Taylor laughed, but it had a thin quality to it. “Let’s just say Evelyn has strong opinions about everything. We go way back. There was a whole thing.”
“Like a romance?” Vivienne asked, clearly curious.
Taylor needed to be careful with what he revealed or he was going to make an appearance in Vivienne’s book.
“Like a cease and desist letter kind of thing.”
“Oh. That’s not the same thing at all.” Vivienne sounded disappointed.
Me, on the other hand…
“She threatened to sue you?” I asked, glancing in the rearview mirror.
“She threatened to have her lawyer look into it, which from Evelyn is basically the same thing. She can be a mean old broad. I don’t even know how she finds the time for stirring up fictional lawsuits.”
Interesting. I had no idea why Evelyn would want to sue Taylor but he seemed more heated and annoyed about her now that he’d been drinking than he had earlier.
“She has time because she makes time,” Reginald said.
That seemed obvious.
I glanced back and saw Reginald was looking out the window, jaw tight.
“Evelyn considers herself the last line of defense between authentic history and what she calls, and I quote, ‘Disneyfication.’ She does not believe restoration work should ever deviate, even slightly, from documented historical record. Even when documentation is incomplete. Even when a little creative interpretation would serve the building better than a rigid, and frankly sometimes inaccurate, adherence to what she thinks the record says.”
“You don’t agree?” Allison asked, sounding scandalized at the prospect. “Accuracy is everything, in my opinion.”
“Not when there aren’t facts to back any of it up,” Reginald protested. “Assumptions aren’t facts. Grainy photos with unclear details aren’t facts. Accuracy is everything, you’re right about that.”
“Have you worked with Evelyn?” I asked.
“I worked for her,” he corrected. “The Bellamy-Fitch restoration, two years ago. She insisted the front portico be rebuilt to match an 1850s daguerreotype that, in my professional opinion, was almost certainly staged with a false facade for the photograph. Common practice at the time. I raised the concern. She overruled me. Publicly. In front of the historical board.”
“Ouch,” Vivienne said, not looking up from where she was quietly adjusting settings on her camera.
“She was wrong,” Reginald said, quiet and clipped. “The portico they rebuilt has proportions that don’t match anything else original to the house. It’s wrong, and it will remain wrong for the next hundred years, and everyone who looks at it will believe it’s accurate because Evelyn Carrington said so.”
I filed that one away carefully. A grudge over lawyers was one thing. A grudge over a man’s professional reputation and his life’s obsession was a different weight entirely.
“What about you?” I asked Vivienne, since she’d mentioned filming at the gala. I wasn’t sure if she’d been hired by the Society or she was doing something on her own. “Documentary filmmaker? Is the gala part of your latest project?”
“It’s about the Society. The history of preservation efforts in the Garden District. Evelyn is a significant figure in that history, so, yes, she’s in it.”
“Is she cooperating?”
“Why wouldn’t she?” Vivienne asked.
I couldn’t tell if that was an innocent question or something more loaded.
I shrugged as I drove down the street toward the manor house, grateful to see there was valet parking. Not that I would expect any less.
“I guess it depends on the angle your film takes,” I said. “I imagine some filmmakers would love to dig into the less than comfortable history of societies like this one.”
“Documentary filmmaking is unbiased. Or at least it should be.”
“Should’ve, would’ve, could’ve,” I said.
“What is that supposed to mean?” she asked, sharply.
