by Carly Bishop
He nodded. “It’s the way I feel every time I go after some fugitive who has nothing to lose by putting a bullet between my eyes.”
Eden looked away. She didn’t ever want to think about the risks he took, the job he did apart from her. She wouldn’t think about it now, either. “The other reason I wanted to go to Monique is that she may know what’s going on with Sheila. Whether she’s really...in love with Broussard, or what.”
Chris slipped his hand from hers to downshift at a red traffic light. “Don’t you think it’s too much to expect Monique to say anything about Sheila one way or another?”
Eden tilted her head, letting it rest against the window. “Maybe. But if nothing else, Monique will understand that I have to go to Broussard to end this nightmare.” Eden chewed at a broken nail. “She was always a great one for pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. And if the worst happens and she won’t talk to me, then Broussard simply knows we’ve been there and that she threw us out. No harm done.”
He stretched his legs and reached over to rest his hand on her knee. “Don’t be naive about this, Eden. You have to remember that everyone has their price. Even Monique Lamareaux.”
FORTY MINUTES LATER, driving through the upscale brownstone neighborhood where Monique lived, he vetted three streets to the north and south. The vintage Karmann Ghia didn’t look terribly out of place, but they left it two blocks down the street.
Monique’s brownstone had lights on only at the second level, in the study that looked out over the street. To Eden that meant she was either not at home, or alone. Suddenly confronted with the enormity of taking on Winston Broussard, Eden drew a shuddery breath. Chris rang the doorbell.
The lights came on in the entry and sitting room, then a set of dead bolts were opened after several seconds. Monique Lamareaux opened the door. Raven-haired, fashion-model thin and dressed to kill even alone at home in the evening, a look of dismay filled her darkly attractive eyes. “Mother of God, Eden, what are you doing here? And who is this man?”
“Christian Tierney, United States Marshal Service. Ma’am, do you mind if we come in and get off the street?”
“You mustn’t! No!” she responded peremptorily. “chère, you must go away. Web will kill you!”
“Monique, please. We have nowhere else to go and I must talk to you.”
Broussard’s cousin made her decision quickly but not happily. Reaching out, her wine-colored nails like talons, she pulled Eden hurriedly inside. Chris followed, then closed and bolted the door and quickly scanned the drawing room and hall. “Is anyone here but you, Ms. Lamareaux?”
“No. Of course not.” Despite her reluctance to admit them to her home, she hugged Eden tightly, then held her away by her shoulders. “I have missed you terribly, but you should never have come back here. After everything that had happened, what can you be thinking of, Eden?”
Chris watched the older woman closely, studying her movements, her voice, her hands, as she clutched Eden tightly to her thin body, then drew her into the sitting room where they sat together on the sofa. With bay windows at the front and on the side, the two women made a sweet set of targets in this room, like a pair of ducks in a carnival shooting booth. He pulled the shades.
Only the slightest trace of the woman’s Cajun roots lingered in her cultured enunciation. Enough to be charming —and more pronounced under stress. She was much older than Chris had imagined. He had believed her to be a contemporary of Broussard’s. Her slightly brittle posture and her age-spotted hands gave her away. Monique Lamareaux was at least fifteen years older, maybe twenty, which made her old enough to be Eden’s mother.
What stunned Chris was Monique’s instinctive, almost maternal fear for Eden, and her naked warning. Web will kill you.
“Monique,” Eden was saying, “do you know what he does? Do you know people die all over the world—”
“I know, chère. I know,” she answered dully. “After the trial, how could I not know? But he cannot be defeated and it is foolish of you to think otherwise even for a moment.”
Eden’s stomach lurched. She had never known Monique to behave or talk this way. She had always maintained a healthy respect for her cousin, but she had never been intimidated by him. Of all the Louisiana transplants, all Broussard’s family and friends, retainers really, only Monique had never asked “How high?” when Broussard said “Jump!” “What has he done to you?”
Monique leaned stiffly back against the sofa, her arms wrapped around her waist. “One gets tired, Eden. One begins to grow weary of the subtle, constant threat of retribution. I have no argument with him. What he does is no concern of mine. Considering what he did to Eden’s!, I am lucky that he allows me to mind my own business.”
