Emilie Richards – Rising Tides (страница 14)

“What right do I have to delve into your family history?”

“I don’t know. Do you have any theories?”

“I haven’t had time to concoct any.” He stood. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to take the letters back to the house and read them.” She stood, too. She met his eyes, and for a moment she didn’t speak. Then she held out her uncle’s journal. “You take this.”

“Why?”

“Think about it. Grandmère wanted us both to find the case. Obviously she wanted you to be part of this. You don’t speak French, but you were with my uncle when he died.”

“Why do you want me to be part of this?”

“I don’t. But my grandmother did. Besides, don’t you need something to do besides sit around and judge me and my family?” Reluctantly she inched the journal closer to him.

He took it with something that seemed remarkably like gratitude.

“So, you want to share what we find at breakfast to morrow?” she asked.

“If we find anything.”

She put the empty suitcase back in the trunk and led the way out. The sky had darkened by the time they emerged. They had come in silence, but now that seemed intolerable. Her grandmother’s strange offering had tilted the balance between them. Dawn no longer knew exactly what to think.

“Betsy’s still threatening,” she said as they started back to the cottage. “Maybe nobody will be able to stay here the full four days. We might have to evacuate. I wonder what that would do to the will….”

“Nobody’s forecasting she’ll come ashore here.”

“Mistakes have been made before.”

They parted inside, their supply of small talk used up. Dawn watched Ben disappear into the kitchen, perhaps to find Phillip and report on this turn of events. She took the letters upstairs and set them beside her bed. A quick scan had shown that they covered a period of years. A good start on translating them would take her into the late hours of the night.

This new link with her grandmother was a surprise and a pleasure. There was really very little that she knew about her grandmother’s family or Aurore’s early life. Who was the woman who had married Henry Gerritsen and borne his two sons? Who was the woman who, contrary to the social mores of her time, had helped build Gulf Coast Shipping into a multimillion-dollar corporation?

Dawn washed and changed for supper; even the knowledge that she would have to face Ben over the table had taken a back seat to the letters and what she might find there.

By the time she went down to eat, rain pelted the roof and thunder shook the rafters. That, too, seemed unimportant.

Alone at last for the evening, she dressed for bed. Then she picked up her grandmother’s bequest.

“You were a crafty old lady.” She hugged the letters as she had earlier. “What was it that you couldn’t tell me yourself, Grandmère?”

She settled into bed and set to work.

CHAPTER FIVE

Bonne Chance lay just across Barataria Bay, not an easy or short journey from Grand Isle, since marsh, water and one ambivalent hurricane separated them. But getting there, even in bad weather, was possible, if you drove back toward New Orleans and cut east to the Mississippi River. Bonne Chance was a one-dictator town, home of Largo Haines, a crony of Ferris’s. It had also been the final home of Hugh Gerritsen.

“I don’t understand why dinner with Largo couldn’t wait until this fiasco at the beach is finished,” Cappy said, peering out the windshield as sheets of rain washed the blacktop in front of them. “We’ve been in the car for hours. We could have had him up to New Orleans next week. I could have made sure everything was perfect.”

“Largo doesn’t care about perfect. He knows exactly how far away we were. He cares whether I come when he whistles, like a well-trained Labrador.”

“Well, apparently he’s got nothing to worry about.”

“Nothing at all. I’ll play bird dog, and the minute I don’t need Largo Haines, I’ll chew him up like an old shankbone.”

“There it is.” Cappy pointed to a discreet sign illuminated by floodlights.

They turned into a driveway that in better weather would have been comfortably familiar. Now the landscape was a thousand shades of forbidding gray, and the Corinthian columns of the Bonne Chance Country Club offered no guarantees that the building would withstand a hurricane.

Inside the marble-tiled foyer, they checked their coats. Ferris swept Cappy from head to toe with critical eyes, but not a golden hair was out of place. Her hat was still perched at a jaunty angle, and the veil that matched the dark red of her suit brushed her forehead.

