The Jabberwock Valentine

2

Val and I were among a trickle of passengers exiting the commuter plane in Wickens. We were hardly down the ramp steps when a man and woman gathered us in, beaming joy, smothering Val, pumping my hand.

“Mom, George, this is the man!”

“Wow! Toss you for this one, Val. Hi, Cody. I’m Elva.”

“I know,” I said, smiling. “Would have known you anywhere.” And it was true. She was the gracefully aging pattern from which Val had been cut.

“And this is George,” Elva said.

“Glad to know you, George.”

“Likewise.” His handshake was good — firm, but not bone crushing. He was a man who didn’t have to display, to prove anything. Mentally I agreed with what Val had said about George Crandall. He was a presence. You either liked him immediately or shied away. I liked the little echo of gentleness in the boom of his voice. I liked the intelligence of the perceptive brown eyes in the face that might have been carved from oak with a trench knife.

This retired army officer, this Colonel George R. Crandall, was second father to Valentina. He was hardly the stereotype southern colonel. No fine-boned aristocrat, no white Vandyke, no broad-brimmed, floppy panama hat or string necktie. He was a tanned, fit light heavyweight in sandals, poplin slacks, and a knitted shirt on which the corners of the collar curled slightly. A man who sweated easily but wouldn’t particularly mind heat or cold.

“Would you like a drink?” he was asking.

“You kidding?” Val said. “We won’t have to wait for the luggage. I want a drink — at home.”

Elva drove. Her car was a modest Chevy. The day was lovely, February cool but touched with that southern Louisiana sense of semitropic in the breath from the Gulf, the river, the bayous and swamps. George pointed out landmarks of possible interest and asked about my work. It was the usual, expected small conversation, but his interest was real, quick, lively.

My impression of Wickens was of modern hustle and a scorn for the passage of time. Taking sustenance from its busy waterfront and natural gas industry, Wickens was state-of-the-moment shopping centers, half a dozen high-rise buildings over a downtown where revitalization had preserved the more historic sites. Wickens was also previous-century on streets where time had been barred, where there was still a corner grocery, a drugstore in an ancient building... it surely had a marble-counter soda fountain. A statue of a Confederate soldier stood guard over a park where old men played checkers beneath hoary live oaks and aged palm trees and pines bearded with Spanish moss. A few young mothers chatted on benches, rocking baby carriages and watching older children at play near an iron-railed fountain. Tract homes and condos hadn’t conquered Wickens. There were broad, tree-shaded streets of impeccable old gingerbread houses from which maidens in crinoline might burst forth at any moment to prepare for a lawn party.

George saw my interest in passing details. “Get to you, if you’re not careful,” he laughed. “Best damn spot on earth — except during hurricane season. Phobia of mine.”

He didn’t strike me as a man of any phobias, which just goes to show.

“Last year, by God, when Charlie was taking on such a load coming up through the Gulf, twisting a drilling platform like it was wet spaghetti, Elva loaded me onto a plane and we shopped and saw the sights in Montgomery, Charlie having aimed straight for Wickens. You were in ’Nam, I understand. Jesus... in those parts I was once in a typhoon... left me without a nail on a single finger. You strike me as a tolerable sportsman, Cody. Golf? Fish? Maybe one night you’d like to break out a watersled and try your hand at frog gigging? Nobody cooks fresh frog legs quite like Elva.”

“I’ve eaten them in Paris.” I grinned.

“Paris? Where the hell is that? For good food you got to go to New Orleans, or Elva’s kitchen.”

We had reached the eastern suburbs, not quite in the country. The houses dotted a landscape of sweeping lawns, small pastures, hedges, fences of wood, iron, chain link, split rail; lines of trees suggested boundaries between acreages of sizes to be called estates.

Elva turned onto a white-graveled driveway that wended between rows of sheltering willows. I saw a farmhouse that was comfortably old Southern, white frame, two stories, tall windows, a porch rambling across the front, a towering fieldstone chimney snugged against the eastern end.

George led me upstairs to a spacious front corner bedroom. Beneath the tall ceiling was a solid old poster bed, chest, bureau, huge oval mirror, writing desk, a Tiffany lamp on a table beside the invitation of a lounging chair.

“Your bath is right there.” George nodded at a door in the rear wall. “The wardrobe filling the corner should do. No closet... House was built by Valentina’s great grandpa, and houses were taxed by rooms in those days. Bureaucrats of course counted a closet as a room, and a hell of lot of people decided to make the wardrobe industry what it was for a while.”

He paused in the doorway. “Just follow your druthers while you’re with us, Cody. We don’t live on ceremony. Shoot any food allergies, or preferences, up front. We’ll do our best.”

“Thanks, George. Not picky in the mess hall. If it’s creeping, just kill it before you serve.”

“Stow your gear, freshen up if you like, and come on down as it suits your mood.”

Half an hour later, I heard the pleasant rise and fall of voices as I went down the oaken-banistered stairway into the spacious lower hallway.

They were in the living room, the forepart of the house off the hall, and Val saw me instantly when I appeared in the broad doorway.

