“Level out his karma field?” I asked.
“Well…It’s just like it sounds. Darryl is a no-good asshat who’s led a mostly charmed life.”
“Okay. But…”
“No buts. He doesn’t deserve to lead that kind of life. So, from time to time, I help karma a little bit. You know, make the universe a more balanced place in which to live.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what did he do that was bad enough to make you want to dabble in his karma field?”
Liza’s karma dabbling reminded me of a saying on one of the Bitchy Signs I collect: Dear Karma, I have a list of people you missed.
Except there’s one major difference. I simply collect the signs, while apparently, she acts on them.
“Oh, I don’t mind sharing at all. I could plum talk your ear off about his sneaky little ass.”
And she did. It didn’t take long for me to realize that Liza had good reason to be meddling in the life of her ex. He put her through a world of shit.
Oh, he was a real charmer. Swept her right off her feet, but it wasn’t long after they were married that old Darryl was off pursuing other women like it was his primary occupation. And yes, I said women. Plural. When it came to Darryl Riley and the opposite sex, there was no reason to employ the singular.
“He wasn’t even careful about hiding it,” Liza said. “It was like he just didn’t care if I knew. Of course, he would always deny it and turn on his charm, but it was just so damn obvious. He drove me crazy.”
“I can sure relate to that,” I said and meant it.
My ex could also be stamped an “asshat” in Aunt Liza speak.
“But how did the whole Voodoo thing start?” I asked, thinking it had to have gotten worse than this in order for Darryl to have his own shelf full of Voodoo dolls.
“We were living in New Orleans. Darryl was stationed in Belle Chasse with the 3rd Battalion 23rd Marines. There I was, a young military wife, living far from home, with a philandering husband.”
“Nicky never told me you lived in New Orleans,” I said.
I love that city and its amazing food too.
“Well, I’m not surprised he never mentioned it. My memories of that place and time are mostly bad, but I did pick up a couple of things down there that’ve come in handy over the years.”
With a faraway look in her eyes, she reached over and patted a box of shotgun shells sitting on her coffee table.
Every surface in the room had a box of shells. And yes, it disturbed me that shotgun shells seemed to be her decorative accessory of choice.
“Old Sweat Pea, for example. She was a gift from Darryl. He wasn’t always an asshole. Sometimes he could be the sweetest man alive, and others…”
She gave her head a little shake, left the past, and came back to the present. “Not long after we were married, he gave me Sweet Pea along with this snubnosed .38 revolver.”
And damn if she didn’t pull out the revolver from underneath the sofa cushion.
“Plus, he taught me to shoot,” she continued, caressing the gun as if it were one of her multitude of cats. “Of course, I grew up around guns on the farm, but Darryl shared some pointers he picked up from his Marines marksmanship training.”
“Don’t the Marines use rifles?” I asked, wondering how many more guns she kept around.
“Yes, primarily, but he thought the shotgun would be better for home defense. You know, covering a wider area and plenty of stopping power.”
She sure as hell wasn’t kidding about that. Possibly the understatement of the century. A .10 gauge shotgun wouldn’t have a problem stopping a grizzly, let alone some happless human intruder.
“And I’m guessing the other thing you brought back from Louisiana was Voodoo?”
I couldn’t help myself. I had to get her back onto the topic at hand and get that revolver out of her hands.
She nodded, and I carefully took the .38 away from her and set it on the table next to my end of the couch.
“Most of the time, I was alone down there and bored out of my mind. So, I took long walks. My favorite thing was to wander through the old cemeteries and take in all the lovely tombs.”
In association with the word tomb, lovely isn’t the first notion that would pop into my head. But, anyhoo…
“Cemeteries?”
“There’s so much history and…” She folded her hands in her lap before continuing. “It doesn’t matter. The point is that I met someone.”
“Go on,” I said, hoping we were getting closer to her Voodoo experiences.
“My favorite place to visit was St. Louis Cemetery #1, and I visited often. I kept running into the same person. An older woman named Marie. We’d always say hello, and eventually, we fell into conversation. As it turned out, she was dealing with the same kind of man troubles that I was.”
I made a mental note that learning Voodoo must begin with tomb walking and man troubles.
“Marie was a wealth of knowledge. I learned a great deal about the history and characters of New Orleans. After many weeks of her random lessons, she stopped in front of a particular tomb.”
“Whose tomb was it?”
“The name on the stone marker was Glapion. It was a family tomb, but the most interesting person lying inside was Marie Laveau.”
A second Marie, I noted. Apparently, there are lots of Maries in the Voodoo world.
“That name rings a bell, but I can’t place it,” I said, searching my head for a connection with Marie Laveau out of the years of research I’d done for my writers.
“Her name’s been used here and there in popular culture, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve heard it. Marie Glapion Laveau was a powerful Voodoo priestess who lived in the 1800s. Her and her daughter were hugely famous. Thousands of people would gather to watch them perform their rites.”
Damn, if all this wouldn’t make a great story, I thought, making another mental note to see to it Nicky included his Aunt Liza’s background in a future book. I sipped my tea, ready to hear more.
“That’s not all I learned that fateful day. The Marie I was walking with was the great-great-great granddaughter of the original Marie Laveau.”
“Wow! Fascinating! So, I take it you began to learn Voodoo from your Marie?” I asked, needing to rush this history lesson a bit to get to the gist of what she’d done to our exes.
