I’ll give him deadweight.
The arm wrapped around her thighs squeezed tighter in warning as if sensing her imminent protest. “Here’s my business card. Hiram M. Frogash, mortician, at your service. And this no-good blackie here is my assistant, Hippocrates Jones.”
“I’s sorry, master. Don’t you be needin’ to whup my no-good hide again,” Cain whined. “I be good from now on.”
“Hiram M. Frogash, mortician. Richmond, Virginia,” the conductor read aloud. “You’re a long way from home, ain’tcha?”
“Yes, sir. I got me a commission to dig up the remains of four Reb soldiers what died at Gettysburg. We’re bringin’ ’em back to their families in Louisiana. The corpses are in coffins in the freight cars.”
“Oh. Then what’s in the sheet?” The conductor sounded rather suspicious. And they were wasting a lot of time, especially if bad guys really were searching the train. Or were they good guys? Harriet was confused, probably from all the blood pooling in her head.
Etienne laughed conspiratorially. “I picked up a little extra business in Memphis. Got off the train for a nature call—hell, a man gets mighty sick of pissing in a chamber pot—when I saw these men arguin’ over who was goin’ to take the dead body of Sally Mae Benson back to Baton Rouge. ’Pears the gal ran away from home before her sad demise.” Etienne’s voice softened to an appropriately doleful undertaker tone. “They gave me ten dollars to take her off their hands.”
“Ten dollars!” the conductor exclaimed.
“Well, we’d best be gettin’ Sally Mae on her way,” Etienne said, patting her rump as he shoved something soft and small, like an item of clothing, up under the folds of her sheet, between her knees, Perhaps her panties or stockings, which would cause undue questions if Etienne got searched. “Don’t want to be spreadin’ no fever.”
“Fever!” the conductor cried out, and seemed to step away.
“Sally Mae died a week ago. Can’t you smell her?”
Smell?
“No. Oh, Lordy, yes, I do. I smell her now.”
Immediately, Harriet heard running feet and a door slamming as the conductor made a hasty exit. She sniffed. There was, indeed, a strong odor, like moldy cheese.
Following a brief silence, Etienne and Cain burst out with relieved laughter.
“Could we get a move on it here, guys?” she interjected, raising her head slightly off Etienne’s back but unable to see through her sheet. “Unlike you two hyenas, I am not having fun.”
Cain guffawed. “What is that smell?”
“One of your dirty socks.”
Cain made a choking sound of protest.
It took only a second for the words to sink in. “Why, you rat!” If her arms weren’t restricted at her sides, Harriet would have pounded Etienne’s back. Instead, she squirmed madly, trying to shake the objectionable sock loose from between her knees.
As he started walking again, Etienne commented, “I think I’m beginning to understand body language now, Dr. Ginny. Every time you squirm, your breasts rub across my back. I’m getting a mighty clear message that you want—”
She stilled immediately. “Oooooh! That was a definite ten on the MCP scale.”
“I aim to please,” he countered affably.
She felt a breeze; so, they must be on the small platform connecting the trains. No wonder he felt free to talk. There were no people about to overhear.
“Dammit, Etienne, you choose the damnedest time to get your sense of humor back,” Cain snarled. “There are passengers in this next car. And they would definitely find it scandalous to see a randy mortician talking to an overripe female cadaver,”
“I am not randy,” Etienne said.
“I am not overripe.” Harriet added.
Then she heard the squeak of the door opening and the low mumble of voices in conversation up ahead.
“Make way, make way. The undertaker is passin’ through,” Cain chanted out.
Maybe I’m not dreaming. Maybe I really am dead, Harriet thought. Maybe, when the train derailed, I died.
Etienne placed his hand over her behind once again. Not to tease her this time, she sensed, but more to assure her not to worry about the buzz of conversation around them.
To Harriet’s dismay, despite his being a chauvinist to the nth degree, all she could think about was the tingle of sweet pleasure that vibrated from the brute’s fingertips out to all the erogenous zones in her body.
