A Cold Day in Hell

by Stella Cameron

  She kept her eyes on Angel. Big, solid and very real, having him with her was keeping her sane while Chuck babbled.

  “Eileen,” Chuck said softly. “I love you, baby. I’ve paid for my mistakes. Look, I’m only working for Duhon’s because I don’t like too much time on my hands. You know I’m a doer. I’ve got plenty of money. If we need to be together all the time for six months…a year, to really get to know each other again—” he laughed “—we can afford to do that. Let me take you away somewhere. You can hire someone to look after the shop. Hell, that brother of yours worships the ground you walk on, let him take care of things. You love it here and I like it, too. But we could go to one of those places in the Caribbean for a week or so. Or to Hawaii. Sun, sand. You and me and a chance to—”

  “No!” She found her voice and heard the way it croaked. She couldn’t believe he’d suggest such a thing. “We’re divorced.”

  He sniffed.

  Please don’t let him cry. Chuck had always been tough, especially with her, and she wasn’t sure she could take it if he shed tears, not that she’d believe they meant anything.

  “I want to be a father to Aaron.” He choked on the words. “I was lousy, ever since he was born, but I love him and I know how important a good father is to a boy. Especially now when he’s had trouble and could go either way.”

  Eileen closed her mouth before she could tell him that Aaron was only going one way—up. The hellish times were over for him. She sighed. Let it all be over, including the shooting spree someone was waging against them.

  “Eileen,” Chuck said. “Forget I mentioned getting back together. It’s too soon. Sure it is. Too soon. Just remember what I’ve told you about looking after you if you need money. You and Aaron. I’ve got to find a way to make it all up to you.”

  A shooting spree against them. The enormity of the thought smacked Eileen. How could she even walk around knowing that bullets had already been fired at Aaron and at her, at Angel, probably at Sonny, too?

  “You still there?” Chuck was saying.

  “Yes. But I don’t want to be,” she said sharply.

  “You’ve gotta do this for Aaron,” he said. “And for us, but mostly for Aaron. He never had it good before.”

  Angel’s gray eyes had turned black, as they did when he thought deeply. His tanned body glistened from wide shoulder to narrow hip and from his muscular thighs to his feet. A paler band swathed low on his hips. He’d been hard the whole time she’d been talking. He’d been hard while they cuddled in bed. She straightened her back and pressed the heel of a hand into the juncture of her legs. A quick tingling response caught her off guard. So did the possessive stare he gave her.

  “Eileen,” Chuck said. “Talk to me.”

  “There’s nothing to say except stay away from us. I’m going to hang up now.”

  “Wait! Just hear me out. I had to go to the medical examiner’s office a couple of hours ago,” Chuck said rapidly. “Leland Garolfo—he’s the foreman at The Willows—he asked me to go with him because he couldn’t find any of the other guys. I think he just wanted moral support.”

  “Get to the point, Chuck.”

  “They wanted him to identify a body.”

  Eileen shivered. She didn’t need to ask which body he was talking about.

  “It was that Bucky Smith. They already knew because of his ID being on him, but they needed a visual, or so they said. God, what a mess. His eyelids were gone.”

  Chuck didn’t sound horrified enough to Eileen. And she didn’t need his laundry list of the insults to that poor dead man’s body.

  “They know it’s Bucky Smith?” Eileen said, meeting Angel’s eyes and swallowing. “I wonder if he has any family.”

  “I think he was a loner,” Chuck said, conversationally. “Leland said he never talked about anything personal. I don’t know about this stuff, but I bet shock took him out before the boiling oil.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Angel suppressed an urge to take the phone from her and tell Chuck to get lost. He might do it if he could predict Eileen’s reaction. She liked to do things her own way. He settled a hand low on his belly, the side of his small finger pressing into his penis. He locked his thighs. How the hell would he ever get past this erection without homing in on the object of arousal?

  He wasn’t a stranger to cold showers.

  Movement outside the window caught his attention. He looked through the glass at thickening shrouds of fog. The vapor lights had sunk into soft halos of gray. The movement was beyond that. He frowned and got closer to the window. A long shadow bounding along the road?

