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Chapter 1 Home, home on the . . . bayou . . . It was dawn on Bayou Black, and its inhabitants were about to launch their daily musical extravaganza, a performance as beautiful and ancient as time. The various sounds melded: a dozen different frogs, the splash of a sac-à-lait or bream rising for a tasty insect, the whisper of a humid breeze among the moss-draped oaks, the flap of an egret’s wings as it soared out from a bald cypress branch. Even the silence had a sound. The only one not making any noise was its lone human inhabitant, John LeDeux. But not for long. “Yoo-hoo!” About five hundred birds took flight at that shrill greeting, not to mention every snake, rabbit, raccoon, or gator within a one-mile radius. John jackknifed up in bed and quickly pulled the sheet up to the waist of his naked body. He was in the single bedroom of his fishing camp, another name for a cabin on the bayou. He knew exactly who was yoo- hooing him. His ninety-two-year-old great aunt, Louise Rivard, better
Chapter 2 Advice to women: When rogues grin, run like crazy . . . Celine was sitting on a bench seat in the paddy wagon, hands cuffed, ankles shackled, with the bayou bad boy on her left and Hal “I could make you scream, baby” Hopkins on her right. If Hal made another lewd suggestion to her or if John continued to chuckle, she was going to put a curse on the two of them . . . one that would impair their precious scream-maker parts for life, and she knew a French Quarter voodoo priestess who could do it, too. There were three female and two male prostitutes and one trick, or sex club client, or date, or customer, or whatever they wanted to call them, on one of the benches, along with her and John, and on the other facing bench were a “client facilitator,” one alleged Playpen owner . . . i.e. Mafia guy named Emile Lorenzo, a male prostitute, and three more tricks or clients. Apparently, there were other members of the Lorenzo family—an Italian-Creole unit of the Dixie mob—in the other em
Chapter 3 He . . . rather, the food . . . was yummy . . . A short time later, they were in the Oyster Bar of the Red Fish Grill on Bourbon Street, feasting on barbecued oyster po’-boys . . . a Louisiana specialty served on loaves of French bread overflowing with red onions, lettuce, tomatoes, and homemade blue cheese dressing. If that wasn’t enough, there were sides of Creole potato salad and tall glasses of sweet tea. She demurred on a dessert after the huge meal, but then found herself picking at John’s double chocolate bread pudding. An oddly intimate and strange thing for her to do. But everything about the angry sparks that flew between the two of them was strange. They were seated before a long bar, on sculpted metal sea creature barstools. The atmosphere was heightened by the giant oyster mirrors on the ancient brick wall behind the bar and by the black and white photographs of Louisiana bayous and residents taken in the 1940s. The artwork had been part of a dissertation at Newc
Chapter 4 Did anyone hear thunder? . . . Tante Lulu gaped at her rascal nephew whose face was flushed with pure panic. “What’s goin’ on? I was jist teasin’,” she whispered to Charmaine. “Tee-John is a bit flustered. I wonder why,” Charmaine whispered back. “I heard that,” Tee-John said. “Don’t get any ideas about me and Celine Arseneaux, either one of you. Celine hates my guts.” “How do you feel about her guts?” Luc asked. He had come up behind Tee-John without his noticing. Tee-John flashed him a look of disgust. “Mebbe St. Jude sent you and Celine ta that hanky-panky club t’gether fer a purpose. Mebbe she jist needs a thunderbolt ta jump-start her heart.” “St. Jude and a sex club? I don’t think so,” Tee-John scoffed. “Stranger things have happened,” Luc pointed out. “The ol’ guy got me with a love potion Sylvie concocted in her lab.” “I got feng shued.” Remy winked at Tee-John, who still wore a frowny face. “Val got kidnapped and dropped in my lap.” You could tell how pleased René wa
Chapter 5 He made her an offer she couldn’t refuse . . . “A treasure hunt? You want me to spend days, maybe weeks, covering some screwball search for Jean Lafitte’s buried treasure?” “It’ll be fun,” her editor, Bruce Cavanaugh, told Celine as they sat in his office. She said a foul word under her breath, something about what he could do with his fun. “Don’t you think my talents are best utilized on something more . . . serious?” Celine gritted her teeth. It was a constant struggle for women in journalism. They were assigned the fluff pieces while men got the Pulitzer Prize–worthy stories. “C’mon, Celine, you’ve worked nonstop on hard news the past few months. There’s nothing wrong with lightening up on occasion. Besides, you’ll find a way of making it a good in-depth piece. Hell, you could make a PTA meeting newsworthy.” “Bruce,” she said tiredly, “another Jean Lafitte treasure hunt? Do you realize how many of these halfbrained schemes there have been over the years? They’re scams.” He