Nope, I am definitely not dead.
Just dumb.
A short time later, the three of them stood in a freight car, the one containing four long wooden boxes…caskets.
They’d been stopped two more times along the way, but Etienne and Cain had their mortician routines down pat. None of their interrogators had been from Pope’s gang…yet. His men might not be so easily duped, Harriet feared.
“What’s in these things anyway? Besides the gold?” Harriet asked, walking over to one of the coffins with her sheet wrapped loosely around her body, no longer comfortable flaunting herself before two men in her skimpy nightgown. Even in a dream. “Real dead bodies? Ha, ha, ha!”
“Oui, of course,” Etienne said, coming up behind her. He and Cain had been whispering over in the corner. Making more stupid plans, no doubt. “At least, one of them does.”
“What?” she squealed, jumping back.
Slipping a deadly looking knife from one of his boots, Etienne pried open one of the boxes to show her a skeleton.
Harriet shrieked with horror. “You guys are nuts! Where did you get that…that thing?”
“A traveling medicine show,” Etienne replied dryly. “And it cost me a hundred damn dollars, too,” he said as he pounded the lid shut again, then opened another. It appeared to be empty, until he showed her the fake bottom, which hid a fortune in gleaming gold. His heavy-lidded eyes watched closely for her reaction, still not sure she wasn’t the enemy.
Her mouth dropped open. There were dozens of bullion bars marked U.S. MINT, PHILADELPHIA lining the base of the casket, and presumably just as much in each of the others. “How much?”
Etienne shrugged. “A hundred thousand dollars’ worth.”
“Did you really rob a bank?”
His jaw clenched angrily. “No.”
“Did you kill anyone?”
His lips twitched as he fought a grin. “Not lately.”
That was good enough for her, for now, anyhow. “Now what?”
Etienne made a slight bow to her from the waist with a hand extended to the open casket. “After you, my dear.”
“Huh?”
“You and I are going to hide in this casket. Cain will stand guard.” The black man—could he really be a physician?—was already crouched in one corner, settling in.
“Don’t get too comfortable, Cain. You have to nail the lid shut after we’re inside.”
“That’s right,” Cain grumbled, and stood again.
Harriet’s eyes widened as she tried to comprehend what Etienne was saying.
He started to climb into the open casket, then hesitated, looking at her. Holding her eyes, he made a great show of removing and folding his spectacles, then slipping them into a pocket in his jacket. And she remembered her earlier remark about men who wear glasses.
Oh, no! He couldn’t possibly think I would—
“Do you prefer top or bottom, honey?”
Chapter Five
Don’t worry,” Etienne assured the woman when she balked at draping her body over his, face-to-face, in an inadvertently sexual position. “I lost all my…uh…male urges in the war.”
He gave himself a mental pat on the back when he managed to get the words out with a straight face. Especially considering the fact that her trim body was covered only by a little leopard-print chemise and some sinfully charming undergarment he’d returned to her, which she called panties.
She nodded with understanding at his disclosure about male urges.
Understanding? Lord, I must be a better
actor than I’d thought. Or a liar. All those years as a double agent, I suppose. The Secret Service trains us well.
Cain snickered.
To his chagrin, the woman, who claimed to be a mind doctor, pursed her full, naturally red lips—which he refused to view as kissable—and furrowed her smooth brow in serious contemplation. Which was ludicrous, considering the fact that she was lying on top of him in an open coffin—a most unserious situation. Even he, who’d lost his sense of humor—though it was coming back by leaps and bounds—could see how absurd they must appear. But, no, now she was bracing her arms on either side of his neck and raising her head to study him better.
“Impotence?” she inquired solicitously.
Cain, who’d been about to replace the lid sealing them in, hooted with glee, muttering something about him being hoisted on his own petard. More like, hoisted on my own pizzle.
