Sacrifice (5 page)

The following morning, after Dallas had gone for his daily run and my father had left for the office, I was alone in my room reading through the press releases for my new novel, Unfinished Business. I thought I was finally going to get some work done, but a gentle rap at my bedroom door interrupted me. With a frustrated sigh, I got up from my bed and headed to the door.

“
Hello, Uncle Lance,” I said cheerfully on seeing my uncle standing outside of my bedroom door. I stood on my toes to kiss him on the cheek and then walked back over to my bed. “Did Dad call you to come over and keep me away from all sharp objects, or are you here to raid the bar again?” I asked as I reached for my papers.

Uncle Lance followed me into the room and took a seat on the chair next to my bed. “After your scene at the wedding yesterday, your old man thinks you have lost it completely. He asked me to stop over on my way to Val’s and check up on you. Where’s spy boy?”

“
Running. Maybe you should stop calling him that, Uncle Lance. Dallas is a boat builder now and not a spy.”

“
Yeah, well, boat boy just doesn’t seem to suit a man like Dallas.” He stared at me for a moment. “Are you still seeing dead people?” he casually asked.

“
Not yet, but the day is young,” I replied, smirking. “So why are you going to Val’s?”

“
I’ve got to pick up her keys. She asked me to keep an eye on her place while she’s away on her cruise.”

I looked over at my uncle for a moment. I was almost afraid to ask the question that was poised on my lips.

“
Do you think I have lost it, Uncle Lance?” I hesitantly asked.

“
I can’t help you there, kid. I lost it years ago and never want to find it again.” Uncle Lance leaned back in his chair. “Your father told me what you said happened in the morgue when you went to identify David’s body. He said you seem to think David is still alive. Do you think that, Nicci?”

I smiled for my uncle. The same fake yet reassuring smile I had given to my father the night before.

“
I’m just tired, Uncle Lance. I know that David is dead and I guess I was just…stressed about everything I have going on in my life.”

Uncle Lance raised his perfectly shaped dark eyebrows at me. “Nice acting job, kid. If the writing gig doesn’t work out, try Hollywood.” He leaned in closer to me. “If you really feel David is still alive then let’s go and find out if it’s true.” He winked at me.

Now there are a few rare moments in life when you have to let your guard down and, for an instant, trust another person. I carefully analyzed my uncle’s tan face and wondered if this was one of those particular moments or, if like most experiences in life, it was a trick to discover my true intentions. I folded my arms across my chest and watched my uncle’s green eyes dance with mischief.

“
What did you have in mind?” I finally questioned, hoping I had found an ally.

Uncle Lance jumped up from his chair, clapping his hands with glee.

“
I’m glad to see you have got some of me in that pigheaded brain of yours. Trust me, Nicci, crazy is my department and not your old man’s.” He thoughtfully rubbed his chin. “Now you think you didn’t bury David in Hammond. Right?”

I raised my eyebrows warily. “So?”

Uncle Lance smiled. “Why don’t you let me do a little digging? Find out if that’s really the case.”

“
How do you propose to do that?”

“
I’ve got connections.”

I glared doubtfully at my uncle. “You’re connections usually do prison time for racketeering,” I commented, referring to my uncle’s notorious underworld friends.

“
Don’t need those kinds of connections to do this type of digging. I called someone this morning to look over the police reports on David’s murder.” He shrugged. “If she finds anything she’ll get back to me.”

“
She?”

“
Did I ever tell you about Beverly?”

I rolled my eyes. “Where did you meet this one?”

“
Oh, I met Beverly at a strip club out by the airport.”

“
She’s a stripper?” I asked, raising my voice in surprise.

Uncle Lance laughed at my reaction. “No. She was waiting tables to make ends meet. Apparently the Tangipahoa Sheriff’s Office doesn’t pay that well. She works in the records department. I called her and asked if she could pull David’s file and see if there is anything we should investigate.” He looked around my room. “Hey, why don’t you come to the French Quarter with me? We can pick up Val’s keys, then grab some lunch, and maybe even do a little window shopping.”

