Mystic Mayhem (7 page)

At least we were for a while.

After about twenty minutes, or maybe three-quarters of the way there, the ancient Swede burped, wheezed, and stopped dead.

Cat tried her best to get the engine to do something, but even her most persuasive sweet talk and gentle stroking were to no avail. The car was dead or, at the very least, comatose. The Mansion at Mystic Isle was still at least five miles away by way of pavement, but if we cut across, we could shave four miles off that distance.

Whining like spoiled ten-year-olds, we locked up George's albatross, left it on the side of the road, and set out on foot. Thank God we were in our comfortable shoes.

The bayou at night is about as hospitable as a cemetery on Halloween. And that particular night, with a light wind rustling the trees and bushes and clouds blacking out the moon, the woods around Mystic Isle were probably even worse than that—at least according to Cat.

"You know what they say 'bout the bayou at night?"

"Yes," I said, sighing. "You've told me." At least a dozen times. New Orleanians can be a superstitious lot, Cat way more than I. "That's just a boogeyman story people tell their kids to scare them into being good."

"Uh-huh. It's Rougarou."

"Right." I was out of breath. Slogging through the swamp was tiring. "Didn't you tell me you saw it one time?"

"Not me," she said, her voice quivering. "Quincy."

That explains it.

"He told me he saw that big ol' thing one night under the full moon. Quincy said the Rougarou was eating a chicken."

I glanced sideways at her, but in the dark I couldn't tell if she was kidding or not. "Chicken?"

"That's what he said."

"Did he say it was Southern-fried, fricasseed, or roasted?"

"Mel," she whispered, "don't make fun. It's bad juju."

It was the one thing about Cat that made me a little bit crazy. She knew every creepy story about every creepy thing ever said about Louisiana. And believe me, there were plenty of them. She and Grandmama Ida could (and did) sit up all night sometimes talking about ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night.

I didn't buy into all that spooky talk—much. But it was pretty dark out there, and who knew what all those weird noises were? I took pity on Cat and pulled out my cell phone and switched on the flashlight just for her benefit though, just so
she
wouldn't be so scared.

And it seemed to work for a while. She quit talking about the Rougarou and walked boldly along beside me—until the battery gave it up, and we were out in the middle of friggin' nowhere in pitch dark, listening to the sounds of the wind rustling the cypress trees and water slapping against their trunks.

Things croaked and squawked. I'd be lying if I said that after a while it didn't get to me too. We clutched each other and crept along through the wetlands barely able to see each other, much less anything beyond that.

The operative words were
creeped out
, and it didn't help when something grunted nearby, then hissed, then growled, and Cat shrieked, "Ohmigod, what is that?"

Suddenly it was scary as hell, the air humid and thick, mist floating around our feet, the soft ground sucking at our shoes, while tendrils of the trees grazed our skin like the trailing fingers of witches sizing us up like Hansel and Gretel for a late-night snack.

"Oh, and what was that?" Cat whirled, nearly knocking me down in her panic.

I'd heard it too. "I don't know." I squinted into the darkness.

"Let's go," she said, turning back around.

We picked up our pace, walking faster, trying not to step off solid ground into a bog that might swallow us up to the waist.

A banshee-like wail pushed the two of us closer together. My breathing was as hard and fast as hers.

Whatever we'd sensed behind us was still there, coming, and keeping up. And then whatever it was seemed to multiply. The rustling and sounds of movement expanded, like stereo, spreading from behind us to all around.

"How big did Q say that Rougarou was?"

Without another word, we began to shuffle along even faster. The sounds were closer, the scurrying of some ungodly, nameless thing pursuing us through the dark, around the fallen trees and dangerous holes.

Slugging it out through the mud now, we moved faster, at a run. I was near to crying, and thought I heard a sob from Cat too.

And then she wasn't beside me anymore.

I stopped, frozen to the spot like a statue. "Cat? Where are you?"

"Uh," she groaned. "Down here."

"Oh, lordy." I bent down and helped her to her feet. "What happened?"

"It was that gol'danged big tree root." She tried to kick it but shrieked instead and went down again.

