“Of course not.” I ran my hands through his hair, feeling a swelling of emotion that was almost painful. “You have to promise me that when I find the person who shot you, that you get DeWayne and Budgie to hold them while I work them over.”
Coleman laughed and kissed my cheek. “I love the way you protect your man.”
“I’m not kidding.” I wasn’t.
“Maybe you’ll luck out and capture the shooter first. That way if you beat him up, there’s nothing I can do about it. At least nothing to prevent it from happening. Of course I’d have to arrest you for assault.”
“You’re just itching to arrest me for something.”
“That’s true.” Coleman wrapped his arms around me. “And I don’t think anyone could blame me. Maybe I’ll put you and Cece in the same cell. I’m arresting her for worrying us all to death.”
“Now that I agree with. Cece looks great in orange.”
Coleman shifted and I popped up out of his lap. He was wounded and didn’t need me leaning against him. “Let’s go inside. You’ve been up long enough.”
“I know you won’t believe it, but I agree. I’m tired.”
“You lost a lot of blood and even though you had a transfusion, you still have to rebuild. The more you rest, the quicker you’ll heal. Doc said so.”
“Could you check the truck and see if I left some files in there? I can do some reading on the case.”
“Sure thing. I also brought you the reports from Washington County.” Coleman was being far more tractable than I’d ever imagined. “Let me grab the files and we’ll get inside. I’ll build a fire if you’d like.” One of the benefits of Dahlia House was the many fireplaces. There was one in my bedroom, and it made the room cheerful and toasty. I could build up a fire and give Coleman his pain meds and snuggle with him until he fell asleep. I couldn’t afford a nap, but a quick snuggle would do us both a world of good.
I went to his truck and got the files he wanted from beneath the seat. Five minutes later I struck the match to light a fire. Coleman couldn’t drink with pain meds so I settled for soft drinks for both of us. “Reminds me of high school, drinking Cokes and watching a fire.” The flames did crackle brightly. “Except we wouldn’t be in bed.”
“Being a grown-up has some definite advantages. But I know you have things to do, Sarah Booth. Head out. I’m fine. I can call my deputies if I need anything.”
He was being really agreeable. I put a hand on his forehead to check for a fever. “Are you sure?”
“I don’t need to be babysat. I’m here, I’m resting. I’ll read my files and talk with DeWayne and Budgie and you when I have something to add. I promise not to overdo it. To be honest, I’m exhausted. I think I’ll take a nap.”
I eyed him warily. This was too, too easy. “Maybe I should call Madame Tomeeka to come over.”
“Do not. I’m capable of doing what Doc says. I want to get well quickly.”
The debate was interrupted by the ring of my cell phone. Tinkie was calling. She obviously had news. I answered while still giving Coleman a look. “What’s shaking?”
“Delane Goggans had plenty to say. Meet me at the courthouse. We have to make Kawania talk. She’s the key and DeWayne said he can’t hold her much longer. She’s demanding a lawyer.” I put the phone down.
Coleman shook his head. “I heard. Go. Call me when you find something. I’ll see if I can’t do my part from this bed.”
“A little shoulder wound won’t slow you down for long.” I leaned over to kiss him. I had the strangest tugging at my heart region—as if a tendon connected us. “Behave. You promise?”
He crossed his heart with an X. “You got it.”
* * *
My heart was still sore when I drove away. Even though Coleman was doing fine, I had a terrible feeling that he needed me to be there—as if I could throw up a psychic wall of protection. Right. There was truly nothing I could do to make him heal faster. I left Sweetie Pie and Pluto to keep him company.
At the Sunflower County courthouse, I found my partner in an interview room with Kawania Laveau. The tension between them was visceral.
“I know you two aren’t real cops and I don’t have to answer anything you ask. I’ve requested my lawyer, Peter Deerstalker, and he’d better be on his way or my rights are being violated.” She crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair.
“We can’t violate your rights because we aren’t police, and you know that.”
“Maybe you should just put a curse on us,” Tinkie taunted.
