Orville’s house. Emma always thought of it that way, because a prenuptial agreement had made it plain when they were married that she would get a significant allowance but nothing more unless she gave birth to Orville’s child.
Emma’s only pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage.
Orville paid the rent on the shop at Oakdale Mansion, too; she’d had to borrow the money to get started. He was listed as the owner of the business. Originally he’d said he would probably change things when they had been together a few years, but the subject had never been brought up again.
Emma’s dad had done his best to make her see that such an agreement flagged Orville’s lack of commitment to the marriage. Back then, though, she’d refused to listen to anyone who questioned his devotion to her.
The single-story Lachance house stood on a golf course owned by a small group of exceedingly wealthy men, of whom Orville was one. Emma watched the lights lining the driveway grow closer. Apart from running Poke Around, she hadn’t worked since her years in college. If she operated the shop alone, she might just get by, but with her allowance gone, she probably couldn’t make the rent and cover her living expenses. The idea of finding a way to support herself was daunting, but she could do it. She had promised to look after her parents’ house until they got back, and once she was alone, she planned to live there and find a job. When they returned, she hoped to move out again and go back to school.
Orville hadn’t said a word by the time he drove his Mercedes into the garage, beside his yellow Corvette, his boat and Emma’s Lexus SUV. She realized that during the trip from the police station, she’d been leaning away from her husband and holding her stomach so tight it hurt. He could come around and decide to be decent. While they’d been driving, the reality of what she had been through might have softened him.
“Hearin’ the news must have shocked you,” she said. She wanted out of this relationship with as little acrimony as possible. “I’m sorry about that. I feel nervous. It’s not likely, but what if the murderer decides to get rid of me, too, or just to frighten me half to death to make sure I don’t think too hard about anythin’ I saw?”
“You’ve got a lot to answer for,” Orville said. “The mayor’s wife doesn’t go runnin’ in deserted areas, wearin’ almost nothing, so she can meet up with some old boyfriend.”
Emma gasped. “Orville, you sound crazy.” Let him lose his temper. “I hardly remembered Finn. We never even dated. He left Pointe Judah a year before I did and went to school back East. It’s too bad you felt you had to insult him. He’s a decorated war hero and a successful businessman, too. If you keep on making stupid suggestions about him, you’ll look like a fool. He could also be a bad enemy during the campaign, I should think. People around here think Finn is special.”
Orville jerked sideways in his seat and raised a hand to hit her. He made a fist and lowered it slowly. He’d hit her before, but never where a bruise might show. Without a word, he slammed from the car.
For a second or two, Emma hesitated. Then she knew, absolutely for certain, that she would set a divorce action in motion as soon as she had a complete plan. Her husband treated her badly, and he frightened her. What reason did she have to stay? She’d loved him so much when they’d met, but he’d smothered all that.
She had already spoken to a lawyer over in Toussaint who had represented a member of Secrets. Emma liked him. Both of the lawyers in Pointe Judah were among Orville’s golfing buddies.
“Listen to you,” she said, getting out into the garage and walking past him on her way inside the house. “A friend of mine has been murdered. I had the rotten luck to find her body, and you’re ranting at me about your reputation. You’re screwed up—or worse.”
“You don’t respect me,” Orville said. “Look at all I’ve given you, but you treat it like nothing. If you’re not very careful, I’ll have to reevaluate this marriage.”
Please do that. Do it now. “If that’s what you want, I’ll have to understand. We could work something out so it didn’t become public until after the election—if that’s what you’d prefer.” She was careful to sound deeply sad.
Amazement silenced him long enough for Emma to walk quickly through a terra-cotta-tiled hallway to the foyer and take the two steps up into the open, all-beige living room she hated—even if the designer, according to Orville, had been the best in New Orleans. Going directly to a wall of glass, which in daylight overlooked the golf course, she stared at the illuminated turquoise waters of the pool outside. Palmettos in stone pots cast shadows like fistfuls of long knives on the surface.
Orville’s shoes hit the floor in quick succession. He was running toward her. She had no way to escape him. He grabbed the top of her arm hard enough to make her cry out. He swung her around, backed her away from the windows and shoved her against a wall. “That’s the first and the last time you ever speak to me like that. I tell you to jump, you jump. You were a dropout, and I picked you up and gave you a dream life. I bought you and treated you like a queen. I own you.”
“You insisted I drop out, but I don’t want to argue with you,” she said, aware that recessed shelves holding art glass stood beside her. “Push me again and you could have your precious glass all over the floor. Let me go, please—if you want to find a civilized way to work this out.”
