The Reunion: The Secret of Cypriere Bayou

by Jana DeLeon

  She pulled it out and unfolded it, her heart pounding as she looked at the shaky cursive, then she began to read it out loud.

  To whoever comes for this letter,

  Twenty years ago, I did a horrible thing. The reason why I did it is unimportant and doesn’t excuse my actions, so I won’t go into it.

  I helped Trenton Purcell get rid of his wife, Ophelia LeBeau.

  I have regretted it every day since I deposited the money, but by then it was too late. If I’d confessed, I would have been stripped of my medical license and my wife and kids would have lost everything. I couldn’t make them suffer for my bad decision, so I said nothing.

  But it’s eaten away at me like a cancer.

  I knew he was going to send her to Eleanor, but I didn’t think he would leave her there. I’m sorry for what happened to her children and to her. If I could go back and change things, I would. Every day, I ask God to forgive me, and every day, I am worried that he can’t.

  My sin was too great.

  Richard Picard

  Alaina clutched the letter and read it again silently. Finally, she looked up at Carter, more confused than ever. “He didn’t say he helped Purcell kill her. He says they sent her to Eleanor...but who is Eleanor?”

  “You haven’t run across that name in any of the documents you’ve helped Danae catalog?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know anyone named Eleanor.”

  “Maybe the nurse knows.”

  They hurried back to the front door and rang the bell again. The nurse seemed surprised to see them again.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  “In the letter that Dr. Picard left,” Alaina said, “he said he sent my mother to Eleanor. Do you have any idea who that is?”

  “Eleanor isn’t a person, dear. It’s a sanitarium.”

  Thoughts of tuberculosis raced through Alaina’s mind. “What was wrong with her?”

  The nurse gave Alaina a sympathetic look. “Eleanor Roosevelt Sanitarium cares for the mentally ill.”

  “Oh!” Alaina’s hand flew over her mouth.

  “Thank you, again,” Carter said as he placed his arm around Alaina’s shoulders and led her back to the truck.

  “He had her committed and then told everyone she’d died,” Alaina said as she stared out the windshield. “That’s why there was no body in the casket. That’s what he paid them to cover up.”

  Carter pulled out his cell phone and called information to get the number for the sanitarium. He put the phone on speaker as it dialed.

  “Thank you for calling Eleanor Roosevelt Mental Treatment Facility. Can I help you?” the receptionist asked.

  “Yes, I’d like to inquire about a patient you had there twenty-five years ago.”

  “Mrs. Anderson has been in charge of medical records for over thirty years. If anyone can help you, it will be her.”

  “Great. Can I speak to her?”

  “She’s on vacation and doesn’t return until the day after tomorrow, but I can make you an appointment for then. Is ten o’clock okay?”

  “That’s great. My name is Carter Trahan, and I’ll have some family members with me.”

  “Okay, Mr. Trahan, I have you down for ten o’clock.”

  “Thank you.” Carter disconnected the call. “Looks like we have to wait a couple of days.”

  “I know. At first, I wanted to scream, but this way is better. This way, Danae and Joelle can go with us. Just in case....”

  Carter reached over and squeezed her hand. “Just in case.”

  * * *

  ALAINA COULD HARDLY contain herself as she rushed to the front door of the estate and fumbled with her key.

  “Don’t open it,” Carter yelled from behind her. “The alarm is probably set.”

  “Oh, I forgot.” She slipped the key back in her purse and banged on the door, hoping Tyler and Joelle were somewhere they could easily hear. A couple seconds later, the door opened a crack and Tyler peered out, then he stepped back and they hurried inside.

  “We have news,” Alaina said. “Where’s Joelle?”

  “She’s in the kitchen. We were just about to fix some sandwiches. Are you interested?”

  “That would be great,” Carter said. “We didn’t stop on the way back from New Orleans. Alaina was in too big a hurry to get here.”

  Tyler raised his eyebrows. “This must be good.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Alaina said as she hurried down the hallway, silently willing the two men to get the lead out.

  Joelle stood at the counter, putting lettuce on turkey sandwiches. She looked up and smiled when she saw Alaina. “I thought I heard your voice,” Joelle said.

  Tyler and Carter stepped into the kitchen behind her and Alaina grabbed Joelle’s hands, unable to hold her news in any longer.

  “We found something,” Alaina said, then explained what she and Danae discovered and her and Carter’s visit to the doctor. She pulled the letter out of her purse and handed it to Joelle. Tyler stepped behind Joelle and read over her shoulder.

  “Wow!” Joelle said. “This makes so much sense now.”

  “It does?” Alaina looked surprised.

  Joelle nodded and told them about her dream. “So the needle wasn’t used to kill her. They sedated her.”

  “That fits with everything,” Carter said, “but I’d still like to know how Purcell got her committed. You can’t just drop someone off at a mental institution and claim they’re sick when they’re not.”

  “I think she was cracking,” Joelle said. “The stress and abuse could have put her over the edge. And there’s something else...something that I can’t prove, but I believe happened.”

  Joelle told them about her suspicion that Purcell had spiked their milk each night.

