by Tina DeSalvo
Ralph’s face reddened. “We took the woman into the family confidence and into their St. Charles Avenue mansion, and she stole from us…um…them. How despicable can a person get?”
“How do you know she actually stole from the estate if you’ve never recovered the stolen items?” Beau asked Claude. Ralph pointed his finger at Beau.
“Hell, man,” Ralph said, his voice sharp. His nostrils flared. “Who else could have done it? I know for a fact no one else had opportunity. I was there. I’m the one that called the police when…”
“Don’t say any more,” Frederick warned, holding up his hand, an easy smile on his lips. “I’m sorry, Beau. As a courtesy to our mutual friend, I’ve agreed to have this meeting. Specifics on the case, we can’t share with you.” He shook his head. “We can tell you she was in our employment as contract labor when the theft occurred. You know why she was there.”
Beau nodded, stood. He’d learned more than he knew before, such as Claude was willing to drop the charges if she returned the family jewelry she had stolen.
Allegedly stolen, Beau thought, hearing Elli’s voice in his head. Innocent until proven guilty. Hell, these men sure believed she was guilty.
Beau wished he could’ve learned more, especially how she’d allegedly stolen the family property. “If you have any information that I should know that might help me in any way to make sure this same crime isn’t repeated with my family, I would appreciate your telling me. You can advise me, without giving me specifics to your case.”
Frederick and Ralph stood. Claude remained in his seat.
“My advice? Don’t let her into your home,” Ralph spit out. “I hired her on the excellent recommendation of a friend. She had very impressive credentials.” He frowned and his light brows furrowed. “I only hire the very best for young Claude, as I did for his grandmother and his father. She conned me.”
“She conned you?”
Frederick walked around the desk and stepped in. “I must go now. I’m glad to have met you. You have an excellent reputation as a litigator, Beau. Not to mention our friend, Stewart, thinks the world of you.” He shook his hand and patted him on the back, turning him toward the door to leave.
“Thank you for meeting with me.” He turned to Ralph and Claude. “Thank you, both. I’m sorry for your loss. I heard that Mrs. Monroe was a remarkable lady. The community will certainly miss her.”
Beau left the offices. On his way down in the elevator, he knew that even with what little he learned, Elli still wouldn’t fire Jewell. So nothing had changed except his suspicions were higher. He’d stay the course—continue to watch Jewell closely. Mignon’s ridiculous claims about living on the plantation and Jewell’s so-called investigation into it would give him cause to hound her like one of Ben’s hunting dogs chasing down a rabbit.
If he really needed a reason.
Protecting his family was reason enough.
***
Beau had gone straight to bed when he returned home from New Orleans after the meeting the night before. He knew Ben and Elli would already be asleep, and he would have to wait until the morning to tell them what he’d learned. He’d talk to them in person. Ben hated to talk on the phone. Besides, he knew Elli wouldn’t see the new information as reason to boot Jewell off Sugar Mill Plantation. Nothing changed her position that a person was innocent until proven guilty. Frankly, on many levels he didn’t really blame her. That didn’t mean Dr. Duet didn’t need watching. It only meant it was up to him to keep a focused eye on the Professor, as he’d already planned to do.
The morning dew hadn’t dried off the grass when Beau drove up to Sugar Mill, yet already there were a half-dozen vehicles parked in the driveway, including T-Bob’s Haulin’ As You Wish moving trailer. He knew Elli had hired T-Bob to move a few of their personal furnishings, including Ben and Joey’s favorite recliners, to the refurbished old slave cottages at the kennel. They'd be staying there when they returned from their beach vacation next week. The advance movie crew would arrive before then to prepare for the filming at the barn and the big house.
