“Whoa! You didn’t say anything about us going by water.”
“Get in, you, and stop bein’ a scaredy cat.”
That was certainly blunt. Rachel eased her way into the boat, put her purse on the bottom, and then immediately grasped the sides in white-knuckled grips. Tante Lulu chuckled and got in behind her, rocking the boat deliberately to tease her.
“You swim, dontcha?”
“Yes, but I’ve never swum in a swamp.”
“First time for everythin’.” Tante Lulu chuckled some more. “Make sure you hold onto that oar in the bottom.
Iffen we flip over, it’s the bestest thing for beatin’ off gators. Hee, hee, hee!” With a sharp pull on the outboard motor, they were off.
“That’s not funny.” Maybe Tante Lulu didn’t like her after all. Maybe she’d lured her out to the swamps so Rachel would disappear forever.
“You got whisker burns up one side of your neck and down the other, didja know that?” Tante Lulu commented out of the blue, as she steered the small craft down the narrow steam which soon branched off into a much wider one. “On your arms, too. If I know that Remy, you prob’ly got a hickey on your butt, too.”
Rachel gasped at the old lady’s words. Not that they weren’t true. In fact, she had Remy’s marks in some other places, too—places too intimate to mention. And she’d marked him, as well.
Before she could tell Tante Lulu to mind her own business, she spouted off again. “Not to worry. I got some ointment that’ll cure abrasions, cuts, itches, snake bites, jock itch, crabs and hickeys, lickety-split.”
That’s just what I need, a multi-purpose crab/hickey cream. Oil of Ol-bayou-ay. Yeech!
“Pig slobber mixed with cow poop.”
Rachel’s jaw dropped with astonishment. Did people actually allow her to put such a concoction on their skin?
“Just kidding. You sure are gullible, aren’t you.”
“Did I say earlier that I was enjoying myself? I lied.”
A loud roar, followed by a hissing noise caused Rachel to jump in her seat, which caused the boat to sway.
“Relax, lessen you want to join those gators over there.”
Rachel stared, google-eyed. In the shallow water near the opposite bank sat a seven-foot-wide platform which rose up about four feet, comprised of a soggy mess of mud and vegetation. A couple dozen eggs held center court— eggs which were about the circumference of regular chicken eggs but much longer. About to plop down on this nest was a mama alligator the size of a minivan, at least eight feet long. She chewed noisily on some reeds and mud that she carried in her mouth, then spit the masticated glob onto the eggs and soon spread it about by squirming her heavy body over the whole slew of eggs. It was Ms. Luggage-To-Be who was doing all the hissing.
Even worse was her hubby, Mr. Luggage-To-Be, a good fifty percent bigger and uglier, who stood guard in the water, roaring his outrage at them. He probably told his wife, in gator talk, “Hey, hon, take a look at these idiots. Do you have a hankering for people steak for dinner tonight? Yum-yum.”
“I want to go back. Right now,” Rachel demanded.
“Those gators are harmless, long as you doan go disturbin’ their babies, or decide to go skinny dippin’ in their backyard. Besides, alligators are king of the bayou, and you best get used to ’em iffen you’re gonna be livin’ here after the weddin’.”
Rachel gritted her teeth, counted to ten silently, then said in as even a tone as she could manage, “There is not going to be a wedding.”
By then, Tante Lulu had already maneuvered their boat some distance past the alligators’ nest; so, her insistence about going back was a moot point, she supposed.
Of course, now she had other things to worry about. In South Louisiana, the bayou system presented an intricate web of intersecting waterways—splitting, turning onto themselves, disappearing one day, reappearing another.
Sometimes they were wide as a river, other times they were so narrow as to be unnavigable. Right now Tante Lulu went up, down, around, left, right—to the point where Rachel would never be able to find her way back if the old lady should have a heart attack or something. Finally, she took them into a remote, gloomy area where the trees formed a canopy overhead, like praying hands, and light came through only in occasional shafts where there was a break in the leaves. You’d never know it was still morning. The water, which at first appeared to be black, was really dark brown on closer examination, stained by the tannin in centuries of sunken trees. In some places, the current swirled and eddied; in others, it didn’t appear to move at all. Vampires and werewolves would be at home in this eerie atmosphere.
