"Alas, Poor Chadwick. I knew him well" A slender man wielding a trowel with a grey powder covered hand, reached into the wall opening and pulled out a skull with his free hand. He began to quote Hamlet. "A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times."

His coworker, a bearded man with equally sooty hands and a streak of dirt across his cheek, tossed a brick down on a pile and leaned forward with morbid interest. A portable battery-operated lamp threw enough light to illuminate the wall vault and cast spooky shadows into the surrounding Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1.

"You knew that guy?" John C said, wiping his forehead.

"I marched at his funeral parade. He was a bass player with the Lafitte Avenue Rhythm Club," Eric Knight replied. "Man, that guy could lay down a riff like a conga drum!" He gently placed the skull back in the hole in the wall as far back as he could reach. "Rest in peace, brother."

"Looks like he couldn't play well enough to get a decent plot," John C snickered. "Only the poor folk get buried in the walls around here." He took his trowel, slapped down some cement, and pulled another brick from the pile. "Let's get this job done and go home."

Around the cemetery workers, the portable light painted long, wavering shadows reaching into the clutter of decaying tombs, crumbling stone monuments, and weathered marbled marking the passing of two centuries of dead New Orleans citizens. Small fleur de lis topped iron fences circled around family tombs like an Addams family version of a white picket fence. Stucco fell in chunks from older tombs and a mish mash of small stone houses made for an eerie city of the night.

It was through this maze of death and spirits that Cayenne and Mambozo picked their way toward the light and the familiar voices. Their flashlights swept across the damp walking path, making for a morbid light show.

"Hey, John C! Eric Knight" Cay immediately recognized her old musician friends from the Phunny Phorty Phellows krewe. "What are you guys doing here? Did you quit your day jobs?"

"This is our day job!" John C joked back. "We play in the funeral march on the way to the cemetery, then we stick around and do the final deed."

"You're grave diggers?"

"Not exactly. New Orleans sits below sea level so there's no digging of graves around here. Bury corpses underground and they'd only float back up to visit us during the next flood. Rich people get their own families tombs. The Mutual Aid Societies gets a big society tomb where all their buddies go together. And the rest of us get buried in the wall."

"How do they all fit?" Cay asked.

Eric chuckled. "You are going to love this! Bodies disintegrate quickly in the heat and humidity, so the tombs are built with a caveau, or a cavity in the bottom, kind of like the ash pit in the bottom of a fireplace. You get your turn in the main vault, and when you are caput, your dust is swept into the ash pit to make room for your Uncle Antoine." He chuckled again. "Me and John C get that job because it's kind of rough on the family."

"Yeah, like they say," John C chimed in. "Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust."

Eric asked, "You are a sight for weary bones, Cayenne. What are you doing in this old place this late at night? This place is dangerous anytime of the day."

A squawk went up from behind an old stone. "Dark deeds being done indeed. my boys."

"Mambozo!" The two ditch diggers seemed genuinely happy to see the Cuban chicken.

"Ah, the honest work of tending to the dying!" Mambozo said. "The Indians have words for that you know." He struck a theatrical pose.

Make fire, make thunder
Kick down tombstones
Midnight put the dead in the wall
Dude tell you
I'll make a tireless climber
Slip the wall
Get to the top
You better not jump or fall

"Jeez, man. You're creeping me out!" John C said. "Why don't you make yourself scarce and go visit Marie Laveau's grave or something?"

"She is buried here?" Mambozo asked with interest.

"Over by that Greek looking tomb over there."

Cayenne and Mambozo gingerly stepped past the small buildings constructed of brick, family tombs sprouting French names, and crumbling walls inscripted with names and words obscured by years of wear and weather.

Mambozo found the voodoo queen's gravesite first, a whitewashed tomb that was scuffed and scarred. Shining her flashlight over the headstone, Cay made out dozens of red crosses scratched into the surface. .

"Looks like vandals beat us here," Cay commented.

Mambozo chuckled. "Ah, chere. All is not dismal. This is called the 'wishing tomb.' Legend has it that believers can invoke the power of Madame Laveau by visiting her grave and performing the asking ritual."

"Marie Laveau was a mulatto hairdresser who was a foremost priestess of Louisiana voodoo in the mid 1800's. She would style the hair of the rich, whispering her folk advice in their ears and presenting them with charms and gris gris to cast spells on enemies and attract good luck."

