French Quarter

by Stella Cameron

Bitsy went to the door and opened it. Neville Payne promptly came into the bedroom Celina would soon be sharing with Jack. Jack was getting dressed in the next room.

  “We’ve got a car outside,” Neville said, including Cyrus in his frown. His face appeared bloated and purplish. Celina had become accustomed to thinking of him as having flecks of silver in his hair, but today there seemed many more. He waved her toward him. “You’re coming away with us right now. Whatever’s gotten into you doesn’t matter. We’re goin’ to put it behind us before it’s too late.”

  Celina rarely looked at Neville and thought of him as anything but her father, her daddy, but she was suddenly and forcefully reminded that they were not related by blood. Would her real father have been so insensitive today?

  “I’m going to check on Amelia,” she said. “Tilly’s getting her dressed and she’s so excited she’ll be hard to handle. Tilly may need some help.”

  “Takin’ on a man like this,” Neville said. “And his child. Even thinkin’ about takin’ them on means your mind isn’t balanced. It’s because of—” He waved in the general direction of her now very obvious pregnancy. “I suppose it’s Errol’s. We never wanted you livin’ in that house. Well, don’t go through with this marriage. Not just to give a child a name.”

  The words hurt. “Why ever not, Daddy?”

  “Because I know you can have Wilson Lamar, that’s why. He wants you. And you owe it to us.”

  Cyrus waved a hand in front of his face. “How can you suggest something like that after what’s just happened? The man’s wife just died. And this isn’t Errol’s baby. You say his name as if he weren’t dead, and as if some of us weren’t desperate to find out who killed him and see justice done.”

  Celina couldn’t bear to continue this conversation. “I’m going to my wedding now. You can come, Mama—Daddy. Or you can leave. Please yourselves.”

  “Celina.”

  She didn’t respond to her mother or look at her father when she passed them and went into the hall. Jack was ahead of her and turned back. Behind him, hopping up and down in a frothy yellow organza dress, Amelia spread her arms and did whirligigs.

  “Hi,” Jack said, coming toward Celina. “Ready to go to a wedding?”

  He wore a beautifully cut tuxedo, a simple tuck-fronted white dress shirt, black tie, and cummerbund. And he made Celina’s knees weak.

  His hand was outstretched, and she took it. “You surely know how to take a man’s breath away,” he told her. “You’re gorgeous.”

  Side by side they went toward the parlor where Dwayne was popping in and out of the door, watching their progress.

  The instant they arrived at the entrance to the room, applause broke out. Gathered beneath the silken bower Dwayne had promised, and crowded together, was a crush of familiar faces from clubs on Bourbon and shops on Royal. The burlesque cast from Les Chats had turned out in their fabulous finery.

  Jean-Claude, amazing as always, played Pachelbel’s Canon on a keyboard, and the sound constricted Celina’s throat.

  She took the bouquet of cream orchids Dwayne handed her, accepted his kiss on her cheek, and went forward with Jack to agree to be his wife.

  When they exchanged rings she’d never seen before, and held hands, and looked into each other’s eyes to make promises she intended to keep, she prayed that God would smile on them.

  They were pronounced husband and wife, and Jack leaned to whisper into her ear. “We’re strong, you and I. We will make this work.”

  She nodded and said, “Thank you,” and turned to face the assembly.

  Standing together, Jean-Claude and Dwayne sang “Ave Maria.” Their fine voices rose in marvelous harmony.

  Celina’s tears for the beauty of the words ran unchecked.

  She felt Jack’s hand on top of hers on his arm. They walked from the room and would return in a short while to mingle with the guests for a “celebration.”

  When they stood in the bedroom, face-to-face but without a word to say to each other, she felt a bitter certainty that without a miracle, theirs could be a tragic alliance.

  Jack studied her so very seriously and said, “I know, Celina, I know. You’re as afraid as I am. But we have more than so many couples have when they take this step. Ι love you very much. More every moment, if that’s possible.”

  She nodded. “Forgive me if I’m trite, but I love you, too.”