I had to force myself not to react. Tinkie was never belittling about supernatural things. She’d been in the room with Kawania for a good half an hour—maybe she had a reason to be so aggressive.
“What kind of curse?” I asked, earning a frown from Tinkie.
“This crazy woman thinks I’m voodooing people to death.” Kawania pointed at Tinkie.
“The other students on the dig team say you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to make them believe in your powers. They say you cursed Dr. Sandra Wells and brought about her death.” Tinkie was deadly serious. I desperately needed a private word with her, but now wasn’t the time. To interrupt the interview would be to give Kawania the win.
“They are fools and easily led around by the nose.” Kawania grinned with pride. “I am good at manipulating them, but I didn’t harm anyone.”
“What about those henna tattoos? You created them. You organized a handful of women into a conjure group. You were calling on the darkness.” Tinkie got louder with each statement until she was right in Kawania’s face, pounding the table. “What did you drag out of the pits of that burial site?”
She had Kawania’s attention—and good. A tear slipped out of the young woman’s eye and plopped on the ugly metal table. “Dr. Wells put me up to it. She’s the one who started all of this. And now she’s dead, but I didn’t have a thing to do with what happened to her.”
“So who did? Spill it,” Tinkie demanded. “Fast.”
I took a seat several feet back from the table and turned on my phone to record whatever Kawania had to say. Coleman would definitely want to hear this. Budgie and DeWayne were listening, and also possibly recording, but I wasn’t taking any chances of missing this interview.
“When Dr. Wells found out I was a distant relative of Marie Laveau, she said I could help her. She had an idea that if we could make people believe the mound was haunted by a ghost or spirit, it would click with the TV producers. Haunted digs, the curse of the pharaohs, you know what I’m saying. There was already a head start with the Bailey family that lived on the property and the rumors of ghosts. All I had to do was get the students worked up and in a receptive mood. That’s how the tattoos came to be. We were using them as a … ward against evil, I guess you’d say. Sandra got one. So did I. Some others.”
“And Bella Devareaux?” I asked.
“Sandra said we could trust her. They knew each other. Sandra said Bella was going to help her get rid of Frank Hafner.”
“Did Sandra hire Bella Devareaux?”
Kawania shook her head. “I don’t know. They met up in New Orleans, and I know Sandra was cooking up a scheme to push Hafner off the dig. She got me to talk about curses and hauntings and such and keep the students on edge and afraid. I think Bella was digging into Hafner’s relationship with Delane. Sandra really wanted Hafner gone and she’d use his sexual peccadillos if necessary. I did overhear Sandra and Bella talking about the missing women. That was just another ploy to keep people upset and in turmoil, afraid to go to the dig at night.”
“So they were literally working together.”
“Well, it didn’t work. Those with the henna tattoos, Sandra and Bella were being killed.” Kawania sighed and looked toward the door of the interview room. “Where is Peter? He’s my lawyer. I called him an hour ago. He should be here.”
“Did he know about this … collaboration?”
She shook her head. “It was kind of a girl thing.
Cooley Marsh knew, but he didn’t have a tattoo. He was always sneaking around eavesdropping on everyone. Bella really had a burn on for him. She would have pushed him off the top of the mound if she could have.”
“Did Dr. Hafner know about any of this?” Tinkie asked.
Kawania looked at the door again, as if she expected help to come sailing in. “Maybe. Ask him. What I know is that all of us, the students, we were just pawns in their game to get grants and become stars. It’s what you do for a grade when you have to do it.”
“Do you have any idea who killed Devareaux and Wells?” I asked.
Kawania squirmed in her chair. “There is something out there at the dig site. Something evil.”
“Don’t pull that crap on me,” Tinkie said. She had used up her quotient of patience, it seemed.
“It’s not crap. When we started with the voodoo stuff and the apparitions, yeah, it was stories we made up to cause unhappiness in the student workers. But I saw something. Something real.”
“Oh … You saw a ghost, didn’t you?” Tinkie was on a tear.
“I don’t know if it was a ghost, but it was something. Something … wicked.”
“Describe it.” I didn’t believe her but I was curious what she would come up with.
