Vieux Carré Voodoo (16 page)

He had died a month ago.

Okay, so that checks out. Score one for Colin’s honesty.

To be on the safe side, I went to a generic search engine,
and typed his name and added the word
murder
. Only one link, from the
Carthage, Ohio,
Courant
seemed to be the right one. I clicked and scanned the article quickly.

Martin Gretsch had been brutally tortured and murdered, his
home torn to shreds. Survivors were listed as a son, Matthew, and a grandson,
Levi.

Okay, that too was true. But why hadn’t Colin mentioned the
son?

Whoever had killed Doc had been looking for something. Doc
was definitely the guy in the picture called Moonie—but that didn’t mean his
real name had been Larry Moon. Moonie could have just been a nickname his
friends called him. I didn’t have any proof other than Colin’s word. And if I
was going to not count his word as fact, maybe Doc was who he’d always said he
was.

I reached for the file folder marked
Levi Gretsch
and knew as soon I put my hands on it that it was empty.

The picture was also gone.

Wait a minute. They were here when Venus and I came
looking for him. So if he stole them, it was AFTER that. So he was in the
building, waiting for me to leave again, so he could use the keys and get back
in here.

Or he’d come in while I was sleeping—no, Colin was standing
guard out in the courtyard. He would have seen him. Therefore, after I’d gotten
the call from Mom, Levi had come in here and helped himself.

Nice try, Levi,
I grinned to myself. I’d scanned
them and e-mailed them to Venus. But as I looked over the icons on my desktop,
my smile turned into a scowl.

The files weren’t on my desktop.

Someone had deleted them.

I opened my e-mail program and clicked on “sent mail.” I
laughed out loud in triumph. The e-mail to Venus was there, and I opened it and
downloaded the attachments.

Gotcha, Levi.
I thought to myself as I opened them.
I read the letter again and frowned. It wasn’t the kind of letter someone would
write to a twelve-year-old.
Go to New Orleans and find Moonie.

No one would tell a twelve-year-old that!

Maybe it was a forgery Levi had doctored up to show me.
Maybe that was why he’d needed to get it back.

I was pretty sure now Levi, or whoever he was, was long
gone.

My head was starting to hurt. None of it made sense. I only
had Colin’s word for any of it. There were no facts.

I turned the page in my notebook and wrote
FACTS
across the top of a new page and underlined it. Underneath I wrote:

Doc was murdered and his apartment searched.

I was hired by someone to find Doc. That person left a
letter and a photo with me.

The person who hired me tied up Millie and Velma and
stole a set of their spare keys.

That person stole the letter and photo back, and deleted
the scans I did of them off my computer.

Someone stabbed me in the neck, wanting to know where
“the eye” was.

Someone shot Colin in the arm.

Someone claiming to be Angela Blackledge left a message
for me on my machine. I called back and left a message.

I scowled at the list. I crossed out “that person” on Number
4, and wrote “someone.” I didn’t
know
that Levi had done that. For all I knew, it could have been Colin.

It wasn’t very helpful.

I leaned back in my chair and pondered for a moment.
Okay, let’s approach this from the premise that Colin is telling the truth.

Some dangerous people were looking for a holy relic that Doc
and his buddies stole during the Vietnam War. They’d killed Marty Gretsch and
Doc, looking for it. They hadn’t found it. One of them had attacked me on the
street, held a knife to my neck—

It hit me like a lightning bolt in the forehead.

Why did he come after me?

Sure, by then Levi had already “hired” me, but no one could
possibly know about that if Levi hadn’t told them. And Levi, if he was after the
Eye, had to know that I knew nothing about it. I hadn’t responded to his story
in any way other than curiosity. I hadn’t recognized any of the men in the
picture when he showed it to me. So, it couldn’t have been Levi who sent the
mugger after me.

So if Levi wasn’t who he said he was, he wasn’t working with
the Pleshiwarians or whoever they were.

It came to me in a bolt from the blue.
Someone knew
Larry Moon and Doc were the same person. They were watching his apartment, had
it staked out. And they saw me not only go in there, but come out with
something.

