As he gathered his family to leave, he could see Miranda bustling around her tiny bedchamber. She spread a fresh silk cloth on her altar and plunked the banana atop it. Squinting at the arrangement for a minute, she picked the banana up and pulled the peel back, so that a third of the fruit poked out invitingly. Then she poured a couple of fingers of rum in a glass and carefully set it down beside the banana. After lighting an array of votive candles and arranging them just so, she’d pulled a cell phone out of her pocket and dialed it.
Her crow’s voice carried to where Joe was standing. As he turned to leave, he heard her rasp, “Bernie, I got a question for a lawyer. You ain’t much of a lawyer, but you’re what I got.”
Amande had settled herself at the table between Didi and Tebo. She was with family, and that’s where a girl should be when she got the kind of news Amande would be hearing tonight. Nevertheless, Joe didn’t feel good about leaving her.
Episode 2 of “The Podcast I Never Intend to Broadcast,” Part 2
by Amande Marie Landreneau
My mother is dead. It’s taken me a while to get my brain around that one, since she was never really alive to me when she was alive.
I didn’t know her, no more than I knew my dead Uncle Hebert. At least I remember seeing Uncle Hebert, even if I’ll only ever remember him as a corpse floating in the water. My mother is…a ghost. I don’t mean that she’s a ghost because she’s dead. She’s always been a ghost to me, a being who was real but who just wasn’t there.
Even the pictures I have of her are ghostly. She ran away from me and Grandmère when she was only seventeen, not enough older than I am now to even count. We don’t have any pictures of her that were taken after that. Somehow, I don’t think that Steve was the kind of lover who took pictures and saved them like treasures.
The woman who died of breast cancer at age thirty-three couldn’t possibly have looked like the pictures Grandmère gave me, not anymore. I have photos of her with braces on her teeth and acne, and I think they’re interesting, but when I look at them, I don’t think, “Mother.” Now, I guess I’ll never say “Mother” at all. Sally the Social Worker wants to know how I feel about that.
I have no idea. So I think I’ll change the subject and tell one of Grandmère’s stories. We podcasters can do that, because we’re in charge of what we say and how we record it and where we post it for listeners to find. Not that I intend to post this at all.
I think I’ll go with Gola George’s story, because George got carried off from his parents and from his family and from everything he ever knew. He got dumped here in the New World with nothing and nobody, but he didn’t let that stop him from taking his world by storm. Nothing could stop Gola George.
Gola George was an incredibly successful pirate. I’ve read everything about him that I could find on the Internet, and George was the real thing. He captured the biggest ships. He slaughtered the most sailors. He kidnapped the prettiest wenches. Brave men trembled in their kneepants and stockings and buckled shoes when they heard Gola George’s name.
Maybe Gola George landed in the pirates’ hall of fame because he was good at murdering and maiming. Maybe he was just lucky, although being stolen away from home to be a slave doesn’t seem like something that happens to a naturally lucky person. It even occurs to me that maybe he raked in a lot of that plunder simply because he was good at public relations. Pirating would be easy if people dropped their valuables and ran at the very sight of you. I mean, think about those finger bones tied in his dyed red hair and those bloody silk shirts. The man was a marketing genius.
It’s also possible that George owed his rising fortunes to his less flamboyant partner. I picture Henry the Mutineer as being like a pirate accountant, sitting at a desk lit by a whale oil lamp and keeping the account books with a quill pen.
Can’t you just hear him telling his partner that the pirate business had been a little slow lately? “Hey, George…I’m having a little trouble making payroll for the crew this month. You need to be doing a little less raping and a lot more pillaging.”
George and Henry terrorized the Caribbean together for more than a decade. Criminal partnerships don’t usually last that long. Throw two sociopaths together, then add money to the mix, and somebody’s going to betray somebody, sooner or later. And just because a criminal partnership doesn’t end with one party stabbing the other in the back, it doesn’t mean that it will end well. Think of Bonnie and Clyde…Butch and Sundance…
It may be that a successful partnership even puts a criminal in danger. The urge to protect a partner you care about—or even love—is a dangerous thing when there are bullets flying.
But Gola George and Henry the Mutineer made it work for them for many years. They were made for each other. Brain and brawn. Careful planning and sheer audacity. If only one of them had been a woman…or if only they’d both been gay…
If I were telling you this story about Gola George and Henrietta the Mutineer, I do believe it would end with the two of them dying together of old age in bed, surrounded by their lying, thieving, stealing pirate grandchildren, but no.
The story of Gola George and Henry the Mutineer ends poorly because Gola George ignored the sailor’s cardinal rule: Never bring a woman aboard a sailing ship.
Chapter Ten
Faye needed some warm bodies to help her finish this project on time, and she needed them immediately. Rural Louisiana wasn’t teeming with experienced archaeologists, but New Orleans was right up the road. Even better, her cousin Bobby was right up the road, and Bobby knew everybody.