In the dark, I couldn't see anything except her outline. Her hands moved to her ankle. "Damn it, Mel. I don't think I can walk."

"Really?" I looked around frantically, like that would help. "I guess I could go for—"

"Don't you even think about leaving me, missy. Here. Give me a hand."

With my pulling and her pushing, we managed to get her on her feet just as more rustling from the bushes posed a new threat.

"Oh, man." I whimpered.

The clouds parted, and I could see her face now, the whites of her eyes huge and luminous. I was pretty sure mine were just as big.

Something behind seemed to lunge at us from the darkness.

"Oh, crap!" I screamed.

Up ahead, we could see the lights from The Mansion peeking through the trees. We were close. Could we make it before whatever was after us caught up?

"Rougarous are partial to chicken, right?" An illustrated image of the big, ugly man-beast thing popped into my mind. What I seemed to remember most about the Rougarou were its big teeth and razor-sharp talons.

Leaning heavily on me, she began to hobble alongside. We weren't moving very fast, and it certainly wasn't easy going—but at least we were putting up a good fight. No way in hell I was going to be eaten by that swamp monster. Winding up as some creature's hot lunch wasn't how I pictured ending my days.

My heart screamed in my chest. Terror clawed at my throat. Whatever it was closed in.

Then bam!

I ran straight into something, tall and warm and hard.

It moved. I screamed. Cat struck out.

"Ouch!"

Huh?

"Melanie? Is that you? Miss Gabor?"

Oh, thank God.

My voice shook. "Cap'n Jack?"

There was no immediate reply, then, "Uh, yeah. I guess."

It hit me then. In my panic, I'd just called my boss by my pet name for him. How the hell was I going to explain that?

*   *   *

Turned out it was a pack of those ugly twenty-pound swamp rats curious about the two of us girls wandering around in the bayou—not the Rougarou. If we'd just turned around and yelled at them, they probably would have scattered like cue balls on the first break. But no, we decided to run like sissies. How embarrassing.

Not to mention we'd made so much racket, the resort's general manager had to come out to see what all the racket was about.

As a reward for his concern, my best friend hit him in the nose.

And then to top it all off, the pièce de résistance, I called him,
dear Lord say it isn't so
, Cap'n Jack. The fact that it had started to rain again seemed irrelevant in the face of such disaster as that.

It was after midnight, officially Tuesday morning, by the time I iced Cat's sprained ankle and found an Ace bandage to wrap it. We'd headed straight for one of the housekeeping lounges because there was easy access to the hallway ice machines. I finally located one that wasn't on the blink and filled up a plastic pail that Cat put her sore foot in for about fifteen minutes.

I was in the process of wrapping it for her when Jack showed up with an elegant mahogany cane. "Mr. Villars left it in my office the other day," he explained.

That made sense. Harry Villars was such a clotheshorse, everything, even down to the cane, was an accessory to him. Harry always seemed to be dressed to the nines in three-piece suits, both summer and winter, patterned
real
bow ties, pastel leather moccasins, and a straw Panama hat. He usually made sure the hatband matched the bow tie and pocket square. He wouldn't consider himself fully dressed without the cane to help his strut, and I was surprised he hadn't returned right away for it. Then again, he probably had twenty or thirty more in his closet at
la petite maison
.

Cat took the cane gingerly. "Thank you. I'll be exceptionally careful with it, and if I'm not much better tomorrow, I'll find some crutches so you can return this to him."

Jack took a chair, turned it around, and straddled it. He rubbed a hand across his stubbled jaw. I wanted to do that too—run my hand across his stubbled jaw, not mine. If I was honest, my jaw was never stubbled. "So, ladies," he began, looking first at Cat then at me. "Do you want to tell me what you were doing out in the middle of the swamp this time of night?"

Cat ducked her head and took a long time studying the handle of the cane.

When the coward didn't speak, I cleared my throat. That was all, just cleared my throat. I mean, what could I say to him?

After a minute, I went with the truth. "It was my idea. Cat just came along because I hounded her until she agreed to. It's all about Fabrizio. They took him away. To jail." My voice broke. "He's like family to me. I just wanted to…"

I couldn't go on. The idea of poor Fabrizio sitting in jail all alone just broke my heart.

