Bayou Hero (7 page)

Further conversation was delayed as he cut across traffic and pulled into the parking lot of what appeared to be another fabulous period mansion. Only the three dozen parking spaces and a discreet sign announcing its name and business gave it away as a funeral home. It was red brick, a bigger-than-life Southern beauty, bright flowers dancing in their beds, Spanish moss trailing from oaks, graceful paths leading from parking lot to doors to small breathtaking gardens.

“Welcome to DeVille and Sons,” Landry said drily.

“The Cadillac of funeral services.”

He cracked a tiny grin. “Yeah, Mary Ellen says they take their ‘end-of-life transition services’ very serious, so don’t repeat that inside.” He opened the door, slid out and frowned at her over the car roof. “Do you know anything about planning a funeral?”

Alia’s brows arched. “My parents are alive and well in San Diego, my maternal grandparents in Chicago and my paternal grandparents in Miami Beach. I’ve never even been to a funeral. In fact, I was thinking I could wait in the gardens—”

“Yeah, I don’t think so.” He came around the car, caught her arm and started toward the building.

Letting a man take her arm and guide her anywhere had been unheard of since she was a toddler and learned she’d rather fall on her diapered butt than have her father, or anyone else, holding her up. But her automatic impulse to shrug away from Landry’s grip didn’t manifest. Not until she’d felt the strength in his fingers, warm, not callused, not smooth, either. Not until she’d identified the tiny tremor that shot through her as something more purely feminine than she’d allowed herself to feel in a very long time.

Not until she’d reminded herself that he was a person of interest in the most important case in her career so far.

And by then, they’d reached the door and he let go anyway.

The air inside was cool enough to raise goose bumps all over her, making her wish for the jacket still sitting in her car’s front seat. Thick carpet underneath muffled their footsteps, and heavy perfume from the half dozen large flower arrangements obliterated the interesting scent that was Landry. Soft lights, soft colors, soothing music, leather furniture and upholstered pieces, a
Gone with the Wind
–worthy staircase, pricey artwork that she wasn’t entirely sure were reproductions...

“The Cadillac people do well,” she whispered as an elegantly dressed silver-haired man approached them from a hallway to the right. How had he known they were here? There’d been no ding from the door, no receptionist sitting politely awaiting customers.

A silent alarm, and probably surveillance cameras for good measure. It was like her office, only in much fancier quarters.

“Mr. Jackson, we’re so sorry about your loss. The admiral was a good man, a good friend to the navy as well as New Orleans.” The man held Landry’s hand exactly the proper length of time, released it just so. “And we just heard about Miss Viola. Such a tragedy.”

That done, he turned to Alia. His gaze slid over her badge and weapons without the slightest change in expression. “I’m Matthieu DeVille. And you are?”

Landry answered for her. “A friend of the family.”

Surprised by Landry’s response, she accepted Mr. DeVille’s handshake. His skin was softer than her own. He had a better manicure, too. Did he deal only with the living, or did these hands also help prepare their clients’ bodies? She had to restrain a shiver as she quickly let go.

“If you’ll follow me, please.”

He led them through broad halls, past chapels, offices and casket-display rooms until they finally reached his office. He seated himself behind a mahogany desk, leaving two finely carved matching chairs for Alia and Landry. She didn’t want to sit down any more than Landry did, but she did.

She sat quietly, legs crossed, hands clasped and fought the impulse to tap her toes or bounce one foot in the air. She wasn’t a fidgeter, she’d told Landry, but energy bubbled and roiled inside her, needing an outlet of some sort. She concentrated on regulating her breathing and on ignoring the fact that somewhere in the building were corpses being cleaned up, dressed up, made up for their last viewing on earth.

She was going to be cremated, she decided on a breath filled with overly sweet flowers.

“What about the admiral’s personal information?” Mr. DeVille asked, looking from Landry to her. They had scheduled the service for Friday at the church the Jacksons and the Landrys had attended for more than a century; the interment would be in one of the family vaults; the family would receive mourners at Mary Ellen’s house.

“Personal information?” Landry blankly repeated.

“For the obituary. Pertinent dates, education, career highlights, surviving family.”

