Magnolia Moon

by JoAnn Ross

  “He’s a little green. But he’s catching on real fast.”

  “But he’s—” Her lips curved downward in what appeared to be her usual expression. “You know.”

  “A college graduate?” Nate asked blandly.

  “Don’t be cute with me, Nathaniel Callahan. You know very well what I mean.”

  “I believe I do, ma’am, and the way I saw it, not only is Dwayne qualified, having earned a degree in criminal justice, he’s overly so. We were lucky he even considered coming to work for the force. Along with his qualifications, he’s local, so he’s got a real proprietary feeling about the parish, a bonus in someone hired to keep the peace. Then there’s the little fact that we haven’t had an African-American officer since Dad hired Dwayne’s uncle back in the seventies. It seemed about time. Past time.”

  “I realize Jake Callahan has been raised to hero status in Blue Bayou, and I’m truly sorry about the tragic way he died, but as I told him back then, change for change’s sake is not always a good thing. Since the subject’s come up, I feel the need to say that it’s important that Blue Bayou maintain the traditions that have kept it above the decline of so much of the rest of our state.”

  “Maybe some traditions deserve to die,” he said evenly as he opened the passenger door of his SUV, which was parked behind the disabled sedan. “Like slavery. Or were you referring to lynchings?”

  “That’s precisely what your father said. I made allowances, since he was, after all, a Yankee. But I would have hoped your mother would have taught you more about your heritage.”

  “Oh, Maman sure enough did do that.”

  Seeming not to notice the way his jaw had gone rigid and the steely cast to his eyes, Toni Melancon allowed him to help her up with a hand to the elbow, and settled into the seat like Queen Elizabeth settling into her gilt coach for a ride from Buckingham Palace to Westminster. It had to be obvious to anyone less egocentric than Gerald Melancon’s wife that she’d pushed his patience and charm to the limits.

  Regan knew Nate had only held his tongue for her sake, and when his eyes caught hers in the rearview mirror, she mouthed a silent thank-you.

  21

  The private driveway to the Melancon house was at least three miles long, flanked by an oak alley created to build anticipation in visitors approaching the plantation. Small one-room buildings Regan suspected were former slave cabins were scattered across abandoned fields, crumbling relics of another time. Untidy formal gardens that at one time must have been magnificent were now in need of a guiding hand.

  The house was large as Beau Soleil, but lacked its grace. Unlike the soaring white pillars at Jack and Dani’s house, four massive Doric columns squatted thickly on the thick slabs of granite making up the four front steps. Green mold tinged red brick that had faded to a dull rose over the centuries. Although Regan had never been fanciful, St. Elmo’s Plantation—named, Nate told her, for the phosphorous green swamp gas that glowed at night—and its surroundings seemed to give off a desolate aura, as if it was inhabited by the Adams family’s southern cousins.

  Nate pulled up beneath the crumbling portico. “Well, thank you, Nate,” Toni said, as if realizing such manners were required, if not honestly felt.

  “Anytime,” he said as he helped her down from the high seat.

  There was a lengthy pause.

  “Well, good day,” she said. So much for inviting them in for a cool drink.

  “You know,” he said, “it’s been a long time since I’ve visited with Miz Bethany. I think I’ll just pop in and say bonjour. Wouldn’t want her to hear the SUV and fret that I’ve come all this way out here without payin’ my respects.”

  Regan watched as his trademark slow, easy smile appeared to do its magic.

  “All right.” Toni breathed out another of those deep sighs suggesting she found the world so very tiresome. “But don’t expect her to recognize you. The old woman’s gone absolutely batty.”

  “Now, that’s a real shame,” he said as they walked up to the huge front door, carved with what Regan suspected was the Melancon family crest, surrounded by an unwelcoming quartet of gargoyle faces. “Maybe we’ll get lucky, and she’ll be having a good day.”

  They were met in the great hall by a nearly six-foot-tall woman who could have been anywhere from sixty to a hundred. Her black dress was relieved only by a heavy chain loaded down with various charms. “Mrs. Melancon is not receiving visitors,” she informed them in a deep voice that rumbled like thunder.

