Black Opal (6 page)

But, in the deepest part of my heart, I wanted to fix this for Dean. Well, not fix it. But make it bearable. I owed him that much for storming down here clutching that receipt like the star of a romantic comedy.

The row of run-down shacks appeared in front of me, nearly overgrown with wild saplings. The gray, unpainted wood gave them a spooky look. I noticed new padlocks on their doors and bars on the first two buildings.

The other three buildings had simply rotted in the soupy South Louisiana air. The glass in one of the windows had broken, leaving a gaping black hole. I took a step backward from the sight, thinking of the slaves who lived here at one time. I felt them, their sad, lost energy reaching out to me. A hiss of whispers rose up from the ground, and I hurried away.

Cold fingers closed around my arm, and my nerves did a quick jump. I bit back a scream. After all, I’d come looking for Shayne. Of course she found me.

I stubbed out my cigarette, ignoring my swimming head, and faced Shayne. She’d been a pretty girl. Of course, her gray lips and the black holes where her eyes had been chilled me. The sound of whispers filled my head. Nothing intelligible. Just a bunch of talking all at once.

“Who did it, Shayne?” Prior to six months ago, I never talked to any ghost. But after my sensitivities increased, I sometimes understood a word within the whispers if I asked the right question.

Shayne motioned me to follow. She flitted in and out of my vision, moving lightning fast, leading me through a small copse of trees. I picked my way after her, very mindful of the copperheads, timber rattlers, water moccasins, and coral snakes that lived in the area. It was just warm enough for them to stir after hibernating for winter. They couldn’t hurt Shayne, but they might kill me. Especially so far from a hospital.

Shayne waited for me next to the final building, which the recent flood unseated from its foundations and turned into a pile of rubble. She stood where the floor would have been. I heard the sound of a shovel digging into the earth. I looked around the area, expecting to see someone with us, before realizing Shayne was making me hear the shovel. My breath came in shaking gasps as the heebie-jeebies took over, but I forced myself to remain receptive to Shayne. I wanted to get this done.

It only took a second to see what she wanted me to see. The bone of a skull, filthy, winked at me from the fertile earth. I slumped, remembering the sound of a shovel hitting and disturbing soil. Someone buried her. Maybe alive. Wild horror forced its way through me, and a wave of dizziness rocked me on my feet.

“All right, then. Let me call your brother and see what we can do.” I used my cell phone to call Dean, pushing the buttons with shaking fingers. When he picked up, I had to clear my throat to speak. “I’ve found your sister’s remains by the old shacks.”

“How do you know it’s her?”

“She led me to it.”

I hung up on his sharp intake of breath and sat down on one of the piers on which the house had sat. I saw the rest of the body, just visible beneath some shallow dirt. Something silver winked at me from the makeshift grave. Poor Shayne. I tried to piece this burial location together with her walking alongside the road beat up, and my throat tightened. Had she gone out for a walk and gotten attacked by the kind of man who hurts women? Or did someone she knew do this to her?

“Shayne, who did this?” I looked around for my ghostly guide, but she was gone. Maybe this was all she wanted. I knew that was almost as likely as a pig learning to talk. A girl could hope, though.

The shouts and bustle of Dean and the other workmen approaching reached me. As they broke into the clearing, I waved Dean over. The sadness in his eyes hurt me to the depths of my soul.

6

A dark cloud rolled over the sky and a clap of thunder boomed somewhere nearby. A few members of the Saint Namadie Parish Sheriff’s Office jumped and glanced in the direction of the thunder.

“Shit,” Dean yelled. “Gonna rain again, and we’re trying to get my dead sister out of the mud.”

“Mr. Turgeau, the East Baton Rouge Parish Medical Examiner came all the way over here to St. Namadie Parish as a favor to my office. They’re the best in the state, and
we
are doing the best we can.” The gray-haired man I pegged as sheriff spoke in a conciliatory tone. “We want to see what happened to this person, and it may not even be your sister.”

“It is.” Dean’s voice rose even more. “See that silver in the dirt? She had a pin in her hip.”

