Blood in the Lake Read online

  “Must’ve been frightening to be so close to all that.”

  “Actually, in the beginning we didn’t know enough to be scared. It was hours before we even realized anything was going on.”

  “What time of day did it all start?” Tom asked, drawing out my dad.

  “Before dawn. We woke up to the sound of sirens and a policeman knockin’ on the door. He told us there was a problem with the salt mine, evacuation in progress. At first we didn’t have to leave; that came later. We just got dressed and went over to PawPaw and Mama B’s to tell ‘em about it.”

  “I guess you could look out across the lake from there and see the whole scene.”

  “Nothin’ to see. Looked like usual. Some barges and a couple fishermen in pirogues on the water. Things looked peaceful enough, maybe a little more movement than usual, but not much. Suddenly, the oil derrick just disappeared. Slu-urp! A fifty-foot high structure vanished straight down into water only 15 feet deep.”

  “Wow!”

  “Then we saw current, the water in a whirlpool on the far side of the lake. One after another, eleven barges disappeared. Then the water level began to drop. A fisherman’s pirogue sat high and dry—well, not really dry, marooned in sticky mud. Astounding, really. One fisherman, Aristide Romero, we called him Teedy, had his fifteen minutes of fame. Someone on shore caught the scene on a camcorder, Teedy climbing out of his pirogue onto the yucky lake bottom, one hand on his straw hat, ‘deer in the headlights’ look on his face. He was interviewed later and the clip played on the national news for three whole days. Wait.” Dad turned to my Mom. “Mimi, you do the Cajun accent better than I do.”

  “No, Emile, you got it goin’ now,” my mom said, loving that my Dad had another chance to tell the story.

  “OK. Wide-eyed, open face, Teedy said to the Channel 10 reporter, ‘I taut it gonna be da en’ of the whirl.’”

  Tom loved it, too. “But then the water came back?”

  “And how! With a vengeance. First there was just a trickle. Once we learned that all the miners were safe, we were calm about the whole thing, stunned but not panicked at all. We had no idea people on shore would have any problem. That changed. Water in the Delcambre Canal, which usually flows south to the Gulf, began movin’ in the opposite direction, pourin’ saltwater into the lake. I’ve seen pictures of the huge waterfall it created, but by then we weren’t hangin’ around to see for ourselves. The sirens had started up again. Another policeman came to the door, and we took his advice to move across the road to the farm. We missed seein’ one of the famous sights, the eleven barges that had gone down the hole poppin’ back up to the surface—pop, pop, pop—and we didn’t see the last shot of Teedy climbin’ back into the pirogue, then just sittin’ there in his straw hat, dazed, waitin’ for lift-off. When there was enough water in the lake, he bowed his back and paddled like hell for the shore.”

  My Dad gave us a demonstration.

  “But then came the real catastrophe, the onshore destruction that followed. Our area was OK, but down farther, not so fine. The water rushin’ in scoured out the bank. Three-hundred-year-old oak trees, a garden of fancy plants collected from all over the world, a bunch of houses, all toppled over and disappeared into the maelstrom, as they called it. Three days later, when everythin’ had settled down, sixty-five acres of land had washed away. Parts of the gardens and plant nursery have been restored, but the entire shape of the lake is changed. The water that was six feet deep before the catastrophe is now way over a hundred. You can still see the brick chimney of one of the houses sticking whop-a-jawed out of the water, kind of pointin’ to where the vortex had taken place.”

  Dad’s face cracked open in a smile. “Better fishin’ now, though. We got saltwater fish to catch.”

  My mom added her latest concern. “I heard the other day there’s some kind of bubbling or foaming going on out there now.”

  “And no explanation of what it is,” Dad said. “That’s the problem. When you deal with the forces of Mother Nature, you just can’t be sure of anything.”

  Tom asked what happened to the salt mining business and the oil drilling.

