Magnolia Moon

by JoAnn Ross

  “Non.” She could feel his chuckle rumbling in his chest. “A dix was the French currency. It’s where the word Dixie comes from.”

  Regan truly doubted that there was any other place in America, with the possible exception of New England, that clung to its past the way Blue Bayou did.

  “I was just wondering, if things had turned out differently, if we would have met earlier.”

  “Probably not.”

  Having expected him to spin a long, colorfully creative scenario, Regan was surprised by his uncharacteristic bluntness.

  “If there’s one thing watchin’ Jack and Finn, and bein’ with you, has taught me, it’s that people can’t fool around with destiny. We were fated to meet this way, chère. In this time.” He skimmed his lips along her cheekbone. “If I’d met you earlier, me, I might not have appreciated you.” He tilted his head back a bit. His eyes gleamed a deep, warm blue in the glow from the campfires as he smiled down at her. “It’s been suggested that I might have been a bit shallow.”

  “Never.” She twined her arms tighter around his neck and fit her body closer to his. “That’s just what you wanted people to think, so it wouldn’t screw up your role in your family.”

  “Which was?”

  “The jester.”

  “Jester?” Hell, Nate figured, that was even worse than Peter Pan. “You mean one of those guys with the funny hat and bells on his curly toed shoes?”

  “No. I mean the wise man of the court who was clever enough to tell the absolute truth, no matter how unappealing, in a way that left people smiling. When anyone else who tried to be that frank might have had his head cut off.”

  He thought about that for a moment. “How do you see Jack and Finn?”

  “Oh, they’re a lot easier, because what you see is precisely what you get. Jack’s the half-reformed bad boy with the heart of gold. Finn’s the rock.” Her fingers were stroking his neck in a way that made him want to make love to her. Then again, listening to her read a suspect his Miranda rights would probably having him wanting to jump her lovely bones.

  “No foolin’ a woman with a psych degree,” he said easily, deciding he’d best shift his train of thought before giving the town something else to talk about. He scanned the crowd. “Sure was a good turnout. Even more than last year.”

  Although Nate obviously hadn’t been real happy about sharing her, he’d stayed typically good-natured as she’d danced with seemingly every male in Blue Bayou, including Cal, whose moves had been surprisingly fast for a man of his years.

  “I suppose getting to see what you’ve done inside Beau Soleil was a draw for everyone,” she suggested.

  “I imagine so. Toni cornered me while you were inside frosting the King cake with Dani. Seems the old lady has most of the family money in company stock, but Toni’s planning ahead for the day she’s no longer with us, and wants to talk about me givin’ St. Elmo’s a facelift.”

  “That house doesn’t need a facelift. It needs a heart transplant.” Regan glanced over at the gallerie, where a stone-faced Caledonia stood guard over her frail charge. “I’m surprised Mrs. Melancon’s here tonight.”

  “She’s never missed a Mardi Gras that I know of. And she seems more lucid this evening.”

  “I thought so, too, when I saw her singing along to some French song a while ago. Music has a way of making connections with people when other things can’t get through.” Up on the bandstand, the Swamp Dogs had broken into a rousing rendition of “You Are My Sunshine,” which made Regan think of her mother.

  “I ’spose so.” He cupped her butt in his hands, pressing her closer. “What would you say to sneakin’ off for a while? I just remembered that I need to measure for the crown molding in one of the guest bedrooms.”

  The molding had actually been installed last week, but it was the best excuse Nate could come up with, while his body was bombarded with sexual needs like he hadn’t even experienced when he’d been thirteen and learning all about sex by reading Finn’s Playboy magazines out at the camp.

  Regan laughed. “I love a man who takes his work seriously.”

  He led her through the throng of people, and just before they reached the gallerie, Charles Melancon stepped in front of them.

  “May I have the honor of a dance, Ms. Hart?”

  Regan instinctively glanced up at Nate and read the resignation in his eyes as he shrugged. Stifling a sigh, she returned the older man’s friendly smile. It was, after all, only one dance. She and Nate still had the rest of the night.

