Fever Moon Read online

  20

  MICHAEL stood at the window of Doc Fletcher’s guest room trying to calm his thoughts. Behind him, the sound of labored breathing came from the bed where Veedal Lawrence struggled to live. Instead of generating sympathy, the sound was like a rasp against Michael’s skin, agitating and annoying. He’d administered the last rites, but he was finding it impossible to offer comfort to the man in the bed. His preference would be to walk out, but instead he surveyed the room, seeking strength in the orderliness of his surroundings. Men like Doc, a few men, had imposed order and civility on the swamp around them. It was possible to tame the wilderness, but now Michael better understood his distaste for Iberia Parish, for the primitive impulses that ruled land and creature. That nurtured men like Veedal Lawrence.

  The horror of it was unsettling, and Michael tried to remember what the old physician had told him about the history of the house during spring socials as they sat in the shade. Built in the early 1800s by a North Carolina planter who’d settled in Acadia and tripled his wealth in rice and cane—until he backed the wrong side of the Civil War—the house had gracious rooms, each with a fireplace and crown molding that showed the intricate craftsmanship of a superior carpenter. It was a lovely house where time seemed frozen in the past, a place where the very ill came to either be cured or to die.

  Outside the window the lawn sloped past elegant live oaks, a croquet field, bird baths, and a large pavilion to the quick waters of the Teche. Michael knew this because he’d spent many a Sunday afternoon on the pleasant grounds. Now, fog shrouded the familiar scene and muffled the sound of a tug headed downstream. Looking outside was like trying to see through multiple layers of cheesecloth. Only the harshness of Veedal’s breathing was sharply in focus on this bleak November morning.

  It was the fact that Veedal lived that brought Michael to his dilemma. Boday Smith had recovered, but Daniel Blackfeather was still in surgery to repair internal injuries. Had Raymond not stopped Veedal, Daniel would be dead.

  Michael turned so that he could see the Bastion foreman’s sweating forehead. Veedal Lawrence had risen from the muck of the swamp in the form of a man, but he wasn’t even an animal. He was an aberration.

  And Henri Bastion had condoned such brutality, or at least had done nothing to stop it. Michael had never considered himself naive, but now he saw that he’d sought a form of blindness brought on by his ambitions. He hadn’t seen what was happening on the Bastion plantation because he refused to look. The children, Marguerite, the prisoners, possibly even Adele—all had suffered at the hands of Henri Bastion while Michael had thrown open the doors of the church to the town’s wealthiest man. Now Marguerite was missing, Sarah Bastion was in the care of Chula Baker, and the boys remained in jail until Marguerite could be found.

  In the fog that swirled in heavy sheets, Michael thought he saw a woman standing in the middle of Doc Fletcher’s lawn. Something about her touched him like an icy hand. He rubbed the window, trying to clear the condensation for a better view. As a breeze caught the fog and shifted it, he saw her again. She stood, arms dangling, staring in at him as if she could see into his soul. Her dark hair, wet from the fog, clung to breasts almost bare. Dark eyes looked at him from under arched brows. “Rosa.” He took a step back and whispered her name.

  When he looked again, the lawn was empty. His mind had merely played a trick on him. The scarecrow, the horror of Veedal Lawrence, the fact that Marguerite had disappeared, leaving behind her children without anyone to care for them—it seemed impossible. Yet it was real. The woman on the lawn, a harmless apparition, was not.

  He heard a tap on the door and turned to find Sheriff Joe Como standing in the doorway. He signaled Michael out into the hall after a contemptuous glance at Veedal.

  “Marguerite is gone. Like she vanished. I tried to track her down to all the places she might go, but it seems like she’s vanished,” Joe said. “Did she say anything when she left the boys with you?”

  Michael thought for a moment. “She said she was done with them, and they should be sent to the reformatory.”

  “Praytor Bless feels the same way.” Joe’s smile was slow in developing, but when he recounted the story to Michael, he chuckled. “You shoulda seen that boy ride Praytor’s leg. I’ll bet he bit a plug out of Praytor’s thigh, right through his pants.”

