Under the Cajun Moon Read online

  “What was the offer? It must have been a big one.”

  Kevin hesitated, glancing at the paperwork.

  “Yes, it was, but your father also came up with a deal clincher, one that would surely convince Naquin to sell. Julian told me to make the offer and draw up the contracts, and he would sign them in a few days, once he got back to town. That’s what I need you to sign on his behalf.”

  “Sounds simple enough, but why can’t this wait? Why am I here tonight when I need to be at the hospital with my dad?”

  “Because of what happened next. Your father was shot a short while after he and I talked. Before he even called for an ambulance, he left a message for your mother, telling her to let me know that this land deal was extremely important and I was to push it through as fast as humanly possible.”

  “Well, that figures,” I mumbled. “Leave it to Julian Ledet to be wheeling and dealing even as he’s lying there, shot and bleeding. Good grief.”

  “I don’t know, Chloe. His message was a little weirder than that. It didn’t sound like his typical ‘wheeling and dealing,’ as you put it. Not at all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “From what your mother told me of his message, it sounded as though the shooting incident and this land deal were somehow connected. I believe his exact words were ‘Now that I’ve been shot, the deal is even more important than before.’”

  “What do you think he meant?”

  “I don’t know. But then it gets even weirder. After that, his message urged your mother to get this contract signed as soon as possible, before they come after her too.”

  “What?”

  “Those were his exact words, that she needed to act quickly, ‘before they come after you too.’”

  I sat back in my chair, thinking about that for a minute, trying to get down to the bottom-line implication. I thought he had been shot in a hunting accident, but now it sounded as though it might not have been an accident at all.

  “Are you saying someone shot my father on purpose? That they came after him and shot him and now they are going to come after my mother unless this deal goes through?”

  “Quite possibly.”

  Blinking, I had tried to reframe the whole situation with that incredible, horrific thought in mind.

  “Why would someone do that?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Now, of course, as I sat in this sunny hotel room and Kevin’s body lay next door, I knew that my father’s concerns had been justified. Whatever was going on, not only had he and my mother been endangered, but apparently his lawyer and even his daughter had been pulled into it too.

  “Excuse me, I need to see the detective,” I said to the cop.

  “He’ll be back in a minute. Just hold your horses.”

  I appreciated the man’s protective presence, but his etiquette left a little to be desired. Standing beside the couch, I began to pace as even more memories of last night came flooding back to me.

  “Who shot my father, Kevin?” I had demanded.

  “I don’t know, Chloe, but obviously something’s going on.”

  “Surely it wasn’t one of the Naquins,” I had said, my mind racing. “That wouldn’t make any sense. Why would you shoot someone who wanted to buy something from you, even if you didn’t want to sell?”

  “No, that makes no sense. Besides, I know Alphonse Naquin and his whole family. There’s no way any of them would have done something like this.”

  “Who, then? Who else would benefit from the sale of Paradise, so much so that my father got shot over it and my mother’s safety hinges upon it?”

  “I don’t know who, but I have an idea about why. Remember I said that when your dad and I talked this morning, he wanted to raise the amount of money he was offering for Paradise, plus he was throwing in a deal clincher? One that would guarantee that Naquin would finally be willing to sell?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think whatever’s going on has to do with that deal clincher. It’s kind of…um…unique. I knew about it, but I have a feeling you’re going to be very surprised.”

  I stared at Kevin, waiting for him to spell it out. Whatever incentive my father had thought to include in a real estate transaction, surely it couldn’t have ended up getting him shot.

  “Unique how?” I asked tiredly. “Just tell me, Kevin. What did he throw in to sweeten the deal?”

  “Believe it or not, it has to do with treasure, Chloe. Buried treasure.”

  I hadn’t replied but merely sat there, staring at him blankly.

  “You know, like pirates and gold and all of that?” Kevin had continued. “You’re probably not aware of this, but your father is half owner of a treasure. He found it himself years ago when he was just a young man. With only a few exceptions, he has kept that treasure a secret ever since.”

  “A treasure,” I said evenly, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. “Kevin, you’re going to need to start from the beginning on this one. You’re right about one thing. This is the first I’ve ever heard about my father and a treasure.”

  “Okay. A long time ago, back in the early fifties, your father was down at Paradise and tracking a deer when he discovered buried treasure. I don’t know the details of how he found it, but I do know that the first thing he did was run get his friend Alphonse to come and see.”

  “What was it in? An old wooden pirate’s chest?”

  “No, more like a disintegrated canvas bag.”

  “And what was inside? Coins? Jewelry?”

  “Statues.”

  “Statues?”

  “Yes, tiny statues that looked very old and very valuable. Right away, your father and Naquin agreed that no matter what the treasure ended up being worth, they would split it down the middle, fifty-fifty. That was their own personal decision, but it’s interesting that Louisiana civil code dictates exactly that.”

  “Exactly what?”

  “That when one person finds treasure on another person’s land, it is to be divided equally between the treasure finder and the landowner.”

  “Tell me more about what the treasure was. Statues?”

