Tiger Rag (29 page)

Devon put on her blue dress and walked into Ruby’s bedroom. Still in her nightgown, Ruby was propped up in bed skimming a magazine.

“I just made a reservation for dinner at eight-thirty,” Devon said. “A bistro on Fifty-seventh Street.”

“I’m not really up for it, dear.”

“It’s Christmas Eve. You’ve been in here all day. It will be good for you to be around other people.”

“I feel like I’ve been around hundreds of people lately.”

“No, mostly you’ve been alone, or with me.” Devon patted her arm gently. “Come on, Mom. Get dressed. It’s our last night in New York.”

“I thought you were staying on to research that article.”

“No, I’m not sure where that’s going right now,” Devon said ruefully. “And I want to get back to Miami myself.” She was still off balance from the night before. Once she got her mother
home, she needed to clear out the debris she’d left behind in her own life and try to start working again, sober, focused.

“I hope you’re not just leaving here because of me,” Ruby said.

“No. Some things have come up. We can talk about it another time.” She opened the closet door. “Now, how about this white woolen dress?”

“You win,” Ruby said, getting out of bed. “Give me the dress. And I promise not to order steak.”

Devon smiled. “You’re getting your sense of humor back.”

“Is that what you call it?”

Devon’s phone beeped. “Text message,” she murmured, flipping the phone open. “Jesus.”

“What is it?”

Devon tried to gather her thoughts. “Joan Neptune’s coming here.”

“What—now?”

“Soon.”

“How did that happen, Devon?”

“I was going to tell you—I visited her last night.”

“I don’t understand. You invited her here?”

“No.”

“Then why is she coming?”

“Just get dressed, Mom, and I’ll try to fill you in.”

Devon answered the doorbell, and Joan Neptune, wearing a green suede coat and green dress, greeted her with an apology. “I’m sorry for last night. Please forgive me. I didn’t know who you were.”

“I told you who I was. Come in.”

She was carrying a large leather handbag. She seemed giddy, which puzzled Devon even more. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

“It’s certainly a surprise. Let me take your coat.”

“This is a beautiful place,” she said, looking around the suite.

“My mother wanted to treat herself,” Devon explained.

“Special occasion?”

“You could say that.”

“Is your mother here now?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to meet her, if that’s all right.”

“May I ask why?” Devon said. “And why you’re here?”

“Because I need to speak with both of you.”

“What about?” Devon said warily.

“Trust me, please. I’ll explain everything.”

“All right. This way, then,” Devon said, leading her down the hall.

When Joan Neptune entered the sitting room and saw Ruby, her smile widened.

Ruby rose from the sofa and shook her head in bewilderment.

“Hello, Ruby,” Joan Neptune said, walking over and taking her hands. “I always knew this day would come.”

It was Marielle.

For a while, Ruby just stared at her. She couldn’t help it. Hazy to begin with, she could barely absorb what was happening. Devon also had trouble grasping that this was her mother’s aunt Marielle who had disappeared without a trace.

Sitting side by side with Marielle on the sofa, Ruby burst into tears. “I can’t believe it’s really you,” she said.

Devon wondered whether Ruby could deal with another jolt, good or bad, just as she was regaining her equilibrium. She went over and put her arm around her mother.

Ruby called room service and ordered a pot of hibiscus tea, along with sugar and fresh limes. Devon had grown accustomed to her eccentricities. But Marielle looked pleased. “You remember,” she said softly.

When the tea arrived, it was Marielle who served it, adding a teaspoon of sugar and a squeeze of lime to each cup, just as she had in New Orleans three decades earlier. When Ruby looked at Marielle’s clear eyes and still flawless hands, her memories flooded back. Marielle’s mud baths in the clawfoot tub, and the greenhouse herbs with which she washed her hair. Her freesia perfume. The panther brooch with the diamond eyes she was wearing now, that matched her earrings: black triangles speckled with diamond chips.

“Onyx,” Ruby said.

“Yes.”

Ruby shook her head. “But how?”

“You mean, how did I get here?” Marielle said. “I barely know where to start. I’m an old lady now, Ruby. And you must be …”

“Forty-eight.”

“Forty-eight. With a beautiful daughter.” Marielle turned to Devon. “Your mother is my second cousin once removed, which makes us second cousins twice removed.”

“You realized it last night when I told you my grandmother’s name.”

“Yes. And I regret our misunderstanding. What matters is that we’re all here now.”

“Have you been in New York long?” Ruby said.

“Ever since you last saw me. A long time. I was married to a musician named Sammy LeMond. Our years together were the best of my life. Then he was taken from me.”

Ruby covered her mouth. “Oh no.” She hadn’t gotten far enough past her initial shock at seeing Marielle to take in the fact that, if she was Joan Neptune, she was also the wife of the man her father had sent to his grave.

“Then you know,” Marielle said.

“Just yesterday I learned what happened. It was bad enough then, but now it’s a nightmare. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. How could you have known?”

Ruby shook her head. “I couldn’t. I never knew my father.”

“But I know you. I never stopped thinking about you, Ruby.”

“I wanted so badly to find you, Marielle, but I didn’t know where to start.”

“You never could have found me. I became Joan Neptune. No one knew. Not even my husband.” She took Ruby’s hand. “No one has called me Marielle since the day I left New Orleans. Until tonight. You see, Devon, I once knew a girl named Ruby Broussard, the daughter of Valentine Owen and my cousin, Camille Broussard. I searched for Ruby Broussard. And Ruby Owen. But until you said it, I had never heard the name Cardillo.”

“It was my grandmother’s name,” Ruby said. “After New Orleans, I went to live with her in Miami. I took her name. Legally I could have been Ruby Owen. He was on my birth
certificate. But that’s the only place he was. Broussard? I hardly ever saw my mother again until this year.”

