Bayou Moon Read online

  Mignon couldn’t look away, she couldn’t even blink. “Why would I know that? It was raining, too. I thought that flooded the road.”

  He smiled grimly. “It had a little help. Like the transformers that fed electricity to the tributary area had a little help being turned off.”

  The color of his eyes was like the sweetest kind of blended whiskey; she thought she might fall into those eyes and never come up for air. She didn’t say anything.

  “Okay, then, what about the séance?” John Henry rocked back and forth on his resting knee. The movement of his large body was hypnotic as she watched the muscles slowly move back and forth.

  “You tied me, and then everyone was freaking out about that stupid egg,” Mignon said. “You’d think you’d never seen an egg turn out that way.”

  “You have?”

  “Sure, my mother and father kept a few chickens. It was a chore of mine to fetch the eggs.” Mignon was surprised with herself. This was a memory that had previously escaped her, like the rhymes had. But now she remembered it as if it had happened yesterday. “There was a chicken coop.” She pointed to the south. “Down that way.” She turned her head to look. It was gone. Long gone, but it existed in her mind, standing in the shadow of the forest as it had over two decades before. “I haven’t thought about it for a long time. My mother would fry up fresh eggs every day on the stove in the kitchen, or sometimes on the potbelly if the electricity was off. Farm eggs aren’t like the kind you get from the store. Double yolks. Other stuff. It happens, but they mostly get weeded out by the time they hit the shelves. It’s a way of life.”

  John Henry watched Mignon as she looked off to the south. He could see that her mind was lost in the past. He glanced over to where the chicken coop would have stood, and when he looked back he found her incredible green eyes on him again. She had the most innocent expression on her face. She was thinking about the past, like a little girl lost in oversized hand-me-downs.

  He fought the urge to take her into his arms and give comfort in the only way he could. Instead, he took a deep breath. “And the bell ringing?”

  “The bell rang?” asked Mignon curiously. “No, it didn’t. I was sitting there the whole time. It was right next to me. I think I would have heard it.”

  “What about the watch fob?”

  “Right on the table in the same spot.” She paused. “Weren’t they?”

  “Do you believe in ghosts, Mignon?”

  Mignon studied him closely. “I know what I would have said a few weeks ago, John Henry.”

  “You didn’t believe,” he said softly. “And now you wonder if something is happening to you.” She nodded ever so slowly, and he added, “So do I.”

  Neither one of them seemed to move, but a moment later Mignon was in his arms, right where she belonged, fitting there as though they’d found the part missing from both of them all of their lives. The Beretta and the newspaper were forgotten, sliding to the porch with a low thud. All she knew was that his lips were intoxicating and that it felt good to think about nothing but the sensation of their bodies rubbing against each other. He carried her into the house, and she directed him to the pantry where she had slept as a child. She had placed a twin bed there, for when the house was finished. The workmen had finished the floors in the tiny room, but it was empty except for the bed, which wasn’t nearly big enough for the two of them.

  They didn’t, however, care much about that.

  Later Mignon was propped against John Henry’s chest. He rested against the wall behind the bed and slowly stroked her thick red hair back from her face. It had been sweet and satiating, and he was already wondering if they could repeat it. So he satisfied himself by studying the lines of her body. It was a lush body with curves many women would envy, full breasts and a trim waist, full hips that jutted out from her midriff in the manner of a woman who was shaped like a woman. She was stretched out at his side, her upper half resting on top of him, one of her hands playing with the hair on his chest. “What’s the gun for?”

  “Snakes, John Henry, what else?” she whispered. “I suppose I should go fetch it off the porch because it doesn’t do me a lot of good in here.”

  “Like that?” he asked, amused. “Like Venus rising out of the half shell?”

  Her head came up. “And who’s to see?”

