All That Glitters

'Get out!' I screamed. 'Get out!'

His eyes brightened with a possibility. 'La Ruby,' he said. 'You're La Ruby. What's going on?'

'Get out!' I charged at him and he put his arms up. Just then, Beau appeared in the doorway. He lunged into the room and seized Bruce by the back of the neck and turned him roughly toward the door.

'What are you doing in our house! I told you not to come here, didn't I?' He pushed him toward the door. Bruce regained his balance and looked back at us. His face was magenta with rage.

'What are you two up to, huh? This isn't Gisselle. I know Gisselle. She has a harder look in her eyes.'

'You're ridiculous,' Beau said, but not with enough confidence. Bruce was buoyed. He smiled.

'This is some sort of scam to get you two more money or something, isn't it? I’ll tell everyone.'

'Go ahead,' Beau said. 'Everyone will believe the words of a drunken, pathetic gambler. The whole city's talking about you and the way you've degenerated. You have as much credibility as a convicted serial killer.'

Bruce nodded. 'All right. I'll get proof, that's what I'll do. Unless you two get sensible and cut me in on what is rightly mine anyway. I'll call you in a couple of days and see if you want to be smart or greedy,' he said.

'Get out of here before I break your neck,' Beau said, moving toward him. Bruce backed away and started down the corridor. Beau followed him all the way to the front entrance, opening it and pushing him out. Bruce voiced one final threat before the doors closed.

'The whole city is going to know what you're up to!' he cried, shaking his fist.

Beau slammed the door in his face. 'It's all right, Aubrey,' he said. 'Everything is under control.'

'Very good, sir.' Aubrey retreated and Beau followed me into the living room.

'Don't worry yourself about him,' he told me after I sat. My heart was pounding and I felt the blood rushing into my face. 'I mean it, no one will give one word he says any credibility. You should hear some of the things they're saying about him now.'

'How could Daphne had brought such a person into her life after being married to my father?' I wondered aloud.

'You said yourself she used people and then discarded them like so much baggage,' Beau replied. He came to my side and sat beside me to take my hand. 'You can't let him get to you, Ruby.'

'But how did he know? Of all the people to look at me and know . . . a drunken man?' I looked at Beau and answered my own question. 'He was intimate with Gisselle. She toyed with him, I'm sure.'

'Probably,' Beau said.

'He was always flirting with me, coming right up to me and taking my hands and looking into my eyes. I hated it; he always had some onions or something on his breath and I had to be polite but firm. And it was my painting . . . I shouldn't have let him see my painting. That, more than anything, gave it away.'

'What difference does it make what he knows and doesn't know, what he did and didn't do? He's a man who's lost respect, and in this town, when you have no respect, you don't have a voice. Believe me, I'll be able to handle him,' Beau promised.

'It's no good, Beau,' I said, shaking my head. 'If a shack's built on weak legs, the first bad flood will wash it away. We're trying to build a new life with a foundation of lies. It's going to come back and haunt us.'

'Only if we let it,' he insisted. He put his arm around me. 'Come on, take a rest. Later you'll feel better. We'll go out to one of the finer restaurants and have a spectacular dinner, okay?'

'I don't know, Beau,' I said with a deep sigh.

'Well, I do. The doctor's prescribing,' he said, sighing, and helped me to my feet.

Above the marble fireplace, Daphne's portrait still hung, the beautiful ivory face peering down at me with an expression of arrogance and self-satisfaction. My father worshiped that beauty and loved having replicas of her everywhere in the mansion.

Remember, child, the devil in all his forms fascinates us, Grandmere Catherine had warned. We're drawn to him like a child is drawn to the wonder of a candle flame and is tempted to put the tip of his finger into the light, only to get burned.

How I hoped and prayed Beau and I had not put our fingers into the candle's flame.

14

  Shadows from the Past

Beau was apparently right about what would happen in regards to Bruce and anything he might do or say. Bruce had lost all his credibility in the business world, and the bank did foreclose on his one major means of making money, his apartment building. Somehow he continued to find money for his drinking, but anything he did tell anyone was considered a pathetic attempt at getting back at the Dumas family. Those who knew him when he was married to Daphne remembered how disdainfully she had treated him. They referred to him as just another ornament on her arm, another piece of jewelry.

Finally, one day Beau called to tell me he had heard that Bruce had moved to Baton Rouge, where he had gotten a job through one of his few friends as the manager of a small hotel.

'So we're rid of him,' Beau said, but somehow I thought Bruce Bristow was like a swarm of swamp mosquitoes: One day they were gone, but you knew they would return to pester you again someday.

Meanwhile, the situation at Cypress Woods remained at status quo. Gisselle lingered in her comatose state; Paul had his good days when he did some work and was sensible, but according to Toby and Jeanne, he still spent