Then another heady fragrance piqued her senses: King’s aftershave. It was a sophisticated blend of tangy lemon verbena, overlaid with the unmistakably masculine scent of a man who had spent a long, sultry evening in a heavy velvet costume. She was faintly conscious that she had begun to lean into him, so that now their bodies were pressed against each other with nothing separating their torsos except for a few layers of fabric. Their kiss became an exploration, a first tentative probing around the edges of their secret selves.
She felt bereft when King finally pulled away from her. He hesitated, as if waiting for her signal that she would welcome him further. “My, my…” he murmured, “the lady from California certainly likes to be kissed.”
“And the gentleman from New Orleans?” she whispered.
“The gentleman from New Orleans,” he mumbled, brushing his lips against hers again with galvanizing sweetness, “very much likes… kissing the lady from California… after midnight… on Julia Street.” She felt him smile briefly against her lips before he began to nibble seductively along her jawline to her earlobe.
“Midnight on Julia Street…” she echoed. “It’s so beautiful. I’ve never been outside on Julia Street this late… kissing…”
“Glad to hear it…” he said with a mock growl, and kissed her some more. Finally he leaned back a second time to gaze at her. “You know, darlin’, we are literally taking our lives in our hands to be standing in a doorway in the Warehouse District at this late hour… so?” His questioning glance clearly seemed to say, It’s your decision, my dear Scarlett.
This pause in their avalanche of kisses provided Corlis with a sane moment in which to come to her senses.
“What time is it really?” she asked, peering at King’s wristwatch. “Two a.m. Oh, boy. I think we’d better—” she floundered, embarrassed now.
King straightened to his full height. “We’d better… what?” he asked, the faintest hint of coolness edging his voice.
“We’d… I mean I… well, we should probably…”
“Probably go inside,” he finished her sentence. “And I’d better hop that streetcar I hear trundling down St. Charles. Got hold of that door key again?”
Corlis grabbed her purse off the sidewalk, plunged her hand into its recesses, and in an instant located the key. She swiftly inserted it into the lock and opened her front door. Then she turned to King and bit her lip.
“We can’t, you know… ah…” she began helplessly. “I mean, you’re a news source, and I’m a reporter covering a story that involves you. So, I hope you can understand that, even though I… responded to… ah, I can’t… or rather, I don’t think that we should…”
King stared intently into her eyes and seemed to come to an unhappy conclusion. “I’ve been down this road a few times before, sugar pie,” he reminded her with a smile, just short of being curt.
“Look. King—”
“Don’t worry ’bout tonight,” he interrupted, as the streetcar squealed to a halt. “You’re a gorgeous woman, Corlis McCullough. Who wouldn’t want to kiss you senseless?”
Gorgeous? Wow…
“King?” she said softly, trying hard not to put a hand on his arm.
“Look… sometimes people get their signals crossed. These things happen. Gotta go.” He turned and began to sprint toward the waiting streetcar that was nearly empty of passengers. “The main thing is,” he shouted over the shoulder of his velvet cape as he leaped aboard, “we’re beginning to get the goods on you-know-who. See ya, Ace!”
No! Corlis wanted to shout to the dashing cavalier. Come back here! But she didn’t.
***
By the next morning Corlis awoke determined to put out of her mind what had happened between King and her on Julia Street in the wee hours of the morning and to forge ahead on the information she’d gleaned from the memos in Grover Jeffries’s home office. To do anything else would be personal and professional suicide. As long as she was on this current assignment—if she ignored King’s kiss, then he’d ignore it. Of that she was certain. It was the written Code of Southern Gentlemen. And besides, the negative repercussions, if they didn’t put aside personal feelings, could be as profoundly dangerous for him as they were for her. They would both be flirting with disaster, big-time, if they didn’t abide by these rules.
By midmorning she had settled down in her living room to read the Sunday papers, sipping a cup of steaming, chicory-laced coffee. Scanning the arts section of the Times-Picayune, an advertisement suddenly caught her attention. It announced a list of performers participating in the celebrated Sunday afternoon jazz concerts at Café LaCroix. She would go. It was time that she got down to business and advanced her story in a new direction.
