Chapter One
Gayle looked up from the dirt she was sifting at Tante Angelique, as she insisted she be called. She pushed the hair back from her face with back of her hand, that side being marginally cleaner than the other. It appeared that Tante Angelique, known on the deeds to this corner lot on Rampart Street as Angelique Revalieu, had trapped Joe for round twenty six in her efforts to stop the excavation of the property so she get on with rebuilding.
Government funded rebuilding. Federally funded rebuilding. That was the salient point Dr. Joe Klein, archaeologist and soon to be tenured (he hoped) professor at Tulane University kept trying to make. Being a Katrina victim, Gayle could hear him explaining patiently for the fiftieth time at least, had got her the money, and the low interest loan. But it had also laid her open to a host of federal laws designed to preserve and protect the heritage of America. Federal laws that kicked in when work on private land, work funded by so little as one cent of her tax dollars led to the discovery of items that had a potentially significant historical or cultural value.
When the workers clearing the site had discovered the pair of graves in the back of the house they'd naturally stopped work and called their boss, who'd called the state, who'd called him. And until he was ready to report that there was nothing here of interest beyond the bones that would be re-interred somewhere else, he owned the site. Period, full stop, end of story and Tante Angelique would have to keep residing in her government provided trailer until he did that. It wasn't negotiable. And it wasn't personal anymore than it was his fault she'd chosen to live in what had once been the Quadroon Quarter of New Orleans, famous for its Creole heritage and the Creole women of mixed race who'd lived there, the pampered mistress-courtesans to the wealthy white men of the ante bellum era. Making it a better than even bet that there was something on her property of cultural or historical value. She should have bought out in a new development in Metaire if she didn't like the consequences of living in a city with a past as rich in history as New Orleans.
Gayle had heard it all before. She tuned it out and went back to carefully sifting dirt, forcing her thoughts resolutely from subject of Dr. Joe Klein and his assets and attractions and focusing them on the screen she held that was revealing nothing.
Joe, for his part, had learned long ago that his smile could get him a long ways with women, and he was employing it with Tante Angelique. To some degree of effect. Not as much as normal, but then Tante Angelique was older than his usual target audience. Oh well. She finally gave it up for the day - it tended to be a daily ritual that Joe had come to see as a penance for something, somewhere, he'd apparently done sometime or another. Maybe for the affair with his professor's daughter 5 years ago when he was an eager grad student himself. Oh well.
Joe looked around. It was cool at least, this time of year. Wet though. And clouds were gathering again. They were gonna get soaked yet again, and get muddy. He sighed. And still no finds worth much. A few coins of some value. A piece of what must have been nice jewelry but now bent out of recognition. Still, there were experts at the university that could possibly make something of it.
Joe himself had been hoping for something a bit different. Texts would have been best. An inscription carved in the stone would have been great. Hoping for much else, given the climate .. well, he was dreaming. He walked over to drop onto his haunches next to Gayle. "Anything at all?" he asked her.
"Nope," she said, smiling up at him. Just some chicken bones, some old flatware and a few buttons. But," she added, "we've finished the back. They'll have the rest of debris from the house gone by the end of the day tomorrow and we can start on the original site. It looks like the old foundations are still there...the house, stables and remnants of the garden wall."
"Yeah, that sounds good. People used to hide a lot of things in their gardens. Buried gold, papers, whatever. Maybe we'll get lucky. I confess Tante Angelique is making me a bit crazy though."
Gayle grinned. "She just likes you and this gives her an excuse to see you."
"Do you think so?" Joe replied. "I hadn't thought of that. Well, let's call it a day and start back to it first thing in the morning. Unless it's pouring again."
Gayle nodded. "If it is I'll head over to the courthouse and see what I can find about who owned it and who bought it for her."
"Good idea. I'm going to hit the library. We've got a lot of stuff on the Quadroons. Maybe I can turn up something there."
