The gator, having had its treats and presumably not considering the two scaredy-cats in the car to be tasty, went for a swim. The danger gone for the moment, Aaron and Daniel got out of the car.
The old guy returned and extended a hand. “I’m Jackson Dufrene, Tante Lulu’s neighbor. Kin I help you fellas?”
They introduced themselves and shook the man’s hand.
“Well, Tante Lulu’s off ta the weddin’, of course. She’s been gone since dawn, had ta have a finger in all the doin’s, lak always. Over ta the bride’s house, first off, no doubt, then over ta Our Lady of the Bayou Church fer the services. The reception’s bein’ held up yonder at the Terrebonne Country Club. Ya kin find her there, guar-an-teed. Guardin’ the Peachy Praline Cobbler Cake she made special fer the weddin’. Five tiers!”
Way too much information! “Oh, we wouldn’t intrude on a private event like that,” Daniel said. “We’ll just go back to our hotel and—”
“Pooh! They’s prob’ly five hundred people gonna be there. Folks comin’ ta see that rascal Tee-John get hitched from all over the world. Even New Jersey. One or two more won’t make no difference. Besides, you two are fam’ly. Where’d ya say you two was from?”
“Alaska,” Aaron said with a wink at Daniel. They had a pretty good idea what was coming next.
“Alaska! Well, doan that beat all? Doan suppose ya live in igloos up thataways anymore?”
“Not lately,” Aaron said with a straight face.
“How do you know we’re family?” Daniel asked.
“’Cause ya said yer last name was LeDeux. And ya look jist lak yer papa, thass how. Valcour LeDeux, the no-count, good-fer-nothin’ bastard, ’scuse my French, breeds good-lookin’ chillen with like features. Wild as kudzu in a garden patch, all of ’em, but I ain’t got no more young girls at home to warn offa y’all.”
Daniel should have been affronted by the man’s words, but what could he say when Aaron just chuckled like a moron.
Thus it was that Daniel found himself, an hour later, with his brother Aaron, about to gatecrash the tail end of a Cajun wedding reception. In hotter than frickin’ hell Louisiana. Where the bridegroom was none other than their supposed half brother John LeDeux. And the hostess of this shindig was none other than the notorious Tante Lulu, whom Aunt Mel had told them about.
They had to park about a half mile away in an overflow lot. Old Jackson might be right about how many people were invited to this reception. Daniel had attended big weddings in the past, but he’d never heard of anything this big. You’d think the bride and groom were royalty or something. Cajun royalty. The William and Kate of the bayou.
Shiiit!
One saving grace was that, from this distance at least, it appeared that the bridal party was the only one in tuxes and gowns. Others were dressed in everything from semi-formal wear to what Aunt Mel would have called church clothes. He and Aaron wouldn’t stand out too much . . . him in a button-down shirt, khakis, and loafers, and Aaron in his usual denim and boots, with a T-shirt that said, “Alaska Air Shipping.” Okay, maybe Aaron would look like a hick, but he wouldn’t.
The crowd filled a huge reception hall, its various side rooms, and spilled out onto several patios that overlooked a golf course. Tents had been erected in the back where it looked as if food would be served buffet style. There was a drink tent, as well, which is where he and Aaron headed. Drink of the day was oyster shooters, which he and Aaron declined in favor of longneck bottles of cold beer. Manna in this heat! Strangely, no one else seemed to mind the high temperatures. At least, they weren’t sweating like pigs, like he and Aaron.
“Let’s go inside, find some air-conditioning,” he suggested, though with this many bodies, he doubted there would be much relief.
The closer they got, the louder the band. More of that twangy Cajun music like they’d heard on the radio. Once inside, they made their way toward the dance floor where a dark-haired man in a tux walked around a wide circle, holding hands with a dark-haired woman in an old-fashioned lace wedding gown. The bride and groom.
“What is it?” Daniel asked an elderly woman next to him.
“La Fleur de la Jeunesse. The Flower of Youth.” The woman sighed. “They doan hardly sing the old songs like this anymore, but Tante Lulu insisted, and that was that.”
Tante Lulu again! That woman sure gets around!