  “Now, Miz Caledonia, you know I’m not just any ole visitor, me,” Nate said, turning up the wattage on his natural charm. “I come bearing gifts.” He held out two small gilt boxes he’d retrieved from the glove compartment of the SUV. “Brought you and Miss Bethany some of those candies you like so well from Pauline’s Pralines.”

  She shook her head and clucked her tongue but took the boxes. “You shameless, Nate Callahan.”

  “Now, you know, Miz Caledonia,” he said with a quick wink Regan’s way, “you’re not the first person to tell me that.”

  “’Xpect not,” she huffed, then caved. “You can only stay jus’ a minute. It’s time for Miz Bethany’s nap.”

  “I’ll be in and out in a flash,” he promised, making an X across the front of his denim shirt.

  She shook her head again, then turned and began walking away.

  “You probably never read Rebecca, did you?” Regan murmured as they walked down a long hallway lined with busts of what she suspected were former Melancons.

  “No. But that fille I told you about, the Chantilly flatware one, liked to watch the Romance Channel, so I saw the movie.”

  “Caledonia makes Mrs. Danvers look like Mary Poppins.”

  “She’s a tough old bird,” he allowed. “But she’s devoted to Mrs. Melancon. Apparently she was her nurse, then just sort of graduated through the household ranks over the years, until she pretty much runs the place.”

  “Toni didn’t appear to like her overly much.” The woman had walked past the housekeeper without so much as a word.

  “It’s my guess she’s afraid of her, since rumor has it that when she first married Charles, she wanted to move the old lady out of the house so she could be queen of the manor. Caledonia threatened her with a voodoo curse, and that was pretty much the end of that discussion.”

  They were led into a parlor filled with plants. Framed photographs of yet more Melancon ancestors frowned down from water-stained, red-silk-covered walls. The atmosphere in the room was so steamy Regan was moderately surprised that the oriental carpet hadn’t sprouted mushrooms. The scent of all those flowers hit the minute she entered the room, giving her an instant headache.

  Almost hidden by a towering philodendron, an elderly woman, as fragile appearing as a small bird, was swallowed up by a wheelchair. Despite the sweltering heat, she was draped in a trio of colorful shawls.

  “Bonjour, Miz Bethany,” Nate greeted her. “Aren’t you looking as lovely as a spring garden today?”

  Her gaze remained directed out the floor-to-ceiling windows, where a trio of stone nymphs danced around a green algae-clogged fountain.

  “Mr. Nate brought you some of those pralines you like so much.” Caledonia’s stern voice had turned surprisingly gentle. She opened one of the boxes, selected a pecan candy, and held it in front of the old woman’s face.

  A beringed, age-spotted hand, laden down with diamonds, snatched it from the outstretched hand like a greedy toddler, and it disappeared between lips painted a garish crimson. She thrust out the hand again, palm up.

  “After your nap,” Caledonia said, putting the box high up on an ornately carved black teak shelf. She could have been talking to a child.

  A heated string of what appeared to be French babbling, interspersed with curses Regan was surprised any southern lady of Mrs. Melancon’s generation ever would have allowed herself to think, let alone say, turned the air blue.

  “You know you can’t sleep when you’ve had too much
sugar,” Caledonia said matter-of-factly. “The box will still be here when you get up.” She adjusted the shawls. “You gonna say good afternoon to Mr. Nate and his friend?” She put dark fingers beneath the sagging chin and lifted the woman’s gaze.

  “Miz Bethany.” Nate tried again, but he’d finally found a female impervious to that winning smile. She was looking straight through them, her pale brown eyes unfocused. They might as well have been ghosts. Regan’s heart sank a little as she realized that her long shot wasn’t going to pay off.

  “It’s time for her nap,” the other woman said, announcing that the brief visit had come to an end.

  “Thank you, Miz Caledonia.” If Nate was disappointed, he didn’t show it. “I appreciate your hospitality.”

  They’d made their way down the hallway, past the busts, across the slate floor of the great hall, and had just left the house when Caledonia caught up with them.

