French Quarter

by Stella Cameron

  Celina said nothing.

  “There’s already enough potential for any competent reporter to make him sound like a pervert. Take a small leap from there to his involvement with young children, and there’ll be a bunch of people ready to accuse his memory of some sort of pedophilic tendencies. The foundation would wallow and sink over something like that. I don’t think you want that.”

  “I don’t.” She ought to get up and leave. “I want Dreams to go on every bit as much as you do. Probably much more. I’m not just the pretty face that begs for donations. I’ve been involved with the children, Jack. 1 am involved with them. Not the way Errol was—he was wonderful. But I’m going to take over for him.”

  “Are you? Let’s get back to what’s happening here tonight. You heard that woman in there. I don’t know who she’s getting her information from, but I’m going to do my best to find out. Maybe someone in the NOPD will want to help me with that.”

  “They don’t know we took those things,” she said in a small voice. “It scares me. All of it scares me. It’s as if all that matters is the sensationalism of the sex stuff. He was murdered. Why isn’t that what everyone’s interested in?”

  “It’s what I’m interested in. They will probably find out we got rid of evidence. Since there must be marks on him that I didn’t notice, they’ll be lookin’ for whatever was used.”

  “I burned it.”

  His smile didn’t comfort her. “Yeah. In your wastebasket. Dwayne picked it up and said silk and nylon smelled bad when they burned, but rubber is the worst. Unless you plan to ask him to perjure himself, we’ll just have to hope the police don’t question him and lead him back to that wastebasket. Then it’s a little hop to you—and then to me.”

  “I wouldn’t tell them you had anything to do with it.”

  “How chivalrous of you. You’d tell them anything once they started working on you.”

  She looked around. “I left my umbrella in the bar.”

  “If it’s gone, I’ll buy you another one.”

  “The police don’t torture people,” Celina said. “They won’t drive toothpicks under my fingernails. I’m a decent citizen. I’ve never hurt anyone.”

  “Is that right? Good. We’ll make sure you don’t start now. Most of all, we’ll make sure you don’t do anything to hang scandal on Errol’s memory. Any more scandal than some people already intend to hang. Damn, I’d like to muzzle that female.”

  “I only came here to ask you to keep my secret. At least until I’m ready to reveal it—or until 1 can’t hide it anymore, whichever comes first.”

  “The way I’ve got it figured, you’re about out of time anyway. I can’t believe you’re more than five months pregnant—I wouldn’t believe it if the doctor hadn’t insisted he was right. You haven’t answered my question. Are you going to say this is Errol’s child?”

  Was she going to “say” this was Errol’s child? “Why does the thought bother you so much?”

  “What bothers me is the thought of someone he trusted taking advantage of him now that he’s dead.”

  He still wasn’t making enough sense. “How would I do that?”

  “By saying he…by saying he took advantage of you.”

  Celina couldn’t form a coherent thought.

  “If you were in a relationship that was healthy, you’d either be happy about this child, or you’d be planning an abortion. Are you? Planning an abortion?”

  Tears filled her eyes. “No,” she said quietly. “Even if I could have considered such a thing, it wouldn’t be this late in the pregnancy.”

  “Are you in a healthy relationship?”

  “No…Ι mean I’m not in a relationship at all.”

  ‘You didn’t get pregnant all on your own.”

  “Stop it.’

  He pulled an ottoman in front of her knees and sat down facing her. “That’s what I’m asking you to do. Stop it. Don’t use Errol.”

  “I never said I would use Errol.” The idea sickened her, the idea that this man thought she would do such a thing.

  “You never said you wouldn’t. What did you tell your brother, the priest?”

  “You already know. That I was pregnant. ‘

  “You people don’t believe in abortion, do you?”

  “We people?”

  “Practicing Catholics.”

  She averted her face. “Αren’t you a Catholic?”

  “My beliefs aren’t the issue here. Yours are.”

  “You think that, in the name of faith, I’d keep a baby 1 supposedly don’t want, but that I’d lie about the paternity of that baby? Why wouldn’t I just not identify the father?”

