Under the Cajun Moon (31 page)

A long, dark, nasty-looking snake.

I froze. Just as the snake darted in for the kill, with a swish and a ping suddenly that snake was in two parts, both of them wriggling for a long moment before slowly growing still. My heart pounding furiously, I backed away, trying to catch my breath, and looked up to see Travis crouched nearby, a rusty old hoe in his hand.

He had saved my life, cutting that snake into two with the hoe.

We made it back to the boat in silence, though once we were there, I could see how furious he was. As for me, the adrenaline was kicking in, and I had to sit down in the boat fast, before my knees started buckling. Without a word, Travis started up the boat and drove us away from there, going a few minutes downriver until he finally turned up into an empty cove and cut the engine so we could talk.

“I know you’re mad,” I said before he had the chance to say anything,
“but it’s
her
, Travis. I heard her. She was telling the old lady not to say ‘boom’ any more that it was their little secret.”

“Do you know what kind of snake that was?” he replied loudly. “It was a water moccasin,
cher
. One bite, and you would have been dead!”

“I know, but—”

“I don’t think you do know, Chloe. Didn’t I just teach you that you never, ever go up into any kind of brush in Louisiana without tapping a stick in it first to scare away snakes?”

“You did, but—”

“Snake like that, he was just minding his own business until you came along and scared him. He was responding the only way he knew how, by striking out. You should be dead now. If I hadn’t gone around to that side of the house looking for a better place to listen from, you
would
be dead now.”

I realized Travis was so angry at me that he couldn’t hear the more important part of what was going on here. I apologized for stupidly putting myself in danger, and when he had calmed down a bit I added that in the end it had been a good thing that I did. I told him that not only was I afraid Ben’s daughter was the one who shot my father, but that I had a feeling she might do something to the old woman too, just to keep her quiet.

“Did you see the way she took care of them in there?” Travis asked me, shaking his head. “She’s not capable of murder.”

“I heard what I heard, Travis. She was talking to the old woman, telling her she couldn’t have a bath unless she stopped saying ‘boom.’ ”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

“You didn’t hear her tone of voice. She was threatening her.”

“Fine, then. Maybe she did shoot your father, but I guarantee you she wouldn’t harm any of those old folks in there.”

Regardless of what Travis said, I knew the old woman might be in danger. We needed to call the police and have them come right out. We just had to do it in the right way, so they wouldn’t end up arresting me instead of her.

Travis came up with a plan that would buy us a little time. He called his grandmother and asked her if she knew Ben Runner’ daughter, Josie.

“Good, good,” he said, giving me a thumbs-up. “Then I need you to do me a favor. Can you call her house and just act like you’re looking for me? Start chatting. I need you to keep her on the phone for a while…Uhhuh…I’ll explain later…Okay…just talk with her on the phone ten or fifteen minutes, okay? Thanks,
Grandmere
.” Travis hung up the phone and to me said, “Asking my
grandmere
to chat on the phone for ten minutes, that’s like asking a marathon runner to jog around the block.” Sliding the phone in his pocket, Travis laid out his intentions, saying that Josie wouldn’t do anything stupid as long as there was someone else on the other end of the telephone line. In the meantime he and I could remain hidden here in this private location, call the police, and tell them what we had seen and heard. That way, whether they ended up arresting her or not, at least they wouldn’t find us. I agreed that that sounded like the most prudent course of action.

Still, I was afraid the police wouldn’t believe me, given that it was just my word against hers—and I was an accused murderer while she was an upstanding citizen who lovingly tended to a house filled with the elderly. I decided I might be better off calling my friend on the inside, Wade Henkins. He could relay the information to the local police, and the fact that he was a cop himself, albeit one who worked in New Orleans and not down here, would give it much more weight.

“You said for me to call you if I needed help. I need help,” I told him once he answered my call.

Wade listened as I explained to him what I had seen and heard, and how Josie was clearly lying. I repeated the words that she had said to the old woman, and Wade agreed that it was very suspicious indeed. “Even if she’s not the one who pulled the trigger, it sounds like she obviously knows more than she was letting on.”

