Blood Ties in Chef Voleur

Jack watched as she, like everyone else in the room, turned toward Betty Delancey.

“Hello,” Betty said from the front of the room. “I want to thank all of you for coming.”

Jack tuned out most of what Betty said. Instead, he paid attention to the man with the lockbox, wondering when he was going to open the mysterious container, and of course, what was inside it. His grandfather had always talked about Lilibelle Guillame Delancey’s last journal, the one she’d written in compulsively for hours and hours during the days following Con Delancey’s death.

He heard Lilibelle’s name and turned his attention back to what Betty was saying as she began to explain why Cara Lynn had been left a special inheritance from her grandmother, Lilibelle Guillame.

“She was the youngest child and the only granddaughter,” Betty said, “since at the time we all thought her dear cousin Rosemary was dead.”

There were murmurs and whispers all around Jack. He couldn’t, by any means, remember all the people he’d met tonight. After all, he knew that in addition to the eleven grandchildren and their spouses, there were other relatives and some close friends present.

Then her mother called Cara Lynn up to the front and gave a short, sweet speech about what a joy it was to have her as a daughter, while at the same time managing to sneak in a small admonishment about her having eloped.

“Your grandmother died when you were twelve. She always said that part of the legacy of the Delanceys was that there were very few girls born to the family. She wanted to leave something very special to her granddaughters. Rosemary, of course, received the monogrammed Delancey silver service for twenty-four when she graduated from high school. And for you, Cara Lynn, she left you her journals. She wrote in them daily, starting when she was twelve years old. She also left you the contents of this box.” Betty indicated the box.

The man holding the box set it carefully on the table near him and unlocked it.

“Come Cara, see what you have and show everyone.”

Cara Lynn walked up and kissed her mother on the cheek. Then she stepped over to the metal box and lifted the lid—and gasped aloud.

The murmurs and whispers started up again as some of the crowd pushed closer, hoping to get a first glimpse of the contents. She reached inside and pulled out a beautiful, pale beige leather-bound journal. The cacophony of voices increased when she held it up.

Beside Jack, a tall thin man gasped and muttered something under his breath. Jack glanced at him, but his attention was glued to Cara Lynn, or more specifically, to the journal in her hand.

“What is it?” a voice chimed in.

“Is that one of Grandmother’s journals?” another voice called.

Cara Lynn opened the book and looked at the first page. Her face brightened with delight. “It is. I have the full set, so this one must be the last journal she kept, from the year my grandfather died.”

Jack’s heart leapt into his throat and he remembered his grandfather’s words. On the day Con died, all she did was write in that book. The police were investigating the scene and questioning us and she just sat there and scribbled. She had to be writing down what happened. If I could just get my hands on that book, I know it contains the truth.

Jack looked around him, but he garnered no information from the peoples’ reactions. Everybody seemed mesmerized by the sight of the journal.

Betty walked over and stood beside her daughter. “But that’s not all, dear, is it?”

Cara Lynn held the journal tucked under one arm and reached back into the box with her other hand. She pulled out something that was wrapped in what looked like an ancient, frayed piece of linen or cotton.

“Unwrap it, darling,” her mother said, clasping her hands together in front of her, a look of unabashed anticipation and excitement on her face.

Jack held his breath just like a lot of other people in the room. He knew what Cara Lynn was holding.

“Mom, I’ll hold it if you’ll unwrap it,” Cara Lynn said, apparently unwilling to let go of the journal. Betty carefully lifted each corner of the delicate-looking cloth and let it fall over Cara Lynn’s hand. The slow reveal allowed the diamonds and rubies and sapphires and emeralds in the tiara to sparkle and shine to maximum effect.

Cara Lynn gasped, as did the entire room. Whether by accident or design, Betty had chosen the perfect place to reveal the tiara for the first time. They were standing under a huge crystal chandelier, which caught the reflections from the gems and turned them into thousands of multicolored sparks of light that danced across the walls and floor.

Cara Lynn turned the tiara so she could look at the large diamond in its center. The whispers and murmurs grew louder and louder until within a few seconds, the sound was deafening.

Jack himself was mesmerized, but not by the sparkly tiara, nor the journal under Cara Lynn’s arm. He was caught by the open, unfettered joy on his wife’s face.

“Oh,” she said, clutching the journal more tightly and looking from the tiara out over the crowd of people, 80 percent of whom were related to her. “I...can barely speak,” she said breathlessly, her gaze sweeping across the faces until she met Jack’s. The smile that shone on her face made him want to cry. “I’ve never been so happy as I am right now.”

Jack blinked and averted his gaze. It was like walking on hot coals to look into her eyes and hear her talking about her happiness. He turned away and found himself toe-to-toe with a tall, fit man in his late forties. Jack took a better look at him. His hair was dyed black, which made him look more like a cartoon than a real person, because nobody’s hair was that black naturally. His eyes were dark brown, and right now they were fixed on Jack.

