by Tami Hoag
ting and—”
“Appropriate setting,” Jack drawled. He stepped around Laurel to lean indolently against the edge of Jimmy Lee's stage, the stringer of fish still swinging from his fist. “You always did give me gas, Jimmy Lee.”
He was near enough that the mike picked up the last of his words, and people at the back of the crowd, who had come only out of curiosity, burst out laughing.
Jimmy Lee's face flushed a dark blood red beneath his artificial tan. His mouth quivered a little as he fought to keep from sneering at the man who was leaning lazily against his platform. Damn Jack Boudreaux. Damn Laurel Chandler. She was the troublemaker, the little bitch. Boudreaux only came along sniffing after her. But as much as he wanted to drag out all the dirt on Laurel Chandler, Jimmy Lee kept himself in check. His followers wouldn't tolerate an attack on a woman of her standing. Boudreaux, on the other hand, was a whole different breed of cat.
He smiled inwardly, a feral, vicious smile. “Do I indeed, Mr. Boudreaux?” he asked. “Shall I tell you what your books do for me? They sicken and disgust me, as they do any good Christian. The content is vile, brutal, a celebration of evil and an instruction manual in the ways of Satan. Or are you here to tell us you've given up that path of wickedness?”
A slow grin spread across Jack's face. He plopped his fish down on Jimmy Lee's wingtips, sending him scooting backward, and hopped onto the stage to sit with his legs swinging over the edge. “Well, hell, Jimmy Lee, that's sort of like askin' you if you've quit stealin' people's money. The way the question is phrased, denial is an admission of guilt. Having been an attorney in a previous incarnation, I know better than to answer.” He tipped his head and treated Baldwin to a merciless, wicked grin so hard and sharp, it could have cut glass. “Me, I'm just amazed to hear you know how to read.”
Another volley of laughter sounded at the back of the crowd and rippled forward. Jimmy Lee clenched his jaw against a stream of profanity. His fist tightened around his microphone while he indulged himself in the fantasy that it was Boudreaux's windpipe he was crushing.
“Evil is no laughing matter,” he said sternly. He turned his gaze back out across the small sea of faces that had gathered to hear him and pointed hard at Jack. “Do we want our children growing up on the kind of twisted and depraved tales this man tells? Tales of murder and mutilation and horrors that should surely be beyond the imaginings of decent people!”
“Hey, Jack!” Leonce called out from near the dusty old gas pumps. “What's the name o' dat book?”
“Evil Illusions!” Jack called, laughing. “On sale everywhere for five ninety-nine!”
“And he laughs and makes money off this filth!” Jimmy Lee shouted to the devout above the laughter of the others. “What other sins might a sick mind like that commit? We hear every day about crimes against women and children in this country. Our own Acadiana is being terrorized by an animal who stalks and murders our women. And where do creatures like that get their ideas for their crimes?”
The grin vanished from Jack's face. He met Baldwin's gaze evenly, never breaking the stare as he rose to his feet and closed the distance between them, booting the fish aside. Hostility rolled off him in hot waves.
“You better watch your mouth, preacher,” he growled, gently pushing Baldwin's microphone aside. “You never know what kind of revenge a sick mind like mine might come up with.”
Jimmy Lee savored the small victory of striking a nerve, meeting Jack's hard stare with a smugness that came from having the safety of a crowd around him. “I'm not afraid of you, Boudreaux.”
“No?” Jack arched a brow. “Are you afraid of the words ‘slander suit'? You'd better be, Jimmy Lee, because I could have my lawyers tie you up in court for the rest of your unnatural life. I wouldn't leave you a pot to piss in, and this preacher act of yours will have been for nothing.”
Baldwin narrowed his eyes. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “It's a free country, Boudreaux. If I think reading trash pushes unstable minds to commit unspeakable acts, I can say so.”
“Uh-huh. And if you utter my name in connection with those unspeakable acts, I'll have the right to beat the ever-lovin' shit out of you—figuratively speaking.” He smiled like a crocodile and lifted Jimmy Lee's hand so that the mike picked up his next words. “Mebbe you oughta try to cast the demons outta me, Jimmy Lee. Run 'em into some pigs or somethin'. Give the folks their money's worth.” Baldwin glared at him. “No? Well, that's okay, Jimmy Lee.”
