by Janet Dailey
"You're worried." He reached over and covered her hand with his, giving it a squeeze. "Don't be."
"Why don't you tell the Mississippi to flow backward?"
"I mean it, Remy. In the first place, there's nothing you can do. And in the second, you need to concentrate your energies on getting better and not get all worked up over this. Let us handle it. OK?"
If he'd patted her on the cheek and told her not to worry her "pretty little head about such things," his message couldn't have been plainer: leave it to the menfolk to handle. Southern chauvinism, in its place, could be nice; it could be sweet. But this was life, her life, and her business—as much as it was theirs. But Gabe would never see it that way. He couldn't.
"You will tell me what's going on, won't you? I'm in the dark about so much now that I don't think I could stand not being kept informed about this."
"The minute we have some hard facts, I promise I'll tell you."
Which meant that he'd only tell her things that would reassure her. If she wanted something more than a watered-down version of the truth, she'd have to find it herself.
22
The minute her mother left the next morning to keep her standing Thursday appointment at the hair salon, Remy headed for the public library, a drab concrete and glass example of fifties architecture located at the intersection of Tulane and Loyola avenues.
She scanned the newspaper article printed on the computer screen. The account on the sinking of the Crescent Dragon had been relegated to page 3 of the paper's front section, running only slightly more than half a column in length and obviously not deemed newsworthy enough to rate a follow-up story.
Why should it be? she thought. There'd been no loss of life, no daring rescue at sea, no harrowing days spent in lifeboats by the crew, and no major oil spill, and no one in the crew had been from the New Orleans area—or even from Louisiana. If it hadn't been for the fact that the tanker was owned by a local shipping company and went down in the Gulf of Mexico, Remy doubted the newspaper would have devoted more than a paragraph to the story—if it had covered it at all.
She read the article again. According to the captain—one Titus Edward Bartholomew from Cornwall, England—the combination of the vessel's age and the heavy seas had caused a structural failure in the tanker's hull. At approximately 10:00 p.m. on the night of September 9, the ship had begun taking on water. Twenty minutes later, with the pumps unable to handle the flow and the tanker foundering badly, the captain gave the order to abandon ship. Twelve hours after that, a passing freighter saw the distress flare fired from the lifeboats and picked up the crew. A search of the area by the Coast Guard yielded some debris, but no evidence of oil spillage.
The only thing Remy found in the entire account that was even remotely suspicious was the tanker's failure to issue a distress call, or Mayday—evidently the ship's radio had chosen that moment to quit working. In fact, problems with the equipment had been reported earlier— perhaps conveniently?
What had she hoped to find? She wasn't sure. A clue, maybe—something that would lead her to look somewhere else. If there was one in the article, she didn't see it. Just the same, she asked for a hard copy of the story and waited while a word processor printed it out.
Where did she go from here? Would the company files have more information? They would definitely contain the names and addresses of the rest of the Dragon's crew. But how was she going to get to see them? She'd never taken an active interest in the shipping business before, so she couldn't just walk in and ask to see the files without drawing attention to herself—and her search. That was the last thing she wanted to do—especially after last night.
By the time she'd gotten home the evening before—after somehow, somewhere making a wrong turn and not knowing it until she discovered she was on the River Road and had to double back—Gabe was already there. She'd walked in to hear him and her father locked in another debate over her.
"I'm not even going to guess how that Hanks character managed to track her down. But as far as I'm concerned, this changes things. Remy is going to that clinic. I want her safely away from here—away from all these questions and charges."
"That isn't the way to handle this, Dad," Gabe had protested. "She needs to be here with us, where we can keep an eye on her—not three hundred miles away."
"The clinic is the best place for her. I don't care what you say."
"Dad, she's already said once that she won't go. If you try to make her, she'll fight you— especially now. Is that what you want? To be at odds with her? I don't think so."
"Frazier," her mother had inserted tentatively. "Maybe he's right."
A long and heavy sigh had come from her father. "I don't know. I just don't know."
"Where is Remy?" her mother had asked worriedly.
"I don't know. She left before I did. I walked her to her car—"
At that point Remy had taken her cue and walked in. "Would you believe I was halfway to the airport before I realized where I was? I guess I thought the car knew the way home, so I didn't pay attention."
There'd been no further mention of the clinic or of Howard Hanks—not in front of her, anyway. But what she'd heard was enough. Her family was determined to protect her, to shield her from this "unpleasantness" over the Dragon—for her own good, naturally.
Maybe they'd always treated her like this, but this time she couldn't let them. These allegations of fraud had to be the trouble she'd sensed. She knew something, she was certain of it—maybe something that would either clear Cole or convict him. She had to find out what it was. She couldn't sit back and twiddle her thumbs, waiting for her memory to return—if it ever did.
Assuming that the charges of fraud were true, more than one person had to be involved in it. Somewhere there was proof of that. Maybe the company files could provide it.
But once again, the question was, how was she going to get to them? That was her next problem. She paid for the hard copy of the newspaper article and left, arriving home a good twenty minutes before Sibylle returned from the salon.
