Bayou Moon Page 28

  He shrugged his powerful shoulders. He could understand it, but it had still hurt in a way that he didn’t like at all. “You could have trusted me.”

  She tightened her lips. “I do trust you. I learned that I could. When I was down in that pit I prayed you would come for me, because I knew that you wouldn’t let Jourdain kill me. I knew you’d do the right thing when it came down to it. You wouldn’t have covered up my murder. Nor would you have helped pull the trigger.”

  John Henry didn’t say anything.

  “John Henry,” she said. “I do care …”

  “Don’t,” he interrupted savagely. “Don’t say that. I understand your reasons. If I had been put in the same position, then maybe I would have done the same thing. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “About what? Jourdain tried to kill you. He did kill Eugenie St. Michel with your gun. The evidence is as clear as day. Your hands tested negative for gunshot residue. His test positive. His fingerprints are all over the back of your car and your gun. There’s his body, your mother’s, Luc’s, and Eugenie’s. You said he admitted everything. It answers a helluva lot of questions all the way around,” John Henry said. “Eleanor wasn’t involved, as you said. Neither was Geraud. Gabriel Laurier and Ruelle Fanchon will be questioned as to their parts in the cover-up. There’s nothing more that I can do. You might have been up to something, but as far as I can tell there wasn’t anything illegal about it, except the vandalism to the sluice gates, and I can’t prove you had anything to do with that.”

  “John Henry …”

  “It was never about scamming the St. Michels for money, was it?” he asked suddenly, and Mignon knew that he wasn’t expecting an answer. “You never intended to take the money. It wasn’t about that at all. I can’t do anything to you, Mignon. I won’t do anything to you. But … I’ll never forget you.”

  He stood up and a cascade of emotions crossed his face. He bent at the waist and pressed a tender kiss to her cheek. His masculine smell was heady as he leaned close to her. “Goodbye, Mignon Thibeaux,” he said, and then he walked away. She saw one of his hands wipe something away from his cheek.

  But Mignon wouldn’t cry.

  The next day she checked herself out of the hospital. A nurse insisted on putting her in a wheelchair and rolling her to the hospital’s parking lot. There Mignon got into her car and put her bag in the back. The wound on her side ached from the extra movement, but she ignored it and drove back to the bed and breakfast, where she would start making arrangements for the interment of her mother’s body.

  Mignon knew that she had to make restitution to several people, including those people whose lands had been flooded when Nehemiah opened the sluice gates. Also, Miner Poteet would receive an anonymous check for a significant figure. Maybe she didn’t owe it to him for remaining silent all these years, but he had been there when Geraud St. Michel had attacked her. He wouldn’t have to worry about money for the rest of his life.

  As she passed through the city, she saw John Henry sitting in his Bronco along the side of the road, but she didn’t stop. He sat broodingly in the driver’s seat, watching her go past, never slowing down.

  Mignon had always known that she would be the focus of someone’s anger. All she wanted to know was what had happened to her mother, and she was willing to poke and prod until she found out. Her own status as an artist provided an opportunity, and Eleanor’s obsession with the paranormal was the key.

  Once inside Eleanor’s circle she had several opportunities to search for information, to try to get Eleanor to slip up. She had been so certain that Eleanor was responsible, long before Minor had given her the bracelet with the E on it.

  Her closest friends had finally confronted her about what she was doing. Mignon had kept most of what she had discovered to herself. Once she found out that her mother was most certainly dead, she became angry. She wanted desperately to know what had happened to Garlande, and although Terri, better known as Madam Terentia Jones, had tried to talk her out of it, Mignon was determined. So they had helped, pleased to return some of Mignon’s generosity over the years. They tried to push at Eleanor until something broke.

  Early on Kate had donned a long red wig and walked the night as Garlande Thibeaux, careful to tread the grounds only on the nights when the fog was heaviest. But none of them had dared to walk the halls of the mansion that way, and now Mignon suspected that it hadn’t been a figment of Eugenie’s imagination. Garlande might very well have been haunting the antebellum home. Perhaps she had wanted revenge, or to protect her daughter. And Mignon had to wonder, Why now? Why had her mother’s ghost started haunting the parish now, of all times? Eugenie St. Michel had stayed away from the mansion for the past two decades. Perhaps her return had been a catalyst, which was only spurred on by Jourdain’s return, and finally by Mignon’s. The three of them must have forced a circle that prompted some otherworldly events to occur.

  They were gone now. Gone like shadows in the dark. Irrevocably and forever.

  She would never really know for sure.

  A WEEK LATER Mignon was dressed in black as she attended her mother’s funeral at the same graveyard where John Henry had taken her weeks before. Days earlier Jourdain Gastineau, Luc St. Michel, and Eugenie St. Michel had been interred in separate private services, their remains cremated. Mignon wasn’t invited, nor was she surprised that she wasn’t.

