French Quarter

by Stella Cameron

  That slime had raped Celina.

  The tension in Jack’s spine hurt. His head hurt more. Regardless of how her baby had been conceived, he had passed beyond the point of wondering if he could come to love it. He already did. She carried the child and no part of her could be other than lovable. That would be his salvation, that he loved Celina and she would become his, everything that she was would become his. She was both woman, and woman with an unborn child in her womb. He wanted the entire package for himself.

  “Celina.”

  “What?”

  He hadn’t meant to speak her name aloud. “Nothing. I want you to get some rest as quickly as possible. This has been some day”

  She smiled at him, a smile that lingered while she studied his eyes. Then she returned her attention to the room beyond the windows.

  For her he could be, or do, anything. Tough, cool Jack Charbonnet had done the unimaginable; he’d lost himself to a woman and he loved being lost as much as he loved her. Almost.

  Immediately after leaving the restaurant, while his head pulsed with fury and he struggled not to go after Lamar again, he had told Celina what he’d overheard between Ben Angel and Mrs. Reed. They’d driven to Baton Rouge then, to the area where they understood the Reeds lived, looking for answers about Errol, and on the way they’d talked about Wilson Lamar, and about the way the Paynes had been willing to take money to get Celina alone with him.

  Jack studied her some more. A brave woman with the kind of inner strength that could make a man feel very humble. Tiredness made her ethereal, and so lovely to him. She’d been loyal to her parents, too loyal. But for their own ends they’d offered her up to a man they knew she hated and she was finally angry enough to want to keep her distance from them.

  His own problem would continue to be an urge to kill Wilson Lamar.

  “I had no idea it was like this,” Celina said. She sat in a wooden chair with one leg shorter than the others, and looked startled each time she moved and the chair lurched. “How can they have time to deal with anything properly?”

  “They can deal properly with anything they care about.”

  “We’re just going to ask about Errol, aren’t we, Jack?”

  He crossed his arms. “Probably. If we mention Wilson Lamar, we’d better tread very lightly, if that’s what you mean. Here comes O’Leary. Let me take the lead, if that’s okay?”

  She didn’t have time to answer him before O’Leary pushed open the door and smashed it shut behind him. He tossed his hat at a hook behind his desk. The hat missed and fell on the floor. O’Leary left it there.

  Balding, gray-faced, and apparently exhausted, he turned dull eyes on Celina and Jack. “Yeah?”

  “Celina Payne and Jack Charbonnet. Errol Petrie was—”

  “I know who Errol Petrie was.” He threw a pack of Camels and a Bic on his desk. “And I know who you are. I asked what you want here.”

  Jack rose. “I want action. And I want answers, O’Leary. Errol’s been dead long enough for you to at least be able to give us a full autopsy report.”

  O’Leary shrugged. “Petrie drowned.”

  “We know that.” Jack stuck his hands in his pockets. They were safer there than in O’Leary’s bored face. “How long was he dead before we found him?”

  “I’m not at liberty to disclose that. Could compromise the case.”

  “Compromise is a big word with you, isn’t it?” Celina said.

  “I’m just doing my job, ma’am.”

  “We have a right to know more,” Jack said. “The day he died you asked if I’d turned Errol over. Why?” He heard Celina’s indrawn breath but concentrated on watching O’Leary.

  The man shrugged again. “No reason you can’t know. He went into the water face first. Never had a chance. Whoever did it to him was big enough to make sure he took in enough water not to be able to fight back fast enough. There were bruises on the back of his neck and between his shoulder blades, and his toenails had bled where he kicked the bottom of the tub.”

  “Oh,” Celina said, and Jack turned to her. She screwed up her eyes. “Oh, Jack. Poor Errol.”

  “What we don’t have,” O’Leary said, “is a suspect. Possible motives, but no suspects. The man had a past. He’d been a drunk who liked women too much. He still liked women when he died, not that it’s a crime. But he could have made some husband or boyfriend angry enough to kill him. Do you have any ideas you’d like to share on that?”

