by Frankie Bow
I’d have to ask Ida Belle and Gertie for help. Maybe they weren’t as young as they used to be, but I could do worse than two former counterintelligence operatives. And I knew they’d be up for an adventure. I pushed down my misgivings and picked up the phone.
Chapter 5
Ida Belle had borrowed a small aluminum fishing boat from one of her friends in the Sinful Ladies Society. It wasn’t fast, but it was perfect for steering quietly along the narrow channels and bayous, and it was low profile enough to hide in the vegetation at the edge of the bank. We even had fishing gear with us, so that we could look like we were out for a casual afternoon of relaxation.
Desiree Roche lived in one of those waterfront houses accessible only by boat. Before I moved to Sinful I had no idea that there was any place in the United States where so much of the traffic moved on water. It was kind of like Venice, but with alligators.
We followed around fifty yards behind Desiree and Justin. The hum of our boat’s tiny motor blended with the sloshing, chirping, and buzzing sounds of the bayou. Desiree’s blonde hair acted as a beacon, glowing in the green shade of the tall cypress trees.
“So why are we doing this again?” Gertie asked. “Are we going to bag Justin and bring him back to Ally? Will we have to knock him out?”
“No, silly,” Ida Belle said. “This has to do with Fortune’s drug dealer.”
“Arms dealer. I just think it’s suspicious that this Desiree Roche woman has latched on to your roommate so fast. I think she wants something from him. Like information about me.”
“Maybe not everything is about you, dear,” Gertie said.
“Well I agree with Fortune. Better safe than sorry.” Ida Belle maneuvered the boat deftly as we wended down the channel, the banks closing in on either side. “Besides, Gertie, you got something better to do? Maybe stay home getting ready for Celia’s stupid festival?”
“It’s not Celia’s festival,” Gertie pouted. “She’s just acting like it is and ruining it for everyone else.
She’s stealing the spotlight like a skunk, stinking it up so bad no one else will want to take credit.”
My cell phone buzzed in the back pocket of my camo pants.
I pulled it out to see Carter’s number on the caller ID. What did he want?
“Hello Carter.” My tone was neutral.
“Oh, hey. I stopped by to see if you were around, but you’re not here.”
Darn it. He picked now to stop by? When I would have had the house to myself? OK, stop that, Fortune. You don’t even like this man. Get a grip.
“I’m just out seeing the sights,” I said nonchalantly. “Shouldn’t you be resting?”
“Doctor Broussard cleared me to do some walking. In fact, he ordered me to get up and walk every hour. He said sitting around makes it more likely I’ll get a clot or something. Sightseeing, huh?”
“Yes.”
“I know Ida Belle isn’t home, and I’d bet my next paycheck that Gertie’s with you too.”
I didn’t have the phone on speaker, but in the humming stillness of the swamp Carter’s voice was loud enough that all three of us could hear him.
“He’s good,” Gertie whispered.
“He’s a condescending jerk,” I mouthed.
“Well, you got me, Carter. I’m out with my friends Ida Belle and Gertie.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, if you want to have dinner, give me a call when you get back.”
Was he actually going to let this conversation end without scolding me? Maybe I’d underestimated him.
“And I know you’re not gonna listen, Fortune, but I’ll tell you anyway. Whatever you and those two Geritol Mafia capos have planned, please, stay out of trouble, stay out of the woods, and don’t get mixed up in anything weird.”
No, I hadn’t underestimated him. The blood rose in my ears, so that I barely heard him say, “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Fortune. I don’t want to lose you.”
“You too,” I said curtly. I snapped the phone shut and stuffed it back into my pocket. Jerk. Here I was trying to save myself from being gruesomely tortured and killed by the world’s most ruthless arms dealer, and Carter was scolding me like I was a naughty child.
“Don’t look like that, dear,” Gertie reached out and put her bony little hand on my shoulder. “He thinks you’re a civilian. He doesn’t know you have ten times the training he does. He’s just worried about you.”