Mambozo took his beak and pushed a piece of red brick toward Cayenne. "Go ahead. Mark her stone with three X's."

Cay did as she was told. Mambozo scratched the ground three times with his claws. He then moved close to the tomb where he balled his talons into a tight little fist and knocked three times against the marble. "I shall wish for Eliah's safety and that Big Chief Mo's killer be found."

He seemed to be praying as he took the strand of his glass beads from around his neck and placed them on the stones.

"I'm going to look around," Cay said, backing away from the grave, giving Mambozo some time alone.

She picked her way carefully through the loose rocks, the spooky statues and the large solid blocks that Cay tried not to think about being filled with ashes and bones of people long gone. She saw a tall, thin shadow move suddenly in the light of her flashlight and her heart jumped.

"Who's there?" she said, trying to sound confident.

Eliah stepped out of the darkness into the light. "Cayenne! You came!"

"You scared the dickens out of me!" Cayenne replied. "Next time, let's just meet in a bar just like everyone else in this story."

In the light of her flashlight, she noticed that a fresh bunch of flowers, kept fresh in the cool air, had been recently placed near a family tomb. MARGARITE MONTANA nee CHAMBON, the inscription read.

"My mother," Eliah said quietly. "I didn't know where else to go."

"What happened, Eliah?"

"You must help me. Whoever killed my father is looking for me too." Cay saw that Eliah held the box containing the headdress in her hand. She also had a small knapsack hung over her shoulder. She looked like she was on the run.

"Why do you say that?"

"I received a phone call asking for the headdress. I don't know who it was. Someone gruff sounding and threatening. He said he wanted the headdress and he knew I had it. I didn't even know who he was! I tried to call the number my father had left in his note, to leave a message. It went to some bodega over in Gert Town. An old man answered the phone. When he found out who I was, he told me, 'your father is dead and now they are looking for you. Don't trust anyone, especially that snake of a boyfriend of yours."

Eliah broke down in tears and fished in her pocket for a tissue. "Then he hung up and I got a call from Raynaldo not long after that, telling me that I should give him the headdress for safe keeping or maybe sell it for the money. He knew someone who was interested in buying it."

Eliah threw up her hands. "I never even told him I had it! I only told him my father was out of prison and that you had delivered a letter from him. My father asked me not to tell anyone about the headdress until he was able to talk to me in person. How did Raynaldo know I had the headdress?"

"I don't know what to do!" She leaned up against her mother's family tomb. "Thank you for coming."

A damp wind whirled around the tilted stones, and Cayenne felt a shiver go down her spine. Eliah continued. "This is very bad, I lost my father to Angola for so many years, and now I've lost him to some enemy I don't even know."

"Eliah, listen to me." Cay said, thinking fast. "Did your father tell you in his letter where he was staying?"

"Yes. Raynaldo and I were going to see him this weekend. Dad was staying in a room over that bodega."

Cay's look told Eliah what the detective was beginning to suspect.

"You don't think Raynaldo is part of this, do you?" The young woman said, incredulously. She pushed the cardboard box into Cayenne's hands. "Take this thing! Keep it away from me. It's evil. I almost thought Raynaldo was right when he said to sell it, but I have so few things from my father that I didn't want to. And now you are saying that my Raynaldo……

Cay tried to calm her before Eliah decided to take off into the night. "What's important now is keeping you safe and finding out the truth." She pointed at the bag that Eliah shifted over her shoulder. "Are those your things? Good. You are not to go back to your place. We need to keep you and the headdress in a safe spot until we can let the police know what's happened."

Cay frowned. "I can't take you back to my place. I think I'm being followed."

A small voice perked up from at their feet. "What about Krewe du Couture? Mary Dan would take her in." Mambozo looked up at Eliah, then bowed his head. "Mambozo is my name, Miss Eliah. Your father was a great Chief."

Eliah yelped and involuntarily jumped back. "You're a chicken!"

"Don't tell anyone," Cay and Mambozo murmured simultaneously.

"Come on!" Cayenne said decidedly. She jerked her head in the direction of the front cemetery gate which opened onto Basin Street. "Let's get out of here before we get shoved in a wall."

Coming January 27, 2005:
CHAPTER EIGHT: Who Be The Prettiest?

Copyright by Aileen M. McInnis, 2005. All Right Reserved.