The Nicci Beauvoir Collection: The Complete Nicci Beauvoir Series

by Alexandrea Weis

  Then, the world went black.

  Chapter 26

  It’s been three months now since I lost David. I don’t have any clear recollection of the first few days after he was murdered. There were so many details to be taken care of. The police closed the investigation, leaving the crime unsolved. I never said anything to the police about David’s past. There was no point. He was gone, taking all of his secrets with him. Secrets someone did not want him to tell.

  My father came to stay with me for a few days. He tried to be stoic and reassuring, but when he thought I wasn’t looking, he would cry. Uncle Lance came back from his honeymoon, leaving his bride at the airport. He stayed for a few days, as well.

  I felt that David would not want an ornate funeral, just something simple, to match his ways. The service was only attended by a few people, my family mostly and some friends of his from the art world. His Aunt Flo was also there. I had found her phone number among his papers.

  She was a frail, petite lady with the determination of a bull. She shouted orders like a captain on a ship, directing flower deliveries, and fending off phone calls with the savvy of a polished politician. Flo and I would sit for many hours at a time and talk about what we had known and loved about David. He had her laugh and her eyes.

  The day of the funeral, she remained composed for most of the service, but when they lowered him into the ground, she broke down and wept on my shoulder.

  A few days after the funeral, there was a big article on David in the newspaper. It was sensational reading. The artist with all the promise of a successful career, gunned down in his prime. The phone calls from agents and buyers started pouring in a few days after the national press picked up the story. In death, David became the famous artist he had hoped to be in life.

  One of the many phone calls came from a Mr. Barry Tujague, an attorney in Hammond. When I went to his office, he turned out to be a very round man who ate crawfish at his desk. Apparently, David had engaged his services after he purchased the house. Mr. Tujague notified me that David had drafted a will soon after he had arrived in Hammond. He must have known one day, someone would find him. He left everything to me: the house, all of his paintings, even the money in his Swiss bank accounts.

  I also got to keep the ring he had purchased the morning he was killed, a two-carat, pear-shaped diamond solitaire. It was to be my surprise when I returned home. It had been among his personal belongings I collected from the city morgue. I still wear it to this day.

  I eventually sold off most of the Jenny’s, but I kept the two I treasured the most. The first one he did of me still hangs over my father’s mantle. The last painting he ever did is still hanging in the living room of our home. In it, I’m sitting at the dining room table, typing away on the old machine he had given me. The sunlight is shining through the windows, illuminating me as I huddle over the keys. I think it was the best painting he ever did. Sammy bought the one of me in the wedding dress. I think she’s still hopeful that one day, Eddie and I might make a match of it.

  I also gave one of the paintings to Cora. I brought it over to her a few weeks after the funeral. She broke down and cried on her porch step when I presented it to her. She had loved her boy so; at least, she had something of his to remember him by.

  I remained in our house, never returning to New Orleans, despite my father’s protests. He was busy getting the new plastics plant ready and he wanted me back home, not alone out in the country. Still, I needed to be alone.

  Epilogue

  It’s a Tuesday morning, and I have a flight to New York in the next few hours. I’ve packed an overnight bag and closed up the house. The cab I called has arrived and the driver honks his horn from the driveway. I take one last look around to make sure everything is in order. The portrait above the mantle catches my eye. I study the painting with all its brilliant hues of gold, blue, and red, and I remember back to that afternoon in the French Quarter, so long ago. Stepping onto the porch, I lock the front door, and walk down the drive to the waiting cab.

  “New Orleans International airport, please,” I tell the driver, as I slide into the back seat.

  We drive through the back streets and arrive in the center of Hammond, passing by all the old plantation homes. I watch as the children play in the warm March breeze. Spotting the small church to my right, I ask the driver to pull over.

  “I have to do something,” I say to him, getting out. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  He nods and picks up the newspaper on the seat beside him.

  I stroll down a red-bricked path to the church entrance. It is a simple dark wooden structure, surrounded by several moss-laden oak trees that seem to lazily stretch out their limbs over the surrounding tombstones. I head back toward the corner of the cemetery, to a spot I have visited so many times in the past several months. There, under the shade of an old leaning oak, rests my David. I arrive at his granite cross, brush off the leaves, and smile down on his little piece of earth.

  “I’m off to New York today,” I tell him. “They’re going to publish my book…our book. Everyone always says write about what you know, so I wrote about us.”

  I gaze up into the morning sky and see white puffs of clouds floating above the horizon. The treetops twist in the gentle breeze while I breathe in the fresh, cool air. I close my eyes, listening to the world around me.

  I open my eyes and suddenly the world seems completely different. It’s as if a foggy veil has been removed from before my eyes. The light of a new beginning has replaced the darkness of my past.

  I look down at the small headstone.

  David Alexander, Beloved Painter.

  Taking a copy of my manuscript from my oversized handbag, I set it beneath the cross.