Just before two o’clock in the afternoon, Corlis walked through the beaded curtain that marked the entrance to Café LaCroix, a nightclub off Decatur near Governor Nichols Street in the heart of the French Quarter. Even with bright April sunshine pouring down on the street outside, the small intimate interior was cast into dim shadow. Despite the institution of no smoking decrees, generations of fumes clung to clung to black-painted walls.
Corlis spotted Althea LaCroix standing next to a battered upright piano on a small stage at the front of the room. The woman was conferring with a man whose round features resembled her own, as did those of another portly young man standing nearby. The LaCroix Brothers and Sister—all six of them—were part of a renowned musical family in New Orleans.
Althea looked up as she heard Corlis approach, and after an initial pause, grinned with a look of recognition.
“You’re Corlis McCullough!” she exclaimed. “Now you’re workin’ for WJAZ, am I right? You did that ah-mazin’ story about my friend Daphne’s wedding.”
“Guilty as charged,” Corlis said with a wary laugh. “And you played an ah-mazing number of Bach sonatas while we were waiting all that time in the church.”
“You coming to the session here this afternoon just to see if I can actually play anything else?” she joked.
“I hear you play great jazz,” Corlis said, nodding.
“Well… welcome!”
“I’d love to hear all of you play,” Corlis amended diplomatically. “I also have an idea about a story for WJAZ, and I’d love to ask you a couple of questions before you get too busy to talk.”
“Yeah?” Althea said, sounding intrigued. “Hey, Rufus,” she called, “get the lady a cup of coffee, and your sister one, too, okay?” To Corlis she added, “Rufus is next to the youngest, so I boss him around a lot, don’t I, baby?”
Rufus nodded with an air of mock resignation and headed for a small room behind the bar to their right. Althea’s other brother, Eldon, nodded politely and resumed making notations on a piece of music he’d propped against the piano.
The two women sat down, and Corlis withdrew her reporter’s notebook from her shoulder bag. She quickly explained the general background to the controversy concerning the demolition of the buildings on Canal Street in favor of a high-rise hotel.
“Since you’re friends with King and Daphne, I expect you already know about some of this,” she finished.
“I just know that King is real fierce about protecting these old buildings he loves,” Althea said with an affectionate laugh. “He saved this one from the wrecker’s ball, sure enough.”
“He did?” Corlis asked, glancing around the room with renewed interest. She added carefully, “Well, I was just wondering if your family had any associations with the Selwyn buildings… way back, say a hundred years ago?” A recollection of a furious Althea Fouché shouting at Julien LaCroix as he stormed down the stairs of Martine’s town house flashed before Corlis’s eyes.
“You mean those ugly ones with the woven metal front over on Canal Street?” Althea asked, puzzled. “Well… our family bought this building a few years back, thanks to King’s efforts, actually.” Just then Rufus appeared with two cups of steaming café au lait. “Hey, you ever hear Daddy talk ’bout anyone in
the family owning buildings over on Canal… way back when?”
“Naw… don’t think so,” Rufus replied, eyeing Corlis curiously.
“By any chance, are you LaCroixs related to a family named Fouché?”
“As in Dylan Fouché?” Rufus replied.
Corlis nodded, her heart quickening.
Rufus looked at his sister. “Didn’t Cousin Keith say we’re all connected somehow? I think Dylan’s a distant cousin, too—though those Fouchés are big-time Catholics. Not exactly the line of business we LaCroixs are in,” he said, grinning widely.
“Keith LaCroix’s our first cousin, on Daddy’s side,” Althea explained.
Rufus spoke up. “I get kinda antsy when Keith starts in on all that family relations stuff.” Then his eyes narrowed. “What you wanna know all this for, sugar? Not doing any big exposé, are you?”
“No,” Corlis hastened to assure him. “I’m just looking for descendants of the people who built the Selwyn buildings back around 1840. Grover Jeffries wants to tear them down and build a twenty-eight-story high-rise. King Duvallon and the preservationists oppose the plan. I’m trying to track down the history of the buildings so our viewers can decide if they’re worth saving or not.”