“It’s worse than that.” Eden exchanged glances with Chris and dropped the shoulder of J. J. Gelham’s navy-and-gray mohair sweater. Monique could not avoid seeing the black stitches and puckered flesh.
“Mon Dieu,” Monique murmured, averting her dark eyes. Her tone was more resigned than angry. Eden’s heart sank. The spirit had gone out of the once energetic and vivacious woman, and the tragedy was that Eden understood why. It had taken no single act of cruelty or domination on Broussard’s part to do this to Monique, only the accumulated weight of a thousand threats disguised as solicitous concern.
“Monique, you must fight back!” Eden begged. “You are not yourself anymore.”
“I have nothing to fight back with. I exist by his leave and his good graces. He has fewer with each passing year.”
Eden moved closer. “Then help me. He is only a man, only flesh and blood!” But Monique was already shaking her head. “You have already endured much more than this,” Eden persisted. “If it weren’t for you, he would still be trying to hack a living out of the bayou! He cannot have forgotten his debt to you.”
“What debt?” Chris asked, as much to reinforce in Monique Lamareaux’s mind that Broussard owed her as to learn of it himself.
Monique only tossed her head and stared at the Louis XVI clock on her mantel.
“Monique was a model,” Eden explained, picking up on Chris’s strategy. “The first in their family to make it big outside the Louisiana parishes. She is the one who gave Broussard his chance, the one who brought him to Boston. He knows his debt to Monique can never be fully repaid.”
“You are wrong.” Monique’s hand fluttered anxiously before her eyes, settling at last at her temple. “He considers his debt more than repaid. What you don’t understand, Eden, is that he blames my attitude toward him for blemishing your perception of him. That I influenced your betrayal.”
“But that is ridiculous! And so typical of him to believe that I have no mind of my own. Monique, I’m so sorry that he blames you. It’s true that you gave me a job and a home. That you made me feel capable and clever and gave me courage when I had none—”
“Stop, chère!” Monique cried, covering her ears. “Please say no more. I do not want to hear these things or be responsible for your betraying him.”
“You’re not, Ms. Lamareaux,” Chris assured her quietly, but Monique only waved off his opinion as irrelevant.
“What Web believes is the only thing of consequence.”
“Why is Sheila with him?” Eden blurted, desperate for other answers.
“Because he wishes it,” Monique answered blankly, as if that were a given. But she looked up quickly, belatedly understanding Eden’s question. “Sheila enjoys the life-style he provides her.”
Eden felt hollow inside, sick to her stomach.
“Who wouldn’t, chère?” Monique went on bitterly. “Even you were enamored of his largess. His—” she swallowed “—his power and good looks and charm.”
Chris got up from the silk brocade wing chair and began to pace. Eden swallowed. This was to have been their cue, that if he felt the interview with Monique was not going well or could not succeed, Eden would bring it to a conclusion and get out. She had promised to listen to him, to trust his in
stincts, but however bitter the pill, she couldn’t go without asking what she had come to find out.
“Monique, please tell me this. Do you know who it was that Broussard sent to kill me?”
“No!” she denied. But all trace of color drained from her face.
Eden reached out to her. “Monique, you were like a mother to me! Please try. Please listen. I saw him once before that day. In Web’s office above Eden’s! He had eyes the color of amber, like fire—and he spoke the patois—”
The distraught woman shook her head in tiny, jerking movements. “Do not ask, chère. I cannot say.” Hopelessness made her eyes dull, listless.
She knew the answer to Eden’s question; there could be no doubt of that. But because Broussard held Monique Lamareaux accountable in her attitude for Eden’s betrayal, he might as well have been standing over Monique holding the puppet strings, his smile contemptuous and his charm deadly.
The image transfixed Eden. The lines descending from each side of Monique’s bloodless lips had deepened; her jaw now resembled that of an antique marionette.
