Dead End (2 page)

Walk, don
’
t run. March along with purpose.
One, two, one two.
You
’
re the one in control now.
She gave a short laugh. Probably had been in control all along—and on her own. Tomorrow she’d really laugh about it.

A gate in a white wooden fence opened onto the narrow strip of graveyard in front of the church. Important folk got laid to rest on this side. The common types had to be glad of a spot out back or in an overflow several blocks away. She let the gate creak shut behind her and hurried along the path to the steps that led up to the door.

The creak she heard didn’t have to be identified. The gate, opening again. She clamped a hand over her racing heart, reached the steps, and glanced over her shoulder when she got to the door. The gate was swinging shut, but she couldn’t see a soul. Breeze must have taken it. Only there wasn’t a breeze.

Without stopping, she went into the church and dashed, as quietly as she could, to the seats closest to the altar. Crouched there, grateful for the low-powered electric candles that burned in sconces mounted on the walls—between carved Stations of the Cross—she could lean out a little to see if anyone entered. She could also keep an eye on an exit door at the opposite side of the building. That’s where she’d go if he followed her.

The church floor was of stone, and the cold felt good beneath her injured knees. She spread a hand on a brass grating in the floor and smiled at its smooth, cool surface. This was a holy place. Teenage thugs didn’t want to tangle with Father Cyrus Payne, who was pastor, or his administrative assistant Madge Pollard—and least of all with Oribel Scully, who ran just about everything and wouldn’t hesitate to go straight to the parents.

The door started to open. Not the front door, but the one she’d intended to use for her escape. If they wanted her badly enough, she’d never make it out by the way she’d come.
Quick, hide before they see where you are.

Without hesitating, she scurried, hunched double, into the octagonal space at the foot of the belfry stairs. And up those stairs she went, gripping the banisters at one side and running her hand along the craggy stone wall at the other. Around and around. The parish of St. Cecil’s was proud of its bells. She reached the level where red-and-white striped ropes hung, but she didn’t slow down. Upward again, to a platform that ringed the tower, then up to the top of the belfry where the bells hung in a room with another gallery. This time there was a door to close, and she closed it—and turned the key in the lock.

The only way to reach her was through that locked door, and it would take one big son of a gun to break it down.

Silence was absolute this time. And it lasted. Skies beyond the open archways into the belfry hadn’t begun to lighten, but there was a little cooling on what currents of air slipped in.

One thing was certain, she wouldn’t be going anywhere before morning. She sat on the floor, leaned against the wall, and let her eyes drift shut. All the progress she’d made with straightening out her life hadn’t been enough. She was still a mess, but tonight had shaken her back into action. This time she would really make a fresh start, move on maybe, quit singing, and get a different kind of job. One day she might even be able to look for the family she’d moved away from years ago. She wanted to show her own folks that she was someone worth loving. If she had roots, she wouldn’t be alone and scared anymore.

A scrape, followed by a clink and rattle, had her on her feet and pointing the gun. The key had fallen from the keyhole to the floor. It had been pushed through from the other side—with another key, and this one turned in the lock.

Her one escape would be through the openings to the belfry…or she could reach beneath the bells for a rope, and slide down.

Click, click, click. The key revolved, and the door opened inch by inch until she looked into familiar eyes.

Unbelievable. This was supposed to be a joke?

She bowed her head, dropped the gun to her side, and contemplated revenge before she looked straight at the prankster. “You,” she said. “You’ll be the death of me.”

Oribel Scully had shown him into the kitchen at the rectory. That was a friendly sort of start—or he’d take it as such. Strangers wouldn’t be brought straight in here.

“Who’d you say you were?” Oribel asked.

So much for the friendly bit. “I’m Marc Girard, Miz Scully. I grew up outside of Toussaint. I’m stayin’ at the old house. I’m in town to clear up a few family matters.” His family had kept their distance from the town, but he’d heard his mother mention Oribel and how she ran St. Cecil’s Parish.