But impotence? He gurgled with speechlessness. This time the woman had gone too far. “No, I’m not im…impotent,” he asserted, barely able to say the word. “I just don’t have the…uh, inclination all that often.” Well, that was partly true. Unlike Cain and Abel, he didn’t feel the need to part the thighs of every female in sight these days. He attributed it to his greater maturity and discrimination.
“Low sex drive,” Dr. Ginny diagnosed, bobbing her head in confirmation.
“Low…low…” he sputtered.
“Oh, God, I cant wait to tell Abel,” Cain chortled.
“Men place entirely too much importance on their sex organs. Really. They need to laugh at themselves a bit more. For example, did you hear what the elephant said to the naked man?”
“I don’t care what the elephant said to—”
“It looks fine but can it pick up peanuts?”
He choked with incredulity.
“Now, now, I’m a psychologist, remember? You don’t have to be ashamed,” the infuriating woman rattled on. Good Lord! She was giving him a diagnosis from a coffin. “I heard you mention Andersonville. I assume you were a prisoner of war. Lots of POWs suffer postwar syndrome, or post-traumatic stress disorder. Sexual dysfunction is one of the traits. I can recommend—”
“Put on the damn lid before I kill her,” he said see-thingly to Cain, who’d stopped laughing and was listening to the woman with professional curiosity. When it seemed as if Cain might engage her in a doctorly discussion, he grabbed the witch by the nape of her neck, shoved her face against his chest, and glared at Cain.
“When was the last time you had sex?” her muffled voice persisted.
“That is none of your affair.”
“Do you masturbate to orgasm?”
“Aaarrgh!”
As the lid was being pounded down, he heard Cain ruminating aloud, “Impotence? Postwar syndrome? Hmmm.”
The woman continued to babble on, throwing out words like “sexual therapy” and “test-ostrich-own” and “creative visualization.” He’d never met a woman who could talk so much in all his life. Or throw out so many big words.
Meanwhile, she was sucking up all the air provided by the knothole Cain had punched out of the side of the pine box, and squirming around to get comfortable. Not that there was much room to squirm in the tight confines.
Suddenly she went stone still.
“What now?”
“That hard object prodding my stomach had better be a gold bar.”
He smiled. At least now he knew how to shut her up.
“Are you smirking?”
“Can’t you tell by my body language, Doctor?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“If you’d lie still, this wouldn’t happen.”
“Can’t you control yourself?”
“I’m trying.”
“Not very hard.”
“Hard enough,” he remarked dryly.
“So much for your impotence.”
“Mon Dieu! I never said I was impotent.”
There followed a long silence. Long for her, anyhow.
“What are you thinking about now?” he asked. An unwise question, to be sure.
“My MCP scale.”
“What? Did I just tip the scale again? I didn’t do anything wrong…well, deliberately wrong.”
“Getting an erection with a woman in a casket clearly falls within the guidelines of a male chauvinist pig.”
He chuckled. “A ten?”
“More like a ten and a half.”
“Well, for your information, that’s not an erection. That’s just a little minor interest. A reflex. If I were really aroused, you’d know it, sweetheart.”
“Oh, God,” she groaned. “I still don’t see why we couldn’t have separate caskets.”
“Because there’s gold in the other boxes, too, and not as much empty space. Because I don’t want you out of my sight till I know who sent you. Because I enjoy having you molt your hair into my mouth. Because drowning in our combined perspiration is preferable to being shot in the back. Because you have the sweetest ass this side of Opelousas. Because—”
“Enough already!”
“You two had better stop talking,” Cain cautioned. “Much as I’m captivated by your entertaining conversation, you won’t be able to see if someone enters this car unexpectedly. And I won’t be able to warn you once they’re here. So, for God’s sake, don’t say another word unless I give you the password.”
“You’re right, of course,” Etienne said contritely, shamed at the way he’d allowed the woman to distract him when distraction could spell danger to them all. Merde! He was trained to be more careful. What was happening to him? Perhaps the headaches were causing his mental functions to diminish. “What’s the password, Cain?”
