A Masquerade of Saints (Saints Mystery Series Book 3) Read online

  I tiptoed through the kitchen, making sure I did not wake everybody in the house. I walked to the futon and gently shook Beau to wake him up.

  He rolled over and left his eyes closed.

  “I’m going out to meet a cab,” I whispered. “I’m meeting the realtor this morning.”

  He kissed my forehead and said, “I’ll pick you up from the house around lunchtime after my appointment with the sergeant.”

  I set the alarm clock on his phone for 6 a.m., picked up my backpack, and walked down to the side of the road to wait for the cab.

  I slept through most of the long cab ride, and the driver stayed blissfully silent.

  When he reached the dirt road he asked me if I could walk the rest of the way. I agreed, grabbed my bag and walked down the soggy path that led to the house willed to me by Rivet and Paulina. I walked to a shed near the edge of the property. The narrow building was made of dark unprocessed wood and was topped with a rusted tin vent cap. It was a relic from when the building needed to be vented to make moonshine. The shed had long ago been repurposed as a place to store equipment and tools. I stopped there, looking for something to use to pry open my old bedroom window. I searched the wall for a screwdriver and found my trusty old Craftsman flathead. I took it from its spot on the wall and carried it with me to the house. I went to my bedroom window and wedged the screwdriver into the jamb, slid it to the right and watched the latch pop off from the inside. It was a trick I often used when I was a teenager to come and go as I pleased.

  The window opened just like the old days and I crawled in, face first. I felt something soft and silky cross my face. I wondered what it was and moved my face across it trying to place the feeling. I touched it with my hand and realized it was spider webs and screamed. I yanked the silky wisps off of my face and took a moment to calm down again.

  I hadn’t stepped foot in my room in years, and from the feel of the spider webs it seemed they were the only inhabitants to occupy that room in my absence. I couldn’t see anything in the darkened room. I knew where the light was and turned towards it, covering my head with my arms to protect myself from the spiders and webs that were between me and the light. As I made my way through the webs I could feel them stretching across my arms and hoped that nothing had found its way into my hair. When I got to the light switch I flicked it and nothing happened.

  “Damn it,” I said.

  I walked to the hallway, flicked the switch and again, no lights.

  I felt my way to the kitchen and remembered the wood-burning stove in the corner. After I made my way to it, I searched the drawer next to it for matches. There was a full box amongst kindling and newspaper. I opened the front hatch on the stove and made a tent of kindling around the newspaper. Then I threw in my match. Once the wood caught I threw in more little pieces of wood and had enough of a flame to light the room. I tucked the matches into my pocket, I reached for a candle on top of the refrigerator and lit it in the fire.

  I closed the door to the wood burner and used the candle to look around the kitchen. The blood from the crime scene was gone, thankfully. Then I remembered the cleaners came and thought they must have been the ones to lock the door.

  I went over to the door and found it was locked just as my realtor said. I turned the deadbolt, opened the door and walked out onto the front porch. The house and the dock hung over the water, and my feet clicked on the wood, echoing in the space between the water and the wood. I stretched and looked out onto the water. Something felt off. It was too quiet. There was a full moon in the sky just getting ready to touch the tree line. Its reflection was still in the water, and I stared at it trying to place the feeling. It was something about the house. After several minutes on the dock I decided not to stay at the house by myself. I formed a plan to go to Clem and Abolina’s and bring Clem back with me. I could see my fishing boat where I had left it earlier in the week and started for it.

  I held the candle out in front of me to light the way down the dock and then pulled in the boat and threw my bag in. I pulled the cord to start the engine but nothing happened. I sat the candle down on the dock so I could get a grip with both hands. I pulled the cord one, two, three times, but nothing happened. I pushed the primer to flood the engine with gas and tried again, and again the engine refused to crank over.

