she refused to press charges everyone thought Detective Blanchard would go quietly away. Beau asked her to promise never to talk to him again and Eve had agreed. After all, she and Beau were getting married and, whatever the circumstances of the case Mac was trying to build, she had forgiven Beau his passionate indiscretion that fateful night. After all, she had been a willing accomplice to his seduction and every day that passed she found herself falling more and more in love with him. She was moving on to a bright new future. But there Mac stood, a walking red flag warning her of some danger neither he nor she could articulate. He was staring directly at her, obviously wanting to probe her for more answers to questions she knew she didn’t know how to answer.
“Eve, I mean Ms. Dowling …,” Mac said.
“Detective Blanchard?”
“Mac, please, you promised to call me Mac,” he replied. He stood there watching her, waiting for an invitation to speak to her despite the palpable tension between them.
“You shouldn’t be here. My fiancé has asked you not to come here or talk to me, detective. The case is closed,” Eve said.
She moved to pass him, but Mac blocked her.
“I know. It’s just . . . This isn’t about police business exactly . . . I . . . have been… and please don’t think I’m crazy until you hear me out. I have been having … these dreams… nightmares is a better word. You’re in them a lot. They’re so real and I… I was wondering if you …”
His words stopped her. She looked into his eyes. He knew and worse, he knew she knew. Eve could tell he knew from the flash of horror that flushed her face and turned her cheeks red. He knew she understood exactly what he was talking about: dreams and visions from another time and place that made no sense. Eve fell silent, but her heart screamed, pounding in her chest like a frightened, captive bird desperate to escape its cage.
Yes, I’m having dreams too, nightmares, daydreams, fragments of images that don’t make sense. Horrible dreams that wake me from sleep and block my eyes and fill my mind with dread and fear that something happened I can’t remember. That something very wrong is happening. She wanted to say all of it out loud to Mac, but Philip’s screams cut through the air. He wanted his mother and he wanted her now!
“I … I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about and I have to go to my son. Please leave, detective.”
“I think you do, Eve,” he said as he pressed his card into her hand.
She felt a rush, a connection that calmed her. “I know you know, Eve. Call me when you you’re ready to talk. Help me help you before it’s too late,” he whispered.
Eve backed away. Her heel caught a stone and she began to stumble. Mac caught her, his arms circling her waist. He pulled her close, lifting her off her feet. Face to face, their breath mingled and she could smell the scent of aftershave, leather and clove breath mints. His arms were strong and she felt amazingly light in his embrace. For a moment, Eve actually felt something she realized she’d not felt in a very long time … truly safe.
Eve twisted from his arms and pushed away. She headed to the summer house. Her head spun, a new, strange, light-headedness made her dizzy again, but this time pleasantly so. She quickly glanced down at the card in her hand. A voice inside her said, tear it up and throw it away, but she slipped it into her pocket and followed the sound of Philip’s cry.
As much as he hated the conventionality of corporate wear, Beau always looked good in a suit. It wasn’t just that his tall frame and broad, square shoulders filled the Armani Black Label suit; it hugged his body in all the right places. He knew how to choose the perfect ink blue color, the one that looked like a night sky over the bayou, to punch the blue of his eyes. It was the way he carried himself: the calm certainty, the tilt of his head, the regal but never snobby presence he could exude. There was something rare about him. He sat in his pale blue shirt and mustard gold tie that seemed to pick up the flecks of amber in his eyes. Those amazing blue eyes could capture the warmth of a summer sky and brighten a room when he smiled or flash a chill as cold as an ice storm. Right now, he was angry … very angry. His eyeballs ached. He’d been reading over legal documents all day. He’d started at ten in the morning, sitting with seven pinched-faced, cold hearted, viciously calculating lawyers; two of whom belonged to the oldest legal firm in New Orleans, the prestigious firm of Robb, Gallagher and Grant and were trustees of the Gregoire Estate; two belonging to his grandfather, Millard Le Masters, who had declared Beau dead so he could sue the Estate and overturn the will. It all started when Millard learned not only was he not sole executor after Beau’s death, but that he’d not inherited any portion of the Estate itself or even a small part of the vast family fortune. Instead, the entire Estate had been bequeathed to the Avery Charitable Trust. The two Avery Charitable Trust representatives were very, very unhappy at the possibility of losing such a grand gift. Their sadness doubled when Beau returned and they were told everything was to revert back to the original heir. The seventh attorney, the only non-pinched-faced member of the legal clan, was Beau’s attorney and childhood friend, Augustus Valentine Lafayette the fourth, aka A.V. to his friends, of which Beau was and always would be listed as his best. A.V. was movie-star handsome with sandy blonde hair, wicked green eyes and beautiful full lips that anyone would love to kiss. He was smart and tall with a quick wit that could give fifty lashes with a single quip. If he had a fault it was that he liked to drink very expensive cognac and make love to anything that caught his fancy.
Beau watched the proceedings with burning eyes, exhausted from the hours of arguing over the Gregoire Estate and its sizable fortune. The Estate encompassed an enormous amount of rich Louisiana land, multiple homes, multiple farms, cotton and pepper plantations and the, as yet, untapped oil and gas fields. That treasure trove Millard had planned to crack open like a case of vintage Lafitte Rothschild, circa 1947. The Trustees blocked him based on the wishes of Beau’s parents, which were that after their death nothing was to be done with the property until Beau came of age and could, with the Trustees’ guidance, decide how he wanted to run the Estate. Millard has waited patiently for his grandson to get through high school and then college and even suggested that he take a year off to travel and see the world. Beau’s last credit card bill and passport visa came six months later from Tibet. After that, there was nothing for eight years. At exactly seven years, without any word from Beau, Millard hired a series of investigators to find proof of Beau’s life - or death. By the end of the eighth year Millard filed to declare him dead.
Once Millard had Beauregard Gregoire Le Masters declared legally dead, Millard assumed, as his only living relative, he would inherit, uncontested, the Estate. He demanded the codicil of the will that related to Beau’s death be read and implemented. Upon learning that his daughter-in-law, with the consent of his only son, had left him out of their will, he went to war to overturn the will. The fact Philip Gregoire senior and his wife Geraldine had left the entire Estate to the Avery Charitable Trust made the situation even more complicated. Then, to top the entire fiasco off, Beau showed up, very much alive, and the real legal nightmare began.
The small hand of the fine antique, grandfather clock that dominated the main conference room of Robb, Gallagher and Grant chimed seven P.M.
“Enough, gentlemen,” A.V. said.
A.V. raised his eyebrows signaling Beau to get up as he gathered his stacks of papers, phone, iPad and computer and stuffed them into his monogrammed, don’t-fuck-with-me, oxblood leather Versace briefcase. He closed the sterling silver latches of the case with a final gong that signaled to all the meeting was over. He and Beau stood.
“There’s not a goddam thing anyone can say that hasn’t been said since this shit hit the fan. Ergo, I and my client are leaving and we will see you in court.”
“Ergo?” Beau whispered an aside.
“Beau, son, let’s work together on this. I don’t see why you can’t grasp how deeply invested the Avery Trust and I are in these new gas and oil fields, not to mention all the restructuring I had