Cold Blood

PROLOGUE

Mojo is an African word denoting a fetish or sacred object, which can be used either for good or for evil. Grisgris, meaning

“gray gray”

in French, is the name given in New Orleans to the combination of “black” and “white” mojos made by a voodoo practitionff to achieve his or her ends to safeguard the life of a person to whom the charm is given, protect against disease and ward off the evil wishes of enemies in order to avoid bad luck in love and life. A personal grisgris must be kept secret, and will lose its power if seen or touched by anyone other than the owner. For that reason, grisgris are usually worn close to the body, on the right side by men, on the left by women.

CHAPTER

Anna Louise Caley remained under the shower for a full half hour, scrubbing herself clean, making sure every inch of her perfect body was cleansed. She could blank out her mind what she had donethat was easybut it was the abuse me inflicted on her body that worried her, and she examined herself with care, pleased to see that there was no bruise or other mark to show what she had done the night before.

With just a soft white towel swathed around her, she reexamined herself, checking and patting her flesh until she was satisfied, then oiled and powdered her body and got dressed. White tennis socks, white cotton panties, white tennis dress and, lastly, pristine white tennis shoes. She laced them up, then chose one of a row of professional-standard rackets and unzipped the cover, tapping the taut strings with the flat of her hand before she slipped the cover back on. She checked her hair, putting on a white stretch headband to keep her long blond hair back from her face.

Anna Louise left nothing out of place in her room, placing in the laundry basket the towel she had used along with the previous night’s soiled clothes. She liked the fact that she was not like a normal teenager, prided herself on being meticulously neat, and she slowly appraised her immaculate room before she headed for the tennis court. She passed through the kitchen, still empty at six-thirty in the morning, before any of the domestic staff had begun to prepare breakfast, and went outside, where a gardener was already turning on the sprinklers and sweeping up any dead leaves that might have fallen during the night. He did not look up, however, as Anna Louise headed for the changing room, where the tennis balls were kept, and picked up a large basket of them, then made her way to the court. First she examined the net, making sure it was precisely the correct height, then fed the balls into an automatic delivery machine and set the dial for speed and direction. She carefully removed her racket from its cover and switched on the ball machine, ready to begin to play against itagainst herself. She stood on the service line, her weight thrown onto the balls of her feet, poised and ready for the first ball to shoot out, then began to practice her double-handed backhand. She was a precise player, fast, meticulous and very powerful, and she slammed ball after ball up the court until she was sweating with exertion, each stroke accompanied by a low grunt of satisfaction.

Her concentration lapsed for a moment and she missed the next ball, which struck her hard in the chest. Someone was laughing, and she recognized both the laugh and the accompanying soft, low giggle.

The balls continued to pop out of the machine, but Anna Louise ignored them now and walked off the court toward the summerhouse, through the shrubbery, where she knew her approach could be neither seen nor heard.

Sometime later, the machine fired out its last few balls, but now Anna Louise was slashing furiously at them, sending them crashing around the court as Tilda Brown, her closest friend, opened the court gate. Tilda was as blond and as pretty as Anna Louise and was dressed in a similar white tennis dress, but Anna Louise didn’t stop playing even for a moment to acknowledge her.

“Hi, Anna!”

Tilda called.

“Sorry I’m late, I’ve got a terrible headache. Maybe I won’t play this morning, I feel real bad,”

she continued, pulling a face.

Anna Louise made no reply, but switched off the machine and picked up the basket to begin collecting the stray balls. Tilda, still complaining of a headache, balanced some balls on her racket and carried them across to the basket to tip them inside.

“Did you hear what I said? I don’t feel like playing.”

Anna Louise smiled.

“Oh, but I’ve been waiting for you. I want to show you my backhand, it’s really progressed.”

“It was always good,”

Tilda replied.

“Yes, but now it’s better,”

Anna Louise said nonchalantly.

“Maybe teK5r!”

Tilda carried the basket over and tipped the balls into the machine.

“I’ll refill it for you.”

Anna Louise stood on the service line, bouncing a ball up and down on her racket, then suddenly took aim. The ball slammed into Tilda’s back, making her turn around, gasping. The blow hurt so much she could hardly speak, and the next ball hit her so hard in the stomach that she staggered backward, winded.

O

“Stop it, Anna, stop it, that hurt… you hurt me.”

Anna Louise moved closer.

“Get Polar to kiss it better… .”

Tilda was scared and tearful; her belly ached, while her back felt as if it were burning, and Anna Louise was bouncing another ball, ready to aim at her again. Tilda ducked for cover as the third ball came toward her.

“What are you doing? Stop it!”

she screamed.

Anna Louise grinned as she picked up a fourth ball.

“You can’t get away from me, Tilda Brown.”

She was now throwing the ball up in the air as if to serve. Tilda moved farther back and bumped into the ball machine, hitting the switch with her arm. The machine began to pump the balls more rapidly toward Anna Louise, who laughed as she swung her racket, forehand and backhand, every ball viciously directed at the cowering Tilda, who screamed, running this way 3nd thatto avoid the swift hail of tennis balls, until she squatted sobbing behind the net.

Even behind the safety of the net, bal^slammed into her arms and legs through the mesh, Anna Louise first tBTing aim at Tilda’s body, and then at her face.

“Stop it, please stop it,”

sobbed Tilda, looking up to see Anna Louise standing over her.

“You stay away from him, Tilda, he’s mine. I see you with him again and I’ll make you sorry. I’ll hurt you more than any tennis ball, I’ll hurt you so bad, Tilda Brown, you’re gonna wish you were dead.”’

Tilda was crying like a baby, terrified as much by Anna Louise’s verbal threats as by her violence, and she sobbed with relief when she recognized the figure coming toward them. Anna Louise saw him too, and gave Tilda a final quick, hard blow on the side of the head, then lowered the racket, smiling sweetly, her whole manner altered.

