Fever Moon Page 6

  “Where is my husband’s body?” She lifted her chin and he saw the Mandeville heritage in her proud stance. What had possessed her family to marry her off to Henri Bastion? Gossip in town was that she’d been sold for a stake in Henri’s empire. Though he didn’t believe the gossip, he knew the reality was that if her parents refused to allow her to return home, she would have no option but to stay with Henri. Marguerite hadn’t been taught the skills of survival as an independent woman, and to the best he could determine, she’d made no friends. In the time he’d been working as a deputy, he’d seen Marguerite in town only on Sunday mornings for church, and Henri had stayed at her side, guarding her contact with others. Perhaps she was a different kind of prisoner.

  He spoke softly. “Doc is doing an examination. I’m sorry, Mrs. Bastion. I know this is hard for you.”

  “I want to lay my husband to rest. It’s barbaric that you keep him so you can cut on him more.” She held herself perfectly erect.

  “There are things we can learn from the body.” He didn’t want to go into the specifics of hack marks and teeth angles, strangulation or evisceration. “Doc is working as fast as he can, but to be honest, he hasn’t had much call to do an autopsy.”

  “Why is an autopsy necessary? Hasn’t Adele confessed to killing Henri?”

  He didn’t want to go into the reasons Adele might be innocent. “Technically, Adele is too sick to confess to anything. Would you mind answering a few questions for me?” He put his foot on the front steps and the child at Marguerite’s side began to cry.

  “Go inside, Sarah.”

  The child clung to her, crying soundlessly.

  Marguerite pushed a strand of hair from her hot face. “Sarah, please go inside. I can’t talk with you pulling at my dress.”

  Raymond leaned down, his intention to talk to the child, to reassure her. The little girl’s eyes widened and she tore free of her mother and ran inside. The screen door banged behind her.

  Marguerite faced him. “Please, ask your questions and leave. My children are upset and need me.”

  Raymond pointed to two cowhide-bottomed chairs that lined the gallery. “Would you mind if we sat in those rockers?”

  “Certainly. I want to help.”

  Raymond pulled out the notepad he always carried. “When was the last time you saw your husband?”

  “When he walked out the door. He said he would be back in an hour. He put his hat on and walked out.” She bit her bottom lip. “I never saw him again.”

  “He was in the habit of walking every evening, wasn’t he?”

  The look she gave him was confused. “He also drank coffee every day and ate a biscuit for breakfast. Why are his habits of interest to you, Deputy?”

  “Sometimes the patterns of a man’s life tell me things. To have an idea of who might want to kill Henri, I need to know his routine. Did he always walk to the same location?”

  “I didn’t question Henri, about his walks or his destinations. Obviously you’ve never been married, Deputy Thibodeaux. It isn’t a woman’s place to ask such things.”

  “Weren’t you even curious?”

  She took a breath. “By the time Henri left on his walks, I’d tended the children all day, cooked our meals, cleaned the house, washed and ironed. I was glad for an hour of quiet to compose myself.”

  “Don’t you have some help?”

  She nodded. “At different times, both Adele and her sister Bernadette have worked here. Believe me, there’s plenty to do for a dozen women.”

  For the moment, Raymond let the matter of Adele rest. “What type of business did your husband do?” Raymond asked the question casually, but he watched Marguerite closely If Adele hadn’t murdered Henri, someone else had, and motive was at the base of his question.

  “He grew cane as you can clearly see. Henri excelled at farming.”

  “He had no other business interests?”

  Marguerite frowned. “He was a planter, Mr. Thibodeaux. Is there something I should know?”

  “Veedal Lawrence is your overseer?”

  “That’s right, since before I married Henri.” She looked out toward the fields. “He isn’t my choice, but Henri trusted him.”

  “Is Veedal responsible for the prisoners?”

  “Yes. He’s in charge. Henri never allowed me to interfere. Henri said the state prisoners were difficult to motivate, and that Veedal had total authority.”