“
I don’t know. Dallas will get back from his run and have a fit if he finds I’m not home.”

He gave me a silly grin. “We’ll leave him a note. Come on, kid.”

My uncle’s smile was contagious and I could not help but laugh when he grabbed my hand and pulled me from the bed.

“
All right, Uncle Lance, you win,” I conceded as I let him drag me out of my bedroom.

***

After a quick stop over at Val’s gray Creole cottage on Dumaine and Royal Streets to pick up the keys she had left for him, Uncle Lance and I decided to walk over to Jackson Square and have lunch at one of the small restaurants that overlooked the iconic New Orleans landmark. As we strolled in the shadows of the overhead balconies, I felt the burden of the last few days ease from my shoulders. The May sunshine warmed my face as we crossed over Chartres Street and walked into the open square. All around us tourists, carrying maps and cameras, were stopping here and there to admire the French and Spanish influenced architecture in the balconies of the Pontalba Apartments, or to study the facade of the Cabildo and Presbytere Museums, or to take in the tall spires of St. Louis Cathedral.

“
So how old is Beverly?” I inquired as we stood outside of Muriel’s Restaurant on the corner of the square and gleaned over their limited post-Katrina menu displayed at the entrance.

Uncle Lance looked over at me and smiled. “Twenty-two. A mature twenty-two, if you know what I mean.”

“
I don’t know if I want to know what you mean. Your taste in women has always left me wondering what dark closet the family pulled your DNA from, Uncle Lance.”

“
Hey, I know I’m nothing like your father.” He rolled his eyes. “Thank God. But not all of the Beauvoirs were as closed minded and boring as my brother.”

“
Or grandfather,” I added, alluding to the infamous founder of Beauvoir Scrap Metal, Lionel Beauvoir, who was known for his business sense and his notorious lack of humor.

“
Yeah, well, I take after my mother’s side.” He waved his hand casually in the air. “Now your grandmother Rita, there was a joker.”

I furrowed my brow at my uncle. “Dad never mentions her. Why is that?”

“
She died when we were both just boys. Billy barely remembers her since he was a baby at the time. But I remember Rita. She used to put live crabs in your grandfather’s toilet bowl when she said he was getting too full of himself.”

“
A live crab?”

Uncle Lance smiled as the memories warmed his eyes. “Used to make our Sunday mornings a little brighter to see my old man come running out of the john with a crab clamped down on his cheeks.”

“
No wonder Grandpa Lionel was always in a bad mood,” I said, half laughing.

Uncle Lance shook his head. “No, kid. The bad moods didn’t come until after Momma died. When she was alive my old man was a hell of a guy. It wasn’t until after Momma passed that Lionel pulled back from your father and me. That’s when he turned all of his attention to the business. He pounded the fear of God into your father to keep the place running after he died.”

“
And what did Grandpa pound into you?”

“
Not a damned thing. Your grandfather and I never saw eye to eye to begin with. He always wanted me to be like him, but I wasn’t. I was like my mother. So he gave up trying to make me into something and that’s when he discovered your father. He spent the last twenty years of his life turning your father into the anal retentive accountant he is.”

“
Dad would disagree with you there, Uncle Lance. He thinks he has been the responsible one by keeping the family business going.”

“
That’s what Lionel Beauvoir taught him to think. Your father, on the other hand, always wanted to be an artist when he was a kid. Wanted to go off and study art at some fancy school until my father shut him down. He had dreams of being the next Monet. Just like your grandmother.”

I gazed in astonishment at my uncle. “Grandma Rita was an artist?”

“
That’s how she and your grandfather met. She was selling her paintings right here at Jackson Square.” He looked about the square beside us. “Lionel saw her here and fell in love with her at first sight.”

“
What happened to her paintings?” I asked as I watched my uncle’s profile.