The five-piece band was situated up on a dais at the far end of the massive room. The band’s singer, who wore some kind of washboard contraption over his chest, wailed out the seemingly sad lyrics in Cajun French, followed by an English translation.
“J’avais promis dans ma jeunesse.”
“I promised in my youth.”
“Que je m’aurais jamais marier . . .”
“That I would never marry . . .”
“C’est aujourd’hui qye na tete est couronnée.”
“But today my head is crowned.”
“Et mon Coeur est omé d’un bouquet.”
“And my heart is crowned with flowers.”
“Adieu la fleur de la jeunesse.”
“Goodbye to the flower of youth . . .”
Meanwhile, the bride and groom, still walking the wide circle, were joined by others from the bridal party, then their guests. A long snake of couples circling the room.
But then the band morphed into a different song, this one more upbeat, and the bridal couple began to slow dance in the middle of the dance floor, she with her arms looped around his neck, he with his hands on her hips, almost cradling her butt. They smiled at each other as they swayed to the music. Occasionally, when the crowd clapped, they kissed. They were good dancers. Soon the dance floor was filled. Much laughter and a rebel yell here and there. These were people who enjoyed a good time.
“This really isn’t the right time for us to be connecting with family,” Daniel said.
“You’re right,” Aaron conceded. “Let’s get out of here.”
They set their empty bottles on a table and were about to wend their way back through the crowd when, in a break between songs, they heard a high-pitched female voice exclaim behind them, “Oh, my God!”
They turned as one to see an old woman, no more than five feet tall, in a calf-length red gown, rushing toward them on what appeared to be red orthopedic shoes. A cap of gray curls covered her head, and dangly diamond earrings flashed in her little ears. She wore fake eyelashes. A smear of bright red covered her thin lips, which suddenly spread into a wide smile. She was eighty, if she was a day. Or more.
It had to be the notorious Tante Lulu.
Coming closer, she spread her arms wide in welcome.
What? Are we supposed to hug her, or something?
Yes, Daniel soon realized as the little person, whose head came only to his chest, took his face in both hands and tugged him downward so that she could kiss him on one cheek, then the other.
Daniel would have bolted if he could have.
Actually, she smelled good. Like vanilla and peaches. And he found himself returning the hug.
“Welcome, welcome,” she said.
She did the same to Aaron, who exchanged a puzzled look with him over her shoulders. Who does she think we are?
“Doan even try ta deny yer more of that Valcour’s chillen. And twins! Oh, Lordy, what am I thinkin’? Ya mus’ be the boys from up Alaska way? I’m so sorry ’bout yer mother.” She hugged them again.
Daniel was feeling really uncomfortable, especially since people around them were starting to stare with curiosity. ‘Uh, I know this isn’t really the right time, but I understand you have something for us. Maybe you could just tell us where it is, and we’ll be on our way.”
“We kin take care of that later.”
Daniel narrowed his eyes at her. “I thought it was something important.”
“It is important. Doan rush me.”
Taking each of them in hand, she began to lead them through the crowd. “Come, come,” she said, “we will go talk, private like
, in the sittin’ room.”
“Is our father here?” Daniel asked right off.
“Pfff! That Valcour, he’s off on a cruise with his wife Jolie. Prob’ly afeared he’d be asked ta pay fer the weddin’. Not that the ol’ buzzard don’t have more money than he deserves. I gotta warn ya right now, yer papa is so crooked he could swallow nails and spit out corkscrews. The man’s been down in the sewers so long he knows the rats by name. But he ain’t nothin’ but a fart in a windstorm when ya get right down to it.”
Enough with the metaphors. We get the picture.
“Doan ya be worryin’ none ’bout that.”
I wasn’t. To tell the truth, Daniel was having trouble following her train of thought. And talk about TMI.
“You got other fam’ly here, boys.” She squeezed their hands, as if they’d been worried about lack of family. He had no time to correct that impression, though, because she was motioning for them to sit on one of the couches in the small room, and she sat on the other couch.
“You mus’ be Daniel, the doctor,” she said to him, “and you mus’ be Aaron, the pilot. Yer Aunt Mel tol’ me ’bout you boys. Ya kin call me Tante Lulu, like everyone does.”
