Bayou Moon Page 24

  When they returned to the main level, John Henry was waiting for them. With a black expression on his handsome face, he said, “Faust Jones. Terentia Jones. Mignon Thibeaux. You are under arrest for fraud.”

  HOURS LATER MIGNON reached through the bars of her cell like the most practiced of convicts. If she had a hand mirror, she might have been looking down the hallway for activity. Terri lounged on a bunk behind her. Both were still dressed in the same evening apparel they had worn the night before.

  The section of the jail that housed women was small, and two other women were in the cell with them. One was drunk and the other was charged with battery against her husband. Both of them had stared at Mignon and Terentia like they were aliens who had just stepped off the mother ship.

  “Come from the ball?” the drunk one asked. She had been caught driving in circles on the highway at about midnight, and couldn’t quite understand why the sheriff’s deputy had felt it was necessary to arrest her and bring her to jail.

  “Yes, dear,” Terri answered. “Why don’t you lie down?”

  “Because the room spins when I do that,” she slurred. “And I don’t want to throw up.”

  A deputy had locked them in a cell together and left without ceremony.

  Mignon turned to her friend and said, “Well, this isn’t the way I pictured spending the rest of the evening.”

  “Me, neither, dear,” Terri responded.

  She called a lawyer in Dallas who vowed to arrive poste haste, while Mignon had called Nehemiah, who said he’d take care of it if things didn’t turn out the way they’d planned. Mignon already had a good idea that she wouldn’t need a lawyer, but she couldn’t let John Henry know that.

  So they slept the night away on their respective bunks, ate a wretched breakfast that didn’t taste like real food, and watched as the drunk and disorderly woman was released on her own belated, sober recognizance. Another hour passed before Mignon began to speculate on the cause of their prolonged incarceration. “They’re searching the entire house to make sure nothing else is missing,” she said.

  “Well, I didn’t steal anything,” Terri protested. She paused. “Kate took off yesterday. Didn’t want to get caught up in the fireworks. Saw her drive off myself. Quit just like that. I can’t imagine how a rich white woman like Eleanor keeps good help. You know she wasn’t even paying that girl minimum wage, hmm?”

  Mignon smiled. “I’ll make it up to her when we get back to New York.”

  Another hour passed and there was a commotion at the front of the jail. John Henry appeared with Terri’s lawyer, a friend of the family’s who knew all about the family business. He was spouting a bunch of stuff about the sanctity of the Constitution of these United States, and how people were subject to search and seizure only under reasonable suspicion, and just because the sheriff didn’t believe in spiritualists didn’t entitle him to charge his client with fraud, et cetera.

  Terri perked up immediately. She brushed off her golden, flowing gown, which didn’t look so hot in the bright fluorescent lights of the jail, and stood up.

  John Henry had the deputy open the cell door and motioned at both of them. “I’m dropping the charges,” he said. Mignon could see that he was tired, angry, and about two shakes away from blowing his top.

  “Why?” asked Mignon.

  The lawyer, who was tall, black, and dressed in an immaculate three-piece suit the color of Texas bluebonnets, answered, “There was a decided lack of evidence on the premises of the St. Michel property. As a matter of fact, there was no evidence except complaints from Jourdain Gastineau and Geraud St. Michel, who had contacted the sheriff prior to the event. The money, which was alleged to have been stolen, was in actuality still locked in the wine cellar, inside the box that Mrs. St. Michel had locked herself in the presence of some seven witnesses, including the complainants. Finally, there was no duplicate box present that might have indicated a switch was ever intended.” He was a handsome man with skin the color of chestnuts. His face twisted into a grimace of utter disdain. “Consequently there is no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the three accused individuals.”

  A little muscle in John Henry’s cheek twitched as he stood holding the door to the jail cell.

  The other resident of the cell block called, “You go, girl.”