Chapter 6 Talk about being blindsided! . . . The day had been a bust. Well, not entirely. John and all the others had worked steadily once they arrived at René’s cabin. First, on orders from Tante Lulu, they’d carted in supplies to the state-of-the-art kitchen, started the generator, turned on the air conditioner, and cleared the pipes to the cistern. No cooking over the campfire here. They were about to sit down to the feast Tante Lulu had spent the past few hours preparing. They’d also brought in laptop computers which were set up in one corner of the great room, another word for a frickin’ big living room. They still called René’s place here a cabin, or fishing camp, even though the original fishing camp had been replaced with this Better Homes and Bayou Lodge. Donald Trump would be comfortable here. John hadn’t participated in a Jinx treasure hunt for two years, before he’d joined the police force. But he had done some diving in the interim and kept up his licenses. It would be a d
Chapter 7 Beware of ladies with funny tea . . . Tante Lulu took a break after cleaning up from dinner. And, yes, she thought of herself as Tante Lulu, like everyone else, instead of Louise Rivard. She was out on the porch, listening as Tee-John teased Brenda, trying to draw the young woman out of her obvious blues. Now that she was pregnant, she probably wanted to be home with her husband and little girl. Cajun music played softly in the background . . . a song by a band named BeauSoleil, she thought. The boy—and yes she thought of Tee-John as a boy, even though he was twenty-eight—was good at heart, and she loved him almost more than all the others. He’d had to live with that devil Valcour LeDeux longest. Lots of people thought he was wild and worthless, even though he’d settled down when he took that cop job a few years back. She knew better. All his running around and joking was like a mask he put on. Inside he was still the little boy who came running to her cottage with welt marks
Chapter 8 When dumb chicks stroll into the fox’s den . . . She crept through the living room, not wanting to disturb Jake, Ronnie, and their little girl who were sleeping on a pull-out sofa. The three of them planned to leave tomorrow after the project was officially launched; Remy would be coming for them in his hydroplane. That’s probably how John intended to leave. Caleb and Adam slept in bunk beds in the second bedroom upstairs. John had told them over dinner that he planned to sleep in a self-enclosed tent outside, nature’s way. “You’ll be covered with mosquito bites by morning, Nature Boy,” Adam had scoffed. “Not inside my tent,” Tee-John had insisted. “Hope an alligator doesn’t chomp you for a tasty snack.” Adam had clearly meant the opposite. Tee-John had gotten the last word in. “Me, I’m too sweet for any ol’ gator. They prefer tougher meat . . . Yankee meat. Yep, Yankees make good gator kibbles.” Luckily, the loud whirring of the ceiling fan covered the sound of Celine openin
Chapter 9 Just another day, down on the bayou . . . The project site, about one mile from the cabin, was situated on a wide bend in the bayou. The stream here was about sixty feet wide and fifteen feet deep. Celine took personal notes for her story by speaking into a small tape recorder, but she’d more than willingly agreed to help with the photography work on the project, chronicling every step of the venture, except for the underwater exercises which would be done by the divers. “Over the years, the network of bayous changed constantly, due to storms and flooding,” Celine said into the recorder. “Land existing today might disappear underwater in five years, and vice versa. Thus, according to the treasure map, the pirate Lafitte’s booty had been buried on dry land, but that spot is now underwater. See written notes on history of the map. And check photos of map on digital chip A, numbers 17, 18, and 19.” She scribbled a few lines in a small notebook, then set both the camera and noteb
Chapter 10 He sure knew how to muddy the waters . . . John was dirty, exhausted and about to be reamed by Celine when she found out that she was going to be forced to stay here at the work site with him tonight. Alone. Ronnie, Jake, Julie Ann, and Tante Lulu were long gone, and Peach, Famosa, and Brenda were preparing to return to the cabin in two pirogues. It would be a shorter trip back since they would be riding with the current. But someone needed to stay behind and guard the site and all the expensive equipment, which meant him. And Celine, according to Chief Pinot’s orders. At the last minute, he took Celine by the upper arm and drew her back. “What . . . what are you doing?” she asked as the two pirogues took off without her. “Let me go. That’s the last of the pirogues.” Jerking away from him, she ran several yards down the bank, slipping and sliding in the mud. “Hey! Wait for me!” she yelled. No one bothered to stop. In fact, Famosa—ever Mr. Clueless—waved to her. Sputtering wi