Shaking her again, he brought his face close to hers. “I could have made you look like an idiot in front of Meche and your friend. I held back to save your feelings. Now I wish I hadn’t.”
“You held back because you don’t want anyone to know you abuse me,” she said, bracing for his reaction.
He took his hand from her arm but cuffed her across the back of the head. “Bitch,” he said.
Emma would not let him see her cry or show how he humiliated her. “Do you want to talk about this?” she said. “Or would you rather leave the house until you’ve calmed down?”
“Leave my own house? Hah, you always were a dreamer, I—”
“Either we talk or one of us has to get out of here.”
He opened his mouth, no doubt with another load of invective to spew at her, but he closed it again slowly and gave a slightly silly, one-sided smile. “You’re not yourself.”
“I’m as close to bein’ myself as anyone would be after the experience I’ve had,” Emma said. “All I can see in my mind is my friend dead and obscenely posed. You haven’t even said you’re sorry about what happened to her. And somethin’ else—we’re livin’ in a town with a murderer on the loose, a deranged person. He could be anywhere. Don’t you think you should already be out there makin’ sure the folks stay calm? The news will be all over town by now.”
“I don’t need you to tell me how to do my job,” Orville said and checked his watch. “Billy’s the one I’ll be talkin’ to. Less said to get the town on edge, the better. If necessary, I’ll say a few words in the mornin’, like I told Billy I would. And nothin’s gonna happen to you. Your problem is you only think about yourself.”
As far as Emma was concerned, the talking was over for tonight.
“Denise Steen was a bitch,” Orville said. He had regained his unruffled appearance. “I wouldn’t have wanted her to die, but she asked for it. She got people all riled up—givin’ women ideas that made trouble for their husbands and men in general.”
Emma’s head stung where he’d hit her, but she kept her hands away from it. She sat on the edge of a chair shaped like a manta ray. The lighted glass shelves and the brilliant pieces displayed there shone behind Orville in the otherwise dimly lit room. She felt him waiting for her to respond, to give him another opening to revile Denise.
“You’re not to speak to that man Duhon again,” he said.
Let him rant.
“Do you hear me?”
Now he could accuse her of ignoring him. So be it.
“Dammit, Emma, I had to break away from an important meetin’ to come and rescue you.”
“I didn’t need to be rescued,” she shot back at him. “Go back to your meetin’. It’s nowhere near time for it to be over. Before you go, though, you should get it straight that Denise was just a member of Secrets, not the one who started it or kept it goin’. That’s Angela. Denise was so busy she couldn’t even get there very often.”
“You’re tryin’ to work me up,” he said, his voice rising. “I’m runnin’ for governor. I’m startin’ early because I’ve got a long way to go, a lot of useful contacts to make—and a lot of palms to grease. I have important things to do, and you’re not goin’ to get in my way. You are never goin’ to hold me back. Do you understand?”
She was quiet again.
“I’ll have to rethink lettin’ you belong to that club. You spend too much time there.” He snorted. “Secrets. Why not just hang out a flag that says, Man Haters Welcome Here?”
“Because it’s not a club for man haters,” she told him quietly. “Quite the reverse. Secrets of a Successful Life is the whole name. It’s about women givin’ support to other women. It’s a gentle, safe place to spend a few hours.” She’d told him all this before, but he never listened to her.
“Sure it is,” he said. “But I’m pretty sure I don’t want you goin’ there. Time was when you never answered me back. You knew your place. That was before you had a bunch of disgruntled women puttin’ ideas in your head. You aren’t a business-woman in some big city—payin’ her own bills—you’re a Southern wife of a prominent man, and I’m your only work. That was the agreement. And that shop isn’t work. It’s a playpen.”
Emma got up. “I need to shower and change.” Every word he spoke to her came loaded with a mean hate. When they’d met and he’d persuaded her to leave school, the talk had been all about love, home, a family. And she’d believed he meant what he said. “Excuse me, Orville.” She turned to go.
“Don’t you leave this room until I say so.”
Her legs trembled inside. “I’ve been meanin’ to ask you. I hear you’re part of a group that calls itself Pat’s Pack. I suppose you get together at Patrick Damalis’s place. Would that be an all men’s club?”
His expression darkened. “I don’t know where you heard about that, but I intend to find out. A few guys get together to discuss business. Now keep your nose out of my affairs.”
“Gladly. I reckon I can be out of here in a few hours.” Now her heart bumped. She shouldn’t have mentioned Pat’s Pack—someone else might get into trouble for talking to her about it. “I could probably leave tonight. After all, there’s pretty much nothin’ that belongs to me here.”
“Includin’ your car,” Orville said, his nostrils flaring.
