Under the Cajun Moon

by Mindy Starns Clark

  Many restaurants offered salt-encrusted fish, of course. Prepared by placing a fish and some herbs in a pan and then literally covering them with a mound of salt, the dish was baked in an oven; when it came out, the salt would have formed a solid crust on the outside, allowing the fish to steam in its own juices on the inside. Though it wasn’t uncommon fare, my father’s version was unique indeed, as he made it with his own special salt, the same salt that was packaged and shipped from an undisclosed facility in south Louisiana and sold as “Chef Julian’s Secret Salt” in fine stores around the world.

  On the TV show, Tony had tried to get me to talk about my father’s salt and where it came from, but the truth was that the source was known only to the great Julian Ledet himself. Given that it was pink in color and slightly bitter in taste, I had always had a feeling it was imported either from Hawaii or the Himalayas, both of which were known for pink salt. Wherever it came from, my father always called it the perfect cooking salt because its bitterness gave way to a uniquely delicious flavor during the heating process.

  I decided to go with Aunt Alma’s crawfish bisque, a delectable dish that had always been one of my favorites. I didn’t recognize the waiter who came to take our order, but he was obviously a pro, as was everyone who worked at Ledet’s. My father would stand for nothing less than excellence.

  When the waiter left and we were alone, Kevin reached for his briefcase and balanced it on his lap. As he opened it up and flipped through the contents, I thought again how handsome he was. Watching him, it had suddenly struck me that part of my mother’s motive for the meeting might have been to matchmake. It drove her crazy that I was thirty-two and not married, for she simply couldn’t understand the point of going through life without a mate. With her, I had always defended my singleness, saying that I poured so much of myself into my career that it wouldn’t be fair to a spouse. What I would never admit to her was that sometimes the loneliness pierced so deep that I would have traded every professional and financial gain I’d ever made for the love of a good husband. It wasn’t very modern of me, but that was how I felt. I didn’t want children, but marriage was something I longed for deeply whenever I allowed myself to really think about it.

  Given that most of the guys I knew were looking for easy hook ups with little emotional involvement and zero commitment, I didn’t date much. Now the first guy I’d met in a long time who seemed decent and kind was dead in the next room. Glancing at the cop who stood watch in the doorway, I resumed my place on the couch, rubbed my temples, and tried to remember more about last night and what had gone so horribly wrong.

  FIVE

  FRANCE, 1719

  JACQUES

  After going undetected for so long, Jacques couldn’t believe that on the final morning he was nearly spotted. He and Papa had worked late into the night to finish polishing the last two statuettes, so they hadn’t roused when the cock crowed. Both men, in fact, were still sleeping the morning away when a loud rapping was heard at the door, jolting them from slumber.

  Thinking it was the farmer’s wife with lunch, they were scrambling around trying to hide Jacques’ pallet when the bolt on the door twisted as if by key and then began to swing open. Immediately, Jacques dove onto the floor and rolled up under the cot. His father smartly slid his blanket so that it draped down the front of the messy bed, and then he rose and crossed to the other side of the room, probably so that whoever was entering would not have their eyes trained in Jacques’ direction.

  “So you are here!” a man’s voice said, sounding startled. “Why didn’t you answer my knock?”

  Papa replied in truth—or at least partial truth—that he had been up late finishing the job the night before and had chosen to sleep in.

  “Well, put your trousers on, sir. It’s time to load up these trinkets so I can deliver them to the palace. In the box you will find cloths to protect the statuettes. Wrap all but the top layer. Leave those unwrapped, please.”

  Jacques was trying to calculate how long it would take them to load all two hundred statuettes when the man spoke again.

  “First, help me with this cart, would you?”

  “Uh, sure. Can you give me just a moment to pull myself together?” Papa asked, which Jacques knew really meant Can you give me just a moment to sneak my son to a better hiding place?

  “Just hurry,” the man barked, but it didn’t sound as though he was going to step outside to leave Papa to his privacy.

