Bayou Bloodline: A Shadow Bayou Mystery

By Suzanna Myatt Harvill

Rachelle Toussaint’s world is turned upside down when her twin brother, Michie, dies from a fall from a balcony, forcing her to return home to New Orleans and take control of the family’s cruise line. Rachelle does not believe her brother’s death was an accident or a suicide. She believes he was murdered…and the prime suspects reside under the roof of the family’s opulent, historic mansion…Rachelle’s vicious stepmother and two stepsisters.
The spice in the gumbo is the pregnant stepsister Amanda’s engagement to Charles-Michel Toussaint. However, in accordance with the family will, the child she carries cannot inherit the family fortune.
The fortune can be inherited only through the legitimate bloodline…in this case, Rachelle.
Michie had physical and mental problems resulting from the time he spent in the Army as a captive in the Middle East, and Rachelle wonders if Amanda’s child actually belonged to Michie.
Handsome and charming Lieutenant Marcus Laborde is in charge of the investigation and is captivated by the beautiful Rachelle. His efforts to discover how Michie died are sidetracked by a series of slaughters of young prostitutes, victims of a slaver network.
Headstrong Rachelle finds the police procedures too slow. Forensics proves Michie was under the influence of exotic drugs when he died. Rachelle learns the drugs may have come from the Shadow Bayou Voodoo traiteur Mirabelle Lebeau.
Rachelle forms an unlikely alliance with Mirabelle to solve the mystery of her brother’s death and suspects her cruise line is being as a pipeline for the slavers to move women about the country.
Rachelle fears family members may be involved with the slavers, and her snooping puts her own life in danger.
As Rachelle wades deeper into the family swamp, long dead secrets emerge, and she discovers the people she trusted are capable of heinous crimes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781663213037

Suzanna Myatt Harvill

Suzanna Myatt Harvill is an author of suspense stories with a Southern flair and attitude. Writer’s Digest award winner. She is the author of the Shadow Bayou series and the comic mystery No Place Like Home

Book preview

PROLOGUE

AIN’T NOBODY CAN party like N’Awlins people, the beautiful blonde giggled, being careful not to spill her geaux…pronounced go…cup of a rum concoction, as she navigated a wobbly passage along the broken St. Charles Avenue sidewalk. I still don’t believe y’all are scared to go into St. Louis Number One at night. She leaned on the corner lamppost and fumbled her phone out of the pocket of her fashionably ripped jeans. Sticking her tongue out, she held her phone at arm’s length and took a selfie, then turned and took a picture of her two best galpals.

Would you shut up about that, Tiffany, her chic, sleek, dark-haired friend slurred. Two women have been killed in that damn cemetery in the last two weeks. Their bodies hung up on stone angels on a couple of those tombs…blood and guts splattered everywhere. No way am I frogging my fine ass in there and risk getting splayed out like a dead cat.

Tiff, Jayne, shut up, both o’ y’all, the third reveler shushed. It’s nearly three in the a.m. All the houses along here are dark. People are trying to sleep. Gerry Washburn was chunkier than her companions, with curly brown hair and freckles. Like her two buddies, she grasped a geaux cup of liquor and was just as inebriated as her friends. Still, she didn’t want to wake the occupants of the houses, seeing as how she lived just around the corner, and her daddy would give her hell for acting like white trash.

Lights from antique lampposts cast illuminated circles on the sidewalk in New Orleans’s Garden District, dispelling the wisps of fog drifting low to the ground. Faint strains of tinny music and a muted thumping base quivered on the air from a club four blocks away…their last watering hole of the evening.

The young lady was right. This was a quiet residential section of the city…a very expensive, high-class neighborhood of sprawling, multistoried mansions, in every style from Italian Renaissance to Greek Revival to Victorian, the bastion of the old New Orleans moneyed elite.

Hours earlier, the girls had taken the St. Charles Streetcar to Canal Street, at the edge of the French Quarter, to start their monthly ritual girls’ night out. Now they were on foot, pub-crawling their way through the labyrinthine streets. Just three friends heading for a sleepover at Gerry’s house.

