by Janet Dailey
"What could this mean, I wonder?" Emil Jardin murmured, his gray eyebrows drawing together to form a thick, solid line.
Simon Varnier took him literally and responded with his own speculation. "We know Donovan has been trying to sell three of his ships. Perhaps he has found a buyer for them. Or perhaps he has obtained financing from some unknown source. If he has, then it would not be wise to demand payment at this time for the notes you hold."
"What do you know of this Tate?"
"Very little. He landed in New Orleans on the first of March, barely a month ago. He says he is from St. Louis, but he arrived not by riverboat, but on one of Donovan's ships that had stopped in Boston. I suspect that is how he came to know about Donovan's situation."
"But how did he discover my interest in him?"
"He refused to disclose his source."
"He will disclose it to me before this goes further." He didn't like the idea that someone new to the city had learned so quickly that he was the force behind the move to crush Brodie Donovan —to crush him slowly, to make him suffer, to make him feel the pain, the grief, the humiliation and shame that he, Emil, knew. The man had destroyed lives—his, Dominique's, and Adrienne's. It was only right that he be destroyed, and only fair that a Jardin be the instrument of his destruction.
As the carriage slowed, Emil Jardin lifted his head and took note of his surroundings, looking down the prominent length of his patrician nose at the string of hastily constructed clapboard buildings. On only two other occasions in his life had he found sufficiently strong reason to venture into the Yanqui section. Both times he'd sworn that nothing would induce him to repeat the experience of being in the midst of those jostling, crude, loud-talking Americains, always hurrying, always demanding, always greedy.
"If this attorney was so anxious to share his information, why could he not have come to the Vieux Carré?" Emil grumbled when the carriage rolled to a stop in front of one of the clapboard buildings splashed with whitewash. "Why was it necessary for us to come to this place to meet with him?"
"I explained that," Simon Varnier said patiently. "Horace Tate is a cripple. A childhood injury left him without the use of his right leg. He has great difficulty getting in and out of a carriage, and he could not have walked the distance from his office to yours."
"I cannot think what information this man could have to give us that would be of any value." But he had to find out, and he stepped down from the carriage.
Horace Tate's office was as spare and inelegant as the building's exterior. A collection of worn law books occupied crude shelves of bare, rough wood, and more sat in a trunk waiting to be unpacked. There were scratches and gouges in the oak panels of the large kneehole desk that dominated the room. Emil Jardin walked straight to it, looking neither to the left nor to the right, his gaze fastened on the man behind it—though he seemed hardly a man, with his dusting of freckles and thatch of hay-colored hair. His quick smile had the eagerness and innocence of a boy's. He reminded Emil of a young man who had barely reached his majority, coming to the city fresh from the river bottoms, whose view of the world had been obscured by the back end of a mule pulling a plow—an impression reinforced by the ill-fitting suit and poorly tied cravat he wore.
"Mr. Varnier, it's good to see you again," he greeted them, speaking in English with a thick country drawl. "And you must be Mr. Jardin. Forgive me if I don't get up, but this leg of mine makes it mighty awkward." Emil observed the limp and crooked sprawl of the attorney's right leg under the desk, and the pair of sturdy canes propped against the plaster wall behind his chair. "Have a seat." Horace Tate waved a hand in the direction of the three chairs crowded in a semicircle in front of his desk.
Emil ignored the chairs and the invitation, choosing to stand, certain, now that he'd seen Horace Tate, that their meeting would be an extremely brief one. "Let us not waste time, M'sieu Tate."
"I agree." The voice came from somewhere behind him to his left. Emil turned and stiffened in shock.
Brodie calmly met his thunderstruck look and raked his thumb-nail over the lucifer, then held the flame to the tip of his cigar. "Surprised?" he queried between puffs.
Purpling, Emil Jardin swung back to the attorney. "What is the meaning of this? It is an insult. An outrage." He stamped the floor with his cane. "Come, Simon. We are leaving."
He turned and flashed a look at Brodie, as if expecting him to try to stop him. Brodie merely shrugged his indifference. "You can stay or go. It doesn't matter to me. But you might want to take a look at the documents Mr. Tate has for you. They could make for some interesting read-ing.
