Acadian Waltz (31 page)

I thought of
Jean Marc’s frequent business trips, the guns in his home, and his sudden
desire to tell me everything about his past. The blood drained from my head and
I wobbled on my feet.

“What’s the
matter, Nora? Shocked by my little disclosure about my brother? Still think you
could be happy as my brother’s wife?”

I stared into
his icy, black eyes. “I have to talk to Jean Marc.” I turned to go.

“Whoa, wait a
minute, Nora.” Henri stood up and grabbed my arm. “You can’t tell Jean Marc
anything I’ve just told you.”

I shook off his
arm. “Why not?”

“If he finds out
I talked, that I’ve made him vulnerable, he’ll kill me.”

“Jean Marc
wouldn’t hurt you,” I assured him as I headed for the parlor doors.

“Jean Marc will
protect himself, Nora,” he stated behind me. “He couldn’t give a damn about me.
As far as he’s concerned, I’m a liability. Just like Uncle Etienne was a problem
for my father, until he was finally gotten rid of.”

I stopped at the
doors and then slowly turned back to Henri. “Are you saying Etienne was
killed?”

He shrugged. “Of
course. My father was furious about Etienne’s marriage to your mother. Claire
was a smart woman, like you. Father felt she would learn about the secret
family business sooner or later. He pressured Etienne to end the marriage, but
my uncle refused. He loved your mother.” Henri paused and shook his head. “Even
when Claire left Etienne for Kehoe, he still refused to divorce her. So my
father found another way to get Claire out of our lives. He set up the
accident, and told everyone that Etienne had shot himself because he could not
handle losing his wife.”

My knees began
giving way. “Why are you telling me all of this, Henri?”

“I’m tired of
living with all the lies. When I told you I wanted to get out of here, it was
the truth. I want out of this business. I want to start over.” He sneered at
me. “You’re here because Jean Marc wanted to keep an eye on me. He knew that
you would tell him everything about my progress. That’s why he let you take
care of me. But he didn’t bargain on you finding out everything about him. It
would destroy his whole plan for your future together.”

“Christ, Henri,
I can’t believe—” The sudden sound of the doorbell interrupted me.

Henri grabbed
his T-shirt off the bed. “My mother probably has more of her idiot friends from
the church coming over. Go and see who it is.” He stood from the bed and
started pushing me toward the parlor doors.

“Are you kidding
me, Henri?” I balked as I threw off his hand.

He slung his
T-shirt over his shoulder. “Nora, now that you know everything, you must keep
it together. I need you to play along until I can get out of here. Just go and
see who it is, and then send them away.”

I took in a
calming breath and let it out slowly, hoping to settle my frazzled nerves. “All
right, but this has to end, Henri. I can’t keep lying to Jean Marc for you. If
you’re not gone in three days, I’ll tell him everything.”

He nodded and
pointed to the parlor doors. “Deal. Now go and get the damned door.”

I headed out of
the parlor and walked down the narrow beige hall to the living room, where I
found Ms. Marie already at the dark red front door.

She was speaking
with three men, standing on the porch outside. The man in front was dressed in
a tailored black suit with a cream-colored tie. He was tall, skinny, and had
dark hair sprinkled with gray. His face was long and he had deep-set, bright
green eyes. He was holding up a bible in his left hand as he smiled warmly at
Ms. Marie. The two men flanking him were thick, muscular, and bald. Each was
dressed in casual dark slacks with white, long-sleeved shirts. One of the men
had a thick, white scar down the left side of his face, running from beneath
his eye to his upper lip. When he smiled at Ms. Marie, his upper lip crinkled,
looking more like a sneer than a smile. A rush of anxiety gripped me as Ms.
Marie waved the men inside. The man with the scar refused Ms. Marie’s invitation
and remained outside as the two other men entered the home.

I knew from the
steady flow of Ms. Marie’s friends who had been coming and going over the past
few days that these three men were not from her church. If anything, the sight
of them made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

I ducked out of
the living room before I was spotted and headed back to the parlor. When I
opened the parlor doors, Henri was already in his bed, dressed in his pajamas
and pretending to be asleep.

“Henri, get up.
There are three men here and something is not right about them.”