  “So,” he asked as he moved her through a complex series of steps, “are you enjoying yourself?”

  “I’m having a wonderful time. Sorry,” she murmured as she stepped on his toes. He was clearly a better dancer; then again, he’d probably had a lot more practice.

  “My fault. It’s too crowded here to try to impress you with fancy moves.” He slowed the pace. “A lot of people think of Mardi Gras and they tend to think of Rio, or N’Awlins. But I’ve always felt that Blue Bayou’s is special.”

  “You won’t get any argument from me about that.”

  She’d just returned his smile when Bethany Melancon popped up from her wheelchair like some wild-eyed jack-in-the box, wispy hair flying around her face.

  “Putain!” she screeched, pointing her scrawny finger at Regan. She spat, then reeled down the steps, leaping on Regan, fists in her hair. “You have no business here. I won’t allow you to ruin my family!”

  “It’s okay, Miz Bethany. Nate grabbed hold of her from behind, lifted her off the ground, and pulled her away. “You’re just a little confused right now.”

  Finn and Jack cut through the crowd, putting themselves between Regan and the old woman, who was screaming incoherently in French. Ragged nails clawed impotently in the air. If she hadn’t been concerned about breaking her in half, Regan would have just taken her down.

  “It’s okay,” Nate repeated soothingly.

  “I’m not letting you take my son away from Blue Bayou, Linda Dale!” Mrs. Melancon screamed, switching to English.

  It took a moment for Nate to realize what he’d just heard. He knew he wasn’t alone when the quiet began to slowly extend outward from the gallerie. A spooky hush came over the crowd as everyone turned toward a stricken, white-faced Charles Melancon.

  By unspoken consent, Mardi Gras came to an abrupt halt. People began to leave, the low level of excited conversation echoing over the swamp.

  Eve Ancelet appeared from somewhere in the crowd. “My bag’s in my car,” she said. “Try to calm her while I get a sedative.”

  “Take her upstairs,” Dani suggested. “You can put her to bed in the guest room.”

  “I’ll go with my mother,” Charles said. He did not look all that eager.

  A typically stoic Caledonia took the woman from Nate’s arms. “Mo’ better you stay down here, Mr. Charles,” she instructed. “You caused enough trouble as it is.”

  She lifted the frail woman into her arms as if she weighed no more than a rag doll, walked into the house, and followed Dani up the stairs.

  Regan’s heart was still pounding in her ears as the rest of them gathered in the library.

  “You want to explain what just happened?” Nate asked Charles, who’d gone from ghost white to a sickly shade of gray.

  “The past caught up with me.” He looked a thousand years old.

  “The past, meaning me,” Regan suggested.

  He sighed heavily. Wearily. “You probably won’t believe this, but in a way I’m relieved the truth has finally come out.”

  Regan still didn’t know what, exactly, the truth was. “Perhaps if you began at the beginning,” she suggested.

  “I fell in love,” he said slowly, painfully. The fifty-something man was far from the congenial Rotarian she’d met at Cajun Cal’s; he looked drained and grim. He also had not looked once at his wife, whom, Regan noted, didn’t appear that surprised by the revelation. “For the first time in my life, I was truly, deepl
y, in love.”

  “With Linda Dale,” Regan said.

  “Yes.” He dragged both his hands down his haggard face. “I fell in love with her the first time I ever met her at a nightclub in New Orleans. I was entertaining clients. She wasn’t a star yet, but every man in the place wanted to be the one to take her home at the end of her set.”

  “But you were the lucky one who did,” Nate said.

  “Yes.”

  “Even though you were married,” Regan, who usually was able to keep her mouth shut during questioning, said.

  “The marriage was a business arrangement I entered into at my mother’s insistence. Love had nothing to do with my arrangement with my wife.” He finally glanced over at Toni. “It still doesn’t.”

