Ciji Ware (71 page)

“Hello?”

“Corlis? Good! You’re still there.”

“Hi, Dylan.”

“Great job on the ol’ tube tonight, sweetheart. I watched from my office.”

“Thanks,” she said, trying to keep the fatigue and disappointment out of her voice.

“You comin’ to Café LaCroix tonight?” he asked.

“First I heard of it. Why?”

“Didn’t you know? The preservation guerrillas are celebratin’, sugar! Won’t be any fun if you and your aunt Marge aren’t there. Althea told me to make sure you’d come.”

King would be there. And probably Cindy Lou. Corlis couldn’t face it.

“I’m just dead,” she temporized, “and I expect my aunt is pretty jet-lagged.”

“She’s rarin’ to go,” countered Dylan with enthusiasm. “Had a nice little nap. I just talked to her, tryin’ to track you down.”

“Oh, Dylan… I dunno.”

“Hey, babycakes… what’s the matter?” Dylan said quietly. Corlis suddenly felt a lump rise in her throat and couldn’t speak. “You havin’ the postpartum blues, sugar, now that the Selwyn story is over?”

“It doesn’t
feel
over,” Corlis said bleakly. “I never did find out if Julien LaCroix’s will stood up in court… or if Joseph Dumas’s son Edgar married Lisette, or if Martine got to keep her property and pass it along to her son Julien—”

“Corlis!” Dylan said insistently. “The story’s over.
The buildings are saved
.”

“But I never learned if my namesake, Corlis Bell McCullough, left her rotten husband.”

“
That’s
not why you’re feelin’ so blue, is it?” Dylan intervened abruptly. “You don’t want to come to the party because… what? You and King have a fight or somethin’?”

“I guess it falls into the ‘or something’ category,” Corlis said morosely, amazed, as always, that Dylan seemed to be able to read her mind. “Before the city council meeting today, King wanted me to reveal what I knew from my sources, so he’d be prepared for what Jeffries and his goons were going to sling at him. But I couldn’t… I
wouldn’t
tell him because of a professional conflict of interest. Now he’s… he’s…”

“He’s
what
?”
Dylan asked impatiently.

“Cool. Preoccupied…” she said obliquely.

“Have you talked to him since the city council voted?” Dylan demanded.

“No…” Corlis admitted. “He never called me. Look, Dylan… I have a long history of misunderstandings with the man. Let’s just leave it at that.”

An idea was forming in her mind. A wild, insane, crazy idea prompted both by her conversation with Dylan Fouché and her fervent desire to do something that was totally absorbing to take her mind off the victory party.

“C’mon, Corlis! It won’t be a party without
you
.
Promise you’ll drop by Café LaCroix later,” Dylan insisted. “It’s gonna go
real
late, I guarantee. Promise?”

“Maybe later,” she said noncommittally. “I have to check out something first.”

There was a pause on the phone. “You’re gonna try to do your flip-back thing tonight to find out what happened, aren’t you, girl? You won’t be satisfied till you’ve tied up all the loose ends on this story. Well, that’s
not
a good idea right now,” he said flatly.

Wow! This guy was scary!

“It’d take my mind off my troubles,” she suggested, tongue in cheek.

“
Don’t
,”
Dylan said shortly. “I very nearly couldn’t get you to come back to consciousness last time you visited another century. Doin’ it on your own… you could get into serious trouble.”

“You mean
permanently
lose my mind? How inconvenient. Well, then, would you consider meeting me at the Selwyn buildings? Right now. Before we go to Café LaCroix?” she asked, making an abrupt decision. She’d make a deal with him. She’d go to the victory party if he’d help her find out what ultimately befell Martine, the other Corlis McCullough, and the original Lafayette Marchand. “I want to try something… but I agree with you. I don’t think I should do it alone.”

“Absolutely not,” Dylan said emphatically. “You’re tired. You’re depressed about King. Don’t risk it right now.”