  Michael didn’t doubt it. The boys were out of control. “And what will happen to them?”

  “They’re safe enough in the jail, for the moment. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. I’m hoping their mama will come home and assume her responsibilities. Save the county a lot of trouble and expense. Course if Praytor presses charges, that’s another thing, but somehow I don’t see him admitting in open court that he was bested by a twelve-year-old boy.”

  “And Raymond?”

  Joe shook his head. “Waitin’ for Doc to evaluate him.” Joe slapped Michael’s shoulder. “If you think of anything Mrs. Bastion said, might give us a clue where to start lookin’ for her, let me know.” He walked down the hallway and took a left to Doc Fletcher’s kitchen.

  Michael walked back to the window. The fog would lift, eventually, exposing the town once again. But not the New Iberia he’d once seen. A core of darkness had been exposed. Raymond had seen this, and Michael finally understood why the deputy made him feel uncomfortable. Raymond had looked into the darkness—a thing that Michael had been unable to confront.

  Stories about Raymond circulated through the town. How he’d killed a dozen Germans in an ambush in a small French town. How he led a charge against a mortar and planted the dynamite to destroy a bridge. Raymond the hero, the man who faced the enemy without fear.

  Yet he’d thrown the medals he was given for bravery into the Teche. A parishioner had seen him do it. And there was the whispered story that he’d begged to be killed when it seemed he might be paralyzed. A week ago, Michael had seen that as weakness.

  “Father?”

  Michael turned reluctantly to the bed. He had no compassion for Veedal. No matter how he flagellated himself, he couldn’t work up any. His distaste for the man was so intense he could barely look upon him.

  “Yes.” He gazed at the pillow.

  “Send Thibodeaux in here.” Veedal spoke in a gasping voice. His lungs had been damaged when the car struck him.

  “He’s busy.” Michael wouldn’t give Veedal the satisfaction of knowing that Raymond, too, was critically injured. He’d been strung up with weights and pulleys in a hospital bed in the hope that traction would pull the muscles of his body enough to relieve the pressure of the shrapnel.

  “I got something to tell him.”

  The man’s gasping was purely annoying. Michael prayed for compassion and swallowed his curt retort. “Tell me and I’ll make sure he hears it.”

  Veedal’s laugh was low, a creepy sound of amusement. “Tell him I’ll see him in hell.”

  Michael drew back. As he stared into Veedal’s eyes, he saw the life leave. A blue film clouded the pale irises and the air left his lungs with one last gasp.

  The night was summer velvet, a lush softness of black stitched with the thrum of crickets and the distant cry of an owl. A small creature squealed, prey for the predator. Raymond watched the moon rise, a cold luminous disk surrounded by a strange red glow like the aura of a saint. The pale face of the moon was carved in blood, the light tainted with violence.

  A stillness settled over the trees, and Raymond listened. Her footfalls came like promises. When she stepped from a grove of water oaks, he heard the gasp that escaped him. She moved with the fluidness of the wild, her limbs gliding without effort.

  Her tattered gown touched the flesh of her thighs and floated away, revealing the milky curve of taut muscle. Her waist was girdled by a silver belt that caught the bloody light of the moon and gave it back in a warm glow.

  She circled him, moving downwind for a better sniff. She lifted her head like a dog, tasting the air, using her primitive senses. Unable to move,
Raymond simply stared at her. He didn’t fear her. Had never feared her. It was impossible to fear a creature with such grace and command of her body.

  When she was satisfied with his scent, she walked closer, her dark hair lifting in the slight breeze that moved the treetops.

  “Adele,” he said.

  “It’s time to run.” She reached for his hand and took it, her warm tongue licking his palm so that he shivered. “With me, you can run again. I can make you whole.”

  He couldn’t resist her. The moonlight glinted red in her eyes. “Are you happy?” he asked.

  “I’m free,” she whispered, leaning into his ear. He felt the coarseness of her whiskers now. Her nails grew thick and long. “I’m free, Raymond. Taste what it feels like to be free. Of the past, of pain, of everything. We can run through the woods, hunting together. No pain. Running.”

