Ciji Ware (23 page)

“Let us speak frankly, dear Martine. Henri is not with us any longer, is he?” Julien said quietly. “He has departed this world due to selfish, unhealthy habits that have deprived his loved ones of his company, is it not so?” Martine’s eyes widened in reaction to his harsh pronouncements, but she remained silent. “And now he’s left you with a deed to some valuable land but no protector. How very unwise of him.”

Martine stood up and stepped angrily away from him. Julien would wager that if she had been a man she would have challenged him to a duel right on the spot.

“Are you threatening me, Monsieur LaCroix?” she demanded, her voice low and shaking with fury. “If I don’t submit to your advance, you will somehow strip my legacy from me? Is that what you are about?”

Julien took her measure warily.
What was he doing?
he demanded of himself. He was neither accomplishing his goal of persuading her to trade her property nor luring her into his bed!

“I am merely stating the facts of the situation,” he replied, attempting to sound calm and in control.

“The
facts
,
as you so delicately put them,” she countered, tapping the tip of her closed parasol into the dust near his polished half boots, “are there for all the world to see in the deed that has been signed by your own father and Monsieur Girard and properly witnessed!”

He quickly rose from the bench as she turned abruptly toward the facade of Saint Louis Cathedral. In another instant he knew he would lose all possible chance to woo her, let alone persuade her that he would honorably exchange her land on Canal Street for property of equal value.

“Martine… I’m—I’m sorry,” he faltered. “You misunderstand my intent! I—”

But Martine Fouché was in no mood to listen to a man whose actions she had found highly insulting. She looked over her shoulder and stared unblinkingly into his eyes. “Good day,
monsieur
!”
she declared. And with that she strode quickly across the open plaza and entered the cathedral.

After a moment’s astonishment Julien hurriedly set off, arriving at the entrance of the church only steps behind her.

“Martine!” he called after her, ignoring curious pedestrians passing by. “Wait! I must talk with you.” Once inside the cathedral, he was forced to pause near the door to wait for his eyes to adjust to the church’s sepulchral interior. “Martine?” he whispered hoarsely. “I acted like a cad. Martine! Where are you?”

He caught sight of a black-clad figure disappearing like a ghostly apparition inside the confessional booth. Meanwhile the bells in the church’s tower tolled the noonday hour, reverberating solemnly in the belfry directly above his head.

As the carillon stilled and the normal sounds of the bustling
carrè de la ville
resumed in the Place d’Armes, Julien wondered with a bleakness that reached into his very soul if he had not lost all chance of capturing the favors of the proud, enigmatic Martine Fouché.

Chapter 10

March 11

The sound of church bells faded in Corlis’s ears, and in its place she heard an insistent ringing coming from her cell phone resting somewhere at the bottom of her purse. Before she could even open the clasp, the noise ceased.

Her heart still pounding, she glanced around in complete confusion at the dimly lit basement and its rows of ledger books and file folders stowed in metal shelves in the underground city archives. Then she gazed at the 1838 diagram of New Orleans spread on the desk in front of her. Warily, she leaned forward and squinted at a faded green square identified as “Place d’Armes” on the map, located in the center of the hand-drawn grid, known in modern times as the French Quarter. When was the name Place d’Armes changed to Jackson Square?

There, drawn on the yellowed map was the miniature, two-dimensional sketch of a three-spired church complete with bell tower and the words “Saint Louis Cathedral” written beneath in spidery nineteenth-century script.

“What in the
world
just happened to me?” she declared aloud, then glanced around to see if anyone was close enough to hear the ravings of a madwoman who had somehow been thrust back into a crazy time warp where the human subjects of her historical research were running around
live
and in living color!

As far as she could determine, reincarnation this definitely was
not
!
But what in blazes was
causing
these little paranormal junkets back in time? And all to the same destination: New Orleans, immediately prior to the time when King Duvallon’s treasured Canal Street buildings had been constructed. Even more astounding, each of these exotic episodes—or whatever they were—was lasting longer, becoming more detailed and involving the ancestors of nearly everyone she had ever met in New Orleans!

Clearly she couldn’t blame this most recent blast from the past on her missing a meal, or on some wild figment of her imagination!

Corlis rubbed her throbbing temples with the tips of her fingers and speculated briefly about the forebear she’d been named after—Corlis Bell McCullough. She hurriedly made a note on the yellow pad as a reminder to confirm more details about the husband of the original Corlis.

Was there any way to prove that the opportunistic blowhard Ian Jeffries could be an ancestor of
Grover
Jeffries? And most astonishing of all, Corlis realized, staring fixedly at the antique map, in
this
particular visitation she had accessed a past that had not always involved Corlis Bell McCullough
directly
.
Perhaps her progenitor merely provided the way back.

Without warning, panic flooded her solar plexus and made her feel faint with anxiety. This kind of thing simply couldn’t be happening to
her
,
of all people! She’d been known her entire career as a hard-core skeptic, more than a little cynical, and in her line of work,
always
on the lookout for charlatans who claimed to have paranormal experiences. In fact, she had long prided herself on being able to detect a fake a mile away.

Corlis deliberately inhaled a calming breath as she scanned the deserted archive. She noticed that her skin had begun to feel that now familiar clamminess that always accompanied these visitations, along with the perspiration that suddenly beaded her forehead. A pang of nausea swept over her.

