French Quarter Page 3

  “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 respo
nding. “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.”

  Five

  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 should
ers. 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 1 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.