  “I brought you a copy. I dedicated it to you, David. After all, you were my inspiration.” I marvel at the granite cross, sparkling in the sunlight. “You were the one who opened my eyes and gave me a new direction. You brought me to my senses.”

  Leaving his grave, I stroll back to the cab and climb in. The driver puts the car in gear and we slowly pull away. I watch as David’s cross grows smaller in the distance.

  “Leaving someone behind?” the driver asks, eyeing me curiously from the rearview mirror.

  “No,” I proclaim, gazing up at the bright morning sun. “I’m taking him with me.”

  THE END

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © Alexandrea Weis 2015

  Licensing Notes

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.

  Chapter 1

  Tiresome carols from department store speakers extolled the dreaded news that Christmas chaos had once again taken over the country. Newspapers would soon be filled with stories of fights breaking out among stranded air travelers at destinations where too much snow, too much wind, or too much airport security had taken its toll. Once at Grandmother’s house, loving families filled with potent eggnog concoctions would turn on each other and use dinner utensils as assault weapons, until SWAT units arrived to stop the bloodshed. Every commercial, greeting card, and holiday display was pressuring us to have the perfect holiday, which we knew did not really exist. But every year in December we once again pulled out the stale-smelling ornaments from the attic, fired up the plastic Christmas tree, and prayed that maybe this year would be better than the last.

  I was suffering through my own Christmas hell, stuck in New York City, in weather far below what any decent southerner considered utterly obscene, to satisfy the expectations of my publisher.

  I had originally balked at the idea of coming to New York. The only place I wa
nted to be during the holidays was home. But the city I called home had been erased from the modern era, wiped out by water, incompetence, and apathy. The New Orleans I had loved had been forever changed by the winds of Katrina.

  Gone were the places of my past. The corner grocery that had always smelled of spicy boiled shrimp, the restaurant that had served my favorite gumbo, the home where I had gathered for the holidays, the neighborhood where I had grown up but had never left behind. How do you begin to cope with the loss of everything that has been part of you, completed you? In New Orleans it is said we are where we live, but who are we when we cannot live there anymore?

  By the time I had finally gotten through to FEMA and was able to restore some semblance of order back into my life, my publisher had called with last-minute plans for a holiday book signing tour.

  So there I sat in a downtown Manhattan bookstore, filled with longing for home and a line of women waiting for my signature on their copy of my book Painting Jenny.

  “Was David Alexander really like that?” one round-faced woman asked as she cleaved a copy of my book to her chest. “The way you described him in the book?”

  “He was as he is written,” I said. I always gave that response when asked about David. I wrote what I remembered about him, the good and the bad, making the character in the book almost as real as the man I had loved. Almost.

  “You were his muse,” a hunched over, gray-haired diva draped in all her Tiffany finery exclaimed. “I saw some of his portraits of you, the ones he called his Jennys, last month on display at a gallery here in the city. He was very talented and his love for you was obvious. He painted you with such reverence, such awe.” She sighed and smiled weakly. “What a waste.”

  I reached for the book the woman handed me with her spindly fingers and looked up into her beady gray eyes. I wondered if she had ever known love or if the cold diamonds that enveloped her body had somehow managed to work their way into her heart. I then gave her my best-practiced smile.

  “He was very talented, and at least the world still has his paintings to remember him by,” I answered, keeping my voice free of the disgust churning inside of me.

  The Madison Avenue maven smiled. “And your book. The world has that too. To remember you both by.”

  A twinge of pain etched its way across my heart as a memory of David began to cloud my vision. We had been sitting on the floor of his studio after a frenzied night of painting. In an instant, I could smell the mix of paint and sweat on his skin. David had expressed his hope that one day his paintings and my stories would stand side-by-side declaring to the world what we had meant to each other. He had told me that he wanted nothing more than to be remembered for eternity with me. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the past.

  “You must have been so devastated by his death,” a shrill voice said, tearing me away from my memories.

  “Devastated?” I smiled up at a chubby, eager-looking woman standing before me.

  Is that what you call this, I thought to myself. Perhaps heartache is a word that can only be experienced, and once experienced, it becomes devoid of description.

  “Yes, of course I was devastated,” I coolly explained. “He was the love of my life.”

  “Then how did you go…” Her hungry brown eyes looked down for a moment. “How did you go on after…he was murdered?”

  “I wrote our story,” I quickly replied. “It was my therapy,” I added as I tried to quell my growing desire to taser this overzealous fan.

  “Do you want some coffee?” the fair-haired Dora spoke up beside me.

  Dora O’Rourke was my representative from the publisher and my voice inside the cutthroat world of book making. She fought for me, listened to me, arranged all of my events, and made sure I had everything I needed to continue making the publisher money. She was a petite woman with a round face, small, dark eyes, and always dressed in masculine pantsuits. She kept her pale brown hair pulled back in a rather severe-looking bun that seemed to accentuate the ever-present coldness of her eyes.

