Blood Ties in Chef Voleur

by Mallory Kane

  Ta Mémé, Lilibelle Guillame Delancey

  20 Février 2001

  Even with all the words he couldn’t decipher, Jack was sure that Lilibelle’s letter was her confession.

  He sat back and watched Cara Lynn. She was bent over Papi’s letter and seemed to be having as much trouble reading it as he’d had reading Lili’s. But for her, penmanship was not the problem. Papi’s words were written in neat block letters. It had to be the content that Cara Lynn was frowning over.

  When, at long last, she looked up, he saw sadness and fear in her expression. For a long moment, the two of them stared at each other. Jack could read her thoughts as easily as if she’d spoken. She knew, just as he did, that each one of them held a document that could potentially destroy the Delancey family, if the words were true.

  Alone, neither could be called evidence, but together they might be enough to convince a judge to reopen the case and allow DNA evidence to be presented, especially if the indecipherable words in Lili Guillame’s letter said what Jack was sure they did. And Jack believed with all his heart that his grandfather’s DNA would not be on the murder weapon. The police report he had indicated that there were two types of blood on the weapon, O positive and O negative. Con Delancey had O negative blood, while Lilibelle and his grandfather both had O positive.

  But right now, he wasn’t willing to share that much with Cara Lynn. He wasn’t yet sure he could trust her. She hadn’t promised him that she wouldn’t go to her brothers. If she told them about the possibility of DNA testing, would they intercept and block his request?

  Jack stood and stretched, then went around the table and opened the refrigerator door. “Want some water?” he asked.

  “Hmm?”

  He looked at her. She was still looking down at the letter in her hand. Obviously she hadn’t heard him.

  “Water?” he said again.

  “Oh. Yes, please.”

  He set a bottle beside her and went back to his chair. As he sat, she reached for her grandmother’s letter.

  He snatched it up. “Hang on. I can’t read everything. I want to take another look at it.”

  “No. I want it back,” Cara Lynn said. “I don’t want anything to happen to it.”

  “Hey,” he said, holding it out of reach when she tried to take it again. “Watch out. I’ll give it back to you when I’m done with it.”

  “I don’t want it torn or wrinkled.”

  “Then stop grabbing for it. Come on, Cara Lynn, why would I want to destroy your grandmother’s letter to you. It confirms what my grandfather said. He didn’t kill Con Delancey. She did.”

  “What?” Cara Lynn snapped. “She does not say that.”

  “Oh, come on. She says right here, ‘I shall wait until you marry to give you the last journal. Not until you have a love of your own, can you know the joy and heartbreak of love and then perhaps, you can understand why I did something, something—”

  “Well something is not kill my husband.”

  “No,” Jack said. “But I think it says did what I did or what I had to do. Then she goes on to say, ‘My hope is that you hide or something the journal, but I will be gone so it is yours. Do what you will with it. Nothing can something me any longer and I do not something anything.’ I’m sure that’s nothing can hurt me and I do not regret anything.”

  “You don’t know that. You said you couldn’t read her writing.”

  “I can read it well enough to figure out what she’s saying.” He waved the letter. “You can’t deny that this sounds like a confession.”

  Cara Lynn thumped the paper with her knuckles. “I can deny it all I want to. This isn’t proof of anything. It’s your grandfather’s word against—against...hers. Now give me my letter,” she said, folding his grandfather’s letter and handing it back to him.

  “In a minute. I want to ask you something first.”

  “Give me my letter!” she demanded, reaching for it.

  “Cara, damn it, stop. If you want to get into a scuffle, I’ll guarantee you I can take you. And if you think I won’t because you’re a girl, then keep grabbing at the letter.”

  She crossed her arms, leaned back in her chair and fixed him with a stony glare. “Fine. Go ahead.”

  He held onto the letter while he spoke. “I need you to promise me that you won’t tell your family about all this.”

  She laughed. It was a short burst that had no humor in it. “Are you kidding me?” she said incredulously.

  “No. I’m not kidding. I’m absolutely serious. If I’m going to trust you to work with me to find out the truth about who killed your grandfather, I’ve got to know you won’t betray me to your family.”

  “Betray— You’ve got a lot of gall, asking me to promise you something like that.”

  “Oh, and I need to know if you’ve already told anybody and who they are. All of them.”

  “Who would I have told? I just found out.”

  “Not just. You found out yesterday morning, didn’t you, when you came back by the apartment to change clothes and found my notepad,” he said. “You’ve seen your mother since then, and who knows who else. You could have told all of them for all I know. And of course, you have a phone. You could have told the entire Delancey clan, hell—most of the city, by now.”

  “I—didn’t,” she said evenly, although how she made her voice even he didn’t know. Because her expression was twisted into a mask of anger and something else he couldn’t quite identify. Could it be hurt? Had he hurt her feelings?

  “First of all, I’ve already promised not to reveal your ‘true identity—’” she surrounded the two words with air quotes “—to any of my family.