  “I’ve got something for the fille,” she said. Reaching into a skirt pocket, she pulled out a dime that had been drilled through and strung on a narrow black cord.

  Regan exchanged a glance with Nate, then took the necklace. “Thank you.”

  “You make sure you wear it.” Vivid turquoise eyes burned in her burnished copper complexion. “You’ve stirred up the spirits, you. This gris-gris will protect you.”

  The ancient woman’s intensity, coupled with their brief meeting with the old woman who could have been Norman Bates’s mother, sent a chill up Regan’s spine.

  “We appreciate that a bunch, Miz Caledonia,” Nate said, jumping in to rescue her. He took the cord from Regan’s nerveless fingers and slipped it over her head. It had to be her imagination, but she could have sworn the coin warmed her skin as it settled at the base of her throat. He bestowed his most reassuring smile on Regan. “No one in the bayou makes better gris-gris than Miz Caledonia. She’s a descendant of the Marie Laveaus,” he said.

  “He speaks the truth, he,” the woman said, taking on a queenly bearing as she rose to her full height.

  “Isn’t that interesting.” Regan forced a smile. “Merci.” It was one of the few French words she knew.

  The woman didn’t answer, just shut the tall heavy door in their faces.

  “Well.” Regan let out a long breath. “That was certainly an experience.”

  “Caledonia is a little colorful even for southern Louisiana,” he said. “I’m sorry about Mrs. Melancon bein’ so out of it.”

  “You said she would be.”

  “I said I’d heard talk. I didn’t realize she’d gone so far downhill since the last time I’d seen her, about a month ago.”

  “Is it Alzheimer’s?”

  “That’d be my guess, since the old girl used to be sharp as a tack. She inherited the chairman’s chair at Melancon after her husband died making love to the mistress he kept in New Orleans’s Faubourg Marigny historical district.”

  “Why does that not surprise me?” Regan said dryly as she climbed into the SUV.

  “It was a pretty good scandal, even for down here. Turns out that the woman and Charles senior had three kids together. The fight for inheritance rights took three very litigious years.”

  “Obviously the family won.”

  “Mostly, but the mistress and the kids did end up getting to keep the house and the stock he’d put in each of their names before he died.”

  “There seems to be a lot of Melancon stock floating around down here.”

  “That’s not so unusual, since they’re the biggest employer. It’d be like living in Atlanta and ownin’ CocaCola stock.”

  “Who are the Marie Laveaus?”

  “Oh, now they were an interestin’ pair. The first Maria was a hairdresser to wealthy New Orleans Creoles back in the 1820s. Technically she was a practicing Catholic, but she was also the spiritual adviser to slaves and their masters. And, of course, the master’s wives, whose hair she fixed. She earned a reputation as a voodoo queen, but she must’ve had a good heart, since she was also the first to go out and tend to sick folks whenever the fever epidemics swept through the city.

  “She still has her cult of believers who mark her tomb with red X’ s and leave coins to pay for spells. Her daughter, Marie II, took the fame thing one step further and put on elaborately staged voodoo rites that became real popular among New Orleans society. It’s been said that she grew so influential, even some of the priests and bishops would go to her for advice.”

  “And Caledonia’s descended from them?”

  “So they say.”

  “Voodoo’s just a myth.” Regan touched the dime at her throat and wondered which of them she was trying to convince. “She couldn’t really know anything about me possibly being in danger.”

  “Of course not.” He shot her a smile designed to lift any lingering dark mood. “’Less you’re talkin’ about falling under the spell of my expert lovemaking.”

  She laughed and began to relax. But there was still the niggling problem of the stock certificates. “I’m really going to have to talk with Melancon.”

  “Won’t have much of a chance to do that till after Fat Tuesday,” he said. “So you may as well just plan on enjoying Mardi Gras.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Don’ worry, Detective Chère.” He skimmed his right hand over her shoulder and down her arm, took hold of her hand, and lifted it to his lips, brushing a light kiss against her knuckles. “I’ll be makin’ sure you enjoy yourself, you.”

