Ciji Ware Read online

  Despite its being December, he was lightly dressed in royal blue running shorts, a white polo shirt, and a beat-up pair of sneakers. He’d obviously been hoofing it for a couple of miles along the riverfront in unseasonably sultry weather as a storm front moved in off the Gulf of Mexico. Perspiration beaded his forehead. His hair was also damp, and sweat ran in rivulets down his neck and into the black chest hair just visible above his open collar. The short stubble on his face, unshaven since his sister’s wedding, most likely gave him a mildly roguish appearance. The deep cleft in his chin intrigued her. How did King shave?

  “I should have called first,” he admitted apologetically. He looked down at his sweat-soaked shirt. “And perhaps I should have showered,” he added wryly.

  “You’re not the only one,” she said, and then wished she hadn’t drawn attention to herself as she observed King give her disheveled garb the once-over.

  “As you might imagine, I didn’t sleep very well last night.” She grimaced. “When I got back from breakfast about seven thirty this morning… I sort of went unconscious. Now I look and feel as if I got run over by a truck.” For a moment they stared in silence across the threshold. Then she added quietly, “Why don’t you come in and tell me how you knew my address, and why you’ve stopped by to see me, of all people, on a Sunday morning?”

  Striding toward the kitchen she asked, “Coffee?”

  “Just a glass of water would be fine,” King replied.

  Corlis knew if she consumed one more ounce of caffeine, she’d probably get the d.t.’s, so she poured herself a glass of water as well.

  King glanced around her living room. His slight nod made it seem as if he approved of what he saw—a rectangular salon, graced with a fireplace, ornately carved wooden moldings, and twelve-foot ceilings overhead. Two windows nearly that high opened out onto the narrow wrought-iron gallery with its marvelous view up and down Julia Street. At that moment the sound of a moss-green streetcar gliding by clanged its way through the St. Charles Avenue intersection as it headed uptown toward the Garden District.

  Just then Cagney Cat heaved his bulk past the open window sill.

  “Whoa… what a big cat!” King exclaimed. “A big, wet cat.”

  “And not necessarily the brightest,” Corlis added. Addressing Cagney, who nonchalantly was rubbing his saturated fur against King’s calf, she exclaimed, “You finally come in out of the rain, and look what you’re doing to our guest!”

  King leaned over and combed his long aristocratic fingers down the cat’s back and gently pulled the length of his tail. Cagney hated it when she did that. However, the infidel stared up at the visitor and began to purr loudly.

  “I don’t believe it,” Corlis muttered, crossing the carpet to close the window against the shower that had begun to spatter the panes.

  “I like these rugs a lot,” King noted with an appreciative glance at the large garnet-red Persian carpet. A similar narrow jewel-toned runner that had reportedly also belonged to Corlis Bell McCullough graced the long hallway extending from her front door. “They’re perfect here.”

  “Thanks. I take it that you’ve been in one of these Julia Street row houses before?” she asked, inviting him to sit in the club chair. Its beige linen slipcover matched the love seat on which she gratefully sat down. To her utter surprise, Cagney leaped onto King’s lap, shamelessly presenting his belly to be rubbed.

  “Oh, yes, I’ve been here before,” he said, nodding. He absently stroked the cat’s fur as if it were the most usual thing in the world. “As a matter of fact, I spent a lot of time on this street when these places were all flophouses.” He glanced around the parlor. “Less than ten years ago, you could have rented a bed in this very apartment for seven dollars a night!”

  “You used to live here?”

  “God, no!” he said, laughing. “I was stone broke when I first came back to New Orleans, but not that broke.”

  “Oh,” she said, feeling foolish.

  Why in the world is this man in my living room?

  “Awhile back,” King disclosed, “I was part of a group that went to bat to save this place from the wrecker’s ball.”

  “Someone was going to tear down these gorgeous row houses?”

