Lies Agreed Upon (45 page)

“Oh, cut it out,” ordered Tess
irritably. She turned back to Jen, ignoring the soft boo from Christina. “Dreux’s explanations for everything are quite logical. But I still don’t feel that I should trust him.”

“Because some of his actions are illogical,” nodded Jen.

“Hey, you need to accept that even lawyers can be illogical,” teased Christina.

“
Worse, lawyers can be crooks,” asserted Jen. “Never mind Dreux. I have to question the motives of Jon Beauvoir. The white Cabreras have not exactly been unselfish benefactors of the black Beauvoirs. The same goes for Tony as Jon’s loyal friend. Are you sure you’re not in over your head, Tess? You’ve already been duped by this Remy.” Jen placed an earnest, comradely hand on Tess’s shoulder.

“Thanks, but Tony, whatever his motives, has already negotiated a higher price and la
nguage to protect my interest in the mineral rights. I can hold my own against Dreux,” Tess assured her.

“
Well, don’t get stuck there in some legal tangle. Remember you promised to be back in time for my July 4 party, and that’s just a week away,” reminded Katie.

“What about my party?” complained Christina. Katie and Christina engaged in a good-natured
tussle and eventually agreed to share Tess’s time. Jen ordered more wine to ensure the meal ended in mellow spirits.

Over the weekend,
Tess finished moving the last of her personal items to Christina’s apartment and brooded over how to get the truth out of the slippery Dreux. On Monday, she received two important phone calls.

In the morning, Tony called to say that he and Remy had worked out an arrangement that
Tony thought would please her. “I don’t know what went on between the two of you, but it’s worked to your advantage,” Tony commented. “If you have to split loot, give me a remorseful man with a guilty conscience. He’s a lot quicker to concede than a righteous dude. Here’s the scoop: Thivet will let his claim on the inheritance drop as long as he’s paid a sum equal to half the sale price of the property, less this garden spot you are carving out. He accepts that the garden and its access are not part of the deal and belong only to you.”

“What about the mineral rights?” probed Tess.

“The lump-sum payment from the sale is all he gets,” answered Tony. “The mineral rights for the whole property are retained by you. Of course, I also made it clear we’re willing to fight his claim if he seeks a share of future royalties. I guess the guy really needs cash right away, because he didn’t argue.” Tess agreed to return June 30, to give them two days to work out kinks before the July 4 weekend.

The next call came from Jen. She let Tess know that Josephine’s letter had already been translated. “I have no idea what was in that message, but
my translator seems rather excited about it,” remarked Jen. “She won’t give me any details, so it’s got to be something juicy.”

That evening, Jen
stopped by Christina’s apartment with the translation in a sealed envelope. Tess sat down on the edge of the couch with the envelope balanced gingerly on her knees like a potential letter bomb.

“Well, open it and read it to us,” urged Jen and flopped down next to Tess.

“Yes, let’s hear what Mommy Dearest had to say to her poor abandoned baby,” agreed Christina, sitting on Tess’s other side. “The suspense is killing me.”

Blood thrummed at Tess’s temples and her fingers trembled eagerly as she tore open the envelope. She sensed some kind of unveiling was at hand. There had to be a reason Ben Cabrera had kept the letter yet hidden it away. She withdrew the folded
original and a stiff new sheet of ordinary copy paper with a double-spaced, typed message. Reining in an urge to scan the contents quickly, she began to read aloud:

My Dear Benjamin,

If you are reading this, it is because I have not lived to guide you to manhood. If you have grown into a fine and respected gentleman, I know it is from your own innate character. I beg your forgiveness for what I am going to tell you, but I do not want your life to be poisoned by a mistaken obligation to Antonio Cabrera. You may be blinded by whatever natural childhood affection and parental respect he has inspired, but please read on.

I married Antonio to please my father and because I thought a man who recited poetry would be a gentle husband. I was a fool and perhaps I deserve
d to suffer. I chose to be an object of adoration for a shallow romantic who cultivated only his own feelings and stimulated only his own senses. Perhaps you will one day notice in the gardens a marble statue of a dying harem girl who has poisoned herself to escape loveless enslavement. It was Antonio’s gift to me. He said it reminded him of my beauty. Did he not see the irony, or is he just cruel? It pierces my heart to look at it.

“I know that statue!” exclaimed Tess. “Antonio moved it from the remains of the Chastant home to his new mansion Alhambra and put it in the middle of the maze there. Thérèse hated it and had it removed after his death. Now Sam Beauvoir has put it back in the main garden.” She paused and mused, “You know, I thought Thérèse hated the statue because it had belonged to Josephine. But now I wonder if she hated it for the same reason that Josephine did. After all, they were both trapped in a marriage to the same man. And it doesn’t sound like he made them happy.”

