern tribes, Mobilian Jargon, during the period of white settlement.

  “Those dark circles under his eyes,” she said. “Could be a family physical trait that became formalized in the name.”

  “Ah, the secrets of surnames. I ought to write a paper on that.”

  Nick wanted to take notes for his own history of the tribe, but decided to wait until he was clearer headed. Bad scholarly etiquette, anyway, to raid a work in progress; as a teacher, he’d always been wary of that. The bum plagiarism rap had made him an even more conscientious scholar, if a less law-abiding citizen.

  Now Holly’s narrative was discussing Katogoula art and the tribal museum. Nick was particularly interested in a shot of an intricately designed bowl portraying twin male figures facing each other, over a stylized, repeating pattern of raccoons. Raccoons, he soon learned, sometimes represented a depressed state of being in ancient Katogoula psychodynamics.

  “Twins and a ‘depressed state of being,’” Nick muttered, thinking aloud.

  “Tommy, you mean?” Holly paused the machine. “I sure wouldn’t want to be in his moccasins. Half the tribe wants to turn the clock back a hundred years, half wants to drive Ferraris. And on top of that, his brother gets shish kebabbed.”