  Thirty-nine

  He couldn’t quite shake the sensation that if he closed his eyes for too long, he’d open them and Celina would be gone. She shouldn’t be there at all. They shouldn’t be there—together. The events leading to this evening were more than fantastically improbable, yet they’d happened.

  Jack didn’t believe in premonitions, and he refused to continue playing with any notions that he could just wake up tomorrow and discover Celina had realized her mistake and left.

  “This is a special night, isn’t it, Daddy,” Amelia said. Still bedecked in yellow, and still wearing yellow lace-edged socks and white patent Mary Janes, she sat at the table in the dining room they rarely used and ate the beignets Celina had suddenly decided were the perfect late-night wedding meal. Amelia’s bedraggled frog sported a yellow ribbon around his neck.

  “A very special night,” Jack agreed. His little girl had fallen in love with the idea of having a mother. If he’d acted irresponsibly, she would suffer—they would both suffer.

  Celina said, “Beignets and hot chocolate. What could be more special? You do know that pregnant women sometimes have strange cravings—for food—don’t you, Amelia?”

  Jack’s daughter licked her fingers and frowned. “Cravings? That’s like things you want a real lot. Do you want liver and icky stuff like that?”

  She looked aggrieved when Jack and Celina laughed.

  The three of them—Tilly had pleaded exhaustion and excused herself—sat at the colonial style table with its highly polished surface, and scattered powdered sugar over fine white linen place mats.

  The laughter softened the tension, and Jack breathed a little more deeply. He’d dispensed with the tuxedo in favor of gray chinos and a navy-blue shirt. Celina wore a bright red cotton sweatsuit and managed to appear exotic. The orchids she’d carried that afternoon were arranged in the center of the table, and she’d put one of the flowers in her hair, and another in Amelia’s.

  He smiled from one of them to the other.

  They would make it work because they wanted to so much. His self-assurances were starting to sound like mantras.

  The sound he’d come to dread interrupted his thoughts. The phone ringing in the hall.

  “Don’t answer it, Daddy,” Amelia said.

  She’d never know how badly he’d like to follow her instruction. Feeling Celina watching him, he left the dining room and lifted the receiver. “Charbonnet here.”

  “I read the paper. Errol help me read better, and I read the paper. And I see photographs. I know that man—the one in hospital. Sonny. Him almost dead, it say.”

  Antoine. Jack closed his eyes, held his breath, and willed himself to be calm. “I called every hospital for miles around looking for you. Nothing. You hid yourself well. I’ve waited for you to call back.”

  “I was afraid, me. Bad things happen.”

  “I know. It’s all right now though. We can get everything worked out.”

  “My woman hurt. Burned.”

  Jack rested his brow against the wall.

  “They come and threaten. Use cigarettes on her. One man. She tell me. She don’t see his face, but I know him, me. She tell me she talk to Miss Celina, too. She like Miss Celina.”

  “Okay,” Jack said. “Listen carefully and please don’t hang up. You’re going to be safe. I promise you that I’ll keep you safe. Where are you?”

  “My woman and boys, they safe now. They away from the Quarter. I’m nearby, me.”

  “Will you come to us here? In Chartres Street?”

  There was silence, and Jack feared Antoine woul
d hang up again, but he didn’t press the man.

  “I want to tell the things I know, but I’m not sure. I want that man to be punish for Rose. He very bad.”

  “If I promise to keep you safe, will you come with me and identify him for the police.” At last Errol would get some justice, even though in death.

  Another pause followed before Antoine said, “You go to the hospital, you. If I can, I meet you there.”

  Jack had argued, threatened, pleaded with her to stay behind, but Celina had refused. She wanted to see Antoine with her own eyes, and she did not want to take her eyes off Jack.

  Police officers, seated on chairs outside the door to his glass-walled cubicle, guarded Sonny Clete.

  Celina didn’t think she’d seen the man before. His head was swathed in bandages and his open eyes moved incessantly above swollen pouches of bloodfilled skin. His fingers twitched, the nails scrabbling ineffectually at the thin white coverlet. Tubes and wires attached his body to machines that pumped, or beeped. Leads ran incessantly across screens.