At moments like these he admired her most, and, as always, on the heels of admiration came desire. These days his sexual needs were few and easily taken care of, and he rarely bothered to spend the night in Cappy’s bedroom. Still, he had never ceased to want his wife when she was most untouchable. Now, as she straightened her skirt, he felt himself growing aroused.

“I’ll never understand why Largo doesn’t insist they redecorate this place,” she said.

“Maybe he likes it.”

She checked the circlet of diamonds above her left breast and brushed away an imaginary speck of lint. “Bamboo furniture and chartreuse walls? I half expect to see a native in a loincloth fanning the guests.”

“Not everyone has your patrician tastes, darling.” He took her arm. “And not a word of criticism.” He brushed his hip against hers as he led her into the dining room.

Largo was waiting at a table in the corner. There were no guests seated near him, but he wasn’t alone. The club manager stood at Largo’s right, his posture deferential. “I’m telling Charles here that we’ll have some crabs and a round of dry martinis before we order.” Largo waved Charles away and stood to embrace Cappy. Ferris watched the byplay and admired—as he simultaneously detested—the finesse with which Largo had already put everyone in the room in their respective places.

He shook hands and grinned when his own moment arrived, then held Cappy’s chair until she was settled. Seated across from Largo, he examined the man who could help install him in the governor’s mansion.

At fifty-nine, Largo had thinning hair that was the ivory of his suit, and his florid face was unremarkable. Raisin-dark eyes snapping with vitality were the first hint that he wasn’t someone to be taken for granted. His hands were even more revealing. Largo’s fingers were gnarled and knotted, yet he used them freely, as if he had an enormous tolerance for pain. More than once, Ferris had dreamed of Largo’s hands.

“The crabs are good,” Largo said. “Catch ‘em right here in Plaquemines.”

“How have you been, Largo?” Ferris asked. “Does Betsy have you worried?”

“Never yet seen a storm I couldn’t ride out. We might get a little damage. Some of the worst shacks’ll go.” He shrugged. “As good a way to clean up the place as any.”

He began to pepper Cappy with questions, which she answered with confident charm. Ferris knew she considered Largo a member of the overseer class, but she was political to the core and perfectly willing to abandon her snobbery on the surface if it suited Ferris’s purposes. And cultivating Largo suited them.

The crabs arrived, and Largo continued to chat as he twisted the shells into sections and dug out the meat with his fingers. The performance was a classic one, visceral and primitive, but most of all repugnant, because Largo obviously derived more pleasure from gutting the crabs than from the flavor of their meat.

Cappy politely worked on one with her knife and fork, and Ferris did, too. His mind drifted to a long ago night under the summer stars, when he and Hugh had sneaked away to the beach at Grand Isle with a dozen boiled hard-shells and half as many bottles of beer. Two young men with their lives ahead of them, they had for gotten their differences. By the time they staggered home at dawn, no secrets had been left between them.

The waiter returned, and at Largo’s recommendation they ordered turtle soup and broiled pompano. The meal progressed in lazy Louisiana fashion, with impeccable service and perfectly seasoned food. One round of martinis became another, with a manhattan thrown in for Cappy.

As they sat over coffee at the meal’s end, Cappy excused herself to go to the ladies’ room and left them to speak alone.

“So your little girl’s home,” Largo said. “Good to have family together.”

“She’s grown up, Largo. A real beauty.”

“You should have brought her.”

“Another time,” he said, although both men knew it would never happen.

“She favor you or her mother?”

Dawn favored Hugh, but Ferris wasn’t going to make that announcement. He wondered what trick of nature had doomed him to see his brother’s face when he looked at his only child. “She looks a little like my mother,” he said.

“I was sorry to hear about Mrs. Gerritsen. State lost a fine lady when she passed away.” Largo stood. “I need to stretch my legs. Let’s walk along the bayou. It looks like the weather’s clear enough now.”

Ferris didn’t know what “clear enough” meant. There was a steady drizzle, and the soft ground promised to suck at every footstep, but he followed Largo to the foyer and instructed the hostess to tell Cappy where they had gone.