“Yes. That’s when I first began to play around with it. At first, Marie only shared bits and pieces, but as she got to know me better, she began to open up more.”
“Maybe we should start with how these spells work,” I suggested, honing in on the exact scoop I needed to begin to figure out how to fix this hex mess.
“Work? Well, they’re all supposed to work in different ways.”
“What do you mean in different ways?”
“Just what I said. Each type of spell has its own peculiarities. But…I’m not always certain how they’re going to work out.”
Nice. Real nice. So, you just cast a spell on some poor sucker and don’t have a clue as to what the consequences will be. That’s comforting.
“How about filling me in on the particular spell that you were using earlier today?”
“Well…”
“What is it, Liza? Why are you hesitating? Because of your spells, we’ve got two guys in the hospital who are lucky they didn’t end up in a cemetery.”
“It’s just that Marie asked me not to share information about the spells. She said that if the details fell into the wrong hands, then terrible things could happen.”
Wrong hands? That’s rich coming from Liza, I silently harrumphed. I wondered if Marie had any real notion of the type of person she’d decided to share with back in New Orleans.
Knowing I needed to put Liza’s mind at ease in order to drag this information out of her, I decided not to voice my concerns regarding Marie’s lack of discretion.
“Listen, Liza, I don’t need you to tell me how you go about casting these spells. I’m sure not looking to get into the Voodoo business any time soon.”
Or ever, to be perfectly honest, now that I’ve seen your handiwork, I thought, again without uttering a word coming from my bitchy subconscious.
“I’m just trying to get a handle on what you were trying to accomplish and then, from there, what might have gone wrong. That’s all. Do you think you could help me out?”
“I suppose so. I’m not sure what that could hurt. Where to begin…okay…first of all, despite what most people have picked up from movies, Voodoo spells generally aren’t for hexing others or for revenge. And the whole thing about sticking pins in dolls to cause an enemy physical pain? That’s pretty much a Hollywood thing too.”
“So then, what are these spells used for?” I asked, willing to admit I didn’t know anything other than what Hollywood thought it knew about Voodoo.
“Voodoo spells are generally used for positive reasons: to get a lover back, success in business, good luck in gambling, personal protection, healing, you know, that sort of thing.”
“But none of those positive reasons sound anything like what you were trying to accomplish today.”
“No. You’re right. The truth is, when it comes to Darryl, I usually try to tweak one of the common spells to…well, to mess around with him in a not-so-positive way.”
“Tweak a spell? How do you do that?”
Great. Now I had to learn the basics of Voodoo plus the tweaked version too.
“It’s not an exact science. I try to figure it out by trial and error. I started by combining what I learned from Marie with the Santa Muerte rites.”
“Santa Muerte? Isn’t that the saint associated with the Day of the Dead in Mexico?”
Oh boy. We’d shot straight out of the light and plunged deep into the dark side of karmic balance.
“That’s right. She’s also known as Lady of the Shadows. You see, Santa Muerte and Louisiana Voodoo are sort of related in that they both come from mixing traditional religions with Catholicism in the New World.”
This was starting to sound more than a little creepy. The queasiness I’d felt after hearing about Hank’s choking incident was back wreaking havoc. I was beginning to wonder if I should have ever opened up this can of twisted worms.
But, I was also relieved that I always carried with me a small bottle of Holy Water. My psychic had suggested I do so, and for this trip, it might come in handy.
“I take it the darker parts of the spells that you used to mess with Darryl and Hank come from the Santa Muerte tradition?”
“Yes. Look, Samantha. I can tell that this is making you uncomfortable, but you have to remember that I never really wanted to hurt anyone, not even Darryl.”
“I believe you, Liza. On the Hank front. Not so much where Darryl’s concerned though. Regardless, I’m just trying to understand what went wrong so we can try to fix it.”
“Gotchya,” she said.
But her voice indicated she was way too excited about all of this to be taking it anywhere close to as serious as I was.
“So, anyway, before we separated, I took some hair from Darryl. I just cut off a big wad while he was sleeping. And that’s what I use on the dolls. I need something that’s connected to a person in a significant way. It could be a piece of clothing, a lock of hair or…”
“Or a wedding ring,” I added, suddenly feeling my own throat constrict.
“That’s right. Speaking of which, I think I know what might have gone wrong with Hank’s spell. I put the ring around the doll’s neck, and I can only assume that has something to do with why he ended up choking.”
That was not exactly the breakthrough I’d hoped for. Even I could figure out that’s why Hank damn near choked to death.
“You didn’t think something like that could happen?”
“To be honest, I thought he might get a sore throat or something.”
“Well, he certainly has a sore throat now.”
I’d said it in a rather snotty way, and probably shouldn’t have if I wanted to keep her on my good side. But sometimes, I couldn’t contain my New York City snark, especially when I was being pushed to the end of my patience.
Not that it mattered that I’d been rather catty, because it appeared she’d missed my zinger altogether. She had her head cocked to one side, listening intently to something. And whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn’t me. After a few moments, she nodded her head ever so slightly and then refocused her attention on me.
“I’m sorry, Sam. She doesn’t mean to interrupt. Now, what were you saying?”
“I said…” But now I couldn’t remember what I’d said. “It was nothing. So, who were you listening to instead of me?”
“Oh, it was just my rhododendron reminding me that it’s time for her monthly watering. The old gal’s gettin’ thirsty, and we can’t have her shrivelling all up and wasting away. I mean, I’d feel just terrible if anything ever happened to her. We go way back.”