Chapter 11 Sliding head-first down the slippery slope of you-know-what . . . There was a long-running dumb man joke on the Internet that said, when it came to sex, men are like microwaves and women are like crockpots. It was not a compliment. Well, John knew for a fact that wasn’t true. Ever since Celine had mentioned the word “sex,” he’d been like a pressure cooker. From zero to hot damn in a nanosecond . . . and he’d been on a slow lust-boil ever since. And he was starting to like her. Even worse, he suspected she was starting to like him, too. Like and lust: a prescription for disaster, where the two of them were concerned. He cleaned the fish with the hunting knife Luc had given him when he was eight. And thought, sex. He built a round fire pit with small stones in the way Remy had taught him when he was nine, and thought, sex. He cooked the fish, wrapped in damp moss, in hot coals the way René had demonstrated when he was ten, and thought, sex. But he was no longer a boy, and Celi
Chapter 12 Get along, little cowboy . . . uh, cowgirl . . . John was so embarrassed. He’d never conked out on a woman after sex before. But Celine Arseneaux had knocked him for a loop, in more ways than one. Every cell in his body felt satisfied. The endorphins in his body must have gone haywire, but he was supremely relaxed now. Like a wet noodle. Well, not entirely relaxed or not entirely a wet noodle, he realized in amazement as his dick sort of raised its head . . . the dick that was still inside Celine, for the love of Dieu! . . . and gave him a silent high five, with the message, “Rev up the engine, big boy! Time for the next lap.” Carefully, he raised his eyelids to see if Celine was laughing at him for falling asleep . . . or too crushed by his weight to speak. But, no, she was thank-you-God asleep. He smiled to himself, inordinately pleased that he could have knocked her out like this. Forget about the fact that he had been knocked out, too. Man, I am good! With that brain-dea
Chapter 13 The Motley Crew just got motlier . . . Veronica looked at the ever-increasing pile of paperwork on the desk of her Jinx, Inc. office in Barnegat, New Jersey, and said, “To think I left corporate law to avoid this crap.” The two people sitting in front of her desk just laughed. “I know what you mean. When I was a nun, teaching at St. Anne’s College, I spent half my time filling out church documents. Believe me, the church is as bad as the government when it comes to red tape. And rules! There were so many ‘Do Nots’ it sounded like a Motown song.” This from Grace O’Brien, a professional poker playing buddy of Jake’s; she’d left the convent years ago, for reasons unknown. “Honey, you must have been the hottest nun. Playboy would have loved you,” said Angel Sabato, another poker playing buddy of Jake’s. Angel ought to know about the nude modeling; he’d once bared it all for Playgirl under the heading, “His Poker Is Hot.” Grace’s lime green eyes flashed with a temper befitting he
Chapter 14 I know how to destress you, baby . . . “We’re comin’ home.” “Oh, Gramps, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Celine said into the satellite phone John had handed her a few moments ago after a convoluted procedure of circuiting the call through his police chief. In her opinion, they were over-obsessing on the danger. “All this hay and grass is givin’ me asthma, chère. And Etienne is gettin’ bored with ridin’ that pony. He wants ta ride a stallion, and you know, girl, if I don’t watch him good, he’ll be ridin’ off like a Kentucky Derby jockey.” “Has he been behaving?” “What do you think?” She laughed. “Actually, he’s been pretty good, ’ceptin’ for the time he tol’ one ranch hand’s little girl where babies come from.” “That little bugger! Did you tell him about . . . you know? I never told him.” Her grandfather laughed. “According to Professor Etienne, a guy spits in a girl’s belly button, and a baby starts to grow underneath.” She laughed, too. “How much longer you gonna be gon
Chapter 15 Rogue to the bone . . . They were sitting around on the porch of the cabin that evening, except for Caleb who’d volunteered to stay behind at the work site. No way was Celine going to risk alone time with John again. Speaking of whom . . . John sank down into an Adirondack chair next to her, propping his booted feet on the porch rail. She was safe, though; Adam, Grace, and Angel were at the other end of the porch playing poker. Grace had agreed to play on the condition Angel wouldn’t tell any nun jokes. A Cajun radio station played softly in the background. René had gone back to Houma with Remy. “Are you gettin’ enough information for your story?” he asked, taking a slow sip from a longneck bottle of Dixie beer. “Absolutely.” She had her laptop propped on her knees, her feet also up on the low rail. She noticed John noticing her legs and the fact that she had shaved them after dinner in the small bathroom. Not that they’d really needed it! Before dinner, they’d all bathed in