  “Because you’re part of a social set that would make your beloved parents lives miserable if you turn up pregnant but without a well-connected father for the kid. And you know Errol’s history. What a perfect cover. Α dead man who used to have a problem controlling his sex drive. The very least you’ll get is sympathy to your face.”

  “You’re a bitter man, Jack Charbonnet. You’re so bitter you can’t think good of anyone you can’t immediately stick in a box and categorize—or anyone you haven’t known forever.”

  “If you’re not ashamed of this pregnancy, why are you hiding it?”

  He would never know if she could help it. “That’s my business, Jack.”

  “I’m going to make it mine.”

  “I’m not ready to deal with this in a public way yet.”

  “Because you’ve got to make sure you’ve got your story straight. And the stage set before you start tearfully giving out the so-called truth.”

  Wilson Lamar intended to try to draw her back into his clutches; she’d seen it in his face the other night. She could elude him on that, but if he found out she was pregnant, he’d hound her to get rid of the baby regardless of how advanced the pregnancy was. And he’d use the same old threats against her family to try to force her hand. “I’m going home,” she said abruptly, and stood up. “Please honor my wishes. My private life is none of your affair.”

  “I think you’ve answered my question. I really hoped I was wrong, but the more I thought my way through the possibilities, the more the hunch grew to conviction that you had a plan I’d have to do something about.”

  She couldn’t do this anymore. Sidestepping him, she looked down into his face. “What can you do, Jack? Apart from hope I can keep this as quiet as possible—with your help, of course.”

  Jack stood up, a formidably attractive man in evening clothes who would make any woman weak at the knees. He made her weak at the knees, but not because he was attractive, not tonight. Tonight Jack Charbonnet scared Celina to the bone. She really believed he detested her.

  “How am I supposed to help you exactly?” he asked in the deceptively quiet voice she now recognized as the one he used when he was truly angry.

  “You know what I want from you. Job security. I want to know you won’t get rid of me because I’m pregnant. It’s not going to stop me from doing my work just as well as I ever have.”

  “I’ve already told you that I have no intention of firing you.”

  “You didn’t make me feel you wouldn’t change your mind later.”

  Jack shrugged and said, “You’ll have to hope I don’t. Will that keep you more or less happy?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I need an absolute promise that you’ll be silent about what doesn’t concern you. I’ll be the one to decide when it’s time to name Errol as my baby’s father.”

  Eleven

  Jack had made up his mind what he had to do. The way he’d got through the difficult years after his parents’ death had been to make up a code of ethics known only to himself, and live by that code. The first tenet had been that he was never to completely rely upon anyone. He’d kept that one. Even with his grandfather—his mother’s father, who had largely brought him up—he’d held a part of himself back, although Granddaddy never knew, at least, Jack didn’t think he did. Another rule was that onc
e he made up his mind to do something, it got done, and unless they killed him, nobody would stop him.

  So today Jack would do what he’d spent most of two nights and a day thinking about. He’d dropped Amelia at school and returned the car to the garage before setting off again on foot. He hoped to catch Dwayne at his club before doubling back to Royal Street.

  The city was heating up, but there was still a breeze to make the walk pleasant enough. Plastic cups from margarita bars littered Bourbon Street. An early-bird street artist had set up her easel, and displayed her sketches of Tom Cruise, of Billy Crystal, of Whoopi Goldberg, and other famous faces who hadn’t sat on her rickety metal chair, on this celebrated and stained sidewalk, to win a place in the pictured company. Even Wilson Lamar was there, showing his perfect teeth, teeth the common folk could trust. Jack smiled a little. The smells were old; old buildings, old memories, older sins. Sin. Now there was a stench Lamar could generate all on his own. Jack knew that Wilson and trust were strangers. Unfortunately Wilson had once stumbled into a situation Jack intended to keep private—for Amelia’s sake—and that piece of knowledge kept the other man safe from Jack.

  “Mornin’, gorgeous. Hey, Jack Charbonnet, I am talking to you.” Dwayne hailed Jack from the open front doors of Les Chats. “Are you looking for something special? Something different? You surprise me, so early in the day. Why, Jack, I do believe you are insatiable.”

