“Mornin’, Mrs. Payne,” Jack said. He’d risen from the chair. “Can we expect your husband too?”
“Neville’s under the weather.” Bitsy didn’t as much as spare Jack a direct glance. “Your daddy’s in bed, Celina. I’ve unplugged the television. I can hope he doesn’t watch the news.”
“So you know what’s happened?” At least there was no need to say it all out loud again.
“I imagine all of New Orleans is gossipin’ about it.” Bitsy’s brunette hair curved to frame her carefully made-up face. Her penciled brows arched high, and there was a lack of mobility in her youthful features that Celina knew was due partly to a surgeon’s knife.
Bitsy did look at Jack then, and her expression flattened. “Celina, I have always told you to be very careful who you get involved with. We aren’t used to this sort of person.” She continued to glare at Jack.
“This kind of person?” he murmured.
“Neville and I know all about you,” Bitsy told him. “So do all of our friends. You may think that because it was your father who was a notorious gangster, you can pretend you have nothing to do with that sort of thing.”
Gangster? Celina digested the word, all the time watching Jack. His expression had closed, closed but for the derision in his eyes.
“Is it true that Errol was murdered?” Bitsy’s strident voice dropped to conspiratorial tones. “Right here, and with you in the house?”
“Nice of you to mention our friend’s death,” Jack said. “We think he died early this morning. At this point we’re waiting for the medical examiner’s opinion. Until he says otherwise, we’re assuming Errol had a heart attack.”
“Oh!” Bitsy fished in her tiny pale-blue handbag for a lace-edged handkerchief and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “Dear Errol. Always such a gentleman. And so kind to you, Celina. Not that Wilson seems to like him very much. I can’t understand why.”
At the mention of Wilson Lamar’s name, Celina made fists at her waist. She felt her eyelids twitch and a cold shiver made a ladder of her spine. Lamar was a successful lawyer, and a hopeful in the next Louisiana senate race. He was also a hanger-on to the senior Paynes’ social connections.
“Rather cuddle alligators,” Jack said clearly.
“What?” Celina turned to him. “What did you say?”
“I was just decidin’ what would be most distasteful to me. The company of some people, or of alligators. The gators won.”
“What people?” Bitsy asked, sounding deeply suspicious.
Jack ignored her question.
“This is beyond all,” Bitsy complained when Jack showed no sign of responding. “I don’t know what you can be thinking of, Celina. Here alone with him. What if your name and his are…well, mentioned together in the papers? You know your daddy doesn’t like talk. Our friends…well, there’s surely never been any talk attached to the name of Payne.”
Embarrassment became an agony. Celina wondered just how much Jack knew about the arrangement between her parents and Dreams for the use of their Garden District home. They were paid, not only for allowing their house to be used as an auction venue, but for encouraging some of their well-connected friends and acquaintances to attend—and to buy. Mama and Daddy got a percentage of the profit for every sale made on their premises to someone they’d invited.
Leading with a shoulder, Dwayne pushed open the door and entered with a tray of mugs. “Coffee LeChat,” he announced, and turned. When he saw Bitsy, he frowned, but said, “Mornin’.”
Bitsy muttered, “Pervert,” not quite softly enough.
“I’ll come over to the house later,” Celina said rapidly. “There’s a lot going on here, Mama. Not nice things. You go home to Daddy and I’ll be along later.”
“Don’t you tell me what Ι should do, young lady.” Bitsy pointed at Jack. “See the way he looks at me? How dare he. Just because he knows I know what he is and he hates me for it. His kind are dangerous, Celina. Jealous and desperate. You don’t know because you’ve led a sheltered life. But they’ll do anything to try to be accepted in our world.”
Desperation stole most of Celina’s breath. “Mama,” she pleaded.
“I told Errol he shouldn’t be mixed up with a man like that.”
“Jack Charbonnet is a gentleman,” Dwayne LeChat said softly, and set down the tray—also softly. “You, lady, are a fool and a snob—forgive me, Celina.”