Tante Izzy’s vintage, nearly neon pink pickup truck and Ruby’s red Caddie were parked in the mix. Those ladies were definitely taking their job as sitters very seriously. They had promised Beau they’d arrive for breakfast, and it looked like they had with the way the camper was bouncing around from a lot of movement inside. It probably hadn’t occurred to them to take their ward into the big house to prepare breakfast, Beau thought with a smile. Man, he sure would’ve liked to have been a fly on the wall to see Jewell managing those two pushy, well-meaning women in her tiny Airstream camper. Especially when they had arrived with their arms laden with enough food to feed the entire Bienvenu clan. Beau knew they had done that since they had told him they would. The food was the reason he suspected there were several other cars he recognized in the driveway. His reason for being there had more to do with the meeting the night before in New Orleans than a delicious breakfast. He had to keep his eye on the woman who the three men he met with believed was a thief and who had conned the Monroe family.
He glanced at his cell phone, both out of habit and necessity. He was always careful managing his time. Time was money in his busy workday. It was eight thirty, and he’d already had an early meeting with a client and rescheduled a deposition because another client had gotten a virus. Since it was Tuesday, he’d surprised his office staff by telling them they could go home after lunch. He had the rest of the day off, if he chose not to spend it catching up on paperwork. Of course, dealing with Jewell was work too.
Beau knocked on the closed camper door and Ruby answered it right away. The sweet and smoky scents of breakfast breads and bacon greeted him before Ruby did.
“Hello, Beau,” she smiled, fluffing her poof of collar-length red hair.
He adored Ruby. She might be a bit of a gossipy pain in the neck sometimes, but she had a heart as big as her eighties-styled hair and a personality as bright as the canary yellow knit top and pants she wore. No doubt about it, with her spiky heels that made her middle-aged body waddle unsteadily and her obvious questions about his clients and love life, she was someone he usually avoided…unless he was in the mood to have a little fun with her.
Teasing Ruby was a sport for Ben and him. Even though she was ten years older than they were, it had been that way since they were young boys. They could lead her on with some tall tale for an hour before one of them cracked. Usually him. She had a great sense of humor about it, too, and Beau wondered if she played along with their games as much as she fell victim to them.
Beau leaned in and gave Ruby a friendly kiss on the cheek, sneaking a peek inside the camper as he did. Yep, just as he figured. There were eight, or maybe ten people, casually squeezed into the very tight quarters. He didn’t see Jewell among them.
"You want to come in?” Ruby looked behind her and narrowed her eyes. “I think there's room in the back bedroom area if you sit on the corner of one of the single beds. Maybe on the left one where Steve is finishing his pain perdu.” She laughed. “Oh, wait, I think there’s room on the floor next to Jewell’s desk. We can put a cushion down for you there.”
Beau’s stomach grumbled. He loved pain perdu or, as most everyone else in the world called it, French toast. He just didn’t love being packed in like a sardine to eat. “How about you pass me a plate. I’ll eat out here.”
She nodded. “Okay, I figured you’d say that.” As she moved away from the door, Tante Izzy and Mignon were directly in his line of sight. They waved to him, but kept talking in French, as they pushed needles through white tube socks with red thread. Jewell’s socks? Did anyone really wear tube socks anymore other than little old men with brown dress shoes and plaid Bermuda shorts? It amused him to imagine her wearing them inside of those expressive rubber boots of hers.
“Here you go.” Ruby handed him a white dinner plate with some sort of blue detail hidden beneath a two-inch high stack of pain perdu, covered with cane syrup
and confectioners’ sugar. A mound of crisp, still sizzling bacon and several slices of dark pink watermelon made finding a handhold tricky. “Is that enough?” she asked with all sincerity.
Enough to feed him and the Cane High School football team’s defensive line, he thought, accepting the plate. “Thanks, darlin’. It’s perfect.”
He turned to leave, but Ruby stopped him. “Oh, wait, Beau. I need you to return something to the plantation kitchen.” Beau nodded. Ruby reached into a purse on a side table not far from the door and retrieved a pair of salt and pepper shakers. She handed them to him. “These belong on the kitchen table. Mignon took them.” She raised her eyebrows and shook her head. “She sure seems fond of them.”
