Oliver had sent the coins to a rare coin dealer in Chicago, who would examine them and report his findings. There was no reason to believe they weren't authentic, Oliver added. If that proved true, they would confirm the Spanish presence near Cap-Haitien around 1500 when Columbus had built La Navidad.
The letter concluded with more outpouring of gratitude from the old bachelor, who had valued his friendship with two young people he'd come to admire and respect. Oliver was a unique individual, Brian reflected when he finished the letter. He was an enigma himself at times, keeping information close to his vest, revealing only what needed to be known, but always showing genuine affection for Brian and Nicole. He had been a good man and Brian hoped he could finish the quest to learn whatever it was that had puzzled Oliver so much.
He stayed up well after midnight finishing Oliver's letter and poring through the notes and spreadsheets in the packet. If the audited financial statements and the other information the lawyer was sending validated the information Oliver had provided, then his friend was correct. This was an opportunity he couldn't afford to miss.
Oliver's letter left him with more questions than answers. He said that Pierre Duplanchier was involved in voodoo just like the Laveaus. He had lived across the street from them and was present in Congo Square for Sunday rituals. But what about Oliver's ancestor Celine? He never mentioned her after saying she was on the boat. Did she live in the St. Ann Street house with Pierre? Was his family secret that Celine, a woman of color, was his relative? Would that have embarrassed Oliver, even though other founding families also were descended from Creoles?
He always said his family had been here for years, but now Brian knew they went back to the beginning. Pierre was here when New Orleans was founded. Why had Oliver not proudly declared that fact? What about his reference to the extremely long lives of some of the Duplanchier clan? What about the date discrepancies the three of them had wrestled over?
It felt now as if Oliver had been playing a game with them like a kitten with a ball of string, knowing all the secrets about the Duplanchier family tree but not allowing Brian enough information to figure it out too. He'd been a friend and business associate of Brian's for years. Was all that simply part of the game? None of this made any sense. There had to be something else he was hiding.
Very soon he would learn the truth about his friend. In the meantime, he fell asleep wondering about Eve and what she was planning next.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Over the next two days Brian spoke with the doctor and went to see Nicole five times. There was no change and she looked the same - happy, peaceful and asleep. He couldn't stay here waiting helplessly for Eve to strike again. Nicole was as protected as he could arrange and now he had to face the situation. For her to awaken - for their lives to continue - he had to find the girl and finish this.
"I have to go to New Orleans and I'll be back in a few days," he told everyone helping his wife. "If something happens, call me - I'm only two hours away."
He arrived around noon and checked into the hotel where they'd spent their honeymoon. He went to the shop, which he planned to use as his base. His first task was to find the cross. The breakfront in Oliver's photo was impossible to miss - it was tall and majestic, standing across the showroom against a wall. In a drawer he found the three books and a box with the cross inside. He took them to Oliver's office and stuck them in his large rolltop desk.
His goal was to bring Eve out in the open and he had a plan to make that happen. Every couple of hours from daybreak until midnight, he walked to the corner of Ursulines and Chartres and stood in front of the three-story Frere house. He stood on the sidewalk in plain sight for ten or twenty minutes each time, but in over twenty-four hours there was no sign of activity anywhere inside. A few times he even knocked on the door, but nobody answered.
He also hired a tourist guide to get him inside the cemetery. He wanted to examine the Duplanchier tomb more closely. There was the piece of marble someone had stuck over the opening of the bottom vault. He moved it and read the slip of paper inside that said Justine (Duplanchier) Quantin Frere, died 2017. He recognized that name and found it interesting. Oliver thought she was the ancient woman who roamed the streets. She must have died very recently and had a very unconventional burial. Looking way inside and using his phone as a flashlight, he saw an old cloth sack in the back. Did it hold the woman's body? He didn't care to find out.