“Well,” Bitsy said, but her voice shook. “How dare you, you pervert. I want you out of here today, Celina, but not before we settle our affairs to our satisfaction. Do I make myself clear?”
“Please be quiet, Mama. Jack will be responsible for overseeing Dreams now.”
Bitsy snorted. “Errol wouldn’t have allowed that. And don’t you be sucked in by a handsome face and smooth talk. They’re a certain kind, my girl, Cajun trash tryin’ to use money to buy respect. No background. They say his mother was never married to his father anyway—and she was half his age.”
Jack took a step toward the Payne woman and felt rather than saw Dwayne move. The other man rested a hand on his shoulder and said, “Let it go, Jack. She’s not worth your anger.”
He looked into Bitsy’s spiteful brown eyes and saw other brown eyes, these a contrast to long, blond hair. The hair had fanned wide on the surface of the pool, and the eyes had stared unseeingly upward. His mother’s naked white body atop a blue air mattress, bobbed on the surface, her legs obscenely splayed. Blood from the gaping wound across her neck stained the water.
His father, or what was left of him, was pinned with metal nut picks to a wooden trellis on the wall outside open doors to the master suite. Racked by his own agony, he watched his wife tortured, raped, and killed before his throat was also cut. Even if they hadn’t dealt the final, killing slash, Pierre Charbonnet wouldn’t have wanted to live with either the memory of his beloved wife’s death, or with what Win Giavanelli’s men had already done to him.
“Jack?”
Evidently his mother had tried to persuade his father to turn his back on the Giavanelli family, and crime, and he had finally made a suicidal move to do what she wanted. If he’d been only an associate he might have got away with it, but not as a made man, not as one of Win Giavanelli’s most trusted captains.
“Jack, what is it?”
He heard Celina talking to him. Her voice came from a great distance. “Yeah.” It had been a long time since he’d seen the images so clearly. They’d haunted him from his tenth year through his adolescence, until the day he’d made up his mind what he had to do. Then he’d put them aside, but had not forgotten them.
Jack had never stopped wanting vengeance, and he was getting closer to his goal.
Win Giavanelli, still the family boss, had given the order for his parents’ assassination. He was going to die for that. Jack had expected to see him dead a long time ago, but he’d also learned that if he hoped to be unscathed afterward, he had to be patient.
“Celina,” Jack heard Bitsy Payne say. “You do know he’s got connections to the mob, don’t you? Look. He’s staring at me. I heard his mother was killed by the mob. The man she was living with was murdered too. Not that he didn’t deserve it. He was a very rich criminal.”
“You are talkin’ about my parents, Mrs. Payne,” Jack said when he could make his voice work. “Pierre and Mary Charbonnet? They were murdered when I was ten years old.”
“Oh, Jack,” Celina murmured, and the horror on her face showed she hadn’t known.
“I didn’t know about your parents,” Dwayne said. “My sympathies, Jack. Bad luck. Of course, if you’d had my parents, you’d have been glad if someone decided—”
“Thanks, Dwayne,” Jack said quickly.
“There was a lot of money,” Bitsy said, and Jack eyed her, fascinated, wondering just how far she would go. “And there are plenty of people who wonder what happened to it.”
He had his answer. “Are you talkin’ about my parents’ estate now, Mrs. Payne?” he as
ked, and if she had any sense, the soft pitch of his voice would have made her very nervous. “Because if you are, there’s no mystery. I was the sole beneficiary, which seems unremarkable to me.”
“Blood money,” she muttered. “Drug money. Payoffs.”
She didn’t have any sense. Ah, well. “Blood money? I wouldn’t know anything about that. Or payoffs. But I do have to set you straight on the drugs, ma’am. Hard for a man to get rich on those. Cosa Nostra has a very strict code of ethics. Good family ethics. If a brother deals in drugs—he’s dead. Insults against the family? Same sentence.”
Bitsy Payne backed toward the door. “Neville will wonder where I am,” she said faintly. “Come along, Celina.”
“I have to stay until the police say I can go,” Celina said. “But I’ll call you a cab.”
Bitsy showed no sign of budging.