  Jack hated that after the hours they’d just spent asking questions in Baton Rouge, Celina had to go through this too. She’d refused to go home without him, so there had been no choice but to let her come. “Errol lived a good life,” he told O’Leary. “He committed himself to serving terminally ill children. You’re right about his past. That isn’t a revelation. He’d kicked his problems, but you’re also right that there’s something we’re all missing. And I don’t think it’s an angry boyfriend or husband. We stopped by to mention a possible lead you might want to take a look at.”

  “Oh, good,” O’Leary said, flopping into his chair and hauling his big, dusty shoes onto his battered desk. He closed his eyes and let his head loll back. “So why don’t you two experts set this amateur on the right track?”

  “You’re a touchy man, O’Leary,” Jack said. “We’re as tired as you are, and maybe as jaded about now. But we lost a friend and no one seems to give a…no one seems to care a whole lot. Celina and I went to Baton Rouge to ask some questions this afternoon. Then we came straight back here to see you. Errol had been going there to some prayer meetings. For some time, only we didn’t know about it. Evidently it brought him some peace.”

  “Different strokes,” the detective said without opening his eyes. “Learn to play a tambourine or somethin’, did he? Speak in tongues?”

  “It’s a cheap shot to poke fun at what matters to other people,” Celina said, effectively silencing Jack and snapping O’Leary’s eyes open. She continued. “What you think about the way people choose to worship isn’t the issue here. Errol spending a lot of time in Baton Rouge is. Would you like to know what we found out today? Or should we leave and see what we can do with the information ourselves?”

  Jack almost laughed. She should have been a diplomat.

  “Spill it,” O’Leary said, uncrossing and recrossing his dirty black laceups. “And cut any detours if you don’t mind, ma’am. It’s been a long day.”

  “It’s been a long day for us too,” she said. “Errol Petrie started attending prayer meetings just out of Baton Rouge. That seems to have been about six months ago. The people who were the ministers are called Joan and Walt Reed. They showed up here in New Orleans shortly after Errol’s death. They said Errol had told them he’d make sure they never wanted for anything. Evidently Errol had even replaced their tent. According to them, they saved his spirit and that gave them the right to ask about his will.”

  She paused and looked at Jack. O’Leary’s eyes were closed again.

  “We asked around the area. The Reeds’ place is closed up—which isn’t surprising since they’re here in New Orleans like a couple of buzzards waiting to pick the bones.”

  “What did you find out?” O’Leary asked.

  Jack didn’t care if the man listened, or attempted to do anything with what they told him. He just didn’t want to be accused of concealing information. “Errol took a liking to Mrs. Reed’s son, Ben, by her former marriage to a man called Angel. Mr. Angel dropped out of the picture some years back and Mrs. Reed remarried. But what’s interesting to us is that Errol Petrie was kind to Ben—who is bright—and encouraged him to go back to school.”

  “Admirable,” O’Leary muttered.

  Celina raised a hand, signifying she wanted to carry on. “Errol lost his own son. That may have played a part in the way he wanted to help this young man. Anyway, Ben helped out at the prayer meetings. Collecting donations and so on. We don’t know if he ever went back to school, but he’s been seen here in New Orlean
s. Another man went to ask questions about Errol Petrie and what he was doing on all his visits to Baton Rouge. This man was looking for dirt, according to the people we spoke to. They didn’t know his name. But they said he liked Ben Angel, and one night there was an argument between Ben and his folks and Ben took off with this man.”

  “Is this going anywhere?” O’Leary said, jerking his feet to the floor and leaning across his desk. His eyes were bloodshot. “If it’s going to take a while, I’d like to get some of the stuff that passes for coffee around here.” He tapped a smashed Camel from the pack and lit up. Smoke curled, making him close one eye.

  “Ben Angel is here in New Orleans,” Jack said. “I saw him around lunchtime today outside a restaurant. I also saw Mrs. Reed talking to him. That was just before Celina and I took a run to Baton Rouge. Would you check something out for us, please?”

  O’Leary spread his arms. “My time is your time. I’m a public servant, and you’re the public.” Stuck between his moving lips, the cigarette bobbed up and down when he talked.

