Chasing the Wind

by Pamela Binnings Ewen

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Epilogue

  Author Note

  Copyright © 2012 by Pamela Binnings Ewen

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America

  978-0-8054-6431-3

  Published by B&H Publishing Group,

  Nashville, Tennessee

  Dewey Decimal Classification: F

  Subject Heading: MYSTERY FICTION SPIRITUAL LIFE—FICTION NEW ORLEANS (LA)—FICTION

  For Scott, Andrea, Lex, and Lucia,

  my beloved children.

  In memory of Anna Marie Catoir

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to everyone at B&H Publishing Group for their friendship and hard work in bringing this book to readers—Kim, Matt, and the whole sales team, Diana, Jennifer—all of you, without you, Chasing the Wind would just be a manuscript sitting on my desk. Special thanks to Julie Gwinn. Thank you for your constant, loving support. During good times and hard times I have learned that your inner strength is awesome.

  Thanks to David Webb, my editor. Your ideas enhanced the story—you make the editing process painless.

  Thanks, again to Jacques and Wendy Michell for sharing your memories of life in Pilottown and on the river, and the colorful history of the Associated Branch Pilots. Jude thanks you too!

  Thanks to my friend Barbara Ray for reading numerous drafts of this story and for your insightful comments. Thanks to my friend and former partner, Bill Stutts, for enduring endless wandering conversations and abstract questions. And thanks to my friend David Skarke for being a sport and helping D. B. out at the end—even though it’s purely fiction, my friends.

  And to my mother, my favorite critic who loves every word I write—thanks, Mom! To Scott, Andrea, and Lex and Lucia—Remember, one person can almost always make a difference. And, to my husband, Jimmy, I could never have written the story of Jude and Amalise’s love without you in my life.

  Prologue

  Bingham Murdoch flew into town on a star one day. At exactly 8:47 a.m. on Wednesday, October 19, 1977, he banked the silver Lockheed JetStar at such an angle that the rays of the sun glanced off the wing and shot a glint of silver through the city of New Orleans. Bingham sat in the first pilot's seat, peering through the wide, curved glass at the metropolis spread out below him. He took in the snaking, brown Mississippi River, the heavy old buildings holding each other up in the central business district, marked by Canal Street and, on the other side of Canal, the distinctive peaked roofs of the Vieux Carré, the French Quarter. Smiling, Bingham then swooped toward the broad expanse of Lake Pontchartrain and the small private airport there, smiling. He'd never felt such kindred spirit with a city before. This was a town with open pockets and an attitude.

  Downtown a young lawyer with the firm of Mangen & Morris stood at the window of her office on the sixteenth floor of the First Merchant Bank Building for the first time in many months. Amalise Catoir felt good because, instead of the gray walls of hospital rooms and the winding vines of pink roses on the wallpaper in her old bedroom back home in Marianus, she was back at work and looking out over the teeming city again. Automobiles crawled through the narrow streets below, people milled on the sidewalks like ants, and a man in a suit on a bicycle ducked in and out of pedestrian traffic and cars. Almost as if nothing had changed.

  It was life.

  Across the street her view of the city was blocked by another high building with rows of windows looking back at her. But to her left Amalise could look past the hospitals and domed stadium to where New Orleans stretched all the way to the lake. She couldn't see the water from this distance, but her imagination filled in the details, the breeze whipping the clouds like marzipan on this October day and ruffling the blue water below. There would be a few sailboats out to enjoy the weather, even on a weekday.

  As she took in the view, a quicksilver glint in the sky drew her attention. For a moment she tracked the small plane as it descended toward Lakefront Airport, sunlight winking off a wing like a shooting star aimed straight for her. She wondered if she were the only person in the world who had just seen the momentary flash of light.

  But someone else saw it, too. About a mile away, a small boy with delicate oriental features sat alone on the front porch of a sagging house in the Faubourg Marigny, watching the other children play. He was somehow different, he knew, from his foster brothers and sister. Yawning, he looked up at the clear blue sky. In the distance he saw a small plane shining in the sun. He watched it for an instant, shading his eyes with his hand and squinting. Then a bright flash of light came at him like a burst of gunfire, and he flinched, remembering.

  When he looked up again, the plane was gone.

  In her office Amalise shivered with the odd fancy that the flash somehow signified a fateful connection between the giver and recipient of the light.

  Chapter One

  Amalise turned from the window, leaned back against it, and surveyed her office. It was good to be back. Her eyes caressed the leather-upholstered furnishings, the vintage mahogany desk and bookshelves, the Black's Law Dictionary given to her by the firm after her second year of law school, the rows of thick volumes bound in rich, colored leather—red, green, and black with gold lettering across the spines—records of corporate transactions she'd worked on during her first year with the firm, plus a few borrowed from other associates to occupy the spaces she would one day fill with more of her own.