  I bent over the motor and looked into the tank. It was almost completely empty. I felt a sudden pain in my ribs and I stood up. I saw that I was being poked by a folded piece of paper from my pocket. I unfolded it and saw that it was the flyer for the quartet. I examined it again and saw something that made my heart skip a beat. In the upper right hand corner the flyer said, “Please join us for these special engagements featuring Maestro Keuper, visiting from the German School of Creative Arts.” When I heard the guys from the quartet say his name I thought it would be spelled with a C, like Cooper. I had seen that before and lunged forward to grab my bag. I pulled out the calendar I had found at Curly’s house, the one that I thought was misspelled with the inscription of “Kalendar.” I flipped through the pages matching appointments like Tulane South Lawn with a concert on the Tulane South Lawn from the flyer. Each of the concerts on the flyer corresponded with writing in the calendar. The calendar in my hands was not Curly’s but belonged to the Maestro, who accompanied the quartet at the Baxter’s party. He was the one who had been in Curly’s garage.

  One of the appointments in the book, dated one day prior to me finding the book said, “9:00 a.m. Marlene Baxter.”

  I imaged that appointment was the one where Marlene told the Maestro to steal the poison from the garage. And it overlapped with the psychic Madame Du’Ponde telling me to wash my hands at dinner. I finally understood that before I ever met Marlene she planned to poison her children and frame me for it. But I still didn’t know why. I grabbed my phone, planning to call Detective Banyan. But I hesitated and let my finger hover over the number. I was thinking about what Jason said. “You never asked me who I called that night.”

  My mind ran through who knew where I lived in New York: Beau, Clem, Abolina, Jori, J.B., a handful of people from the bayou, and maybe Banyan. He was a police officer and he could have gotten that information. I started to question all that Banyan had ever done. He kept coming to the bayou for these cases. He stayed long after they were resolved. I thought he did it because he liked me, but he never saw me when he came to town. I wondered if he was taking time off from his job in New York and why he would do that for somebody he barely spoke to.

  I heard what sounded like an engine in the distance. My home was secluded, and I only heard a car travel down that road once or twice a month when I lived there. It was still dark, and I wasn’t planning to see the realtor for nearly two more hours.

  I’m in a trap, I thought.

  I ran the length of the dock, past the house and through the lawn. I headed for the shed. I slammed open the door, re-lit the candle and started a frantic search for fuel. I threw off the caps of the weed whacker and lawn mower; both were empty.

  I held the candle to every wall and found nothing of use. I searched my mind for where to find some gas, stopped for a moment and thought; I need to call the police.

  I pulled out Lt. Portvliet’s number and dialed. She yawned into the phone and said, “What?”

  “Lieutenant, this is Fanchon. I think somebody is going to try to kill me. I am at Rivet and Paulina’s house on the bayou. The electricity is out. I need you to come get me. Hurry, please.”

  “Stay where you are. When the police get there put your hands in the air, and they won’t shoot you.”

  “What? Why would they shoot me?” I heard a shot in the distance and ran to the side wall to look through the cracks.

  “Was that a gunshot?” she asked.

  “Yes. I think it’s Detective Banyan.”

  “It’s not Banyan,” she said.

  “How do you know…” I started and then stopped when I heard his voice in the background of our call.

 
“Who is it?” he said.

  My face went red, and I hung up the phone, holding down the “end call” button with all the anger I could manage.

  I fumed for a moment, wondering what he was doing at her house, and then gathered my senses and hit the speed dial for Clem and Abolina. I punched the button and let the phone ring while I searched the rest of the shed. I crouched low to the ground to look around, when a second shot rang through the air, closer this time.

  I continued to wait for an answer while my search around the shed became more frantic. I held out the candle using the small flicker of light to try to make out shapes, but I could find nothing of use. I finally decided my search was pointless and peeked out of a crack to see if the person shooting was on the property yet. There was nobody in sight. I pushed open the door, which let out a high-pitched creak, cutting through the quiet of the night and giving away my position. I stood quietly looking for movement, and the phone chimed loudly and delivered a message from the operator to hang up and try again. It startled me so much I dropped it on the ground and ran for the tree line as fast as my feet would carry me.