A frown all but made Oribel’s bright blue eyes sink out of sight beneath overhanging brows. “What family matters? Seems to me you Girards moved on and didn’t leave nothin’ behind exceptin’ the half the town your pappy owns and rents out.” She pulled the front of her daisy-covered shirt away from her compact body and flapped it. The blades of an overhead fan chased each other but didn’t do much for the stifling heat in the room. “That what you come for, to put all those good people out of their businesses so your pappy can build something fancy and make more money—bein’ you don’t already have enough?”

He would be charming the way he knew how to be. A soft laugh usually took the edge off things. “Now, Miz Scully, you know the Girards wouldn’t do a thing like that. We think Toussaint’s just fine the way it is.” It would be finer if he could have a glass of water. “Except for all the trouble we’ve been hearing about lately. We don’t like that at all.”

Probably in her mid-fifties and well cared for, Oribel had a pleasant enough face when she wasn’t cross. She was cross now. “Your pappy—”

“My father’s dead, ma’am. Been dead several years. Died in Florida after they moved. My mother misses him, like you’d expect. But she’s one who likes to take care of herself. I deal with the bigger business matters is all.”

“You don’t say.” Oribel’s features yielded, and she waved him to a chair at the worn oak table Marc remembered from his one childhood visit. “Iced tea? It’s sun tea, mind. There’s some who says it’s the best in all Louisiana.”

“I’d be grateful,” he said, but he glanced repeatedly at the door to the rest of the house. What he’d come to this town for wasn’t pleasant, and he had no interest in renewing acquaintances for any reason that didn’t further his task. “Smells like an apple pie in the oven. Cinnamon, too. That stove doesn’t look a day older than when I last saw it, and I bet it puts out as tasty a dish as ever.”

The range and stove were finished in a mottled gray, and the brand had been scrubbed to nothing readable. A spit still hung over a fireplace in an alcove next to an expanse of worn steel draining board.

“I’m not the cook, me,” Oribel said with her nostrils flared. “More important things to do.” A tall, frosty glass of tea appeared on the table in front of Marc. Sunlight through the windows made it glow like thin honey around ice cubes. A slice of lemon and a sprig of mint reminded him of long ago summer days in his mother’s kitchen.

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

“When’d you get here?”

“Just a couple of days ago.”

“Where you stayin’?”

“Clouds End.”

“Lordy.” Oribel slapped her thighs. “I thought that place was fallen down. Ain’t set eyes on it since I don’t know when. Longer’n since I set eyes on you, and that’s gotta be twenty years.”

“Thirteen or so,” Marc corrected her, not that it hurt his feelings to be forgotten in a town he’d been glad to leave behind.

“Well, you better get yourself a room at Doll and Gator Hibbs’s place—if you’re plannin’ to spend another night, that is. You don’t want to be out there in whatever mess Clouds End is in.”

He wouldn’t tell Oribel that none of the Majestic Hotel’s twelve rooms were available—to him—or that Doll Hibbs had almost expired when he walked into the place. “When will the pastor get back—or is he here somewhere? I’d like a few words with him.” From what Marc could gather, Father Cyrus Payne was a rock, a coolheaded man to whom much of the town turned when things got out of hand. Each time he’d mentioned the man’s name it had been met with fond reverence.

“He’s out. With that Madge Pollard.” Disapproval hung heavy and weighted down the corners of Oribel’s brightly lipsticked mouth. “Should be back by now.” She put on thick glasses and looked at her watch.

Marc cleared his throat. “How’s Deacon Scully, Miz Scully? The pastor must find him a real help. The load isn’t so light in Toussaint these days.”

“Don’t know what you mean by that.” She patted her close-cut gray curls. “All we got here is law-abiding folks who mind their own business but help out when they’re needed.”

“That’s good to hear. I—”

“I expect Harold Scully’s just peachy. Him and that Winifred Crane.”

Marc drank some of his tea and tried to make sense of what she’d said. “Miz Crane is still president of the Altar Society?”

“She was before she ran off with my Harold. But I don’t ask for no pity. The Good Lord deals with the likes of them. In time a broken heart mends.” She sniffed and blinked rapidly.

“I’m sorry,” Marc said.

“I’ve got a life to get on with. We all do. Some of us are interested in more than rollin’ around in a sweaty bed of sin.”

