Blue Bayou

by JoAnn Ross

  The judge shot him another dark, killing look from beneath beetled white brows that seven years ago had been as black as Louisiana crude. “That's blackmail.”

  “I prefer to think of it as an incentive.” There was a tight white ring around the judge's mouth that worried Jack, just a little, but he decided that having gone this far, he wasn't about to back off.

  “If I were still on the bench, I'd toss your ass in jail and throw away the key.”

  “Good thing you're not on the bench.”

  “Fuck.” The judge shook his head. “All right, I'll tell her. But there's something you ought to know, Callahan.”

  “What's that?”

  “One of the most useful things they taught us in law school was to never wade out into unknown waters; never ask a question you didn't know the answer for ahead of time. Once you open this particular can of worms, you're not going to be able to get them back in. And you might be damn surprised what crawls out.”

  “I think you're mixing your metaphors a bit, Judge,” Jack said mildly. “But I get your meaning. And I'm willing to take my chances.”

  The judge shrugged. Having reluctantly accepted the ultimatum, he now seemed bored with the conversation. “Don't say I didn't warn you.”

  Having expected World War III, Dani had been amazed when her father had actually agreed, without being held at gunpoint, to undergo a series of medical tests. She would have been happier if he'd been willing to go to a doctor in the city, but hadn't wanted to push her luck by insisting.

  The dates on the medical degrees tastefully framed on Dr. Eve Ancelet's office wall revealed her to be in her early thirties. She was a slender woman with warm eyes and a bit brisk, but friendly attitude. After shaking hands, she folded hers atop a thick manila folder. Dani was grateful when she didn't waste time with small talk but got right to the point.

  “I've already discussed all this with the judge after we'd gotten the results back yesterday,” she said. “He gave me permission to share the details with you.”

  “Which is handy, since he refuses to discuss anything about his condition with me.”

  “It's hard for a man accustomed to control to surrender it.”

  “You'd think he would have grown used to that in prison,” Dani said dryly.

  “He undoubtedly learned to deal with it. In his own way. But I doubt he liked it.” The doctor opened the folder. “First of all, the diagnosis by the prison doctor was correct: your father does have congestive heart failure.”

  The word failure carried with it a frightening finality. Dani's heart sank.

  She tried to listen carefully, but the dreadful idea of her father dying before she found a way into his heart splintered Dani's concentration and many of the words became merely a buzz in her head.

  “We're not sure how he contracted it, but my educated guess is that he suffered a virus which settled in his heart muscle,” Dr. Ancelet was saying when Dani dragged her mind back from wondering how emotionally harmed Matt would be if his grandfather happened to die days after he'd finally met him. “Going back through the records, and what he told me about a time shortly before his arrest, it appears he'd suffered a case of flu. It's particularly memorable since apparently it kept him off the bench for nearly two weeks and all his cases had to be reassigned.”

  “I remember. He was furious.” At himself, Dani recalled. “In fact, it was the first time in my life I could remember him being ill, so I was going to come take care of him, but I'd just discovered I was pregnant with Matt, and he insisted I stay home rather than risk catching something that might hurt my baby.”

  Dani rubbed a hand against her chest, where her own heart had begun to ache. If she had insisted on returning to Blue Bayou, would her father have recovered sooner? Could she have prevented his potentially fatal heart disease?

  “He was right to be cautious. The fetus is far more vulnerable in the first trimester. However,” the doctor said briskly, “there's no point in wasting time on what-ifs. Right now we need to concentrate on managing your father's illness so he can regain a better quality of life.”

  “Is that possible?” Hope returned to once again flutter delicate wings in Dani's breast.

  “Actually, it is. While we can't beat the disease, at least not yet, we can help people live with it. The good news is that it's reversible. Of course, any success in treatment depends on a patient's age, condition, and goals, and needless to say, a younger person is going to have different goals than someone your father's age. They'd probably want to return to work, play with their children, make love, all those physical things that are important to them. An older person tends to have less ambitious objectives. Such as being less dependent on family and friends.”