  As much as he regretted the unproductiveness of the visit to the Melancon house, Nate couldn’t deny that he was grateful for anything that kept Regan in Blue Bayou a little longer. It was strange, the way time was beginning to blur. They’d only known each other a handful of days, but he was beginning to forget how his life had been before she’d come into it.

  It was lucky that with the exception of the ongoing work at Beau Soleil and finishing up the sheriff’s office remodel, he didn’t have any jobs demanding his attention at the moment. He wasn’t sure he could have paid enough attention to do them justice. It was as if he’d begun looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope: nearly his entire focus—except what the hell he was going to do about Josh—had narrowed down to Regan Hart.

  He thought about her too much and too often. Hell, all of the time. He pictured her intelligent golden brown eyes when he was brushing his teeth in the morning, and visions of her long, lean body were the last thing to pass through his mind before he’d finally fall asleep.

  She’d pop into his mind during the day when he’d be fiddling with a set of blueprints, and suddenly, instead of looking at a bearing wall, he’d picture her as she’d looked out on the Santa Monica pier, her smooth sleek hair ruffled by the sea breeze, her fresh clean scent more enticing than the gardens of Xanadu.

  During the time he’d been waiting for her to show up in Blue Bayou, she’d filled his mind. So much so that he hadn’t even noticed that he was painting the wainscoting in Beau Soleil’s dining room French Vanilla, instead of the Swiss Coffee Dani had picked out, until she’d pointed it out to him. Hell, he hadn’t made a mistake like that since those summers during high school, when he’d begun learning the construction trade.

  It had been bad enough before she’d arrived with big eyes, wrap-around legs, and problems any sensible man would stay clear of. And he’d always considered himself an eminently sensible man when it came to women. But now, it was as if she’d put a voodoo love spell on him, fevering his mind and tormenting his body.

  Which was, of course, the problem, Nate told himself as he turned onto Bienville Boulevard, two blocks away from the inn. While his reputation for romancing the Blue Bayou belles might be a bit exaggerated, he couldn’t remember ever being this sexually frustrated. Not since he’d made the grand discovery that women liked sex as much as men did. Once he got the delectable detective into his bed and satiated his lust, while giving her a damn good time, too, of course, he’d be free of what was rapidly becoming an obsess
ion.

  “Oh, my God.”

  “What?” The mental image of kissing his way down her slender torso popped like a soap bubble. She grabbed his arm so hard they nearly ran off the road.

  “You need to stop.”

  The stress in her voice made him immediately pull over and cut the engine. “What’s wrong?” She looked as pale as Beau Soleil’s Confederate ghost.

  “It’s that house.” Her hand trembled in a very un-Reganlike way as she pointed toward a bright cottage, built Creole-style against the front sidewalk. The stucco-covered brick had been painted in historically correct shades of putty and Egyptian blue, and a For Sale sign was tacked to the French red door.

  “What about it?”

  “It’s Linda Dale’s.”

  Obviously the unsuccessful meeting with the old lady and Caledonia’s spooky voodoo shit had taken its toll on her.

  “Linda Dale’s house got wiped out by a hurricane, chère,” he soothed. His palms stroked shoulders as stiff as the Melancons’ granite steps. “Remember? I already checked the real estate records before you came to town.”

  “They’ve got to be wrong. Dammit, that’s the house.” Her eyes were huge and earnest.

  “I know the realtor,” he said, deciding no good would come from arguing. Best she discover she’d gotten confused on her own. “Let me give her a call and we’ll get her out here to let us in.”

  He knew how serious this was when Regan didn’t even make a crack about him knowing a woman named Scarlett O’Hara.

  “The key’s under the mat,” he said after he ended his cell phone call to the real estate office. “She leaves it there in case people want to take a look for themselves without a salesperson hovering over them.”

  “The living room is to the left when you walk in,” she murmured as he retrieved the key from beneath the green mat. “The dining room to the right.”

  “That’s pretty much the way Creole cottages are laid out,” he said carefully, not wanting to upset her anymore than she already was. “Four rooms, two back to back on either side of the door.”