“Devon told me she passed away. I’m sorry. I lost contact with her long ago.”

Devon understood why Marielle had had such a powerful effect on her mother in her youth. Her strength was readily apparent, in her face, her voice, her gestures. She had a primal quality, a sense that youthful transitions were still occurring—or at least possible—long after she had passed middle age. She had a chameleon-like quality, in which disparate traces of the many lives she had once described to Ruby flickered in and out of sight. It was as if one of those African masks on her wall had come to life.

“Devon’s a musician herself,” Ruby said.

“I know she is. And all you know about the Bolden cylinder, Devon, is what Emmett Browne told you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sure Mr. Browne shared an interesting version of the story. Let me tell you another version, which happens to be the truth. It begins on my last night in New Orleans, the last time we saw each other, Ruby. You must have been told that I was called to the phone at Ciro’s, went out to the parking lot, and disappeared. That phone call didn’t just change my life: it made me invent a whole new one. A man on the phone told me I had five minutes to leave the restaurant and thirty minutes to get out of town. He ordered me to stay away from the airport and the train station—to just drive.
Don’t go home
, he said.
Don’t call home. Don’t talk to anybody. And don’t come back here, ever, if you know what’s good for you
. Driving east, into Mississippi, across Alabama, I felt sick knowing how worried you and Theodora must have been. Honey, I never stopped thinking
about you. But I knew that man was speaking the truth, and I did what he said.”

“Who was he?” Ruby said.

“I don’t know. I didn’t recognize his voice. Maybe he was disguising it, maybe not. Didn’t matter. He was threatening me, but there was fear in his voice, too. That’s what really shook me up: I knew he wasn’t lying. He might have been as scared as I was. We both knew what Chief Beaumont could do, to friends and enemies alike.”

“But what had you done?” Ruby said.

“Done? It’s what I knew, Ruby. It wouldn’t mean much today, but back then it might have sent some important people to jail, including the chief. There was a contract put out. I never found out any more than that. I wasn’t even sure what it was I knew that had suddenly turned toxic. I’d seen and heard plenty when I was with Beaumont’s brother.”

“And none of your connections could help you?”

“There was no one in that town who could check Beaumont. I had no choice but to run. I drove ten hours straight. Caught a few hours’ sleep in a motel outside Atlanta. Then headed north. I checked in to a hotel in East New York where a black woman alone wouldn’t catch notice. Had no luggage, so I bought a suitcase. Some clothes. It was when I signed the register that the name came to me. Joan Neptune.”

“I hope you don’t mind my asking,” Devon said, “but weren’t you afraid such an unusual name would arouse suspicion?”

“Names like Wilson or Jones—
they
sound suspicious. But who in her right mind picks an alias like Joan Neptune if she’s laying low? It grew on me. Neptune was always my planet: the water planet. I waited a week, then rented an apartment. I
needed work.” She turned to Ruby. “I couldn’t exactly do what I did in New Orleans. Not much market for that up here. But I knew I could draw on what gifts I possessed. So I set up as a psychic, taking on clients. I made a reputation for myself, and one day the police called on me to help them. I lived alone, kept to myself. Then one night I went to a club and met this man. And everything changed again. We traveled. He had tired of it when he was young, touring all the time, but I got him to go to Amsterdam with me, and Stockholm, and Venice. Cities with canals, cities built on water, like New Orleans. So that sometimes we both felt as if we’d gone home while being as far away from home as possible. He loved that. He loved the light that came off the water, and the smell of the canals, that mix of salt and fresh. He loved to wander, find a neighborhood we didn’t know, a park, a restaurant. We would sit for hours listening to music. I almost had a child—can you believe it? I was forty-four, and he was fifty-six. But it didn’t work. Nearly killed me. We decided then that we had each other and that’s all we needed. His music, the club, our home. I had given up my practice. He had a sweetness about him. A soft spot for musicians who were down and out. He was a strong man, but he could be naïve, believing in people. I didn’t believe in anyone except him, and I tried to watch out for him. And, for all my supposed know-how, I let him down when he most needed me. I warned him, but it wasn’t enough. I never should have left his side. I remembered Valentine Owen. I knew how he had treated your mother and you. I knew he had done worse things, in New Orleans.” She sat back. “You saw my home, Devon. Most of the furnishings were Sammy’s originally. The paintings, the sculpture. There are a lot of things you could steal there. All kinds of people visited us: gangsters, grifters, tough guys. But
only once did someone steal, and it was Valentine Owen. I’m sorry to be telling you this, Ruby.”

“I want you to tell me.”

“We all know people don’t just steal money,” Marielle said. “They can go after your confidence, your happiness, even your luck. Your father stole something valuable, all right, but much of the artwork was worth more than Bolden’s cylinder. He stole the thing Sammy treasured most. A part of his musical soul. A link to all the trumpeters who preceded him, back to Bolden, and all the cylinder’s caretakers. If Owen had stolen anything else, Sammy would have been angry, but it wouldn’t have cut so deep. He was having trouble with his heart, and I know this was what did him in. As for Browne, his role isn’t as innocent as he suggests. He conveniently changed one part of the story: Valentine Owen went to him
before
he stole the cylinder, not afterward. Instead of turning him away, or warning Sammy, Browne encouraged him to steal it. Later he told me he had no idea Owen had stolen the cylinder, but that’s a lie. They plotted it together. He agreed to pay Owen a huge amount and then cover his tracks for him. He advanced him a chunk of cash. But once he had stolen the cylinder, Owen tried to shake Browne down, doubling his price. I was surprised a man like Browne didn’t see that coming. Then Owen took off with Browne’s money
and
the cylinder. Browne sent a man named Nate Kane after him.”