Despite the appearance that the Frere house was deserted, his loitering in the area had apparently paid off. She must have seen him because this morning he had received a call at the gallery. "You know who this is," she had said. She told him to meet her on the levee between Café du Monde and the river in an hour.
Brian arrived ten minutes early and sat on a bench as she had instructed. His mind raged with anger. Nicole had been in a coma for four days and he felt helpless without her. He had to finish this with Eve. He was certain she'd killed Oliver. She'd also killed Stanley Oblowski in Guatemala. She was evil, but he wasn't afraid because she had attacked the one thing he loved the most. Any fear that had been was replaced by a grim resolve to stop this girl and the madness she had created. He would have willingly killed her if that would have accomplished anything. Unfortunately she had to stay alive until Nicole was free from the spell.
When she sat next to him, he hardly recognized her. It had been only four days, but physically she was much different. She had apparently outgrown her dress and pinafore. Now she wore a modern long-sleeved sweater and slacks. Her body was dramatically different - it had been that of a teenager a few days ago. Today, even with her baggy clothes, her shapely figure was unmistakable. She was taller, a bit heavier and her hair was darker. She looked to be maybe in her twenties.
He didn't wait for her to begin. He said curtly, "Tell me how to wake her up and I'll give you the cross."
He has it! "Of course you will," she said demurely. "Did you bring it with you?"
"Seriously, Eve? I'm not a fool. This is a quid pro quo. Tell me how to wake her up - or do it yourself - and I give you the cross. That's it, period."
It wasn't that simple any more, unfortunately. The strength it had taken to make Oliver Toussaint jump off the bridge had put her in bed for two days. She knew she couldn't break Nicole's spell until she had more elixir. Making another batch required the cross, but he wouldn't give it to her unless his wife was awake. She had known this was where the discussion would head and she had come up with an idea.
Before she could say it, he surprised her with a revelation.
"I know about the Duplanchiers. I've seen your grandfather's journal. He made the elixir four hundred years ago. He brought the recipe from Haiti along with Columbus's cross. He lived an extraordinarily long time, like many of you have. And yesterday I saw your mother's grave in the family tomb. So she finally died. How old was she, Eve? How old was Justine, and how old was her sister, Felicite, the one buried just above her?"
Why the hell did he care? And at this point what did it matter? "Mother was two hundred and fifty and Aunt Felicite, a hundred and twelve, I think. Now you know. Are you satisfied?"
"I won't be satisfied until you undo what you've done. Your mother and your aunt obviously took the potion, but at some point - for some reason - they stopped. And now you've stopped too, thanks to Oliver and me. How long do you have, Eve? I can see that you've aged what - maybe six more years - since you hexed Nicole in Dallas. You'd better get the elixir in a hurry or you're going to be really old. No deals - I'm not here to bargain. We're going to do this my way. Wake her up and you get the cross. I have a plane on standby at the airport twenty-four seven, ready and waiting for my call. We'll fly to Dallas and it'll bring you back afterwards. The minute she's awake and I can tell she's herself, you'll have the cross. That's my promise."
She had to give up a secret to make this work.
"Bring me some shavings from the bottom of the vertical beam of the cross. That's all I need to make more elixi
r. Then I'll do anything you want."
He shook his head. "No way. You're a devil occupying a girl's body. It's easy for people to get caught up in how innocent you appear, but I'm not falling for it. I know what you really are and I know you're a liar. Wake her up first."
"I can't," she admitted, hanging her head. "I'm powerless without the elixir."
"I don't believe you. You killed Oliver -"
"I didn't kill him. I wasn't even there -"
"Bullshit! You put a spell on him. You made him jump off that bridge."
She finally gave in. "You win. Here's the truth. I have to have more elixir before I can break the spell on your wife. You can help me, or she can remain in a coma until she dies. It's as simple as that."
That was the one scenario Brian wasn't expecting. He didn't understand how all this worked, but there had to be another way.
"Give me the recipe and the ingredients and I'll make it myself," he said. "I'll take you to Dallas; you drink it by Nicole's bedside and wake her up."