“That she does.” He smiled. “Thanks for breakfast.” He took his meal into the quiet plantation and placed the salt and pepper shakers on the table in their usual spot. He poured himself a glass of organic milk and sat at the kitchen table to enjoy his food alone. That was how he usually had breakfast and dinner. The way he preferred it. Lunch was either surrounded by paper work in his office, which he enjoyed, or with a client, which he tolerated. He loved being with his Bienvenu family and he enjoyed working and meeting new clients, yet he was most content eating alone. He didn't need a shrink to tell him that it was a byproduct of going off alone during his domestically violent childhood and finding a small measure of peace.
As he savored the meal, he recalled his childhood and how his brother Jackson would fight him for the last strip of bacon. Reaching for his milk, he glanced up, and down the hallway saw Jewell heading toward the stairs to the second floor. Even though it was daylight and the house was filled with a lot of natural light, she had her head lamp turned on. The light, coupled with her tool belt strapped around her slender waist told Beau she was ready for work. He wasn’t sure what her pumpkin orange rubber boots said or even what was painted on them. He did note, however, that her jeans were tucked inside the boots and she wore her usual blue logoed work shirt. Her hair was in the usual single ponytail, too.
A surge of irrational anger filled him. What in the hell is she doing in the house? Her job was out in the barn. Not wandering around the main house unsupervised. And even though he doubted there was room to slide a pilfered piece of paper into the pocket of those tight jeans, he didn't trust her any further than he could throw her.
Damn it, she'd just ruined a perfectly enjoyable breakfast and moment of peace. He pushed aside the pain perdu, shoved the last piece of bacon into his mouth and followed her upstairs.
He didn’t see her anywhere.
He walked through the guest bedroom floor-to-ceiling window that served as doors to the upper galerie. Then, he walked around the three sides of the galerie and still didn’t see her.
“Are you a ghost with sticky fingers, Boots?” he whispered, turning to walk back to the guest bedroom. That’s when he spotted the closed double-wide doors along the exterior wall. In all the years he’d played and hung out on that balcony, he’d never noticed the doors before. He supposed that’s because they always had their backs toward the wall where it was located as they dropped things over the side railing or tossed them into the yard toward the bayou. These hidden doors were faced with the same siding as the house, and had tiny wooden doorknobs painted white, so they blended into the wall. He pulled on the door to the right, having to give it a hard jerk to get it open. Stairs led up directly in front of him.
Now this was a surprise. A secret passage? Wouldn’t this have been fun for him to know about as a boy playing hide and seek? He guessed Ben must not have known about it back then, either, or he would’ve told him.
Beau leaned in further and heard the faint sound of singing. Not that he'd call the barely recognizable, off-key rendition of Sheryl Crow’s tune, “If It Makes You Happy,” singing.
Climbing the extra wide, thick, unpainted cypress stairs two at a time, he realized the hidden staircase had been designed to haul large items into the attic. Clever architecture. The singing got louder as he neared the top. When he reached the landing his eyes scanned the huge attic, which covered the entire width and length of the house. A fluorescent light illuminated the center of the large space, leaving the corners dully lit by the natural light of the dormer windows. Jewell was in the paler light toward the right corner, swinging her hips and dancing. She kept beat with the song she was belting out at the top of her lungs, clearly not worried about disturbing anyone in the house from way up here. Wearing white cotton gloves, she smiled at the faded blue bonnet she was holding.
“I thought we had a deal,” he said, containing the anger that had started to build when he first saw her in the house. She didn’t respond. She kept dancing and shaking her pretty derrière. He walked up behind her and repeated what he said. As she began the second chorus and bent over to reach into the chest in front of her, her bottom bumped against his thigh. He was already aroused, seeing her dancing like smooth sex and singing like a sick duck. Having her making physical contact pretty much sent him over the top.
She jumped forward, gasped and turned, one gloved hand to her throat like a Victorian maiden. “God! What are you doing here?” Her voice came out in a breathy rush. Forget the smooth sex; with a voice and body like that, there would be nothing smooth about it.
“I was just about to ask you the same thing.” She shook her head, pulled off her ear buds. The music was blaring loud enough for him to hear Sheryl Crow singing as the song should be sung. “Since I know there are better places for karaoke and dance clubs, I think you’re up in this hot attic for reasons other than that. Reasons, I thought we agreed you would not explore without me.”