  “Save it,” Jack called back, laughing. “I don’t embarrass that easily.”

  When Jack drew close to Dwayne, he took quick note of the other man’s tired eyes and the tense expression he wasn’t quite managing to hide. “Could we hope for some decent coffee in this high-class establishment of yours? I need to wake up, and you look as if you need to go to sleep. Probably means we both need that coffee.”

  Dwayne gave up on the grin. He lowered his voice and said, “I tell you, Jack, I am dead where I stand. I mean, I am aware that the whole world isn’t necessarily as uncomplicated as I am, but there are things going down around here that shake me.”

  “Me, too,” Jack agreed.

  “There are some who think it isn’t safe here anymore.”

  “It never was.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No,” Jack said, “I don’t think I do.”

  “Forget the coffee. We probably shouldn’t even be seen together.”

  Jack looked behind him. “Now you’ve got me jumping. Did something else happen?”

  “Other than the murder of our mutual best friend?” Dwayne asked, drawing Jack into his glittering, mirrored club. The debris of the previous night had already been cleared, and the flashing neon lights inside groups of velvet-covered “scratching posts” were being checked out for the next performance of Catting Around. Dwayne said, “You had better be ready to jump, my dear friend. Perhaps very quickly and with no warning.”

  Dwayne’s dramatics were legendary. “I agree that Errol’s death has shaken me,” Jack told him. “I wouldn’t be normal if it hadn’t. But I’m still not convinced it was murder.” He had already created a new scenario, one involving the lady visitor to Errol. Why couldn’t he have drowned accidentally and been removed from the bath? Terrified people could find unnatural strength.

  Dwayne watched him as if expecting him to say more. When he didn’t, Dwayne said, “I do not know what you may be thinking, Jack, but you are probably wrong.”

  “Why so sure?”

  Dwayne shook stiffened fingers in the air. “I do not know anymore. Perhaps I am trying to say that not one of us knows what’s going on. I keep waiting for an announcement on Errol. Why aren’t the police saying anything?”

  “Perhaps because they don’t know anythin’,” Jack suggested.

  A great, frustrated sigh raised Dwayne’s chest. “None of this feels right. They should know something by now.”

  A lithe man with a glass in one hand and a cigarette between pursed lips seated himself at a piano and tinkered, one-handed, through the melody of “Careless Love.”

  “He is so talented,” Dwayne said of his partner, Jean-Claude. “I’m a lucky man. At least I find a little peace with him.”

  Jean-Claude set his glass on top of the piano, squinted through his cigarette smoke, and showed just how talented he was. He grinned at Jack and Dwayne.

  “You are lucky,” Jack said.

  “I know. But I don’t enjoy being scared.”

  “Okay.” Jack faced Dwayne. “Concentrate. I came by to touch bases and find out if you know something I don’t know about Celina Payne. Do you?”

  “Oh, I am sure I do.”

  Jack looked at the toes of his boat shoes. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”

  “Celina Payne is special. She’s kind, generous, and honest. And she is not an empty-headed bimbo. The whole pageant routine was her mama’s thing. That woman and her big, useless husband drove her son away and came close to ruining her daughter’s life before she had any chance to live it at all. Bitsy Payne thinks that if her family had not been so refined, she would have been winning those paste crowns herself. From when she was a little child, Celina kept quiet and did what her mama told her to do. You don’t know a whole lot about family, Jack, any more than I do. Yours wasn’t around long enough—God rest their souls. Mine, we will not discuss. But Celina is still working herself free of her parents’ sticky fingers.”

  Jack pretended to gasp. “That was some speech. Is the lady running for office? If she is, she’d better make sure your friend Dr. Al doesn’t have a big mouth.”

  “The only potentially big mouth we have to worry about is yours, Jack.” The deadly serious cast of Dwayne’s face surprised Jack. “People in Al’s job don’t discuss cases. Evidently Cyrus is another walking miracle, a Bitsy offspring who outran the odds and became a really decent human being. He’ll always protect his sister. I wouldn’t discuss Celina’s business with the Angel Gabriel if she didn’t want me to—even though I do celebrate this baby. A baby is a blessing, friend, an innocent creature meant to be loved and nothing else.”

