“Who owns the property now?”
“Prosperine LaPiere. She’s long-since dead and buried, but last time I checked, nobody has ever filed a deed to transfer ownership.”
“Who pays the taxes?” Jack asked, and the woman didn’t know. Back in the car, Jack called his friend at the court clerk’s office and got his answer. “The tax bill goes to a law firm in New Orleans named Godchaux and Hart.”
Landry nodded. “Same firm that oversees the Toulouse Street building. They’ve handled the family’s affairs since the Civil War.”
They turned off Highway 3127 toward Bayou Lasseigne. When the road ended, Landry watched for a pair of ancient brick columns and took the dirt road that ran between them. A broad field of tallgrass flowed like water toward the tree line on both sides, and some distance down the lane they could see an old two-story house.
“Look,” Jack said, pointing. “The cemetery’s over there in the trees. Let’s go take a look.”
The graveyard was in a copse of tall leafy oaks that kept it in perpetual half-light. An ancient iron fence defined its boundaries. Grass and weeds grew waist-high between the markers, although it was less overgrown than Landry would have thought, considering the lady’s claim that the place was abandoned.
A rusted gate lay askew on one hinge, and a span above it bore seven letters — a family’s name.
LaPiere.
Since only a few stones remained upright, it was impossible to know how many burials had taken place there. Most lay on their sides, hidden in the underbrush. Two massive marble crypts stood in the middle. One belonged to Lucas LaPiere, his death date forever memorializing the day his wife tossed him over the railing on February 2, 1832 at age fifty-seven. Landry presumed Lucas built the vaults long before his death, because Prosperine wouldn’t have spent money creating a monument to her cheating husband.
The next enigma arose from the identical crypt next to Lucas’s. There lay Prosperine, resting for eternity next to the man she killed. She’d lived until 1865, dying at age eighty-seven.
Landry thought, A ripe old age. Too bad your husband didn’t get to finish his.
On the other side of Prosperine’s crypt among some brambles stood a plain marble rectangle. Landry moved aside the brush, read the inscription and called Jack over.
Charles Richard. 1802–1878.
It seemed the situation got more puzzling with each discovery. “Look at this,” Landry said. “Someone in the family cared enough to bury him right next to the LaPieres, but he died a long time after Prosperine. Maybe he picked this plot for himself. So who was he? The guy at the building — Empyrion — is black. If he’s Charles’s descendant, then was Charles a servant? If he was, why did Prosperine entrust him to oversee her New Orleans property? In the eighteen hundreds that would have been an unusual thing to bestow on a servant.”
Jack agreed and asked how they could find out what role the Richards played.
“Let’s look at the house. Maybe we can find some answers there.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Row after row of azaleas and bougainvillea ran along the front of the house. They would have provided a colorful welcome long ago. Untended and wild today, they grew aimlessly in every direction.
This mansion was smaller than many antebellum homes Landry had seen. It was a two-story with stacked porches that ran the length of the house. The old place was in sad shape — broken windowpanes, rotting porch floorboards, and support posts for the second-floor veranda that were on the verge of collapse.
Avoiding three rotten steps, they walked onto a porch covered with hundreds of vines that crept along the floor and up the walls. Although thick tendrils interlaced across the front door, someone had hacked away just enough to allow access. When Landry pushed on it, the door swung open with a heavy groan. They stepped into a gloomy hallway that ran the length of the house. Although warped and twisted in places, the floor appeared to be sturdy.
Landry went into what appeared to be a parlor. Rotting curtains were drawn tight, keeping the room dark even on this sunny day. Jack was surprised that everything was still in place, considering the house was abandoned in 1878. Landry agreed; the thick layer of dust and grime everywhere was the only clue the house wasn’t occupied. There were chairs covered by heavy drop cloths, end tables where framed photographs still stood, rows of books in shelves on either side of the fireplace and other bric-a-brac one might expect to see in a late nineteenth-century home.
Hanging above the mantel was a large painting of a handsome black man in resplendent dress — a dark three-piece suit, a shirt with ruffled collar and sleeves, and a top hat. A watch chain ran from one vest pocket to the other. He wore tall boots, and one arm rested on the neck of a beautiful horse. The man looked as if he were ready to go on a fox hunt.
Landry said, “He looks like Empyrion. I’ll bet it’s Charles Richard and that they’re related. This just adds to the mystery. This was the LaPiere home. Charles fits into the puzzle somehow, but I can’t imagine they commissioned a portrait of a servant and then hung it in a place of honor above the fireplace. What if this picture is Lucas LaPiere? I’ve assumed all this time he was white, but do we know that?”
“The woman at the historical society showed us their picture. They’re white. This guy isn’t Lucas.”
“You seem to be full of questions today,” came a voice from behind them. Empyrion Richard stood in the doorway with an angry scowl on his face. He wore white slacks,