Gayle stood up and tried to dust the dirt off her hands. "Okay. " She looked around the lot, shaded by live oaks and cypress trees, miraculously spared by Katrina. THe rest of the lot hadn't been so fortunate and it was the loss of the shrubs that had led to exposure of the graves. "Any news on the remains?"
"Not yet. Time period looks like 1800s though so they might be very interesting."...
"I'll call over in the morning then, see if they've anything definite. It would help at the courthouse. I'll also check the parish sacramental records, they often listed baptisms, weddings, what have you by name and address, so that may help too."
"Great. You're .. You've got a good mind Gayle," he said to her with a smile.
She blushed. "Thank you. So do you. I'll see you tomorrow either here or at the office," she said, getting ready to head home.
"Do you need a ride?" he offered.
"Gosh, that would be great," she said, looking at the sky. "It's going to pour before the bus gets here."
"Sure," he replied and led the way to his rather beat up old Jeep Renegade. At least it had a top on it. "So," he said as he pulled away. "Is actually digging in the dirt as compelling as you hoped it would be when you first decided to become an archaeologist?"
She looked at her hands, the cracked nails and the mud under them, then at her clothes. "In some ways," she said. "I keep hoping for the Indiana Jones kind of find with all the attendant adventure, but you know how that goes...romantic childhood dreams."
He laughed. He had a great laugh. "Well, even he had to dig in the dirt now and again. And crawl through cobwebs. Who knows. Maybe we'll find something hidden under what's left of the acacia tree. Did you know that it represents purity and endurance of the soul? Oh, and it's got this funerary symbolism thing going on, signifying resurrection and immortality. How neat would it be that we find some ancient voodoo queen, who might look just like Tante Angelique, buried her old lover there."
She laughed with him, charmed by the idea and by him. "It would be. Tante Angelique was telling me there's an old woman who lives around here who knows all the legends about the quarter. A real character she said. People go to her for potions and charms."
"I bet. And no doubt she makes a sweet living doing it," he said, grinning at her. "The tourists eat that shit up. You don't take that stuff seriously do you?"
"No," she said, making a face. "But I find it fascinating nonetheless. The inexplicable is what they all seem to dabble in, wrapped up or buried in the history of things. It's the passing on of the tradition and the oral history that I love, that interests me."
"True, there's poetry in the oral history, poetry and romance, and okay, yeah, some misery too. But it's the misery of Romeo and Juliette which is beautiful despite its horror. But I like things in black and white more than just the oral history. I want to find some long lost scroll with mysterious revelations in it."
"So for you it isn't Indiana Jones, it's the DiVinci code?"
He laughed and glanced over at her. "Yeah. For me that's it. We'd make a pretty good team. You with the fascination with the oral history and me finding the hidden symbols and their meanings."
She grinned at him. "Works for me, Doc."
He dropped her off at her apartment and drove off, waving at her as he did so.
He had pictures of what the garden had looked like. Tante Angelique had photos from the early days of the century, her relatives, dressed in white linen, looking prosperous and content, in the cooling shade of a southern garden, drinking what, mint julep or iced tea, back in the days long before air conditioning. back when life slowed to a near halt during the heat of the day and the inhabitants of New Orleans hid behind the cooling (such as it was) breeze from fans and garden fountains.
He hadn't slept well, so he'd been at the dig site not long after dawn. Gayle wouldn't be on site before noon, other requirements of her advisor taking precedence, and that was fine with Joe. It gave him a chance to get a feel for the garden, to let it seep into his bones, through his skin, into his mind.
The history he'd read the night before enhanced the pictures from the photos Angelique had shown him. The photos not nearly as old as the graves here, but still.. And there were photos and paintings and drawings of New Orleans in the early days of the 1800s so he could almost picture it. A bustling city with surprisingly modern - or at least not puritanical morals. It was French, with some English, and thus far more European in outlook and thinking than the rest of the United States of the time. It was a separate country, a different place, out of time, out of history even, at least so far as the residents of the city thought.