  “The deal was that you wouldn’t embarrass me, Charles. I believe you’re doing a very good job of that tonight.” Toni Melancon rose from her chair with a lithe grace learned in finishing school. “I’ll be calling my attorney first thing in the morning.”

  A little silence settled over the library as she left the room. Regan took a deep breath and dove back into the dangerous conversational waters. “The man Linda Dale wrote about had a name beginning with the initial J.”

  “My father was Charles Melancon, senior. I was called Junior while I was growing up, and it wasn’t until he’d been dead for two decades that I began to finally put that name behind me.”

  Regan thought about what Nate had told her about the elder Melancon being so influential. It must have been hard growing up in his shadow, especially at a time when the family had begun to lose their power and influence.

  “What happened after you took Linda Dale home from the club that night?”

  “We made love. All night long.” Both his expression and his eyes softened at that long-ago memory.

  Regan had figured that part out for herself. “And afterward?”

  “I explained to her about my situation. My responsibilities to my mother and the stockholders. There was no way I’d ever be free to marry her.”

  “I can’t imagine she was thrilled with the idea of being your mistress.”

  “To be honest, I believe the idea of not being able to make a life with her bothered me more than it did Linda. She was an amazingly generous person and understood responsibility, more than most. She was willing to accept whatever life we could manage to carve out for each other.”

  “Which is why she moved to Blue Bayou from New Orleans.”

  “Yes. I thought it would be easier, having her here close by, where I could see her more often. But it proved harder. Because the more time we spent together, the more I wanted to be with her. It became frustrating, and after a time, my regret and bitterness at my marital situation threatened to ruin what we had together. That’s when I knew I had to do something drastic.”

  “So you killed her?” Nate asked, slipping a protective arm around Regan’s shoulders.

  “Of course I didn’t!” Charles leaped to his feet. “I loved her, dammit. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I decided to leave Blue Bayou and start a new life with Linda. Mother did not take to the idea.”

  “Because if you ran off with your mistress, your wife would file for divorce and take her money with her.”

  “Yes. We argued. She told me I was no better than my father. I’d promised Linda I’d come over after my talk with Mother, but I was so angry, I drove to New Orleans and drank my way through the Quarter.”

  Regan found it hard to feel sorry for him. He was, after all, still alive.

  “What happened to Linda?” she asked. The fury that had twisted Bethany Melancon’s face flashed in her head. “Did your mother kill her?”

  “Yes.” He raked his fingers through his pewter hair. Shook his head. “No.”

  “Which is it?” Regan asked, reining in her impatience.

  “Both.” He huffed out a deep breath. “My mother never drove. Never needed to. There was always a chauffeur to take her wherever she wanted to go. But of course servants talk, and that night she didn’t want the staff to know where she’d been, so—”

  “She had Caledonia drive her,” Nate guessed.

  “Yes. She hadn’t believed me when I’d told her that Linda loved me as much, if not more, than I loved her. She was so sure this ‘white-trash golddigger,’ as she’d called her, was only after my money. So she took along twenty-five thousand dollars in stock certificates to buy her off.”

  “But Linda didn’t want the money.” Regan had learned enough about her mother to know this. She’d also dealt with enough homicides to envision the scene. The old woman, who would have been about the age her son was now, would have started out cold. Regal. Like a duchess talking down to a peasant. But she was about to discover she’d met the one individual Melancon money couldn’t buy.

  Frustrated, she would have argued. Probably even started screaming, as she did tonight. Screaming, Regan thought, like the cauchemar in her nightmare.

  Her mother would have stayed calmer. After all, she had a child asleep in the bedroom. She might have even tried to get past her to open the door, perhaps to call Caledonia for help. There would have been pushing. Shoving. The room was small; although Regan couldn’t recall the furnishings, there must have been tables in it.

  “It was an accident,” she decided.

  “That’s what Mother said,” Charles confirmed flatly.