“The car is mine, remember? A birthday gift from your father.” She’d opened a safety deposit box, and the papers for the Lexus were safely stowed there, together with a few other small treasures, including a stack of savings bonds her grandmother had left her.
He came closer, and Emma had a struggle not to fall back. “Where would you go? You don’t have the money to leave town.”
In that he was right, but she knew how to work hard. “I’ll move into Mom and Dad’s place for now. And I’ll get a job.” She glanced at the cream-colored grand piano Orville had bought just prior to their marriage because he loved to show off her musical talents. “Someone will be glad of a hardworking waitress. Maybe I could play a bit here and there, too. I used to when I was at school in New Orleans, and people liked it.”
“You’d go out to that dump where you grew up? It’s in the middle of nowhere.”
“My parents’ home is no dump. I love that house, and that’s where I’ll go.”
He pushed his shoulders back and raised his head so he could look down at her. “You’re afraid of bein’ alone. Particularly at night.”
Emma laughed; she couldn’t help it. “Don’t you think I’ve gotten over that by now? You leave me alone every night.”
“Damn you,” he ground out. “I’ll make sure you can’t get a job and embarrass me all over Pointe Judah…. It’s that man, isn’t it? Mr. War Hero and businessman. What kind of business would that be? Think he’ll arrive on his white horse to turn your nights into hours of sweaty sex? You fool. He thinks you’re rolling in it—that’s why he wants you. Have you thought about that? You didn’t tell him all you get is a very good allowance unless you have a child, did you? Or that you don’t even get the allowance if we split up?”
She shook her head, hating him more with every second.
“’Course you didn’t. I’ll go after him, y’know. He’s the one in the wrong, and I’ll make him pay for it, then pay some more. He’s gonna wish he never set foot back in this town.”
“Listen to yourself,” she said, helpless to steady her voice. “You’re makin’ things up. Threatenin’ a man I never really knew when we were in high school. A man I saw for the first time in years and almost didn’t recognize. Go ahead, make a fool of yourself. That should help your campaign.”
Orville sat down and let his hands hang between his knees. “I’ve got to think.”
“I’ll leave you to do that, then.”
“Don’t go…please. Stay with me.”
He looked up at her, and she couldn’t tell if he was really calm or just hiding his anger. “Emma, I don’t want a divorce—ever.”
Because his image needed her. “You were the one who brought the subject up.”
“I was angry, is all.” He looked at her with the mournful eyes he could accomplish at a moment’s notice. “Remember how it was when we met?”
“Oh, please. That’s hardly even a memory.”
“To you, maybe.” His eyes glittered, and she thought he might actually be crying. “To me, you were a dream come true.”
The perfect political wife in the making.
He held a hand out to her, and she looked at it.
“Please, darlin’,” he said, beckoning her closer. “I don’t know what comes over me sometimes. Just seems I say things I wouldn’t if I thought them through.”
Emma’s soft heart had been a liability throughout this marriage. She went to his side, but she crossed her arms. She couldn’t bear the idea of holding a hand he freely used to punish her.
Orville looked up at her with pleading in his eyes. “I’ve got a temper,” he said. “But don’t you know the reason I got so mad tonight was because I was thinkin’ how I’d feel if it was you they found murdered out there?”
No, she didn’t.
“It would break my heart to lose you—under any circumstances. This campaignin’ is gettin’ to me. I want the office because I know I can do good, but the wranglin’ and the process is killin’ me.”
“Give it up, then,” she said promptly. Emma doubted she could find too many people who would believe Orville La-chance wanted to be governor to do good for others.
A different light flared in his eyes, but he quickly smothered his fury. “It’s my duty,” he said. “Just as it’s your duty to be at my side. Your duty because we’re man and wife, and I wouldn’t be whole without you. Stick with me, darlin’. I haven’t been myself, I know it, but give me more time. And if you still want to, we’ll see someone about gettin’ help with havin’ a baby.”
She couldn’t respond to him. For months he’d behaved as if she physically repulsed him. And she’d lost her baby ten years earlier.
“Emma, I’m givin’ a party on the fourteenth. I know it’s short notice, but I also know if anyone can pull it off perfectly, you can. Can’t you see how much I need you? And you need me? You need someone strong in your life, and that’s what I am.”
“How big a party?”
“Not big—but important. Donors with deep pockets. Maybe thirty couples, so it would be nice right here. I can get the list to you in the mornin’.” Yet again he looked at the time. “I want things lush. Impressive. We’ll woo the big bucks right out of their bank accounts.”
“Get me the list,” she said, out of fight for the present.
“You won’t forget to put your name on the invitations?”
