24

It was well after midnight when the flickering lights from the bonfire began to ebb and people started hunkering down for sleep on Bayou Bon Coeur. I wanted to collect Heather and get out of there immediately, but that wasn’t going to happen.

Delbert Baldou asked me if I had a place to sleep. I told him no, but that I was waiting for my daughter, and after that I would have to figure it out.

He grinned. “I got da answer for y’all and Heather.” He pointed to his swamp boat. He explained that in the footlocker on board, he had a homemade tent setup that would cover the boat and create a sleeping space. We could use the life jackets for pillows.

Sleeping bags and mosquito nets were being mustered by the voodoo crowd within the walls of the roofless mansion ruins. Compared to that, Baldou’s boat looked like a night at the Plaza. I accepted his invitation, though I privately wondered why the special treatment.

I hung out at the shoreline pondering the appearance of that ghoul on the water and my helplessness, thinking about the horrible toll visited on those children and their families, considering what Belle had told me, and wondering why she had come clean like that about her mother and her diary. Perhaps there was more to Belle than I thought. And more to Minerva, as well.

When Heather showed up, she gave me a polite hello and I told her about Delbert Baldou’s offer. She was happy to join the two of us on the flatboat. In less than half an hour Delbert was snoring loudly. Heather couldn’t hold back a giggle.

In the shadows I rolled over so she could hear me, and I whispered, “Give me your impressions.”

“About what?”

“What you saw. The voodoo ceremony.”

“Educational,” she said. A few seconds later, she added, “Informative.” More time went by before she ended with “And very strange and kind of unsettling . . .”

“Me too,” I said.

“You watched?”

“Keeping you under surveillance. But yes, I saw it.” I let a few seconds go by, then asked, “You’re the anthropologist. Tell me —what was going on with that woman at the end? Strutting around like she was a Hollywood starlet, then crumpling into tears.”

“They said it was the female spirit god, Ezili Freda, taking her over.”

“Meaning what?”

“They say Ezili Freda is very powerful. Brings love and success. But also feared, because her jealousy and vengeance are all-consuming.”

“Why the tears?”

“They told me that Ezili Freda always ends her visits in weeping. Because the world is too much to endure.”

“True,” I said. “It can be. The dark side always makes enticing promises that are never kept. What’s left is sorrow. Broken hearts. Enslaved souls. I’ve lost friends to it.”

For a while Heather said nothing. But in her total silence I knew she was still awake.

After a few moments she said in a whisper, “I suppose, now you’ve found me and your ABA speech is done, you’ll want us to head back to Ocracoke.”

That’s when I told her about Morgan Canterelle hiring me as a consultant. I mentioned a little about his cases but tried to be discreet.

I finished with “So this rash of abductions, those young girls, I’ve been hired to track them down. And find the monsters who are doing it.”

“How many? Where?”

“Several in this area. Close.”

I thought about the cold case dating back a decade and a half —involving the horrible death of fourteen-year-old Lucinda, whose body had been found right there on Bayou Bon Coeur. But I spared Heather from that one.

“So,” I said quietly, “I’ll pay for your airfare tomorrow. Fly you back to Florida or wherever you want to go.”

But Heather protested so loudly that Baldou began to stir and I thought he might wake up.

“No way, Trevor,” she said. “I’m staying here with you. I’ll be your research assistant or something. Where else am I going to get this kind of experience?”

Experience? I thought to myself. Heather still knew nothing about the real dangers of the demonic empire. And how those battles aren’t forensic or scientific but spiritual.

I told her we would discuss it in the morning, but in my heart I didn’t want Heather anywhere near the forces I’d be confronting.

Her last words before we both slipped off into sleep were “Just so you know, Trevor, I’m staying here in New Orleans. I’m working on those cases with you.” I tossed her a skeptical look. A moment later she added, “Anyway, it’s about human trafficking. In anthropology, you know . . . it’d be field experience.”

When morning broke, Delbert agreed to ferry the both of us through the swamps and back to the landing at the Little Woods marina before returning for some of the other visitors. The other swamp man was on his way, he said, to help transport the remaining voodoo followers, including Belle Sabatier.

