Heather Graham (16 page)

“Scare tactics?”

“You bet. In fact, in 1782, the governor of Louisiana was so afraid of a voodoo uprising that he clamped down on slaves being imported from Martinique, since he blamed that island in particular. Too late for New Orleans. The ground was sodden, the city was humid, and there were constant yellow fever epidemics! Life was tenuous, and the drums beat, and there were promises of what could be if the right sacrifice was made, if the proper price was paid! The mind has always been a strong friend—or foe. Belief in something can sometimes make it be. Voodoo queen Marie Laveau worked on the thought processes of others. You’ve heard of her.”

“I live in New Orleans. Of course I’ve heard of her.”

He grinned. “You cannot imagine how many tourists visit her grave yearly.”

“Well, I admit to having done so,” Ann said. She paused, wiping her face with the back of her hand. It was humid and hot. They were now away from the water. Cindy was trudging along behind them. They might well have been in the middle of nowhere. The heavy foliage and a covering of clouds was making the day dark, though it was barely three o’clock and summer, and there should have been light for hours to come. If she closed her eyes right now, she thought, she could well imagine what it had been like. The swamp, the slaves, oppressed, seeking what freedom they could, dancing wildly to a voodoo drumbeat while the blood of a chicken gushed over the hands of a voodoo priest. The rich planters would hear the drums, and know that the slaves gathered together in a frenzy. And they would be afraid.

“Marie Laveau was supposedly a woman of white, black, and Indian blood. She dressed the hair of white ladies and taught them to inflict evil upon their enemies by pricking pins into dolls depicting them. She sold magical ‘gris-gris’ dust as well, which was a spell-casting powder, a hex powder, or a protective powder. Her daughter, another Marie, then became famous for her machinations and power—and sex orgies. There are no more public voodoo rituals in New Orleans, you know. But in certain things, the people still believe. Right, Cindy?”

Cindy, coming up from behind them, flushed. “Well, all right, so I’ve asked for a love potion or two in my day. And I had a horrible teacher one year at school and I made a straw doll of the man and pricked it full of pins.”

“What happened to him?” Ann asked.

“He was promoted to principal of the school,” she said with a shrug. Ann laughed, Gregory snickered. The swampland didn’t seem quite so forbidding or frightening. Still, Ann glanced around. And she was glad that she wasn’t alone. The bayou was a haunting dark green with the clouds overhead. The occasional bird cry was unnerving. The scent of the green darkness was all around her. She could almost see it as a mossy color whirling in the air.

“I’ve seen things work, though,” Cindy continued. Her voice was very low, almost a whisper, adding to the haunted quality of the bayou land. “I’ve seen Mama Lili Mae’s spells work.”

“On?” Ann queried.

“Men,” Cindy replied flatly.

“Maybe the men were going to fall in love anyway,” Ann suggested.

Cindy smiled. “Ah, but these men fell in love with the right girls and then
behaved
. Now, I assure you, that definitely takes magic!”

“Maybe you’re right,” Ann agreed, laughing. “The names are very similar, aren’t they?”

“What names?” Cindy asked.

“Gina, and Lili Mae. The surname is L’Aveau, right? And with the infamous Marie it’s Laveau, right?”

“Yes, but there’s supposedly no relation. Half the people in this place have French surnames. There are dozens of families with very close spellings or grammatical variations of names,” Gregory said.

Cindy giggled. “Maybe the families were related. I mean, Marie Laveau was one
bad
moma! Infamous for her sex orgies. Our L’Aveaus might not have wanted anything to do with the others.”

Gregory, walking ahead, suddenly stopped. He reached up into a tree, drawing something from it.

“What is it?”

“Bad magic,” he murmured, perplexed by whatever it was he had found. He turned to the two women. He held a small doll, no more than three inches in length, made of straw. It was clad in a black dress and had yellow yarn for hair, green buttons for eyes. There were pins stuck through it.

Ann had the queasy feeling that the bepinned figure was supposed to be her.

“I thought Mama Lili Mae practiced good magic,” she murmured.

“She does,” Gregory said firmly. He shrugged. “There are other houses out here. More of her family, and other families as well. Not a staggering population, but still...that area is all Cajun to our west. Lots of bayou fishermen resting from bringing in the crawfish. Then there are kids living out here, naturally. Kids play games, you know.”

