Murder in a Minor Key (8 page)

He was in high spirits and there was no point in contradicting his orders. I sat back, amused, and let the Wayne Copely steamroller roll over Doris and me. Wayne was delighted that Doris wanted to accompany us to Jazz Fest. He chatted away about the musicians scheduled to play throughout the day, consumed three beignets, and sent the waitress off for more coffee. Finally, he patted his mouth with a napkin, erasing the last vestige of powdered sugar, and sat back, contentment on his face, and absently brushed the front of his shirt with the side of his hand.

I decided not to spoil his good mood by relating yesterday’s disturbing conversation with Stanley in Jackson Square about Little Red LeCoeur. Bad news could wait, and maybe Stanley was wrong. I was still hopeful. Instead, I turned to Doris, who had been an attentive audience to Wayne’s monologue.

“Doris, tell us what kind of response you received to your request to tape voodoo practitioners,” I said.

“I met with three people yesterday, and I have a few appointments tomorrow. I haven’t been able to return two calls, but I’ll try again before we leave this morning.”

“How did you happen to become interested in voodoo?” I asked.

“I’d been teaching a course on the history of religion, and had to read up on voodoo because I knew so little about it. Voodoo is rich in folklore, but unlike most mainstream religions, it has no uniform infrastructure to maintain it. There’s no pope, no central governing body. Every temple does its own thing, so to speak. Yet it’s lasted for seven thousand years.”

“I didn’t realize it was that old.”

“Yes, very old,” she said. “It’s kind of like jazz in the way it developed. Jazz evolved from both the African musical culture brought to this country by slaves, and the European musical tradition, which was familiar to slave owners. New Orleans voodoo is also a mixture, in this case, a blend of at least three separate religious traditions—African from Dahomey, Catholic from the French and Spanish who settled in New Orleans, and Native American, too.”

“You’ve given this talk before, I think,” Wayne said, smiling to soften his comment.

Doris blushed. “I have indeed. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lecture you.”

“Please don’t apologize,” I said. “I hadn’t heard it.”

“I’ve been known to go on about a topic till eyes glaze over,” she said, chuckling.

“You’re just passionate about your work and that’s an admirable trait,” I said. “Go on, Doris.”

Doris cleared her throat. “There are two historical figures associated with the spread of voodoo and its influence in New Orleans in the Nineteenth Century. One was Dr. John, also sometimes called ‘the Drummer.’ The other was Marie Laveau.”

“Now there’s a name every New Orleanian is familiar with,” Wayne interjected.

“I’m sure that’s true,” Doris continued. “Voodoo is matriarchal, and the powerful voodoo queens were always more important than the men, even witch doctors.”

“Yes, but wasn’t Marie Laveau actually two women?” Wayne prodded.

Doris smiled at him. “I’d love to have you in one of my classes. You’d certainly keep me on my toes. Yes, they were two women, mother and daughter, both with the same name. Marie, the mother, reigned over notorious ceremonies that took place in Congo Square and along Lake Pontchartrain, with frenzied dancing and boiling cauldrons of frogs and snakes and the like. That’s what became the Hollywood image of voodoo.”

“Is voodoo still practiced that way?” I asked.

“Actually, today believers say ‘verdoun’ rather than ‘voodoo’ to dissociate themselves from the sinister portrayals of voodoo involving casting evil spells, human sacrifice, and stabbing pins into voodoo dolls to harm your enemies.”

“None of that takes place anymore?” I asked.

“I think some of it probably does. Animal sacrifices, but certainly not human sacrifices. There are always fringe elements in religion. But for the most part, voodoo focuses on living in harmony and attaining spiritual balance by serving the
loa,
the spirits.”

“Wayne, you mentioned the loa when you talked about Little Red,” I said.

“Yes. They’re also called the ‘mysteries’ or the ‘invisibles.’ They’re kind of intermediaries between the human world and the creator.”

“Like saints,” Doris added. “You can see the Catholic influence there.”

“But Dr. John and Queen Marie Laveau are loa,” Wayne put in, “and they were not very saintly.”

“That’s true,” replied Doris, “but they were powerful in their day, and are still considered powerful.”

I turned to Wayne. “Are they the same loa that are supposed to have possessed Little Red and influenced his music?”

