Sister of a Sinner Read online

  The Cajun healer, Rosemarie Leleux, opened the door and embraced Xochi. She’d inherited the house from her grandmother, the redoubtable Madame Leleux who had the sight and could tell the future as well as conjure up good luck and love potions that always worked. Mostly the locals called the younger traiteur Miss Rosemarie, but they still left their cash offerings to the Virgin under the white rock after a consultation.

  “Xochi, girl, so glad to see you. Come in, come in out the heat. I got cold lemonade.”

  The living room no longer smelled of the freshly baked cookies Madame Leleux gave away so generously to all callers. It now had a faint taint of turpentine from Rosemarie’s workroom where she painted pottery to be sold in Chapelle’s gift shops and galleries. Some believed her jam and honey pots, her magnolia-strewn teapots, and figurines of happy flying pigs brought luck, but Rosemarie never claimed they did.

  She freely admitted the sight had skipped over her. She couldn’t crochet afghans exactly right for the sex and personality of the child to come like her granny. Xo had one of these in the colors of Mexico placed in a chest long before she arrived in Chapelle. The thought gave Xochi a small frisson instantly noticed by the plain, stocky woman with a broad face marred by ancient chicken pox scars and a gray bun piled messily on top of her head.

  “You cold, baby? I keep the air-conditioning down low to help circulate the air and dry my paints. Let me turn it up.” The traiteur fiddled with the thermostat, and the blasting cold air ceased. She unbuttoned a paint speckled blue smock the color of her eyes and hug it on an old coatrack, revealing a housedress not much more attractive. “There, you more comfortable now?”

  “Yes, ma’am, but you didn’t have to do that.”

  “I have coffee on. You want some, not the lemonade?”

  “I think I would, thanks.”

  As Miss Rosemarie hustled to the kitchen in her flapping slippers, Xochi roved the room instead of taking a seat on the sofa that still boasted several layers of Madame’s afghans. She approached a mirror, an antique cheval glass on a heavy stand that took up far too much room in the small space, and forced herself to look at her reflection after stripping off the visor and sunglasses. Its broad width and height showed her entire body, but mostly it revealed her aura, a lovely, light peridot green, the sign of a natural healer. Yet, she felt no calling to be a doctor or a nurse. She asked Stacy to do the jobs for translators at the hospitals because the signs of disease she saw distressed her and instead lent her talents to the police department. Many of the culprits possessed the dirty brown auras of deceit, the black holes of evil, but she dealt with that better than innocent children terminally ill or beloved elders riddled with cancer.

  Rosemarie returned with the coffee tray. “That old mirror, granny found it at an estate sale, and the trouble we had getting it back here! She did alterations until her knees gave out and liked to have a full-length glass for her customers. I know it bothers you. Sit. You been thinking about our talk?”

  “Yes, for a while.” Xochi huddled into the comforting nest of afghans on the sagging sofa and prepared her coffee with milk. “I thought I was ready to apprentice myself to your Uncle Nestor, but things have gotten more complicated. I’d feel better if I could work with you.”

  Rosemarie shook her head as she liberally added sugar to her cup, one of her creations with dogwood blossoms on a pale green background. “No, the knowledge must be passed from man to woman to man and so on. My daddy taught me the prayers, the treatments, and the potions, but he died long before Granny who taught him. Uncle Nestor learned beside him, but none of his kids want to carry on the tradition. Superstitions, they say. Maybe some are, but the charms and such, they provide a focus for healing energy, and the prayers give all that a boost. At least, I think so. But, Xochi, you have a true God-given gift not to be denied. Cookie?”

  The traiteur offered a plate of Oreos. Xochi shook her head.

  “Not as good as Granny’s homemade, I know, but I still like to dunk ’em.” Rosemarie did just that. “Now don’t you worry about Uncle Nestor. He’s way up in years and got a bad prostrate. He won’t bother you any no matter how pretty you are. He wants bad to pass on what he knows before he dies. When you touch his hand, he’ll know you are the one. I felt that healing warmth when I helped you deal with the onset of the auras. It’s best you live by him to pick up the ways. You never know what will pop into that old man’s head out of the blue, things I didn’t learn or have forgotten.”