Jack, bless his gorgeous heart, seemed to understand. "You were just trying to help him. Weren't you?"

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

"And you thought, what? That maybe by coming back here, you'd find something that would clear him and lead the investigation in another direction?"

"Oh." I was stunned. "You get it."

He nodded.

And I didn't even really have to explain. I was right—we
were
soul mates.

"And," he went on, "with Miss Gabor out of commission, you'll need someone to watch out for you while you're investigating."

Was he saying what I thought he was saying? I held my breath. It was too much to hope for.

"I mean, we could be dealing with a desperate character here. You could be in danger."

Something warm opened up inside me, like a flower blooming in the sun.

"And I owe it to Mr. Villars to try and clear Fabrizio. It's detrimental to the resort to have an employee charged with a crime of this magnitude. But," he went on, "no matter what we decide to do, we need to be fully cognizant of our guests' privacy. We wouldn't want Mr. Villars to be served a harassment lawsuit. Would we?"

The flower wilted. It was beginning to sound as if clearing Fabrizio was secondary to making sure I didn't step on anyone's toes while I was doing it. It looked like Jack Stockton was all about business after all.

But Fabrizio needed me, and my confidence level was too shallow to believe I could do this by myself, so I took what I could get. "Thank you, Jack," I said. "It's kind of you to offer to help."

While we hadn't intended to stay overnight again, it just seemed to work out that way. Our old room hadn't been booked, and Jack didn't seem to mind that we were back. I wanted to think it was because he was so taken with me he couldn't stand the thought of my being far away. Fantasy aside, I think he was just being nice.

He walked us to our room. Cat thanked him for all his help and swore that something as inconsequential as a sore ankle wouldn't keep her from her post at the table in her shop, The House of Cards. The only equipment she needed to pull the wool over the eyes of her customers was a table, a couple of chairs, and of course a deck of tarot cards. Her workplace was small in space but big on atmosphere. Villars himself had decorated it in the flamboyant manner of a gypsy caravan. It was exotic and attractive in a wild sort of way, just like Catalina herself.

Leaning on Harry's cane, she went in the room, leaving Jack and me standing in the hallway. We were at least a foot apart, but it felt like inches. I swear his body was throwing off heat. My mouth went dry.

"What's your work schedule for tomorrow, Miss…Melanie?"

"I have two appointments, but I should be done by two or two-thirty in the afternoon."

He smiled and nodded. "Let's get together after that then and get organized."

"Organized?"

"Yes, of course. We can't just go off in every direction, not if we hope to exonerate Fabrizio in a timely manner."

Really? Couldn't he just say, "We need to make a plan, girl"?

But instead of making that suggestion, I said, "Great idea, Jack."

We stood there a moment longer in uncomfortable silence.

"Well, then, I guess I'll see you tomorrow afternoon," he said, turning away.

"Right," I said, resisting the urge to salute. "Tomorrow afternoon."

"Sleep well." His voice trembled a little. What was that about?

"Yes, you too." I reached for the door handle.

He stopped. "Melanie?"

"Sir?"

He looked back over his shoulder, a bewildered look on his face. "Earlier. Did you call me Cap'n Jack?"

I nearly choked. "Cap'n…?" Oh, he did hear me. "Why, no."

He smiled.

Dang. I've always been a terrible liar. "Cap'n Jack? Why would I call you that?"

"That's what I was wondering myself. Good night, Melanie." And he walked away.

Cat was already in bed, her foot propped on a pillow. She didn't look happy.

"Does it hurt?" I asked.

She shrugged. "A little, nothing major, but I doubt I'll be much help to you unless there's some real improvement by tomorrow."

She seemed so down I took pity on her. "Don't worry about it, Cat. Getting to the bottom of this should be a fairly simple matter. Don't you think?"

She just looked at me. "Simple? What makes you say that?"

"Well, not that many people knew about the money. Right? So, all we have to do is figure out who needed it the most. On TV, it's usually the person with the best motive."