“I don’t think so. There are many loa, and Little Red was probably identified with Ogoun. He’s associated with metals, so the trumpet fits in, and is also represented by the color red—blood and fire. Little Red’s playing was supposed to be very fiery and passionate. Of course, that’s an assumption we can’t prove until I find those recordings.”

His eyes did a quick check of the other tables on the patio, before he leaned toward us and added in a soft, singsong voice, “And I think that’s coming closer.”

“Your meeting last night?” I whispered, caught up in his need for secrecy.

He sat back with an enigmatic smile, but said nothing.

Was someone leading him on? I felt guilty for having held back the information I’d learned from Stanley. But I didn’t want to approach the subject in front of Doris. There would be time later when I could pass along Stanley’s comments to Wayne without an audience.

Leaving Wayne with my morning newspaper, Doris and I returned to our respective rooms to make a few phone calls and ready ourselves for a day at the festival. I called Charlie Gable to confirm our upcoming dinner interview, and checked with the bookstore to verify that my books were in stock before we finalized plans for the book signing. At a quarter to eleven, new hat in hand, I met Wayne and Doris in the hotel lobby.

Chapter Six

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people in one place at one time,” I said.

Wayne and Doris and I, along with thousands of like-minded people, were crossing the dirt track of the Fair Grounds Race Track to where a sea of tents, flags, and booths filled the huge grassy oval. Atop a giant scaffolding, a sponsor’s sign welcomed us to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

“They do get quite a crowd,” Wayne remarked. “Over four hundred thousand last year, plus the four thousand or so putting on the show.”

Wayne guided us to the first green-and-white-striped tent on our left, in which a gospel group was warming up. In the shade of the tent, he gave us a fatherly lecture. “You see all those flags?” He nodded toward the kaleidoscope of pennants, flags, and banners dotting the scene before us. Many were homemade with suspended ribbons, bows, and fringe fluttering as their bearers carried them aloft. “People use those to identify themselves, so their friends and family can find them in the crowd. If they didn’t do that, they might wander around here for days and never meet up.”

“Isn’t that clever,” Doris said. “Look at that one.” Bobbing by us was a feather-bedecked pole with bouquets of ribbon arrayed across three crossbars. It was held high by a tall man who wore one of the ribbon bouquets on his head, and who walked backward, keeping an eye on his flock of teenaged followers.

“We don’t have a flag,” Wayne reminded us. “And it’s easy to get separated in this crush. I’ll try to hold on to you, but let’s agree to meet in specific places at specific hours. That way if we lose sight of each other, we’ll know we’ve got a regular rendezvous point to reassemble.”

Doris and I agreed that making appointments to meet at certain hours was prudent, and we all synchronized our watches as if we were on a military mission.

“What do you suggest we see right now?” I asked, hanging on to my hat when a stiff breeze threatened to carry it away.

“I need to check in at the press tent, but we can use this time just to look around and get our bearings. There’s music everywhere. We can just stop in to hear whatever appeals to us.” A family carrying folding chairs squeezed by, and Wayne took our arms. “There’s no way you can whip through this fair. Get used to strolling. That’s the only effective pace.”

The air at the festival fairly hummed with the strains of gospel, zydeco, bebop, Cajun, Dixieland, and virtually every other musical variation of jazz and pop and country, the sounds drifting out of the tents and rising on the breeze in a delightful cacophony. A gust of wind blew up, flapping the colorful pennants strung from tent top to tent top, and wafting the smells of spicy cooking in our direction from the food stalls on the other side of the oval. The intermittent breeze was a blissful counter to the blazing sun.

The press tent was abuzz with activity when Wayne flashed his pass and ushered us inside. Large oscillating fans on stands whined in each comer but had little effect on the stultifying air. I blotted my forehead with a handkerchief, and followed Wayne as he dipped into bins that had been set up along two sides. A flustered press aide was attempting to fill the bins as quickly as the press corps emptied them. Wayne studied their contents, retrieving press releases and biographical backgrounds on the acts scheduled for that day, flipped through samples of music magazines, and dropped them back in the bins.

“How nice to see you again, ladies.”

I looked up into the clear-blue eyes of Julian Broadbent.

Wayne joined us, his hands full of papers.

“Copely.” Broadbent nodded curtly.

