Chapter 17

The first leg of Tommy and Connie’s road trip was a two hour jaunt south on US Highway 84 to the newly completed section of Interstate 10. Tommy merged eastbound on the Interstate and motored to San Antonio. Sections of Interstate 10 were still under construction, so they spent as much time on US 90 as they did the Interstate. They rolled into San Antonio at noon and stopped for a leisurely lunch at the Officers Club at Brooke Army Medical Center. It was early in their travels for a lengthy stop, but Tommy needed the break. Riding in a vehicle for a prolonged trip was hard on Tommy, and four hours at a time was about all he could stand.

They pulled out of San Antonio at two in the afternoon. Connie drove the second leg of the trip. Connie did not feel constrained to drive the speed limit and Tommy was tolerating the trip better as a passenger, so at seven in the evening, they drove into Lafayette, Louisiana. Tommy was surprised when Connie made a couple of turns off the highway and pulled up in front of a small Gothic-looking hotel a number of miles outside of town.

“Why are we stopping here?” Tommy asked as Connie opened her door.

Connie turned in her seat and gave him a reassuring smile.

“It’s okay Baby, I know the family that owns the place. We’ll eat supper and get a room for the night. I figure if we leave by seven in the morning, we can be at your sister’s this time tomorrow night.”

Tommy nodded his understanding and exited the truck with her. Tommy’s feet were barely on the ground when a small wiry man wearing a white ruffle-front shirt and dark trousers appeared as if by magic in front of his truck. The man had cruelly handsome features, glossy, slicked back ebony hair and piercing brown eyes. Tommy guessed his age to be mid-twenties, but it was hard to tell for sure.

“Welcome back, Miss Delgado,” the man said in a surprisingly soft Creole voice.

“Thank you Pierre, it’s nice to be back. This is my fiancé Thomas Bledsoe; Tommy this is Pierre Arcenaux, his family owns this charming inn.”

Tommy stuck out his hand. Pierre grasped it firmly and looked up into Tommy’s face.

“You are a very lucky man, Thomas,” Arcenaux said with envy in his voice.

Pierre’s firm handshake and disarming honesty caused Tommy to like him immediately.

“Yes I am,” Tommy replied sincerely.

Connie sorted out which bags they’d need for the night, and the two men lugged them up the broad front steps.

Connie knew the area and the Arcenauxs because of a movie she’d made here in Lafayette. The inn was a prominent location in the production.

The movie was the only one in which she’d appeared cast as the villain. Connie thought her work in Voodoo She-Devil was some of her finest. The movie was also one of the few in which she actually wore different costumes, even if all the gowns were exceedingly low cut, tight and revealing.

In the movie, she played a Cajun Voodoo Priestess whose followers were tormented by a bunch of loutish Yankees down from New York on a bayou hunting expedition. After the hunters sexually assault and kill a teenage girl, the Priestess extracts her revenge. She seduces and kills the hunters, one at a time, in cruel and unusual ways in and around the Hotel Arcenaux.

Pierre led them into the lobby and up to the ornate reception desk. A petite and attractive older woman, dressed in a long black skirt and a black off-the-shoulders peasant blouse, was manning the desk. The woman also had shiny black hair, but hers had a striking white stripe on either side of her face. Her eyes were a mesmerizing caramel color flecked with gold. She greeted Connie as if she was a long lost relative, and then cast those hypnotic orbs on Tommy.

“And who is this big gorgeous man, Cherie? My girls will eat him up.”

Connie giggled and once again made introductions.

“This is Thomas, Marie. He belongs to me, so tell your daughters he’s off the menu. Tommy, this is Marie Arcenaux, she is my late husband Beau’s cousin.”

As soon as Tommy took her proffered dainty hand is his big paw, Marie’s pupils widened and she rocked back on her heels. Marie, locally renowned as a seer, quickly dropped Tommy’s hand, performed the Sign of the Cross, and looked at Connie in doe-eyed wonder.

