Lies Agreed Upon (42 page)

“You’re saying that Desmond didn’t kill himself? That my mother accidently caused his death?” gasped Tess. “But you never said that to the police.
You told the police you weren’t even in the room.”

“Why increase the trauma and guilt for the poor child?” sighed Dreux. “It was an acc
ident. Better to let Desmond take the blame. But the Donovans and your grandmother knew, and it fueled the old feud. That dreadful day scarred us all.”

“Especially my mother,” agreed Tess
with a grim nod. Here was another explanation for the unhappy tension in that long-ago bayou house. It also explained how Dreux had been close enough to Desmond to be covered in sprayed blood as Sam described. Dreux claimed he had lied not to protect himself but to protect a child. Her mother’s suffering was even deeper than she had thought, Tess realized. So why then had her mother asked Dreux to come see her, knowingly embracing her old misery? Had she planned her end and wanted to seek expiation or closure? Dreux had said the tragedy had not been discussed, but why believe him?

“Why
did Desmond have his finger on the trigger, and why didn’t he have the safety on?” asked practical Tony.

“We’ll never know. It was carelessness with a terrible consequence,” answered Dreux and trained on Tess an earnest
, regretful gaze. “I have wanted to avoid upsetting you with the truth, but you insisted on knowing.”

“Horror,
guilt and lies, years of lies.” 

Tess turned and pretended to inspect a weapons display on the nearest wall, collecting her thoughts.

“Why do you believe Dreux? Did my suicide ever make sense? I was tough. I mended stronger in the broken places as they say. Three people were in this room on that terrible day, and two of them ended up as ‘suicides’ Think about that.”

Tess stared blindly at a pair of crossed cavalry sabers that had been mounted behind
the big desk. One was a relatively austere blade, and the other a decoratively etched dress sword, both of which Tess assumed dated from Ben Cabrera’s Confederate cavalry service. Beneath the swords were two serviceable pistols, resting heavily on their mounting brackets.

To give her
self more time to regain her composure, Tess asked Dreux about the weapons, and he readily confirmed her assumptions that they all dated from Ben Cabrera’s Civil War service. Most Southern cavalrymen carried at least two handguns, Dreux noted, and Ben had relied on a trusty Colt revolver as well as an intimidating but less reliable double-barrel LeMat, a gun invented by a New Orleans doctor.

The old lawyer next drew her attention to the space over the fireplace mantel where an old-fashioned brace of percussion dueling pistols had been posed, barrels pointing dramatically at each other. They were deadly, lovely toys, their murderous purpose belied by the beauty of their gleaming damascene barrels, polished walnut stocks and elaborate scroll engraving. The dueling pistols had originally belonged to Antonio Cabrera and had never been used by anyone as far as he knew, Dreux added. If Antonio or Ben had ever demanded satisfaction under the famed “dueling oaks” in City Park, there was no record of it.

Tess smiled crookedly. She definitely could imagine the romantic Antonio pacing under the oaks, clutching a pistol and a tear-stained farewell note for his beloved, whether Josephine or Thérèse.

Tess continued to scan the room and noticed a small slant-top lady’s writing desk perched on delicate cabriole legs. Tucked shyly in a corner, it was too feminine for the masculine room. She approached it and ran a curious hand over its
walnut and cherry marquetry

“It’s one of a pair of desks belonging to Josephine,” Dreux remarked behind her. “Ben gave one to Marie Haas when she married Louis. So I believe the twin of that piece is in Lillian Vanderveld’s attic.”

Tess inspected the desk with more interest. Mimi’s reminiscence about the ill-fated trip to Lillian’s attic echoed in her mind. With a small leap of excitement, she identified the little desk as the mate to the one described by Mimi as having secret drawers.

She was turning to mention this to Dreux, when Mrs. Blaise appeared at the door and summoned the old lawyer. “I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but you have a call from the young man you met with last week,” she said. “Should I ask him to call back?”

Dreux frowned. “No, I’d better speak with him, Vera.”

He turned to his guests and graciously asked them to excuse him. “I’ll be right back. This shouldn’t take long.” Dreux exited quickly and they could hear his muffled voice in a phone conversation behind the closed master bedroom door.