  Jack didn’t find O’Leary amusing. “You people were called to a fund-raising party held at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Lamar. There’d been an attempted robbery and the suspect was apprehended by the pool. Would you look up that incident, please?”

  For an instant Jack thought O’Leary would refuse, but he pushed to his feet and left the room. Ten minutes later he returned with a computer printout in his hand. “Is this it?” He pushed the paper at Jack, who scanned it quickly and handed it back.

  “Well?” O’Leary asked.

  “That would be it. Where’s the rest of it?”

  “That’s the lot. Lamar let the kid go. We don’t take kindly to being called out, only to be told there aren’t any charges and we wasted our time.”

  Celina shifted to the edge of her seat. “No charges? They didn’t—’

  “Uh-uh.” O’Leary opened a penknife and cleaned his fingernails with the tip of the blade. “Evidently the kid didn’t get a chance to take anything, so Lamar waited until we got him in the car and downtown, then came in and told us there weren’t any charges. The end. Not a thing we could do.”

  In other words, Wilson had used the elaborate piece of drama Celina had described to justify his decision to employ Ben Angel, the aquarium man who never saw an aquarium before he saw the ones someone else had already put in for his new boss. The biggie was why? There were a lot of whys. Unless Wilson had a thing for boys, Jack couldn’t come up with a reason.

  “We came to pass all this along in case it’s of any use,” Jack said. “The man who brought Ben back to New Orleans was Wilson Lamar. Ben is now his bodyguard and chauffeur. Nothing against that, but Wilson did go to Baton Rouge several weeks ago asking questions about Errol and what he was doing there.” He felt Celina shift and realized he’d just violated his own earlier statement, and all but accused Wilson of playing a part in some plot.

  O’Leary tossed the printout on his desk. “Is that it?”

  Celina and Jack looked at each other and stood up in unison. “That’s it,” Celina said. “Just checking in.”

  “Well, we certainly do thank you. Don’t hesitate to come by with any other brilliant pieces of detective work. I’m always lookin’ for ways to sharpen my skills.” The man shook his head. “Maybe I’ll take the pair of you along on a bust. Budding pair of sleuths like you shouldn’t be wasted.”

  Jack held his temper just. “There is something else you might do if you’ve got a spare hour. Errol had a man who worked for him for years. His name was Antoine. I don’t know his last name. But he’s gone. He left Royal Street some days after Errol was killed and never came back. That was several days ago now. 1 wouldn’t have said he was the kind of guy to abandon a sinking ship, which makes me wonder if he’s afraid of something.”

  “Now are we finished?” O’Leary said.

  “Yes, sir,” Jack told him. He put an arm around Celina’s board-stiff shoulders and walked her out to the street without another word to a member of the force.

  On the sidewalk she said, “What made you mention Antoine?”

  “I’ve been thinking about him. I like the guy and I can’t figure out why he’s dropped from sight.”

  Celina didn’t say anything and he looked at her curiously. She was serious, but then smiled suddenly and warmed him as only she seemed to warm him these days.

  “Going to O’Leary was a waste of time,” he muttered.

  Celina said, “No, it wasn’t. Now we know that whole thing with the boy who supposedly robbed guests at the Lamars’ was engineered to explain why Wilson hired Ben.”

  “Only it doesn’t,” Jack told her, walking toward Les Chats. They needed to check in with Dwayne. “What it proves is that good ol’ Wilson felt he had to have some sort of cover for hiring the kid. But we still don’t know why he hired him.”

  “You are just too sharp for yourself,” Celina said, smiling up at him. “And now we’re going to have to find out that little piece of information for ourselves.”

  Dwayne hadn’t been at Les Chats. A worried Jean-Claude spoke of some man who came to talk to Dwayne and how Dwayne left immediately afterward, saying he was going to Royal Street to talk with Cyrus, whom he’d evidently come to trust. Jean-Claude had smiled at that and said, “I swear that boy is feelin’ guilty ‘bout somethin’. Nobody does guilt like a good Catholic boy. I guess your brother has become his confessor, Celina. Now, there’s a priest even I might be able to get excited about.” He smiled, but it was a deliberately lascivious smile, and they all laughed.

