All Saints' Secrets (Saints Mystery Series Book 2) Read online

  All Saints’ Secrets

  Nicole Loughan

  The following is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover illustration and design by Genevieve LaVO Cosdon, LaVO Marketing and Design

  Book design and production by Little Spot for Stories

  Editing by Erin McNelis, MFA and Kourtney Wojciechowski

  Author Photograph by Rikki Leigh Shepherd, Rikki Leigh Photography

  © 2013 Nicole Loughan

  Saints Mystery Series

  To Murder a Saint

  All Saints’ Secrets

  A Masquerade of Saints

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Beyond all Repair

  The Big Apple

  Cleaning Day

  Back to the Bayou

  Long Drive

  Another Warning

  The Photograph

  A Night in Dixie

  Lisette’s Last Days

  All Hallows’ Eve

  All Saints’ Day

  All Souls’ Day

  The Lady in the Water

  Last Respects

  This prologue summarizes book one of the Saints mystery series: To Murder a Saint.

  Prologue

  I moved to New York with stars in my eyes. It didn’t take long for me to learn that the city was more venomous than a Louisiana Copperhead.

  I had lived in a rural bayou town most of my life, surrounded by snakes and alligators, but I never found myself on the business end of either one until I moved to New York.

  My childhood best friend, Josephine, and I had just settled in a few months ago. Josephine had flashed her bright green eyes and charming smile in the right direction and found herself at a coveted job at a New York magazine that had no business taking on a feisty Cajun like her.

  Just after we had settled in I went out on a first date and came back to find Josephine torn apart, the way I’d seen bloodhounds tear apart rabbits.

  The police couldn’t find any prints at the scene and everything had been locked up tight. The only clue was the scrapings of an alligator tooth. The police were stumped and focused their attention on me or a mysterious alligator which might somehow be able to climb three flights of stairs.

  I went back to the bayou to stay with my kin, which to me was Josephine’s family. Her mom, Abolina, and her father, Clem, had been acting as my parents for many years. While on the bayou I was comforted by friends, gumbo and the occasional visit from Josephine’s hapless but handsome cousin, Beau. The police finally pegged her murder on a tiny pet alligator and called off the manhunt.

  I returned to New York full of spice and spitfire, because I didn’t believe a force of nature like Josephine could be taken down by anything less than a giant monster, human or otherwise.

  I was back in town for one day and found myself in a mess of trouble, the same sort of trouble that led Josephine to an untimely demise. It turned out my blind-date Jason Stepwald didn’t only have eyes for me. They had quickly wandered to Josephine, which meant she had faced the fate that was meant for me.

  Jason didn’t waste any time throwing me in front of a gargantuan bayou-bred alligator. Luckily, that old alligator and I shared a moment of understanding between us, and he left me alone. When Jason came back to make sure I’d been finished off, I let my new friend, who I’d named Granddaddy Alligator, make a snack of his arm. Jason went on the run, but at least part of him had to stay in New York, in the belly of a gator.

  This is how I found myself a frightful mess in New York City, all alone.

  Beyond all Repair

  My eyes were closed, my head was pounding and my body felt numb. I heard cracking sounds near my head which made me afraid to open my eyes. The cracking sounded too close, like it was only a few inches from my face. Perhaps I was paranoid after what had just happened to me: being imprisoned in a basement, trapped on an alligator can do that to a person, but I just couldn’t take another surprise. I kept my eyes closed and hoped that whatever was cracking near me would stop and go away. Then it was interrupted by a beep and I heard, “After a close call Hugh makes it through the last patch before the storm.”

  Huh, I thought and finally opened my eyes. At first everything was too bright. When I focused I noticed a small white speaker in front of me with buttons on it. One of the buttons said mute and another said nurse. The speaker then boomed, “Next week on

  Ice Road Truckers…” I hit the mute button and slowly sat up. I took in the surroundings of the room; it was a hospital room, with a bed and two chairs. The moveable tray meant for food was pushed over to the window. On it was a bouquet of blue and yellow flowers tied together with a ribbon and a card.

