Courir De Mardi Gras (21 page)

Linc left a cooler with two bottles of wine, cheese, and grapes, a big bar of chocolate, romantic kinds of things. He thought about oysters but didn’t know if they’d keep. No sense getting the lovers sick. All told, he liked the total effect. Maybe he’d do the same with Doris one night if Mama would keep the kids.

After all the decorating, George went to get the horse, but when Linc stopped by Porrier’s after stocking the cooler, George still hadn’t closed the deal. He looked to Linc to chip in an extra ten bucks to get the silver saddle again and another twenty to shut up Alcide.

“You know, you boys, I heard what you been up to on Mardi Gras, yeah. But Alcide Porrier, he know a good joke when he hear one. Dem Patout boys, now, dey got no sense of humor. Wouldn’t want dose Patout boys to find out, no. Dey never hear it from Alcide Porrier.”

That Cajun bastard sat on his porch counting his bucks as George led Puffy away. Cost them another five to get the saddle put on right this time. They could have bought the horse for what those two rides cost.

“This was your idea,” George reminded Linc.

Linc took the credit and shut up. After dark when it was about time to get going, George started backing out. They were sitting in Linc’s truck waiting for the rain to let up while Puffy ate his oats in the rented horse trailer, another damn expense when the weather turned bad and George didn’t want to let the animal with his dad’s silver saddle stand in the rain.

“What if I screw this up again?”

“We all screw up sometimes. No big deal.”

“Not Linc St. Julien.”

“Well, the great Linc St. Julien has. Worse than you ever did.”

Glad it was dark because Linc didn’t want to see George’s face when he told him. But a friend doesn’t let another friend run himself down, so he let it all out. “Up there in the Big Time, I wasn’t worth shit, George. My knees went bad on me. Doris was always pregnant, and I spent more money than I took in, mostly on women who weren’t. I got kind of desperate toward the end and put this big bet on the other team. When it looked like we were going to pull it out of the fire in the last quarter, I smashed into my own man to keep him from making the shot. Racked up my knee so bad, I ended my career, but the bills got paid.”

Linc kept staring out into the night. The weather turned uglier. For years, he had lived off of George’s admiration. Now he was only a high school coach nobody remembered. He needed this man’s friendship. George laughed, short and bitter.

“Well, Linc, I’d say we’re two of a kind. That stolen silver was fake. I committed fraud when I handed the check to Ernest Prevost, and Suzanne knows it because she’s the one who found out my mother had been swindled. I was trying to figure out how to deal with the situation, and the stuff disappears. Convenient, huh?”

“Man, you better be good in bed tonight. If I didn’t know you better, I’d be thinking like she’s thinking.”

“Doris ever find out about your throwing the game?’

“Doris knew about the bills and the broads. I expect she figured out the rest, but she stuck by me.”

“True love.”

“Go get yourself some.”

The rain let up. Linc drove up as close to the house as he could get. No lights burned around the back. They led Puffy around to the front facing the bayou and tied him to the pillar with the bullet holes in it. Nice detail, Linc thought. Where else would the Devil’s Horseman hitch his mount? George let himself in and went up those stairs, quiet and swift in his court shoes to make his change.

Linc went back to the camp. By the time he got there, the rain let up a little. The water stood high around the spit, but he got in okay and lit the fire and a few extra candles. Halfway home and listening to music on the truck radio, he caught the storm warnings, more heavy rain coming, flash floods expected.

Linc drove on a ways with something gnawing on his mind, something about Uncle Jack’s camp, some story Unc used to tell when they went out there duck hunting together when he was just a kid, some sort of horror story. No, not horror, but a disaster story about Uncle Jack getting caught out there once in heavy rains. Yeah, that was it. The levee gave, and the whole damn place washed clear off the pilings with him in it. Unc climbed on the roof and beat off moccasin snakes and nutria rats with their big orange teeth for two days until help came.