  “With Henri gone, the burden of the prisoners falls on your shoulders, Mrs. Bastion, but I’ll check with the overseer on my way out.”

  “Thank you, Deputy Thibodeaux. There’s so much for me to figure out how to do now, without Henri. Your help is appreciated.”

  “You said Adele worked for you for a time. What did she do, and why was she let go?”

  “Last year she came for the gathering of the summer crops and the cane harvest. She helped me preserve the vegetables to see us through the winter.” Her hands smoothed the arms of the rocker. “She worked beside me, a strong, efficient worker, maybe a little peculiar. She kept her own counsel.” She gave him a look of puzzlement. “And now she’s killed my husband. I don’t understand why.”

  “Did you fire Adele or did Henri?”

  “She simply didn’t return to work one morning. I discovered later that she’d come down with morning sickness. She was pregnant.”

  “Who was the father?” He pretended to write in his notebook but his attention was focused on Marguerite. Bernadette had claimed that Adele was fired, but it was possible Henri had fired her without telling Marguerite. He was getting a picture of a man who seldom confided his reasoning to his wife.

  “Who can say? Adele was often down in the stables where we keep the prisoners. She was lonely, I know that. For some reason she couldn’t find a man to love.” Her smile was sad. “It’s difficult here for a woman, Deputy. So many men have been killed in the war.”

  “Was there one particular convict she fancied?” He held the trump. Armand Dugas. It would be interesting to see if Marguerite revealed the man’s name.

  “Veedal said she flitted from one to another.”

  “And what did Veedal say she was doing in the stables, exactly?”

  “She had some homemade salve and mumbo-jumbo herbs. She organized baths.”

  “Your husband allowed this?” Raymond couldn’t cover his surprise.

  “Henri said Adele could do no harm. He knew she was a little off, but he certainly never thought her dangerous.”

  Raymond stood up. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Bastion.” He walked past her and down the steps. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the little girl standing behind the screen door. She held a glass figurine of a horse in her hand, one that matched those in Bernadette’s home.

  When he was at his car he turned back to Marguerite, who’d stood and walked to the door. “There was never any particular convict linked with Adele?”

  “If there was, Henri never told me.” She let the screen door bang behind her as she entered the house.

  Raymond drove the hundred yards to the stables. The men were in the field, and he hoped the foreman was, too. When he entered, the stench nearly made him gag. He crossed to the small office and walked straight to the desk. He felt no hesitation as he began to go through the papers until he found what he sought.

  The prisoner inventory list from the previous year showed one Armand Dugas arriving at the Bastion farm in February of 1941. Dugas was serving a life sentence for murder. No additional information was given. Raymond scanned the other papers. There was no mention of Dugas being returned to Angola. Either he was still in the field, or he was dead.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doin’?”

  Raymond looked up to find a tall man, freckles burned to a burnished copper across his face, red hair thinning and arms as big as hams.

  “I’m checking your prisoner inventory.”

  “Just because you’re wearing that tin on your chest doesn’t give you the right
to come in here and poke around.”

  “No, but Mrs. Bastion gave me that right.” He smiled. “She also told me to check the condition of the convicts. She’s wondering if their food ration is adequate.”

  “She doesn’t give a fuck about the food.”

  “You must be Veedal Lawrence.” Raymond held the papers in his left hand, his right easing ever so slowly to the gun at his side. Veedal didn’t look like a man who’d been refused by the army because of physical defects, yet Raymond knew he’d never served a day.

  “It ain’t no concern of yours if I’m Peter Piper. Now give me that list and get out of my office.” Veedal made a grab for the pages.

  Raymond stepped back. He took Veedal’s measure. He saw the foreman’s pale eyes, the way his jaw set and locked, loutish and eager for a fight. “Try that again, and I’ll have to shoot you.”

  “Put that gun and badge on the desk and fight me like a man.”

  Raymond smiled. “I’d rather blast your dick in the dirt and watch the show while you try to figure how to put it back in place.” His fingers closed on the grip of his gun. “Now I want to see Armand Dugas.”

