Harry the Sleuth
Better than Agatha, whatever her name is.
Okay, you have to listen to me. We all know I tend to exaggerate — some of you call it lying — Peter and the Wolfe thing. I have to take your cynicism on the chin, but so help me, God, if this isn’t the truth, strike me down dead.
I was sitting down waiting for Ted Lasso to start when someone came to the door. I looked at my ‘ring’ app but didn’t recognize the frame of the man at the door. I paused the TV. When the guy turned around, it was Tony Celio, the pro at my golf club. Not my golf club, but, heck, stop, you know what I mean. Tony gives me lessons.
“Hey Harry, I’m sorry to bother you this evening. I have a problem and want to discuss it with you,” he said. I’m thinking, are you kidding me?
“Is it urgent, Tony? I’m about to watch Ted Lasso,” I said. Expecting him to be polite and say, No, it is not urgent; I can come back tomorrow or in a month.
“I’m afraid it is somewhat urgent, Harry. Tomorrow will be too late.”
Trying not to be rude, I said. “I have a friend who is available online, Tony; her name is Bridgette. She’s outstanding. I take her advice all the time.”
I was wasting my breath. “That’s kind, but this is not something I can talk about to a stranger; it’s, well, it’s difficult to explain. May I?” Tony gestures; he wants in.
“Sure. Do you happen to watch Ted Lasso?” I stand to one side and let him enter.
“Hate it, bloody too sentimental, and the owner of the club, she’s a weird cow.”
“You think? She’s my favorite character. So, anyway, there, take a seat,” I said, pointing to the armchair. “What’s this all about, Tony?” I was trying to remain calm at this point.
“It’s my wife, Harry. She disappears for a week, always at this time.”
“Yep, I have one, exactly the same. She’ll camp out at Harrods for a sale.”
“This is more serious than shopping, Harry.” He said, having a sharpness in his tone.
“Of course, sorry. I thought a little levity, you know…”
Tony stopped me mid-sentence. “Will you help me? She’s never met you. You could follow her. I mean, I want you to find out where she goes.”
Tony is a tanned forty-year-old ex-pro golfer and founder of a highly lucrative golf centre.
“Why not just ask her?” I said, pointing the remote at the TV and turning it off.
“I have, but Jill is the independent sort, always has been, and refuses to answer on the grounds that I don’t trust her. We have the perfect marriage, so I let it ride. The truth is it gets to me not knowing her whereabouts for a whole week.”
To cut a long story short, a money-making length, I agreed to follow his wife when she left home the next morning and found myself standing directly behind a shapely Mrs. Celio in the ticket line at the airport.
She had driven her Mercedes from home to a parking garage downtown, then called a taxi using a stranger’s cell phone. I noted this: why not use her cell phone, question mark.
Answer — she didn’t want anyone to know her business, whatever it might be. You agree, right? Suspicious. I was having fun with my sleuth sideline. It would pay twelve lessons on the golf course.
Standing directly behind her, she told the ticket agent she wanted a first-class flight to New Orleans. She paid in cash. Again, you’re with me, right? Who the hell pays cash for an airline ticket if they are not up to something cagey? Okay, I bought a first-class ticket and followed her onto the plane.
When we landed in New Orleans, she hailed a taxi. I did the same and followed her to the Hotel Saint Marie in the French Quarter. It was Mardi Gras Eve, and with a reservation, it was possible to get a hotel room. Crap, I was screwed. But Mrs. Celio had a long-standing reservation. Twenty bucks gets you any information from a concierge.
I gave the valet, a black guy named Don, fifty bucks to sleep in his old Chevy and an extra fifty for him should Mrs. Celio leave the hotel before his shift ended. There was no need to flash him a photo; he had caught an eyeful of her when she got out of the taxi. And one remembers a babe like Mrs. Celio.
There was no phone call. I gave Don back his Chevy.
Light drizzle started around mid-morning. I stood on the sidewalk under the balcony of the Saint Marie still in my creased shirt, and no jacket. (How did I know she would head to an airport, clever shit reader!)
At noon, she came out of the main entrance wearing a yellow vinyl raincoat and bucket hat. I followed her down Toulouse to Decatur, where she entered the Cafe du Monde, across from Jackson Square. (That’s a stone’s throw from the Mississippi if you’ve been to New Orleans.)
Even though it was Mardi Gras, the place wasn’t too crowded. It was still early, and the chilly air had not yet invited a crowd.
Mrs. Celio took a table in the front, sitting by the rain-beaded windows that look out onto Jackson Square. I sat at a corner table nearby. She ordered the specialty: (I know because I asked the manager, who told me she came every year and order this, her specialty. If you’re going to be a clever shit reader, go read Agatha Christie) sorry, where was I, of yeh, so she ordered her specialty, beignets and cafe au lait. I ordered a black coffee.
I studied Mrs. Celio’s face in the grey morning light. She reminded me a bit of Tippi Hedren in The Birds: beautiful, sensitive and intelligent. All held together by a serenity of expression that I found intriguing.
A half hour later, I followed her out onto Decatur and, dropping back a little as she stopped to look in the French Market, where she bought a voodoo doll. Okay, this is really turning weird. But I guess tourists do it, so she’s doing it. Then she turned north on St. Louis and, after a few blocks, entered a seedy section of town just beyond the Quarter. And then she entered St. Louis Cemetery. Not a place to be alone, even in the daytime, teenage muggers, druggies, you know the sort.
