Chapter 7
The front door opened and we were greeted warmly by Christopher. He was impeccably groomed, as usual, but his amber eyes were red rimmed, as if he’d been crying.
“Is everything all right?” I asked, glancing in the direction of murmuring voices in the parlor.
“It’s a good day, Nola. For Mimi especially. I haven’t seen her this happy since we thought Sunny had returned. But today, having Camille here—well, it’s a bit like having a piece of Adele back again.”
Christopher’s gaze drifted to the doll and his smile fell. “Is that a Madame Alexander?”
Jolene nodded excitedly. “It is. I figured you’d probably know. Nola hasn’t a clue.” She sent me a sidelong glance. “Nola found it in the armoire at the house on Esplanade. Beau wanted to show it to Mimi, but he keeps misplacing it.”
Christopher’s eyes met mine. “I see,” he said, as if he did. “May I?” he asked, reaching for the doll. “I’ll put it somewhere safe for now if that’s all right. Mimi’s a bit occupied right now.”
Jolene eagerly relinquished the doll, and we watched as Christopher opened the lower cabinet of a demilune chest in a small alcove next to the door.
He absently wiped his palms on his pants before turning back to us.
Feeling someone watching me, I turned toward the portrait of Beau’s grandfather and Mimi’s husband, Charles.
His spirit—presumably now at rest—had been a benign and helpful one, but that didn’t stop me from being disturbed by the feeling of eyes in the portrait following me.
“One seltzer water and one Sazerac coming right up, ladies.” Christopher was well-versed in our drinks of choice, as well as knowing that Jolene had to be cut off after one cocktail.
The three of us had learned that the hard way.
“Shall we?” he asked, leading us into the front parlor filled with elegant antiques and the white marble fireplace upon which rested the familiar bust of the Roman god Bacchus.
I was relieved that plastic sheeting shielded the arched opening between the parlor and the dining room, where scaffolding covering the walls could be seen through a crack along one edge.
My heart beat a little more slowly as I noted there was no swinging chandelier and no demonlike presence projecting itself from the ceiling.
I still woke up at night with a scream in my throat, having not quite recovered from that awful time when Jeanne and Antoine Broussard had been sent to the light, and Beau had almost died.
The unanswered questions from that event filled my dreams, clinging to my subconscious like burrs, unwilling to let me go until I could figure out why Adele was still earthbound and what had happened to Beau’s father, Buddy.
I hoped that was all. I really, really hoped that was all.
My well-being was dependent on my staying sober, and sleepless nights and restless ghosts were not conducive to the tranquil and sober life for which I had moved to New Orleans.
Sam waved from where she sat next to Mimi on the sofa and widened her eyes as if to indicate that we had a lot to discuss in private later.
Not for the first time, I thought that Sam and I could be good friends except for the minor detail of her being Beau’s girlfriend.
Mimi rose and greeted me with a kiss on each cheek.
Her unusual eyes—one green and one blue—bored into me before she took my hand and turned to a middle-aged couple seated in the pair of salmon-colored velvet Biedermeier chairs by the fireplace.
Beau stood next to them in conversation before Mimi interrupted.
“Camille and Henry, I’d like you to meet a good friend of ours, Nola Trenholm.”
The woman—Camille—appeared to be in her mid-to-late forties.
Her petiteness was emphasized by the extremely tall man standing next to her, presumably Henry.
He was about the same age as his wife, and as blond as she was dark.
Camille wore round tortoiseshell glasses that seemed too heavy and big for her nose.
She pushed them up with her left hand as she reached to shake my hand with her right.
“Beau’s been telling us all about you,” Camille said, with a small yet warm smile and the soft handshake usually given by elderly women or young children.
Her accent was definitely Southern, which made sense since Beau had said she was from Hoover, Alabama, where she’d grown up with his mother.
The way she spoke made me think of newscasters who’d taken elocution lessons to learn how to drop their regional accents, but telltale signs always remained to give them away.
It made me wonder where she’d been since leaving New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Camille regarded me with bright green eyes fringed with thick black lashes, the single standout feature that made her memorable.
As soon as I shook her hand her gaze shifted to the floor.
With her beautiful eyes downcast, Camille disappeared into her beige cardigan and matching beige turtleneck and pants.
