Safe Passage (8 page)

Jules grinned and ate the beignets. She took out her phone and texted Gen a thank you. She finished grading some papers while she waited for her students to come in; she had a lecture-heavy day so she was trying to get as much done as she could so she wouldn't fall behind. The classes flew by because she was so busy, and she grinned when the lunch bell rang.

She walked over to the faculty lounge and saw Gen pulling out her frozen dinner. "Put that away," Jules said. "I brought you something much better."

Gen smiled as Jules handed her a quiche and salad setup just like she'd eaten the day before.

Both women sat down and began to eat their lunches.

Mike sat down with them almost immediately. "Just doing my part to help you out, JD. Don't want rumors to spread, and all," Mike said as she started eating his pizza.

"Thanks, Mike," Jules said dryly, rolling her eyes.

"Just remember to mention what a great guy I am to that girl you wanted to set me up with, and we are so much more than square."

Gen swallowed a bite of quiche, nodding at Jules at how good the meal was. "What girl is that?"

"Beth."

"Beth, your best friend from college?"

"Yup, that one." Jules turned to her friend. "Mikey, I was sort of kidding, about that, I mean, the only thing you have in common is that you both like to give me crap."

"It could work. I mean, how much do you and I have in common, Jules?" Gen fixed Jules with a pointed stare.

"And with that, I will call Beth and see what she thinks."

Mike laughed. "You are so whipped, JD."

"Happily," Jules replied as she opened her soda.

The lunch went on much as the one the previous day had gone. Part of Jules wanted to see if Gen was up for doing more research on the letter that night, but she didn't want to push things too far too fast.

The rest of the day passed quickly, a few brief texts back and forth with Gen, two more classes, and training with the team. Jules went out to row on the school's boats for a while to clear her head. She keyed up a song on her iPod nano and began to row the route her girls took every day.

As she rowed, she muttered to herself about the letter and the journal. "Find Evie, she will tell you what else you need to know. What the hell, Auntie? How can we find her and how can she tell us anything. She's dead, and she's been dead since 1940. You knew she was dead. Had your Alzheimer's already started when you wrote that stuff? She wrote the letter to me in 2006, so it hadn't yet. What was I doing then? It was two years after Athens, so I was in grad school. Why would you address the journal to me when I wasn't even in the state? You barely saw me those two years. It was more than a year after Katrina."

Jules stopped talking for a minute, and only the fact that the motion was so ingrained did she actually keep rowing. "Wait. That's important. After Katrina, would she have tried to find Evie's body? Of course she would have. And bodies were lost all over the city when the flooding happened. She would have had to work to find Evie. And she was too old, that means she'd have had to find someone to do it for her. The obvious choice would have been me, but I wasn't here. So she'd have hired someone. The whole story is with Evie's body!"

Jules looked around, realizing she had overshot her turnaround by a lot. She got the boat turned around and rowed back to the boathouse. She put the boat away and pulled on a hoodie as she went back to her car.

Jules debated calling Gen, but then remembered she was trying not to rush things. She drove home, ate a quick dinner, and changed her clothes. She loaded Samson in the car and took him to the dog park. After an hour having him chase a tennis ball and play with the other dogs, she headed back home to sleep.

*~*~*

The next morning, Gen met up with Jules in the faculty room. "Jules, I think I know where the rest of the story is."

Jules smiled at Gen and filled her coffee cup. "Where?"

"In Evie's grave."

Jules took a sip of her coffee and looked at Gen over the rim of the cup. She was wearing a pale blue button down with yellow stripes, paired with a brown skirt. Jules found her eyes focusing on the soft looking skin exposed in the unbuttoned V of the shirt. "Yeah, I think so too."

Gen smiled knowingly at where Jules’ focus had rested. "Any idea where it is?"

Jules shook herself out of her daze and shrugged. "No clue. I mean, she was executed, right? That means she'd have been buried by the state."

"Or her family. So we're back to square one."

"Nah, we're at least at square five now, right?"

Gen rested a hand on Jules' forearm, her fingers rubbing the crisp fabric of her deep purple shirt. "So, any hints about Saturday," she purred.