  “No more and never will be, if I can help it,” my dad said. “The salt mine never reopened, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t always tryin’ to use the underground cavities to store stuff. Natural gas, I hear. Texaco shut down its operation and didn’t drill again, but oil and gas companies are forever schemin’. Oil is found next to all the salt domes around here, you know. We’re snake-bit. We stay busy fightin’ every attempt to use the area in any commercial or government scheme whatsoever. Even though people keep tellin’ us this or that can be done safely, we don’t want to take the chance. I’m against anyone who wants to do anythin’. I think that chimney on the sunken house is pointing a scoldin’ finger toward the site of the whirlpool and sayin’, ‘World, keep your cotton-pickin’ hands off our lake.’”

  I was glad Tom got to hear what makes my family so paranoid about ‘development.’

  After lunch, Aunt Tut and I helped Mom clean up the kitchen. Tut’s boys and Taddy went out into the yard to throw a football back and forth. Tom joined them, and I watched him carefully place the ball in Taddy’s hands, fingers on the lacings. Hmmm. I liked that.

  When the others left, Mom, Dad, Tom and I settled back down on the porch. Tom took a chair where he could look out over the lake.

  “You have a lovely spot here, Mr. Aguillard. The lakefront is so peaceful.”

  “Yes, we’re here thanks to my wife’s family. PawPaw arranged for us to have this strip right next to his house.”

  “And the big house up there to the right? Jefferson House, you call it?”

  “That’s the real prize. Joseph Jefferson, the famous actor who played the part of Rip Van Winkle in a traveling theater company, fell in love with the spot when he was on tour in New Orleans. He bought what was then known as Orange Plantation and built that mansion on the butte, or dome, overlookin’ the lake. Jack Alexander owns it now. As you know, the Alexander family lives in Nashville and only spends summers, huntin’ season, and some holidays down here.”

  “If that place were mine, I’d be here every day of the year, and I think I’d never go to work. I’d spend all my time on one of the porches looking out on the water.”

  Soon the conversation got around to PawPaw’s empty house—what the family was going to do with it—and then to Mama B. Mom wanted to tell Tom about my grandmother’s last days. I tried every way I could to steer the conversation to a more cheerful subject, but Mom wouldn’t let go.

  “No, Mandy,” she insisted. “Tom should know one of the reasons we’re all so angry about what happened to PawPaw.”

  I resigned myself to wait out her story and apologize to Tom later. She told him Mama B was sick for many years, but she and PawPaw mostly handled everything by themselves. Surgeries, chemo, radiation—the works. Through it all, Mama B was sure she’d get well. The next therapy was going to do it, she’d say. She went to daily Mass, walked every day no matter what, and always wanted to talk about anything other than her health. We thought her optimism and fight kept her going, and, for sure, eased the burden on everyone else.

  One morning, when she put her legs over the edge of the bed and tried to stand up, she fell back down. She couldn’t hold her own weight. PawPaw carried her to his truck and drove her to the emergency room in town. The hospital took a bone scan. PawPaw said the picture of her skeleton was lit up like a Christmas tree. They only kept her at the hospital for a couple days. PawPaw put her bed in the hall, next to his recliner.

  I couldn’t take any more. “Mom, Tom doesn’t need to hear all this.”

  “Yes, he does need to hear it, Mandy. He’s asking questions about the family, and this is where we’re all coming from.”

  She went on, telling him PawPaw stayed right by Mama B’s side, holding her hand day and night. The rest of the family came and went, did what needed to be done, but when the lights went o
ut at night, it was just PawPaw and Mama B.

  “Funny how peaceful—and how beautiful—those days were for us,” she said. “Mama B didn’t seem to be in pain. We didn’t understand how that could be until the doctors explained. Sometimes bone cancer hitting the spine kills the nerves first. God’s mercy, he said. Every child, every grandchild, visited. Some of the little ones didn’t know what to say to her so we told them to write her a note. They scribbled, ‘We love you Mama B’, and tucked the pieces of paper into her covers.”

  There was nothing I could do the stop my mom. We were all changed by those six weeks, but did our lawyer need to hear the details? And that’s what Tom was to the family—the lawyer. So far, at least.