“Keep reading. We can discuss the details later,” urged Christina. “I want to know the point of all this trash talk about old Antonio.”

Tess returned to the letter:

After losing my first two children, I despaired and would have gladly embraced death if my lover had not come to rescue my spirits.

“Now we’re getting to the good stuff,” chortled Christina.

“Hush,” commanded Jen. “Go on, Tess.”

Tess looked at the next sentence and returned to the narrative with a suddenly dry throat:

I was ecstatic when I found that my love had given me a child—given me you, Benjamin. Antonio Cabrera is your father in name only.

“Oh,” gasped Christina, followed by a grin of pleased titillation. “Naughty Josephine.”

“Don’t you think she should have kept that secret? Imagine what it must have been like for Benjamin Cabrera as he went away to war,” Jen speculated. “I mean, Antonio Cabrera was the only parent he’d ever known. Telling the truth seems cruel and not something a loving mother would do.”

“Maybe Josephine really thought her son would need to be protected from Antonio’s selfishness,” reasoned Tess. “And she was proved right, wasn’t she? I mean Antonio was depressed and neglectful during his son’s childhood, and then allowed Ben to sacrifice his inheritance so Antonio could get a new young wife.”

“She caused that depression and neglect with her suicide. And her warning didn’t work anyway,” countered Christina. “In fact, I think it backfired. It made Ben feel so anxious about his false position as son and heir that he tried even harder to be a perfectly devoted son.”

“Hey, let’s give the lady the benefit of the doubt. She wrote this right after she gave birth and was in bad shape,” argued Tess, surprised to be defending Josephine when she had previously blasted her for her selfish death. “Postpartum depression was probably piled on top of existing unhappiness. If she had lived and come out of her funk, I’m sure she would have torn up this confession.”

“Read mor
e, Tess. Let’s find out who is Baby Ben’s real father,” interrupted Christina.

Tess continued to read slowly:

Antonio was so vain he never wondered about the source of my renewed happiness. He never counted the months and wondered how the seed was planted by his neglectful plow.

As a child of love, you are thriving, unlike the blighted fruit of my union with Antonio. But I fear Fate may tear me from you. I write this shortly after your birth, and I am very weak. The only thing that makes me hold onto this life is my love for you and my desire to protect you, my son.

In case I must leave you too soon, I am writing this message. I have asked my faithful servant Solange Beauvoir to keep this letter hi
dden and to give it to you when you turn 18. By then you will be old enough to understand but still young enough to correct your path. I know Antonio too well. He will try to convince you to sacrifice your dreams for his and to put yourself in service to his happiness. He will encourage you to believe in his false pride and his false posing before society. I do not want you to break with Antonio in front of that society. But I beg you to open your eyes to his selfish nature and to seek your heart’s desires even if it does not please him.

You may want to know the name of your true father. I dare not reveal it. Only know that he was loving and courageous. If you find these things
in yourself, they come from him.

With all my blessings, your mother, J

“Wow, that’s heavy,” commented Christina.

Jen suddenly leaned forward excitedly. “You know, I think Antonio wasn’t as oblivious as Josephine thought. If Antonio knew Ben was a cuckoo in the nest, it explains the events leading up to Josephine’s suicide. Think about that little drama Antonio cooked up when he ‘saved the baby.’ I think it was his way of making it clear to Josephine that, if he was going to have to a
ccept the child of another man, then he would take full possession of that child. He was punishing Josephine by denying her claim on Benjamin. She says in the letter that her sole reason to live was the desire to love and protect her son. Well, that night, she understood Antonio’s plan to take control of the child, and she saw the condemning faces of witnesses who would support his denial of her mother’s right. She realized she had lost her son, her reason to live.”

“It makes as much sense as the
plantation-obsessed bride or frustrated murderess theories,” nodded Tess. She continued to muse aloud, “A more interesting question is whether Ben Cabrera figured out his paternity. If anyone knew, it would be Solange, Josephine’s trusted confidante. If Ben probed Solange, she might have told him, even if she never told her own descendants.”

“
If Ben knew, or even suspected, that he had a dishonorable paternity, it would explain his actions after getting that letter,” pointed out Christina. “It was as if Ben was trying to prove to himself and to the world that he was worthy of his place as a Creole gentleman. He tried to become the epitome of Southern manhood—a Confederate hero, a devoted son, and a protector of family honor. But people then really believed that ‘blood will tell.’ Ben probably feared his secret would come out in his descendants. So he sacrificed fatherhood to ensure ‘untainted’ heirs to the Cabrera name. His vow to Thérèse gave him an excuse. Or we can go back to my other theory that he was gay, which made it even easier to swear off marriage,” concluded Christina with a wink.

Jen shrugged. “The tragic irony is that Ben may have
sacrificed for the honor of a Southern dynasty—not realizing that he was handing it all to Thérèse, octoroon Solange’s daughter!”

“Well, I say let’s toast tragic irony,” announced Christina, pouring wine into three glas
ses. “It brought Tess an inheritance.”

“Here, here,” smiled Jen. “Come on, Tess. It’s a sad story, but it has a happy ending for you.” She tapped her crystal rim against Tess’s and Christina’s glasses with a merry ping.

“I guess—if money alone counts as a happy ending,” acknowledged Tess.

“Never mind endings then. Let’s toast beginnings,” smiled Christina. “To a New Start for Tess!” Tess returned the smile but could
not shake a feeling of foreboding.

She had confrontations with Remy, Dreux and Sam Beauvoir ahead. Meanwhile, secrets were swirling together in a dark
vortex with New Orleans at its center. She had a fleeting image of Cee and Bea resignedly watching the killer tornado approach. She lifted her glass and echoed with forced warmth, “To a New Start for Me.”

18
VORTEX

The
Bon Secours North Shore Medical Center was striving for a corporate campus ambiance. Its gleaming new steel-and-glass buildings sat on tidy islands of greenery in a delta of pristine concrete streams. Inside, corridors in soothing pink and green pastels rayed out from a sunny spacious lobby decorated with modern art canvases that vaguely recalled waterscapes and sunrises.

But hospitals cannot disguise their function, and visitors’ voices still hushed for the passage of wheelchairs ferrying helpless passengers across the polished linoleum Styx.

Tess was disgorged by the hospital elevator in front of a busy nursing station. It was almost noon, and a rack of food trays was parked nearby. The odor of institutional food curled into her nostrils along with the smell of disinfectant and sent her emotions instantly back to her grandmother’s bedside.

When she inquired at the nursing station, a middle-aged woman in cheery scrubs poin
ted her toward a room with a partially open door. She peeked in and saw a seated Jon Beauvoir frowning at a curtained bed. “Jon?” called Tess as softly as she could and still be heard.

Jon jumped up and hurried into the hall. “Tess! I thought you’d want to know about Grampaw’s health, but I hope you didn’t think I implied an obligation to come. I know you’re busy,” he whispered.

Tess waved away the apology. “Of course I had to come. I drove here as soon as my meeting wrapped up. What happened?  How’s he doing?”

“Grampaw’s a little better
,” Jon assured her, but his eyes were tired and anxious. “The Tremé house was getting more repairs, and Grampaw stepped on a nail.” Tess winced, and Jon nodded his head grimly. “He washed his foot, put on a bandage and kept on with his routine. Luckily, Aunt Luanne arrived a few days later and noticed his limp and fever. She dragged him, protesting and delirious, to the emergency room. They’re pumping him with antibiotics. Let’s go in for a quick visit. It’ll pep him up. He’s bored to tears,” smiled Jon.

Jon escorted her in, and Tess was relieved to see the old man awake and propped against the pillows of the angled hospital bed. Fever-bright eyes and flushed cheeks gave an ill
usion of rosy health to the wizened form floating on a floe of white sheet. Sam smiled, “Come sit here by me, Miss Parnell. Tell me what you been up to.”

“I’m Tess, not Miss Parnell,” she reminded. “I was shocked to hear you were so ill.”

“I’m old,” grumbled Sam. “I’m ready to check outta this place f’sure. They keep pesterin’ me day and night till it don’t matter to me if I go home or to the nex’ world.”

“Please don’t talk like that,” frowned Jon. “You’ll send Aunt Luanne off the deep end.”

“Well, she gotta know I’m gonna go ahead. Don’t worry. She won’t be in no hurry to follow,” snorted Sam. “But lemme talk to Miss Tess. So what’s happenin’ with our property, young lady?”

Tess explained the emergence of Noah Cabirac’s heirs and the deal that had been worked out.

“Old sins come home to roost, huh? You’re right to share with Noah’s kin,” nodded Sam. He paused and fretted, “Jon, see what’s happenin’ with my lunch. I’m feeling puny, and my foot’s painin’.” Jon’s expression registered immediate concern, and he strode out.

Sam turned keen demanding eyes on Tess as soon as Jon left. “I’m glad you gonna keep the garden and honor the debt to Noah, but what about the Cabrera debt to the Beauvoirs?”

“I’ve really thought about it, and I have an idea that I think you may like,” answered Tess and lowered her voice to explain.

Jon returned with a lunch tray just
after she finished outlining her plan to Sam. The old man had closed his eyes and relaxed against his pillows. “That’s good. That’s right,” he was sighing weakly as Jon entered.

At the sight of Sam
’s limp body, Jon shoved the tray on the bedside table and rushed over. “Grampaw, what’s wrong? Should I call a nurse?”

The old man’s eyelids opened slowly and he rested a feebly reassuring hand on his grandson’s arm. “Don’
t fret. Raise me up so I can sit and eat some of their slop. I ’spect I’ll feel better then.”

Tess gnawed at her lip anxiously and watched as Jon helped his grandfather
sit up, positioned the bed table and uncovered the unappetizing food. “What were you two talking about?” asked Jon finally.

“Oh,
we was talkin’ about how Tess gotta get other peoples to tend that garden,” said Sam with a vague wave of his hand.

Jon looked disturbed, and Tess put in quickly, “Please stay involved with the garden for as long as you like.” Sam merely grunted and scooped macaroni and cheese onto his fork.

After a short pause, when Sam seemed somewhat revived by the meal, Tess announced, “I found Josephine’s last letter, the one you said your grandmother Solange gave to Ben Cabrera.”

“You don’
t say! Where’d you come by it?” asked Sam. He didn’t seem surprised and only mildly curious.

Tess told them about the hidden compartment in the lady’s writing desk and the surprise content of the letter. “Well, Solange never told nobody about Josephine havin’ a lover,” Sam said, speaking slowly and thoughtfully. “But Solange’d know what Miss Josephine got up to, so if Ben really did wanna know, he’d go to her. And I was jus’ thinkin’ how Solange got good reason to hint to Ben his sire was so
meone Ben’d be ashamed to claim—even if it ain’t so.”

“Why would Solange do that?”
exclaimed Tess.

“
Maybe she seen Ben standin’ in the way of her daughter Thérèse marryin’ Antonio and gettin’ more inheritance for her chirren. She knows Ben’s character. She can bet Ben’s gonna step aside if he feels unworthy of bein’ a Cabrera heir. And if she lets Ben think he’s got tainted blood, and she knows it, then she got both Thérèse
and
Ben with reason to use Cabrera money to keep Solange quiet.”

“So Solange may have told Ben a lie to gain financial security, a lie that
may have ruined his happiness. How can you defend that?” demanded Tess.

“Whoa, Solange was strugglin’ in that evil world where some’s master and some’s slave. Now in that kinda world, sometime you gotta fight wrong by doin’ wrong
, and you gotta grab justice by unjust ways.” Sam held his stern gaze on the astonished faces of Tess and Jon. It was disconcerting to glimpse a glint of steel beneath the old man’s genial manner.

“
No one made Ben take it so far he give up marryin’,” he continued. “Thérèse likely woulda wed Antonio without that sacrifice. Anyways, ever’body sure gained by Ben’s guilty secret, maybe even Ben. I reckon it made him work to be a better man, to be worthy of bein’ a Creole gennelman.” Sam closed his eyes, exhaustion clear in the sag of his facial muscles.

“You’re looking worn out, Grampaw,” interjected Jon swiftly. “I’ll get a nurse to check on you.”

Glancing at Jon’s departing back, Tess took it as her cue to ask her final question. She rose and gave Sam’s hand a gentle squeeze. “I don’t want to tire you so I’ll leave now. I have only one more thing to ask. I also found a letter written to you by my mother. She referred to the day of Desmond’s death and implied that she felt an obligation to seek ‘justice’ by telling the truth about some ‘deaths.’ Do you know what she meant? Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

Sam looked at her with sad eyes. The fevered alertness had slipped into a dull glaze of pain. “When she was small, your momma won’
t say a word about what went on in that library,” he rasped. “After she growed up and Emily got sick, she told me she was keepin’ secrets about two dead men: Desmond and her father. She said Emily made her promise to keep shut. Once her momma was gone, Joanne swore she’d tell those secrets. She jus’ never told me. So there’s nothin’ to tell you.”

“Well, I think Phil Dreux knows. He was the only other person in the library when De
smond died,” murmured Tess.

