Α bottle of bourbon had rolled under the bed. Fortunately it had been capped. The room was stuffy and foul smelling. “Should I open a window?” she called.
“No,” Jack said, so close behind her she jumped and spun around. “We’re going to admit they’ll find our fingerprints all over this place, but you don’t open windows in someone else’s bedroom, not if you’re only supposed to be trying to find them.”
“Where should I put all this stuff?” Celina asked, not wanting to as much as touch it.
“In your apartment.”
She gazed at him. “I don’t want it there.”
“What you do with it later is your business. That’s where it will have to go for now.” He picked up the phone beside Errol’s bed and dialed the emergency number. Then he said, “Medical emergency. Heart attack. I’m not sure, but I think so. I understand. I’ll stay on the line. Someone will be waiting for you down below.” He held an open hand toward Celina, and in the palm rested the awful green rubber ring she’d seen.
When she backed away, he frowned and motioned her to come to him. She did so and he pushed the ring among the other things she held while he gave the Royal Street address to whoever was on the phone.
He hung up and said, “Go. Now. Get dressed fast and come right back. They’ll be here.”
“You’ve forgotten something,” she said. “Whoever these things belong to. What if she comes forward and says what really happened here?”
“Go,” Jack said. “She’s not going to say anything.” “How can you be so sure?”
He looked her directly in the eye. “I’m sure.”
Three
Miss Payne could move fast, he’d give her that. Jack had heard the approach of sirens, and now feet clattered on the stairs from the courtyard. Only minutes had passed, but Celina had already sped to her rooms and back, and managed to exchange her robe for a loose white linen dress. She was still frantically buckling flat brown sandals.
Jack heard Antoine say, “He this way. Lordy, I don’t know what the matter,” and shot a warning glance at Celina before going to fling the bedroom door open. He was confronted by medics. They passed Antoine in the hall and hurried through the bedroom to the bathroom, carrying steel cases of equipment and a portable gurney.
“Mr. Petrie?” Antoine said. “What the matter, him? He sick? Mr. Charbonnet? Miss Celina?”
Celina went to Antoine and threaded her hands around one of his massively muscular arms. “We need you,” she told him. “It’s bad, Antoine, very bad.”
“Lordy, lordy,” Antoine muttered, wiping his spare hand over his sweating face. A giant of a man, his tightly curled hair had turned gray, and each flash of very white, gold-edged teeth chopped his dark, finely featured face in two.
“Thank you for showing the medics up,” Jack told him, feeling the depth of the man’s distress.
Antoine said, “I gotta go to Mr. Petrie, me.”
“Not now,” Celina said. “We have to allow the medics to do their job.”
Jack studied her face. Either she was concerned for Antoine or the lady could act.
“Mr. Charbonnet,” the man said, “you tell me what happen?”
“You know Mr. Petrie didn’t have a good heart,” Jack said. Antoine waggled his head. “He dead. You sayin’ he dead, him.”
More sirens sounded, quickly growing closer. Jack met Celina’s very blue eyes again. He saw a question there and raised his brows. if they hoped to salvage as much as possible here. she had to keep her cool.
Two cops appeared behind Antoine. One said, “Excuse us, podner,” and they made their way into the bedroom. Jack glanced behind him at the activity inside the bathroom. The medics worked over Errol’s body. When he turned back, Jack saw that Antoine cried silently and made no attempt to hide the tears.
One of the policemen left the bathroom. “Might be better if you three gave me your names, then took a seat in another room,” he said, flipping to a clean page in his notebook. “We’ll start with you.” He pointed his pen at Antoine.
By the time each of them had complied, another siren sounded and rapidly zeroed in. It cut off outside the building.
Within moments, loud male tones rose above other, more quietly spoken men’s voices. “I am going up there. If you want to stop me, you’re going to have to shoot me in the back. Right there between my shoulder blades. Just make sure you give me a chance to take off my shirt first. It’s linen and cost a bomb, I can tell you.”
Jack felt an urge to laugh at what he recognized as Dwayne LeChat’s dramatic declaration.
Compact, with blond curls still wet from the shower, Dwayne wore denim shorts and a flowing white poet’s shirt. He tore into the bedroom a few steps ahead of two more members of the New Orleans Police Department. Beneath a perfect tan, his round face was almost as white as his shirt. He pushed Antoine aside and started for the group in the bathroom, but stopped. “I knew it,” he muttered. He glanced at Celina and said, “Is he dead?”
“We’re afraid he may be,” Jack said quickly. Celina’s eyes darted to his and away again. He’d have to keep on top of things or she’d give them away. “Why don’t you go into the parlor, Dwayne? Errol would want you here. He thought of you as family.”
Dwayne chewed the knuckles of his left hand. “You’re talking about him in the past tense already. You think he’s dead for sure. Oh, my God. How?” He turned to Celina. “How did it happen, darling? He’s—oh, I don’t care, I refuse to speak of Errol in past tense. He’s the gentlest of creatures. He
abhors
violence. No one would deliberately hurt him.”
