Still wailing, he fought to his feet and tore at her wrist.
S
pike wanted to drive with his foot to the floor but held his speed down to a lousy, crawling fifteen or twenty. Madge’s car kept a steady distance behind him.
“They’ve lost us,” Gary said. “They’re probably miles away by now while we creep along like this.”
“We aren’t the only ones looking,” Spike said. “I’m putting my money on Bill not wanting to go far with her. The longer they’re together, the better the chance he’ll get stopped.”
“The way the motorcycle cop stopped him, you mean?” Gary said. “The guy didn’t even think Vivian was in the car.”
Spike hadn’t missed what the cop told them and he didn’t want to talk about it, but he said, “He didn’t see her in the car. Doesn’t mean she wasn’t there.”
The radio dispatcher came on. “Call just came in from a kid. Says to tell Spike Devol it’s Wally. He knows where Vivian is. You need to turn around.”
Spike rammed on the brakes and cursed when he
looked in the rearview mirror. “Where? Gimme a coordinate.” Madge was heading for his rear.
“Nothing scientific but it’ll work,” the dispatcher said. “Three posts that used to be white. Reflectors on ’em. About three miles north of Blanche Point Way. Bayou side of the road heading north. BMW went off road just past there. It’s in trees. Subjects already out of the car by the time the kid got there. Says he hears them, though.”
Madge stopped her car inches from the bumper of the patrol car. Spewing gravel, Spike spun a U-turn and sped back the way he’d come. He believed the fewer people mixing it up in a standoff, the better. He wouldn’t have long before the Iberia crew were all over them.
Spike saw Wally before he saw the posts. Waving one arm, clinging to a struggling Boa with the other, he ran into the road to flag Spike down.
“Keep things quiet,” Marc told the boy, jumping out before the car stopped completely. “Hold the dog’s muzzle. If there’s a chance of surprise, let’s take it.”
Wally already had a hand clamped around Boa’s mouth and pointed into the trees where broken bushes and flattened grass showed the BMW’s path. “I’ll stay here,” he said.
“Stop anyone from charging in,” Spike told him, already on the move.
With Marc and Gary at his back, he crept in the direction of eerie keening sounds.
He saw Bill’s car, nose into a wall of dense undergrowth, with both doors hanging open, and he saw the bayou through the trees. Then he saw Vivian and Bill and threw out his arms to stop the other two from going forward.
As well as moss, tangles of muscaline grape vines snarled the way, but the mess of vegetation also helped hide the advance as long as they stayed low.
Bill’s were the howls they heard. He struggled with Vi
vian and Spike saw why she wasn’t already dead. Bill had been wounded. Blood welled through his clothes at his right shoulder and arm and ran from the fingers on the same side. The arm hung useless. More blood soaked through the back of his pants.
He and Vivian fought over the knife Bill held in his good hand.
Gary rose out of his crouch but Spike shoved him back. He looked at Marc, and at Gary and signaled for them to wait. Then, on his stomach, he shifted rapidly over the ground, hat discarded, gun braced, the toes of his boots acting as propellers and rudder together and the rest of his body straining forward.
Instinct wanted him to rush Bill.
Cold odds told him that way led to a better chance that Vivian would be seriously injured or killed.
His face cleared the roots and branches. One thrust and he’d be in the open.
Vivian’s silence—but for her labored breathing—amazed him. She poured her strength into holding the wrist with the knife in both of her hands.
And she was winning.
He freed his shoulders, gathered his legs beneath him, and threw himself. He’d take Vivian down with Bill but there wasn’t a choice.
The impact shook her voice loose and she shouted. He got a grip on Bill Green’s hand and weapon and all but tossed Vivian aside.
A man’s roar erupted behind him. Another body scrambled over his, pressed his face down so that he couldn’t see and he heard Bill’s muffled yell, “Get back. I’ll kill all of you.”
Strong hands fastened on Spike’s legs and pulled. He saw again, saw it was Marc who had freed him from Gary’s weight. Gary had leaped on top of him to get at Bill. The knife rested feet from them, glint
ing, but Gary had a gun on Bill who didn’t struggle anymore.
He did babble, and moan.
“Don’t kill him,” Spike shouted. “We’ve got him now.”
“Spike?”