Ricky went to his brother’s side, grabbed his arm, and dragged him away from the sheriff, whispering in his ear. Dean jerked away and came to stand near me. A muscle in his jaw jumped every few seconds, and a vein throbbed at his temple. I could tell he was close to having a breakdown of some sort and wanted to comfort him, but knew it wouldn’t help. I tensed my muscles in preparation for having to help drag Dean away from the crime scene. Ricky tried touching his younger brother’s shoulder. Dean’s arm flashed out, slapping his hand away. The stocky man came to stand on the other side of me.

“Did you call Colton?” Dean asked across me. “Didn’t you say he’s at the hospital with Mom and Dad?”

“Not yet. They don’t have any way of knowing it’s her,” Ricky said. I pressed my lips together and shrugged. Unless Shayne was playing an elaborate prank, I knew for a fact these were her remains. I opened my mouth to tell Ricky but bit back my words. He might not want to know what I knew. And how Dean would react to me telling him was anybody’s guess. So I said nothing, although remaining quiet made me squirm.

“Call him,” Dean said louder than necessary. A few uniforms from the crime scene glanced our way.

The sheriff walked to our little group, his lips and eyes pinched with tension. “Folks, the ME has asked that all non-law enforcement vacate the premises.” Dean opened his mouth to protest, but the sheriff cut him off. “Being in law enforcement yourself, I know you understand.”

Dean flushed. Knowing him like I did, I figured he’d been ready to use his career as a way to remain on the scene. He needed to get out of here before he really lost it. I took his hand in mine.

“Come on. You can help her more if you’re somewhere else.”

Dean grabbed my hand and squeezed, grinding the bones together. I gritted my teeth at the pain but refused to pull away when he needed me. He leaned close and whispered in my ear so Ricky wouldn’t hear what he had to say. “You’re still going to see if you can figure out who killed her, right?”

Talk about a role reversal. This was the first time Dean ever admitted to needing my help. I hoped I didn’t let him down. “If she’ll help me,” I spoke just above a whisper. “I haven’t seen her since I found the bones. It may be all she wanted.”

Dean took off walking without an answer, pulling me along behind him. Ricky followed us, taking out his phone and placing a call to Colton. He spoke quickly, obviously leaving a voicemail, and jogged to catch up to us. The three of us walked back to the house without talking. Once there, Dean reminded us Julienne wouldn’t want her house dirtied, so we sat in a flower filled brick courtyard on wrought-iron furniture.

“You saw the pin, huh?” Tears rolled down Ricky’s face, and his mouth twisted as he tried not to cry in front of me. I turned my back to him so he wouldn’t feel embarrassed. Behind me, he wept.

“What was the pin from?” I needed to make noise so I could pretend not to hear Ricky crying.

“Our mother had a car wreck when Shayne was a little girl. She had to have a pin in her hip.” Dean spoke to me as though Ricky wasn’t crying. “And, yes, I saw it.”

“I can’t believe it’s her. Not after all these years.” Ricky choked out the words and put his hands over his face. Dean and I squirmed in our chairs. When the other man’s sobs slowed, Dean handed him a white cloth handkerchief. Ricky wiped his face, then stared at the barn.

“I ought to go out there now and beat the truth out of that pathetic runt myself.” Ricky’s body was tense. He jabbed an accusing finger in the direction of the barn. “If we want to know what happened to Shayne, that’s where the answers are.”

I raised my eyebrows at Dean in question. He sighed and shook his head.

“Trey and Shayne dated before she disappeared. They actually broke up a few months before she went missing. Something went on between them, and Shayne was afraid of him.”

“Tell you what that something was, little brother.” Ricky leaned forward, resting his thick forearms on the table. “I was home from college that weekend. Shayne was doing those interviews. Remember that?”

Dean listened intently, his eyes on his brother’s face. I made a mental note to ask him about the interviews later. If Shayne was dealing with a lot of different people, one of them might have hurt her.

“She came driving up in that old junky station wagon Mom gave her, all red-faced and upset. She was shaking so hard she could barely get her things out of the car.” Ricky leaned back in his chair, fury simmering in his eyes. “I asked her what was wrong, and she said she and Trey got into an argument. Wouldn’t tell me over what. But, Dean-o, she had these scratches on her arm, looked like some kinda animal made them.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell anybody?” Dean frowned at his older brother.

“Because…I…went to see him.” Ricky’s shoulders rounded.

“You kicked his ass?” I clarified. He shrugged and would not meet my gaze. So jovial Ricky had a temper.