Henri rolled
over in the bed and looked at me. “What are you talking about?”

“Two of the men
came inside when Ms. Marie invited them in, but one man stayed on the porch. He
had this scar down the side of his face and—”

“What scar?”
Henri sat up in the bed.

“It ran from
underneath his eye to his lip.” I watched the color drain from Henri’s face.
“What is it, Henri?”

Just then a
knock came from outside of the parlor doors.

“Coming,” I
called as Henri stood from the bed.

Ms. Marie opened
the parlor doors and peeked inside. She smiled at Henri. “Henri, some nice men
are here to see you. They’re friends from your church in the city. I put them
in the livin’ room and told them you’d be out shortly.”

“I’ll help him
get ready,” I assured her.

“See, Henri,”
Ms. Marie said to her son. “People care about you. And you told me you didn’t
have any friends in New Orleans. You shouldn’t be telling your mama such fibs.”
Ms. Marie shifted her eyes to me. “I’ll just be off to church, Nora. But make
sure those nice men get some refreshments, all right?”

I nodded at Ms.
Marie. “Of course. I’ll take care of it. You go on. You don’t want to be late
for church.”

Ms Marie waved
good-bye to her son, and I waited until she had closed the parlor doors behind
her before I spoke.

“Who is here,
Henri?”

He quickly moved
from the bed to the parlor doors and I was shocked by the effortless grace of
his movements. I figured he had been hiding his true physical abilities from me
all along. I wondered what else he had kept from me.

Henri listened
at the door as the tap of his mother’s shoes on the hardwood floor headed down
the hallway toward the kitchen. He turned to me. “It seems my associates from
the city have come to see how bad off I really am.”

My heart fell to
the floor.

Henri, however,
remained cool and collected. “Go to the cottage and get Jean Marc.”

“But he went
crabbing with Uncle Jack.”

Henri cursed
under his breath. He gazed about the room and then his black eyes returned to
me. “Go to the cottage. Call his cell phone. He takes it everywhere with him.
Tell him what’s going on.”

“What about
you?” I asked, feeling the nervous beads of sweat begin to collect on my upper
lip.

He went to the
foot of the bed and picked up his robe. “I’ll stay here and talk to them. Try
and convince them that I’m as stupid as they need me to be. But if they aren’t
convinced….” Henri slipped the robe over his shoulders. “Looks like you might
get your wish after all, Nora. As soon as I can get rid of these guys, I will
have to leave. I can’t stay here anymore.” He nodded to the door. “Take the
back door from the kitchen to Jean Marc’s. Now go.”

Before I pulled
the parlor doors open, I glanced back at Henri.

“Go get my
brother,” he urged with a wave of his left hand. “He’ll know exactly what to
do.”

Chapter 27

I took off down
the hall and headed toward the kitchen. I didn’t see any sign of Ms. Marie, and
prayed that she was on her way to church and out of harm’s way.

I rushed out the
back door and down the porch steps. As soon as my feet hit the soft, green
grass, I took off running toward the path that led to Jean Marc’s.

I reached the
clearing in front of Jean Marc’s cottage and recognized my uncle’s blue pick up
truck parked under a nearby oak tree. As I approached the screened front porch,
I heard raised voices coming from the back of the cottage. I ran around the
side of the house and noticed two men leaning over the back of a green flatboat
tied up to the dock.

“Check the
sparkplug again,” Jean Marc’s voice barked as I ran up to the dock.

“I already did
that. She ain’t the problem,” Uncle Jack replied as he turned from the back of
the boat and saw me.

My uncle nudged
Jean Marc next to him as I hurriedly approached the boat.

Jean Marc stood up
in the boat. “Is something wrong?”

“There are men
at the house for Henri,” I explained as I tried to catch my breath.

My uncle looked
from me to Jean Marc.

“Men?” Jean Marc
scowled. “Policemen?”

I shook my head
and took another few quick breaths. “They showed up at the front door and your
mother let them in. They said they were friends from his church, but Henri told
me they are his former associates, the ones who set him up in all of that cult
business.” Jean Marc climbed out of the boat. “He sent me to get you. He said
you would know what to do,” I related as he came up to my side.

