Ciji Ware (62 page)

“I really don’t think this is a day for a lunch date, Mr. Marchand,” Corlis said pointedly. “As you well know, the city council is meeting late this afternoon, and I had hoped that either you or Mr. Jeffries would be willing to talk to me on camera about—”

“That’s
not
why I’m calling,” Marchand intervened brusquely. “And I’m not inviting you to lunch.” He sounded increasingly grim. “To put it as clearly as I can, Ms. McCullough, I know you care about King, and so I am strongly suggesting that you meet me in front of the restaurant as close to twelve as you can make it.”

Before Corlis could reply, the phone line clicked. Marchand had hung up on her.

“What did he say about King?” Antoinette demanded. “What did that man say about my
son
?”

Nonplussed, Corlis exchanged confused glances with Althea and Virgil.

“Lafayette Marchand wants me to meet him in front of Commander’s Palace for purposes unknown,” she disclosed reluctantly. “It’s a pretty weird request,” she added for Virgil’s benefit, “but my instinct says we should go there, okay? Maybe we can grab an interview with him in case Jeffries won’t talk to us on camera after the city council vote.” She turned to King’s mother and aunt. “I don’t know what all this is about, but I will call you right away if I learn anything about King’s whereabouts… all right?”

“Thank you,” Antoinette said faintly.

“That’d be mighty sweet of you,” Bethany said.

“And would it be all right with you if I did a quick interview with Althea here in the garden? It shouldn’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes, and I may not have a chance to do it later in the day. I’ll shoot it over there,” she added, pointing to a thicket of palmetto trees in the side yard. “The TV viewers won’t even know where we are… just that we’re somewhere pretty.”

Antoinette glanced nervously over her shoulder. “Well, my husband’s gone on down to our shop, so I suppose it’d be all right.”

Bethany reached out and touched Corlis’s forearm. “You
will
call us if Lafayette knows anything about King, won’t you? Laf’s an old family friend, and even though he and King have been mighty rude to each other ’bout this Selwyn buildin’ business, I’m sure he’d want to help us… find Antoinette’s son.”

The chances of Lafayette Marchand caring a damn about King’s welfare at this stage of the game were zero to none, she thought bitterly.

Following the brief interview of Althea LaCroix in the garden, Corlis and her television crew headed in two vehicles toward Commander’s Palace. Meanwhile, Althea called United Cab to take her back to the Preservation Resource Center.

“What’s your cell phone number?” Althea asked Corlis as she got into the taxi. “I’ll call you if I hear anything from our end.” The black woman shook her head. “We’ve gotta
find
him, Corlis. We’ll be a totally lost cause at that council meetin’ if we don’t.”

“I know,” Corlis agreed, her voice tight.

“I’m puttin’ all the guerrillas on the case, soon as I get back downtown,” Althea vowed. “And I’m callin’ my second cousin, Councilman Bordeleon. This is serious. See you later at city hall.”

***

On Washington Avenue, a crowd of hungry patrons lined up outside Commander’s Palace, a blue-and-white Victorian situated directly opposite the historic Lafayette Cemetery Number 1.

“How fitting to be meeting Lafayette Marchand
here
,”
Corlis noted sarcastically when she caught up with Virgil and Manny, who were parking the news van a few spaces away from her Lexus beside a large, imposing wrought-iron fence.

The trio found Marchand standing in the shadow of one of the wooden pillars of the restaurant that supported the gallery and its jaunty blue-and-white-striped awning. As usual, he was impeccably attired, this time in a southern classic: a blue-and-white seersucker suit with a white shirt made of fine Egyptian cotton. Even Marchand’s perfectly knotted silk tie sported regimental stripes of sapphire and ivory, as if he had intended to serve as a visual complement to Commander’s color scheme.

“Let’s head on over to the cemetery,” he announced without preamble. He started to cross the street in the direction of the picturesque wrought-iron gates marking the entrance to a graveyard notable for its aboveground tombs.