He glanced at Vivian. Her face and hair were smeared and clotted with blood. “Lie down,” he told her. “Marc—”
“I’m okay,” she told him.
Gary stayed where he was, stretched out on top of Bill, a gun held to his temple. He kicked the man’s legs and pummelled his injured arm, even though Bill had quit fighting back.
Marc pressed a fist into Spike’s back. “It’s done,” he said.
“Damn you,” Bill said clearly. “You’re too late, Legrain.”
Gary abandoned the useless arm for the man’s throat. “Move and you’re dead.”
“He’s finished,” Spike said, getting to his feet, but Gary didn’t seem to hear. He pushed the gun into Bill’s head and muttered in his ear.
Bill made a different sound. He cried.
“Okay.” Gary’s voice rose. “Okay. This is going to be done by the book. You’ll get a lawyer. You don’t have to say a word until you do.”
Spike shook his head. People did the craziest things under pressure.
“Nothing,” Gary said, squeezing Bill’s throat harder. “Just shut up.”
“He’s lost it,” Marc muttered.
“The gun,” Spike said, then, “Gary, can you hear me? We’ve got him now. We need him alive. Just stay put and we’ll take him. He’ll get his rights read when it’s time.”
The two men rolled until Bill was on top of Gary.
”
Gary.
” All options were up. No way could Bill have turned them both over. Gary had done it deliberately. He intended to blow the man away and who would be able to argue how it really happened when the victim cut off any view of the weapon.
Spike put a bullet in Gary’s leg just below the knee and prayed.
The scene blew apart.
Gary bellowed and went for his leg. Bill fell to the ground beside him and Spike, his weapon whipping back and forth, put himself between them.
“You’re dead, sucker,” Bill said to Gary. “You were from the start.”
“Shut the
fuck
up.” Gary panted, holding his leg. Marc had already picked up his gun.
“Medics are on the way.” It was Cyrus who emerged from behind the live oak. He went directly to Vivian. “I kept them all out as long as I could but they’ll be in now.”
“You didn’t need to do it, Gary,” Bill said, sniggering, his head rolling from side to side on the slimy bayou bank. “Martin hated his sons as much as you did. You got what you wanted…Now you’ll lose what you wanted.”
Gary’s pain silenced him but his eyes showed fury as well as agony.
“See.” Bill coughed and tried to squint at Spike through swollen eyelids. “It’s simple. He wouldn’t work for the Martin boys and their old man never told him he wouldn’t have to. Then Louis Martin made the mistake of crowing about treasure at Rosebank and how it was worth a fortune. He was going down to break the wonderful news to the two little ladies.”
“He doesn’t know anything,” Gary said. “Take him in.”
“You decided you’d make the treasure your consola
tion prize and knock off poor old Louis at the same time—just to punish him for not loving you more than his boys.”
Gary made a move toward Bill but his leg stopped him.
“He had something on me,” Bill said. “From a long time ago. And then he needed what I do best.”
“Kill people,” Vivian said, her voice rising. “He killed them. He killed Olympia.”
”
I killed lots of people
,” Bill said. He clamped his teeth together.
Spike heard the crashing of approaching feet through the trees and saw officers approach with weapons drawn.
“A friend of mine’s fault, that’s what it was,” Bill said. “Guido got a conscience and told Gary boy about something I did years back. Doesn’t matter now. Legrain thought he could blackmail me into getting his map for him. Well, I got it but he didn’t. Pineapples and more pineapples and Gary’s golden egg was supposed to be in one of them. Guy Patin must be up there laughing. Pineapples everywhere. All over his house. No eggs.”
The arriving men fell silent.
“Kill Louis Martin and get me my map or I’ll turn you in for what you did,” Bill said, suddenly lucid. He raised his head. “That’s what he told me. But he couldn’t get me if I wouldn’t go along, not without showing his own hand.”
An Iberia officer approached and said, “We’ll take them in now. You’ll understand if we ask you to come in, too?”
“Sure,” Spike said. He left Bill and Gary and went to kneel on the ground by Vivian. He took her face in his hands and kissed a bloody cheek.
“I’m okay,” she said. “No, I’m not. I’m battered. I want to go home.”
More Iberia uniforms tromped by.
“Hey,” Cyrus said. “Look out there.”