Bobby also knew who was kin to who, and he knew who everybody had slept with, and he knew who wasn’t speaking to who, and he knew how to properly use “who” and “whom” when writing in standard English. More importantly, he had the social skills to know that it was possible to be too pedantic about such things as objective pronouns and split infinitives.
There was no such thing as a short conversation with her dear cousin, because every mention of a human being required him to revisit, yet again, the question of who was kin to who. It was a good thing that Faye’s cell phone plan included unlimited long distance.
“You’ve already talked to Nina, I’m sure?” he said, pinning an unnecessary question mark to the end of his statement so that she’d have to say she did. And then she’d need to give him the details of the conversation, including whether their friend and colleague Nina was dating anybody and whether they were serious, because if Faye didn’t volunteer the information, Bobby would ask.
“Yes, I did. Her new boyfriend is in grad school with her, so I sent the two of them over to Grand Isle to do some initial survey work.” She forestalled Bobby’s next question by saying, “His name is Mark, but he’s from Philadelphia, so you don’t know him. I mean Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, not Philadelphia, Mississippi.”
“Oh.” Bobby’s social curiosity was bounded on the north by Lake Pontchartrain and on the south by the Mississippi River, and it dimmed considerably with each successive mile east and west of Jackson Square.
“Have you seen Dauphine yet?” she asked. “I gave her some library research to do and told her to get you to help.”
Bobby’s connections at the Historic New Orleans Collection had been a godsend for Faye, more than once. Rare documents, old maps, historic photos—Bobby could find paper proof of just about anything that had ever happened in New Orleans or its vicinity.
“Yes, Dauphine hobbled in on her crutches. She’ll be coming in every day, until you finish working her to death.”
Bobby was, in theory, against the notion of gainful employment. In practice, he was a tenured history professor who spent as little time as possible on campus. He came from a family that had only needed to work for a living in recent years…which, in Bobby’s world, meant that it had been more than a century since they were wealthy.
“Do you know anybody else who could help me with this project? Archaeologists, history grad students, warm bodies who can run errands and do grunt work…I can use them all.”
“I’ll put out some feelers. Would you like anything else, dear Cousin? Perhaps someone to fan you with palmettos and feed you peeled and seeded muscadine grapes while your minions do your work for you?”
This sounded pretty good to Faye right that minute.
“If you knew anybody like that, they’d be fanning and feeding you, Bobby.”
“And how do you know that they’re not?”
Faye had to love Bobby’s style. He gave her no choice.
“Do you have any lawyers on your long, long list of very dear friends? Preferably some who owe you favors?”
“Lawyers? Why do you need a lawyer?” His voice dropped a conspiratorial half step. “You’ve been arrested, and you’ve just wasted your phone call talking about work. Am I right?”
“No. I haven’t been arrested.”
“Then Joe’s been arrested. I always knew that man had a shifty look about him. My lady love disagrees with me, but just because she’s a police detective doesn’t mean she’s not wrong. Joe has the kind of virile good looks that make me hate him on principle. I think his muscles cloud Jodi’s perspective.”
Oh, joy. Bobby was sallying forth for another conversational joust.
“Focus, Bobby. We’re talking about my friend’s legal needs, not your jealous heart. There’s nothing shifty about Joe, and there’s nothing wrong with Jodi’s perspective, except for the fact that she’s still planning to marry you. Joe has not been arrested. There are plenty of true scandalous tales in this world for you to spread. There’s no need to make one up.”
“Well, you do have a point there. People have been misbehaving for millennia. This is why I love the study of history so completely. Okay, you win. Tell me why you need a lawyer. I’ll shut up and listen.”
“Thank you.” Faye tried to gather her thoughts. Why did every conversation with Bobby leave her flustered? “I have a young friend who recently lost her mother. The mother’s husband showed up with a will, saying that her mother had died and left everything to him. The estate includes half of the houseboat my friend lives in with her grandmother, and the widower would just love to kick them out of it. And I don’t think the rest of the houseboat belongs to the grandmother, either. My friend—her name is Amande—”
“Pretty name.”
“Yes, isn’t it? Well, Amande is terrified that she and her grandmother are going to lose their home.”
“How old is Amande?” Faye was surprised at how completely Bobby’s tone had changed from playful to businessman-crisp. “Do you know who owns the other half of the houseboat?”
“She’s sixteen. And I believe her mother’s half-sister owns the other half of it. I have no idea why the two sisters were letting Amande’s grandmother use the boat. The dead woman, Justine, had been estranged from her stepmother for years, and her half-sister, Didi, didn’t impress Joe as the generous type.”
“They were half-sisters? Which parent did they share? And is he still alive?”
“Their father. He’s been dead for quite some time.”
“Look. I studied the history of the Louisiana legal system for two whole semesters, and I still only learned enough to be dangerous. The whole system is counterintuitive, but this situation sounds relatively straightforward…if you can call anything about our inheritance laws straightforward.”
He sighed. “I wish we were in the same room so I could sketch out a family tree and draw you a picture. Let’s see how well I can do with words. It sounds like the houseboat was not community property, and the dead man left his wife a usufruct on it, either because he drew up his will that way or probably because he left no will at all. The actual ownership of the boat went to his children, but his wife has the use of the houseboat until she dies. I’m guessing that’s true of any other non-community assets that he left.”