Chapter Sixteen
Paul Maroncek kissed his wife goodbye, then sank into her mocha-colored Nissan to make the drive back to their home in the Boston suburb of Belmont. Janna was staying in Worcester with her sister for a few days. He hit the turnpike after fifteen minutes and followed it east to the tollbooths, tossed in his change and sped on.
Intending to get off on I-95 and head up to the Waltham exit, he’d switched on the CD player and listened to a Neil Diamond disc for twenty minutes or so when the cellular phone trilled.
He wished to God he’d left the thing home. Now he’d have to listen to someone else’s harangue regarding Christian X. Tierney.
The whole of Massachusetts was keeping score now, all four districts, not only Boston, as if Tierney was starring in some kind of sexy, modern-day version of Bonnie and Clyde.
He punched the Off button on the CD player and barked into the phone. “Maroncek.”
A cloying female voice came on the line. “Chief Deputy Paul Maroncek?”
His stomach knotted. “Yes.”
“Please hold for the attorney general.”
Maroncek sighed. This would not be just anyone’s harangue.
The A.G. wasted no time on pleasantries. “I was promised an update, Paul. I want Christian Tierney found. I want that witness alive and back in custody and I want it all yesterday.”
Frigging eight-thirty at night on a Tuesday, he thought disgustedly. Tierney had been gone five days now, and on every one of those days, Maroncek had been held personally accountable for his deputy’s reckless disregard of the attorney general’s express wishes.
It wasn’t that Christian X. Tierney’s bloated reputation didn’t need a reality check, Maroncek thought. Too many people in too many high places had begun to think he walked on water with the captures he’d turned in over the last year and a half.
The specter of Tierney getting crosswise of the attorney general herself had suited the hell out of Maroncek. Only now, well in advance of Tierney getting his due, knocked down a peg or two or several, or, alternatively, off his pedestal altogether, Maroncek found himself getting raked over the coals.
“We all understand your directives,” he replied evenly. “I’ve got every available man on the case, and Tafoya—”
“You’re not suggesting, are you, Chief Deputy, that the combined forces of the Boston FBI and Massachusetts districts of the United States Marshal Service aren’t up to the job of bringing in one of their own, are you?”
“Certainly not.” Maroncek grimaced, smarting from the sarcastic remark, although why the hell he cared, he didn’t know anymore. He’d talked himself blue in the face for the past five days. Even Tafoya admitted Tierney had saved Eden Kelley’s life, but all the steps Tierney had taken after that were ones Maroncek could not justify—except to reiterate over and over again that at least with Christian Tierney, the witness was still alive.
“Tierney has got to be brought in,” the A.G. pressed on. “The media is turning this fiasco into an ongoing circus. I want it resolved, Paul, and if that means you get your ass out there beating the bushes, then by God, you do it. Clear?”
“Perfectly,” he snapped, moving over a lane to take the eastbound Brandeis exit.
“Good. Have a productive evening, Paul.” She spoke softly, as was her habit, leaving the unspoken words “or else” hanging threateningly over his head like the proverbial big stick.
So angry he lost track of exactly where he was and what he was doing, he broke the connection and jerked the cellular phone battery adapter from the cigarette-lighter port about the time a small car came up fast behind him, slowed, then passed him. Automatically, Maroncek registered the vintage model, the license plate, the dark color. The car reminded him of J. J. Gelham, whom Maroncek hadn’t spoken with in several months. A year?
No, more. Needing a distraction from his anger at the attorney general, he fell to reminiscing. Gelham was a man’s man, not in appearance, but in ways that counted. He had a rapport with the judges like no other attorney Maroncek had ever seen. A way of framing things for the liberal bench in such a manner that he got whatever he went after—warrants, wiretaps. Name it, J. J. Gelham got it.
All that talent going to waste, Maroncek thought, was a damned shame. He could use Gelham’s advice about now. Gelham would have some brilliant strategy for keeping the attorney general at bay.
On the other hand, he and Tierney had been as thick as thieves. Drinking buddies in addition to schemers extraordinaire. Gelham would be busy transforming the media frenzy into a heroic, crime-busting platform from which Tierney’s next step would be the White House.
