Ciji Ware (4 page)

“First of all,” Daphne announced, her voice wavering as faintly as the pinpoints of light that shimmered on the prayer station behind her. Members in the congregation began exchanging uneasy glances. “I just want to say… how much I a-appreciate everything my mama and d-daddy have done for the wedding…” A woman in the front pew wearing a white orchid corsage began to shake her head vehemently. “In a strange way,” Daphne continued, her voice gaining strength, “I suppose the person I should thank the
most
is my maid of honor…”

The groom’s frozen smile began to wither, and he turned toward the priest with a look Corlis interpreted as a demand for holy intercession. As for Cindy Lou Mallory, a stain approximately the same shade of red as her vibrant tresses spread from her décolletage to her hairline. Among the congregation, heads bobbed back and forth, and a low rumble of shocked reactions bubbled up like cheap champagne. Corlis watched with amazement as Daphne Duvallon worked her engagement ring off her finger.

“You see…” she said, her rigid control beginning to disintegrate before everyone’s eyes. “Jack and Cindy Lou Mallory don’t know it, but I
saw
them making out last night. At the groom’s dinner. In the cloakroom at Antoine’s,” she added, her voice now choked with tears. “Right after the toasts were given, and we’d all been drinking and dancing for a while. It seems my maid of
honor
,” Daphne Duvallon continued with stony emphasis, “has been having an affair with my groom, Jack, here, for
months
,
while I was in New York!”

An extremely frail, elderly woman seated next to Daphne’s mother gave an audible cry and slumped against the shoulder of a middle-aged woman sitting to her left. The seatmate swiftly began to fan her distraught companion with the wedding program, her own features etched in a combination of outrage and dismay.

“So I’m sure y’all can understand why…” Daphne forged on bravely, “why… I can’t go
through
with this. I just
can’t
!” In a lightning gesture, she slapped her engagement ring into the hand of the stunned groom. Then the bride scooped up her twenty-five-foot lace train and nodded emphatically in the direction of Althea LaCroix.

The musician brought her hands down on the organ’s ivory keys with a crash. Triumphant recessional music thundered ominously throughout the church while Daphne scored a bull’s-eye, dashing her red and white rose bouquet against her maid of honor’s elaborate flame-haired coiffure.

As suddenly as King Duvallon stepped out from the line of nine groomsmen, a thought hit Corlis like a bolt of lightning.

He knew this was going to happen! That’s why he wanted us to leave!

The stunned wedding guests gawked, dumbfounded, as King offered his distraught sister his arm. Within seconds they swept down the aisle and disappeared.

As for Corlis, watching this passion play from the balcony, her journalist’s instinct suddenly took over. Pavlov’s dog. The bell had rung.

“
Follow
me
!” she hissed urgently to her TV crew.

She made a dash for the paneled stairwell as if she were off to cover a fire. Virgil, with his video camera thumping up and down on his shoulder, and Manny, with headphones clamped to his ears, thundered close behind. The panting trio arrived at the arched doors in time to see brother and sister sprinting across the slate paving stones that fronted Jackson Square.

“I’m still rolling!” Virgil shouted as he and Corlis raced in hot pursuit of the fleeing couple. The reporter prayed that her cameraman had caught the shot of Daphne’s long train billowing behind the pair like a water-skier’s wake.

“Get the hell out of here, you harpy!” King shouted at Corlis over his shoulder as he yanked open the door to the waiting limousine.

She didn’t really blame him for his angry reaction, but by this time the adrenaline was pumping. And besides, she considered in some remote portion of her brain, chasing fire trucks was all in a day’s work. She’d decide later whether or not she’d actually use this footage.

In the next instant King pushed the bride into the backseat, speedily stowed her long, lacy train inside as if he were gathering an unwieldy parachute, and climbed in after her, slamming the door. A second later the sleek black Cadillac sped away—destination unknown.

“Oh… my God!” Corlis exclaimed as she and her crew headed back inside the church in time to see gaggles of dismayed wedding guests leaving their pews. “She
did
it!” she said in an awed tone of voice. “She blew that two-timing creep right outta the water!”

***

By the time Corlis had broadcast the story of the disastrous Ebert-Duvallon wedding, edited with spine-tingling speed, barely in time to make the late evening news, she’d all but forgotten the strange apparition of the Victorian-era bride and groom at the church. It was nearly eleven, and feeling drained and dead tired, she gathered up her things and left the newsroom.

In the hallway, Larry, the janitor, stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her. He was toting a poster-sized photograph. Corlis gaped at the glossy color image of herself in full makeup and the requisite lady-broadcaster’s solid turquoise linen blazer.

“Oh, Miz McCullough,” the janitor said, shaking his head. For a brief two months, her picture had graced the lunchroom wall, along with those of the rest of the WWEZ-TV broadcast team. “I’ve got bad news for you, sugar. Mr. Girard done tol’ me to take this down.”

“Wha—?” Corlis asked, dumbfounded.
The janitor
was delivering this news? “How can I be fired? The story just aired ten minutes ago!”

“Mr. Girard called me on m’cell. Mad as a snake, I’m ’fraid. Tol’ me to go right into the lunchroom tonight and—”

“But
why
?” Corlis protested. “That wedding turned out to be an incredible story! The video was fabulous! I thought I wrote it well, and—”

“But, sugar,” Larry interrupted patiently, “the news editor and the director both done tol’ me they
tried
to get you to call higher-ups tonight before you went and put that thing on TV.”

“Oh, Larry, those guys are always a bunch of wusses in situations like this!”