  Shadows didn’t bound.

  There wasn’t anything there.

  “Matt Boudreaux said you and DeAngelo were out at the landfill when they found the corpse,” Chuck said to Eileen.

  “No. After they found it. Matt thought Christian might be able to identify the body. He couldn’t.”

  “Who’s Christian?”

  She was tired of this. Sleep was all she wanted, sleep and Angel. “Good night, Chuck.”

  “Please don’t hang up,” Chuck begged. “I don’t have anyone else to talk to. Leland knew the man, even if he did look like boiled pig. All he needed was an apple in his mouth.”

  “Damn you,” Eileen said. “Speaking of pigs—”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay? Some people say inappropriate things when they’re upset. You can’t look at a thing like that and not be upset.”

  Eileen thought Chuck sounded like a ghoul who relished being on the inside of this one. “That thing was a man. I’ve got to go now.”

  Whatever he saw wasn’t that far away, Angel thought. He tried to listen to Eileen, but his skin had become cold. Inside he turned absolutely quiet. His mind had stilled. No, not now, he couldn’t have a disconnect now.

  A shadow took shape—long, a head, a tail, and outstretched legs. Where trees should have lined the road, the fogbank hovered like a pale canvas behind the apparition instead.

  “Look,” he heard Eileen say. “I appreciate you sharing this with me, but—”

  “Cher,” Chuck said to Eileen. “They think they narrowed down the date when the killing happened. There were newspapers on top of him. Whoever did that wasn’t thinking. Unless he didn’t care if everyone knew the time line.”

  Two shining, polished slits glowed in Angel’s direction. He couldn’t have closed it out if he’d wanted to. The perspective was all wrong. If the glowing slashes were eyes, and they seemed to be, he shouldn’t be able to see them so clearly.

  The thing faded, or snuffed out.

  Angel turned his back on the window. If he hadn’t had the experiences that plagued him while he was a CIA operative, he’d dismiss the whole thing.

  The auras were back—the second sight, the visions of figures that foretold things to come.

  “Angel?”

  He wanted to look over his shoulder.

  “What’s the matter?” Eileen asked.

  “What was all that?” he said, dodging her question. She’d put her phone aside. “You’re really upset. I’ve got to get rid of that bastard.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Eileen said. “There’s been too much violence already.” Tears hung in her eyes. She slid down into the bed.

  “What did he say to you?” Angel asked. His spine tightened. Even if there had been some kind of a creature out there, it couldn’t have seen him from so far away.

  He didn’t know how far away it had been.

  He didn’t know how big it was.

  He didn’t know if it was.

  She had hauled the sheet all the way over her head. Angel sat beside her and found his way to stroke her naked back. “Speak to me.” They had gone from a simple friendship, even if he’d always known he wanted more, to a complex entanglement.

  “Please go and check on Aaron and Sonny.”

  “What’s happened? What did Chuck say to frighten you?” He snatched the sheet from her head and push
ed her hair away from her face. “Eileen!”

  “You didn’t hear what he said. I didn’t think…I don’t know what I think. He said things about Bucky—and Emma.” Her voice rose.

  Angel kept rubbing her back. He couldn’t begin to see what Bucky and Emma had in common. He kissed Eileen’s forehead. “Settle down. It’s okay.”

  “It’s not. Chuck reminded me how I got to know Emma. We both belonged to a club for women called Secrets. It was just to support each other and share problems, and good things, too.”

  “A women’s club?”

  The interest had left his voice and manner at once. “Don’t dismiss it like that,” she said, sitting up abruptly with the sheet held to her breasts. She detested talking about Secrets. All of them had tried to forget about it. “Other people dismissed it as silly. Then one of the members died. It was horrible.”

  He listened closely again. “What does the club have to do with things now?”

  “I don’t know. I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with it. Chuck said Bucky was probably killed the night Emma was attacked in the parking lot at Out Back.”

  Angel didn’t see any connection with this club she’d mentioned and said so.

