Lies Agreed Upon (44 page)

She eagerly hauled out the old box and dug through its
layers until she found the folder shoved under her mother’s old day planner. Inside the folder, on top of folded correspondence, was a holiday-photo card. It was the last photo taken of her grandmother, mother and herself before her grandmother entered an assisted living facility. It was “funny” if you thought it was amusing to see them all wearing stuffed felt reindeer antlers. It had been her grandmother’s idea, to which her mother had only sourly complied, but her mother had still saved this memento for some reason.

Tess opened the card and found a
copy of a letter addressed to Sam with her mother’s unsigned signature block. The letter was dated January 6, 2005, shortly after her grandmother moved to a care facility:

Dear Sam,

I will be handling all matters pertaining to the old Cabrera pro
perty from now on. I’m afraid my mother is no longer well enough to do so herself. I promised my mother that I would maintain the garden, and, as long as she lives, I will honor that promise. As you know, I also promised my mother I would avoid any confrontation over the past, and so I will continue to manage in absentia. I will trust you to do your best on my behalf. But justice can’t be delayed forever. Even as a child, I understood just what happened in that library. As I hinted to you, I refuse to carry the burden of those deaths forever. It’s a matter of timing. If I say I want to sell the property, I think Dreux will come slithering around. I am traveling right now, but I will send you more detailed instructions later regarding the property.

Sincerely,
Joanne

The clues were tantalizing but vague. What deaths? There had been so many deaths before and after the library tragedy: Dylan, Guy, Desmond and Noah. And it was clear her mother had a deep dislike of Dreux and had planned a confrontation with him for a long time, using the land sale as a lure. Why? Sam Beauvoir had guarded someone else’s secret again. Why hadn’t he told her about her mother’s desire for “justice?” Tess resolved to reach him, either directly or through Jon, when she returned to finalize the land deal.

Tess rapidly inspected the rest of the folder. It was filled with
computer-generated copies of letters from her mother, neatly folded and all addressed to Sam Beauvoir. These were interspersed with responses and queries from Beauvoir, apparently typed on an old manual typewriter. Tess scanned the correspondence, but it was dominated by businesslike instructions and reports about land leasing, taxes, storm damage, road grading and the like. A 2008 letter was interesting since it informed Sam of an upcoming geological assessment and the names and phone numbers of team members who would be contacting him. So why was there no report in her mother’s files? There was another 2009 letter letting Sam know that he might be approached by investigators seeking to ascertain the source of toxic seepage. But any documentation on the outcome was missing.

Then, at the back of the folder, Tess came upon a handwritten letter addressed to her grandmother. She did not recognize the neat penmanship and was shocked to see that the me
ssage was signed by “Bea.”  It was dated June 2, 1988, and began prosaically with questions on the health of Joanne and Tess, reassurances about the health of Bea, Cee and Dad.

Tess’s heart rate picked up
when she saw the sentence “I also wanted to confirm that you will be arriving on the 23
rd
of June for your first visit to New Orleans in many years.”

She
skipped impatiently through a travel itinerary until she reached the second to last paragraph:

I think you are right, and Joanne will be more comfortable staying at the bayou place instead of the townhouse. We have tried to put that terrible day in the library behind us, and I know you have made Joanne promise that she will not resurrect any issues of guilt or responsibility for the sake of everyone’s peace of mind. We certainly do not plan to alert Phil Dreux that you are coming. I think a meeting between Joanne and that man would be very unpleasant.

Tess was increasingly convinced that her mother’s death was linked to her childhood trauma. And here was more proof of a long-standing animosity between Phil Dreux and her mother. Tess needed to confront Dreux on a growing list of items: the mysterious reappearance of Roman’s amended will, the source of her mother’s dislike for Dreux after her traumatic experience in the library, and the truth about what occurred during his visit to her mother on the day she died. She was convinced that Dreux held a clue to her mother’s unexpected suicide, and his plausible denials only strengthened her suspicions.