He stood in the early morning light, looking down at the graves. They'd not found much so far. Surprisingly little. Well, maybe the Katrina flooding had moved some of what might have been put there, no telling. They'd just have to be patient and search the garden more thoroughly. But the wall... He knelt down in front of what was left of the back garden wall and ran his hand along the brickwork. It was beautiful to him. Old and done lovingly, back in the day when artistry masqueraded as masonry. His fingers, rather than his eyes, found the slight difference in the bricks first. He tried to dismiss it when he looked where he'd been feeling, as imagination rather than something of substance. But Joe believed in his instincts. So he took the tiny trowel and the larger brush from his pocket and swept away the dirt and the first layer of mossy growth and looked more closely at the brick itself. It was a bit different from some of its neighbors. A slightly different sort of brick, perhaps newer than the others? He knelt down and squinted at it, and used the edge of his trowel to scrape at the green mold and detritus of flood and age. One brick seemed loose so he began working at it.
He was patient and careful, disturbing the mortar as little as possible. He got his fingernails up against the brick and began to ease it out as the ancient mortar sifted away to dust. He broke a fingernail, but finally got the point of the trowel in far enough to pull the brick free. He pulled out the small flashlight he had with him and aimed it into the hole where the brick had been. He squinted and leaned closer, coughing a bit from the stirred up pollen and dust particles. Then his eyes went wide. Something was catching the light from the flashlight. Something shiny? He used the brush to reach into the tiny hole and work whatever it was out of there. That was when he realized there was open space behind that brick, rather than just more brick. The shiny thing was... he finally got it out into the light so he could see it.. an old probably bone button. Perhaps off a cuff. Perhaps belonging to the mason, pulled off during the making of the wall. Or... It was small. It might have belonged to a woman? Off of a woman's sleeve? How odd for it to be there. He shone the light back into the open area again and thought he saw something back in there, something that wasn't mortar or the back side of more bricks. His heart started to race. He felt it. He sensed it. Something. Something possibly important had been bricked into the wall! It might be only a child's trinkets, for all he knew at this point. But even so, who knew what might be in there. Coins which now might be a real find, or a bit of cheap jewelry that over time was now priceless. Or even love letters, or a postcard daguerrotype or something!
He worried another brick free so he could reach into the dark space behind the brickwork. It was not brick. It felt like.. metal? Possibly tin. Not wood. That would have not been so durable. He worried out another brick and saw a box. He had to remove two more bricks to have enough of an open hole to get the box out. It was iron, which was surprising. Like a small strong box. He got a hand on one corner and managed to get the point of the trowel up against the other side and began to ease it forward. Finally he could get both hands on it and got it far enough out of the dark hole it had been secreted in to free it from its grave. There was the sound of metal clinking on metal. Bullets? Musket balls?
It was surprisingly heavy he found, as he eased it to the ground. There was an ancient lock on it. He considered smashing the lock but decided against it. Better to do it back in the lab in case there were letters in it. He picked it up and set it aside, as the wind suddenly picked up. The ivy and weeds that had tried to take over the brick garden wall nearby were moving in that sudden wind, writhing a bit as if there might be a snake in it. He eyed it worriedly. He shivered as the sun that had warmed his back earlier was hidden behind a bank of dark clouds.
He sort of zoned out for a moment, and it was some time before he realized where he was. What the hell?
A slight noise behind him made him jump.
"Dr. Klein," Tante Angelique said with a smile, "Good morning."
He turned on his smile for her, doing his best to look the competent professional. "Good morning Tante Angelique." He got up a bit awkwardly and she reached out to steady him. "Sorry. Somewhat gimpy knee. I was just trying to plan how to excavate the graves and wondering if the flooding might make us have to expand our search grid around them."
She nodded sagely. "It was terrible bad here. But does this mean you'll be finished soon?" she said She stretched a bit to peer behind him. "Or have you found something?"