  I stopped in the trees to catch my breath, letting the coverage disguise my location. I was preparing to run out into the open to the front door of the house and wanted to be sure I was still in the clear. After eying the property one last time, I took a deep breath and darted quickly to the porch and then through the door. As soon as I was in the house I opened the door to the stove for light. I searched the kitchen drawers for any type of weapon, flinging each of them open and leaving them that way as I searched. Only one drawer had anything of use, a flashlight. I clicked it on, blew out my candle and quickly searched the rest of the room. After yielding nothing of use I went back to the living room. I noticed that Paulina’s pile of newspapers was gone. The cable spool that was used as a coffee table held two pieces of paper set neatly in the center.

  I pointed the flashlight at the papers, walked closer and saw that one was a registered mail slip addressed to Jason Stepwald, Queens N.Y. from a New Orleans based post office, dated two weeks before he killed Josephine. The other piece of paper was a receipt for a box truck registered to the Animal Sanctuary that was paid for in cash. It was dated one week before Jason and that rapist Terry Thibodeax kidnapped me.

  I felt a knot in my chest. Those papers in my parent’s house made it look like I had paid Jason to kill Josephine. The truck receipt, paid for in cash, made it look like I bought the truck that Jason and Terry used to kidnap me. I thought with the right amount of people to speak out against me and these documents the police could believe that I killed my best friend for her money, that I was trying to help her killer get away, and that I had just killed my brother.

  The person who planted those receipts in my house was close to me. It wasn’t the Maestro. It had to be the person who Jason called to get my address in New York, the same person who didn’t want Jason to meet Josephine. They had to know where I lived, and they had to be the person who purchased the truck that Terry Thibodeax used when he kidnapped me. I knew of only one person who fit the bill. Finally, I knew who had betrayed me and more importantly I knew he was no match for me.

  I heard one more shot, close to the house this time, near the corner by my room. I clicked off the flashlight and ran back through the webs. I stood close to the window and looked out to see how close he was.

  I heard a quiet voice say, “I just heard gunshots and a woman scream over at the Deveroux property. I’m heading over there to see if she needs help.”

  The voice confirmed my suspicion.

  No woman will be screaming from this property tonight, I thought. Not this time.

  I jumped up and ran to my parent’s room, a place I had not been in ten years. I had no idea what was in there, but if my memory served me correctly there was a paddle in that room, it was printed with the title “The Attitude Adjuster.” I felt the edge of the wooden bed frame and ran my hand along it until I got to the head of the bed, next to a nightstand. I reached in and ran my hand along the wood. I felt papers and reading glasses and nothing more. When I sat on the bed and rolled to the other side, something crunched under my back, and I was glad I could not see what it was. I feared it was dried bug corpses. I got to the other nightstand, opened the drawer, and came up completely empty. I heard steps outside the window of the room and stood still. After a moment the steps resumed and started quickly for the door by the kitchen. I didn’t want to be trapped in the back room and ran, as quietly as I could for the door. When I pulled it open I heard something thump on the back of the door. I reached up to see what made the noise and felt “The Attitude Adjuster.”

  I held it tightly in my hand and walked softly to the living room. I stayed behind the living room wall, adjacent to the kitchen. He would be forced to walk within inches of me to get past the kitchen table, and that’s where I would get him.

  The door scraped the floor as it opened, sounding like an animal scratching to get in. The air changed in the same moment and wind hit the house, causing the wood to creak. The air traveling through the cracks in the wall sounded like moans. Soft footsteps padded to the stove and closed the door of the burner. Then the steps turned and started towards the living room. I drew back my paddle, and as soon as he rounded the corner he said, “Fanchon.” And I hit him smack in the center of his face.

  “Hey, Jimmy,” I said. He fell to the ground, his nose gushing blood. He threw his hand over it to stop the bleeding.