Jack stared at Dwayne, then shook his head slightly when a policeman, his cap pushed back from his sweating brow, asked, “What makes you think Mr. Petrie was deliberately hurt, Dwayne?”
“He’s as fit as a fiddle, Mulligan,” Dwayne snapped, his intelligent brown eyes sharp. “You gentlemen of the law are a trifle too quick for your own good—unless some law-abiding citizen needs you to actually
think
about something. Then your tiny little minds crawl—in reverse. I want to see Errol.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea at the moment,” Officer Mulligan said.
Dwayne gave him a pitying look and went toward the bathroom anyway. As owner of a drag club on Bourbon, he was on at least a last-name basis with most city cops. No one knew if LeChat was really Dwayne’s last name. Jack liked the guy. He was rarely serious, but he was a man who made a faithful friend.
“1’ll go and wait in the parlor,” Celina said, holding his gaze. She seemed to want him to get the message that she was in control. “I’ll take Antoine with me.”
“I should wait outside,” Antoine said, his expression desolate.
“You’ll wait with me,” Celina said firmly. “I need you, and Mr. Petrie needs you to be here too.”
A sudden, uncontrolled burst of sobs froze them all. Jack turned around in time to see Dwayne stagger backward, his hands pressed to his stomach. Mulligan caught him by the arm and led him to the others, saying quite gently, “I think this is too much for you, Dwayne. Why not give yourself a break and go sit in the parlor? Have a drink.”
“My God!” Dwayne pulled away from the policeman as if he were afraid of being hurt. “He
is
dead. They’re going to take him away and cut him up. They’ll take his insides out and paw him and poke him and make their nasty, sterile little notes. And they won’t know anything about who he was. You can’t open a man’s body and find
him
inside. Errol Petrie isn’t in there anymore.”
Jack pinched the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t good at shows of emotion.
“Go sit down, Dwayne,” Mulligan repeated. “Maybe you could take him, sir,” he said to Jack.
With a nod, Jack took Dwayne firmly by the elbow and guided him from the bedroom and along the corridor to the parlor. Once inside, he steered the other man into a daffodil-yellow armchair and poured him a brandy.
Celina came to stand in the middle of the room. Antoine hovered awkwardly to one side. Both declined a drink with a shake of the head.
Jack heard more footsteps in the hallway but didn’t bother to find out who else was descending on this house of death.
Celina touched his sleeve hesitantly and immediately dropped her hand. He wanted to take that hand in both of his and press her palm to his cheek. He wished they were alone. He’d wished that on a number of previous occasions, but never as desperately as now. Wanting her was suicidal, and even allowing the thoughts he’d had about her to surface at a time like this was bizarre.
Without warning, Antoine bowed his head and wept. His body jerked with each racking sob, and Dwayne leaped up from the chair to mutter to himself and pace.
Agitated, Celina said, “Stop them, please,” and clapped her hands over her ears. “This is too much.”
He agreed, but couldn’t allow himself to give in to an urge to yell for calm. “You’ll be able to leave soon,” he told her, not at all convinced he was right. “The police will have some questions to ask, but then they won’t keep you.”
“I won’t be going anywhere.” She sat on the couch that matched the daffodil-yellow chair, crossed her legs, and twitched her skirts around her knees in an
unconsciously provocative gesture.
Jack’s glance at her legs wasn’t so much unconscious as inevitable. They said her legs had bought her the Miss Louisiana title. Jack didn’t believe any woman got to be Miss anything that a lot of people coveted on the strength of their legs, or any other thing God had given them. Not a pair of long, long legs, or a pair of deceptively innocent navy-blue eyes—or a mouth many would consider too big.
Or did they?
Taken a piece at a time, Celina Payne might not be spectacular. Put all those pieces together and she was physically irresistible—except to Jack Charbonnet.
Antoine’s sobbing subsided and Dwayne threw himself back into the chair.
Jack cast about for something other than Celina to hold his attention. He ran his gaze up the high white walls to gold crown moldings, a still life in oils that hung over the fireplace, and vowed to improve his timing when it came to admiring the female of the species. Thanks to Celina’s redecorating talents, and Errol’s indulgence of her influence over him, the room was tastefully beautiful.
When she spoke again, he realized she’d expected him to respond to her last statement. “I take it you don’t have a problem with that, Jack,” she said. “I’ll be staying here for the present anyway. I’ll have a lot of work to do to keep things running.”
She’d
have a lot of work to do? Jack studied her again and decided he might not enjoy some of the battles that lay ahead. On the other hand, they might not be all bad....
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” he told her, taking some pleasure in the surprise on her face. “Your help is going to be needed, I’m sure. Errol told me many times that you kept him on the straight and narrow around here.”
A rap sounded on the open door and a man with an official air but dressed in rumpled plainclothes stood there. “Detective O’Leary,” he said. “NOPD. I’m going to ask all of you to remain here, please. I’ll be asking each of you to speak with me alone. Nothing to worry about. Just formality at this point.”
