Lies Agreed Upon (28 page)

“I think Guy Cabrera fell in love with someone else,” answered the little woman with an accepting lift of open-palmed hands, as if to let the acrid fumes of Lillian’s bitterness drift away. “After dumping Noah and losing Guy, Lillian made the worst choice of all. She went back to Desmond, even though he was crippled and mean. Sometimes I think she wanted to martyr herself. Still, when Desmond died, Lillian cried for days, and she’s never married.” Mimi bowed her head.

Tess spoke quickly to derail Mimi’s incipient melancholy. “I’m
so sorry to hear that your friend suffered all these years, Mimi. However, I had another reason for stopping by. Do you think I could get another look at Josephine’s portrait? I feel I’ve missed something important about that picture.”

The little woman blinked for a disoriented moment. “Oh, yes, it’s possible, but I will have to escort you. We can’t let people wander around by themselves with so many valuable antiques. Quickly, follow me.” She hustle
d Tess directly to the portrait, and Tess stared blankly. There was the primitive perspective and the idealized mistress enthroned with one hand on a cross and the other on a whip. Why did this portrait flash through my mind in Dreux’s office? The answer refused to come.

Since the errant thought had occurred while Dreux described the interrelationships of Guy, Desmond and Noah, Tess turned to Mimi and asked, “Did Lillian ever show this painting to Guy, Desmond or even Noah before the boat accident?”

“How strange you should ask that!” exclaimed Mimi, her eyes widening. “I just realized that this painting and the boat accident are linked in a way.”

She contemplated the picture, but Tess got the clear impression that she was seeing it in another time and place.

“Lillian had invited her friends and the duck-hunt competitors to her family’s Garden District home for lunch. Guy, Desmond and Noah were there, and Desmond’s chum Phil Dreux. We ate, drank and played tipsy badminton in the back garden.” Mimi smiled in nostalgia for the afternoon of carefree youth.

“The party was winding down when Phil Dreux suddenly asked Lillian if it was true that she had heirlooms
that belonged to the infamous ‘lost lady’ of the Chastant plantation,” Mimi reminisced. “It was an old ghost story even then. Of course, Guy and Desmond already knew about Lillian’s Josephine artifacts, but it was new to everyone else. We all trooped up to her attic to see the stored Josephine relics. On the way, Lillian gave a ghoulish account of the murderous Josephine, and there were lots of delicious shudders when she pulled a dust sheet off Josephine’s portrait.

“
But I recall now Noah became withdrawn and went downstairs early. I thought he perhaps felt excluded from a group talking about family backgrounds. Phil and Desmond left soon after, too. The rest of us poked around for a bit, looking at Josephine’s old love letters and antique furniture. I remember there was a lady’s writing desk, one of a pair once owned by Josephine and given to Marie Haas Cabrera by Ben Cabrera. Lillian had just discovered that if you pushed on a piece of marquetry at the top of a little interior cabinet, it would swing open to reveal tiny secret drawers for hiding jewels or love letters. I remember being excited by the romantic mystery of it. It turned out there was nothing inside the secret drawers, of course. We were just silly young people using old tragedies to get a little thrill. We didn’t know what real traumas lay ahead for some of us. In the next few days, Guy would crush Lillian’s hopes, Lillian would reject Noah, and Desmond would be maimed. In just two years, Guy and Noah would die.”

With that
grim ending to the visit, Tess thanked Mimi for her continued help and left. She walked blindly through the streets toward her hotel, picking fruitlessly at the toxic knot of Guy Cabrera’s youthful ill-wishers: Desmond, Dylan, Noah, Lillian and even Dreux. There had to be a connection to her grandfather’s murder hidden among these old enemies.

Noah Cabirac certainly emerged as a suspect, she decided. He could be described as an insulted rival, a guilt-spurred avenger or a spurned lover
, and any one of those motives might lead to violence. Fortuitously, Tess now had a way to pursue Noah’s ghost through his sister Louise.

