Ciji Ware (44 page)

“I can see why.” Sim groaned, patting his bloated stomach with a pained expression. “I don’t think too many eateries in America can claim to serve sour cream corn muffins
and
broccoli corn bread,
and
Mexican corn fritters all on the same menu.”

Sim even made it to Natchez the day the historic
Delta
Queen
docked next to the
Lady
Luck.
That morning, Daphne conferred with the activities director to offer her paid services the next time one of the three paddle-wheelers paid another visit to Natchez-Under-the-Hill. After the successful conclusion of the negotiation, she and Sim ate corn dogs on the deck and listened to the old-fashioned calliope whine out nineteenth-century favorites like “In the Good Old Summertime!”

Their idyll came to an abrupt halt one hot Monday afternoon in early June when Daphne wheeled through the gates of Gibbs Hall and continued on foot to the cottage. Sim was not his usual, cheerful self. He handed her a glass of iced tea and pointed to one of the two chairs that flanked his minuscule dining table.

“Got something to tell you,” he said without preamble.

“What?” Daphne asked, conscious of the hum of the air-conditioner in the window nearest the daybed.

“My mother called from San Francisco today.”

“Is she ill?” Daphne asked with alarm.

“Oh, no… nothing like that,” Sim assured her. “She just called to warn me.”

“About what?”

“That I should expect to hear from Francesca sometime soon.”

“Really?” Daphne said carefully. “And why is that?”

“She’s coming to Mississippi on a case. She wanted my mother to give her a number where she could leave a message when she arrived.”

“Did your mother give it to her?” she asked stiffly.

Why
am
I
giving
this
poor
man
the
third
degree?

“Francesca can be very persistent. She said she knew what project I was working on back here and wore poor Mom down with a battery of questions. My mother said that afterward, she felt like she’d just given a deposition. She felt terrible that she’d told Francesca where I was staying and called me today to apologize.”

“How in the world did Francesca even know you were in Mississippi?”

Sim paused and arched an eyebrow. Daphne knew instinctively that bad news was on its way.

“She’s been hired to act as legal consultant for Able Petroleum in the environmental battle shaping up in Jackson.”

Daphne sat up straight in her chair. “Oh, my God…” she said, stunned. “It’s Jack, isn’t it? Jack, the
agent
provocateur.
Jack the Internet wizard. Remember what he said that night at the bar when he admitted he’d done a Web search on you and your wife?” She stalked to the door and held it open. “Do you mind if we sit out on the veranda? I need some air.”

“Sure,” Sim said, and followed her outside. “It’s starting to cool off.”

“That son of a bitch!” Daphne began to pace the porch. “He finds it
amusing
to stir things up like this. He does it just for the perverse entertainment value.”

“Well, obviously he also wants to win this battle very, very much if he’s willing to pay Francesca’s enormous consulting fee. Her firm is one of the top corporate litigation outfits in the country.”

“Able Petroleum is footing the bill, so what does Jack care? He’s hell bent on sweet revenge, and figures, somehow, that Francesca’s just the person to help him get it.”

“It’s a legislative battle, Daphne. It’ll be decided in a bunch of hearings, not here in the Natchez Trace. It’s not personal.”

“Oh… it’s
personal
, Sim. Trust me,” Daphne said bitterly. “I
knew
Jack wouldn’t just leave me be. I knew he wouldn’t let go until he felt he’d humiliated me as much as I humiliated him. He won’t be satisfied until he’s stripped me of every happiness he can.”

“Look, Daphne,” Sim said. “Aren’t you being a little—”

Daphne turned on him and felt her heart begin to pound. “If you say ‘dramatic,’ I’m going to walk right out of this place, because you
have
to believe me when I say that there is something very, very scary about this guy.”

“I think he’s really just a pest,” Sim said gently.

She turned and stared at the bird feeder replicating Monmouth Plantation. Then she faced Sim again.

“You said the day that I agreed to help you with the benefit that you’d stand by me if Jack threatened any trouble. But if you won’t…” she said, her hands on her hips, “if you’re not up for dealing with this kind of a mess—an ex-fiancé and an ex-wife, both up to no good—then let’s just put that on the table right
now
, before I get my heart handed to me.”

“Daphne, why are you making such a—”

“Sim…
stay
with
me
, here! You said a long time ago, ‘We’re all grown-ups’ and I believe I am… or at least I’m getting there. So, I’m asking you, Simon Hopkins, to
trust
me when I tell you Jack’s latest move to involve your ex-wife in this is
serious
and can cause us nothing but trouble unless we stay vigilant. You have to take my word on this. And if you take the attitude of ‘there, there, little lady, don’t exaggerate,’ I will pack my toothbrush right now and clear out. I mean it!”

Sim stood silently behind one of the rocking chairs, his long fingers tapping the white wicker in concentration.

“This is really visceral with you, isn’t it?” he asked. “Gut instincts?”

“Higher up,” she declared, planting an imaginary dagger into her chest. “A stake in the heart.”

“Okay…” he said slowly. “I get it. Jack’s unpredictable.” He stepped toward her, but before he could enfold her in his arms, Daphne put the palm of her hand on his chest to ward him off.