“We’re here,” Tante Lulu announced cheerily.
Rachel felt like walloping her over the head with an oar. “Here” amounted to Tante Lulu running her little boat up onto a muddy bank and tying it to a nearby bush, which probably contained a gazillion snakes or giant spiders.
Tante Lulu stepped out of the boat and proceeded to plod off, oblivious to the fact that Rachel still sat in the boat. At first, Rachel was determined to stay put, but she soon changed her mind after hearing an odd crying noise like a wildcat—or more likely a big bird—and after taking a good look around at the ancient cypress tree with its out-flaring base and roots that pushed themselves up out of the water some distance from the base like trolls, seeking precious air for survival. . . or people food. It was a fanciful thought, but in this dreary atmosphere, with spooky Spanish moss hanging in clumps from the trees like monster cobwebs, well, anything seemed possible.
She grabbed for her purse and slung it over her shoulders, then jumped out of the boat, immediately sinking down in the pudding-like mud up to her ankles. Emitting some swear words she hadn’t used in ages, Rachel stomped after Tante Lulu. “Wait for me, you bloody witch. Take me in the swamps and abandon me, will you? Hah! Call me a scaredy cat! Hah! We’ll see who cries wolf first. Hah! You’re gonna buy me a new pair of shoes, that’s for sure, Ms. Indiana Imbecile,” she muttered. Along the way, her arms kept brushing against the numerous jewelweed plants, which immediately burst forth with bright orangish flowers when touched. Jewelweed was also known as “Touch-Me-Nots” for obvious reasons.
Tante Lulu was bent over a bush, picking up clumps of small green berries from a tree she identified as prickly ash, or “The Toothache Tree.” Rachel was too angry to ask for an explanation. And, frankly, she could have cared less, even when Tante Lulu informed her that these berries could be used to alleviate toothache pain.
She tossed Rachel another canvas bag and ordered, “Yer taller’n me. Pick off some of that Spanish moss.”
“What for?” she asked in a surly fashion, even as she shifted her shoulder purse, then reached up and gingerly stuffed some of the gray swathes in the canvas bag. The moss was probably loaded with bugs.
“The Indians usta clothe their infants in it, or cover a sick man with it during the sweating exercise. Some folks still use it to stuff mattresses. I likes to boil it up fer fever.”
“Look at that unusual tree over there,” Rachel said, pointing to the large-leaved tree, which stood out from some of the others here in the swamp.
“Thass a Sacrifice Tree. Good for colds, but you gotta gather the leaves at the first full moon.”
As Tante Lulu continued to pick and choose among the various plants, even pulling out a knife to cut some mamou roots which would be used for pneumonia, Rachel asked her questions about her traiteur work. Folk healing was the popular name for it today, or alternative medicine. “Who taught you all this stuff?”
“My auntie was a traiteur. Later, I learned from watchin’ other healers in the area. But you gots to have the gift to begin with, or you can’t never be taught the ways.”
Rachel noticed that the old woman made the sign of the cross often when picking her herbs. When she asked why she did that, Tante Lulu said, “Healing is a gift from the Lord. Can’t never forget that, or the gift will go away.”
“How many peopl
e do you treat?”
” ’Bout two hundred, give or take. Oh, not all at once. Mebbe a dozen a week these days. Lots more when I was younger.”
They suddenly heard the sound of men’s voices a short distance away. Rachel went rigid with attention, and Tante Lulu put a forefinger to her lips, calling for silence. Spinning silently on her feet, Tante Lulu put down her canvas bag and began creeping toward the men’s voices, which Rachel could now hear were gruff and mixed with Spanish. Rachel carefully placed her purse and canvas bag on the ground, too. Then, she followed. What else could she do?
Are we nuts? We should be hightailing it out of here. Unless Tante Lulu thinks it’s someone she knows. But, no, she wouldn’t be taking such care to be quiet if that were the case. God, I feel like this is a bad Lucy and Ethel routine.