She really had shaken his self-assurance, at least a little. “The invitations will be appropriate. I do need to know exactly what you have in mind, so e-mail me, please.”
He was on his feet. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m so grateful we know how to get through a little bump like this. I’ll work hard to make sure we don’t misunderstand each other again. We’ve got a long way to go in this race. Get yourself the sexiest dress on the planet.”
Emma didn’t look at him. He honestly thought he was persuasive. All that mattered were his political ambitions, and as long as she understood that, she wouldn’t inconvenience him.
Scuffling sounded from the area of the front door. The knock that came would have gone unheard if she and Orville hadn’t been so close.
“Let me deal with this,” Orville said, frowning. “Stay back so you won’t be seen—for your safety.”
He went to the door, and Emma stayed exactly where she was.
Clustered together outside stood Angela, founder of Secrets of a Successful Life, Frances Brussard, Holly Chandall and Wendy Saunders. The last three were members of the group.
Emma couldn’t believe Angela had left her home. She rarely, if ever, went out. Statuesque, with long white-blond curls and an exceedingly pale face webbed with severe burn scars on one side, she bowed her head and said, “Mayor La-chance, please forgive us for interrupting you, but we came to comfort Emma. And ourselves.” Angela’s vocal chords had been damaged during the fire, and her voice sometimes faded away if she was nervous. She pulled locks of blond hair farther over her scars. All four women wore the loose pink robes members of the club wore to be comfortable at meetings. The robes were kept at the club, and seeing them here like this meant the women were so upset they’d forgotten to change out of them.
For the first time that evening, Emma sobbed. She beckoned her friends into the house, and they crowded around her, joined arms and pressed close—and cried. She thought of Orville watching them, then didn’t care.
“We know what happened,” Angela said, her blue eyes puffy. “It’s cruel fate that you were the one to find her.”
“That’s what I thought at first,” Emma said. “But it was better for me to be there than just strangers.”
Holly Chandall rushed out her words, as she always did. “Rusty thinks Denise must have been working on a story about someone who didn’t want to see their name in the paper, so they killed her to stop her from writing the article.” She had tied a pink and white scarf around her auburn hair, turban style. Her deep brown eyes were wide with anxiety.
“Sounds obvious but reasonable to me.” Frances, with her bunches of black cornrow braids decorated with colored beads, had a level head but lousy taste in partners. “Wendy thinks we should go to the police and tell them what we think. Just in case they haven’t thought of that angle.”
“They’ve thought of that angle.” Orville’s voice intruded. “You’ve probably come to the same conclusion as the authorities. It’s the only one that makes sense.”
“Most likely you’re right,” Wendy said. “I don’t know why I always think someone else might miss the obvious.”
Emma caught Angela’s eye, and understanding passed between them. They knew why Wendy doubted a lot of things.
“Ladies?” Orville cleared his throat. “I do thank you for coming to make sure Emma’s all right. She isn’t, of course, but she’ll be okay, and your concern has helped her. Be careful to lock up when you get home. Get some sleep. Tomorrow we’ll probably all face a lot more questions. Did y’all come together?”
Angela’s expression lost any trace of softness. Her thin, high brows rose even closer to her hairline. She pulled at her hair again and nodded at Orville. “We came in my van, thank you.” Her robe swirled around her. A deeper pink than the others, it was made from heavy silk rather than cotton. Her burns, caused by a kitchen fire many years before, extended to her hands, and she wore pink crocheted gloves without fingers. Her nails were long and painted.
Orville held the front door wide open. “Good. Now you be careful drivin’ back. Give your dear mother my best wishes, please, Frances.”
The women left with faint goodbyes, and Emma saw her husband for the patronizing chameleon he was.
“I guess they mean well,” he said once the two of them were alone. “Why the ugly pink dresses?”
“We wear them at meetings.” Emma hated explaining any of this to him. “We like them. They’re comfortable, and they’re a sign of our solidarity. And pink makes any woman look better.” She smiled at him.
Orville paused before returning her smile with one that came loaded with what might be pity. “You don’t need extra pink to make you pretty,” he said.
With his chin held up as if he were listening for something, he stood where he was. What felt like minutes passed before he said, “You’re the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen.”
He had to know how forced he sounded, how awkward they were together. “Thank you,” she said, looking away. “I guess I’ll finally get that shower I keep talkin’ about.” And a chance to start grieving in peace for a dear friend.
“Good idea. Then you turn in, darlin’. I suppose I’ll be answerin’ some questions I won’t like when I get back to the meetin’. They’ll have been waitin’ for me all this time. I’ll try not to wake you when I get back.”