“Wait a few minutes and I’ll walk you out,” Dwayne said. “If we get questioned by the press, just say, ‘No comment.’ I’ll tell them you and I are old friends. We came to give our condolences together because we’re a comfort to each other.”
Bitsy said, “Call me a cab, Celina.”
Chapter 5
Naked on top of the rumpled bed, Wilson Lamar stretched and yawned and slapped his flat belly while he smiled down at the only body he revered—his own.
“Aren’t you just a teensy bit wiggly, Wilson?” Sally Lamar asked her husband, watching him in her dressing table mirror.
Wilson was always partly erect—something else that brought him pleasure. It used to bring Sally pleasure before he’d lost interest in making love to her.
Brushing her long, dark red hair slowly, she caught his blue eyes in the mirror and smiled at him. “Just a teensy bit?” she murmured. “This is going to be a long, busy day. Let’s give each other something to remember while we get ready to charm the people tonight. Some encouragement?”
“We’ve slept the morning away. Where’s the remote? I’m going to miss the one o’clock news.”
Sally knew enough to make sure her smile didn’t slip. “On the table beside you, hon.” The bastard. He was nothing without her. “They’re putting those darling white lights in the trees, Wilson. I think I’m going to ask for more along the galleries. What d’you think of that, lover?”
If Wilson thought about anything at all at that moment, it was Wilson. Everything he ever did was calculated to the greater glory of Wilson Lamar, and the senate race he expected to win. He didn’t answer her question, but then, she hadn’t expected him to do so.
The fine silk nightgown Sally wore was white, with thin straps that didn’t want to stay on her shoulders. Only her breasts stopped the garment from succumbing to gravity. She got up to stand in front of the French doors she’d already opened, clasped her hands behind her head, and arched her back, taking pleasure in a warm breeze that passed over her body.
“Get away from there, Sally,” Wilson said. “How many times have I told you not to advertise your wares to the world?”
“Why, Wilson, you do care,” she said, and walked onto the gallery, catching up a robe as she went. She hummed, and played a game she liked. Inside her head she created a little roulette wheel and gave it a spin. Her white ball bounced around and the wheel slowed. “Red is yes, and black is no,” she chanted quietly. “Red, I do, and black, I don’t. Red, I get what I want, and black, well, I guess I’m not in the mood for black today. We’ll have to see what we can find at the party tonight.” She wouldn’t have any problem finding a willing playmate to pass a little time with.
She pulled on the robe and leaned on the gallery railing. The beautiful old double-galleried house was on the southern edge of the Garden District and had belonged to Sally’s parents. Her mother had died first and her father remarried but—good for Daddy, and good for Sally—when he died, the hopeful young widow discovered it was to Sally not her that the house had been left. The house and almost everything else wealthy Claude Dufour owned. After all, Sally’s lawyer had pointed out when the widow complained, Sally’s mother had been Claude’s bankroll, and it was only appropriate that Sally should inherit.
“Μοrnin’, Mrs. Lamar,” Opi called up from the front steps to the house. Caterers, florists, and sundry other people preparing for the evening’s event scurried in and out from vans parked in the driveway.
“Mornin’,” Sally replied to Opi. He had been with her family for more years than she had, and she’d long ago forgotten exactly what he did except that nothing happened in the house that Opi didn’t orchestrate. Rotund, bald, and the color of milky coffee, either he’d advanced in the household at a very early age, or he was an old man. Hard to be sure.
“Well, I’ll be,” Sally whispered to herself. She’d have pulled back inside if it wasn’t already too late—if that upstart boy hadn’t already seen her. He stood under a tree, watching as if he’d been waiting for her to appear.
She didn’t even know his name. He was a new member of the household staff. Not that she had any idea what he did. Yesterday he’d sauntered past her, his sweet ass tight inside Jeans washed so thin, she could see the shadow between his cheeks.
First she’d followed him through the oaks until she had a chance to speak to him alone. Then she’d taken him to the old gazebo, and it had all been so much fun—until he turned rough. He’d scared her and she’d told him to get lost, but there he was, smiling up at her.
