Knock Before You Enter

by D. A. Bale

  “Uh…okay. Did you want to come in?”

  She walked inside and looked at the mess I’d left on the bathroom floor. “Is my granddaughter around?”

  “No, I think she’s downstairs. Do you want me to run down and get her for you?”

  “Not necessary. It’s you I’d like to talk to, if you have a moment, Victoria.”

  “Sure.” I smoothed the comforter on the end of the bed.

  Addie remained standing in all her four-foot-nine glory. “I overheard you and your father in the hallway just now.”

  My turn to sit. “Oh…I’m sorry, Mrs. De’Laruse. I didn’t realize we were being so loud.”

  “You weren’t, dawlin’. I was in the alcove at the end of the hallway.”

  “Okay.” I had no clue where she wanted to take this conversation – nor why we were even having it.

  She finally sat beside me. “Don’t you think it’s time to extend the olive branch and forgive your father?”

  My shock must’ve reflected on my face. This was a strange conversational vein coming from a woman who displayed no sign of forgiveness at any point in her life.

  Addie continued, “I’m not as scatterbrained as my age might dictate.”

  “One thing I’d never accuse you of is being scatterbrained.”

  “Be that as it may, I’ve watched you and Franklin at each other’s throats for years and it always grieved me to see a father and daughter quarrel like that. My Louie and Charlotte had such a close bond when she was young it…truth-be-told, it made me jealous at times.”

  I didn’t know what to say to such a confession from Addie, so wisely I kept my big mouth shut.

  “It broke his heart when she…did what she did. Neither of us handled that time well, and I’ve held it over Charlotte’s head all these years.”

  I finally found my tongue. “Things with my father are…” Messed up? Beyond repair? “…different.”

  She shook her head. “Not really. Pain reveals itself in many forms, and it’s usually those closest to us that suffer the brunt of it.”

  “But you don’t know what Frankie did to me growing up. To my Mom. When he didn’t get his way about everything, he was a cruel and heartless bastard.” Addie didn’t even flinch with my language. “His words hurt more than any physical punishment he doled out. Nothing I ever did was right in his eyes.”

  Tears pricked the edge of my eyes. Holy… Why in the hell did I pour out my heart to this woman? Why here? Why now? Where did this come from?

  Something else to blame on the sperm donor. His presence completely disrupted my entire equilibrium. Or maybe it was emotional aftereffects of too little sleep. Or maternal worry over Slinky the other night. Yeah, let’s blame it on that.

  “Does not the Good Book say all have sinned and fallen short?” she asked.

  “Some more than others,” I mumbled. “But you don’t understand.”

  “I understand that more than you realize, Victoria,” Addie said, patting my hand. “Marrying into the De’Laruse line had challenges of its own, standards to live up to, jealousies of former contenders. Imagine being a newlywed and living under the roof of your new in-laws.”

  I shuddered, grateful for the distance from family the modern lifestyle provided. “I doubt I’ll have to deal with those kinds of situations. If I ever lived under Frankie’s roof again, we’d kill each other.”

  A humph. “Your father cares about you more than you realize.”

  “He’s got a funny way of showing it.”

  “When have you ever known a man with a solid grasp on showing emotion?”

  She had a point.

  Addie sighed. “There’s something about old age that softens even the hardest of hearts. It’s only now I understand how much. I deeply regret the years lost…how I treated my dawlin’ Louie. And those years I’ll never get back.”

  After one more hand pat, she stood and opened the door. “Start by finding some common ground. Someone has to be the first to reach across the breach, Victoria…and you’re the kind of woman who’s strong enough to do it.”

  ***

  Within two minutes after the end of lunch, Mom had corralled everyone into the limousine for Pierre to whisk away to New Orleans. I couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief from the reprieve. Too many deep thoughts and emotions assailed me – and I wasn’t ready to do anything about it all yet.

  Hey, Addie might think I’m a strong woman – but I’m not that strong.