  Eleanor had taken a trip to the islands, supposedly to stay for the winter. Mignon thought that she might not come back. She was a proud woman, very much like Mignon herself. She almost pitied the older woman. She hadn’t liked being lied to, and Mignon hadn’t cared to lie to anyone.

  The sheriff’s department held back the cameras while a young priest held the services. It was a small ceremony. Bill Martinez the pharmacist was there, as was Mrs. Regret. Horace Seay showed up with his wife, looking appropriately sad. The witch-woman put in an appearance, praying briefly over Garlande’s coffin. Vincent Grase hadn’t known the Thibeaux family, but he’d felt obligated since he’d helped Mignon purchase the old farmhouse, and Miner himself was there, looking distinctly uncomfortable in a tight black suit that was probably older than Mignon herself. His granddaughter was with him, patting her grandfather’s arm as the service finished. Nehemiah held Mignon’s arm and whispered in her ear that Terri and Faust thought it was too risky to come. Mignon nodded, and tried to concentrate on what the priest was saying.

  When it was all said and done people shuffled past Mignon and Nehemiah, apologizing or expressing their sympathy. Mignon almost cried then, because it seemed like there were so many people who genuinely cared about Garlande.

  Nehemiah left her side and Mignon stood alone by the grave. The men who would complete the digging waited patiently in the shade of the church while she stared down at the white casket. Finally she sat down on a nearby stone bench and contemplated the weeping willows and magnolia trees that dripped moss like cobwebs hanging from ancient walls.

  Mignon felt a certain amount of relief. It was over. It was well and truly over.

  A shadow blocked out the sun. She would have turned to look, but she already knew who it was. She’d seen him earlier, standing by the cemetery’s gates, dressed in a black suit that was obviously tailored to fit his strong body. “You mind if I sit down?” asked John Henry. His trademark Stetson was held capably in his hands.

  Mignon smiled. She didn’t mind at all.

  “How’s that wound?” he asked, arranging himself on the bench. He laid the hat on a nearby tombstone of a family named Laitsch, dated 1893. “You hurting right now? You’ve been standing a long time.”

  “It aches.” Mignon didn’t look at him. She wasn’t exactly speaking of the injury, although it did hurt when she tried to do too much. Then she said, “The man in the wilderness asked of me, ‘How many strawberries grew in the sea?’ I answered him as I thought good, ‘As many as red herrings grow in the wood.’”


  “One of your mama’s rhymes,” John Henry said. “I’ve never heard that one before.”

  There didn’t seem to be a lot to say. When Mignon glanced up she found Nehemiah looking smug as he leaned against the rental car. She detected a certain gleam in his eye that told her he knew exactly what was going on.

  “I see that the workmen are still working on the little farmhouse. They took it up once the crime scene techs were done with it,” John Henry said. “I guess I don’t need to tell you that it was human blood on all those boards. Enough of it to indicate foul play, but my man over to Shreveport tells me it’s too degraded to tell who it belongs to, although it doesn’t seem to matter now. Everything is settled.” He paused and then added bluntly, “I want a second chance.” He hesitated. “I tried to think what I would have done to find my daughter, if she suddenly went missing. I think I would have done almost anything, and I think I understand why you did what you did. Why you had to do what you did.”

  She looked at him then, surprised. His handsome face was serious. Mignon opened her mouth to say something and one of his large hands gently grasped her cheek, cupping the flesh gently. His fingers caressed her skin as if it were the most delicate thing imaginable. Then he lowered his lips to hers and gave her a slow, sweet kiss that she felt all the way to her toes.

  When they were done, she looked up and saw that Nehemiah had driven off, leaving her alone with John Henry. “I suppose I have to give you a second chance now, don’t I, John Henry?”

  He laughed. “What?”

  “Or else I’ll be walking back to Natchitoches.”

  He glanced back. “Well, I’ll still give you a ride even if you won’t give me a second chance.”

  “That’s all right. I think everyone deserves a second chance.”

  “Damned good thing, too.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I don’t give up easily.”

  “Kiss me again.”

  So he did.

  “John Henry,” she said afterwards.

  “Mmm?”

  She gritted her teeth. “About that vandalism to the sluice gates …”

  John Henry laughed again.

  BAYOU MOON. Copyright © 2002 by C. L. Bevill. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  eISBN 9781429970815

  First eBook Edition : March 2011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bevill, C. L.

  Bayou moon / C. L. Bevill.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-28207-9

  1. Women artists—Fiction. 2. Missing persons—Fiction. 3. Mothers—Death—Fiction. 4. Louisiana—Fiction. 5. Voodooism—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3602.E85 B39 2002

  813'.6—dc21

  2002069251

  First Edition: October 2002