Mardi Gras Madness Page 26

  The kitchen door opened and closed. Pearl and Angelle breathed easier.

  “Do you think she’s gone, Pearl?”

  “You stay here. Let me just take a peek.” The maid opened her bedroom door a crack only to have it kicked back into her face. She stumbled against Angelle but regained her footing and her senses in time to shove the child behind her.

  Miss Vivien waved a small pistol at them. “Naughty, naughty child to hide from your mother again. I almost got rid of you when I burned down Domengeaux’s store. You have as many lives as that black cat you adore. A bullet will be less painful, but not as cleansing as fire. Fortunately, I still have a full clip since I didn’t have to waste even one shot on that passive wimp, Laura. Step aside, Pearl. This doesn’t concern you.”

  Pearl stayed put before the child and talked soothingly to her former mistress, telling the demented woman what she wanted to hear. Maybe she did have Tante Lu’s talent for telling tales after all.

  “Miss Vivien, you sure are right about those errors. Why, I found a whole new batch of diaries in a secret compartment when I cleaned out that old closet upstairs. They say Caroline LeBlanc was a crazy person who made up all those stories. I know you want to see them. They in my closet right here.”

  Watching Vivien and blocking her view of Angelle, Pearl moved toward the hidden stairway and shoved her small sewing machine out of the way. When the door stood half way open, Pearl pushed Angelle before her and jumped in after, slamming the closet door shut. They made the fourth step before Vivien fired into the wood.

  “I know where it leads, Pearl. I’m blocking this door, you hear? You won’t get out.”

  From their place on the tenth step, they heard the sewing machine being shoved back into place and jammed against the wall. A vacuum cleaner stood in the way in the upstairs closet. The housekeeper and child on the thirteenth step shoved it aside. Shielding the girl, Pearl moved into the empty bedroom first, but Vivien did not wait for them. In the kitchen below, the maniac broke glass, bottles of cooking oil, liquor, anything flammable, Pearl guessed. Miss Lilliane called from her room for Pearl to stop that racket.

  Footsteps sounded in the hall and up to the first landing. Leaving Angelle hidden in the closet, Pearl risked taking a glimpse from the Judge’s room. Miss Vivien gleefully sprayed a can of peanut oil on the frayed runners of the stairs. She lit a wooden kitchen match and touched it to the soaked fabric. Even before that, Pearl smelled something burning in the kitchen—grease, alcohol and paper toweling maybe. Vivid orange and blue flames shot up from the pool of oil on the stairs. That crazy woman meant to burn them alive.

  On the other side of the veil of flames, Vivien shouted, “I do see you, Pearl. Much as I’d love to watch you and the child fry, I must go pay my last respects to Miss Lilliane. She won’t need her wheelchair after today. It is cruel to leave your prey half alive, but LeBlancs are tough to kill. Must be your primitive black blood. Who knew she would jump out a window rather than burn. After today, only Robert will be left to spread the lies, and I am sure I can find him easily at my father’s house and finish the kill I started at the camp.”

  Pearl half shielded by the door watched Vivien retreat down the stairs. “Bon jour, old woman. May you dance in hell,” Angelle’s mother called out merrily to Tante Lil. The mad woman returned quickly with the wheelchair, went outside and threw it down the verandah stairs. She did not return to the burning house.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Father Ardoin saw the smoke upon his return from the other side of town after attempting to administer last rites to a person in very good health. He considered the false phone call a very cruel joke at best and sacrilege at worst. He contemplated preaching on the matter this Sunday, but the smoke escaping in small wisps around the stained glass borders of the windows drove his sermon from his mind.

  The priest woke Chief Fontenot, chair cocked back against the fire station wall, from his doze in the spring sunshine. Once the Chief cranked the siren, a host of volunteer firemen gathered rapidly like a heavenly army, their slickers flapping like golden wings as they ran. Even Robert LeBlanc, who was supposed to be half dead down in a New Orleans’ hospital, came running from the library. He didn’t look too bad for a sick man, but frantic, very frantic. Father Ardoin had no more time to worry about T-Bob who could surely take care of himself. The sacred treasures of the church must be saved without delay.

