Ciji Ware (13 page)

“Yes!” Marge exclaimed excitedly. “I’d asked the people at the bank to get my safe-deposit box, and you’ll never imagine what I found out! I couldn’t wait for you to go check your email… so I thought I’d just call you.”

“Well… what did you find out?” Corlis inquired, acutely aware that behind her King had just zipped up his trousers and was donning his polo shirt.

“In the diary it mentions that there was an
Ian
Jeffries who went into business with Corlis’s husband.”

Ian Jeffries? Oh my Lord!

Corlis could feel her heart start to race.

“Are you sure the diary says Ian?” Corlis asked weakly.

“I’m looking right at it!” Marge insisted tartly. “He and Corlis’s husband were involved in some sort of business venture there in New Orleans… sometime in the late 1830s or 40s from what I can determine. I’ve just sort of skimmed through it.”

“That is… just… pretty… weird,” Corlis said faintly.

“And here’s something even stranger, considering who just answered your phone!” Aunt Marge said enthusiastically. “There was a banker named Duvallon that apparently was mixed up in the enterprise… as in
King
Duvallon!” Marge added with a note of triumph in her voice. “I asked that nice-sounding young man if his family had ever been in the banking business, and he said he thought maybe they were, but he’d look into it to know for sure.”

Corlis heard King sit down on the end of the chaise longue across the bedroom and start to put on his shoes and socks. She didn’t dare look at him. This woo-woo stuff was seriously starting to get to her!

“Amazing,” was all she could manage, gripping the receiver with both hands.

“Well… as I said, the name Jeffries just kept ringing in my head,” Marge reiterated. “May I remind you, dear, I was born in 1923. My great-grandmother was Susannah Buffington McCullough, the woman who had married Warren McCullough.”

“You’ve lost me, Aunt Marge.”

“Oh,
you
know! The little boy born on the Mississippi to Corlis Bell on the journey south from Pittsburgh? Well, I remember
her
—Granny Susannah—telling me that your namesake, who was, of course, her mother-in-law—”

“Wait a sec!” Corlis interrupted. “Let me get this straight: Corlis Bell McCullough was
your
great-grandpa Warren’s mother?”

“Right. His wife, my great-grandmother Susannah, was told by the original Corlis
herself
that the McCulloughs and the Jeffrieses were practically run out of New Orleans over some big scandal or something,” she said, chuckling, “I do so love a juicy story!”

“Especially ones that involve family skeletons, right, Aunt Marge?” Corlis commented dryly.

“I hadn’t read that diary in fifty years, and I’d forgotten some of the details. And also, isn’t the
Duvallon
-McCullough connection astonishing?”

“To put it mildly,” Corlis said, glancing over at King.

“I’ll go dish out the food, okay?” he whispered.

Corlis nodded and allowed him to walk out of her bedroom before she said to her aunt, “And the Jeffries-McCullough connection is pretty wild, too.”

“Where’d that Grover Jeffries come from originally?” Marge inquired.

“Texas.”

“Oh,” the older woman sighed, sounding disappointed. Then she brightened. “Of course, the other Mr. Jeffries—Ian Jeffries—could have been run out of New Orleans
to
Texas along with the McCulloughs, and this Grover Jeffries character is a descendant who moved
back
to Louisiana.”

“Jeffries isn’t a particularly unusual name. It’s a long shot,” Corlis concluded.

“Want me to have the diary photocopied, and I’ll send it to you?” Marge asked cheerfully. Then she paused when her niece didn’t reply. “Or maybe you’re too busy to indulge your old aunt in the family genealogy fetish?”

“Ah… no… of course not, Aunt Marge. I’m fascinated by this genealogy stuff. By all means, make me a copy, and send it along.”

Fascinated
—
and not a little spooked!

“Wonderful! I’ll sign up to get the Elder Ride people to take me to the photocopy place when I can spare the time,” Marge said, sounding pleased.

“Xerox away. I’d love to read the diary. By any chance,” she asked warily, “did you come across the name of Corlis’s husband?”

“She’s none too complimentary about
him
,”
Aunt Marge pronounced with a good deal of enjoyment. “Let me think a moment.” There was a pause, and then Marge’s voice rang breezily through the wire. “Here it is. His name is Randall. Randall McCullough, son of John McCullough of Pittsburgh, PA.”

“Oh, boy…”

“What’s that?” Marge asked.

Corlis leaned against her bedroom wall. She raised her free hand to her temples and began to rub the taut skin in a circular motion.

Just then an egg timer sounded on Marge’s end, producing a loud ping in the background. The elder McCullough was a true Scotswoman, thrifty to the core.

“There’s your timer, Aunt Marge,” Corlis noted obediently. “Send me a copy of the diary, and we’ll keep in touch by email.” She almost dreaded the possibility there might be hard evidence, like this family journal, that could back up her recent bizarre experiences. “Is your computer working all right for you?” she asked, changing the subject. “No trouble getting online?”

“Love it, love it
, love
it!” Marge replied with hearty enthusiasm. “I’m up to the point in my memoirs where Hearst gave me twenty-five cents in 1939, and sent me—a seventeen-year-old cub reporter—into downtown Los Angeles to write a story about women living on skid row in the Depression.”

“How long did you have to stay there?” Corlis asked, awestruck, as she always was when her great-aunt described her early career.

“A week,” Marge replied blithely. Then she added unnecessarily, “The city streets weren’t quite as mean as they are today, of course, and money went a lot further in those days, you know.”

“I’ll bet it did.” Corlis again pictured the bills she had let pile up on her desk. “But even so, it’s got to be a great story, Aunt Marge. Keep writing, okay? And you take care, y’hear?” she said in an approximation of King’s southern drawl.