“Kids. They can be just terrible,” Cindy agreed.

But she and Gregory were looking at one another.

Ann was convinced that they both thought that the figure was supposed to be her as well.

“Let’s get on to Mama Lili Mae’s,” Gregory said. “The cabin is just ahead now. This is just so much rubbish!” He dropped the doll to the ground and walked ahead.

Ann paused, watching his broad back. She reached down quickly for the little doll, stuffing it carefully into her jeans pocket. She wanted to discuss it with Mama Lili Mae when she got the opportunity.

“Ann?” Gregory said, looking back for her.

“Coming!” With a smile, she hurried to catch up with him and Cindy.

“What are you up to?” Gregory asked warily. “Don’t you go taking that doll seriously now.”

“I’m from Atlanta, remember?” she said, and hurried on past him.

Of course she wasn’t taking the doll too seriously.

She wondered if she was taking it seriously enough.

Mark stopped by the hospital, determined to find out Jon Marcel’s condition. Not much changed, but Marcel was still hanging in nicely. His chances for surviving and coming out of the coma were actually looking a little better.

Marcel’s wife wasn’t at the hospital.

Having left the doctor, Mark drove by Ann’s house. He cursed himself all the while. He was probably risking his job. His integrity. His sanity.

The sanity was already slipping.

He parked in front of her house, stepped by the pretty storefront, and took the steps to the second-floor apartment. Cops were no longer in residence, watching the door. He rang, he knocked, he called her name.

Feeling an incredible void and an odd sense of anxiety, he came back down the stairs and out to the street. He looked skyward. It was going to storm. Summer’s light was already being obscured by clouds. The night, in low-lying New Orleans and environs, was going to be pure, wet hell.

What was she doing out?

Be realistic, he told himself firmly. She had every right to be out, every right to go anywhere she so desired.

No, she didn’t.

She’d answered him. She’d wanted him; he’d been the damned idiot to consider things like circumstance and what used to be a sense of integrity. Maybe he’d never had a sense of integrity; maybe he’d just never come across an Ann Marcel before. There had been other women, but...

Where the hell was she? What the hell was he doing here? He’d walked away last night because the urge to touch her, to taste her, had become too strong. The urge to do more had been almost overwhelming. Almost. Hell. He’d controlled it. All right, he hadn’t controlled it; he’d walked away with it. So why come back? Why torture himself. Unless he had decided the hell with right or wrong, the hell with his job, the hell with his own sensibilities where this case was concerned.

A case with some of the strangest damned twists and turns he’d ever seen. Maybe they should all stop. Wait. Pray for Jon Marcel to come out of it...

Come on, come on home, Ann! he thought irritably.

Again he told himself that she had a right to be out, to be anywhere she wanted to be.

The club.

He got into his car and gunned the engine.

A beep startled him. He looked up. Jimmy was driving by, pulling alongside his car.

“She’s out?”

“Yeah.”

“You haven’t had a chance to tell her about Jane Doe, eh?”

“No.”

“She was at the cemetery, you know.”

“She was
what
?”

“She was at the church this morning, and at the cemetery. Oh, she didn’t really come into the church; she hung around in back. She did the same thing at the cemetery, kind of hung around the tombs by the entry. She had that look about her when someone comes to a funeral because he or she feels compelled to, but doesn’t want to disturb the real mourners, if you know what I mean.”

“More or less,” Mark said. Hell. She’d been near him all damned day and he hadn’t seen her. Great detective. Well, he’d been burying Gina. He’d had another corpse on his mind as well.

And he’d still been sweating his behavior of last night. Not having the good sense to realize what a fool he’d been to start. She couldn’t seem to realize that he was worried sick about her most of the time. All right, so maybe he had made it look a little cut and dried. Jon Marcel did look as guilty as all hell. The evidence was against him. But she needed to be careful. She didn’t understand that. He’d been angry. Amazing what anger did. Well, anger was passion. And then passion was wanting. He should have never touched her.

He should have never left.

Now he was left with the emptiness, the burning, of so nearly having, then still wanting. Wanting so much. More of a taste of her.