He bent and snatched up the stringer of fish and swung them hard at Jimmy Lee. Baldwin barely had time to react, catching the slimy mass against his belly with a grunt and a grimace.
“There you go,” Jack said. “Now you get yourself a couple'a loaves of bread, and mebbe you can do that miracle.”
Howls of laughter went up from the back of the crowd. Laurel pressed a hand over her mouth and tried to contain herself. Jack hopped down off the stage and sauntered toward her, slipping a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and dangling it from his lip.
“You are so bad!” she whispered as he turned her by one arm and escorted her away from the crowd.
His dark eyes sparked with mischief as he slanted a look at her. “That's what makes me so good, sugar,” he drawled. “Now let's go get that drink you owe me.”
They hadn't taken three strides toward the road when a terrible scream split the air—piercing, blood-curdling, a sound that cut straight to the bone. Laurel pulled herself up, chilled and shaken, her hand grasping Jack's forearm, her heart thundering in her breast. She could hear the crowd behind her murmuring, gasping, shuffling their feet on the concrete as they turned. Then the scream came again and again. It emanated from Frenchie's, a terrible, keening wail, that carried in it a note instinctively understood by all, and everyone stood, breath held, waiting.
Laurel's grip tightened on Jack's arm as she spotted the Partout Parish cruiser parked out front. Sheriff Kenner walked out of the bar and down the steps, his mirrored aviator sunglasses glinting in the sun. The side door on the building slammed, and a thin young man in surfer shorts and a neon green shirt jumped the rail and came barreling across the parking lot, running as if the devil were at his heels, his face chalk white, shirttails flying.
The front door swung open again, and T-Grace literally hurled herself out onto the gallery, screaming, “My bébé! My bébé!” She fell to her knees, smashing her fists against the floor over and over, wild, terrible sobs tearing up from her very soul. Then Ovide stumbled out onto the gallery, feeling his way like a blind man. Finding his wife with his hands, he sank down behind her, tilted his face heavenward and cried out, “Bon Dieu avoir pitié!”
“Oh, God, Jack,” Laurel whispered, tears crowding her throat and pressing at her eyes. The feeling that swelled inside her as she turned toward him was unmistakably grief, and a small, disconnected part of her brain marveled at the body's ability to react so strongly to something as yet unannounced.
Seconds later the young man who had dashed out of the bar arrived with the news: Annie Delahoussaye-Gerrard, who had not been seen since Sunday night, had been found. Her nude, brutalized body had been discovered by a pair of hikers along the bank of the bayou.
The murder rocked the town of Bayou Breaux to its core. As the terror of the Bayou Strangler had gripped other parts of Acadiana, residents here had felt immune. Partout Parish had seemed a safe haven, a magical place where bad things didn't happen. In the time it took Annie Delahoussaye-Gerrard to gasp her last breath, the illusion of safety had vanished. The world tilted on its axis, and the residents of Bayou Breaux cast about frantically for something to hang on to.
That evening the streets were abandoned. Businesses closed early. People went home to be with their families. Doors that had never been locked before were bolted shut against the threat of evil that lurked along the dark, misty banks of the bayou.
T-Grace, inconsolable in her grief, had to be carried to her bed and sedated. As if the news had been carried to them on tel
epathic waves, the rest of the Delahoussaye children began arriving. The family banded together to mourn, to offer each other strength, to fill the tiny house where they had all been raised and try to banish the emptiness left by that one missing face.
The bar was not open, but a core of regulars gathered inside in much the same way as the Delahoussaye clan in their home. They were family of sorts—Leonce and Taureau, Dede Wilson and half a dozen others. Annie had been one of them, and now she had been torn from the fabric of all their lives, leaving a ragged, ugly hole.
Leonce took charge of the bar, dispensing drinks without a trace of his usual carefree grin. His Panama hat hung on the rack by the front door, removed out of respect, and he had traded his trademark aloha shirt for a somber black T-shirt. The rest of the group sat at or near the bar, everyone avoiding the dance floor and stage, except Jack. He sat on the piano bench, drinking Wild Turkey and playing soft sad songs on his small Evangeline accordion.
