6
SIX
Ellen had a huge house in the Garden District.
It wasn’t one of the biggest mansions, but it was far bigger than anything that could be found in the French Quarter.
Well, anything that hadn’t been stitched together from multiple parcels at least. It was even bigger than the LaLaurie Mansion, which was saying something.
A woman in a modified maid’s uniform — it didn’t look like a Halloween costume, but it was still over-the-top with ruffled sleeves — opened the door once Ofelia had been cleared through the gate after introducing herself via intercom.
“Ms. Purcell is waiting for you in the parlor,” the maid said in a voice tinged with Bayou Creole.
“Thank you.” Ofelia forced a smile, but her gaze was roaming through the house. She was familiar with the New Orleans aesthetic — a lot of people felt they had to decorate everything voodoo chic to celebrate their roots — but this house was something else entirely.
“Ms. Purcell likes a good theme,” the maid explained as she watched Ofelia take it all in.
Ofelia stopped to stare at the cross on the wall. It was different from the crosses that often adorned the homes of Christians. It was still a cross, but the ends were wider. They also had decorative carvings in them.
“This is hoodoo,” Ofelia said before realizing she’d spoken out loud.
The maid watched her closely for a reaction. “Does that bother you?”
Ofelia shook her head. “No. I just wasn’t expecting it.” She was already calculating what, if anything, in the hoodoo religion might be able to help Angelique. “Sorry,” she said finally. “It’s a nice cross.”
“You and Ms. Purcell will get along fine,” the maid assured her. “Some people judge her faith. She has no use for those people. You don’t seem to care either way.”
“I don’t believe in any one religion,” Ofelia admitted. “I believe there is room for every religion.”
“Scientology?”
Ofelia chuckled at the well-delivered question. “Even Scientology, although I think that there are limits for every religion. If you’re hurting others, which seems to happen with Scientology on the regular, I’m not interested in protecting that form of worship.”
“Yes, you and Ms. Purcell will get along fine.”
Ofelia allowed the maid to lead her into a beautiful parlor.
The walls were a dark gray color, and there were candles everywhere.
There was also an ornate altar pushed against one wall, and from what Ofelia could see from across the room, there were a bevy of crystals and potion ingredients on the altar.
“Ofelia Archer,” a woman’s voice said from the gray settee in the center of things.
Ofelia turned and found a beautiful woman with mixed-race skin.
It was hard for Ofelia to pick a color to compare it to because she’d never seen anything like it before.
The woman’s hair was a majestic silver color.
Not gray. Not white. It was actually silver.
“Hello.” Ofelia held out her hand. “You must be Ms. Purcell.”
“I am.” The woman bobbed her head and gestured toward the settee. “You may call me Ellen.”
“Are you sure?” Ofelia asked, thinking of how the maid had referred to her boss. “I can call you Ms. Purcell, if that’s what you prefer.”
To Ofelia’s surprise, Ellen burst out laughing. “If you’re asking that because Rutina insists on calling me ‘Ms. Purcell,’ don’t bother. That’s something that she refuses to let go of. I think her mother instilled it in her. I’m still trying to break her of it.”
“Ah.” Ofelia allowed herself to relax. She didn’t know this woman well, but so far she liked her. “I’m assuming Pascal called to clear the way for me.”
“He did,” Ellen confirmed as she reached for the majestic teapot on the coffee table. “Is tea okay? I can get you something else if you prefer.”
“Tea is great,” Ofelia assured her. She was more of an iced tea drinker, but it didn’t matter. She would be fine with hot tea.
“Pascal and I have been friends for a great number of years,” Ellen started once she handed over Ofelia's cup. “We didn’t meet until after I was cured, however. Did he tell you about that?”
“He told me that it was better I hear the story from you.”
“Of course he did.” Ellen sighed. “That is his way.”
“It is,” Ofelia agreed. She was prepared to give this woman as much time as was necessary since it was the only lead she had. Impatience gnawed at her stomach, however.
“It happened 30 years ago,” Ellen started. “Actually, I think it was 31. No matter.” She waved her hand as if swatting at a pesky gnat. “I was engaged at the time to a man named Leonard Hebert. Have you ever heard of him?”
Ofelia had to search her memory. The name was familiar. When she finally landed on the answer, she looked at Ellen in a new light. “Are you talking about the oil tycoon who took a header off the Hancock Whitney Center in the CBD 30 years ago?”