  “I know I can’t cure cancer or mend a bad heart, and people will expect that of me.”

  “Xochi, there are many kinds of healing, not all of it physical like a doctor gives. You radiate wellbeing, confidence, and love. You can still the troubled mind, help the hopelessly ill pass over peacefully.”

  “Is that enough?”

  “For some it will be. They might need a charm or potion to reinforce that. Nestor will teach you those.”

  Xochi nodded. “I thought I’d made up my mind to give this a try, to see if I could help people, but recently two men have come into my life.”

  Miss Rosemarie’s face radiated with a good-natured smile. “My granny would have seen that coming and described each to a tee—but I don’t need to know all that, only if you want to go on with your training as a traiteur or give it up to be a wife and mother.”

  “Is that mutually exclusive? You mean I can’t be both?”

  “Sure, you can, sugar. I never could catch a man with this face, but you are so belle, I am surprised you only got two beaux.”

  “Maybe a few more,” Xochi admitted. “But, I love your face. It’s so open and generous.” She squeezed the woman’s hand.

  The traiteur chuckled. “See, I feel better about myself already. Still, the generosity you mention is probably fat.” She helped herself to another cookie and dunked. “Lost my figure years ago and don’t much care anymore. You can be a wife and a traiteur if you find a man who will allow it.”

  Xochi scowled. “I’d like to see any man stop me once I make up my mind.”

  “True enough, men seem to be getting better, but there are still drunks and abusers and those who would take the money given to the Virgin Mary and spend it on themselves. Then, the prayers and the charms won’t work. Though if you short on groceries or can’t pay your light bill, the Virgin, she won’t mind if you use a bit for that, but you can’t set out to get rich doing this. Still, I think your special talent will help you weed out the bad ones.”

  Xochi squared her soft, rounded shoulders. “I can support myself with my translating and interpreting services, but if I do move here and stay with Uncle Nestor, I’ll have to give up the more lucrative contracts I have and rely on doing work on the internet. Does he have wi-fi?”

  That question set off a round of boundless mirth. When Rosemarie finished laughing and wiping her eyes on a paper napkin, she said, “Cher, he barely got electricity, and wouldn’t have that if he didn’t like to watch a ballgame now and then. Big Sinners fan. Won’t he be s’exciter to have a Billodeaux in his home, a sister of a Sinner, and more than one those.”

  “I don’t know about Uncle Nestor, but my brothers and beaux aren’t likely to be thrilled when I tell them I’m going to move in with a codger and learn about healing herbs and prayers.”

  “A man who loves you accepts you as you are.”

  “I guess he’ll have to. I’m going to give this a try. Even if I have no true healing powers, it is important that the lore isn’t lost. Give me a few weeks to settle my affairs in New Orleans, then I’m coming home to learn the skills of a traiteur.”

  “You like my own daughter, baby.” Rosemarie cupped Xochi’s face and gave her the benediction of a kiss on the forehead. “It’s good to know the old ways won’t die with me.”

  “Before I go, have you got any fresh honey? I don’t want to return home empty-handed, and it might sweeten the news.”

  “Mais, yeah, from Nestor’s own hives.”

  Xochi followed
the slap of Rosemarie’s slippers to the small side room where Madame Leleux once told fortunes and sold her potions. The walls were still papered with holy cards growing yellow. The small table with the varnish worn away where so many had rested their hands for a reading sat covered with paint stains now, the traiteur’s current project of a pretty pin dish with a rose design centered in the middle on a plastic placemat. Behind the tables, shelves held a row of brown bottles marked with different colored ribbons, paints, brushes thrust into Mason jars to soak, quarts of honey, and a selection of jams and jellies—strawberry, fig, mayhaw, and dewberry.

  “Here you go, cher, some of Uncle Nestor’s best wildflower honey. A gift for your family.”

  “No, no, I intended to pay.” Xochi delved into the depths of the hot pink tote and unearthed her wallet.

  “If you refuse a gift, you hurt the giver.” Rosemarie bagged the honey jar in a plastic grocery bag from Walmart.

