Page 1 of Cursed (Decorah Security 2.0, #14)

CHAPTER ONE

The moment she asked the way to Belle Vista, Morgan Kirkland knew she was in trouble.

The gas station attendant stiffened. And the good old boys who had been lounging on a bench next to the soda machine came to attention.

“Belle Vista? Why do you need to know the way to that place?” the guy in the greasy overalls demanded.

She wanted to tell him in a steel-edged voice that her reasons were none of his business. But since Decorah Security had sent her here on an undercover assignment, she gave him a tentative smile.

The patch on his right front pocket said his name was Bubba. She’d read all about him in the notes her client, Andre Gascon, had sent to Baltimore. Bubba Arnette was a high school dropout who pumped gas during the day. When the sun went down, he illegally trapped alligators in the bayou.

Trying to sound friendly, she spouted her cover story. “Mr. Gascon has hired me to catalogue the books in his library with a view to possibly selling off some of the collection.”

“Oh yeah? You a librarian?” he challenged, staring at her with the smug eyes of a man who thinks that any guy is the superior of any female.

She looked up at him through the car window, picturing what he saw. A very non-threatening individual. A woman with straight, chin-length blond hair, blue eyes, slender frame, dressed in a conservative beige skirt, a persimmon-colored blouse.

What he couldn’t see was the martial arts training, the marksmanship badges, the woman who had abandoned caution along with cream in her coffee. And the gal who held her own with the Decorah agents who had special talents she didn’t possess.

Really, she’d like to meet this guy in a dark alley and teach him some manners.

She took in a breath of the hot humid air and let it out before answering, “Yes, I’m a librarian.

” She might not have a degree in the field, but she’d just been through an intensive crash course.

The consultants from Baltimore’s famous Enoch Pratt Library had pronounced her fit to decide whether to go with the Dewey Decimal System or Library of Congress cataloguing.

“Well, you don’t want to work for a secretive bastard like Gascon. He’s bad news,” the local expert allowed.

“In what way?”

“You want to get murdered, you drive right up to his estate, chere.”

Morgan gave him a wide-eyed look. In a shaky voice, she asked, “murder?”

“Guys end up in the bayou out by his place. Face down in the muck. Clawed by a jaguar,” he answered, a nasty ring to his voice. Apparently, he was enjoying telling horror stories to the little librarian.

“There’s a jaguar in the swamp?” she quavered, pretending he’d had the desired effect, wishing she were free to wipe the smug smile off his weaselly face.

One of the good old boys, a guy in his fifties with thinning hair combed across his bald pate and an inner tube belly hiding his belt pushed himself off the bench and ambled over to join the conversation.

“Bubba here is just giving you some friendly advice.” He fixed her with a piercing look. “My cousin Willie shoulda listened to him. Leastways, if he didn’t want to croak hisself.”

“Um, thank you all for the warnings,” she answered. “But Mr. Gascon has already given me a retainer. I need the money, and I’m not about to return it.”

“Suit yourself, chere,” Rubber Belly said. Probably he was Bob Mansard, cousin of Willie Mansard, who had indeed ended up clawed to death in the swamp. Until his demise, Willie had been one of the troublemakers in town. Bob seemed to be ripped from the same cloth.

Gascon had told her about the local men and about the cat legend. He’d characterized the guys in humorous terms. She’d gotten the “rubber belly” description from him. But he’d never joked about the big cat. He’d said the murderer was a man—wearing claws. And he had hired her to find out who it was.

Thinking she’d like to cut the chitchat short—and use the facilities before arriving at Belle Vista—she asked, “Is the ladies room locked?”

“Key’s right there,” Bubba answered, pointing to a hook inside the door of the station.

With all eyes on her, Morgan resisted the urge to focus on her beige sandals as she walked past the onlookers, retrieved the key, then hurried around the side of the building.

The restroom wasn’t a place where she wanted to stay very long. So, she was in and out as quickly as she could manage.

When she returned, a couple of the guys in the peanut gallery seemed to be enjoying some kind of joke, and she had the feeling they’d been talking about the new Belle Vista librarian while she’d been gone.