  Since George hadn’t returned from his fitting – Alphonse probably had to send out a rush request for extra material – Sibby left his place setting at the table while Janine and I helped her with the remainder.

  Janine struck up a tentative conversation as we settled dirty china and crystal in the gray plastic tote. “Do you like being here, Sibby?”

  “Yes, Miss De’Laruse,” Sibby said without looking up. Her hands shook like a terrified turkey at…well, Thanksgiving time.

  “Please call me Janine.”

  “Certainly, Miss Janine.”

  Gee, had we stepped back in time to a more servile southern period? We were all in the same swirling cesspool of humanity, as far as I was concerned. ‘Course maybe Sibby’s discomfort had more to do with the fact I’d seen her and George entwined beneath the sheets – more like on top of the sheets, but apples and oranges.

  “Is it true that you and Maisie are related?” I blurted out.

  Pink tinged Sibby’s cheeks, but at least she looked up at us this time. “Distant relation. It’s how I obtained employment so eas’ly with Miss Adelaide.”

  “Do you enjoying working alongside Maisie?” Janine asked. “I mean, having family here must’ve made coming to Heaven’s Gate an easier choice.”

  Sibby lifted the full tote onto the cart and grabbed the empty one on the second shelf. “Long hours sometimes…like this week.” She glanced up at us in horror. “But I’m not complainin’, mind you. Miss Adelaide is much better to me than…well, some others I’ve worked for.”

  “Like who?” I prodded.

  “Well…I don’t…”

  “That’s okay,” Janine interrupted with a huff my way. “It’s none of our business.”

  I shrugged. “I was just curious.”

  Things with this whole wanton and wicked dance with George just weren’t adding up. What kind of other work had Sibby been involved in before coming to work for Addie? Maybe it was about time I found out.

  Sibby finished up with the table and pushed the cart toward the doorway leading toward the prep room. “I best be gettin’ these washed and put away so’s I can help Maisie with the pies for t’morrow.

  I sniffed the air. “Is that pumpkin I smell?”

  Sibby nodded. “We’ll be makin’ pumpkin, pecan, apple, peach cobbler, cranberry cheesecake, lemon meringue…”

  “Lemon?” I asked, feeling the pounds pile on just thinking about all the desserts I’d soon be sampling.

  “It’s Grandma-ma’s favorite,” Janine explained, “especially since she can’t tackle the pecan very well these days.”

  Sibby nodded as her pocket buzzed. “That’d be Mr. George requestin’ pick-up from downtown. I best tell Maurice. ‘Scuse me, ladies,” she said before dragging the cart beyond the swinging door.

  In light of the lack of forthcoming information from Sibby, we set our minds toward treasure and slunk to the study like Slinky escaping from the critter carrier.

  With gloved hands, Janine pulled the two rolled-up surveys from the credenza behind the huge mahogany desk where we’d stowed them the night before and carefully unfurled the weathered pages of the older one before underlying the applicable page with the newer. We weighted them down with an assortment of heavy objects scattered across the desk, from the dried out silver and crystal antique inkwell to a paperweight of carved ivory from who knows when.

  ‘Course Janine could probably tell me when just by looking at it, if I cared enough to ask – which right then I didn’t. Over
the last few days, I’d grown doubly impressed with my bestie’s ability to retain pretty much every bit of her family’s history. This treasure hunt only amplified that fact.

  “So,” Janine started after study of both surveys, “both show the mansion here and the family cemetery there.”

  “Is that the creek in the middle?” I asked, pointing my ungloved hand at the older survey and getting it swatted away.

  “Yes, and don’t touch unless you’re wearing gloves. That paper is over a hundred years old.”

  “And yet you let me handle the Bonafeld journal without gloves.”

  “Because that thing has been manhandled by far more hands over the years and withstood the abuse of rolling on the ground.”

  “If you hadn’t noticed, I’m female,” I countered with a pout.