  “Yeah.” How could he point out that this particular innocent, lovable creature wasn’t exactly coming along at a perfect time, not as far as he could see? “Who’s the father?”

  Jean-Claude quit the piano and hopped onto a stage, where he leaped into a tap routine. To Jack’s uneducated but appreciative eye, the performance looked like competition for Gregory Hines.

  “I’m not going to talk to anyone about Celina’s pregnancy,” Dwayne said, an unexpectedly steel edge in his voice. “That’s what you came to ask about, and I’ve told you all I’m going to tell you.”

  “Does that mean you do know who the father is?”

  “It means, dear Jack, that you can fuck off and die before I’ll play a game of whodunit with you on this one.”

  “You don’t know? Or you do?”

  “I don’t fuck—”

  “All right, all right. But do you think it might have been Errol?”

  Dwayne’s mouth opened and closed. He shook his head and walked away, then turned around and came back. “You’re unbelievable. Or you would be if I hadn’t known you long enough to almost expect you to be outrageous.”

  “Me outrageous?” With an expansive gesture Jack took in the entire club. “What does that make this—and you?”

  “I’m just a working fool trying to keep bread in my mouth,” Dwayne informed him primly.

  “So you say it wasn’t Errol?”

  “I did not say any such thing. I said you are outrageous to ask personal questions about Celina.”

  “You thrive on gossip.”

  Dwayne rounded on him so abruptly that Jack stepped backward. “Listen up, Jack baby. I thought you were listening, but I was wrong. Celina is my friend. I respect her. I told you I can be trusted with my friends’ most intimate secrets, and I meant it. Those are the things I don’t gossip about.”

  “You do think it was Errol.”

  Dwayne yelled, “Jean-
Claude, save me,” threw up his hands, and fell into a chair. “I have to keep different company. You are all driving me mad. Jean-Claude! Go away, Jack. Go ask Celina if you dare. That little lady might eat you up, but ask her anyway, because she’d be doing us all a favor.”

  “Well, thanks,” Jack said, but he grinned, and snapped his fingers to a Dr. John disc Jean-Claude snapped in behind the bar. “Maybe I’d like it if she did too.”

  Dwayne pretended not to hear. He batted at imaginary dust on his bleach-splattered but carefully creased jeans. “Listen to me, Jack. But don’t look as if I’m saying anything important.”

  “What …” Closing his mouth, Jack studied Jean-Claude’s long, loose-limbed walk—his dancer’s walk—when he slowly approached. chatting to employees on the way.

  “I had a visitor a while ago. He came through the kitchens. Wore a cowboy hat with his usual getup. As if the hat was some sort of disguise. Pretty scary, I can tell you. He made my stomach loop-de-loop. Felt like it was getting ready for a Blue Angels’ audition.”

  Dwayne became silent. He glanced in every direction.

  “Okay,” Jack said. “Put me out of my misery here. Who are we talking about?”

  “Antoine.”

  “Antoine?”

  “Keep your voice down. Yes, Antoine.”

  “He came here in a cowboy hat? I don’t believe you. Here? He wouldn’t be caught dead—”

  “Don’t say that,” Dwayne ordered. “I am well aware of Antoine’s religious beliefs. He is a good man. He came here because”—he dragged Jack so close, their noses all but touched—“he came because he saw something.”

  Jack watched the other man’s pupils dilate. “Antoine saw something?” he whispered. “You don’t mean…you do mean the night Errol died, don’t you?”

  “Very early in the morning. Antoine likes to start early, but on that morning he got there really early because he had some things left over from the previous day that needed to be finished. Antoine is a very industrious man.”

  “But the coroner said Errol died around midnight.”

  “This person came into the courtyard with the dawn—Antoine’s terms, not mine—he came with the dawn, carrying a bag, and left soon after, still carrying a bag, and still moving with the shadows.”