  They found Dwayne stretched full-length on the bright yellow sofa in the parlor at Royal Street. He took one look at Jack and Celina and put an arm over his face.

  “Is Cyrus here?” Celina asked. “He said he would be.”

  “The good Father has gone to counsel his nemesis. Mrs. Wilson Lamar. I told him he has a death wish, but he reminded me that he has a responsibility to God’s children. That brother of yours is just too good, Celina, but I like him. A decent man can be hard to find, and he’s decent.”

  “Yes, he is,” she agreed. “Thank you.”

  “Your daddy called,” Dwayne said. He looked uncomfortable. “I know I’m not supposed to say a bad word about someone else’s parents, but that man surely does think he should be able to control his children. And he does not want his little girl getting married to a man he hasn’t chosen.”

  Celina sighed. “My folks can’t understand that their children don’t care about the same things that matter so much to them.” She was too tired to dwell on just how disgusted she was with her parents.

  “I’d say you understand them very well.” Dwayne spoke to Celina, but his eyes were on Jack. “Your daddy wanted to know where you were, girl. You and Cyrus. I couldn’t give him any information on you because I didn’t know.”

  “Thank you, Dwayne. You couldn’t do anything else.”

  She waited for Jack to say something, but when he didn’t, she said, “Jean-Claude said a man came to see you and you were upset afterward. D’you want to talk about it?”

  “Do I want to talk about how I was told not to talk? Short conversation. Really short when you consider I never got to hear what it is I’m not to talk about.”

  Jack surprised Celina by sitting in an armchair and pulling her to sit on his lap. He did it as easily as if they’d been doing similar things for years. “I take it you’re talking about when Antoine came to see you at the club. Someone came by to warn you not to talk about it?”

  “Yeah. He bruised my arm.” Dwayne unbuttoned the cuff of a loose sleeve and rolled it up to reveal multiple purple bruises. “Wretch. Pickin’ on a pacifist.”

  “He might not know you’re a pacifist,” Celina couldn’t help saying. She earned herself a baleful stare.

  “Could you pick out the guy?” Jack asked.

  Dwayne gave him a pitying look. “A man tries to unscrew my arm and you think I might not remember his face? He had ears
so high on his head, the wind would have to go under his hat.”

  Jack didn’t comment.

  “I told the man Antoine didn’t say a thing,” Dwayne went on. “He came in wearing that ridiculous hat and shifted from foot to foot, lookin’ around like he was afraid he was about to lose his virginity.”

  Jack smiled at Celina but quickly looked away.

  “Where’s Antoine?” Dwayne asked. “I’ve known him for years, and he isn’t the type to run away from some trouble. Especially not trouble that involved Errol. He loved Errol. I would not say this if we weren’t in up to our necks, but Antoine’s illegal. Errol found him and his wife and kids—they were babies at the time—down in Florida and took a shine to them the way he was always taking a shine to the underdog. He brought them back here and put Antoine to work. He paid him enough to live okay. Antoine wouldn’t disappear at a time like this.”

  “Unless he’s afraid of being deported,” Jack said grimly.

  “That wouldn’t stop him,” Dwayne insisted.

  “Jack told the police he hasn’t seen him,” Celina said. Her head thumped.

  “The detective—he’s the one who’s in charge of Errol’s case—he didn’t seem interested. People come and go in menial jobs around here all the time. It would be tough to get the police interested.”

  Could it be so tough if she told about the T-shirt and the broken front tooth? Celina asked herself.

  “Anybody home?” came Jean-Claude’s voice as the door to the hallway opened and slammed shut again. “Do I have something for you. Oooh, boy, there’s trouble in River City and a certain person’s in the middle of it. Cyrus!”

  “Get in here, JC,” Dwayne called. “And keep your voice down, darlin’, we aren’t deaf yet.”

  Looking cool in a beige linen suit, Jean-Claude appeared in the doorway. “Where’s Cyrus?”

  “With Sally Lamar,” Celina said promptly. The less hedging, the better. “He doesn’t take kindly to liars and gossips.”