“The sheriff investigated Trey, but said he was clean.” Dean said to me. “Mom and Dad felt guilty for suspecting him and insisted he stay on.”

I glanced at the barn and considered Trey as the one who killed Shayne. Despite what Dean said about the investigation turning up nothing, I had no trouble seeing him as her murderer. His instability struck me as a lifelong affliction. Their failed romance added in motive. Next time I saw Shayne’s ghost, I’d try to direct her to communicating with me about Trey.

“Shit,” Dean’s yell made me jump. “That’s Lisette’s car pulling up to the house. Who the hell called her?” He glared at Ricky.

“Not me.” Ricky’s wide eyes could have been elaborate acting or the real deal. “Mom may have. You know she still considers her family.”

Julienne’s Jaguar sedan appeared not far behind Lisette’s Mercedes. Upon seeing their mother’s car, both brothers rose. Dean held out a hand to pull me up. I took it not because I needed it but because I liked the gesture and hoped Lisette was watching. The three of us walked toward Julienne’s car, me trailing a little behind and feeling like the worst kind of intruder. I noticed Lisette sat in her car an extra few seconds, applying makeup. I shook my head.

The story Dean told me about his divorce involved infidelity and a lot of hurt feelings. I didn’t understand why Julienne still considered someone who cheated on her son as family, regardless of whether Lisette grew up with the Turgeau children.

Dean and Ricky reached their mother. The older woman cried openly, clutching both her sons and Madeleine to her. Colton put his arms around the weeping family and leaned his head against Julienne’s. I kept my distance, feeling my otherness more than ever. This was not my family.

Lisette, on the other hand, did no such thing. She threw herself into the circle of mourners, slipping under Dean’s arm. He pulled away as if burned and walked toward me.

“Come on,” he said. “No doubt you’ll want to shower before dinner. I’ll get you some towels and show you the bathroom.”

Though Madeleine had already done those things, I followed him silently.

###

Freshly showered, I sat in Madeleine’s pink nightmare of a room while she rifled through her closet to find me a dress for dinner. I had no idea people in the twenty-first century still dressed for dinner.

“I can’t believe your mother is cooking dinner.”

“That’s Mom.” She sat down on an overstuffed fuchsia chair. “Her words were,‘They’ll find what they find, and we’ll deal with it then. For right now, we’ll keep things as normal as possible.’” While speaking Julienne’s words, Madeleine sat ramrod straight and used her mother’s overly proper way of speaking. I bit back a smile. She was a good actress. “Fuck steel magnolias,” she said. “That’s not what a southern belle is. Mom is a true southern belle. She looks as delicate as lace but she’s pure cast iron and bailing wire.”

I liked Madeleine. She wasn’t as intense as Dean, but she had his focus and confidence. If I had more family, I’d want someone like her in it.

“I heard Ricky say you found her.” Her eyes rested on me.

“There are—were, I guess—some shacks past the barn—”

“That’s what’s left of the slave quarters.” She bit her lip. “We like to pretend that period in history didn’t happen…”

“But it did,” I said, wondering if that was why brush and trees had been allowed to grow between the big house and the old slave’s quarters.
Easier to live next to horror if you couldn’t see it.

“Yep.” Madeleine played with a t-shirt, folding it, shaking it out, and refolding it. “Shayne was a skeleton?” She squirmed.

I nodded. “Have you ever heard anybody speculate on who might have hurt her?”

“I wasn’t even born when she disappeared. By the time I was old enough to be aware, no one ever talked about it. One time, Daddy’d been drinking at Christmas and he got into an argument with Mom, saying if they’d never let Shayne drive all over the county interviewing people, nothing would have happened to her.”

Those interviews again.
Now was my chance to find out more. “Interviews?”

“Yeah. Shayne and Colton put together these books about the Cajun culture. I don’t know much about them, but if Colton comes to dinner, he’ll talk your ear off about them.”

That didn’t tell me much, but I’d talk to Colton as soon as I could.

“How is your father?” I wondered if he’d insist on coming home from the hospital to oversee these newest developments.

“Horrible. Mean. Contrary.”

I glanced at Madeleine for elaboration, but she offered none. Instead she stared into the deepening gloom outside her window. When she spoke, her voice had lost its jaunty edge. “Do you think someone killed her back there?”