On the way back, there was little talking. Watching a few cranes winging over the water. Spotting splashes that made me think alligators were close. As soon as we reached cell phone service, I would have to call our hotel and, once again, extend our stay, and the same went for the car rental. Since being retained by Morgan Canterelle, I had an envelope full of cash, so that would help.

After Delbert Baldou docked the boat at the edge of the water and loaded us into his pickup truck, he suddenly became talkative, as if on cue.

“I seen y’all talkin’ to Miss Belle. The Sa-ba-tier daughter.”

I nodded.

“Y’all know dat her momma, Minerva, the voodoo gal, she done got poisoned.”

It caught me off guard. Then I said, “No, it was an allergic reaction. Food allergy. Maybe allergic to peanuts or something.”

“Dat’s what dey wanted y’all to tink, sho’,” Baldou said. “But I know better. She done got soup for dinner. When she dead, the FBI done a test. Found peanut oil fo’ sho’ in her body. But dat don’t kill her. Got poisoned by black-magic beans.”

Heather was in the backseat of the truck, and she leaned forward, hanging over the console at that point.

“Where’d you hear that?” I asked.

Baldou shrugged. “Got all kinds o’ in-fo’mation round here.”

“You get this from Attorney Canterelle? Or a private investigator named Turk Kavagian?”

Baldou shook his head. “Not from any lawyer. And not from a pri-vate eye.”

When we pulled up to the marina where my rental was waiting for us, Baldou parked, quickly got out, and opened the door so we could exit. He waved to us as he jumped back behind the wheel of his truck and shouted out the window, “Y’all have a good day now.”

On our ride back to the hotel, Heather commented on my new rental —a Mustang. I told her about my stolen rental and getting a replacement.

She said, “Things are getting weirder.”

“You mean the stolen car?”

“Not just that. What Delbert said. Poisoned,” she said, repeating the word. “Black-magic beans and all that.”

“Yeah, that was news to me too,” I said. I grabbed my cell, called the hotel and extended our room stay, and dialed Morgan Canterelle, who was in his office. I put him on speaker. “Morgan, what do you know about Minerva Sabatier being poisoned?”

Silence on the other end. Then, “Well, sir, I do know that she died from the rich soup concoction she ate that evening. Some kind of peanut soup. Her personal chef didn’t know about her allergy. Nor anyone else, I gather.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Another silence. After a few seconds Canterelle said, “There was an investigation. And it found something else in her system besides the peanut oil from the soup.”

“Like?”

“Some kind of toxic plant. A bean, found somewhere in Africa. I do not recall the name of it. But it is highly poisonous.”

“What did her private chef have to say about this?”

“Not a word. He vanished.”

I asked, “How do you know all this?”

“Can’t tell y’all. Attorney-client confidentiality, my friend.”

“Who’s your client in that matter?”

“That also is con-fi-dential.”

I pushed back. “I can’t help you if you tie my hands.”

“If I think it’s essential to advise y’all,” Canterelle said, “I’ll obtain the appropriate client waiver.”

I had to get Canterelle on record on at least one point. “Then answer this,” I said. “Did you ever tell Delbert Baldou any of this business about the poisoning?”

An instant denial. “No, sir. I surely did not,” he said.

I was drawing a blank on what this new revelation meant. As Heather said, things were getting weirder.

After hanging up, I noticed that Heather had just done a Google search on my iPad, and she was grinning. “Okay. About those ‘black-magic beans’ that Delbert Baldou mentioned. The botanical name is Physostigma venenosum. Common name: the Calabar bean,” she said. “Just as Canterelle said, derivation is from West Africa. Sometimes used in —get this —voodoo ceremonies. In sufficient strength, it causes paralysis and even death.”

Heather capped it off with “Booyah.” If she had a microphone, she would have dropped it.

“Hey,” I shot back, “this is not a game. This is deadly serious.”

The wry grin on her face told me she wasn’t buying the risk. Not yet.

“I happened to notice that in your phone call to the hotel, you extended both of our room stays.”

Yeah, she had caught that.

“I’m taking this one day at a time,” I said. “But the minute I think there’s any personal danger to you, I will order you straight out of New Orleans. Is that clear?”

She grinned again. “Understood, Czar Trevor.”