  “Little statuettes, really, about the size of figurines. There were sixty of them, all identical, each about four-inches high, shaped like a fleur-de-lis, and made from solid gold.”

  I sat up straight, realizing I had seen the very item he was describing. I had grown up in the same house with it, for that matter. As far as I knew, it was still sitting where it had always been, in a glass case in my father’s study, next to his most prized possession, the ribbon he had earned upon graduation from the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris. As a child, I had been fascinated by that ribbon—probably because I couldn’t understand why my father thought it was so precious—but I had never given the gold statuette next to it much thought.

  “You said there were sixty of them? Where had they come from?”

  “Your father and Naquin had no idea. Their best guess was that it had been buried there by pirates.”

  “Out in the middle of a swamp?” I asked skeptically.

  “Oh, yeah. That area was a prime hiding ground for pirates back in the day. Here, take a look at this.”

  Kevin pulled a page from his file and handed it to me. I looked at it to see the heading: “Found Treasures in the State of Louisiana.” Below that were listings of numerous treasures, the dates they were discovered, and the places where they had been discovered. “Jefferson Island, found in 1923, 3 boxes gold coins dating fm. 18 & 19 century,” read one. Scanning the locations listed, I was surprised to see that Kevin was right. The swampy parts of the state seemed to be where almost all of these treasures had been buried.

  “Of course, there are enough treasures yet to be found that they fill entire books. Treasure hunters study various legends and rumors and then go out searching for the treasures based on that information—and sometimes they find what they’re looking for. Usually, though, treasures are simply stumbled upon purely by luck.
Like with your dad, or like that group of shrimpers out of Mobile, who pulled up their nets only to find them full of Spanish gold coins.”

  Kevin’s story was interrupted by the appearance of the waiter with our salads. He flitted around us for a moment, offering ground pepper and refilling our water glasses. After he was gone, I handed Kevin back his sheet of paper and he continued.

  “Anyway, your dad and Naquin were excited about the treasure, especially because both of them could really use the money. Naquin made a fair wage working for an oil company, but by that point he had four kids and another on the way, and he wanted to build a bigger house. Your dad was just twenty-one, working in a New Orleans restaurant and trying to figure out how he could afford to go to a good culinary school. They knew that both of their lives could change for the better with this treasure, but that they would have to be careful.”

  “Why careful?”

  “Because if it really was pirate treasure and they made their find public, there was a good chance it could be taken away from them. Foreign governments will sue over treasure, you know, especially if they can prove it was seized by pirates from one of their own country’s ships. Considering that these statuettes were fleur-de-lis, the symbol of French royalty, your dad and Naquin had a feeling that if they tried to sell them on the open market, the French government might show up and claim the statuettes, leaving them with nothing.”

  “So what did they do?”

  “They tossed options around a while and finally decided to get some professional advice. They shared the news of what they had found with one other person: my father, Ruben Peralta. He was in law school at the time, and they were hoping he might be able to advise them from a legal standpoint about how to proceed.”

  Kevin went on to describe what his father’s legal research revealed. From what he could tell, there weren’t any hard-and-fast rules about how to prevent a treasure from being legally seized by another government. Ruben suggested that they continue to keep the treasure secret while doing some historical research to trace back its origins. If they could prove the treasure’s location was legitimate and not due to theft or piracy, then they could go public. If they found that the treasure did tie in with pirates or some other sort of shady dealings, they could choose to go public anyway and take their chances with lawsuits, or as a last resort they could always keep it private, melt down the statuettes into ingots, and sell them for the value of the gold.

  “How could buried treasure ever be legitimate, though?” I asked. “I mean, come on. It had to be pirates. An honest person would keep their valuables in a bank vault or a safe, not buried in the backyard.”

  “You’re thinking like a modern person, Chloe. How about before there were any banks in Louisiana? Or how about the people who didn’t think banks were safe? And don’t forget the Civil War, when a lot of money and valuable items were hidden away in some very unusual locations to keep them from being confiscated.”

  “All right, I see your point.”

  “Of course,” Kevin added, “for your dad and Naquin, melting down the gold was a risky thing to do, financially speaking, because if these statuettes were something important, historically and/or artistically speaking, that extra value would melt away.”

  We were again interrupted by the waiter, who came to take away our salad plates, refill our water glasses, and let us know our entrées would be out in just a few more minutes. I sat quietly, trying to process everything, until he was gone.

  “So what choice did they make, Kevin? What happened to the treasure?”

  “Long story. I’ll just give you the highlights. Because both men needed some fast money, they agreed to melt down just enough of the gold to carry them over but save the rest until they were able to do their research. They kept out five statuettes and hid the rest of the treasure in a location known only to the two of them. They held on to one as a souvenir of sorts. Your dad showed it to me at the house. The other four they melted down. Gold was selling at forty dollars an ounce back then, so they netted more than fifteen thousand dollars from melting down just four of the statuettes.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “No. Of course, they had to pay a commission to my dad for handling the details. I mean, you can’t exactly melt gold on the stove and then bring it to your local bank. He made things happen in that regard, and he also saw that the treasure was kept secret even while the IRS was correctly compensated so that there would be no problems with the tax laws. But even with his fee and the taxes, there was still enough to send your father to Cordon Bleu in Paris and get Naquin into a new house. In fact, your father had enough money to stay over in Europe for a few years after he graduated, just to study the cooking techniques of the various regions. By the time he came home, he was one very well-educated chef.”