“Hi, honey.”

Robert Caley smiled to his daughter, then looked toward her weeping friend.

“What’s happened, Tilda?”

Anna Louise linked her arm through her father’s.

“It was my fault. You know that serve o’ mine, Papa, poor little Tilda here got right in the way of it… and you got to take some of the blame for coachin’ me to serve so hard, but I didn’t mean to hit her, I guess she just isn’t up to my standard.”

Robert Caley had one arm around his daughter as he reached out to Tilda with concern.

“You all right, sweetheart?”

Tilda wouldn’t look into his eyes, but held her hand to her head, feeling the lump where Anna Louise had hit her.

“I want to go home, Mr. Caley, today,”

she said in a low but firm voice.

“She is just bein’ silly ‘cause she lost the game,”

Anna Louise said petulantly. She tried to hang on to her father’s arm to stop him from following Tilda, but he pulled free of her, and she was infuriated to see him help Tilda to the gates and walk her back to the house. She smashed the racket against the Har-Tru court, then examined it, afraid she had damaged one of her favorites. Long strands of Tilda’s hair were caught between the strings.

Tilda had packed, and refused to say anything else to Anna Louise through her locked bedroom door other than that she was going home at once. Anna Louise tried to cajole her, saying she was sorry, that she hadn’t meant to be nasty, but Tilda refused to unlock the door. Now Anna Louise was worried about what Tilda might say to her mother, and was beginning to think that perhaps the sooner she left the better.

“Fineyou leave, Tilda Brown, I don’t care,”

she said angrily, but she was worried enough to decide to go and sit with her mother. Tilda would certainly want to say good-bye to her, and more than likely would tattle. Anna Louise tapped on the door of her mother’s suite and waited; it was often locked in the mornings, as Elizabeth Caley hated being seen without her war paint, even by her own daughter. Anna Louise knocked again, then walked in: all the curtains were drawn and the room was in darkness. She called out to her mother, but receiving no reply she wondered if Elizabeth was still sleeping or, worse, had gone downstairs and would see Tilda. She hurried through her mother’s sitting room toward her bedroom.

“Mama,”

she whispered, then pressed her ear to the door, listening.

“Are you awake, Mama? It’s me, it’s Anna Louise.”

She eased the bedroom door open and peeked inside, adjusting her eyes to the darkness of the room, then called out softly again, but saw that the bedcovers had been drawn back. Her mother was known to fly into an even worse rage if she was woken from sleep than if she was surprised without makeup. She suffered from severe insomnia and her sleep was precious, if rarely natural.

Anna Louise looked across to the bathroom door and heard the soft sounds of bathwater running. She was about to leave when she noticed the low, fiickerin^ffght of a candle on her mother’s bedside table. The candle was sputtering, and she crossed the room in order to snuff it out.

The grisgris had been consecrated, because it was positioned on top of a worn black Bible, a small white cotton sack of salt to the left and a tiny green bottle of water to the right. Above the Bible a blue candle, representing the element of fire, guttered in its candlestick; below the book was a square of sweet-smelling incense, the symbol for air. Anna Louise felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle when she opened the grisgris bag and looked at the contents, unaware of their meaning and of what it meant to have seen and touched a consecrated grisgris. Fascinated, she picked up the old Bible and opened the flyleaf: in old-fashioned scrolled handwriting whose ink had faded from black to brown there was an inscription to Elizabeth Sealher mother’s maiden name. Anna Louise carefully replaced the book, flicking through the tissue-thin pages to try to make sure it was in the same position she had discovered it in.

Back in her own room, she sniffed her fingers and decided they smelled musty, so she filled her washstand basin with hot water and soaped her hands clean. She was just drying them when she heard her mother calling for her and returned to the suite.

“Tilda wants to go home today,”

Elizabeth said, toying with a silver spoon on her breakfast tray.

“But that’s silly because we’re all leaving tomorrow.”

Anna Louise sat on the edge of her mothfe bed, noticing that the bedside table had been cleared.

“Oh, we had arrargument, we’ll make it up.”

She was anxious to change the subject, so asked with concern,

“How you feeling today?”

“I’m just fine, honey. Now you go and talk to your friend it’s stupid for her to go if we’re all going to New Orleans tomorrow.”

“Okay, I’ll make up with her. Do you want me to take your tray?”

“Mmmm, I’ll sleep awhile maybe, I had a bad night. Kiss kiss?”

Anna Louise leaned over to plant a kiss on her mother’s cheek and then carried the breakfast tray out of the room and closed the door behind her.

Tilda had already left by the time Anna Louise returned her mother’s tray to the kitchen. Anna Louise was unconcerned: she’d make it up to her, buy her something expensive. She wandered into the kitchen, where Berenice, the housekeeper, had just baked a tray of fresh blueberry muffins, and began picking at one with her fingers, remembering the strange, musty smell from the Bible she had seen upstairs.

“Tilda told me something weird, something she’d seen….”

She began casually, still picking at the muffin’s crispy top.

Berenice was emptying the dishwasher, not paying too much attention to her employers’ daughter, only half listening as she went back and forth stacking the clean dishes in the cupboards. She poured a glass of milk for Anna Louise and set it beside her.

“Miss Tilda sure was upset about somethin’, crying her eyes out. We thought maybe she’d had bad news.”

She continued putting the clean dishes away.

“What does it mean if you’ve got a Bible, a blue candle and funny little bags of salt and incense, you know, like those grisgris bags they sell back home?”

The cupboard door banged shut.

“You don’t wanna know, Miss Anna Louise, an’ you stop pickin’ at each muffin. You want one, then you take one.”