“Don’t you take his side, Gertie,” Ida Belle snapped. “And Fortune, you stay strong. Those kinds of entanglements just slow you down.”
We were drifting along a channel that was narrowing, and the cypress trees overhead, choked with Spanish moss, blocked out the sunlight. Justin and Desiree’s little boat disappeared around a bend. We came around after them and re-established visual contact. I watched Desiree secure the boat and then scamper up the bank, as graceful as a cat. Justin followed, a little more awkwardly, holding his arms out for balance. Their destination was a little camp, a modest wooden shack on the edge of the water.
Ida Belle guided the boat to the edge of the bank. We peered through the reeds as Justin followed Desiree up the splintery steps of the front porch.
“What do you do if you have a medical emergency out here?” I whispered. “We’ve been on the water nearly an hour.”
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Gertie said.
“Me too,” I agreed. The swamp around here didn’t look particularly creepy as swamps go (a low bar to be sure), but I did have a feeling of foreboding.
In training, they tell us to listen to these feelings. Often what we think of as “intuition” is really the subconscious mind processing the subtle clues in your surroundings that your conscious mind doesn’t catch. Then again, sometimes intuition can steer you wrong. Your subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between movies and real life. Or in this case, between real life and the last stretch of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, which to me looked just like Perd’ Espoir.
“Did Marie Laveau ever make it out this far from New Orleans?” I joked. “I’m feeling some bad juju.”
Ida Belle and Gertie exchanged a glance.
“What?” I asked. “I know there’s something you two didn’t want to tell me about this place. What is it?”
“We didn’t want you to think we were superstitious,” Ida Belle said.
“I’m superstitious,” Gertie declared.
“Fine,” Ida Belle said. “You’re the teacher, Gertie. You give her the history lesson.”
“Well, you know who Marie Laveau is,” Gertie said.
“Sure. Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. Rumored to have lived to a hundred and fifty, selling potions and casting spells. Although some say that her daughter took her place at some point, making the hundred and fifty years a little more believable.”
“Sounds like someone’s been reading Wikipedia,” Ida Belle said.
“Anything wrong with that?”
“Very good, Fortune. Don’t let Ida Belle discourage you. Anyway, there was a man named Henry Roche Belaire. He fathered two children with Marie Laveau's grandmother, Catherine Henry. And then he sold Catherine.”
“Pig,” Ida Belle added.
“Oh, those were evil times, Fortune. You can’t imagine. Human beings used and sold, bred like cattle, children taken away from their parents. A master could do anything to a slave. The most monstrous behavior was tolerated. People just looked the other way.”
“No, I know exactly what you mean. Slavery’s alive and well, you know. They brief us about it, but it’s one thing to read the statistics on a PowerPoint slide, and another thing to see a twelve-year-old girl about to be sold to an old sheikh.”
“I can’t believe you let that happen,” Ida Belle said.
“I didn’t. In fact, that’s what aborted my last mission. I broke cover to save the girl. Sorry, Gertie, I’m listening. So these Roches? They’re related to Marie Laveau?”
“Well, no
w I’m not sure about that. I believe Catherine Henry had two children by that man, but she had Marie’s mother, Marguerite, by another man, possibly. Or maybe not. When Henry Roche Belaire sold Catherine, he kept the daughter, Marguerite. Now let me see...”
“They’re inside,” Ida Belle interrupted. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 6
We crept up the bank. Ida Belle led the way, because her eyesight was better than Gertie’s. I went last, in case either Ida Belle or Gertie lost their footing and started slipping back down into the water.
We found a position behind a clump of something I hoped wasn’t poison ivy, and settled in. Ida Belle had brought three hearing amplifiers and three portable folding chairs. These weren’t from Marge’s secret arsenal, as impressive as that was; technology had marched on since Marge’s death, making spy gadgets ever smaller and cheaper. Ida Belle had ordered them on Amazon during one of their daily deals for less than fifty bucks apiece. She’d been hoping to use them to eavesdrop on Celia Arceneaux and the rest of her Catholic crew on Sunday mornings. Unfortunately, by the time the sound waves got through the exterior wall of the Catholic church, across the street, and then through the wall of the Protestant church, the signal was too weak to pick up.
