Flight of the Stone Angel (18 page)

“Now stay together,” said Betty, shepherding her flock of ten guests across the bridge. One damn fool was veering off on the side road. “You don’t want to go in that direction, Mr. Porter. Three feet off the path and you’re into Finger Bayou.”

Mr. Porter was entranced by the worn wooden arrow pointing the way to the old Shelley place. Perhaps he took it for a traffic sign, for she could see he was longing to obey it despite the No Trespassing sign posted on a near tree.

“Is the bayou very deep, Mrs. Hale?”

“Well, no. But you could break your backside trying to get yourself out of there.” Yes, he would definitely crack his ass if he fell on his face.

“Now if you’ll all gather round, please.” Betty pointed up through a break in the trees. “That house is where the bats come from.” Cameras began to click photographs of the roof and its round window as souvenirs of last evening’s bat races.

“It’s more than a hundred and fifty years old,” said Betty. “It was built by the Trebec family. Miss Augusta is the last of the line. When she dies, the house passes over to the state of Louisiana.”

“So she’s leaving it to the state as a historical site?” asked the woman from Arizona.

“No, her father arranged that in his will,” said Betty. “He put all his money in a trust fund. Augusta only got a caretaker’s salary.”

“Some caretaker,” said an elderly woman, eyes focussed through field glasses. “There are holes in that roof.”

“Oh, the whole place is a wreck,” said Betty. “The roof is the least of it. It’s a damn shame to see one of those beauties go to ruin that way. Augusta Trebec is the Antichrist of the St. Jude Parish Historical Society. They invoke her name every time they cuss.”

The line got a smattering of laughter, and Betty decided to leave it in the tour speech.

“The house has quite a history, and I – ”

“Could Cass Shelley be alive?” Mr. Porter was asking.

“Not likely. Now Augusta became the mistress of Trebec House under very sinister – ”

“Are there any alligators in that bayou?” asked the intrepid Mr. Porter “You think maybe an alligator could’ve eaten her body?”

Though she wanted to stuff a sock in Porter’s mouth, Betty smiled on him with benevolence. “A gator
could
eat you whole. When he clamps down on you, he goes into a death roll and drags you under.” She liked that image of Porter. “But if the gator isn’t hungry just then, he’ll stuff your body in some underwater hole or a cranny in the bayou wall ” Either way the gator went with that, Porter would be just as dead. “And then he’ll bide his time till your body rots up real tender.”

Now she had everyone’s attention. Bloodthirsty bastards, bless their little hearts and credit cards. “But an alligator didn’t eat Cass Shelley. Fred and Ray Laurie killed every single gator in these bayous a long time ago. Finger Bayou runs up near Trebec House. Before Cass died, I used to take my tour groups up there. Augusta won’t allow strangers on the place anymore, though. I guess the stoning spooked her. She stopped the herbicide on the bayou, and now it’s choked off with water hyacinth, impassable by boat. You see those plants floating on the water? And most of the land surrounding the house is swamp, infested with poisonous snakes. So I
repeat,
you don’t want to stray off on your own. Now what was I saying before we got off on gators?”

“The house,” said the man from Maine.

“Right. Now the house and a few acres was all that was left of the original plantation. The town sprung up, lot by lot, as the Trebecs sold off the land.”

“You said the house was ruined,” said the man from Maine. “So Miss Trebec is too poor to maintain it?”

“Poor?
Augusta?
Oh, no.” Betty laughed. “She’s a master of shady land deals. She owns all those cane fields out by the highway. Bought her first forty acres with seed money inherited from her mother. Then she sued a chemical factory for fouling the water on her land. That gave her cash for more land near
another
factory. Over the years, she’s filed lawsuits against most of the chemical plants along the River Road. They always settle out of court. Today, Augusta owns most all of St. Jude Parish, except for Dayborn and Owltown.”

“Could you lose a body in that bayou?” asked Mr. Porter, impatient to get back to the subject of murder. “Maybe sink it down with weights?”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Betty. “The sheriff was all through Finger Bayou dragging for that body. He would have turned it up.”

