Midnight Bayou Read online

  The staircase was narrower here. This level was for children and staff, neither of whom required fancy touches.

  He’d save the servants’ wing for later, he decided, and circled around toward what he assumed were nursery, storage, attics.

  He reached for a doorknob, the brass dull with time and neglect. A draft, cold enough to pierce bone, swept down the corridor. He saw his breath puff out in surprise, watched it condense into a thin cloud.

  As his hand closed over the knob, nausea rose up so fast, so sharp, it stole his breath again. Cold sweat pearled on his brow. His head spun.

  In an instant he knew a fear so huge, so great, he wanted to run screaming. Instead he stumbled back, braced himself against the wall while terror and dread choked him like murderous hands.

  Don’t go in there. Don’t go in.

  Wherever the voice in his head came from, he was inclined to listen to it. He knew the house was rumored to be haunted. He didn’t mind such things.

  Or thought he didn’t mind them.

  But the idea of opening that door to whatever was behind it, to whatever waited on the other side, was more than he cared to face alone. On an empty stomach. After a ten-hour drive.

  “Just wasting time anyway,” he said for the comfort of his own voice. “I should be unloading the car. So, I’m going to unload the car.”

  “Who you talking to, cher?”

  Declan jumped like a basketball center at the tip-off, and barely managed to turn a scream into a more acceptable masculine yelp. “God damn it, Remy. You scared the shit out of me.”

  “You’re the one up here talking to a door. I gave a few shouts on my way up. Guess you didn’t hear.”

  “Guess I didn’t.”

  Declan leaned back against the wall, sucked in air and studied his friend.

  Remy Payne had the cocky good looks of a con artist. He was tailor-made for the law, Declan thought. Slick, sharp, with cheerful blue eyes and a wide mouth that could, as it was now, stretch like rubber into a disarming smile that made you want to believe everything he said, even as you caught the distinctive whiff of bullshit.

  He was on the skinny side, never had been able to bulk up despite owning the appetite of an elephant. In college he’d worn his deep-brown hair in a sleek mane over his collar. He’d shortened it now so it was almost Caesarean in style.

  “I thought you said a couple hours.”

  “Been that. Damn near two and a half. You okay there, Dec? Look a little peaky.”

  “Long drive, I guess. God, it’s good to see you.”

  “ ’Bout time you mentioned that.” With a laugh, he caught Declan in a bear hug. “Whoo, boy. You been working out. Turn around, lemme see your ass.”

  “You idiot.” They slapped backs. “Tell me one thing,” Declan remarked as he took a step back. “Am I out of my fucking mind?”

  “ ’Course you are. Always have been. Let’s go on down and have ourselves a drink.”

  They settled in what had once been the gentlemen’s parlor, on the floor with a pepperoni pizza and a bottle of Jim Beam.

  The first shot of bourbon went down like liquid silk and untied all the knots in Declan’s belly. The pizza was good and greasy, and made him decide the strangeness he’d experienced had been a result of fatigue and hunger.

  “You planning on living like this for long, or buying yourself a chair or two?”

  “Don’t need a chair or two.” Declan took the bottle back from Remy, swigged down bourbon. “Not for now anyway. I wanted to cut things down to the bone for a while. I got the bedroom stuff. Might toss a table up in the kitchen. I start buying furniture, it’ll just be in the way while I’m working on this place.”

  Remy looked around the room. “Shape this place is in, you’ll need a fucking wheelchair before you’re finished.”

  “It’s mostly cosmetic. People who bought it last got a good start on the big work, from what I hear. Seems they had an idea about turning it into a fancy hotel or some such thing. Gave it nearly six months before they turned tail. Probably they ran out of money.”

  Lifting his eyebrows, Remy ran a finger over the floor, studied the layer of dust he picked up. “Too bad you can’t sell this dirt. You’d be filthy rich. Ha. Oh yeah, I forgot. You already are filthy rich. How’s your family?”

  “About the same as always.”

  “And they think, our boy Dec, il est fou.” Remy circled a finger by his ear. “He’s gone round the bend.”

  “Oh yeah. Maybe they’re right, but at least it’s finally my damn bend. If I’d gone to one more deposition, faced one more meeting, handled one more pretrial negotiation, I’d have drowned myself in the Charles.”

  “Corporate law’s what stifled you, cher.” Remy licked sauce from his fingers. “You should’ve tried criminal, like me. Keeps the blood moving. You say the word, we’ll hang out a shingle together tomorrow.”

  “Thanks for the thought. You still love it.”

  “I do. I love the slippery, sneaking angles of it, the pomp and ceremony, the sweaty wrestling, the fancy words. Every damn thing.” Remy shook his head, tipped back the bottle. “You never did.”

  “No, I never did.”

  “All those years busting ass through Harvard, tossed aside. That what they’re saying to you?”

  “Among other things.”

