“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.”
Chapter 11
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 once 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 tol
d 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.”
Dwayne must once have had acne. The pores around his nose were enlarged. Jack realized he was refusing to concentrate because he wasn’t ready to deal with potentially tangible facts about Errol’s death—and his killer.
“Well?” Dwayne said.
“Antoine went up then?” Jack asked. “When I arrived, he already knew Errol was dead? Why didn’t he do something? And why didn’t he say something when he saw me?”
“I don’t know. And I don’t know if he did go into the house. He may not have thought it was for him to interfere.”
“Of course you know. Antoine came to tell you all this.”
“I do not know the rest of his story. He said he knew too much. Then he told me he must be careful not to hurt good people who were his friends, then he stopped talking. Not another word, I tell you. He said he was afraid. He said he thought he’d been followed here, and he was leaving.”
Jack threw up his hands. Jean-Claude was still making slow progress toward Dwayne, but he was on his way. “Tell me quickly, please. What was he afraid of?”
“It’s obvious, dear. He thinks he saw the murderer—who evidently went back into the house because he’d forgotten something, and then sneaked out again, never expecting to be seen. All that would be good news, or it could be, if Antoine didn’t think this guy—although he’s not certain it was a guy—it could have been really useful information for the police if Antoine hadn’t told me he’d clam up if we told them because he’s afraid he’ll be the next one to turn up dead.”
Celina stood at the single window in her small sitting room and looked down into the street. A silver Mercedes was parked at the curb with a tall, broad-shouldered young man leaning against the driver’s door. “Is that yours?” she asked without looking at either Sally or Wilson Lamar. “The new Mercedes?”
“Isn’t it lovely?” Sally said. “Actually it’s all mine. Wilson insisted.”
The man by the car was familiar, but Celina couldn’t place him. “And the chauffeur? Is that man leaning on the car yours too, or should you go down and tell him to go away?” Then get in your “lovely” car and leave.
Sally giggled. “That’s Ben. He’s supposed to be Wilson’s chauffeur, but that’s not really what he is.” She sent Celina a knowing glance.
“What is he, then?”
“Oh, don’t be naive. He’s Wilson’s bodyguard. There are dangers attached to running for public office, you know. Aren’t there, Wilson darlin’?”
“We aren’t here to discuss our household staff,” Wilson said brusquely. “We came to talk about you, Celina, and our concern for you.”
She hated him. One of her hands went to her stomach. She hated the father of the child she carried, and loved. That shook her deeply.
“I heard your brother is with you,” Sally said, peering around as if Cyrus might be hiding behind a piece of furniture. “You
r parents would have come with us this morning, but they are very upset that their only son—and he a priest—has returned to their very doorstep, so to speak. And he’s been here for ages, but he hasn’t bothered to go and see them.”
“Cyrus is here on personal business.” Could she really lie about something like this? Celina glanced involuntarily upward. “Visiting the diocese. He had to come on short notice and he needed a place to stay. I’m closer to the chancery than our parents.” Cyrus had come to New Orleans to visit the diocese, but he’d had no plans to stay until he’d discovered Celina’s plight.
Sally had lost interest in why Cyrus was there. “Where is he?” She pressed her palms together. “At mass? Such an unusual man.”
“That’s right, he’s at mass. Why did you say you were here?”
“To make sure you’re all right, of course,” Sally said, trotting on her inevitable high heels to put an unwelcome arm around Celina’s shoulders. “We are all so worried about you. Your mother and father begged us to come and persuade you to do what you should do.”
“Which is?”
“Now, just a minute, ladies.” Wilson had yet to meet Celina’s eyes. Dressed in a light gray silk suit and luminously white shirt with a black tie, he exuded health and vitality from every tanned inch of skin. “There are a few things I’d like to say at this juncture. I owe it to Bitsy and Neville—without whom I’m not sure I should be in quite so enviable a position—I owe it to them to follow their instructions to the letter. So I must ask you both to let me talk for them. And I must ask you to listen without interrupting me.”
Sally rolled her eyes, wrinkled her nose, and flopped down on Celina’s couch.
“Your parents are very worried about you,” Wilson said solemnly. “And so are Sally and myself. There is a murderer on the loose.”
How could she ever have thought he was a good man who cared for people? She wanted him anywhere but near her. She said, “In New Orleans, one murderer on the loose would be good news.”
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