Whispers of the Bayou
Read Whispers of the Bayou Online
Authors: Mindy Starns Clark
Tags: #Mystery, #Suspense, #Contemporary, #Inspirational
o f t h e
B A Y O U
M I N D Y S T A R N S
C L A R K
HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
Scripture quotations are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION
®
. NIV
®
. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
Cover by Dugan Design Group, Bloomington, Minnesota
Cover photos © Corey Hilz / Rubberball Productions / Getty Images; Rebecca Floyd / Graphistock Photography / Veer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
WHISPERS OF THE BAYOU
Copyright
©
2008 by Mindy Starns Clark
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Clark, Mindy Starns.
Whispers of the bayou / Mindy Starns Clark.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7369-1879-4
ISBN-10: 0-7369-1879-5
1. Louisiana—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3603.L366W47 2008
813’.6—dc22
2007039825
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 / LB-SK / 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated with much love to
Alice Clark.
Your Christian walk inspires me,
your wonderful personality delights me,
and your kind and selfless actions minister to me.
Thank you for all that you do!
Discover the Smart Chick Mysteries
Many, many thanks to…
John Clark, my superhero.
Emily and Lauren Clark, my precious angels.
Kim Moore, the most dedicated editor I have ever known.
Betty Fletcher and all of the other amazing folks at Harvest House.
Kay Justus, brainstorming partner extraordinaire.
Ned and Marie Scannell, my dear and generous hosts who always come through when I need it most.
My amazing assortment of illustrious experts, including: Tracy Baudoin, Don Beard, Cheryl Berrios, Brandt Dodson, Mark Mynheir, Vonda Skelton, and Jennifer Lee Whitt.
The gracious and helpful Janice Kollar of Janice Kollar Fine Art Restorations.
The best medical advisors in the world: Ron Berrios, CRNA; Michael Jacoby; Keith Lehman, MD; Lamar Lehman, MD; Richard Keller, MD; Robert M. Starns, MD; D.P. Lyle, MD; and Ronda Wells, MD.
My delightful online group Consensus, whose input and honesty help me to shape every story. (Visit
www.mindystarnsclark.com/newsletter.php#resource
for more information or to sign up.)
My FVCN small group, for boundless prayer, friendship, and support.
ChiLibris, as always, for everything.
All epigraphs are taken from
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from the 1893 Cambridge Edition (originally published in 1847).
Dreamlike, and indistinct, and strange were all things around them;
And o’er their spirits there came a feeling of wonder and sadness—
Strange forebodings of ill, unseen and that cannot be compassed.
The man appeared in the doorway of my studio unannounced, with a brown paper package tucked under his arm. He was younger than he had sounded on the phone, thirty at the most, with dark wavy hair, mottled skin, and a narrow caterpillar of a mustache along his upper lip.
“Miranda Miller?” he asked in what sounded like a thick Long Island accent. “Jimmy Smith. We spoke this morning?”
I was elbow deep in plaster and not in a position to shake hands, so I just smiled and told him to come on in. Ready for a break, I extricated myself from my project and rinsed off my arms and hands at the utility sink. I usually didn’t see private clients, but he had been so persistent over the phone—and he had dropped enough important names, names of people who funded some of our grants—that I had made an exception. Now that he had unwrapped the picture and was holding it up, however, I was sorry I had relented. Even from a distance I could see I would be wasting my time, not to mention his money.
“Tell me again where you got this painting?” I asked as I slipped on a pair of handling gloves.
“At a flea market in the East Village. Only two hundred dollars! I’m thinking it was a real steal.”
I crossed the room, noticing as I got closer that the top of the man’s head barely came to my nose. At five nine I was tall for a woman, but next to this guy I felt like an Amazon. I took the painting from him and turned around to lean on the deep windowsill, the late-morning sunlight warming my shoulders. The painting in question was an 11 x 14 canvas framed in mahogany, a poorly done oil of a busy village market scene. The piece wasn’t nearly as dirty as he had described, just a bit dusty, especially around the edges. I’d be happy to clean it up for him, but it didn’t seem to need any restoration and I wasn’t going to charge him for my trouble. He’d already paid more than enough to get it—many times more than it was worth.
“So whatcha think?” he asked.
“Looks like it just needs a little cleaning,” I replied as I stood and carried it over to the work area. “No soot or stains or mildew. Just dust. And not even old dust. It doesn’t need restoration. I believe you could easily have taken care of this yourself.”
“I mean about the picture.”
I glanced at his eager face, hesitant to be the bearer of bad news.
“I’m not an estimator,” I hedged. “Just a restorer.”
I flipped on the light box and set the painting down on top of it. With the beam projecting through the image, I quickly scanned the canvas for irregularities. Satisfied that there were none, I turned off the box, moved the piece to my worktable, and clicked on the lamps there.
“You have surely had experience with enough fine art to know a good piece when you see one,” he said. “So at two hundred, was this a steal or what?”