“You want us to interview you in the
cemetery
?”
Corlis exclaimed as she and her TV crew scampered across the street in Marchand’s wake. Was this man such an egotist that he wanted the ornate ironwork arching overhead that spelled out: “Lafayette Cemetery No. 1” to serve as background for his comments concerning the inevitable demise of the Selwyn buildings?

Some people in this town are just too weird!

Marchand didn’t halt his forward progress to reply. Instead, he pushed open a waist-high iron gate and hurriedly ushered them through.

“Oh m’God,” Corlis said under her breath to Virgil as a phalanx of marble crypts loomed ahead. “Places like this give me the creeps.”

“Me, too,” Virgil whispered back, and Manny nodded.

In front of them stretched an asphalt path that was deeply fissured by cracks and potholes. On each side was a line of trees, followed by row upon row of miniature marble structures that looked like a community of stone dollhouses. Sepulchers were distinguished by crosses, rotund stone cherubs, winged angels, and graceful urns—elaborate carvings that struck odd notes of individuality among the hundreds of tombs that had been inhabited by deceased citizens of New Orleans since 1833.

Ahead of the television crew, Marchand continued at a brisk pace. After a few minutes he did an abrupt about-face. Corlis saw that his blue eyes expressed the same kind of sorrow as the doleful cherub gazing mournfully down at their oddly assorted group.

“May I speak with you alone for a minute?” he asked Corlis.

She glanced at Manny and Virgil, who appeared as surprised as she was by Marchand’s sudden request. She hesitated and then replied, “Okay. Guys, wait here. We’ll be right back.” To Marchand she suggested, “How about over there? On the other side of that big mausoleum?”

The well-dressed public relations man strode across the grass another fifty feet and waited for Corlis to join him behind a solid marble obelisk guarding the entrance to a large crypt dedicated to the Moreau family.

Without preface Lafayette Marchand said, “I need you to help me locate King Duvallon. And when you find him, you must promise me you’ll have your crew record it.”

Corlis gazed at Marchand, dumbfounded by his bizarre request. “I think you’d better explain. Why have you brought us to a cemetery, Mr. Marchand?”

“We don’t have much time,” he said agitatedly, no longer the smooth-talking spin doctor with whom Corlis was accustomed to dealing. “I’ve asked you to help me locate Professor Duvallon because… Kingsbury is my son. Mine and Antoinette Duvallon’s.”

Corlis took a step toward the stone tomb and held on to it for support.

“Oh… my… God…” Corlis said on a long breath.

She envisioned King, tall and slender, with the kind of patrician good looks, natural grace, and aristocratic manners that had never really jibed with Waylon Duvallon’s short, stocky physique and gruff nature. Her gaze drifted from Lafayette’s sleekly trimmed silver-streaked hair to his crisp seersucker suit and elegant brown loafers. King Duvallon certainly possessed the man’s physical characteristics.

“The Mardi Gras court…” Corlis murmured. “I saw the picture of you dressed as a duke on Antoinette’s mantelpiece in the house on Orange Street.”

“That picture is a snapshot of my entire life,” said Marchand somberly.

She did some fast calculations. Lafayette Marchand and King’s mother were contemporaries. They’d grown up in the same social circles thirty-plus years ago. Corlis pulled from her memory the details of the photographic portrait of the Mardi Gras court starring a girlish Antoinette Kingsbury, with Avery Labonniere as King of Carnival, and Lafayette Marchand serving as “duke.” The picture had been given pride of place in the front parlor filled with one-hundred-eighty-year-old treasured family heirlooms.

“Well… it’ll take more than a snapshot to explain what’s going on here,” Corlis declared. “But, obviously, all that’ll have to wait. Will you just answer me one thing, Mr. Marchand? Why have you told
me
,
of all people, about this? Why now? And why do you think I can find King any better than you can?”