  “I’m outta here,” said Terri. “Davis, you got a car, because I need a ride out of this one-horse hick town, just as soon as my fat ass can get in the car. I’ve never been so humiliated in my entire life. Have you people heard of wrongful arrest? Have you people heard of the Constitution? I’m never coming back to Louisiana if I live to be ten thousand years old.” With her back to John Henry, Terri winked broadly at Mignon, who had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing out loud.

  “My arm, Madam Jones,” the lawyer replied, offering a solid arm to the harried woman. “Let us sign the paperwork to have Faust released and leave this den of iniquity. This lair of wrongdoing. This haven of misdeeds and injustice.”

  Terri muttered under her breath all the way out.

  John Henry stood at the door and looked at Mignon carefully. She hadn’t moved.

  Finally she suggested, “Maybe if you slept with her, too, she wouldn’t mind the harassment, John Henry.” She almost winced when it came out of her mouth because of the intense wave of guilt she felt at lying to him. If it weren’t for protecting the others, she might have confessed all of it to him.

  “You knew that if you were doing something illegal, then I would arrest you,” he said. His voice was neutral, but she could see the sizzle of barely harnessed anger in his eyes. The remark about sleeping with Terentia had cut to the bone. “I told you and I was clear.”

  “If I was doing something illegal,” she said, knowing full well she had skirted legalities. Terri had purposefully not represented herself as a “real” psychic, but as a spiritualist, a guide for those who would explore the paranormal. Technically, Nehemiah was the only one who had committed a crime in vandalizing the sluice gates and the electrical transformers. And Mignon wasn’t going to tell John Henry about that anytime soon. “Then, why am I leaving here, without going in front of a judge? Why are you dropping the charges?”

  “Because I couldn’t find what you had done,” he answered, and it was evident from his voice that he believed she was guilty of something, and that it was only a matter of time before he figured out what it was.

  “Isn’t it possible that you jumped to conclusions?” she asked him. “Couldn’t you have looked in that box before you arrested me? Didn’t you break the law yourself?”

  John Henry couldn’t find an answer to that. He wanted to believe that she was guilty of something, of anything, in order to warrant his actions. As it was he was going to have to explain to his constituents that he had made a mistake. OUTSIDER SHERIFF ARRESTS HOMETOWN GIRL WHO MADE GOOD: That was going to sell some newspapers. He wasn’t sure if he could make it sound as if he had been vindicated in making a mistake. Geraud and Jourdain had come to him about the so-called cleansing ceremony and he had known immediately that a fraud was about to be perpetrated. The scam wasn’t exactly uncommon. Typically the money to be cleansed was switched before it ever went into a locked box. But that hadn’t happened that way. He couldn’t find one tiny shred of evidence that justified his arrest of the three people who had just spent the night in his jail. And if he wasn’t justified, then he had wrongfully arrested one very special woman, one with whom he might have fallen in love. He said, “I’ll have a deputy drive you back to your car.”

  He started to walk away and then turned back. “Jesus Christ, Mignon, couldn’t you have waited before trying this? You’ve got money, a lot of money. You sure as hell don’t need Eleanor’s. That isn’t going to bring your mother back, and I talked to Fanchon.”

  “What?” Her voice was suddenly hoarse. Had they jumped the gun? Was it possible that Fanchon had rolled over on Eleanor St. Michel?

  “He’s a tough old bastard, but I think
I can get him to talk on the condition of amnesty for that crime and leniency on the drugs charges,” he snarled at her, and the woman across from them jumped back on her bed in alarm. “Couldn’t you have waited?”

  Mignon didn’t know what to say to him. He went on. “I checked Terentia Jones’s record. Took me a while without her fingerprints. Didn’t you think I might? Fraud in New York State. Small cons, like being a fake psychic. But then I called a cop I know up there. He said Madam T. is out of that business now. She owns an art gallery. An art gallery which happens to feature a breakout artist named Mignon. I called them up and asked them. The receptionist was pleased to tell me about this artist. Dammit. This didn’t need to happen.”