He wondered idly what Aunt Mel had said that would allow Tante Lulu to identify them so easily.
“I kin tell by yer sad eyes the troubles ya seen lately,” she told Daniel. “Yer aunt sez ya been depressed and are gonna quit medicine.”
It appeared Aunt Mel had a bigger mouth than he’d realized.
“Ya do know that depression is a no-confidence vote in God, dontcha?” She gave him a stern look, then reached forward and patted his knee. “I prayed ta St. Jude fer ya, and here ya are. Hallelujah! You jist watch now. Happiness has a way of sneakin’ in through a door ya dint know ya left open.”
She smiled then.
Daniel had no idea what he was supposed to say to that. And Aaron wasn’t helping at all by commenting to the old lady, “Amen!”
Just then, the door opened and a woman peeked in. “Sorry to interrupt, Tante Lulu, but the caterer has a question about the crawfish.” The woman was stunning. Tall, even taller with strappy black high heels, a long mane of auburn hair, and a killer body in a form-fitting green halter dress, that ended just above the knees. She must be at least five-ten in her bare feet, judging by his own six-foot-two. The freckles that covered much of her body only seemed to add to her allure.
Tante Lulu stood and said, “Boys, this is Samantha Starr, a friend of the fam’ly. Samantha, this is Aaron LeDeux. He’s an airplane pilot. And this is Daniel LeDeux. He’s a doctor, retired at the moment.”
Samantha nodded at Aaron, but she frowned at Daniel. Because he was a doctor, or because he was retired, he wasn’t sure. In any case, she’d already turned, giving Daniel a full-blown view of her backside, which was amazing. A slim waist and wider hips, giving her buttocks sort of a heart shape. And it moved when she walked away. Up, down, up, down.
Tante Lulu stood, about to follow, but the old bird noticed the direction of his stare, and remarked, “Thass what I call a hot cha-cha hiney.”
Aaron burst out laughing, and Daniel found himself blushing.
Tante Lulu asked the oddest thing then. “Ya got a hope chest yet, Daniel?”
And thus began their new life in the South.
Chapter Four
A dog, a cat, and birds, oh, my! . . .
“He’s stalking me,” Samantha told Lucien LeDeux when he came to her house the Monday following the wedding.
“That’s what you said on the phone.”
“Should I buy a gun?”
“Uh. Maybe not yet.”
“Tante Lulu says she can lend me hers.”
“Mon Dieu! Is she still packing a pistol in her purse? She must have bought another one. I buried the last one in her okra patch.”
“I think it was a shotgun she mentioned. Pump action. Twelve gauge.”
He rolled his eyes. “Let’s talk first.”
Samantha hadn’t really been serious about a gun. Though her ex-husband was beginning to creep her out.
Luc took one of the two mugs of strong Creole coffee she’d just made and followed her from the kitchen into the atrium which she’d converted into a sunny library-lounge. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases on the house side with French doors leading out onto a wraparound patio from the three other sides. Her grandfather’s old partner’s desk sat in the middle, and two low couches gave the sunny room an inviting atmosphere. A great place to take care of Starr or foundation business when at home, to read a good book (she was hooked on biographies), or to chat with friends (who were few and far between since the divorce).
It was one of her favorite rooms in the two-hundred-year-old Garden District home. Nick had hated it, wanting instead to raise prize orchids there or some such thing. Not because he knew a bleepin’ thing about orchids, but he’d read in Architectural Digest that it was a hobby of old-rich families (as compared to new-rich, like himself, thanks to the Starr family well he kept dipping in). Truth to tell, Nick had never been overly fond of the house as a whole, which was small by Garden District standards, being a converted carriage house.
In fact, Nick never could fathom why a woman with such financial assets would choose to live in such an understated manner, and not just in her housing choices. She liked designer clothing, but she had no qualms about keeping the quality, often timeless items for years and mixing and matching outfits for maximum use. In fact, the Chanel pantsuit she’d worn to court was more than ten years old, purchased on her honeymoon to Paris. As for jewelry, she had several good pieces, but nothing flashy or overly expensive. Unlike Nick, who had two Rolex fifteen-thousand-dollar watches and a Bvlgari chronograph that did everything but fly a plane.
