Ciji Ware (16 page)

Strangely, Daphne experienced no fear or dread as she climbed the broad staircase to her room. There had to be a logical explanation, she insisted to herself, remembering the restless nights she had in New York prior to flying south. And then she’d been awakened by the sound of harp music that first night at Bluff House. Perhaps tonight, she’d merely nodded off—which she had done once or twice when practicing late into the night at Juilliard—and the scenes she’d witnessed were merely dreamscapes.

As if to prove a point, she slipped beneath the bedcovers and fell into a dreamless sleep the instant her head touched the pillow. Much to her surprise, when she awoke she found Groucho curled up on the foot of her bed. Apparently, whether she wished to or not, she’d made a new friend.

***

That morning, Daphne was determined to put all thoughts of the previous night’s unsettling events out of her mind, chalking up the experience to the hugely stressful day she’d spent warding off both Jack and her mother’s punishing anger.

For most of the day, she read and rested on Maddy’s wide veranda with its spectacular view of the river. In the late afternoon, she spent a leisurely forty-five minutes choosing clothes to wear on her date with Simon Hopkins. The evening was slated to include both dinner at an upscale restaurant and dancing at a couple of funky blues bars.

“Not so easy to figure out, is it, Groucho?” she declared aloud, scanning the limited wardrobe she’d brought from New York and hung amid a raft of garment storage bags in the closet. Ultimately, she selected a pair of trim, lightweight black twill slacks, a black cotton tee with spaghetti straps, a collar-less red linen jacket, and a pair of comfortable, black sling-back Chanel pumps that were great for dancing. She donned her one good pair of plain gold earrings and the eighteen-carat gold Tiffany pin in the shape of a harp that King and Corlis had given her when she’d earned her master’s degree. Dressed and made up a little before seven o’clock, she filed the essential lipstick, mirror, comb, and credit card into a black crochet handbag the size of a small envelope.

“Dr. Hopkins is here, darlin’,” Cousin Maddy called up the stairwell, “and he’s brought us a big ol’ batch of gorgeous roses that Lani sent with him from Monmouth! Now, isn’t that just dear of her?”

Doctor
Hopkins? Maddy, of course, would ask what Sim’s proper title was. Daphne descended the steps wondering how a man with a PhD would react to the creative chaos that reigned in Madeline Whitaker’s household? She found visitor and hostess in the kitchen debating the virtues of a tin bucket to serve as a vase for the roses, versus a dented, tarnished silver trophy that Cousin Marcus had won in a croquet match as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford.

“Let me just find us some silver polish,” Maddy declared, and began to root among the clutter of cleaning gear and washday products under her kitchen sink.

Daphne smiled self-consciously at Sim as she felt his gaze meander from her face to the tips of her sling-back pumps. He smiled a warm welcome, then bent to seize a large bucket from a cupboard to the left of the sink. He had on the navy blazer he’d worn at her brother’s wedding and a sage-colored polo shirt that intensified the gray-green of his eyes. Trim beige pleated slacks and a pair of loafers made him quite the
GQ
cover model, indeed.

“I liked your first idea, Mrs. Whitaker. Let’s do a Martha Stewart and use this wonderful old bucket,” Sim proposed. “We can fill it with these long stem beauties and set them right here in the middle of your kitchen table.”

“Why, I think you’re absolutely right, dear boy,” Madeline declared delightedly, shoving the silver polish back into the crowded cupboard under the sink. “An easy, sensible solution. What do you think, Daphne?”

“Perfecto,” Daphne agreed, and exchanged smiles with Sim.

He swiftly unwrapped a copy of the
Natchez
Democrat
, freeing at least two dozen roses in shades of pink, peach, and vibrant coral, and handed them to his hostess.

“And champagne!” Maddy exclaimed. “He brought two gorgeous bottles.”

Sim grinned at Daphne and shrugged. “From the wedding. Mrs. Riches thought you two were the proper recipients of such leftover largesse of Veuve Clicquot.”