She wanted to whirl and ask what was so funny.

But that would be out of character. So, she paid for her gas, climbed back into her rental car, and drove farther into town.

Over the past few weeks, her new client had e-mailed a great deal of material about the area, the local residents and his own estate.

She’d wondered if his assessment was too harsh.

Now that she was in town, it was easy to see what he’d been talking about.

These guys didn’t like him. More than that, it sounded like they were holding him personally responsible for anything bad that happened in the backcountry.

She got a better impression of St. Germaine, population ten thousand, when she reached the restored business area which featured two blocks of charming old brick and stucco two-story buildings that had been scrubbed and painted into what Gascon had called “a tourist-trap shopping delight.” Although she found a hardware store and a small grocery, the majority of the businesses were antique shops, art galleries, tee shirt “factories,” a handicraft co-op, and several restaurants.

The town was definitely open for business, but the free parking lot next to the grocery store was only a third full—on a Friday afternoon.

And all of the retail businesses lining the brick sidewalks featured prominent “sale” signs in the windows.

Beyond the shops was a two-story Victorian that housed the Chamber of Commerce.

After pulling up next to a well-kept Cadillac, Morgan went inside.

The woman behind the counter glanced up immediately. “Can I help you?” she inquired, as though speaking to her new best friend.

Morgan thought she was probably Sadie Delay, since she fit the description Gascon had given her of one of the women who worked in the office.

“I’m just looking,” Morgan answered. As she began picking up some of the brochures for bayou boat rides and outlet malls fifty miles away, a tall, well-built man bustled out of the back office.

“Dwight Rivers, president of the Chamber of Commerce” he said in a hearty, booming voice that Gascon had described as a bullhorn in search of a crowd to control. “What can we do to help you? Are you vacationing in the area?”

“I might,” she said because she didn’t want to get into the kind of hostile situation she’d created at the gas station.

The man stuck out a broad hand, which she felt compelled to shake.

Cautiously she tried a testing remark. “I would have expected to see more people around town on a Friday afternoon.”

He sighed. “So would I.”

“Is there some problem in town?”

“Just the slow season.”

Right. For the past eight months .

“The guys at the gas station told me that there had been some deaths in the swamp.”

His features darkened. “Well, they talk too much.”

“Sorry, I’m just trying to …”

“No. No. That’s okay. It’s not your fault.

I understand why you’d be nervous. There’s talk of a big cat prowling the bayou country, and that’s hurt business here.

But you’re perfectly safe in town. In fact, we have several charming bed and breakfast establishments that would love to have you stay with them.

I can call up one of the owners for you right now. ”

“I’ll have to think about it,” she answered, quickly.

Before he could push any more of the town’s delights on her, she turned and walked out the door.

Probably in the next few hours he’d hear over the grapevine that she was working for Gascon.

Maybe he’d think she’d been less than honest with him.

But she could always use the gas station as an excuse.

Who would want to get into two confrontations in the space of half an hour if she could avoid them?

She lingered in town for perhaps fifteen minutes, taking a self-guided tour, noting the wide lawns and old mansions in the better areas and the smaller, ramshackle houses with faded paint and missing siding on the metaphorical wrong side of the tracks.

Swinging back onto Main Street, she headed for the road that she knew would take her to Belle Vista. Gascon had asked her to arrive before dark. Although she still had plenty of time, she couldn’t help feeling a sense of urgency now.

The last dwelling inside the town limits was a two-story farmhouse.

Though the gray siding looked like it needed painting, the lawn and shrubbery were well kept.

But it wasn’t the landscaping that caught Morgan’s attention.

The window to the right of the green-painted front door sported a sign that made her eyes widen.

It said: Voodoo Priestess.

Morgan, whose sensibilities were firmly planted in the culture of the north, had always thought of Voodoo as an ancient cult—and one that was never quite respectable. Apparently in St. Germaine, it was okay to advertise yourself as a priestess right out in the open.

Why hadn’t Gascon mentioned it in all the information he’d given her about the area? An oversight? A deliberate omission?