The only areas of color that weren’t beige, besides her brown hair, were her brown loafers.
“That’s a bit worrying,” I said, “so please let me know if you need clarification on anything.”
Camille laughed, the sound confined mostly to her throat, as if she were afraid of being heard. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”
“And you must be Jolene,” Henry said, stretching out a hand to my roommate.
“Yes,” she drawled.
I had to look at my friend to make sure that low, sultry voice was hers. Her cheeks had pinkened, and when I turned toward Henry I understood why. He was what my grandmother Amelia would call “movie-star handsome,” or what Jolene would call a cool drink of water.
Henry was a cross between Ryan Reynolds and a blond Tom Cruise but taller, and better-looking—if that was even possible.
He wore a light blue button-down oxford-cloth shirt beneath a navy cable-knit cashmere sweater that accentuated his summer-sky blue eyes.
Maybe it was the mental mention of my grandmother, an avid bird-watcher, that made me see Henry and Camille as cardinals, the male all showy in his scarlet plumage and the drab female meant to blend into the background.
It may have been my childhood, spent in the shadows of my mother’s addictions, that made me warm to Camille, or maybe an instinctive distrust of any good-looking male (Thank you, Michael Hebert) that made me shift away from Henry and embrace Camille.
Mimi put her arm around Camille’s shoulders and gave a gentle squeeze. “We’ve been sharing stories about Adele. She knew Adele long before Buddy did. She has photo albums at her parents’ house in Alabama, and she’s going to ask them to send them. I think Beau would enjoy seeing them.”
Christopher joined us. “And I remember working with Adele and Camille at the Past Is Never Past during the short time they lived in New Orleans before the storm. Never a dull moment with those two, that’s for sure.
I also remember that Camille had an encyclopedic memory of every piece of inventory. ”
“That’s right,” Mimi said. “And she could add up an entire column of numbers without a calculator. After a while I stopped double-checking her totals, because she was never wrong.”
Camille looked down at her feet as a blotchy red stained her cheeks.
“Well, that’s one thing she can do better than me,” Henry said with a chuckle. He was the only one who laughed.
Mimi hooked her arm through Camille’s. “I’ve recently installed a small greenhouse in my back garden and am testing my green thumb with orchids.
They’re extremely temperamental, so who knows how long I can keep them alive?
But they look so lovely. We’ve got another half hour until dinner, so why don’t I take you back to show you? ”
Camille glanced at her husband as if asking for permission.
Henry waved his hands in their direction. “Oh, go on. We men would prefer to talk football—am I right?” Henry didn’t wait for Beau or Christopher to respond before he scooped a handful of nuts from a crystal dish on a side table and plopped down on the vacated sofa.
As Sam, Jolene, and I followed Mimi and Camille from the room, I could hear Beau suggesting that Henry remove his feet from the inlaid wooden coffee table and then apologizing that they hadn’t considered adding a Barcalounger to the parlor room’s décor.
Sam and I shared a glance, choking on our laughter.
“Y’all hush,” Jolene whispered from behind us. “He might have been raised in a barn and doesn’t know any better.”
We followed Mimi into the backyard and into a greenhouse that was only about fifteen feet square but that someone with an eye for architecture and an appreciation for historic vernacular had given an Italian Renaissance roof that matched that of the house, including a widow’s walk and oval windows.
The glass windowpanes were set in copper frames, the patina of which would change to an antique blue-green hue over time.
“Did you design this?” I asked Mimi, taking in the freestanding wood-and-iron shelves and the potting bench along one short side of the structure.
“Actually, no. Beau did.”
I looked at her. “Beau Ryan? Your grandson?”
Jolene poked me in the ribs, causing me to yelp. Every time I told her not to poke me with her finger she insisted that she wouldn’t need to if I would simply remember to be polite.
Mimi chuckled. “Yes, Beau. I suppose I’d been mentioning for years that I wanted to try my hand at growing orchids but wasn’t sure how to go about it.
He must have been working on the design and ordering materials while he was in the hospital, recuperating from his, er, accident, so it was all ready to go last weekend, when he and Christopher installed it.
It went up very quickly. Unlike the orchids. ”
She frowned at a row of pots that displayed not even a single stem protruding from the soil they contained.