  “As for all this—” she gestured at his briefcase and the letter from his grandfather. “How can I talk to them about all this and not tell them about you? So I think I’ve covered that. Now, you have to promise me the same thing.”

  “The same thing?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean don’t tell your family. And for sure as hell, don’t tell my family.”

  Jack shook his head tiredly. “My family consists of my mom, who lives in Florida with her sister. Papi was my dad’s father. So Mom cares nothing about all this. All she cares about is that her murderer father-in-law is finally dead. So you don’t have to worry about my family.” He heard the bitterness in his voice and was a little surprised. He’d never spent much time thinking about how his mother had reacted to his grandfather’s imprisonment. His dad had already been sick at the time and died only a couple of years later. That was probably at least part of the reason that he, Jack, had been so close to his grandfather. Papi had filled the role of father for him.

  He and his mom talked, and he visited her during the holidays, so he supposed they were as close as many mothers and sons. But, when his grandfather died, Jack had felt as though he’d lost his family. Maybe that was why clearing his grandfather’s name was so important to him.

  He just wished he’d started digging for the truth years before, instead of waiting until after Papi had died.

  “Jack?” Cara Lynn said. “Will you promise?”

  He shook his head sharply and blew out a frustrated breath. “Sure. I promise I won’t tell my family.”

  “Or friends, or my family. I don’t want my family upset for what’s probably no reason.”

  “Or friends or your family,” he repeated. “I solemnly swear.”

  “You don’t have to be so
sarcastic about it,”

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, sliding the sheet of fine parchment paper across the table to her. When she took it, he saw her fingers trembling. She carefully folded it and stuck it back into its fragile envelope. Then she rubbed her temple shakily. “Thanks,” she said shortly. “Now, I’ve got a headache. I’m going to bed.” She stood, gripping the back of her chair.

  “What’s the matter?” Jack asked.

  She shook her head, then rubbed her temple again. “Nothing. I think I forgot to eat. I’ll be fine.”

  “I could fix you a sandwich—”

  Cara Lynn held up a hand, her expression pained. “Don’t!” she said. “Don’t start offering to do things for me. We may still have a marriage license binding us together, but as far as I’m concerned, you and I—” she pointed back and forth between them “—are nothing.”

  Chapter Seven

  Paul was becoming desperate. He’d spent his entire adult life as caretaker of Claire Delancey’s Garden District home, while she lived in France. He’d struck a deal with her to live there rent-free and care for, repair and renovate the beautiful but decaying old home.

  Now Claire was dead and her will stated that her home and all current furnishings and décor would go, not to Paul, but to her newly found granddaughter, Hannah Martin. Suddenly, it occurred to Paul that he was about to be homeless.

  It had only been a matter of a couple of months since Claire had told him she’d reconnected with her estranged daughter, who was dying from liver failure and waiting for a transplant. To Claire’s surprise and delight, her daughter had a child—Hannah, who was twenty-six years old.

  It had all come to light when Hannah witnessed a murder and fled to New Orleans to ask for help from her mother’s best friend, and instead had met the best friend’s son, MacEllis Griffin—one of Dawson’s D&D Security investigators. The two of them had been instrumental in breaking up a drug distribution ring and rescuing Hannah’s mother, who’d been kidnapped and left for dead.

  At the time, Paul had been happy for Claire, not considering what her newfound family would mean to him. Somewhere along the line, while he’d been living on Claire’s money and doing his favorite things—remodeling and redecorating, he’d lost track of what belonged to him and what did not.

  Claire’s lawyers hadn’t mentioned her checking account on which he was signatory, but he knew it was only a matter of time before they’d get around to closing it. Luckily, he’d recently bought materials to overhaul the two-story porch that wrapped around the entire front of the house. He’d already made a deposit to his own account in the Cayman Islands.

  He sat at the French Provincial writing table in Claire’s master suite, comparing his bankbook from his Cayman account with Claire’s household checking account. Beside the account book was the police scanner he liked to listen to. The night had been quiet, very few break-ins or domestic disputes, and nothing more serious than that. He turned it off and picked up his tumbler of bourbon and stared at the account book in front of him.

  Over the past twenty-plus years, he’d spent every bit of the money Claire had given him in quarterly transfers. The issue, if the lawyers discovered it, was that less than half of Claire’s money had gone into the house. The rest he’d spent on himself.

  To Paul, that seemed perfectly reasonable, given that in his opinion, redoing an entire twenty-five hundred square foot house from roof to foundation over a period of a couple of decades was a full-time job. However, he couldn’t be sure that her lawyers and accountants would agree that a caretaker’s personal expenses other than shelter over twenty years equaled approximately three million dollars. After all, that was only a hundred and fifty thousand a year.

  Looking at his Cayman account balance, he was extraordinarily pleased with himself that he’d managed to pad material and labor expenses enough to sock away just over a million. Not a bad retirement, he thought, sipping bourbon, for a job well done.

