The Empress File

sundress, the uplift bra, and the breast exposure, the crystal would have been hard to miss. The light flickering off it made it seem alive.
    “She sees it,” LuEllen said in a low voice, around the menu.
    LuEllen ordered a chicken breast salad, and I had an open-face hot beef sandwich, which arrived swimming in brown gravy. We talked about painting locations in town, LuEllen worried about the cholesterol in my lunch, and we both tried unsuccessfully to eavesdrop on the booth behindme. I was just finishing the sandwich when I felt the mayor and Ballem slide out of their booth. LuEllen winked.
    “I don’t mean to interrupt,” the mayor said, pausing by our table. She was looking at LuEllen. Ballem walked on a few steps before he stopped and turned. “That is a beautiful crystal.”
    “Why, thank you,” LuEllen said sweetly. “It’s a Herkimer diamond. My great-great-grandmother found it near her farm in upstate New York.… It’s sort of our family channel—”
    “Oh, you’re
interested
,” Dessusdelit said with enthusiasm. She had a narrow, sallow face framed by a short, dark, thoroughly lacquered hairdo. The bags under her pale eyes seemed fairly new, as though she hadn’t slept for a couple of nights. A chain of braided gold, like LuEllen’s but thinner, hung around her neck. She fished it out. “I have one of my own.…”
    Her crystal was bigger than LuEllen’s but not quite as clear. And while LuEllen’s was double-ended, the mayor’s had a rough cleavage at the bottom, where the crystal had been broken off its base.
    “From Mount Ida,” she said.
    “Oh, sure,” LuEllen said knowledgeably. “They’re famous. Did you collect it yourself, or—”
    “Yes, yes, I bothered Ralph, that’s my late husband,I said to Ralph, ‘Ralph, I swear, if you don’t take me, I just don’t know what I’ll do.’ One day he said, ‘Let’s go, girl. Then maybe you’ll leave me alone.’ I looked at crystals until I thought my eyes would fall out. This one just sort of
spoke
to me, you know?”
    “I know exactly, I know,” LuEllen gushed. “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night just having to hold it. I can actually
feel
the spheres intersecting through my diamond.… Have you ever tried using a ball?”
    “Well, once, when this lady was coming through town, but I didn’t see much. I mean, for a minute—”
    Ballem was looking bored and impatient, but LuEllen ignored him. “Did you have a chance to warm it with your touch, or did you just look into it?”
    “Well, I touched it, but mostly I just looked.…”
    The conversation was getting serious now.
    “You should try a ball again. You’ll find it’s different from the crystal, but sometimes it’s… a lot better. Next time roll it in your hands for a while. You have to establish a resonance with the ball… and it has to be real. The more a ball’s used, the more open it gets.…”
    “I don’t know if I could find, just offhand… they’re expensive, the good ones.”
    “Well…” LuEllen looked at me, as thoughfor permission, “I have an antique ball down in our river yacht. You’d be welcome to come down and try… I mean, if you’re really an enthusiast…”
    Dessusdelit looked from LuEllen to me, and her voice took on just an edge of wariness. We were moving too fast for the Old South. “Are you… staying in town?”
    “We’re down at the marina. You can see the big white river yacht down there. My name is LuEllen Case. Mr. Kidd’s a painter, and he’s here scouting landscapes. I’m just along… for the ride.”
    “So you’re not from around here?” But her voice had warmed a notch. We had a large boat.
    “No, no. Mr. Kidd has homes in St. Paul and New Orleans. We travel back and forth so he can work on his painting.”
    “Well, that sounds very nice.” Dessusdelit had definitely warmed back up, though the wariness lingered. We were Yankees, after all, and apparently living in sin. Of course, I
did
have two houses and a yacht.… “I’m Chenille Dessusdelit, and this is Archibald Ballem. I’m the mayor here, and Archie is the city attorney.”
    Ballem made a little scrape and bow. From a distance you might think he was sixty. Up close you realized he was probably ten years younger than that, but his face had a dissolute crepe-paper texture, and his nose had the swollen, big-poredquality of a heavy drinker. His eyes, small, sharp, and mean, dispelled any illusion that he was a dumb hick