“I can understand her not wanting to spend her own money on a house that isn’t hers,” said the man from Maine, still trying to make sense of the ruined mansion. “But if the woman is rich, there’s nothing to keep her here. So why doesn’t she just leave?”

“Oh, Augusta won’t go till the house falls down. She could set a match to it, but that would offend her sporting nature.”

The man from Maine gaped. “You mean she
wants
it to – ”

“What about quicksand?”

“No, Mr. Porter,” said Betty. “There might be a bog or two back there in the swamp, but even a bog will yield up a carcass eventually. Of course, only a Cajun could walk that swamp – or Augusta. She’s what you might call a Cajun without portfolio.”

The rest of the group had their binoculars trained on the top window of Trebec House. One scrawny woman from California was shaking her head sadly. “Surely the historical society will restore the house when this crazy woman dies.”

“Can’t,” said Betty. “It would take too much money. They waived their rights in favor of Augusta’s proposal for a bird habitat. Those ornithologists won’t waste a dime on Trebec House. They’ll just watch it rot. That’s the deal they made with Augusta.”

“So what do you think happened to the body?”

“It
is
a mystery, isn’t it, Mr. Porter?” And if it were ever solved it would cut into her business, now evenly divided between bird-watchers, amateur detectives and the visiting New Church seminar suckers.

“Is it possible to lose a body in that swamp, say if you sunk it in a bog, and – ”

“What goes into this ground will come up again, Mr. Porter. I’ll show you what I mean.”

She led them through the skirt of trees and into the cemetery. “We generally bury bodies aboveground. If we sink ‘em in the earth, they just rise again, and it doesn’t matter how many stones you put in the coffin to weight it down. Now some of these bodies here were buried in a traditional manner, but you see that big slab of concrete? That’s to keep the coffin belowground.”

“Couldn’t there have been
one
alligator hiding in the bayou?” asked the hopeful Mr. Porter.

“No! Sorry. No, the closest thing we got to a gator around here is Augusta. When she smiles, you can see the resemblance, and if you get on her bad side, her eyes will go dead on you – just like a gator. Oh, and just because a gator’s dead, that doesn’t mean it’s safe to approach one. An alligator can bite you two hours after it’s been killed. I plan to be several hours late to Augusta’s funeral when she goes.”

“But suppose there was just
one
alligator.”

Betty’s smile was broad, but her teeth were grinding. “Cass Shelley died this same time of year. Even if there was a gator in there, he would have been hibernating. Cass
did not
end up as gator food. Now, Mr. Porter, if we are done with the alligators?”

She pointed to the monument which towered over all the others. “That’s the back of the angel. She’s the image of Cass Shelley, God rest her soul. And the little girl in her arms? That’s Kathy. She’s come home again and murdered Babe Laurie.”

The first of the tour group stood in front of the angel while Betty brought up the rear. “Now you just gather around. As I was saying, the little girl in the angel’s arms – ”

“What little girl?” The California woman was looking up at the angel.

“The little girl
in her arms.”
What kind of blind fools did they make up north? They shouldn’t allow idiots to travel; there ought to be a law. “Later, I’ll take you into the alley alongside the sheriff’s office and show you where her jail cell is.” No point in telling them the fugitive was on the loose. That might result in some empty rooms. “She might even come to the window, so take a good look at the little girl.”

“What
little girl?” asked the very sensible man from Maine.

Now Betty came around to the front of the statue to point out the little girl you couldn’t fail to notice even if you were just this side of legal blindness.

But the stone child was gone.

The angel was alone on her pedestal, eyes cast down and holding out her empty arms.

“Oh, my God. It’s a miracle.” Betty walked up to the angel and stared into her eyes. “Oh, my God.”

“She’s crying,” said the man from Maine. “The statue is crying.”

Ten cameras shot the angel simultaneously.