Emil glared at Brodie for a long moment, then thrust a hand at his assistant. "Let me see these documents."
Horace Tate silently passed them to Simon Varnier, who gave them to Emil Jardin as Brodie wandered over to the far side of the desk. "Pull out a chair for him, Simon. I think he'll want to sit down."
Emil had barely got past the first paragraph when his hand began to tremble and the color drained from his face. "What is this?" He sank into the chair Simon had pulled out for him.
"Exactly what it says," Brodie replied. "You seem so anxious to destroy the Crescent Line, I thought you might like to know I don't own it anymore."
His fingers curled into the papers, crumpling their edges. "You cannot do this!"
"It's done—all legally signed, sealed, registered, and recorded," Brodie waved the cigar at the papers. "You don't have to let them stop you, though. You can still go through with your plans to ruin the Crescent Line. Of course, it will be interesting to see how you'll go about demanding payment on those notes from your own great-grandson. But I forgot. You refer to Jean-Luc as your ward, don't you? Then as his legal guardian, you should know that he's now the owner of a shipping company and a house. If you'll read further, you'll see I've named Mr. Tate here, Father Malone, and Adrienne as the administrators of his properties until my son turns twenty-one."
"How—" Emil choked off the rest of the question.
"How did I find out Jean-Luc was my son? It was a good job you did of muffling my sources of information, but you failed to silence all of them."
"You cannot prove this."
"I can't prove it, not legally. But he is my son. I know it and you know it." Brodie moved to the corner of the desk, dropping his air of coolness and seeking the confrontation he'd arranged.
Emil Jardin rose from his chair and hurled the documents down on the desk. "I will see you in your grave for this."
"Maybe you will. But my death—whether by your hand or by God's—won't change the one thing that matters: Jean-Luc is my son. He may carry the Jardin name, but he has Donovan blood."
On that note Emil Jardin stalked from the room, his cane pounding the hardwood floor with each stride.
The honking of a car's horn somewhere outside jarred Remy into the present. "Then Brodie gave the Crescent Line to his natural son," she murmured. "Emil Jardin didn't steal it from him."
"It wasn't for lack of trying," Nattie declared as she pushed off the armrest of the stuffed chair.
"And Brodie? What happened to him?"
"He died in August of that same year."
She remembered the threat Emil had made, swearing he'd see him in his grave. "How? Did Adrienne's grand—"
"No one knew for sure—except Brodie and old Emil. They say he died of yellow fever. Old Bronze John, they called it back then. Maybe he did. That summer of eighteen fifty-three saw one of the worst yellow-fever epidemics ever to hit New Orleans. Somewhere around fifteen thousand died from it, although some claim the figure was more than twenty thousand. Upwards of sixteen hundred died the same week in August that Brodie did. There were so many bodies needing to be buried, officials didn't bother with death certificates. Which is why there's none showing the cause of Brodie's death. And by then there weren't enough gravediggers to keep up with all the work. Coffins were stacked up like crates in a warehouse. The situation got so desperate they dug trenches and
dumped the bodies in common graves. That's where Brodie ended up—in an unmarked grave. It was a terrible, terrible time."
"And Adrienne?"
"She and her family escaped it. Like always, they left the city the first of May, before the fever season arrived. She knew what was going on here. The whole world knew. People from all over the country sent gifts of food and money," Nattie said, then paused. "Adrienne never married. Wore black the whole of her life—for her brother, folks claimed, but I think she wore it for Brodie too. Every All Saints' Day, she went around and placed flowers on the common graves of the yellow-fever victims—because she didn't know which one Brodie was in. Old Emil couldn't have liked that, but I guess by then she didn't care whether he did or not. Old Bronze John took Father Malone too. And five years later Horace Tate was killed when the boiler on a riverboat exploded. He'd been on his way to visit his family in St. Louis."
"And Adrienne ended up as the sole administrator for her son."
