Early afternoon the same day
At the side entrance to the rectory, a young deputy faced off with Toussaint’s most exotic citizen.
“Let me go through,” she said. “The day when you make Wazoo stay out of any place she wants to go, is the day your teeny weeny gonna fall right off.”
Madge arrived, panting, from the back of the rectory and skidded to a halt at a table where Wazoo had been stopped by one of Spike’s young male officers. Rose, his name tag read, and Madge imagined he’d lived through plenty of grief because of that.
Wazoo, animal psychologist and practitioner of whatever opportunity arose, ruled Toussaint’s information grid and used her contacts shamelessly, but once a friend, her loyalty stuck. People avoided turning her into an enemy by making her mad. She was really mad right now.
Deputy Rose and Wazoo dodged back and forth on their respective sides of the table. Rose sweated, trying to stop Wazoo from getting past.
“Him,” Wazoo said when she saw Madge. “He about two days out of diapers and he tells me, me, I can’t go see my good friends in the rectory. Do you believe it, Madge? Where’s God Man? I wanna see him right now. He take care of this.”
“Who’s Godman?” Rose adjusted his creaky new gun belt.
Madge tried to signal for Wazoo to avoid the question.
Too late. “Father Cyrus Payne to you.”
Cyrus detested Wazoo’s pet name for him.
She looked marvelous in black lace with panels of red cotton swirling each time she moved inside her floor-length skirt. Her black hair sprang in long curls from a center part and almost reached her waist. Fine ringlets bobbed about her forehead and the sides of her face. Her eyes, too dark to fathom, glistened within heavy lashes. The makeup she used—clever, accomplished—heightened her mystery.
Years earlier, Wazoo had arrived in Toussaint to mourn an old friend. Then she had stayed. Her age was difficult to pinpoint, but most thought she must be in her thirties.
“Deputy Rose,” Madge said, giving the slight young man a serious look. “Wazoo is a good friend of ours, and she worries about us. She wouldn’t do anything to interfere with the investigation, would you, Wazoo?” She stared hard at her buddy.
Wazoo pursed her lips, wrinkled her nose and took entirely too long to say, “No.”
“Miz Pollard,” Rose said with a drawl that gave him away as a transplanted Texan. “The sheriff, he said nobody was allowed past the tapes if they weren’t already on the other side. It’s like this. We’re checkin’ for footprints, clues and the like, and if a lot of folks come messin’ things up, we could lose—”
“More insults—you think I’m stupid, me?” Wazoo said, striking a pose. “I’m standin’ here watchin’ an army of people march all over where you don’t want me to go. There’s people everywhere. Outa my way.”
“Stupid, Miz Wazoo?” Rose said, shaking his head. “Now you know I don’t think that about you.”
She straightened up, braced one hand on the table and the other on a hip. “Why?” she asked. “How come I didn’t notice before?”
Rose glanced around. “Notice what?”
“How cute you are, of course. You got a girlfriend?”
He turned pink. “Not at the present.”
“What’s the matter with all the females in this town? You are one sexy, tingle-makin’ hunk of male.”
Rose twitched inside his uniform.
“Not two moments ago I was thinkin’ someone ought to give you a good spankin’ to make you wise up.” She held the tip of her tongue between her teeth for a moment before adding, “Now I do believe I’ll see about that spankin’ myself. Oh, yes, that is one hard, high, spankable rump, and I’m the woman to make the most of it.”
His face scarlet, Rose put more distance between them, but not before Wazoo leaned around to see his derriere. “Very nice,” she murmured.
Madge closed her eyes. Wazoo could embarrass the pants off a bumblebee. No, no. Absolutely no pants were coming off around here.
Wazoo took off toward the back door with her hair flying and her skirts flapping.
“That one is something,” Rose said. “I don’t suppose there’s any reason she can’t go in this way, but I’ve gotta ask y’all to make sure she doesn’t get near that front door. They’re working around there.”
