Courir De Mardi Gras (27 page)

They drove on a country road, she could tell. Hell, the roads leaving Port Jefferson were all country roads. As the car banged across potholes, she counted the number of bruises the tire iron she lay on gave her. She tried to use the tool to work off the rope. No good. Suzanne wondered if Paul would use the tire iron later to bash in her skull. No, the Philadelphia Slasher favored knives and blood and dirty words painted in red on the walls.

She wanted air! More air! Sucking in what she could through her nostrils, she began fretting about dulling her reflexes for escape with carbon monoxide and gas fumes. Should she try to kick out the taillights? Most of the cars in the parish had at least one bad light, and no one ever stopped them for it as far as she knew. Wouldn’t a new vehicle have an inside trunk release. Yeah, but where in Hades would it be? She forced herself to be calm again and grope for it. Before she found the latch, the road surface changed to shell popping against the undercarriage of the car. The motor stopped. The trunk opened. Suzanne filled her lungs with the damp night air.

Paul jerked her out. Half pretending to be too dizzy to walk, Suzanne got her bearings quickly. They’d arrived at an old motel, the kind with little cottages in a double row running back into the darkness of the trees. The tourist huts of green stucco were roofed with red Mexican tile. The sign, so old it wasn’t even neon, proclaimed this haven to be the Wonderland Motel. Or maybe, the current clientele preferred dimly lit advertising or no lights at all. The only cabin showing some life belonged to the manager who sat dozing by his window in front of a flickering TV while the Late Show rolled on. No one looked out to see a young woman, bound and gagged, emerging from a trunk.

They didn’t enter the cabin where Paul parked. He steered her into the shadows by the pressure of the knife blade in the middle of her back. They moved toward the lodging farthest from the road. Holding his captive close all the while, Paul worked at a rusty padlock on the door with his knife tip. When the door swung open, Suzanne squeezed her eyes shut, afraid to see what might remain of Cherie Angers, or was her flashy rival already food for the gar and crawfish of Bayou Brun? And so, the smell reached her first—mouse droppings, mildew, urine, and the ripe stench of semen, but not the coppery scent of blood.

Suzanne opened her eyes as Paul shoved her forward into the room. Cherie lay bound hand and foot to the old iron bedstead. Somehow, she still looked seductive even with green eye shadow smeared across her face and her red hair pulled into wild, electric spikes as if someone, Paul, had held her by its roots. Despite the odor of decay, the single naked bulb illuminating the room, the sink in one corner with a faucet dripping rusty water in a steady rhythm, Cherie’s linens were almost tidy, tucked in with hospital corners. A cheap, yellow motel blanket covered her breasts, and the straps of her slick, green nightgown had been aligned in perfect parallels over her shoulders. Cherie Angers’ eyes were closed. Dead, Suzanne thought, arranged for burial.

Paul stripped the tape from his first victim’s swollen red lips. The green eyes snapped open, and the mouth began to work. Suzanne should have known a tough cookie like Cherie Angers would be hard to kill.

“No need to be so rough, lover. Cherie has been waiting for you like a good little girl. I’m plumb wore out from last night and this afternoon,” she drawled. Then, the former Cherry Fontaine noticed Suzanne.

“Now why did you have to bring her here, sugar? Didn’t we have enough fun all by ourselves? Oh, I sure would like to see you without that mask, tiger.”

Obligingly, Paul shed the woolen ski mask. His face burned red, his expression more petulant than psychotic. His nearly military crew cut stood up damp and darkened with sweat.

“Why, you’re a real handsome man to be wearing a mask. I thought maybe there was something wrong with you, covering up like that, sort of the Phantom of the Opera, maybe. But I know for a fact the parts of you that matter work real well.”

Suzanne couldn’t believe this. Cherie Angers worked at seducing her kidnapper—possibly a murderer, a serial killer. The gas fumes must have gotten to her. Of course! She was distracting him, giving Suzanne a chance to escape. She edged toward the door, but with one swipe, Paul yanked her back and slammed her into a scratched and cracked plastic chair ending its days in a corner of the Wonderland Motel.

“Tell her, tell her all we did last night. She thinks I’m dull, not romantic enough for her. This guy George can give her a mansion and antiques and Mardi Gras balls and all that shit. Tell her what she missed last night when she was sleeping in his room. Tell her!”