“You’re Jack, Cara Lynn’s husband,” he said firmly, as if he was worried that Jack didn’t know. “And your last name is...?” He embellished his unfinished question with a flourishing gesture.

“Bush,” Jack responded, offering a small smile to counteract his flat response. Then with a wider smile he said, “Jack Bush.”

“Bush,” the man said thoughtfully.

“And you are?” Jack asked, resisting an almost overwhelming urge to run his finger along the inside of his collar. The way the man said his name made Jack second-guess his decision to take the name Bush. These people were as much—maybe more—old New Orleans as his family. Any one of them might know enough French to make the connection. Broussard was from a French word meaning brush man or bushman. At the time, he’d thought he was being clever. Now he wished he’d chosen Smith or Johnson.

He looked back at the man and waited for him to introduce himself. Finally, after shooting his cuffs and smoothing his school tie with a hand weighted down by a large Austrian crystal-studded ring, the black-haired man lifted his nose slightly. “Paul Guillame.”

The name sent a streak of adrenaline through Jack. Paul Guillame. A cheating, lying skunk who helped Con’s wife frame me for murder, Granddad had written about him. Watch your back. Jack kept his expression neutral and waited, but Guillame did not offer his hand, so Jack didn’t, either. “You’re related to the Delanceys?” he asked innocently.

Paul straightened and looked down his nose at him. “Senator Delancey’s wife was a Guillame,” he said. “The Guillames are a very old family here. But you, Jack Bush.” The man gestured around vaguely. “I hope you realize that you have committed a serious crime against the Delanceys and that they are even now preparing your punishment.”

Jack looked at him, stunned into silence. Crime? Punishment? What was the man talking about?

Guillame leaned forward. “Are you satisfied that the crime was worth whatever punishment will be meted out? Can your love for our pretty little youngest survive the wrath of the Delanceys?”

So that was it. His crime against the Delanceys was stealing their youngest. His paralyzed vocal chords loosened. “Sometimes something is so beautiful that it must be had, at any cost or any punishment.”

Again, as he’d hoped to do when they first came in, he tried to sound worldly, but he wasn’t sure if he’d pulled it off or if he’d just sounded silly.

Paul Guillame smiled. He reminded Jack of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. “Be aware, young Mr. Bush, our Cara Lynn has four brothers and four cousins. That’s eight descendants of Con Delancey. So anyone who hurts her faces death times eight.” Paul raised a hand with an impeccable manicure and pointed a finger at him. “Now, Monsieur Jacques, you add your sword to the pledge, which makes it death times nine.”

All the blood rushed from Jack’s head at Guillame’s use of the French pronunciation of his name. For a split second he felt as though he might pass out. But he kept himself composed and managed not to look around to see if anyone had noticed Paul calling him Jacques. He hoped his hand was not visibly shaking as he placed it over his heart. “I so pledge, Monsieur.” He sketched a little bow. When he raised his gaze to meet Guillame’s, the man’s black eyes were on the box again, but only for a brief instant, then he turned back to Jack.

“So, tell me Jack, where are you from anyway?”

As a Southerner, Jack understood the question. When asked where are you from, a Southerner knows the asker is not interested in where you live, or even where you grew up, He wants you to lay out your family’s history as far back as you know it.

Jack had prepared for this question and his brain was already queuing up the background he’d invented for himself. “My family originally came from—”

The room went dark. Pitch dark.

Startled, Jack took a second to orient himself. Screams and yells came from all around him. Someone tall bumped against him in the dark and almost knocked him off balance. He righted himself, reaching around him for something, anything, to grab in order to break his fall. His fingers brushed a sleeve. The sleeve was pulled away immediately, but Jack noticed that the person who’d bumped into him had been tall—at least as tall as he, and wearing a suit jacket or sports coat. The material that had brushed against his fingers was a thick, heavier fabric, the kind used to make men’s coats.

Then Jack heard a sound that penetrated all the other sounds around him. It was a shriek and a cry of pain. Cara Lynn.

At that instant the lights came back on. Jack, who was standing less than six feet from where Cara Lynn had been holding up the bejeweled tiara, saw her, crumpled on the floor in her satin gown, not moving.

“Cara!” he cried, just as someone, maybe Cara’s mother, screamed. “Oh, my God, Cara Lynn!” From another part of the room someone cried out, “The tiara! It’s gone!”

People were milling around everywhere. Jack saw the Delancey men moving in concert, as if they were all part of one company or battalion. In sync, they divided up. Some headed toward Cara Lynn and her mother. Some headed for the front doors. One of them—it looked like one of the twins—pulled out his cell phone, calling the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office, no doubt.