  “Apparently Linda fell and hit her head on the corner of the coffee table. Caledonia would lie through her teeth to protect my mother, but I believed her story then.” He sighed heavily. “I still do. Mother was apparently distraught, and together they decided to make it look like a suicide. Caledonia helped her carry Linda’s body out to the garage. They put her in her car, turned on the engine, then left.”

  “Did it occur to either one of them that they left a two-year-old child alone in the house to fend for herself?” Nate asked, furious on Regan’s behalf.

  “That was”—Charles paused, as if searching for the right word—“one of the worst parts of the tragedy.”

  Nate felt guilty he’d even brought this mess into Regan’s life. If it hadn’t been for him, she’d have gone on thinking that her father was a war hero, rather than this man who’d chosen to remain quiet and allow his daughter to be taken from him.

  Regan thrust her hand through her hair. “Let’s get one thing straight, Melancon. You don’t have to worry about suddenly having to turn paternal. I’ve gotten along thirty-three years without a father, and—”

  “What?” His surprise was too genuine to be faked. “I’m not your father, Ms. Hart. You were an infant when I met Linda.”

  Nate could tell Regan was as surprised as he was by this revelation, but she managed to hang onto that inner strength he admired.

  “Then she obviously had another relationship,” Regan said.

  “I’m sure she had several before she met me. I never held that against her.”

  “That was goddamn big of you,” Nate muttered.

  Charles shot Nate a look. “I loved her,” he repeated. “I was willing to give up everything for her.” He turned back to Regan. “And you.” Despite the seriousness of the conversation, his lips curved slightly. “I’d never thought I’d have children—Toni made it very clear from the start that she wasn’t the maternal type—but I came to care for you as if you were my own daughter.”

  “Do you happen to have any idea who she’d been with before you?”

  “No. But even if I did, it wouldn’t tell you who your father was.”

  “Why not?”

  His eyes gentled, revealing a caring side of the businessman Nate had never seen. “Because, detective, Linda Dale wasn’t your birth mother.”

  28

  Idon’t understand.” Regan felt the blood drain from her face, and she was distantly aware of Nate tightening his hold on her.

  While she had learned to expect the unexpected during investigations, she felt as if she’d landed in one of those Halloween ha
unted houses, where goblins and ghouls kept leaping out at you as you wandered through twisting hallways in the dark.

  “It’s obvious that I’m the toddler the police discovered in the house after Mr. Boyce found her body.” The image of Linda Dale lying in the front seat of that car would stay in her mind for a very long time, and she hated that it wasn’t softened with happier memories. “I have the elephant.”

  “Gabriel.” He closed his eyes and exhaled a long breath. When he opened them again, he smiled faintly. “It was from a little store in the Quarter. You dragged it around with you everywhere. It was the first—and last—child’s toy I ever bought.

  “When I first returned home from my weekend binge and heard Linda was dead, my first thought was that Toni had killed her. She might not have any love for me, but she definitely enjoyed being Mrs. Charles Melancon. Her people had made their fortune in the slave trade, which even down here was considered unseemly. Marrying into my family bought the respectability she craved.”

  “And made her queen of the parish, once your mother couldn’t hold the crown,” Regan guessed.

  “Exactly.” His look was one of respect. “That’s a very good analysis, considering you haven’t been in Blue Bayou very long.”

  “I’m a quick study.” It helped in the murder business. “When did you realize your mother killed Linda?”

  “Decades later. She and Caledonia kept their secret well; it was only when her mind began to go and she’d have these flashbacks to the past that I discovered the truth.”

  “That must have been rough,” Nate said. “Realizing that your mother was responsible for the death of the woman you loved.”

  “Yes. But it wasn’t as difficult as believing Linda had committed suicide because she thought I’d betrayed her.”

  “How do you know she wasn’t my mother?” Regan asked.

  “Because she told me, of course. We shared everything.”

  Regan’s mind spun as she tried to think why on earth an unmarried woman with a career not conducive to motherhood would take on the responsibility of an infant. The answer, when it hit, was staggering.