“You have honored us, Cherie. Not since I met my children’s father have I felt such gentle goodness. He is one of the blessed!” she exclaimed.

Before the thoroughly startled Connie could react, Marie spun on her heels and fled out of the lobby through a set of double doors.

“Pierre, show our guests to the bridal suite. Cherie, dinner is still served promptly at eight,” Marie said over her shoulder.

Pierre shrugged when Connie shot him an inquiring frown, but he looked at Tommy with new respect.

“Mother sees things in people no one else can see, but I’ve never seen her react that strongly to anyone. The only other person she has ever said was blessed was my father.”

Tommy and Pierre picked up the suitcases and the three of them walked over to an old-fashioned elevator set in an alcove off the lobby. As Pierre operated the controls of the creaking old Otis, he told them about his father.

“According to Mother, my father was a kind and gentle man. He refused to use a weapon, yet he volunteered for service when the Korean War broke out. He was a Navy Corpsman with a Marine unit at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, and his bravery saved a number of men. He was killed when he dashed out into the open to pull two wounded men to safety. Even though he was mortally wounded, he managed to save both men. Mother says my father was incapable of not doing what was right.”

Tommy was silent through all of this, but he nodded his understanding and agreement with how Rene Arcenaux lived and died. Tommy, better than anyone, knew how Pierre’s father felt. He shared the man’s aversion to weapons, yet Tommy, like Rene, was a long way from being a coward. Connie noticed Tommy’s sad expression and took his hand reassuringly.

Pierre led them to a lavishly decorated room with a large round bed, reminded them about dinner and disappeared. Tommy looked around, awestruck at the gaudy red and pink magnificence. Still holding his hand, Connie sat down on the bed and pulled him down next to her.

“What are you thinking, Baby?” Connie asked solicitously.

“They remind me of the ‘Addams Family,’” Tommy replied with a sheepish grin.

Connie laughed delightedly and kissed him on the cheek.

“They are unusual, Baby; but like you, in a good way,” Connie said.

Then she looked at Tommy’s watch and hopped to her feet.

“We better hurry, we need to dress for dinner and we only have twenty minutes.”

Dressing for dinner at the Hotel Arcenaux meant a coat and tie for Tommy and a calf-length red cocktail dress for Connie. Tommy dressed distractedly as he watched Connie transform herself in a focused fury of motion. At five minutes before eight, they were on the elevator as it groaned its way down to the lobby.

The dining room was small and intimate, with six tables scattered around. There were only two other couples in the dining room, both older and prosperous-looking. A young woman in a sassy French maid’s outfit showed them to a table near a large bay window. The woman was the spitting image of Marie, right down to the double white stripes in her long inky tresses.

Tommy and Connie were having a cup of coffee after an exceptional meal, when Marie swept into the room. To be such a tiny woman, she had a commanding presence. Marie greeted her other guests, then walked over to Tommy and Connie’s table. Tommy stood up and pulled out a chair for her.

“Please join us,” he said, his voice steady and clear.

Marie gave him a sweet smile and gracefully folded herself in to the chair.

Connie watched the two of them with an amused smile. She could already see the ‘Tommy magic’ working on the usually aloof and serious Marie. Cousin Marie was a kind and pleasant woman, but according to Connie’s late husband, the spark had gone out of her life when her beloved Rene died in Korea. As they sat talking, Connie had an idea.

“Tommy, I’m tired and ready for bed. Marie, why don’t you show Tommy the gardens, and I’ll just head on up to the room.”

Tommy took one look at Marie’s eager expression, and any thought of protest died on his lips. They all walked to the elevator and Marie continued to the desk to pick up her shawl. Connie stood on her tip-toes and kissed Tommy on the cheek.

“Make her laugh, Tommy. She deserves it more than most people,” she whispered in his ear.

Tommy did just that as he and Marie sat under a small gazebo in the center of the beautiful, well-tended

garden. He had her in stitches as he comically related his life as a small town cowboy who couldn’t ride a horse even if he owned one. After his stories, Marie told him about her one and only love. It amazed Marie to find herself telling this virtual stranger embarrassing, yet amusing tidbits about her and Rene.