  “They’re wrong. You know that, Dec. You’re not tossing anything aside. You’re just picking up something different. Relax and enjoy it. You’re in New Orleans now, or close enough. We take things easy here. We’ll wear some of that Yankee off you soon enough. Have you doing the Cajun two-step and stirring up some red beans and rice on wash day.”

  “Yeah, that’ll happen.”

  “You come on into town once you’re settled in, Effie and I’ll take you out to dinner. I want you to meet her.”

  Remy had pulled off his tie, shucked his suit jacket, rolled up the sleeves of his lawyerly blue shirt. Except for the hair, Declan thought, he didn’t look that different than he did when they’d been at Harvard sucking down pizza and bourbon.

  “You’re really doing it? Getting married.”

  Remy let out a sigh. “Twelfth of May, come hell or high water. I’m settling my bad ass down, Dec. She’s just what I want.”

  “A librarian.” It was a wonder to Declan. “You and a librarian.”

  “Research specialist,” Remy corrected and hooted out a laugh. “Damn prettiest bookworm I ever did see. She’s a smart one, too. I’m crazy in love with her, Dec. Out of my mind crazy for her.”

  “I’m happy for you.”

  “You still got the guilts over . . . what was her name? Jennifer?”

  “Jessica.” Wincing, Declan took another swig to cut the taste her name brought to his tongue. “Calling off a wedding three weeks before you’re due to walk down the aisle ought to give you the guilts.”

  Remy acknowledged this with a quick shrug. “Maybe so. Feel worse if you’d gone through with it.”

  “Tell me.” Still, his gray eyes remained broody as he stared at the bottle. “But I think she’d have handled it better if we’d done the thing, then gone for a divorce the next day.” It still gave him a twinge. “Couldn’t have handled it any worse, anyway. She’s seeing my cousin James now.”

  “James . . . James . . . That the one who squeals like a girl or the one with the Dracula hair?”

  “Neither.” Declan’s lips twitched. Jesus, he’d missed this. “James is the perfect one. Plastic surgeon, polo player, collects stamps.”

  “Short guy, receding chin, broad Yankee accent.”

  “That’s him, but the chin doesn’t recede anymore. Implant. According to my sister, it’s starting to look serious between them, which just serves me right, I’m told.”

  “Well, hell, let your sister marry Jennifer.”

  “Jessica, and that’s what I told her,” he said, gesturing with the bottle for emphasis. “She didn’t speak to me for two weeks. Which was a relief. I’m not very p
opular with the Fitzgeralds right now.”

  “Well, you know, Dec, I’d have to say, given the circumstances and such . . . screw ’em.”

  With a laugh, Declan handed Remy the bottle. “Let’s drink to it.”

  He took another slice of pizza from the box. “Let me ask you something else, about this place. I’ve researched the history, did a chunk of it way back after we came here the first time.”

  “Stumbling around like drunken fools.”

  “Yeah, which we may do again if we keep hitting this bourbon. Anyway, I know it was built in 1879—after the original structure burned down in an unexplained fire, which was very likely set due to politics, Reconstruction and other post–Civil War messiness.”

  “That’s the War of Northern Aggression, son.” Remy pointed a warning finger. “Remember which side of the Mason-Dixon Line you’re plopping your Yankee ass down on now.”

  “Right. Sorry. Anyway. The Manets scooped up the land, cheap, according to the old records, and built the current structure. They farmed sugar and cotton primarily and divvied off plots to sharecroppers. Lived well for about twenty years. There were two sons, both died young. Then the old man died and the wife held on until she apparently stroked out in her sleep. No heirs. There was a granddaughter on record, but she was cut out of the will. Place went to auction and has passed from hand to hand ever since. Sitting empty more than not.”

  “And?”

  Declan leaned forward. “Do you believe it’s haunted?”

  Remy pursed his lips, copped the last piece of pizza. “That whole history lesson was your way of working around to asking that one question? Boy, you got the makings for a fine southern lawyer. Sure it’s haunted.” His eyes danced as he bit into the pizza. “House been here this long and isn’t, it’d have no self-respect whatsoever. The granddaughter you mentioned. She was a Rouse on her mama’s side. I know that, as I’m fourth or fifth cousins with the Simones, and the Simones come down from that line. Girl was raised, I believe, by her maternal grandparents after her mama took off with some man—so it’s said. Don’t know if I recollect what happened to her daddy, but others will if you want to know. I do know that Henri Manet, his wife, Josephine, and the one son—damned if I know what his name was—all died in this house. One of them doesn’t have the gumption to haunt it, that’s a crying shame.”

  “Natural causes? The people who died here?”

  Curious, Remy frowned. “Far as I know. Why?”

  “I don’t know.” Declan had to fight off a shudder. “Vibes.”

  “You want someone to come through here? Little gris-gris, little voodoo, chase off your ghost, or maybe summon the spirit for a little conversation? You can find yourself a witch or psychic every second corner in town.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “You let me know if you decide different.” Remy winked. “I’ll put you onto somebody who’ll give you a fine show.”