So
Tess mentally rehearsed for her next step: a call to Louise Gregory, a woman with a “grudge” against the Cabreras.

“Frankly, I’d hang up on some California snoop who asked me questions about my dead brother’s dead friends. But good luck.”

By the time she gratefully reached her air-conditioned room, Tess had decided that respectful honesty was the right way to start the call. She determinedly keyed in the phone number.

The phone rang unanswered for interm
inable seconds. Tess was about to disconnect when a husky voice finally mumbled, “Gregory residence.”

“Is this Mrs. Louise Gregory?” Tess asked.

“Yes, ma’am” came the terse response.

“Mrs. Gregory, I am calling in regard to your brother Noah Cabirac
—” Tess began.

“He’s dead. He died over
50 years back,” said the hoarse voice, punctuated by a hacking cough.

“Yes, I’m aware of that. I am calling as a descendant of former friends of his, Desmond Donovan and Guy Cabrera
.” Tess paused to see if mention of the names drew any reaction. They did, but not the one she expected.

“Guy Cabrera? You related to da Cabreras?” The woman’s voice was now sharply alert.

“Yes, I am the granddaughter of Guy Cabrera. My name is Therese Parnell,” said Tess, speaking slowly to give the elderly woman a chance to grasp the relationship.

There was dead silence. Had she lost the call? Had the woman
hung up?

“So someone come at las’ to make
it right. Who told you?” rasped Louise Gregory.

“Who told me about your brother, you mean? I learned about him only recently from Philip Dreux, an old friend of Noah,” explained Tess.

“Oh, him,” said the woman in a dismissive tone. “It’s da Cabreras need to do right by Noah.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what ‘do right
by Noah’ means,” replied Tess, taken aback by Louise’s remark.

“Tell me again what you wanna know about Noah,” demanded Louise.

“Again, I’m sorry. I realize I may have started out in a confusing way. Please give me a moment to explain better why I’m calling,” apologized Tess. She and Louise seemed to be talking at cross-purposes. “I just learned of my family’s New Orleans background because of an inheritance. It seems I’m the only heir to the Cabrera family’s holdings. I never met any of my Cabrera relatives here, however. So I’m doing some family research. I learned that your brother Noah went to high school with my grandfather, Guy Cabrera. I was hoping to find photos or shared memories of my grandfather, which may have been passed on to you by your brother.”

T
here was a silence in which Louise’s hoarse breathing sounded heavily. “Da only heir, hah,” she coughed at last. “Dere’s an inheritance? How much?”

Tess began to object.
“Excuse me? I really don’t want to discuss family financial—”

“But you t’ink I should talk about my brodder?
Why should I, when you Cabreras don’t t’ink you owe Noah’s memory a damn?” The woman sounded coldly furious.

“I understand,” appeased Tess, but she did not understand at all. She felt as if she had stepped into a conversational quicksand. She had not wanted to begin by alluding to the boat accident and Noah’s suicide, but it must be the source of Louise’s antipathy.

She took a deep breath and continued slowly, feeling her way with each word. “I realize that your brother Noah died tragically young, and some held my grandfather to blame for the unhappy accident that may have contributed to—”

“You should
talk about his birt’, not his deat’,” snapped Louise.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re getting at,” Tess mumbled.

“You got da guts to come here an’ speak wid me face to face? I can decide if you gonna do right by Noah. Den I might pull a secret or two outta da grave to tell you.”

“Mrs. Gregory, if you wish me to visit, I can certainly come to see you. When would be convenient?” Tess began to scramble mentally for an appropriate date and time to suggest. What would the touchy woman see as too early or too late?

“Come by my house 2 o’clock sharp dis Monday afternoon,” Louise Gregory ordered. She softened her tone and cajoled, “I even got some snapshots. Your grandpapa’s in some.”

“Monday is fine. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me,” Tess said.

“I won’t say ‘my pleasure.’ An’ I don’t t’ink you gonna find what I say easy to hear. Lemme see if you t’ank me on Monday, huh,” grunted Louise, and abruptly ended the call.