She sighed, rubbed the back of her neck. “I hate having to explain everything I do to you as if I’m a common criminal,” she looked at him, “which I’m not.” She lowered the volume on her iPhone. “Elli and I were talking over breakfast in the camper about the barn and what still needed to be done and one thing led to another. Next thing I knew we were discussing the plantation attic.” She shrugged. “We came to take a look together. She said there wasn’t much here but, oh, Beau, what’s here is magnificent.”
She turned to the four chests and three boxes in front of her. “Each of these chests is French, dating back to the late 1700s. They probably came over to the plantation with the original owner. The wooden boxes? I don’t know what’s inside all of them.” She squatted in front of the chest nearest her. “But this one has baby clothes in it.” With the clean, pristine white gloves covering her hands, she lifted a thin, faded white cotton baby bonnet from the open chest and ran her hand lovingly over it. It looked like an old, dull handkerchief to Beau, but by the radiant look on her face, what she held was something special to Jewell.
He wondered if she ever looked at a man that way. Oh, hell, he hated that he thought such a ridiculous thing.
“All of that's well and good,” he said, looking at the bonnet again. Hell, he'd tossed out dress shirts in better condition than that old thing. “But you weren’t supposed to go near any of this stuff without me.” He squatted next to her and closed the chest. He looked at her. “You’ve contaminated the evidence.”
“Evidence? Is this a crime scene? Are we going to court? What are you talking about contaminating evidence?” She stood, bumped him as she walked away toward the stairs. Before going down, she turned, looked at the boxes, the chests, then him. He could see she was torn with distancing herself from him or staying with the old crap behind him. “For the record, Counselor, while I’m going through inventory, I would never, ever, contaminate history.”
She took a few steps back into the room, and the natural light through the dormer shone on her hair, capturing strands of red and gold.
“I preserve it. I record it. I honor it.” She glared at him.
If looks could manifest, he'd be in a broken heap at the foot of the stairs by now. Nope, she was definitely not a Victorian maiden. More like a bare-knuckle brawler. That image made him smile. Her eyebrows f
urrowed. She stomped her boot hard on the unstained wooden floor.
“I’m a historian, damn it.”
Fleurs-de-lis. Gold and brown and green fleurs-de-lis. That’s what was on her orange rubber boots today. He stood and walked up to her. “Such passion, Boots. Or is it?” Shit. He wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe the theft at the Monroe home was a mistake, a misunderstanding. It would make his life less complicated. Besides all that, hell, she was so damn believable. In a hot, sexy way. Crap. That’s what made her so unbelievable. Was it his lust thinking? Not logic. Confidence games worked because the people who conducted them were believable. They played on the victims’ weaknesses. Was she becoming his? Ridiculous.
He’d be damned if he allowed her indignation or her annoyance to sway him. She'd agreed to his terms. Now she had to abide by them. “We look together. That’s the deal.”
“I’m not used to checking in with someone every time I move from one space to the next.” She shook her head. Then, as he’d seen her do earlier, rubbed the back of her neck.
Did she pull a muscle? Was she feeling tension there? Not his concern, he reminded himself.
“It’s very annoying,” she said, her voice even, but there was no mistaking her annoyance with him. “It’s a waste of time. It’s unnecessary. Besides, I’m sure you have to go to court or do whatever lawyering it is that you do.”
“I have the rest of the day off.” He crossed his arms over his chest, widened his stance and stood his ground.
She exhaled, looked up, then away. “Yeah, I get it. You don’t trust me.” She faced him again. “We look together. That’s the deal.” She sounded resigned but not dejected. She threw back her shoulders, stiffened her spine. “I want to look here, now.” She waved in a large sweeping movement indicating the attic. “Elli hired a moving crew to group the furniture in the barn for me, to save time. They have stronger backs and the right equipment to move the heavy pieces so I can actually get to them. I have to stay out of their way.” She stuffed her hands in her back pockets. “I tagged each piece in the barn with colored labels earlier this morning. They’re placing each item into the corresponding color-coded squares I taped on the floor.”