Alia removed her tablet from her purse and, after a quick search, found the admiral’s biography online. The page gave great detail to his education and navy career and spared one small paragraph for his family. The way of his life, she thought as she asked for Mr. DeVille’s email address.

With a word of thanks, he opened the email on his computer, then printed a copy to go into Jackson’s file. He studied the top page a moment, right about where her email address appeared:
@ncis.navy.mil
. His gaze flickered from the page to her, to the badge and weapons he’d noticed earlier but couldn’t see now. How many questions was he wishing he could ask? Dozens. Though in his line of work, certainly he would be the soul of discretion.

Once the paperwork was finished, DeVille escorted them back to the first of the display rooms filled with caskets. Alia would hazard a guess from all the gleaming wood and metal, silk and bronze and just pure impression the caskets made that these were the expensive ones. Jeremiah Jackson had surrounded himself with luxury in life; why would death be any different?

She walked in, looked at a few—mahogany, ash, teak, all perfectly fitted and designed as exquisitely as high-end furniture. None of them bore price tags—
If you have to ask, you can’t afford it
—and all of them struck her as obscene. The man was dead. Cremate him; donate any usable organs or bones; give his body to a medical school; do anything besides spend a fortune getting him from the coroner’s office to the family vault.

DeVille cleared his throat, and she turned to see that Landry hadn’t yet crossed the threshold into the room and didn’t appear likely to anytime soon. He hadn’t wanted to come here in the first place, she would bet, and damn well hated it without his sister to make the decisions.

“You knew him,” he said, his voice hoarse. “You know what Mary Ellen would want. You choose.”

DeVille couldn’t stop the fleeting surprise—and pleasure—that crossed his face, but he tamped it back into sympathetic concern. “Of course, we can do that, Mr. Jackson. Don’t worry. We’ll take care of Jeremiah as if he were one of our own. But then, he was one of our own, wasn’t he?” From an inside pocket, he produced a piece of notepaper with a flourish. “Here is a list of things to be done—meeting with Father Callaghan, choosing the music, ordering flowers, catering the family meal before the service. If you or Mary Ellen need help with any of it, please don’t hesitate to call us.”

Landry looked at the page a moment before, folding it to fit in his pocket, then walking away toward the exit.

Alia glanced after him, then shrugged. “Sorry. He, uh...”

This time DeVille’s smile struck her as sincere. “Don’t apologize. People react all kinds of ways to death. You’ve probably seen that yourself.”

Yep, he’d definitely noticed the
ncis
in her email address.

“Landry said you knew the admiral.”

“All our lives.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t make his own arrangements.” She intended to email her parents this evening about the wonderful world of preplanned burial services.
It’s your eternity. Be happy in it.

“Don’t think I didn’t suggest it a time or two. But he intended to live forever. We believed him, too. He was more active than people half his age, still sharp as a tack. He was a good man.” DeVille hesitated a moment, then more quietly added, “A tough man.”

Tough. Strict. Rigid.
Behaviors that could get a man killed.

Before Alia could say anything else, a woman stuck her head out of the nearest office—the only other sign of life they’d seen since they had walked into the building. “Miss Regina’s on the phone.”

“I have to take this,” DeVille said. “Remind Landry that if he needs anything...”

* * *

Standing beneath a live oak in the garden, hands in pockets, Landry watched Alia burst out of the funeral home as if the building was too small to contain her natural energy. Her gaze went straight to the car, then swept around until it located him, and she angled in his direction.

Instead of watching her approach, he gazed into the fountain and wondered whose job it was to pick out every leaf, pine needle and acorn every single day of the year. Jeremiah had had his own term for such people—
the others
. In his world, there were people with money, power, social status, and there were
the others
.

Had it bothered him that his only son was just an
other
? God, Landry hoped so. The bastard had likely blamed Camilla for it, though maybe, just once in his life, maybe he had considered that it had been his own doing. When you deliberately broke someone, you had to accept some of the responsibility.

Unless you were Admiral Jeremiah Roy Jackson Junior.

Alia came along the path toward him, fingers linked together as if she was enjoying a midmorning stroll. “You do know you just opened your wallet in there and said, ‘Here, take however much you want.’”

