Blue Bayou

by JoAnn Ross

  “Watch your language,” Dani gently warned her son.

  “Okay. But I didn't really say it. I was only saying what Grandpa said. . . . Thanks, Jack.” He was almost out the door when he glanced back over his shoulder.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “How come you're sitting up on the counter?”

  “Your mama got herself a little scrape,” Jack responded before Dani could think of any valid reason. “I was just checkin' it out for her. Maybe put a little lotion on it.”

  “Oh. Maybe Orèlia could help. Since she's a nurse.”

  “Oh, that's not necessary,” Dani insisted, ignoring Jack's wicked grin. “I'll be fine.”

  “Okay.” He was out the door. “Hey, Grandpa!” he hollered with more enthusiasm than Dani had heard in months. “Jack says you're wrong and it's a no-brainer.”

  “Great kid,” Jack murmured as the door slammed behind him. He cupped her calf in his palm. “Now where were we?”

  “We were discussing why I don't want you getting too involved with my son.”

  “Too late. I'm already involved. With the boy and his pretty maman.”

  “That's the point.” She jerked her leg away and slid off the counter back onto the floor. “I've already been married once and it didn't work out.”

  “You hear me proposin' chère?”

  Heat flooded into her face. “I didn't mean . . . Goddammit, Jack—”

  “Better watch your language, Danielle.”

  His cocky smile left her not able to decide whether to hit him or smile back. In the end she did neither. “I realize you don't take anything seriously—”

  “Now, there's where you're wrong.” He caught her hand as she was combing it through her hair and laced their fingers together. “There's a helluva lot I take seriously, including a certain gorgeous lady who'd obviously walk through fire for her child.”

  “Matt's the most important thing in the world to me.”

  “It shows. And you don't have to worry. I'm not gonna do anything to jeopardize that.”

  She shook her head. In her expressive eyes he read both temptation and a wariness she hadn't possessed when he'd last known her.

  “You have to understand that my decision to return to Blue Bayou wasn't an impulsive one,” she stressed. “I'd thought about it so many times, but I stayed in Virginia because I kept foolishly hoping Lowell would realize how important Matt was. And how he needed a father in his life.”

  “If he didn't appreciate Matt's pretty maman, I doubt that would have happened.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “Then, even after he died, I still weighed my options carefully.”

  “Made lists.”

  “Yes.” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you laughing at me?”

  “Never.” He lifted their hands, brushed his lips across her knuckles. “Lists can be a good thing. I've been known to make a few myself from time to time.”

  “My point is, I never expected you to be back here in Blue Bayou.”

  “Well, that makes us even. Because I sure as hell hadn't expected to be, either. And I definitely hadn't expected you to come home.”

  “I don't know where whatever this is, is going.”

  “Why don't we just go with the flow and see where we end up? I won't lie to you. I want to touch your curvy little body. Everywhere and often. I want to taste your sweet flesh. All over. But you want to take it slow, then that's what we'll do.”

  His eyes on hers, he skimmed his thumb over her lips again, then backed away, giving them both some space. “Meanwhile, I need you to help me pick out some wallpaper.”

  “Why don't you get yourself a decorator?”

  “Because a decorator wouldn't know Beau Soleil like you do. Come on, sugar. We'll look at some samples, share a pizza, and pass a good time. Besides, don't you want Matt to see the house his maman grew up in?”

  From the bold confidence in those bedroom eyes, Dani knew that he realized he'd found the one lure impossible for her to resist.

  “You really are terrible,” she complained as she threw up her hands.

  “I don't like arguing with a jolie fille, but I'm not terrible. I'm good. Hell, better than good, I'm—”

  “The best I've ever had,” she repeated the claim he'd made on the way to Angola.

  He laughed and put a friendly arm around her shoulder. “Now you're getting the idea, you.”

  They went back out to the yard, where Matt was playing fetch with Turnip, who, apparently having decided to get into the game, would scoop up the ball he'd toss her way, then run around the yard in frenzied circles before returning to drop it in front of his sneakers.

