Under the Cajun Moon

by Mindy Starns Clark

  Something in his cold, hard voice reminded me of what had been done to Sam. I had no doubt these people were capable of torture. In fact, right now, for the sake of my own life, I was willing to play by their rules. I nodded and then stood very still as they undid the gag and the bindings on my wrists.

  Once I was completely free, they gestured toward the door, and I stepped forward, hesitated for a moment, then twisted the knob and swung it open.

  There, sitting in the light of a single lamp, was my mother.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  ”Mom!”

  “Chloe! Finally!”

  I stepped forward into the room, relieved when neither of my captors followed me inside. Instead, they seemed to have vanished into the night. I pulled the door closed behind me, locked it for good measure, and then turned back to face my mother. Even in the dim light, I could see that her eyes were red and swollen, as if she had been crying. I hesitated, not sure what I was seeing. Was she one of my captors or had she also been brought here against her will?

  “What’s going on?” I asked, moving toward her. “Are you being held captive here?”

  “Held captive? Me? Good heavens, no.”

  I realized that though I had spoken on the phone with my mother, I hadn’t actually seen her in person in about two years. She was as beautiful as ever, though for the first time it also struck me that she seemed older. Her forehead was smooth and unlined, as always, though looking at her now I realized it was likely Botox that was keeping it that way. I did notice the fine lines around her mouth and dark circles under her eyes. Still, given what she had been through in the last two days, with my father shot and her only child accused of murder, it was no wonder she didn’t look her best.

  She stood but did not approach me. Instead, we both just looked at each other, thirty-two years of disconnect and dysfunction and deceit thick in the air between us. There was so much I wanted to know and so much I wanted to say, but for the moment words failed me.

  “What have you done?” I asked after some moments. I looked around the room and wondered how she could allow masked men to kidnap her own flesh and blood. The only thing I knew for sure was that my mother wasn’t clever enough to have masterminded anything. If I had been some pawn in a complex scheme, then it had to be someone else’s scheme, not hers. She was in cahoots with others, I had no doubt. Lola Ledet, or should I say Fifi LaFlame, was not even smart enough to play checkers, much less chess.

  “What have I done? What have you done?” she cried, stepping toward me. In her eyes I could see a lot of different emotions: anger, fear, confusion. Clutched in her hands was a white linen handkerchief, now wrinkled and stained with mascara.

  “I don’t know what to say to you, Mother. You’re not who I always thought you were.”

  “The same goes for you, Chloe. You’re my own child, and I can’t believe you’re a murderer.”

  “A murderer? Me? Oh, that’s right. You think I killed Kevin Peralta.”

  “You did worse than that!”

  I hesitated, trying to understand her accusation.

  “You don’t honestly believe I’m the one who hurt Sam, do you? That I tortured and killed him?”

  “I don’t know, Chloe. I don’t know you at all anymore.”

  “I didn’t kill Sam and I didn’t kill Kevin, and if you think I could have been capable of either one of those murders, then not only do you not know me now, you never knew me at all. Then again, I guess that’s only fair, considering that I never really knew you, either.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Were you ever going to tell me about your secret past? Did you forget to bring up that one little fact about your former career, Mother? Or, excuse me, Fifi?” I threw her stage name out there like a dagger, expecting it to garner a big reaction. Instead, the only expression on her face was surprise and confusion. “Your days as a dancer? Fifi LaFlame? Bourbon Street? Does any of that ring a bell?”

  I was practically yelling, but at this point I didn’t care. My mother and I had been politely dancing around each other for years. It was time to let our hair down.

  “What about it, Chloe? I don’t understand your question.”

  “What about it? How could you have hidden something like that from me? How could you keep a secret of that magnitude for thirty-two years? I can understand not wanting me to know as a child, but what about when I was older? What about when I was off on my own? Did it never once cross your mind to tell me about your past? Or did you think you hid it so well that I would never ever find out?”

  I studied her face, expecting to see shame. Instead, all that seemed to register there was yet more confusion.

  “Chloe, I never hid any of that from you.”

  “Are you kidding me? I had to learn it from Conrad! He thought I knew.”

  “I don’t see what this has to do with anything anyway.”

  Closing my eyes, I pinched the bridge of my nose and wondered how to get through to her.

  “Mother, my whole life you have been this perfect person, this elegant, classy, rule-following Southern lady. Now I find out that that’s not even who you are, that you remade yourself from something else entirely.”

  “Of course I did,” she said, shaking her head. “When I married your father, I was just a stupid kid from rural Mississippi with no money, no brains, and a killer body. Exotic dancing was the only way I knew to make a buck. Julian and I made a perfect pair, you know. He was much older, of course, but he was still just a scrappy kid from the Quarter. We used to dream of a better life, an elegant restaurant that bore our name. Once it looked like that dream was going to be a reality, we decided that both the building and I needed makeovers. While Julian stayed home in New Orleans and renovated and designed and created and built Ledet’s practically from the ground up, I went off to charm school, where they taught me to change my hair, my clothes, my makeup, my manners, my speech patterns, and everything else so that I would be good enough, classy enough, to serve as the hostess. By the time I got back, both the building and I were ready for our debut. I don’t see what the big deal is. I never hid my past. I never kept it a secret. Over the years, sure, people forgot, and I wasn’t going to remind them. But if you think there was some big secret conspiracy to keep it from you, you’re wrong. I didn’t know that you didn’t know, honey. I guess it just never came up.”