There was a short pause before Cain replied, “Rooster.” Etienne didn’t have to see his friend to know he was smirking.
“Are you sure you two aren’t delusional psychotics? Perhaps there aren’t any real bad guys following you at all. Perhaps, with your severe distortion of reality, you’ve created a danger that doesn’t even exist. Perhaps—”
“Shut up, Harriet.”
“Oh, all right. If you don’t want my advice…” The woman settled down then with a deep sigh, followed by a yawn. “I’m so tired. I feel as if I haven’t had a good night’s rest in ages. If I fall asleep, are you going to attack me in my dreams again?”
Etienne stiffened, “I have never attacked any woman…not sexually, anyway. The women I make love to…they do not fall asleep. Furthermore, you and I have never made love, in or out of a dream.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” she murmured, clearly not accepting his claims. “Men with sexual inadequacies always overcompensate by bragging of prowess they don’t have. The superstud syndrome.”
He gritted his teeth. Don’t strangle her now. You’ll have plenty of time later.
Don’t worry, though.” She patted his cheek in comfort. “Intercourse isn’t the only sexual game in town. There are other methods of—”
“Stick out your tongue.”
“Why?”
“So I can cut it out.”
“Geez, why are you always so grumpy? Frustration? No, that can’t be it. You’ve been getting enough satisfaction from me to last a lifetime. Hey, maybe that’s why you’re having trouble getting the little soldier to rise. You’ve been wearing yourself out with me in my dreams.” She yawned again.
Grumpy? Little soldier? The woman had a death wish. Before he could react to her latest outlandish statement, her body slumped, and she fell into a deep slumber. Instantly. Like a rag doll.
He hadn’t done that since he was an innocent boy, tired out from long days exploring his beloved Louisiana bayous. He almost envied her.
“Did you hear that conversation?” he whispered to Cain.
“No, I’m laughing too hard,” Cain said softly. “How’s your ‘little soldier’?”
“Fine. How’s yours?” he grumbled.
“Seriously, Etienne. Laughter aside…this woman is rather strange.”
??
?Hah! Tell me something I don’t already know.”
“Who the hell is she?”
“Damned if I know.”
“If we get out of this alive, I want to ask her a few questions about that postwar disease. So curb your temper. Don’t kill her right away.”
“If we get out of this alive, you’ll have to stand in line to ask her questions. I reckon there will be a line of people wanting to kill her, too.”
“What’s that noise? Sounds like purring. Oh, I don’t believe it. What are you doing to her?”
Etienne made a tsking exclamation. “Give me a little credit for good sense, Cain. She’s snoring.”
“Oh,” Cain responded with obvious disappointment.
“How long do you think we’ll have to stay in these grave boxes? It’s hotter than blue blazes in here, and Harriet—that is the name she’s using, isn’t it?—might look like a small package, but she’s getting heavier by the minute. I feel as if I’m covered with a hogshead of sugar.”
“I don’t know, Etienne. Probably till New Orleans…about six hours.”
He groaned.
“Do you think Pope will come?”
“Never!” Etienne sneered. “The bastard delegates his dirty work. And he’s probably not even the head of this operation.”
Cain exhaled loudly with resignation. “Can you breathe well enough to last that long? Here, let me poke out another knothole from the opposite side. And try to sleep. No sense both of us keeping watch.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Etienne said, and proceeded to nod right off.
“How long you been here, nigger?”
The loud voice was immediately followed by a crash—probably a body slamming against the metal side of the freight car.
“’Bout three hours, suh,” Cain replied with a cry of pain. “Why’d you punch me? I ain’t done nuthin’. Just mindin’ my boss’s business here, suh.”
More punching, slapping noises and grunts of pain.
Etienne came instantly awake. Three hours! Normally, he was a light sleeper, attuned to the slightest rustle. How could he have conked out for so long? And how could he have not heard, immediately, the racket of men entering their hiding place?