  “You were always able to stay up later than me,” Alaina said. “I could barely get in bed before I was out.”

  “Exactly,” Joelle said. “So if he was doing it to us, why wouldn’t he have done it to Mother?”

  “As despicable as it sounds,” Alaina said, “I’ve seen it before in child custody cases where one parent wants to make the other look incompetent. If Purcell drugged our mother to the point that she seemed incoherent and erratic, all he’d need was a doctor’s assessment and a couple of credible witnesses to say she was behaving irrationally. He paid for the doctor’s assessment—he could have paid for witnesses. If he made a case for child endangerment, it would have been enough to commit her.”

  “But why?” Joelle said. “Why keep her alive?”

  Alaina shook her head. “It sounds like he wanted something and Mother wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to know.”

  “The diamonds?” Joelle said.

  “It’s possible. Maybe Purcell thought there was more than just her necklace, and he didn’t believe her when she said she didn’t know. He might have figured that locking her up would make her tell.”

  Joelle stared at Alaina, her eyes wide. “Then what happened to her after that? I mean, she died at some point or she wouldn’t be haunting us, but I always assumed she died here since she appears here.”

  “Maybe he brought her back here at some point and killed her then.”

  “That could be. Did you tell Danae and Zach?”

  Alaina nodded. “We went by Zach’s place before heading back to Calais. We wanted to tell him in person that it didn’t look like his father was involved in a murder. He’s still not happy about his father’s decision to bury an empty casket, but I think he’s relieved that it’s a lesser sin than what he feared.”

  Alaina looked out the kitchen window, all the day’s events running through her mind. For the first time since she’d arrived in Calais, she finally felt that they were on the right track—that they were finally g
oing to get the answers about everything that happened so long ago.

  Suddenly, she froze. “There’s something out there.”

  “Where?” Carter asked, shifting immediately into cop mode.

  “In the brush about twenty feet from the house. It was big and moved quickly.”

  “Bear?” Tyler asked.

  “Unless it was walking on hind legs and thinner than the average bear, no.”

  Carter pulled his pistol from his waistband. “Let’s check it out,” he said to Tyler, then turned to Joelle and Alaina. “Keep the doors locked and your weapons ready.”

  The two men rushed outside and Alaina locked the door behind them, already worried about what lurked in the swamp. “Do you have your pistol?” she asked Joelle.

  “It’s upstairs on the nightstand.”

  Alaina pulled her pistol from her purse. “Run up and get it. I’ll wait in the entry where I can see the balcony.”

  Alaina followed Joelle to the entry and watched as she hurried up the stairs and into one of the bedrooms. By the time she heard the footsteps behind her, it was too late.

  A cloth covered her mouth and nose, a hand pressed against it and an arm wrapped around her back. She struggled for a second, then everything went black.

  Chapter Twenty

  Relief coursed through Joelle when she saw her pistol on the nightstand where she’d left it that morning. She grabbed it and rushed out of the room.

  “Got it!” she yelled down at Alaina.

  Her own voice echoed back at her and she drew up short and peered over the balcony. Her heart caught in her throat as she scanned the entry. Alaina was nowhere in sight.

  “Alaina!” she called down.

  Nothing.

  Maybe something happened outside. Maybe Alaina went to help Carter and Tyler.

  Clutching her pistol, she inched toward the staircase, scanning below her with every step. There was no sign of Alaina anywhere and no sound echoed up from the entry. She leaned over the railing, trying to look down the kitchen hallway.

  When she rose back up, she felt cold metal press against her scalp.

  “Drop it,” he said.

  She let her pistol slide out of her hand and onto the carpeted runner. His voice sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

  “Now,” he said and coughed. “Turn around. Slowly.”

  Terror coursed through her as the raspy voice from her nightmare rang through her head. It was him. The man who’d helped Purcell attack her mother. The man who’d held her mother down while Purcell drugged her.

  Her feet seemed to move involuntarily. She didn’t want to turn, but she couldn’t keep herself from doing it. She clenched her eyes shut until the gun pressed directly into the center of her forehead, then opened them and stared at the man who’d helped ruin her childhood.

  Mayor Dupree!

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why would you help Purcell?”

  He lowered his pistol and took a step back from her. “The oldest reason in the world—money.”

  “Fine. That was twenty-five years ago. You got away with it. Why bother with me now and risk exposing yourself?”

  His eyes narrowed at her. “Because when you talked to me in the café with your sister, you recognized me. It was only a matter of time before you remembered why.”

  “I never saw you that night. I only heard you.”

  He sighed. “Then I guess this is going to be a waste of a bullet.”

  As he lifted the pistol up toward her head, she screamed.

  * * *

  TYLER AND CARTER hurried through the swamp to the spot Alaina had indicated. Two clear footprints stared up at them from the soft ground.

  “This way,” Tyler said and headed through the swamp in the direction the steps pointed. As he ran through a thick set of brush, his feet connected with something heavy and large and he grabbed hold of a tree trunk to keep from falling.

  Carter slid to a stop behind him and they looked down at the crumpled body of Bert Thibodeaux.