“I don’t think I’d like to live in this museum,” Tony remarked and strolled over to peer at the titles on the lower bookshelves. “That bedroom gives me the creeps and so does this library. Did you notice the stain on the floor just under that armchair? I’m pretty sure it dates from his buddy’s gruesome accidental-death-turned-suicide. I’m sorry your mother had to go through that kind of trauma, by the way.”

Tess glanced askance at the spot Tony pointed out. Perhaps it was spilled ink or coffee, she thought. Knowing the history of the room might make them turn an innocent stain into gruesome evidence.

Tony began to pull out thick old books, blowing at the dust and glancing at his smudged fingers with distaste. Meanwhile, Tess turned back to the little desk and carefully flipped open the slant top.

As described by Mimi, the interior held two sets of pigeon-hole slots on either side of a little central cabinet with two drawers. Somewhere in the decorative marquetry was a release to reach the secret drawers
at the rear of the central cabinet.

Tess was feeling around for the magic inlay shape when Dreux suddenly reappeared at the door of the library. “Something unusual has come up. I wonder if I could speak with you a moment in the bedroom, Mr. Mizzi,” he said. His expression was noticeably somber.

Tony raised his eyebrows. “If this concerns Miss Parnell, I think she should join us,” he replied.

“Of course, but I would like your advice on a legal point first. In this instance, I believe we will be on the same side of the issue,” intoned the old man with a meaningful nod.

“OK,” Tony agreed, but he rolled his eyes behind Dreux’s back to show he suspected the little lawyer of indulging in dramatics.

Tess was not as sanguine as Tony. She swallowed down an acid flux of anxiety and told herself to wait for more information before assuming the worst.

To distract herself, she turned back to the writing desk and desultorily poked at more inlay pieces. Suddenly, to her shock, one of them gave, and the little center cabinet squeaked and moved slightly outward on one side, like a thick little door. She hooked a fingernail in the little crevice that appeared and tugged the center piece open to reveal three shallow little drawers with tiny brass pulls.

Tess opened the top hidden drawer and felt inside gently with her finger. Nothing. She repeated the procedure with the second little drawer. Nothing again.
To be thorough, she hooked a negligent exploratory finger in the last little drawer. She was stunned to hear a rustle and feel the edge of something light and stiff. She pulled the drawer all the way out and saw a small, much-folded square of yellowed paper. She opened it carefully and spread it out. It had deteriorated and perforated in some places around the creases, but the faded brownish-ink handwriting was still legible.

Tess
studied her find. Even a brief glance told her the spidery old-fashioned handwriting was in French. Like many California teens, she had opted to focus on Spanish as the more practical language given the state’s large Hispanic population. But she had taken two years of high-school French, too, enough to understand the salutation at a glance: “Mon Cher Benjamin,” meaning “My Dear Benjamin.”A little fizz of excitement zipped through her veins. She glanced at the bottom of the one-page letter to see the name of the sender. There was only a large bold J. She thought she remembered someone saying something about old family letters signed with a big J.

She ran through the transcripts of her various conversations in New Orleans. Yes! Lillian had described correspondence between Antonio and Josephine, and how Josephine’s clos
ing was signed with a scrawled J. But how could Josephine write Ben a letter when she died in his infancy? The answer hit her immediately. Sam had told her on the way back from the garden visit that Josephine, fearing she would not survive to guide her son into adulthood, had given a letter to Solange. Solange had dutifully passed it on to Ben when he left for West Point. Ben must have secreted that letter in his mother’s desk.

The sound of low voices and footsteps intruded on Tess’s excited sleuthing, and she ra
pidly folded the letter and shoved it into the pocket of her slacks just seconds before Dreux and Tony entered the library.

The tight set to Tony’s mouth did not bode well, Tess thought. As she opened her mouth to ask what had happened, Dreux noticed the dismantled desk behind Tess and exclaimed, “What in the world! These old furniture pieces can be fragile, but I hardly expected you would be rough enough to pull that desk apart.” Dreux hurried forward with a distressed look.