Conditions were better out here on the bayou. Only vegetation stood between us and the cabin, which conveniently had no glass in the windows.
Inside I saw the moving shapes of Desiree’s family members. I heard the hubbub of conversation—how many people were inside that tiny building? —but I couldn’t make out anything that was being said. It almost sounded like they were speaking French.
“You got it, Gertie?” Ida Belle whispered. Gertie made a shushing motion with her hand and stared hard at the open window. I made out Justin’s silhouette as he sat; I recognized his protruding ears and the short hair that stuck out from his head in a radial pattern. There was Desiree, sitting next to him. A young man—or a tall and very fit woman, hard to tell in the dark interior—pulled out a chair for what must have been the family matriarch. I could sense from the body language of the family members standing around that Mom was the one in charge. She settled in and the hum of conversation died down. Now Desiree was speaking. I could see her hands gesturing. I couldn’t understand a word.
“She’s talking about Justin,” Gertie said. “She’s telling Maman she shouldn’t worry, he’s not a Yankee.”
Maman nodded and said something, and then Desiree spoke again. Justin sat quietly, probably not understanding any better than I did.
A small hand reached up and touched Justin’s spiky hair. A child’s voice said something.
This was followed by a murmur of scolding voices. Someone picked the little girl up and whisked her out of sight. I still didn’t recognize the words, but the little girl’s plaintive tone was unmistakable. It was the “but MOM!” tone of a kid who doesn’t want to leave while something exciting is going on.
“What did the little girl say to Justin?” I asked. Neither Ida Belle nor Gertie answered me. They both stared at the cabin, avoiding eye contact.
“I think we should tell her,” Gertie said, at length.
“Tell me what?”
“You tell her then,” Ida Belle said. “If you think it’s so important.”
“It’s not something we like to discuss with outsiders,” Gertie said.
“Outsiders? How can you say I'm an outsider? You already know...my deal. And I know yours too.” Gertie and Ida Belle were the only two people in Sinful who knew I was a CIA operative in hiding, and I knew that Gertie and Ida Belle had spied for the U.S. Government during the Vietnam War. Even though we were out in the middle of nowhere, where no one but the alligators could hear us, we all knew better than to speak the details out loud.
“You're right, Fortune.” Gertie looked sheepish. “I apologize. I shouldn't have implied you were an outsider.”
“Knowledge can be a burden,” Ida Belle said. “You of all people should know that, Fortune. The value of plausible deniability.”
Gertie waved at us to shut up. Desiree was speaking again. Gertie leaned forward in her folding chair and stared at the little cabin as if she could will its walls to become transparent. The dithering-old-lady act had fallen away. I was watching Gertie the counterintelligence operative.
“Maman wants to know what his business is here,” Gertie said. Right after that I heard Desiree’s voice in my ear. She was translating for Justin: “Maman wants to know what brings you here.”
Justin cleared his throat. “I’m doing research for my master’s thesis on the effect of environmental hydrocarbons on a fast reproducing organism, in this case the coypu, also known as the nutria or swamp rat. We’ve already confirmed the presence of hydrocarbons using cyclohexane extraction and transmission measurement, which has the advantage of…uh, I’m studying swamp rats.”
“Maman” asked him a question, which of course I couldn’t decode.
“Not yet, Maman, but he’s gonna taste some at the swamp rat festival. Right, cher?” Desiree giggled.
“Oh yah, sure,” Justin agreed.
Maman leaned back and nodded. Desiree whispered something else, but I couldn’t hear it.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m looking at,” Justin said. “But reversing it? That’s a whole nother question. I’m not really...”
The rest of his answer was drowned out by excited conversation.
“Well this was a bust,” Ida Belle said. “Looks like we came all the way out here to spy on someone’s awkward meet-the-parents date.”
