Boston, Massachusetts
The Past, Three Weeks Ago
BellaDonna put a gloved hand to the tarnished brass pull and drew the glass-fronted door open. She stepped up and into the bar and shuffled her feet out of habit upon the doormat to wipe the dampness from the soles of her boots. She looked up to survey the dim interior. It was a long room of dark brown wood paneling and deep green padded upholstery. The bar itself was zinc-topped, with green padded stools all along the front. The opposite wall was lined with deep booths that lent themselves to privacy. It was one of any number of Irish bars in the city of Boston. There were only two people inside the bar, the barkeep himself and a silver-haired man seated on one of the barstools. Both men turned to appraise Belle as she strode forward. She was dressed in a long dark gray coat, a bold purple silk scarf looped around her neck brought out the stunning color of her eyes. Elizabeth Taylor eyes, as she was often told, but Liz was only a fraction of fiery and dramatic as BellaDonna Boudreaux.
Belle smiled a tight-lipped smile at the men. She walked to the bar and set the thick manila envelope she carried down upon the counter. The bartender nodded at her.
"What'll you have?" he asked.
"Bourbon," she answered, her voice dark and smoky. Her eye might have winked. "On de rocks."
The silver-haired gentleman had appraised Belle appreciatively and she cast her violet gaze upon him. "On me," the man told the barkeep and tapped his credit card against the countertop.
Belle smiled at the man and moved several stools forward, sliding the envelope along the bar towards him. He was an older gentleman, perhaps as old if not older than her father, if Marius had still been alive. The difference in their ages seemed not to deter the rather immediate attraction each had for the other. Belle lowered her eyes and head, hiding her rueful smile. She should have prepared herself for this encounter, she realized. Meeting Remy LeBeau's biological father in the flesh was much like encountering the son. She could hold fast to the conviction of her anger until actually confronting Remy in person, only to find her fury at him melt away like spring frost. That in itself gave her a different reason to be angry; Remy could be so infuriatingly forgivable.
She pulled off one glove and then the other and tucked them into her coat pocket.
"Why, thank you," she told the gentleman then glanced at the bartender. "Dead in here, enh?"
The bartender poured a measure of bourbon into a glass containing a single ice cube and shrugged. "Just about."
Belle's eyes flicked back to the silver-haired man and nodded at the barstool beside him. "This seat taken?"
The senator smoothed a hand across the padded stool and turned it. "I'm meeting a business partner," he told her. "But until then, perhaps you'd keep me company?"
Belle unbuttoned her overcoat, revealing her light gray blouse and black pencil skirt she wore before sliding onto the barstool. She crossed her stockinged legs and loosened her scarf. "What business is that?" Belle asked.
The man smiled, revealing a white smile of even teeth. Belle was taken aback. It was a smile she'd fallen in love with once. She forced herself to meet his eyes. They were dark brown, like molasses. Belle almost thought it a shame the man would be dead within the next half-hour.
"Politics," the man replied.
"Your face does look familiar," Belle said, which was perfectly true though not because the man stood in the political spotlight.
He extended a hand. "Honoré DesJarlais," he told her. "Ray. Of Louisiana."
She took his hand briefly. "Louisiana, my Louisiana...the place where I was born," Belle half-sang.
DesJarlais looked at her with some surprise. "Well...one of my own constituents here in this very bar. What a coincidence."
"Is it?" Belle asked him sharply. When DesJarlais looked at her askance, she added: "I'm here on a business errand of my own. And as much as I'd love to sit and chat, I'm on de clock." She tapped a fingernail against the folder.
The man studied her carefully, then looked down at the manila envelope. He looked back up into her eyes. "Boudreaux?" he tentatively asked.
She smiled her unkind smile, turned to her drink and put the glass to her lips.
"I wasn't expectin' a woman," DesJarlais said. Her eyes slid back to his. "Though that's of no matter to me. It makes this business venture more of a pleasure."
Belle swallowed her mouthful of liquor, but the sweet warm notes of the bourbon were lost to the bitterness on her palate. "Why don't we...?" she said and nodded in the direction of one of the booths towards the back. She picked up the envelope and slid from the stool before waiting to see if he would acquiesce. She heard him request a second drink from the bartender. Belle sat in the deep booth and waited, swirling the single ice cube around in her glass. DesJarlais at last sat across from her.
"Am I to understand you were successful?" DesJarlais asked Belle. "In fulfilling our contract?"
She gave a single slow nod and moved the envelope towards DesJarlais. "You'll find the results to your satisfaction." Inside the envelope was a number of glossy photographs in vivid color; that color being mostly blood red. Belle had taken the photos from her vantage point across the alley from Remy LeBeau's Upper East Side apartment in New York. Little did she know at the time she was photographing not the corpse of her ex-husband, but a lifeless clone. Only a few of the photos had come out clearly. Much to her dismay, her hand had not been as steady as she would have liked when she snapped the images.
DesJarlais made to open the envelope when Belle put a staying hand upon his wrist. "I wouldn't suggest opening that here," she said quietly, then cast a glance to the barkeep. "Perhaps the men's lavatory?"