  “I wouldn’t look away,” he replied with a little rasp in his voice, enjoying the thought of her walking naked out to the porch to retrieve her gun, the gun he had pointedly ignored when he had almost snatched her into his arms. And the vision of her long flanks glowing in the warm afternoon’s golden light was tempting beyond belief. “But don’t go away. No one will come. Not with the cruiser out there.”

  “Why? Will they think you’re interrogating me?” Mignon laughed huskily. “Is this what you do with all of the new artists in town?”

  One of his large hands cupped her face, tilting it so that his brown eyes could stare directly into her green ones. “I don’t do this with anyone else.”

  Mignon shrugged lightly, but she didn’t break the contact between them. She lowered her head, and John Henry couldn’t see that she was staring at the wall like it would fall before her eyes. “Someone doesn’t want me here,” she murmured.

  “I know, and I can say that it isn’t me,” he murmured back as he stroked her hair gently. “Why are you here, Mignon? Why have you come back?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I see the most attractive woman I’ve ever met. With green eyes the color of the sea, and vivid hair, and the most sensual body, and an apt mind, an incredible mind. She has this wonderful talent, and she has pulled herself out of the ashes unlike anyone I’ve ever known. I wish I had met you years ago. I see all of that, and I see someone who’s playing with fire.” John Henry’s voice was rough, but tender, like the soft rumble of an old tomcat. “Looking for something that might not be there. I see it, and I feel like I’m helpless to do anything about it.”

  Mignon sighed reluctantly and raised her head to stare John Henry in the face. “And the St. Michels?”

  “The St. Michels are people who would do anything to protect themselves. They would and they have. I’ve walked a line with them. Maybe I’ve even walked a fence with them. I’ve tried to be careful not to fall on either side, but sometimes it can’t be helped. Sometimes my only redeeming quality is that I stubbornly crawl back up on that fence. My only fortune concerning them is that they’ve mellowed in recent years. Eleanor’s interests lie in the supernatural and Geraud works in New Orleans, well out of my jurisdiction. But they ask me to come to their house upon occasion, just like some of the other plantation families do. And for politics’ sake, I go. Some of these people are good people. Some of them aren’t.” John Henry stared back at Mignon, hardly even blinking.

  “And that satisfies you?” she asked curiously. “Walking this line? Walking the fence? When you know that they’ve broken the law.”

  “When I can prove they’ve done something wrong, I won’t walk the fence.” His rumbling voice warned her that he didn’t like being questioned on this matter. Mignon didn’t care.

  “So you want to know what makes me tick? What really brings me back?” She sat straight up, and reached over the bed to pull a T-shirt off the floor and over her head. When her mop of red hair reappeared, John Henry was genuinely sorry that the rest of her bare body had disappeared. “Was that what this was all about?”

  “Hell, no,” he exploded and kissed her again. It was a long time before they drifted back to the present. When he released her they were both breathing heavily. He looked at her seriously. “I asked around about Luc and your mother. No one said boo about them except they up and ran off, not until years later. There was speculation about them being dead. But then there was also information that indicated Luc had sent some paperwork from New Orleans, after he left here with your mother. They might not be alive now, but it’s not because they were murdered that day.” He hadn’t found
any proof of their deaths, not in the cold case files from Louisiana, Arkansas, or Texas. But what he kept from her was that he hadn’t found any proof of their lives either. He knew damned well that they should have left some kind of trace, but there was nothing. It didn’t prove that they were dead, but what other answer could there be? And secrets like this tended to stay secret.

  “I suppose that would be what you might think.” Mignon spoke softly, picking her words carefully. “But you need to consider the source of the information about this ‘so-called’ paperwork from Luc St. Michel. I’d be willing to bet we’re talking about a power of attorney granting control over the St. Michel estates and money to Eleanor.” She didn’t want to let on that she knew a great deal more than he would have expected her to know, but there was a point where she knew that she had to trust him. She had made love with him, she had trusted him in the most intimate manner possible, and she couldn’t deny that. The only thing left was the question of how much information she should impart to him. How much of it was safe? And what would endanger her and her friends?