Uncle Jack
followed Jean Marc onto the dock.

Jean Marc ran
his hands over his face. “Where’s my mother?”

“She went to
church,” I informed him.

“You sure ‘bout
that?” Uncle Jack demanded.

I nodded. “She
wasn’t in the house when I left.”

“How many men?”
Jean Marc questioned.

“Three,” I
answered. “One stayed outside on the front porch, and the other two were in the
living room waiting for Henri.”

He turned to
Uncle Jack. “You got your shotgun?”

Uncle Jack
nodded. “In my truck, loaded and ready to go.”

Jean Marc
motioned to the house. “Meet me out front.”

Uncle Jack
hurried down the dock and headed around the side of the cottage.

I turned to Jean
Marc. “What are you going to do?”

Jean Marc
started for the back door of the cottage. “The only thing we can do. Go over
there and make sure nothing happens to Henri.”

I followed him
to the back door. “You can’t just walk in the door, guns at the ready, and
shoot everyone.”

Jean Marc stopped
at the door and faced me. “Nora, if these men are as Henri said then we have no
other choice. They came here for one thing and one thing only; to make sure
Henri can’t talk and incriminate them in any way. It won’t matter to them if he
can remember any of his dealings with them or not.”

“But he can
remember everything, Jean Marc. Mentally he’s still the same Henri, and has
been for some time.”

Jean Marc
grabbed my arm. “How long have you known this?”

“Since yesterday
morning when I returned to the house. I walked into the kitchen and found him
smoking a cigarette. That’s when I learned the truth about his recovery.” I
dropped my gaze from his outraged eyes to his hand, clutching my arm.

He let go of me
and shook his head. “You should have said something to me last night. I could
have kicked his sorry ass out of the house and avoided this mess.” He opened
the back screen door and waved me inside.

We stepped
through to the rear of the kitchen and then headed for the living room. I
followed behind him as he went to the table by the front door and retrieved the
.9mm pistol from a drawer. He pulled out the magazine, checked it, and then
slammed it back into the gun.

“Are you going
to kill those men, Jean Marc?”

“Possibly.”

“Have you ever
killed a man before?”

He stared at me
as if trying to understand why I had asked such a question.

“Henri told me
about you. He said you’re considered one of the best in your profession. How
long have you been an international smuggler?”

Jean Marc
uttered a heaving sigh. “Fifteen years. I was going to tell you about all of
it, tonight. I would have said something earlier, but I was afraid of losing
you.” He dropped his eyes to the gun in his hand. “Am I going to lose you,
Nora?”

The front door
flew open and my uncle came bounding into the cottage. In his hand was a
double-barreled shotgun.

“You ready?” he
asked, nodding to Jean Marc.

Jean Marc moved
toward my uncle. 

I reached for
his arm. “What about the police? Shouldn’t we call them?”

Jean Marc pulled
his cell phone from the front pocket of his jeans and handed it to me. “Mel
Cadeaux is on my call list. He’s the local police chief. Tell him what’s going
on and to get out here right away.”

I took the phone
from him. “What do you want me to do?”

Jean Marc took a
step closer to me. “Stay here. I can’t protect you if things get dicey up at
the house. Promise me you will stay here until the police arrive.”

“Please be
careful,” I whispered to him.

He kissed my
cheek. “Don’t worry about me, Nora. I’ll be fine.” He stood back from me and
winked.

I looked to my
uncle, who offered me a reassuring nod, and then the men headed down the porch
steps. I watched from the cottage doorway as Jean Marc’s tall figure
disappeared into the brush.

I peered down at
the cell phone in my hand and began scrolling through Jean Marc’s long list of
contacts, until I came across the name Mel Cadeaux. After four rings a man’s
gritty voice picked up on the other end.

“Gaspard, you
old son of a bitch.”

“This isn’t Jean
Marc, Mr. Cadeaux. It’s Nora Kehoe. There’s trouble at Gaspard House. Three men
have shown up and are threatening to harm Henri. Jean Marc wanted me to call
you right away.”

“You’re Claire
Mouton’s girl. I remember you, Nora,” Mel Cadeaux said into the speaker of the
phone. “Tell Jean Marc I’m on my way.”