  “Isn't Turnip a great dog?” Matt called out to her.

  “She certainly seems to be.”

  “Can we get a dog, Mom?”

  “We'll see,” Dani said. “It'd be a bit difficult to keep a dog in the apartment.” Crowded, too, she considered.

  “I'd walk it every day. I promise.”

  “I suppose we could take a trip to the shelter. After we get settled in the apartment,” she qualified. “Just to check things out.”

  “Really?” Dani was amazed at how such a seemingly small thing could create such a look of stunned joy on his face.

  “I'm not promising anything,” she warned. There were other breeds, she reminded herself. Smaller, apartment-size dogs that wouldn't take up so much room and eat as much as a horse. “But I suppose it wouldn't hurt to look.”

  “Thanks, Mom!”

  As he threw his arms around her, Dani's eyes met Jack's over the top of her son's head. He gave her a thumbs-up, and in that brief, suspended moment Dani remembered, after a very long time, how it felt to be truly happy.

  “Wow!” Matt's gaze swept over Beau Soleil's circular, pillared entry hall. “Did you really live here, Mom?”

  “I certainly did.” Looking at her former home through her son's eyes, Dani saw not the work still to be done, but the glory that the house once possessed. And would again, thanks to Jack. “With your grandfather. And Jack's mother.”

  “Wow. It's as cool as the White House.” He looked up at Jack. “So you lived here, too? With my mom?”

  “No. My maman was the judge's housekeeper. We lived in town when my dad was alive.”

  “Your dad died, too?”

  “Yep. When I was a bit older than you.”

  “Did you miss him?”

  “A bunch,” Jack answered. “Still do, from time to time.”

  “Jack's father was a very special person,” Dani said. “He was sheriff of Blue Bayou.”

  “Really? Did he have a gun?”

  “Yeah,” Jack answered. “But he kept the peace well enough he never had to use it.” Watching him carefully, Dani saw the dark shadows move across his eyes and suspected he was remembering that day his father had died to save hers.

  “Then, after he passed on, my maman and brothers and I moved into one of the houses here at Beau Soleil.”

  “Was it as nice as this?”

  “Not as fancy. But we liked it well enough. Even with it bein' haunted.”

  “It wasn't really. Was it?” Matt's eyes grew even wider.

  “Sure was. Maybe still is. The ghost's supposed to be a Confederate officer who got lost in the bayou after the battle of New Orleans and showed up here. Since a bunch of soldiers from the Union army were camped out in this house, your maman's ancestor hid him in one of the little houses out back.

  “She sent her own personal maid to take care of him during the day, then every night after dinner, she'd dispatch the soldiers—”

  “What does that mean? Dispatch? Like she killed them?”

  “Fortunately, she didn't have to go to those extremes. The way I heard the story, she was pretty liberal with the port and would get them all drunk so they'd pass out.

  “Then she'd sneak out of the house and take the night shift trying to nurse that Confederate boy back to health, which was a dangerous thing to do,
since harboring the enemy was a hangin' offense.”

  “She must've been brave.”

  “Must have been. But then, the women in your maman's family have always been pretty special. They've always been real good about gettin' around in the dark, too.” His wicked grin was designed to remind Dani of her own midnight excursions from this house.

  “Unfortunately, the soldier ended up dying, and it's his ghost who supposedly haunts the place. There were stories about the lady of the house telling people that he used to come visit her at night, but since she was an old woman, people just figured she wasn't quite right in the mind.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I wouldn't know for sure. But I guess I sorta like the idea of the two of them finding some sort of happiness together in a troubled time. They're supposed to dance in the ballroom in this house, but I've never seen them. Though sometimes,” he said with a wink Dani's way, “if I listen real close, I think I can kinda hear the music.”

  “That's so cool. Do you think we'll hear it tonight?”

  “Never know what's gonna happen. After supper I'll show you around the rest of the place, then, perhaps, if you'd like and your maman says it's okay, we can check out the little house before taking you back to town.”