And speaking of planes . . . at one point, Nick had wanted her to buy a Piper Aztec plane. When she’d argued the lack of need for such an extravagant purchase, he’d said it would only be a small plane. Still, a plane!
“Why not buy a yacht while you’re at it?” she’d asked.
“Now that you mention it, think about the kind of networking we could do among my medical colleagues,” Nick had remarked, giving her the coaxing smile he’d perfected over the years.
She now knew what kind of networking he’d had in mind.
Thank God that part of her life was over. And thank God there had been no airplane or yacht to deal with during their divorce.
Samantha sank down onto one couch and Luc onto the other. He took a sip of his strong coffee and made a humming noise of appreciation. She placed hers on the coffee table between them, a huge crosscut slab of an ancient cypress tree in the shape of an elongated egg. Its patina and whorls of age rings spoke to Samantha. Truly a work of art, by both nature and the craftsman.
Luc put his mug down, too, and ran a finger over the top of the table. “A Jacque Vermain?”
She nodded, surprised that Luc would recognize the work of the backwoods craftsman. His pieces weren’t sold in any shop. You had to know someone who knew him, and even then the old codger might not let you come out to his bayou workshop to view his pieces.
“My sister-in-law Rachel . . . you’ve met her, haven’t you?”
“Remy’s wife?”
“Uh-huh. Anyhow, Rachel is an interior decorator,” Luc said. “She fell in love with Vermain’s furniture and talked him into making her a massive dining room table fer their big family. They’ve adopted a pigload of kids, y’know. And my wife has one of his salad bowls, which we’re not allowed ta eat out of. Go figure.”
“It probably cost as much as the down payment on your Beemer.”
“Really?” Luc pretended shock but wasn’t really all that concerned. He could afford a thousand-dollar salad bowl, or two. “Anyhow, Tante Lulu wants him to carve her a statue of St. Jude, but thus far he’s declined. Not his thing.”
“Hey, I heard he was just commissioned by some Jewish congregation in Biloxi to make a carved, arched double door for its synagogue.”
She’d read about it in the style section of the Sunday paper. Which was becoming a rarity in itself . . . print newspapers, that was. To her, lolling about on a Sunday morning with a computer version of the New York Times wasn’t nearly as satisfying as a print edition spread all over the place. Another thing Nick hadn’t been able to stand. “So, St. Jude might not be far behind,” she concluded.
Luc smiled. They both knew how persistent the old lady could be when she wanted something.
“The wedding was wonderful,” Samantha commented then, which wasn’t really a change of subject. Everyone knew that Tante Lulu was largely responsible for the wedding celebration, and, Good Lord, they must have invited half of the South.
“Yeah, it was great, wasn’t it? Did you see Charmaine dirty dancing around her husband Rusty, like he was a friggin’ stripper pole?”
“No, I must have left by then.”
“She was three sheets to the wind, although it doesn’t take much of a breeze for Charmaine to show off her assets.” He grinned and added, “Never thought I’d see the day my brother Tee-John would settle down, though.”
Actually, Luc, Remy, and René were brothers, while John and Charmaine were half brother and half sister, having different mothers. Or something like that.
“Way I hear it, all you LeDeux men were . . . are . . . wild.”
“True enough,” he said, making a little bow, as if she’d paid him a compliment, “but all in the past, once we married.” He winked at her to show he hadn’t tamed down all that much. “Anyhow, none of us were ever as bad . . . or good . . . as Tee-John. I was certainly never a stripper, even if Tee-John only ever did it for a week or so on a bet until Tante Lulu dragged him home by the ear from Atlantic City. That boy probably taught Charmaine some of the moves she demonstrated at the wedding, or maybe it was the other way around.” He grinned at Samantha, and she could see why the LeDeuxs had a reputation for charm.
“Well, Tee-John might be the king of cool, but the Cajun Men Revue your family puts on occasionally comes a close second. I saw you out at Angola Prison a few years ago.” And they had been really good, doing a bayou version of that old Village People act. Even Luc in his conservative business suit. Macho Man, for sure.