Exhausted, Tess headed for Christina’s apartment. Christina lived in a four-story co
ncrete square two blocks from Venice beach. The site offered minimal parking for residents under a first floor overhang facing a narrow alley. The dingy parking area was one of the big drawbacks of Christina’s beach life. It not only tended to attract a constant littering of fast-food wrappers and lost shoes, it also had a limited number of assigned spaces. This meant Tess would have to scour nearby streets to find some scrap of parking further inland. She eventually snagged a spot and then tromped several blocks. The apartment building’s concrete stairwells smelled of urine, dope and coconut oil, so Tess held her breath to avoid gagging and ran up to Christina’s door.

Once inside, the attractions of the apartment were clearer. Christina’s unit was on the top floor with a balcony view of the ocean. Granted it was just a smallish portion of blue water framed by neighboring buildings and rooftops, but it was proof that Christina had snagged the California beach life.

Tess pulled open the sliding glass door and stepped out on the little platform to gaze idly toward the ocean. On weekends, the beach scene was a hive of activity. Even on a summer weekday, Tess could hear the hum of the Venice circus. By Saturday, the sidewalk beyond the last edge of rooftops would be swarming with roller-skating bikini beauties, street dancers and henna tattoo artists. The pale hot sand would spray and billow under tanned youth leaping for volleyballs as families trudged past dangling wet towels and babies. White gulls and brightly colored kites would swoop through the azure sky, and the foam lined waves would be specked by bobbing heads and floating pelicans. 

The odor of brine and fast-food grease wafted toward Tess, and the breeze bore the shudder of surf and the screech of sea birds. Christina the iconoclast said she preferred Venice to more sedate beach locales because its paradise was leavened by a touch of madness: the chai
nsaw juggler, the incoherent doomsayer waving a cardboard sign, the shoulder-perched parrot squawking blasphemies.

In another life, the locale might have relaxed and amused Tess, but New Orleans had i
njected some distemper that sun and sea could not soothe—and that human follies irritated. She fell asleep on the couch to the chatter of daytime television. 

Hours later, she was jolted awake as Christina blew into the apartment like a fashio
nably attired whirlwind—noisily scattering purse and keys (a thud and a jangle), shoes (a double clatter) and two plastic bags of groceries (rustles, clunks and clinks) in her wake.

“Gosh, I must have fallen asleep. I’m still jet-lagged,” said Tess, rubbing her eyes and blinking at Christina, who tossed her hair and laughed in her throaty, white-toothed way, as if promising pleasures that even the worst jet lag could not hope to dim.

“I suspected you might try to conk out on us,” grinned Christina. “So are you all moved in here?”

Tess shook her head. “I’ve got to pick up the last of my personal stuff tomorrow. I put all the furniture in storage this morning. Then I went to try on the bridesmaid dress for Katie’s wedding.”

“Oh, the big show. I’m tired of hearing about it,” announced Christina and joined Tess on the sofa. She slumped onto her tailbone and propped her stocking feet on the coffee table. She fixed her brown eyes demandingly on Tess. “But you’ve got some stories to tell. I understand from Katie that you went and painted the town red, first with this new ‘cousin Jon’ and then with his lawyer buddy. That gave me hope, but then you went out with Mac and his boss. Tell me that you did not succumb to that ass for old time’s sake.”

Tess shook her head. “No, I’m not going to rekindle the flame with Mac.” She carefully did not bring up her sexual interludes with Mac or Joel. From the term “his boss,” she hoped Christina would ima
gine Joel as an older male, either unavailable or unappetizing.

Christina took her response at face value. “Well, thank God. So why see Mac at all?”

Tess decided to balance honesty with discretion. “He caught me in a down mood,” she admitted. “Jon showed me around Tremé and then declined an invitation to dinner with excuses of ‘another obligation.’ He suggested I call his buddy Tony as a substitute. I felt snubbed—and lonely enough to call Tony. He took me out clubbing, and we had a good time. But he made it clear he wasn’t interested in going beyond ‘friend of a friend’ status. (Christina snorted.) I was definitely feeling underappreciated. Mac was in town and in pursuit, so I’m embarrassed to say I went out with him just so I didn’t feel like a complete reject. We did some tourist stuff with the boss and a woman friend.”