One caustic thought after another flew through Maroncek’s head. He pulled into his dark driveway in a very foul mood. Just as well Gelham was out of the picture, tinkering with his antique Karmann Ghias.
Just short of opening the door of his wife’s Nissan to get out and go inside, Maroncek froze. He sat there absolutely dumbfounded, replaying the sight of that dark vintage Ghia passing him on a secondary highway that traversed most of the state, linked up with other secondaries that came out of Saugerties, and coincidentally, passed within a couple of miles of J. J. Gelham’s place in Westfield.
Maroncek cursed and banged his fist off the steering wheel. He’d been within spitting distance of Tierney and the Kelley woman and never known it. He comforted himself with the knowledge that he alone knew how to find his run-amok deputy.
He picked up the cellular and made a few calls, setting into motion an unofficial, off-the-record all points for the Karmann Ghia, concentrating in the central Boston area and all points of access north to Marblehead. Unless he was way off base, which was rarely the case, Maroncek thought, Tierney would now go after Winston Broussard with both barrels blazing.
Maroncek could already taste the sweet satisfaction of having been the one to bring Tierney in. A part of him hoped Tierney beat out the Feebs and got to Broussard first.
MIRED AGAIN IN FEELINGS of loss and guilt that could never be assuaged, Eden stroked Monique’s fragile cheek. “You will be free of his clutches and his threats, Monique. I swear it.”
“Do not swear to such a thing, child. It brings the worst kind of luck.” She got up from the sofa and sighed. Eden rose, as well. “I am going to bed now. Eden, ma chère, if you care anything for me, you will please be gone before I awake in the morning.”
“Monique.” Eden held out her arms, but the older woman stood stiffly, rooted to the floor in her black leather pumps, her arms wrapped tightly about her.
“I beg you,” Monique whispered. “I have kept your room as it was when you left so many months ago. Collect what you want and then run away, as far and as fast as you can.” She turned on her heel and fled up the stairs.
Eden stood watching after Monique, tears brimming at her lashes. Chris went to her and took her in his arms. She rested her head against his shoulder.
>
“I’m sorry, Eden. I know you thought she could help you, but it looks as if she’s just not up to dealing with Broussard anymore.”
Eden wiped her tears away and stood apart from Chris. “I can’t believe he blames her for what I did.”
“He had to blame someone. He sure as hell didn’t believe you were capable of taking him on. It’s his own failing, Eden. Not Monique’s. Not yours.”
“Not Sheila’s, either.” Eden straightened her shoulders. “But that will be his downfall. He won’t quite get it that I’ll never say die.” She switched off the lamps. Weariness gnawed at her bravado. She wasn’t so sure of anything anymore, not with Monique crumbling as she had. “Come with me upstairs. I left a few things. Some clothes, shoes.”
She walked back across the entryway and turned off the light, then led the way through the kitchen toward the back staircase. Chris followed her in the dark up four flights of stairs to the topmost floor of the brownstone.
Eden opened the door to her old room and stepped inside. The door creaked in a familiar way as did the floorboards. The only light was cast by street lamps. “Do you think it’s safe to turn on a light?”
Chris let his eyes adjust to the dark another few seconds, then moved past Eden and the old-fashioned dressing screen to the solitary window overlooking the street. Standing to the side of the window, he watched for a few moments. “I don’t see anything to worry about.”
Eden angled her head. She could only see Chris in profile. “I assume your instincts are usually right.”
“Usually,” he answered dryly, pulling the shade anyway. “Aren’t those candles? There on the bedside table?”
Eden shook her head. “Of course. And a box of matches.” The faint, lingering scent of perfumed candles should have reminded her. Maybe they were too much a part of her memories of this haven to trigger her conscious thoughts about what to do now.
She went and sat on the four-poster double bed. The coverlet was a thick, hand-tatted lace over an ivory linen spread. Her fingers went to the patterned lace, but with Chris standing at the window, dominating her old room, she was unwilling to get caught up in old memories the coverlet aroused. She snatched her fingers back. “I’ll just light these.” The wooden match flared. She lit two candles, then glanced around. Chris was watching her way too closely. “What?”