Read Alex in Wonderland (The Wonderland Series Book 1) Online
Authors: Michel LaCroix
36
Candid
Cameras
The New Orleans Police Department
often referred to Mardi
Gras
as “controlled chaos,” and
Alex decided the same label applied to the atmosphere in the tension-packed
rectory. Camilla, in a sort of suspended animation, languished in one corner
while her mother and father hovered like courtiers attending a tragic queen.
Slumped in an enormous Gothic chair, face as pale as her wedding gown, she
reminded Alex of a photographic negative. His parents were there too, along
with the bewildered Father Gregory who looked anxiously from one face to
anther, praying for someone to explain the peculiar turn of events. After Alex
volunteered that he knew nothing about the mysterious men fleeing the church,
all attention shifted to the bride. Sumner, to one’s surprise, took charge.
“Alright, Camilla,” he began. “Who
the hell were those guys and why did you faint?”
Camilla shook her head, unable to
reply. Her mother Ivy leaned close and whispered, “Randolph
has asked you a question, dear, and your father and I would like an answer
too.”
With Camilla's ongoing silence,
except for the occasional whimper, and Sumner’s growing impatience, the tension
ratcheted up a couple more notches. When everyone turned to Alex for help, he
dutifully knelt at her feet.
“You must tell us why you’re so
upset, my darling,” he said, praying his voice wouldn’t crack with inner glee. “Are
those men criminals or something? Are you frightened of them?” He squeezed her
icy hands. “Please let us help you.”
Camilla’s eyes flickered to his
face, and in that fleeting moment Alex felt unadulterated loathing. He wondered
if she suspected he had a hand what had happened or if she was merely appalled
by his ongoing stupidity. He shook his head and moved back to his corner to
wait for the approaching train wreck to reach the station.
Slowly, her lips began to move.
“I…I can’t—”
Sumner’s notorious impatience
simmered to the surface. “Look here, Camilla. We’ve got a church full of people
out there wondering what the hell happened. They deserve to know something and
so do we!”
“Calm down, Sumner,” Cleve Spivey
said, breaking his paternal vigil. “Can’t you see the poor girl is scared half
to death?”
“Of course I can!” Sumner snapped.
“I just want to know why. Maybe we need to call the police. I mean, am I the
only one here who thinks those guys looked like they just broke out of Angola?”
“Yes!” Camilla cried, reclaiming
all attention.
What everyone else saw as the
beginning of the truth Alex recognized as her convoluted solution to this mess.
“What do you mean?” her father asked.
“Call the police,” Camilla
muttered. “Those men…those men—”
“What about those men, dear?” her
mother urged.
Camilla sat up and assumed a
commanding posture Alex had seen innumerable times.
As she glanced around the room,
deftly playing to everyone present, he braced himself for a boffo performance.
He wasn’t disappointed.
“Those…those awful men attacked
me!”
“You mean they raped you?” Sumner
asked.
“Yes!” Camilla cried, voice a
calculated amalgam of rage and terror. “They raped me! And I think they’re
escaped convicts!”
Dear Lord, Alex marveled. Was there
no end to her audacious lies and deceit? Did she really think she could get
away with this?
“But how…what…when did—?” Cleve
Spivey stammered.
“It was at the fishing camp,
Daddy.” Camilla took his hand, her mother’s too, and held tight as she spun her
fanciful tale. Only Alex knew she was making it up as she went along. “You
see,” she told the Sumners, “I go up there for nature hikes. I was so stressed
over the wedding and Alex’s kidnapping that I needed to get away from
everything and those terrible reprobates came out of nowhere. Before I knew
what was happening, they…they dragged me into the house and…oh, it was too
horrible!”
“Why didn’t you tell us, dear?” her
mother pleaded.
“Oh, mama!” Camilla buried her face
in her hands and trembled terribly. “I’m…I’m so ashamed. I can’t…I just can’t
talk about it.”
Spivey enfolded his daughter in his
arms while Camilla gushed crocodile tears. Everyone focused on the poor girl’s
sorrow and shame, each weighing the horror of what she must have endured. Ivy
grew so pale Father Gregory helped her to a seat, and Cleve Spivey was visibly
shaken. Sumner looked equally unsettled while Karen drifted to the window, an
enigmatic smile playing on her lips as she admired a magnolia loaded with white
blossoms. Alex, of course, knew Camilla was lying through her teeth. Well, he
thought. Two can play this game.