“
I’m fine
.”

“I don’t think so,” he pronounced sternly. “Listen, sugar… I’ll be glad to help you answer any questions still plaguin’ you, but let’s wait till you’re rested. Till you’re not so stressed out, y’hear what I’m sayin’? Maybe one day next week.”

But I want to know now! I
have to know what happened to Corlis Bell McCullough and why the women in my family always have so much trouble with the men in their lives. Maybe it’s in our genes?

Even steady, sensible Aunt Marge had never had a sustainable relationship with a man. Lovers aplenty, and someone very special, from what she’d disclosed today… but never a partnership that lasted in the face of driving ambition. And the same was true for Corlis herself. Was it the men, or was it the McCullough women? If Dylan wouldn’t help her find out tonight why this was so, she’d just hazard it on her own.

“Okay, Dylan,” she agreed calmly. “Will you do me a favor? Will you go pick up Aunt Marge on Julia Street while I finish up a few things here? Then I’ll meet you both at Café LaCroix in about an hour, okay?”

“Okay,” Dylan replied doubtfully.

“My other phone’s ringing,” she fibbed. “Gotta go. See you later.”

***

It was a few minutes after midnight when Corlis parked her car on Common Street next to the entrance to the old LaCroix & Company brick warehouse. She turned off the headlights and scanned the buildings on either side. Architect Keith LaCroix’s rendering of the old site had identified the third entrance from the corner as the probable location of Joseph Dumas’s tailor shop. Colvis, his competitor, had had a similar establishment facing Canal Street. Dumas’s business was just a few doors down from the back entrance to Martine Fouché’s former town house, located above the shop where her sister Annette had once sewn gowns for the city’s elite.

Corlis locked the door to her Lexus and dug inside her voluminous shoulder bag for the item she’d purchased at the all-night supermarket. The box of children’s drawing chalk was not precisely the kind tailors used to mark alterations on clothing, but Corlis hoped it would produce the desired result.

She felt slightly ludicrous as she withdrew her heavy black police-style flashlight from the car trunk and glanced up and down the street to be certain there was no one in sight. Fortunately the massive aluminum, three-story screen did not extend around to Common Street, so she located the door to Dumas’s old shop with relative ease. One of its hinges had broken off, and in a few seconds she was inside the former tailor’s establishment, shining the broad beam around the deserted interior space.

The shop’s most recent incarnation had been as a tax preparer’s storefront office. Outdated IRS manuals and a smattering of tax forms lay strewn about the floor. Otherwise the space was empty. Corlis trod gingerly around the debris and made her way toward the rear of the space, attempting to imagine the place as a nineteenth-century haberdashery.
Had Joseph Dumas and his son, Edgar, actually occupied these very rooms?
she wondered. Had her namesake, Corlis Bell McCullough, truly sipped a cup of coffee here, as described in her diary?

She aimed her flashlight’s powerful beam into a small room at the back. Toward the rear wall stood a scarred desk and wooden chair where some benighted soul had toted up the taxes for citizens too weary or too confused by the complicated federal regulations to figure out the forms by themselves.

Despite the dust, she sat down in the straight-backed chair and piled her leather purse and flashlight onto the desk’s scratched surface. Warily she extracted a piece of blue chalk from the box. With determination she lifted it to her nose and inhaled deeply. The dry, cretaceous smell made her want to sneeze, and for an instant she thought she might be transported to her first-grade school room at El Rodeo, K through 8, on Whittier Drive, in Beverly Hills. She could picture Miss Bettelheim standing at the blackboard in a room where chalk dust blended with the fragrance of macaroni and cheese drifting down the corridor from the nearby cafeteria.

Corlis wistfully pushed this memory aside and deliberately began to take deep, measured breaths, just as Dylan had instructed her in her bedroom on Julia Street. She envisioned a shield of white light encasing the battered old desk like a bell jar and protecting her from forces unknown.

