Sandra Hill - [Jinx 03] (14 page)

All this thinking was giving her a headache. Rising from the chair, her bones creaking like an old rocker, she went to rummage through her big purse. Placing it on the folding table, she began to pull things out. An extra bottle of Tabasco sauce she carried everywhere; everyone knew “Cajun lightning” was needed on just about any dish. Five boxes of Snazzy Lady hair dyes: Witchy Black, Nutty Brown, Hot Mama Red, Blonde Bomb, and Pink Fizz. Three tubes of lipstick. Her favorite romance novel:
The Red-Hot Cajun
; she’d read it five times. Two boxes of condoms, in the event someone had an emergency case of the hornies; she shook one of the boxes, which, oddly, seemed to be empty; she tossed it into the trash. A prescription bottle of Viagra; she had no idea where that came from . . . well, yes, she did . . . whoo-boy! A little mini-vibrator shaped like a butterfly that Charmaine had given her as a joke on her ninetieth birthday. Some joke! She hadn’t yet been able to figure it out. A flashlight, matches, tissues, antacid, wallet, Bible, pistol, rosary beads, a stack of St. Jude prayer cards, house keys, and five pens later, she found her pill box that usually held aspirin. But it was empty. She recalled belatedly that she’d used them all after seeing those newspaper articles about the Hot Cop, and forgot to buy refills.

“Horsefeathers!” she muttered, went to find the first aid kit, and dug around. They had enough stuff to do brain surgery, but no painkillers.

Glancing around the tent, she spotted Celine’s purse. She hesitated for only a second at what would be an invasion of privacy. This was a crisis. Sort of.

Celine’s purse was all neat and organized. Son of a mud bug, she hated organized people. It was a wonder Celine didn’t have one of those accordion-pleated, filing case kind of bags.

She took the items out one at a time and laid them on the table. There were tissues, keys, a small notebook, and pen in one side flap, and in the other, birth control pills, a wallet, a clear pouch with liquid makeup, mascara, and lipstick, a fold-up brush, an emery board, a wallet, and . . . ta da . . . a little plastic travel case of Tylenol. She popped two in her mouth, downing them with a swig of sweet tea. Then she began to return the items where they had been.

The last thing to go back was the wallet. She stared at it for a long moment. There was a lot you could learn about someone if you checked out the contents of their wallet, just like she’d learned that Celine was that anal retentive thingee by looking in her purse.

It really would be nosy
, one part of her brain said . . . the St. Jude side, no doubt.

But the other side said,
Nosy ain’t all bad.

Back and forth, she argued with herself, then snorted with disgust and dropped the darn thing on the ground, causing it to snap open. “Oops, I guess I better pick it up.”

Celine had about fifty dollars and change, a driver’s license that said she was twenty-six and lived on Crawfish Lane in Houma, two credit cards, a blood donor card, and pictures in clear plastic, which she flipped through quick-like. There were only six of them.

She frowned. Not even one photograph of Dillon, the fiancé. How strange! There was one picture of her grandfather, James Arseneaux, and the rest of a little boy.

She glanced closer. And almost had a heart attack, her blood was pumping so fast.

It was Tee-John. As a baby being held by a younger Celine, then maybe two years old, then three at a birthday party with three candles on a pirate-themed cake, then finally studio portraits in two different poses at about four years old.

What would Celine be doing with baby photos of Tee-John?

Her mind moved sluggishly as she pondered the puzzle. Celine hadn’t moved to Houma ’til she was in high school; so, she wouldn’t have even been around then.

Slowly, her mind came to the only conclusion it could. This must be Celine’s son Etienne. But why did he look like—

She gasped and put a hand over her heart.

Surely . . . oh, please, God, no . . . this little chile cain’t be Tee-John’s son.
She studied all the pictures closer, especially the last ones. The little boy had the same hair as Tee-John, same devilish eyes, and same smile showing two missing front teeth. It could have been a copy of Tee-John’s kindergarten picture.

It must be a coincidence.

Then she checked the date stamp on the back of the birthday pictures. Frowning, she realized that Celine’s boy must be five, not four as she’d told them. But why would she lie? Or was it a lie?

She would take one of the more recent photos back home with her and compare it to those in her picture album. Then, she would do a little research with some friends who knew stuff about public records.