“And you think black folks owned those?” Rufus scoffed. “You gotta be crazy! The land’s probably worth millions now. It’s smack in the middle of downtown! No black people own nothin’ on Canal Street today! Ain’t none of us owned that kind of real estate way back then, either. Don’t you Yankees realize that we was slaves before the Civil War, sugar pie?” he added caustically.
“I’m not a Yankee… I’m from California,” she said stiffly. “And Free People of Color did put up some of the money and land to build them. I’ve already found records from the late 1830s to prove that.” She turned to Althea. “As a matter of fact, a free woman named Martine Fouché might have been the principal owner of the original property. There’s a possibility she developed it in a partnership with a white man named Julien LaCroix,” she disclosed. “And Martine’s mother’s name was Althea, which is fairly unusual, right?” Althea nodded, her expression kindling with interest. “That’s why I came to talk to you about all this. Is there any way you could introduce me to… Keith, is it? To see if there’s some sort of a blood connection that can be proved between the plantation-owning LaCroixs and the African American LaCroixs and Fouchés?”
“Maybe,” Althea said thoughtfully. “As Rufus told you, Keith’s our first cousin, and he’s a fiend for all this family history stuff. He’s a little older than me. He’s an architect and has an office in the Warehouse District.”
“You’re kidding? I live in the Warehouse District,” Corlis exclaimed.
“Our cousin Keith knows King pretty well, as a matter of fact, ’cause his architecture firm specializes in rehabing old buildings, and King specializes in… well, he specializes in helping people get approved for mortgages.”
“So, Keith, King, and Dylan Fouché all know each other and are involved in historic preservation and restoration together?” The interrelationships were beginning to make sense now, Corlis thought, as well as King’s offstage role of mortgage angel in the city’s Live in a Landmark program.
“Haven’t you figured it out yet, Corlis?” Althea laughed. “In New Orleans, families go back forever. Everybody knows everybody, and most folks round here are related, one way or another.”
“Though lots of folks don’t like admitting it, sure enough,” Rufus added sourly.
“Can I ask you another thing?” Corlis inquired, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. “Do either of you… or maybe Keith… know for sure if your branch of the LaCroixs were… ah… associated with white plantation owners a hundred or so years ago?”
Eldon LaCroix looked up from his music, and the three siblings burst out laughing.
“Associated!” Rufus echoed. “That’s a mighty polite way to put it!”
“Look at us!” Althea exclaimed, pointing two fingers at her brothers. “Café au laits!” she said, and all three LaCroixs succumbed to another round of laughter. “Used to be the lighter you were, the better you were, ’cause it proved you were kin to fancy white folks. Nowadays, with Black Pride and everything, the LaCroixs aren’t black enough to suit some people!” Corlis stared at her hosts, unsure what to say next. Althea touched Corlis’s hand. “Way, way back, the white LaCroixs owned Reverie Plantation upriver. It’s open to the public now… like a big ol’ museum. If you ever go there, you’ll see a bunch of photographs taken round the time of the Civil War that show some of our great-great-granddaddies working the cane fields.”
“Oh… wow… that’s great!” Corlis enthused, picturing Virgil getting the shots she’d need for the three-part series she was planning. Then she sobered. “How do you know for certain you’re related?”
“ ’Bout the time you’re talking about, and earlier too, those white LaCroix planter gentlemen had their way with some young, pretty African slaves and—” She pointed to her brothers and herself. “Granddaddy told me that’s how we all ended up with the LaCroix name a long time ago. We’ve got the light skin to prove it—but we’re still black, right baby?” She nodded to Rufus and Eldon. “The white LaCroixs all died out.”
“Could you take me to meet Keith… say, later today or tomorrow?” Corlis persisted. “Do you think he’d know what ancestor of yours was the link between the white LaCroixs and the black Fouchés?”
“Hey… girl, you’re real pushy ’bout this stuff, aren’t you?” Rufus said.