Augusta wondered if sleep had been induced by the herbal concoction to stave off infection. Or had the girl passed out from the pain of irrigating the bullet wounds? Well, better that she slept.

All around the room were soggy towels and windings of gauze. Augusta picked up the bloody debris and put it into a plastic garbage bag. When she had washed her hands, she sat down in a chair by the bed and removed the bandages. She pulled the packing from the back wound and replaced the poultice. The girl slumbered on as Augusta taped the poultice in place and then turned the body over to clean the front wound in the shoulder.

With no warning, one white hand snaked out and held Augusta’s arm in a surprisingly strong grip. The cat leapt onto the foot of the bed and made a low growl. Augusta hushed the cat and looked back at her patient and deep into a pair of very angry young eyes.

“What did you give me to make me sleep?”

“Nothing I didn’t grow in my herb garden,” said Augusta. “Now do you mind if I get on with this? It’s a
big
hole.” She bent low over the wound, ignoring the tight squeeze of her arm, and finally the hand fell away. “Must have been a hollow-point bullet. This exit wound was real good for drainage.”

Augusta’s patient looked down at the new packing in her flesh. “Is that what I think it is?”

The old woman nodded. “Spider silk resists bacteria. I wrap herbs inside it so the medicine releases slowly. Takes a lot of silk to make a good packing, but my house is a damn factory of spiders spinning webs ”

Augusta unraveled a long strand of cotton gauze and clipped it with a pair of shears. “You were lucky. It’s a soft-tissue wound. Missed the joint and the bone. No permanent damage.” She wrapped the gauze over the naked shoulder to cover both wounds. “This is a pressure bandage. I know it hurts, but the greater the pressure the less you bleed.”

“How long will I be laid up?”

“Not long at all, now that the bleeding is under control. In fact, the sooner you begin moving this shoulder the better. It won’t be so stiff later on if you use it now. But go easy – you don’t want to do anything to start the bleeding again.”

“Why are you helping me?”

Augusta looked up to the greenest eyes she’d ever seen, and they were drilling holes in her. Strange child.

“Real estate,” Augusta said, bending to the work at hand, winding another layer of gauze over the holes. “I never lose an opportunity to do a real estate deal. If you die intestate, it could take more years than I got left to tear your mother’s house loose from the state.” And now she risked another glance at her patient.

Not good enough,
said the girl’s bright eyes, narrow with suspicion. “Why didn’t you let the place go for back taxes?”

“And pay top dollar in a bidding war at auction?” She put one hand to her breast to say,
What kind of fool do you take me for?
“I tried to buy this place from your grandfather in a fair deal, but he wouldn’t sell. Then after he died, and your mother moved back to Dayborn, she wouldn’t sell either. But now I got you, don’t I? I think you’ll like my offer, Kathy.”

“Call me
Mallory.”
This was not a suggestion, but clearly an order.

“All right then. You know, your mother never did say who your father was. That name you took –
Mallory.
Might that be his name?”

The younger woman only stared at her, impassive.

Well, there was silence, and there was silence. Maybe she did know who her father was, and perhaps she also knew how to keep a secret.

Augusta pointed to the corner. “There’s your bags over there.” She had recovered them from the woods and made it back to the house not ten minutes before Tom Jessop had pulled into her yard with the patrol car.

“What about my dog?”

“I slipped him into the bog at the top of Finger Bayou. Fred Laurie too. Those bodies won’t stay down forever, but I guess we can worry about that later. I hope you don’t mind the dog keeping company with Fred. That animal deserved better, but it was as good a burial as I could manage on short notice. Poor demented dog, his dying was a mercy,” she said in lament for the dog and passing over the incidental death of a man.

Augusta continued to wind the bandage tight. And all the while, Mallory and the cat exchanged looks of suspicion, two distrustful beings taking one another’s measure, resolving into a standoff. And then the cat curled up in a ball, perhaps intentionally insulting her adversary by closing her eyes while the larger animal, Mallory, was still within harming distance.