“Oh lover, let’s show her!” Cherie wiggled her shoulders just enough to displace the yellow blanket and make her nipples pout out under the sheer green nylon.

For a maniac killer, Paul seemed slightly shocked. “John was right,” he marveled. “He said he met women all the time who wanted it rough, who wouldn’t struggle when you tied them up. They liked to be threatened, he said.”

As if demonstrating for Suzanne’s benefit, he gripped Cherie’s short hair with his blunt-tipped fingers and kissed her brutally on the mouth. Another chance for escape! She stood up and was betrayed by the creak of split plastic. Paul slammed Cherie’s head back against the pillow and advanced holding the knife toward her.

“Fuck you, Suzanne. I wasted money on fancy dinners and a hell of a lot on postage. I come down here to prove I can be more exciting than some man with a mansion, and I find out you’re not worth the trouble or the vacation leave time. Now that,” he flicked the blade in Cherie’s direction, “That is a real woman, and you don’t deserve—”

The motel door burst open, splintering through the center where the termites had gnawed at it. George moved quickly on those long legs of his. He throttled her attacker with an arm across the throat and twisted Paul’s knife arm behind his back to the point of snapping. Birdie’s turkey carver dropped to the floor. Linc used the knife to free Cherie Angers from the bed and cut Suzanne’s bonds. Two uniformed deputies with their pistols drawn stood wondering what to do in the doorway. George hadn’t given them time to say “Drop you weapon” before he disarmed Paul. Sheriff Duval came in right behind them. The whole scene was very gangbusters—very exciting—very romantic.

As the deputies took charge of cuffing Paul and reading his rights, Suzanne hugged on to George, never wanting to let go despite his mysterious coating of bayou mud. He didn’t so much as glance at Cherry Fontaine in her peek-a-boo green nightie, though all the other men in the room did, only at her dressed in plain jeans and a shirt. She didn’t say a word—because George neglected to remove the tape from her mouth until he lowered his face for a kiss. Oh well, this was a good moment to do nothing but feel.

Cherie did not agree. She grew very vocal as the youngest of the deputies draped the yellow blanket over her shoulders and asked if she wanted to see a doctor. Ignoring him, Cherie staggered from the bed and followed Sheriff Duval and Paul to the squad car.

“Now don’t you hurt him. No harm done, none at all. Honey, I know a good lawyer. We’ll have you out tomorrow. Now that I’ve found you, I’m not going to lose you, tiger. You hear!”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Suzanne’s story

George had to be there to make sure things were done to his satisfaction, the executor said. George asked Suzanne to come, and she did, though she’d thought of a million excuses the night before to avoid watching the destruction of Helene Sonnier’s garden this morning. The work crew drifted in between eight and nine and began tearing at the bricks of the cistern with crowbars. The old mortar crumbled easily along with the soft, handmade brick. Suzanne winced each time they tossed a block onto the heap by the porch and small chips of clay flew through the air. By the time the workmen finished the dismantling, the wicker chairs had a fine coating of red dust.

The pumps ran now, diverting the cistern water through the hoses laying along the side the Sonnier house and crushing the new iris shoots in the flowerbeds. The stream flowed out into the gutters of Main Street and followed the tilt of the land into the waters of Bayou Brun. Leakage around the pumps and hoses turned the pleasant back lawn into a morass grooved by the imprints of large work boots.

They reached a sludge layer at midmorning. Now, the workmen gouged into the hole with a piece of equipment that looked like an amusement park claw machine. It chewed out the prizes in huge bites. Metal struck metal. Suzanne shuddered. She’d begged everyone concerned to have the cistern emptied by hand, but the sheriff said this was no damned archaeological dig. His time was money, and the budget the parish forced him to operate on was ass wipe cheap. George could put up the funds for laborers if he wanted. George didn’t have the money either. A laborer hosed down the load of mud by the side of the cistern. The replica silver appeared piece by piece.

She waded in and began carrying the bowls and candlesticks to a tarp placed out of the way of the heavy equipment and heavier feet. Sheriff Duval showed up, called, no doubt, when they uncovered the silver. He tipped his Stetson to Suzanne coated in grime, then stood by the fence silently witnessing the return of the stolen goods.

