Joyce's eyes narrowed skeptically and her voice took on an excessively neutral tone Cree knew well. 'Of course.'
Driving took all of Cree's attention.
'The borders thing?' Joyce asked.
'Oh yeah.'
Joyce frowned. 'This is me trying to check in emotionally, Cree. But you're not helping much.'
Cree freed a white-knuckled hand from the wheel, found Joyce's, and gave it a quick squeeze. 'I think I may have used up my allotted lifetime's worth of emotions, got none left. I'm sorry.'
'Well, you can tell me in excruciating detail when you buy me lunch. And let me stress the lunch part. They served us these things on the flight – I think they were supposed to be foodstuffs, but you could have fooled me. Honestly.'
'So what I don't get is why you're so sure you scared this guy off,' Joyce said decisively. 'I mean, your story is overwhelming on so many levels. Sounds to me like he did his best, you're the one who pulled the plug. If he didn't argue with your decision to leave, that was out of respect for your feelings – he didn't diminish them by trying to bring you out of it or seduce you or something. What did you want him to do?'
Joyce was a tenacious researcher who was impossible to deflect if she wanted information, and she'd skillfully coaxed and goaded the whole story out of Cree. Joyce's idea of checking in emotionally had an inquisitional quality to it, Cree thought, but it sure got the job done. Now they were sitting in a Starbucks at the edge of the Garden District, rain blasting against the plate-glass windows in erratic gusts. The relentless sloshing and splashing made Cree think of the interior of a dishwasher on high cycle. Under the circumstances, she had given up on finding something regional to eat. Joyce had complained about having her first New Orleans food in a too-familiar, Seattle- based franchise, but access to a bathroom had become imperative, and it was only five blocks from Beauforte House; when they were done, it would be easy to swing by and give Joyce her first glimpse. They had ordered caramel mocha cake, apple crumb cake, and coffee. Between Joyce's familiar presence and the first food Cree'd had in twenty-four hours, she felt a little better.
'I mean,' Joyce finished, 'let's face it, for all your empathic talents, when things bear upon you personally you don't seem to understand the simplest things about human nature. Especially your own. The way I see it, not telling him was getting you nowhere fast, what was there to lose?'
Cree accepted the chastening. Joyce was enjoying the mother-henning, and Cree didn't want to spoil her pleasure by telling her that her relationship with Paul Fitzpatrick was almost something of a moot point. It was less his reaction than Cree's own that she feared. She'd made it through the night only by resolving to focus on the hauntings, on Lila, on her own internal equilibrium and process. That was the foundation on which she would have to rebuild, not on resurrecting some wan hopes about a possible relationship that had clearly gotten off on the wrong foot, probably irredeemably.
'Point taken,' Cree said at last. 'I'm screwed up, I'm working on it. This has all been particularly difficult for me. Now, will you assume I'm dodging the issue if I bring up the reason we're both here? Our commission from the Beaufortes?'
'Atta girl! Come right back at me, that's the way!'
They both laughed. Joyce was a pain.
Cree filled her in on developments: details of Lila's apparitions and state of mind, Beauforte family history, the Chase murders, the hoodoo hexes, Cree's experiences at the house. A legal pad materialized in front of Joyce and she started taking notes.
Cree outlined their research priorities. First, the architecture. Joyce would need to nag Tulane for the floor plans and go get them when they were available; as soon as possible, they'd need to go through the house, room by room, feature by feature, to look for divergences that would clue Cree to the ghosts' eras.
Next, history. The convulsive beating gesture she'd seen in the study could well be a link to the murder of Lionel, John Frederick Beauforte's supposedly troublesome servant, around 1880. Joyce should search newspapers of the period for references to the incident, seeking details of the murder and anything relating to Lionel's personal history. While she was at it, she might as well look for references to Richard Beauforte's death in 1972 – news reports, medical details, obituaries, eulogies, whatever.
Then, Josephine. Cree asked Joyce to try to trace Lila's long-gone nanny. If she were still alive, she might provide information Beauforte family members didn't know or were reluctant to share. If indeed she and Lila had been close, she might have an opinion on what had transformed the bright, confident girl in the early photos to the scared, reserved, repressed junior college student. At the very least, she might be able to explain why Lila's vital signs had shown such agitation when they'd toured the house and had come to Josephine's room.
Finally, Cree also asked her to keep her eyes open for any link between the Beaufortes and voodoo or hoodoo, anything that might make sense of the hexes Deelie Brown had found. She considered asking Joyce to research some of the details she'd recalled about the daydream in Josephine's room but decided she'd given her enough.
'Gawd, this is a regular smorgasbord! Missing persons, historical archives, voodoo, architecture – this is it, I've died and gone to heaven.' Joyce turned an ecstatic face to the ceiling but quickly brought her eyes back to Cree and sobered. 'I'll get on it right away. On one condition You come with me to Bourbon Street one of these nights, eat some Cajun food, have a few drinks, and go dancing. And maybe, dare I say it, if you're giving up on Dr. Fitzpatrick, flirt a little? I'm serious, Cree, I'm gonna have to insist. You don't like this condition, fire me. You gotta live a little. This is not Muncie, Indiana, it's New Orleans, right? Seize the day.'
Everyone close to Cree had some prescription; she usually acquiesced – for their sakes, not her own. Now she agreed with a pretense of enthusiasm she knew was unconvincing.
They dashed for the car and drove through the maelstrom to Beauforte House, where they pulled up in front and just sat in silence for a few minutes. The trees thrashed in the wind like creatures in pain; rain darkened the yellow siding in irregular patches and poured in wind-twisted runnels from every angle of the roof. The hollow upstairs windows gaped like the empty eyes of a cadaver. For Cree, the sight brought back the horror of the boar- headed man and that powerful sense of brooding secrets that surrounded both the house and Lila.
'This one is so hard for me,' Cree found herself confessing quietly. 'I… I don't know why. I can't remember being so… accessible, it's like everything invades me. I can't seem to get any control, it's gotten so I don't trust myself. The whole thing is… very disturbing.'
Joyce didn't answer and didn't look at her, just stared at the house with eyes narrowed and mouth constricted to a tight line. After another moment she made a pistol out of her forefinger and fired it at the rain- smeared image. 'We're going to get you,' Joyce muttered quietly. 'We're coming after your translucent white ass, and don't you forget it.'
26
The rain had slackened by the time Cree made it to Charmian's house the next morning. Before going in, she sat for a moment in the car to gird herself for another encounter with the dowager. It wasn't easy. Inside, she felt like a port city in a hurricane, all the boats broken loose from their moorings and beating themselves against the shore. She was torn from her own identity, even from her anchor in the present. Adrift in too many ways, susceptible to every wind.
Yesterday afternoon, she had napped as Joyce had settled into her hotel room, three doors down from Cree's. Dreams of Mike troubled her. By the time she'd awakened, it was dark, and the rain still swirled madly outside. She checked her voice mail and found a message from Charmian Beauforte scheduling this meeting. She stifled a pang of disappointment that there wasn't one from Paul, and then the confusion of loyalties rose up to torment her.
Even Joyce admitted that it was not a good night for cruising the Quarter, so while she set up her computer and began doing some Web research, Cree drove over to Beauforte House.
The Garden District was battened down in the rain, its streets empty and few porch lights lit. The live oaks roared and groaned in the wind and cast thrashing patterns of shadow and streetlight against the walls of the big house. Inside, Cree took off her raincoat and left it in the front hall. No high tech tonight, she'd resolved earlier.
