Jackpot Blood: A Nick Herald Genealogical Mystery (35 page)

Holly said, “If you look closely at the trees, you’ll see the limbs are the hair of a malevolent female creature of the swamp.”

The woman had the soul of a teacher: she couldn’t keep a good lesson down. Holly retreated into sullen silence when she saw Nick’s smirk. He thought the work showed the influence of Caspar David
Friedrich, the influential nineteenth-century German painter, but kept quiet, not wanting to sound pedantic himself.

Nick moved so that the window was behind him and squinted his eyes. “Yeah, I see it now. It would have been his masterpiece, I’d say.”

“Gothic Romanticism,” Holly said, caught up in the dank spookiness of the painting. “Caspar David Friedrich.”

“I don’t know who y’all talkin’ about there,” Mr. Tadbull admitted, “but I’ll take your word for it. Anyhow, we keep the attic thisaway for folks visiting us, show ’em
somebody
in the family had a little culture. Right, son?”

“Whatever, Pop.” Wooty would not share his father’s good-natured self-depreciation.

Mr. Tadbull went on, showing no awareness of his son’s silent brooding.

“They say when Great-granddaddy Tadbull came back from the war, an old Katogoula healer-woman told him he’d die one night soon in this house, while he was sleeping. So you know what he did? Gotdamn if he didn’t never spend another night here as long as he lived! Had him a tent out there under that old oak, and he used to sit with his Indian friends—the ones that were left. They’d smoke and watch the fire till dawn. They say he slept up here during the day a lot. Guess he out-foxed old Death, ’cause he lived to his nineties. Died two . . . no, no, wait, three years, wasn’t it Wooty?—sure was, three years before I was born.”

Nick had turned his attention to the paintings and photographs—windows of art, allowing glimpses of Katogoula ways during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Grandfather Tadbull clearly loved the subjects of his works, the Indians who had been his companions since childhood. He’d shared much of his father’s superstitious nature, judging from his selection of subjects and cryptic style.

The modern Tadbulls seemed unconcerned with anything remotely spiritual. Still, there must be something to Wooty. Nick couldn’t see Holly falling for a clod.

“Mr. Tadbull,” Nick said, “these should be put on wider display. Scholars would love to get their hands on these pictures. They could answer a lot of questions about how the Katogoula lived in those days.”

“Well, now,” Mr. Tadbull said, rubbing his chin, “I never thought they were that important. Or that valuable, either. But the fact of it is, I’m of a mind with my daddy. He wanted to burn ’em all, turn the attic into a billiards room. Say, did I tell you there’s descriptions and such on the back of some of ’em?”

This was new to Holly. Nick could see the explorer’s lust awaken in her green eyes.

Mr. Tadbull stopped before a watercolor showing men and boys wading in a sluggish bayou, casting a white powder on the water. The painting dated from the twenties or thirties, Nick guessed. The Indian fishermen wore shirts, trousers, and hats that would have looked natural on Main Street, though it was odd that they were fully dressed and half-submerged. Had Christianity made them ashamed of their traditional, natural nakedness? Nick saw the scene as a clash of ancient and modern ways.

“I always ’specially liked this one,” said Mr. Tadbull, removing the watercolor from the wall. “Let’s see what Granddaddy says is going on right here. I do believe some of those descriptions fell off over the years and got swept up in the trash.”

“That’s too bad,” Nick said, as blandly as he could manage.
Good God, what irreplaceable genealogical information had been lost already?!

On the torn, brittle paper backing, only a portion of the pasted-on descriptive label remained: a scrap of flowing words, in the elegant style of the day, by a hand used to transforming inner visions into art.

Vince . . . grandnephew of Luke . . . . and their clan . . .

A meth . . . ng used by the Katog . . .

On the Bayou Fostine, August . . .

They take the poison, devil’s shoest . . .

Many fish thus are . . .

Grandfather Tadbull had meant this inscription to be the finishing brush stroke of the painting, an integral part of the whole work of art. Nick was sure the old man would have gritted his teeth to know what a dolt his grandson had grown up to be. Maybe Wooty was right to have such a low opinion of his father, which seemed so obvious from the young man’s demeanor.

Nick imagined himself running away from Tadbull Hall, carrying half a dozen pictures, stealing them to save them from further sad deterioration at the hands of the present master of Tadbull Hall. What a crime to allow this precious heritage to fall victim to further neglect! He’d done worse for baser motives.

He squirmed in the cast. The arm and shoulder felt much improved, but probably not up to his over-eager ideas for honorable larceny.

As he handed the picture back to Mr. Tadbull, he spotted a small Bible on a shelf of one of the wicker tables, haphazardly resting amid other old books. He knew instantly that it was almost a twin of the one lost in the museum fire.
Twins again. Has to be a sign
. He could be superstitious himself, when it suited his purposes.

This Bible, at least, was something he could save. Wouldn’t even strain his arm. It was his duty, right? He tried not to look at it, but his mind whirred away with elaborate rationalization.

From downstairs the maid shouted that Wooty had a telephone call. He curtly excused himself and left.

Mr. Tadbull hurried to the plenum. “Wooty, you going out, son? You let me know if you do, ’cause I need me a pree-scription from the Wal-Mart.”

Even at the distance of two floors, Wooty’s exasperation came through in an unintelligible, snarling retort.

“Excuse me,” Holly said. “I’m going to the, uh . . .”

“Oh, well, sure, sweet thing,” Mr. Tadbull said. “You know where it is. You bring your cameras over here anytime, you hear?” And then, after Holly had descended the stairs, he said, “I sure do like that gal. Liked her hair long, though. Can’t understand why my
got
damn bull-headed son don’t sling her over his shoulder and carry her down the aisle. . . . Now, look at this one, here, Nick.”

