Page 42 of Jethro

Neil picked one up and stared at the signature. It was perfect, down to the little hook Carter put on the tail of the r. He did not know that Missy had sat at her kitchen table for three nights running with Carter's old checkbook register and a yellow legal pad, writing her husband's name over and over until her hand forgot it had ever written anything else. The pad had gone into the fireplace afterward. Margie had found the ashes in the morning and wondered why anyone needed a fire in October.

"Thirty days of silence," Vance said approvingly. "Negative consent. Half of them are in their eighties. They'll put it in a drawer with the church bulletins."

Neil set the letter down. His hand was shaking.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Langley, but I won't sign the compliance certification until I've spoken with Carter myself. In person. I've worked for him for nineteen years. I owe him that much."

Missy did not argue. She only smiled and checked the slim gold watch on her wrist.

"Of course, Neil. Come by the house tomorrow afternoon. Around four. He's usually at his best after his tea."

The bedroom smelled of camphor and closed windows. Carter lay propped against the headboard in navy silk pajamas that hung on him now like a borrowed suit. His skin had gone the color of candle wax, and his eyes took a long time to find Neil's face when Margie showed him in.

The Haviland cup sat empty on the nightstand. Missy stood at the foot of the bed with one hand resting on the carved post, as still as a figure on a cameo.

"Carter." Neil pulled a chair close and lowered his voice, as though that might keep it from her. "Carter, it's Neil. Listen to me. She's selling the firm to Preston Vance. For half what it's worth. There are letters going out to every client, with your signature on them. Did you agree to this? Did you sign anything?"

Carter's gaze drifted past him to his wife. For a long moment, the only sound was the ceiling fan turning slowly overhead. Neil would remember that look for the rest of his life. It held no confusion at all. It was the look of a man reading a verdict he had already guessed.

"Do what she says, Neil," Carter whispered. Then he closed his eyes.

Missy walked Neil down the curving staircase and stopped him in the foyer beneath the chandelier, her hand light on his arm.

"You heard him." Her voice was gentle, almost kind. "And Neil, before you go thinking about phone calls you might make. The valuations on Carter's real estate fund, the ones that went to the investors right before it collapsed. Whose signature is on the certification page? Not Carter's. Yours." She straightened his lapel.

"If anyone ever starts asking questions about this firm, darling, they'll start with the man who signed for it. They'll start with you."

Neil signed the compliance certification the next morning. The client letters went out that afternoon in three hundred and twelve cream envelopes. The closing was set for the first of the month, the same day Dustin Morgan's patience was due to run out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The firm was money. The bank seat was power, and power, Missy had learned at her father's knee, could always be sold for more than money to the right man.

Crescent Gulf Bancorp was the holding company for four banks strung along the coast like pearls: Crescent Gulf Bank & Trust in New Orleans, Bayou Teche Community Bank in New Iberia, Pearl River Savings across the Mississippi line, and Gulf Coast National in Mobile.

Carter owned nine point two percent of its stock, a block his father had assembled one quiet purchase at a time. For fourteen years, that stake had come with a seat on the board of directors and a place on both the loan committee and the audit committee. Carter thought of it as a prestige appointment, three hours a month, a good lunch, and a reason to wear his father's cufflinks.

Friday lunch at Galatoire's was a New Orleans sacrament, and Whitney Boudreaux had kept the same table by the front window since the Carter administration, the other Carter. He was seventy-one, pink-faced and white-haired, in a seersucker suit he wore well past the season out of pure stubbornness. He stood when Missy approached and kissed her cheek, and his face folded into genuine sorrow.

"Missy, I heard. I'm so sorry. How is he?"

"Not well, Whit. Not well at all." She waited until the waiter had brought the soufflé potatoes and gone, then laid an envelope beside his bread plate. Inside was Carter's letter of resignation from the board of Crescent Gulf Bancorp, effective at the November meeting, signed in that perfect blue hand. The second paragraph praised Julian Theriot of Lafayette as a man of integrity and accounting expertise and urged the board to appoint him to fill the vacancy. A copy of Dr. Pryce's certification was clipped behind it.

Whit read it twice, then took off his reading glasses. "I've never heard of this man. Missy, the nominating committee does its own vetting. There are background checks and regulatory notices. And who exactly is buying Carter's shares? I'm hearing it's some trust out of Delaware with no name I recognize." He folded the letter. "I've known Carter for thirty years. I'd like to see him before I put anything in front of my board."

"He isn't receiving visitors." Missy buttered a piece of French bread with small, precise strokes. "But he did ask me to remind you of something, Whit. Orange Beach."

The pink drained out of the old man's face so quickly that the waiter, passing with a tray of trout amandine, paused to ask if Mr. Boudreaux was all right.

"Six million dollars to your son-in-law for that marina development," Missy went on pleasantly, once the waiter had gone. "Approved by the loan committee without a single independent appraisal. You recused yourself on paper, of course, but you made three phone calls to the committee members the night before the vote. And when the marina flooded and the loan went bad, it was restructured twice and quietly kept off the problem-loan list the examiners review." She took a sip of water. "Carter sat on that committee, Whit. Carter kept notes. Carter kept everything in a locked drawer in his study. And I have the key."

"That's blackmail," Whit said hoarsely.

"It's lunch," Missy said. "Mr. Theriot will be at the November meeting. I'm sure your committee will find him perfectly suitable. And Whit," she added, gathering her gloves, "the shares will transfer on the first. I'd hate for anything to delay it."

She left him at the window table with his soufflé potatoes going cold. She did not tell him that the locked drawer in Carter's study had held nothing but old tax returns and a box of cigars. Missy had learned about Orange Beach the way she had learned most things in her life, at a ladies' luncheon from a banker's wife who had drunk one Sazerac too many.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE