Plunder: A Faye Longchamp Mystery #7 (Faye Longchamp Series) (12 page)

“Well, you do have a point there. People have been misbehaving for millennia. This is why I love the study of history so completely. Okay, you win. Tell me why you need a lawyer. I’ll shut up and listen.”

“Thank you.” Faye tried to gather her thoughts. Why did every conversation with Bobby leave her flustered? “I have a young friend who recently lost her mother. The mother’s husband showed up with a will, saying that her mother had died and left everything to him. The estate includes half of the houseboat my friend lives in with her grandmother, and the widower would just love to kick them out of it. And I don’t think the rest of the houseboat belongs to the grandmother, either. My friend—her name is Amande—”

“Pretty name.”

“Yes, isn’t it? Well, Amande is terrified that she and her grandmother are going to lose their home.”

“How old is Amande?” Faye was surprised at how completely Bobby’s tone had changed from playful to businessman-crisp. “Do you know who owns the other half of the houseboat?”

“She’s sixteen. And I believe her mother’s half-sister owns the other half of it. I have no idea why the two sisters were letting Amande’s grandmother use the boat. The dead woman, Justine, had been estranged from her stepmother for years, and her half-sister, Didi, didn’t impress Joe as the generous type.”

“They were half-sisters? Which parent did they share? And is he still alive?”

“Their father. He’s been dead for quite some time.”

“Look. I studied the history of the Louisiana legal system for two whole semesters, and I still only learned enough to be dangerous. The whole system is counterintuitive, but this situation sounds relatively straightforward…if you can call anything about our inheritance laws straightforward.”

He sighed. “I wish we were in the same room so I could sketch out a family tree and draw you a picture. Let’s see how well I can do with words. It sounds like the houseboat was not community property, and the dead man left his wife a usufruct on it, either because he drew up his will that way or probably because he left no will at all. The actual ownership of the boat went to his children, but his wife has the use of the houseboat until she dies. I’m guessing that’s true of any other non-community assets that he left.”

Faye made a mental note to check Florida law, not to mention the wording of Joe’s will and her own. “Poor Miranda…she lost her husband and everything, all at once.”

“Yes. Here’s the important thing: Do not, under any circumstances, let your friend’s grandmother do anything stupid like hand over the boat. Not until she talks to a lawyer who knows Louisiana law. Just because the man has a will showing that part, or even all, of the houseboat belongs to him doesn’t mean that he has the right to evict her.”

“Amande will be so relieved.”

“And another thing…make sure the lawyer is looking after Amande’s interests, not just her grandmother’s. Amande may not have all that much to fear from her mother’s husband.”

“Amande’s grandmother is meeting with her lawyer this afternoon, and she’s actually asked me to sit in on the meeting. She respects education, and she wanted someone she could trust to explain things to her. I’m flattered that she feels that way. Anyway, I understand that the will is pretty straightforward. Everything goes to him. How a woman could cut her own child out…”

Bobby’s voice went past businessman-crisp, going straight to evangelist-intense. “She
can’t
. Or rather, she couldn’t, back when she was alive. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Louisiana inheritance law recognizes ‘forced heirs.’ Most of the time, you can’t just cut your children out of your will. The law forces you to leave them
something.
My guess is that, when the dust settles, Amande will find out that she owns a quarter of her mother’s property, with the rest going to her mother’s widower. That’s going to put her interests at odds with her grandmother’s, especially if there is other property besides the houseboat. Even more important, her lawyer needs to find out what else her mother—Justine, was it?—owned at the time of her death. Justine’s husband may be forced by law to share it with Amande, no matter what that will says.”

“I understand that there’s some oil company stock. Maybe other stuff, but these are not rich people.”

“It doesn’t matter. Rich people fight over thirty million dollars. Homeless people will fight with the same intensity over thirty dollars. Or three. I’m a historian and I’m here to tell you that devastating wars have been fought over truly trivial sums. You’ve told me that Amande’s aunt is not a nice person, and neither is her mother’s widower. I think it’s likely that your sixteen-year-old friend is now co-owner, along with those two, of a houseboat and some stock. This is not an insignificant pile of property. Any sixteen-year-old in that situation needs an advocate. If she’s your friend, you need to help her find one.”

***

Bobby hung up the phone with a smile that was unseemly for a man who cultivated the illusion that he was way too sophisticated to be amused by much. Faye was fun. There was no other word for her. If she and Joe lived in New Orleans, he and Jodi would force them to be their best friends, whether they liked it or not.

Though Bobby’s family had lost their old money sometime in the early nineteenth century, he still possessed their blue blood, so he was a member of the right Mardi Gras krewe and he got invitations to all the best parties. Faye, Joe, and Jodi would ordinarily have been frozen out of that society forever, because the partygoers would have been at a loss for anything to say to someone whose family wasn’t traceable back to eighteenth-century France. Or, in some cases, seventeenth-century France. Actually, Faye’s bloodlines intersected with his own slightly, but her family lost their high social standing in this part of the world at about the time they started pronouncing their name “LAWNG-champ,” instead of “LAWN-shaw.”

However, if the four of them sailed into a high-society soirée on the strength of Bobby’s bloodlines, they would set the party on its ear. Joe would be fetchingly dressed in a white tie version of the buckskin clothes he made himself, with a feather poked into his long, thick ponytail. Jodi would regale staid partygoers with nausea-inducing police tales involving bodily fluids, and the crowd would love it the way they loved those CSI shows on TV.