12 relics

Tess found the turnout that marked her inherited property with much less difficulty than she expected. She climbed out of the car and quickly confirmed that she was in the right place by spotting two pillars of vegetation topped by brick capitals, the relics of the gate posts to Alhambra as described by Jon. A rutted gravel driveway beckoned. It ran from the turnout to the twin towers of green, but she reined in an urge to go explore; she did not want Jon and Sam to have to come looking for her.

Tess could make out whitish-
yellow flowers speckling the vines on the pillars. It looked as if they were covered in honeysuckle, and she took a deep breath to see if she could catch the heavy scent of it on the breeze that intermittently fanned the road with a faint warm breath.

It was then that she made an unpleasant discovery. Her property literally stank; sulf
urous mud, cloying vegetative rot and fumes blown from the neighboring refinery stewed in the humid heat. She turned her eyes away from the enticing gate posts and studied the landscape more carefully. There was something slightly repulsive about the place, she decided. Trespass outside the gravel path was discouraged by the green swords of squadrons of naturalized sugar cane. A fetid brown pool, over which iridescent blue dragonflies darted, filled a depression between the paved road and the curving gravel drive. Beyond the ruined gateway, rough brush and unruly saplings jostled under the dark crowns of live oaks.

The entire plot seemed to throb with insect life. She took a few experimental steps into the grass off the gravel parking area, and emerald grasshoppers exploded away from each foo
tstep. Black gnats immediately rose up to dance in a cloud before her eyes, and unseen mosquitoes whined a ceaseless warning of potential discomfort.

In the distance, she detected another constant, low hum
—
this one the throb of human haste. On roadway and waterway, motorized machines were speeding heedlessly past her little piece of wasteland. Looking down into the grass, she saw that they had nevertheless left a wake. Plastic-bag festoons, flashing silver cans, and cigarette butt confetti adorned the weeds. She stopped her tentative incursion as soon as she noticed the muddy pockmark of some creature’s underground den. She recalled Jon’s mention of “snake encounters” and returned with haste to the roadside.

"You're an idiot fo
r wearing sandals," she mentally scolded as her bare toes plowed rapidly back through the stinging blades of grass. She pulled out her cell and called Jon Beauvoir.

“Hey, I’m here and waiting. How far away are you?” she asked Jon, holding back her whipping hair and instinctively skipping behind her vehicle as a pickup whizzed past and sent a gust of hot dust over her legs and up her cotton skirt. “Why did I wear a skirt?” she asked herself crossly. She
blocked that train of thought quickly before her mother’s snide voice could answer. She knew already it was about looking nice for Jon.

“Just five minutes away. Hold the fort,” Jon said, sounding lighthearted, like a man on an outing.

Tess was deciding to return to her car and turn the air conditioning to full blast when she saw the distant outline of a silver Mercedes. It came toward her in surreal slowness, floating over the black road’s heat mirages
–
rippling chimerical pools that shimmered and evaporated into the air. As the mirages shifted and vanished, the approaching Mercedes also wavered and warped, hovering along on a shining surface of false water. Finally, the image of the car solidified and rolled firmly over the asphalt, stopping behind her rental car with a heavy earth-bound crunch of gravel.

Jon hopped out of the car, clear and crisp in the sun-simmered air. He was wearing knife-pleated black slacks and an unwrinkled, form-fitting white polo shirt. Tess became acutely aware of her own sweat-creased skirt. Jon flashed a blinding white grin as he stood and stretched, hooking sleekly muscled, brown arms behind his head as he twisted his long, lean to
rso. Tess raised a hand to shield her eyes from the unexpected flash of sexual attraction as much as the sun shards spraying from his car chrome.