Mr. Bunny.

If whatever it was they were looking for wasn’t in his
apartment, they would think he’d gotten rid of it. And it was entirely possible
the only thing carried out of his apartment yesterday was Mr. Bunny.

He’d gotten that phone call that had upset him so much, and
when he’d come back from taking it he had Mr. Bunny with him.

I felt really cold.

I gave the damned thing to Mom.

And coincidentally, Colin had shown up and wound up inside
Mom’s apartment, telling some cock-and-bull story about being shot. He wasn’t
above shooting himself if it helped him achieve his objective.

Surely, though, he wouldn’t hurt Mom or put her in danger.

Or would he? He’d pretended to love all of us once before.
He’d pretended we’d mattered, when all along he was just using all of us. He’d
been able to just walk away without saying good-bye, without any word.

I glanced at the clock. Wow, it was already past eight! Mom
and Dad were night owls, and usually stayed up until dawn, sleeping in until
about one every day. I picked up my cell phone and dialed their number.

It went straight to voicemail.

They always turned the phones off when they went to bed, so
that didn’t mean anything. Their sleep time wasn’t to be interrupted. How many
times had Mom lectured me about the importance of unbroken sleep?

Maybe I should just go over there, get the stupid rabbit,
and give it to Venus.

There was a lot going on here I wasn’t aware of, and that
didn’t help my mindset at all.

I wished Frank were here.

“But he isn’t here,” I said aloud, shaking off the gloomy
mood. “And if he were here, he wouldn’t put up with this negativity.” I walked
into the kitchen and got another cup of coffee. I sipped it as I sat back down
again and stared at the pad of paper. I wrote down,
Who knew they stole the
Eye of Kali?

I tried to put myself into their mindsets. Three young men
from Mississippi, from relatively poor backgrounds who volunteered for service
to their country—

I wrote down,
Check into their backgrounds. They may
still have relatives who could answer some of these questions.

One of them, according to Colin, had been
killed—butchered—in a back alley of Saigon. Matt Hooper, that was his name. I
sat down at the computer. I typed in
Matt Hooper murder Saigon
into the
search engine and waited.

A link popped up; it was not to a Biloxi newspaper, but
rather the
Fresno Bee.
I clicked on it, and swore when a pop-up window
informed me that “archived articles cost $3.95.” I grabbed my wallet and filled
out a lot of ridiculous personal information, including the credit card number,
and hit Enter.

The article, which was a scan of the original newspaper
page, downloaded as a PDF file, and once it was finished, the file opened.

I started reading. Matt Hooper wasn’t from Biloxi, he’d been
from a little town outside Fresno called Hanford. He’d been killed in a random
crime in a back alley, stabbed to death, and his killer had cut his eyes out.

Well, Colin hadn’t been lying about that.

I stood up and stretched, my back cracking. I went into the
kitchen and got another cup of coffee. I sipped it. Something was nagging at me,
but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I walked back into the living room and sat
down on the couch.

I glanced at my coffee table.

Surely, it wouldn’t hurt to do a reading.

If the gift was coming back, maybe I’d be able to get some
hints as to what the hell was going on. Besides, my mind was all jumbled—doing a
reading used to help clear my mind.

I got up and walked to my front door. I eased it open and
looked out into the courtyard. In the dim light just before dawn, I could make
out Colin sitting at one of the garden tables. The light from my hall caught his
eye, and he looked up and waved at me. I waved back and shut the door.

I
wanted
to believe him.

I sat down at the coffee table and pulled my cards out from
under the couch. I lit the white candles, and said a prayer as I shuffled the
cards. I laid the cards out and started flipping them over.

Certain danger on the pathway ahead.

Lies will be uncovered by the shining light of truth.

The past continues to influence the future.

I sighed. That wasn’t particularly helpful.

I swept the cards back into a pile and put them back in the
box.

My phone started ringing. “Hello?”