  “My father hates being dependent on anyone.”

  “That's a universal feeling,” the doctor agreed. “Heart function doesn't stay static once a person gets heart failure. It's always getting worse or better. Unfortunately, for the past seven years your father has been getting worse. I'm hoping we can turn things around and buy him some valuable time with you and your son.”

  “What about surgery?”

  “That's not currently an option in your father's case. At least not at this time while he's so weak. I'll be frank with you, Ms. Dupree—”

  “Dani.”

  “Dani.” She smiled. “And I'm Eve. As I told the judge, at this point, I'd like to try treating him with medication and a change in attitude.”

  Good luck getting that attitude adjustment, Dani thought, but did not say.

  “Your father is very obviously depressed.”

  “Who wouldn't be if they'd spent seven years in prison? Most of that time in isolation?”

  “Granted, imprisonment could only make things worse. But his records suggest that he may have already been clinically depressed when he arrived at Angola. From talking with him, I suspect he's suffered several depressive episodes during his life.”

  “I don't remember him ever being depressed.”

  “How about angry? Or remote?”

  “Well, yes. But I always figured that was just his personality. He's always demanded perfection of everyone around him, including himself, and he's an unrelenting control freak.”

  “Well, whether or not he was depressed in the past, he definitely is now,” Eve Ancelet said. “Which isn't surprising since depression happens to be a very common side effect of heart failure. We're just beginning to get a handle on the connection between the two.”

  “Could depression have kept him from fighting back when he was wrongly accused of taking that bribe?”

  Eve Ancelet nodded. “It might have. As a rule, when we diagnose depression, we warn patients against making any critical decisions until their medications begin working. Choosing not to participate in your own defense could certainly qualify as a critical decision.”

  “Why didn't his attorney tell the court?”

  “There's a good possibility he never realized what he was dealing with. After all, your father isn't the most forthcoming patient I've ever had.”

  “Tell me about it,” Dani muttered.

  “I gave him a several prescriptions. One's an antidepressant. Of course, whether or not he chooses to have them filled is up to him.”

  “He will.” If she had to sit on his chest and stuff the pills down his throat.

  “Good. You've undoubtedly heard about the studies being done that link mood and physical condition of patients. Empirical evidence points to the fact, which I've witnessed myself during my practice, that optimistic, positive-minded patients feel better and tend to live longer than pessimistic, negative minded ones.

  “Perhaps it has something to do with stress being a major factor in heart disease, or perhaps the folklore about our heart being tuned to our emotions is, indeed, fact. But the sooner we can turn your father's mood around, the better off he'll be. Also we'll want to start him on an exercise regime.”

  “Is that safe with a weak heart?”
<
br />   “Certainly. While in the past, patients were admonished not to exercise to reduce the burden on their hearts, we've since learned that such restriction on lifestyle actually produces a severe deconditioning of the heart. More recent studies have shown the beneficial effects of exercise and with that in mind, I've worked out a daily routine with your father.”

  Dani was still skeptical. “I'm all for physical fitness, but he could barely walk out of the prison.”

  “Which is why we're going to begin slowly. I've recommended he begin taking short walks, just to the corner in the morning and evening. Needless to say, after having been so severely limited in his activity these past years, any cardiac conditioning is going to take longer than it would with a younger, more active patient. Still, if he sticks to the schedule I've outlined, your father could expect some improvement within a few weeks.”

  While Dani was a bit more optimistic than when she'd first arrived at the office, she couldn't help still being concerned. After all, Eve Ancelet was only a family physician in a small rural town. And barely older than Dani herself was.

  “I'm considering taking him to Tulane.” She didn't want to insult the doctor, but also felt a responsibility to her father.

