“He’s stealing you blind!”
“Now, Mother, how could you know that?”
“Leopards don’t change their spots. That’s how I know. You mark my words, missy. He’s a no-good scoundrel, and what’s worse, he’s smart. And if you weren’t such a nambypamby, you’d see him for what he is.”
“Mother, stop it!”
“I won’t stop it. It’s time—past time—you grew a backbone. If you’d had the guts to refuse to marry him in the first place, your father might still be alive today.”
“That’s not true, and you know it.”
“Don’t you walk away from me!
“I’m not listening to any more of this.”
“Jeanne, you come back here!”
Charlotte had just finished scrubbing the scuff marks off the bathroom floor made by Clarice’s walker and was mopping the bathroom floor when Jeanne stalked across the bedroom.
At the hallway door, Jeanne hesitated, then turned toward Charlotte. Tears filled her eyes, and her voice shook with emotion. “Would you please make sure that she gets back to bed okay?”
Before Charlotte had time to answer, Jeanne fled through the doorway. Seconds later, Charlotte heard a door farther down the hall slam shut.
“Charlotte!” Clarice called out. “Are you still in there?”
Charlotte set the mop aside and hurried out onto the gallery. There she found the old lady struggling to get out of her chair. “I’m cold,” she told Charlotte. “I want to go back inside.”
“Here, let me help you.” Clarice wasn’t much bigger in size than Charlotte, but it was like lifting dead weight. As she struggled to get the old lady to a standing position, she wondered how on earth Jeanne managed day in and day out by herself.
“I swear, I don’t know what gets into that daughter of mine,” Clarice said as she aimed her walker toward the open French doors. Then, without so much as a please or thank you, she began her arduous journey back inside.
Charlotte simply shook her head and wondered yet again about the strange relationship between the two women. Why did Jeanne continue to put up with her mother’s rudeness, a rudeness that at times bordered on abuse?
By the time that Charlotte cleared off the outside table and set the tray on the floor in the hallway, Clarice was entering the bathroom. Except for vacuuming, Charlotte was finishing cleaning Clarice’s suite. Even so, she waited a few minutes before leaving the room just in case Clarice needed more help.
“Be careful, Miss Clarice,” she told her. “I just mopped that floor, and it might still be a bit damp.”
Clarice stopped, turned her head, and glared at Charlotte. “I’m not going to mess up the floor, Charlotte. I just want to rinse my teeth.”
Messing up the floor was the least of Charlotte’s concerns, but she figured trying to explain that she only feared Clarice might slip and fall wouldn’t do a bit of good. The old lady only heard what she wanted to hear.
Once Clarice was safely back in her bed, Charlotte gathered her supplies and started on the bedroom next to Clarice’s. Within the hour, she’d cleaned all of the bedrooms except the master suite. Since the door to that room was still firmly shut and she hadn’t heard Jeanne come out, she decided she would wait and clean it later.
After dusting the small tables in the hallway, Charlotte moved to the staircase. The handrail and balusters were fashioned from antique mahogany, but the steps were of oak, sanded and finished to a high gloss.
It was rumored that when the original owners of the Dubuissons’ house had built it, they had procured the handrail and balusters from a house that was reputed to have been the temporary headquarters for Andrew Jackson when he had defended New Orleans against the British. Just thinking about the historical significance of the staircase gave Charlotte a lot of pleasure, and she took a great deal of pride in the polishing and upkeep of the old wood.
From her supply carrier, she removed a bottle of lemon oil and a special cloth she used to apply the oil. She also removed a polishing cloth, which she tucked into the waistband of her slacks.
After sprinkling the first cloth with lemon oil, she rubbed it into the handrail, tediously working her way down the staircase. It was when she was working her way back up as she polished the handrail that she noticed the scuff marks on the steps, scuff marks almost identical to the kind made by Clarice’s walker.