  Veedal grinned. “I’d like to see him, too. Bastard pulled a runner last fall. Either he made it out of the swamp alive or a gator got him. Couldn’t rightly say which.”

  “You’re telling me that Dugas, half starved and in leg shackles, got away?”

  “Strange, ain’t it? Almost like some kind of magic. I come down that mornin’ and his leg irons was lying open on the ground. He was gone and no amount of whippin’ could get the others to say what happened.”

  “He just up and disappeared?” Raymond forced his grip on the gun to relax, fighting his impulse to pull the weapon and slam it hard into Veedal’s face, repeatedly.

  “Mr. Henri was right upset. Dugas was a good worker, for all of his oddities. The state sent two to replace him, though, so it worked out. Mr. Henri was satisfied.”

  Raymond had no doubt Armand Dugas’s body, or what was left of it, was somewhere in the swamp. Most likely Veedal had beaten him or worked him to death and then dumped the remains for the hogs to eat or the swamp to swallow.

  “How many other prisoners have you lost, Veedal?”

  The man grinned. “Dugas was the only escapee. We’ve had eight in the last year die from the fever.”

  The fever. Another convenient cause of death. “I’m sure you had Doc Fletcher out here to verify the cause of death.” He saw the negative answer in Veedal’s heated eyes. “You’d best see to it that the men’s food ration is increased. Considerably. I’ll be back by to check, and if they don’t look a little less like walking skeletons, you and I are going to have another talk, and you aren’t going to like the gist of what I have to say.”

  Veedal snapped a salute. “Yes, sir, boss. I’mma gonna do jus’ what you say.”

  Raymond dropped the papers he held to the floor. He walked past Veedal Lawrence. He’d intended to interview the convicts, but the men wouldn’t talk to him with Veedal around. He’d come back in a day or two. Check on the foreman’s progress.

  7

  THE sun hung above the treetops when Chula turned down the road to Louiselle Dumont’s home. The post office was closed for the day, but there were older residents, or those who lived alone or without transportation, whose mail Chula delivered whenever she could.

  She felt the familiar burn of tired muscles between her shoulder blades as she wrestled the car through a patch of wet sand. It would be good to get home to a hot bath, to the supper her mother would have planned for her. There were days she thought she missed the life of wife and mother, but mostly she was glad to remain a daughter. Once she left her mother’s home, no one would coddle her. In Iberia Parish, and the rest of the country, the yoke of domesticity rested firmly on the woman’s shoulders.

  Smoke rose from Madame Louiselle’s chimney and Chula felt a pulse of excitement. Madame had begun to teach her the ways of the traiteur, the healer, and each encounter with the older woman brought something new into her life. Chula had discovered an innate ability to sense illness. Part of it was her willingness to listen, to truly hear what lay beyond words. She’d come to believe, though, that another part was a gift. Madame had convinced her of that and was helping her learn to accept and hone her talent.

  She picked up the letter from California off the car seat and hurried up the steps of the cabin. She was about to knock on the door when it opened. Madame put a finger to her lips and drew Chula inside.

  The room was too hot, stifling for such a lovely October afternoon. She was about to protest the heat when she saw the form of a young woman on the sofa, the firelight flickering over her sleeping features. At first she didn’t recognize Adele, but when she did, she raised her eyebrows. She’d heard the talk that Adele had been spirited away from the jail—that Raymond was protecting her, for some unknown reason. Chula knew why. For all that Raymond had lost of himself, he was still a man who defended the helpless.

  For a time, just out of high school, Chula had believed she loved Raymond. Believed it enough to yield to the hot passion that jumped between them. She felt a smile touch her lips. Those were good memories to cling to when seasons passed and no man sparked her interest. The thing between her and Raymond, though, had been, ultimately, a joining of two minds that could not abide injustice. When the passion had burned away, a bond of friendship as strong as love had remained. At least until the war, when Raymond returned a shell of the man she’d known.