  “Okay, but give me one fig preserve and a mayhaw jelly.” Xo held out a ten-dollar bill, which the traiteur accepted. Her purchases joined the honey, and she settled them all carefully in her big purse. “I’ll let myself out. I can see I interrupted your work.”

  She leaned over the table to hug the woman who had created the gris-gris bag that chased away the nightmares of her parents’ deaths. “You stop by any time you want more jam or just to visit. I don’t think you’ll be needing any of the love potions with all those men in your life,” Rosemarie joked.

  “Only your prayers.”

  “You got those, my honey.”

  Decision made, Xochi left more lighthearted by the always-unlocked front door. She made two more stops, the first to Pommier’s Bakery for two-dozen Mexican wedding cookies and a sack of orielles de cochon, pieces of fried dough shaped like pig’s ears sticky with Steen’s cane syrup and sprinkled with chopped pecans, plus two cups of coffee to go. She dropped the coffee and two of the pig’s ears off at the squad car lurking for its next victim.

  “Nice to see you on the job, Officer Chauvin. I thought it might be time for a coffee break. Did you stop that pickup truck full of guys looking for trouble I brought your way? They tailgated me on the highway.”

  “Sure did, Miss Xochi. Doing seventy-five in a thirty-five mile an hour zone, and busted them for not wearing seatbelts.”

  “Do you know where they are now?”

  His partner accepted a coffee and a pig’s ear. “If they know what’s good for them, they went straight to the courthouse to pay their fine. If not, they probably left town on the other road and headed back to New Orleans where they come from.”

  “I didn’t notice them tailing me until Morgan City.”

  That prompted Officer Chauvin to offer some fatherly advice. “I got daughters, me. Don’t drive a fast car like that with the top down alone. You attract all kinds of trash. They asked where the Billodeaux ranch was located, lots of tourists do. These guys, we give ’em directions that will take them to the next parish speed trap if they don’t go home. Friends of yours always know to ask for Lorena Ranch if they get lost on the backroads.”

  “Thanks, nice to know I’m be looked out for, officers.”

  Xochi lost no time getting into the Mustang and driving slowly out of town in a direction opposite the one given to her followers. Once free of the city limits, she gunned the engine and made record time arriving at Lorena Ranch wrapped all around by gnarly live oak trees veiled with Spanish moss. All the grown children had remotes to open the wrought iron gates, though she knew an alert went directly to Knox Polk, Sr. in his capacity ranch manager and guard. Before she traversed the long lane, he would be in the security hut checking the cameras to identify the new arrival. By the time she came to a stop at the kitchen door, he’d be waiting for her or anyone else who showed up without warning.

  Yes, there he was, standing straight, tall, and lean, his close-cropped hair silver, his green eyes startling as ever in his tan face. Except for the height, Xochi saw little of Junior in him. Knox rarely smiled. A girl just had to know he was glad to see her. In a minute, his wife Corazon joined him and wrapped Xo in her warm embrace, proof positive that opposites attract.

  “So nice a surprise! No one know you coming.” Corazon glanced hopefully at the car as if it might hold another person, maybe in the trunk. “But not Junior.”

  “I suspect he might be moving into his new condo this weekend. He’s leasing the place below Tom and Alix.”

  “He don’t do nothing wrong that you kick him out?” The grooves of age and worry deepened in her brown face.

  “Absolutely not! Junior is a perfect gentleman and an excellent houseguest.” Add a damn good kisser, but don’t say it. “Just time for him to have his own place.”

  Knox Polk exhaled slowly as if relieved to hear he’d raised his son right. When Xochi popped the trunk, he went immediately to retrieve her small overnight bag while Xo offered the baked goods to Corazon. “I have honey and preserves I got from Rosemarie Leleux. Let’s get out of the heat and enjoy them before the Billodeaux horde shows up. Where are they anyhow?

  “First day of Camp Love Letter. Most of the guests arrived last night. Big weenie roast, lots of trash to burn this morning.” Knox filled her in on the activities of the charity for seriously ill children. “Lorena is on lifeguard duty. Trinity and T-Rex are giving pony rides. Edie is organizing games for the little ones. Mack, he’s lying around somewhere resting for his mini-camp next week.” The last sentence implied unvoiced criticism. Everyone pitched in for Camp Love Letter, no excuses.