When they got to the point where they were ten or fifteen feet away and hidden by bushes, they stopped. Peering through the foliage, they saw four men who were cursing in both English and Spanish as they tried to maneuver a large raft with a metal box on the top by working long poles in the stream bottom. Industrial-strength belts were wrapped around it, with one of the lengths connected to an oak tree on the bank.
“Is it a coffin?” she whispered to Tante Lulu.
“Ain’t like no coffin I ever seen,” Tante Lulu whispered back. “Too big.”
“Maybe it holds two bodies.”
“Mebbe.”
“Guns!” Rachel murmured, as she noticed the weapons that all four of them carried. Rifles, and pistols in shoulder and hip holsters.
“There it comes again, Carlos. The helicopter,” one of the men said.
Yes, in the distance, there was the whir of a helicopter which got louder as it came closer. It appeared to be low riding and slow moving. Was it Remy? It could be anyone, she supposed, Louisiana being such a touristy state.
“For chrissake, Juan, you’re too goddam nervous. Jumpin’ at every little thing.”
“I’m telling ya, Carlos, everywhere we go lately, I keep hearing a helicopter. I think it’s followin’ us.”
“I think you’re full of shit. Let’s get this job done and get out of here. Sonnier, do you have the map, so we can get out of this hellhole? I don’t know how we ever would have found this place without you for a guide.”
Sonnier, who was unshaven like the rest and the youngest at about twenty-five, nodded as he folded a paper into his pocket.
“Valdez, get over here and help us shove this box over the side. It’s heavy as hell.” Standing knee deep in the muddy water, the four men huffed and swore as they pushed the metal box over the side. Because of its weight, it immediately sank to the bottom. Then, they did the same to the raft itself. The only thing visible, but only if you were looking for it, was the cloth belt leading from the base of the tree into the stream. The four men prepared to board a boat that resembled Tante Lulu’s, except bigger.
That’s when Tante Lulu’s cell phone chose the perfect time to ring—a loud brrrr-iiing, brrrr-iiing, brrrr-iiing!
“What was that?” Carlos said.
“Jesus H. Christ! Someone’s watchin’ us,” Sonnier exclaimed.
“I tol’ you that ’copter was suspicious,” Carlos put in.
“Let’s get ’em,” Valdez shouted, drawing his pistol.
Rachel looked at Tante Lulu and Tante Lulu looked at her, both horrified. Then, Tante Lulu turned quickly and ran back in the direction from which they’d come. Rachel ran right after her. There was no path; so, they just shoved branches and bushes aside in their path. Forget-Me-Nots were blooming all over the bloody place. God bless the old lady for being in such good shape. She was no sooner in the boat, revving the motor, than Rachel slip-slided down the bank behind her. They were twenty feet away before the men arrived at the stream edge and began shooting at them.
“Duck,” Tante Lulu yelled with misguided glee.
As if Rachel wasn’t already burrowing as close to the bottom of the boat as she could get! When they passed the alligator nest on the way back, Rachel wasn’t even afraid.
“Do you think they were burying a body, or bodies?”
Rachel asked once she could speak over the loud thudding of her heart.
“Mus’ be.”
“But why?”
“Bad guys would be my guess.”
“Do they have the Mafia in Louisiana? Maybe it was a Mafia hit.”
“Like The Godfather, you mean? Like, ’swimmin’ with the fishes’? They dint look much like Marlon Brando, iffen you ask me, but I s’pose so. Mon Dieu! Can’t wait to tell the church ladies about this. Ain’t had this much excitement since the oil men tried to kill Luc and Sylvie, or the time I went to the voodoo lady and—”
“The oil men tried . . .? Voodoo . . .? Never mind. We should probably go to the police. Let’s call nine-one-one, or something.”
Tante Lulu shook her head. “No police. Not yet. I’ll talk to Luc about it. He’s a lawyer. He’ll know what to do. Mebbe it was jist some trappers tryin’ to hide their illegal catches.”
“You don’t really think that, do you?”
“Nope. Ain’t many Cajuns speak Spanish like that. Plus, trappers wouldn’t go to that much trouble to hide their furs from the law. Mostly, they just flip the bird to the game warden when he comes snoopin’ around.”