  “That's not a bad idea,” the doctor responded easily. “Second opinions are always helpful, and I'll be happy to recommend cardiologists with whom you might want to confer. In the meantime, the medication I'm putting the judge on can't hurt him and working to change his attitude will only make things better.

  “And if it helps to ease your mind, I've shared your father's tests with cardiologists at both Tulane and Johns Hopkins. And they agree with my diagnosis.”

  “That's reassuring. Not that I don't trust you—”

  “I understand your concern.” Eve smiled. “It's difficult, but although he might not see it that way right now, your father has a great deal going for him. Plus, he has a secret weapon not all patients are fortunate to have.”

  “What's that?”

  “His family.”

  As she left the office, Dani could only hope they would be enough.

  Aweek later, while Dani was sitting at the kitchen table, helping Matt with his homework and Orèlia was in the front parlor, watching America's Most Wanted on television, the judge returned from his evening walk.

  When he'd first started he'd barely been able to make it down the steps. Tonight he'd managed to make it all the way to the corner and back. Without his cane. And while that doctor, who seemed to know what she was doing, even if she was young and a woman, had told him that it could take at least two weeks for those antidepressants Danielle was forcing down his throat every day to kick in, this morning had been the first time in a very long while he'd actually been glad to wake up.

  During his days on the bench, he'd sent hundreds—tens of hundreds—of men and women to prison and had understood, intellectually, the life to which he was sentencing them. But even while he'd been kept from the general population, and thus, reasonably safe from harm, he'd quickly realized that there was no way for anyone who hadn't experienced that inimitable sound of a cell door sliding closed to realize how hard it was to lose the simple day-to-day freedom people on the outside took for granted.

  His legs were a little shaky; he sat down on the top step of the porch and relished the ability to actually look up at a sky. As the first star winked on, he thought about Jack's threat and realized that he was running out of time.

  After giving it a lot of thought, he still believed that he'd been right, although with hindsight he might admit that perhaps his methodology had been a little heavy-handed. Still, if he'd ordered Danielle to stop seeing Marie Callahan's middle son, would she have?

  “Not a chance in hell,” he muttered.

  Running his housekeeper's son out of town was one thing. The events that followed quite another. The judge knew that he wasn't exactly beloved in Blue Bayou; however, until he'd been framed on those bribery and subjugation of perjury charges, he'd always been considered a fair magistrate. He'd also never let a personal acquaintance with a defendant influence his decisions. Which is why he couldn't overlook the fact that he'd been guilty of a crime against his daughter.

  Dani seemed to have forgiven him for not having been a warm and loving parent while she'd been growing up. But he'd already been a crusty bachelor of forty-eight when he'd made what at the time had been the worst mistake of his life by marrying her gold-digging slut of a mother.

  If he'd been seeing clearly at the time, he would have realized that a twenty-two-year-old court stenographer would be unlikely to fall in love with a man more than twice her age. But he'd been blinded by her dazzling blond beauty.

  Even after Savannah Bodine had trapped him the old-fashioned way—by getting pregnant—his ego had enjoyed her feminine flattery. Which, unsurprisingly, had come to a screeching halt the moment she'd gotten that five-carat pear-shaped diamond ring on her finger. In fact, while he had no real proof, he'd been bedeviled by suspicions that she'd had a fling with a streaked-blond, tanned beach boy who worked the cabana at the Caribbean resort where they spent their honeymoon. And that had been just the beginning.

  By their first anniversary he'd paid for breast implants and a nose job, only to have her move into her own bedroom. By the second, she'd stopped any pretense of interest in sex with him, while making him a laughingstock by spending her evenings drinking vodka gimlets and flirting down at the No Name, as well as blatantly sleeping around with seemingly every single man in the parish. And not a few married ones, as well.

  He would have divorced her. Should have. But back when he'd been thinking with his seemingly born-again penis, he'd foolishly signed a prenuptial agreement—ostensibly to protect their unborn child—and refused to reward her bad behavior by handing her a substantial chunk of his estate. But he'd miscalculated yet again, when, rather than allow herself to suffer by being trapped into a marriage she no longer pretended to care about, Savannah simply continued to ignore the little fact that she had a husband and a daughter at home.

