Jewell (A Second Chance Novel Book 2)

by Tina DeSalvo

  “Don’t do anything.” She shoved him away. “I don’t need your help. I don’t want to involve you and your family in my problems. Those problems have nothing to do with my work for Elli or for Tante Izzy. Nothing. I don’t know any other way to say it. Why can’t you just believe what I’m telling you? If you don’t believe me, fine. I just need for you to not get in my way.” She turned her back to him. “Let me do my job.”

  He grabbed her shoulders from behind, but he didn’t turn her to face him. “I want you to do your job. Just not here.”

  Tears slipped quietly down her cheeks. She felt his struggle. She hated that she understood it and his loyalty to his family. It mirrored hers for Mimi. She swallowed back the pain and worry. Her problems with the criminal trial against her, with what to do with Mimi if she went to jail, with losing Mimi to dementia, with just getting through the next day…would not be resolved now in the upstairs of an eccentric, kind old lady’s home. She heard Mimi’s voice wafting up to the second floor from where she and Tante Izzy were watching television.

  “My daughter’s a celebrity like Ellen,” Mimi said, causing Jewell to flinch.

  She inhaled deeply. “I'll start with the first room here on the right.” She walked away from Beau’s heat, his strength, to go into the room alone.

  “Yeah, I know,” Beau said, walking into the room behind her, flipping on the light switch. “You don’t want to talk about your mother. Your celebrity mother. Or was that fantasy and confusion from Mignon’s dementia?”

  Jewell turned to face him, prepared to lie as she had her entire life. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t utter another deflecting tale or half-truth to hide the embarrassing reality of who her mother was. She’d suddenly and inexplicably reached her lifetime limit on lies about her mother.

  “No. It isn’t fantasy.” She looked directly into Beau’s beautiful eyes. Eyes that saw things in only black and white. Her tainted life fell mostly into the gray area. The darkest of grays. “My mother is very famous in New Orleans, Beau. Legendary. For the last thirty-plus years, she’s danced on dimly lit, seedy Bourbon Street stages wearing nothing but a G-string and tassels.” She paused, swallowed hard. “She's Miss Praline of the Crescent City Lantern Club.”

  ***

  Holy crap.

  Beau knew exactly who Jewell was talking about. Everyone in the state of Louisiana or men who traveled to the infamous Bourbon Street had heard of her. In fact, most of the men in the state and tens of thousands beyond had made pilgrimages to see her as a rite of passage when they turned twenty-one.

  Including himself.

  In fact, besides his going to see Miss Praline's show a number of times when he turned twenty-one, he’d been back to see her for several of his friends’ birthdays and bachelor parties over the years.

  Holy crap.

  Yeah, he knew who she was all right, and the resemblance between Jewell and her exotic and beautiful mother was unmistakable.

  Holy crap.

  "Miss Praline is your mother?"

  She nodded. “Not that she ever acted like one. Mimi was more of a mother to me.” She looked at her hands. “She never allowed me to call her Mother. She had me call her by her stage name, Praline.” She blew out a breath. “I’ve accepted the situation. I did long ago. I just don’t go around telling everyone that my fifty-one-year-old mother struts around in a G-string and tassels on a dimly lit stage on Bourbon Street in kinky six-inch heels. Not good for my business. It doesn’t attract the right clientele. And as you can imagine, it can cause other problems with people who make assumptions about me being like my mother or those wanting a personal introduction to her.”

  “Like you said earlier, not all of us get the picture-perfect, well-behaved plantation mothers and fathers we’ve grown to think are ideal.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets to keep from gathering the miserable woman in front of him in his arms. He wanted to. God knew he wanted to. She looked so damn vulnerable, like a woman who needed a hug…and reassurance.

  Damn. When had he turned into such a nice, charitable guy who wanted to soothe a woman who very well might be his enemy? Hell, maybe he didn’t really care about her feelings. Maybe he was the one who needed the reassurance? He’d let his guard down enough with Jewell that some old emotions—long believed to be resolved— from bad childhood memories had resurfaced to bite him on the ass. Maybe he’d been so busy watching out for the family that he’d forgotten to watch out for himself.