Daphne put a hand over her heart, and said with mock solemnity, “King and Corlis would definitely want these committed to our care, and I’m sure as shootin’ going to drink some before I go back home. But, let’s save the other bottle for their first anniversary, shall we, Maddy?”

“How about having a glass, now, with these?” Sim said, revealing a dish of cold, baby artichokes sitting on the kitchen table next to the champagne. “My mother, believe it or not, FedEx-ed them to me at Monmouth, and the chef there was kind enough to steam them.” He laughed with an edge of embarrassment. “Apparently, she didn’t think a California guy could survive without my monthly bounty from Castroville, the Artichoke Capital of the World.”

“That’s south of San Francisco, isn’t it?” Daphne said, staring at vegetables that looked to be a cross between a thistle and a cactus.

“Way back when, my family grew them as a business. Then, my grandfather used to grow them as a hobby. Now, half the land the family owned is covered with mini-malls and tract housing, but we still have a small interest in a couple of artichoke farms and my mother gets paid in produce from time to time.”

“Doesn’t your father like artichokes?” Daphne inquired with a smile, “or do you and your mother have some sort of side deal?”

Sim paused, and said lightly, “My father died last year, but, yes… he was crazy about them. It’s in the blood, my mother says.”

“Oh!” Daphne said, embarrassed. “I’m so sorry—”

“You couldn’t have known.”

Madeline carefully set the bucket of roses on the kitchen table. “Was it sudden, dear?” she asked sympathetically. “He must have been relatively young—that is, when you look at life from
my
vantage point.”

“Sixty-two. From prostate cancer. He’d ignored the symptoms for quite a while, it turned out.”

“That’s
terribly
young,” Maddy said, distressed. She turned to Daphne. “It almost seems as if we’re in the middle of an epidemic, doesn’t it, dear?” She switched her attention back to her guest. “I lost my husband
and
my twenty-seven-year-old son to cancer several years ago. I know what a blow that must have been to you and your mother, and I’m so sorry you had to go through such an awful thing.”

Sim nodded almost imperceptibly. “It was pretty rough, but the one good thing was that my father and I—” He paused, gazed out the kitchen window for a moment, and then started his sentence again. “In the last three months of his life, we really came to know one another… maybe for the first time. If he hadn’t gotten sick, I sometimes wonder if that would ever have happened.” He picked up a bottle of champagne. “Well, now. Mrs. Whitaker, shall we—”

“
Maddy
, please,” Madeline insisted. “Let me just get a clean tea towel from the drawer there so you can work out the cork.”

Daphne shot Sim a conspiratorial look and crossed the kitchen to assist her cousin in the search. Maddy had opened a drawer filled to overflowing with piles of wrinkled tea towels, crumpled cloth napkins, and wads of cheesecloth from her previous cooking projects.

“Ah! There it is!” Maddy exclaimed triumphantly, seizing the needed towel and waving it in the air.

The threesome soon moved out onto the veranda and gathered together several serviceable wicker chairs from a variety of furniture in various states of disrepair. By the time they settled down with their artichokes and champagne, the sun was slanting off the bend in the river directly opposite Bluff House and a shimmering twilight silently enfolded the scene.

“What a magnificent view,” Sim murmured. “Kinda makes me want to burst out singing ‘Old Man River.’” Daphne and Maddy chuckled as Sim pointed straight ahead, adding, “Look at those vast tracts of land across the river on the Louisiana side. In California, it would be so built up, it’d probably look like Silicon Valley by now.”

“My husband’s family once had big cotton fields over there,” Maddy said, “and upriver, they had a magnificent house and a plantation on the Mississippi side called Devon Oaks that first produced tobacco, and later, cotton, when the land played out.”

Daphne felt her heart begin to race at the mention of the mansion that had so unexpectedly appeared the previous night in her—what? Vision? Apparition? Full-blown hallucination?

“Does the house still exist?” Sim asked.

“It’s a country inn these days,” Maddy answered, “A gay couple from Atlanta turned it into a B and B, like so many of the old places. The Tornado of 1840 didn’t blow it down, as it did some neighbors’ houses up there—or some big ol’ developer bulldoze it to the ground to build one of those ugly mini-malls. The new owners did a beautiful job restorin’ it and makin’ it a mighty pretty place.”