“It’s obvious that you care for my son,” Marchand replied tersely. “And you’re the best investigative reporter in town. I’m… desperate. I’ve tried all morning to find him by myself. You and your crew provide my greatest chance—at this late date—for finding him alive.”

“But why did you drag us all the way into a
graveyard
to tell us this?”

“Because King’s locked up in one of these tombs.”

Chapter 27

June 1

The noonday sun beat down with increasing intensity on Lafayette Cemetery Number 1. “Who did this to King?” Corlis demanded, simultaneously furious and fearful.

“I’ll give you a full explanation, but first let’s begin to search.”

Her thoughts were racing in various directions, but underlying every possible scenario was a terrible sense of foreboding. Whoever had risked a kidnapping charge was probably capable of a lot worse things.

Like fitting an adversary with a pair of cement shoes!

“Okay, let’s get started,” she agreed shortly, “but I’ve got to tell my crew what’s going on and let them decide for themselves if they want to get involved with this.”

“Fair enough,” Marchand replied, “but I’d rather King be given the choice of whether to acknowledge me publicly as his father.”

She nodded. “Okay. That part’s between us… off the record.”

Marchand followed behind her as she strode back to Manny and Virgil, who still waited on the other side of the central path. Immediately she explained that King Duvallon had been kidnapped.

The crew looked astonished as Marchand elaborated.

“Jack Ebert let it slip this morning that Grover’d told him to tail King last night. He picked him up outside his parents’ house,” Marchand disclosed. “According to Jack, he and one of the hearse drivers from the Ebert-Petrella funeral homes brought King to some cemetery and locked him up in a tomb till after the council voted Grover’s way today.”

“Jack Ebert? The mortician’s son?” Virgil interjected gruffly. “Jesus, Marchand! You gotta know there’s no love lost between
those
two.”

“Jack knows the city graveyards like the back of his hand,” Marchand said. “Jack claims Grover told him to find a tomb that has a steel grate or marble filigree, so King can get plenty of fresh air till the city council meetin’ is over. Trouble is, Ebert took off, and I couldn’t find him after our telephone conversation. There are cemeteries like this all over greater New Orleans,” he disclosed with a sweeping gesture that encompassed the vast grounds. “This is the third one I’ve been to this morning.”

“And you trust his archenemy to pick a nice ol’ comfy tomb for the guy?” Manny spoke up angrily. “What if the jerk deliberately chose
wrong
?”

“Believe me, at this point, I don’t trust any of that bunch on any level, whatsoever. That’s why I got in touch with you all.”

“God knows what some of these mausoleums are like on the inside,” Corlis exclaimed with a shudder. “Something could have happened and King’s hurt! Doesn’t that idiot Jeffries know that kidnapping—even for a
day
—is a federal offense?”

“I’m sure he knows,” Marchand said tiredly. “He just figures he can get away with it. No harm, no foul. Jack warned me to keep my mouth shut, if I didn’t want to be accused of being an accessory after the fact, and if I wanted to receive the hundred thousand dollars he knows Grover owes me on account.”

“And
you
said?” Corlis asked caustically.

“I hung up the phone and started trying to get hold of you, Ms. McCullough.”

“Why me?”

“I’d seen the way you and King were together when you were dining at Galatoire’s, and then I heard through the grapevine that you’d attended Emelie Dumas’s funeral with him.” Corlis glanced at Manny and Virgil and felt herself flushing. “I knew instinctively that King must have some strong feelings for you if he’d taken you there,” he continued, “and you for him as well. So I hoped you’d be willing to try to help me find him and then put pressure on Grover to stop manipulating members of the planning commission and the city council about this demolition business. Sooner or later, all this arm-twisting is gonna earn him, and anyone who works with him, an indictment.”

“What do you think I
am
?”
Corlis asked indignantly. “Your damage control officer? You want me to do the rescuing
for
you, is that it? Keep your fingerprints off such an embarrassing incident, so you can stay out of jail and still collect those fees?”