supposedly born," he began.
"We had that mulatto woman, Tituba,
remember?"
"I remember. I remember hating her. She was
too sloppy and too lazy and she frightened me with
her silly superstitions," Daphne recalled. "Dropping
pinches of salt everywhere, burning clothing in a
barrel with chicken droppings . . . at least Nina keeps
her beliefs private."
"And so we let Tituba go right after Gisselle
was supposedly born, remember? At least, that was
what we told the public."
"What are you getting at, Pierre? How does that
relate to this trifling problem?" she asked caustically. "We never told the truth because we were
working with private detectives," he said.
"What? What truth?"
"To get back the stolen baby, the twin sister
who was taken from the nursery the same day she was
born. You know how some people believe that
missing children are voodoo sacrifices, and how some
voodoo queens were often accused of kidnapping and
murdering children?" he said.
"I always suspected something like that,
myself," Daphne said.
"Precisely. No one's ever proven anything of
the sort, however, but there was always the danger of
creating mass hysteria over it and causing vigilantes
to go out and abuse people. So," he said, sitting back,
"we kept our tragedy and our search private. Until
today, that is," he added, pressing his hands together