Shit. I am sooo wasted. Jayne Larue tottered on her six-inch, ankle-high, lace-up, Jimmy Choo sandals. She gripped an overhanging tree branch to keep from toppling.

Woo woo. Tiffany threw back her head. "I feel like howling at the moon like a loup garou." She curved her beringed, long-nailed fingers like a bayou werewolf.

Hush up, Gerry hissed.

The trio of college girls paused in front of an enormous white stucco pile, three stories high, sporting Juliet balconies on the second and third floors, covered by red umbrella awnings, their color matching the barrel-tiled roof. Dimly lighted lamps on wrought iron posts along the curving drive and on the front of the house bathed the scene in a yellow glow, the ambiance harkening to a bygone century. The palatial home stood out in sharp relief to the tall, Spanish moss-draped, ancient oaks surrounding it. Little puffs of a damp breeze broke the night’s stillness, a forewarning of a rainstorm. Light from a sliver of moon limned the building and the statues dotting the lush grounds.

Keep it down, Tiff. Your mouth’s gonna get our asses arrested, the brunette girl agreed with her pudgy friend. Mah daddy’ll have a shit fit it that happens.

What a pair of pussies, Tiffany grumbled, stumbling on a tree root poking through the sidewalk. We need to wake up these old farts. The blonde tossed her hair. A good ol’ rebel yell oughta do it.

Oh, my God! Jayne gasped. She grabbed Tiffany’s arm and pointed toward the house.

The French windows leading to a third-story balcony flew open, and a naked figure staggered to the railing. Curtains flapped outward, blown by the mansion’s air-conditioning, partially obscuring the body from the view of the three young women.

It’s a man. Jaybird-ass-nekkid, to boot. Gerry gawked. What’s he doing climbing on that railing?

Is there somebody behind him, or is it the curtain I’m seeing? Jayne’s eyes were glued to the scene rapidly unfolding in the darkness.

I don’t know. Tiffany had her phone at the ready, recording the bizarre tableau of a tall, nude man climbing onto the railing, then standing there, poised with one foot on the bannister and the other still on the floor, his arms out to his sides as though he were contemplating flying. His blond hair was riffled by the breeze.

"Posing like Leonardo di Caprio in Titanic, Gerry whispered, eyes wide. King of the world."

The man turned his head, looking over his shoulder.

What’s he looking at behind him? Jayne murmured. Is there somebody there? Suppose somebody’s chasing him?

Gerry squinted and moved closer to the fence. I can’t see…it’s too far.

Let me zoom in, Tiffany said, holding her phone in front of her face. He looks scared fartless, she whispered, then adjusted the camera back so she could continue recording the entire scene.

Should we yell at him…let him know we see him? Jayne rushed to the fence and grasped the uprights with both hands. Look. What’s he doing?

The man stepped back down, turned toward the house.

Shhh, Gerry hissed, leaning forward, poking her face between the fence bars.

The naked figure took a step, waving an arm outward, toward the open doorway.

He’s going back inside. Gerry straightened up. Show’s over.

Jayne relaxed her grip on the wrought iron. Yeah. I thought maybe…

A gust of wind twisted the curtains toward the man, enveloping him. He fought the curtains, pulling them away from his body.

Wait…wait…what…? Tiffany held the camera steady, still recording.

Oh, jeez. Gerry put a hand to her mouth.

The naked man stumbled backward toward the railing, flailing at the billowing draperies. He was tangled in the gauzy curtains, as the backs of his upper legs made contact with the wrought-iron balustrade. His back bent over the railing.

Jayne gasped. He’s gonna…

The man rocked and pitched forward, fumbled only a step or two back toward the house. He jerked like a marionette whose strings were being tugged. He spiraled around, then pitched forward toward the rail again, arms extended, the curtains flapping at him like the wings of a giant bird of prey.