Chapter 16 She dropped the daddy bomb . . . Celine was having fun. They’d dug up four more chests of gold today, and flagged ten other spots that indicated metal beneath the surface. Ronnie and Jake would be coming in tomorrow to help with the work. Everyone was in a festive mood and decided to quit work early. John was attempting to teach Grace and Angel how to dirty dance to a Cajun song, although Angel already had some good moves of his own. Grace kept slapping his hands away from inappropriate spots on her body. “Did you hear about the nun and two priests?” Angel asked Grace. Grace put a hand over his mouth for silence. Caleb was cooking freshly caught fish over an open fire while Adam dropped live crawfish into a boiling pot of spiced water. The beer flowed. Just then, John’s satellite phone rang. He looked over at Celine and indicated it was her grandfather. “Celine, they know,” he said right off. “Know what?” “The LeDeuxs know about Etienne.” “No! Oh, please, no!” Everyone in th
Chapter 17 A chip off the ol’ block, for sure . . . Tante Lulu sat quietly, listening to the chatter around the table. James was also quiet, but that was probably because she’d given him a piece of her mind about keeping Etienne from his daddy and judging all the LeDeuxs by that bastard Valcour. Etienne did most of the talking, happy as a pig in a mud puddle. He was a carbon copy of his daddy, just the way Tee-John had been at that age, except for those times Valcour had gone on a rampage. Tee-John wouldn’t describe himself this way, but he was a survivor. All of them were . . . Luc, Remy, and René. Not so much Charmaine, since she was raised by her mother, though living with a stripper hadn’t been much of a life, either. “Why do ya call him Tee-John?” Etienne asked her. “’Cause he was such a little mite, like you,” she answered. “That means Little-John in Cajun French.” Etienne craned his neck to look up at Tee-John, who sat on his right. “Ya ain’t little no more.” “Nope.” Tee-John lo
Chapter 18 They wanted him to testify, and, boy, did he testify! . . . John’s personal life was put on hold the next day with the order to return to town immediately, incognito, and report to the courthouse in Baton Rouge. The trial had been sped up and was about to begin. He wasn’t the only one required to go to all these convoluted lengths in order to testify. There were at least a dozen others, including the police, ATF, and FBI. They would be without disguises once on the stand, but coming to and leaving the courthouse, they were sitting ducks for Mafia snipers. At this point, it was the upper hierarchy that were on trial: the club manager who was considered a “soldier,” a counselor or consiglieri, an accountant, and two sons of the “godfather,” who acted as “lieutenants.” They were being charged with prostitution, narcotics (one kilo of coke found on the premises), gambling (a slot machine in the back), blackmail, extortion, bribery, racketeering, possession of illegal firearms, a
Chapter 19 They could all become pirates . . . or not! . . . After dinner, Celine sat at the table talking with all the adults, while Etienne played a video game on a minuscule black-and-white TV set over in the corner. Everyone was pretending to ignore the glaring tension between her and John. “Exactly how much gold have we recovered so far?” Ronnie asked Adam. “Roughly a thousand gold coins, an equal amount of silver, and a half dozen items of jewelry,” Adam answered. “Mostly Spanish doubloons, but some silver reales, and coins from a few other countries. Dutch, French, Portuguese.” “A cursory search on the Internet,” piped in Celine, who had been able to put her computer geek skills to good use, “estimates the value in the range of two to three million.” “It’ll be even higher if we can establish the provenance to Lafitte through one of those unusual necklaces,” Caleb pointed out. “I have a jewelry expert friend of mine working on that right now,” Adam said. “Celine, some of us have
Chapter 20 Annie Oakley had nothing on Tante Lulu . . . “Do you want the good news or the bad news?” Luc asked him right off when he answered his satellite phone. “Bad news first,” John said. “Celine was at Tante Lulu’s—” “That is bad news.” “No, that’s not the bad news. Celine was there to interview her for some feature she’s gonna do on bayou folk medicine.” “Okaaay.” “The bad news is that two of Lorenzo’s goons showed up at Tante Lulu’s, figuring they might be able to coerce her into telling them where you are.” “Sonofabitch! Is Celine all right?” He began to pace, frustration oozing out of his pores. He hate, hate, hated being isolated out here, unable to help. “Celine and Tante Lulu are fine. The goons aren’t so fine.” He stopped pacing. “Can I assume this is the good news part?” “Yep. Tante Lulu blew the kneecap out of the one guy—” He had to smile. “Finally, that pistol she carries in her purse must have come in handy.” “Yep. She says she was aimin’ for his heart.” Good Lord! “A