  “That’s part of it.” His eyes had narrowed, wondering what her source of information was.

  “And there was nothing else? Not a Christmas or birthday card to Geraud and Eugenie?” asked Mignon. “Not a postcard?”

  There was a long pause. “I’ve seen men do it before,” John Henry said at last. “Hell, I’ve seen women do it. Cold-blooded individuals who walked away and never looked back.”

  Mignon stood up and walked over to the door of the little room. She stood there, dressed only in a T-shirt that fell to the tops of her thighs. “Did you know that this was my room as a child?”

  “No, how could I know that?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “My father pulled down the shelves in here so that I would have a little space to myself, or perhaps so that he and my mother would have a space to themselves.”

  John Henry grunted. “You’re feeling sorry for yourself. If that had been so, then they would have simply stuck you in the kitchen by the potbelly stove.”

  She smiled quickly, and it faded away just as fast. “I didn’t think of that. But here was where I slept for years as a child. I was born in this house.” She pointed toward the master bedroom. “In that room.” Resting one shoulder against the doorjamb, she glanced over her shoulder. “I asked you a question about whether you had dreams that came true or not. I have them. Last year, I was at the peak of my form. I was made. If I wanted, I could never work another day in my life, and I would never lack for anything. All I have to do is live off my investments. I did everything I vowed to do when I was a little girl. Everything, and then last year there was a mugging.”

  There was a heavy silence before she went on. “A friend was shot while I watched. Mugged by some kid in the street. There was blood. A lot of blood. He lived, my friend. But … I started having these dreams.”

  “What dreams?” he asked as her voice trailed away.

  She took a deep breath. “Dreams of death, of blood, of screaming, of my mother dying, and dying violently. I try to help her and I can’t do anything because I’m frightened beyond words. Death and pain haunted me, day in and day out.” Mignon turned to face John Henry, and he could see the lines of pain etched on her face. “I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t paint. Finally, I went to see a psychiatrist in New York City. A good man. The best. And we decided that I was dreaming about my mother’s abandonment. If I could simply come to terms with it, then I wouldn’t dream about it.”

  “Go on.”

  “What better way could there be than to confront my mother personally? So I put some of my money to good use. Instead of taking the Prozac the doc prescribed, I hired a private detective, just like Geraud did in 1982. Only I didn’t know that then.” She shivered a bit and John Henry sat up in the bed, looking at her carefully. “A good private investigator named Potter, a former feebie. Expensive as hell, but worth his weight in gold.”

  “He told you something.”

  “Potter told me everything I needed to know.”

  Mignon stepped back to the bed and sat on the edge next to John Henry. “Potter looked for the cold, hard facts. He didn’t find any.” She went on to tell him about the unused Social Security numbers, the missing driving records and work histories—much of which he already knew. But then there was something he hadn’t considered. “There’s no record of use of a passport since 1975 for Luc St. Michel. My mother was never issued one, not then, and not since then. Luc was driving a 1975 Mercedes Benz, a metallic gray sedan. The most expensive sedan one could buy from Mercedes at the time. It has never turned up. It was never sold to anyone, and never registered in another state under its VIN.”

  “They could have changed their names, bought new identities,” suggested John Henry. There was a natural reluctance to tell her he had found out much of the same information, that he was still looking at cold cases from 1975 and 1976, but he wasn’t sure how she would react when he told her. Trust was already the biggest wall between them, and he didn’t want to build it even higher. “Eleanor is a vindictive woman. You haven’t seen it yet, because you haven’t crossed her. You’re bringing her something she wants, albeit strange to most folk. But Luc probably had a very good reason to hide from his wife. She would have sued him for every penny he owned and then some. Adultery in 1975 was still seen as a sin, and she would have won.”

