by C. L. Bevill
Quite suddenly she looked up, and her green eyes, the color of glass that has sat in the sun for a long time, contemplated Jourdain without a hint of recognition. It seemed like time stretched out forever as their eyes locked on each other. Finally, she turned away and continued her stroll down the avenue, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. She touched a bag of pecans from a stand outside the produce store and passed it by. She bent down to smell Mrs. Regret’s flowers on the corner. She sauntered down the street, as if she were taunting all of those people who were watching her.
With his mouth gaping wide, Jourdain watched her, too.
“I would have known her anywhere,” Bill said.
Jourdain shook himself. He turned to look at Bill. “What do you mean?” he croaked, and winced when he heard himself. He sounded like he had years ago when he was a first-year graduate fresh out of Harvard. In an instant, he had been transported back to the days when his tongue tied at the tip of a hat, and the jewels of merciless wit that now sprang forth readily escaped him.
The other man screwed up his face. “Well, goodness, Jourdain. They run off together, come … oh … twenty-five years ago. She was raised here. She still has cousins here. You know the Dubeauxs over to Provencal, don’t you? Or maybe you don’t. They’re not the type to hire such a fancy-pants lawyer as yourself, and you’ve spent so many of the last years down to Baton Rouge. Surely, some of the St. Michels had to expect that one or t’other would be back one day. It wasn’t like they fell off the face of the earth.”
Jourdain stared at Bill, not seeing the man at all. His mind was working like a computer, calculating what her presence meant. It’s true, all of it. But that woman … she … . “Isn’t her,” he said positively, finally, determined that it should be so.
Bill snorted. “What do you mean? I saw her, too. So did half the townspeople, by the look of the people peeking out their windows. I ain’t seen so many people on Main Street at nine in the morning since the Pecan Festival in July. You’d think the woman was prancing down the middle of the street wearing nothing but a smile and a how-d’you-do?” He smiled at the mental picture that popped into his mind.
“Think!” Jourdain raised his prescription bottle and shook it in front of the pharmacist, blue and white pills rattling like a maraca. “Did that look like a woman in her early fifties?”
The other man chewed on his lower lip. He took a moment to answer. Damned if she couldn’t be her twin sister, back from years ago, and that is the point Jourdain’s getting at, that it was a whole lotta years ago. But there was only one explanation to be found here, the most obvious one, the one that hadn’t immediately occurred to Bill. He said at last, “No, it’s got to be the other one.”
Jourdain nodded and left the pharmacy abruptly. He left so quickly that he didn’t pay his bill, and Bill didn’t think to ask for it until much later. Jourdain went to his Mercedes Benz and almost ran over the postman’s cat, who wandered too much to suit Jourdain or the postman. He left the town of La Valle, driving north.
There were many others who noticed the woman. Her auburn hair, her green eyes, and her clean-limbed figure were all pleasing to the eye. Even women responded to her welcoming smile and throaty voice. She stopped several places in the course of the morning, and many people saw her. She browsed through the hardware store. She bought a bouquet of autumn mums. She chatted with two teenage boys on the corner of Main and Jacques Streets, both of whom were obviously playing hooky from school, and couldn’t keep their young eyes off her legs and breasts. Before long, many more people were talking about her. The murmurs moved faster along the main street than she did. She heard the mutters a few times. There were a few people who out and out stared, but no one asked. No one had the courage, because they weren’t sure if they wanted to hear the answers she might give. Nor did they care to understand why her presence coincided so closely with the return of the St. Michels, and the return of an onslaught of rumors.
It was the realtor, Vincent Grase, who confirmed her identity. She stepped into his office with a brilliant smile. He had only lived in St. Germaine Parish for fifteen years, and although he had heard the hearsay before, he didn’t put it together with his first client of the day.
“Good morning,” said the red-haired woman. Vincent was instantly entranced. He was in his forties, married to a shrew of a woman, and had two shrewish children who didn’t care to follow their father in the real estate business; he was always looking for future Mrs. Grases, whether the female in mind was interested or not.
