Whispers of the Bayou (43 page)

Lisa went to the bathroom to compose herself, not even yet aware of what I had uncovered with my night’s work. I planned to save that huge news until after the police were gone. In the meantime, as we all waited for them to come, I went to the room with the paintings, turned off the light, and closed the door. Then I went to the other sitting room and crossed to the window in the dark. Pulling back the curtain, I looked out into the night, watching for the arrival of the police, wondering where Jimmy Smith had gone when he once again ran from here.

I looked out at the dark night, a light mist hovering near the ground.
The moon was exactly half full, and it cast an eerie glow to the whole landscape down below. I tilted my forehead against the window, letting its coolness calm me. My own face reflected back at me, but suddenly it wasn’t the face of a thirty-two-year-old woman.

It was the face of a five-year-old girl.

My heart began pounding, but this time instead of grasping for the memory so hard that I would chase it away, I forced myself to relax and simply let it come.

It was night.

It was an upstairs window.

I was looking outside at someone walking across the yard in the moonlight.

Who was it?

Was it Willy?

The picture in my mind grew fuzzy, and in one moment it
was
Willy—Willy with a shovel in his hands—but in the next moment it was two people, their arms held tightly around each other as they walked. Then I saw Willy again, still with the shovel, still alone. Digging.

Whatever I was remembering was no ordinary scene. I pressed my hands against the glass and saw my arms begin trembling. I felt the urge to run out into the night and do something, anything. I felt horrified. For some reason I wanted to go up high. Higher.

I didn’t know what that meant, but I could see stairs, metal stairs with no backing to them, so that as I walked, I had to look straight ahead so I couldn’t see how far up from the ground I was.

“Miranda? Are you okay?” Lisa rasped.

“I’m having a memory,” I said as evenly as I could. “I’m trying not to lose it.”

Understanding my situation, she didn’t speak again, but it was too late; my concentration had already been broken. I stepped backward and took a deep breath and hoped that soon, maybe once the police were gone, I might be able to get to that place of remembering again.

“Sorry about that,” I said to Lisa, who was standing there in her robe looking calmer than she had a few minutes ago. “I was just standing here
looking outside and I had this flashback to the sight of Willy out there with a shovel.”

“A shovel? In the middle of the night?”

I studied her eager face, took one more quick look out the window, and made my decision.

“I have something huge to show you,” I said. “Do you want to see now or after the police are gone?”

“They’re not here yet. Show me now.”

Taking Lisa by the hand, I led her to the room with the mural. Talking quickly, I moved from wall to wall, pointing out the story as I saw it taking place. When I was finished, I saw that her eyes were glistening with excitement, her terror at being choked already forgotten in this moment.

“We have to do the rest of the walls out there,” she said. “One of them must show where Willy hid the bell.”

“I know,” I replied. “But even if the walls don’t give us that particular bit of information, I think it might be stored somewhere in my brain anyway, the knowledge of where Willy was digging.”

We heard voices from downstairs, so we turned off the light, shut the door, and went to Lisa’s room. We were just sitting down on the bed when my father and AJ came walking up, accompanied by two policemen. I could see lights flashing outside, lots of red flashing lights.

For a small town, Oak Knoll sure had a variety of responders on the police department. First there had been Bubba, the guy who came to check out my report of animal abuse. Then there were the two detectives who had examined my scalp. I had been so out of it at the time that I hadn’t really formed an opinion about them or about their competency, though thankfully the two goofballs who had been guarding the crime scene were not around tonight.

This time, two female cops greeted us, and they were obviously in charge this time. They were there a good while, questioning Lisa, gathering evidence from outside, interviewing the rest of us. Again, I couldn’t shake that feeling that they viewed us primarily as suspects, not victims. They seemed particularly unimpressed with the markings left on Lisa’s neck, one of the cops even commenting that she’d seen a lot worse. That
made me angry, that they would challenge the veracity of our claims based on how bruised Lisa was—or wasn’t, as the case may be. Because he had grabbed her seconds before I opened the door and scared him off, there probably hadn’t been enough time to cause significant bruising anyway.

I told the policewomen that I had already given the detective a sketch of the man that morning, and they said they would use it to put out an APB. Hopefully someone would spot him soon and they could bring him in. By the time they were finished questioning me, the sun was about to come up. I wanted to return to my work on the mural, but they were still here, talking to my father for his version of things. Realizing that I had never gone to bed for the night, I stretched out on the top of my covers, just trying to rest my eyes until the police were gone and I could get back to work. As I drifted off to sleep, I could at least be comforted by what one of the policewomen had told me, that they’d gotten back the lab report on the potentially poisonous food confiscated from Deena’s kitchen, and it hadn’t been positive for anything more lethal than spoiled beef. At best, she was guilty of being a cheapskate—not to mention a bad cook.

When I awoke, the sun was much higher in the sky, and I felt as though I had gotten some much-needed deep sleep. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I rubbed my eyes and looked at the clock to see that it was almost 11 a.m.