“It was like something dead.” She held up a hand to stop our laughter. “It isn’t funny. It was like the reanimated dead. The last time I saw it, I swear it looked just like Dr. Wells. Except it was horrible. Decayed. So ugly and rotten.”
She was an effective con woman. Had it been midnight at a dig in the middle of nowhere, she might have scared me. I happened to know that ghosts were real—just not reanimated dead ghosts. Where Cece’s description of what she’d seen had gotten under my skin, the same thing coming from Kawania made me skeptical. There had to be a logical explanation, and it wasn’t a zombie. “Just so you know, Dr. Wells’ body had already been shipped back to Michigan,” I told her.
“Why are you even trying this?” Tinkie asked her.
“Because I’m telling the truth. I saw Dr. Wells at Mound Salla after she was dead.” She swallowed. “Ask Cooley Marsh. He saw her, too.”
How convenient that he was on our suspect list. Not much of a confirmation in my book, but I didn’t need to say it out loud. “Anyone else catch sight of this miracle of Dr. Frankenstein?”
Kawania had finally had enough. “Now I’m done talking until Peter gets here. I don’t think he’s missing at all. I think you didn’t call him. But that’s all you’re getting from me.”
27
Tinkie and I adjourned outside and, as I suspected, DeWayne and Budgie were right there. I sent the download of the taped interview to Coleman’s phone.
“What do you make of her claim about Sandra Wells?” Tinkie asked the two deputies.
“Reanimated dead?” DeWayne had a slow, easy smile. “I say call the production company that does The Walking Dead. We may have an episode for them.”
“Very funny,” Tinkie said, but she was grinning wide.
The sheriff’s office phone began to ring and Budgie hurried to answer it while Tinkie and I talked to DeWayne.
“Any idea where Hafner has gone?” I asked.
“No idea. He isn’t in Michigan, though Hafner indicated he was going to speak at the professor’s funeral. He was giving the frenemy eulogy, I suppose.” DeWayne’s grin was out of place. “You should know where Hafner is. Coleman said he was hitting on you, Sarah Booth.”
“To no avail. I think he was on automatic pilot. That’s his programmed behavior. He’d try it on a tree stump if he thought he could gain an advantage. In this instance he was just trying to piss Coleman off.” A change of topic was in order. “Tinkie, did you find anything from Delane?”
She nodded. “I did. She swears she overheard Cooley Marsh talking on his cell telling someone to meet him at the Winterville Mound. Cooley said that he had evidence that would clear that person.” Tinkie pointed to the knife that was on the deputy’s desk. “I believe Cooley set up Peter and Cece. I think he left the knife there as part of an attempt to plant evidence against Peter and make him look guilty.”
“But it isn’t the murder weapon.” I pointed out.
“If Coleman or one of us had happened upon Peter holding that knife with Cece potentially as his hostage, it could have ended badly,” DeWayne said. “It was definitely a plant, and if Cooley made that call…”
“Do you think that nerdy student is actually a killer?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” Tinkie wasn’t rushing to judgment. “He’s not around the motel. I can’t find him, and Cece did say it was a male who called, so it couldn’t have been Delane or Kawania. It could have been Cooley.”
Budgie came back to our little group frowning. “I have some strange news. Dr. Wells’ body never made it to Michigan. The coffin arrived, but it was empty.”
“What the hell?” DeWayne got on his phone immediately and called the hospital. After a brief conversation, he looked at us. “Doc sent the body to the funeral home where she was put in the coffin and sealed. The coffin was driven by hearse to Memphis and put on a plane. They have all the paperwork to document it.”
“So where is the body?” Tinkie asked. She shuddered slightly as if someone had walked on her grave.
“Wandering around Mound Salla at night.” I couldn’t help it. This case had everything, and now there was a missing body. “It would seem Dr. Wells is more dedicated to that dig than we thought.”
Tinkie punched my arm. Hard. “Be serious.”
I rubbed my arm. “Listen, short stack, do that again and I’ll pick you up like a baby and carry you to the car.”