Suzanne and the Ghost would be at the camp by now and about to be interrupted again. Linc swung a U-turn on the rain slick road and very nearly ended up in the drainage ditch already filled to the top with water. The rain started coming again so fast his wipers couldn’t keep the windshield clear. Afraid to miss a bend in the road, he crept along hauling that stupid horse trailer. When he arrived at where the dirt road turned off the hardtop back toward the lake, the little bridge over the swampy part had already washed out. The water rose fast coming at his truck engine. Linc backed onto the hardtop and got the hell out of there. Must be some other way to rescue Suzanne and Ghost.

Chapter Fourteen

Suzanne’s story

The white horse waited by the pillar with the bullet holes. For a moment, the moon shone through a gap in the clouds, and the silver harness glittered like the dark rider’s eyes. They mounted and passed in and out of light and shadow as the ragged clouds masked and unmasked the moon. The horse’s hooves sucked against the wet earth.

“Who are you?” Suzanne whispered.

The rider covered her mouth with one gloved hand, then replaced his fingers with his lips. She asked again and received the same response. Each time she tried to speak, which was often, he answered with a kiss, an ever-deepening kiss. This time no bugle got in the way, and the horse seemed to pick its own path in the darkness. The sound of the hoofbeats changed as their mount thrummed across a small wooden bridge and came out of a cypress grove by the shore of a lake.

A stilted cabin stood out in the water at the end of a narrow path. Firelight glowed through the cracks in the walls. The dark rider carried her there, small waves lapping at his boots when the wind sprang up. The first step up to the hideaway sat under water, but inside, the cabin was dry and snug, shutting out the damp.

A pallet covered in gold satin lay near the antique woodstove. He placed Suzanne there tenderly, hung his cloak and hat on a peg and threw his gauntlets aside. From a dark corner of the room, he brought her a glass of red wine. They drank and watched the flames in the open grate. The warmth of the wine, the fire, and his body spread through her from top to bottom. Not rape or abduction, but seduction.

At last, he unwrapped the lacy coverlet as if he opened a gift on Christmas morning and pushed down the thin straps of her peach-colored gown. Suzanne reached to unknot his mask, but he grasped both her wrists with one large hand, raised them above her head, and pushed her down against the satin. When he became preoccupied with her breasts, nuzzling, suckling, and lightly running his fingers along the soft sides, she began to unfasten the buttons of his shirt, one by one. This he allowed.

His skin shone very white against the sable of his shirt. Blue veins stood out across the muscles in his arms. A patch of dark hair, heart-shaped, covered his chest. She toyed with it and ran her fingers firmly over the nipples hidden there. He moaned and moved further down her body, dragging his tongue down her centerline, and supporting her hips with his big, cupped hands. He kissed the tender, sensitive skin of her inner thighs.

Suzanne could have lain there for hours reveling, but had to do her part. She rose slightly and ran her hands down his back to his buttocks, firm and lean. Reaching around his front, she fumbled with the stiff buttons on the archaic pants. He was long, so long all over. The boots presented a problem. He became impatient with them, sat up, heaved them off, flung them across the room, and then, he came to back to her. Suzanne reached out to cup him and stroke a truly urgent erection, but he took her hands away again and slid back and forth across the most sensitive spot on her body until her thighs ran slick with wetness.

The rain started again, drumming more loudly against the tin roof of the cabin than it had on the slates at Magnolia Hill. The wind whipped through the cracks and extinguished the candles. His face drew close. By the light of the fire, she gazed into his deep, blue eyes and gasped as he penetrated to the hilt. He paused to see if he’d hurt her. She dug her nails into his backside, spurred him on, and let him continue the whole night long.

****

Morning has to come, and everyone must open their eyes when it does. Suzanne woke not to the soft whisper of her name that she’d heard all night, not to the sound of gently falling rain or to the sweet trilling of birds, but to swearing. Her rider stood in the open doorway looking out at the flood. Water covered all but the top step of the tiny shack, stark in the daylight. The footpath had disappeared and beyond, water inundated the cypress trees half way up their trunks. The white horse was gone, but the black mask remained knotted in place. He’d pulled on the snug, black pants, and barebacked and bootless, he cursed their circumstances.

“God dammit, screwed up again! Fuck it!” He berated himself.

“Actually, you do it very well, George. Exceptionally well, I’d say.”

“I’m not George. I’m the Devil’s Horseman, dammit,” he said hoarsely without turning toward Suzanne.