The three friends watched in horror as the man lurched, stumbling, head extended, as his midsection hit and folded over the bannister. He teetered…then tumbled headfirst from the balcony.

All three girls jumped in unison at the Whomp of his body striking the ground below.

Jesus. Did he jump? Gerry whispered through the fingers covering her mouth.

The ghostly white curtains fluttered from the open French doors in the light breeze, the balcony empty.

I don’t know. Tiffany’s voice came out in a squeak.

A keening wail trembled on the humid night air, coming from the direction of the house.

What was that? Gerry wrapped her hand around Jayne’s arm, digging with her nails.

Shit if I know. Is there someone else up there? Jayne stared fixedly at the house. Did somebody push him?

I don’t know, Tiffany repeated and gulped. It’s all here on my phone.

Should we call the police? Jayne whispered.

I don’t…what should we…? Tiffany’s eyes mirrored her confusion.

Let’s get our asses out of here. Gerry tossed her unfinished drink cup into the gutter. We don’t need our daddies on our cases for getting involved in some kind of weird shit.

1

A FLIGHT ATTENDANT held a large black umbrella over me, his steps paralleling mine, as I hurried down the stairs from the Toussaint Shipping corporate jet to the tarmac. The runway of the New Orleans Lakefront Airport looked like an overflow from Lake Pontchartrain, which surrounded the peninsula where the small, executive airport was located. Water poured like a giant sink overflowing from Heaven.

I flinched as a fork of lightning streaked across the sky. The following rumble of thunder shook the ground.

The tropical storm had lowered the early fall temperatures, and I shivered as I hurried to the waiting car. The rain carried the familiar fishy, tropical swamp rot, and woodsmoke odor, unique to the Big Easy.

The smell of home.

A familiar figure wearing my family’s livery of black pants topped with a dark red jacket that bore the family crest stood under another black umbrella. He held the door open to a burgundy Rolls Royce Phantom. His dark face was somber, but a sad smile split his face as the attendant handed me off to him.

I put my arms around the big man, and he embraced me with the arm not holding the umbrella. I felt as much as heard the deep rumble of his voice when I placed my cheek against his chest and inhaled the clean, fresh scent of Old Spice.

Miz Rachelle, chile, we all be so glad you come home, even though the circumstances be bad. He held me close and patted my back, as he had done so many times when I was growing up and had run to him for consolation when I was upset…when a kitten had died or when Daddy had criticized me for some imperfection in my character or in my actions.

Fred Tolliver was like one of the big, solid oak trees that grew on the Toussaint estate. He had been a surrogate father to me, always close by, always dependable and loving, dispensing advice and scolding me when I needed upbraiding.

Oh, Fred, I’m just so, so…I don’t know what. Michie’s dead, and I’m just…oh…I’m just so glad you’re here to meet me. My throat felt tight. I pulled back and held onto to each of his massive arms with my hands.

I’ll always be here, chile. He bobbed his graying head at me, giving me a reassuring smile. Right here ‘til they plant me in the fam’ly plot.

My lips quivered when I tried to return his smile. Fred’s family had worked for my family for generations, and there were indeed many black Tollivers interred in large tombs alongside my white Toussaint ancestors in the family cemetery on our estate. I’m back home for good. I fought down the urge to cry, so silly, so futile…and so unlike me. I took a deep breath and climbed into the back seat, where I tossed my purse onto the seat and slipped off my soggy sandals. I never expected to return to New Orleans permanently, but Fate often sends us the unexpected…some good, some bad. I could only pray that some good would from come something as horrible as my brother’s untimely death.

I know I speak fo’ all the staff when I say we sho’ is happy, us, to have you back home where you belong. Miz Rachelle, you a welcome site fo’ sho’. He closed the car door and hurried around to his seat behind the steering wheel.

In spite of our closeness, Fred had called me Miz Rachelle from the time I was a toddler.

Members of my private jet’s crew hustled to get my bags from the plane and stash them in the car.