Wade seemed to understand my desire to avoid the police for the time being. He said that he would call them for me and then get back to me.

“Are you somewhere safe in the meantime?” he asked. “You don’t need to tell me where you are. I just want to know that you’re okay.”

“I’m okay for now, but I’ll feel better once the police have a chance to talk to Josie Runner and see for themselves what I’m talking about.”

After we hung up, Travis asked me if I was sure that Wade himself could be trusted. He was the last person to see my father before he was shot, after all, Travis reminded me. And as a cop, he also carried a gun. In reply, I told Travis that I was just so grateful to the man for helping to move up my bail hearing that I hadn’t given his guilt or innocence much thought after that.

“I guess we’ll know for sure soon,” I added, “depending on whether or not the police go to Josie’s. If they do, then Wade’s likely on the up-and-up. If they don’t, then that means he’s probably getting in his car in New Orleans right now, heading down here himself to come after us.”

We waited there in tense silence until Travis’ phone rang about ten minutes later. He answered and had a brief conversation, finally disconnecting the call and returning the phone to his pocket.

“Well,
c’est ca.
That was Minette, wanting to know why, in the middle of a conversation with her friend Josie, the police came knocking on the woman’s door.”

I couldn’t help but smile, glad to know that I wasn’t wrong about Wade.

“It would be bad manners for me to say I told you so, so I won’t say it. That I told you so.”

“Sorry, but you can’t blame a Naquin for not trusting a Henkins. Our families have been feuding for years.”

“Feuding? You mean like the Hatfields and the McCoys?”

“Not exactly. Wade’s father and his father before him were not nice men. But I guess Wade himself is fine.”

While Travis started our engine again, I thought about Wade’s story of how his father died and my father and Alphonse stepped into his life, kind of like big brothers. Between that and the anonymous gift of the college scholarship to Ben, at least this whole experience had given me a different picture of my dad. He could still be a jerk, but at least I knew now he could also be a pretty nice guy sometimes too.

“So where do we go next?” I asked.

“I think we need to lay low until we find out what happens at Josie’s. In fact, we should probably put a little more distance between ourselves
and her place, just in case the cops decide to come after us once she tells them that we got there by boat.”

“Good idea.”

Travis started up the engine and I put on my floppy hat again, even though the sun had already set and the darkness was fast approaching. Before we took off, he unhooked a big flashlight from under the seat, handed it to me, and told me to be ready to shine it out in front of us like a headlight once we needed it.

Driving back down the river away from Josie’s, I thought about how badly I wanted to clear my name, to learn that the charges against me had been dropped. Beyond that, I wanted to know the details, the who and why and how of what had really gone on down here the day my father was shot and after that as well.

As long as I was letting myself think of the things I wanted, I wanted to get out of this ridiculous getup and into some decent clothes, and I wanted to get back to New Orleans and go to the hospital. My mother and I had a lot of things to discuss, and I was not looking forward to that, but it would be worth putting up with her just to be able to finally see my father. I couldn’t believe that I had landed in New Orleans on Monday night, and here it was Wednesday evening and I still hadn’t seen him. After all I had been through in just two short days, I couldn’t believe that there was a good chance that all of this was finally coming to an end.

From behind me, I heard Travis whistle, and I turned to see what he wanted.

“Regardez!”
he said, smiling and pointing toward the shoreline.

I looked in the direction he indicated, to see a flock of huge white birds taking to the sky. As I watched them soar and dip in the encroaching darkness, I couldn’t help thinking about the one downside of this whole thing coming to an end: That would also mean an end of my time with Travis.

It had been a very long time since I had met someone I genuinely liked as much as I liked Travis Naquin. Though he could come across as a
goo goo ga ga
or whatever he had called it, in truth he seemed very intelligent, quite talented, and most of all kindhearted. It struck me that he didn’t talk very much about himself, and in a way that was refreshing. Having grown
up with an egomaniac for a father, I think I just expected all men to act as if the earth revolved around them. Though Julian Ledet was an extreme case, it seemed to me that most of the men in my life were self-absorbed. Now, after spending so much time in the company of the unpretentious, unassuming Travis, I found myself wondering what it would be like to date him.

