Sandra Hill - [Creole] (16 page)

Hey, she wasn’t a total nincompoop.

Putting the bar in her briefcase, along with Joleen’s gun belt and pistols—though what she’d do with those, Harriet
had no idea—she headed for the door and freedom.

Even so, just before Harriet closed the door and turned the key in the lock, she felt tears well in her eyes. With painful insight, Harriet realized that she’d held something precious in her hands in this room, and somehow it had slipped through her fingers.

Etienne took one last sip of the thick chicory coffee, a Creole mainstay, and pushed his chair away from the table. It would be dawn soon. Time to leave the Crescent City.

“What the hell is taking Abel so long?” he grumbled.

“Need you ask?” Cain responded with an arched brow.

They’d long since finished the huge breakfast Simone had laid out for them before going off with Abel more than an hour ago. The fancy house customers had departed by now and the girls had retired after a tiring night’s work.

He stood and walked over to a side mirror, checking his disguise again. The blond wig and mustache changed his appearance dramatically, not to mention the pleated shirt, brocaded vest and frock coat left behind by one of the brothel’s customers.

This whole parade of disguises was wearing thin, and bordered on the ridiculous. But it was a game Etienne played to divert Pope. In order to win the game, they had to lead Pope and all the game players to Texas—the lair
of the prime player in this charade. No sense killing ants if the main nest stayed intact.

“How come I never get to be the riverboat gambler?” Cain complained behind him. He was dressed in the blue uniform of a Yankee army corporal.

“A blond Negro?” Etienne inquired with a grin.

Cain shrugged. “I’ve seen a few.”

“Next time, then.”

“With any luck there won’t ever be a next time.” He stowed his medical bag in a knapsack and asked, not for the first time, “Aren’t you going to say good-bye to the wench before we go?”

“
Mon Dieu
, no!”

Cain laughed. “Afraid, are you?”

“For a certainty. The witch has worn me down to a nub as it is. I don’t trust her strange allure.”

“Nubs have a way of coming back. Trust me on that. We doctors know these things,” Cain teased. “Perhaps you fear yourself, my friend.”

“Perhaps,” Etienne agreed with a grimace.

Then Cain exclaimed, “Would you look at that? Here comes my wife.”

“Well, heavens above, why are you-all dawdlin’ heah? Tain’t nothin’ like an uppity nigger!” a high-pitched feminine voice addressed them from the hall. Abel sashayed into the room with a flourish, wearing a long calico gown of faded gold that no doubt belonged to Joleen. A bucket-style bonnet adorned with silk buttercups crowned a head of shoulder-length, black curls. He carried a yellow parasol, and matching gloves covered his rough hands. Two melon-sized mounds stuck out from his chest.

“
Merde!
You look like a sunflower,” Etienne observed.

“Nice bosoms,” Cain remarked.

“Touch my tits and you’re gator bait, you randy buck, you,” Abel hissed, narrowing his eyes at his brother.

Chortling, they all walked toward the front door.

“Stop right there! All of you!”

They spun around to see Simone standing at the top of the stairs, hands on hips. She wore only a dressing gown, and her mussed hair bespoke her recent activity with Abel. The flush on her face was from anger, not lovemaking, though.

“What’d you do? Refuse to marry her again?” Cain asked Abel.

For years, Abel had been besotted with Simone, and vice versa. It didn’t matter to him that she’d once been a harlot, that she ran a house of ill-repute. Or that she was white. It didn’t matter to her that he was a musician with less than spectacular financial promise. Or that he was a Negro.

But Abel knew that, despite the war and the Emancipation Proclamation, a mixed marriage would never be accepted. As it was, Simone had received more than one threat from the Knights of the White Camellia just for allowing blacks into her establishment.

“She always asks. I always say no. Maybe it would be best if I went travelin’ with Billy Bolden’s Brass Band. At least then our inevitable separation wouldn’t hurt so bad,” Abel replied in a subdued voice. Then he straightened. “But it’s not me she’s starin’ at with fire in her eyes now.”

Cain and Abel both glanced at Etienne.

“Me? What did I do?”

“Not you,” Simone said, storming up to them. “It’s that…that woman you brought here. She’s gone.”

“Gone?” they all said.

“What? Have you turned into a chorus of parrots?
Oui
, the woman is gone and she has put a voodoo curse on two of my girls.”