"No. It'll take more than twenty-four hours for the elixir to rejuvenate my body. It has to be my way."
The fact that Nicole wasn't in a life-threatening situation made his decision easier. "That's not going to happen. If I give you what you want, I have no assurance you'll come through. You're losing it, Eve. The doctor says Nicole's in no danger. She may come out of this on her own before long. I'm not giving you the cross until you remove the spell. Figure it out and call me."
Having just made a high-stakes gamble, he walked away from the toughest situation he'd ever faced. Eve had as much to lose as he did and the ball was in her court. He wanted to believe that Nicole would recover on her own, but he couldn't take that chance. Eve had to come up with something and he had to keep the cross hidden. She would literally do anything to get it. If she did, it would be Nicole's death sentence.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Brian had finished Oliver's letter with more questions than answers. His friend had made such a point at the beginning about keeping secrets from them - he even apologized - yet the only secrets he revealed were seemingly insignificant. He knew the entire Duplanchier family tree, he'd made some deliberately false entries in the one he showed Brian and Nicole, the Duplanchiers lived very long lives, and his ancestor was a servant of Pierre's who came to America in 1699.
No big deal ... or was it? Was there even more he hadn't revealed?
He thought back to something Oliver had said when they'd met that Sunday afternoon during Mardi Gras. He'd casually mentioned how fortunate it was that records dating back to the founding of the New Orleans cemeteries still existed, tucked away in humidity-controlled vaults in a private museum somewhere in the French Quarter. Maybe he'd find answers there. It was worth a try.
Oliver's assistant hadn't heard of the vault he'd described, but she placed a call to the historical society and found out what he needed. The Marigny Foundation was a prominent nonprofit dedicated to historic preservation in the city and they owned a seventeenth-century building on Dumaine Street that housed thousands of records. She gave Brian the foundation's number and he arranged an appointment later that day with Kathy Sullivan, its director.
"I'm glad to meet you, but I'm sad that it's under such unfortunate circumstances," the lady said as she poured coffee in her office. "I admired Mr. Toussaint very much. I'm so sorry about what happened to him. I was completely shocked. Of anyone I know, he'd be the last I'd think would take his own life."
Brian admitted that he'd been surprised too. He told her the reason for his visit, explaining that he was interested in researching some burial records and had been told by Oliver that they were housed here.
"Is it the Duplanchiers you're looking for?" she asked with a wistful smile. "Exploring that family's history had become a passion of Mr. Toussaint's, it seems. He was over here looking through things quite often. He left me a request for more records the last time he came and I pulled those, but sadly he never returned."
"I'll look at them, but I'd also be interested in Oliver's own family, the Toussaints. Haven't they been in New Orleans for centuries too?"
"They have indeed, although I'm not as familiar with that lineage as I am that of the Duplanchiers. Oliver's fixation on them rubbed off on me too, I'll confess. I've run up against the same roadblocks he came across - incomplete information, inaccuracies in birth and death dates, missing descendants and so forth. Of course, having a hole in the family tree where a son or grandson should go isn't that puzzling because our records aren't meant to be the be-all and end-all. For instance, we only have documentation for people buried in the city's cemeteries. Duplanchier children could have fanned out all over the country for all we know."
The director explained how the system worked. She'd show him what Oliver had requested, and later she'd pull what records she had on the Toussaints and call him when they were ready for review. She took him to a small reading room with a table and two chairs. There were two slim folders and a magnifying glass on the table.
"These are what Mr. Toussaint wanted to see next. This is everything I have on Miss Felicite Duplanchier. He said he was trying to figure out something about her that puzzled him. He didn't say what it was, and being a bit of a puzzle fanatic myself, I read the files to see if anything stood out. We have very little information about her and I didn't see anything unusual. Why don’t you look them over and we can talk about it when you're finished? I'd like to know what you think."