  I tried to reach over to the table so that I could read the card, and that is when I realized I was immobilized. My right leg was wrapped in a thick white cast and tethered up to a crane over the bed. Then I remembered that I had passed out in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. I vaguely recalled Banyan, the detective who helped get me away from the alligator, sitting over me while he called my best friend Josephine’s mother, Abolina, to tell her I was going into surgery. My leg was broken and they said something about losing the pulse in it.

  I wondered how long I had been out. From the position of the sun in the sky I assumed it was most of a day. I looked down at my arms, which were covered in hand shaped bruises, and I imagined my neck would look much the same after the beating I took from that psychopath and alligator abuser Jason Stepwald.

  There was nobody in the room, but there were two guest chairs pulled up to the bed and from the re-run of “Ice Road Truckers,” I was sure that Beau or Clem, my best friend Josephine’s dad and cousin, must be around. More likely Beau because Clem did not trust planes or pilots and probably would say something like, “I’m not going to no New York City on no plane.”

  I lay back in the bed and assessed the safety of my surroundings. I felt okay. Actually, even with the leg I felt better than I had in a long time. Maybe I felt better knowing that I had faced Josephine’s killer and I finally knew what had happened to her. I also got to watch him lose his hand to an alligator, which was more therapeutic than it sounds. Perhaps part of my relief was having the knowledge that she was killed by Jason Stepwald and not by any of our friends or our family, as the police had suspected.

  Ring. Ring…

  I looked around for a phone. It rang for at least two minutes before I figured out where it was. The phone was a long white piece of plastic, set flush into the rail of my hospital bed, so I could barely see it.

  I picked up the receiver and, with some trepidation, said, “Hello?”

  “Fanchon!” said Banyan’s ecstatic voice. “I expected to get Beau again. You are up. How are you doing?”

  “I am okay,” I said. “Did you catch Jason?”

  “We haven’t yet, but we are getting close. He can’t get too far with one arm. Is Beau there?” Banyan asked.

  “He’s not here right now. I haven’t seen him yet.”

  “How about Abolina? Is she around?” he asked.

  “I didn’t know Abolina was here. Do you need something?” I asked.

  Banyan replied. “Nothing to worry about. I can call back another time.”

  “Wait, what? No. What’s going on?” I asked.

  He went on to tell me that he had been on the phone all morning with the Louisiana State Police. He said they needed more information.
/>   “More information about Josephine?” I asked.

  “No, we need to talk about what happened the night Lisette was murdered.”

  My heart sank and all of a sudden my good feelings were gone. Nobody had ever called what happened to Lisette a murder. It was always “the accident.”

  I tried to pry more information out of him about what happened to Lisette but he wouldn’t budge. “You just got through with a tough surgery. I shouldn’t even be talking to you about this. I will come up there later tonight. I can talk to everybody when we’re together,” Banyan replied.

  “No, I want to know what you found out. I hurt my leg, not my damned mind,” I shouted. I opened my mouth to start up again when Beau and Abolina walked in. Abolina had two cups of coffee in her hand, and Beau was carrying two Styrofoam cartons. They didn’t realize I was on the phone and Beau loudly said, “I got you what they say counts for jambalaya around here. Near as I can tell it’s just shrimp and rice, but Abolina has a can of Tony’s Seasoning in her purse so we can make it up right.”

  I held out my hand gesturing one second to him. “What time are you coming by, Banyan?”

  “I will be there around seven o’clock, Fanchon. I’ll order pizza.”

  As soon as the phone hit the receiver Abolina was on top of me smothering me with hugs. Her tiny body was heavier than it looked when it was on top of you.