“Yeah, but sweetheart, if you’d done called the big boss, he’d have tol’ you that he’s Mr. René Ebert’s second cousin on his mama’s side.”

“You mean
Victor
Girard, as in the
owner
of WWEZ-TV?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re telling me, then, that the philandering groom’s
father
—René Ebert—and my boss, Mr. Girard, are kissing
cousins
?” Corlis exclaimed, and then added in a small, defeated voice, “And so…
that’s
why we were assigned to cover this particular wedding? Just a family puff piece?”

“I ’spect that’s right.”

“And Victor Girard, then, was the person who provided the assignment desk with all that inside information about the two prominent local families?”

“I ’spect so, sugar,” Larry nodded with a sad, knowing smile.

“Nobody told me that.”

“In N’awlings, darlin’… all them other white folks’d figure you already
knew
.”

Chapter 2

December 21

Just after midnight Corlis stood on the carpeted ramp that led to the deserted newsroom and surveyed the rows of empty reporters’ desks and the news set beyond. The cavernous studio was shrouded in darkness, except for a few lights glowing in the assignment editor’s office, whose large picture window overlooked the open floor plan.

Fired!

Again!

Sensations of mild panic and bubbling rage boiled in her solar plexus as she stood holding in her arms a cardboard file box filled with the contents of her desk. She’d been in New Orleans for less than two months and already she’d been canned. Axed. Deep-sixed. Outplaced!

What is it with me?
she wondered as moisture rimmed her eyes.
Do I have some sort of Wage Earner Personality Disorder or something?

For a long moment she gazed around her and then she turned on her heel and fled the newsroom before the security guard arrested her for stealing her own laptop.

***

By the time she arrived at her brick row house on Julia Street, upriver from the French Quarter, the leaden weight that had pressed against her chest as she drove home had become an emotional volcano, poised to erupt. Fighting a lump in her throat the size of a praline, she trudged up the flight of stairs to her living quarters above the photographer’s gallery that fronted the deserted street. She balanced the cardboard carton full of her office possessions on one knee, while she opened the front door with her key and called out, “Cagney?”

She was startled by the shaky sound of her voice and distressed when her twenty-three-pound marmalade tomcat didn’t deign to appear in the foyer to greet her.

But then, Cagney Cat never came when called. It was a little game he played just to show her who was the boss on Julia Street. At times the feline’s red fur, slightly pugnacious attitude, and feisty independence prompted Corlis to think that the four-legged firebrand
was
the tough-guy actor, James Cagney… reincarnated.

Forlornly calling out to him one last time, Corlis walked down the hall and dumped the box on the desk in her home office. The small room had been the scullery and broom closet when the building was constructed in 1832, a time when most of the surrounding warehouses had yet to be built. Back then there had been plenty of servants available to scour and clean other people’s parlors. As of tonight, however, she couldn’t even afford her twice-a-month cleaning woman!

A long soak in a steaming bubble bath did nothing to soothe her soul, nor did the stiff shot of bourbon she downed from a Waterford crystal tumbler before crawling into bed. As she lay in the darkness, unable to sleep, listening to the late-night street noises up and down the old Warehouse District, Corlis had only one thought.

God almighty, what would Great-Aunt Marge say this time?

Would Aunt Marge, a celebrated reporter, consider tonight’s broadcast an example of heads-up journalism or another act of professional suicide? Had Corlis shot herself in the foot—again—or merely fired a volley on behalf of great reporting in a town that was too politically conservative and inbred to tolerate such an act of First Amendment freedom?

Everyone thinks I’m such a tough cookie, a chip off the old block.
She reached for a tissue as tears began to spill down her cheeks.
Well, I’m not!

It was nearly 10:30 p.m. in California. Struggling for composure, she turned on the bedside light. After a moment’s hesitation she reached for the phone beside her four-poster plantation bed that no man’s form had yet to grace. Margery McCullough’s number rang four times before her voice mail picked up. At eighty-eight years old, the self-described favorite “sob sister news hen” of the long-deceased newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst embraced all the latest electronic gadgets, including a laptop computer that she had purchased for herself when she bestowed a duplicate model on her great-niece as a going-away present.

“You can leave a message here for Margery McCullough,” announced a strong, vibrant voice. “I’m either writing my memoirs and ignoring this call… or on my other line… or I’m out on the town! Tell me who you are, and I’ll get back to you when I can.”

What a woman!
Corlis thought admiringly, hanging up without mentioning her most recent debacle. She didn’t want her great-aunt to come home to hear about this upsetting news and find it too late to call her back. Exhausted, she turned out her bedside light for the second time and stared woefully at the carved moldings decorating her ceiling, dimly visible in night’s gloom.

After what had seemed like hours, Corlis reckoned she’d slept only fitfully, or not at all. At length, when the luminous dial on her bedside clock registered 5:30 a.m., the tears finally burst forth in earnest. Her crying soon prompted a few answering shrieks from a family of feral cats that had long made the back alley outside her bedroom window their nocturnal retreat. Embarrassed by her unrestrained outburst, she stifled her weeping, only to suffer alternating waves of anger and remorse that swept over her in unrelenting succession.

Aunt Marge and I thought my moving to New Orleans was the perfect solution
—
and look what happened! No job, looming debts, and now a really rotten résumé!

She struggled to sit upright in bed and put her head in her hands. She was thirty-four years old. She’d been engaged once, had worked for six different TV stations in five different cities, and had been fired three times in a twelve-year career for telling the unvarnished truth. Not exactly a great track record.