“Scotty, this is Angela Blackledge.” I recognized the voice
as the same from the message she’d left earlier. “I’m sorry it took me so long
to return your call. It’s imperative that we talk.”

“Thank you for returning my call, Angela Blackledge,” I
replied. “No offense, but I was really hoping I’d never hear your name again.
Too many bad memories.”

She let out a low laugh. “Yes, I’m sure there are. I am
truly sorry for everything that happened three years ago, Scotty. It was never
my intent to cause you pain.” She cleared her throat. “I understand you’ve
already made contact with Abram?”

“If you mean Colin, yes,” I replied. I’d known Colin wasn’t
his real name for years, but I would always think of him that way. “He told me a
bunch of stuff I suppose I am supposed to take on face value? Because of course
he’s never lied to me before. For that matter, I could say the same about you.”
As I talked I was typing Doc’s name into a search engine. I hit Enter, and a
list of links popped up. They were mostly links to papers and articles he’d
written; some were links to talks at conferences. I started scrolling through
them.

“Scotty, this case is very important,” Angela went on
.
“I am prepared to wire fifty thousand dollars into your business account for you
and Frank to work with Abram on this. Is that sufficient?”

“That’s a lot of money—and Frank’s not available. He’s out
of town,” I replied, trying to keep my voice level. This woman was even less
trustworthy than Colin.
I went on, “Tempting as that is, Angela, I don’t need the money. And I am
tired of being lied to.”

“Scotty, the case is the most important thing right now. I
can’t stress how important this is. The Eye of Kali has to be found, and it has
to be found quickly.”

“Why is it so important? Why now, when it was stolen forty
years ago? You’re not making sense, Angela.”

“This is highly sensitive information, Scotty. You cannot
share it with the police, or anyone in your family.” She took a deep breath.
“They’ve discovered uranium in Pleshiwar. Are you familiar with the political
situation there?”

“No.”

“The country was a theocracy, ruled by a renegade cult of
the Hindu goddess Kali. I am not going to go into all the background—you can
research that just as easily as I can tell you, and I don’t want to waste any
time. Suffice it to say that many governments and groups hostile to the Free
World are very interested in a new source of uranium. The ruler of Pleshiwar
right now is friendly to the Free World, and to your own government. However,
there are those in Pleshiwar who believe the old ways of the theocracy were
best—and they want to return to power. They are being funded by many enemies of
the West—enemies who are interested in access to that uranium. That uranium is
of a particular geological purity, and can easily be enriched. Do you know what
that means?”

“Weapons of mass destruction.”

“So you can understand how vital it is that that uranium is
controlled by friendly hands.”

“And what does the Eye of Kali have to do with that?”

“It is their most holy relic, Scotty, and it’s been gone for
forty years. Whoever finds it and returns it to them is going to be viewed very
favorably by their people. A number of people are looking for it…there’s also a
power struggle going on over there behind the scenes. I understand you were
attacked last night by someone of Indian descent?”

“Yes.”

“It cannot fall into their hands. The man looking to
overthrow their leader is being funded by al-Qaeda. Do I have to explain to you
what it would mean to world stability and security if al-Qaeda suddenly had
access to an almost endless supply of uranium?”

“No, you don’t.” I, like every other American, had very
vivid memories of 9/11, the day our country came under attack and the Twin
Towers fell. Al-Qaeda was dedicated to the complete destruction of our country.
If they had a source of uranium—and wasn’t that one of the reasons we invaded
Iraq? To supposedly keep uranium out of the hands of terrorists?

“Say the word and I’ll send the funds. They’ll show up in
your account in a matter of moments.”

I considered. Fifty thousand dollars was a lot of money, but
how could I be sure I was being told the truth? But the best way to find out the
truth was from the inside. “Okay, Angela, I will. On one condition.”

“Name it.”

“If I catch him in another lie, I am going to the police.”

“Fair enough.” There was a pause, and she said, “Check your
bank account.”

I pulled up my bank’s Web site and signed in. I pulled up
the business account. There was a fifty-thousand-dollar deposit sitting there,
pending.