The relentless gaze probed deep, and Cree felt a growing discomfort. 'I'm a parapsychologist. A ghost hunter.' Josephine's eyes widened slightly, and Cree felt she had to hurry on or she would lose the old woman again. 'Lila tried to move back into Beauforte House. She was… troubled… by a ghost there. It attacked her. Lila asked me to investigate. I've seen the ghost, I know who it is. But Lila has been badly shaken up. She tried to kill herself yesterday, Josephine! If I can't figure out exactly what happened back then, if I can't help her be rid of the ghost, she'll just try again and again until she succeeds. Charmian won't tell me anything. You're the only one who can tell me. Please, Josephine!'
Josephine's rigid stance didn't change as she considered that, but the news of Lila's suicide attempt clearly hurt her, and suddenly she looked very old and brittle. ' 'The truth shall set ye free'?' she rasped.
'Yes. Exactly.' Cree allowed herself a tiny welling of relief: Josephine had not resisted the idea of ghosts or hauntings in the slightest.
'And you gone help Lila 'cause you know the truth. You help her see the truth what happened, she gone get all better.'
Cree nodded, feeling the relief spread. Josephine understood and would cooperate. 'I hope so.'
Josephine took the photo from Cree's hand, stared at it with that ancient look for a moment. Then the creased lips turned down, the wooden face moved on its bones, pain and sorrow and love all worked together. Leaving the tea on the counter, she turned and walked stiffly to the door to the screened back porch. Cree felt the disturbance in her: The old woman was burning up inside.
The man hacking at the soil paused to look over at them, his sweat-sheened forehead creasing when he saw Cree. 'You okay, Auntie?' he called across the yard.
'You just go on workin', Hiram. I'se talkin' to this lady.'
Hiram hesitated, doubtful, then dutifully went back to his mattock work, his powerful back and shoulder muscles banding with each stroke.
'You can sit, you want to,' Josephine told Cree. Three wired-together wooden chairs stood on the canted deck, facing the backyard. Cree sat, but the old woman stood looking out at the expanse of weedy grass, the garden plots where Hiram worked, and trees that stretched away into the scrubby forest beyond. One of her stiff hands knotted and kinked in jerky, painful motions.
' 'The truth shall set ye free,' ' Josephine intoned again, shaking her grizzled head slowly. 'You just a baby, ghost lady. You like me, way I was. Got the same idea. But what if you wrong? What's left o' your faith, you wrong? What you do with your faith? How you live, after that?'
'I'm not sure what – '
'You want to know why I killed that man.'
'I know why. I need to know the details of what he did to Lila and what Charmian did when she found out about it. I need to know more about him, what kind of person he really was, so I can figure out how to set his ghost free.' And why you left the hexes. And how it connects with the murder of Temp Chase. And… But that would come later, if the old woman seemed willing to go that far.
Josephine digested that for a moment, her eyes losing their immediate focus as some internal view took precedence. When she spoke again, it was with a quiet, impassioned urgency: 'You gotta understand how I loved that girl. She was a… like a star, so bright, even when she a baby.' Josephine put a hand to her hard, hollow stomach. 'I had a sickness when I was a chil', couldn't have no chil'ren my own. Maybe she was that for me, closest I could have to my own daughter. But that not all of it. She every shinin', pretty thing you could ever think of. Strong, determined, she take on the whole worl', she got to! Biggest heart there could be. I love that girl, do anything for her. Oh, Charmian, she love her chil'ren, too, don't ever doubt that! But a different way, more like a lady lion love her cubs, teach 'em be strong hunters, be kings an' queens. She never see inside Lila like me. Lila, she knew that. We close.'
'Lila has told me that many times. How important you were to her.'
'An' what happen to her was so bad. What he do to her.'
'It was the worst thing that could happen. That's why Lila has hidden it from herself. But it isn't staying down, it isn't staying forgotten. His ghost chases her and rapes her again. It's all coming back, and it's killing her now.'
Josephine looked at Cree with an unfathomable grief in her eyes, and something else – a look directed at Cree herself, something like pity. 'That the worst, huh? That what you think? That the worst?'