Laurel watched him from her perch on the corner bar stool. He sat with his head bent, his graceful hands working the instrument, squeezing out notes so poignant, it seemed to be weeping. He hadn't said ten words since the announcement—to her or to anyone. Despite the fact that he remained physically present, she couldn't get away from the feeling that he had gone into retreat. He had pulled in on himself and closed all doors and shutters, the same as the residents of Bayou Breaux who had locked up their homes. His face was a stark, blank mask, offering nothing, giving nothing away. There was no sign of the man who had teased her or the man who had held her while she cried. She nibbled on a thumbnail and wondered where he'd gone . . . and wished he hadn't gone there without her.
She felt like an outsider again. The others all had their memories of Annie to bind them together, common tales and common experiences. She hadn't known Annie. Until recently, her life had never crossed paths with any of the people who thought of a place like Frenchie's as a second home.
An old feeling came back to her from childhood, a memory of herself and Savannah dressed in their matching Sunday best, standing on the sidewalk out front of the church, watching with longing while other children ran and played in the park adjacent to the church grounds.
“Can't we play, too, Mama?”
“No, darling, you don't want to get your pretty dress all dirty, do you?” Vivian, in a red-on-white dot dress that matched her daughters', an elegant wide-brimmed white hat perched just so on her head, bent and smoothed a sausage curl behind Laurel's ear. “Besides, sweetheart, those aren't the kind of children you should play with.”
“Why not?”
“Don't be silly, Laurel.” She smiled that brittle smile that always made Laurel's tummy knot. “They're common. You're a Chandler.”
A stupid memory, she thought, trying to crush the residual vulnerability. This was a time of tragedy for the Delahoussayes; she had no business feeling sorry for herself. Besides, no one in their right mind would want to be included among the mourners.
“Here you go.”
Laurel looked up and blinked at the tumbler of milk Leonce had set on the bar before her.
“My grandpapa, he had an ulcer,” he said softly. He put his elbows on the bar and leaned toward her, a knowing look raising one dark eyebrow and the knot of scar tissue that interrupted it. “He used to rub his belly same as what you're doin'. When he ran out of the cabbage juice the local traiteur used to give him, he drank milk.”
Laurel shot a guilty glance at the hand she had absently pressed to her middle. “I'm fine,” she said, wrapping both hands around the cold glass. “But thank you, anyway, Leonce.”
He took a deep drag on his cigarette and sighed out a cloud of pale smoke, staring across the room at nothing. “I can't believe she's gone, snatched away from us just like dat,” he said, snapping his fingers.
“Were you close?”
He smiled sadly. “Ever 'body loved Annie.”
Laurel sipped her milk and looked at Jack out of the corner of her eye, wondering if he had loved Annie. “She was married, wasn't she?”
“Oh, yeah, but Tony, he didn' treat her good, so all bets were off, if you get my drift.”
He took another pull on his smoke and crushed the butt out in a Jax Beer ashtray. Lost in memories for a moment, he lifted a hand to rub absently at the scar on his cheek. “Annie, she liked to pass a good time,” he murmured. “She wasn' a bad girl. She just liked to pass a good time, is all.”
Meaning she cheated on her abusive husband. Automatically, Laurel's mind sorted and filed the facts, formulated theories. Old habit. Comforting in its way. There was solace, consolation to be found in making sense of tragedy. Murders could be solved. Justice could be served.
But nothing would ever bring Annie back.
The side door near the kitchen opened, and Ovide stumbled in like a zombie. He looked twenty years older and frail, despite his bulk. The hair that fringed his head stood out in an aura of silver. The ruddy color had leeched out of his face, leaving his skin a ghostly shade of gray.
Talk stopped, and everyone looked to him expectantly. Everyone except Jack, who hunched over his accordion, playing “Valse de Grand Mèche.” Ovide just stood there looking lost and confused, as if he had no idea where he was or what he was doing there. Leonce went to him and took hold of his arm, speaking to him softly in French. He didn't appear to listen, but looked around the bar at the people who had gathered to talk, at Jack, who had set himself apart. Finally, his gaze settled on Laurel.