I looked around, feeling a little anxious myself, there was no one about; even so, I stayed back, pausing here and there, acting as if I were a tourist, but soon realized there was no need for caution. Mrs. Celio walked swiftly away to another part of the cemetery, as if bent on an errand and never glanced back.
Three minutes later, she came to a whitewashed tomb. She stopped. Everything around seemed centuries-old, crumbling ruins of brick and stone. Here and there, tombs had rusty iron fences around them. Some tombs were shaped like miniature houses. Trinkets hung on others, and yet more had votive candles perched on them.
The one Mrs. Celio stopped at was a few feet taller than many. A plaque was next to a faux door, and the whitewashed stone was chalked with Xs.
Like, I’m really into this shit now. This is one weird, spooky lady.
She placed the purchased voodoo doll on a low step at the base of the faux door, crossed herself, turned her body in a complete circle three times, and then turned back around in the reverse direction three more times.
She took a memo pad from her purse and scribbled something on it, then tore off a slip and placed it underneath the doll.
I was ready to step into a narrow alley between two tombs should she turn in my direction. However, she continued the walk until she came to a waist-high tomb of limestone and crumbling brick. It had an iron cross leaning precariously on top. And there she stood as immovable and rigid as the statues of simpering angels and gargoyles around us.
Something distracted me for a moment. The flapping of wings. A raven, perhaps, a flash of blackness against the grey sky out of the corner of my eye. But, whatever, when I looked back, Mrs. Celio was gone.
Okay, you’re into it now, right? Me, too.
I hurried to where she stood and looked over the surrounding area. Couldn’t see her anywhere. Nothing through the grey drizzle that dripped from the overhanging trees. Gone, I’m telling, may God strike me down dead.
I glanced down at the faded inscription of the tomb.
It read: Clarisse Beauchamp 1830–1855 O mon cher Belzebuth, je t’adore!
This got me to thinking (yes, I can read French, asshole.) I walked back to the whitewashed tomb and reached under the voodoo doll for the slip of paper Mrs. Celio had written on. I unfolded it. It had already become as soggy as my shirt, and the ink had begun to run, but the words were still legible: Give me another year, I pray. As always, your humble servant and devoted follower.
Putting on my best sleuth smile, I asked around town about this tomb. It was the resting place of Marie Laveau Glapion, who had married a ‘free man’ of that name.
The name Marie Laveau was familiar to me. She was the infamous voodoo queen who had lived in New Orleans throughout most of the nineteenth century. A practitioner of the dark arts. One old girl in the town told me that Marie Laveau had the power to bring the dead back to life. Thus, creating the popular legend of the zombie.
So, what do we know? Okay, it appears that Mrs. Celio is a follower of some voodoo cult, which would explain her reluctance to reveal her disappearances yearly to her husband. What would he know, he’s a fucking golfer. What kind of shit is he likely to understand?
But who was Clarisse Beauchamp? And why had Mrs. Celio deliberately stopped in front of her tomb? Coincidence? I didn’t think so.
There was something awful niggly going on at the back of my neck. I felt a sudden uneasiness as images of zombies lurking among these ancient ruins came to my mind, remember all those grade-B movies. I felt a chill and without knowing how, felt confident someone was standing directly behind. Close enough to reach out and touch me. Would it be Mrs. Celio or something that looked like Mrs. Celio?
I turned, no-one there.
Later I made some inquiries around the Quarter but learned nothing. This was until I entered the Voodoo Museum and saw an obscure, framed photograph hanging on the wall. It was a daguerreotype of a beautiful young woman — the spitting image of Mrs. Celio. I turned to the assistant, and asked who the woman in the photo was.
“Why, that is Clarisse Beauchamp. She was one of Marie Laveau’s most ardent followers. She died young, and it is said that Marie Laveau loved her so much that she raised her from the dead. It is legend that she returns every year to the tomb of Marie Laveau to be granted another year of life.”
Well, isn't that just my luck.
I called Tony Celio later and gave him my report: that his wife was in New Orleans seeing the sights and doing some shopping. As far as I could see, nothing was out of the ordinary. No hanky-panky.
What the fuck would you do? You think I’m going to tell him he’s married to a woman who died a hundred and fifty years ago — and within whose body is the soul of a zombie?
You think that will get me twelve free golf lessons?
I went back to the airport and swear that something, or someone was following me. Maybe it was God, He surely cannot take me seriously, I’m a writer for fuck’s sake.
Adrienne Beaumont | Autistic Widower (“AJ”) | Brett Jenae Tomlin | The Sturg | Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles | Trisha Faye | Karen Schwartz | NancyO | Katie Michaelson | Bernie Pullen | Michelle Jimerson Morris | Amy Frances | Julia A. Keirns | Pamela Oglesby | | Tina | Pat Romito LaPointe | Ruby Noir | K. Joseph | Brandon Ellrich | Misty Rae | Karen Hoffman | Deb Palmer | Susie Winfield | Vincent Pisano | Paari | Marlene Samuels | Ray Day | Randy Pulley | Michael Rhodes | Lu Skerdoo | Pluto Wolnosci | Paula Shablo | Bruce Coulter | Ellen Baker | Kelley Murphy | Leigh-Anne Dennison | Jennifer Marla Pike | Carmen Ballesteros | Marlana, MSW| Patricia Timmermans | Keeley Schroder |Jan Sebastian | James Michael Wilkinson | Whye Waite | John Hansen | Trudy Van Buskirk | Joanie Adams |
(If you dislike being tagged for various reasons, no offense will be taken, please let me know, I’ll be sure it doesn’t happen on my posts again. If, on the other hand, you’d grace me by allowing a tag, I’d be thrilled to add you.)
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