  “Can we, Mom?”

  “If it's not too late.”

  “Cool,” he said again as the mural drew his attention. “This is the biggest painting I've ever seen. Bigger even than the one the teacher showed us when my class took that field trip to the National Gallery.”

  “It tells a story about Evangeline and Gabriel, two people who were in love, but got separated when the Acadians first came to Louisiana.”

  “On those ships?” He pointed at the tall-masted vessels depicted on the mural.

  “That's right.”

  “Did they ever get back together?”

  “No. I'm afraid not.”

  “That's too bad. Can we have the pizza now? Baseball must make a guy hungry, because I'm starving.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Two days later, pulled from a daydream in which Jack had played a sexy starring role, Dani looked up from where she'd been doodling lopsided stars all over the list of new books she was ordering and saw the man standing in front of her desk.

  “I'm sorry. I didn't notice you.”

  “Don't worry,” he said easily. “I tend to get a lot of that.”

  And no wonder, Dani thought as she skimmed a quick judicial look over him. He could have been anywhere from twenty-five to forty; his body was youthfully trim, but the lines extending outward from friendly eyes that were neither blue nor gray but an indistinguishable hue in-between, suggested he'd at least hit thirty.

  His medium short brown hair was neatly trimmed; he was wearing a blue chambray shirt rolled up at the sleeves, bark brown Dockers, and loafers—without the tassels, which would've been sure to get him ragged by shrimpers or oilriggers if he made the mistake of dropping into a local bar. He was neither attractive nor unattractive; merely the most ordinary man she'd ever seen. She honestly doubted he'd be noticeable in a crowd of three.

  “I could use some information.” His voice lacked any accent; it could have been designated Standard American.

  “Well, you've come to the right place,” she said with a smile.

  His answering smile deepened those lines around his face, and while he didn't turn into Brad Pitt before her eyes, suddenly he wasn't quite so ordinary. “I'm seeking information on a home around here. You may have heard of it. Beau Soleil?”

  Her fingers tightened on her pen. “Of course I have. It's one of the parish's last standing antebellum homes.”

  “So I hear.” He rocked back on the heels of his cordovan loafers. “I also hear it's haunted.”

  Reaching into a brown billfold, he pulled out a card which read Dr. Dallas Chapman, Parapsychologist. Along with listing him as a consultant to the American Society for Psychological Research, there were nearly enough other letters after his name to complete an entire series of Sue Grafton alphabet mysteries.

  Dani lifted a brow and tapped the edge of the card with her fingernail. “Does this mean you're a ghostbuster?”

  “Oh, I don't bust them,” he said quickly, with another engaging smile. “I just study them. Chronicle their environment, their behavior, examine stories of various hauntings around the country in an attempt to better understand the phenomenon.

  “Although people are often disappointed to hear it, I don't spend my time blasting hotels trying to catch nasty little green ghosts, I've never worn a jumpsuit, and unfortunately, my funding doesn't come close to allowing me to build a portable nuclear-powered particle accelerator like the ones they carried in that movie. And I've never been slimed.”

  “I imagine that's a bit of a relief.”

  “Absolutely.” His expression turned a bit more serious. “Certain of my colleagues disliked that film because they felt it made light of our profession. But I enjoyed it as an entertaining piece of fiction, and discovered that rather than demean my work, it actually made it easier.”

  “Oh?” The movie may have been fiction, but try telling that to her son, who must have seen it a dozen times and had gone through a phase, when he'd been in the first grade, of wanting to become a ghostbuster when he grew up. Dani couldn't wait to see the look on Matt's face when she took this business card home and told him she'd actually met a real live ghostbuster, right here in her library.

  “Now, at least, people have some concept of what I do for a living, albeit a skewed one, and when they bring up the idea of ghostbusting, I can set them straight as to what a parapsychologist actually does. Before that film came out, despite the field being more than a hundred years old, the public simply didn't have a clue.”

  Dani didn't admit she wasn't all that up on the subject, either.