The screen door slammed. She looked up from a weighty piece she cleaned and could not quite remember having handled before. Helene Sonnier came onto the porch and began carefully wiping down the chairs and a small table with a clean white towel. She beckoned to George. He followed her with a serious and guilty look on his face into the house and returned with a perplexed expression and a tray of large sugar cookies, each dotted in the middle with a single raisin. Helene followed him with a sloshing twenty-four cup coffeemaker in her hands and a double package of Styrofoam cups wedged under her fleshy arm.

“Break time,” she called cheerfully over the clang of machinery and the chug of pumps. She waved Suzanne in from her self-appointed task and begged George and Sheriff Duval to take a chair. George fidgeted as the workmen began lining up for coffee. Conscious of their dirty hands, they took only disposable cups. Suzanne seized a cookie and ate more to avoid conversation than to satisfy any hunger. The crumbs stuck in her throat. Her actions had killed this nice woman’s husband.

George spoke up. “You know if half the crew took a break and the other half kept working, it would save the sheriff a lot of time and money.”

The workmen at the end of the line glared resentfully, but when Sheriff Duval nodded, one returned to the dragline and another to the hose. George settled into the chair again and took a bite out of a cookie way down to the raisin in the center. Clearly, he did not know what to say to Mrs. Sonnier either. Helene carried the conversation for everyone.

“Beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

Her guests looked out over the quagmire of her yard and nodded.

“You know, I had a call just this morning from that nice black lady, Odette St. Julien. She told me how sorry she was about Jeff and how she remembered her own grief when her husband passed away. She went back to substitute teaching to get in the stream of things again. She wondered if I might be able to spare some time to nurse at the free clinic when I feel up to it.”

Helene brushed the crumbs of her first cookie from her lips and started in on another.

“I told her I would be in next week. And my daughter called to ask me if I would keep the house and equipment because she thought she might like to come back here to practice when she finishes her medical studies. Before, all she could say was how much she wanted to get away from Port Jefferson and her father’s reputation.”

Suddenly, Helene laughed deeply, tripling her chin. “You know, I always thought she meant his
medical
reputation up until now.
Everyone
loved Jeff. Oh, it will be good to have Ellen home and peace in the house. Now Bobby will feel free to live his own life with his friend, Randy. They want a place in New Orleans. Jeff never would advance them the money for it, but I’ll soon have plenty to give away.”

Sheriff Duval had been studying the black coffee in his cup. He looked up and directly at Suzanne while the widow rambled on cheerfully about her plans for the future. Could a professional nurse inject a sleeping man with poison without waking him, she had to wonder? She mouthed the word “murder” at the lawman. He shook his head slightly in a motion telling her to keep quiet and held the coffee cup to his lips.

The two laborers denied an early break queued up to the porch for coffee while the rest of the crew went back to work. The dragline operator leaned against a post and remarked, “Man, dat stuff ain’t never gonna quit comin’ out dat hole.”

She glanced at the tarp. Her neat row of artifacts had jumbled into a heap of heavily tarnished silver objects, far more than there should have been.

“Excuse me,” she said, distracted from her suspicions about Mrs. Sonnier. As she left the porch, Sheriff Duval came right behind her. He spoke to in a low voice as they crossed the lawn together.

“I know what you’re thinking, missy. Well, let me tell you what you don’t know. This ain’t the first time Jeff Sonnier tried to take his life. Right after Virginia Lee passed on, he swallowed some pills. Left those same kind of letters on the nightstand. Helene saved him. She worked real fast, made him throw up all that junk. Guess she figured things would be better between them with Ginny out of the way. Don’t figure it was.”

A merry laugh emitted by the widow reached across the yard. Helene pushed another cookie on George and took one herself.

“Still, not saving a man’s life ain’t the same as killing him neither. This time he used a needle. Much quicker, they tell me, and no pain. That’s the way they’re putting killers to death now ’stead of frying ’em. And the letters had to be new. They mention the stuff in the cistern, had the same thing in his will.”

Suzanne only half listened as she knelt in the mud, but that last comment caught her attention. She rummaged in the pile, handling pieces more carelessly than she should have, allowing the metal to shift and collide as she searched for the copy to match with the original on top of the heap. There it lay neatly placed in her original row, the candlestick with the cement core. The core had fallen out, and its side been dented by the backhoe. However, its surface luster remained only slightly dimmed and spotted compared to its twin, the tarnished, blackened original with the heft of the real thing. She arranged items, two by two, copy with original: two teapots, two sugar scoops, two punchbowls.