“Yeah, you talk to him,” croaked Sam and lay back on the crumpled pillows, his lunch unfinished.

Jon arrived with the nurse, who began to check the old man’s vital signs. Tess signaled to Jon that she was leaving. “Bye, Grampaw Sam. I hope you feel better. I’ll come back, and we can talk more about the garden,” she called softly and was rewarded by a weak glance.

“
Bye, now. My time in that garden’s done. You gotta tend it for yourself,” he mumbled and shut his eyes.

Jon joined Tess in the corridor outside Sam’s room. “I’ve never seen him so resigned, so fatalistic,” said Jon with a troubled
look. “Thanks for stopping by. I think it meant something to him, and I know it meant a lot to me.” He gave her a quick tight hug, and Tess felt the tension in his tight muscles. He briefly relaxed in her embrace but then drew back and straightened with a strained smile. As Tess entered the elevator, Jon had already vanished into his grandfather’s room to continue his hospital vigil.

Tess drove back to her hotel in a pensive mood. The news of Sam’s illness had been an unhappy surprise earlier that morning as she girded for what she thought might be a confront
ation with Remy. It turned out that her meeting with Remy was the pleasant surprise.

After a breathless wince at the sight of Remy’s strained smile, she realized
that her anger had already waned, and they were able to negotiate with careful politeness. After Tony exited with their signed deal, Tess and Remy sat alone in stiff silence for a long moment.

“I don’t know how to explain myself in a way that won’t seem self-serving. Can you fo
rgive me enough to let me rebuild your trust and respect?” Remy finally remarked.

Tess looked at his pleading face. “We don’t have to kiss and make up right now,” she a
nswered. “Let’s keep things open-ended. That’s about as positive an answer as I can give.”

“That’s positive enough, and more than I expected or deserve,” said Remy, and his old warm grin reappeared, like the irrepressible sunshine after a New Orleans thunderstorm.

In her hotel room, visits with Remy and Sam behind her, Tess tackled her final nemesis: Dreux.

“Hello, Miss Parnell,” Dreux said, “I assume we’re meeting tomorrow. Has something come up?”

“Tony and I will meet you about the property as planned,” replied Tess. “But I also would like to settle some personal issues. We really need to honestly discuss your visit to see my mother, the visit that coincided with her suicide.”

“We’ve talked about this before, Miss Parnell,” Dreux protested. “I was merely meeting with your mother to discuss sale of her land. You surely can’t believe that anything I said about property would make her distraught enough to take her own life!”

“Of course not, but that was not all you discussed, was it? You see, I spoke with my mother’s domestic help, a woman in whom she confided, and I finally took a closer look at my mother’s personal papers. I found out some very disturbing things. I know that my mother planned to discuss with you secrets she had been keeping ever since Desmond’s death in the library. I know that my mother planned to go public with her knowledge about the deaths of both Desmond and my grandfather.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about
,” replied Dreux. “What kind of personal papers are you talking about?”

“Well, copies of information about the property, and revealing letters between my mot
her and Sam Beauvoir. I talked with Mr. Beauvoir today about it. There was also correspondence between Bea Cabrera and my grandmother, and there was, um, my mother’s diary for the year before she died,” asserted Tess, turning her mother’s day planner into a secret-filled diary to bolster her case.

“But my mother was a very young, traumatized child when she came to b
elieve what she did, and she may have completely misinterpreted, misremembered or even imagined information,” she added to show she had not made up her mind and was open to any explanations Dreux might have. Tess had calculated her approach. Her goal was information not accusation.

“
I want to give you the chance to correct her perhaps misguided assumptions,” she continued. “You are the only living witness to the events in that library. You’re the last person to speak with my mother before she died. I need to understand the connection between that past trauma and my mother’s death. I’m not emotionally invested in the New Orleans past as she was. I
am
emotionally invested in her death. I need to understand, to make peace with it.”

After a heartbeat of silence, Dreux said, “Very well, we’ll deal with it when we meet t
omorrow.”

Tess’s route to truth was not going to be straightforward, however. The next morning, as she readied for her appointment with Tony and Dreux, Tony called to let her know that Dreux was under the weather with food poisoning and had postponed the meeting to Monday. Tess was irate.

“The damn liar wants to avoid talking about issues I brought up yesterday,” she shouted.

“You spoke to him on your own? And didn’t tell me?” Tony was clearly
miffed.

“We talked about mutual family history unrelated to the property,” Tess snapped and then paused and finished with strained calm. “But I may have pissed him off. I’m sorry if it’s i
nconvenienced you.”