  Nah, that felt like a damn lie.

  He did care about her. He shouldn’t, but he did. His humanity was damn inconvenient. Her intellect, passion for her work, love for her grand-mère, vulnerability and her sassy independence made her likable. It also made her dangerous. She had all of the attributes to run a scam—intelligence, access to information on much of the family history and knowledge of how to use it or spin it to create the scenario to gain trust so she could accomplish her goal. That left him in a tight, dark crack. He liked her as a person but did he trust her? He had to answer that, once and for all, with complete confidence. Did he believe her claims that she was ethically beyond reproach and only cared about protecting and recording history? Or, did he believe that she was capable of scamming him and his family? Her legal troubles warned him to distrust her.

  If that wasn’t enough, he should take Tante Izzy’s concerns about Mignon into account. Tante Izzy had whispered to him on the front porch that she couldn’t stop thinking about the way Mignon was claiming that Sugar Mill was her home. His unpredictable old aunt had gone so far as to arrange for the manicurist, a Bienvenu relative, to give her Mignon’s cleaned fingernail clippings she collected during her manicure at the beauty parlor. She then mailed it to the lab that was used by the GENE ID Foundation that she was involved with. Tante Izzy was going to have a DNA analysis run on Mignon Duet to see if she was related to the Bienvenus. It was a shocking and not so legal thing to do, but an efficient way to get at the truth.

  A truth that had nothing to do with Jewell’s mother being the celebrity stripper, Miss Praline.

  “Okay. Now you know,” she continued. “I just ask that you keep it to yourself. Can you do that?”

  He thought about it for a moment before answering. “As long as it doesn’t affect Elli and Ben or the rest of my family, I won’t bring up your mother.” He sure as hell hoped he wouldn’t think about it too much either. The idea that the buttoned-up, brilliant professor of Louisiana history in the quirky rubber boots was the daughter of the luscious, buxom queen of Bourbon Street was a dichotomy that played with a man’s mind. Was she the way she was today because of her mother’s behavior and choices? Of course she was. “I’m not sure your grandmother will be so discreet.”

  Jewell shrugged, her eyes counteracting the casual gesture. Her mother’s onstage persona troubled her a great deal. Beau wondered which had hurt her more...a mother who was a stripper or a mother who clearly was not maternal. He knew it was the latter. “That can’t be helped.”

  “You know, I get why you don’t want to be associated with Miss Praline of the Crescent City Lantern Club. I’m sure it was especially tough when you were a teenager.” He ran a hand through his hair. “My mother wasn’t Betty Crocker, either.” She looked at him, her eyes bright with an emotion that he could only label as hopeful. Hopeful of what, though? Hopeful that he would be understanding? That he was falling into her scam? “Yeah, well, having an alcoholic mother or a stripper mother…”

  “The most infamous stripper in Louisiana history, who refused to age out of the business when she was well beyond the age when most girls in her profession did,” she corrected.

  “Yeah, well, I get why that can suck, but it could’ve been worse.” Her eyes widened. He leaned against the wall and crossed his ankles.

  “Don’t try to put this into a pretty, shiny pink box when it belongs in a tattered, smudged one, Beauregard Bienvenu.”

  “I won’t.” Damn that urge to take her in his arms. “What I was going to
say was that you didn’t get the dream mother or father as a kid, but you were lucky to get a wonderful grandmother who loves you.”

  “Yes. Thank God.” Jewell sucked in a ragged breath. “I can never repay her for what she’s done for me.”

  Was this really what her life had become, a mission to pay back her grandmother for rescuing her from the influence of her mother’s wanton world? Or was it a scam to pretend it was her quest? Maybe it was both. And how did the possible criminal charges pending against her play into this?

  It certainly made sense that the motivation for a scam to get at Martine’s trust could be for Jewell to give back to Mignon what she couldn’t give her on her own.