“Viens ici, chérie,” he murmured, holding a hand out toward her. “T-Grace, she wants to see you.”
Laurel just barely kept from looking over her shoulder to see if there was a more likely person standing behind her. “Me?” she murmured, touching her chest.
“Oui, come. Please.”
With a heavy, black feeling of foreboding pressing down on her, and with the ironic thought that she was going to be included after all, she slid down off her stool.
They entered the Delahoussaye home through the kitchen, which proved to be the largest room of the house. Inappropriately cheerful and bright, the rich aroma of coffee and the spicy bite of étouffée lingered in the air. The walls sported yellow-and-white checked paper and a boggling array of knickknacks that ranged from plastic praying hands to thimbles from Las Vegas to salt-and-pepper sets in the guise of squirrels and chickens—all of it striking Laurel as being painfully sweet and too revealing about the woman who had raised her children in this house.
Delahoussaye children and grandchildren filled the benches at the long harvest table in the center of the room. Sleepy-eyed children sat on the laps of parents or elder siblings. The glare of the fluorescent light washed the color from all their faces, emphasizing eyes that had been cried raw and red. Laurel envied them their family, but not the grief that hung like a pall around them.
“I'm so sorry,” she whispered, apologizing for both their loss and her intrusion on this private time.
Her words triggered a flood of tears from a woman who might have been Annie's twin—apple cheeks and corkscrew curls, a tank top two sizes too small. A brawny husband folded his arms around her and the dark-haired baby who sat on her lap and rocked them both. At the other end of the table, a younger version of T-Grace stood abruptly and looked straight at Laurel.
“Thank you for coming,” she said automatically. “I'll make us a fresh pot of coffee.”
She set about the task with the frenetic energy of someone trying to keep a step ahead of inner demons. Laurel recognized the signs from experience, and she felt empathy drawing on her, pulling at her limited reserve of strength.
She followed Ovide through the cramped living room, where two boys of about ten sat on the floor watching an age-old rerun of Star Trek on a television that had the sound turned so low, the actors seemed to be whispering. A toddler had been settled to sleep on the green plaid sofa with a nubby orange afghan covering all but her face and the fist pressed against her mouth as she sucked her thumb.<
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T-Grace lay in bed in a room that would have been considered a closet at Beauvoir. Meager light from a red glass Spanish-look lamp on the nightstand glowed off the imitation walnut paneling that displayed gold plastic candle sconces and gaudy metal butterflies. The smell of mothballs and cheap perfume permeated the air. Clothes were folded and stacked in precariously tipping piles on every available surface, giving the cramped little room the feel of a storage cupboard at the Salvation Army store.
When Laurel stepped through the door, her breath caught hard in her throat. Her first thought was that T-Grace had died of shock and heartbreak, and she could only wonder why Ovide had dragged her over here to view the body. The woman lay propped against half a dozen pillows, her bulging eyes staring into nothingness, her thin mouth hanging slack, as if she had been stricken down midsentence. Her orange hair stood up in thin, ratty tufts around her head. Then she stirred, lifting a hand from the green chenille bedspread, and Laurel forced herself to move farther into the room.
“I'm so sorry, T-Grace,” she said softly as she took the woman's hand and settled a hip on the edge of the bed.
T-Grace rolled her head from side to side on the pillow, too sedated to do much more. “My poor, poor bébé. She's gone from us. Gone from dis world,” she mumbled. “I can't bear it.”
“You should try to rest,” Laurel whispered, unable to find adequate words that could soothe a mother's suffering.
“There is no pain like to lose a child,” T-Grace said, her eyes filling. She made no move to brush the tears away. They spilled down her sunken cheeks and trickled back along her jaw. What little energy she had left she concentrated into speech. “I would give myself a hundred times in her place.”
Laurel bit her lip and held tight to the hand that seemed so frail in hers.
“Someone gotta pay for dis.”
“They'll catch the man,” Laurel said thickly, to placate T-Grace and to reassure herself. Someone would pay. Justice would triumph in the end. It had to.