DesJarlais studied her a moment, then nodded. He excused himself and tucked the envelope into his jacket. He stood and departed for the rear of the bar. Belle folded her hands upon the tabletop and watched as a film of water appeared on top of her bourbon as the ice cube melted. Several long moments passed before the lavatory door reopened. A man walked out and strode silently towards where Belle was seated. He slid into the booth across from her, placed a pocket watch onto the tabletop, then mimicked her posture by folding his hands upon the tabletop.
"That didn't take long," she told the man. She nodded at the watch. "What is that?"
"What I could recover of his personal effects," the man said, pulling the monogrammed watch fob from the chain.
He pocketed the watch, then removed a sharp stiletto blade from his interior coat pocket and passed it across the tabletop to Belle along with the fob. Belle recovered her blade and in an instant it had disappeared somewhere on her person. She smiled. "I didn't think you had it in you, thief," she said with a mocking sort of pleasure in her voice.
The man drew a steadying breath. He held the packet of photographs in one hand. Belle noted that his hand trembled. She took pleasure in his discomfort.
"It comes easier when you're confronted by a monster," the man replied, a tremor in his voice. Belle wasn't sure if he was speaking of DesJarlais or herself.
"You saw de photographs?" she asked. "I'm sorry you did. Gruesome, aren't they?"
"C'est pas possible," the man whispered to himself.
The man ducked his head and put a hand to his forehead as if in pain. Belle began to feel a sympathetic twinge of guilt. She slid a hand across the tabletop and took the envelope from beneath the man's fist.
"It isn't him," she said offhandedly, her voice low.
The man's blue eyes snapped up to her own. "What –?" he said, startled.
"The body in de photos. It isn't Remy. He isn't dead, Jean-Luc," Belle told him.
Jean-Luc LeBeau looked all at once relieved, but then his mouth became an angry line. "You let me believe –!"
"Perhaps if you had known Remy was still alive, you might not have gone through wit' de kill. You might've let dat monster live another day," Belle told him coldly.
Jean-Luc mulled this over. "You can be uncommonly cruel," he told her.
Belle's eyes narrowed a bit. It was something of an uneasy truce she had with her former father-in-law. She held the reins to the Guilds and he acted as silent partner, rarely intervening in the Guild affairs. Really, he was like a shadow of his former self. In all the years that Belle had known him, she always detected an undercurrent of disapproval. Likely it was due to the centuries-long feud between their two Guilds, but Belle couldn't help but think there was more to it. Jean-Luc simply did not like her. She could say the feeling was mutual.
Envelope in hand, Belle slid from the booth. Her eyes met the barkeep's. "Your washroom needs attendin' to, Alec," she told him and dropped the fob into her empty highball glass.
The bartender nodded at BellaDonna as she walked past. Jean-Luc slowly followed. He removed a packet from his sleeve; the payment Belle was to receive from DesJarlais for fulfilling the contract on Remy's life. She would not have accepted it, even if she had been the one to murder Remy LeBeau. Jean-Luc tossed the packet onto the zinc-topped bar for the bartender. The barkeep was a loosely affiliated Guild member, one of those castaways stranded in New England by the British some two-hundred and fifty years ago after Le Grand Dérangement. But New World colonists, while in the pursuit of their own religious and democratic freedoms, weren't so much interested in taking on a glut of Papists from Acadie, so they gave the Boudreaux and LeBeau ancestors the old heave-ho. Which left New England with nothing but the most stubborn and recalcitrant bunch of Acadians you'd ever like to find.
Belle rebuttoned her coat and retied her scarf once outside on the pavement. Jean-Luc joined her, firmly closing the bar door behind him.
"If that wasn't Remy in those photos," he began. "Then who was it?"
Belle regarded Jean-Luc. It felt nice to be the one with answers for a change. "A clone," she told him. "Somebody liked Remy enough to go and make hisself a copy."
Jean-Luc found no humor in that. "So a murdered clone turns up in my son's apartment," he said.
"Seems a might unlikely, but there you have it," Belle said.
"Improbable, to be sure," Jean-Luc said. "Unless you happen t'know someone with a knack for improbability."
"What're you talkin' about, Jean-Luc?" Belle mused, looking down her nose at him.
"There's somewhere you ought to be," Jean-Luc replied.
"Right, de woman," Belle said. "Helen Moreux. Time t'meet mommy dearest and collect my wages. Unless you want a cut...? You did do most of de work, after all."
Jean-Luc made a dismissive sound. "Don't be vile t'her," Jean-Luc admonished. "She's had a difficult enough life."
"All dis time thinkin' her son was dead," Belle sniped. "Yes, I'd imagine that'd be hard t'live with."
Jean-Luc shook his head tiredly, but had no retort.
"All dis time you knew who his folks was," Belle said. "And you never breathed a word. I wonder what Remy would say if he knew de kinda secrets you kept from him."
"As it happens, I'd know exactly what he said, Belle, " Jean-Luc replied. "And what he's yet to say. And none of it was ever meant for your ears." With that pronouncement made, Jean-Luc turned and walked away, leaving BellaDonna once again in the dark.
~oOo~
Next Time: Flashbacks. Pink shirts. Bad hair. Lots of dogs. Breaking and entering. And a long, long chapter.