And Faye would look like a tiny queen, swathed in a silk gown she’d sewn herself. She would behave herself until some boor called her “Little Lady” and made conversation by asking what her husband did for a living while she was lounging around getting her nails done. Then, with a single short sentence, she’d flatten him with the sheer force of her intellect, and all hell would break loose.

It would be a hoot. He wondered what it would take to get Faye and Joe to leave Joyeuse.

There was the rub. Faye was about as likely to leave her island home as Bobby was to leave New Orleans. Damn. Nevertheless, Mardi Gras was only ten months away, give or take. If he started now, he could wangle a pile of invitations to events so exclusive that even Faye wouldn’t be able to say no.

The woman had better start sewing silk dresses. She was going to need a lot of them.

Bobby looked around him. He loved old maps, and he loved New Orleans. The historic collection housed in this place was as close to heaven as he cared to get without dying. How fortunate that he could hang out here, carefully fingering the merchandise, and call it work.

At a computer in the corner, he spotted a familiar face, a sunburned and freckled man in his mid-twenties with sunbleached hair. Bobby had seen him several times lately. He didn’t look old enough to hold a PhD, but maybe he was a grad student. People who hung out at the Historic New Orleans Collection tended to be academics, and they tended to specialize in fields like history and geography, so they didn’t often get sunburned. Like Bobby, they generally had the complexions of bookworms.

Archaeologists were an exception. If they weren’t smart enough to wear hats and long sleeves and sunscreen, they always looked sunbaked. Maybe he should introduce himself to the man, in case he was someone who could help his cousin Faye. Bobby, like most people of his social standing, knew the importance of networking. Success in life was generally tied to who you knew and who knew you.

He walked over and extended a well-manicured hand. “I’m Bobby Longchamp. I’ve seen you here before. I know my way around these maps as well as anybody. If you’re not finding what you need, maybe I can help.”

The young man extended a hand. His fingernails were way too clean for an archaeologist. Bobby knew what Faye’s hands looked like in the evenings, despite her protective gloves. He also knew the vigorous scrubbing and soaking she used to keep her hands in a ladylike condition. It almost worked, but her cuticles stayed red and rough as a result. This man had the delicate skin of a natural blond. If he played in the dirt on a daily basis, Bobby would be able to tell.

“My name’s Dane. I think I’ve found what I’m looking for, but thanks.”

Bobby looked over his shoulder at the list of maps Dane was planning to request. They all centered on a shallow portion of Barataria Bay that was dotted with small islands. Dane wanted to see bathymetric maps and fishing maps and satellite imagery of the area, and he didn’t just ask for current maps. He’d asked for historic ones. Bobby noticed that he’d requested no topographic maps of the islands. So he was interested in the water, not the land.

If the man had only wanted to fish, current fishing maps would have been sufficient. He could have bought those at any marina, while he was buying bait and beer. Considering the rate the land changed down near the mouth of the river, historic fishing maps were fairly useless. Nevertheless, Dane wanted to see them. Bobby wondered why.

The bathymetric maps were something yet again. They would have been total overkill for fishing, when depth finders could be bought so cheaply. The man wanted to know the shape of the land beneath the water, and his desire for old bathymetric maps said that he wanted to know how the land under the water
used
to be shaped. Curious.

His request for a series of aerial photographs of the bay through time wasn’t surprising, given the other requests.

Bobby took a stab in the dark. “Are you an oceanographer?”

Dane gave him a dark look, then hunched over his work as if to dismiss Bobby from his presence. That moment of non-collegiality made Bobby think,
Not an academic.
By process of elimination, Bobby knew what the man was studying. More precisely, he knew what the man was up to.

He was interested in the seafloor of that bay. He couldn’t care less about the islands dotting it. And he wasn’t an academic.

Bobby totted up the evidence and checked Dane over one more time. Yep, the hair was so short as to be barely there. Combined with a sunburn and soaked-clean fingernails, a haircut that would be no trouble underwater and would dry quickly made him look an awful lot like a diver. Secretiveness made him look an awful lot like a diver who had found something underwater that he didn’t want to share.

The man’s attitude had pissed Bobby off, so he took revenge in his trademark style, through a few well-chosen words delivered in a tone that sounded oh-so-friendly.

He clapped his hand on the young man’s shoulder, as if he were giving a little brotherly advice. Then he put him in his place. “Many people wiser than you have wasted their lives looking for treasure in those waters. It’s not there. Or, if it is, the Mississippi has buried it in mud. And even if it
is
possible for you to find it…I think you should let it rest with the bones of the people who went down with the ship.”

Dane gave him a sharp look that told Bobby he’d guessed right.

Bobby released Dane’s shoulder and watched the man pull away. He pretended not to notice, and he kept talking. “I can’t stop you from looking for treasure. Even if you find it, it’s up to the authorities to decide whether you broke any laws doing it. But I
can
do one thing. I will be watching the way you handle those maps. Some of them are priceless. Break one rule, and I’ll have you kicked out of this place for good.”

It was good to be a tenured professor, because it meant that Bobby punched no time clock and nobody cared if he sat at the Historic New Orleans Collection day and night, as long as his classes got taught. He had no classes today, so Dane would need to get used to having a spectator.

After about thirty minutes of spectating, Bobby noticed that Dane’s short hair was damp with sweat. The man was not cool under fire.

The sound of heavy and uneven footfalls entered the room ahead of the woman who made them. Bobby knew that Dauphine had returned before he saw her face.