  It was another hour before Mignon walked out of the sheriff’s department a free woman, albeit the back way because there were ten reporters waiting out front for the famous New York artist to emerge from the slammer. A male deputy named Elvis Brandt escorted her to his patrol car, and Mignon was surprised she got to sit in front. She thought that maybe John Henry was looking out his office window on the second floor, but it was hard to tell with the sunlight shining on the windows. There seemed to be a large, shadowed figure there, but it moved away before she could tell who it was.

  So much for that relationship, she thought. It never would have worked out anyway. Big town artist, small town sheriff. Who was going to move where? And who was going to make the sacrifice? Among other things . …

  Elvis the deputy wanted to discuss what kind of art was a good investment lately.

  “Dead artists,” Mignon muttered.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Well, you buy an artist’s pictures while they’re alive, and they generally become more valuable when they die,” she explained.

  “But you don’t know when they’re gonna die,” the deputy complained.

  “That would be the trick.”

  The deputy stopped at the St. Michels’ gate. The security guard let them in without hesitation. Mignon knew they were expected. He let her out at the base of the steps leading up to the front door. Her rental car was nowhere in sight.

  Elvis said, “If you know of some artist who was about to die, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

  Mignon turned back to the patrol car and gave the deputy a cold look. She had just spent the night in the county jail and he wanted free advice on investments. Jerk. “No.” She turned and walked up the stairs. Her purse and keys were presumably inside, since they hadn’t come with her to the jail. John Henry had been in too much of a hurry to arrest them all, confident that he had figured out the mystery.

  The door opened before she got there and Eleanor was standing there, her eyes cold and her expression foreboding.

  Mignon stopped abruptly and wondered if she’d made another mistake.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 26

  There was a little man, and he had a little gun,

  And his bullets were made of lead, lead, lead;

  He went to the brook, and saw a little duck,

  And shot it through the head, head, head.

  THERE WAS A LITTLE MAN

  “I ONLY WANT MY keys and my purse, Eleanor. Nothing else.”

  Eleanor sighed and a strange look crossed over her fine features. She was dressed in a sophisticated silk suit as if she were going to a garden tea. As usual, her hair and makeup were impeccable, as if nothing could scathe her.

  “There were … ,” Eleanor started and then hesitated. “No incidents last night.”

  Mignon stood stock-still. Eleanor truly believed the so-called “hauntings” had ended. She went on. “Geraud and Leya have returned to New Orleans. He decided that his actions are regrettable and that he wants no more of this nonsense.” He decided or you did? Mignon silently asked. Has the incident at the farmhouse slithered out of the woodwork?

  “Why don’t you come in, and I’ll have one of the servants bring your car around?” invited Eleanor with a sad little smile. “Wouldn’t you like to freshen up?”

  “You know what, I really would like that.” Mignon smiled and went in. She suddenly realized that John Henry hadn’t told Eleanor about her connection to Terentia. At least, she thought, not yet.

  Almost an hour later she and Eleanor were sitting on the patio facing the sun, drinking coffee. It was a rich French blend with all the flavor and aroma that the jail’s coffee had sorely lacked. “I hate to sound like an old television commercial, but that’s good coffee,” Mignon said.

  “Mignon,” Eleanor began. “I would like to apologize to you.”

  Mignon put down her cup on the glass-topped table and stared out at the tree line across the vast expanse of green yard. The trees in the distance were beginning their change in color. There was a hint of orange and red among the green.

  “When my husband left me, I was heartbroken. Moreover, I was embarrassed that he had done such a thing. With, of all people and I’m sorry for this, your mother. I was mortified that he had run off with a seamstress. We were the plantation owners and Luc had run off with a lowly couturière.”

  Mignon finally looked at Eleanor and saw that her face was crestfallen. The older woman suddenly seemed to be a thousand years old. All of her fears and all of her heartache had been brought back to her a hundredfold. “I know what that sounds like. And I know that I’m not that much of a better person. A bigot, I’ve been called. A horrid hag of a woman. A woman so cold I could freeze a tom turkey at a hundred yards.” She laughed, and it was an ugly laugh.

  There was nothing Mignon could say to this. She couldn’t laugh with her. She couldn’t cry. She could only listen.

