by Tami Hoag
The heat grew a little thicker. She sweated a little harder. Overhead wispy clouds writhed and curled their way across the blue sky, scudding northward on a balmy Gulf breeze. The quintet ended, and the news began, signaling the start of the lunch hour.
“Topping the news this hour: the discovery of another apparent victim—”
Laurel jerked her head around as the announcement was cut short. Savannah stood on the gallery, hands on her hips, a pair of square black Ray-Bans shading her eyes. She had pulled her wild hair up into a messy topknot that trailed tendrils along her neck and jawline, and had dressed with her usual flare in a periwinkle spandex miniskirt that hugged the curves of her hips and backside, and a loose white silk tank that managed to show more than it covered. A diamond the size of a pea hung just above the deep shadow of her cleavage, just below the necklace Daddy had given her years ago, and gold bangles rattled at her wrists as she shifted her weight impatiently from one spike heel to the other.
“Baby, what in the world do you think you're doing?”
Laurel pushed her bangs out of her eyes and flashed a smile. “Gardening! What's it look like?”
She abandoned her tools and straightened up, dusting the loose dirt off the knees of her baggy jeans before heading for the gallery. Mama Pearl would cluck at her like a fat old hen if she tracked it into the house.
“You've spent the entire last two days gardening,” Savannah said, frowning. “You're going to wear yourself out. Didn't your doctor tell you to relax?”
“Gardening is relaxing, psychologically. I've needed to do something physical,” she said, toeing off her canvas sneakers and stepping up beside her sister. In her heels Savannah towered over her. Laurel had always felt small and mousy in Savannah's presence. Today she felt like a grubby urchin, and the feeling pleased her enormously.
Savannah sniffed and made a comical face of utter disgust. “Mercy, you smell like a hog pen at high noon! If you needed to do something physical, we could have gone shopping. Your wardrobe is begging for a trip to New Orleans.”
“I have plenty of clothes.”
“Then why don't you wear them?” Savannah asked archly.
Laurel glanced down at the shapeless cotton T-shirt and baggy jeans that camouflaged all details of her body. Most of what she had brought with her was designed for comfort rather than style.
“It wouldn't be very practical for me to do gardening in stiletto heels,” she said dryly, eyeing her sister's outfit. “And if I had to bend over in that skirt, I'd probably get arrested for mooning the neighbors.”
Savannah looked out across the courtyard to L'Amour, the once-elegant brick house that stood some distance behind Belle Rivière on the bank of the bayou. The corners of her lush mouth flicked upward in wry amusement. “Baby, you couldn't scandalize that neighbor if you tried.”
“Who's living there? I didn't think anyone would ever buy it, considering the history of the place and the state it was in the last time I saw it.”
L'Amour had been built in the mid-nineteenth century for a notorious paramour by her wealthy, married lover. By all accounts—and there were many versions of the tale—she died by his hand when he discovered she was also involved with a no-account Cajun trapper. Laurel had grown up hearing stories about the place's being haunted. No one had lived there in years.
“Jack Boudreaux,” Savannah answered, her smile turning sexy at the thought of him. “Writer, rake, rascal, rogue. And when he gets to be old enough, I imagine he'll be a reprobate too. Come along, urchin,” she said, turning for the house. “Go hose yourself down. I'm taking you out to lunch.”
Jack Boudreaux. Laurel stood on the veranda, staring at L'Amour.
“Baby, you coming?”
Laurel snapped her head around, a blush creeping up her cheeks like a guilty schoolgirl's. Concern tugged at Savannah's brows, and she pushed her sunglasses on top of her head.
“I think you've been out in the sun too long. You should have worn a hat.”
“I'm fine.” Laurel shook her head and dodged her sister's gaze. “I'll just take a nice cool shower before we go.”
Cold shower indeed, she thought, shaken by her response to the mere mention of a man's name. Lord, it wasn't as though she had enjoyed their encounter. It had unnerved her, and in the end she'd made a fool of herself. Mortification should have been her reaction to the words “Jack Boudreaux.”