  Celina and Jack had stood there for half an hour, but there was no sign of Antoine. “He isn’t going to come,” Celina whispered.

  “We can’t be sure.”

  “Have a seat, ma’am,” one of the cops said, getting up. When she tried to decline, he insisted, and she felt obliged to sit down.

  “Don’t say his name out loud,” Jack said, his voice low. “He’s coming now.”

  Celina couldn’t stop herself from looking up, and along the corridor.

  Balanced awkwardly on crutches, one leg in a cast to the knee, one arm in a sling, Antoine came toward them. His hair looked more white, and his shoulders weren’t as massive. He had, in fact, lost a considerable amount of weight. When he drew near and raised his head, Celina had to swallow a cry. His face bore signs of a terrible beating. Sutures showed through clear dressings, and bruises stained almost every inch of skin. He was missing half a front tooth.

  “Hello, my friend,” Jack said.

  Celina got up and went to Antoine. She rested a hand along his jaw. “Thank God, you’re here,” she said, and they exchanged a look that let her know he understood that she was giving thanks for his life.

  “We have permission to go in,” Jack said. “He looks worse than he is. He’s pretty bad, but expected to live.”

  The policeman who had stood up said, “The door stays open.”

  The second officer added, “Here come the law,” and referred to a nurse whose rubber-soled shoes squished officiously on the pale yellow linoleum.

  She held up a silencing finger and went into Sonny’s cubicle to do the things Celina assumed she did on a regular basis. Then the woman came out again. She looked skeptically at Antoine. “I take it this is the person you were waiting for. Nο more than five minutes in there, mind. And you look as if you belong in a bed yourself, sir.” A sympathetic smile softened her scrubbed face before she returned to her station.

  “Ready?” Jack asked.

  Antoine didn’t respond, but neither did he hesitate to go to the injured man’s bedside. “Shot you, did they?” he asked, looking down at Sonny. “I read that, me. You prettier in your picture in the paper. You a true mess, yes, sir. The man who burn my Rose, he the man who do all this to me, right? He tie me up and beat me, right? Brave man, him.”

  Only Sonny’s eyes moved. He swallowed and, in a dry whisper, said, “I didn’t have no part of it.”

  “You there when he do it,” Antoine said. “You the man who sit behind me. I know your voice. I hear it before—when you go to Mr. Errol. I see you there too.”

  “I didn’t touch you, old man.”

  “You let the other one touch me. And him touch my Rose, and threaten my boys.”

  “Nobody stops Primrose.” Sonny swallowed and his throat clicked. “He’s dead now. Died with Win.”

  “You mean you killed him when you killed Win?” Jack said.

  Celina expected someone to stop them and throw them out at any moment.

  “It wasn’t that way. I didn’t mean to shoot Win. It was an accident. Then Win’s personal triggerman did this to me. And he killed Primrose. I never saw the rest of it.”

  Antoine let out a breath. “Dead,” he said. “They leave me to die. But Antoine strong. It take me hours, but I crawl out of that place, and they take me to hospital. I pretend my head too bad for me to remember nothing. Not my name. That way no one find me.”

  “Including your friends,” Jack muttered.

  “I think I live to kill that Primrose. A man call Primrose?” Antoine shook his head.

  Celina heard the squeak of returning nurse’s shoes.

  “Antoine,” Jack said urgently, “this is the man you wanted to tell Dwayne about, isn’t it? And Celina? You saw him leaving Errol’s place after he was killed.”

  Celina put her hands to her mouth.

  “You wanted to say you’d seen him because he was the only one who could have killed Errol.”

  Antoine looked at Sonny. “He the last one.”

  “I went to get the money,” Sonny said. “Errol liked to give me money because I watched out for you, Jack. I went to pick it up that morning—it was almost light. But poor Errol was dead, so I went away again.”

  Celina headed off the nurse at the door and whispered, “Please give us just two more minutes? I promise we’ll leave then.”

  The woman looked dubious, but said, “Two minutes.”

  “You were taking payoffs from Errol?” Jack said.

  “Just a few times. And real recent. He was concerned about you.”

  “Damn you,” Jack said. “You extorted money from Errol.”