  He felt her teeth at his neck and he made no effort to resist. He’d never wanted anything more than to surrender to her, to give himself utterly to her.

  “Raymond?”

  He tried to ignore the voice calling to him. Someone touched his shoulder, shaking him, forcing him up from the forest where the moon was misted in a nimbus of blood.

  “Raymond, we need you to stay with us.”

  He opened his eyes and took in his surroundings. Whatever Doc Fletcher had given him had not stopped the pain but had removed the worst of it to a distance. He knew where he was, and he had a burning sense of urgency, yet he couldn’t move a muscle to get up. Events were wrapped in impenetrable layers. He could clearly see the pale tea roses on the wallpaper and the rich plum velvet of the draperies and knew where he was. The how of it escaped him, though.

  Chula Baker stood at his bedside, a tall, well-groomed, fair-haired man in tow. He vaguely recognized him. “Chula?” He thought perhaps she was an apparition, someone from his long-ago past, before the war. He heard a soft tapping on the window and he looked outside. Adele was just there, waiting for him. “What are you doing here?” he asked Chula.

  “Doc said you were doped up, and he wasn’t kidding. For a moment there, I thought you were gone.” She held his hand, stroking it. “Sarah, the little Bastion girl, is at the house with Mother. We’ll take care of her …” She looked back at the man. “Raymond, I’m worried about Madame Louiselle. When I took those herbs to her, no one was home. And Jolene LaRoche swears that Adele Hebert was at the Bastion house, rocking Sarah. I know it’s impossible. Adele is in a deep coma. But Jolene swears it. She’s terribly upset and repeating the story all over town. Now people are beginning to say that Adele has done something with Marguerite.”

  Raymond forced himself to focus on Chula’s face, where worry etched lines between her eyebrows and on each side of her mouth. The man’s face mirrored that concern. Raymond fought the lethargy and the strong desire to slide beneath the moon mist and his compelling dream. “Jolene saw Adele? When?” He closed his eyes and saw Adele in the moonlight, a wolfish gleam in her eyes as she stalked him with promises of freedom.

  “Jolene said she was at the Bastion house earlier today.” Chula spoke clearly and firmly, demanding his attention. “As soon as I heard, I drove out there and got Sarah. She’s not injured.” She frowned. “She’s so strange, though. She doesn’t talk.”

  “Did you see Adele?” He tried to swallow and his throat was dry. Chula stepped to the bedside and offered him the glass of water on the night table.

  “I haven’t seen her. I thought she was at Madame Louiselle’s.”

  Raymond fought the drug that tempted him back to sleep, to his dreams. He tried to push himself up in the bed and felt the bite of the shrapnel in his back. “Am I paralyzed?” he asked.

  “You aren’t paralyzed. They’re worried that the metal has shifted, that it moved closer to your spine. Doc says you have to stay in bed.”

  Raymond saw the compassion in her eyes. When he’d been hit by the grenade, he’d come as close to being a cripple as a man could without ending up in a wheelchair. The possibility hung over him, the pain in his body a constant warning of the doom that awaited him. Instead of the anger that normally came with that thought, he felt the need to get up. “Help me get out of this mess.” He waved at the weights and pulleys.

  Chula shook her head. “No, Raymond. If you aren’t careful, you’ll—”

  “I have to find Adele.”

  “I can go back to Madame Louiselle’s.” She motioned for the man to come forward. “John will go with me.”

  Raymond assessed the man. There were few people he’d trust, but Chula had good sense and a level head. “I need to know that Madame is okay, and I need an answer about those herbs. Someone gave Adele something, and I may have found it. Adele is innocent, Chula. No matter what people say, she’s done nothing wrong.”

  “Folks in town don’t believe that. Joe told me that Praytor Bless is organizing some kind of trap. For tonight. He’s out for blood.”

  “I can’t lay here and let that happen.”

  “Wait until I get back from Madame Louiselle’s. Then if you want to get up, I’ll help you.”

  Raymond nodded. He had no choice. He was strung up like a bird on a spit. If Chula wouldn’t help him, no one else would. “Hurry,” he said. “Adele left Madame’s, but I’m hoping she’ll go back there. Hurry!”