“Broadbent,” Wayne grunted in acknowledgment. He turned his back on the reporter. “Ladies, I’d like to introduce you to some of the musicians who are here.” He pushed us across the room toward a series of tables set up for press interviews. The musicians sat against the outside wall of the tent; across from each were two or three chairs, most of which were occupied. A pile of black-and-white glossies for autographing, and a set of black and blue pens, sat at each musician’s elbow.

“Say hello to Oliver Jones,” he told me. Jones was a short, stocky black man with a sweet face and even sweeter smile.

“Oliver is one of Canada’s many gifts to the jazz world, Jessica, Doris. He studied piano with Oscar Peterson’s sister, Daisy, in Montreal.”

“I have one of your albums,” I said. “A friend, Peter Eder—he’s the conductor of our symphony orchestra back home—loves your music. So do I,” I added hastily. “You play so beautifully.”

“Thank you. I hope you enjoy the concerts.”

“I know I will,” I said.

Doris and I were introduced to a few more musicians—the vibest, Terry Gibbs; a bass player, Ray Brown; and a saxophonist, Bobby Watson.

Julian Broadbent trailed our little party, eavesdropping as Wayne greeted colleagues, and nodding at the musicians as if Wayne were including him in the introductions. When we finally left the press tent, he touched Doris on the shoulder. “Mind if I walk around with you today?”

“Sure. Why not?” she said, taking his arm.

Agreeing to meet us at the gospel tent later on, Julian and Doris went off to explore on their own, while Wayne and I stopped to read the program and choose which performances to see. He craned his neck to make out something off to our right. “I hear one of the brass bands,” he said. “Let’s catch up with them.”

We hustled to get a good look at the small band of performers. Clad in bright-blue suits, gold sashes, and white gloves, they were slowly snaking their way around the field, stopping every so often to allow their leader, who was carrying a matching blue umbrella, to execute a little two-step dance. When we reached them, the players—two trumpets, a trombone, a sousaphone, a tuba, and a drum—were in the middle of a Dixieland tune that had me tapping my toe with the beat and clapping along with the other listeners.

“This is a typical New Orleans brass band,” Wayne told me as we applauded at the end of the piece. “They’re sponsored by clubs in the African-American community, and have a long history in New Orleans. Brass bands were hired for every social occasion—weddings, funerals, picnics—and it became a wonderful tradition.”

The band’s next song was one I recognized, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The leader pumped his umbrella above his head and the musicians headed off in another direction.

“I have something I want to talk about,” I said to Wayne. “Has anyone come forward with information for you about the cylinders?”

“I have a few leads,” he replied, turning his attention to me and twirling a pencil between his fingers. “And the paper mentioned it in the article covering our panel.” He pulled a leafed-through copy of the magazine Wavelength from under his arm. “I’ve also got a little ad in here that should churn the waters.”

I told Wayne about Stanley and the street merchant’s insistence on the futility of searching for recordings by Little Red. “I’m concerned that you’ll be terribly disappointed after putting in all this effort,” I said. “I know how much it means to you.”

He listened intently. Then a smile creased his face, and he patted my arm. “You know, Jessica, I’ve heard that argument for years. But I’m not the only one looking for them; there was an ad in the paper a few weeks ago. So I think the odds are good. If nothing else, my research may clear up the mystery and determine once and for all if the recordings were ever made. And if they were, what happened to them.” He grinned. “Either way, I’ll have enough material for another book.”

“You devil. And here I was worrying for nothing.”

Wayne and I continued on, starting with zydeco, sampling some bebop, and listening to stride piano. Two hours later, Doris, Julian, Wayne, and I exited the gospel tent, our cheeks red and foreheads gleaming. The gospel tent had had rows of folding chairs, but few people had stayed in their seats once the concert had begun. We all stood, swaying, moved by the music, hands clapping, feet tapping. It was a physical as well as spiritual experience.

“What wonderful, talented young people,” I exclaimed, fanning my face with my straw hat.

Wayne was smug. “Picked a good one, didn’t I?” he said.

“They were terrific,” Doris agreed. “Sure got me hopping.” She bounced lightly on her feet, holding on to the new gris-gris—a small red pouch suspended from a string around her neck—that she had purchased at a voodoo stall. “This has already brought me good luck.”