  “Chula?”

  For a moment Chula had forgotten where she was, or who lay before her in a sweating coma. “Madame, what is this?”

  “It’s an unusual case, Chula. Like none I’ve seen.”

  Chula stepped closer to the sick woman. “Will she live?”

  “I haven’t been able to break the fever, but it’s reduced. I lit a fire to ward off the chills.” Madame’s voice was in a low register, barely a ripple of noise.

  “Fever?” Images of the most recent epidemic came to mind. Delivering the mail, Chula had seen funeral after funeral, coffins nailed shut by doctor’s orders against the spread of illness. Some said it came from mosquitoes, others said it was a sickness in the swamp water, and others believed it was bad humors from an evil spirit. Chula and her mother had escaped illness, but many lives had been lost.

  “It isn’t the yellow jack.” Madame’s dark eyes held Chula’s, telling her not to be afraid. “This is something else. Want to examine her?”

  Chula nodded. She did want a closer look. She stepped over to the sleeping woman and took in the paleness of her skin, the purple rings beneath her eyes, the way her hands and feet twitched like a sleeping dog.

  She touched Adele’s forehead and felt the dry, hot fire that burned within her.

  “She had a seizure this morning and bled from the nose. She lost a lot of blood before I could stop it with cold compresses.” Madame stood beside Chula.

  “Has she regained consciousness?”

  Madame shook her head. “I thought she might, but she slips back into her sleep. She doesn’t want to leave her dreams and return to this world.”

  Chula touched one of Adele’s jerking hands and held it firmly. She felt the tremors that pulsed through Adele’s flesh as an electric current might. Chula inhaled sharply and looked at Madame, who only nodded.

  Chula’s hands moved up Adele’s arms, touching, pressing, sensing. As her hands explored, she tried to clear her mind to register the sensations she felt. Adele’s muscles were strung taut, defying the appearance that she slept. There was an inner tension in Adele’s body that Chula had never experienced.

  “She fights herself,” she said, not intending to speak aloud.

  “What else?”

  Chula let her hands wander to Adele’s chest. The drum of her heart reminded Chula of a trapped bird, wings beating in the effort to escape. Panic, fear, the consuming need to be free. “She’s afraid. If she continues, the fear will kill her. Her
heart will burst.”

  “Which is why she bled from the nose. The pressure of her beating heart.”

  Chula stepped back. “The fever has no physical cause, does it?”

  Madame took her arm and led her into the kitchen. She closed the door and went to the open window for a breath of cool air. “I’ll make some tea.”

  Chula took a seat at the table while Madame put a kettle on and prepared the teapot. The room was painted aquamarine, a color that Madame said soothed her mind when she was troubled. Chula loved the color and the bright glass jars of preserved tomatoes, beans, potatoes, jams, and fruits that lined the shelves. Often Madame took payment for her services in meat or vegetables. She canned what she couldn’t eat, supplies that would last her during the winter or a long flood.

  Herbs and different marsh grasses hung in the windows, drying. Madame’s gift of healing was her use of the native plants to concoct medicines. Those who couldn’t afford, or didn’t trust, Doc Fletcher came to her.

  “Have you given Adele anything?”

  “She holds nothing down.”

  “Not even water?”

  Madame shook her head as she placed tea in a pot. “She acts as if she can’t swallow, but I’ve checked her mouth and throat. There’s nothing wrong. She drools constantly.”

  Hydrophobia. Chula thought about the infection spread by the bite of a rabid animal. “Could it be rabies?”

  “I thought it might, but no.”

  She had a terrible thought, one that would devastate a parish already overwhelmed with disaster. “Polio?”

  “No, not that.” Madame poured the hot water over the tea. “It’s a fever in the brain. It comes and goes. Raymond said she was sensible this morning.”

  Chula accepted the cup of tea Madame handed her. “Could it be that someone is giving her something to cause the fever?”

  Madame’s smile was proud. “That thought has crossed my mind.”