DeWayne and Budgie howled with laughter, but Tinkie was not amused.
“What are you going to do about dead professor walking?” I asked them.
“Send you and Tinkie up there to scout it out tonight.” DeWayne almost preened with delight at his teasing.
“Sure, I’ll check out the burial mound if you find Frank and put him and Delane in lockup, along with Cooley Marsh.” The long arm of the law would have a lot more success keeping track of my missing client, his paramour, and one weird student than Tinkie or I would. “Did you guys ever talk to Cooley Marsh?”
“We did,” Budgie said. “He swears he’s just a student trying to get a grade, but that’s not true. He isn’t registered at the university as a student.”
“Delane said she wasn’t responsible for him. She thought Hafner had hired him.” Tinkie brought them up to date with what we knew.
“Maybe Hafner brought him in as an outside worker, but he isn’t a student.” DeWayne was frowning. All trace of teasing was gone. “We’ll clear this up when we find Hafner. Also we’re going to have to let Kawania Laveau go right now. We can’t just keep her in that room.”
“We’re done with her for the moment. Thanks.” I looked at Tinkie. “What’s next on the agenda?”
“I’ve had it with the talk of someone—or something—stumbling around the dig site. We need to set up some cameras on Mound Salla. If there is someone or something up there rambling about, we should capture it on film and then we can do what we must. And, on the reality front, I don’t think we’ll find any zombies, but we might catch someone snooping around that doesn’t belong there.”
I checked my watch. It was getting late. The sun would be setting and, to be honest, I didn’t want to be on top of the mound in the dark. For any reason. “Let’s do it now.”
“Let’s head to the electronics store. We need motion-activated low-light cameras,” Tinkie said.
I was making a list in my head. I wanted to set up the equipment and be gone before full dark and the rise of the moon. I wanted my friends safely tucked into their homes.
Lucky for Delaney Detective Agency, Tinkie had a platinum credit card and no reluctance to use it. We bought cameras and all the necessary gizmos to go with them. If anything moved on the top of that mound or around the bottom, we’d have it on digita
l files. Whatever was going on at Mound Salla, whether it was supernatural or human, we’d get to the bottom of it. And when we did, someone was going to be charged with two counts of murder.
It was still light when we arrived at Mound Salla and initiated the setup of our equipment. It didn’t take long, and we talked as we worked. “We forgot to ask Kawania for a list of everyone who had one of those tattoos,” Tinkie said as I pounded a stake into the hard ground.
“You’re right. We need to know that.”
“I’ll call her.” Tinkie sat down in the grass and dialed. She frowned and hung up. “It went to voice mail.”
“Not everyone answers the phone every time it rings.” I couldn’t resist a tiny dig at Tinkie for being such a phone addict. “We should call DeWayne to check on her. And mention Sister Grace, too. Someone should check that connection. How about I call Cece to explore this? She owes you plenty and she can check it out without an official action. Those uniforms sometimes make a girl nervous.”
“With your quick thinking, you’re leaving me behind in the dust, Tink.” Maybe I was tired or had worried myself into dullard mode, but Tinkie was out-thinking me left and right. “Call her, please.” Just after I spoke I glanced to the east. The rim of the moon had crept up onto the horizon. The pale slice looked like a portion of a giant disk. I’d never seen the moon come up that big, perhaps because of my vantage point on top of the mound. Or maybe because it was the Crow Moon, an omen of danger.
I took a moment from setting up the cameras and called Coleman, just to let him know I was thinking about him. He answered sounding a little breathless.
“Are you in bed?” I asked.
“No, but I’m fine. I can’t lie in that bed. It drives me nuts.”
“But you’re resting and taking care of yourself?”
“I read the files. I’ve talked to the Washington County deputies. They’re staking out Winterville Mound tonight. The manager of Tibbs Funeral Parlor insists Sandra Wells’ body was put on a plane to Ann Arbor. He personally locked the coffin and sent the key. When the coffin was transferred to the funeral home in Ann Arbor, they opened it to prepare the body for viewing. No body.”
Game of Bones Page 23