Fever Moon (7 page)

He shook his head. “Primarily the hands. The wound in her feet was a new development.” He closed his eyes to block the memories. The wounds had terrified him, and in his terror, he’d allowed doubt to grow. In his doubt, he’d failed Rosa in the most profound way. Now he would not fail Jolene.

“You really wrote the Vatican about Rosa?”

“I did.”

“Were they considering Rosa as a saint?”

“They were.” He wasn’t lying. The cardinals in Rome had taken Rosa Hebert’s case under serious scrutiny. What he didn’t tell Jolene was that the Vatican had cast a dim eye upon Rosa. His request that she be authenticated as a stigmatic had met with firm disapproval, and it was too late when he’d understood that the Vatican was not eager for a common American woman to be elevated to the status of miracle.

“Just because she’s dead, does that mean they’ll stop trying to prove she was real?”

He stood, wanting to pace the room himself, to enjoy the release of action. He forced himself to stand steady, calm, the picture of composed strength. “Because her death was a suicide, the Vatican won’t consider her case. Had she died under other circumstances, the investigation would have continued. Suicide is a mortal sin.”

Jolene’s thin bottom lip slipped into a pout. “That’s hardly fair. If my hands opened in gaping wounds and started bleeding every Friday, I might have to consider suicide, too.”

“That is a damning statement, Jolene.” He shook his head but could not shake loose the sadness. “Suicide is not something to joke about. You are God’s creation. You live by His choice, and it’s for Him to determine when it’s time to call you home.”

“Sometimes God overloads the wheelbarrow.”

He saw the pulse in her throat and knew she was aware of her blasphemy. In moments like this, he’d learned to review a person’s past. It gave him what passed for wisdom among his parishioners. Jolene was in an unhappy, childless marriage. Her waist was thickening and her looks were fading. She teetered on a thin line between doing the good works of the church and becoming a bitter, harsh woman.

“As hard as it is to hear, God has a purpose for all that He puts in our paths. He knows the burden you carry, Jolene, and each day He sees your strength.” He hesitated. “My area of study was the history of the Irish church. My anticipation was that I would be sent to Belfast, to work with a country I loved and understood. A country engaged in a terrible war. I had no preparation for this culture in Iberia Parish. I don’t understand why God sent me here, but I have to trust that He has a plan.”

“Your trust in God’s grand design intrigues me. How do you know it’s true?”

He touched his chest and thought he heard an echo. “In here. Faith happens in the heart, not the mind, Jolene.” He knew the proper words, even if he’d lost his belief in them.

She mimicked his gesture. “There’s nothing here but emptiness. I want to feel something, before I’m too old.”

Jolene needed to be loved. She needed tenderness. He was moved by her emptiness, but he had no solution for her. “You must pray to God for faith. If you seek it, God will deliver it to you.”

“I’ve spent hours on my knees.”

The anger had returned to her voice, and he was suddenly weary. “God demands surrender. You should pray for the grace to surrender to His will.”

“So that I can go home to Jacques and cook his supper and fetch his slippers.” Her voice rose with each word. “He doesn’t love me, Father. All I want is someone to love me.”

Michael grasped her shoulders and held her firmly. “God loves you, Jolene.”

“It’s not enough.” A dry sob tore at her throat. “I just want someone to hold me, to make me feel safe.”

Michael drew her into his arms. He was violating one of his personal rules with the females of his congregation, but Jolene was on the verge of a total collapse. He felt her bitter tears soaking through the starch of his collar. He held her in his arms, an intimate embrace, feeling only compassion.

He let her cry herself out, then assisted her into a chair. He poured a small measure of brandy into a lovely crystal glass from a set his grandmother had sent from County Cork. “Drink this.”

She tried to resist but he pressed it into her hand.

“If Jacques smells liquor on my breath …”

“Send him here to talk to me. There is a duty to God we shall discuss.” He walked to the window and looked out. Plants grew lush and thick in the Louisiana heat and humidity. Even now, so late in the year, there were blooms on the roses in his garden. While the nuns labored over collards and other winter crops for the Victory Garden that would feed them, Michael had planted an assortment of mums that bordered his paths in bright golds, oranges, and russets—a sunset rush of color and graciousness in the middle of a brutal swamp.

Beyond the garden was a wrought-iron fence, and beyond that a live oak with graceful limbs that swept the ground. He could recall in vivid detail the morning he’d looked out this very window and taken such pleasure in his flowers, his gaze sweeping up to the fence and the tree, and the dawning horror of Rosa Hebert swinging in a gentle wind.

He didn’t hear the door close as Jolene left, her footsteps muffled by the vacuum of his private nightmare.

The line of twenty prisoners, mostly Negro men, swung machetes in unison, then advanced and swung again, hacking their way into the purple rows of sugar cane. Behind them, another line of twenty men stripped the stalks and tossed them into the bed of a wagon for delivery to the refinery. In the distance, working another field, Raymond saw the migrant workers, paid labor, hacking and stripping. Haitians and Puerto Ricans had been brought in to work for minimal wages for the harvest, but it was the convicts who interested Raymond. Henri had controlled their lives the same way a human determined the destiny of livestock.

A breeze swept across the field, and Raymond caught the scent of the sugar cooking at one of the refineries. The odor was sickly sweet, nauseating. The men kept working as if they didn’t smell a thing. Raymond watched the process, the endless bending and hacking of the first row of men, followed by the quick stripping and tossing of the second. The cane had to be cut close to the ground, for the sweetest part was near the soil. Almost everyone who lived in southern Louisiana had worked the cane fields at one time or another. Such labor had taught Raymond as a young boy that he wasn’t interested in farming.

The convicts moved in a steady rhythm across the rippling field of cane. The men would work until darkness stopped them and rise again at first light. The race was on to beat the first frost of the year, which would destroy any unharvested cane. Marguerite Bastion’s comfortable future rested on the backs of the convicts and imported poor who toiled in her fields.

Even from a distance Raymond could see the skeletal quality of the men, hear the clank of the leg chains that bound them to the job and to each other. The chains were unnecessary. None of the men looked as if he could make it to the road if he tried to run. They were in pathetic condition. It was ironic that the slaves once used to grow and harvest the cane were better treated because they were financial investments. If half the prisoners never returned to Angola, it would be that many less mouths for the state to feed.

He drove on to the house and parked. He was halfway across the yard when Marguerite stepped onto the front porch. Like Bernadette Matthews, Marguerite had a child clinging to her skirts. Unlike Bernadette, Marguerite was beautifully dressed. The cameo at her throat was expensive; the gold earrings that looped into a cascade of pearls were real.

“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.