"That's right. And that's how Emil Jardin ended up running the Crescent Line—and the Union blockade during the Civil War. Made a fortune at it, too. Why, it wasn't nothing for one of his ships to net almost a half a million dollars in one round trip. And the war went on for four years, with the ships making anywhere from five to ten trips a year. Most Southerners lost everything they had in the war, but old Emil Jardin got rich—or Jean-Luc did, since it was really all his, and old Emil didn't live long enough to enjoy much of it. He died in eighteen-seventy, after Jean-Luc turned eighteen."
"Then the Jardins were the war profiteers," Remy mused absently, and she leaned against the curved back of the loveseat. "I wonder how Cole found that out? I suppose if he went far enough back in the company records he would have found a copy of the document transferring all Brodie's interest in the Crescent Line to Jean-Luc. Maybe there was even some mention of his death in eighteen fifty-three—long before the Civil War started."
But it didn't explain why he had dragged Brodie Donovan's portrait out of storage and hung it in place of her grandfather's. He had to know it would upset her family, especially her father— which meant it had been a deliberate act. Why would Cole want to deliberately antagonize him?
"Are you still going to take that shower and change?" Nattie wanted to know.
"Yes." She nodded, still preoccupied with her thoughts.
"I'll lay you out some clean towels, then."
As Nattie headed for the adjacent bathroom, Remy rolled to her feet, restless again. She crossed to the French doors, unlocked them, and stepped onto the front gallery. Like twin sentinels, the two magnolia trees stood guard over the front lawn, magnolia trees that Adrienne had suggested Brodie plant.
Remy paused for a moment, then walked to the railing, its delicate ironwork a tracery of leaves and flowers. She let her gaze wander over the lawn, the wrought-iron fence that surrounded it, and the quiet street beyond.
Catty-corner across the street, a navy-blue sedan was parked at the curb. Remy noticed the driver sitting behind the wheel, her eye drawn by the incongruity of his dark hair and neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard, which looked more salt than pepper from this distance. He appeared to be writing something. She guessed he was a salesman. At that moment, he looked up. Realizing that he'd seen her, Remy turned from the railing and walked back to her room, not wanting her presence to be taken as an invitation for him to come pitch his wares.
As she entered the room, she glanced at the antique tester bed and stopped, suddenly wondering if Adrienne and Jean-Luc had lived in this house after Emil Jardin died. She was certain they must have. How else could it have become the family home? And if it had been haunted with memories for Brodie, how much more haunted it must have been for Adrienne.
A pink-palmed hand waved in front of her face. Startled, Remy blinked and focused her gaze on Nattie's high-cheeked face. "Sorry, I didn't see you."
"I guessed," she said dryly. "The towels are all laid out for you, and your robe's hanging on the back of the door."
"Thanks."
"What's wrong?" Nattie frowned at her in puzzlement. "You looked like you were in some kind of a trance."
"I was thinking about Adrienne, remembering how much she liked the social life back then— and how much she pitied her Tante ZeeZee. Yet she ended up just like her, a spinster—alone. I wonder where she found the strength to do it."
"Honey," Nattie said, offering another one of her sad and sage smiles, "A woman is like a teabag—you never know how strong she is until you get her in hot water."
Remy laughed, yet she had the feeling that somewhere nearby, trouble seethed. Where and of what kind, she couldn't remember. But she needed to be there. Why? To prevent what? To stop whom?
20
The museum complex on Jackson Square wasn't the place. At least her visit to it hadn't given her any indication that it was. Remy stood at one of the desks in the museum's office area, closed to the public, and absently twined the telephone receiver's coiled cord around her forefinger.
Gabe's voice came over the line. "If you're calling to tell me you're too tired to go to the museum this afternoon, I'm not surprised—considering how early you were up this morning."
"Actually, I'm calling from the museum."
"You're there?" She could hear the frown of surprise in his voice. "I thought you were coming to my office at two-thirty so we could go together."
