Sandra Hill - [Creole] (6 page)

“I wish I knew.”

“Don’t you remember, honey?” Etienne recalled with an obnoxious snicker. “We’re soul mates.”

Harriet’s face heated with embarrassment. She’d been hoping he’d forgotten her words. “I take it back.”

“You can’t take it back,” he argued childishly.

“Yes, I can. A woman has the right to change her mind.”

“In less than an hour?”

“Tsk-tsk!” Cain contributed. “Will you stop? You remind me of Dreadful and Bob when they used to go at each other.”

“Who are Dreadful and Bob?” she asked.

“Childhood pets. A dog the size of a horse and a three-legged chicken,” Etienne told her. Then he shook his head from side to side as if he couldn’t believe he’d actually felt the need to answer her question. “You’re right, Cain. I’m wasting time. Now go get a linen sheet from the conductor. Or better yet, see if you can filch one from the linen storage area, without anyone seeing you.”

“A sheet? Why?” Cain’s wide brow furrowed with puzzlement.

“A shroud,” Etienne announced brightly. “For the corpse.”

He and Cain turned as one to look at her.

“Me?” she squeaked out.

Etienne pulled a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles out of his jacket pocket and put them on. He beamed at her, the picture of an adorable geek.

“You know what the good thing is about men who wear glasses?” she blurted out. Harriet knew her jokes were ill-timed and inappropriate for the circumstances, but her life was falling apart, and she feared she might cry if she didn’t laugh.

Etienne and Cain tilted their heads in question.

“When they take them off, you know they mean business.”

Cain frowned with confusion, but Harriet knew the moment Etienne understood her flip remark. His eyes turned a smoldering shade of dark blue.

And Harriet wondered what he’d look like when he turned to a woman and took off his glasses, intent on
business
.

Immediately composing himself, Etienne then posed next to Cain. The black man slouched his shoulders a bit in a subservient posture, gazing at Etienne, but never making direct eye contact, as if Etienne were the master, and Cain a mere slave.

“Well, Dr. Ginny? What do you think?” Etienne inquired, a rascally glimmer in his somber eyes.

“I think Dumb and Dumber just got even dumber.”

He wagged an admonishing finger at her. “Madam, let me introduce myself. I am Hiram M. Frogash, mortician. And this is my mortuary assistant, Hippocrates Jones.”

“Gawd!”

“Our speciality is”—he wiggled his eyebrows at her in a lascivious Groucho Marx-style, which caused his spectacles to slip down his nose—“female cadavers.”

A shiver of foreboding rippled over her skin.

“Oh, and did I mention I’m a taxidermist, too?” Then he crooked a finger at her. “Here, kitty, kitty.”

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Harriet huffed out, “Dumb, Dumber and Dumbest just added a new gang member. The dumb-ee. Me.”

She could barely breathe, wrapped snugly as she was in a linen sheet. Not to mention hanging over Etienne’s shoulder with her butt in the air. They were passing through the corridors of the railway cars to the freight car near the end. The only good thing was that they’d untied her hands and feet, with Etienne pocketing her panties and stockings.

“Shhhh,” he hissed. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

“Make way, make way. The undertaker is acomin’,” Cain called out to no one in particular as he spearheaded their macabre procession. It was after noon, and most passengers were in the dining cars toward the front of the train, but there was always the chance they might run into someone. So Etienne had compelled her to make a choice…either cooperate in their screwball caper, or he’d conk her on the head with his revolver.

Some choice!

“Stop jabbering. Cain, we’ll wait here while you check up ahead.”

“Yassuh, master, suh,” Cain replied sarcastically, then mumbled something that sounded like, “Up yours, master, suh.”

Meanwhile, Etienne leaned against a wall and used the time to clamp a palm over her tush, chuckling. “Have I told you, you have a wonderful ass?”

“About fifty times,” she muttered, “and if you don’t stop touching it, I’m going to dislocate yours. Geez, it’s hot in this sheet, and your shoulder is growing bonier by the minute. Can’t you put me down for a while?”

“No. And I’d be willing to wager you’ve let me touch it, and much more, in those dreams of yours.” His persis
tence on the subject of her tush was remarkable, especially for a guy no longer attracted to her.

Her silence spoke volumes.

So did his.

“Stop smirking,” she chastened him.