  “Oka-a-a-ay,” Janine said tossing an eye roll my way. “Womanhandled then.”

  “That’s better.”

  Janine shook her head then focused in again on the desk documents. “You’re right, though. That is the creek, leading to the confluence to the north there.” She gingerly curled back one page then another. “These waterways lead into the Tangipahoa River, which then empties into Lake Pontchartrain.”

  “And your great-great-great grandpappy once owned all of that land?”

  “It appears so.”

  As Janine cradled each page and lay it over the other again, I studied the varying shapes, squiggles, and strokes. “Wait, what are these other lines branching out across the ground?”

  Janine studied the old survey more intently, lifting the edge of the two topmost pages before settling on one. “I’m not sure. They only appear in these three sections of the main property.”

  I looked over the most recent survey. “They don’t show up at all on this one.”

  “Hmm.” She fell silent in her musings between the discrepancies.

  “Do you think they’re creeks or streams that have since dried up?”

  “No, they’d be marked like these,” she responded, pointing to the known water routes. “They are pretty straight and uniform, so it’s safe to assume that whatever purpose they served, these were manmade. Maybe ditches or ramparts dug by the occupying Union troops?”

  “If they were ditches, why aren’t they noticeable anymore?” I asked. “And marked on the newer survey?”

  Janine shrugged. “Maybe one of my great-grandfathers filled them in at one time. After all, what southerner wants to keep around reminders of a war fought and lost?”

  “Or maybe to try and put to rest those collusion with the enemy rumors.”

  “Which may or may not be true.”

  My turn to cast an eye roll Janine’s way. “May or may not?”

  Brows furrowed before she threw up her hands. “Alright fine! The evidence thus far supports that assumption. Can we move on, please?”

  Keeping my fingers far from the documents to avoid getting slapped again, I pointed toward where we’d explored the day before. “The ditches, or whatever they are, all seem to radiate out from that general area, but do you notice how one branch leads over here near the graveyard?”

  “Right near the northwestern corner.”

  “Where there’s a giant old oak tree.”

  Blue eyes widened my way. “You don’t think…?”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” I said, rummaging through a desk drawer before flicking the flashlight in Janine’s face. “Wanna go on a wet and wild field trip?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The rain had slowed to a misty drizzle by the time Janine finished a crude drawing of the survey highlights, and we changed into grubby attire – which for my bestie consisted of pink shorts, pink tee, and pink tennis shoes I was sure she’d never be able to wear again after traipsing and tromping through the mud. Another reason why I loved the all-black look.

  The gray sky had lightened enough so we didn’t have to use the flashlight as we slogged our way across the property. At least the bed of moldering leaves provided some traction after we left the manicured lawn.

  “Ugh,” Janine cried as she extricated her sneaker from a mucky hole. “I’ll never be able to wear these shoes after today.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, lending her an arm to lean on as she shook the shoe clean – somewhat. “If someone can make ripped jeans out to be fashionable, why not mud-encrusted tennis shoes?”

  “Because holes don’t leave filthy footprints in their wake?”

  “Good point.”

  “Maybe we should have Maurice ready the horses.”

  “He’s gone to pick up George, remember?”

  “Oh,” Janine grumbled. “It might be better if we waited until tomorrow to do this.”

  “Thanksgiving Day?” I challenged.

  “Or Friday.”

  “We leave Sunday. Your birthday is Friday, and the party is Saturday. When would you suggest we continue our search?”

  “Today it is then,” Janine acquiesced with a grimace before stepping smack dab in the center of another puddle. “Maybe we should go back and borrow some hip waders. I’ll bet Grandma-ma has a few pairs stashed away somewhere.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, I can definitely see Addie tripping around in hip waders.”

  “No, I meant in Grandpa-pa’s old things.”

  “She probably threw it all out the day after the funeral.”

  “We were still here and would’ve seen, if you remember.”

  “I was kidding, Janine.”