“Oh no, it’s fine. I learned from, um, Lillian that the desk Ben gave to Marie had secret drawers. You know Lillian had the matching piece in her attic all those years. So I poked around and happened to find the secret drawers in this one,” explained Tess.

“Hidden drawers? I never knew that. I don’t think Desmond did either. Well, did you find anything of interest?” asked Dreux, darting forward and curiously inspecting the little hi
dden caches.

“No, they were empty,” Tess lied. She was fine with Dreux grabbing up all the old Cabr
era furniture that would have been passed down to her in a less dysfunctional family. But the personal communications of her family belonged to her, the last Cabrera, she told herself defensively. 

“How good you are at lying now. Do you think it’s part of the inheritance? Green eyes and deception.”

“Who cares about an old desk?  Let’s talk about this new development. Tess, we’ve got some bad news,” interrupted Tony.

“What happened? Was it that phone call?” Tess blurted, her pulse accelerating.

“Miss Parnell, I believe I told you that you are the only legitimate heir. And I believe that is still true,” said Dreux in a maddeningly slow and ponderous manner. “However, there was a
nother possible line of inheritance. I looked into the possibility of a claim from that direction initially, but it was baseless at the time. I believe you and I have discussed a certain friend of Desmond named Noah –”

“Noah Cabirac. Yes, I talked with his sister yesterday. I know she claims that he is the i
llegitimate son of Roman Cabrera and Bea Landry, who later married Michael Cabrera. But I thought there was no proof of his paternity.” Tess amazed herself with her calm tone. Perhaps she had been preparing for this challenge ever since Louise Gregory demanded a righting of old wrongs.

“So you know about it!” exclaimed Dreux, although Tess got the impression that the su
rprise was more emoting than emotion.

Tony’s surprise on the other hand was unfeigned. “What the heck! You never mentioned any other heirs to me, Tess. Why not?”

“Because I didn’t see how there could be a legal claim,” replied Tess. “Mr. Dreux, are you saying the Cabiracs have come up with some acknowledgement of parentage or some actual legal bequest from Roman Cabrera? And who is the potential heir? I know Noah was married at the time of his death, but I didn’t know he had any children.”

“Yes, Noah Cabirac had one child, a son named Robert,” nodded Dreux. “Noah married less than a year before his suicide. Let me just say that she was a poor, uneducated girl. Given the bir
th date of Noah’s full-term son five months after his marriage, it’s also clear it was a ‘shotgun wedding.’ After his death, the young widow remarried almost immediately. Her new husband, a truck driver, adopted the boy. Like his father Noah, young Robert was apparently very bright. Despite his upbringing, he worked his way to a good education and became a university professor. He also married and had a son.”

“So Noah’s son Robert Cabirac has proof that he’s a Cabrera heir through his father?”

“His name is not Robert Cabirac actually. Remember he was adopted by his stepfather. His name is Robert Thivet, and it is his son, Remy Thivet, who is pressing the claim,” explained Dreux, and then gasped in alarm. “Miss Parnell, are you alright? Mr. Mizzi, quickly help her to a seat.”

He didn’t have to urge Tony. He had already responded to Tess’s sudden pallor and swaying stance. He grabbed her elbow and guided her into one of the winged armchairs
in front of the fireplace. Tess leaned over and took several deep breaths to try to emerge from a strange tunnel rimmed by rippling light. She closed her eyes and willed her stomach to stop its quivering upheaval into her throat.

Remy! Why hadn’t she added it up? She winced as each clue fell into place: the susp
icious coupons redeemable only from the waiter, the amazing interest in a tourist’s family history, the free swamp tour ticket and the suggestion that maybe his uncle could lead her to Noah (of course, he could), his so-logical absence when she spoke with Louise Gregory, his own great-aunt. And then there was his sympathy-grabbing life story, and his I-wish-we-could-be-closer-but-there’s-a-problem remarks at the end of their Lafayette outing. He wanted to talk with her tomorrow, probably to present his case. He’d probably called just now to ask Dreux to hold off until he smoothed any ruffled feathers.