“How do you know I’m smirking?”

“I’m an expert on body language. I even wrote a book on it,
Bodyspeak
. I can tell by the posture of your body.”

“I thought you were an expert on women’s fantasies.”

“I am. I’m an expert on lots of things.”

“I’Il bet you are, darlin’.”

“You’re smirking again.”

“I know.”

“I swear, you’re at the top of the list in my next book.”

He said nothing.

“Don’t you want to know what my next book will be?”

“Not particularly.”

His supposed lack of interest didn’t deter her. “
The MCP Scale: How to Identify a Male Chauvinist Pig
.” When he still didn’t respond, she went on doggedly, “That’s why I know so many dumb-men jokes. I intend to weave them throughout the book.”

“What do shove-nest pigs have to do with dumb men and scales? And how do you weave a riddle?”

“Shove-nest? Huh? Oh.” She laughed. “Not shove-nest. Chauvinist. A male chauvinist pig exhibits the ultimate in obnoxious, crude, swaggering, oversexed, egotistical behavior of all the male species. A walking ape.”

“Who says I’m oversexed?”

“And furthermore, since I’ve known you, you’ve done a whole lot of things that fall into a ten on my MCP rating scale.”

“A ten being the worst, I assume.” He didn’t sound at all offended by her assessment of him.

Before she could educate him further, Etienne’s body went tense, and he pushed away from the wall. Harriet
heard rushing footsteps then, followed by Cain’s worried voice.

“The conductor’s approaching…in the next car…two government men boarded the train in Memphis…a search is on for three bank robbers,” he panted out.

“Bank robbers?” Etienne snorted.

“Bank robbers?” Harriet repeated into his back.
Great!
Now Steve was robbing banks, too.

“That’s the story Pope gave the railroad people in order to conduct a search,” Cain explained hurriedly.

Just then, Harriet heard a door opening up ahead, followed immediately by the crack of a sharp slap close by.

“That’ll teach you, boy. Where you been hidin’?” Etienne barked to Cain, easing smoothly into one of his dialect changes. “I told you to come back and help me carry this body.”

“What’s the problem here, folks?” another voice inquired.

It didn’t sound like the same conductor as before.
Thank goodness!
He might have recognized Etienne, despite his disguise.
Though why I should care is beyond me
.

“No problem now, sir. But there ain’t nothin’ worse than a lazy nigger,” Etienne remarked. “What he needs is a good whuppin’.”

Cain whimpered dolefully.

“Ain’t it the truth?” the conductor concurred. “Whatcha got in that sheet?”

“A corpse,” Etienne apprised him matter-of-factly as he hefted her off one shoulder and onto another while he reached inside his jacket. She had to bite her bottom lip to keep from crying out at the rough handling. “And the damn body’s growin’ heavier by the minute. Deadweight, you know?”

I’ll give him deadweight
.

The arm wrapped around her thighs squeezed tighter in warning as if sensing her imminent protest. “Here’s my business card. Hiram M. Frogash, mortician, at your ser
vice. And this no-good blackie here is my assistant, Hippocrates Jones.”

“I’s sorry, master. Don’t you be needin’ to whup my no-good hide again,” Cain whined. “I be good from now on.”

“Hiram M. Frogash, mortician. Richmond, Virginia,” the conductor read aloud. “You’re a long way from home, ain’tcha?”

“Yes, sir. I got me a commission to dig up the remains of four Reb soldiers what died at Gettysburg. We’re bringin’ ’em back to their families in Louisiana. The corpses are in coffins in the freight cars.”

“Oh. Then what’s in the sheet?” The conductor sounded rather suspicious. And they were wasting a lot of time, especially if bad guys really were searching the train. Or were they good guys? Harriet was confused, probably from all the blood pooling in her head.

Etienne laughed conspiratorially. “I picked up a little extra business in Memphis. Got off the train for a nature call—hell, a man gets mighty sick of pissing in a chamber pot—when I saw these men arguin’ over who was goin’ to take the dead body of Sally Mae Benson back to Baton Rouge. ’Pears the gal ran away from home before her sad demise.” Etienne’s voice softened to an appropriately doleful undertaker tone. “They gave me ten dollars to take her off their hands.”

“Ten dollars!” the conductor exclaimed.