  I had heard numerous stories over the years about my father’s insatiable quest for cooking knowledge and his love for Cordon Bleu and his vagabond days in Europe, but now that I knew more of the story, slowly the pictures I kept in my mind were having to realign themselves. He wasn’t just a poor kid from the Quarter who made good; he was a poor kid from the Quarter who got lucky and then made good. When I was growing up, he was always driving home the point that hard work and dedication can get you anywhere. Somehow, much of that rhetoric felt like a lie once I knew he had had a secret treasure footing the bills.

  The waiter came back with our entrées at that point, and I was glad for the opportunity to collect my thoughts.

  The man set my delicious-smelling bowl of crawfish bisque in front of me, but Kevin’s Croûte de Sel Rose was a little more complicated than that. Part of the dish’s appeal was the elaborate presentation it required. Much like Caesar salad or bananas Foster, the final steps of serving salt-crusted fish lent itself to a bit of tableside drama. Kevin and I both watched the waiter act out that drama now on our behalf, not an easy task considering that this performance usually involved the assistance of several attendants, silent workers who would hover at the waiter’s elbow and provide each tool as he needed it, much like a scrub nurse in an operating room.

  As our waiter was working alone, he simply laid out an array of tools, a cutting board, and a plate on the empty side of our table. Turning his attention to the hot pan in which the fish had been baked, he tapped along the solid crust with the back of a heavy spoon, breaking the seal and releasing the aromatic fragrance of the herbs. Next, he used a special pair of tongs to separate the crust along its fault line, pushing each side back to reveal the tender, juicy fish inside. Once the salty package was wide open, in a quick, careful movement with yet another tool, he scooped out the whole fish and set it down on the waiting cutting board. There, he filleted it perfectly, right along the bone, and placed the resulting meat on the empty plate. Trading tools again, he used a slotted spoon to scoop out some tiny red potatoes and pearl onions from the pan and add them to the plate. He used a pastry brush to whisk away any errant chunks of the salt, and then he topped the whole thing with a meuniere sauce.

  “This isn’t going to be too salty?” Kevin asked as the waiter finally set the plate in front of him and gathered up his tools.

  “No, sir, not at all. Enjoy!”

  Kevin took a bite of the fish as the waiter again left us alone. I could tell by his closed eyes and rapturous expression that he found it even more delicious than he had expected. I enjoyed my bisque with equal enthusiasm, feeling as I did a twinge of pride at the fact that Julian Ledet was my father. The man had his flaws, but truly he was an artist and a genius when it came to food—regardless of how he had paid for his education way back when. In the restaurant that bore his name, though he no longer prepared the food himself, he had created the recipes for most of the items that were served there.

  “Ms. Ledet, may we see your hands, please?”

  Startled, I opened my eyes to find myself back in the hotel room. Detective Walters and another woman were standing in front of me expectantly. Kevin was dead, I reminded m
yself, and though I knew there was still more of last night for me to remember, the two people standing here and staring at me were obviously waiting for something.

  “Excuse me?” I asked, blinking

  “Your hands. May we see your hands?”

  I held my hands out in front of me. As I did, I noticed for the first time since waking up in this strange place that my perfectly manicured fingernails were dirty.

  SEVEN

  As the woman and Detective Walters studied my hands, I tried to remember how my fingernails could possibly have gotten so dirty.

  “Uh-huh,” the woman said to Detective Walters as she studied my nails. Then, before I could stop her, she pulled out a pair of nail scissors and a plastic bag and clipped off my right thumbnail at its base.

  “What are you doing?” I cried, pulling back and staring at her.

  “I need the tissues and dried blood under your fingernails as evidence,” the woman replied, reaching out again and grasping my hand in a firm grip.

  Blood? Dried blood?

  “How would I get blood under my fingernails?” I asked, watching in disbelief as she finished one hand and started in on the other, destroying with a few quick snips a sixty-dollar manicure.

  “More than likely from the scratches on your friend’s cheeks,” she replied.

  Stunned, I looked up helplessly at Detective Walters. He didn’t say a word but merely pantomimed the scraping of his fingernails across his cheek.

  Were they serious? Did they really think I had killed Kevin? That was ridiculous!

  Once the woman finished with my fingernails, she sealed up her plastic bag, thanked the detective, and walked away. He looked down at me and told me not to go anywhere, that he would be back in a minute. Then he followed her out of the room, and I was left alone again except for the cop at the door. Looking at him now, I finally realized that he wasn’t here to protect me. He was here to keep me from leaving.

  I knew if I had indeed killed Kevin myself, my only hope lay in remembering how and why. Could I have done it in self-defense? Near panic, I forced my mind back again to the memories of last night.