His back to Nick, Mr. Tadbull now faced another painting, which portrayed a nighttime powwow, with the Katogoula participants in full ceremonial regalia, masks and feathers and animal skins and weapons abounding. Nick quickly walked to the wicker table and slipped the Bible in a side pocket of his coat.

Mr. Tadbull showed Nick to the door, after a quick tour of the study stuffed with historical oddities dug up or collected by several generations of the family. Nick had expressed appropriate wonder at Great-granddaddy Tadbull’s minié ball.

He took the opportunity to visit the Tadbull family cemetery, a short walk behind the house—a pretty little graveyard overhung by serpentine oak limbs dripping moss. A few minutes later, he dawdled on the white shell drive, waiting for Holly. She’d been gone half an hour or so, but he knew she could take care of herself. He wasn’t worried. Probably some unfinished romantic business with Wooty.
He began to face the possibility that their recent intimacy had been a fluke.

Gargantuan fatsia partly obscured her VW van in a three-car parking area to the right of the porch. Daydreaming, Nick thought the fatsia looked like dark green hands reaching for the overcast fall sky. Then he noticed them: Holly and Wooty standing between her van and his muscular, feline, black Porsche. Through the van windows, Nick could clearly see that Wooty was angry, Holly worried and angry. He spoke fast, each word an accusation; he whipped an index finger repeatedly in the air before Holly’s face.

Holly slapped him, hard. That shut him up. He glowered at her, moved a few inches closer. For a second Nick was afraid he was going to hit her back, and he considered what he would have to do to break it up. Instead, Wooty turned quickly away and stalked off on a strip of lawn between a vegetable garden and a rose bed, toward the back of the house.

Holly drove her van away from Tadbull Hall. Nick had some more work to do in the Armageddon courthouse, and then he was heading to New Orleans. He’d convinced himself he could drive, in spite of his injuries. Holly was dropping him at the motel to collect his stuff.

He’d rather skip the appointment with a famous orthopedist, but since Sangfleuve Parish was footing the bill, hey, why not? Hawty had insisted he report to the office to handle a client problem—“You don’t pay me enough to argue with bigoted white women who don’t like the ancestors I’ve found!” And Val, the vixen from Bayou Luck Casino, had called him at the Greensheaves. She had information on the Katogoula murders. Couldn’t say on the phone. Had to meet him at her company’s riverboat casino, the
Crescent Luck
, the next night, Wednesday.

“You were right about that Tadbulls’ collection,” Nick said. “Fantastic.” Holly had not spoken since they left the house. “I know you probably won’t approve, but I felt it was my scholarly duty to liberate one of the prisoners.” He held up the small Bible.

She barely glanced his way before again staring down the rural, rutted two-lane highway, running the gears to the limit and then shifting ferociously, so that the boxy van seemed to be riding a rough sea.

“It’s my fault,” she said.

“That you slapped him?”

“He deserved that. It’s my fault we’re in deep doo-doo. I guess it’s time you know. Here goes: Wooty runs pot through Tchekalaya Forest. When we were going together, I was his mule, they call it, a few times, maybe seven or eight trips. I used my van to take some small loads to an airstrip near St. Francisville. He had a Cajun buddy of his weld a false muffler section or something underneath.”

Nick didn’t interrupt her; he could tell a free-flowing confession when he heard one. The fever must run its course, he believed; you’ll feel better afterward.

“At first I thought it was an adventure, you know, a blow against stodgy old Southern society. Then I realized how stupid, how incredibly un-idealistic, uncool, unsafe it all was. This was dirty, bloody business, that destroys lives. These people have no conscience, don’t care who they hurt.”

She sped past a slow-moving logging rig overloaded with pine tree trunks.

“I know, sounds hypocritical. Sure, we both smoked our share of pot in those days. The danger was a rush; real cloak-and-dagger. And the money was good. But now . . . he tells me he can’t quit. I don’t mean he’s addicted or anything; his suppliers are being assholes. And it’s my fault.”

She told Nick about their first years together. Holly and Wooty had met in college; she was going to LSU, and he was at Freret in New Orleans. “I spent more time on I-10 and in bed with him than I did in class,” she quipped.

Wooty was different then. A fiery rakehell of Shakespearean proportions, afraid of no one and nothing, always seeming to land on his feet, and get passing grades, even though he rarely attended classes.

His muscles and his hormones seemed to do his thinking for him. The aura of the jock superstar hung about him, even though he’d made only third-string, and in his freshman year quit the football team, which at Freret was pretty much of a joke anyway, Holly related.

But he had money—at least, more than anyone else in their circle—great looks, fine cars, lots of fraternity and sorority friends, and a contagious need for excitement. It was a kick just to be around him. In an undeclared competition, testing their newly fledged adult bodies, they tried to outdo each other in wildness. Who could fly closer to the sun?

“Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll,” Holly said. “Wooty finished business school and came home, so after school and some traveling, I moved up here for my job at the television station in Armageddon. Still a wild child. And following him, I guess. About two-and-a-half years ago I decided I was smarter than those Mexican guys, that we could have our cake and smoke it, too. Oh, I was in the
media
; I knew it all! Guess I was still trying to impress him, just like in college. On my last trip, I pretended the van was burgled, and the grass stolen. Instead, I sold it to some guys I know in New Orleans. He didn’t know anything about it, I swear, until afterward. I thought the creeps would just write it off, or at worst stop using us. What do they care about one load of dope, anyway?”