Moon Bayou (Samantha Moon Case Files Book 1) Page 9

  Years ago, I realized I could contact my spirit guides—or something bigger than myself, wiser than myself—through the use of automatic writing. I could connect in other ways, too, but the automatic writing was kind of neat, the answers literally spelled themselves out before me. No guesswork there.

  Although I didn’t have much use for air, or my lungs for that matter, I breathed in and out, slowly, calming myself, slipping deeper, deeper.

  I waited, my quill poised over the thick paper, feeling a bit like an undead fortuneteller.

  As I said, weird. And then I reminded myself to focus…

  Focus…

  But the familiar twitch in my arm never came. The low voltage electricity that hummed up and down my arm, that prompted my hand to move, to spell out message from spirit, never came.

  Never had I felt more alone.

  And scared.

  Chapter Eighteen

  People in old New Orleans didn’t trick or treat on Toussaint Eve, by the way. Or give out candy.

  The big celebration happened at the cemetery; they spent all day tidying up the family crypt or ‘pigeon-hole’—the coffin slots in the communal tombs—and gossiping with the neighbors. Some people brought picnics and danced to the strolling fiddlers and accordion-players. Then they went to late mass.

  A Halloweenish custom existed of giving pennies at night to the gangs of young boys who roamed the streets near the docks. Most were moonlighting black slave children, but some were Irish kids orphaned by Yellow Fever, or homeless Cajuns, or even Choctaw Indians. Some of these kids wore scarves over their faces to hide them; the Irish kids even wore crude animal masks.

  The docks gave me the idea of telling Colonel Bart, when he finally got around to the delicate business of asking me what brought me to New Orleans in the first place, that I’d traveled all this way looking for the daughter of a family friend. When I disembarked, I found out at the shipping lines office that she’d died at sea.

  “Look, Colonel, I’m very grateful for your hospitality, but I can’t go on staying here and, well, sponging off you forever. I need to find some kind of work so I can at least repay some of your generosity to me.”

  The colonel scowled. “What? You mean taking in washing? Becoming a servant? I won’t stand for that, Sam!” Like Lalie, he’d taken to calling me by my first name after a week or two.

  “There are lots of things I can do. Like becoming a secretary. Or maybe a governess.” Actually, I was pretty clueless about how to do either one, but it was all I could think of.

  He shook his head. “I know your people do things differently out west, but I’m certain your late husband, rest his soul, would never have allowed any such nonsense.”

  “Actually, he did,” I said. Say what you like about Danny, but he was always up for me to earn a spare buck. Considering he ended up owning a strip club, I guess it’s lucky he never tried pimping me out. Then again, between him thinking of me as ‘some dead thing impersonating my wife’ and potentially still being his wife, he probably couldn’t bring himself to.

  “May I ask his profession?”

  “He was a lawyer.” The one occupation even sleazier than being a pimp. Of course, Kingsley was a lawyer, too, so I tried to keep an open mind on the subject.

  “And what sort of work did you do, if I may ask?”

  I tried to recall the history of Fullerton. Back then, it basically didn’t exist; Orange County was just a collection of haciendas, orange ranches, and Native American villages to the southwest of the growing town of Los Angeles.

  “Well, I was sort of the local sheriff,” I said. “You know, the equivalent of one of your constables. Most disturbances are domestic anyway, and sometimes a woman’s touch works wonders.”

  The colonel looked thunderstruck. “You mean you… arrested felons? Broke heads, broke up bar fights, chased outlaw gangs? You actually carried a weapon?”

  “Oh, Colonel Bart.” I tried batting my eyelashes at him the way Lalie did at anyone in pants. “You know yourself that most women travelers carry toy pistols in their purses. I’m an excellent shot.” True, I’d never fired an antique, and it had been months since I’d been to a range, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t embarrass myself when I did.