He knelt at her feet again, annoyed
that, unlike Camilla, he couldn’t conjure tears on demand. “We’ll find those
animals my darling,” he vowed. “We’ll find them and send them back where they
belong.”
Camilla’s response was so hokey he
came dangerously close to chuckling, especially when she rested a hand on his
shoulder and spoke in a quavering voice. “You mean…you mean you still want to
marry me after learning that I’m…spoiled?”
“I want to marry you more than
anything in the world,” Alex said, poker-faced. He brushed her damp cheek with
a kiss then turned to the priest. “May I use your phone to call the police,
Father Gregory?”
“Of course, my son.”
“Call 911,” Cleve Spivey ordered.
“I want an A.P.B. on those bastards!”
Alex was reaching for the phone
when a loud knock at the door made everyone jump, including him even though he
expected it. Father Gregory opened it a discreet crack, and the panic in Samara
Sarpy’s eyes warned the drama was about to escalate another notch.
“Yes?” asked the priest.
“I have something for Mr. Sumner,”
she said breathlessly. She brandished a white envelope. “Those dreadful men who
ruined the service gave it to me as they rushed out. One said it was urgent.”
“Which Mr. Sumner?” asked Father
Gregory, eyes flickering between Alex and his father.
“Give it here!” Sumner growled.
He pushed the priest aside and
snatched the envelope from the cowering Miss Sarpy. He tore open the envelope
and pulled out a sheaf of photographs. Fearing he’d lose his cool if he watched
his father’s reaction to Camilla cavorting with the red-necked dynamic duo,
Alex drifted to his mother’s side and sought escape in the beauty of the
magnolias.
Sumner’s roar was heard inside the
sanctuary. “Jesus H. Christ!”
“Randolph!”
Ivy Spivey gasped. “Remember where you are!”
Sumner was speechless when he saw
the first photos. His face flooded red with embarrassment as he shoved them back
in the envelope and motioned Cleve Spivey to join him in the hall. Alex wasn’t
surprised at being excluded. After all, he thought, this marriage has nothing
to do with the bride or groom.
“What on earth was in that
package?” Ivy asked in a small voice.
No one ventured a guess. In fact,
no one spoke until the men returned and Sumner announced their findings.
“Camilla was telling the truth. These photos are of her and those two
hooligans.”
Camilla sprang to life,
leaping to her feet and snatching the envelope from Sumner’s hands. “They
didn’t!”
Oh, yes, they did, Alex thought. Or
rather,
we
did! But with Camilla’s unexpected accusation of rape, he
wondered if it had all been for nothing.
“No!!!!”
Once again, Camilla fainted away,
but this time Alex didn’t help as she crumpled in a heap of white silks and
satins. While everyone swarmed around her, he picked up the photos and
pretended to thumb through them for the first time. He felt sick to his
stomach. Instead of his passport to freedom, he now saw them as evidence to
convict two men of rape. Although she was clearly enjoying herself in the
pictures, Alex knew Camilla would merely claim she was threatened, bullied and
forced into feigning pleasure while being brutalized. With her father’s money
and his father’s connections, they’d doubtless engage the most high-powered
attorneys in the country, and Alex would be right back to square one.
“Damn!” he muttered.
His father looked up. “I know it’s
a terrible shock, son, but I promise you justice will be done.” The bizarre
circumstances dawned on him before anyone else. “Wait just a minute. Why would
those men send us these incriminating photos?”
Alex shrugged, defeated, and
started to shove the pictures back in the envelope. He stopped when he realized
there were more inside. When he pulled them out and examined them, his heart
leapt as he realized the balance of power had shifted yet again.
“Daddy?”
“What?”
Alex jerked his head toward the
hall and, once they were alone, he handed four sequential photos to his father.
“Did you see these?” As Sumner perused the photos in shock, Alex said, “I hate
to question Camilla, Daddy, but…well, this doesn’t much look like a woman about
to be raped.” He paused. “Does it?”