  By the sudden brightening of the light, in fact, Jacques realized that the man had swung open the larger door. Carefully, he tried to look down toward his feet, to make sure they were hidden even in the glare of the morning light, but he just couldn’t be sure. Saying a prayer that he wouldn’t be spotted, Jacques focused on lying as still as humanly possible.

  Listening closely, he could hear what sounded like the squeaking wheels of the empty cart that had thus far sat unused in a corner of the workshop. Next came the sound of clanking and grunting as the man and Papa wrestled with something obviously heavy. Jacques winced as soon as the coughing started, knowing that Papa wasn’t up to doing whatever he was having to do, not at all. Finally, the man seemed to realize that as well, for Jacques heard him tell Papa to move out of the way so he could do it himself.

  After a good bit of shuffling and scraping and clanking, there was a single, low squeak, like the opening of a door or cabinet, and then all went silent for a moment.

  “I don’t understand,” Papa said, clearing his throat.

  “You don’t need to understand,” the man replied. “Here’s the next part of this job. We need you to melt these down to bars, every last one of them. I’ll be back to get the bars day after tomorrow, and then you can go home.”

  “Bars,” Papa said, “so these are…real?”

  “Fourteen carat, solid gold. And you had better account for every ounce.”

  “Of course. But the sumptuary laws—”

  “Exempt. I was told you might want to see the certificate.”

  Jacques heard the rustling of paper, and though he wasn’t exactly clear as to what was happening, if it had to do with sumptuary laws, then that meant Papa was making sure he wasn’t being asked to do anything illegal.

  “Yes, I see,” Papa said finally. “This is acceptable. Thank you.”

  More movement and then the man spoke again.

  “Listen, I need to water my horse. You fill the trunk with your little treasures and then I’ll be on my way.”

  “Yes. Certainly.”

  After the man had unhitched his horse, Jacques heard footsteps walking away and the gentle neigh of the horse in the distance. Still, he remained frozen until he heard a whispered “all clear” from his father.

  “What’s going on, Papa?” Jacques replied softly, sliding out from under the cot. “What is he asking you to do?”

  Jacques crouched beside the cot and looked toward the front of the workroom. There, framed in the light of the door, were two carts, each one weighted down with a large, identical wooden trunk.

  “Don’t let M. Freneau see you,” Papa hissed. “Go. Get out of sight.”

  Jacques glanced outside to make sure the well-dressed man in the powdered wig was still tending to his horse and facing away from the building, and then he made a quick, quiet dash to his usual hiding place, a narrow wardrobe near the back door into which he could just fit his muscular frame. As he pulled the door closed, he saw his father shuffling laboriously toward the trunks at the front of the room.

  The coughing resumed almost immediately, and it was all Jacques could do not to pop out of the wardrobe and take over. Fortunately, after a few minutes he heard M. Freneau outside calling toward Papa.

  “Listen, take your time, old man. I will pay off the farmer for your meals. Maybe they’ll give me a hot breakfast as part of the deal.”

  Papa managed to stop coughing long enough to reply that that was fine. Jacques listened as the stranger mounted the horse and trotted away. As soon as
he could no longer make out the rhythmic clattering of the horse’s hooves, Jacques stepped out of the wardrobe and moved toward his father.

  “Let me do it, Papa,” he whispered. “You keep watch.”

  The old man didn’t even put up a fight. He just nodded wearily, coughing some more, and dragged a stool to the threshold, positioning himself where he could see up the road but not be seen.

  Jacques propped opened the trunk, pulled out the stack of fabric squares inside, and began running back and forth between the shelves and the cart. One by one, he wrapped the finished statuettes in the fabric squares and placed them down into the trunk, wondering why Freneau had brought two trunks when one was obviously going to be enough to hold them all.