  He stared at me for a minute, then burst into loud laughter. “By the Devil, Mrs. Samantha Moon, I do believe you at that! You’re no shrinking violet—I’ve half a mind to make you one of my sergeants on the spot! What a to-do that would cause in this town. In any case, there will be no more talk of repayment. You’ve become almost as dear to me as another daughter. Lalie loves you; moreover, you have lightened the days of a lonely old man with your charm and grace. Any obligation is on our part, not your own. No, no”—he held up one finger—“tut, not another word out of you, young madame. I promise you I will think on all you’ve said.”

  Which is how I ended up staring at a corpse with him on All Saints Day, the morning after my midnight visit to Eulalie de Mandeville Macarty. Pelagie had gone off to mass when the colonel—who rarely attended church, since he claimed to be a ‘free-thinker’—found me in the parish prison library, looking through old court records of anybody named Dominique.

  “You’re not at church?”

  “I’m a free-thinker, too, I guess.” I didn’t think it the time to bring up my personal relationship with God.

  He laughed. “That you are, Sam! And a salty-tongued heretic at heart, I know. Well, my dear, we are on skeleton-crew duty today here at the police department, so perhaps you would care to hone your skills as a constable and accompany me to the scene of a particularly gruesome crime. I must warn you, however, it may be no sight for a lady’s eyes.”

  “I’m not much like other ladies, Colonel Bart.” Little did he know…

  You have to hand it to the old dude; he had a gallantry for every occasion. “Certainly, there are none others as headstrong and independent-minded.” He offered me his arm. “Nor as lovely—as your own mirror should tell you.”

  I almost choked. Luckily for me, the Macarty home didn’t have many mirrors—and Lalie tended to monopolize the ones they had.

  I had the feeling I would miss quite a bit about New Orleans in 1861 someday, if my plan to find Marie Laveau and get her to send me back—I mean forward in time—actually worked out… All that masculine gallantry, for one thing. The way everybody hung out with each other in person instead of just texting or talking on the phone. And maybe it was my imagination, but the food seemed to taste better.

  Of course, this time had a lot of other things I totally would not miss. Racism and slavery, for example. The way a woman had no freedom, and couldn’t do anything unless a man allowed it, for another. Oh, and those damned whalebone-ribbed corsets, endless petticoats, and long hoop skirts. I wouldn’t miss those either.

  Picking my way through the long grass of Congo Square, the park to the north of the old city where the ‘negroes’ were allowed to stage their hoodoo dances every Saturday night—was muddy business.

  We passed a grove of twisted acacia trees to the mouth of a little cave, following the lead of the uniformed constable who had been first called to the scene.

  “I sent a runner to Dr. Bell,” muttered the colonel. “He should be meeting us here. Tell me truly, Sam; what is your opinion of the young man? Is he a suitable candidate for Lalie’s hand?”

  “I think he’s a great guy.” I picked up my skirts and batted away a swarm of bluebottle flies. “And a heck of a good doctor.”

  “But what about the religious difference? Do you think he’d consent to convert?”

  This seemed to matter to people a lot back then, even to so-called free-thinkers, so I shrugged.

  “My impression of Dr. James is he’d go to hell and back for her, so saying a mass or two probably won’t matter to him much.” I mean, how much difference was there really between Presbyterians and Catholics? I didn’t have a clue; the closest thing to religion in my parents’ life was weed and natural foods.

>   The colonel snorted, but that could have been from the smell of the corpse.

  Our victim lay at the back end of the cave, five or six yards deep. The overhang, rock and red clay pierced with tree roots, was low, so we had to duck our heads and crouch to approach the body, a naked woman in her thirties, pale and streaked with muck. She had no rigor, and her skin had puffing up from the damp and decomposition. The three of us had to cover our noses and mouths with our handkerchiefs.

  “Haven’t I seen her before?” I said. “Isn’t this the same lady who played the statue at the opera?”

  “Yes, Madame Pretis-Baille,” said the colonel. “She was also a music teacher at the Ursuline Academy; Lalie instructs her younger students.”