  Mom plowed on. “The immediate family is a special unit, but you have no idea how close everyone is until you see a gathering around a mother’s deathbed. Each person goes home with a deeper understanding of family, of life, of death.” She looked Tom straight in the eye. “We couldn’t be there for PawPaw when his time came, and that makes us angry.”

  Tom nodded.

  She continued. “I know anger eats the container it’s in, so we’re the ones suffering. We should get over it, but we can’t. And as for Christian forgiveness? As long as the pain that guy caused is still at work in our hearts, we’re a long way from coming out the other side.”

  Tom stood up, went to Mom’s chair and touched her shoulder.

  After goodbyes to Tut’s family, Tom took my hand and we walked down to the lake to watch the sunset.

  “Today I learned something about picking jurors,” Tom said.

  “And what was that?”

  “For our trial, I’m going to try to find some men and women who’ve cared for an elderly parent.”

  I guess that’s what a prosecutor thinks about—how to win. Getting prosecution-minded jurors is a critical part of a trial, but I knew my Mom. She treasured the memory of Mama B’s death but wouldn’t necessarily choose the ultimate penalty for the man who deprived her of the same experience with her dad. Mom was revealing her own spiritual struggle with Christian forgiveness, not thinking about the trial.

  And I remembered Dora’s conversation on Aunt Mathilde’s back porch after the arraignment. She’d beaten herself up about not being there for Mama B, but that didn’t determine her attitude toward capital punishment for the murderer of PawPaw. She was against it. Tom had missed the point.

  When the mosquitoes started buzzing, we picked up our chairs and walked back up to the porch.

  “By the way, Tom. I left you a note after I read Deuce’s notebook.”

  I guess I was just as bad as Tom—obsessed by the trial.

  “Deuce’s good, isn’t he. What did you think?”

  For a few seconds I considered telling Tom I was concerned about the scarcity of hard evidence needed for a conviction, but decided to leave that alone. I’d stick with subjects more appropriate for my lowly status as an intern.

  “I couldn’t find a statement from that deputy in Birmingham—I think his name was Hamilton—nor a lab report on Remmy Richard’s car. And I didn’t see a statement signed by Mrs. Falgout.”

  “The lab report on the car came directly to me. Might be still on my desk. Just another white pickup. A five-year-old Nissan, I believe. Nothing helpful except of course the wallet they sent us. Deuce got Hamilton’s statement this week, and I think he’s made an appointment to see Mrs. Falgout on Wednesday.” Tom put his hand on my arm. “Maybe you’d like to go with him. It would be good experience to go on an investigation.”

  You bet I’d like to go.

  * * *

  Mr. Strait had a special invitation to have dinner on Friday at Lagniappe, the fun little restaurant on Main Street, but he had a conflict—command performance to make a kick-off speech at a campaign event for the Sheriff of St. Martin Parish. He’d make it to Lagniappe, but late. He asked Tom to cover. Not a problem. Tom and I loved the place.

  Usually Brother Andry only opened the restaurant for lunch, but tonight was special. His birthday. Not that he didn’t consider every day a reason to celebrate. Tonight he planned to wear his bright red apron (which never got near enough to the kitchen to be soiled by a spot of food), graciously accept a few bottles of wine from his regular guests, and share stories with the diners at every one of the twenty tables. Although Tom and I’d be the youngest guests, I was delighted to be included. Brother planned to unveil his latest work of art—a caricature of Mr. Strait.

  Brother Andry’s wife Evelyn made stocking dolls, which she tucked around the room on the window sills, the piano, and on top of the bar, but the walls were reserved for Brother’s art. He had one large painting of the Billeaud Sugar Mill, where my brothers took their cane—if I’d had money to burn I’d have bought it for my Uncle Jay and Aunt ‘Tilde—but the real drawing cards were Brother’s whimsical caricatures of his own customers—and Evelyn’s cooking.

  I couldn’t wait to see what Brother would do with Mr. Strait.

  The evening was great fun. The usual daytime waitresses were at work. Mona, a lady of at least eighty, banged out show tunes on the piano. Some man tried to make a request, but his words literally fell on deaf ears. Mona couldn’t hear. She just smiled and kept playing. The food was super. Evelyn did something wonderful with speckled trout. Well into the evening—late for this crowd—the boss hadn’t shown up. Tom got antsy.