  “But when I was in my thirties I was vainglorious. I was prideful. I believed that the things I so took for granted were my right, just like a god in my own world. How can you understand the things I am trying to say?” Mignon opened her mouth but Eleanor stopped her. “No, don’t answer. Just listen.

  “Luc waited for me in the library that day. He told me that he was leaving me for your mother. That they were going away. That he would file for divorce and marry this woman he had discovered that he loved.” Eleanor’s eyes were bright with tears. She stared at Mignon, seeing Garlande’s green eyes and wondrous red hair, and the fine features that made her beautiful and striking all at the same time. But there was more. There was shock in Mignon’s face at what Eleanor was saying. “Yes, he loved your mother. And apparently your mother loved him. Not so sorry a thing. But I wasn’t an understanding woman. I had found the gold necklace with her initials on it in his jacket pocket, which he snatched back from me as if it were a priceless objet d’art. I screamed, I yelled, I threw things, and Luc finally left in disgust. When he had gone I found that Eugenie and Geraud had witnessed most of my dishonor. And Eugenie was never the same.

  “So Luc left with your mother and I was so angry that I did something unthinkable. I didn’t want to ever set my eyes on another Thibeaux in my life. I blamed your mother. It was her fault. It was a Thibeaux’s fault, and they would pay.” She looked away, at the shape of the trees on the horizon. “But you paid. And your father paid.”

  Mignon said, “You told the judge and the sheriff to make us leave.”

  Eleanor took a deep breath. She nodded. “I didn’t want to look at you ever again. And you were forced out like common criminals.”

  Mignon nodded slowly. The bitterness of that day rushed over her in a blinding flow of resentment. Then it was gone and she felt as though a burden had been released.

  Eleanor saw her face and was momentarily nonplussed. “I said … I don’t remember what I told Ruelle and Gabriel exactly. I was so furious that I wanted to scream, and then Eugenie disappeared. We didn’t find her for hours. Even Jourdain looked for her endlessly.”

  Mignon pulled the gold bracelet from her purse. Its little medallion glittered brightly in the flaming light of the sun. She dropped it on the table in front of Eleanor, who stared at it. In Mignon’s mind, she could only see one way that
this bracelet had ended up in her own tiny, blood-soaked hands—if Eleanor had murdered her mother. “Whose is this, Eleanor? Who does this belong to?”

  Eleanor reached out with white fingers but she never quite touched it. It was like a deadly viper just a hair’s breadth away from her bosom. Her eyes stared at the little bracelet with the E on it and she couldn’t force herself to look away. “It looks familiar,” she finally said. Her fingers quivered.

  “Think, Eleanor,” Mignon insisted, sitting forward in her chair. “Have you ever seen it before?”

  “It’s not mine,” the older woman muttered. “I would remember it. But I think …”

  “What? What do you think?”

  “When we went to New Orleans that year before Luc left, we went to Mardi Gras. We were so happy, my family. I bought things for all of the family. For Luc, for Geraud, and for Eugenie. I had a jeweler design that for a gift. He was a famous jeweler, a master craftsman, you see. I gave it to … gave it to … my God, I haven’t seen it for years … since that year.”

  “Eugenie … ,” Mignon’s voice faded away in horror as she realized the implications of what Eleanor said. The bracelet had belonged to Eugenie. Eugenie had been sent away during a so-called childhood sickness to a hospital in Baton Rouge right after Luc disappeared. But Eugenie had been only ten years old at the time. How could that be?

  “Where did you get this bracelet?” demanded Eleanor suddenly.

  “I found it,” Mignon answered, trying to spare Miner Poteet any retribution. How could she or anyone hold a ten-year-old responsible for a crime? How would she discover the truth from a thirty-five-year-old woman who was lost in the hell that was her own mind? The questions raced through her mind. She stood up and stared down at Eleanor. She was so sure that Eleanor had been the one—either Eleanor or one of her cronies. But it had been Eugenie, and that was almost too appalling to believe.