Tonight there would be a big fund-raiser for Wilson’s campaign. The old house and its sumptuous gardens would ring with music and laughter, and the clink of fine crystal and china. Deals would be made. For a “small” consideration, Wilson would remember his friends who helped him get to the senate. Already the pot was gratifyingly huge, but it had to be a great deal larger. And Sally would be the gracious hostess, the bestower of sisterly confidences on rich women, suggestive winks on rich old men, and, as the hour grew late and the company became drunker, sly crotch squeezes on rich men who were not too old.
But that was tonight.
Sally deliberately ignored the boy—she didn’t even know his name—and studied the men at work threading lights among live oaks draped with Spanish moss. She glanced behind her and saw Wilson propped on one elbow, his expression rapt as he watched the only god he worshipped almost as much as himself, and money—the media.
She turned to the gardens once more. He was still there, and he was looking right back at her. Standing in the shade of one of the oaks closest to the house, he sank his hands into the pockets of his jeans and stared up at Mrs. Sally Lamar. Insolent boy. He’d pushed her down, ripped her underwear. Oh, he’d been good—good enough for her to want more—but there was something about him that made alarms sound in her head. Besides, she was thirty-six. This sun-tanned, hard-muscled, eager-to-be friend might be twenty-one or two, or a little more. Or he might not. A tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed, beautiful young thing. Possibly a dangerous young thing. She would ignore him.
His finger, pointed at her, mesmerized Sally. He kept right on pointing and strolled from the shade into the light.
Heading for the house. He was heading for the house!
When he reached the bottom of the front steps, he sent her a knowing look and folded his arms. He nodded toward the entrance, then disappeared beneath her, through the front door.
Sally felt the beat of her heart in her throat. She went back into the bedroom, keeping her steps slow. Wilson continued to stare at the TV screen that all but covered a wall, and acknowledged her presence only by letting out an exasperated breath and shifting irritably when she walked in front of him and out of the room. She closed the door quietly behind her.
From the balcony that ran around the second story there was an unobstructed view of a central hall. Tessellated black and white marble tiles, walls hung with dark red brocaded silk, white stone urns overflowing with hothouse flowers already put in place by the florists—a small gold-draped dais where a harpist would serenade arriving guests. Daddy would have approved. Sall
y approved of it, but she didn’t have time to admire her taste while the sinuous, fluid-limbed man approached the stairs with the kind of nonchalance that belonged only to the foolish or the self-confident. Everyone was too busy working to notice when he climbed upward, one large hand on the gilded banister. His light denim shirt was unbuttoned to the waist, showing plenty of black curly hair on his chest.
And the way those soft jeans dipped and bulged over his crotch.
Heat and cold chased across her skin. She had to get rid of him. He was young, and wild, and could be difficult to control. Control was Sally’s thing. She always controlled the men she chose to play with.
This time she’d control the boy too. She’d show him who was in charge, enjoy him, and make sure he didn’t come near her again unless she did the approaching and the asking.
One of Opi’s Jelly Roll Morton tapes burst to life from the dining room. Sally snapped her fingers to “Black Bottom Stomp” and turned her back on the man who climbed the stairs. Sashaying to the music, she made her way into one of the guest bedrooms. She dropped her robe at the entrance to the bathroom and began to hum and clap. There were always plenty of big, fluffy towels in every bathroom. Sally pulled two from a cupboard and hung them on a rack near the shower before turning on the water.
Yes, this time her strong, young lover would learn about being used, and he’d want her again so badly that he wouldn’t dare to put another foot wrong.
The bedroom door slammed shut.
Sally boogied, her bare feet beating a rhythmic tattoo on the cool, deep-water-green tile.
He entered the bathroom, hovered by the door, watching her. Then he locked them in.
His eyes were dark, but dark blue, not brown, and maybe she’d misjudged his age.
“How old are you?” she asked softly.
“Old enough, me.” His liquid voice was deep, the cadence heavily Cajun.
“You?” he asked.
“Old enough, me too,” she said, making herself laugh. He was too sure of himself. “Where did you get all that chutzpah so soon? Come on, how old? Twenty?”
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