Flip the bird? This old lady continually surprises me. “Oh, my God! I left my pocketbook back there. We left the canvas bags, too. Do you know how to get back to that spot?”
They’d arrived safely back at Tante Lulu’s house by now, and the old lady was tying the boat to a small dock.
When she finished, she gave Rachel a disbelieving scowl. “You wanna risk going back there?”
“I guess not. You don’t seem worried about all this, now that we escaped the danger.”
“Of course, I’m worried. We Cajuns doan like strangers coming into the bayou, messin’ around.”
“Burying caskets with dead people,” Rachel added sarcastically.
Tante Lulu missed the sarcasm totally. “That, too. But you gotta know, Rachel, that we Cajuns have our secrets, too. Nope. I ain’t goin’ to the po-lice till I talks to Luc first.”
“And how about Remy? Are you going to talk to him, too?”
“Hell, no! He’s too upright, by half. He’d go straight to the po-lice.”
“Aaarrgh!”
As if to satisfy Rachel, Tante Lulu punched Luc’s office number into her cell phone. “He ain’t in. I got his answer machine,” she told Rachel. Then she spoke into her phone, “Luc, call me,” was all she said. Noticing Rachel’s glower, she added, “It’s important.”
Rachel grabbed the phone out of Tante Lulu’s hands and punched in Remy’s number. She, too, got an answering machine. Her message repeated Tante Lulu’s. “Remy, call me. It’s important.”
She and Tante Lulu glared at each other. The stubborn old biddy broke eye contact first. She said, “Well, let’s get a move on it, girlie. I gots works to do.”
“Take me home first,” Rachel ordered, already walking beside her towards the car.
Never one to take orders, Tante Lulu buckled herself into the T-bird’s driver seat, adjusted her pith helmet, waited for Rachel to get in, and again took off like a bat out of hell.
“Did you hear me? I want to go home!”
“I heard you, I heard you, but I gotta go smoke a baby first.”
How could Rachel resist such a tantalizing prospect?
Chapter 11
Here comes trouble.
Remy was in a meeting with the DEA folks in a hidden office behind a warehouse in Lafayette.
Already, they had the names of some of the low-level culprits involved, including a Louisiana fellow named George “Sonny” Sonnier, along with some other scumbag locals, who probably gave the Romero cartel all the geography lessons they needed to stash the drugs. All morning, they’d scanned from the air the various suspected bayou hiding spots being contemplated by the Colombian drug kingpins. Now th
ey were making corrections and additions to the maps spread out before them and pinned to the four walls. Alarmingly, he’d discovered that one of those hiding spots was in his own Bayou Black region.
Up to this point, it had been an investigative, studying and waiting game. They didn’t want to go in for the kill, so to speak, until they’d identified all the individuals involved, as well as the hiding spots. But they couldn’t wait too long.
In the midst of all this serious business, Remy kept thinking about Rachel.
How sweet she’d smelled.
How silky her skin had been.
How she’d shed her inhibitions and clothing, just for him.
How her innocent expertise at lovemaking touched his soul.
How she’d allowed him to do whatever he wanted, no matter how shocking.
How the memory of her soft moans aroused him, even now.
How she’d touched his deformed skin, without flinching.
How his otherwise physically fit body ached in certain places from too much lovemaking, if there was such a thing.
How he’d said those three scary words to her.
How she’d said them back to him.
“Earth to LeDeux. Earth to LeDeux,” Larry Ellis said.
Remy came back to the present with a mental thud. Mon Dieu, he was letting Rachel, and an important part of his anatomy, rule his life. He had to straighten up and fly right.
“What were you saying?”
“Just that timing is everything,” the head of the operation, Shelton Peters, or “Pete” as he was known, explained. “Yes, we can’t rush things by making the arrests too early, but, on the other hand, if we wait too long in hopes of catching the big apples, we may end up with no apples at all.”
“So, what’s the answer?”
“I say we set a deadline,” Ellis offered.
The others nodded in agreement.
“Monday, a week from tomorrow, will be D-Day,” Pete said.