Whispers in Time

by Becky Lee Weyrich

  Pierre stared up at his father, his face grave. “Really? When?”

  “How about right now?” Vic asked, forcing a smile that hurt his face and his breaking heart. “Why don’t you run down and tell him to come up here?”

  Pierre grinned—uncertainly at first. Then the meaning of the wedding caught hold of him. If Cami was about to marry his father, then she couldn’t be dying.

  “I’ll bring him right up,” Pierre called, already racing out of the room.

  Vic took a few moments alone with the priest to explain his odd request.

  “But she must answer,” the priest argued. “How will she do that?”

  “I’ll answer in her behalf,” Vic told the man in a no-nonsense tone.

  A short time later, Vic and Pierre stood on opposite sides of Cami’s bed—the father holding her left hand, the son her right. Harp music drifted up from downstairs. Cami’s dark-skinned pupil wasn’t very good at the instrument yet, but she did her best for the occasion. Another of the servants had gone out to the garden and quickly cut a bridal bouquet of late-blooming roses. The blood-red flowers lay on the bed beside the unconscious bride.

  The priest cleared his throat, then began with a prayer for the salvation of the bride’s eternal soul. Vic cast a frown his way. “This is a wedding, not last rites,” he warned under his breath.

  As the holy man droned on and on with his preamble to the ceremony, Pierre felt something peculiar. He tightened his hold on Cami’s hand and glanced toward his father. Vic returned the boy’s stare, his own expression grave. Pierre wanted to tell the others, but he knew that it would be impolite to interrupt, especially to interrupt a priest. Still, he was sure he had felt it. Cami had squeezed his hand.

  “Do you take this woman to be your wedded wife?” the priest intoned. “I do!” Vic answered.

  Vic glanced quickly down at Cami. He was sure he had felt her fingers move in his when he made his pledge. Her eyes were still closed, her face expressionless. He told himself he was only imagining what he wanted to feel.

  “Camille Mazaret, do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

  Silence greeted the priest’s question this time. Intent on his examination of Cami’s face, Vic forgot that he was supposed to answer. The priest repeated the question.

  “Camille Mazaret, do you take this man, Victoine Navar, to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

  Again, silence. They were all staring at Cami—at the tears seeping from the corners of her eyes. No one spoke. No one moved. They stood frozen in time and space—watching, listening. They all saw it at the same instant. Her colorless lips moved slightly.

  “Cami,” Vic rasped.

  Pierre’s grin was so wide it nearly split his face.

  The priest cleared his throat and repeated his question one more time.

  “I do.” The words were not even a whisper. They seemed more like the wings of a butterfly brushing a light summer breeze. But they had issued from Cami’s own lips.

  “She’s alive!” Pierre whispered. Then he gave a joyous shout. “My mother’s alive!”

  Oblivious to the others in the room, Vic knelt beside the bed, cradling Cami in his arms.

  “My darling,” he whispered, awed. “My precious, darling wife! You’ve come back to me.”

  “I was never away,” she murmured. “I was there in your heart all the while. I have been there forever. I’ll remain yours through all eternity.”

  A faint pink tint suffused Cami’s lips. Vic leaned down, warming them with a tender kiss.

  Cami had no idea where she had gone for so long, but it had been a dark, cold, lonely place. Then the oddest thing had happened. It seemed someone had come to her from faraway to lead her back. Carol, she thought, wondering who the woman was.

  Now sunlight showered her bed and her husband’s arms held her lovingly. The scene was pure rapture in gold. She returned his kiss from the very depths of her soul.

  A small, warm hand touched her cheek. Cami’s eyes opened. Pierre, his handsome young face grave, stood staring at her.

  “I found the treasure, Cami,” he said solemnly. “More gold than you ever saw.” Pierre paused for a moment, fighting for control. When he spoke again, his clear, young voice was strong and steady. “But the treasure—the real treasure, Cami, is you!”