“Good morning,” he responded enthusiastically, rising up from behind his large oak desk. He even took the time to suck in his not inconsiderable stomach for effect. He offered his hand. She took it. There was a quick shake and release, just as Vincent liked his handshakes to be.
“I’m looking for a place,” said the beauty.
“To rent or to purchase?” asked Vincent. Please let it be a home to buy. Maybe one of those six-figure babies on the south side of town. Hello, Christmas bonus. Maybe ask me over for a brandy one night … .
“A rental to begin with,” she answered, waving a hand at one of the chairs in front of his desk. “May I?”
“Of course,” Vincent agreed. He even came around the side of the desk to help her be seated, which was, of course, unnecessary. After she had brushed his wandering hands off her body, he asked, “Coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
“How do you take it?”
“Black as sin.” Her throaty voice was almost sinful to listen to, as she gazed up at the realtor with those pale green eyes.
Focusing on her answer, and not its implications, Vincent appeared surprised. “Most young woman, such as yourself, seem to care for a bit of sugar, a bit of milk. Something to take the edge off the bitterness.” He busied himself at the table beside his desk, which contained a full coffee pot and all of the essentials. Cups clanked together as he made himself useful.
“Isn’t life a little bitter?” she asked, folding her hands across her stomach.
Vincent handed her a cup of coffee and watched her full lips take a sip of the steaming brew. He thought that he knew women pretty well, and when the lovely young woman gave him a certain look, he knew that he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of making any moves on her. Inwardly he sighed. His stomach abruptly expanded itself again in abject resignation.
“You mean you drink your coffee black to remind you that life isn’t all peaches and cream?” he asked.
“That’s a very accurate way of putting it. Sometimes a person has to remind oneself that life isn’t always sweet and tasteful.” Then she laughed. “Or perhaps it’s just that I simply care for my coffee black.”
Vincent looked at her for a moment. He stood propped against the front of his desk, not three feet away from one of the most beautiful women he had seen in years. Finally, he shook himself out of his reverie, and asked, “Do you have a price range for a rental, Miss … ah … ?”
“Price isn’t an object,” she replied smoothly, ignoring his attempt to produce her name. “I would like to be comfortable. In a place that has at least one room with a lot of light, and nothing near a freeway. Older properties are just as acceptable as newer ones. Later, I will be looking to purchase certain properties in the area, and naturally I shall require a realtor, such as yourself.”
“Naturally,” said Vincent, totting up dollar signs. She wore an expensive suit, a Donna Karan, if he wasn’t mistaken. Her shoes were Ferragamo’s. Her purse was Dooney & Burke. The scent of money poured off her just as her exquisite perfume did. It was the kind of fragrance that Vincent was positive he couldn’t buy his wife in any store around these parts, and one that he was not altogether sure he could afford even if it was available. “Do you mind me asking what kind of business you’re in, ma’am?”
“Oh, I’m an artist.” She took another sip. “Just an artist.”
Chapter Two
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10
The Queen of Hearts,
She made some tarts,
All on a summer’s day;
The Knave of Hearts,
He stole the tarts,
And took them clean away.
THE QUEEN OF HEARTS
“HER NAME IS MIGNON Thibeaux,” said Vincent Grase in a little café, three doors down from his office. “She’s an artist from New York City. She was born here.”
Mrs. Regret, whose first name was unknown to most of the population of La Valle, and who owned the flower shop and a bed and breakfast, looked at Vincent the way she might have looked at some creature that had crawled up on her doorstep. The red-haired woman had left his office at half past eleven, walked back to her rental car, and driven away. After she left, Vincent had stepped out of his office, intent on lunch. Mrs. Regret and three other business owners had followed Vincent like a pack of voracious hyenas. Now they sat at the counter on stools, looking at each other and at Vincent in turn.
Even the waitress at the café horned in on the conversation. She said, “She looks just like her mama.”
Mrs. Regret turned her withering gaze on the waitress. “Eloise, you weren’t even born when Garlande Thibeaux left La Valle.”