“Voodoo? Are you sure,
chérie
?” Abel asked. “She’s not even from the South.”

“Well, actually, she has lived here,” Cain corrected. “Remember, Etienne, she said her stepfather was from Louisiana?”

“Aaarrgh!” Simone stamped her foot. “Would you all
listen to me? The witch has put two of my girls into a trance. Joleen is upstairs squawking like a chicken, and Charity keeps chanting the same refrain, over and over, ’Etienne is a jerky, Etienne is a jerky.”

“What’s a jerky?” Abel asked. “I mean, I know what hardtack is, but what does it mean when a woman calls a man a jerky? Oh, I see, I s’pose it has something to do with his
hard
tack.” He made a gesture at Etienne’s groin.

“Aaarrgh!” Simone shrieked again.

“Good Lord!” Etienne put a hand to his forehead in disbelief.
What next?

“Not
le bon Dieu
. Damballa,” Simone told Etienne.

He shook his head, convinced that Harriet wasn’t involved in the black arts. “She did tell me that she uses something called hypnotherapy with her customers,” he recalled. “In fact, she wanted to cure my headache by putting me in a trance.”

Simone leveled an angry glare at Etienne, as if he were already in a trance. “So, M’sieur Baptiste, what are you going to do about this situation?”

He tossed his satchel to the floor with disgust and headed back up the stairs.

Behind him, Etienne heard Simone comment to Abel, “You look pitiful.”

And Abel asked her, “Do you want to touch my bosoms?”

It took two hours before they were able to break the trance. That was when Cain berated him, “None of this would have happened if you’d kept your damn rooster in its coop.”

“Rooster,” Joleen and Charity murmured then, coming instantly alert. They didn’t remember a thing, except that Harriet had admired their beautiful eyes. Then they proceeded to lambast Etienne for abandoning the poor, helpless woman.

Helpless? She’s no more helpless than a wildcat in a henhouse
.

After that, they gave him a tongue-lashing over his unusual sex habits. “No wonder the sweet lady left you, you slimy swamp rat,” Joleen declared. “Can’t ya get it up for any live women no more?”

Cain and Abel dragged him away before he attacked the blathering Amazon, and probably got himself walloped in the process.

“Are we going to search for her now?” Cain asked as they left Simone’s house, hours later than originally planned.

“No.”

“No?”

“I don’t ever want to see that woman again,” he said, seething. “I fear what I’d do to her.” Despite himself, though, an image flitted through Etienne’s mind of just what he’d already done to her. And a small part of him—the part not blistering with blood-boiling anger—had to admire the woman’s ingenuity. She’d outwitted him, good and proper.

In some ways, he wished they would meet again someday. She wouldn’t find him such an easy target a second time.

Etienne leaned against a levee piling, smoking a thin cheroot. He’d just purchased a steamboat ticket and was waiting for the passenger boarding to commence. A discreet glance across the wide street confirmed that Cain and Abel still stood in front of the Lousiana National Bank on Decatur Street.

He had booked a short passage on the
Dixie Belle
. Mademoiselle Abel, in Sunday finery, had done likewise. “She” pretended to be going to visit her sister Sula Mae down in Terrebonne Parish and would board after him, as was the custom for black travelers. Abel had already warned Cain that if he tried to kiss “her” good-bye, there would be hell to pay.

Cain planned to maneuver a large pirogue he’d pur
chased up to Bayou Barataria, where they would all meet later that day to continue their journey to Bayou Noir. In all, the trip should take four days.

It wouldn’t be the most comfortable mode of travel. Steamboat packets navigated many of the interlocking bayou waterways, but none could penetrate as far as the remote Bayou Noir, especially during this low season. Flatboats did make the rough trek, but Etienne was exercising extreme caution. He didn’t want the three of them to travel together among strangers who might later identify them to Pope’s men and bring a premature ending to the staged chase.

So now Etienne put his finger to the side of his nose. It was the signal to break ranks and commence their plan.

Unfortunately, Cain put his thumb to his nose and wagged his remaining fingers. It was not the agreed-upon return signal.

Really, for a serious physician, Cain went too far with his foolery. Especially of late.

Abel didn’t appreciate his brother’s games, either. He poked Cain in the ribs with an elbow. Then he made eye contact with Etienne and pointed his parasol toward the bank entrance.

Etienne’s jaw dropped.

Strolling out, large as life, was Harriet, the bane of his life.