Impossible, she thought. Even as wide as the steps were, Clarice’s walker was wider. Charlotte frowned in thought as she stared at the scuff marks. The only way they could have been made by Clarice’s walker was if the walker had been folded and dragged down the stairs, which meant that Clarice would have had to hold on to the banister for support....
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” she muttered. What on earth was wrong with her, standing there, wasting time obsessing about such a silly thing? Something else or someone’s shoes had to have caused the marks. The only time Clarice ventured down the stairs was when she had her monthly doctor’s exam. Even then, Jeanne enlisted the help of Max, a part-time chauffeur she’d hired to assist her mother.
It was almost noon by the time that Charlotte had scrubbed away the scuff marks on the stairs and cleaned and vacuumed all but the main parlor and the kitchen downstairs. She was ready to begin dusting in the parlor when she heard the clink of dishes coming from the kitchen.
Jeanne, she decided, had finally come out of her room and was preparing lunch. Once again, she had to admire the younger woman. Jeanne might be hurt or angry with her mother, but she would still take care of her needs.
Charlotte quickly gathered the supplies she needed and climbed the stairs. Now she could finally clean the master suite; then she would take her own lunch break.
By midafternoon, Charlotte was almost finished with everything but one last chore in the kitchen. As she stacked the last of the plates from the dishwasher into the butler’s pantry, Jeanne entered the kitchen.
“Charlotte, could we talk for a moment?”
“Of course.” Charlotte nodded, then closed and locked the door to the dishwasher.
Jeanne motioned for Charlotte to take a seat at the small breakfast table. But instead of seating herself, Jeanne began to pace the distance between the table and the cabinet. After a moment and a deep, steadying sigh, she finally stopped behind a chair across from where Charlotte sat. Her hands gripped the back of the chair so hard that her knuckles were white.
“I’m—I’m truly sorry about what happened earlier,” she told Charlotte in a halting voice. “I want to apologize.”
“You don’t owe me an apology,” Charlotte said gently. “I really understand. Your mother has—er—she has problems.”
Jeanne grimaced and sat down hard in the nearest chair. “Oh, Charlotte, what
am
I going to do about her? What Mother has is more than just problems. She’s going senile and seems to be getting worse with each passing day.”
Charlotte’s heart went out to the younger woman. “Sometimes simply talking about a situation helps,” she suggested. “At least talking seems to work for me.”
Jeanne placed her arms on the tabletop and leaned forward. “You’re right, I’m sure. With Anna-Maria off at school and Jackson gone most of the time, I don’t have a chance to talk to anyone much.”
Charlotte reached over and patted Jeanne’s hand. How sad, she thought. She couldn’t begin to imagine leading such an insular, lonely life. “Well, I’m here now,” Charlotte told her, “and my middle name is discretion, so you just talk all you want to.”
Jeanne seemed to hesitate, but only for a moment. “She’s always making accusations about someone or something,” she blurted out. “Take for instance that stuff she was saying this morning about Jackson. Why, Jackson isn’t even home half the time, what with all of the late nights he’s been keeping at the office lately. When he is home, he stays holed up in the library. And who could blame him?”
How convenient for him, thought Charlotte. And how totally selfish. Charlotte didn’t really know Jackson Dubuisson that well, since most of the time he was at work when she cleaned. But from the different things that Jeanne had let slip over the years, Charlotte’s opinion of the man was zero on a scale of one to ten. She had often wondered how such a warm, loving woman like Jeanne could have ever married someone like him.
But if, as Jeanne pointed out, Jackson was never around, why
would
Clarice choose to pick on him? she wondered.
Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.
The old saying played through Charlotte’s mind. Over the years, Charlotte had seen the truth in the cliché more than once. “Why do you think your mother is so fixated on maligning your husband?”