I opened the compartment on the back of the front seat and retrieved a handful of napkins from the portable bar, so I could dry my feet and my sandals. How are things at the house? I tucked the used napkins into the trash receptacle, closed the compartment, and snapped my seatbelt.

Losin’ M’sieu Michie this way has upset the whole household, but we copin’. Havin’ you back with us is a godsend. Fred turned to speak to me. What happened to Michie was just plain awful.

I know. And we still don’t know for sure what really took place. My heart sat like a ball of ice in my chest.

The po-lice ain’t told you nothin’ yet?

The police don’t seem to know much of anything at this point. I spoke with the detective investigating the case while I was flying in from Virginia. They don’t know if Michie jumped or fell…or…

Was pushed? He finished for me.

"Mais ye. Or was pushed…and if so, by whom." My urge to cry had passed, and now I felt anger welling inside me, as Fred voiced my concerns.

We got us a covey of suspects nested up at our house, that’s the Lord’s own truth, yes.

I know that’s right, and I can’t get my stepmother and her sorry offspring out of our home fast enough. Vonda Meacham, my father’s second wife, brought two daughters to their marriage. Morgan was a year older than I, and Amanda was two years younger. The three horrid creatures had continued to live in our house, enjoying the luxurious amenities since my father’s death a little over a year ago.

One of the attendants rapped on the window, gave Fred a thumbs up, and waved to me to let us know the luggage was inside the trunk.

You travel with mo’ bags than Queen Elizabeth. Fred chuckled and put the car in gear.

Everything else is being packed by my realtor in Arlington and should arrive in a few days. She’s taking care of selling my car, too, in addition to my condo. I settled into the soft leather seat. Here I was back in New Orleans, home for good. Had my brother’s life not ended, I would have been here attending his wedding in two weeks; instead, I would be arranging his funeral. I also would be assuming the helm of the family shipping business, which included a cruise ship line that ferried passengers up and down the Mississippi on authentic paddle wheelers. This was a position I never expected to have foisted on me. My brother had been the heir to the business, not me. Oh, Michie, I whispered.

The fact of my brother’s death still hadn’t settled on me. I felt like I was in the middle of a bad dream and would wake up and find everything normal. Whatever had gone so crazy in Michie’s charmed, privileged life? Everything seemed to have gone wrong when he opted out of going to college and chose to join the military. Our father had been furious. He had personally groomed his son to take over the business, not to become an Army gypsy, as he called Michie.

My brother, Charles-Michel Toussaint, served honorably in Afghanistan but came home a broken man. He confided his physical problem to me shortly before Daddy died, but his mental anguish went beyond his physical disability.

Most of the time, he seemed normal, but he had sporadic periods of increasingly odd behavior. Estelle Rankin, our housekeeper, had been keeping me apprised of his condition with weekly phone calls. He would go for days without bathing, would jabber meaningless words and phrases. One day he drove himself to the office in his undershorts and a dinner jacket. Another time, he found a trunk full of women’s evening gowns in the attic, relics from the early twentieth century, and tried to wear them out in public. He let his hair grow long, dyed the blond locks fuchsia and had a perm. Then he shaved his head and all his body hair, even his eyebrows. For days he would eat nothing but Spaghetti-O’s. Within hours of some of these episodes, his actions would swing from weird to perfectly normal. His bizarre behavior was written off as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder…a good catchall for emotional problems suffered by soldiers who’d seen too much of the horrors of war.

How many people had he told about the torture inflicted on him while he’d been imprisoned? Not many I would guess. The results of his torment were not something a man would want to share. But I was his sister, his twin…Rachelle Micheline Toussaint.

Ruby and Estelle, they all atwitter at you comin’ home. Cookin’ and cleanin’. You know how they are.

I can hardly wait to see them and all the others. I’ve missed y’all.

Fred turned right, leaving the airport, and we’d barely crossed the drawbridge, when the cacophony of sirens interrupted our conversation. An ambulance, followed by a firetruck, screamed past our car. Flashing lights of police cars strobed through the rain a couple blocks ahead. Traffic was piling up.