The newspaper print blurred. Not that it mattered, Remy thought. She'd read the article so many times she practically had it memorized. She lowered the copy to her lap and let her gaze drift restlessly around her bedroom. The blackness of night pressed against the glass of the gallery doors and threw back a fuzzy image of the room. Remy couldn't help noticing how relaxed she looked, lounging on the loveseat clad in a jade satin robe—the proverbial lady of leisure. She knew a closer look would have revealed her tension.
She glanced at the digital clock on her bedside table and sighed. The minutes were ticking away with all the speed of stampeding snails. She considered going through the drawers of the small escritoire again, but she'd already spent the afternoon doing that, and had found little more than bank statements, blank checks, a sheaf of embossed stationery with matching envelopes, an odd letter or two from what she presumed were girlfriends of hers—letters she obviously hadn't gotten around to answering—and an address book filled with names and phone numbers of people she couldn't remember, with two pages devoted to family birthdays and anniversaries. There was a date calendar for the new year, but the notations in it were few, limited to the month of January and containing mostly reminders of dinner engagements, somebody's party, museum meetings or tours, and a dental appointment, and concluding with the time, airline, and number of her flight to Nice.
Cole's name didn't appear anywhere. Remy didn't know whether that meant that she'd already broken up with him by the time the new year started or that she hadn't needed to be reminded of her dates with him.
The drawers had yielded no diaries or journals—not that she had expected any. Even now she had no compulsion to commit her thoughts to paper. And there hadn't been any lists of things-to-do. If the contents of those drawers were a reflection of her life, she obviously led a very carefree existence—no responsibilities, no demands, no obligations.
Had she always let others d
o things for her? Like Nattie, who cooked the meals, made her bed, tidied her room, and saw that she had clean towels for her bath. And the dailies, who cleaned the house and did the laundry and the ironing. And her mother, who planned the meals, managed the household, arranged the dinner parties, and kept fresh flowers in all the rooms. And her father, uncle, and cousin, who ran the family shipping business that provided her with an income— though it wasn't her only income. According to some papers she'd found in the desk, she had a trust fund of some sort. Set up by her grandfather, she thought.
But what had she ever contributed—except to put in her appearances at the board meetings? Had she always let others provide for her needs, let them have the work and the worry of the shipping line while she breezed through life—until now? But it couldn't have taken until this minute for her to realize what she'd been missing. No, it had to have happened earlier, or she would have never been nagged by this feeling of trouble at the hospital in Nice when she hadn't known anything about herself. Had she been jolted into awareness by the insurance company's charges of fraud and her own now-lost knowledge of it? Or had it started before that? Maybe with Cole's criticism of her ignorance about the company's financial situation?
My God, how horribly and painfully ironic that would be, she thought, and then she heard footsteps and muffled voices in the hall outside her door. Hurriedly she snatched the latest issue of Harpers Bazaar off the floor next to the loveseat and sandwiched the copy of the newspaper article between its pages. A second later there was a light rap on her door.
"Come in."
As she'd expected, her parents walked in, her father in white tie and full evening dress, her mother gowned in a soft chiffon cloud of deep rose pink, a silver fox stole around her shoulders. They were off to another gala event, one of literally dozens strung in multiple strands through the Carnival season, which began on the sixth of January—Twelfth Night—and ran all the way to Mardi Gras, gathering momentum all the while.
"We wanted you to know that we're leaving now," Sibylle Jardin declared, casting her a concerned smile. "Are you sure you'll be all right here alone?"
"I am twenty-seven." Remy automatically smiled, then caught herself and remembered not to look too bright, too cheerful—or too anxious for them to leave. "I think that's old enough to stay home alone at night, don't you?"
"Yes, but . . . with you being ill and all—"
"I have a slight headache . . . probably from fatigue. It's nothing more serious than that. I promise."
"Just the same, we'll give you a call later and make sure you're all right," her father said.
"No, don't. You'd be alarmed if I didn't answer, and I wouldn't," she said, thinking fast. "I was planning on disconnecting my extension so I wouldn't be disturbed if the phone rang."
"I suppose that's sensible," he conceded. "You know where we'll be if you need us."
"I do. Has Gabe left already?" She thought she'd heard his car, but she wasn't sure.
"About ten minutes ago."
When her father made a move toward the door, Remy quickly encouraged it. "You two enjoy yourselves tonight, and don't worry about me. I'll be fine."
After a few more flutterings of concern from her mother, they left. Remy waited until she heard the Mercedes pull away and let another ten minutes drag by for good measure, then ran silently across the second-floor hall to the master bedroom. For an instant she stared at the solid brass doorknob, conscious of the hard thumping of her heart and the nervous churning of her stomach, and then she closed her hand around it, gave it a turn, and slipped inside. She felt exactly like a thief sneaking into her parent's bedroom—but she hadn't come to steal, only to borrow.
