was a little boy then, and she was singing at a club in Casablanca. She’d gone there to escape the occupation of Paris.”
“Casablanca? Did Sam play it again?”
“Don’t be cute, darling.” He tossed the driftwood into the waves.
Dawn refused to follow it with her eyes. “What were you doing there?”
“I was on the Augusta when the Allies took the coast of Morocco, and in the city later, after the French troops surrendered.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I’ve never been one to trade war stories. There wasn’t a lot about killing and waiting to be killed that was pleasant to remember.”
She was impressed with his candor. This reluctance to discuss particulars was something she hadn’t known about her father, something that didn’t fit with his political image of decorated war hero and patriot. “And you met Nicky?”
“I did. So did half the American men in the city.”
She stopped. “What are you trying to say?”
“Nicky was a woman alone with a child. She was light-skinned enough to come back to this country and try to be any race she chose. She was looking for a man with a soft heart and a savior complex….” He said no more.
Dawn shook her head. “Preposterous. Nicky had a son with dark skin. You’re saying she intended to abandon him?”
“There were schools in Europe where she could have left him. No one would have been the wiser.”
She continued walking. “I guess whether you were right or wrong about her intentions doesn’t matter now.”
“It mattered then. She went after someone close to me, someone weak enough to be tempted. I told her I saw through her scheme. And I told her I wouldn’t stand for it.”
She could imagine that scene. It left her feeling distinctly uneasy. “Who was it?”
“I can’t say. I suppose I’m still protecting his reputation. But he left the country after I confronted Nicky, and I’m the one she held responsible. I’m the one she vowed to get even with.”
“Don’t tell me you think this has something to do with Grandmère’s will?”
“Nicky Valentine’s a woman capable of extracting revenge. Maybe years later she got to your grandmother and told her lies or made demands. I don’t know. I haven’t put it together yet.”
They had turned back toward the cottage before she spoke again. “Why did you tell me this?”
“So you won’t be shocked if any of it comes out.”
She didn’t believe him. What had he really hoped for? That her respect for Nicky would diminish? She realized she’d better set him straight. “I’m surprised you knew Nicky during the war. But no matter what happened then, I don’t believe she’s after some kind of perverted revenge. And how could you believe it, what—twenty years later? Nicky must have had men falling in love with her every day. She’s still one of the most stunning women I’ve ever seen.”
“She’s a stunning colored woman.”
“And you’re blinded by your prejudices.”
“No more than you’re blinded by idealism.” He put his arm around her shoulders.
She had expected rejection. This attempt to draw her closer touched her. “Whatever the history, can’t you forget your feelings for a little while? Be the Ferris Gerritsen who gets himself elected to every office he runs for. Pump a few hands, smile a few smiles.”
“There’s no one here who would vote for me, darling. Not even my own little girl.”
“That all depends on who’s running against you.”
He squeezed her shoulder before he released her. “I don’t know what your grandmother thought she was doing, but I’m going to insist that Spencer read the en tire will this morning.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“He’s made himself unavailable to me.”
“I think there are going to be more surprises ahead.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling. But why would Grandmère call us together in this remarkable way un less she had more plans for us? So far, nothing’s come out of our being together. There’s got to be more in store.”
“I’m leaving by noon.”
Dawn snapped one final photograph. Her father’s arms were folded, and his expression was supremely confident. Only rarely did anyone get the best of Ferris Lee. But in life, Aurore Gerritsen had been every bit as determined. And clearly, even in death, her determination had not faltered.
The only room in the cottage that was large enough to hold everyone was a screened porch, referred to as the morning room, which looked over a patch of yellow chamomile rimmed with magnolias and oaks. Storm clouds were gathering, but the occasional shaft of sun light beamed brightly in protest.
The bucolic setting was a touch of humor in a situation that merited more. As a journalist, Ben had grown used to insinuating himself into situations where he wasn’t wanted. He could not recall a time, however, when he had been so completely uncomfortable. He couldn’t dredge up enough sanctimony to suit the occasion. The Gerritsens didn’t want him here, and their objection was fair. They didn’t know that he was here to claim more than whatever small token Dawn’s grand mother had left him.
From his wicker vantage point in the corner, he watched the others straggle in. He remembered Dawn’s theory about Aurore’s sense of the dramatic. Whether it was true or not, the participants in this odd event were players in a pageant of Louisiana history, and he knew enough about all of them to appreciate it.
Dawn’s mother took her place in an overstuffed chair in the corner. She was sugarcane and old Creole blood lines that rivaled Aurore Gerritsen’s own. Cappy was a thriving symbol of a way of life that had passed on al most a century before.
He lifted his hand to Nicky and Jake, who settled across the room from Cappy. He knew a little of Nicky’s background from things that Phillip had told him. She had spent her childhood years watching the birth of jazz from a house on Basin Street, near today’s Club Valentine. She had gone on to Paris and later New York, but it had been the New Orleans in her voice that made her a star. Phillip’s only claims to Louisiana were his mother’s heritage and his recent marriage to a New Orleans woman, a fact Ben had discovered last night.
Jake’s roots were nowhere near as exotic as Nicky’s. Born into a family of sharecroppers, he had pulled him self from poverty by leaving Louisiana and venturing into a world where sometimes, at least, the color of a man’s skin was less important than what he was made of. But after his success was assured, he and Nicky had moved back to the state of their birth, with its deeply rooted culture and its enthusiasm for her talent.
Pelichere was a Cajun, descended from those brave souls, thrust from their homes in Acadia, who had found their way to the Louisiana bayous and a way of life rich in color and tradition. Ben liked her. She was as down-to-earth as the life she led. She, along with Spencer St. Amant, seemed perfectly willing to cut through the bull shit the rest of them wallowed in.
Finally there were Ferris Gerritsen and his daughter, the last to arrive. The senator was a mixture of his mother’s Creole blood and his father Henry’s perversion of it. From the distance of half a century, it was difficult to understand what Henry Gerritsen had offered a woman like Aurore Le Danois. He had been descended from a “Kaintuck” who floated a flatboat down the Mississippi, sold it for lumber in New Orleans, then started a business brokering boats for others. Somewhere on the trip, at some saloon or floating whorehouse, he had picked up Henry’s grandmother, and nine months later, Henry’s father had