  Despite what the lawyers might suspect, he felt relatively confident that there was nothing they could prosecute him for. He and Claire had set up this arrangement verbally. And as quickly as possible, he’d switched their correspondence from telephone to email, so he had proof of what she had expected from him. He had saved every email she’d ever sent him, even the few where she’d requested explanations for what had seemed to her outrageous expenses.

  Because, even when she complained, she still had stated over and over that she had expected him to spend money on the house and to compensate himself. Not only that, he had sent her photos of progress on specific projects, and he’d saved those emails, too.

  Claire’s death was extremely annoying. Paul knew he was going to be harassed by the accountants and lawyers, and forced to produce two decades of receipts and invoices and bank statements. And, once all that was over, he was probably going to have to leave New Orleans. And none of those were even his biggest problem.

  What was feeding his panic was something much worse. Claire had sent Lilibelle Guillame’s priceless tiara and her last and most revealing personal journal to Cara Lynn on the occasion of her marriage. And Paul knew that even if the lawyers or accountants found discrepancies in his record-keeping, his fiduciary indiscretions of the past twenty years couldn’t hold a candle to what he had done twenty-eight years ago. If the truth about Con Delancey’s death ever came out, the Delanceys would destroy him.

  But every moment that he did not have the journal in his hands was another chance for someone to read it and find out what had really happened that fateful day, twenty-eight years ago.

  He didn’t have the journal, but he did have an important piece of information that he was pretty certain nobody else had, except the little princess, Cara Lynn. They were the only ones who knew there had been a letter in the box. And she had it.

  Paul had seen her catch the white paper in her fingers just as the lights had gone out. He’d counted the seconds until the emergency generator kicked in and was looking directly at Cara Lynn when the lights turned on again. She was slipping the bit of white into her small evening clutch.

  He couldn’t swear that what he’d seen was a letter. But he would bet it was. It only made sense that Lili or Claire or both of them would write a note to accompany the gift. Whether it had been written by Lili or Claire, whether it was a long letter or a brief note, it could contain information harmful to him.

  He had made plans from the beginning for getting into Cara Lynn’s house on the pretense of helping her with her genealogy research. However, she’d already put him off several times, claiming she was too busy, so he was going to have to change his plans. One way or another, he had to get his hands on that letter—and soon.

  Picking up his tumbler of bourbon, listening to the ice pinging against the sides of the glass, he walked over to the bed. He dropped his dressing gown and climbed under the covers, propping himself up against the headboard. As he sipped the whisky, he thought about the best way to get that letter.

  Picking up his cell phone, he paged through his call log, looking for the name he’d called a few times before, when he’d needed help. As he watched the names slide by, he asked himself if he was confident that if he did this, he could keep Cara Lynn from being hurt.

  He spotted the name and clicked on it.

  * * *

  CARA LYNN WOKE in the dark, her head pounding. She couldn’t see. Someone had turned off the lights or covered the windows or blocked out the sun. It was hard to breathe, too. She tried to turn over and couldn’t.

  Her head was covered. Her nose was pressed into the mattress. She clawed at the covers, trying to loosen them so she could get a full breath.

  She had a vague recollection of taking migraine medication and lying down. She must have gotten twisted in the covers. She rolled her head back on her neck—or tried to. But th
e covers were too tight.

  Panic rose like bile in her throat and she sucked in air desperately. She struggled to tear her way out of the covers. She had to have air. Forcing her mouth open, she wheezed and sucked every molecule of oxygen she could into her lungs.

  “Help—Jack!” she tried to scream. But no sound came out. She just wasted air. She got her arms under her and pushed, but something weighed her down. She couldn’t get any purchase with her legs, either. This wasn’t just twisted covers. She pushed against the weight again. This time she identified the source of the pressure. Something—a hand—on her head was pressing her face into the mattress.

  “Who—? Get off me!” she mumbled against the mattress.

  Then something cold and round pressed into the soft flesh of her neck.

  “Shut up!” a gruff, muffled voice said.

  Terror hit her chest like a fist, knocking what little air she had left from her lungs. “Can’t—breathe!” she rasped. “—can’t—”

  “Shut! Up! And be still!” the voice said, but the hand on the back of her head let up—a little. Her lungs spasmed and her head pounded as she finally managed to gulp in enough air to stop the burning in her chest. She pushed with her arms again, an instinctive move to gain some control of her body, but the hand on the back of her head shoved her back down and her face was mashed against the bedclothes again. Then the cold heaviness against her neck pressed harder, deeper—so deep it hurt.

  “Be still or I’ll shoot you!”

  Gun! Cara Lynn’s pulse throbbed where the barrel of the gun pressed into her neck. That increased the pain in her head and she felt nauseated. “Let me up,” she begged. “Who are—”

  “Don’t talk. Listen.”

  The voice echoed in her ears like the low, eerie growl of an alligator in the swamp at dusk.