She flipped on the lights and went directly to the bureau. There, on top of it, in the oval tray that held her father's loose change, an empty money clip, and a pocketknife, was a key ring with some half-dozen keys looped on it. Smiling in triumph, Remy scooped it up. The smooth fall of his trousers—with no jangle of keys when he walked—had earlier encouraged her to believe that he was carrying only his house and car keys, leaving the rest behind. What they all went to, she didn't know, but she was counting on the fact that when he'd resigned as president of the Crescent Line, he hadn't returned his key to the office.
Back in her room, Remy pulled on a pair of navy-blue slacks and a matching raw-silk sweater, grabbed a fawn-colored suede jacket from the closet, and left the house.
Thirty minutes later she was inside the International Trade Mart, standing in front of the entrance to the corporate offices of the Crescent Line. Neither the first nor the second key fit in the lock. Remy flipped past the next two, which bore the Mercedes logo—possibly spare keys to her mother's car. She tried the fifth key. It slipped right in. She gave it a turn, and the lock clicked open.
The office lights were on. For security reasons? Or had someone forgotten to shut them off before leaving? Or—was someone here? Remy stepped partway into the reception room and listened intently for some creak of a chair, a rustle of paper, the faint click of computer keys, a cough—anything. Silence. Not trusting it, she inched the door closed and moved stealthily forward to investigate, in the process discovering how loud the sound of cloth brushing against cloth was, how dry her mouth could be, and how acutely tense her muscles could become.
But there was no one about. She was alone. She drew her first full breath and began her search for information. She glanced at a computer terminal. A touch of the right keys would call up all the information she wanted—assuming she could figure out the access codes. But it was the documentation for the computer entries that she really wanted to see.
She went to the file cabinet. Locked. She started down the row, pulling at drawer handle after drawer handle. Locked, locked, locked—they were all locked. She sagged against the last cabinet in frustration and combed a hand through her hair, trying to think.
The file clerks had to have keys to them. Did they take them home? Drop them in their purses or pockets to get buried in the bottom or sent to the cleaners—or left on the kitchen table? They wouldn't take that risk; they'd leave the keys in their desks. She found a set in the first drawer she looked in, and went to work.
It took Remy fifteen minutes to figure out the filing system, and another twenty-five to gather together all the paperwork relating to the tanker's final voyage. Armed with the names of the crew from the ship's manifest, she shifted to the payroll records, pulling each man's file.
Unwilling to take the time to study all the documents now, Remy turned on the copy machine and glanced through the papers while she waited for it to warm up. All of them appeared to be simple and straightforward—a list of the stores and their associated invoices, a bill for the cargo of crude oil and a copy of a check representing payment in full for the same, charges for fuel and marine services, copies of some kind of licenses or permits, employee rate cards and personal information. Yet something bothered her. She had copied all the documents and was halfway through the crew's records before she realized what it was.
Hurriedly she copied the rest, stuffed the copies into a blank folder to take with her, returned the originals to their proper files, and began going through other employment records to see if maybe—just maybe—she was wrong. She wasn't.
The crew that had sailed aboard the Crescent Dragon on her last and final voyage—from the captain to the lowliest seaman—had never worked for the Crescent Line before or since. Judging from the records, it wasn't uncommon for a seaman or a first mate, or even a captain, to work for the company only one time. But an entire crew? No, that was too coincidental to be anything other than suspicious—very suspicious.
Remy stared at the crew names, many of them Oriental, possibly Korean, and thought how funny it was—a twisted and bitter kind of funny—to realize that this was just the kind of thing she had hoped to find. And now that she had, she wished she hadn't.
Where were they now, she wondered. Probably scattered to the four winds—or in this cas
e the seven seas. More than likely with a considerable amount of extra cash in their pockets in return for keeping quiet about what they knew ... or what they'd seen. And if Howard Hanks was right, what they'd seen was the tanker off-loading its cargo of crude oil onto waiting barges or into an offshore pipeline.
The crew had to have known what was going on—at least the officers definitely did. And the seamen would have recognized that it wasn't normal to off-load cargo within a day or two of leaving port, and then continue on empty.
And Remy understood that her chances of tracking down any of the crew were virtually nil. Maybe Howard Hanks had succeeded in talking to one of them. Maybe it was even where he'd gotten his proof of fraud. Or maybe he hadn't talked to any of them. If he had, surely he would have known whether the crude had been off loaded onto barges or into a pipeline. He wouldn't have held out both as possibilities.
Maybe Gabe was right. Maybe Hanks didn't have anything more to go on than suspicion. Maybe he was trying to scare somebody into making a mistake . . . somebody like Cole.
She turned away from the thought and walked to the window, the night's darkness a mirror for the sudden desolation she felt. She looked out, directly at the glittering lights of Algiers. Below was the Spanish Plaza with its lighted fountain. And in between, the wide, black ribbon of the Mississippi made its sweeping crescent curve, outlined by the lights on both banks.
Then, on the river itself, she saw lights moving. At first she thought they belonged to the ferry that ran from the foot of Canal Street across the river to Algiers Point. Then she realized they were the running lights of a ship crawling steadily upriver, the vessel itself almost invisible from this distance—a black shape on a black river.