Suddenly her cell phone rang a second time. She plunged into her purse’s depths, wildly rooted around, and pulled it out in time to see the telephone number displayed on the tiny screen before the ringing ceased once more. She could only determine from its familiar prefix that someone who lived in the French Quarter was trying to reach her. Her watch said it was five o’clock exactly.

How strange!
she thought, biting her lip in concentration. If she’d fallen asleep, she’d only dozed a few minutes. But
had
she merely fallen asleep? Then she sat upright in her chair. She certainly wasn’t going to find the answer just sitting in
this
dank place. She rose to her feet but was forced to steady herself by leaning against the desk until her vertigo abated. Cautiously she stashed the rare documents into the proper folder to await her next visit and made for the exit just as the basement archive closed for the day.

Sure as shootin’, I don’t want to be shut up in a place like this all night!

With a brief nod to the security guard in the lobby, she ventured outdoors, eager for the privacy of her car. Right now, Corlis thought with single-minded determination, her only goal was to find out who had sent her an electronic summons from the real world—and had thereby, inadvertently, bid her return from the nineteenth century.

***

“You can leave a message for King Duvallon, Jitters, or any of the preservation guerrillas, after the tone. Have a decent day.”

Corlis leaned her head against the back of her luxurious leather driver’s seat and inhaled slowly, then held her breath for a count of five and exhaled. Her masseuse in LA had taught her this technique for finding her center.

King had called her. From his house. After business hours.

Oh boy. Aunt Marge. What do I do now?

A million questions swirled in her head as she quickly pushed the “end” button on her cell phone to avoid saying something foolish into King’s answering machine.

If she considered Kingsbury Duvallon just a source—like any other she dealt with day in, day out—she wouldn’t be feeling so giddy over the simple fact that he’d called her… would she? And what if she disclosed to him what had just happened to her in the city’s basement archive? How could a mere acquaintance like King Duvallon be the only person in the universe that she’d trust with this bizarre information?

Corlis slowly shook her head in dismay. Why, she wondered bleakly, did she absolutely
yearn
for this former adversary to put his arms around her and tell her she wasn’t going crazy?

You know the rules, McCullough. You’re covering a story. No fun allowed.

With all the money at stake—not to mention the politics—the controversy brewing over the demolition of those buildings on Canal Street could be big.

Very big. You’ve got to keep everything between you and King strictly professional!

For years Aunt Marge had drummed “the code” into her: “If the relationship between a reporter and a source begins to get personal, dear, the reporter either has to confine herself exclusively to contact during business hours and when other people are around—or take herself off the assignment,” Aunt Marge declared. “There are no ifs, ands, or buts about this, darling girl.”

Just then her mobile phone emitted its familiar ring.

“Hello?”

“Well… I’ll be!” A deep voice chuckled. “I actually got you in person! Where are you, Ace? It took all my spies to track down your cell number.”

“King!” Corlis exclaimed. “How
did
you find me? This thing is as classified as a Pentagon safe phone!”

“Can’t reveal my sources,” he said smugly.

“Virgil again. I gotta talk to that guy.”

“Got something very interesting to show you.”

Corlis could hear the excitement in his voice.

“Yeah? What?”

“As I said, I’ve got to
show
you.”

“Well… okay,” she said doubtfully. “Where do I have to go to see this mysterious whatsus?”

“My place.”

“What?”

“I had the librarian at the Historic New Orleans Collection make two copies late today—which I just picked up on my way home. How ’bout coming over for a drink first, and we’ll have the unveiling. Then we can grab a bite at a little neighborhood place I know round the corner.”

“What
kind
of unveiling?” she asked suspiciously. “And copies of
what
?”

“What’s the matter, Ace? You going cold on this story?”

“No! In fact, I’ve been doing a little digging on my own… in the basement of City Hall.”

Not to mention a little time-traveling!

“That’s great, sugar!” he said enthusiastically. “Are you in your car right now?”

“Yes. Parked just off Poydras,” she said as she stared into her rearview mirror, wishing she’d washed her hair that morning.

“Get yourself to the Quarter on the double. I’m on the corner of Dauphine and Ursulines. The gate’ll be open, so you can park in the courtyard.”

“Okay…” she agreed uncertainly, “but I don’t know about dinner.”

“We’ll talk about it when you get here. I promise that I’ll remove from the house all signs of my ever having been a member of a fraternity. Bye now.”

***

Corlis took the longer route to King’s place to give herself time to steady her nerves. She needed a few more moments to recover after her latest rendezvous with an unsettling historical cast of characters.

At dusk on this cloudless March day, shafts of soft topaz light suffused the atmosphere as she drove down Decatur Street. On her right, the sluggish Mississippi had turned into a ribbon of molten gold as the sun began to fade along the narrow streets of the French Quarter.

It was all so beautiful, she thought. She was filled with a savage adoration for the elegance and decadence of the city. Its culture and crime. A place where the best and worst of humanity mixed it up at Mardi Gras and at Jazz Fest, in the churches uptown, and in the bars along Bourbon Street. A place that made a person deliriously happy—or suicidal.

Once on Dauphine Street, she quickly spotted two heavy wooden gates that were magically swinging open as she approached, their painted sage-green hue inviting against the house’s warm, toast-colored stucco walls. Above the first floor a lacy wrought-iron gallery was supported, at intervals, by pillars of matching iron filigree. Enormous shaggy ferns cascaded from hanging pots along the stylish balcony. Corlis steered her car into the courtyard and parked between King’s battered station wagon and a late-model, navy-blue Jaguar convertible. A fountain embedded in the far wall splashed musically.