If it was Tee-John’s son, did he know about it? If he did, Tante Lulu was going to be very disappointed in the boy. Even more disappointed than the time he got arrested for leading a no-underwear day at Our Lady of the Bayou School when he was eleven. Or the time he got caught at a rainbow party when he was fifteen; Charmaine had had to explain to her what a rainbow party was.

Tante Lulu did some mental calculations in her head. If Etienne was five, Tee-John must have been a senior at Tulane, about to graduate. And Celine . . . well, she would have been two years behind him. So, that was when the mite had been hatched,
if
it was Tee-John’s son.

Could he possibly have a son and not acknowledge him?

No, that was impossible. He might be Valcour LeDeux’s son, but he wasn’t bad. He would never ignore a child of his blood.

The other possibility was even more horrendous. Could Celine have had Tee-John’s baby and never told him? If so, why?

Some of Celine’s behavior began to make sense. The way she bristled every time Tee-John approached. The way she avoided talking about her family. Her whole secretive nature.

Oh, my heavens, I have to lie down.
Her headache was pounding like a swamp woodpecker. She replaced the wallet, turned off the camp stove, then went over to Tee-John’s tent, where she crawled in and made herself a pallet with a rolled-up sleeping bag for a pillow.

Only then did she pull the photo out again.

“Etienne LeDeux,” she murmured. Then louder, “Etienne LeDeux.”

She smiled.

It had a nice sound.

Chapter
13

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 her fiery red hair. “I am tired of you always making jokes about my being a nun. There’s nothing wrong with a religious calling.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Angel held his hands up in surrender, laughing. “Pull in your prickles, Miz Thorny.”

“You are such a child.”

“And don’t you just love it?” He tugged on one of her red curls playfully.

“You wish!” She slapped his hand away.

The two of them had got knocked out early in the World Poker Tournament in AC, where Jake was still in the game. The talent was intense, Jake had told her when he called this morning. That must account for the snippy moods these two were in. She and Jake had both planned a getaway to a boardwalk hotel, but her grandfather had been unable to babysit at the last minute.

“Listen, Mr. Studmuffin. You’ve got your tail in a knot just because the redneck from Alabama kept making fun of your earring, and then beat the stuffing out of you in the last round. Don’t take it out on me. Good thing you got rid of that long hair, though, or Leroy would have really been on your case. Either that, or he might have asked you for a date.” Grace grinned as she ragged on Angel.

Until recently, Angel had worn his long black hair in a ponytail and his body in leather . . . lots of leather. For some reason, he’d gone conservative lately . . . well, conservative for Angel. Today he wore a muscle shirt that showed off a barbed wire tattoo, boot-cut jeans, and motorcycle boots. And his hair was short . . . almost military short.

“Sweet cheeks, my tail is just fine,” Angel drawled. “Your problem is frustration, pure and simple. Celibacy will do that. Nothing a little hot sex won’t remedy. When was the last time you got laid, by the way . . . pre–Vatican One, or, could it be . . . never?”

“And you’d like to be the one to remedy that situation? Too little, too late.”

“No one has ever called me little.” He paused and grinned. “Did you hear about the nun who went to her first confession and told the priest she had a terrible secret . . . she never wore panties under her habit. Well, that priest was no dummy. He told her to say five Hail Marys and do five cartwheels on the way out of church.”

“Very funny,” Grace said, not laughing.

“What I was wondering, sweetheart, was . . . ” Angel paused for drama, “Do you wear panties?”

“Grow up!”

“Ahem! Back to the reason for your visit,” Veronica interrupted. “I don’t understand why you want to join Jinx. What about poker?”

Angel shrugged. “It’s lost its zing for me.”

“Me, too,” Grace said. “We’ve both won more than we’ve lost. Money is no longer an issue.”

“Plus there are all these young Turks with calculator minds, figuring all the angles. What’s the fun in that?”

“Okay, but why treasure hunting?” Veronica asked.

“I’m a born gambler and adventurer. Searching for treasure has to be as risky as gambling. And one of the last bastions for adventure,” Angel explained.

“And maybe I might find a hunk to un-bore me.” Grace waggled her eyebrows.

“Hey, I’m a hunk.”

Veronica was puzzled by their behavior. “Are you two a couple?”

“No!” they both said.

“But you’re applying for a job here as a package deal?”

“Yep,” Angel said.