He looked up, his brow quirked. “Actually, I opened Scott’s wallet. The expenses will be paid once the estate’s settled. Scott’s covering them until then.”

“I take it you, your sister and your mother are the primary heirs.”

Landry considered moving the conversation to the bench at the base of the tree, but a growl from his stomach sent him back toward the main path. “Probably just Mary Ellen and our mother. The old man liked the idea of disinheritance.”

“So whatever happened between you was unforgivable enough that he would disinherit you.”

He only shrugged. It could be easy at times to forget who she was and just answer, if he hadn’t spent most of his years keeping his life to himself. Other kids said,
When Dad and I
...
Not him. His best friend from school had thought Jeremiah was dead, had been dead forever. It had puzzled the kid when he found out otherwise, filling him with questions.

“Does the disinheritance possibility bother you?” Alia asked as he opened the passenger door for her.

“Nah, ten million bucks would just make my taxes more difficult.” Could he even live with that money knowing where it came from? How much of it would he have to give to charity to cleanse it enough that he could let himself benefit from the rest?

A whole freaking bunch. Jeremiah had worshipped at the altar of everything wrong and sinful in the world.

“It’s family money,” Alia pointed out as they reached the car. “Not the admiral’s. He was just the steward of it for his generation. You’re as entitled to it as your sister is.”

“Except she didn’t cut him out of the last half of her life. She was a dutiful daughter—visited him regularly, called him Daddy, walked down the aisle on his arm when she married, included him in every part of the girls’ lives.” He truly didn’t understand any of that. Mary Ellen had had as much reason to hate him as Landry, but instead she’d
welcomed
him into her life. She’d done a lot of forgiving and a whole lot of forgetting.

Landry never forgot a thing.

“I’m going to lunch,” he announced as they settled in the car. “You interested in some good food, or does duty call your name?”

He’d swear her ears pricked at the mention of food. “No, I’ve got to meet Jim—What kind of food?”

“You name it, Huong can make it.”

“Huong?” A glance showed her interest was definitely piqued. “What’s the name of the place?”

“Mama’s Table. Huong took it over when her mama got too old, but Mama Trahn still helps with lunch.”

“Sounds really good. But, no, I do have to meet Detective DiBiase.”

“What, doesn’t he eat?”

“Not like he means it,” she muttered.

When they reached Miss Viola’s house, the ambulance was gone, along with the coroner’s people, and the only vehicles left were official. He was grateful. He didn’t know Miss Viola’s kids nearly as well as Mary Ellen did. About all he would have to discuss with them was the methods of their parents’ murders.

Thirty-plus stab wounds beat a shove down the stairs any day.

Alia unbuckled her seat belt and gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Mama’s Table, huh?”

“At the far end of Decatur. Don’t let the outside fool you.”

With a nod, she got out of the car and climbed the steps to the gallery. She really had great legs, he thought again, and taking down that braid would be like unraveling a puzzle of silk strands that would tangle around his fingers before sliding free.

Him taking down her braid wasn’t gonna happen, but he wouldn’t be a man if he didn’t think about it.

Landry shifted into Reverse, but just sat there a moment. He would likely never come back to Miss Viola’s house. It had always been a haven for him, a place his mother had brought him and Mary Ellen for family time out when Jeremiah was out of town, the place he’d run to for escape when Jeremiah was home. He’d never been close to his grandmothers, but it had never mattered because he’d had a cousin who was better than all the grandmothers in the world combined. He’d loved Miss Viola, and she’d loved him back.

Now he didn’t have anyone who truly understood...

Grimly he swiped one hand across his eyes, then backed out of the driveway. He had every intention of visiting Mama’s Table, as he’d told Alia, but he had to make one stop first.

Mary Ellen lay on the chaise in the sunroom, a pillow tucked beneath her cheek, its lace edging obscuring part of the writing on her nightshirt:
Best Mom Ever.
Her makeup had been cried off, the color washed out of her face. She was nibbling on a fingertip and looking sad and heartbroken and lost, even more so than when he’d left her to live alone with their ineffectual mother and their lousy father.