  “I’m going outside to give him a call.”

  Tom came back relieved. Mr. Strait had just climbed down from the back of a pickup truck where he’d harangued the crowd in Les Doux Subdivision and would be at Lagniappe in fifteen minutes.

  Finally, he showed, and Brother called Evelyn out from the kitchen. The extra beads of sweat on her brow revealed that her husband’s birthday wasn’t her celebration, just meant more work. She set down a special banana mango cake in front of her husband, but before Brother led the group in “Happy Birthday” to himself, he unveiled his latest work. He’d captured the boss, for sure. Grey suit, graying hair, intense eyes behind big round glasses, hands snapping in half a yellow number two pencil.

  Brother called out for champagne—on Mr. Strait’s tab, of course.

  Tonight’s lagniappe—the little something extra in the bowl at the cash register—was a homemade chocolate candy, not in the shape of an Easter bunny but of Lady Justice. Creating that little favor had probably taken all of last Sunday and had put another ribbon of sweat across Evelyn’s forehead.

  Investigating with Deuce

  DEUCE PICKED ME up in a patrol car. The green-leaf air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror did little to mask the odor of a thousand drunk-runs wafting from the back seat. I could fit on the passenger’s side, but only because I’m small. A computer screen hanging from the lowest point on the windshield, angled to the driver, filled up the space between us. A stack of papers on the floor left little space for my feet.

  “Does Detective Aymond ride with you often?” I asked, deadpan.

  That brought a good chuckle from Deuce. “Naw. When it’s the two of us, Buddy drives. I squeeze in over there. Maybe one day we’ll get some new vehicles with all the techie stuff built in. Ever seen the inside of a State Police unit? Uptown. They even smell better.”

  We’d met briefly at the office last week. Deuce seemed very formal then, calling me Miss Aguillard. I’d praised the meticulous work he’d done on his investigation notebook, but he turned aside the compliment. Today he seemed a lot looser. I think he liked to be out in the field. I warmed to his big, open face, and I knew from the bulges under his shirt that wherever we went, no one would get very far trying to give us grief. Deuce turned onto Captain Cade Road.

  “So the Falgouts still live in the same place?” I asked.

  “Yeah. DA’s Victim’s Assistance is renting a FEMA trailer for them until their insurance comes through. You can guess how that will work out—slowly. A fire is the worst disaster a home can have, you know, especially when you aren’t around to save a thing.
They’ll never be able to replace what they lost, and of course a lot of what we treasure is irreplaceable.”

  We pulled up in front of a weedy patch of land. A mobile home shaped like a silver cigar-case perched twenty feet back from the road. Three piles of fire debris lay stacked at the rear of the tract. Concrete steps led up to a door in the side of the trailer, which shuddered under Deuce’s knock. Jim Falgout appeared and showed us to a sofa on the far side. Deuce had to duck his head to avoid a collision with the light fixture dangling from the ceiling.

  Lydia Falgout stretched out in a lazy-boy. A plaster cast swathed her left leg; her bandaged left arm crossed her chest. White gauze covered the left side of her face, but below the bandage, her lips opened in a broad smile. Lipstick, even. She held out her right hand. She said she had a dim memory of meeting Deuce and another detective in the hospital in Houston.

  “The other guy was Detective Aymond, ma’am. This is Amanda Aguillard from the DA’s office,” Deuce said.

  Hey! I liked the sound of that. Amanda Aguillard from the DA’s office.

  Deuce took charge of the conversation. “We never got back to you for a complete account of the events of last September. We’d like to go over the details.”

  She agreed, and let us run a tape. I opened my brief case and looked around for a spot for the device. Mr. Falgout jumped up to clear the end table at Mrs. Falgout’s right.

  “Let’s start at the beginning. Can you remember what time of day this all began?”

  “Not exactly. Mid-morning, I’d say.”

  “You heard a knock at the door, or did someone ring a doorbell?”

  “A knock. My doorbell don’t work.”

  “Did your door open in or out?”