I shrugged. “You’re right. No one’s throwing Justin into the trunk of an Escalade or anything like that. I guess that’s a relief. So what was it that you were going to tell me? Or not tell me?”
“Wait.” Gertie was steadying her earpiece with her hand, frowning into the middle distance. Desiree was saying something else now. Her tone was serious.
“He can help us, Maman,” Gertie translated.
“Help us?” Ida Belle snorted. “Guess she thinks he’s rich.”
“They must not know many grad students,” I said.
“Cougar,” Ida Belle said.
“She’s not that much older than he is,” I said, a little defensively.
“Cougar!” Gertie repeated, and both of them were on their feet, scrambling down the bank.
Then I realized what they meant.
Standing beside the cabin, just five yards away and gazing directly at us, was a cougar. An actual cougar. This was nothing like Floyd Guidry’s pet bobcat. It was a beautiful animal; tawny, muscular, with alert, triangular ears and yellow-green eyes outlined with black.
I also happened to know that it was capable of clearing that distance in a single jump.
I stared at the ground to break eye contact and backed away slowly, then turned around and dashed to the boat. I took a running start and leapt in just as Ida Belle was pulling away from the bank.
I breathed a little easier when we’d been on the water for about fifteen minutes, with no sign of the cougar following us.
“Sorry about getting you two into this,” I said. “Wow, I couldn’t understand a thing they were saying. Was that Creole?”
“Cajun,” Gertie said.
“Gertie has a real talent for languages,” Ida Belle said. “You shoulda seen how fast she picked up Khmer.”
“What was it that the little girl said, when everyone shushed her and then someone carried her out of the room? Was it something rude?”
“Sort of.” Gertie shifted uncomfortably on the narrow aluminum bench seat. “It’s that Cajun legend I was telling you about. A man that can change into a beast. The Rougarou.”
“That’s right, Rougarou. I remember now. Did she think Justin was a werewolf?”
“Justin?” Ida Belle guffawed, “A werewolf? That kid’s as hairless as a nectarine. What? I only know cause he walks around the house without his shirt on sometimes.”
“Should we call Carter?” Gertie asked. �
��Let him know that we saw a cougar? Maybe it’s the same one that got LeRoy Thibodeaux.”
“I’m not going to call him. First of all, what’s he going to do about it? He’s the deputy sheriff, not animal control. And second of all, I don’t need him scolding me again and telling me to stay home and lock all the doors.”
“Fortune has a point,” Ida Belle said. “Carter wouldn’t be able to do anything about it anyway. And we don’t even know if that’s the one that got LeRoy.”
Something splashed into the water, and I felt my heart rate jump. My anxiety level was in the red zone, which wasn’t healthy, but was understandable. I was hiding out from an international arms dealer in a place teeming with snakes, alligators, and now carnivorous cats. Maybe I should just stock up on canned food and wine, go home, lock the doors, and stay inside for the rest of the summer.
“There’s one for Ally,” Ida Belle said.
A wet, furry brown thing glided alongside our boat and then ducked underwater.
“What was that, a beaver?” I asked.
“That’s a swamp rat,” Gertie said.
“That’s what Ally’s been trying to make into pies in my kitchen? It looks too cute to eat. And way too big to be a rat.”
“Don’t be fooled by how cute they are,” Gertie said. “Those cute little critters are an environmental menace. Some fur traders brought them here back in the thirties, but they got loose and now they’re out of control. They dig up roots and destroy river banks.”
“That’s why we get money from the state for the swamp rat festival,” Ida Belle said. “I guess I have to call it the nutria festival now, thanks to Celia.”
“There seems to be some kind of festival or fair every week or so in Sinful,” I said.
“Mostly we have them during the summer,” Gertie said. “There’s not much else for the kids to do when school’s out. Idle hands, you know.”
“I do know,” I sighed. “Maybe I need to find a hobby.”
The three of us repaired to Francine’s Diner in time for the early bird dinner special.
“So are you going to tell me now?” I said.