City of Masks

25

Yes, it could rain in New Orleans.

Cree clenched the steering wheel as the car hit standing water and sent an arc of spray slashing across Highway 10. She was running late, so blind from the whirling rain and the dirty mist tossed up by other vehicles that she was afraid she'd miss the airport signs. Blind also from the welter of facts and impressions and intuitions, the half-seen paranormal and normal-world insights that seemed to come at her just as hard.

She had awakened to find the hotel windows streaked and bleary. Below, Canal Street looked battered by the drenching gale. The awnings along the sidewalk fluttered and humped as if they'd rip off and fly away, and only a few pedestrians scuttled here and there. The road crew had apparently given up their mud pit for the duration.

The memory of last night made her wince.

Her visit with Lila this morning had been frustrating, distracted, pointless. The wild wind and rain seemed to pull everything apart. In the Warrens' neighborhood, so staid and placid on a calm day, the trees and garden plants tossed and gyrated in the stormy half-light like a frenzied disco crowd. Then she'd arrived to find a couple of tradesmen's vans parked in the driveway. Sweet, dear, Realtor Jackie's idea of a romantic surprise, Lila had explained resignedly: He'd scheduled the remodeling of one of their bathrooms to cheer her up. Which meant the house was full of the voices of men, the whine of drills, the thump of fixtures being moved around, and every few minutes a voice calling down the stairs, "Mrs. Warren, I don't mean to trouble you ma'am, but I got a question 'bout this heah shower stall. .. "

Understandably, Lila was also preoccupied with her forthcoming diagnostics; the desperate intimacy they'd established yesterday had faded. Still, she had dutifully pulled out more of the family archives, and they'd spent a difficult hour or so looking at photos. They had looked at faces of Beaufortes and Lamberts, of Charmian's brother Bradford, Richard's sister Antoinette and brothers Franklin and Alexander, of cousins, in-laws, family friends, servants who had come and gone.

Between interruptions, Lila had managed a few words about each one. All Lila's uncles and aunts were dead now. Bradford had been the only one to stay close to the family, and he'd died before having children. Richard's sister Antoinette had married and moved to Houston, where she'd had one son, killed in Vietnam, and a daughter who'd become a prominent oncologist before succumbing to her own specialty; Antoinette had died a few years later. Franklin had moved to Italy just after World War II and had stayed there, marrying into a large Tuscany clan. Alexander had died of a stroke; one of his sons had become a priest, the other had been killed driving home drunk from a keg party. His daughter, Lila's cousin Jennifer, was still alive; fifty-one now, she lived in Oakland, California, with her partner Ellen.

Lila told it all without excess emotion, in a tone that was almost formal, as if she were speaking for the benefit of the plumbers and carpenters who passed in the hallway.

With Brad's death in 1971, the future of both proud families had come to depend on only Charmian and Richard. And given Ron's distinctly undomestic habits, that had narrowed in the next generation to only one line: Lila and her three children. Lila admitted that the fact had contributed to her desire to reestablish the family roots at Beauforte House.

Many of the photos and clippings showed Charmian or Richard with influential people who Lila explained were good friends, neighbors, or fellow members of their country club or Mardi Gras krewe: a couple of mayors, a state supreme court judge, a governor, a police cornmissioner, the state coroner, various parish representatives, prominent restaurateurs, other bankers, heads of charities to which the Beaufortes gave generously. Lila's memory of them all seemed quite good; if she were repressing anything, Cree thought, it wasn't apparent from any systematic lack of recall.

Cree had her own distractions. The reassurance she'd felt after talking to Edgar hadn't survived the conflicted feelings that accompanied it. Uncomfortable memories returned: last night with Paul and almost intolerable ones of much earlier. At moments, Mike's face materialized in front of the Beauforte faces she studied.

And then after a while it was time for Lila to leave for Ochsner Clinic and for Cree to head to the airport. Lila ended their session looking battered, puffy around the eyes. Cree felt only frustration: The family archives had shown her nothing, except to confirm that the Beaufortes were indeed very well connected, well established. A distinguished family without a blemish upon its name.

Cree gasped as a truck threw up a huge gout of muddy water that completely obscured the view ahead. The car sped forward into absolute murk, Cree bracing for a head-on collision but afraid to slam on the breaks for fear she'd be hit by the equally blind car behind.

Her view cleared after only a second or two. But the sensation of hurtling out of control, the sense of imminent danger from ahead and behind, future and past, stayed with her.

Joyce came into the arrival gate wearing baggy beige pants, a tight white tank top, open sandals that displayed her red toenails, and oversize pink sunglasses pushed up into her ebony hair. With her gigantic handbag, she looked every bit the Long Island tourist, and she barely made it to the parking lot without buying cheesy New Orleans souvenirs from the airport concessions.

"You look like something the cat dragged in," she said as Cree pulled onto Route 10 and headed toward the occluded skyline of New Orleans. "You are not living right."

"Hey, tell me about it."

Joyce peered out the car window. "This is not what I expected. I didn't know it rained like this here. Not this time of year. My Gawd." She had to raise her voice to be heard over the drumming of rain on the car roof and the vehement whack-whack of the windshield wipers.

"I didn't either."

"Your sister says hi, by the way. And the twins. Such sweet kids!"

"You talked to them?"

Joyce bit her lips and looked a little caught out. "Well. She was a little worried. Called me as I was going out the door this A.M. and asked me if I knew how you were doing. Said you'd called her late last night, you had the blues pretty bad."

"I'll get over it."

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."