I’m gon’ get off here, take the back streets and get outta this mess, Fred told me. Some folks drive like bats outta hades in the rain. Got no sense. He pulled off the highway onto Press Drive. The traffic was light on the double lane street.

My driver was a native of New Orleans and knew the streets of the town as well as the lines on his face.

The rain increased, and the big Rolls left a wake as we passed the Southern University of New Orleans and plowed through a middle class neighborhood of decently kept homes. After a few blocks, Fred took I-10 across the city.

This rain gettin’ to be a booger. Gon’ be like a hothouse once it passes.

Can you believe I actually missed our crappy weather all the time I was in Virginia?

It’s home, even with the heat, the rain, and the bugs. Fred chuckled. I sho’ didn’t like it when yo’ daddy packed you off to that fancy girls’ school near ‘bout up north in Virginia.

I wasn’t crazy about it either, but I couldn’t stand being around Vonda and those bitchy daughters she brought with her when she married Daddy.

He snorted. Yo’ mama wasn’t hardly cold in her grave her, no. He crossed himself. Just wasn’t fittin’ to my way of thinkin’.

I know. Mama had been dead less than a year. We’d had this conversation before…several times. The entire staff had been shocked when my daddy married Vonda Meacham only a few months after Mama died, ignoring the traditional Southern requisite for one year’s mourning.

You was what…fifteen when you left?

Almost, and I can count the times on my fingers and toes that I’ve returned to N’Awlins since then, but I never stopped loving this place.

Instead of returning home and attending Our Lady of Holy Cross College, taking useless courses until I found a local boy to marry me, I had stayed in Virginia and gone to college there, attending summer school to graduate early and visiting with my college friends over school holidays. Then I took a job for a slick lifestyle magazine. My BA in English and my MBA had allowed me to work my way up the ladder quicker than most. You have no idea how much I treasured the cards and letters you and other members of the staff sent me over the years. I chuckled. Especially the boxes of homemade goodies Ruby concocted in the kitchen.

We all missed you. You our little princess.

I missed all o’ y’all, too, but I didn’t want to have any truck with those Meacham women. I know how Cinderella felt with her stepmother and stepsisters, even if I didn’t have to scrub floors. I heaved a sigh. I’m back home now…that’s what matters…and Vonda and her brood be damned.

He grumbled and shook his graying head. Them women, they ain’t never treated you right, no. And you fam’ly. You the bloodline.

The dashboard phone chirped, and Fred answered it. I know what you callin’ fo’.We’ll be there tereckly. Cap’n Sondergaard brought Miz Rachelle in safe and sound, despite this little rainstorm.

Lightning struck only yards from the car, and the rumble of thunder shook the heavy vehicle.

I scrunched against the seat. I would have to get used to Louisiana’s storms all over again.

We’ll all be waitin’ in foyer, us, his wife, Ruby, our cook, said. Jus’ you be careful on these wet streets. You bringin’ us a precious package.

I smiled at the sound of her familiar voice…Ruby, the worry wart.

It ain’t like I’m drivin’ through Katrina, no, Fred assured her. Jus’ a little tropical blowup.

I tuned them out and returned my thoughts to my brother and the wedding he had been planning, the announcement of which had shocked me thoroughly, though not nearly so much as the notification of his death. The identity of his chosen bride-to-be stunned and baffled me even further. I knew the woman…all too well. I tried to talk him out of it, but he was adamant. He…and his bride…could make it work. I’d not been so sure. His mental state concerned me as much as his physical condition.

Now Charles-Michel was gone, jumped to his death from a third story balcony of our family home…or so I was told by the New Orleans police the day Michie died.

In this morning’s phone conversation, the NOPD detective, Marcus Laborde, implied there might be more to Michie’s death than a simple suicide…if there is such a thing. For a moment, my brain switched to remembering the sound of the police detective’s velvety, seductive voice. Fine time to be fantasizing about a man I’d never seen. On the phone, he’d sounded exactly like Sean Connery, except his accent was not Scottish; it was purely a Southern gentleman’s drawl. He’d said he needed to meet with me soon. I wondered if he’d look as good as he’d sounded. I stifled a chuckle. He probably stands about titty-high on me and is bald as a boiled egg.