God, damn, but she was affecting him. He was falling into something. Love? So quickly? Maybe he was falling into wanting. She did things to him. The sound of her voice. The flash of her smile. He liked her. Liked her talent, both her confidence and her modesty. He liked her, admired her.

Liked the way she looked, too. Her petite frame, soft, blond hair. Yep, that was it. He was falling into wanting. Spending his time fantasizing about her. About her breasts. Naked. All of her. Naked. Her flesh. Naked.

Jimmy was still talking. Grimacing. “She should be careful. She’s an awfully pretty piece of bait if someone else is involved in this thing.” He hesitated. “Both women killed were really beautiful. Not that that may even matter. I mean, she is involved. She does keep showing up...”

“I was about to check the club,” Mark said.

Jimmy shook his head. “I was just there. You sent me today, remember. I was doing the question and answer thing with our Jane Doe photo and artist’s rendering. Ann Marcel was not there. She...”

His voice trailed away suddenly, and he looked at Mark with his dark sad eyes suddenly very large. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” Mark demanded. “Damn it, Jimmy, what?” The anxiety that had been growing in him was rising uncomfortably to the surface of any calm facade he might have pretended.

“I, uh, heard Gregory Hanson talking today to Lili Mae L’Aveau.”

“Yeah?”

“He was bringing someone out to the bayou.”

“Shit!” Mark agreed. “Shit.” His engine revved, and his car jerked down the street.

M
AMA LILI MAE SAT
on the porch of her old wooden home, rocking in a deep-cushioned, white-wicker rocking chair. Her house was a pretty place, reached by a little wooden bridge that stretched over a small pond filled with giant lily pads; Ann marvelled that they could have come upon it in the midst of what appeared to be absolute swamp.

She had apparently been waiting for them. She puffed on a long-stemmed pipe, watching the path and the bridge. When she saw them, she nodded a welcome, addressing Ann right away while ignoring both Gregory and Cindy.

“Ann Marcel, how’s the boy doing tonight? Somewhat better?”

“I don’t know. He’s still in a coma,” Ann said, crossing the bridge to come to the old woman and take the hand offered to her. Mama Lili Mae’s handshake was startlingly firm. She felt the woman’s vast strength in that handshake, and warned herself not to be deceived by Mama Lili Mae’s fragile appearance. She was like an old reptile, Ann thought, with a hide thicker than aged leather. She had the eyes of an old reptile, too, yellowed and aging—watchful. Always watchful. Her smile was amazing, awakening her face, giving it a brilliance and beauty.

“Saw you today, hovering in the background there. Knew you’d be coming around.”

“Did you?”

“Gregory, give me a hand there.”

“Yes, Mama Lili Mae,” Gregory said quickly. He came to her side, helping her up. Ann had the feeling that she didn’t really need help getting up, but she liked the attention—and she liked the way Gregory hopped instantly to attention as well. She winked at Ann.

“You come on inside. We’ll talk alone.”

“But Mama Lili Mae—” Cindy protested.

“Young lady, we’ll have words later,” Mama Lili Mae promised. She set a hand along Gregory’s handsome face. “We’ll talk, too, son. Lord A’mighty, but it hurts me to see the way you’re grieving, boy. She’s in the Good Lord’s hands, and you take comfort in that. Gina was a streak of flash and light and beauty and wildness, and she burned brighter than a Fourth of July firecracker; but she’s safe now, from anyone who would hurt her. You learn to live with that, boy. God knows, I’ve seen enough death to know it’s a part of living, and that’s the way of it, and that’s that. Now you get on with life, y’hear?”

Gregory took the old hand that caressed his cheek and held it tenderly. “I’m trying, Mama Lili Mae.”

“You try harder!”

With that stern admonition, she moved on into the house. The others followed her.

Her living room was a strange place. Comfortable sofas draped with beautiful, handcrafted quilts were at right angles to the entry, while a small but serviceable kitchen sat at the other end with only a brick counter to separate the two rooms. Water came from a pump. Kerosene lamps burned on two end tables to give light to the room.

From the ceiling, in contrast to the old-fashioned, all-American warmth of the sofas and quilts, chimes made of small bones dangled from the ceiling in various places about the room. The breeze that now entered the opened windows caught them, creating a strange melody as bone collided with bone and more bone collided with more bone. The sound was strangely light and soft, and oddly enough, soothing.