  How could she have forgotten? Now that she took a moment to listen, the distant shouts and laughter of children filled the air like the songs of the mockingbirds. “I can pick up Mack’s slack while I’m here,” Xo offered as they moved inside to the commodious kitchen where thirteen children once ate their breakfast. Home.

  Tonight, she’d sleep in her deep yellow childhood bedroom bordered with red roses and full of colorful accents like a green glazed pottery vase filled with huge paper flowers in gaudy colors, a fiesta of a room Stacy called it. This evening she wouldn’t have to compete with Stace for the use of their shared bathroom that linked her space with Stacy’s gold and white princess bedroom. She’d sleep well knowing how safe Daddy Joe and Knox made the ranch, but she’d still place the gris-gris bag beneath her pillow to banish bad dreams. No dark men here.

  Xochi coaxed the very busy Knox and Corazon to sit and have coffee and cookies with her. The housekeeper insisted she eat some lunch, too, and served up a heaping helping of the jambalaya leftover from the campers’ meal and a small salad. “Nobody takes as good care of me than you, except maybe Junior,” she sighed in contentment.

  Junior’s parents exchanged a concerned glance. “What I meant is Junior has been doing all the cooking. Not to insult you, but his jambalaya is fantastic.”

  Unoffended, Corazon shrugged those comfortable shoulders that Xochi had often cried upon. “Catered and good enough for so many. Finally, Mawmaw Nadine, she don’t insist we do all the cooking.”

  Shocked, Xochi said, “Is she dying?”

  “No, no, just slowing down a little.”

  Her brother Mack slouched into the kitchen. His wrinkled pajama bottoms hung low on his narrow hips, and his long black hair straggled loose around his shoulders. He needed a shave rather badly. His facial hair had gone beyond scruff but not quite reached a beard. Scratching his patch of chest hair, he slumped into a chair. “Got any of that for me?”

  “Sure, Mr. Mack.” Corazon left her coffee and a half-eaten wedding cookie to fetch another meal.

  No Mr. Mack for Knox Polk. “Lorena is waiting for you to spell her at the pool, boy.” Talk about steely gazes that could bore right through a person. He hadn’t been an Army ranger for nothing and took no crap from lazy goof-offs.

  “Soon as I eat. I only have to put on a pair of trunks.”

  Xochi had to admit her brother could pack away a plate of food in less time than it took to reheat it. H
e also finished off what Xo didn’t want and grabbed a handful of cookies to go. Minutes later, he passed through the kitchen again, dressed for lifeguard duty in flip-flops, a Cowboys ball cap, aviator sunglasses, and a Speedo he certainly had the body to wear.

  Lorena replaced him at the table. She tossed her long, black braid over her sun-glazed shoulders and attacked her meal much as Mack did. She’d covered the bikini she also had the tall, lean body to wear with a terry cloth wrap, but otherwise resembled her brother with flip-flops on her narrow feet and sunglasses pushed up into her thick hair, almost his female duplicate with her large, dark eyes and high cheekbones. The tang of chlorine and suntan lotion surrounded her.

  When she paused between bites, Lorena said, “Honestly, if Mack weren’t my triplet, I’d punch him right in the nose for leaving me out there with no lunch until one-thirty. He thinks he’s a big deal because he’s going to play for Dallas, and I’m only traveling to Australia to play women’s volleyball.”

  Xo nodded with sympathy. She’d done her time at the pool. “I’ll be here tomorrow if you want a break.”

  “Since I can’t depend on my brother, that would be great, but the pool doesn’t open until one on Sundays. First church services in the theater for those who want to attend, then lunch and the one-hour rule, though I’ve never believed that to be true. Remember, you have to keep a good watch on the kids. Some are so afraid of the water. Others will jump in no matter what their handicap.”

  “I recall.”

  Lorena’s rather bold nose sniffed as if something other than her own aroma were in the air. “What are you doing here anyhow? Those who have a real life are exempt from helping at camp.”

  “You know Dean and the honeymooners will give the camp some hours along with numerous former Sinners, but I came to discuss something with Mom and Dad.” Xochi set her determined chin on top of her steepled hands.