The memory of his words sent a frisson of trepidation through me. He wouldn’t discuss the case with me in any detail on the phone. But he did tell me that, until the police could determine the certainty of suicide, Michie’s death was being treated as suspicious. The M word had not been used, but the lieutenant hinted at it.

Murder.

Who would want to kill my poor broken brother?

A sudden chill gripped me, and I ran my hands up and down my bare arms. I needed to talk to the family lawyer, Claude Landrieu, and soon. I could always trust Claude.

Michie’s death left me the sole heir to our family’s riverboat cruise business, the shipping business, and all our other investments, as well as the luxurious Garden District estate, currently occupied by my stepmother and her two daughters.

My father’s widow could not inherit any of the Toussaint properties or business interests, but Daddy had been more than generous with her and my stepsisters in his will. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t move out and into a home of their own. No doubt they enjoyed the prestige of living in a historic mansion, with a staff of servants at their disposal. Three unmarried women given the run of a fabulous estate, rent-free, and the operating expenses, including the salaries of the servants, were paid out of the family coffers.

A windfall most anybody would take advantage of.

That situation was about to be terminated. I nodded to myself, my mirthless chuckle drowned out by another roll of thunder.

With no marketable job skills, the Meacham women had better start looking for husbands for themselves.

I couldn’t fault the sisters for not being married. Here I was, almost thirty years old and still single…with no prospects…but I was educated and capable of earning my way. I pulled my mouth into a narrow slit.

Amanda. The younger stepsister had found herself a mate. She had been my late brother’s fiancée.

I silently harrumphed. My brother’s death quashed whatever plans Amanda had to become lady of the historic Toussaint House, as it’s called in the tour brochures. Another lightning flash and the thunder that followed brought me back to the here and now.

What y’all servin’ fo’ dinner tonight? Fred asked.

It’s gon’ be a surprise just fo’ Miz Rachelle, Ruby told him. Oughta be feedin’ you plain lettuce. You gettin’ a rump on you like a fo’ty-dollah mule.

Aw…now, woman.

I smiled as the two teased each other. In my mind, neither had changed a bit since I was a little girl, though they were both in their sixties.

This rain’s gettin’ worse, he said to his wife. I need to be drivin’, not jawin’. He rang off.

While he concentrated on his driving, I nattered over the situation I had inherited.

I was the last remnant of the tattered Toussaint line. There were some cousins, but I was the only direct heir. The Garden District estate had been in the family for almost three centuries. The original royal land grant provided that the place could not be sold and could be passed down only through the Toussaint bloodline, not through relations by marriage. A Nineteenth Century amendment to the ancient document, made the same provisions for the family-controlled businesses.

A smile tickled my lips at the wording of the old property grant, which emphasized the heir had to be a legitimate offspring. Given the former French custom of placage, or the practice of a young man acquiring the services of a mixed race jeune fille to take care of his sexual needs until he married…and often long afterward…the original executors wanted to make certain the family property was passed only to legitimate children. I knew enough about my hometown’s scandalous past to know this had been a valid concern, and I supposed the Toussaint men had been no randier than the other wealthy young Frenchmen. I suspected all sorts and colors of woods colts abided in my Creole family’s secret stable.

Until now, there had always been a male heir to run the company. I would be the first female CEO and President of Toussaint Shipping.

While I was packed off to a fancy girls’ boarding school in Virginia. Michie stayed behind; after all, he was the heir apparent and was coddled and treated as such.

Not only was I my father’s only daughter, I was only a daughter.

What you reckon them Meacham women gon’ do when you put ‘em out? Fred interrupted my musings.

Their problems don’t worry me in the least, I told him. I learned to work and support myself.