“
Only one is left,” he stated. “The one of Lionel hanging in your father’s office. My mother painted that just before she died. My father gave away all of the others.” He sighed. “I would have liked to have had some of her paintings to remember her by.” He turned to me and winked. “And you thought you were the only one in the family in love with an artist.”

I reflected for a moment on what my uncle had just told me. I looked around the square and thought of David. “The first time I saw David’s paintings was here. He had been selling them just around the corner in Pirate’s Alley,” I said as I pointed to the front of St. Louis Cathedral. “I had come to the Quarter to do some shopping and stopped to view some paintings I saw displayed in the alley because I was intrigued by the style. Then I ran into David and found out the paintings were his. We had met only a few weeks before at one of the debutante teas given by Myra Chopin. Everyone at the party thought he was just another of Sammy Fallon’s gigolos. And so did I, until I saw his paintings and realized there was much more to him than what I had initially believed.”

Sammy Fallon. I shuddered as I thought about my father’s old business rival. A ruthless woman who viewed people more as chess pieces than as human beings, Sammy had hired David to seduce me and feed my father false investment information. She had hoped to bankrupt my father’s business, but David’s love for me had thwarted her plans.

Uncle Lance laughed. “Yep. You and David started out just like Momma and Lionel. Weird, huh?”

“
I have to admit I’m surprised that no one has ever mentioned this to me before.”

“
Well, I was going to, but I figured there was no point in bringing it up. You were so devastated after David died and then you found Dallas and …” He looked back at the square. “You do realize, Nic, that no matter what we learn you still have one hell of a problem waiting for you when you go back to Connecticut.”

I shook my head “Dallas said he didn’t want me to return to Connecticut until I’m ready to marry him.”

“
Ouch!” He grimaced. “You better figure out how you plan on handling that situation. Because sooner or later you’re gonna have to face the fact that you’re not in love with the boat builder.”

My jaw dropped slightly as I gawked at my uncle “I love him—”

“
But you’re not in love with him,” he injected. “Don’t get me wrong, Nic, I like Dallas. And personally I love the fact that he’s a better cook than half of the chefs in this town. But I see how you two are together, and you’re definitely not in love with him. You’re just using him.”

“
Uncle Lance! Care to be a bit more diplomatic.”

He shrugged. “Why? We all use somebody at some time for something, Nicci. Humans are not known for their selfless acts. It’s in our nature to be selfish. Hell, look at me. I haven’t done a selfless thing since 1979.”

“
And what was that?”

“
I let your mother go. Little did I know she would end up marrying my brother.” His smile wavered for a moment. “But it was still the best thing I ever did.”

“
She would never have made you happy, Uncle Lance. Mom knew that. No woman will ever make you happy.”

He raised his dark eyebrows at me. “What makes you say that?”

“
Because no woman will ever live up to the ideal you carry around in your head. My mother came close, but no mere mortal can compete with your version of Aphrodite.”

He grinned at me. “And what makes me any different from you? Every man you meet you compare to David. I don’t even think David could live up to the persona you’ve created for him.”

I frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”

“
You’ve built David up so much inside of your head that I wonder at times if you are actually remembering the man or the myth you created. All people tend to do that when looking back at someone through the hazy glass of grief, but you seem to have taken it to the next level.”

I felt slightly taken aback by his comment. I had always believed my memories of David had been accurate, but there was something about my uncle’s words that resonated within me. Perhaps I had been putting David on par with the pantheon of Mt. Olympus residents, but I knew what I had embellished had been, hopefully, based on fact.

I shook off my doubts and held my head up to my uncle “At least my myth was a living human being.”

“
Is a living human being, kid,” Uncle Lance corrected as he put his arm about my shoulders. “Now let’s go eat,” he stated, pulling me toward the entrance to Muriel’s Restaurant. “I’ll buy you lunch, mixed with a few cocktails, and we will put the whole thing on the company credit card. Just make sure you tell your father it was a business lunch,” he added with a rascally grin.