  “Keep your voice down,” Celina warned him. “They’ll kick us out. That explains the money Errol took out of the Dreams account.”

  “You gonna be put away for what you did to my wife,” Antoine said.

  “I didn’t—”

  “You were part of it. You let it happen, and you helped that Primrose with what he did to me. I tell the police so.”

  Jack’s agitation grew visible. “And you’ll tell the police about seeing Sonny leave Errol’s. He must have killed him.”

  Antoine frowned. “The woman there too. The one who come sometimes in the night. When I work late I see her sometimes. She there that night, but she leave before. Later this one come.”

  “I tell you, Errol was dead when I got there,” Sonny said, his voice growing weaker. “On the bathroom floor. But I saw him.” He narrowed his eyes at Antoine. “That’s why we had to teach this one some lessons. He was too dangerous. He could have fingered me for somethin’ I didn’t do. I don’t like injustice.”

  Celina almost laughed aloud. “And then you and your friend grabbed me. I didn’t see either of you, but from what was said, I’m sure it was you. Did you take me and scare me almost to death because you’re such a justice freak?”

  Sonny ignored her and kept on looking at Antoine. “He was dead when I got there, I tell you. That’s why I had to lean on you. You coulda fingered me for somethin’ I didn’t have nothin’ to do with.”

  “Well,” Jack said. “Would you know the woman, Antoine?”

  “Mrs. Sally Lamar,” he said without hesitation.

  Jack scrubbed at his face. “Do you think that woman could have held Errol under the water until he drowned, then hauled him out onto the floor.”

  Antoine shook his head. “Not her. But the man, maybe.”

  “Sonny? Yeah, I surely believe that too.”

  “Could be,” Antoine said, “or the other one, the man who come there before this Sonny.”

  With Antoine between them, Jack and Celina stood in the driveway of the hospital.

  “I got me a room,” Antoine said. “Nice boardinghouse. Ms. Simmons. On Rampart Street. I go there, me. You let me know—”

  “Miss Payne! Miss Payne! Wait, please.”

  The nurse from the ICU puffed up to them. “Thank goodness I caught you. There’s an emergency at home
and they need you there.”

  Jack bit back the temptation to tell the nurse that Miss Payne, was Mrs. Charbonnet. “Do you mean her present home?”

  “The message was from a Mrs. Bitsy Payne.”

  The woman left at a trot, and Jack tried to read Celina’s expression.

  “You better go there,” Antoine said. “Only trouble call this time of night.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Celina said sharply, and looked abashed. “Sorry. This has been a long day. Jack and I were married this afternoon.”

  Antoine stared at her, then at Jack—and he grinned his gappy grin. “Well, that good news. Mr. Errol would smile. He love you. Both of you.”

  “And we loved him,” Jack said. “We’re going to make sure whoever killed him pays for it.” He hailed a cab idling at the curb and insisted Antoine come with them.

  “I want you, too,” Celina said. “You shouldn’t be on your own. Not even at nice Ms. Simmons’s. We’ll deal with whatever my parents want, then you can use a spare bedroom at our place.”

  Jack couldn’t hold back his broad smile. He couldn’t ignore his pleasure at hearing her refer to her new home so naturally.

  With Antoine a reluctant third passenger, they rode into the Garden District, to Neville and Bitsy Payne’s slightly shabby Italianate cottage on Chestnut Street.

  Jack paid the cabbie and took his card, extracting a promise that the man would return when called.

  A figure approached along the sidewalk, and Cyrus was illuminated beneath a streetlight.

  “Gathering of the clan,” Celina said to her brother when he joined them.

  They went in a pack up the uneven front path. The gardens weren’t as well-kept as they must once have been but they were still beautiful. A tangle of lush palms and vines cut out much of the moon’s glow. White paint around the arched dormer window did gleam. So did stone parapets along the base of the roof.

  The only light that showed inside the house was through glass panels in the front door. Jack hesitated. Should he have sent Celina back to Chartres Street?

  She went ahead and tried the front door. It was unlocked and she stepped into a wide, stone-tiled hall. Finely molded ceilings soared above walls covered with russet silk.