With the skirt of her gauzy lavender gown swishing from side to side, she walked right by Cain and Abel without recognizing them. She was too busy counting a wad of paper money, which she tucked into a side flap of her travel case. Then, smiling with a feline I-got-the-cream satisfaction, she flicked open a parasol and proceeded down Canal Street toward the railway station.

His first reaction was to let her go. Even though he was madder than hell at her, he couldn’t risk accosting her on an open street.

But how had she gotten so much currency? He’d ex
amined the contents of her satchel. She had nothing of value to barter in a bank.

Suddenly, the hair stood up on the back of his neck in warning. Well-honed instincts advised him to investigate further.

Using silent signals, Etienne directed Cain and Abel to follow him. Then he tossed his cheroot to the ground and strode after Harriet.

“
Salut
, mademoiselle,” a man greeted her, edging in close to her side.

She gave the tall fellow in the dandified attire of a riverboat gambler a haughty scowl at his familiarity. He wasn’t the first man to accost her today. A few had even tried to cop a feel. Thank goodness, she’d had the foresight to grab a parasol from the umbrella stand at Simone’s. She’d soon discovered that a parasol was better than Mace. Apparently single women on the streets were considered fair game.

But she wasn’t a frail little Southern belle. She would get rid of this creep, just as she had the others. A cursory glance revealed a version of Kevin Costner with blond hair and mustache and a rakishly tilted hat.

Oh, my! She did have a thing about Kevin Costner.

But, no, no, no…a handsome man was the last thing she needed in her life right now.

“Slow down,
s’il vous plaît
. I just want to talk with you,
chérie
.”

Uh-oh!
She would recognize that voice anywhere.

Her only outward reaction was a slight stumble in her stride, which she immediately corrected. “You are pitiful,” she murmured and kept walking.

“Now, darlin’—”

“Go away.”

“Why did you run away,
chérie
?” he asked in a low tone, meanwhile nodding to passersby to maintain the impression of normalcy. A grimace passed over his face at
the warning whistle of a nearby steamboat, which would be departing soon.

Harriet stared straight ahead as she accelerated her pace, hoping he would give up his pursuit.

Instead, he kept in step with her.

Coming to an abrupt halt, she confronted him. “You want to know why I left? Well, I want to know why you locked me up.”

“Safety.”

“Safety?” she scoffed. “Whose? Mine or yours?”

“Both.”

“Liar. You know, you can always tell when a man is lying. He moves his lips.” Neither of them smiled at the joke. Her voice carried a wealth of venom. “I detest you.”

“I’m not so fond of you right now, either, Harriet.”

“Just like a man! Sweeps a woman off her feet when he’s horny, then sweeps her out the door afterward.”

Etienne rolled his eyes with exasperation. “Come into this restaurant with me where we can talk in private,” he suggested.

“I may have suffered a brain blip, but I’m not totally stupid. You had your chance to talk last night, buster.”

“I was busy communicating in other ways.”

Her face flushed. “I’m not going anywhere with you, ever again. And stop touching me, you…you lech.” She shrugged off the hand that he’d put to her elbow to assist her into the cafe.

“I have no time for this nonsense,” he muttered to himself. Then he sliced her with a glare. “How did you get the money?” he hissed out, ditching subtlety.

“What money?” She averted her eyes.

“The money you put in your travel case.”

She exhaled with resignation, realizing that there was no sense denying an obvious fact. “From the bank.”

“Aaarrgh! I already know that. What I want to know is what you gave the banker to get the money?” He spaced his words evenly as if addressing a thickheaded child.

Harried snapped her parasol shut, and braced both hands on her hips belligerently. “A gold bar.”

Her answer obviously stunned him.

“Wh-what? You stole one of my gold bars?”

She waved a hand airily with disregard.

“Now you’ve really done it, Harriet. I’m going to have to kill you.”

“That’s right, violence is the answer to everything in your dictionary. First forceful seduction, now physical threats. Don’t try to paint me guilty. You stole the gold in the first place. So you’re the real thief in this picture.”

His eyes widened with astonishment at the accusation. “I
recovered
the gold shipment from men who stole it from the U.S. government. I work for President Grant.”

“You do?” She blinked in surprise. Actually, he’d alluded to this mission before, but was he telling the truth? Probably. But it didn’t make any difference to her. “Well, that’s beside the point. Since I didn’t steal it from the government, the crime isn’t mine,” she deduced.