  After stacking the first fifty or so Jacques was breathing hard, though whether from exertion or the fear of being caught, he wasn’t sure. He paused to step around the corner and check on his father. The man was perched heavily on the stool, his head resting against the rough doorframe, his eyes glued to the road. For the first time ever, Jacques realized that his strong, capable father looked utterly weak and small. How quickly this final turn for the worse had happened!

  “No sign of him yet, Papa?” Jacques whispered.

  “No. I will tell you when I spot him.”

  Quickly, Jacques returned to his work, though before he loaded any more statuettes he took a moment to roll the cart closer to the shelves. That, indeed, made the loading a lot easier. Standing in place now rather than running back and forth, Jacques was able to load twice as fast. In the end, as he’d estimated, all two hundred statuettes had fit inside the one trunk, but just barely. He brought over the other cart, thinking that as long as Freneau hadn’t returned yet, he might as well divide the load after all and shift things around a bit. Swinging open the lid of the second trunk, however, presented quite a surprise.

  It was already full. Inside was what looked like two hundred more of the same statuettes. Jacques did a double-take, as he was now looking at two identical trunks sporting two identical loads, the only difference being how he had stacked his, vertically rather than horizontally, as the other ones were.

  What had Freneau said to Papa? Something about “the next part of the job” and “melting down to bars”? Why did he want these melted down? Obviously, they had been made by someone else. Had their workmanship been inferior?

  Jacques picked up one of the statuettes from the second trunk and took a moment to study it closely. It looked fine to him. In fact, it looked as though it had come from the exact same mold as the ones they had been making. How could that be?

  What was going on?

  Jacques carried that statuette to the first trunk, lifted one from there, and compared them. They were identical.

  “Jacques!”

  Jacques’ head jerked up at the rasp of his father’s voice. Quickly, he returned each statuette to its trunk, closed their lids, and dashed toward the front door.

  “What is it, Papa?” he hissed. “Do you see M. Freneau?”

  “I see a cloud of dirt up the road. It’s likely him.”

  As fast as he could, Jacques ran back, grabbed one of the heavy carts, and dragged it to the doorway. He was about to drag the other as well when his father came inside, holding his stool, and urged Jacques to get in the wardrobe. Without a word, Jacques did as he was told.

  There in the narrow, dark space of his hiding place, Jacques couldn’t see but he could hear a little. First came the cloppity-clop of the horse outside, then Freneau’s voice saying something. Once he came into the building, his tones sounded angry. Straining to listen to the conversation between him and Papa, Jacques realized that Freneau wasn’t mad at him, he was griping about the farmer’s wife, who had only been willing to give him a single cold biscuit for his trouble.

  As the two men talked, it sounded as though they were working together to attach the horse to the cart. Freneau said something again about returning day after tomorrow at noon to pick up the bars, and then with the sound of hooves moving more slowly this time, he clattered away.

  Jacques waited in the wardrobe, listening for Papa’s “all clear,” but it never came. Finally, unsure what to do, he took a risk and pushed the wardrobe door slightly ajar. He didn’t see anyone, so he pushed it a little further and then gasped.

  There, lying on the ground in the open doorway, was Papa.

  “No!” Jacques cried, running to his father.

  “Once he was gone, I simply lost all strength,” Papa rasped, trying to struggle to his knees.

  “Of course you did,” Jacques said, lifting up his father from the ground and helping him toward the bed. He would have carried the man entirely, but he didn’t want to humiliate him. “You had to work too hard. You weren’t up to that.”

  “At least he is gone now. Close and lock the door, son, and bring me some water.”

  Jacques did as he was told, his heart pounding in his throat the whole while. His father simply couldn’t die! He was too young! It was too soon! Trying bravely not to cry, Jacques held the cup to his father’s trembling lips as he took a few sips. Jacques didn’t even visibly react when he pulled the cup away only to see that yet another tooth had come out and was lying there in the water at the bottom.

  “Papa, please hold on,” Jacques whispered, tossing out the contents of the cup and setting it aside. “I can’t lose you yet.”