  Gee, and just when I thought my bestie was beginning to loosen up a little bit. I had a feeling it’d take more than a week to tackle that challenge to a successful completion.

  Hmm. Tackle. Completion. I needed to check the schedule to see what time the Dallas Cowboys game started tomorrow. Surely Addie would alter the Thanksgiving schedule to accommodate kickoff. Or the second half. Maybe we could squeeze in the fowl feast during halftime.

  Janine hesitated. “You don’t think that alligator will be out in this rain, do you?”

  My turn to stop with a shudder. “You just had to bring up alligators, didn’t you?”

  “Should we go back and wait for Georgie to help?”

  “I can’t believe you just used George and help in the same sentence.”

  She gave her forehead a good V-8 smack. “You’re right. Don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “Besides, we’ve got this,” I said, flicking the flashlight in her face again.

  “What’s that gonna do? Blind the beast?”

  I shrugged. “Or we could use it to bash him on the head.”

  “Who? The gator or George?”

  “I’d be happy to practice on George first.”

  Janine snickered. “But that means you’d have to let him get close enough to where he could grab you.”

  I pondered the fondling idea for a sec. “Think I’d rather take my chances with the gator.”

  Decision made, we continued tripping through the flocks of foliage, flora, and looking out for potential fauna during the next twenty minutes to skirt the graveyard to the giant oak. A quick glance over our shoulders, then we skittered beyond the barbed wire fence to stare up into the tree then down into the previously dug hole.

  A blue tarp lay off to the side of the hole, weighted down with several large rocks. A sturdy rope looped around a lower branch of the oak like Spanish moss and disappeared into the abyss carved around the ancient root system.

  “Do you think someone’s already down there?” Janine whispered.

  “Besides things that slither in the mud?” I responded in kind.

  “I meant something a little more human.”

  I thumbed over my head. “With your moldering family looking over our shoulder?”

  Janine noticeably shivered as she glanced toward the graveyard – and I didn’t think it was from the welcomed chill the change in the weather brought.

  Her voice dropped in volume as it rose in pitch. “I’ve heard things buried underground
can shift from their original position over the years…especially in Louisiana’s soil. You don’t think…?”

  Her voice drifted away as she stared again toward the big hole. And I was pretty sure her reasoning and train-of-thought had nothing to do with the gold.

  “You wanna climb down and check?” I prodded.

  Janine’s eye widened before vigorously shaking her head and sending a stream of droplets my way like freshly bathed critter. Once again, that thought had my mind creeping toward the possibility of running into a less-than-friendly sort of the scaly variety instead of the soft and fluffy.

  “Maybe we should knock first,” Janine suggested.

  “Where? On the tree?”

  “You know…to announce our presence.”

  “As if a gator would respond to southern manners,” I chided.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Janine admonished. “Alligators can’t climb ropes.”

  “No, but people can,” a gravelly voice called.

  The unexpected voice echoing up from the cavern-like depths almost stopped my heart. With a graveyard at our back and a deep hole at our feet, my gray matter sorted through all manner of terrifying scenarios. Janine’s face went whiter than a Klansman’s bleached sheet, and I was sure I was gonna have to catch her – if I didn’t pass out from fright first.

  We held onto each other and stared in fascinated horror as the dangling rope went taut. A jingling jangle like Jacob Marley’s chains convinced me we were about to experience a spectral visit rivaling Ebenezer Scrooge’s Christmas Eve caper.

  And we hadn’t even celebrated Thanksgiving yet.

  When a head popped up from the hole wearing a halo of weeds and webs, Janine lost the fight and collapsed against me – just before I recognized the ghostly goon rising from a grave I’d sure like to put him back in soon.

  “Lucas?”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Fancy meetin’ you two here,” Lucas said, pulling himself from the hole and securing the rigging.

  “Lucas Monette, what in tarnation are you doing digging holes and scaring good folk half to death?” I demanded, balancing Janine to avoid further soiling her pink attire in the mud.