Embarrassed that I had slept so late, I straightened the covers and grabbed a change of clothes and some toiletries to take down the hall to the bathroom. As I opened my bedroom door, it was to the sound of a machine whirring. Confused, I followed the sound into the hall and down a bit, where Lisa was removing the outer layer of enamel over the mural—by using an electric sander!

“What are you doing?” I yelled, dropping my things to run forward and rip the plug from the wall.

“Oh hey, Miranda, big news,” Lisa replied. “The police called a little while ago and the DNA reports came back. As it turns out, the DNA evidence found at Willy’s crime scene was not a match for any of us that they tested. Not you, me, Deena, Charles, or his driver.”

While I appreciated that news, it wasn’t the most important thing on my mind at this moment.

“How could you do this?” I cried in dismay, the wall a series of vicious gouges and scars.

“Don’t worry, I haven’t come across anything important yet. So far, from what I can tell, they’re just languishing inside a prison camp and then heading to America and getting settled here.”

Heartbroken at the condition of the artwork, I stood and surveyed this part of my grandmother’s mural. Though Lisa’s progress with the sander had certainly moved faster than my diligent peeling had, the handheld device had also taken its toll on the artwork underneath. The images were still intact enough to follow the story, but in many places, the layers had been removed or scratched so severely that the acrylic had been obliterated. I studied the newly revealed panels of the mural through the scratches and blank spots, trying not to weep at the damage that had been done. This picture showed the Acadian refugees in various stages of illness, suffering, and even death. In one corner of the prisonlike setting was a carved wooden box with carrying handles, a dirty, ragged cloth draped over the top and three half-melted candles on top of that. Inside the box that was now serving as an ad hoc bedside table was, no doubt, the bell. The angelus.

I don’t think I had realized how important this mural was to me—not as a clue to a mystery but as a work of art, as a link to my forebears—until that moment. Feeling as if she had sanded off my own skin, or sanded away my past, I simply sank to the floor and put my head in my hands. Further up the hall, Lisa remained silent and still, and I could only hope that she understood the true cost of her impatience.

“Why?” I asked finally, looking up at her. “Was it worth it?”

I expected to see guilt radiating from her face like a neon sign. Instead, the angle of her chin was defensive, and as I watched she returned to the wall outlet and plugged the sander back in.

“A man tried to kill me last night. We’re out of time. We can’t do it your way anymore.”

She was about to turn the machine back on, but I jumped up and crossed to her, nearly trembling with rage.

“You may be the other
gardien
of the angelus,” I said in a low, even voice,
“but Twin Oaks is
my
house. This wall is
my
wall, and it represents more than a set of clues. It’s one of the few connections I have to the family I lost. Do you even understand what you’ve done here?”

“Miranda, I—”

“Lisa, please. Just go.”

With that, she put down the sander, walked back to her room, and shut the door.

Silent a moment they stood in speechless wonder, and then rose
Louder and ever louder a wail of sorrow and anger,
And, by one impulse moved, they madly rushed to the doorway.

I headed downstairs, my heart heavy, to see where everyone was. I could hear some sort of activity in the back of the house, and when I got there, I realized that Deena was there with a moving van, and two workmen were loading up her possessions. I was standing in the hallway talking to Deena, explaining who really paid for the upgrade to Willy’s casket, when Lisa suddenly opened the door and brushed past, suitcase in hand.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“You don’t want me here. Fine. I’ll leave.”

I closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose.

“I didn’t mean you had to move out. I just meant for you to leave the mural alone.”

She shook her head, tears filling her eyes.

“I know when I’m not wanted,” she muttered.

Then she turned on her heel and simply left.

“Long live the queen,” Deena snarled after her. “The drama queen.”

In the distance, I could hear the back door open and close.

Deena returned to her packing, and I took a deep breath, shook off the unpleasantness of the confrontation with Lisa, and walked into the kitchen, where I found AJ quietly making sandwiches at the counter. Beautiful and perfectly put together as usual, she was dressed in an elegant gray blouse over black slacks, a hammered silver belt circling her narrow waist, with matching hammered silver earrings dangling from her ears like shiny twin icicles.

“Where’s my father?”

I asked her. “I don’t know, but when he left here, he was carrying his suitcase.”

I considered that, wondering if he had left town without even saying goodbye—or if he was merely clearing out of my immediate vicinity before I was given notice that my right of inheritance was going to be challenged.

“Can I make you a sandwich?” AJ asked, waving vaguely toward the fixings in front of her. She seemed subdued—almost depressed—and for a moment I thought about our conversation several days before, when she warned me not to come here for the sake of my mental health. I was surprised to see that the same could have been said for her. She was not doing well, and I realized that for AJ this whole place represented, primarily, pain.

“No thanks, but we do need to talk,” I said to her now, thinking of the conversation I’d heard last night between my father and his brother. Though I should have been angry with her, she was so downcast that I didn’t have the heart to be all that mad, at least not yet.

“What is it?” she asked, spreading fat-free mayonnaise on a slice of whole wheat bread.

“Not here. Can you take a walk?”

“Give me just a second.”