Jules' eyes widened. "Not that I'm complaining, but that was a big shift you made just there."

Gen blushed and bit the corner of her lower lip. "Angie has been driving me nuts lately. So I'm just giving her a little payback."

"Ah, okay. And as for Saturday, I was thinking maybe dinner." Jules was trying to stay calm but she really liked that Gen was laying claim to her in front of her ex.

"Vague, but okay."

"Well, do you like sushi?"

"I do."

"Perfect, I know just the place." Jules grinned, wanting to keep the place a surprise.

"Oh?"

"Yup."

Gen started fiddling with the buttons on Jules' vest. "You're not going to tell me where?"

Jules took a shuddering breath. "No, and you can't tease it out of me."

Gen laughed but before she could try again, the warning bell rang and both women walked to their classrooms.

*~*~*

Between thinking about her date, running her team ragged, and the stacks of grading that she'd slacked off on, Jules actually didn't think much about the letter for the next two days. She still spent as much time as she could with Gen while they were at work, and they texted some in the evenings, usually while Jules was training with her team.

Saturday arrived and Jules woke up at seven. She rolled out of bed, put on her rowing clothes, fed Samson, and got in her car to drive down to the Orleans Canal to meet up with her rowing club. She had always preferred rowing singles, but a few friends of hers from high school needed another for their coxed eight team, and Jules had said yes, and then she'd brought in Becs a few months later.

Jules drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she waited at the red light. She sighed in frustration at herself and turned on the radio as a distraction. Mercifully, the light turned green and she put the car into gear focusing every available cell in her brain on the lyrics of the Foreigner song on the radio so she could avoid thinking about Gen and tonight. Then when she realized the song was all about sex she grunted and turned the radio back off. She got to the boathouse and saw most of the team there already.

"Jules, how's everything with that safe?" Becs hollered. "Did you find someone to translate the letter?"

"Yeah, Becs, I did."

"And?"

"It's complicated. The letter just raised some questions about my aunt I'm trying to answer."

"That's not too complicated. I mean, I am a detective."

"Well, two things about that. Thing number one, you're not nearly as cute as the girl I've got helping me with this."

Becs waved her off. "Pffft, whatever, I'm hot as hell, you just couldn't handle me."

"Right, moving on, thing two, the complicated part, is that I have a date tonight with the French teacher who helped me translate it."

"Ah, way to go Jules. Where are you taking her?"

"Lakeside Sushi."

"Oh, nice. Good choice. Amber and I went there last month."

Jules and Becs' talk was interrupted by Jessica, the cox. "Alright, let's get going," she yelled from across the boat house. They picked up the boat and put it in the water, climbing in and starting their practice. After an hour and a half on the water, they put the boat up and started walking toward their cars.

"Jules, you up for brunch?" Becs asked.

Jules nodded and hopped into Becs' Jeep.

The two of them headed to a diner near the canal and slid into booths.

"So," Becs said. "Tell me about this French teacher. First date?"

"Um, maybe."

"Jules, how the hell are you not sure it's a date?"

"No, I know it's a date, I just don't know if it's our first date."

Becs held up her hand to stop Jules. She looked over at the waitress. "Coffee and a Denver omelette."

The waitress nodded and looked at Jules.

"Coffee and pancakes with a side of sausage." One of the things Jules had been happiest about when she stopped training for the Olympics was that she could eat pancakes again.

The waitress left to get their coffees and Becs shook her head at Jules. "This college crap doesn't work anymore, Jules. You are thirty years old. Nut up! How are you not sure it's your first date?'

"Well, I had her over to my place and I fixed her dinner, but that was before I knew she was gay. Then she brought me coffee and beignets the next morning and told me that she was gay and that I was cute. Then that night she brought Thai over to my place. Both the times we were at my place we were working on figuring out stuff about the safe."

"Huh, only you could fall into this kind of thing. I get how you don't know, though. I don't either. Play it by ear?"

"Thanks, you are enormously helpful."