  In a way, I realized, this was almost worse than if she had kept it secret. I didn’t know about my mother’s dark past simply because no one had ever bothered to tell me, and I hadn’t been around her or their friends enough to hear it from anyone else. Unbelievable.

  Crossing over to the couch, I sat and buried my head in my hands. At this point, I didn’t know whom to trust or not trust. I didn’t know where Travis was, if he could be trusted, or even if he was still alive. All I knew was that I had been captured and brought here against my will, only to come face-to-face with my very own mother.

  “You’re a monster, do you know that?”

  “Because I danced for money?”

  “No, Mother. Next subject. Try to keep up.”

  “Don’t talk down to me that way, missy. Why am I a monster? The way I see it, Chloe, you’re the one who needs to be behind bars.”

  Rage pulsed through my veins, and I stood and got right up in her face, her beautiful, elegant face, the face of a woman who was my own mother and yet a complete stranger.

  “How can you not even know your own child?” I demanded.

  She just shook her head, fresh tears springing into her eyes.

  “How could you shoot your own father?” she replied.

  I took a step back, feeling as if I had been punched in the lungs.

  “What?”

  “You shot your father!”

  “What are you talking about? I didn’t do that. I couldn’t have. I was in Chicago at the time, if you recall. If you don’t believe me, just look on the TV schedule. How could I have been appearing on live television up there
at the same time I was supposedly down here?”

  My mother shook her head, sobbing into her handkerchief.

  “I don’t know how you did it, Chloe. You know you’re much smarter than I am. I’m sure you figured something out. I just don’t understand what could bring a child to hold up a gun and pull the trigger on their own parent.”

  “I didn’t shoot him!”

  “Yes, you did!”

  “Says who?”

  “Says him, Chloe. Says your father. He’s out of the coma. And he says you’re the one who shot him.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  LOUISIANA, 1722

  JACQUES

  ”Here. Right here. Feel it?” Angelique said, smiling as she held Jacques’ hand to her belly. He sensed the slightest rippling against his flattened palm. The kick of his baby felt like the kiss of an angel.

  “I feel it,” he said, grinning. He kept his hand there until the movement ceased. After that, he put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. With the other hand he clicked his tongue and tugged the reins to start the horses moving again. They responded by pulling the wagon back onto the roadway and continuing on down the bumpy, rutted road.

  Jacques knew he had never done anything in his life to deserve this much happiness. One year ago, as the door of the convent had been swung open wide to reveal Angelique standing inside, he had done the only thing he could do: With a deep, guttural yell, he had moved into the room, wrapped her fiercely in his embrace, and openly wept, kissing her lips and face and promising her that he would love and care for her forever. Thanks to the startled nuns who then promptly sent for a priest from New Orleans, just a few hours later Jacques and Angelique were declared man and wife.

  Jacques thought that would be the single happiest moment of his life. Now here they were a year later, and the child Angelique carried inside her womb was making itself known, giving its first real kicks.

  Could his life get any better than this?

  Jacques thought that perhaps all the trial and misery of that awful, uncertain time had created within him a heart more easily satisfied with life’s blessings. All he knew was that he spent every waking hour of every single day feeling thankful and deeply blessed. To have the woman he loved, and to create new life within that woman, was more than any man deserved.

  Now the two of them were on their way to New Orleans where they would finally claim the two gold fleur-de-lis statuettes that the royal goldsmith had promised to Jacques in his letter one year ago. Jacques already had a buyer arranged, a wealthy landowner who was going to pay him top value for the gold as long as Jacques melted it down first and used it to create a simple golden tray embellished with the man’s family crest. Jacques could handle that job easily, especially given that he now owned a working furnace where he could use his father’s smithing tools.

  In fact, Jacques had his own shop in the German settlement, one he had purchased and outfitted using the money sent to him by the royal goldsmith. Through his previous work in the settlement as a store clerk, Jacques had seen the near-constant need among the local farmers for tools and implements. The shop he and Angelique built sold new tools whenever they could get the raw materials to make them and repaired existing ones when they couldn’t. Knowing he could adapt his goldsmithing skills toward more general metalworking, Jacques was already becoming known for the fine axes, hoes, and other farm implements he crafted. He was pleased to realize that his lack of artistic ability made no difference here, for what did a farmer care if his plow was beautiful as long as it was sturdy and did the job? Free at last from the stifling guild system that had limited his occupation back in France, here Jacques was able to do as he pleased, and he found that creating and selling tools to the citizens of this vast territory pleased him very much.

  Jacques and Angelique had been living over the shop, but once they cashed in their statuettes, they would have enough money to buy more land and build a home. That had been their plan, and so far everything had been working out perfectly.