Spike followed his direction and saw a pirogue, swaying gently, a few yards from shore. “Not to worry,” he called out. “Everything’s all right here.” It was the woman who lived on the houseboat with Claude. With the sun behind her, he couldn’t see her face.
Standing in the shallow hull, she used her single paddle to bring the little wooden craft slowly closer.
The medics had arrived. They already had Bill on a gurney. Others worked on Gary’s leg and one woman brought supplies toward Vivian.
“It’s on the radio,” the woman on the bayou said and her words carried clearly. “When I heard it I knew it was time I came. That one, Bill Green he calls himself now, he murdered his wife, Sylvia. I know it all and I’ll tell you.”
With his arms around Vivian, Spike looked and listened.
“There were three of them, see,” the woman said. “A kind of team. Bill, another man who called himself Guido—he killed him, too—and then there was Claude. He was known as Ulisse. They were young and stupid, but that one was all evil.”
“Who is she?” Vivian whispered.
“I don’t really know,” Spike said. “Except she lives in a houseboat with Claude or Ulisse or whoever he was and comes to us for provisions.”
“Thank you for coming to help, ma’am,” one of the officers called. “We’d be glad to give you a ride to the office now.”
“I’ll make my own way along,” she said.
“Will Claude come with you?” Spike asked.
She raised her head so the sun hit her face and he saw her smile. “My brother had to leave.”
Three and a half weeks later
T
he feeling Vivian had today, right at this moment, would stay in her memory and her heart forever.
French doors stood open from Mama’s favorite receiving room onto the front gallery. In the almost a month since the fete and what followed, and when the world had finally slowed down a little, work done at a wild pace had restored the room to its former bizarre glory.
The sun had begun to lower and shadows lengthened, but Vivian’s closest people remained on the gallery and the front lawn. Not a big number, but enough. There had been more at St. Cécil’s for the wedding and they’d have been welcome here, too, had they chosen to come, but they’d drifted away afterward, smiling, waving.
At last she had persuaded Spike to discard his tie and unbutton the collar of his white shirt, but he wouldn’t
take off the jacket of his gray suit. Hours earlier, when she’d seen him waiting for her at the altar, tall, straight and so serious, tears had spilled and she hadn’t tried to stop them. He had looked wonderful, but more than that, she had known his love for her was true and he wanted to marry her as much as she wanted him.
Cyrus had married them. Homer had stood at Spike’s side and Charlotte had given Vivian away. Carrying Boa, Wendy had marched up the aisle first.
The best day ever.
Vivian wondered if she would ever think of it without wanting to cry with happiness.
Spike sat beside her on a swing decorated with white satin bows that fluttered in a late-afternoon breeze. She looked down at his hand, the strong fingers laced together with hers, and giggled.
“What?” he said, giving her one of his quizzical, just about too-blue stares.
“Look at us,” she said. “Spike and Vivian Devol. When we first met I bet you never thought this would happen.”
“Sure I did. Never doubted it for a moment.”
“That’s not true.”
Wasn’t it
? “No,
cher.
I wanted it to happen but there surely did seem a lot of reasons why it never would.” He was ready to take her away and have her to himself, but Charlotte and Homer, and the rest, still watched them covertly and he saw how they weren’t quite prepared to let them go. And Wendy, dancing on the lawn with Joe Gable and Ellie Byron to the music of an ancient black guitar player with golden fingers, laughed and swung the skirts of her pretty green dress in a way that made him reluctant to break up the party. Vivian had curled Wendy’s hair and it bobbed while she hopped and twirled.
“Look at you,” Vivian said quietly. “Lovin’ that child. It’s so sweet to watch.”
“I will love all of our children,” he said, smiling at her.
She brought his hand to her mouth and looked up at him. “
All
of them?”
Spike narrowed his eyes on the alley of live oaks winding away toward the entrance. “Vivian, I talk a good story but I’m still not believin’ this is happenin’.”
When she grinned, she resembled a gleeful kid. “I’m just accepting it,” she said.
Her green eyes sparkled. Above her eyebrow, makeup covered the healed wound Bill had inflicted. It barely showed. The layered skirts of her white cotton dress, yards of stuff she called eyelet, floated back and forth while Spike gently rocked the swing. The top of the dress was soft, with a tight belt of the same material. A froth of pale green lace showed from beneath the wide neckline from shoulder to shoulder.