Jon then patiently helped Sam to exit. In contrast to Jon’s black-and-white clarity, the old man seemed to have absorbed the fluctuating energy of the mirages from which he’d emerged. His form wavered, shrinking and straightening, as he moved out of the car in a slow, undulating progress. After straightening as much as his age-bent posture allowed, Sam began to shuffle forward
. After a few steps, he halted to lean heavily over his cane while he caught his breath. He was wearing his modern black sunshades under a fedora that had been new when Kennedy was president, and his formal rusty-black suit and small black bowtie were not any more recent. Tess wryly wondered if the Mercedes had passed through a time-portal rather than a heat-induced mirage.

As Sam made slow progress, Tess began to frown in concern and saw a matc
hing worry in Jon’s face. He moved to his grandfather’s side and reached a strong hand under the elderly arm to counterbalance a dangerous list toward the cane-supported flank.

“Mr. Beauvoir, I hope we don’t need to walk very far. I think it might be too tiring for you,” said Tess once the old man finally stood hunched but smiling before her.

“No worry, Miss Parnell. I jus’ gotta get into my rhythm. Ridin’ in the car stiffens me up,” chuckled Sam with a dismissive flap of his hand. “Now you follow me.”

“You know, Mr. Beauvoir, you don’t have to be so formal with me. Why don’t you call me Tess?” Tess commented as they moved slowly down the gravel drive leading to the ruined gat
eway.

“Well, that’s a two-way street, Miss Tess. So why don’t you call me Grampaw instead of Mr. Beauvoir?” smiled the old man. Jon seemed a little
uncomfortable with this exchange but remained silent.

Tess fell in behind the two men as they inched along. Sure enough, the old man seemed to move with increasing ease as the distance from the parked cars grew. He held Jon’s arm for balance and determinedly planted his cane in the rocky surface of the rutted drive, like a man poling down a stone stream. When they stood in the shadow of the abandoned gateway, he stopped and looked up.

“There useta be tall gates here with ‘Alhambra’ wrote in iron,” Sam said, leaning on Jon and pointing at the gap between the pillars with his cane. “The gate was real grand, and there was a curvin’ drive with big live oaks for shade. At the end was Mr. Antonio’s palace. I used the money your momma sent to keep up a road, but no way there’s money to keep up the plantin’s. The oaks is still here, but I recall when the grass was like carpet with beds of azalea and forsythia and lily. All gone now,” he said with a mournful nod. Then he resolutely poled through the unguarded portal.

Trailing the Beauvoirs, Tess scanned the area curiously. It was hard to imagine the man
icured setting described by the old man, especially viewed through the swarm of black gnats at the end of her nose. She was only slightly comforted to note that Jon was flicking an irritated hand at a similar insect cloud. She rummaged in her purse, pulled out a pair of sunglasses and shoved them over her nose; they would cut the glare as least. She created an improvised visor with one hand to shade her face from the blaze of early afternoon and briefly envied Sam Beauvoir his old-fashioned hat. Tess resisted the urge to curse and hitched the strap of her purse higher on one damp shoulder.

“Another mistake. Why are you lugging a purse through a jungle in 100-degree heat?”

Through her dark lenses, Tess peered fruitlessly for evidence of the destroyed house. “Where was the house, Grampaw Sam?” she finally asked. “Shouldn’t we at least see foundations?”

The old man obligingly halted and pointed with his cane to a line of vegetation
to their right.

“
But this road seems to bypass the house,” Tess pointed out.

“Oh, this is a service road now. The main drive went curvin’ right up to the front door,” said Sam, squinting at some point where only he could see the
phantom of the house. 

Tess squinted in the same direction and thought she could make out the lighter hue of foundation stones in the overgrowth. Without further thought, she waded into the weeds off the drive for a better look.

“Hey, watch out for any unfriendly natives,” warned Jon when he noticed she was straying. Tess stopped abruptly and glanced anxiously at her feet, but she saw no immediate danger. She waved an acknowledgement and ventured a few careful paces. When she detected a flash of bright green a few inches from her advancing left foot, Tess froze. The heart-stopping image of a coiled snake shot through her mind. But then she realized she was looking down at a piece of broken Moorish tile. Its stylized floral pattern in emerald and peacock blue was only slightly obscured by dried mud. She bent and picked it up.

