On the Edge

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “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 Orleans. 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. I 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.”

  “I guess he isn’t gonna want to give Charmain Bienville a hickey, huh?” Jean-Claude said.

  “JC,” Dwayne said severely. “Not in front of Celina.” Jean-Claude actually turned a little pink. He said, “Sorry I forgot. You sure that’s where Cyrus is?”

  “Absolutely,” Celina said. “He made arrangements to meet her again today, and he said he refused to let some small-minded gossipmongers stand in the way of his counseling a needy soul. He thinks Sally is sincere in wanting to make her peace with God.”

  “Difficult to believe,” Dwayne said. “But I’d never argue with Cyrus if the subject was God.”

  They all laughed and the atmosphere lightened. Jack asked, “Where are they meeting?” but Celina shook her head and said she didn’t know. The less she shared Cyrus’s plans for claiming Sally’s soul for the Lord, the better.

  “Do stop flitting about,” Dwayne said. “All of you. We’ve got a wedding in three days. I have a lot to do and I need the cooperation of the happy family.”

  “I thought we wouldn’t have to do anything,” Jack said. “Dwayne the expert is taking care of every detail.”

  “As long as you agree to everything I’ve arranged, you don’t have to do anything. I’ve looked at your parlor several times, Jack. It’s going to be a fairy tale by the time I’ve finished. I rendered a design and there’ll be a lowered ceiling like a striped big top made of silk streamers with painted flowers twining up the st
reamers. The painted flowers will be echoed with the real thing. There will be urns standing in every corner of the room, in the windows, everywhere we can put a stone urn. I’ve been promised I can do roses and have plenty to choose from, so it will be roses. I thought pale pink and cream. Celina?”

  “Very pretty.” She couldn’t imagine preparing for a wedding, least of all her own.

  Α knock at the door silenced them all and Jean-Claude went to look. He came back with a tall, clearly very expensive crystal vase filled with long-stemmed red roses.

  When the delivery boy had left, Jack asked if he could see who Celina’s secret admirer might be, and she told him to go ahead. She couldn’t stop him indefinitely anyway.

  Α card said, Forgive me, please, but wasn’t signed.

  “A secret admirer no less,” Dwayne said. “How romantic.” He caught Jack’s eyes and said, “Sorry.”

  “Not so secret,” Jack said, his lip curling.

  Celina let the comment pass.

  “I didn’t want to bring this here, but I’ve got to,” Jean-Claude said, pulling a folded sheet from an inside pocket of his jacket and handing it to Jack. “By tomorrow this is going to be all over the city. Cyrus’s name will be dragged back into it. See if it isn’t. He’s going to need some advice.”

  Jack took the sheet from one of the city’s sensationalist rags. Celina looked over his shoulder. She sat upright on his lap so abruptly, she butted his jaw with her brow, and he grunted.

  Α lurid photograph on an inside page showed a woman apparently in the throes of sexual ecstasy. The back of a man covered much of her, but one breast—slightly fuzzed out of focus but crowned with what appeared to be a blossom—was revealed. She clung to some sort of bars and her legs were wrapped around the man. No imagination at all was required to visualize what couldn’t be seen.

  “Hell,” Jack muttered. “Seems like taking freedom of the press a bit far.”

  “That’s Sally Lamar,” Jean-Claude said. “Some employee of Lamar’s talked out of school to a reporter. I’ve got a hunch he probably also arranged to have that shot taken. I bet the little creep cleaned up. Her friend in the picture is unnamed. Now ain’t that justice?”