"I was." After spending all morning wandering the house, she'd been on the verge of going crazy from inactivity. Then her brother had called around lunchtime to let her know he'd talked their father out of sending her to that clinic outside of Houston. In passing Remy had mentioned she was thinking about going to the museum later on, and Gabe had immediately insisted on going with her. At the time, she'd agreed. It wasn't until later that she'd known she would prefer to see it alone— with no one to distract her with talk—so she could be open to any impressions, any memories, any sense of trouble. "I was too restless sitting around the house, so I left early and came here to look around on my own."
"Then you've already been through everything."
"Yes." She couldn't keep the dispirited tone from her voice.
"You seem . . . discouraged. Weren't you able to remember anything?"
"Unfortunately, no," she said on a sigh. Nothing had been familiar to her—not any of the layouts, not a single exhibit, not one member of the staff, nothing.
As she idly scanned the bank of television monitors, part of the museum's security system, on the opposite wall, she noticed an older man standing near the traveling exhibit. With his dark hair and distinctively whitish beard, he looked exactly like the man she'd seen in the car in front of her house. Obviously she'd been wrong to assume he was a salesman. He must be a tourist. It was odd, though, that he was wearing a suit and tie. Most of them dressed much more casually, especially in the daytime. And he certainly wasn't very interested in the exhibit. The way he was looking around, Remy had the impression he was searching for someone.
"What are your plans now?" Gabe asked, distracting her attention from the black-and-white monitors. "Are you going to stay there for a while, or head home?"
"I don't think so. I'll—"
"Don't tell me. I think I can guess," he broke in. "You're going to Canal Place and see if you can buy out Saks and Gucci's this time."
He sounded so certain that Remy frowned. "What makes you say that?"
"Because you always go on a shopping binge when you're depressed."
"I do?"
"You do," he declared, with an undertone of amusement. "I'd offer to carry your purchases for you, but I've got some paperwork I should catch up on. Why don't we meet at La Louisiane for drinks at, say . . . about four-thirty? That'll give you almost three hours to shop."
"All right," she agreed, though she had no desire to go shopping.
There was a hesitation on the other end of the line, as if Gabe sensed her reluctance. "Remy . . .you aren't going to get yourself lost or—wander down to t
he docks again, are you?"
"No. I promise." She smiled at the phone.
"Good. I'll see you at four-thirty, then."
"At La Louisiane," she confirmed, then hung up the receiver when the line went dead. "Thanks," she said to one of the staffers, who nodded in response.
As Remy started to leave the museum's administrative offices, a young woman in her early twenties came bounding up to her, her dark hair cut in a short, sleek bob with a full fringe of bangs. She stopped abruptly, exclaiming in delight, "Remy! When did you get back?"
"Last night," she replied, silently wondering who this girl was.
"How was the Riviera? I expected you to have a gorgeous tan that would make all of us poor working girls green with envy," she said, scanning Remy from head to toe. "That's a gorgeous outfit. Did you get it in France?"
"It was in my closet." She had no idea where she'd bought it.
"I wish I had your closet," she responded, casting an openly admiring eye over the hunter-green paisley jacket and blouse that Remy had paired with a navy skirt and red belt. "Have you got time for a cup of coffee or something? I've got about an hour before my tour gets here, and I'm dying to hear all about Mardi Gras in Nice. It can't possibly be as crazy as it is here."
"I'd love a cup—" Remy began, then stopped, a wry smile curving her mouth. "This is awkward. I'm sure I know you, but—I can't remember who you are. You see, I. . ." She hesitated, but there was no way to say it except straight out. "I have amnesia."
The girl gave a jaw-dropped look. "You're kidding."
"I wish I were."
"Oh my God, you're not kidding," she declared. "For heaven's sake, what happened? How? Oh, Remy, you've got to tell me all about it." She reached out to clutch at her hand, then laughed self-consciously. "I forgot. You don't remember me. I'm Tina Gianelli. We both started working here at about the same time."
With that, she caught at Remy's hand again and practically dragged her back to the employee area, sat her down at a table, and demanded again to know all about it. Remy briefly filled her in, keeping to the basic facts and concluding with, "I came to the museum today hoping something would be familiar, but when I wandered through the various exhibits, I felt like a stranger looking at things I'd always known about."