"No, nothing much. Some old metal casings and stuff. An old iron box, which we'll open at the lab. We'll process it but I don't have a lot of hope for it. Looks like it ended up here as the water receded."
She nodded again, her smile fading. "Dr. Klein are you sure there's no way to speed this up. My friend Suzette told me that she didn't have to go through any of this and her loan's just like mine."
He moved to put an arm around her shoulders and began walking her away. "I'll do my best to speed it up, I promise. I've no desire to make you have to wait any longer than absolutely necessary. We ought to be done excavating the bones and getting them moved by the end of the week. We'll do a cursory search round and if we don't find anything that looks like it is native to your garden, we can be out of here next week. How's that?"
"Thank you so much," she said, patting his arm. "You're such a good boy. I was telling my friend Mama LaTourneau all about you just this morning over coffee."
"Who's that?" he asked.
"Bella LaTourneau. She owns a shop just off Jackson Square."
"Oh!" he replied laughing. "One of those voodoo queens, is she?"
She smiled. "Oh yes. Amazing woman. She's been the biggest help to me so many times. I just don't know what I'd do without her. You can ask her anything and...well...she just has this way about her."
"I'll bet that she does. Sells the tourists lots of trinkets and what do they call those things they wear around their necks, the amulets? And does spells and potions, she worships the loas, yeah?"
Tante Angelique raised her hand to her throat. "You mean the jujus," she said.
Joe eyed her. "Are you a believer in Voudon, Tante Angelique? I find that a bit hard to believe. You strike me as a rational woman."
"When you've lived as long as I have you'll understand that what most people define as rational is only a very small fraction of what is real." She smiled. "There was a time when the world was understood using the senses, now it is the intellect and the senses are only for sex and artists."
"If you say so. Me. I'll stick with what I can touch and feel, and make sense of and leave the creepy atmospherics to you and your friend Mama LaTourneau."
"Well I'll be going then," she said. "But it's a shame, really. Still you never know."
"I'm headed back to the university. Gayle will be here after lunch. You enjoy your day, Tante Angelique," Joe called to her as she walked away.
Government funded rebuilding. Federally funded rebuilding. That was the salient point Dr. Joe Klein, archaeologist and soon to be tenured (he hoped) professor at Tulane University kept trying to make. Being a Katrina victim, Gayle could hear him explaining patiently for the fiftieth time at least, had got her the money, and the low interest loan. But it had also laid her open to a host of federal laws designed to preserve and protect the heritage of America. Federal laws that kicked in when work on private land, work funded by so little as one cent of her tax dollars led to the discovery of items that had a potentially significant historical or cultural value.
When the workers clearing the site had discovered the pair of graves in the back of the house they'd naturally stopped work and called their boss, who'd called the state, who'd called him. And until he was ready to report that there was nothing here of interest beyond the bones that would be re-interred somewhere else, he owned the site. Period, full stop, end of story and Tante Angelique would have to keep residing in her government provided trailer until he did that. It wasn't negotiable. And it wasn't personal anymore than it was his fault she'd chosen to live in what had once been the Quadroon Quarter of New Orleans, famous for its Creole heritage and the Creole women of mixed race who'd lived there, the pampered mistress-courtesans to the wealthy white men of the ante bellum era. Making it a better than even bet that there was something on her property of cultural or historical value. She should have bought out in a new development in Metaire if she didn't like the consequences of living in a city with a past as rich in history as New Orleans.
Gayle had heard it all before. She tuned it out and went back to carefully sifting dirt, forcing her thoughts resolutely from subject of Dr. Joe Klein and his assets and attractions and focusing them on the screen she held that was revealing nothing.