  He shook his head with a bit of what she took to be mute frustration. “I'd introduce myself at a cocktail party or on an airplane and people would just give me sort of a blank stare. Or perhaps they'd mistake me for a psychologist. Or even a psychologist's assistant, like a paralegal. You know, para-psychologist,” he explained at her blank look.

  “Ah.” Dani nodded. “I can see how that might be a problem,” she agreed, fighting back a smile. He appeared to take his career very seriously, and she didn't want to risk offending him.

  “Oh, it was a terrible problem. Of course you, as a librarian, undoubtedly know that the word parapsychologist refers to the study of psi, which stems from the twenty-third letter of the Greek alphabet, denoting the unknown.”

  “Actually, I didn't know that.”

  “Well then, now you do. The worst problem is when I'm confused with someone who practices witchcraft.” He leaned toward her. “In fact,” he said conspiratorially, “there was this one memorable time, when I was flying to London from Rome, where I'd been speaking at a joint conference of the ASPR and our European counterpart. The pilot nearly had to do an emergency landing in Milan, after I made the mistake of trying to explain the concept of life after death, or as we professionals prefer to call it, the survival of bodily death, to a little old lady who was sitting beside me.

  “I no sooner mentioned the words apparition and hauntings when she started screaming bloody murder in Italian and began hitting me on top of the head with her rosary. It seems she was certain I was in league with the devil and giving her the evil eye.” He sighed. “It took three flight attendants and half the bottle of a very nice Chianti I was carrying home in my carry-on from the duty-free shop to calm her down.”

  Dani laughed. “Well, at least it doesn't sound as if your work is boring.”

  “Oh, it's never boring,” he agreed. “A bit wearying from time to time. Since spirits are not always the most cooperative entities, the work can often entail spending a lot of time in abandoned, unheated buildings waiting for an apparitional haunting, but it's quite satisfying.

  “As a matter of fact, I met my wife at a castle on the mo
ors in the Scots Highlands. I was there exploring stories concerning a former laird of the castle, who'd died in the sixteen-hundreds and was allegedly slipping into women's beds at night and making mad, passionate love to them while their husbands were sleeping right beside them.”

  Dani wondered how it could have been all that passionate if the husbands slept through it, but didn't want to sound as if she were challenging his claim. “So your wife's a parapsychologist, too?”

  “Oh, no. At least she wasn't then. She was actually there as part of a team to debunk the ghost theory.”

  “Who won?”

  His eyes lit up. “We both did.”

  “That's sweet.” Despite her own failed romantic relationships, Dani remained a sucker for a happy ending.

  “We've been married ten years next month,” he revealed. “And collaborators for eight of those years. You may be familiar with our work. We wrote a quite wellreceived in-depth study of the infamous Bell Witch published two years ago by the University of Tennessee Press.”

  “I believe I must have missed that one,” Dani said mildly.

  “It's another house haunting and one of our better studies, if I do say so myself. It's my hope to have the same success with the ghost or ghosts of Beau Soleil. Why, if things work out as well as I hope, that Confederate soldier could put Blue Bayou on the map.”

  Knowing Jack's penchant for privacy, and wanting to protect her former home from sensationalism and her hometown from hoards of tourists seeking tacky glow-in-the-dark plastic ghosts to hang from their rearview mirrors, and Lord knows what else, Dani certainly wasn't going to tell the man how to get to Beau Soleil. Of course he could get directions easily enough from the myriad local guidebooks on the shelves, but there was no point in making things easier for him.

  “I imagine you know of the house,” he said, his voice going up on the end of the statement, turning it into a question.

  “It would be hard to live in the parish and not know of Beau Soleil,” she hedged. Dani decided the fact that she'd grown up there was none of his business. Nor was she going to share any of the haunting tales that had been handed down from each succeeding generation of Duprees, or those random occasions when she'd heard weeping, or music, or some undistinguishable sound that was, undoubtedly, nothing more dramatic than an old house settling into the swamp.