She showered quickly and dressed in a pair of baggy blue checked shorts and a sleeveless blue cotton blouse. Barely ten minutes had passed by the time she trotted down the stairs and turned into the parlor, a room with soft pink walls and the kind of elegant details that put Belle Rivière on a par with the finest old homes in the South.
“. . . poor girl over in St. Martin Parish,” Caroline was saying in a low voice.
She sat in her “throne,” a beautifully carved Louis XVI man's armchair upholstered in rose damask. Home from her regular Saturday morning at the antiques shop, she had settled in place, kicking off her black-and-white spectator pumps on the burgundy Brussels carpet and propping her tiny feet on a gout stool some woman in the eighteenth century had doubtless gone blind needle pointing the cover for by lamplight. A tall, sweating glass of iced tea sat on a sterling coaster on a delicate, oval Sheraton table to her left.
“I turned the radio off before she could hear,” Savannah said, her voice also pitched to the level of conspiracy. She sat sideways on the camelback sofa, leaning toward her aunt, her long bare legs crossed.
“Before I could hear what?” Laurel asked carefully.
The two women jerked around, their eyes wide with guilty surprise. Savannah's expression changed to irritation in the blink of an eye.
“It should have taken you at least another twenty minutes to get ready,” she said crossly. “It would have, if you'd bothered to put on makeup and do something with your hair.”
“It's too hot to bother with makeup,” Laurel said shortly, her temper rising. “And I don't give a damn about my hair,” she said, though she automatically reached up a hand to tuck a few damp strands behind her ear. “What is it you didn't want me to hear?”
Aunt and sister exchanged a look that sent her ire up another ten points.
“Just something in the news, darlin',” Caroline said, shifting in her chair. She arranged the full skirt of her black-and-white dotted dress slowly, casually, as if there were nothing more pressing on her mind. “We didn't see the need to upset you with it, that's all.”
Laurel crossed her arms and planted herself in front of the white marble fireplace. “I'm not so fragile that I need to be shielded from news reports,” she said, tension quivering in her voice. “I don't need to be cosseted from the world. I'm not in such a precarious mental state that I'm liable to fly apart at the least little thing.”
Even as she spoke the words, her mouth went dry at the taste of the lie. She had come here to be cosseted. Only just last night she had gone to pieces arguing with a no-account drunk about a no-account hound. Weak. She shivered, tensing her muscles against the word, the thought.
“Of course we don't think that, Laurel,” Caroline said, rising with the grace and bearing of a queen. Her dark eyes were steady, her expression practical, straight-forward with not a hint of pity. “You came here to rest and relax. We simply thought those objectives would be more easily attained if you weren't dragged into the torrent of speculation about these murders.”
“Murders?”
“Four now in the last eighteen months. Young women of . . . questionable reputation . . . found strangled out in the swamp in four different parishes—not Partout, thank God.” She gave the information flatly and with as little detail as possible. Now that the cat was out of the bag, she saw no point in dancing around the issue with dainty euphemisms. Certainly her niece had dealt with cases as bad or worse in her tenure as a prosecuting attorney. But neither did she see the need to paint a lurid picture of torture and mutilation, as the newspapers had done. She only hoped th
e case wouldn't snag Laurel's attention. Coming away from the situation in Scott County, she didn't need to become immersed in another potboiler case of sex and violence.
“All in Acadiana?” Laurel asked, narrowing the possibilities to the parishes that made up Louisiana's French Triangle.
“Yes.”
“Are there any suspects?” The question was as second-nature to her as inquiring after someone's health.
“No.”
“Do they—”
“This doesn't concern you, Baby,” Savannah said sharply. She rose from the sofa and came forward, her pique doing nothing to minimize the sway of her hips. “You're not a cop, and you're not a prosecutor, and these girls aren't even dying in this jurisdiction, so you can just tune it out. You hear?”
It was on the tip of Laurel's tongue to tell Savannah she wasn't her mother, but she bit the words back. What a ludicrous statement that would have been. Savannah was in many ways more of a mother to her than Vivian had ever been. Besides, Savannah was only trying to protect her.