“We’re friends,” Grace added.

“With benefits?” Angel asked Grace with mock hopefulness.

“You wish!”

“Do you have any experience?” Veronica asked.

“I did some diving in the Navy,” Angel told her.

“I mountain climb as a hobby.” Grace stood and began looking at the framed photographs on the wall. Mostly they were pictures and newspaper clippings of her grandfather on some of his more famous expeditions.

Angel confessed, “Actually, Jake recommended that we come talk to you. He made it sound really exciting and implied it was learn-as-you-go type work.”

“And this subject came up in what context?”

“We were talking about how poker was no longer a challenge, and—”

“Jake, too?” Veronica was a little surprised and a lot hopeful. She’d wanted Jake to quit for a long time.

“Well, yeah, I mean . . . ” Angel was embarrassed at having let slip something that he hadn’t known was a secret.

“What do you do for an encore, big mouth?” Grace inquired sweetly of Angel.

Veronica was going to kill Jake when he got home . . . after she kissed him about thirty-seven times. “Here’s the deal, guys. I have a small team down in Louisiana now, looking for pirate treasure.”

“Oooh, I love pirates,” Grace cooed.

“Correction. She loves Johnny Depp,” Angel explained to Veronica.

“Same thing,” Grace contended.

“It sounds more glamorous than it is. We’re talking swamps, digging, heat, bugs, and snakes. If you’re still interested, one of my team members dropped out, Brenda Caslow, and I could send you down there as sort of apprentices. Or you could wait ’til the next project. I have several on the calendar. A lost show cat. A collection of Victorian erotic pictures. An Incan treasure. A sunken Viking ship. A vial of bull semen. One of Cleopatra’s wigs.”

With each item she mentioned, their jaws dropped further.

“Bull semen?” Angel choked out.

“Erotic pictures?” Grace’s green eyes shone with un-nun-like interest.

“So, are you in?” Veronica asked.

“Like Flynn.” Angel smiled at her.

She called Adam then; he was the manager on the Pirate Project. The satellite phone on the other end rang seven times before Adam picked up. “Famosa here.”

“Hi, Adam. How’s the project going?”

He strung out about seven foul words. “Nothing so far. Peachey and LeDeux are diving now with a metal detector and camera. We did eight dives yesterday and four so far today. No friggin’ treasure in sight.”

“Are you saying we should scrap the project?”

He exhaled with a whoosh. “No. It’s just been a bad day. Mud. Bugs. Snakes. Gators. Tante Lulu.”

“What’s the old lady done now?”

“Everything.” He paused. “She wants to make me a hope chest.”

“Uh-oh. Matchmakers R Us. I thought she was concentrating on John.”

“That’s another thing. While we were gone overnight, LeDeux and that newspaper reporter had wild monkey sex. Lots of it, by the looks of them.”

“Does it affect his work?”

“Well, no, but—”

“A little jealous, are you, Adam?”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what the Cajun Casanova does. We’re going to continue with the dives for the rest of today, but if we don’t hit pay dirt or anything even close, we’re moving our search onto land tomorrow.”

“Don’t be discouraged, Adam. Treasure hunts rarely produce results the first day or two. Remember that Panama hunt; it took us a month to find the lost documents.”

“When are you coming back?”

“I don’t know. Jake’s still alive in the tournament.”

“That’s good.”

“Listen, the reason I called is to ask whether you could use two more hands on the project.”

“Can they shovel?”

Veronica looked at Angel and Grace, who were both studying the photographs now and carrying on a low conversation. “Yes, I think they know one end of a shovel from another.”

“Is Grace the hot nun?”

“The hot ex-nun.”

“Hubba-hubba!”

Adam had been hanging around with Tante Lulu for too long. Veronica hadn’t heard that expression in ages, probably from her grandfather the last time he saw his girlfriend Flossie in stilettos and fishnet stockings.

An hour later, after the two of them filled out a number of work papers and she gave them the directions to Tante Lulu’s cottage, where they would be picked up tomorrow, they headed toward the door.

And Angel needled Grace some more. “Did you hear about the two nuns cycling down a cobbled street?”

“No, and I don’t want to.”

He continued anyway, “The first nun says she’s never come this way before, and the second nun says it must be the cobbles. C’mon, Gracie, lighten up. You have to admit that one was funny.”