  Tyler immediately dropped down and put his fingers to Bert’s neck. “He’s alive.”

  Carter stooped and helped Tyler roll Bert over onto his back, then Tyler tapped his cheeks. “Bert. Wake up.”

  The burly truck driver stirred a bit, then bolted upright.

  “Oh, my head,” Bert said and clutched his head with both hands.

  “What happened?” Tyler said.

  “What does it look like? Someone cracked me on the head.”

  “Did you see who did it?”

  “No. He came up behind me.”

  “You’re in a lot of trouble, Bert,” Carter said. “A lot of things have gone wrong in this house and I can put you on the hook for all of them if I want.”

  Bert’s eyes widened and for the first time, Tyler saw a glimmer of fear in them. “I haven’t hurt nobody. That ain’t my thing.”

  “Then maybe it’s time you tell me exactly what your thing is. Or I can haul you in now.”

  Bert studied Carter’s face for a while, and Tyler wondered if the stubborn trucker was about to clam up again, but apparently he figured out that Carter wasn’t joking about pinning everything on him.

  Finally, he sighed. “I was looking for the diamonds.”

  Carter’s eyes narrowed on him. “How did you know about the diamonds? And don’t tell me Purcell told you, because I’m sure he took that secret to the grave hoping to find them himself.”

  Bert looked down at the ground. “Roger Martin told me. I don’t know how he found out.”

  He was lying. Tyler would bet anything on it, and one look at Carter’s face told him his friend didn’t buy it either. But what was Bert hiding now?

  Or who?

  It hit Tyler like a shock wave—the red lacy bra suddenly stringing everything together.

  “Sonia,” Tyler said. “It was Sonia who told you.”

  Bert’s eyes widened and Tyler knew he was right.

  “Johnny said she dated a numbers guy. What do you want to bet it was the estate accountant,” Tyler said. “She did it for the information and always intended to come back here to you.”

  One look at Bert’s face and Tyler knew his guess was correct.

  Carter whistled. “That’s one even I didn’t see coming. How have you been getting in the house?”

  Defeated, Bert inclined his head toward a set of brush to their right. “Same as always. Through the tunnel.”

  Tyler stared at Bert for a moment as he remembered the footprints near the house but not leading up to it and the small clearing he’d discovered that first day. The clearing they were standing in now. “The cellar. It connects to the cellar in the butler’s pantry.”

  Tyler pulled the brush and a huge tangle of dead vines came away, exposing a wooden door. “Brant must have seen someone use it. That’s how he got in before.”

  Carter nodded. “And that same someone put a bullet in him before he could make matters worse. And likely cracked our friend Bert here on the head.”

  “Well,” Bert said, “whoever it was is in the house now. The door was still covered with dirt when I got here.”

  “Get out of here and have your head looked at,” Carter told Bert. “I’ll be by later to take your statement. Don’t even think of leaving town or you’ll have more trouble than you’ll ever work your way out of.”

  Bert knew when he was defeated. He gave Carter a single nod and hoisted himself up from the ground. They watched as he stumbled through the brush back toward the house, still clutching his head.

  Tyler pulled back the wooden door and peered inside.

  “It’s not deep,” he said and climbed down the ladder into the pit. Carter pulled a penlight out of his pocket and dro
pped it to him.

  “I’m going to circle around and enter through the front door so maybe we can corner this bastard once and for all. Be careful when you get to the cellar. He could be in there waiting for you.”

  Tyler gave him a nod and directed the penlight down the tunnel. The tunnel was so narrow only one person could fit through it at a time, and he had to duck a bit to keep from scraping his head on the ceiling. The entire thing was composed of chopped stone, and Tyler wondered briefly how long the tunnel had been there. The craftsmanship of the stonework led him to believe it was very old.

  He hurried down it, careful not to bang his head against the ceiling. It shouldn’t take long to reach the cellar entrance given the proximity of the trapdoor from the house. As he rounded a corner, he drew up short. A door made of thick wooden planks and steel belts was directly in front of him.

  He pressed his ear against it, but couldn’t hear anything. That didn’t mean the room was clear, though. Gripping the penlight with his left hand and pistol with his right, he pressed his shoulder against the door and eased it open enough to peer inside. He cast his penlight across the cellar, but didn’t see anyone.

  Relieved, he stepped out of the tunnel and into the cellar, then turned back to look as the door swung shut. The cellar side was finished with a sheet of paneling that blended perfectly with the rest of the wall, explaining why he hadn’t noticed it before. He shone the penlight around the edges of the paneling, now able to make out the outline of the door.

  Clever.

  He headed up the cellar stairs, wondering if Carter had made it inside the house yet. When he reached the door to the butler’s pantry, he paused again, to listen for footsteps. Hearing nothing, he eased the door open a crack and that’s when a bloodcurdling scream echoed throughout the house.

  Joelle!

  He bolted out of the cellar and tore through the kitchen in the direction of the scream, almost tripping over Alaina’s prone body in the hallway. He paused only long enough to ensure she was breathing then took off again. What if he was too late? What if, once again, he failed?