Sim raised his glass and tipped it first in Maddy’s direction, and then, with a smile, toward Daphne. “Amen to saving pretty places.”

Half an hour later, Daphne and Simon stood up, bid Maddy farewell, and walked toward Sim’s dusty white Range Rover, a recreational vehicle that easily accommodated a large amount of photographic gear and could transport it to any sort of terrain where rare birds might be found. In less than two minutes, they had driven down the hill to the restaurant. Someone was just pulling out of the parking lot next to the Magnolia Grill on Silver Street, a narrow thoroughfare that wound its way to the mooring where the
Lady
Luck
lured gamblers aboard her decks, and where the touring paddle wheel boats tied up when they called at Natchez.

The evening had grown cool, now that darkness had descended. On the Mississippi a hundred yards away, tiny crystal lights outlining the riverboat’s pilothouse reflected like dancing gems off the water, and the smell of dogwood floated in the air. Sim locked the car, and he and Daphne headed toward a red brick building nestled into the base of the bluff that towered overhead.

“There used to be a couple more streets down here, once upon a time,” Daphne explained, “but the river washed them away over the years. Silver Street is basically all that’s left.”

Sim pointed at the two-story structures that lined the cliff side of the street. “You know, they
look
as if they were all once boarding houses and dance halls, don’t they?”

“Not to mention a bordello or two,” she said, pointing to a building with a freshly painted wooden sign reading
Magnolia
Grill
. “This place claims to be the oldest, continuously operating eatery in Natchez, but this building was constructed about twenty years ago to look like the falling-down saloon that used to be on this spot.” Sim clasped Daphne’s arm as they strolled past the restaurant’s enclosed porch and made their way to the entrance.

Inside the restaurant, Daphne surveyed the bare, wooden floor and plank tables and wondered if Simon Hopkins might find the spot a little too “down home” for his refined tastes. Meanwhile, he calmly surveyed the wine list and, after consulting with her about her entree, selected a California Pinot Noir that would go nicely with both the duck breast she’d ordered—topped with toasted pecans and a sugar-bourbon demi-glace—and his own fresh Gulf redfish smothered in crabmeat and a Creole meunière sauce.

“As you might have guessed by now, the Magnolia Grill serves a sort of soul food with attitude. Not bad for lil’ ol’ Natchez, wouldn’t you say, though I might like it better if they changed the restaurant’s name,” Daphne joked, glancing around the packed dining room.

“Thank God I know an almost-native,” Sim replied, smiling. “I was afraid that my eating would be confined to the Pig Out Inn.”

“I
love
the Pig Out Inn!” she protested, then realized Sim was teasing. “You haven’t even been there, have you?” she demanded accusingly.

“No… just noticed it as I drove by. Mostly, I’ve grabbed a hamburger somewhere on my way out to the wilds.”

“The Pig Out has
the
best barbecued pork sandwiches you ever tasted in your life.”

“Sounds like you could get us a good table there, too,” he replied, poker-faced.

After that, they fell into a comfortable discussion of Sim’s pursuit of the yellow-rumped warbler and other elusive photographic prey. When the conversation shifted to the subject of Daphne’s life as a classical harpist in New York, Daphne regaled Sim with amusing backstage anecdotes and avoided recounting the unhappy saga of the professional price she’d paid for attending her brother’s nuptials. Their easy exchange of banter made it hard to imagine that only yesterday she had been sobbing her heart out over Jack Ebert’s treachery in Sim’s stunning bedroom on the second floor of Monmouth Plantation. Sim obliquely reminded her of that fact over coffee and their order of caramel bread pudding.

“So…” he said, taking a sip from his demitasse, “any more sightings of your jilted fiancé?”

“No, thank heavens,” Daphne replied. “Let’s hope he checked out the financials at the Natchez funeral home that his parents bought, and hightailed it back to Texas.” She kept her words light. Even so, she suppressed a shudder, wishing Sim hadn’t allowed the unpleasant subject to intrude upon their enjoyable evening.