  “Well, they weren’t so gorgeous before the rehab, but, yup… a developer by the name of Grover Jeffries had big plans for this block. Grover’s hairy pawprint is on most of those high-rises you’ve probably noticed over on Canal Street.”

  Jeffries? she thought, startled. Wasn’t that the last name of one of the creepy guys standing around the coffin she’d just dreamed about? Corlis began to wonder if getting fired for the third time in one’s career could actually unhinge a person. She slowly took a sip from her glass of water, trying not to lose her composure. “You mean that guy Jeffries built those steel-and-glass jobs that look like downtown Dallas?”

  “You got it.”

  King pointed in the direction of her ornate fireplace. “A lot of people in this community got together to fight him off. They were able to save this entire block. To restore the facade and make the interior renovations cost-effective, several of the row houses like yours were divided, turned condo for individually owned apartments, while others remained as four-story, single-family dwellings.”

  Another silence.

  Finally she said, “Those modern buildings downtown are pretty soulless.” She looked at him expectantly.

  So? We seemed to have exhausted the pretty-versus-ugly buildings topic of conversation. Just tell me: Why are you here?

  King gave Cagney a sensuous rub on his stomach. Then he looked up at her and declared abruptly, “I’m sorry you got ousted from WWEZ because of your story about Daphne’s wedding.”

  “You are?” Corlis replied, astounded. “Weren’t your final words to me last night ‘Get the hell outta here, you harpy’?”

  King grinned. “Did I say that?”

  “You sure did. However, I didn’t take it personally. You were probably upset by what that creep Jack Ebert had done to your sister, not to mention what Miss Cindy Lou Mallory did to you,” she couldn’t resist adding. She’d heard scuttlebutt from her cameraman that King had been seriously dating the voluptuous redhead for nearly a year. “I expect my TV crew and I were more than just a pesky annoyance.”

  “Yeah… I was pretty upset last night, and… I wanted to lash out at someone. You were mighty handy.”

  “I thought you wanted to kick us out of the balcony because of… the old business between us,” Corlis ventured awkwardly. “But then later I realized that you knew ahead of time that your sister wasn’t going to go through with the wedding, and you’d just as soon not have that broadcast on TV.”

  “Exactly,” King confirmed. “Althea LaCroix—the lady playing the organ? She and I were the only ones Daphne confided in right before the ceremony.”

  “Wow… being let in on that little secret would have made anybody a bit testy.”

  “No kidding,” King said with a short laugh.

  “It not only ended a wedding, it kind of blew up your relationship with the redhead, didn’t it?”

  “I’d say so, and none too soon, from the way things turned out. In fact, when I saw the story last night on the news, I was sort of torn between wanting to strangle you and wanting to give you a hug for being so alert to what was really going on.”

  “You actually caught the broadcast?”

  “Sure did. On the TV in the Old Absinthe House bar,” he replied ruefully. “After two old-fashioneds, I must admit. But, still… it was pretty amazing. You just let the pictures tell it… and you got the facts right.”

  “Well… thanks…” Corlis said, blindsided by the compliment.

  Silence fell between them once again.

  “Actually, I thought the piece you did last night was brilliant.”

  “You did?” she replied, amazed.

  “Yes. I did. Later… when I had time to think about it all… I realized that when you refused to l
eave the balcony… you were just doing your job.”

  “Yup. Like at UCLA.”

  Now, why did I bring that up? He’s trying to be nice, for pity’s sake!

  This time the silence lengthened to nearly fifteen unbearable seconds.

  King shifted his weight as he sat in her expansive club chair and took another sip from his water glass. “Maybe a story like that’ll show other brides and grooms that it’s never too late to call a halt to a wedding if you’re having second thoughts about it. It sure served as a wake-up call for half the groomsmen last night. I can tell you that.”

  “Bailing out is always an option,” she murmured, thinking of Jay Kerlin. Well, at least she’d canceled the reservation for the outdoor wedding facilities at the Bel Air Hotel before the invitations were mailed.

  “And there’s something else,” King said.