Inhale… exhale. Inhale… exhale.

She allowed her mind to empty of all other thoughts and instead concentrated on the sound of her slow, even breathing and the dusty, powdery aroma of chalk. A sensation of deep relaxation began to flow through her body. How pleasant this exercise was, she mused. It felt wonderful to release the tensions of this tumultuous day… to allow all thoughts to drift… to merely drink in sensations… to imagine someone sketching quick, bright blue lines down a piece of finely woven wool… light black wool of the sort that fine clothes were made… clothes to be worn on important occasions like… like a
wedding
.
Oh yes, a wedding! It would be a ceremony that the man, whose trousers were being so deftly marked by blue chalk, hoped would surely be the most joyous occasion of his life.

Chapter 31

May 12, 1852

Surely you
will
come to our wedding, Mrs. Mac?” Edgar Dumas asked, standing on the small rounded dais where his father’s many clients had their clothing tailored to precision.

Corlis Bell McCullough noted that Edgar was staring past the rather rakish straw hat she’d donned today. The groom-to-be gazed out of the shop’s window onto Common Street as a large wagon, pulled by a team of gargantuan workhorses, lumbered by. Edgar’s father, Joseph, squatted on his knees, chalk in hand, putting the final touches on his son’s wedding suit.

“At our nuptials,” Edgar continued, resuming his attention to his visitor, “Lisette has decreed there shall be an orchestra and that I’m to play my violin and she the pianoforte!”

“Ah… but what a wonderful treat for all your guests,” Corlis replied, smiling. “You both have such a talent for music, Edgar, as does Lisette’s mother, Martine. My wish is for any children you and Lisette may have together to be blessed with her beauty and your shared artistic ability.”

Corlis knew that young Edgar would cheerfully give up the tailoring business entirely to pursue his dream of playing professionally, if only his father would permit it. The senior Dumas never would, of course. Even the younger man could see that it would be very imprudent to exchange such a thriving business for the uncertainties of playing violin in an all-Negro orchestra or string ensemble.

Corlis took an appreciative sip from the cup of rich chicory coffee that the Dumases always had brewing on the hob for the patrons who called at their popular shop. However, Mrs. Mac, as Edgar and his father had come to call her over the years of their acquaintance, was more than just a neighbor—she was also their bookkeeper. And as was her habit, she arrived at the end of the business day, on Tuesdays, to deliver an updated record of the shop’s accounts.

“I wouldn’t miss the marriage of Edgar to Lisette for the world,” Corlis warmly assured them. “Although one of the reasons I came to see you today was to tell you that I shall be leaving New Orleans very soon.”

“My dear madam, we are so sorry to hear this,” the elder Dumas declared. “Of course, we understand such a decision on your part,” he added with the diplomacy that had made him the confidant of his many clients, black and white. The Dumases realized, given the mysterious disappearance of Mr. McCullough, that his abandoned wife could neither mourn a deceased spouse nor divorce a live one. Her only solution was to depart for foreign territories where no one knew her, and there assume the role of bereaved widow. “But where will you be going?”

“My son Warren has written from California that there are wonderful holdings we can homestead just outside the capital in Monterey. That’s south of San Francisco, on the sea,” she explained.

“What an adventure for such a young man.” Joseph cast a protective look at his own son. “And only seventeen,” he murmured. “He’s a credit to you, Mrs. Mac.”

“I was worried sick about him when he stowed away, till I heard of his safe arrival.” Corlis nodded. “I’ve determined to leave on the fifth of June, on a sailing ship from New Orleans down to Panama, and then take a mule train across that narrow isthmus that separates the two oceans.”

“Isn’t that an awfully perilous journey?” Joseph asked, concerned.

“Perhaps,” Corlis replied, “but I’ve already had yellow fever and feel equal to the challenge of tramping through a jungle.” She heaved a sigh. “I must admit I
am
concerned for young Webb. I do hope he’ll be all right.”