With a sad smile, I thought of the lost opportunity from the summer we were both eighteen. Had I not been such a prim and proper snob on our date, Travis’ dream for that summer might very well have come true. We could have fallen in love and had one last fling before both heading off to college. Then again, I had a feeling that Travis Naquin was not the “fling” type. He was more the love-you-forever kind of guy, the type of man you bring home to Mama. The one you marry. I couldn’t imagine how different my life would have been if things had gone differently so long ago.

We were still speeding along the darkening waterway when I noticed that this engine was beginning to make funny noises too. I turned around to look at Travis, wondering if someone had tampered with our engine while we were inside at Josie’s.

“This seems to be my day for engine trouble!” he called to me over the faltering roar of the motor.

At least we had put some distance between ourselves and Josie’s by that point. As I flicked on the powerful lamp and shone it ahead of us, Travis turned into a side channel, one that seemed to have no houseboats or camps on it, and then he turned again into an equally deserted one and finally cut the engine.

The bayou was wide here, but I kept my eye on the direction we were drifting, as I had no desire to float into the overgrown tangle of flora and fauna that hung from the shore on both sides. One snake encounter per day was more than enough for me.

“Did somebody sabotage us?” I asked fearfully, my voice sounding loud in the sudden quiet.

Travis was silent for a moment as he carefully tinkered with the hot motor. Then he replied that he didn’t think so. This looked to be a timing problem. He asked me to turn around and shine the light where he was working, so I did just that.

“Should we call someone for help?”

“Not yet. I should be able to fix it.”

“How far are we from all of those friends and relatives you were talking about, the ones who have places up in the swamps?”

“About another five miles or so, too far to paddle in this kind of boat. Speaking of paddles,
cher
, you might want to grab one and use it right about now.”

I turned around to see that we had practically drifted directly under the very place I hadn’t wanted to go. Putting down the flashlight and frantically grabbing a paddle from the floor of the boat, I used it to push off from a fat tree trunk and float us out toward the middle again.

Once there, I again picked up the light and shone it toward the engine. Travis certainly seemed to know what he was doing, and as he worked I allowed myself to watch the certain, strong movements of his hands.

All around us, though it was nearly dark now, the swamp sounds were coming to life. Between the crickets and the frogs and a dozen other noises I couldn’t identify, it almost felt as though we were listening to a mood tape, one from the rain forest or something. Creepiest of all were the near-constant plopping sounds that came at us from all sides. I wasn’t sure what sorts of things were causing the water to plop, but I hoped it was flying fish or frogs or something benign like that—and not snakes or alligators or other, more ominous creatures.

“Chloe!
Allons done.
”

“What is it? We’re still out in the middle.”

He gestured toward the light, and with a start, I realized that I had let the beam wander to the wrong angle. As I corrected myself, I noticed something sparkling on the water about ten feet away

“Hold on a second,” I said lifting the flashlight to train the beam out toward the shoreline. I could see two pairs of lights reflecting back at me, though I wasn’t sure what they were so I asked Travis.

“
Cocodrie
. Now can you shine the light this way, please?”

“
Cocodrie
…” I said, thinking, and then I gasped. “Alligators?”

“Of course,
cher
. We’re in Louisiana. What did you expect?”

With a shudder, I wondered if they were just sitting there watching
us and waiting for our boat to sink so they could swoop in for a yummy dinner. I had seen enough
National Geographic
specials to know that alligators could move pretty fast and jump quite high—when they wanted to. Fortunately, they rarely wanted to.

“Hey, at least it’s just April,” Travis added softly. “Wait till it gets warmer and they all start coming out. When that happens, you can shine your light across the bayou and literally see hundreds of glowing eyes looking back at you. It’s really something.”