  “What?” she asked, alert now for payback time.

  “I might have a lead for you on another job.”

  “You? Find a job? For me?”

  Now she really must be dreaming!

  Chapter 4

  December 21

  Corlis stared at King Duvallon in astonishment. “You’d actually recommend me for another broadcasting job in this town?”

  Wasn’t this the man who twelve years ago led his fraternity brothers on a mission to utterly humiliate her and all the other women who wrote and edited Ms. UCLA?

  “Sure,” King said with a friendly shrug. “You’re a pro. I could see that last night. And the station I’m thinking of is a kind of upstart enterprise here in town,” he explained, the hint of a grin playing about his lips. “You ever watch WJAZ-TV? It’s nonunion, but they’re pretty feisty over there, so the two of you might be perfect for each other.” Corlis shot him a look. “They tend to cover stuff around New Orleans that no one else’ll touch,” King concluded with a blameless expression. “Crusader Rabbit types, you know what I mean?”

  “Don’t tell me they’re ‘cause’ TV journalists?” she blurted. “Or one of those vanity TV stations where if you write a check, they put you on camera with your own cooking show!”

  “No… they have a legit news organization,” he assured her. “They’re just pretty new in the market, and they’re not affiliated with any network yet.”

  “And nonunion,” Corlis repeated glumly. “That means they pay zilch.”

  “Well… it was just a thought,” King said, draining his glass while continuing to stroke Cagney Cat’s silky fur. “I was thinking that after the havoc that the Ebert-Duvallon wedding wrought in your professional life last night, maybe we—maybe I owed you one.”

  “Considering our little run-in at UCLA, Mr. Duvallon, don’t you think you owe me at least two?” she replied archly, then flushed with mortification.

  She’d gone and done it again! Given him a zinger when he was being perfectly agreeable. Now, why did this man rankle her so? Well, she wasn’t herself this morning. Who would be after her miserable night and that awful dream she’d had?

  King’s generous mouth had settled into a straight line. “I don’t think that now is really the time or place to go over ancient history,” he said coolly. “You might be forced to hear the other side of the story, and I understand that journalists hate doing that.”

  “You mean tell the tale of how you and your fraternity broke into our office, plastered the place with ‘Keep ’em barefoot and pregnant’ posters, stole our logos, and produced a vicious lampoon of our magazine? That story?” she shot back. Her dander up, she added, “Or are you referring to the way you guys portrayed me on the cover of your bogus edition? Perhaps you’ve forgotten the awful cartoon of me that you and your buddies hawked all over campus?”

  King set his glass carefully on the leather coaster that decorated the mahogany side table next to his chair. “Well…” he considered slowly.

  “It was… humiliating,” Corlis replied, staring at her hands, which rested in her lap.

  “So was reading in your magazine about my election as president of my fraternity,” he countered quietly. “Didn’t the headline of your story start something like ‘Redneck Gets the Nod at Sigma—’”

  “Okay, okay,” Corlis interrupted, holding up her hands in front of her face. “I admit it. That piece came perilously close to a personal attack. I’d never do that now.” She stared at him earnestly. “But that was after you guys marched on our offices and challenged the Ms. UCLA staff to a naked mud-wrestling contest—and when we refused you kept that twenty-four-hour catcall brigade howling outside our door!”

  “Well, at least give me credit for calling off all that harassment stuff when the sorority across the quad invited us to their swimsuit fashion show that weekend, remember?” King recalled, his lips twitching in a repressed smile.

  Corlis shot him a disgusted look and tried not to laugh. Then she shifted her gaze and stared out the window, murmuring, “All those fraternities were so disgusting toward women back then.” She looked across at King and added, “Some still are.”

  “No doubt about it… some of us were… pretty disrespectful,” King agreed softly. He cocked his head. “But, upon reflection, don’t you think getting me expelled from school and campaigning to permanently ban my fraternity from campus was kinda a case of overkill?”