“I’ll do it,” Madge said and hurried after Wazoo. “Hey. Wait for me. You are one bad girl sometimes. You go inside the kitchen and stay there. We’re holed up there anyway. And you don’t go near the front of the house. Got it, Wazoo?”
“Got it. I’m gonna call Nat. He’ll get down here and fix these goons.”
Nat Archer, New Orleans homicide detective and Guy Gautreaux’s former partner, was tight with Wazoo, although no one could figure out what that meant in their case. Whatever it did mean, Nat was a big, impressive man and he didn’t tolerate anyone treating Wazoo with less than respect.
“Have you taken a good look at that church of yours?” she asked. “You got enough uniforms over there to take on the streets of New Orleans. What they doin’? That’s what I want to know. And cars and vans and trucks. Any minute, we gonna see the helicopters—maybe a couple of them things for on the water and on the land, too.”
“Amphibious vehicles,” Madge said automatically and looked at the sky. Why was she getting into this discussion?
“Like you just said,” Wazoo said. “Them, too. We need Nat and Jilly’s Guy on the job. They’ll get things done.”
“Please don’t call Nat or get Guy riled up. Spike’s already got enough on his hands without somebody else treating him like gum on their shoes.”
“What did you just say, you?” Wazoo whirled to face Madge. “Gum on their shoes? I believe you must be keepin’ questionable company and they teachin’ you bad language. You goin’ to the dogs.”
“I didn’t swear,” Madge protested.
Wazoo laughed, showing off beautiful teeth and almost closing her big, black eyes. “You are way too serious, girl. I’m here because I figure I’m needed. We got trouble in this city again.” She turned back and marched onward. “I need to talk to Spike—that boy is showin’ more promise all the time. If I can teach him to accept that some of the things he can’t see are more important than the stuff he can pick up and blow his nose in, he could go places.”
“Yes,” Madge said. She felt breathless. “You have a great sense of what’s going on. We couldn’t manage without you around here.”
Wazoo stopped abruptly. She tossed her hair back and looked over her shoulder at Madge. “I was goin’ to mention that. ‘We?’ And, ‘Wazoo is a good friend of ours and she worries about us?’ Has this good friend, Wazoo, been kept in the dark about some big news?”
Madge frowned. The day only grew ever more humid, and she was already too hot. The tone of Wazoo’s question, her sly sideways look, didn’t ease the discomfort.
Wazoo moved in closer and spoke into Madge’s ear. “I know nothin’s changed. You got to teach that man you love to ride. Just one lesson and from then on, he be teachin’ you. You’ll have to hold on tight or be bucked right off. He is one sexy—”
“Stop! Please don’t say any more. He’s a priest.”
“He’s a priest and he loves you.” Wazoo took Madge’s face in her hands. “You are beautiful, you. And he’s pretty darn beautiful, too. Mm—mm, yes, he is. You gonna be beautiful together. I can close my eyes and see the pictures. Moonlight on shiny skin, sweatin’ skin…naked skin.”
Madge swallowed air before she choked out, “That’s not appropriate.”
“I know,” Wazoo said and chuckled. She took a couple of dancing steps and whirled on her toes. “I love not bein’ appropriate. That’s boring. I am never goin’ to be boring. And I love you, Madge Pollard. I even love that scrawny little mutt of yours.” She hugged Madge quickly and kept on laughing low in her throat.
“Thank you. I love you, too. Now get inside before someone else hears the kind of things you’re sayin’.”
Madge didn’t know how much more tension she could take today. She hadn’t needed Wazoo’s outrageous suggestions. Madge had an imagination of her own. She held on to the memory of every touch and special word she got from Cyrus, and this morning, the way he’d held her, had been one of his most spontaneous reactions yet. He’d been a man who wanted to feel a woman in his arms, and she was that woman.
“Yes,” Wazoo said. She frowned. She closed her eyes.