  “I feel your pain,” he said, purposely looking as though he felt no pain at all. Just trying to project an image of apathy, skepticism. “I’m an empathetic guy.” He folded his arms over his chest. “But don’t expect me to feel too much, Boots. I won’t let this sad tale of a less than ideal mother weaken my resolve to protect my family. I won’t let it lessen my defenses. Whether or not that was your intention.”

  “Whether or not it was my intention?” She closed her eyes for a brief moment, obviously trying to control the anger that made the tips of her ears turn red. “Well, we’re even on that point, Guardian of the Bienvenu world. I won’t let your zealous, gladiator attitude stop me from attaining my goals either.”

  She turned away from him, taking her cell phone out of her pocket. She began to snap photos of the dark walnut antique four-poster bed and the faded lace-trimmed canopy draped over the top. She moved around the room, snapping photos of the other well-preserved furniture pieces, old porcelain dolls and stack of folded quilts. When she finished in the first room, she moved to the next room and the next, doing the same thing. Her movements were as brisk and unemotional as the few necessary questions she had to ask him while in each of the dusty, stale, warm rooms. When she finished with her photos she headed down the creaky wooden stairs without a backward glance.

  ***

  Tante Izzy, Ruby and two other women she didn’t recognize waited for her at the foot of the stairs. They all smiled at her, looking as sweet as each of the different heavy fragrant perfumes they wore. “I tole them not to bodder you,” Tante Izzy said. “But they wouldn’t take ‘go and leave my house’ as an answer.”

  The three women began speaking at the same time. With their heavy Cajun accents, and fast-talking excited voices speaking over one another, it sounded like they were underwater. It was muddled, loud and almost incomprehensible.

  “I’ll wait for you and Mignon in my car outside,” Beau said in an even voice that she somehow heard clearly over the jumble of noise in front of her.

  “Coward.” She frowned at him.

  “No. I’m just smart, me,” he said, his Cajun accent heavy and smooth. He grinned, looking so ridiculously sexy and charming that despite her wanting to remain unmoved by this man whom she knew viewed her as the enemy, Jewell’s body reacted. Her insides warmed, making her feel flushed. Then, in easy movements that looked like an agile dance, he kissed Tante Izzy on the cheek, avoided her bright lips that tried to return his affection, flirted and wooed the chaos of women with a wave, wink and a look, then sauntered out of the house.

  “Wow. He’s good.” The room had gone silent a millisecond before she spoke and her words sat in the room like an early morning fog.

  “I think she’s sweet on our Beau,” said the tall, fifty-plus-year-old woman standing next to Ruby with the short brown hair, wearing the blue maxi dress.

  “Are they dating?” The other woman whom Jewell didn’t know and who appeared to be in her middle sixties looked at Ruby for an answer to her question.

  “Of course not. Don’t be silly. He’s just hanging out with her for other reasons,” Ruby answered. It shouldn’t matter, but her response hurt. The ladies seemed satisfied with Ruby’s answer and began speaking at the same time again. This time Jewell understood some of what they were saying. They were there to hire her to purge their houses, attics and garages. They wanted to have garage sales, too.

  She held up her hand. “Ladies.” Their voices lowered. “Ladies,” she repeated and they quieted. “I would love to discuss working for the three of you. Please call me, so we can make an appointment to discuss your jobs.”

  “Me first,” Ruby said. “You know I asked first, Jewell.”

  Five minutes later she was in Beau’s car without Mimi. Tante Izzy, Ruby, and the other two ladies she now knew were Pearl and Beth, were taking Mimi with them to the St. Anthony’s bible study and the late afternoon potluck social afterward.

  “How did you get out of going to bible study?” Beau asked, driving away from the house.

  “If you had hung around and not hid in the kitchen, you’d know that I told them that if I went with them, I would never have time to get to their jobs.” She smiled. “They practically pushed me out of the house.”

  He laughed. “Good one.”

  “I’m smart like dat, me,” she said, mimicking the Cajun accent he’d laid on her earlier.

  “Dat you are, chère.”