  “So many people!” Angelique cried, looking around them as they neared New Orleans and began to come across other carriages and pedestrians. “It almost feels like Paris.”

  “Feels like Paris,” Jacques replied, smiling. “Smells like a chamber pot.”

  Jacques had expected the mood in the city to be festive, considering today was the day that forty-six other people were about to get the statuette they had waited so long for. And though there were a lot of folks milling about, the mood seemed anything but light. In fact, almost every conversation they overheard was filled with griping and grumbling.

  After securing the carriage with a livery service near the port, Jacques and Angelique made their way on foot to the Place d’Arms, a large central open square flanked on one side by the river and on the other side by low, wood slat fencing, a sure sign of construction to come. A crowd had already gathered there on the grass, and it seemed everyone was waiting for the agent of M. Law to appear and give out the treasure they had coming to them. Off to one side, Jacques could see a soldier standing guard over a trunk, the very same trunk from three years before. Just looking at it made Jacques ache with longing for his papa.

  At precisely noon, a man entered the Place d’Arms and stepped up on a wooden box so that he could be seen and heard over the crowd. No doubt Freneau’s replacement, the man announced that the three-year waiting period for the statuettes was over, and that those statuettes would be distributed today. His clerk had a list of the passengers who had sailed on the Beau Séjour and were eligible to claim the reward. He began reading through the list, and each person as their name was called came forward and accepted their prize. When the man finished reading off the ship’s roster and called out Jacques’ name, people began grumbling, reluctant to let Jacques make his way to the front to claim his prize.

  “Why does he get one?” someone called out.

  “Yeah, he wasn’t on our ship,” another added.

  As Jacques finally made it through and was handed his statuettes, the man in charge told the crowd that Jacques was a special case, a man cheated by John Law and who was being awarded restitution by the French government.

  “What are you doing with the rest of them?” someone yelled.

  “Yeah, what happens to the ones that were supposed to go to all the people who died?”

  The crowd was getting angry. One man yelled that he lost his wife and two children on that voyage and that he felt like he deserved their statuettes. He was probably telling the truth, but then ten more men shouted out, claiming that their wife and six children, eight children, twelve children had died, and they deserved their statuettes. The crowd worked themselves up in a frenzy, so much so that the man’s answer could not be heard. Finally, he gestured to the soldier, who fired into the air. The resounding boom caught everyone’s attention and soon they were again quiet.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, bear with me and I will attempt to explain the situation more fully. As you know, M. Law was not one hundred percent honest in his enticements to bring people to the New World. In all fairness, the populating of an entire territory is not an easy task.”

  An angry chorus of boos discouraged the man from justifying Law’s actions again.

  “In any event, you may recall M. Law saying that the gold for these statuettes had come from here, from the Louisiana territory. That, in fact, was a lie. The gold he used for the statuettes had been smuggled into France from Spain. The reason the royal goldsmith said that it was as fine as the finest gold from the Spanish territories in the New World is because the gold was from the Spanish territories of the New World. Law had procured the gold himself and lied to the royal goldsmith about its origins.”

  Jacques remembered the original propaganda that had been circulated by Law, posters and brochures that promised one could simply walk down the streets here and scoop up gold and diamonds by the handful. It had sounded ludicrous even then, but once Jacques had arrived in Louisiana he had seen for himse
lf that it was not true. The only things one might scoop up by the handfuls here were mud, mosquitoes, and snakes.

  “Given that France has strict sumptuary laws preventing the export of this type of gold,” the man continued, “you will understand why the whole load is in violation of French law and should never have been sent here in the first place. The remaining statuettes, therefore, will be returned to France, where they will go back into the royal treasury. It is only by the goodness of the regent’s heart that he has agreed to honor the original promise made to you all by M. Law and allow me to distribute these here today.”

  The goodness of the regent’s heart? As far as Jacques knew, he’d been as culpable in this as Law was! The regent was only serving until Louis XV was old enough to rule France for himself, and Jacques could only hope that would happen soon!

  “How do we know these aren’t fakes?” one man called out.

  That seemed to rile up the crowd a bit, as they were all wondering the same thing.

  “There has been some confusion about a second, duplicate set of statuettes. The truth is, a second set was made, but from my understanding there was a mix-up at the last minute, and the wrong ones were sent here by mistake.”

  “I knew it! They gave us the wrong ones!”

  “Yes, but that is to your benefit,” the man insisted, trying to explain that the wrong ones were solid gold and the right ones were gilded.

  Things began to turn ugly very quickly after that. Jacques realized what was happening, and it was simply a confusion between the crowd and the agent as to what they each were saying.

  No matter how hard the man tried to explain, the crowd simply didn’t get it. When the agent confirmed, for the third time, that the statuettes he had just handed out were indeed the wrong ones, the ones that weren’t supposed to come here, the entire gathering began to spiral out of control.

  “It’s a worthless piece of junk!” one man cried, and before anyone could stop him, he raised his arm behind his head and threw his statuette directly at the agent. It struck the man at the temple with a heavy thud, drawing blood and causing him to fall off of his platform.