“What is it?” Madge whispered.
Wazoo shook her head. “Nothin’,” she said, looking cross. “And there ought to be somethin’ after what’s gone on around here.”
Cyrus came from the rectory without Wazoo noticing him. “Wazoo,” he said quietly. “I’m sure you’ve come to help us all stay calm.”
Holding back a smile, Madge listened to Cyrus’s persuasive voice and watched Wazoo’s reaction.
“Who would have thought you’d ever say you needed my help?” she asked. “In here,” she poked at her chest, “I believe you and me have found a meetin’ place, God Man. But in here,” she poked her head, “I worry in case you’re foolin’ with me. I wouldn’t like that, and I’m not sure what I’d decide to do about it.”
“I don’t lie,” Cyrus said. “It’s painful to me that you think I might.”
“Then put aside your pain, God Man. I think you can still be saved and you’re worth it.” She looked toward the searing sky, then, gradually, lowered her gaze to the bayou. “I can smell the water. The fresh plants startin’ to spread their vines on the surface and their leaves poppin’. See how the cypress trunks shine white…like dead men’s bones.”
“Wazoo?” Cyrus said, a warning in his tone, but she gave no sign of hearing him.
She shrugged. “Me, it’s my job to listen for warnings.” She turned her big, dark eyes fully on Cyrus, raised her nose and sniffed several times. “I think I smell blood.”
“Why don’t we go inside and have some coffee?” Cyrus said.
“I’ve got to be ready is all,” Wazoo said.
“Ready for what?” Madge said.
Wazoo pursed her lips. She tapped a foot and looked even more annoyed. “Sometimes a woman’s got to be patient and wait for instructions. I’m waitin’, and I’m ready.”
“Just don’t talk,” Cyrus told her. “You can frighten people who aren’t used to you.”
Wazoo waved a hand. “I didn’t smell old blood,” she said. “So far it’s still runnin’ in someone’s veins. We better hope it stays there.”
Madge tried not to stare at Cyrus, but failed, and he caught her eye. The sadness that welled into his expression squeezed her heart. The day after tomorrow she was supposed to go out with Sig Smith for the evening, and she didn’t want to. But she would go and she would try to keep Cyrus’s face from her mind.
The old tension was there between her and Cyrus. They both remembered Wazoo in time for Madge to see the woman’s knowing stare. Cyrus had to see it, too. She climbed the back steps and pushed her way through the back door with Madge and Cyrus right behind her.
Madge was a part of his life and he didn’t want to let her go. She had caught him staring at her again, but at least she couldn’t know what he was thinking. He was trying to accept that she would learn to care for someone else. So far he hadn’t started to make peace with the changes that had to come.
And he never would. He was going to hate any man she let into her life.
He shut the door, using the moment to calm down.
Just the three of them, and Bleu, were in the kitchen. Lil had taken Cyrus at his word and gone home for the rest of the day. Bleu usually worked in a small room on the second floor, but it was easier for her to be at the kitchen table as long as the sheriff’s men were swarming over the front of the house.
As soon as Marty Brock stopped with his questions, Cyrus had driven over to Bleu’s place with her car keys. She had followed him back, insisting she had to work—even though he had seen how her eyes drifted closed from time to time.
She wasn’t anywhere close to nodding off now. Nobody slept with Wazoo around.
“Where’s Spike? He over there?” Wazoo peered through a window over the sinks, toward the church.
“He didn’t get here yet,” Bleu told her.
Wazoo squinted at her. “There’s somethin’ goin’ on here. No, I don’t mean that you got a corpse in the church or wherever—somethin’ else.”
“Wazoo!” Bleu dropped her pen.
“Does that mean you’ve waited long enough for your woo-woo messages to start coming through again?” Madge said.
Cyrus appreciated her for taking the edge off Wazoo’s comment.