There were only a few pages in each folder. They were photocopies of faded original documents, some of which had been torn and stained. He was glad she'd provided the magnifier to help see the faint handwritten words. He hoped Kathy could translate the French words.
For fifteen minutes he painstakingly examined every ancient word, feeling as though he were on a wild-goose chase. He didn't even know what Oliver had been looking for. It was obvious that some of the documents were public records - maybe a death certificate or an interment order. A couple of the pages seemed to be notes someone had jotted down. He forced himself to keep looking at every single word when he came to a sentence that perked him up.
Felicite Duplanchier, huit ans, est arrivé à la Nouvelle-Orléans en 1699 avec Pierre Duplanchier et Celine Toussaint.
What? He thought he understood that sentence. He jumped up from his seat, took the page to Kathy's office and asked her what it said.
She looked at it closely. "It says that eight-year-old Felicite came to New Orleans in 1699 with Pierre Duplanchier and Celine Toussaint. That's a link between the two families I hadn't considered when I glanced at it earlier. Do you think that's what Mr. Toussaint was looking for?"
There was more than just that exciting news. Brian said, "We went through the Duplanchier family tree, but it didn't make sense to me. For instance, look at this. It says that Felicite came with Pierre from Haiti in 1699. Can we assume then that Pierre was her father?"
"I'd think so. She was a child and probably was in her father's care. There's no mention of her mother."
Brian nodded. "That's because Oliver told me Pierre's wife, Anne Saucier, died a year before he left Haiti. He was a widower who was bringing his child and servant to America. I think he brought the woman along to raise his daughter."
"Did Mr. Toussaint tell you the girl was on the boat?"
"No. Maybe he didn't know it. But explain something to me. If she was eight years old in 1699, then she was born around 1692. Is she the same Felicite Duplanchier who's buried in the family tomb with Pierre?"
"That makes sense to me."
"But the grave marker says she died in 1804."
She paused a moment. "Then obviously she wasn't the same woman. But I know from my research that she's the only Felicite Duplanchier who's buried in New Orleans."
"I have something to tell you," he began, "that's going to change everything you thought you knew about the founding families. I've got a little tale about voodoo for you." He outlined what he'd heard from Eve
and Oliver about the Duplanchiers.
Many members of the Duplanchier line lived very long lives indeed, all because of a life-prolonging elixir Pierre had brought from Haiti.
Justine Quantin was Pierre's daughter who had taken her mother's last name. She died at two hundred and fifty.
Justine's half-sister, Felicite, lived to be a hundred and twelve.
Eve Frere was alive and living in New Orleans today. She was eighty-three years old, but she looked like a child.
From Pierre on down the line, the entire family was involved with voodoo.
There were no holes in the Duplanchier family tree. The ancestors had merely lived on and on for generations.
"I need to see everything you have on the Toussaints as soon as possible," he said, beginning to understand how that family might fit into all this.
He was back at the museum within twenty-four hours, ready to go. Kathy gave him the much fatter Toussaint files, explaining that there were a lot of them who'd lived and died in New Orleans. Generations of this proud old Southern family had made the city their home.
He found some of the same inconsistencies in the very early records that he'd seen in the Duplanchier files. Celine Toussaint had come on the boat with Pierre, but there was something else he discovered in the records. He found a torn piece of paper - a list of names written in French in a beautiful longhand. It appeared to be part of the passenger manifest from le Moyne's boat.
Brian enlisted Kathy to translate and she read the list aloud. There was Pierre, aged fifty-two years, and Celine, aged twenty-five. As they knew from the Duplanchier files, eight-year-old Felicite was a passenger too. Now Brian began searching for one more record, one thing he needed that would tie it all together in one neat package. The director sat by his side, as captivated by the story as he was.
And at last he found it. There was a death certificate for Celine Toussaint, who had died in Pierre's St. Ann Street house in 1787. From the ship's record, they knew Celine was twenty-five in 1699.
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