Joe, for his part, had learned long ago that his smile could get him a long ways with women, and he was employing it with Tante Angelique. To some degree of effect. Not as much as normal, but then Tante Angelique was older than his usual target audience. Oh well. She finally gave it up for the day - it tended to be a daily ritual that Joe had come to see as a penance for something, somewhere, he'd apparently done sometime or another. Maybe for the affair with his professor's daughter 5 years ago when he was an eager grad student himself. Oh well.
Joe looked around. It was cool at least, this time of year. Wet though. And clouds were gathering again. They were gonna get soaked yet again, and get muddy. He sighed. And still no finds worth much. A few coins of some value. A piece of what must have been nice jewelry but now bent out of recognition. Still, there were experts at the university that could possibly make something of it.
Joe himself had been hoping for something a bit different. Texts would have been best. An inscription carved in the stone would have been great. Hoping for much else, given the climate .. well, he was dreaming. He walked over to drop onto his haunches next to Gayle. "Anything at all?" he asked her.
"Nope," she said, smiling up at him. Just some chicken bones, some old flatware and a few buttons. But," she added, "we've finished the back. They'll have the rest of debris from the house gone by the end of the day tomorrow and we can start on the original site. It looks like the old foundations are still there...the house, stables and remnants of the garden wall."
"Yeah, that sounds good. People used to hide a lot of things in their gardens. Buried gold, papers, whatever. Maybe we'll get lucky. I confess Tante Angelique is making me a bit crazy though."
Gayle grinned. "She just likes you and this gives her an excuse to see you."
"Do you think so?" Joe replied. "I hadn't thought of that. Well, let's call it a day and start back to it first thing in the morning. Unless it's pouring again."
Gayle nodded. "If it is I'll head over to the courthouse and see what I can find about who owned it and who bought it for her."
"Good idea. I'm going to hit the library. We've got a lot of stuff on the Quadroons. Maybe I can turn up something there."
Gayle stood up and tried to dust the dirt off her hands. "Okay. " She looked around the lot, shaded by live oaks and cypress trees, miraculously spared by Katrina. THe rest of the lot hadn't been so fortunate and it was the loss of the shrubs that had led to exposure of the graves. "Any news on the remains?"
"Not yet. Time period looks like 1800s though so they might be very interesting."...
"I'll call over in the morning then, see if they've anything definite. It would help at the courthouse. I'll also check the parish sacramental records, they often listed baptisms, weddings, what have you by name and address, so that may help too."
"Great. You're .. You've got a good mind Gayle," he said to her with a smile.
She blushed. "Thank you. So do you. I'll see you tomorrow either here or at the office," she said, getting ready to head home.
"Do you need a ride?" he offered.
"Gosh, that would be great," she said, looking at the sky. "It's going to pour before the bus gets here."
"Sure," he replied and led the way to his rather beat up old Jeep Renegade. At least it had a top on it. "So," he said as he pulled away. "Is actually digging in the dirt as compelling as you hoped it would be when you first decided to become an archaeologist?"
She looked at her hands, the cracked nails and the mud under them, then at her clothes. "In some ways," she said. "I keep hoping for the Indiana Jones kind of find with all the attendant adventure, but you know how that goes...romantic childhood dreams."
He laughed. He had a great laugh. "Well, even he had to dig in the dirt now and again. And crawl through cobwebs. Who knows. Maybe we'll find something hidden under what's left of the acacia tree. Did you know that it represents purity and endurance of the soul? Oh, and it's got this funerary symbolism thing going on, signifying resurrection and immortality. How neat would it be that we find some ancient voodoo queen, who might look just like Tante Angelique, buried her old lover there."
She laughed with him, charmed by the idea and by him. "It would be. Tante Angelique was telling me there's an old woman who lives around here who knows all the legends about the quarter. A real character she said. People go to her for potions and charms."
"I bet. And no doubt she makes a sweet living doing it," he said, grinning at her. "The tourists eat that shit up. You don't take that stuff seriously do you?"