Again Jeanne hesitated as a myriad of emotions played across her face. After a moment, she seemed to compose herself. “For one thing, when Jackson and I married, Father made him a full partner in the firm. Ever since, Mother has always claimed Jackson only married me to get control of the firm. She says all he cares about is money, specifically my money. But even worse, she still blames Jackson for Father’s death. Never mind that it’s been fifteen years since Father was murdered. Mother simply won’t stop harping on it.”
Murdered.
Charlotte’s stomach turned queasy. “Oh, goodness, I’d forgotten that your father had been murdered.”
Even now, Charlotte only vaguely recalled the incident. At the time, though, she hadn’t paid much attention to the story or the gossip. She’d been too caught up in her own tragedy, that of trying to console her son after his wife had purposely aborted their child, her grandchild, a child Hank had wanted badly. “The murder of someone close leaves its mark on the whole family,” she murmured, still thinking about the loss she and her son had suffered. “It’s a terrible thing.”
Jeanne nodded and lowered her gaze to the tabletop. “It was terrible,” she whispered. “A burglar broke into the house, robbed the safe, then killed Father.”
Charlotte reached out and squeezed Jeanne’s arm. “Oh, you poor thing. I’m so sorry.”
Jeanne suddenly laughed, but it was a bitter sound filled with irony. “Don’t be too sorry. My father would never have won any Father of the Year Awards, and he had a cruel streak.” She shrugged. “But my mother loved him just the same, something I never understood.”
Charlotte immediately thought about Nadia’s situation with Ricco. “I know exactly what you mean,” she said, “but I’ve never understood how a woman could stay with a man who was cruel or abusive. I guess love takes on many forms, but I sometimes think women confuse love with other things, things like security, or they feel trapped or feel there’s no other choice.” She shrugged. “For whatever reason,” she added.
“Yes . . . well, I figure that Mother felt she had no other choice, since my father controlled the money. Even so, she just couldn’t accept that he was gone, and she went a little crazy at the time. As if Father being murdered wasn’t enough, she made terrible accusations about Jackson to the police. You see, Jackson and Father had argued the night before . . . something about some investments Father had made using the firm’s money. But of course Jackson had an alibi the night of the murder. As usual, he was working late on an upcoming court case with his secretary. But not even that seemed to convince Mother he was innocent. Never mind that it completely satisfied the police.”
“Was the murderer ever caught?”
Jeanne shook her head. “No—No, he wasn’t. And after a while, I think the police gave up.”
Jeanne’s next words chilled Charlotte to the bone.
“My father’s murderer is still out there,” she said. “Somewhere . . .”
Chapter Two
N
ot even the overhang of the lower gallery was protection against the humid heat of the afternoon sun. Charlotte wiped perspiration from her brow and upper lip, then resumed sweeping away the trail of leaves, grass, and dirt that littered the ten-foot-wide porch. But the one thing she couldn’t seem to wipe away or sweep from her thoughts was Jeanne’s unsettling statement.
My father’s murderer is still out there.
Even now, despite the heat and the sweat soaking the back of her blouse, Charlotte still felt a chill, the kind that went clear to the bone. Though she knew intellectually that it was possible a person could get away with murder, she didn’t like to think that it could really happen, at least not in her safe, secure world.
Before long, however, the oppressive heat of the afternoon began to take its toll, and a cool, cleansing shower and a large glass of iced tea were all that Charlotte could think about. She should have swept the gallery earlier, when it was cooler, instead of saving it for last.
“Almost done,” she muttered as she turned the comer leading to the side gallery.
The side gallery fronted two rooms of the bottom story of the house—the front parlor and the library. Three sets of double French doors opened out onto the gallery—two sets for the parlor and one set for the library. In the days before air-conditioning, the doors were thrown open to create a draft inside the old house.
Just outside the doors of the library was a white three-piece bistro set, each piece composed of an intricately designed pattern made of cast iron. Though the table and chairs were perfectly situated for an early-morning first cup of coffee, Charlotte knew for a fact that the set was mostly for decoration.