Dead End (10 page)

The frame of the soaring space was of copper. Years of grime had built up on the windows until they’d become more like shades to hide the gardens outside than clear glass, with a border of stained-glass grapevines intended to turn each view into a picture for those inside.

“There’s still a pool house,” he told Reb. “Another major repair project, but the shell’s there and it’s solid. The pool is as good as new. It’s being cleaned and should be ready for test runs in a day or two.”

“Oh, Marc,” Reb said, raising her hands and turning a circle on chipped and cracked marble tile. “It’s so wonderful. Nothing can take that completely away. But it makes me sad to see it like this. Thank goodness you came when you did—before it got too late for some things to be repaired rather than rebuilt. They wouldn’t have been the same.”

He watched her without responding.

“The palms.” She dropped her head back and pointed to where the graying crowns of palm trees extended through panes they’d forced out of the stained-glass roof. “Oh, Marc!” Hurrying closer, she looked at him with very serious eyes. “You’re getting this place ready to sell, aren’t you? Why didn’t I think of that?”

Why hadn’t it struck him that Clouds End might matter to her? He didn’t need any explanations for why her reactions pleased him. Not a good sign. But also not one he had to be concerned about, since he planned to be back in New Orleans before long.

What would he do with the place? Leaping in to fix it had been reflexive, but would he ever use it? He studied Reb, thought about her here—with him—when he could pay visits. Oh, yeah, the pictures that crossed his mind were pretty, but he thought they might shock her.

“I’m not selling it. It isn’t mine to sell anyway.” Not strictly true, since his mother had already deeded it to him in something close to a fit of temper. The house was his responsibility now. Giving it to him had been a challenge. He knew what it had meant to his father, and it was in his hands to decide whether to keep it in Ira Girard’s family or sell it to strangers.

Reb smiled her relief. “It’s none of my business. I haven’t even given the place more than a few thoughts over the years, but I like knowing it’s here and that it belongs to your family. Sounds silly, I know.”

“No.” No, no. He wasn’t sure she could say anything he’d find silly. “What would you like to drink? Dinner’s interesting. You still like desserts, I hope.”

She rolled her eyes. “They are my waterloo. I try not to eat even a bite of them or I can’t stop.”

“Good. If necessary I’ll slip you a bite when you aren’t looking just to get you going. We’ve got dessert and dessert, and then there’s dessert, and maybe…dessert?”

“What do you mean?”

“Life’s short, eat dessert first,” he said, and winced.

“You should look embarrassed,” Reb told him. “You never used to fall back on clichés—you didn’t need them.” She closed her mouth, blushed a pretty shade of pink, and turned away to study orchids that continued to bloom in profusion together with bird-of-paradise, ginger, and proteas.

“When we were at Tulane, you mean?” he asked and didn’t even feel guilty for bringing up what had been a period of sweet agony for him.

“I don’t know what I meant.”

Sure she did. What she obviously hadn’t known at the time was how much it had cost him not to take what she had offered. By now she knew all about raging male hormones, but at seventeen she hadn’t been worldly.

“Come and see what we’ve got.” If he decided he wanted to pursue her, and he might, there would be time enough to see what happened if he got her riled up just the right way at the right time.

For a moment she behaved as if she wasn’t going to respond to the lure of the sweet things he knew she loved, but she put her hands behind her back and approached until she could look beneath each of three silver covers he’d had polished. “Took me most of the day to make these,” he said.

He earned himself an unexpected dig in the ribs. Then Reb was too busy examining raspberry-almond torte, mango cheesecake, lemon chiffon pie, crystallized pears in caramel sauce, and fanciful marzipan shapes tucked into chocolate nests to show any remorse for poking him.

“You didn’t have to get all these,” she said.

“Nope. And I didn’t. They were brought here from Toussaint.

Whoever thought it was a good idea to rename The Pastry Place, All Tarted Up?”

Reb sputtered. “Flakiest Pastry in Toussaint? The Gables, I guess. I heard Jilly and Joe got tired of the old name and decided the place needed a new image. They’ve got a booming business there, and Jilly’s so efficient I think the only thing Joe does is the books—and of course he likes to hang around and talk if he’s in the mood. He’s pretty busy with his other business. He’s a lawyer.”