  She rested her head against the back of the seat. When they were joking with one another like this, she really enjoyed his company. It was nice to be with someone her age…some who had a good sense of humor and quick wit.

  “I got an idea when I was talking to your cousins, Pearl, Beth and Ruby about bible study,” she said, closing the vent blasting cold air on her. “I had mentioned it earlier in the attic as one of our research options. I think it should be a priority. I need to look for the original Bienvenu family bible. The one that Martine’s name is in.”

  “How do you know Aguste had the family bible, and that Martine’s name is in it?” He lowered the fan speed on the car air conditioning. The man didn’t miss anything. He observed her every movement and he stayed focus on the conversation. It was both admirable and disconcerting.

  “I don’t know for sure,” she responded, looking at the acres of sugar cane fields along the roadside. “I’m hypothesizing based on what was usual and customary for the French people who lived on Louisiana plantations of that time.” This felt right. This felt comfortable. This was what she understood. “Even most nonreligious families owned a family bible. That’s because the major selling pitch by door-to-door bible salesmen was that it could be used for the “records” or “register” section, which is usually located in the center or between the Old and New Testaments.”

  “Good marketing by the publishers.”

  “Yes, it sold a lot of bibles, but it actually did serve a need. When the bibles were purchased or received as a gift, these special pages were blank. It represented such hope and anticipation for young families who couldn’t wait to use pen and ink to fill the lines with names, dates of births, marriages and even deaths. It recorded their lives. Some family record keepers put in other notations of important family events or included slips of papers or noteworthy certificates.”

  “If our family has one, it hasn’t been pulled out with the old photos of holiday gatherings. I've never seen, nor heard, about a Bienvenu family bible. Which makes me think it doesn’t exist.”

  “Well, I’ve heard of some families displaying their bibles or sharing it at family gatherings, but mostly I heard of the modern families securing it in safety deposit boxes or special places. It depends on the family or who actually has possession of it.”

  “That is the question for the Bienvenus, I guess.” He smiled. “I’ll call around and ask if anyone has Aguste François Bienvenu’s bible. That will create a stir in the family, no doubt.” She laughed softly. “What does this bible look like?”

  “I would guess it’d be pretty typical of the ones I’ve seen, since the publishers didn’t produce a big variety of bibles. It would be a large, heavy, black leather-covered book. Have you seen something that looks like that around the plantation?

  He shook his head. “I think I would remember seeing that. There are a few
possibilities as to who has it if it wasn’t thrown out with the trash by Elli’s Aunt Rosa or someone who lived in the plantation and didn’t realize the value of it.”

  Jewell shivered. “God, I hope not.”

  “It could be packed away somewhere in the plantation, maybe been given to a family member who asked Ben’s father for it, or maybe Ben’s mother, Helen, has it.” He sat silently a moment. “Of course, maybe the obvious person has it. Maybe Aguste’s youngest child has it.”

  “Tante Izzy.”

  Beau slammed on the brakes. “No time like the present to find out.” Before the dust had settled around the car, they were turned around heading back to the house, and Tante Izzy’s bright pink pickup truck appeared on the road in front of them.

  “Oh, good. There she is.” Jewell smiled, clasping her hands. Her excitement quickly faded. She didn’t look like she was slowing down. Her heart began to race. “She’s traveling awfully fast.” The truck hit a bump, lifted and came back down with the bottom hitting the road. She kept coming head-on toward them. “Beau. I don’t think she sees us.” He blew his horn. She blew hers back at him. She didn’t slow down. He moved to the side of the road and stopped just as she whizzed past him without a glance in their direction.

  “Crazy old woman,” Beau mumbled, his face pinched and his cheeks red.

  “Oh, my God, her eyes are barely above the top of the steering wheel,” Jewell said, looking behind them where she had driven past them. “Can she even see to drive? She’s like a child-size adult.” She looked at Beau. His jaw was clenched, the muscle straining. “Your family seriously needs to evaluate your aunt's driving privileges.” Her mouth fell open. “Mon Dieu, Mimi is in that speed demon’s truck. Go stop them!” she shouted in French.