  Her eyes landed on a framed photograph on a shelf above the books, and a flood of emotions—anger, pity, fear, sorrow—hit her all at once. She walked over and picked up the photo of her and her former husband. Phillip Sharp's dark eyes glowered at her from under his brows, as if he had known even then how things would end. In the picture they sat at the Café Pontalba, across from Jackson Square, where she'd waited tables every day for three years during law school.

  She closed her eyes, and the memories rushed in, swirling and mingling—Phillip's slow descent into madness, his hatred of her, his death, and then the accident and the blessed loss of memory in those last few moments. Twenty minutes, gone. Retrograde amnesia, the
doctors said.

  She'd been trapped in a nightmare with Phillip. Jude had warned her.

  And Jude had saved her in the end.

  Amalise moved along the bookcase, plucking each picture of Phillip from its place among those of Mama and Dad, Jude, Gina, and one of Rebecca and her in caps and gowns at graduation from law school. Tucking Phillip's pictures in the crook of her arm, she crossed to the long credenza behind her desk that held the telephone, her daily appointment book, some new yellow legal pads, a box of sharpened number-two pencils, and more photographs.

  She picked up a box of business cards and pulled one out. Embossed in shining black letters across the center of the card, just above her contact information at the firm, was the name "Amalise Catoir." Sans Sharp. Good. Pushing the card back into the box, she set it down and trailed her fingers across a framed photograph of Mama and Dad at home in Marianus. And another one of Jude.

  Jude, her oldest dearest friend. Since childhood, from the time she was six years old and he was ten, they'd been inseparable. She'd tagged along behind him everywhere. She smiled and picked up the photograph, studying it. He'd taught her to swim and fish, tutored her in math, taught her how to dance. Here, he stood on deck aboard a ship at the mouth of the river, poised to climb down to the pilot boat waiting below. His skin browned by the sun, he shaded his eyes with his hand as the camera caught him by surprise.

  Her Jude.

  And then a question rose against her will: Was he really hers?

  Rebecca came to mind. Beautiful, glamorous Rebecca. How casually she'd introduced Jude to Rebecca, never thinking. Amalise remembered the two of them as they were on that day, two years ago, when she married Phillip. Standing on the veranda, Rebecca had looked up at Jude, green eyes sparkling as he took her hand and led her to the dance floor.

  They had been dating ever since. Yet Amalise had never given much thought to their relationship—until now. For one thing, Jude was too fine a man and too old a friend to discuss his love life. And Rebecca was focused on her career. Driven by her career, in fact.

  Amalise's smile slowly faded. These new feelings for Jude were complicating things. During the past few months, while he'd spent so much time at her side as she recuperated, she'd grown conscious of a longing for something more than friendship with Jude, something deeper and different. She felt a connection with him that went way beyond their childhood companionship.

  Was this love?

  But how could anyone fall in love with her oldest, dearest friend? He was there in her every memory of youth. Could a person know someone so completely, their every little fault and wonderful thing, and then accept, or even understand, such a fundamental shift in their friendship and then just segue on to romance? Imagining the expression on Jude's face if she were ever to tell him of her feelings, she put the picture back on the credenza, setting it by the telephone where one of Phillip used to stand.

  Jude probably still thought of her as that child.

  And then there was Rebecca.

  She set her mind to putting these thoughts aside. Jude was her best friend, but Rebecca was a good friend too. They had gone to law school together, becoming the first two women ever hired as attorneys by the prestigious firm of Mangen & Morris. They were the Silver Girls.

  Amalise knew she should be happy for Rebecca. And yet, as she turned to her desk, pulled out the chair, and sat down, an empty space opened inside at the possibility of losing Jude to her. She set the pictures she'd gathered up of Phillip face-down on the desk and pushed them aside. She couldn't imagine life without Jude. He'd had girlfriends over the years, of course. Women loved Jude. But she had always come first, she'd thought, at least since the time she was too young to think otherwise.

  And recently, she'd again come to take for granted her supreme spot in Jude's heart. She hadn't wondered once about Rebecca during her recuperation and Jude's ministrations. Indeed, she'd been so shaken by Phillip's death, the accident, and the amnesia that sheltered her from knowing what had happened at the end, that she had readily slipped into that old familiar intimacy with Jude, almost as if they'd traveled back in time.

  But what about Rebecca?

  Amalise reached out, running her hands over the dark, solid desk, steadying herself, reminding the nagging voice inside her head that, since the accident, Jude had spent every moment away from work on the river at her side instead of here in the city with Rebecca.

  Enough! She was determined to enjoy her first day back at work.

  She leaned down and pulled out the bottom drawer and then swept the pictures of Phillip Sharp inside. One night soon she would take them home and store them in some dark place. For now, she turned and put her hands flat before her on the desk, ready to go to work.

  She recalled once more the glittering prize: partnership at Mangen & Morris in six more years. The unacknowledged fact that hung between Rebecca and Amalise—their competition for that prize—drifted just below the surface of her conscious thought.