“I didn’t know that,” Marc said. He’d met Joe and liked him. “Maybe I’ll get in touch with him if I need representation right in town.”

Reb examined the pastries from several angles. “That’s Girard property, too, isn’t it? The bakery and shop. Were they supposed to ask permission before they changed the name?”

“Of course they weren’t supposed to ask first. But I think the name stinks.”

She sucked air through her teeth and lowered a finger and thumb like a pair of pincers, over an apricot in a meringue cup fluted with whipped cream. Once it was in her mouth and her eyes were squeezed shut in ecstasy, she mumbled, “I think it’s funny. And this is almost worth what it’s doing to my hips.”

Mark picked up one of the miniature mango cheesecakes but said, “From where I’m looking, your hips are perfect,” before putting the very sweet mouthful away. Reb didn’t say a word, but he got a long, warning look. She ought to remember that he’d always been excited by a challenge.

He opened the promised ice chest. This was one he’d found abandoned in a parking lot after a concert on the campus at Tulane. Its silver sides were dented, but the words painted in red, one word on each panel, were still clear. “Horniest Toads in Louisiana.”

“White wine, pink wine, champagne, or something mixed. Name your poison.”

“Nice ice chest.”

“That wasn’t on the list, but thanks.”

“I’ll have champagne.”

He popped a cork and poured it into two heavily cut flutes with fragile stems. “I saw your Father Cyrus in All Tarted Up. Had an odd kid with him. The kid was hanging around the parish house, too.”

“He’s not
my
Father Cyrus. He is my friend. Was it a boy around ten?”

“Uh huh. He had something in a brown bag, and Cyrus was ticking him off by not letting him take it out in the shop.”

Reb’s fingers hovered over the dishes again. “Wally Hibbs. Doll and Gator Hibbs’s boy. That would have been Nolan in the bag.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Marc said.

“Wally’s tarantula. He takes it everywhere in a plastic box—and part of everywhere is following Cyrus whenever he gets the chance. Cyrus insists he cover the spider in front of anyone who might be disturbed by it. Wally isn’t odd, just a loner and too old for his years.”

“The priest wasn’t pleased with him. I could tell that much.” Marc clinked his glass against hers and said, “To old times.”

“To Clouds End,” Reb responded, not meeting his eyes.

“I thought I’d buy you dinner at Pappy’s, but I didn’t want to short you on the good stuff. They aren’t famous for desserts.”

Gaston, who had been poking his way through the plantings, came within feet of them and lifted his head to sniff the air. With no warning he whipped his simply clipped body from a flower bed to the top of the ice chest and halfway onto the trolley Marc had brought in to bear the goodies. One cover was askew, and the animal snooted it aside to take a petit four in his teeth.

“Gaston,” Reb cried. “Drop it. Now. I said, drop it.” She put down her champagne and ran at the dog, who promptly streaked away with the cake still in his mouth.

Marc began to laugh and Reb turned on him. “It’s not funny. I don’t know that there aren’t pieces of glass in those things. Come here, boy.” She set down her champagne and captured Gaston as he swallowed the last of his stolen treat and licked his lips.

“Shouldn’t have laughed,” Mark said, disturbed by her remark. “He might get sick.”

“He won’t get sick,” she said, clutching the dog to her chest. “He…” Her voice trailed away, and she sat down hard on a blue-tiled bench. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come. You must think I’ve lost my mind.”

“Reb…”

“I overreacted. It’s been…This hasn’t been a good day. If you wouldn’t mind taking me home, we’ll make an appointment for you to come and talk in my office.”

“I would mind.” He offered her the champagne she’d hardly touched, and when she didn’t take it, held it in front of her face until she did. “I invited you out for the evenin’ and you accepted. Something’s eating you, and if it’s the prospect of talkin’ about the woman who died, then you’ve got a lot more complicated feelings about it than you’ve indicated.”

She drank the champagne down and coughed. “You, you, you,” she said and sounded furious. “There you go again. Someone else doesn’t feel so hot and it has to be because of you. Well, it isn’t, Marc Girard.”

“Then open up and tell me what it is.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“I’m a good listener, and I’ll help if I can.”