  “No thanks.” I shook my head, refraining from telling her that any coffee north of Baton Rouge generally tasted like horse piss to me and every other New Orleanian. Chicory was highly addictive.

  Dora sat back and eyed the line in front of our table. “Not many more,” she whispered, “then we can get out of here.”

  I was relieved to see only three more women waiting for their autographed copy of Painting Jenny. I smiled at each of the women as they approached, listened attentively to their kind words, and then heaved a sigh of relief when the last one walked away.

  “Good job, kiddo,” Dora remarked as she gathered up her five-gallon purse. “I’ll get a cab out front, and we’ll head back to your hotel.” She glanced at her watch. “That will give you a few hours to relax before the big party tonight.” And without another word she shot out of her chair and headed toward the entrance to the bookshop.

  The “big party” was the annual Christmas extravaganza given by Harold Hamper Publishing. As the newest initiate into the Hamper world of writers—and promising, profitable authors—I was expected to attend.

  I wearily gathered up my purse and laptop while thoughts of a night of fake smiles and inane conversations lay before me. But I checked my negativity, took a cleansing breath, and reminded myself that I was doing this for David. He had believed in my writing and would have wanted this for me. I had to endure in order to fulfill both our dreams.

  “Excuse me,” a rather high-sounding voice said in front of me.

  I looked up to see a short man in a white suit carrying a silver-handled cane standing before me. He had gray, slicked back hair and large brown eyes.

  “You are Nicci Beauvoir, aren’t you?” He nodded his head toward me. “Of course you are. You have the same delicate porcelain features, the same long auburn hair as in the paintings. You’re Jenny.”

  I frowned at the little man as his dark brown eyes took in every inch of my face. I had learned to graciously overlook the occasional stare or being mistakenly introduced as Jenny, but I had never been scrutinized in such an uncomfortable way before. Ignoring him, I stood abruptly from my chair and bent over to pick up my computer bag from the floor. When I looked up, the little man was still staring at me.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, clutching my computer bag to my chest.

  He held out his hand and I reluctantly took it. “I am Simon La Roy. I believe we have a mutual acquaintance,” he added, squeezing my hand firmly in his.

  This should be good, I thought to myself as I earnestly tried to fathom who among my friends or family would have associated with this Tennessee Williams look-a-like.

  I quickly let go of his hand. “Really?” I then slung my computer bag over my shoulder in hopes of making a speedy exit.

  “Yes,” he said as he smiled smugly. “David Alexander.”

  I instantly stifled my desire to punch the little man right in the nose. Many individuals thought they knew David after having read my book. Like a character in a highly rated television series or popular movie, people seemed to think that after only a few hundred pages of paper they knew David better than anyone—even me.

  “You knew David?” I asked, trying not to sound too sarcastic.

  Simon La Roy proudly rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Knew him very well. In fact, you could say I made him,” he added, beaming.

  I frowned, beginning to wonder if this was nothing more than some kind of a sick joke. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “Everything you wrote about in your book, his knowledge of wine, clothes, and women, I taught him those things.” He paused and leaned in closer to me. “That and he worked for me. I arranged things for him, if you know what I mean.” He winked at me.

  Suddenly the realization of his words hit me and I felt my legs go weak. I took a seat in the chair beneath me. I swallowed hard and tried to take in a deep breath.

  “You…were the one who found him his jobs
?” I finally asked.

  He nodded his head casually to the side. “I connected him with people who needed problems handled is probably the easiest way to say it. I must admit when he first came to me and told me he was leaving me to paint pictures, I thought him quite mad. That was until I saw his portraits of you. Then suddenly his reason for leaving became very clear.”

  “He never spoke of you, but then again he never wanted to talk much about his, ah, profession.” I paused as I looked over Simon La Roy with renewed interest. “After he died I couldn’t find anything in his papers or his computer about his past. No phone numbers, no names. Nothing.” A swell of anger stirred inside me as I peered into his brown eyes. “David has been dead for over two years, Mr. La Roy. Why haven’t you contacted me before now?”

  He glanced around the bookstore. “Perhaps we should talk more. There are things we need to discuss.”

  An unsettling feeling arose from the pit of my stomach. “What things?”

  “I’ll explain later.” He reached into his pocket and handed me a card. “My cell phone number is on the back.”

  He tipped his head to me and turned away.

  Simon La Roy merrily strolled out of the store, swinging his cane as he went. As the little man disappeared from view, I began to understand why David had never wanted me to know about his employer or his past. Simon La Roy appeared to be a shady man in a dangerous profession, and I had a sneaking suspicion he had contacted me for a very specific reason.

  I glanced down at the little man’s plain white business card. Part of me wanted to rip it up and forget about our meeting. But another part of me wasn’t so sure.

  “Nicci!” Dora yelled, coming up to my table. “Come on, the cab is waiting!”

  I looked up from the business card in my hand and into Dora’s plain brown eyes.