And she’d married him, this lovely woman with enough guts to fuel an army. He hid a smile at the thought.
“What’s funny?” she said at once.
“Mmm?” He looked down his nose at her. “I guess there’s no foolin’ you. I was thinkin’ you’re a tough cookie and I’d better watch my rear.”
“I’ll do that for you,” she said, with absolute sincerity.
“I’d appreciate it.”
“It’s going to be hard to leave them today, isn’t it?” She glanced around. “My mother looks more peaceful than she has since my father died. I think it’s the right decision to use some of Louis’s money to finish the renovations here, don’t you?”
“You’ve asked me that before. Several times. I think it’s right, partly because it’s what the man would have wanted and partly because he was correct in thinking he ought to try to set some things straight. Vivian?” He made sure he had her full attention. “I’m going to man
age to leave—with you—and not be too depressed about it.”
If she admitted just how badly she wanted them to be alone, they might forget about being restrained. “I won’t be depressed at all.”
“Homer’s goin’ to be over here every day after we get back, y’know.”
She knew what Spike meant. He’d agreed, at least until the hotel and restaurant were up and running, to bring Wendy to live at Rosebank while Homer ran their business. Later? Well, they hadn’t tackled that too deeply yet but there wouldn’t be room for all of them at his house.
Fresh dishes and trays arrived at the banquet table beneath a green-and-white marquee in front of the gallery. Cyrus, handsome Cyrus, led an amazingly enthusiastic line to fill up more plates. Marc filled two, one for himself and a second for Reb who sat sideways on another swing farther down the gallery. Poor Gaston’s lap space had shrunk to nothing but he clung there on his beloved Reb just the same. Boa, who had decided Gaston made a fine plaything, waited beside the swing for the other dog to make the mistake of jumping down.
Today there had been no talk of the ongoing case or of Bill Green, who had recovered enough from his injuries to be awaiting his fate in a jail cell. Gary occupied similar quarters. The hunt was still on for Claude whom Bill accused of Gil’s murder.
“You’re thinking about it again.” Spike had felt her concentration shift. “Nothing to worry about there anymore. I’d like to think Bonine wouldn’t rear his head again after the graft charges, but he’ll show up somewhere. Over the years he must have been on the take from every perp for miles around.”
“Including the Martin boys and Gary,” Vivian said quietly.
The ruckle was back between her eyebrows and he didn’t like it one bit.
She looked toward Serenity House. “They’re going to carry on with that place,” she said. “Can you believe it? I thought they’d want to get away after Olympia was murdered. I thought they’d get a divorce.”
He already knew what Morgan and Susan planned, just about everyone did, but he wasn’t surprised by Vivian’s thinking aloud about it. “Maybe that’s why they’re stayin’. If it hadn’t been for that place and all the sneakin’ around and lyin’ she’d probably still be alive. Maybe they think they shouldn’t leave now. But it’s not our problem.”
Wazoo came from the house carrying a full bottle of champagne. She refilled their glasses and handed them over. “You two gotta grease the pump,” she said.
“Sure that shouldn’t be
prime
?” Spike asked her.
Her grin showed just how beautiful her teeth were—and she was pretty lovely herself, even if the red ribbon in her hair was her one concession to being at a wedding party. “I’d say it don’t matter a whole lot what you do. Grease it, or prime it. Should do the trick.”
Spike got a kick out of watching Vivian turn pink.
“I been meanin’ to tell you how I’ve gone over every inch of this house,” Wazoo said. “If there’s one o’ them foreign eggs here, I jest don’t know where.” If she thought about how she’d made off with Vivian’s book, she never mentioned it and neither did Vivian.
“Forget the egg,” Vivian said. “We have.”
Spike didn’t think that was entirely true but he was glad to hear it anyway. They figured that Guy Patin had hidden his precious egg as his own insurance against bad times. His riddle, dreamed up when he discovered he would soon die, hadn’t been just a riddle, but a way to make the egg safe from a casual searcher who didn’t have Guy’s clues to follow.
The instant Wazoo was out of earshot he put an arm around Vivian and said in her ear, “Confession time. For a number of hours now, I’ve been seeing things.”
Vivian looked at him sharply.
He nodded gravely. “Scenes. You’re in all of them. Me, too. And I’ve been feelin’ a certain way. And I’ve gotta tell you,
cher
, I think things are as greased and primed as they need to be.”