  Papa closed his eyes and tilted back his chin, his breathing labored and long. They had known too many men in their business who had died this way, first the breathing, then the teeth, and then finally the internal humours. It wouldn’t be long now.

  “Jacques, you must finish this job for me. There is one thing left to do.”

  “What does it matter now, Papa?”

  His father opened his eyes and looked straight at him.

  “I am a master goldsmith,” he replied sternly. “It matters.”

  Jacques nodded, wiping at his damp cheeks, promising he would make sure the work was done and done well. Kneeling there on the floor, Jacques listened miserably, trying to concentrate as his father explained that he was to melt down the statuettes that were in the remaining trunk and cast them as gold bars.

  “I’ll have to separate out all of the metals first,” Jacques corrected.

  “No, son. These aren’t gilded. They’re solid gold.”

  “What?”

  There in the quiet workroom in the dim light of morning, Jacques’ father explained that the statuettes only looked similar on the outside to the ones they had made. On the inside, these were solid fourteen-carat gold, as opposed to theirs, which had been brass statuettes covered in gold leaf.

  “I don’t understand. We didn’t make these. How is it that they look exactly the same? How could someone else have matched your design so precisely?”

  Papa thought for a moment and then swallowed before speaking.

  “It was the other way around. When I first came here to do this job, I was given the finished molds and told to use them. We matched their design, Jacques.”

  “But why, Papa? What’s going on?”

  “It’s not our business to ask. We have been well paid to do a job and keep quiet about it, and that’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to do. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir. I understand.”

  Jacques stayed where he was for the moment, and soon his father’s breathing changed from shallow, agonized gasps to the deeper, even wheezes of sleep. Jacques laid the blanket over his father’s resting form. Then slowly, sadly, he got up, brushed himself off, and forced himself to do exactly as his father had told him.

  First he got dressed, splashed some water in his face, and ate a hunk of leftover bread to calm his churning stomach. Then he crossed the room to where the remaining cart waited by the door and slowly rolled it toward the worktable. He stoked the furnace with fuel, and as it heated up he gathered the tools he would need: the crucible, the muffle, the tongs. Finally, his heart heavy, Jacques open
ed the trunk and reached inside for the first of two hundred fleur-de-lis statuettes that he would be melting down to a liquid and then casting as gold bars.

  It wasn’t until that moment that he realized the man had mistakenly carted away the wrong trunk.

  SIX

  Still thinking back to last night, I remembered Kevin pulling out a file folder for us to discuss before closing up his briefcase and setting it on the floor. I wasn’t sure where that file folder or the briefcase were now, but I didn’t recall seeing either in the hotel room next door.

  Was that it? Had someone drugged both of us just to get their hands on that paperwork? Maybe that was what had happened, only somehow Kevin’s body had reacted differently to the drug than mine, and he had ended up dead.

  But when had we been drugged? Where, and how? Surely not at Ledet’s, my own family’s restaurant. Closing my eyes yet again, I strained to remember what had happened next. We were there in the restaurant, our orders placed, Kevin holding the file folder in his hands.

  “Ready to get started?” he had asked.

  “Yes, I am,” I replied, eager to sign the papers, eat a fast meal, and then get myself to the hospital as soon as I possibly could.

  Kevin began by explaining the basic situation, saying my father had called him first thing that morning and told him to make an offer on a property down in south central Louisiana. The place he wanted to buy was an eighty-acre tract of high ground, much of it wooded, that sat in the Atchafalaya Basin between the river and a clear, deep bayou. For many years it had been my father’s favorite hunting and fishing grounds, the place he went whenever he wanted to relax and regroup.

  “You’re talking about Paradise, where he was today when he was shot,” I replied. The land he wanted was owned by Alphonse Naquin, an old friend of my father’s, one with whom he’d had a falling out a few years ago. “My dad’s been trying to get Naquin to sell that place to him for a long time. The answer was always no.”

  “Well, this time your dad had a new approach. He was so excited about his offer that he felt sure Naquin would accept it this time.”