“So you had a tourist outing with Mac, and nothing more?”
probed Christina skeptically. Tess nodded and Christina continued in a sharper tone, “So now what’s the scoop on this René character? He sounded so promisingly sexy.”

“Remy,” corrected Tess. After she revealed that Remy was actually a fellow heir, Christ
ina declared him to be permanently in the “scumbag Judas” category.

Tess found herself in the surprising position of defending Remy. “He’s not an out-and-out villain, Christina. I think he really does like me – but his family interests come first,” she protested.

“Don’t even think about forgiving him, St. Tess. If you turn the other cheek, he’ll betray you with a kiss on that side, too! Brother, I’m disappointed,” grumbled Christina. “You started out with so much romantic potential.”

“You should be glad. Now you can set me up for a no-strings-no-sting fling,” smiled Tess.

Christina gave her a baleful look. “Don’t think I won’t,” she warned.

Tess and Christina met Jen and Katie for dinner at a well-known Italian restaurant near the beach in Santa Monica. Tess was struck by its clean, bright bustle and the hip, pretty people. It was so different from a New Orleans eatery’s ferment of
decayed tradition and leisurely sensory savor.

Over glasses of chardonnay, Tess updated her friends on her adventures in New Orleans, and the characters of all the eligible males were dissected and analyzed. Katie the romantic and Christina the sybarite fell into a playful squabble
about ranking the young men according to who was “most likely to succeed.” They kept hectoring a blushing, protesting Tess for her opinion.

Tess was relieved when Jen, who had been noticeably absent from the discussion, suddenly dragged old Dreux to center stage.

“I don’t see anything interesting about your Southern beaux, Tess. But Dreux is fascinating,” interrupted Jen, slapping a hand on the table to halt the giggling chatter of the other two women. “What are his real motives? I think he’s using the land purchase as a convenient cover for some other plan unrelated to Gulf Coast Refining. But what in the world is he up to?”

“Oh boy, Jen, you’re the only person I know who would rather talk about a dusty relic than a trio of hot guys,” groaned Christina. “It’s pretty obvious Dreux’s got some creepy obse
ssion with dear departed Desmond.”

“You have sex on the brain,” retorted Jen. “Think about it. What was his goal in luring Tess to his New Orleans house, for example? And why does he keep introducing complications and delays to closing a deal?”

“He’s a kiss-ass who made good, and he got a mean little kick out of showing Tess his ownership of her family heirlooms,” Christina lobbed back.

“That’s probably true
,” nodded Tess. “But Jen has a point. Dreux could have told me at the beginning that Noah Cabirac’s heirs were seeking a share of the inheritance. He magically resurrected the altered will and set the whole thing up before I arrived. And what about all Dreux’s other documents, the same ones that seem to be missing from my mother’s files? He keeps pestering me to look through my mother’s papers and pushing me to investigate the past,” puzzled Tess. “If he’s hiding something, it’s a strange way to cover up.”

“Unless he thinks
someone else
was hiding something, like your mother, and he wants you to do the searching he can’t,” commented Jen.

“I keep thinking that something happened
when Dreux visited my mother. She wanted him, a man she associated with the most horrifying day in her life, to come see her for some reason, and she lured him with a property sale,” frowned Tess.

“Well, I still think Dreux is acting ou
t of some abnormal psychology,” asserted Katie. “Maybe he sees creating dispute and scandal for the Cabrera inheritance as delivering divine justice on behalf of his dead friend Desmond because he was maimed and then accidentally killed by a Cabrera.”

“You shoul
d write for the movies, Katie. Great start of a plot: spooky house, crazy geezer and pretty heiress,” clapped Christina. “But the ending is a letdown: Girl leaves town—alone. Let’s get back to an ending that includes someone who doesn’t have one foot in the grave and bats in his belfry. So which guy are you going to choose when you go back, Tess?”