  “Well, the same thing might be said of that caricature of me!” she retorted. “But… yes… I think the whole thing spun out of control. Our side, too.”

  King pursed his lips and after a long moment nodded.

  “You might well be right there, Ms. California. And that cartoon of you was pretty vicious.” King sought her gaze and smiled faintly. “I expect we’ve both grown less hotheaded in our old age, don’t you imagine?” When Corlis didn’t reply, he added swiftly, “Well, maybe I have. The military knocked a lot of cockiness outta me, not to mention the attitude adjustment urged on me by a few women marine officers.”

  “You were a marine?” The man seemed so uptown… so patrician. Hadn’t his family lived in New Orleans practically since the explorer Bienville plunked down the French flag in the swamp in 1718?

  “You betcha!” he said, throwing his shoulders back military style. Cagney Cat was startled by this motion and hopped down from King’s lap. However, the feline immediately curled his portly body around the man’s ragged tennis shoes, resting his furry chin on the toe—and went back to sleep.

  “Why would you join the marines?”

  King grinned and shook his head. “You think I was gonna face my daddy after getting his national fraternity banned forever from the UCLA campus? Actually, going into the service was the best thing that ever happened to me. I came back to Tulane a disciplined studying machine. Like I tell my architectural history students at the university,” he added jocularly, “you gotta suck it up if you want to get ahead in this life. But then, you already know that, don’t you, Ace?” He rose from his chair and carefully eased his toe from beneath Cagney’s chin. “Well… I’d better get going. Only two and a half more shopping days till Christmas.”

  Corlis rose to her feet as well.

  “King?” she said uncertainly.

  “Yes, sugar?”

  Sugar?

  “It was… very nice of you to come by here personally and tell me about the job possibility at WJAZ.” She visualized the stack of bills awaiting her immediate attention in her broom closet home office down the hall. She’d been so busy this month, she’d let them pile up. “Is there anyone in particular that I should talk to at the station?”

  “Yeah. A guy named Andy Zamora.”

  “Is he the news director?”

  “That, and the station owner, and probably also the janitor. I got to know him when WJAZ covered a big controversy last year on lower Canal.”

  “Another Grover Jeffries construction project? What are you, anyway, the Preservation Police?”

  “That happens to be a very accurate description of the work I do,” King said, the corners of his lips quirking upward. “Las
t year I got into a tremendous flap about Jeffries’s biggest boondoggle to date. Have you seen the Good Times Shopping Plaza?”

  “That hulking, half-finished megamall off Canal Street? Ug-ly!”

  “The very one. It went bankrupt six months before you got here to the tune of nearly half a billion dollars. The cost overruns and the graft—even by New Orleans standards—were off the charts.”

  “Wow…” she said, awed by the size of the dollar amount. “Then how can Grover Jeffries afford to be making any more mischief in this town?”

  “This is Louisiana, darlin’,” he drawled. “Grover and his slick lawyers made sure that in his contract with the city, taxpayers like you and me are footing the bill for that financial catastrophe—not Jeffries Industries. In the end they couldn’t pin a thing on him.”

  “And WJAZ covered the story as it went along?” Corlis asked with admiration.

  “In the beginning they were just about the only news outfit that did—that is, until the whole thing blew sky-high, and the New York Times financial section picked up the story. Then the big stations around here and the newspapers couldn’t ignore it any longer,” he said with a hard, angry edge to his voice. “But, like I said, WJAZ’s an upstart outfit.”

  “I wonder if Zamora could also use a crackerjack cameraman and sound technician?”

  “Manny and Virgil? I can personally assure you that they’d be mighty grateful for your recommendation.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Virgil told me how to get hold of you when I called him this morning.”

  “You’re a friend of Virgil’s?” she asked, astonished.

  “Sugar…” he repeated the endearment that Corlis sensed was merely meant to sound ironic. “In some significant ways, New Orleans is a very small town. Everybody knows everybody else—you know what I mean?”