She pushed off the coverlet and wrapped his ebony cloak about her. When he finally looked her way, she could see his eyes watering badly wetting the eyeholes in the mark.

“It is George, isn’t it? Why don’t you take out the contacts?”

“This time, I forgot to bring my glasses. I knew I should have gotten refitted for the soft contacts instead of using these old athletic ones, but I didn’t want to spend the money. I forgot how much these could hurt when you wear them all night long. I forgot a lot of things.” He frowned at the engorged lake.

“We’ll be all right.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not from around here. It could take days for the water to go down. If it rains again, we’ll be swimming right along with the gators. This lake is full of them.”

“We seem to do a lot of swimming together.”

“Look, I just shoved a cottonmouth out of here with a chair leg when he decided to join us for breakfast. I’m glad you can joke about it.”

“What’s for breakfast, then—cottonmouth? I’m starving.”

“Grapes, cheese, chocolate, and leftover wine. No water bottles. It’s a good thing you weren’t hungry last night because there is precious little of it.”

“But I was hungry.” She looked directly at the man in the mask. He flushed everywhere not covered by dark fabric. He had too much to own up to this morning.

“Are you going to tell me what this is all about?” Suzanne asked gently.

He sank down in the corner next to the ice chest containing the provisions. “Linc says if she wants romance, give her romance.”

“The famous Lincoln St. Julien I’ve heard so much about?”

“The same.”

“He’s very imaginative.”

“He always was a big hit with the ladies. Him and my dad, the original Devil’s Horsemen.”

“And you aren’t?”

“No. I want to be, but I’m really not.” George stared at his toes.

“George, come here.” She patted the place next to her on the mattress. He stayed by the cooler but glanced up.

“Admit it, Suzanne. You pity and maybe like George St. Julien. At least, you did a few weeks ago. You came here with the Devil’s Horseman.”

She took her turn to blush. He was absolutely correct. If she had not held on to her delusion of a tall, dark stranger whisking her away on a white horse, she could have unmasked George at the start. Deep down, she recognized him from the first, even though she treated Sheriff Duval’s suggestion that they were lovers as a joke. She didn’t want to admit that her dark rider was George, plain, old George. Last night with those blue lenses so clearly defined in the firelight, she knew his identity for sure, but remained pleasantly surprised by the amount of muscle and stamina his gray business suits concealed.

“You’re right. But, there is a great deal more to George St. Julien than meets the eye—or the hand—or the body.”

He smiled a little at her truly pathetic joke. “If I told you right now….”

She held her breath, expecting something other than what came out.

“If I told you right now that I did not steal the silver, would you believe me?”

“Yes. I would believe George, but not the Devil’s Horseman.”

He unknotted the black satin covering his head and took off the mask. His hair, lank and sweat-soaked fell in his eyes. He pushed it back, groaned, and ran his hand over the dark stubble covering his chin. He became simply George St. Julien again, but a gorgeous, bare-chested George with a whole lot of potential.

He told his story then, featuring Randy Royal and Bobby Sonnier as the villains. This made some sense, only the timing of it bothered her—all the phone calls and driving that would have been necessary to commit such a spur of the moment crime. Suzanne pondered it over grapes and cheese. They finished the bottle of opened red wine, and George gallantly checked the bathroom for snakes before letting her use the facilities. She slipped back into the silky nightie and wrapped herself in the cape again. When she came out, George squatted on the edge of the mattress and stoked the fire with a meager supply of dry wood.

Feeling warm and cozy from the breakfast wine, she sat next to him. “George, I have an idea.” He looked at her sidelong, hopeful, his bloodshot eyes gleaming. But no, they weren’t going to have sex again right this minute.

“I’ve gone to Royal’s shop before on the pretext of buying silver. I could go again and ask if he has something in the line of silver-plated ice cream spoons. I’m from out of state, just passing through again. He could sell to me safely. The spoons aren’t the questionable pieces, but I’d recognize them if they came from your mother’s collection. Then, we take the evidence to Sheriff Duval, and we’ve caught the culprit.”

“And I have to repay $100,000 to Mutual Trust.”