  21

  FLORENCE cut the precious lard into the flour, added buttermilk, and worked the ball of dough in the wooden bowl. Her actions were more aggressive than necessary. As her fingers teased out the texture of the biscuit dough, her mind was on Raymond and the insult he’d dealt her the day before without so much as a thought. All night long she’d expected to see him at her door, but she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him. If there was any justice in the world, Adele would have eaten him.

  She understood that Raymond had not intended to cause her pain. He wasn’t a man who would deliberately set out to use and humiliate a woman. Not even a whore. She slammed the dough onto the wooden table and began to roll it out.

  What hurt so badly was that Raymond hadn’t even thought of the cost to her. Had he talked it over with her, acknowledged even that he needed to put her in a position that could only bring her pain—that would have made a difference. They could have gone to Baton Rouge together, as partners seeking information. But Raymond’s actions had clearly shown her that he saw her as a whore first, a woman second, and a partner not at all.

  Tears fell into the biscuit dough and she smashed them with the rolling pin. She hadn’t made biscuits in ten years, preferring to pick up her breakfast at the café each morning. Raymond’s cruelty had driven her back to the kitchen, back to the routine of her childhood when the texture of simple daily chores had put order in a life filled with the chaos of her mother’s profession as a whore.

  She sniffed and wiped at her eyes with the shoulder of her dress. She’d punched the dough so much the biscuits would be tough and inedible, but it wasn’t about eating anyway. It was about cooking and the solace that came from working the dough.

  Something rustled outside her kitchen window, and she looked up into the blind white eye of swirling fog. She was taken aback. It was nearly nine o’clock and the fog hung over her house like God was deliberately trying to cut her off from the rest of the world.

  It was a vaguely creepy thought, and she clapped her hands together to shake off as much flour as possible. In her bottom kitchen drawer she found the biscuit cutter and began the job of punching out the circles and arranging the biscuits on a baking sheet. The morning was cool, and the hot oven felt nice, reminding her of fall mornings when her mother had baked. Sometimes a special John would join them for biscuits and syrup, but Corrina, her mother, mostly made it a point to share breakfast time only with Florence.

  She pushed the pan in the oven and stood, the sense that someone was watching her so strong that she walked to the window and studied the shifting whorls of fog. Though she knew the heavy mist was a condition caused by the heat of the earth and the cooln
ess of the night air, she still rubbed her arms and shivered. Scientific facts didn’t go far toward warding off the heebie-jeebies.

  While the biscuits baked she went to her bedroom, dressed, and brushed out her hair. Raymond had hurt her, but life went on. She had to get a grip on herself. She’d known all along that Raymond was damaged goods. Before he’d gone to war he’d dated a beautiful young woman, a dark-eyed Cajun beauty from the next parish over. Florence had noticed them all over town—in the drugstore eating Coca-Cola floats, at the movies, walking along the Teche, riding in Justin Lanoux’s big Plymouth convertible while they laughed and drank frosted pastel liquor from paper cups.

  Florence had watched them living a life forever outside her sphere. She’d fallen in love with Raymond because of his smile and the way his hand hovered so protectively over the young woman’s slender back. His gaze had been attentive, tender. She’d laughed up at him, her finger tracing his lips. Florence had watched them and gone back to her house to wait for the paying customers.

  When Raymond had returned from the war only six months before, she’d seen him in town, walking with a cane. She’d thought it odd that he never went back to his mother’s house but instead bought his own place on the edge of town, a handsome old house left empty when the Gautreaux boys were killed. In a matter of weeks Raymond had gotten rid of the cane and pinned on the deputy sheriff star.

  The war had stolen things from him. The first was his smile and the second was the young woman. Gossip around town was that she couldn’t take his darkness, his moods, and she’d moved to New Orleans to mend her broken heart once he told her he would never wed. Florence didn’t care when she’d gone; she was only glad she left.

  Raymond had been home for a month when he first tapped on her door, asking if she was busy. She’d unlatched the screen and let him in, her heart hammering in a way that made her feel alive and angry. Angry because she knew this day would come when she’d pay the price for loving him.