  “Chuck said the club made a lot of men mad because it changed the women who were in it. We got pushy, that’s what he said. And it was Emma’s fault that I changed because she was the one who got me to join.”

  He had to let her make her way through this.

  “Chuck and I would still be married if it hadn’t been for Secrets. That’s what he said.”

  “Take it easy.” He tried to recall if he’d talked one-on-one with Chuck. Had they looked at each other directly? He couldn’t remember, couldn’t visualize the other man’s eyes other than their being very dark, like Aaron’s.

  “No wonder someone tried to hurt Emma outside Ona’s,” Eileen said, breaking down. “He shouldn’t have said that. He’s had too much to drink and he’s stupid. I’m sorry to make a fuss. I feel so shaky.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He pulled her into his arms. “The guy’s mad because you aren’t buying what he’s selling, so he’s lashing out.”

  “He’s Aaron’s dad and Aaron wants to spend time with him. But I don’t want him to.”

  Angel felt out of his depth. “I guess that’s all normal.”

  “I shouldn’t want to keep my son from his father. They should be able to get together and Aaron’s hoping for that. I know he is. I could ruin that for him.”

  Her ex-husband might be smashed, Angel thought, but he still knew what strings to pull. Eileen and guilt were old friends and Chuck was using the fact. “If Chuck wants to be a good father to Aaron, he will be. If he wants to use Aaron to get to you, he’s not a good father or a good man.” He screwed up his face. “I’m way off base interfering. I told myself I wouldn’t go there. I don’t know beans about being a father—or a husband.”

  But he knew a lot about being a real man, Emma thought. She couldn’t stop herself from trembling. “Chuck as good as said it would have been a good thing if Emma died that night. He wonders if something went wrong and she was supposed to be the one in the landfill.”

  24

  “Gracie!” Emma shouted. “Get out of that tree. You’ll kill yourself.”

  Matt walked toward the woman hanging strands of bells from branches high up in a sycamore tree, bracing himself to break her fall if necessary. That wouldn’t be an altogether unpleasant experience—as long as she didn’t kill him on her way down.

  “Tell Gracie to get out of there,” Emma told him. “She climbs trees like a boy.”

  “I do not,” Gracie said. “I climb like a woman who can climb trees. Don’t you go setting your own kind back that way, Emma Duhon.”

  Emma spread her hands to Matt. “She’s fearless. The bells don’t need to go so high.”

  “That bark’s gotta be like glass. Gracie,” Matt said, eyeing the late-morning drizzle, “slipping would be easy.”

  “Go find someone who needs your help,” was all the thanks he got.

  Tonight the fair started. The preview and Santa party as they called it. The original plan had called for a morning opening tomorrow, but Emma decided it would be prettier and more lucrative with an early evening kickoff. Fortunately the fire chief had okayed the barbecue, the boiler—and the brazier that promised to be roaring tonight. The fragrant scent of frying crabs, crawdads and shrimp would make every mouth water.

  Buzz, who owned Buzzard’s Wet Bar just up the street, had actually applied for a license to sell beer. Matt was impressed. Buzz hadn’t been so careful on previous occasions. The Boardroom had a lock on frozen daiquiris in plastic cups. Couldn’t call a celebration a celebration till the gutters were clogged with those red and green cups.

  Matt was expected to make this walk-through during the final preparations and show an interest, but his mind and heart weren’t into checking out safety compliance on Main Street, or dealing with Lobelia Forestier.

  Lobelia had popped up front and center. “Did you think about what I told you to do?” she said. He hadn’t noticed before how the broad tip of her nose separated into two distinct bumps.

  “What was that?” he said.

  “Setting up that stuff for terrorists.”

  He tried to concentrate on her. “Stuff for terrorists? Are we expectin’ a whole lot of those, Miz Forestier?”

  She huffed. “We shouldn’t be finding bodies in the landfill or havin’ our citizens attacked on the way to their cars, but it all happens right here in Pointe Judah just the same as it does in New York. When that big old glass ball comes down—” she paused, frowning “—or goes up. One or the other. The one in Times Square on New Year’s. They put up barricades, they search bags, and they don’t allow any backpacks. All we need are checkpoints either end of the block. Your officers can check everyone comin’ in.”