She came and took my hand, ran the fingers of her other hand lightly along my temple. “Your hair is curling a little from the shower damp.” She smiled. “Come let me display you. People, this is Cody. Cody, meet Lissa Aubunelli, with whom I’ve had some pigtail pullings, and Keith Vereen. Careful with State Department classified in Keith’s presence, Cody. He’s one of those monsters known as the press. Publishes the local daily newspaper and brought the first, and only, television station to Wickens, a CBS affiliate.”

Lissa was plump, dark, big brown eyes, brown hair cut short and sassy, teeth that flashed almost as perfectly as Val’s, round, pink-cheeked face with chronic little moisture swatches beneath her eyes.

She gave me a hug and peck on the cheek, a sigh as she stepped back, head tilted, looking me over. “Val the stinker... really got the pick of the litter.”

Keith Vereen was smiling at her, offering his hand to me. He was tall, slender, slightly stooped, sandy-haired with quick, sharp blue eyes in a finely boned face. His movements suggested a carefully tuned conditioning and the reflexes of a cat.

“A real pleasure, Cody. But you’re no stranger. Val’s carryings-on about you in letters to her mother made you a friend quite awhile back.”

“How about a drink, appetizer?” Keith suggested. We drifted toward a buffet burdened with the wherewithal.

“Bourbon?” Lissa said. “I’ll pour; want it neat, or with branch, soda, ginger ale?”

“A splash of branch is fine.”

“How about a Sunday feature, Cody?” Keith said. “Isn’t every day an assistant secretary of state surfaces in Wickens. I’d even ask Lissa to write it.”

“No way,” Lissa said. “Hunk like him... I couldn’t be the least bit objective.”

Our hands touched as I took the proffered drink. “You’re a writer?”

“The best by-hell investigative reporter in the state of Louisiana,” Keith said, “perhaps the South.”

“Why stop there?” Lissa asked.

She didn’t look like an investigative reporter; she looked like a jolly young woman with innocent devilment behind her eyes and pasta recipes in her head.

“She started on the Sword, which is what my grandpappy called the paper when he bought the first linotype machine. Unfortunately, we lost her in a short time to the New Orleans Observer. Been there how long now, Lissa?”

“Seven years, kiddo. Don’t bother to ask my age.”

“She’s had offers from the Washington Post, New York Times, a news magazine or two,” Val said in pride of her lifelong friend.

“They’re not in New Orleans, lamb. They’re in places where there’s no old French market and the yokels don’t know how to listen to Dixieland music.”

Elva and George came in, beginning a pleasant hour. I felt so at home, I might have been born in Wickens.

Despite the comfort of the poster bed, I didn’t sleep well. Finally, about two in the morning, I gave it up. I put on a robe and socks, and slipped downstairs to the kitchen. I filched makings, cold chicken roasted in a piquant Louisiana basting, French bread, shreds of jack cheese, and a generous slap of a cajun version of slaw.

I carried the reuben out to the front porch. The night was nippy, but not cold. A breeze whispered in the pines and palm trees, the moon glinted behind scudding clouds, the faintest insinuation of primeval earth seeped from the swamps.

“You ought to have a cup of steaming coffee and chickory with that drooly goody. The chickory — it gentles everything, lulls you to sleep on a full stomach.”

At the first soft murmur I’d turned. Lissa’s round face, dimly seen, was smiling from a wicker chair in the darkness. Beside the chair was its wicker twin. I sat down, holding out the sandwich. “Want a hunk?”

“Sure.” She reached, carefully wrestled off a modest share, sat back, taking a bite. “Very good.”

“Want a whole one? You hardly got a mouthful.”

“Better not.” She bit into the morsel. “What’s with you? Jet lag? The quiet against big-city ears?”

I shook my head. How could I tell her? An awful premonition won’t let me sleep... I’ve had them before, not often, never know when or how, but they’re more real than the wailing of that night creature, which sounds like it’s in bad trouble.

“Oh, the excitement, I suppose,” I said. “The day. Coming to Val’s home, meeting you people, who are so very much exactly as you should be.”

“So are you.” She was silent a moment. She saw me looking in the direction where the night creature had screamed, one brief wail, abruptly cut off.

“It’s a million years ago, not far down state road 61. But you’ve been in jungle even more deadly.” She rustled, leaning slightly toward me. “You can keep from telling me what’s on your mind, Cody. None of my business. So I won’t ask.”

“I won’t volunteer.”

“Touché. Well, I don’t mind telling you why my bed was smothery, why I finally came down to look at the familiar yard and think about when we were kids, Val and I. Fact is, I need an ear... someone who won’t sigh crossly and tell me I’m an emotional nit, acting like a stupid child.”

“Give you my word. None of us sounds altogether brilliant when we need a sounding board.”

“Truth is...” She took a breath. “Cody, I’m frightened. And if I tell you why, I’ll sound like an underdone fool kid who got hold of some crack.”

“Try me.”

“It’s this... the pattern.”

“What pattern?”

