Free The Evidence Room: A Mystery by Cameron Harvey Page B

grandparents’ home. And now here she was, surrounded by talismans, whether she liked it or not.
    Between the frames were strewn souvenirs from places with names Aurora had never heard of: a thickly spotted seashell from Bayou Sauvage, a coffee mug with a faded logo that advertised a place called Baboon Jack’s, an apron that bragged of the best barbecue in Hambone.
    Aurora had expected neat stacks of paperwork, another version of Papa’s office back home, legal pads and a tightly ordered file cabinet. She could handle paperwork; she did it every day. But Papa had left her with so much more than that. There were things here she needed to understand. If there were questions surrounding her mother’s death, they needed to be answered. She wasn’t ready to dismantle the house. Not today. Not yet.
    A Mass card was fitted into the corner of one of Raylene’s photographs, the faded image of a mournful saint on the front. Internment, Ti Bon Ange Cemetery, 9 A.M . A thickness rose in Aurora’s throat. Had she been allowed to attend the burial? Had Papa ever visited the grave?
    The man in the skiff was moving again, floating past her house now, his oar laid across his lap, his head tipped back in the sunshine. She opened the front door, crossed the latticed porch, and made her way down to the boat ramp.
    “Excuse me, sir?”
    The man did not sit up but tilted his head in her direction. She was learning that nobody in this town did anything quickly, something that set her off balance after the frenzied rush of the emergency room. He wore a filthy T-shirt tucked into a pair of ragged cutoffs, one tanned bare foot dangling in the sun-dappled water.
    “I was wondering if you could help me, sir,” Aurora began, surprised at the timid note in her own voice. “I’m looking for Ti Bon Ange Cemetery.”
    This got the man’s attention. He hoisted himself to a sitting position and shaded his eyes to give her a closer look. “You Hunter Broussard’s granddaughter? Raylene’s girl?”
    “Yes.” She was surprised at the hitch in her voice. She was part of something here; linked to this unfamiliar landscape in a way she did not yet understand. “Yes, I am.”
    He nodded. “Ernest Authement. Your grandfather, he used to buy shrimp from me. He was a fine gentleman.” He crossed himself and pressed a thumb to his lips. “He buried in Ti Bon Ange? I know he was coming back to visit. Bayou gets a hold on you, it won’t let go.”
    “No,” she said. “My mother is.”
    “For true,” he said. There was a warmth in his creased eyes, a kindness that made her believe her family had meant something to him. “Well, you gonna need a boat to get there.”
    “It’s an island?”
    He laughed, a guttural chortle that morphed into a coughing fit, revealing a mouthful of graying teeth. “For true, you an out-of-towner. That cemetery’s been half under water for years.”
    “Under water ?” It seemed unimaginable that someone could let that happen.
    The man shrugged. “A few years back they poured some concrete to hold it down. But that don’t work forever. The bayou gonna rise—nothing they can do.”
    “So they just forgot about it?”
    “Forgotten, maybe so,” he said, extending a hand to her. “But not gone. Get in. I’ll take you.”
    *   *   *
    The dead lay all around Aurora, entombed aboveground in stone vaults choked with weeds and dying flowers. She stood on the soggy patch of land where Ernest Authement had dropped her off, promising to return in half an hour.
    The bayou was wilder here, the water heaving past in an unrelenting torrent the color of strong tea, helpless to the pull of Laveau Bay and the ocean beyond. The line of vaults stretched ahead of her in crooked rows, the water’s greedy fingers already seeping between the rows and lapping at their edges.
    Aurora gripped the elbow of a submerged oak tree, scaled like an alligator’s back, and began to scan the names. Was her mother’s grave already