  ****

  Beneath the flaming chapel, Laura lay on her back duplicating the cruciform shape of the church with her body and trying to be sensible. The short bout of screaming had done no good. She had to think this through. If she crawled to her right among the brick supports that raised the building off the damp Louisiana earth, she would reach the side of the church where St. Francis had provided one small hole in the siding for the shelter of a kitten and the possible salvation of Laura LeBlanc.

  She rolled over and crawled, smashed her hands painfully into one of the brick supports in the darkness, altered her direction slightly, prayed she would not move in a circle. A papery shed snakeskin disintegrated beneath her hands. She hoped its owner had moved to other quarters. Thankful the smoke rose upward, Laura saw small chinks of light ahead. She reached a barrier of boards, boards too thick to break with the frenzied blows of her fists. Moving along those boards on raw hands and knees, she sought to find that small weak spot in the wall obscured by ferns and ivy. She came to a corner.

  Oh Lord! The wrong direction! She’d arrived near the arm of the church holding the Mary altar. She raised her hand. The floor felt warm and the smell of ashes seeped between the cracks in the thick old cypress boards. Laura retreated, one hand on the wall, the other feeling for the brick supports mushrooming up at regular intervals in the darkness. Having to pass them by removing her hand from the guiding boards was like being forsaken by God each and every time. Then she found salvation—the hole just big enough for her left hand to grope through into the patch of tall wood ferns. Her right hand beat on the siding, her mouth screamed until it became dry and cracked, but neither could be heard above the sirens wailing on the green.

  ****

  Robert LeBlanc stood on the green arguing with Chief Fontenot. Pretty much like trying to make a point with a tub of lard, he knew.

  “Now Bob, your wife’s not in there. Any minute now, she’ll come along here from the bakery or La Boutique and be on me for letting a sick man get in the line of danger. That church has four wide doors, and I’m sure she went through one of them a long time ago. If she were in there when the fire started, why, she’d have come to get me, right?”

  “Then let me work the hose line.”

  “No way, boy. You are sidelined until further notice. Crack open that wound working for the city, and you could sue me. Yes, you could.”

  “What’s that?” Robert directed the chief’s attention to something flailing in the ferns by the feet of St. Francis.

  “Must be an animal trapped under there. We find ’em all the time roasted to a crisp under these old places. Now get back. Shit! Someone hold on to Father Ardoin. He’s going into the church.”

  By the time the chief turned back to the argument, Robert had seized an axe from the fire truck and raced to the siding determined to make some effort to fight the fire. The chief was probably right about Laura being safe somewhere. Certainly, he had enough strength in his arms to free some poor entrapped cat or dog.

  “Thibodeaux!” bellowed the chief. “You go tell LeBlanc I’m chief here. He’s outta this fire.”

  Old Thibodeaux tapped Robert LeBlanc on the shoulder, “Chief says…” Both saw it at the same time, a woman’s left hand beating at the wood ferns, a hand with a ring finger bearing an antique silver and garnet wedding band. Thibodeaux ran for another ax, but Robert keep hacking at the boards until his wound broke open and bled through his shirt.

  He didn’t notice the pain. What he did feel was the warmth and softness of Laura’s body as he pulled her free of the church. Sh
e coughed and touched the side of his face, unable to do more until her lungs cleared. He carried her and his child-to-be away from the flames. She’d lost her shoes and bled from scrapes on her knees, elbows, hands and chin. Her dress was covered with dirt and green stains from her crawl under the church, and her snarled brown hair smelled of smoke as he buried his face in it. He put his mouth over hers, wanting to give her his breath, but she pushed him away and struggled to her feet. Laura saw the hurt in his bittersweet brown eyes but had no time to waste apologizing. She tried to talk over the commotion of high-pressure hoses and collapsing timbers, but could not make herself understood with a voice raspy from smoke and screaming. She took his hand and drew him from the fire toward the library.

  “That’s what I told you to do, T-Bob. Go on home and rest. See a doctor, whatever, and let me run the show,” Chief Fontenot shouted as he orchestrated the fight to save the church of Ste. Jeanne d’Arc. “Just ’cause you right this time, don’t mean you always right.”

  At least, the library staff gathered outside to watch the fire applauded his heroics and called for a kiss. Robert tried to embrace her again, but Laura batted him away. “Vivien has gone after Angelle. I do love you, but later! Ruby, send the police and another fire truck to Chateau Camille just in case she set another one there.”