I’m right proud o’ you. You a pistol. That’s fo’ sho’. He barked a laugh and turned off the interstate onto Claiborne, its wide median decorated with tall trees, giving the long street a park-like ambience…except the boulevard was lined with strip malls, auto parts stores, not a pretty part of a city that has been described as the most beautiful in the country. Them Meacham women can’t find they behinds with both hands and a roadmap, them. And now you officially the head of the Toussaint fam’ly, and you gon’ run that shippin’ business jus’ fine, you.

The rain let up a bit, but was still pouring, as we reached the intersection with Napoleon Avenue, where Fred turned left and headed toward the Garden District. Another wide, grassy median separated the traffic lanes. Large, ancient oaks lined both sides of the street. He slowed and allowed three partiers, geaux cups in hand, to slog across the street in front of us.

I don’t have much choice, except to run the business, do I? I commented on his remark. Unless I want to let Henri-Paul take care of things. He’s been doing a fine job, and I don’t know what Michie would’ve done without him after Daddy died.

I know that’s right, but yo’ cousin, M’sieu Henri-Paul, he ain’t a Toussaint, even if he is yo’ mama’s sister’s boy.

No, I agreed. And he was born on the wrong side of the blanket, to boot. Tante Delphy never did tell anybody who his daddy was.

Might not’ve known fo’ sho’. Fred snorted. That girl…umm…not like yo’ mama, no.

"Mais ye. There is that. My mother’s twin, my Aunt Delphine Dupree Moreau was what one might call a good time girl" in her youth. Mama told me her twin sister announced her pregnancy shortly before my parents’ marriage, bemoaning the fact that her bridesmaid’s dress would have to be let out to accommodate her growing belly. At that time, and to this day, she has never revealed the identity of her son’s father. She named him Henri-Paul after her own daddy, my Grandpere Dupree. About four years later, she married Germaine Moreau, who gave the boy his name and sired three more children with my aunt.

For the first few years of Henri-Paul’s life, my daddy had been a surrogate father to him. Then Michie and I arrived. We had always regarded our cousin as an older brother, and my father treated him much the same way. To be fair, Henri-Paul had a much better head for business than Michie and was a far more responsible sort of person, so I could understand Daddy showing him so much favoritism.

Right now, I was glad my cousin would have my back while I assumed the helm of Toussaint Shipping. Henri-Paul is doing a good job, but I have some changes I want to make at the company. I’ll have to tackle some problems there, in addition to getting those Meacham creatures out of my house. I’m afraid there’s going to be a bunch of noses out of joint at both Toussaint House and at Toussaint Shipping.

Gon’ be a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on. Fred’s laughter rumbled in sync with another drumroll of thunder.

2

FRED NAVIGATED THE Rolls through gates that opened automatically and followed the curving driveway to Toussaint House. The rain drummed steadily on the roof of the vehicle. Another fork of lightning speared the magnolia trees lining the drive. As we neared the house, the thunder sounded more ominous than usual.

A deluge of Biblical proportions greeted my homecoming, while a storm of a different sort roiled inside me.

Our house sits on a nice chunk of acreage facing St. Charles Avenue, the entire estate enclosed by a six-foot, spiked, wrought-iron fence. The house is white, three stories, a red barrel-tiled roof, with Juliet balconies on the second and third floors, from which we watched the Mardi Gras parades. I’d always loved this place, my ancestral home, but had been forced to leave it. A fresh knot of anger formed in my stomach.

I was cried out over my brother’s death, the shock replaced by the determination to find out what had really happened to him. I didn’t believe he took his own life. He had problems, but he’d never indicated that he might be suicidal. He’d tried to take an active part in running the shipping line and had kept me on board with the doings of the business, so I was not a stranger to the functions of our family enterprise.

Michie had depended on guidance from our cousin, Henri-Paul Moreau, and I would have to do the same until I had a firm grasp of the company’s workings. I was glad to know I would have his support. As for the other members of the company team, I barely knew most of them.

The executive officers and staff of Toussaint Shipping had been fiercely loyal to my father. I wondered if