Faye made a mental note to check Florida law, not to mention the wording of Joe’s will and her own. “Poor Miranda…she lost her husband and everything, all at once.”
“Yes. Here’s the important thing: Do not, under any circumstances, let your friend’s grandmother do anything stupid like hand over the boat. Not until she talks to a lawyer who knows Louisiana law. Just because the man has a will showing that part, or even all, of the houseboat belongs to him doesn’t mean that he has the right to evict her.”
“Amande will be so relieved.”
“And another thing…make sure the lawyer is looking after Amande’s interests, not just her grandmother’s. Amande may not have all that much to fear from her mother’s husband.”
“Amande’s grandmother is meeting with her lawyer this afternoon, and she’s actually asked me to sit in on the meeting. She respects education, and she wanted someone she could trust to explain things to her. I’m flattered that she feels that way. Anyway, I understand that the will is pretty straightforward. Everything goes to him. How a woman could cut her own child out…”
Bobby’s voice went past businessman-crisp, going straight to evangelist-intense. “She can’t. Or rather, she couldn’t, back when she was alive. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Louisiana inheritance law recognizes ‘forced heirs.’ Most of the time, you can’t just cut your children out of your will. The law forces you to leave them something. My guess is that, when the dust settles, Amande will find out that she owns a quarter of her mother’s property, with the rest going to her mother’s widower. That’s going to put her interests at odds with her grandmother’s, especially if there is other property besides the houseboat. Even more important, her lawyer needs to find out what else her mother—Justine, was it?—owned at the time of her death. Justine’s husband may be forced by law to share it with Amande, no matter what that will says.”
“I understand that there’s some oil company stock. Maybe other stuff, but these are not rich people.”
“It doesn’t matter. Rich people fight over thirty million dollars. Homeless people will fight with the same intensity over thirty dollars. Or three. I’m a historian and I’m here to tell you that devastating wars have been fought over truly trivial sums. You’ve told me that Amande’s aunt is not a nice person, and neither is her mother’s widower. I think it’s likely that your sixteen-year-old friend is now co-owner, along with those two, of a houseboat and some stock. This is not an insignificant pile of property. Any sixteen-year-old in that situation needs an advocate. If she’s your friend, you need to help her find one.”
***
Bobby hung up the phone with a smile that was unseemly for a man who cultivated the illusion that he was way too sophisticated to be amused by much. Faye was fun. There was no other word for her. If she and Joe lived in New Orleans, he and Jodi would force them to be their best friends, whether they liked it or not.
Though Bobby’s family had lost their old money sometime in the early nineteenth century, he still possessed their blue blood, so he was a member of the right Mardi Gras krewe and he got invitations to all the best parties. Faye, Joe, and Jodi would ordinarily have been frozen out of that society forever, because the partygoers would have been at a loss for anything to say to someone whose family wasn’t traceable back to eighteenth-century France. Or, in some cases, seventeenth-century France. Actually, Faye’s bloodlines intersected with his own slightly, but her family lost their high social stan
ding in this part of the world at about the time they started pronouncing their name “LAWNG-champ,” instead of “LAWN-shaw.”
However, if the four of them sailed into a high-society soirée on the strength of Bobby’s bloodlines, they would set the party on its ear. Joe would be fetchingly dressed in a white tie version of the buckskin clothes he made himself, with a feather poked into his long, thick ponytail. Jodi would regale staid partygoers with nausea-inducing police tales involving bodily fluids, and the crowd would love it the way they loved those CSI shows on TV.
And Faye would look like a tiny queen, swathed in a silk gown she’d sewn herself. She would behave herself until some boor called her “Little Lady” and made conversation by asking what her husband did for a living while she was lounging around getting her nails done. Then, with a single short sentence, she’d flatten him with the sheer force of her intellect, and all hell would break loose.
It would be a hoot. He wondered what it would take to get Faye and Joe to leave Joyeuse.
There was the rub. Faye was about as likely to leave her island home as Bobby was to leave New Orleans. Damn. Nevertheless, Mardi Gras was only ten months away, give or take. If he started now, he could wangle a pile of invitations to events so exclusive that even Faye wouldn’t be able to say no.
The woman had better start sewing silk dresses. She was going to need a lot of them.
Bobby looked around him. He loved old maps, and he loved New Orleans. The historic collection housed in this place was as close to heaven as he cared to get without dying. How fortunate that he could hang out here, carefully fingering the merchandise, and call it work.
At a computer in the corner, he spotted a familiar face, a sunburned and freckled man in his mid-twenties with sunbleached hair. Bobby had seen him several times lately. He didn’t look old enough to hold a PhD, but maybe he was a grad student. People who hung out at the Historic New Orleans Collection tended to be academics, and they tended to specialize in fields like history and geography, so they didn’t often get sunburned. Like Bobby, they generally had the complexions of bookworms.
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