"No," she said, making a face. "But I find it fascinating nonetheless. The inexplicable is what they all seem to dabble in, wrapped up or buried in the history of things. It's the passing on of the tradition and the oral history that I love, that interests me."
"True, there's poetry in the oral history, poetry and romance, and okay, yeah, some misery too. But it's the misery of Romeo and Juliette which is beautiful despite its horror. But I like things in black and white more than just the oral history. I want to find some long lost scroll with mysterious revelations in it."
"So for you it isn't Indiana Jones, it's the DiVinci code?"
He laughed and glanced over at her. "Yeah. For me that's it. We'd make a pretty good team. You with the fascination with the oral history and me finding the hidden symbols and their meanings."
She grinned at him. "Works for me, Doc."
He dropped her off at her apartment and drove off, waving at her as he did so.
He had pictures of what the garden had looked like. Tante Angelique had photos from the early days of the century, her relatives, dressed in white linen, looking prosperous and content, in the cooling shade of a southern garden, drinking what, mint julep or iced tea, back in the days long before air conditioning. back when life slowed to a near halt during the heat of the day and the inhabitants of New Orleans hid behind the cooling (such as it was) breeze from fans and garden fountains.
He hadn't slept well, so he'd been at the dig site not long after dawn. Gayle wouldn't be on site before noon, other requirements of her advisor taking precedence, and that was fine with Joe. It gave him a chance to get a feel for the garden, to let it seep into his bones, through his skin, into his mind.
The history he'd read the night before enhanced the pictures from the photos Angelique had shown him. The photos not nearly as old as the graves here, but still.. And there were photos and paintings and drawings of New Orleans in the early days of the 1800s so he could almost picture it. A bustling city with surprisingly modern - or at least not puritanical morals. It was French, with some English, and thus far more European in outlook and thinking than the rest of the United States of the time. It was a separate country, a different place, out of time, out of history even, at least so far as the residents of the city thought.
He stood in the early morning light, looking down at the graves. They'd not found much so far. Surprisingly little. Well, maybe the Katrina flooding had moved some of what might have been put there, no telling. They'd just have to be patient and search the garden more thoroughly. But the wall... He knelt down in front of what was left of the back garden wall and ran his hand along the brickwork. It was beautiful to him. Old and done lovingly, back in the day when artistry masqueraded as masonry. His fingers, rather than his eyes, found the slight difference in the bricks first. He tried to dismiss it when he looked where he'd been feeling, as imagination rather than something of substance. But Joe believed in his instincts. So he took the tiny trowel and the larger brush from his pocket and swept away the dirt and the first layer of mossy growth and looked more closely at the brick itself. It was a bit different from some of its neighbors. A slightly different sort of brick, perhaps newer than the others? He knelt down and squinted at it, and used the edge of his trowel to scrape at the green mold and detritus of flood and age. One brick seemed loose so he began working at it.
He was patient and careful, disturbing the mortar as little as possible. He got his fingernails up against the brick and began to ease it out as the ancient mortar sifted away to dust. He broke a fingernail, but finally got the point of the trowel in far enough to pull the brick free. He pulled out the small flashlight he had with him and aimed it into the hole where the brick had been. He squinted and leaned closer, coughing a bit from the stirred up pollen and dust particles. Then his eyes went wide. Something was catching the light from the flashlight. Something shiny? He used the brush to reach into the tiny hole and work whatever it was out of there. That was when he realized there was open space behind that brick, rather than just more brick. The shiny thing was... he finally got it out into the light so he could see it.. an old probably bone button. Perhaps off a cuff. Perhaps belonging to the mason, pulled off during the making of the wall. Or... It was small. It might have belonged to a woman? Off of a woman's sleeve? How odd for it to be there. He shone the light back into the open area again and thought he saw something back in there, something that wasn't mortar or the back side of more bricks. His heart started to race. He felt it. He sensed it. Something. Something possibly important had been bricked into the wall! It might be only a child's trinkets, for all he knew at this point. But even so, who knew what might be in there. Coins which now might be a real find, or a bit of cheap jewelry that over time was now priceless. Or even love letters, or a postcard daguerrotype or something!