“Sim, you and I have to be absolutely clear about everything,” she said in a voice that vibrated with intensity. “Jack is far more than ‘unpredictable.’ I’d go so far as to say he’s got a screw loose,” she said, thinking back to the day Jack locked King inside a big family crypt on the grounds of a New Orleans cemetery in the heat of the day to prevent her brother from testifying at a building demolition hearing. “
Believe
me, if Francesca is working as a legal consultant for Jack Ebert, he’s just upped the ante about fifty levels regarding the toxic dump controversy. As far as I’m concerned, they’re both the enemy now. I learned that from my brother King. And if you don’t see it that way, that’s your right, but then
I’m
not signing on to help you or Bailey Gibbs with the fundraiser to challenge Able Petroleum—and putting myself in harm’s way.” She removed her hand from his chest and turned to face the veranda railing, staring into the stand of trees that encircled the cottage. “So, just tell me,” she said softly, her back to him. “Are you up to being a
totally
united front about this—or not? If not, fine. I won’t feel rejected. I’ll just know that you’re being straight with me.”

The air crackled with an emotional charge. Daphne could sense Sim gazing at her ramrod-straight back as they stood silently on the veranda. At length, he answered her question by closing the gap between them, pressing her against his chest, and gently wrapping his right arm around her upper torso, pulling her close.

“I take that as a yes?” she murmured, tears suddenly filling her eyes. She felt the knot in her stomach miraculously untie and she could breathe again. She turned in place and allowed Sim to take her properly into his arms. “Now, what do we do?” she whispered into his collarbone.

“Nothing,” he said. “We’ll be patient. We’ll stay alert… ‘vigilant’ as you put it. And we’ll go on with the business at hand.”

Daphne leaned back and gazed at Sim with a watery smile. “You learned a lot, didn’t you, during those ten years in the wilderness? The wait-and-watch stuff.”

“I learned a lot about myself.”

“So have I,” she murmured.

And then he led her by the hand inside the cottage, cooled by the humming air-conditioner, and made love to her, telling her without words, she supposed, that he had signed on as one half of a united front.

Chapter 19

Daphne received another unpleasant and unanticipated jolt within an hour of leaving Sim’s place and returning to Bluff House. At the end of Maddy’s driveway, a burgundy late-model Cadillac with Louisiana plates was parked haphazardly on the grass, as if its driver couldn’t care less about the unsightly grooves his Michelins made on the lawn. The owner was easy to identify.

Steeling herself, she mounted the back stairs of the old house and prayed for courage to break in on the diatribe bouncing off the walls of her cousin’s kitchen. She stood on the back porch for a while and peered through the screen door.

“It’s plain mortifyin’ for everybody concerned, and you, of all people, know perfectly well it is, Madeline Whitaker!”

“I don’t see it like that at all, Antoinette—”

“Well then, you’re as certifiable as
she
is,” Antoinette exclaimed, “Isn’t she, Waylon?”

Daphne’s father sat at the kitchen table with an untouched glass of lemonade in front of him. Waylon Duvallon appeared as uncomfortable in his brown suit and buttoned-down shirt as when his short, stout frame had been squeezed into white tie and tails the fateful evening he’d walked his only child down the center aisle in Saint Louis Cathedral.

“She looks like a damn tramp in that picture,” he growled. “First King pisses off every friggin’ developer and politician in New Orleans, and now my daughter joins a rock ’n’ roll band with a bunch of nig—”

“
Hello
, Dad,” Daphne said, pushing open the back door with a bang. “Mother.”

“Where the hell have you been?” her father demanded. “Your mother and I have been sittin’ ’round here for more than an hour, waitin’ for you and—”

Maddy jumped up from the kitchen table, wringing her hands nervously. “They left a phone message that they were in town, dear, and planned on comin’ by for a visit, but I was teachin’, and you were…”

“Showin’ your tail in a bar somewhere, probably,” Waylon declared, banging his fist on the kitchen table.

Meanwhile Antoinette, too, had risen from her chair. She was impeccably groomed, her periwinkle-blue silk jacket setting off her flawless complexion and jet black hair, pulled back, as always, in a smooth chignon at the nape of her neck. Her white linen skirt just skimmed her knees and showed off her shapely legs to good effect.

Standard
issue
for
a
Magnolia
Suprema
, Daphne thought, attempting to keep her sense of humor and self-confidence intact.

“Quiet, Waylon,” her mother snapped. “Let’s let Daphne explain to us why she has abandoned her thrivin’ career as principal harpist in the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra in New York and returned to this backwater to sing with a bunch of blacks in costumes even hootchie-kootchie dancers would be ashamed to be seen in.” She narrowed her hostile glare and pointed a perfectly manicured vermilion fingernail at Daphne. “Just tell us, daughter. I’m curious to hear exactly what led to your latest
brilliant
decision regardin’ this travesty you call your
life
!”

Before Daphne could even attempt a reply, her father waved two newspaper clippings in her face. “You’ve outraged the family one time too many, young lady.” Squinting, he read aloud, “‘The Aphrodite Jazz Ensemble’s scanty attire is an insult to the Natchez community where music and art have long enjoyed an honorable tradition.’”

Daphne stared at cousin Maddy and then at her father. “Where did that come from?”

“The
Times-Picayune
in New Orleans,” her mother shot back. “And surely you’ve seen the photo of yourself in the
Natchez
Democrat
? You don’t think you can keep such scandalous behavior a secret, do you?”

Daphne stalked to the kitchen table and snatched the
Picayune
article from her father’s fingers. Eyeing the byline, she announced with disgust, “Bitsy Worthington’s so-called society column! You
know
she was Jack’s old boss at
Arts
This
Week
and got fired at the same time he did when Lafayette Marchand took over. This is a planted item, Daddy, designed to disparage me.” She turned to address her mother. “Jack’s up to his usual dirty tricks, and, as usual, you get mad at
me
?”