“Of course I was,” protested the waitress vehemently, rubbing her hands on a dish cloth. “I was three years old.”
“Garlande Thibeaux,” repeated Vincent thoughtfully, trying to mentally scrounge up the connection to his present-day client of the same last name. “Now where have I heard that name?”
“It was the biggest scandal since that Jew fella up and shot Huey Long,” someone three stools down the counter called out.
“I’ve only been in these parts since the middle eighties, you know,” said Vincent. “Give me a cup of your coffee, Eloise. Mine tastes like battery acid. Don’t know how that young woman drank three cups of it.”
“So what’s she doing back here?” asked Mrs. Regret, irritated that the conversation had veered away from her, and away from the subject she most wanted to hear about: the presence of Miss Mignon Thibeaux in the town from which she had been absent for over two decades.
People all along the counter squirmed and wriggled to look at each other.
“Looking for a place to live, of course,” said Vincent. “Why else would you go to a real estate office? Can’t tell you any more. It’s confidential.” He sounded as if he had signed and sworn a solemn oath of office before the President of the United States. He even pulled back his shoulders and stuck out his chin in a manner that might have put people off asking the question again.
Mrs. Regret and Eloise both stared at Vincent. Neither was impressed. Finally, Mrs. Regret said, “You ain’t a medical doctor, Vincent. Nor, the last I heard, are you a psychiatrist. So I don’t think that’s rightly correct.”
Vincent looked at his cup of coffee. Upon discovering that the presence of Mignon Thibeaux had caused some sort of brouhaha, he was not about to admit that he hadn’t pumped the woman for as much information as he could about her appearance in La Valle. Since she wasn’t about to flirt with him, he had concentrated on finding a listing for her that was suitable. She had filled out a bit of paperwork about her preferences, told him she would check into a bed and breakfast nearby, and would be in touch. In fact, her last name had sounded familiar, but in north-central Louisiana there were dozens of French names like Thibeaux. There were Cheres, Thibodouxs, Regrets, Roques, St. Michels, and others too many to name. It had been filed away in Vincent’s mind as merely a coincidence.
In any case, if he had known that Mignon Thibeaux was someone everyone was wondering about, then he surely would not have allowed her to leave his office until he had connived to get everything he could out of her. “She’s an artist,” he repeated, weakly. “Said she’d published a book of her paintings. Watercolors and oils, I think.”
“Uh-huh,” responded Mrs. Regret.
Nearby sat the postman, who happened to be the only man who knew Mrs. Regret’s first name and why no one else was permitted to know it. It had been her mother’s name and just as hideous a name as the postman had ever heard. He said, “I think I heard of her. She won some awards and such. You remember, Eloise. There was an article in the Shreveport Herald. Goes by just her first name, like Cher or Madonna. But no one said she was born here, and I ain’t put two and two together to realize it was the very same gal.”
Eloise shrugged. She was more interested in hearing about scandals and such. Like all of the hubbub up at the St. Michel mansion about ghosts walking the halls there, looking for God knows what. Some of the young women who worked there as maids refused to go there after dark, and even the speculation on just who the ghost was supposed to be was heated. A St. Michel had died in the Civil War protecting the family’s silver. A slave had been beaten to death by an owner in the nineteenth century. Or perhaps it was the infamous white lady, who visited the St. Michels when some type of catastrophe was about to pass. There were even a few who intimated that the ghost was Luc St. Michel himself, though there was not a bit of proof that Eleanor St. Michel’s husband was dead, and even Eloise knew that story. Finally, she answered, “I don’t remember.”
The postman went on, “’Cause she was an orphan and all. Of course, no one really knows if she’s that, because her mama’s probably still alive. I remember way back when that Ruff Thibeaux died over to Dallas. Suppose the child went into the foster care system, because the mother did abandon her. Anyway, that article said she managed to get herself some scholarships, lives in both New York and California. She even studied in Europe. One of her paintings sold for over one hundred thousand dollars. Although I think it was a Japanese fella who bought it. Imagine that. A Thibeaux selling a picture worth one hundred thousand dollars.”