  She shook off the ruminations and glanced at the stack of files Raymond had left on the corner of her desk. As she reached for the folder on top, she found a note clipped inside. A surge of energy shot through her as she read it. She was ready to jump back into life, into her work. In Raymond's cryptic scrawl the note read: Welcome back, Amalise.

  The corporate jet skidded down the Lakefront runway and taxied to the gate. "Thanks for the ride," Bingham Murdoch said to the pilot, removing his hat and slapping it down on the man's head where it belonged. "Tom was right. This baby's smooth." Only the best for Tom Hannigan, Morgan Klemp's hottest banker on Wall Street. Bingham stood. "You're going on to Houston?"

  The pilot nodded and bent over the instrument board. "Picking up Mr. Hannigan and the rest over there. Then back to New York."

  "Well, tell him thanks for me."

  The pilot nodded as Bingham turned and ducked through the cockpit door. His new partner, Robert, was waiting in the cabin, briefcase in one hand, looking like the rest of the Morgan Klemp lifers, of whom he'd been one until two weeks ago when Bingham's proposition had jelled. The stewardess arrived with Bingham's coat, holding it out for him. With a nod, Bingham slipped it on.

  "Sandra," he said, pecking her cheek before he stuck his arms through the sleeves. "It was a pleasure to meet you, dear. I hear you're heading home this afternoon."

  "That's right," she said, adjusting the shoulders of his coat. She gave him a sly smile. "Unfortunately."

  She stepped back, and he turned around to face her. "Call me when you're in the neighborhood again." He crinkled his eyes and chucked her under the chin.

  Bingham started down the stairs to the tarmac, with Robert following behind. "We'll be here a few weeks," he said over his shoulder. "Five, maybe six. I'll be staying at the Roosevelt."

  "I'll remember," she said.

  Her look made him smile, given the wear and tear he was feeling.

  A black Town Car idled nearby. Bingham stood watching as the driver stored his suitcase and Robert's garment bag in the trunk.

  Despite the sunshine, wind blew off Lake Pontchartrain and across the tarmac with a vengeance. The damp, cold wind surprised him. Wasn't this place supposed to be temperate? Bingham looked around. The terminal was a two-storied, featureless cement-block building with bricked-up windows. There were a few Cessnas around, and a single-engine plane was parked by a hangar. He spotted a woman in the tower looking down at him. He waved. She waved back and disappeared.

  The driver adjusted his cap, walked toward Bingham, and opened the door. Robert went around to the other side of the car, while Bingham sank down into the deep, soft leather. A soothing melody played on the radio. "Begin the Beguine." His kind of music. The driver closed the door and followed Robert.

  "May I take that for you, sir?" the driver said to Robert, nodding toward the briefcase.


  "No thanks." Robert placed his briefcase on the middle seat and slid in beside it.

  The driver got behind the wheel and looked over his shoulder. "Roosevelt Hotel?"

  "Yes."

  "I'll need a car while we're here," Bingham said to Robert as they started off.

  "The hotel's got that covered."

  The driver rolled the window partition down an inch. "Mind if I smoke?"

  Robert: "Yes."

  Bingham: "No."

  With a shrug, the driver rolled the window up again, and they sped away from the airport. Bingham looked out the window, smiling, thinking of the expression on Tom Hannigan's face the first evening they'd met in Grand Cayman and he'd mentioned the Black Diamond project. They'd been sitting at the open bar on the beach, thatched hut and all. Powdery white sand everywhere you looked. Blue sky stretching over the water for miles, the water turning from green to blue to emerald as the sun sank.

  They'd sat for hours under that same thatched roof a few days later, working through the prospect of Black Diamond, even after the sun went down and all you could glimpse of the sea in the darkness was the phosphorescent foam atop each wave as it rolled in, the white froth turning to lace on the sand before disappearing. Bingham took a deep breath. He could almost smell the salty air, could almost taste the ice-cold margaritas. It had all been so easy, really.

  Gliding above the city now on Interstate 10, Bingham could see for the first time the dense cluster of buildings downtown and, straight ahead, the rise of the bridge over the Mississippi River. Off to the left they passed the new Superdome, a place built for sinners and saints, he'd read. He asked the driver about it.

  The driver nodded. "That there dome was finished about two years ago. Thirteen acres and twenty-seven stories of bad luck you lookin' at there."

  "Bad luck? Why?"

  "Because it's built atop the Girod Street Cemetery, that's why." Beside him, Bingham heard Robert snort. "There's graves under that there stadium," the driver went on. He glanced at Bingham in the rearview mirror. "My buddies and I used to play around in them tombstones when we was kids." He beat a rhythm on the steering wheel, shaking his head. "There're some restless souls under that Dome." The driver exited the interstate, stopped at a light, then turned right toward downtown. "We was just kids, but still, you gotta' have respect." He shook his head. "Can't go buildin' ball fields over graves."