  He needed no more explanation. They took the Mercedes the old black chauffeur, Thurston, had driven from New Orleans with Robert as his passenger. With the keys left in the lock, they snatched it right out from under him as the driver, shaking his head and muttering about “crazy Miss Vivien” who ought to be put away, watched the fire.

  ****

  Pearl retreated to the closet and filled her arms with the old sheets stacked on the shelves. Taking Angelle’s hand, she led the child to the library. Too scared to do anything but cling and hinder the housekeeper, the girl stuck to her like ivy to an oak tree as Pearl knotted the sheets into a rope.

  Oh yes, she could see the mad woman waiting in her car down below. Oh yes, she knew Vivien had the gun, but what other choice was there? Keeping low, hoping the slats of the upper gallery would provide protection Pearl moved to tie the sheets to the banister nearest the corner column. The child hung on her, weighing her down like a baby nine months in the womb. They would have to go down together or not at all. And now, Miss Lilliane’s voice cried out, not from her room but closer, near the stairs. Pearl noticed the cries captured Vivien’s attention and made the arsonist smile. Small child up here, old woman down there. Good Lord, what to do!

  “Look here, Angelle. I got to get Miss Lilliane. You be safe here for a few minutes. Just squat down real quiet, and don’t move till I get back.” The girl hung on her and had to be pried off and tied by the sheeting to the rail while Miss Lilliane called louder and louder from the stairs.

  There she was, that tough old woman, pulling herself hand over hand up the stairs toward the smoke and flame. Two more sheets from the closet went into the tub of the modern bath by Charles LeBlanc’s old room. Pearl, draped like a Klan member, wore one wet sheet and carried the other. Thanking the Lord for long legs, she jumped the flaming runners and swathed Miss Lilliane in the sopping sheet.

  Up was harder, made harder still when Vivien opened the front door. The flames soared higher relishing the fresh air. As best she could, Pearl drew the old woman through the fiery barrier, thanking Jesus for the smoke that obstructed Vivien’s aim as the bullets shattered the finely milled newel posts of the staircase.

  A powerful car, crushing the shells as it sped up the driveway, created enough diversion for Pearl to drag Miss Lilliane into the library, slam the door and hoist the woman into the judge’s ancient caster-wheeled desk chair. Far way, a siren howled on the trail of the smoke.

  “Help’s coming, Pearl. You take Angelle down. I’ll wait here,” rasped Miss Lilliane.

  “No, ma’am. Smoke’s getting worse.” Wisps of it slithered under the library door.

  “Get her, get her!” Miss Lilliane pointed to where the slim child, free of the bulky knots, stood ready to jump from the outer edge of the balcony, a perfect target for her insane mother.

  Pearl got out there in time to save the child. She made a grab. They lost their balance, but the housekeeper grappled at the knotted sheets one-handed and swung the child down with her. Their good luck ended. Vivien was waiting. Behind the demented woman, T-Bob and Miss Laura ran to help, but not fast enough, Pearl knew, to save them. She twisted the sheet and offered her back to the former mistress of Chateau Camille. Vivien fired her last shot and watched Pearl fall the final few feet with Angelle clutched in her arms. Without enough bullets left for the child, Vivien went and stood over her daughter clicking the trigger of her pistol in frustration, unable to stop trying to correct the errors.

  Robert seized his ex-wife’s arms, but she kicked him with those sharp high-heeled shoes of hers, and when he lost his grip, she smacked him with the pistol in the center of the bloody spot staining the front of his shirt. Robert crumpled over his wound. Vivien ran free through the gardens laughing gaily as if she played hide and seek among the blooming camellias

  Pearl lay dying. She knew it. She had saved one child; the one clinging to Miss Laura, now came the time to save another.

  “Laura, Miss Laura.”

  “I’m here, Pearl. The police are coming. They can radio for an ambulance.”

  “No need—’cept for him and the old lady. Miss Lilliane still up there.”

  She nodded toward Robert. He’d taken Angelle into his arms, but leaned heavily on the child, his strength giving out as his blood flowed.

  “You tell my daughter I got money saved up in the bank. Her inheritance, all I got to give. She’s to make herself a new life. You tell her I love her no matter what name she goes by.”