“I’m on a deadline,” Corlis said apologetically. “There’s a move to get those buildings torn down really quickly. I’d like to get the facts out about their history before it’s too late.”
“Are you working for King on this?” Althea asked with a knowing smile.
“I’m a working reporter and I’m independent,” Corlis said tersely. “On stories like these, some of our interests might coincide on these issues… and some might be different. I’m just trying to get the facts straight.”
“Those Selwyn buildings are real ugly,” Rufus commented. “And a new high-rise would sure give lots of needy folks round here some mighty good jobs.”
“There are competing ideas about this,” Corlis agreed carefully. “Behind that three-story screen are some beautiful nineteenth-century row houses, perfectly preserved on their exteriors. King and the preservationists maintain that renovating and restoring the old buildings could provide just as many jobs, plus retain their history, which attracts more tourism. You can certainly make an argument both ways.” Of Althea, she asked, “Would you introduce me to your cousin?”
“Sure.” Althea shrugged. “That’ll be real easy. He usually shows up here on Sundays.”
However, it wasn’t until the following Thursday that Corlis and Althea sat down for a formal meeting with architect Keith LaCroix. Engrossed in listening to his cousins’ music, he suggested that the two women drop by his office on Girod Street, just a few blocks from Corlis’s apartment.
***
In the full light of day in Keith’s architectural office, Corlis was struck by the similarity of the cousins’ features. Keith LaCroix was also light-skinned, and like Althea, his facial traits suggested his mixed heritage.
“We’ve also got some Tchoupitoulas Indian thrown in, too,” he said with a laugh, pointing to a Mardi Gras poster on his wall that pictured a swarthy man dancing in the street attired in a bright yellow-feathered headdress and elaborately sequined costume. “That’s Bernard LaCroix. Swamp Indian on his mother’s side, he claims. As they say, New Orleans isn’t just a melting pot. It’s a great big batch of gumbo!”
Corlis explained her mission: to track down some descendants of the original free blacks who’d constructed the block of threatened Greek Revival buildings on Canal Street. “Besides the white partners—Paul Tulane, William Avery, and Jacob Levy Florence—the names that keep popping up on documents relating to the Selwyn buildings are LaCroix and Fou
ché and…”
“Well, sugar… you’re looking at their direct kin,” Keith declared, referring to himself and his cousin Althea.
“No way!” Althea exclaimed, staring at Keith and then at Corlis, looking pleased. “Really?”
“Just ask Professor Barry Jefferson at the university. He’s got all the family charts to prove it.” He elaborated for Corlis’s benefit. “He teaches history of the South… black history… that sort of thing. He wrote a college text on the Free People of Color in New Orleans.” He swiveled his office chair, pulled a volume off the shelf, and handed it to Corlis, opened to a page with a bookmark and a genealogy chart. Then he cuffed his cousin Althea gently on the chin. “Don’cha know, girl, that your baby brother, Julien, is named for an octoroon who was the black Creole grandson of a mulatto woman named Althea Fouché?” he explained, pointing to the chart.
“Run that one by me again, will you?” Althea said, shaking her head.
“The original black child your youngest brother was named after was Julien LaCroix, the son of a white man—Julien LaCroix—an early owner of Reverie Plantation.”
“Bingo…” Corlis said on a low breath, staring at the family tree.
“Look here how Professor Jefferson traced it back for years and years…” he said, running his finger down the page. “The names Julien, Etienne, Martine, and Althea are peppered all through the black Fouchés and LaCroixs, here… see?”
“My brother Julien’s seventeen,” Althea explained for Corlis’s benefit. “He plays slide trombone.”
Keith LaCroix turned to gaze at Corlis with renewed interest. “And you think Althea Fouché’s daughter Martine owned the land the Selwyn buildings are on?”
“There’s an old deed and a plot map that says she did indeed take title to the land in 1838. And I’m pretty sure that a white man named Julien LaCroix was involved, too, as a result of having a… personal sort of relationship with Martine,” she said, slightly breathless. “I also believe some other Free People of Color and white investors participated in the building project as well. I’m still digging…”
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