  Beau stood in the corner shaking his head. Abolina told him to get over and give me a hug. He slowly made his way, pretending he didn’t want to do it, when he got to the corner of the bed Abolina stepped back and pushed him to me. He bent down, and let his arm fall over me. He smelled differently than I thought he would. I always thought he would smell of oil, dirt and tobacco. But he didn’t. He smelled like laundry detergent, spice and a little bit of cologne. I inhaled deeply when I noticed that he smelled better than I thought. It made me feel at ease. Then I realized he smelled like Josephine. It must be a smell you get from living with Josephine’s family.

  After the hug, Beau stepped away from the bed over to the moveable tray table and grabbed the flowers off of it. He pushed them to me without turning around and unceremoniously said, “These are for you.”

  “Gee thanks,” I replied.

  He opened his Styrofoam containers, reached into Abolina’s purse and pulled out the Tony’s. He doused the two containers with spice and stirred them all together in the lid of one with a plastic fork. He broke off the top of the other container and divvied up the contents for the three of us. I did not know I was hungry until he slid the tray table my way. He and Abolina ate out of the containers on their laps and gave me the table.

  After we were settled in, Abolina asked, “How you feelin’?”

  “Oh, I am alright,” I said. “But what’s the word on the leg? Did you guys talk to the doctor?” I asked.

  She and Beau looked at each other and something in their manner led me to believe the news was not good.

  “We did talk to the doctors and we told them we is your family. They wouldn’t talk to us otherwise. I did not like lying, but your family wasn’t around and I couldn’t have you alone. Also, I called your mamma, and she said if you want her to come she will.”

  I shook my head. “No, you and Beau is enough family for me. What did the doctor tell you?”

  “Well cher, the thing is…” she trailed off and looked at the ceiling for a moment. “You have what they say is an open fracture, with something about debris from being exposed too long in that basement.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  Beau swallowed his jambalaya and looked away from the now muted Ice Road Truckers to say, “The doctor said that leg is FUBAR.”

  In polite company FUBAR means Flubbed Up Beyond All Repair, in less polite company the F stands for something else.

  “Will I be able to walk on it?” I asked.

  “You gonna walk funny for life,” Beau said taking a bite of rice.

  “Hush now,” Abolina chided. “You are scarin’ her. Lookie, cher, you gonna be just fine. You’re gonna be off your legs a long while, but the doctor said down the road, maybe six months or more you will be able to walk to one degree or another.”

  “Six months!” I screamed.

  “It will be all right. We gonna take care of you. Six months will be by before you know it. You’ll get a long rest and be waited on hand and foot. Clem is already making up Josephine’s old room a little better for you. It’s good for him to keep his mind busy. He said he gonna paint it so you got a nice fresh place to sleep. What color you want him to fix for you? The hardware store only has blue, white and yellow. Which one you want?”

  “I can’t go back to the damn bayou for six months. What the hell am I going to do?” I said, burying my head in my hands.

  “You just had a trauma so you’ll be upset,” she said unfazed by my reaction. “We don’t need to settle all of it just now. We will sort it in time.”

  I kept my head buried in my hands, and Abolina and Beau sat in their visitors’ chairs quietly eating their purse-spiced jambalaya.

  Without taking my head away from my hands I said, “Banyan’s coming by tonight.”

  “Oh good,” said Abolina.

  Then Beau said, “Turn up the volume. I want to know what’s happening on the show.”

  Later that night, after a round of beautiful narcotics courtesy of the hospital nursing staff, I felt light and happy again. Whenever they gave me a fresh batch of those pretty white pills, I suddenly didn’t feel the doom and gloom of an extended stay on the bayou or the fear of a lifetime limp.

  The sun went down, and my hospital room grew dark. The hustle and bustle in the hallway calmed down as visitors filed out for the evening. I was one of the youngest people outside of the maternity ward according to Beau. So, all of my senior neighbors were sleeping. We had the TV in my room tuned in to late night game shows. Abolina and I watched them together while Beau went to the downstairs lobby to wait for the pizza. He had already collected an extra chair for Banyan.

  When Beau came back he had two pizza boxes and Banyan at his side.

  Perhaps it was because I was bed bound, or maybe just because the first time I met Banyan was the night that my best friend was murdered, so my mind was elsewhere, but for the first time I noticed just how tall and handsome he was.