  The final straw was when a shrimp boat captain's wronged wife named her as correspondent in their divorce. When it looked as if his errant wife would actually have to appear in his own courtroom—the one place he was still admired and even feared—he'd thrown in the towel.

  Two weeks before the third anniversary of their marriage made in hell, she'd taken off for Los Angeles with a hefty check in hand. Having already demonstrated that she had the maternal instincts of a black widow spider, the judge wasn't all that surprised when she left behind the blond toddler she'd once told him, in a furious flare of temper before Danielle was born, wasn't even his child.

  After arriving in Tinseltown, Savannah Dupree née Bodine, had parlayed the voluptuous, albeit in hindsight, common beauty and a seemingly natural-born skill for blow jobs into a career in porno films. Once, at a judicial conference in Manhattan, he'd seen her picture on a flyer in his hotel room, advertising the pay-for-view adult movies.

  Assuring himself that it was only natural curiosity, he'd paid nine dollars and ninety-five cents to watch his former bride have sex in more imaginative ways than she'd ever had with him.

  Her career had turned out to be a meteor, rising fast, burning brightly, only to quickly flame out. She died on what would have been their fifth anniversary, when, high on drugs and alcohol, she'd driven her car off the Pacific Coast Highway.

  The judge had been surprised to learn that he was still listed on all her legal documents as her next of kin. Until he discovered that she'd burned through the money she'd gotten from him as well as whatever she'd been earning for her X-rated films and had been in debt up to her bleached-blond roots. He'd paid to have her cremated, but decided to let MasterCard, Visa, and AMEX take care of themselves.

  Given her outrageous behavior, there were bound to be those in Blue Bayou who'd wondered about Danielle's parentage. But no one had ever whispered so much as a word in front of him, and he'd taken some measure of p
ride in the fact that he'd clothed, housed, and fed the abandoned child who looked exactly like her mother and nothing like him.

  For the first few weeks after she'd been brought to Beau Soleil from the hospital, the judge had ignored the infant, turning her care over to the same black nanny he'd always felt closer to than his own parents. But then one day, when she'd been nine months old, she'd caught a summer cold that had escalated into pneumonia.

  Faced with the possibility of her actually dying, he'd belatedly realized how much he'd grown accustomed to having the well-behaved baby around the house.

  After clearing his court calendar, he'd spent the next five days in the pediatric intensive care wing at St. Mary's Hospital, hovering over her crib as if his presence might protect her. Her mother, who'd taken off for a supposed trip to buy clothes in Dallas, was nowhere to be found, but even if she'd been in Blue Bayou, she'd never displayed any interest in her daughter when Danielle was well, so she certainly wouldn't want anything to do with this ill, cranky, croupy baby.

  When Dani turned turned the corner and the fever that had created hectic red flags in her satiny smooth cheeks for too many nerve-racking days subsided, she'd smiled up at him, with her pretty rosebud lips and happy eyes that hadn't yet decided whether they were going to be green or blue, and stolen his heart.

  He'd been afraid during his cribside vigil. After Savannah's departure, Victor Dupree came to understand the true meaning of terror. The more he bonded with the child which, if he hadn't given life, at least had given his name to, the more he grew to fear that someday his former wife might return to Blue Bayou and decide to claim maternal rights.

  Oh, she wouldn't have a chance in hell, especially in his parish, but knowing how mercurial Savannah could be, he wouldn't have put it past her to hire some thug from her seamy underworld to kidnap their daughter just for spite. Or worse yet, for ransom.

  Without being aware of doing so, little by little, the judge began to protect himself—and his heart—by distancing himself from Danielle again, even after her mother had died and the threat of Savannah taking her away was no longer valid.