  I stood over him and said, “What’s the plan, Jimmy? Are you supposed to frame me, kill me?”

  “I want to help you get away, Fanchon. This is not how things were supposed to go. Marlene said you were supposed to get arrested for a minor crime. I thought she meant theft or something. She said you would go to jail, donate a kidney to her and serve a little time. Nobody was going to get hurt. But now she says you know too much. She has a kidney, and she doesn’t need you. She wants you dead, but I won’t let that happen. We can fake your death. I already fired shots outside so people could hear them. All we got to do is give you a little cut on the hand to put a few drops of blood on the dock and then I tell everybody you went down river. Let’s do it now. I will tell the police I shot you and you fell into the water.”

  I didn’t answer. “Honest, Fanchon. You can take my car. It’s hidden under the willow tree at the fork in the road.”

  He slid his keys across the floor to me. “Nobody knows I have this car.”

  “How did you get involved in this, Jimmy?”

  “When Lisette sold your picture and your name to the man in the tweed suit back in high school, he told us if we ever had more information about you we should call him and he would pay for it. He gave us a phone number to call. I held onto that number for a long time. When the new semester started I needed money for class, and you were at home with Clem and Abolina. I didn’t think it would hurt to try the number and let them know where you were. I met with that Baxter lady, and she just asked me a bunch of questions about you, and she paid for my schoolin’. That’s all.”

  “Did you tell her I visited the psychic, so she could frame me?”

  He pulled his hand away from his nose and examined his hand. It was covered in blood, and his nose was still gushing.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose and in a nasal voice said, “I did Fanchon and I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t believe you are here to help me Jimmy,” I said holding back the paddle to take another swing at him.

  He flinched, “Why?”

  “Because from the looks of that mailing slip in the living room and the receipt for the box truck used to kidnap me, I think you are trying to frame me, not save me.”

  He took his hand off his nose and sat up. He looked at me pleading, “I just had to give the police a reason why I would kill you. It wouldn’t make no sense if I just wandered out to your parents house and murdered you in the middle of the night. Then it could get back to Marlene, and she would kill me. Marlene sai
d with all that evidence here and you having a gun and all, they would think you murdered Josephine and it would be easier for them to believe you killed your brother, too.”

  “She gave you half a plan, Jimmy. I don’t own a gun.”

  He pointed behind him to the gun that he dropped when I hit him in the face, “This here weapon is registered to Clem. He sold it to me back when he needed money, and I never registered it, so I figure it will be easy for the police to think it’s yours. I already have my story worked out. I came out here cause I heard screamin’ and you and I got into a fight cause you didn’t want nobody to know you was here. You pulled a gun on me and chased me down to the dock. I’m gonna say I wrestled the gun away from you, shot you and then you went down the river.”

  “So what, I’m supposed to go on the run for the rest of my life.”

  He plugged his nose again. “I don’t know, Fanchon. It’s better than dead. I don’t want nobody dying.”

  “There are two problems with your story. First, you knew Marlene was willing to kill me. Jason Stepwald told me somebody from the bayou gave him my address a year ago when he was hired to murder me, and I can tell from all that that it was you. Secondly, I was on the phone with the police when you fired those shots, so they know I wasn’t the one shooting the gun.”

  He sobbed and planted his face in his palms, his body shaking. I lowered my paddle and watched him. He looked pathetic. I thought he was going to fall backwards, when instead his hand jutted out forward and wrapped around my ankle. He smiled and said, “I didn’t know that.”

  He tried to pull my leg out from under me, but I saw it coming and shifted my weight to the other leg. When he pulled me I kicked him hard in the chest, knocking him backwards. He landed on the ground with a thud. I didn’t wait to see his recovery and instead ran for the back of the house.

  I heard him jump up and his heavy footsteps gaining ground on me. I darted into the bathroom door just in time; his fingers grazed my arm as I slammed the door on him. I pushed with all of my weight to close the door behind me, but he threw his hand in between it and the jamb.