“I am no longer a nun. Get that? Nun jokes don’t work on a non-nun, idiot.”

“Wanna take a ride on my Harley, honey? Over some cobbled streets?”

“Aaarrgh!”

“Good luck, guys,” Veronica said, then muttered to herself. “Tante Lulu is going to be in matchmaker’s heaven when she gets a gander at these two.”

“That’s it for this section. Ready to give it up?” John inquired inside his mouthpiece, which was wired to Caleb’s ear mike. They were swimming underwater, beside each other, after another unsuccessful dive . . . the fourth of the morning.

“Roger,” Caleb replied. “Time for a lunch break anyhow.”

“Go ahead without me. I’m going to swim a bit. Here, take the camera with you.”

“Is it safe . . . to swim alone?”

“Please, this is the bayou . . . my home. Besides, I have a speargun on me.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Oh, Caleb . . . ”

“Yeah?”

“Watch out for snakes.”

Caleb gave him the finger, then swam to the surface, John’s laughter rippling in his ears.

John swam away from the area where Caleb was splashing out. He had plenty of air left in his tank for a leisurely crawl near the bottom. This was the first opportunity he’d had to be really alone for days, the first chance to think about recent events and what to do about them, not the least of which was Celine-I-am-so-screwed!-Arseneaux.

His head lamp illuminated the tea-colored water, but only a few yards at a time.

Like his life, really.

He knew the direction he wanted to travel in his life, but that was about it. The final destination was up in question, the specifics all short-term . . . as far as his head lamp, or short-circuited brain, could reach.

He liked law enforcement and was good at it. He would have preferred the FBI, but the prospect of living in a city all the time put him off, big-time, especially DC. And he was too southern to park his carcass in Yankee land for any length of time.

As for his personal life, he’d thought he was cool. Enjoy the single life for a few more years . . . or a dozen. Then settle down finally . . . maybe . . . with a babe hot enough to keep him from straying. Pamela Anderson with a brain. Yeah, he laughed to himself, pure clueless male delusion fantasy.

And now . . .
and now
, there was Celine.

She meant nothing to him.

And she meant everything to him. When did that happen?

How could he have made love with Celine Arseneaux?

How could he have resisted?

His life was becoming one colossal SNAFU . . . situation normal, all fucked up. Everyone thought he was a screwup, but he’d done a good job the last few years, at least on the outside, of living a pretty normal life.

Making love with Celine Arseneaux was not normal; it was insane. A FUBAR factor of about a thousand percent. A disaster in the making. But, man oh man, it had been the best sex he had ever had. And that was remarkable.

Which made it all the harder to keep his resolution not to go looking for a repeat.

A dark cloud passed overhead, almost like a celestial warning, but he soon realized it was just a raft of duckweed passing by. Yep, he was going off the deep end when he started getting celestial messages in duckweed. But he figured it was time to hightail it out of Dodge before he became gator lunch. Next the duckweed shadow might really be a gator.

When he was up on dry ground again, he saw that everyone had gone back to the headquarters site to eat lunch. He tugged off his diving suit and equipment, thought about hanging out here, but then realized he hadn’t eaten any breakfast after Tante Lulu’s cane syrup remark.

Cane syrup.
That brought an involuntary smile of remembrance to his lips. One of the biggest surprises about making love with Celine . . . and there had been hot damn more than a few . . . had been how uninhibited and inventive she had been once she’d passed over that line between “Should I?” and “Oh, baby!”

It was going to be hard not making love with her again.
Hard
being the operative word.

He had just shrugged out of his wet suit when all his best intentions went to hell. Celine had come back.

They were alone.

He already knew what turned her on.

She already knew what turned him on.

They could take care of business and still return for lunch.

He gave her his best “come hither” smile.

She snorted her opinion of his smile. “Get real! I came back to tell you about your aunt.”

Okay, so Celine hadn’t returned for a nooner . . . dammit!

“Something strange is going on with your aunt.”

“Something strange is always going on with my aunt.”

“This is different. First of all, she was lying down when we got back. Your brother went up to her right away, but she said she was just resting.”

John was concerned. His aunt never rested during the day. He was about to pull on his jeans and rush back to see what was up, but Celine put a hand on his arm.

Big mistake, that.

His dick interpreted her touch in a way Celine surely hadn’t intended.