Chapter 21 He needed her knees . . . Celine was in big, big trouble, and she was having too much fun to put a halt to the disaster headed her way . . . the disaster being in the form of one great big love bug. Yep, she was falling in love with the worst possible man. No way would a guy like him be satisfied for long with a woman like her, even though he was giving her “the look,” now that Etienne had fallen asleep in the middle of his movie. His head was resting on folded arms on the rug, his little butt up in the air. Her heart constricted as she watched John lay a St. Jude afghan over him with loving care. Oh, God! How could I resist loving a man who loves my son? Or a man who loves his aging aunt so much he actually uses a St. Jude afghan? “You’re good with Etienne,” she remarked from the lounge chair where she was sitting, sipping at a glass of white wine. In a St. Jude glass, of course. “It’s not hard bein’ good with him. He’s a great kid.” He walked over and took the wine from he
Chapter 22 Roommates with benefits? . . . Late afternoon, the following Wednesday, he and Celine interviewed mediators in a conference room at Luc’s office. They each got to eliminate two candidates before being forced to make a mutually agreeable choice. He was gung ho for the first one, a psychologist sex therapist with minimal legal education. Celine was not. When Dr. Epstein left the room, Celine turned on him. “I am not getting counseling from a woman who wears fishnet stockings.” “I didn’t notice.” She laughed. “I liked her tongue piercing, though.” He objected to the next one. A man. Dr. Samuel LeBlanc, Esquire. Yes, he’d actually used the word “esquire.” “I like him,” Celine said. “I don’t. He looked at me funny.” “Funny?” “Yeah, I think he was prejudging me for having abandoned you and Etienne all these years.” “He didn’t say a word.” “He gave me a look.” The third one was gunning for John, as well. Turned out the guy was a geek computer friend of Celine’s from high school, no
Chapter 23 Then the you-know-what hit the fan . . . John had tried repeatedly to contact Celine before she heard about the National Enquirer article from someone else. No response, even to his voice mails that it was urgent that she call him back. He was assuming she’d found out and was pissed. With good reason. But it wasn’t his fault, and he needed to explain that to her. So, he’d headed over to Houma, bringing with him a bike he’d bought for Etienne. It was the cutest thing. A two-wheeler with training wheels, painted black with red flames. He’d seen a bike in the backyard on previous visits, but it was smaller and a bit battered. There was no sign of Celine or her car, but there was a reporter hanging around, hoping to trap either her or him into divulging something tantalizing, though facts weren’t all that important to the tabloids. If they didn’t get the info from the horse’s mouth, they got it from their own horse’s ass selves. He threatened to beat the crap out of the reporter
Chapter 24 And then she stepped into the LeDeux trap . . . Celine was late when she entered the Veterans Club hall that evening, having had to finish up the treasure hunting story and upload today’s photos, which took longer than she’d expected. Etienne, and his friend Pete who’d come along, were like regular jumping beans, so excited to be involved in an actual pirate event. The two would probably get kicked out of the place if they shot the wrong person with rubber bands from their fake flintlock pistols. Gramps had already confiscated them three times while they’d waited for her to get ready. But they looked adorable in their pirate outfits, especially Etienne, who’d been wearing his ever since John brought it over yesterday. Not that she’d been there at the time. Nope, she’d made sure to avoid the louse all week. And she missed him so much it hurt. She was beginning to wonder if she’d been too harsh with him. Cutting off her nose to spite her face. Love hurt, she was finding that o
Chapter 25 Another LeDeux bites the dust . . . One month later, John LeDeux and Celine Arseneaux were married at Our Lady of the Bayou Church in Houma. He wore a tuxedo, the bride wore a flowing white gown that once belonged to Tante Lulu. Luc was the best man, and Charmaine was the maid of honor. Ushers were Remy, René, Jake, Angel, Caleb, and Adam. Bridesmaids in sleek peach sheath dresses were Ronnie, Grace, Rachel, Sylvie, and Val. James Arseneaux gave the bride away. Tante Lulu, tears streaming down her face, gave Tee-John away. Even Tante Lulu looked classy today, her gray hair neatly coifed in a curly cap topped by a red straw hat to match her red silk, calf-length gown. Etienne, in a mini tux, was the ring bearer, and Charmaine’s Mary Lou was the flower girl. Everyone expressed surprise that the wildest of the LeDeux brothers would insist on such a traditional wedding attended by five hundred of Louisiana’s best . . . and not so best. Even the reception was a sedate affair at t
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