It was clearly a rhetorical question, and the way Josephine asked it gave Cree a chill. What could possibly be worse?
But Josephine had opened the screen door and was beckoning Cree to follow her. Hiram paused again, shaded his eyes to look Cree over, then wiped his brow and went back to work. By the side of the steps, the old woman found a gnarled stick that she used to help her hobble over the uneven ground.
'Hiram, this here lady's a healin' woman. You don't mind if I's soundin' upset, you just keep workin'. We got stuff to talk about, you hear?'
'Yes'm,' Hiram said.
Closer, Cree could see that he was a huge man and was older than he looked from a distance, in his forties. The look he gave Cree contained a clear warning: You on notice – you don't do nothin' to hurt my old aunt.
'This my family house,' Josephine said as they walked on. 'I's born here in 1920. When Mama moved to N'Orleans, I went with her, but one my brothers stay on here – he Hiram's gran'daddy, Hiram get the place when I's gone. When I lef the Beaufortes, an' then Mama died, I moved back. She a root doctor, Mama. People call her a conjo woman. Had a little shop on St. Philip Street, made her livin' at it. Knew all the ol' medicines, cures, charms. Learned from her momma and aunts. Some these plots here, still the same one she made when I's a girl.'
'I read about her in a newspaper. You must have learned a lot from her.'
Josephine tipped her head ambiguously as she walked on to the end of the grassy area, where several dirt paths led into the scrub. The view to the left was closed by the wall of the levee, overgrown with bushes and vines; above, the tree canopy cast a mottled shade. The smell of the bayou was stronger here and mixed with a sharp smell like insecticide the ubiquitous stink of chemical factories.
Josephine started down one of the paths, stiff and slow. 'You know how he wore that pig mask? How he chase her an' let her go and chase her again? How he torture her?'
'Yes.'
'I's out that night. Should have been home, never would have happened. Some the other colored servants in the distric', they go their own party, I go along.' Josephine's voice was bone weary with self-condemnation, sepulchral. 'Lila come home, she feelin' a little sick and besides she never like seein' her folks so drunk.'
'Did she tell you? Is that how you found out?'
Josephine stopped beneath one of the windy, scaly-barked trees. Her eyes were beyond sad and beyond angry now, more like the eyes of a dead person. 'No. Not the first way I know. Come home, there's things knocked over. I figure it's party night, maybe some Beauforte friend extra drunk and cuttin' loose, I straighten things up before Charmian gets in. But when I see Lila in the mornin', she's walkin' wrong an' her eyes are wrong! Her fire, see, her fire was different! Mos'ly it was out, but then it burn too hot. Then it out again. An' she scared – scared to talk to me, even look at me! An' later I'm doin' my job, I'm changin' her sheets an' I see the blood. After that I ask her an' she tell me.'
Josephine was vibrating slightly, a shiver that shook every inch of her gaunt frame. The habitual control had vanished as the ancient pain and rage took over again, and now her voice was just a rasp, coming out under great pressure: 'I's a Christian woman. I knowed to kill's a sin. But I knowed he had to be punished. Couldn't do anything right away, seemed to take forever, havin' to wait. Even then, didn't mean to kill him. Didn't go into the lib'ary thinkin' to kill him. But when the time come, Lord Jesus, I did it, I took that iron an' I hit him. He layin' there, movin' around like a snake with its back broke, an' that exactly what he was, a snake, an' Lord forgive, I took that poker an' hit him in his head. Hard as I could. Did it again! Didn't hardly know I's doin' it. An' after that, that snake didn't move no more. No he didn't. No he didn't. God Jesus, help me an' forgive me!'
Josephine had gotten breathless and unsteady, and now she sort of swooned as her eyes rolled up and the tall straight body toppled into the bushes. Cree rushed to her and held her, lifted her out of the tangle. They limped together to a fallen log and Cree helped her sit, folding her body in long rigid sections like a hinged thing.
A terrible sense of alarm shrilled in Cree's nerves, the awareness that something was very wrong.
'Josephine, I don't understand. Richard Beauforte died of poison. You poisoned his drink. Something in his