“Well, we’d best be gettin’ Sally Mae on her way,” Etienne said, patting her rump as he shoved something soft and small, like an item of clothing, up under the folds of her sheet, between her knees, Perhaps her panties or stockings, which would cause undue questions if Etienne got searched. “Don’t want to be spreadin’ no fever.”

“Fever!” the conductor cried out, and seemed to step away.

“Sally Mae died a week ago. Can’t you smell her?”

Smell?

“No. Oh, Lordy, yes, I do. I smell her now.”

Immediately, Harriet heard running feet and a door slamming as the conductor made a hasty exit. She sniffed. There was, indeed, a strong odor, like moldy cheese.

Following a brief silence, Etienne and Cain burst out with relieved laughter.

“Could we get a move on it here, guys?” she interjected, raising her head slightly off Etienne’s back but unable to see through her sheet. “Unlike you two hyenas, I am not having fun.”

Cain guffawed. “What
is
that smell?”

“One of your dirty socks.”

Cain made a choking sound of protest.

It took only a second for the words to sink in. “Why, you rat!” If her arms weren’t restricted at her sides, Harriet would have pounded Etienne’s back. Instead, she squirmed madly, trying to shake the objectionable sock loose from between her knees.

As he started walking again, Etienne commented, “I think I’m beginning to understand body language now, Dr. Ginny. Every time you squirm, your breasts rub across my back. I’m getting a mighty clear message that you want—”

She stilled immediately. “Oooooh! That was a definite ten on the MCP scale.”

“I aim to please,” he countered affably.

She felt a breeze; so, they must be on the small platform connecting the trains. No wonder he felt free to talk. There were no people about to overhear.

“Dammit, Etienne, you choose the damnedest time to get your sense of humor back,” Cain snarled. “There are passengers in this next car. And they would definitely find it scandalous to see a randy mortician talking to an overripe female cadaver,”

“I am not randy,” Etienne said.

“I am not overripe.” Harriet added.

Then she heard the squeak of the door opening and the low mumble of voices in conversation up ahead.

“Make way, make way. The undertaker is passin’ through,” Cain chanted out.

Maybe I’m not dreaming. Maybe I really am dead
, Harriet thought.
Maybe, when the train derailed, I died
.

Etienne placed his hand over her behind once again. Not to tease her this time, she sensed, but more to assure her not to worry about the buzz of conversation around them.

To Harriet’s dismay, despite his being a chauvinist to the nth degree, all she could think about was the tingle of sweet pleasure that vibrated from the brute’s fingertips out to all the erogenous zones in her body.

Nope, I am definitely not dead
.

Just dumb
.

A short time later, the three of them stood in a freight car, the one containing four long wooden boxes…caskets.

They’d been stopped two more times along the way, but Etienne and Cain had their mortician routines down pat. None of their interrogators had been from Pope’s gang…yet. His men might not be so easily duped, Harriet feared.

“What’s in these things anyway? Besides the gold?” Harriet asked, walking over to one of the coffins with her sheet wrapped loosely around her body, no longer comfortable flaunting herself before two men in her skimpy nightgown. Even in a dream. “Real dead bodies? Ha, ha, ha!”

“
Oui
, of course,” Etienne said, coming up behind her. He and Cain had been whispering over in the corner. Making more stupid plans, no doubt. “At least, one of them does.”

“What?” she squealed, jumping back.

Slipping a deadly looking knife from one of his boots, Etienne pried open one of the boxes to show her a skeleton.

Harriet shrieked with horror. “You guys are nuts! Where did you get that…that thing?”

“A traveling medicine show,” Etienne replied dryly. “And it cost me a hundred damn dollars, too,” he said as
he pounded the lid shut again, then opened another. It appeared to be empty, until he showed her the fake bottom, which hid a fortune in gleaming gold. His heavy-lidded eyes watched closely for her reaction, still not sure she wasn’t the enemy.

Her mouth dropped open. There were dozens of bullion bars marked
U.S. MINT, PHILADELPHIA
lining the base of the casket, and presumably just as much in each of the others. “How much?”

Etienne shrugged. “A hundred thousand dollars’ worth.”

“Did you really rob a bank?”

His jaw clenched angrily. “No.”

“Did you kill anyone?”

His lips twitched as he fought a grin. “Not lately.”

That was good enough for her, for now, anyhow. “Now what?”