Undaunted, Wazoo made a smug pout and said, “You keep on makin’ fun, you. I don’t say things I don’t mean. And if I could see what I’ve been tryin’ to see, I’d tell you about it. I’m thinkin’ there’s too much interference from you unbelievers for a hard-workin’ seer to do her job.”
Cyrus looked at Madge. She pulled a chair out from the big oak table in the window and sat down across from Bleu.
Wazoo didn’t move, didn’t speak again. She stared through the back window toward Bayou Teche.
Heavy footsteps sounded on the steps to the kitchen door, and Spike Devol let himself in. A circle from his hatband flattened a line in his dishwater-blond hair. “I got here as fast as I could,” he said. “I was over at Kate Harper’s. I need to talk to you. Are we still waiting for the box to be picked up by forensics? Is it in your office? Something’s—” He stopped when he noticed Wazoo behind Cyrus.
“Wazoo just arrived,” Cyrus said. “She’s been having one of her feelings and—” He closed his mouth.
“Is that right?” Spike said sarcastically.
“The box is still in my office,” Madge said. She got up and walked behind Cyrus. She rubbed his arm as she passed and he swallowed hard.
Spike had bright blue eyes that folks thought of as friendly. They weren’t too friendly at the moment.
“That’s right.” Cyrus felt like a man up to his neck in water and trying to walk against a tide.
“Cyrus is right,” Madge said. “Wazoo senses…She gets feelings.”
“Have you forgotten I live around here, too?” Spike said. He propped his long, rangy body against a counter. “I do believe I’ve bumped into Wazoo’s feelings before.”
Spike’s skepticism shone through and Cyrus figured there was almost no point in trying to change the sheriff’s opinion of Wazoo. She’d been right about a number of things in the past, but that didn’t seem to count for much.
“Annie Savage talked about you,” Bleu said to Wazoo suddenly. “She told me you saved her life once. She wouldn’t say how and neither would her husband. Roche isn’t talking, either, but I could tell they were serious.”
“What’s the box you got here?” Wazoo asked. “What’s in it?”
“Official business,” Spike said. “Nothing to interest you.”
“You one ungrateful, nasty man.” She wagged a long finger at him. “I’ll let myself out.”
Instead of going toward the back door, she went to the corridor leading to the rest of the house.
“Quicker for you to go out this way,” Spike said,
“I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do,” Wazoo said. She walked straight at him without slowing down, and Spike jumped aside. “How come that lovely Vivian married you, I don’t know. How come you got that sweet child, Wendy…well, now there’s another mystery. And now you got another poor little victim. The longer David stays a baby, the better for him. And you don’t respect that father of yours. Homer Devol is a saint.”
Spike’s dad could be crusty and difficult. A saint, he’d never be.
“Wazoo,” Bleu said and laughed. “That is so unkind.”
“I know,” Wazoo said over her shoulder.
Cyrus went with Spike and followed Wazoo—straight into Madge’s office.
The surface of the desk had been cleared and covered with white paper. An aura of fine dust hung over the box in its ripped cradle of fancy paper.
Wazoo stared. She walked a few steps to get a different angle into the box, then stayed where she was.
“Hey, guys,” Roche Savage said, walking into the room. He saw Wazoo and the box of charred remnants and closed his mouth.
Cyrus nodded at him. Something about Wazoo convinced him not to say anything else.
“Was that left on the front step?” Wazoo said.
“Yes,” Spike said. “We’re trying to find out—”
“Who put it there?” Wazoo interrupted. “That would be a good idea. Nice thinkin’, Sheriff.”
She moved determinedly to the box and hauled out a handful of its contents.
“Don’t do that,” Spike said.
“I guess I already did. It’s books.”
“We know,” Cyrus said, warily watching Spike’s furious expression.
Wazoo calmly opened a little volume, knocking off charred edges as she did so. “School books,” she said. “Little kids’ readers. There’s a picture of angels here. Must have come from the old school right here.”
Cyrus’s stomach turned.