He worried another brick free so he could reach into the dark space behind the brickwork. It was not brick. It felt like.. metal? Possibly tin. Not wood. That would have not been so durable. He worried out another brick and saw a box. He had to remove two more bricks to have enough of an open hole to get the box out. It was iron, which was surprising. Like a small strong box. He got a hand on one corner and managed to get the point of the trowel up against the other side and began to ease it forward. Finally he could get both hands on it and got it far enough out of the dark hole it had been secreted in to free it from its grave. There was the sound of metal clinking on metal. Bullets? Musket balls?
It was surprisingly heavy he found, as he eased it to the ground. There was an ancient lock on it. He considered smashing the lock but decided against it. Better to do it back in the lab in case there were letters in it. He picked it up and set it aside, as the wind suddenly picked up. The ivy and weeds that had tried to take over the brick garden wall nearby were moving in that sudden wind, writhing a bit as if there might be a snake in it. He eyed it worriedly. He shivered as the sun that had warmed his back earlier was hidden behind a bank of dark clouds.
He sort of zoned out for a moment, and it was some time before he realized where he was. What the hell?
A slight noise behind him made him jump.
"Dr. Klein," Tante Angelique said with a smile, "Good morning."
He turned on his smile for her, doing his best to look the competent professional. "Good morning Tante Angelique." He got up a bit awkwardly and she reached out to steady him. "Sorry. Somewhat gimpy knee. I was just trying to plan how to excavate the graves and wondering if the flooding might make us have to expand our search grid around them."
She nodded sagely. "It was terrible bad here. But does this mean you'll be finished soon?" she said She stretched a bit to peer behind him. "Or have you found something?"
"No, nothing much. Some old metal casings and stuff. An old iron box, which we'll open at the lab. We'll process it but I don't have a lot of hope for it. Looks like it ended up here as the water receded."
She nodded again, her smile fading. "Dr. Klein are you sure there's no way to speed this up. My friend Suzette told me that she didn't have to go through any of this and her loan's just like mine."
He moved to put an arm around her shoulders and began walking her away. "I'll do my best to speed it up, I promise. I've no desire to make you have to wait any longer than absolutely necessary. We ought to be done excavating the bones and getting them moved by the end of the week. We'll do a cursory search round and if we don't find anything that looks like it is native to your garden, we can be out of here next week. How's that?"
"Thank you so much," she said, patting his arm. "You're such a good boy. I was telling my friend Mama LaTourneau all about you just this morning over coffee."
"Who's that?" he asked.
"Bella LaTourneau. She owns a shop just off Jackson Square."
"Oh!" he replied laughing. "One of those voodoo queens, is she?"
She smiled. "Oh yes. Amazing woman. She's been the biggest help to me so many times. I just don't know what I'd do without her. You can ask her anything and...well...she just has this way about her."
"I'll bet that she does. Sells the tourists lots of trinkets and what do they call those things they wear around their necks, the amulets? And does spells and potions, she worships the loas, yeah?"
Tante Angelique raised her hand to her throat. "You mean the jujus," she said.
Joe eyed her. "Are you a believer in Voudon, Tante Angelique? I find that a bit hard to believe. You strike me as a rational woman."
"When you've lived as long as I have you'll understand that what most people define as rational is only a very small fraction of what is real." She smiled. "There was a time when the world was understood using the senses, now it is the intellect and the senses are only for sex and artists."
"If you say so. Me. I'll stick with what I can touch and feel, and make sense of and leave the creepy atmospherics to you and your friend Mama LaTourneau."
"Well I'll be going then," she said. "But it's a shame, really. Still you never know."
"I'm headed back to the university. Gayle will be here after lunch. You enjoy your day, Tante Angelique," Joe called to her as she walked away.