He got a vague picture of skinny Harold Scully with his long strands of limp white hair and bobbing Adam’s apple and Winifred Crane, a cheerful, pleasantly buxom lady who was older than Oribel, probably as old as Harold, who had to be sixty-five or so. The picture wouldn’t expand to placing the couple in a “sweaty bed of sin.”

“Well…I’d better wait for Father.”

“She went after him, y’know. Started wearing all those short skirts and rubbing knees with him at council meetings.”

“Hmm.”

“Can’t tell an apple by its skin.”

“I suppose not.” He couldn’t stop his feet from twitching.

“What happened to that sister of yours?”

Marc set his glass down firmly and leaned back in his chair. If he knew the answer to the question he wouldn’t be here. “Amy’s busy.” Wherever she was, she might be busy. Marc didn’t know with any certainty where that might be, but he was growing a hunch that had the power to make him sweat. He was relieved Oribel didn’t know her son-in-law, Chauncy Depew, had never stopped messing around with Amy—and he was sure she didn’t or he wouldn’t be sitting at this table and drinking the woman’s sun tea. Chauncey was married to Oribel’s only chick, Precious.

“Toussaint wasn’t good enough for any of you Girards.” Oribel had poured herself a glass of tea. With every sip she took her teeth clattered on the rim.

He didn’t respond to her remark and stared through the windows instead. Heat rose in quivering layers of steam off the bayou, drew porous films over polished water that moved like warm lime taffy. The lawns surrounding the house were more white clover than grass, and bees hovered and dove from flower to flower. If he got closer to the panes and looked hard right he’d be able to see St. Cecil’s, and any tomb that wasn’t moss-covered would be glinting white like mica.

“Overstepped myself, me,” Oribel said. She stood at the other end of the table and looked outside just as Marc was doing. “Been harder than I like to let on. I’ve said too much to you, and it wasn’t called for. Holding your head up isn’t always easy, if you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” Marc said. It didn’t cost much to be decent—if it was to someone who wasn’t a threat.

Footsteps sounded in the passageway outside the kitchen, and a man’s voice said, “Thanks, Madge. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Keep a list of people asking for appointments, but tell them you’ll have to call back. I want a chance to put them in some sort of order. Let me know if you hear from Jilly or Joe Gable.”

The man who came into the kitchen wore jeans and a dark brown check shirt with a worn collar. The shirt looked pretty good on him even if it did belong in a ragbag. When he saw Marc he said, “Good morning. Cyrus Payne,” and shot out a tanned hand that was anything but soft.

“Marc Girard.” He returned the hard handshake. “I’m hoping you can spare me a few private minutes.”

Father Cyrus had stopped smiling. He was as tall as Marc, and that was tall. Marc doubted any priest’s job would be made easier by looking like this handsome, dark-haired man.

“Don’t mind me,” Oribel said. “I’ll be in and out, but you’ll be quiet enough here.” She moved a pile of books from a counter to the table and sat down. Apparently she’d decided to start out by being “in.”

“How can I help you?” the priest asked.

“His family owns a lot of Toussaint,” Oribel said, turning pages. “Made their money in sugar. His pappy’s dead and his mama lives in Florida. Marc never did mix with people hereabouts. Hightailed it out of the area to go to school and never came back. He’s here now to see about making more money out of the town. His sister wasn’t any better—”

“I’m not here to do anything about our holdings in Toussaint,” Marc said tightly, but he relaxed when he saw the priest shake his head slightly and smile.

“It’s an honor to meet another person from one of the old families, Mr. Girard. Let’s go into my study.”

“Madge is in there,” Oribel piped up.

“This way,” Father Payne said. “To the left, then right.”

Marc went ahead of the other man along a corridor with dark wood wainscotting that rose halfway up the walls and the same dark wood on the floors. Carpet runners had probably been green and brown but were too faded for a newcomer to be sure. Photographs of happy people and places in the Quarter hung between holy pictures. Lemon-scented wax tickled the nose.

“Oribel is a good woman,” Father Payne said. “She’s suffered some disappointments and they’ve made her defensive.”

“I’m not offended by her,” Marc said, and lied. As a teenager chafing to run with the kids who were having the good times, he hadn’t understood his parents’ insistence that he and Amy stay out of town other than to allow Marc to go to school there. Now he began to think he understood their reasons all too well.