  That said, Pearl rested in Laura’s arms and let her soul slip away.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Only the all black Nebo Volunteers came to turn their hoses on Chateau Camille. The Chapelle firefighters had their hands full trying to save their two-hundred-year-old church. Only the charred timbers of both landmarks remained by the time help arrived from neighboring communities, but the Nebo men had a tale to tell that rivaled the one about Father Ardoin going into the church to save the cypress carving of the Virgin. They swapped the stories in some of the neutral meeting places around Chapelle, the post office and the bank.

  “There she was on the balcony, this old, old white lady in a fancy nightgown, sitting in a desk chair, her lap full of little brown books. She threw them books out in the bushes away from the fire. ‘Why, that’s the old librarian, Miss Lilliane, I sez.’ Before we could get a ladder up there, she uses that chair to push herself along the walls and back inside.

  “She wouldn’t come out wit’ us ’til we took the rest of them books, too, so we did. The whole time she was gasping and choking and between coughs, telling us not to get water on the ones she threw in the bushes. Well, we got her down the ladder and slapped a oxygen mask on her. Did the best we could. I was real sorry to hear she didn’t make it, a tough old lady like that, willing to die for her books. Lungs jus’ gave out, I guess.

  “Had to take Mr. Bob to the hospital in Lafayette, he bled so much. I’d a thought we were gonna lose him, too. Sent him off with Miss Laura and T-Angelle, ’cause he wanted them by his side just in case. But he made it, yes, he did.

  “The police caught that crazy bitch, Vivien, out in the cattle barns trying to set fire wit’ no matches. They took her off to the nut house, and she won’t never get out this time. Yessir, this is a story to remember.”

  ****

  The entire community remembered Miss Lilliane and Pearl Segura on Sunday at a special Mass. Baptists and Methodists also attended, black and white, small children ordinarily sent to the nursery during services and old people taken from the rest homes for the day. The Baptists provided the folding chairs set up on the green beneath the sheltering oaks. All the chairs were taken and some small childr
en perched on the low-slung branches while their parents leaned against the broad trunks.

  Three people in the front row gave up their seats next to Ruby Senegal and her husband when the LeBlancs arrived from Lola Domengeaux’s old house where they stayed until they could rebuild. The three of them wore clothes so new none had been washed yet because, of course, they’d lost everything but a box of little brown books in the fire.

  On the edge of the crowd stood a tall black woman in a yellow and brown patterned sheath. With her hair wrapped in a turban made of the same material and large hoop earrings hanging to her shoulders, she appeared to be one of those African-American types, a big city reporter maybe, definitely not a local.

  Father Ardoin stood before the crowd between two statues. On his right sat the cypress Virgin, her tawny skin blackened by smoke, on his left, the effigy of St. Francis pried from its spot near the ruins of the church. Potted Easter lilies, already being sold at the K-Mart, surrounded the Virgin, and St. Francis’ bowl held coins, dollar bills and checks. Father Ardoin had a new majesty about him. He wore the cassock singed by the fire.

  “Dear people of Chapelle, we come together this day to remember two women, one white, one black, who directly or indirectly, fell victim to the flames which have ravaged our heritage. They were human and had their flaws, but in the end, they were strong. So we must be strong. Our church will be rebuilt on this site, and our own unique Virgin of the Flames, symbol of our past, will be housed again within it. St. Francis shall have a special shrine in our new building, because at his feet a living woman bearing within herself a child that is a symbol of our future was pulled from the fire. The sacrifice of Pearl Segura spared yet another child.” Father Ardoin rolled on, loving the moment in the present as colorful as anything in Chapelle’s past. Laura smiled very slightly remembering her first meeting with the verbose priest.

  Robert sat with one arm around his daughter and his other hand clasping hers. Absently, he rubbed her silver and garnet wedding band. She worried about him. He still looked gray beneath his usual tan and heavy close-shaven beard. She fretted about Angelle who gave them no rest at night with the violence of her dreams. Yet, Laura felt strong as if the toughness of Miss Lilliane and the vitality of Pearl Segura had been seared into her. She would be able to care for the ones the flames had damaged. She leaned toward Robert, and he leaned against her.