  “You don’t understand. My guy obtained a copy of the power of attorney that Luc supposedly signed. It was forged, confirmed by a handwriting expert, and despite that it was notarized by Jourdain.” Mignon looked deeply into John Henry’s eyes, not willing to admit that she had seen a copy of the document in Geraud’s safe. She also didn’t want to admit that the private detective had provided dossiers on all of the principals in the area, from Eleanor St. Michel to Sheriff John Henry Roque himself, from their shoe sizes to their grades in grammar school, and photographs when available. “I found things in this house that my mother treasured profoundly. She wouldn’t have left me. I know that now. You have to know that they never left this place. They never left Louisiana. They’re dead, and they were murdered.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20

  Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly, lavender’s green;

  When I am king, dilly dilly, you shall be queen.

  LAVENDER’S BLUE

  THEY WERE DRESSING WHEN Mignon noticed that something seemed wrong with John Henry. She wasn’t sure what it was, whether it was the expression on his face or the way he stood by the window after he finished buckling his belt. She tucked her T-shirt into a faded pair of Levi 501s. John Henry ran his fingers briskly through his hair, looking out the dirty kitchen window.

  “What’s wrong, John Henry?” Mignon asked quietly, and answered it herself. “You can’t think that anyone would be that shaken up by my presence here? All I’ve gotten are warnings. Stupid warnings. If they thought I could accomplish anything here then I probably would be dead, lying in a grave out in the Kisatchie Forest right now.” That was easy to say, she thought. But then he doesn’t know about the violent shove into the canal.

  John Henry turned to look at Mignon. “Maybe they don’t think you’re a threat, yet. But all this psychic seance bullshit … What if you’re right? What if they were murdered that very day, by Eleanor or her hired man? Wouldn’t she see you as a threat to her, someone who could expose her? Don’t you think that you’ve put yourself in a position of danger?”

  “You heard what she said. She feels guilty. She believes that her husband is haunting her because of the wrongs she did me and my father. Perhaps she thinks that by inviting me to the mansion for her little discernments she’s keeping the ghosts at bay. Maybe she didn’t say that, but that’s what she means.” Mignon shrugged. “It doesn’t make sense if she’s the kind of woman you say. But the St. Michels have always been above the law in St. Germaine Parish. You know that. They’ve got more politicians in their pockets than loo
se change. Maybe she doesn’t see me as a threat and maybe she’s developed a conscience after all these years. Being haunted by your dead husband’s ghost has to be somewhat … cataclysmic.”

  “I don’t see Eleanor St. Michel like that,” John Henry muttered. “I see her as someone who would be quite willing to squash anyone who got in her way.”

  “And you think she’s like that, yet not capable of murdering her husband?”

  He didn’t answer and she started along another avenue of thought. “Then there’s the psychic phenomena. She’s so into that, she thinks she’s got a pipeline there. Maybe that’s the reason. I don’t understand everything here, but if this is a ticket for me to find out something about my mother, then I’ll use it.”

  “But you’re not doing anything. You’re not psychic,” he said. “Or so you say.”

  Mignon rolled her eyes, shoving away the sharp knife of guilt that she felt about keeping the rest of the information from this man. “Ever the malcontent, fault-finding fussbudget. I could have a signed affidavit from God and you’d still be, ‘I dunno, she’s awful suspicious, even though I slept with her.’”

  “I dunno,” he began and laughed. “Maybe if you came over to my house for a change and slept there.”

  “Are you inviting me?” she asked. “Because I think you can do better than that.”

  “I have work to do today and lots of it. But I wouldn’t mind if you came over and let me feed you some of my patented seafood gumbo. Best in the whole parish.” He winked.

  Mignon smiled at him. Then she asked, “Was there something else that was bothering you?”

  “Yeah, how did you know?”

  She shifted restlessly, trying to read his body language, which was difficult. He kept a stoic face.

  John Henry crossed his arms over his chest, staring out the window as if he were looking for something in particular. Finally he cast an eye back at her, looking at her for a moment before looking away. “I haven’t been … honest with you.”