  He navigated the hospital room as if he had been there before. He walked over to the side of the bed closest to the window and hugged me. It was a curt hug.

  “Good to see you,” Banyan said.

  It felt a little sterile considering what we had been through. Not long ago he had pulled me, half-naked, off of an alligator.

  Unsure of how to proceed, I replied in kind. Banyan seemed a little disappointed by this. When he pulled away he lingered for a moment, like he wanted to say something else, but he just smiled and backed away.

  Banyan sat in the single chair at my bedside. Beau gave everybody a slice of pizza on a napkin and took a seat on the other side of my bed next to Abolina.

  After a few bites Banyan said, “I have to talk to you guys about a few things that have come up in the course of my investigation.”

  “Oh,” Abolina said. “About Josephine?”

  “No, I had a discussion with The Louisiana State Police Department about what happened with Lisette. They had a few concerns because they said the murder was never reported to them.”

  “Murder!” said Abolina and Beau in unison.

  Abolina collected herself and said, “Now listen. Josephine’s murder is what you need to be spending your time on. Lisette wasn’t murdered. That’s why there ain’t no murder reported. Lisette died in a boating accident.”

  Banyan took a moment to speak, choosing his words carefully. “We are working on Josephine, I assure you. But when I looked at Lisette’s death there were just too many questions for me to leave it alone. A copy of the accident report was sent to the state police at my request and after looking over the evidence, the state
investigator had some concerns. They aren’t ruling it a murder yet but said the case needs a more thorough review. The local sheriff’s office should have at least done an investigation. But there was nothing, not even the processing of her body by a coroner.”

  “A coroner? Jesus!” Abolina said holding her hand over her heart.

  Beau placed his hand on her leg in an attempt to comfort her and said, “It ain’t no murder.”

  Banyan took a deep breath after Beau said that, which told me he was holding something back. Like he thought it was a murder. Then in a calm voice he said, “I may have spoken too soon, but there are some discrepancies to talk about. The most unpleasant parts I will get out of the way up front.” He sat his pizza on the napkin on his knee and reached into his jacket pocket.

  “I need you to sign this, Abolina, so that we can take a proper look at Lisette’s body.” He handed the paper to me to pass to her. I opened it and noticed the first paragraph stated, “Permission to exhume the body of Lisette Chabert.”

  My heart was heavy as I read the words and passed the paper to Beau. He looked at it with raised eyebrows then passed it to Abolina.

  When she read the words at the top she started to cry. She covered her face so we couldn’t see her tears, but I knew they were there. She took a moment to compose herself then turned to us and said, “I have to talk to Clem about this.”

  “I understand,” Banyan replied. “But, more than that, I need you guys to tell me what you remember from that night.”

  With that he set his pizza on the window ledge behind him and pulled out his little notebook and pen.

  Nobody spoke, so he said, “Fanchon, can you get us started?”

  I went on to tell him what I remembered and as I did, he wrote it all down:

  “I remember that night very well. It was the last day of school. All of the underclassman had gone to Jeff Haveroux’s house to celebrate. Lisette went with her boyfriend, Jimmy. Josephine and I had gone to a different party at Terry Thibodeax’s house. His was the party for all of the seniors. Our whole class of 12 was there. Josephine and I danced, drank and played cards at the party until about midnight and then drove our boat back to Josephine’s house and fell asleep. We were awoken around 3 a.m. when we heard a slamming sound that came from down river. We ran out, with Abolina and Clem and heard Jimmy yelling for help. Clem, Josephine and me got on Clem’s pontoon boat and rushed over. It was pitch-black that night. We would not have been able to see Jimmy if it weren’t for the searchlight still on in his boat. We went to the light and when we got there, we saw Jimmy treading water beside the boat. Lisette was in front of the boat surrounded by weeds and floating face down. Josephine jumped off of our pontoon and swam to Lisette; Clem yelled to Abolina to call the police.