Hands on her hips, she tamped down her temper, sighing slowly to release some of the steam, feeling drained from what little fury she had shown. “I don't have any intention of trying to solve a string of murders,” she assured them. “Y'all know I have my hands full just managing myself these days.”
“Nonsense.” Caroline sniffed, tossing her head. “You're doing just fine. We want you to concentrate on getting your strength back, that's all. You're a Chandler,” she said, seating herself once more on her throne, arranging her skirt just so. “You'll be fine if your stubbornness doesn't get the better of you.”
Laurel smiled. This was what she had come to Belle Rivière for—Caroline's unflagging fortitude and ferocious determination. There were those around Bayou Breaux who compared Laurel's aunt to a pit bull—a comparison that pleased Caroline no end. Caroline Chandler was either loved or hated by everyone she knew, and she was enormously proud to inspire such strong reactions, whatever they were.
“We're going to lunch, Aunt Caroline,” Savannah said, slinging the strap of her oversize pocketbook up on her shoulder. The Ray-Bans slid back into place, perched on the bridge of her nose. “Come along? Mama Pearl's gone to a church meeting.”
“Thank you, no, darlin'.” Caroline sipped her tea and smiled enigmatically. “I have a luncheon appointment with a friend in Lafayette this afternoon.”
Savannah tipped her glasses down and arched a brow at Laurel, who just shrugged. Caroline's friends in other towns never had names—or genders, for that matter. Because she'd never been married, or even seriously involved with any of the local men, Caroline's sexual preferences had long been a source of speculation among the gossips of Bayou Breaux. And she had always staunchly, stubbornly refused to answer the question one way or the other, saying it was no one's damn business whether she was or wasn't.
“What do you think?” Savannah asked as they slid into the deep bucket seats of her red Corvette convertible.
“I don't,” Laurel said, automatically buckling her seat belt. Savannah drove the way she lived her life.
Savannah chuckled wickedly as she put the key in the ignition and fired the sports car's engine. “Oh, come on, Baby. You're telling me you've never tried to picture Aunt Caroline going at it with one of her mysterious friends?”
“Of course not!”
“You're such a prude.” She backed out of the driveway and onto the quiet, tree-lined street that led directly downtown. Belle Rivière was the last house before the road stretched out into farmland and wetlands. But even up the street, where houses stood side by side, the only activity seemed to be the swaying of the Spanish moss that hung from the trees like tattered banners.
“Not wanting to picture my relatives engaging in sex doesn't make me a prude,” Laurel grumbled.
“No,” Savannah said. “But it sure as hell makes you the odd one in the family, doesn't it?”
She let out the clutch and sent the Corvette flying down the street, engine screaming. Laurel fixed her eyes on the road and fought the urge to bring her hand up to her mouth so she could gnaw at her thumbnail.
Sex was the last thing she wanted to talk about. She would have preferred there were no such thing. It seemed to her the world would have been a much better place without it. It certainly would have been a better world for the children she'd fought for in Scott County, and for countless others. She tried to imagine what Savannah might have achieved with her life had she not become such a sexual creature.
Those thoughts brought a host of others bubbling to the surface and set her stomach churning. She tried to turn her attention to the familiar scenes they were passing at the speed of sound—a block of small, ranch-style houses, each with a shrine to the Virgin Mary in the front yard. Shrine after shrine made from old clawfoot bathtubs that had been cut in half and planted in the ground. Flowers blooming riotously around the feet of white totems of the Holy Mother. A block of brick town houses that had been restored in recent years. Downtown, with its mix of old and tacky “modernized” storefronts.
She didn't turn to look at the courthouse as they passed it, concentrating instead on the congregation of gnarled, weathered old men who seemed to have been sitting in front of the hardware store for the past three decades, gossiping and watching diligently for strangers.
The scenes were familiar, but not comforting, not the way she wanted them to be. She felt somehow apart from all she was seeing, as if she were looking at it through a window, unable to touch, to feel the warmth of the people or the solace of long acquaintance with the place. Tears pressed at the backs of her eyes, and she shook her head a little, reflecting bitterly on the defense of her mental state she had made to Caroline and Savannah in the parlor. What a crock of shit. She was as fragile as old glass, as weak as a kitten.