Ellen nodded, seemingly relieved. “So, you have heard of him.”
“Yeah. He had a terrible reputation for screwing smaller businesses when he purchased them. He acted as if he had altruistic reasons for buying up the property — he was going to help the little guys by letting them rent from him — but he jacked up the rent on everybody to make himself rich.”
“Yeah, he was a real turd.” Ellen frowned at the memory. “Like … a real turd. I knew that when he asked me to marry him, and I still said yes.”
“How come?”
“Because my father wished it.” Ellen’s lips curved down even further. “I was a spinster, according to my father. He was a banker and owned four banks in the state. Can you imagine? Four.”
“I never really think about who owns the banks,” Ofelia admitted.
“Normally, they’re companies now, not individuals.
Back when my grandfather started, that wasn’t the norm.
My family’s money came from steamships originally, and they were one of the few families to adjust when the switch came.
They managed to hold onto their wealth and went into banking, which was a whole other type of wealth. ”
Ofelia was stymied by where the conversation was going, but she figured it was germane to the story that Ellen had to tell her, so she just nodded. “You’re basically saying that your family had money.”
Ellen smirked. “And a lot of it. That’s why my refusal to marry when I was younger was met with such … disappointment.” She made a face when saying the last word. “I wanted to be my own businesswoman, but my father believed that women should be wives and nothing more.”
Ofelia thought of her father and how proud he’d been when she announced she wanted to run Krewe. The bar had been his life — maybe too much — but he was happy to hand it over to Ofelia at the time. He knew she would take care of it.
“I can practically hear the train chugging along in your head,” Ellen acknowledged. She pointed at Ofelia’s engagement ring. “I’m guessing you don’t have the same problem.”
“No, but my family doesn’t have the same amount of money that yours obviously does,” she replied.
“I know more about you than you know about me,” Ellen countered. “I’ve watched you work your way between problems in the city. You’re a powerhouse, as a witch and a woman. You took over your father’s business, and he seems happy with how things turned out.”
“My father never looked at me as if I didn’t have a business mind simply because I was a woman,” Ofelia replied. “I know that happens to other people, other women, but he was never that way with me. He had … other demons.”
Ellen’s smile softened. “I know those stories, too. Your mother and I move in some of the same social circles.”
Ofelia immediately balked. “You can’t always trust what my mother says about my father,” she said hurriedly.
Ellen chuckled. “I don’t. Take a breath.”
Ofelia did just that.
“Your mother is a unique individual,” Ellen continued after a beat. “She’s not what I would call evil. She’s not entirely on the side of good either. She lives in a gray area that I find fascinating, if a little frightening.”
Ofelia made a grumbling sound deep in her throat. “She finds herself fascinating, too.”
Ellen snorted. “I like that you don’t gloss over who your parents are.
You love them both and make more allowances for your father, as you should.
” She paused a beat. “Tales of his mental illness made it all the way out here. My heart broke for you when I heard you had locked him up. I know you fought against that for a long time.”
“It turns out that was the best thing for him,” Ofelia replied. “He’s doing really well right now.”
“So I hear.” Ellen rubbed her hands over her knees.
“I don’t bring up your father to shame you.
I wish I had the strength to deal with my father as you did yours.
Instead, I kowtowed to him, and when he insisted I had to marry because he’d arranged it for me, I didn’t fight him as I should.
I believed, since I was in my 30s at that point, that he’d given up on the idea of an arranged marriage. ”
Ofelia was bothered by that term. “Is that how you looked at it? As an arranged marriage, I mean.”
“Yes.” Ellen bobbed her head. “My father wanted to cement a relationship between our family and Leonard. He believed a marriage would do it. There was just one little problem.”
“You didn’t want to marry Leonard,” Ofelia guessed.
“No, and it made me angry when the marriage happened against my will,” Ellen admitted. “It made me even angrier when he took his mistress on our honeymoon. It made me angriest when he had a family with his mistress.
“I didn’t want to marry him,” she continued. “I didn’t expect him to be faithful. We only consummated the marriage a handful of times, always at his behest. I did not look at him that way.”
Ofelia had an inkling that she knew why Ellen hadn’t looked at Leonard that way — beyond the obvious — but it wasn’t important. At least not now. “You were embarrassed because everybody knew what he was doing,” she guessed.
“Yes.” Ellen was grim. “Each passing day made me angrier. That’s when she came.”
Ofelia sat straighter in her chair. “Who?”