  Happy tears brimming in her indigo eyes, Camille Mazaret Navar clasped father and son to her at once. They were a family at last—a loving caring family. Together they would face new hopes, new dreams, new tomorrows.

  dp group.org

  Epilogue

  Newspaper clippings—

  New Orleans, March 5, 1992:

  MURDERER CONFESSES, SHOOTING VICTIM VANISHES

  A bizarre shooting incident took place yesterday in Jackson Square. According to numerous eyewitnesses, the gunman, identified as Orville Percy Jones, 55, an escaped murderer from the Louisiana State Penitentiary, fired into a large crowd of tourists striking one man. Panic ensued. Once officers restored order to the scene, the victim of the shooting had disappeared. Evidence found at the scene indicated that he had been wounded.

  An eyewitness, Roger W. Ross of Plano, Texas, told officers, “I saw the whole thing—the man with the gun and the guy he shot. There was a woman, too. She tried to warn the victim right before he got hit. She called him ‘Frank.’ I saw him go down. It looked to me like he was shot right through the heart. Then everybody panicked, figuring the shooter was going to keep firing into the crowd. They closed in around the man on the ground and the woman with him so I couldn’t see them any longer. When the cops grabbed the gunman, then cleared everybody away, the guy that got shot was gone. I mean, gone like he’d vanished. There was blood on the pavement—lots of it. But not a sign of the fellow named Frank or his lady friend.”

  Another witness at the scene, Joe Crozat, owner of the nearby Let-The-Good-Times-Roll Cafe, stated that he recognized the victim as Detective Captain Frank Longpre of the New Orleans Police Department. Crozat identified Longpre’s female companion as Carol Marlowe, a visitor from North Carolina.

  A call has gone out to area doctors and hospitals in the event that Longpre went somewhere for treatment of his gunshot wound. However, no reports have come in.

  The manager of the Hotel Dalpeche, where Longpre and Marlowe were staying, told authorities that he had spoken to the pair earlier in the day as they were leaving the hotel, but he did not see them return. A check of their rooms brought no further information.

  Authorities are checking on several leads, but are clearly baffled. Anyone having any information on the whereabouts of Detective Captain Frank Longpre or Carol Marlowe is advised to contact the police department.

  The suspect, O. P. Jones, has corroborated eyewitness reports that the victim was Frank Longpre, stating, “Yeah, I shot him. He put me away and I been waiting a long time to get even. Well, I showed him. He’s dead, take my word for it.”

  In a surprising revelation, Jones also confessed to the abduction and murder of Mrs. Frank Longpre, a case that had gone unsolved since May of 1980 when Eileen Longpre disappeared from her home in Metaire. The details of this grisly crime will be printed at a later time.

  Jones was arrested at the scene and made a full confession. He was shot and killed by police a short time later when he attempted to escape.

  New Orleans, March 5, 1992:

  CARNIVAL PRANKSTERS SUSPECTED OF BODY SNATCHING

  The county coroner’s office reported earlier today that the remains of an unidentified body are missing from the morgue. According to a spokesman for the coroner’s office, the corpse, discovered in December of last year, was awaiting positive identification after being pulled from a bayou by a fisherman.

  “It was a right strange case,” the coroner’s spokesman stated. “This wasn’t your normal floater. This was the mummified corpse of a woman, and from what we could tell, it’d been in the swamp a long time. Years.”

  Asked if there were any leads as
to what happened to the corpse, the spokesman said, “We figure it was probably just a Carnival prank. You know the crazy things that go on this time of year. Odd, though, how that mummy just vanished into thin air.”

  New Orleans, April 30, 1841:

  Monsieur and Madame Victoine Navar of Elysian Fields and Golden Oaks plantations are pleased to announce the arrival of a daughter, Jane Carol, on the twenty-second of March. Mademoiselle Janie is welcomed, too, by her brother, Pierre. The Navars will receive family and friends at a reception at Golden Oaks on Sunday afternoon next between the hours of one and five.

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  More from Becky Lee Weyrich

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