“I'm really not very hungry,” she murmured, digging her fingers into the beige leather upholstery of the car seat to keep her hands from shaking as the tension built inside her, the forces of strength and weakness shifting within, pushing against one another.
Not bothering with the blinker, Savannah wheeled into the parking lot beside Madame Collette's, one of half a dozen restaurants in town. She took up two parking spots, sliding the 'Vette in at an angle between a Mercedes sedan and a rusted-out Pinto. She cut the engine and palmed the keys, sending Laurel a look that combined apology and sympathy in equal amounts.
“I'm sorry I brought it up. The last thing I want is to upset you, Baby. I should have known better.” She reached over and brushed at a lock of Laurel's hair that had dried at a funny angle, pushing it back behind her ear in a gesture that was unmistakably motherly. “Come on, sweetie, we'll go have us a piece of Madame Collette's rhubarb pie. Just like old times.”
Laurel tried to smile and looked up at the weathered gray building that stood on the corner of Jackson and Dumas. Madame Collette's faced the street and backed onto the bayou with a screened-in dining area that overlooked the water. The restaurant didn't look like much with its rusted tin roof and old blue screen door hanging on the front, but it had been in continuous operation long enough that only the true old-timers in Bayou Breaux remembered the original Collette Guilbeau—a tiny woman who had reportedly chewed tobacco, carried a six-gun, and dressed out alligators with a knife given to her by Teddy Roosevelt, who had once stopped for a bite while on a hunting expedition in the Atchafalaya.
Rhubarb pie at Madame Collette's. A tradition. Memories as bittersweet as the pie. Laurel thought she would have preferred sitting on the veranda at Belle Rivière in the seclusion of the courtyard, but she took a deep breath and unbuckled her seat belt.
Savannah led the way inside, promenading down the aisle along the row of red vinyl booths, hips swaying lazily and drawing the eyes of every male in the place. Laurel tagged after her, hands in the pockets of her baggy shorts, head down, oversize glasses slipping down her nose, seeking no attention, garnering curious looks just the same.
The scents o
f hot spices and frying fish permeated the air. Overhead fans hung down from the embossed tin ceiling, as they had for nearly eighty years. The same red-on-chrome stools Laurel remembered from her childhood squatted in front of the same long counter with its enormous old dinosaur of a cash register and glass case for displaying pies. The same old patrons sat at the same tables on the same bentwood chairs.
Ruby Jeffcoat was stationed behind the counter, as she always had been, checking the lunch hour receipts, wearing what looked to be the same black-and-white uniform she had always worn. She was still skinny and ornery-looking, hair net neatly smoothing her marcel hairdo, lips painted a shade of red that rivaled the checks in the tablecloths.
Marvella Whatley, looking a little plumper and older than Laurel remembered, was setting tables. There was a fine sprinkling of gray throughout the black frizz of her close-cropped hair. A bright grin lit her dark face as she glanced up from her task.
“Hey, Marvella,” Savannah called, wiggling her fingers at the waitress.
“Hey, Savannah. Hey, Miz Laurel. Where y'at?”
“We've come for rhubarb pie,” Savannah announced, smiling like a cat at the prospect of fresh cream. “Rhubarb pie and Co-Cola.”
At the counter Ruby eyed Savannah's short skirt and long bare legs, and sniffed indignantly, frowning so hard, her mouth bent into the shape of a horseshoe. Marvella just nodded. Nothing much ever bothered Marvella. “Dat's comin' right up, then, ladies. Right out the oven, dat pie. You gonna want some mo' for sho'. M'am Collette, she outdo herself, dat pie.”
The table Savannah finally settled at was in the back, in the screened room, where abandoned plates and glasses indicated they had missed the lunch rush. Out on the bayou, an aluminum bass boat was motoring past with a pair of fishermen coming in from a morning in the swamp. In the reeds along the far bank a heron stood, watching them pass, still as a statue against a backdrop of orange Virginia creeper and coffee weed.