Chapter 8 - Celeste Vance
Lucien read the bank statement three times.
Then he sat down.
Camille had never seen him sit because his legs failed him, but that was what happened. One moment he was standing beside the stage, the next he lowered himself into the nearest chair as though the name on the page had removed something structural from his body.
“Celeste Vance,” he said.
Caroline’s expression was unreadable.
Detective Ruiz looked between them. “Who is Celeste Vance?”
Lucien answered without looking up.
“My grandmother.”
Camille frowned. “Your grandmother is Celeste Marceau.”
“She married a Marceau.”
Caroline gave a short, humorless laugh. “Families like ours enjoy changing the labels on old bottles.”
Lucien finally looked at her. “August was her brother.”
“Yes.”
Caroline’s father.
The pieces shifted again.
Celeste Vance Marceau was Lucien’s grandmother and Caroline’s great-aunt, tying the two families together by blood long before business, rumors, or grudges divided them.
“Is she alive?” Ruiz asked.
Lucien nodded slowly. “Ninety-seven. She lives outside the city.”
“And she controls Orpheus?”
“I did not know.”
Caroline said, “That makes two of us.”
Nobody believed her.
Ruiz held up the bank statement. “How did this copy get inside the folio?”
Caroline’s voice sharpened. “I have no idea.”
“You said the administrator was Celeste before anyone told you her full name.”
Caroline’s eyes moved toward Camille, then back to Ruiz.
“My father talked about her. She and August fought about the old records for years.”
“Where is Celeste now?”
Lucien gave the address.
Ruiz called ahead.
Forty minutes later, Camille was in the back seat of an unmarked police car crossing into Jefferson Parish while rainwater flashed silver along the road.
Lucien rode beside her.
Neither spoke for the first ten minutes.
Finally Camille said, “Did your grandmother know my father?”
“Better than I understood.”
“Did she lie to you about Alain?”
“Yes.”
“You sound certain.”
“She once told me Alain’s death was the price of his own recklessness. I spent seventeen years hating him for making her bury a grandson.”
“But she never buried him.”
“No.”
Camille watched the road.
“Does that make you angry?”
Lucien looked out the opposite window. “There are ages at which anger becomes too small a word.”
Celeste lived in a private residential community hidden behind live oaks and a brick gate. Her cottage stood at the far end of a landscaped path, small compared with the Dauphine Street house but immaculate.
A nurse opened the door.
When she saw Lucien, she sighed.
“She has been expecting you.”
Lucien stopped. “Since when?”
“Since breakfast.”
The nurse led them to a sunroom.
Celeste Vance Marceau sat beside a window in a pale blue chair with a blanket over her knees. Age had reduced her body but not her presence. Her white hair was arranged perfectly. Her back was straight. On the table beside her was the missing prayer book.
Camille saw it immediately.
So did Ruiz.
Celeste smiled.
“Detective, you may photograph anything you like. I am too old to begin lying efficiently now.”
Lucien stood in the doorway.
“Grand-mère.”
Celeste’s face softened.
“My beautiful angry boy.”
“You told me Alain was dead.”
“Yes.”
“Is he?”
“Not unless he has improved dramatically in the last six months.”
Lucien closed his eyes.
Camille stepped forward.
“My father.”
Celeste looked at her.
For the first time, the old woman’s composure broke.
“Camille.”
“Is Étienne alive?”
Celeste’s hands tightened on the blanket.
“Yes.”
The word was almost gentle.
Camille did not feel gentle.
She felt heat behind her eyes and a pressure in her throat that made speaking difficult.
“Where?”
“Until yesterday, Lafitte.”
“Until yesterday?”
“He left the house we arranged for him.”
“Why?”
“Because he saw the video from the benefit.”
Camille stared.
Celeste reached for the prayer book. “Your father has lived under another name for eighteen years. He agreed to disappear because August had people watching your home, your school, your mother’s work. At first it was supposed to be weeks.”
“My mother died believing he abandoned us.”
Celeste lowered her eyes.
“I know.”
“You knew where he was.”
“Yes.”
“You knew where I was.”
“Yes.”
“And you let that happen.”
Lucien moved slightly, but Camille raised one hand.
She did not need protection from a ninety-seven-year-old woman.
She needed answers.
Celeste’s voice was quiet. “Étienne tried to return three times.”
“Then why did he not?”
“Because every time he moved, Alain found out.”
Lucien’s face hardened.