She stood up, still cradling Gaston in one arm, and replaced each dish cover firmly. The pager grabbed her attention, and she quickly located her cell phone in her purse. “Hi, Peggy. Everything okay? Did you rest like I told you to?”

For some time Reb only listened. He admired how much she cared for her patients, but she took it too far.

“I’ll write all that down when I’m back in my office. Now listen;
then
I want you to lie down and get some sleep. No, no argument, or I’ll have to call George at the mill and have him go home to you.”

She listened again.

“Well, do as I tell you, then, Peggy. I won’t let anything happen to you. Yes, I heard what’s bothering you, and no, it is not necessary for you to make special emergency plans in case it snows when it’s time for you to deliver. I think we’re going to be okay there. Can you trust me on this? I know you’re glad I’m here for you, and I’m not going anywhere.”

The call ended and she put the phone away without comment. He guessed that was his cue to keep his mouth shut about doctor-patient business.

“Reb, like I said, I listen real well.”

“I don’t need help.”

“I think you do. And I think you’re just as pigheaded as you were when you were a kid, only now you’re a doctor and you think that makes it okay to be a pain in the ass. You don’t need help? Fine, but I do, and I’m not giving up till I get it.”

“Some things don’t change,” she said, and he saw how she shivered. “You’re still pushing me around and deciding what I have to do, what I have to accept. Just like you always did. Any decision involving you and me was always made by you.”

He wasn’t touching that. “I have a responsibility to my family. I take those things seriously.”

“I don’t have a family,” she told him. “I only have me and Gaston, and today someone tried to kill him to make a point with me.” She paused with her mouth open, then turned away from him.

“Reb?”

She shook her head.

Marc gripped her arm and spun her to face him. “I’m not giving an inch until you explain what you just said. Are you serious? Someone did that?”

“No. I don’t know why I said it.” When she brought her lips together they trembled. She was upset, but she was also one angry woman.

“Don’t treat me like an idiot. Of course you know why you said it. Now tell me about it, or we’re going to get real tired of standing in this conservatory.”

“That’s a new twist.” Her voice rose. “I know you’re overbearing and opinionated; I didn’t know you’d turned violent.”

“Violent? That’s rich.” He laughed but was far from amused. “I’m holding your arm, so now I’m violent?”

“You’re threatening me. If I don’t do what you want, you won’t let me leave. Don’t you think I’m going through enough?” Her breasts rose and fell with each breath. “You let me go right now. I’ll find my own way home.”

“Reb, I want—”

“
Just let me go.
I don’t care what you want. When are you going to get that through your thick head?”

“Dammit!” Blood hammered at his temples, and he pulled her close. “You’re bein’ weird and scarin’ me to death. Either you’re frightened, or sick. Which is it?”

She let Gaston jump from her arms and amazed Marc by taking a swing at him with an open hand. He caught it before she could slap him.

For seconds she stared up at him, her eyes unblinking and her lips parted. When she started to slump, he gathered her against him.

She clung there, drove her fingers into his arms. “This isn’t your problem.”

So there was a real problem, not that he’d needed her confirmation on top of what he was seeing here. “Whatever’s going on with you
is
my problem because I’m making it so. We’re far from strangers. We’re old friends, good friends, with unfinished business.” When had his timing turned so lousy?

Reb shuddered. She looked over her shoulder at the dust-covered windows, and overhead, as if she might be attacked through the broken panes there. The great breath she took was obviously meant to calm her. She took another and another and let her hands go limp on his muscles.

“You are fearful, cher. Terrified. Are you in danger?”

Her body tensed again, and she pushed against his chest. From somewhere close by came a thump followed by a series of small clunks. Reb’s eyes filled with tears, but he wouldn’t let her shrug away from him.

“Just more plaster coming down,” he told her.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “You want me to tell you something you can’t do a thing about. You can’t let a person have her own dignity and make sure she isn’t imaginin’ things before she starts shooting her mouth off, so I’ll give you your way, of course.”

“Are you imaginin’ things?” he said, growing agitated again. “Is some nonexistent threat turning you into a jumpy woman afraid of her shadow—and dreaming up a few shadows maybe?”

“That is so like you to laugh at my concerns.”