  In spite of supposedly having a delicate constitution and taking to her bed with ‘the vapors’ whenever she got upset, Lalie managed to teach singing classes three mornings a week to schoolgirls at the music school. She had, in fact, invited Mr. Edwin Hart Lyons the actor as a visitor to one of these classes just the day before yesterday, scandalizing the sisters but causing favorable comment in the Daily Delta, which had reported that ‘all were enchanted both by the Philadelphia gentleman’s engaging manners and pleasing baritone.’

  So Dr. James Bell looked gloomy and depressed when he joined us inside the cave.

  “There are about a dozen of these caves or small caverns here in the Tremé fauborg surrounding the park,” said Colonel Bart. “This is the fourth unfortunate we have found murdered inside them since last April. All females.”

  “None of that has been reported in the newspapers!” said Dr. James in a shocked tone. “I have never been called to perform autopsies on the bodies!”

  “Yes, well… your pardon, my young friend. It was not my decision; the mayor thought it wise not to alarm the populace. But this is the first white victim.”

  I touched her wrist, then her upper arm, pulpy, like a sea sponge.

  “Were all of them drained of blood like this?” I asked.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A pair of black stretcher-bearers arrived in a butcher’s cart to carry the remains of the opera singer to the morgue. As they left, the doctor pulled me aside.

  “May I ask if you have often observed this phenomenon before, Mrs. Moon? A human corpse completely exsanguinated?”

  The colonel glanced at me sharply, so I said, “Out in California, we see a lot of Mexican workers attacked by giant vampire bats. Sometimes they look like this afterwards.”

  “I will need to dissect to be certain,” Dr. James said in a low voice, so the small crowd of onlookers might not overhear him. “But my instincts tell me Mrs. Moon is correct. Did you notice the slash over the carotid artery?”

  “A razor?” asked the Colonel.

  “Such is my surmise. A word with you, if I may, madame,” the doctor went on in a low tone as we followed the cart back toward the prison gates. “Since your arrival here, you haven’t… met socially with any other persons suffering from your peculiar affliction, have you?”

  “No,” I said, truthfully. Unless you counted Eulalie. “But I have heard rumors of an infected Frenchman called Dominique living here—and that he was a close associate of Delphine Lalaurie.”

  “Delphine Lalaurie?” echoed Colonel Bart, who had somehow overheard my last few words. “Yes, most acute of you to bring her to mind, Sam. The last time we witnessed crimes here similar to this was in ‘34, during that vile creature’s reign of terror. After her departure, they stopped. I was told she died in Paris some years ago.”

  “Could she have returned somehow?” asked Dr. Bell.

  The colonel arched his eyebrows. “Unlikely. You must know she was my aunt on my father’s side, and thus nearly twenty years older than I. That would make her eighty-five now, were she still alive; scarcely able to overpower anyone, particularly younger women in robust health.”

  “Have there been any unexplained disappearances lately?” I asked.

  The two men stared at each other briefly.

  “My dear Sam,” said the colonel as we approached the opening prison gates, “in the city of New Orleans, dozens of our good people go missing each week. Mostly slaves, of course, many of them running away, but also children living in the street, souses, ladies of the night, wharf-rats, and other transients. I’m afraid we lead the nation in this category, not a distinction I am proud of.”

  I guess some things never change, I thought as the gates closed behind us.

  An hour later, all three of us suddenly realized that Madame Pretis-Baille’s grisly murder meant that the rest of the teachers at the music school might be in danger, including Lalie. There had been a crime wave on Halloween night, mostly drunk and disorderly and bar fights, but all the town magistrates had taken the next day off, which left the colonel too busy to leave. I went back to the house looking for her, but Lalie still hadn’t come home from church. She’d told her maid, Marguerite, to go home without her; she would go on with the Chinn family.

  I took Alphonse with me and hurried to the cathedral. Most of the crowds had already gone home for a big holiday dinner, and Lalie was nowhere to be found. Then we went to the Chinn’s house on Canal Street. She wasn’t there, either. A terrible suspicion came over me.

  “Run back to his office and tell the colonel to meet me at the St. Charles Theater,” I told Alphonse, and we both dashed off. At least I walked as fast as I could in that ridiculous big skirt, now spattered with mud from half the city. No matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to stay all neat and tidy like the other women there did; I guess you had to be born in those clothes.