“And
you
enjoy your interview with Mr. Duvallon,” Marge replied. Corlis could almost see her great-aunt wink at her phone receiver in her Westwood condominium, high atop Wilshire Boulevard. “He can’t be as bad as you’ve made him out to be. Just remember, Corlis, fairness and accuracy are our primary missions as reporters. Love you, darling.”

A classic exit line by Margery McCullough, she thought, replacing the receiver.

She left her bedroom, sniffing the air appreciatively. A wonderfully rich scent of exotic herbs and spices wafted from the front of the apartment. Smiling to herself, she set off down the hallway to investigate precisely what sort of folly an ex-marine could get into in her kitchen. Much to her pleasure, she found King dutifully reheating the gumbo on the top of her stove.

“Where’d you find that pan?” she marveled, silently recalling the charred saucepan she’d been forced to discard after she’d burned her oatmeal a couple of months back.

King pointed to the step stool and then to the top of her kitchen cabinets. “Tucked way, way up there. I take it Ms. McCullough doesn’t do too much heavy-duty cookery?”

“As in
never
,”
she replied, “but you sure seem to know what you’re doing.” She peered over his shoulder and caught a fragrant whiff of the bubbling gumbo, a spicy concoction that contained a variety of shellfish, okra, chicken or sausage, depending on the mood of the chef at the Hummingbird.

“I ought to be able to reheat gumbo!” King laughed. “After all, I was a cook in the marines.”

“You were a
cook
!”
she exclaimed. “I’d have thought you’d have made officer before you were through.”

“I’d just gotten thrown out of a prestigious university, remember?” King reminded her as he spooned steaming stew directly into two large bowls, ignoring her soup tureen. “I’d defied family tradition by going out west to school. After I was booted out, I didn’t exactly have a file of glowing recommendations, not to mention a diploma, to get into any officers candidate school.”

“Why did you decide to go to college in California in the first place?” Corlis asked, ignoring his reference to being ejected from UCLA thanks to her.

“Let’s just say my parents and I agreed we both needed a break,” he explained shortly. “How ’bout you set the table in there?” King suggested, nodding in the direction of the living room, where a small dining table stood next to the wall opposite the fireplace. “I would have done it myself, but I didn’t know where you kept your linens.”

“My
linens
?
Straw place mats are about it, Chef Duvallon,” she replied, opening a drawer to retrieve silverware and the necessary implements for the dining table. With her booty in hand, she paused suddenly in the middle of the Persian carpet and turned to face King, who followed a few steps behind carrying the two filled soup bowls.

“I think I
did
overreact,” she announced.

King halted his forward progress halfway across her living room.

“Place mats are fine,” he assured her mildly. “You’re a busy lady. Who has time to iron, right?”

“No!” she protested. “I mean about my getting you kicked out of UCLA and launching the petition drive to get your fraternity permanently banned from campus.”

King gazed at her for a moment and then grinned.

“You
definitely
need to get something into that stomach of yours, sugar,” he declared, indicating with a nod that she should quickly set the table so he could unburden himself of the hot soup bowls.

“King!” Corlis objected, swiftly laying down the place mats and silverware. “Haven’t you been waiting twelve years to hear a full-fledged apology from me?”

“Since I never thought I
would
—no. I haven’t been waiting.” Then he shot her a mischievous look. “But I do confess it’s mighty nice to hear those fair words emanating from your luscious lips.” Corlis felt her cheeks flush. “Thank you,” he added before she could reply. “And if the truth be told, getting thrown out of UCLA was probably the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Oh, come on now,” she chided. “Isn’t that going a bit too far?”

“No… I’m serious,” King insisted. “If I’d done everything just as my mama and daddy wanted me to, I’d be some nose-to-the-grindstone lawyer in an old-line firm housed in some god-awful high-rise on upper Canal Street somewhere, and I’d be absolutely miserable! No, sugar,” he said, pulling out a dining room chair and indicating that she should sit down, “our little set-to twelve years ago put me on a much better path.”

“How so?”

“When I got expelled, my parents cut me off without a cent,” he explained, taking a seat to her left. “Not that they had much family money anymore, mind you, but I had to completely earn my own way after I got out of the marines.” He took a bite of gumbo and continued, “While I was still an undergraduate, I started volunteering for various historic preservation groups around town. Those folks changed my life.”

“I take it you decided early on not to become a lawyer,” she said, spooning the hot gumbo into her mouth.

“I sometimes wish now that I had added those skills to my quiver,” he said ruefully, “but no… I became fascinated with the history of the architecture in the South. It tells so much about the past… right there in wood, stone, and mortar.”

It tells so much about the past…

“It sure does,” she agreed emphatically. Then she volunteered cautiously, “You won’t believe it, but my aunt Marge found reference to an
Ian
Jeffries in the McCullough family diary. That’s why she called me tonight.”

King raised an eyebrow. “That
is
pretty amazing. And the name Duvallon was also mentioned, she told me,” he said thoughtfully.

Corlis hesitated briefly before plunging ahead with a question that she’d been longing to ask all evening. “Have you ever had any… ah… untoward… experiences when you’ve worked with old buildings?”

“What do you mean ‘untoward’?” he said, glancing up from his soup to stare at her intently.

“Well… ah… you know! Weird stuff… like… well, like—”

“You mean seeing ghosts or hearing things that go bump in the night?”

Corlis felt her jaw tighten. She honestly couldn’t determine if his question meant he thought her a fool—or worse yet—demented… or if he really wanted an answer.

“Well… sort of,” she ventured. “More like having a sense of… well… of the
people
who once lived in a certain time, and… as if you could envision exactly how certain places must have looked in the early days…”