“The appearances of the dead bodies in Mad Frenchwoman’s Cove! But of course, you don’t know any of it. I’m not yet making sense.”

“No, you’re not, Lissa. Why not try starting at the beginning?”

She eased back in her chair; she seemed small in it. It was a big barrel of a wicker, the top a little higher than her head, the arms great convolutions of wicker curved halfway around her.

“You’ve heard of the events of February 14, 1929, in Chicago, of course.”

I thought for a second. “The St. Valentine’s Day massacre?”

“Yes... so it’s known. Seven men waited for the arrival of a hijacked truckload of bootleg booze — six gangsters and an optometrist who enjoyed the company and life-style of gangsters. A mongrel dog was also present. Bugs Moran, the prime target in the gangland sortie, should have been there, but he was running late. As he approached the Clark Street warehouse to join the gangsters inside, he saw a big Caddy, police gong on the running board, pulling up and disgorging four men. Two were in police uniform, two in civvies. A fifth man, the driver, stayed in the car. Moran turned and made tracks while his seven pals were blasted with shotguns and submachine guns. Close range. Really gory. The gunfire attracted notice, but when two men in uniform herded two in civilian clothes out, it seemed just another Chicago episode in a time when such raids were commonplace. No one was ever convicted. Al Capone, having masterminded the tactic to wipe out members of a rival gang, had taken himself off to his Florida estate, and at the hour of the massacre was chatting with the Dade County solicitor.”

“A perfect alibi,” I remarked. “But why dwell on violence and murder on a day given to love?”

“Because there was another St. Valentine’s Day massacre, Cody. Way back in 1865.”

“Close of the Civil War,” I said.

“Yes. It made regional headlines, quickly forgotten, especially in the chaotic aftermath of war. But it’s still in the history books, those multi-volume things covering Louisiana history. Occasionally it crops up in Sunday supplement feature stories in one of the larger state newspapers.”

“Who was massacred?”

“Seven young men, Yankee soldier boys sent in to help police a riverfront town in a region already neutralized and under Union control. They were invited to a St. Valentine’s Eve party by a beautiful young woman, Marie Louchard. On the way they were captured by a band of marauders, thieves, cutthroat killers posing as die-hard Rebs. They were herded onto a barge, hands bound, and dropped into the Mississippi. One by one their bodies washed ashore in Mad Frenchwoman’s Cove. It’s an inlet, and the river currents twist shoreward.”

Lissa was still more than a hundred years from my fears for Valentina, but I had a foreboding that the threads were going to cross. I wanted Lissa to shut up, but I had to hear on.

And she continued, “The leader of the renegades was one Alberto Batione y Ochoa. He was of two families powerful at the time when the Spanish flag flew over the Cabildo in New Orleans, once the seat of Spanish government in Louisiana. Both families were notorious for their blood lust, sadism, and cruelties, and the genes certainly came to full expression in Alberto...”

She paused, taking a small breath. “Seven years ago, Cody, the first body washed up in Mad Frenchwoman’s Cove. Young man. Hands bound. Cause of death, drowning. It was a run-of-the-mill report in the Sword and hardly made the other papers. Then the next year, another body... and the year following... always the same, a satanic valentine for Wickens. Along about the sixth year, the investigative reporter in me began to take notice, frame questions.”

“And you discovered?”

“Nothing right away. Cases unsolved... During the course of a full year what’s one more killing in a society rife with daily murders, rapes, muggings? The seven bodies in Mad Frenchwoman’s Cove in life had been as unlike as peas and potatoes, one a street person, another a filling station attendant, a drug peddler, fellow who worked for an outdoor sign company... but my head wouldn’t let go. And I came up with a link, Cody. Dear God, I went into the history of each victim, and I discovered that two were cousins, and I backtracked them, in a growing obsession with this thing. And would you know... every single one of the seven young men was descended from Alberto Batione y Ochoa. Cody, I swear... am I going nuts? The spirits of those seven Yankee soldier boys of 1865 have been about their revenge. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth... spirits real, or spirits imagined in an insane head... the result is as undeniable as men taking a trip to the moon.”

“Seven,” I said. “Seven Yankee boys, seven of Ochoa blood now accounted in Mad Frenchwoman’s Cove.”

“You fool,” she said quietly. “You’re trying to tell yourself that it’s over. For some reason, you want to believe it. You’re afraid for Valentina, Cody. I can see it in your eyes. I can smell your fear. I don’t know how or why, but thank God you’re in Wickens this St. Valentine’s. This year, if the pattern holds, this is the season for the pièce de résistance. The woman who betrayed the seven Union soldiers — Marie Louchard — is yet unatoned.”

I pressed back away from Lissa’s sweat-beaded face. “Hush!” I said thickly. “Don’t say anything more.”

“All right, Cody. As you say.”

“No — you must.” My hand caught her arm. “Valentina... Marie Louchard...”

“Five generations, Cody. Direct descent, through Valentina’s paternal grandmother.”

The night was a vacuum. Then Lissa shivered. “I’m cold,” she said.

I was hardly aware when she rose and slipped away into the house.