sign on the lawn: FOR SALE – NEW ORLEANS REALTY COMPANY. It was impossible. I’ll never sell this old house, her mother had often told her. We’ve all been so happy together here.
Filled with a strange, unreasoning fire, Tracy moved past a giant magnolia tree towards the front door. She had been given her own key to the house when she was in the seventh grade and had carried it with her since, as a talisman, a reminder of the haven that would always be there waiting for her.
She opened the door and stepped inside. She stood there, stunned. The rooms were completely empty, stripped of furniture. All the beautiful antique pieces were gone. The house was like a barren shell deserted by the people who had once occupied it. Tracy ran from room to room, her disbelief growing. It was as though some sudden disaster had struck. She hurried upstairs and stood in the doorway of the bedroom she had occupied most of her life. It stared back at her, cold and empty. Oh, God, what could have happened? Tracy heard the sound of the front doorbell and walked as if in a trance down the stairs to answer it.
Otto Schmidt stood in the doorway. The foreman of the Whitney Automotive Parts Company was an elderly man with a seamed face and a body that was rail-thin, except for a protruding beer belly. A tonsure of straggly grey hair framed his scalp.
‘Tracy,’ he said in a heavy German accent, ‘I just heard the news. I – I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’
Tracy clasped his hands. ‘Oh, Otto. I’m so glad to see you. Come in.’ She led him into the empty living room. ‘I’m sorry there’s no place to sit down,’ she apologized. ‘Do you mind sitting on the floor?’
‘No, no.’
They sat down across from each other, their eyes dumb with misery. Otto Schmidt had been an employee of the company for as long as Tracy could remember. She knew how much her father had depended on him. When her mother had inherited the business, Schmidt had stayed on to run it for her. ‘Otto, I don’t understand what’s happening. The police say Mother committed suicide, but you know there was no reason for her to kill herself.’ A sudden thought stabbed at her. ‘She wasn’t ill, was she? She didn’t have some terrible –’
‘No. It wasn’t that. Not that.’ He looked away, uncomfortable, something unspoken in his words.
Tracy said slowly, ‘You know what it was.’
He peered at her through rheumy blue eyes. ‘Your mama didn’t tell you what’s been happening lately. She didn’t want to worry you.’
Tracy frowned. ‘Worry me about what? Go on … please.’
His work-worn hands opened and closed. ‘Have you heard of a man called Joe Romano?’
‘Joe Romano? No. Why?’
Otto Schmidt blinked. ‘Six months ago Romano got in touch with your mother and said he wanted to buy the company. She told him she wasn’t interested in selling, but he offered her ten times what the company was worth, and she couldn’t refuse. She was so excited. She was going to invest all the money in bonds that would bring in an income that both of you could live on comfortably for the rest of your lives. She was going to surprise you. I was so glad for her. I’ve been ready to retire for the last three years, Tracy, but I couldn’t leave Mrs Doris, could I? This Romano –’ Otto almost spat out the word. ‘This Romano gave her a small down payment. The big money – the balloon payment – was to have come last month.’
Tracy said impatiently, ‘Go on, Otto. What happened?’
‘When Romano took over, he fired everybody and brought in his own people to run things. Then he began to raid the company. He sold all the assets and ordered a lot of equipment, selling it off but not paying for it. The suppliers weren’t worried about the delay in payment because they thought they were still dealing with your mother. When they finally began pressing your mother for their money, she went to Romano and demanded to know what was going on. He told her he had decided not to go ahead with the deal and was returning the company to her. By then, the company was not only worthless but your mother owed half a million dollars she couldn’t pay. Tracy, it nearly killed me and the wife to watch how your mother fought to save that company. There was no way. They forced her into bankruptcy. They took everything – the business, this house, even her car.’
‘Oh, my God!’
‘There’s more. The district attorney served your mother notice that he was going to ask for an indictment against her for fraud, that she was facing a prison sentence. That was the day she really died, I think.’
Tracy was seething with a wave of helpless anger. ‘But all she had to do was tell them the truth – explain what that man did to her.’
The old foreman shook his head. ‘Joe Romano works for a man named Anthony Orsatti. Orsatti runs New Orleans. I found out too late that Romano’s done this before with other companies. Even if your mother had taken him to court, it would have been years before it was all untangled, and she didn’t have the money to fight him.’
‘Why didn’t she tell me?’ It was a cry of anguish, a cry for her mother’s anguish.
‘Your mother was a proud woman. And what could you do? There’s nothing anyone can do.’
You’re wrong, Tracy thought fiercely. ‘I want to see Joe Romano. Where can I find him?’
Schmidt said flatly, ‘Forget about him. You have no idea how powerful he is.’
‘Where does he live, Otto?’
‘He has an estate near Jackson Square, but it won’t help to go there, Tracy, believe me.’
Tracy did not answer. She was filled with an emotion totally unfamiliar to her: hatred. Joe Romano is going to pay for killing my mother, Tracy swore to herself.
She needed time. Time to think, time to plan her next move. She could not bear to go back to the despoiled house, so she checked into a small hotel on Magazine Street, far from the French Quarter, where the mad parades were still going on. She had no luggage, and the suspicious clerk behind the desk said, ‘You’ll have to pay in advance. That’ll be forty dollars for the night.’
From her room Tracy telephoned Clarence Desmond to tell him she would be unable to come to work for a few days.
He concealed his irritation at being inconvenienced. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he told Tracy. ‘I’ll find someone to fill in until you return.’ He hoped she would remember to tell Charles Stanhope how understanding he had been.
Tracy’s next call was to Charles. ‘Charles, darling –’
‘Where the devil are you, Tracy? Mother has been trying to reach you all morning. She wanted to have lunch with you today. You two have a lot of arrangements to go over.’
‘I’m sorry, darling. I’m in New Orleans.’
‘You’re where? What are you doing in New Orleans?’
‘My mother – died.’ The word stuck in her throat.
‘Oh.’