Sumner’s jaw dropped at the picture
of Camilla getting out of the Porsche in her whorish get-up. He grimaced at the
next shot of her grinning and flashing her tits, but the final, most damning
photo of all caught Camilla kissing Dooley while groping his crotch while he
wore a look of total surprise.
Sumner was disgusted and outraged
when he realized the truth. “Shit, son!” he growled. “We’ve been had!”
Alex nodded with exquisitely
feigned gravity. “My thoughts exactly, sir.”
“Give me those damned photos! I’ll
handle this!”
As Sumner stormed back into the office,
Alex turned toward the bewildered wedding consultant lurking in the shadows.
"Now don't you go away, Miss Sarpy. Your job isn't over yet."
"It isn't?" she asked in
a shaky voice."
"No, ma-am," he replied
with a grin. "Not by a long shot.”
For another fifteen minutes, the
mystified congregation was treated to more loud voices from Father Gregory’s
office, predominantly masculine shouts punctuated by the occasional feminine
wail. Rumor and speculation spread like wildfire until a shaken Samara Sarpy appeared
on the altar. She raised her hands to quiet the buzz, and, after much throat
clearing, made the shocking announcement.
“I have been asked by the families
of the bride and groom to—” A loud hiss turned her head to stage left where
Sumner gestured angrily. “Uh, I’ve been asked to announce that father of the
groom has called off the ceremony.”
Bitsy Covington and Puddin’ Dupree
let out dual shrieks that deafened those in adjacent pews and set every dog on
“The families thank everyone for
coming,” Miss Sarpy continued, “and now bid you a good morning.”
Miss Sarpy’s frantic nod to Phaedra
prodded her to her chubby feet and, after a quick confab with the organist, the
soloist seized the opportunity to vocalize for the wedding to follow the ruined
Spivey-Sumner nuptials. While everyone filed out, Jolie remained seated and
hummed along with a gloriously intoned version of Beethoven’s
Ode to Joy.
By the time Phaedra finished, the sanctuary
had emptied, and, as Jolie expected, Alex came looking for him.
“Well?”
“It’s a done deal,” Alex said, for
now giving his friend the short version. “Daddy saw the photos and hit the
ceiling.”
“I heard,” Jolie said. “We all
heard. In fact, I’ll be surprised if they didn’t hear across the river in Algiers.”
Alex shook his head. “If there’s anything
Daddy hates, it’s losing a business deal or being double-crossed. In this case
it was a bit of both. I swear, Jolie, I’ve never seen him so mad. I think he
would’ve killed Cleve Spivey if I hadn’t convinced him the poor guy was as
unsuspecting as himself.”
“Probably not altogether true, but
a moot point at this juncture,” Jolie opined. “What about our delicate little
Camilla?”
“In the midst of all the commotion,
she gathered up her skirts and hit the road. Last I heard, she and the Porsche
were peeling rubber out of the parking lot.”
“Good riddance to bad rubbish as
the Brits say.”
“Amen to that.”
“Where are your folks?”
“Jedediah drove them home. I told
them I needed some time to think, and Daddy was so consumed with rage that he
didn’t question me. He’s also consumed with humiliation. You’re not going to
believe this, but he gave me a look that was almost apologetic.”
“As well he should,” Jolie said.
“If anybody’s going to meddle in your affairs, it’s going to be me!”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the important thing now is
that you make another positive step as soon as possible. Maintain your momentum
while you have everyone's sympathy. And, dear boy, I have just what the doctor ordered.”
“I’m scared of that!”
“Nonsense,
mon ami.
Think
about it. What better to replace a wedding than another wedding?”
Alex chuckled. “I think your
girdle’s too tight.”
“I’ll have you know I’m not wearing
a girdle,” Jolie sniffed. “I’ll also have you know that thanks to my trip to France
I have for you and you alone the absolute proposition of a lifetime. The
deal of the century as it were
.”
“Thanks, Monty Hall, but whatever
it is, I can’t think about it right now.” Alex looked at the altar as Phaedra
delivered a haunting
Ubi Caritas.
“In fact, all I can think about is
what Martin Luther King said. ‘Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty
I’m free at last!’”