  He didn’t want a show, Declan decided later. But he did want that shower, and bed. With Jim Beam buzzing pleasantly in his blood, he hauled in boxes, pawed through them to find sheets and towels. He carted what he figured he’d need for the night upstairs.

  It was good old Catholic guilt rather than any need for order that had him making the bed. He treated himself to a ten-minute shower, then climbed into the fresh sheets to the sound of the incessant rain.

  He was asleep in thirty seconds.

  There was a baby crying. It didn’t strike him as odd at all. Babies tended to cry in the middle of the night, or whenever they damn well pleased. It sounded fretful and annoyed more than alarmed.

  Someone ought to go pick it up . . . do whatever people did with crying babies. Feed it. Change it. Rock it.

  When he’d waked from nightmares as a child, his mother or his nanny, sometimes his father, had come in to stroke his head and sit with him until the fear faded away again.

  The baby wasn’t frightened. The baby was hungry.

  It didn’t strike him as odd that he thought that. That he knew that.

  But it did strike him as odd, very odd, to wake, bathed in sweat, and find himself standing outside the door with the dull brass knob on the third floor.

  3

  Sleepwalking. That was something he hadn’t done since childhood. But in the watery light of day it was simple enough to see how it had happened. Jim Beam, pepperoni pizza and talk of ghosts.

  A little harder to accept was the gut-clenching terror he’d felt when he’d surfaced and found himself outside that third-level door. He’d snapped out of the fugue and into a nightmare of panic—one where he’d been certain he’d heard the fading echoes of a baby’s restless crying.

  He’d run. He couldn’t have opened that door if he’d had a gun to his head. So he’d run, with his own bright fear chasing him, to lock himself back in the bedroom. Like a mental patient, he thought now over a lukewarm cup of instant coffee.

  At least there’d been no one around to see it.

  But if you thought about it, it was a rather auspicious first night. Cold spots, baby ghosts, fugues. It sure beat sitting in his empty town house in Boston, sucking on a beer and watching ESPN.

  Maybe he would spend some time digging deeper into the history of the house. His house, he corrected, and with his coffee, he leaned on the damp iron rail of the gallery outside his bedroom.

  His view. And it was a beaut once you skimmed over the wreck of the gardens.

  Leaves dripped from the rain in steady, musical plops, and the air shimmered with the weight the storm had left behind. Mists crawled over the ground, smoky fingers that trailed and curled around the trees to turn them into romantic and mysterious silhouettes.

  If the sun broke through, the glittery light would be spectacular, but it was nothing to sneeze at now.

  There was a pond, a small one, choked with lily pads, and fields—some fallow, some already planted for a spring that came so much sooner here. He could see the thin curve of the river that ribboned its way through the deep shadows of the bayou.

  A rickety little bridge crossed the water in a hump, then a dirt road pushed into the trees toward a house mostly hidden by them. He could just make out a puff of smoke that rose up to mix with the hazy air.

  He’d already been up on the belvedere that morning, and had been relieved to find it, the roof, the chimneys, all in good repair. The last owners had seen to that and this second-floor gallery before they’d thrown in the towel.

  It looked as if they’d started on the rear gallery as well, had started preliminary work on closing it into a screened porch.

  Which might not be a bad idea. He’d think about it.

  Declan wasn’t certain if they’d run out of money or energy, or both, but he considered it his good fortune.

  He had plenty of money, and just now, watching the steam rising over the weeds and water, plenty of energy.

  He lifted the cup to his lips, then lowered it again as he saw a woman—a girl?—slip through the trees toward the curve of the river. A huge black dog lumbered along beside her.

  She was too far away from him to make out features. He saw she wore a red checked shirt and jeans, that her hair was long and dark and madly curling. Was she old? he wondered. Young? Pretty or plain?

  He decided on young and pretty. It was, after all, his option.

  She tossed a ball in the air, fielded it smartly when the dog gave a leap. She tossed it twice more while the dog jumped and ran in circles. Then she reared back like a pitcher in the stretch and bulleted it through the air. The dog gave chase and didn’t hesitate, but leaped toward the pond, shagging the ball with a snap of teeth an instant before he hit the water.

  Hell of a trick, Declan thought and, grinning, watched the girl applaud.

  He wished he could hear her. He was sure she was laughing, a low, throaty laugh. When the dog swam to the edge, scrambled out, he spit the ball at her feet, then shook himself.

  It had to have drenched her, but she didn’t dance away or brus
h fussily at her jeans.

  They repeated the routine, with Declan a captive audience.

  He imagined her walking with the dog closer to the Hall. Close enough that he could wave from the gallery, invite her in for a cup of bad coffee. His first shot at southern hospitality.

  Or better yet, he could wander down. And she’d be wrestling