Free Plunder: A Faye Longchamp Mystery #7 (Faye Longchamp Series) by Mary Anna Evans

houseboat, Faye smelled the odor of incense drifting through its open windows. Miranda was preparing to remember her son’s life in the special ways only a mambo knows.

Episode 2 of “The Podcast I Never Intend to Broadcast,” Part 1
    by Amande Marie Landreneau
Gola George didn’t get religion after he escaped slavery. He also didn’t decide to do something nice for the world out of gratitude to God or his African gods or fate or luck.
No. According to my Grandmère, he put all the slavers’ African prisoners ashore on a deserted island, except for a handpicked crew selected from men who were willing to turn pirate. Now, I’m not sure what his options were, since dropping the Africans off at a seaport would have meant they went into slavery. And taking them back to Africa wasn’t gonna happen, not without food and supplies. Still, based on the things Grandmère told me about Gola George, I’m thinking he didn’t really care what happened to all those women and their children, and he certainly didn’t care what happened to the weakling men who weren’t good pirate material.
People said Gola George was seven feet tall. Or maybe he was just one of those men who could make you believe he was seven feet tall. Either way, he was a most excellent pirate. He grew his hair long and dyed it red. He tied finger bones in his curls, like Christmas tree ornaments. They clanked when he shook his head, which happened a lot when he was slicing people open and running them through.
He always wore a flowing white silk shirt, and he kept a plain white silk scarf wrapped around his head, but they didn’t stay white long. Gola George made sure there was always a spot of blood showing on the white silk, but just one. That single spot of horror distracted his victims. They couldn’t look away from George and his trademark bloodspots.
It occurs to me that George had been stolen from Africa, so he’d probably never been on a sailing ship before being taken as a slave. How did he even know what a pirate was? That question is just one of the things that makes me think that Henry the Mutineer was no innocent pawn, trapped into helping George because his only other choice was death. Grandmère’s judgment was always a little murky where Henry was concerned because, you see, she always said she was supposed to be descended from him.
Myself, I think Grandmère’s people are descended from Gola George himself. There have been times when I looked at Grandmère, stomping around our little kitchen and chopping squash with a big sharp knife and mumbling to herself in French, and I thought, “Yes. A pirate.”
But there have been other times when I was the one mumbling angry threats. I was the one looking out at the water and wondering whether the engine on this old houseboat could take us somewhere. Anywhere. And I’m not any kin to Grandmère and her ancestor Gola George.
Maybe there’s a little bit of pirate in all of us.

Chapter Eight
Another marked car circled through the marina parking lot, and Joe wondered whether he should pack up his little family and move. So he asked Faye what she thought. “Do you think it’s a good idea to stay here? With the murder and all? We’re gonna need to move, sooner or later. This new scope of work is too big for us to handle it all from here without driving all day. We could go on down to Venice and get a place for a while. Then we could go to Grand Isle. It’s gonna take us several days to do all that work over there.”
She’d said pretty much what he’d expected.
“This place is cheap and clean. The food at the marina is great. And did I already say that it’s cheap? I heard that prices have gone through the roof in Venice since the media people came down to cover the oil spill. I think we should just get cracking on the job and not waste time with a move we don’t have to make. There’s time enough to get down to Venice.”
Joe glanced out the window of their cabin at a lonely girl perched