She turned in his arm, rested her hands on his neck and kissed him until he moaned. “Time to go?” she whispered.
“Reckon so.”
The guitarist had taken a break but from the open room behind them came the sound of the old piano. They peered around to see Cyrus, still wearing his collar but without his jacket, sitting there, bent over the keys. Madge perched on the end of his bench to watch.
Cyrus began to play, and to sing. Vivian hadn’t known he sang. His voice was a warm tenor with a heart-squeezing break.
“Listen to him,” she told Spike. “Is there anything he can’t do?”
He glanced at her but didn’t comment.
The piano needed tuning. Several notes didn’t work at all but Cyrus kept right on singing “Your Love Amazes Me,” and conducting with his spare hand during missing notes.
When it was over, everyone applauded and called for more, but he became bashful and wouldn’t be persuaded.
“Hey, Spike.” Marc bent over him and said quietly, “Is there anything I need to explain to you? Just so you’ll feel you can take your bride wherever it is you’re going?”
Spike smiled and shook his head. In fact he and Vivian didn’t know just where they were going but that’s the way they wanted it.
Joe approached next. “Nothing to worry about,” he said. “Just follow your instincts.” And Spike suspected a plot that was giving some people a good laugh.
“Ready,
cher
?” he asked Vivian.
She jumped up and pulled him with her, to the delight of the group gathered around them.
Wendy stood front and center, and accepted kisses from both of them, and hugs. “I’m not gonna ask to come with you again,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I’m staying with Gramps and Charlotte and they say I wouldn’t like where you’re going.”
That brought a chuckle.
Cyrus tapped Charlotte’s shoulder and gave her an envelope. Crimped up along its length, it was made of pale purple tissuelike paper. “Just tuned the piano for you,” he said. He shot a glance at Spike and Vivian and rolled his eyes, making them both chortle. “Someone slid that in the works.”
“I know what it is, me. I know what it is.” Wazoo went into one of her famous capers. “Why didn’t we think of that? The message was torn, remember? But it say, ‘…all the right notes.’ So God man play the right notes and he don’t get a thing ’cept that letter. It gonna tell us where that damn egg is, see if it don’t.” She waggled her head. “Excuse the language.”
Charlotte worked open the flap, but gave the envelope to Vivian.
One sheet of paper, folded in half, slid from inside and she read it. Then she frowned.
“What it say?” Wazoo demanded.
Vivian cleared her throat.
“Last coming
First going.
First coming
Last going.
Which way?”
She folded the paper again.
“That’s
it
?” Charlotte said.
“Uh-huh,” Vivian told her, and gave back the envelope and paper. “Have fun. I think it’s time Spike and I got going.” She put a hand under his arm.
The bags were already in Spike’s pickup—now minus the boiling and barbecue equipment. The two of them had opted not to change, mainly because Vivian was too fond of her wedding dress.
Shouts and cheers went up and a few of the hardier guests ran beside the truck on its way down the drive, but eventually they fell back. Spike and Vivian waved to them from the windows. They had been spared the shaving cream announcements on the vehicle, but cans clattered and clanged behind.
When they approached the gates, they looked at each other and Spike stopped the truck. He climbed out to cut the cans free and toss them inside the back.
He looked over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t being watched from the driveway and heard Vivian’s door slam. “Which way?” she asked. “Which way are we going?”
Spike shaded his eyes to look at her. “You get to pick, sweetheart. I’ll follow you anywhere.”
She stood there, her feet planted apart in strappy white sandals with high heels. “Which way?” she said again and backed toward the road.
For a moment he thought she intended to run and have him chase her. He was game, but feared she might break an ankle.
Vivian went only as far as the gates and he caught up with her there. She crossed one foot over the other, leaned on one post and pointed upward.
“Have you changed your mind about this?” he asked, before he glanced above her head, at the stone finial on top of the post, one of the two pineapple-shaped ones that flanked the entrance. “Wow. Could it be…Last coming, first going. Which way?”
“All depends, doesn’t it,” she said. “Think we’re right? Could it be in one of these?”
“Could be.”
She ran around him and hopped back inside the truck. From the window she said, “Do you care?”
“Can’t say I do much.” He got in beside her and took off the brake. “Do you?”
“Not right now. Maybe later.”