Celeste continued. “Alain had helped Étienne at first. He believed exposing the trust would force the old families to surrender property and money. Then he discovered he could profit more by controlling the evidence than releasing it.”
“Blackmail,” Ruiz said.
Celeste nodded. “A refined word for an ugly business.”
Lucien stepped closer. “You protected him anyway.”
“I protected the location of the evidence by making everyone believe both men were under the same arrangement. Richard moved the money. He did not know Alain had turned.”
“Why keep paying Alain?”
“So I could see when he touched the account.”
“A tracking line.”
“Yes.”
“And yesterday you closed it.”
Celeste looked at Camille. “Because the folio surfaced and Alain moved too quickly. The account had become a map leading back to Étienne.”
Camille remembered the threatening photograph.
“Did you send me the picture of my father?”
“No.”
“Did you take it?”
Celeste hesitated.
“Yes. Three days ago.”
The room went still.
“I visited him,” she said. “I told him I was dying and that the truth had waited long enough. He refused to leave until he knew where you were. I showed him a news article about Ashmore and Vance’s benefit. He saw your name on the staff list.”
Camille’s breath caught.
“He knew I worked there?”
“For three days.”
“And then the video appeared.”
“Yes.”
“Who had the photograph?”
“My nurse printed one copy for him. A digital copy remained on my tablet.”
Ruiz asked, “Who had access to the tablet?”
Celeste looked toward the hall.
“My great-niece visited yesterday afternoon.”
Caroline.
Camille felt cold.
“So Caroline sent the threat.”
“I cannot prove it,” Celeste said. “But she was frightened. Fear makes our family repetitive.”
Lucien stared at his grandmother. “Where is Alain?”
“I do not know.”
“Do not do this again.”
“I am not. He changes names, companies, countries. Six months ago he contacted me because Pelican River Development needed clear title to the river parcels.”
“Pelican is Alain’s company,” Camille said.
“Behind several shells, yes.”
“Then the private buyer was Lucien’s brother.”
Celeste nodded.
Camille looked at Lucien.
His face was carved from anger.
“What does the prayer book say?” Camille asked.
Celeste handed it to her.
“The numbers inside the bell are page, line, and word references. Your father designed the cipher. Six numbers are enough only if you know which six marked pages to use.”
Tiny pencil dots appeared at the bottom corners of six pages.
Camille worked through them with Celeste.
Seventeen.
Four.
Nine.
Thirty-one.
Eight.
Twenty-two.
Each pointed to a word.
When Camille wrote them in order, the sentence was short.
THE VOICE WAITS UNDER ROYAL STREET.
Ruiz frowned. “What voice?”
Celeste closed her eyes.
“The recording.”
Lucien turned. “What recording?”
“October fourteenth. August, Richard, Alain, Étienne, and me. Étienne recorded the meeting without telling us. August admitted the title transfers were fraudulent. Alain admitted he had made copies and planned to sell access to them.”
“Where is it?” Camille asked.
“Under Royal Street.”
“A basement?”
“Ashmore and Vance has no public basement,” Lucien said.
Celeste smiled faintly. “Public is doing work in that sentence.”
She explained that the building once connected to an older counting house through a sealed subcellar beneath the service corridor. August had closed it during renovations thirty years earlier.
“Étienne hid the master recording there before he disappeared.”
Camille’s mind raced. “Then what was inside the bell yoke?”
“A duplicate key and a map.”
“The thing stolen last night.”
“Yes.”
“If Alain has it, he can get into the subcellar.”
“Yes.”
Ruiz was already on the phone.
Camille asked the question she had been avoiding.
“Where is my father now?”
Celeste reached into the prayer book and removed a folded note.
“He left this for you yesterday.”
Camille opened it.
Three lines in her father’s handwriting.
I saw you standing in that ballroom and understood how much of your life I missed while pretending absence kept you safe.
I am coming home.
If I am late, look beneath the place where they sold other people’s histories.
Camille’s head snapped up.
“Royal Street.”
Lucien was already moving.
Celeste called after him.
“Lucien.”
He stopped at the door.
She looked suddenly very old.
“I was wrong to decide grief for you.”
He did not answer for a moment.
Then he said, “Stay alive until I come back. I have not finished being angry.”
Celeste smiled through tears.
“That is the most Marceau thing you have ever said.”
Camille ran with Lucien toward the car.
May you like
Her father was alive.
And he was walking toward the one building everybody else was trying to escape.