  Outside the closed theater, which stood next door to the huge cathedral-like St. Charles Hotel, the marquee posters had been torn down for ‘A Shakespearean Pageant of Plays,’ and a pair of workmen on ladders put up new ones advertising Camille. As I arrived, Colonel Bart burst out of the front doors, followed by Sergeant Dupont, Dr. James Bell, and Alphonse. The old man clutched an envelope, which he handed to me.

  “The bird has flown! This was left behind in a dressing room, the porter says; as you can see, it’s addressed to me. Best you read it to me, my dear, I’ve left my spectacles back at the prison house.” His hands shook too much to read anyway.

  “It’s in French,” I said after a minute. “But I think it says that she’s… eloped. With Edwin Lyons Hart. She says they’ll mariés en secret and she hopes you’ll forgive her. She says she is très heureux and that she’ll be back to visit as soon as Edwin’s bookings permit. At least I think that’s what it says.”

  The colonel turned bright red, cursed loudly in French, and sent Dupont back inside again to find out where the theater company had gone next. “An actor!” he yelled in English. “A Yankee actor, for my sins! By the devil, I won’t have it! Well, what is it, Dupont?”

  “He say they go next to Mobile,” said Dupont, who didn’t have the best English. “The show people.”

  “I’ll proceed there myself by packet tomorrow. Alphonse, go home and tell your father to start packing my portmanteau. Dupont, take a note to the Western Union—no, never mind, I’ll go there myself. I am too perturbed to compose it. Go at once to the Great Northern railway station and find out if a couple matching their description has bought tickets. Then do the same for the Smokey Mary at Port Market.” The Smokey Mary was the little train that chugged up Canal Street to Lake Pontchartrain and back. “If you find the guilty pair there, detain them at once—you may use my authority to do so.”

  “I’ll accompany you, sir, if I may,” said Dr. James, pale as a ghost. “You should not be alone at a time like this.”

  By the time we got to the telegraph office, the colonel had calmed down enough to fire off telegrams to the police chiefs of nearly every city he could think of. Then he returned to the prison and sent constables to nose around the riverboat offices on Cotton Wharf. Alphonse returned with lunch, and the three of us ate a hurried and uncomfortable meal while the telegram messenger boys brought back replies
.

  By the end of the day, we had reports of possible sightings in a honeymoon hotel in Pass Christian and Arlington Plantation, south of Baton Rouge, and what sounded like an even more definite lead from the Kate Frisbee, a riverboat steamer that had left at noon for St. Louis and points north. The reply telegrams began flooding in soon after. The most convincing of these came from the stationmaster in Canton, Mississippi, who was certain he would be able to recognize a daguerreotype (an old photograph). The worst news of all, however, came from Washington, D.C., like it usually does—the actor, who came from a famous theatrical family, also had a warrant. He had been sued for bigamy by his first wife in Philadelphia, since he had never bothered to divorce her in order to marry his second in London.

  If he made good on his promise to Lalie to find a priest or justice of the peace, she would be the third Mrs. Edwin Lyons Hart… and only the first one counted.

  After a couple hours of arguing, the colonel finally agreed to send Alphonse up to Arlington, while he and Gaspar took the steam ferry to Pass Christian and then Mobile. Dr. James and I would take the train to Memphis, hoping to cut off the Kate Frisbee, first stopping in Canton, Mississippi, in order to interview the stationmaster and show him photographs.

  Trust the two men to object to this plan. “But an unmarried lady and gentleman traveling along together?” said the colonel. “Without even a ladies maid? It’s highly irregular.”

  Never mind that poor Dr. James was totally the most lovesick dude on the planet.

  “Look,” I said finally, “It’s not my virtue we’re all worried about here. That ship has sailed. It’s Lalie’s, right?”

  Put like that, they both shut up, and we all three left first thing the next morning.

  Chapter Twenty

  You might think that traveling by railroad hadn’t changed much in over one hundred years, but you’d be wrong.