Jack straightened up and pushed his hands into his pockets. “Sure. I’ll be glad to do anything I can,
but couldn’t you let Miss Payne take a rest first? She’s had a terrible shock, Officer.”
“Detective,” O’Leary corrected. “And haven’t you had a shock too, sir? Under the circumstances, it might be as well if Miss Payne hung in here until we’ve spoken with her. Just procedure. I’m sure you all understand. Did you turn the victim over, Mr. Charbοnnet?”
“Over?”
“You didn’t?”
“Why would I?”
“No reason. I was just asking.”
Why didn’t the man come out with whatever he was almost saying? Jack walked to the door. “I’d be glad to be questioned first,” he said. “But how about you tell us all what’s on your mind?”
“Nothing definite to tell until the autopsy’s been performed.”
Antoine said, “Lordy, lordy,” and shook his head repeatedly.
Celina wrapped her arms tightly about her middle and blinked back tears.
“You’re not suggesting”—Dwayne rose from his chair—”that is, Errol had a heart attack, didn’t he?”
“He may have,” Detective O’Leary said. “The medical examiner will tell us if he did. And if he had one, the examiner will tell us when he had it—before or after.”
The detective enjoyed his little games. Jack didn’t. “I’ll bite,” he said. “Before or after what?”
“Before or after what probably killed him.”
His chin jutting, Dwayne walked toward the detective.
“What kind of a goddamn comment is that, O’Leary? You don’t have a heart attack
after
you’re dead, do you?”
O’Leary took out a smashed pack of cigarettes, lit up, and squinted from Dwayne to Jack to Celina and back to Jack. He exhaled slowly and said, “I guess Dwayne’s got a point there, huh?”
Four
Celina didn’t want to be alone with Jack Charbonnet. He either looked at her and apparently didn’t see her at all, or he looked and saw too much. At the moment, he stared at her, stared at her face, then her body—all the way to her feet and back.
The questioning was over until they were called again. Antoine was showing the police through the areas at the back of the courtyard that were used primarily for storage. Errol’s rooms were taped off and the police continued to examine and photograph the scene.
Jack shifted his attention. “There’s a crowd in the street,” he said. He stood to one side of the window to peer down. “As soon as the ghouls go away, I’d like you to let me take you somewhere for a good meal. You look as if you need one.”
She stopped herself from giving a sarcastic response. “Dwayne should be back with coffee soon,” she said instead. Dwayne had insisted on kitchen duty and informed Celina that he didn’t need or want her help.
“Coffee isn’t going to be enough,” Jack said. “For either of us.”
She didn’t answer. Much as she wished it were otherwise, she knew this man was only being polite. He had never approved of her, never approved of Errol hiring her. Most of all, as he’d already mentioned several times that morning, he absolutely disapproved of her living there.
“Do you think Errol was murdered?” she asked.
Jack wandered away from the window with a faraway look in his eyes. “I think the police are moving in that direction. But they’ve got to be wrong. I’m convinced of that.”
“If they aren’t,” she persisted, “we destroyed the evidence at a crime scene.”
“I know.”
“Should we go and tell them what we did?”
“For God’s sake, no. Please do as you originally said you would—when you were dealin’ with all of this so calmly. Keep your mouth shut.”
Α flush shot into her cheeks at his tone. He sounded so angry.
Without looking at her, he said, “He called me late last night. I was on the phone, so he left a message on my voice mail. Damn, why didn’t I check to see if anyone had called?”
She didn’t feel like soothing his feelings. “We do what we do.”
That earned her a flicker of green eyes in her direction. “Yeah. I suppose we do.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference.” She didn’t do the cruel thrust well.
“It might have. When we find out how…We don’t know when he died yet, do we?”
The man had a way of tossing even a small kindness back. “No,” she said.
The clip of high heels on wood silenced them both. “Celina?” Her mother’s voice echoed from the hall. “Where are you? It’s your mama.”
Jack flopped into a chair. “Exactly what we need,” he said. “Some additional drama.”
“You’re talking about my mother,” Celina said while her heart sank at the prospect of what was about to come. “In here, Mama,” she called. “We’re in the parlor.”
“You sound as enthusiastic as I feel,” Jack murmured. “Can we hope she won’t get hysterical on us?”
Celina spared him a glare and rose as her mother entered the room.
“There you are, Celina,” Mama said. “So much fuss. Police, TV people, cameras—and such a crowd. How people do love to gawk if they think they’re goin’ to see something awful. I actually had to sneak into the courtyard and hope I wasn’t noticed. Then a policeman tried to stop me from coming up here! I ask you—stop me from visitin’ my own daughter!”
“What are you doing here, Mama? I told you last night that I’d call you later today.”
“We argued last night,” Bitsy Payne said, tears filling her eyes. “I just could not stand another minute knowing you were not happy with your mama.”
“Not now, Mama. Please.” Celina hated to look at Jack. Her mother had a way of embarrassing her whenever they were together in front of other people.
“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 asked, 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.”