  Hammering sounded all around as stalls went up. The hundreds of bells Gracie Loder had already hung tinkled with every breeze. Hoover, the large, bearlike Bouvier belonging to Aurelie Board, a lawyer in town, snuffled back and forth, gathering mouthfuls of whatever got dropped on the street. Suky-Jo was in charge of setting up a stall for Poke Around and must have wound up each music box and snow globe as she unpacked them. “Jingle Bells” fought with the “Hallelujah Chorus” and a lot of other tunes that just made noise.

  “Did you hear me, Matt Boudreaux?” Lobelia said. “Terrorists.”

  Lobelia was a terrorist, but Matt didn’t want to tell her so, not right now. “Relax,” he said. “This is a little holiday street fair in Pointe Judah, not Times Square on New Year’s Eve. But we’ll be on our toes, don’t you worry.”

  She wasn’t moving. “We know about the man in the landfill, y’know.”

  “So you already said.” Rusty, who owned the town newspaper, hadn’t even had a chance to put out the weekly issue, but Lobelia and her cronies could rival a champion team of homing pigeons for spreading news.

  “We’ve got big trouble,” Lobelia persisted. “We can’t be too careful.”

  “And we will be careful,” Matt said patiently, poised to act as Gracie’s foot found the top rung of her ladder. She ran to the ground and moved to the next tree. Gracie had a nice body, he thought, but she wasn’t his type.

  Eileen was his type, but he’d managed to blow that.

  Sarah and Delia Board huddled with the musicians who played at the Boardroom, most of whom looked as if they had hangovers. Matt wandered that way. In truth, these guys never slept much, so their eyelids were always at half-mast.

  The Bouvier passed Matt and plodded over to sit at Sarah’s feet.

  “Matt.” Delia waved. “Tell me we won’t blow anything out here when we plug in the amplifiers.” She gestured dramatically and her orange silk dress, which almost matched her hair, flipped around her calves.

  “You won’t blow anything,” Matt said.

  With Sarah in tow, Delia separated from the men and too
k Matt by the arm. She guided him to stand in front of Sadie and Sam’s. “What’s going on?” she asked him in a low, theatrical voice. “Lobelia’s twittering all over the place. Of course we all know about that poor man who got fried at Ona’s.” She shuddered. “Dreadful. But who was he?”

  “Someone who worked for Duhon’s. We don’t know much more than that yet. If you put the amplifiers out here now, what will you use at the club tonight?” He didn’t care but wanted to change the subject.

  “They won’t be out here if the band’s not out here,” Delia pointed out.

  Matt realized Sarah was smirking at him, and that she knew he was just trying to make conversation. He saluted her, scratched Hoover’s head and turned around to look down the disaster that was Main Street. Vehicles picked their way cautiously between the stalls.

  Angel DeAngelo’s silver GMC truck wasn’t a welcome site. He was the only person around to own one of the crewcab monsters, which he usually left behind in favor of the motorcycle.

  With the truck parked at the curb, Angel got out and did a visual of the area. He quit searching as soon as he sighted Matt, who had figured the other man could be looking for him.

  Matt separated from Delia and Sarah and walked slowly toward Angel. The man had one of those loose strides that covered a lot of ground fast. Did he, Matt wondered, know everyone looked at him when he passed? Coming right down the middle of the street, the gap narrowing between them, Matt recalled scenes of shootouts in western towns. All they needed was spurs.

  Now, he wasn’t a fanciful man. The pressure around here must be getting to him.

  “Chief, hold up!”

  He paused to let Sabine Webb catch up with him. “Hey, Sabine.”

  “Hey. I need your help.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  She grimaced. “With Lobelia.”

  “Maybe you don’t have my help,” he said.

  “I’m going to tell fortunes tonight and she’s having a fit. She says fortunes don’t have a thing to do with Christmas. But people like it and it’s fun, so where’s the harm? Lobelia isn’t complaining because someone’s coming over from Toussaint to read dogs’ minds, but she’s giving me a bad time about fortunes.”