After their breakfast, Becs drove Jules back to her car and she headed home to try to distract herself until 7:30, when she had to leave to pick up Gen. She graded papers, and cleaned up her house, just in case. Samson watched her frenzied cleaning from the couch, his forehead wrinkled as if he couldn't understand why his human would work so hard. After Jules had done everything she could do, she glanced at the clock. It was still only two o'clock. She sighed and went to the store, figuring she'd cook something for dessert, just in case.

She came home from Whole Foods with all the ingredients she needed, and went to work on a chocolate raspberry torte. After she finished making it and cleaned up the kitchen she glanced at the clock again. Now it was six o'clock and she could go start to get ready. Jules showered, dried her hair, and then spent time going through her clothes, finally settling on a fitted grey cashmere sweater that was thin enough to not make her stiflingly hot and black pants with a matching grey pinstripe, she paired it with black driving shoes and a black linen sport coat. As she threaded her black belt through the belt loops, she thought about what she'd had planned. It was a basic date. She didn't want to go overboard. She kept going back and forth on the flowers she'd bought while she was at Whole Foods.

"Well," she said to Samson who was lying on her made bed as she got ready. "I already bought them, I might as well take them. She's special, and she likes the romantic gestures, right?"

Samson just kept staring at her, his large head cocked to the side, trying to figure out what Jules wanted him to do.

"Yeah, thanks buddy." Jules scratched behind his ear and walked into her bathroom, doing a final once-over on how she looked. She hung up the towel she'd tossed over the toilet and then put on a fragrance. She glanced at the clock on the radio and grimaced. She still had plenty of time. She called Samson to her, smoothed out the comforter and closed the bedroom door. She went down to the living room and turned on the TV to kill another thirty minutes.

After she'd watched a Family Guy rerun, she put Samson in his crate with his dinner and a chew toy, grabbed the flowers and her car keys. She climbed into her grey Nissan Xterra and plugged Gen's address into her GPS. She turned on the radio for a distraction as she drove to Metairie and Gen's townhouse.

She sang along to the bands that played and pulled up in front of the townhouse five minutes early. "Crap," she muttered as she killed the engine and turned the key to accessory so she could listen to the radio while she waited for 7:30. Jules drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. When the clock in the car ticked to 7:29, she sighed.

"Close enough."

She grabbed the flowers, turned off the car and stepped out.

Jules walked along the shrub-lined path, up to the door of the townhouse. She rang the doorbell, and waited. After what felt like an eternity, but was really in reality probably only thirty seconds, the door opened to reveal a thin blonde guy in an apple green polo shirt and jeans.

Jules looked at him, surprised. "Um, I was looking for Gen, am I at the wrong place?"

"No, she's upstairs, I'm Jake." He turned and yelled up the stairs. "Genny, your lady caller is here." He turned back to Jules and smiled. "Come on in while we wait for her."

Jules walked in and looked around the place. It was done in all tans, blues, and whites.

"So, Jules," Jake said. "Where are you taking Gen?"

"You're putting off quite the dad vibe."

"Close, I'm her brother."

"Oh, sorry. We're going to Lakeside Sushi."

He laughed. "I'm totally yanking your chain, Jules. Gen is just my roomie. She was right, you are cutely proper."

And with that, even Jules' pathetic gaydar went off, and she laughed. "Yeah, uh, thanks, I guess?"

"Oh, you're welcome. Our Gen is quite taken with you, you know? It's been all Jules this, and Jules that, for like, ages."

"We've only really been talking for a week."

"Oh, yeah, but she's been waiting for you to ask her out since she started that job. I kept telling her that she sends out too much of a straight vibe to expect to get picked up at work, but would she listen?"

"Jesus Christ, Jake! Could you at least try to keep a little bit to yourself? Please!"

Jules stood as she heard Gen's voice and turned to see her on the bottom step.

"Oh, she stands up and everything, very old school. Do you have any brothers, Jules?" Jake asked.

Jules wasn't really listening to the guy at all. She took in Gen's blue dress that hugged her curves without being trashy. Her blonde hair was down and flowing around her shoulders. Jules walked over to her. "You look great," she said.