At ten-thirty, she walked him back to the elevator and kissed him on the cheek with a promise to see him off in the morning.

When Tommy sauntered into the bridal suite, he was surprised to find Connie still awake. He was even more surprised when she whipped off the covers to show she was also gloriously naked.

“Get undressed and join me,” she said urgently. “Seeing you with Marie reminded me exactly why I love you so much, and you know how needy I am when I think about that.”

Even though they made love until midnight, Tommy was still up at his normal six AM. He cajoled Connie out of bed with the promise she could sleep in the truck while he drove. They were showered, dressed, packed and down in the lobby by six-forty-five. Pierre helped Tommy load the suitcases into the back of his truck, while Connie stood on the wide front veranda talking to Marie. When the suitcases were secured under the tarpaulin, Tommy and Pierre rejoined the women.

“Tommy, I promised Marie we’d stop by here for a night on our way home, too. They are having a cotillion next Saturday night that should be lots of fun.”

Tommy smiled and nodded enthusiastically.

“Sure, as long as Marie wears something pink and saves a few dances for me,” he said teasingly.

Tommy helped Connie into the truck and handed her the bag of pastries and thermos of coffee Marie had made them, and then started to walk around to his side of the truck. He glanced up towards where Marie was standing on the porch. She looked so small and forlorn that he changed course and bounded up the steps. He stopped a step below her and pulled her into his arms. Marie wrapped her arms around his neck as he hugged her tight. Tommy turned her head towards his, kissed her firmly on the lips and blew a little puff of air into her mouth.

“That was a piece of my happiness, Marie. Be a good girl and I’ll give you some more when we come back,” he whispered in her ear.

Marie’s pupils were huge when she looked into his eyes, but she nodded and gave him a tentative smile.

The drive from Lafayette to Palmdale was smooth and uneventful. Tommy drove for the first four hours again, then Connie took over and chauffeured them the rest of the way. They pulled into the yard of Tommy’s childhood home just before eight that evening.

Tommy stepped out of his truck and was leaning to the side to stretch his back, when his sister Beth barreled into him as if she was Dick Butkus on a blind-side blitz. Tommy wrapped his arms around her in self defense and held her as she cried.

The frozen scene of Beth sobbing and Tommy looking bewildered highlighted the one big emotional tragedy of Tommy’s head injury. To make it worse, Beth was the only one with a memory of what they’d lost.

Beth’s husband Wayne came down off the porch and shrugged apologizingly to Connie.

“Beth has been in a state for days over Tom coming home. I’m Wayne Taylor, and these big lugs are our sons Joseph Thomas, who only answers to JT, and Bradley Wayne, who has decided he wants to be called Gator.”

Wayne Taylor was even bigger than Tommy’s six-three, two-twenty and Beth was just shy of being six feet tall, so their boys at ten and eleven were bigger than most teenagers. Connie gave Wayne and his sons a devastating smile, and stuck out her hand.

“I’m Connie, and it’s a pleasure to meet you all.”

Wayne made an effort not to stare at the beautiful young woman as he tried to recall where he’d seen her before. He finally put her out of his mind and went to rescue his brother-in-law.

It took a minute for Beth to compose herself, but she still kept a tight grip on Tommy’s arm. Wayne introduced her to Connie and Tommy solemnly shook hands with his nephews as they walked into the house.

After a few minutes of getting acquainted seated around the kitchen table, Wayne stood up and grabbed a blue uniform jacket off a hook next to the kitchen door. Wayne, recently promoted to lieutenant, was the weekend duty officer for the county’s central fire command. Wayne kissed his wife and boys, bid their guests goodnight and headed off. Connie and Beth sent Tommy and the boys out to fetch baggage. Beth wanted Connie alone so she could talk about her brother. Beth struggled uncomfortably for a way to tactfully start her questioning. Connie saw her discomfort and took her off the hook.