“One painting,” repeated Vincent. He had visions of a wonderful listing being sold to Mignon Thibeaux. Maybe a quarter of a million dollars. Hell, a half a million dollars, with a seven percent cut for me. Yee-haw. He was so busy thinking about it that he almost drooled in his coffee.
“I can see exactly what’s on your mind,” Mrs. Regret sneered.
Vincent was nothing if not willing and able to change the subject at an opportune time. “So what’s the big scandal?”
“It involves the St. Michels,” said Eloise. Then she glanced crossly at a customer who had gone from waving his hand at her to flailing his arms about in an effort to gain her attention. “Hold on to your horses, mon ami. I’m a’coming.”
Mrs. Regret frowned at her bowl of gumbo. She never liked eating here since the owner had hired a new cook from Yankee Land who didn’t even know how to make a proper bowl of the Louisiana staple. “You know Eleanor St. Michel?” she asked Vincent, moving the bowl to the side.
“Sure.” Sometimes the matriarch of the St. Michels would put a listing with Vincent. It was usually a farm lease of some sort, considering the vast amounts of farmland that the St. Michels owned in the area. It was either Eleanor or her oldest child, Geraud, when he was about.
They were not the friendliest sort of folks around, but Vincent chalked it up to them being rich and uppity plantation people. Their forefathers could be traced back to the French-Acadian influx in the eighteenth century and so forth, and the Grases were only Johnny-come-lately’s to Louisiana in comparison. It wasn’t an unusual situation in the area; there were many poor families who could trace their roots back a century before the St. Michels, if they were so inclined. But those kind of people didn’t have the cash in the bank, nor the antebellum home to show for it.
“Her husband up and ran off with his mistress back in the seventies,” continued Mrs. Regret.
“Not only that,” the postman interrupted.
Mrs. Regret nodded. “Not only that but his mistress was married and had a child. She up and left her husband and child for Luc St. Michel. He left Eleanor in the lurch with two children of their own, although they sure weren’t hurting for money or support.”
Vincent wasn’t exactly impressed.
Men did that, upon occasion. So did women. He’d do it, given the opportunity. Say, if Mignon Thibeaux looked at me longingly with those pale green eyes, and asked pretty please with sugar on it, I’d be there just like that. He mentally snapped his fingers. Then he snapped them again. Maybe quicker.
“That woman was Garlande Thibeaux,” finished Mrs. Regret, ever anticipatory of a good ending to a story.
Vincent opened his eyes up wide. “And Garlande is Mignon’s mother,” he finished.
Mrs. Regret smiled slowly. “Just so. The very spitting image.”
“Imagine that,” sighed Eloise, eyes heavenward. “True lovers running off to be together, forever.”
Vincent couldn’t imagine that. But what the heck, if Garlande Thibeaux ran off with her wealthy lover, who might blame her? He thought about that and answered it himself, thinking of the cold, collected woman who came to his office upon occasion. A woman who carefully compiled each piece of paperwork, and made sure she had copies in triplicate, might blame the woman who had stolen her husband away. Eleanor St. Michel might do just that. There is a woman who would hold a grudge.
Dismissing the thought, he wondered about Mignon Thibeaux and what exactly had brought her back to this town.
Mrs. Regret smiled to herself. “They say that he died someplace, Luc St. Michel. That he came back to torment the St. Michels because of the way the daughter of his mistress was treated.” Her voice trailed off, and her eyes focused on the man who had been sitting in a back booth listening to the conversation. He stood up to his full height of over six feet and carefully put his hat on his head. “Oh, hey, John Henry,” she stuttered. “I sure didn’t see you there.”
The man in the Stetson and the khaki uniform dumped a handful of bills on the table, and nodded vaguely at Mrs. Regret and the others. His neatly pinned sheriff’s badge glittered in the fluorescent light as he turned. The active murmurs died away until he stepped outside and got into his official white Ford Bronco.