“Lotta those bits. Why
don’t you keep some for a souvenir?” Sam called from the service drive. She inspected her find and scanned the area to see if there were any more tile fragments within easy reach. She spied a royal blue and crimson shard and lifted it carefully from under a blackberry bramble.

With the two broken tile pieces in one hand, she picked her way back through the veget
ation to her waiting companions. They resumed their journey down the service road.

“So there’s nothing left to see of the house,” remarked Tess sadly as she inspected her tile shards.

“No, nothin’,” agreed Sam without turning his head.

“So where are we going? Is there any hint of the gardens that I could see?” Tess persis
ted.

“You can say so,” answered Sam. “We gonna get there in a bit.”

Tess blew sweat-sticky bangs off her forehead with a frustrated puff and swiped futilely at the persistent veil of gnats. The pieces of tile in her sweaty palm were probably the only pathetic relics to be found on these stinking acres, she thought as she placed them carefully in her purse.

“At least I found a use for the purse,” she sighed inwardly.
“Inventive.”

Tess trudged
morosely behind the Beauvoirs. Another dead end, she thought. She had awakened early and gone back to the Internet café to send Katie, Christina and Jen a long e-mail detailing her family saga. By writing it all down, she had hoped to discover some previously obscured pattern. Yet, as she read her final essay, Tess had to admit that she was no closer to solving the puzzles of her mother’s suicide or her grandfather’s murder. Sam Beauvoir was withholding key clues, however; once they got to his mysterious destination, she would ask him some tough questions.

After passing the location of the vanished house, Tess glumly watched her scuffing sa
ndals to avoid tripping in the ruts and potholes of the drive. She had lost interest in the wider landscape.

So when the two men stopped abruptly and she glanced up, she was shocked to see a high green wall. It was a 10-foot-high Japanese yew hedge, amazingly dense and neatly clipped, and it ran uninterrupted for close to 100 yards.

“What’s this?” gasped Tess.

“A hedge wall,” answered Sam. “Part of what I get paid for.”

“Jesus, Grampaw,” murmured Jon. “This is surreal. Who knows about this?”

“I know,” stated the old man. “You keep this unner your hat, Jon. My chirren and granchirren don’
t need to get into all my bizness,” he added. Jon raised his eyebrows at the tart command but acquiesced.

The service drive forked as it neared the hedge; one road followed the green wall to the right and the other veered left and disappeared around a straight edge of manicured yew. Sam went to the left, and when they turned the corner, Tess looked down another long green wall paralleled by the drive.

“Here’s what we come to see,” Sam announced after several yards. Directly in front of them was a 7-foot-high padlocked wooden gate set deep into the planting.

“If this is what we came to see, why didn’t we
drive here on the service road instead of walking in the heat?” asked Jon in sweaty irritation.

“Tess gotta see the whole picture, includin’ the frame,” answered Sam. He then fumbled in his pocket and pulled out an old-fashioned, long-barreled key to unlock the rusty padlock on the door’s security bar. Sam gestured to Jon, who obediently shoved the door inward on squea
ling hinges.

Tess could only get a glimpse of what lay beyond the wooden door, but it was enough to make her gasp. Jon emitted a low whistle and mumbled, “There better not be a queen in there painting roses and shouting, ‘Off with their heads
.’”

Sam ignored his grandson and shuffled through the gate. He paused just inside and looked back at the young pair. Tess felt oddly intimidated, and Jon wore a similar
ly hesitant expression. It was as if they were poised on some otherworldly threshold. Perhaps guessing their thoughts, Sam smiled reassuringly and gestured at Tess and Jon to enter.

“Wonderland awaits,”
announced Jon and walked in.

Tess followed him
and stopped abruptly, stunned. The fantastical garden of Alhambra, captured in faded sepia by Gloria’s photographs, came to vibrant life before her eyes. Tess twirled slowly on sun-warmed sandstone paving, feasting on the reality of color and scent and orderly tranquility.