French Quarter (5 page)

“Yes,” the reporter said. “Sorry, ma’am. Maybe you can shed a little light on what went on in there this morning.”

“Errol Petrie died,” she said. Charbonnet still stood between her and the camera. “We thought he had a heart attack. He had a weak heart.”

“You thought he had a weak heart?”

“He did have a weak heart. But the police doubt if that’s what killed him.”

“That’s it,” Charbonnet said, steering his companion firmly along the sidewalk. “No further comment.”

“Celina Payne, isn’t it?” the reporter said, glowing with triumph. “Why, yes, I should have seen at once. We’re talking with Celina Payne, folks, our former Miss Louisiana.”

“Someone’s going to pay for this,” Wilson said.

Sally looked at him and got slowly to her feet. His face was pale, and sweat trickled down his temples. He scooted to sit on the end of the bed, where he was so close to the television screen, she was sure the picture would be too blurred for him to see.

“Bitch,” he whispered through his teeth. “You are going to learn to do as you are told,
bitch.”

“I haven’t—” Sally stopped, her lips parted. He wasn’t talking to her. “Celina?” she said. “What do you mean?”

“You aren’t taking me down,” Wilson said. “Trust me, baby, it’s time for a lesson.”

“Wilson,” Sally said quietly. “Please.”

He turned on her, threw her down on the bed. His lips were drawn back from his teeth and veins stood out at his temples and in his neck. Too quietly he said, “You don’t have to beg, Sally. Just spread your legs.”

For the second time that morning a powerful male tore off her clothes and used her forcefully. For the first time in some months, Wilson entered his wife’s body. He used her, and kept his eyes on the television while he did so. If she were stupid and blind, she might have enjoyed it. But Wilson Lamar had become amused by an image on a screen, and his wife happened to be around as a substitute for Celina Payne.

Six

Jack heard Amelia’s bare feet on the wooden floor in the corridor—again. He could also hear Tilly smacking pots and pans together in the kitchen.

He peeled off his reading glasses and lowered his feet from the leather ottoman in front of his chair. What a hell of a day. And now his daughter was mad at him, and his housekeeper was mad at him.

Women.
He would never figure out what made any of them tick.

Amelia pushed the door to his study open and stood there, hanging on to the doorknob and clutching her oversized buddy, Frog Prince, beneath an arm.

He set aside the sheaf of papers he’d been studying. “What now, squirt?”

“There’s an ugly ghost eating my toys. He’s making loud chewing noises and he doesn’t say he’s sorry when he burps.”

Jack struggled not to laugh. “Wow. You’d better not say that too loud. All the other kids will want one.”

“There aren’t any other kids, Daddy. Just me, and there’s an ugly—”

“Amelia,” Jack said, “I put you to bed. Tilly put you to bed. I put you to bed again. There isn’t an ugly ghost.”

She swung back and forth in her blue cotton nightie, and swung a small foot too. Her short black curls shone. There was no hint of either anxiety or remorse in her green eyes. “You didn’t take me to school.”

“No, and we already discussed that. I had something unexpected come up and I had to ask Tilly to take you.”

“That’s our time. You said that. It’s our time when you take me to school. You didn’t have breakfast with me either. That’s our time too.”

“It sure is, squirt. But sometimes we have to make allowances because of something important.”

Amelia stopped swinging. “This is important.”

Jack started to get up, but changed his mind. “Okay, shoot. What’s important?”

“I’m upset because we missed our special times this morning, and you have to make allowances.”

This was the price he paid for treating his little girl like a sidekick, and for talking to her as if she were an adult, and insisting her grandmother and Tilly talk to her in adult terms. “I’m sorry you’re upset.”

“I forgive you. A story would be a good allowance.”

Jack shook his head and held out his arms to receive his daughter when she hurtled across the room and scrambled onto his lap. She went through her ritual of getting settled, and arranged her frog—with his shiny patches where the green fuzz had worn off—on top of them both. Jack wrinkled up his face as he got ready to continue the same story he’d been making up for years.

“Phillymeana and the Dragon Prince have rescued another elf baby from the Ice Wizard.” Amelia inevitably provided a recap of the previous episode.

“Philomena,” Jack automatically corrected her.

The sound of the doorbell surprised them both. They rarely got evening visitors.

“You want me to answer that, Mr. Charbonnet?” Tilly yelled as only Tilly could yell. “Or you want me to follow my instincts and ignore it?”

Jack set Amelia on the floor and called, “I’ll go. Thanks, Tilly.”

Tilly lived in. Jack’s connections had allowed him to buy a coveted apartment above two antique stores on Chartres Street and Tilly lived in comfortably renovated third-floor quarters that had once housed servants.

Tilly was not a servant. She was Amelia’s companion, Jack’s household consultant.

The banging of pots resumed and Jack went down the stairs that led to the door from the street. An outside lamp glowed through the fanlight. Adhering to a rule he’d imposed on himself because of Amelia, he used the peephole before shooting back the old but effective bolt.

“Well, well,” he murmured, and opened the door. “I hope you’re going to tell me your bodyguard’s somewhere around,” he said to Celina Payne.

She frowned at him and glanced over her shoulder at the stream of people that trolled back and forth on the sidewalk, and spilled into the street. “You’ve got to be joking,” she told him. “I know what I’m doing. I’m not a tourist.”

“Does that mean you’re immortal?”

Even in the gloom he saw her pale, and felt a morsel of guilt—a very small morsel. “What do you need?” Now he sounded rude—great.

“Please may I talk to you?”

“I didn’t think you just wanted to look at my pretty face.” She ducked her head, but not before he saw a faint smile. “Did I say something funny?”

“Not especially. You’re so prickly. Looking at you is dangerous to the eyeballs.”

He leaned on the doorjamb. “Okay. You do want to look at my pretty face.”

Celina Payne gave him a cocky grin and said, “I don’t want to prick my eyeballs.” Their lunch together hadn’t been exactly cozy, but it had broken a little ice. Tonight he saw a strong spark of the aplomb that had helped make her Miss Louisiana. She added, “But you do have a pretty face, Jack Charbonnet. Too bad you’re such a nasty man.”

Maybe more than a little ice. It was impossible not to smile back at her. “What d’you need, Celina?”

“Could I come in, please? I can’t talk about this out here.”

Jack had never brought a woman to Chartres Street. Not to his home. This was Amelia’s territory, the territory she shared with Jack and Tilly—and Frog Prince—and where she didn’t expect intruders. “Couldn’t it wait until tomorrow? This has been a long day.”

“Not for Errol,” she said, all hint of humor gone. “It was really short for him.”

“Grief counseling isn’t my forte.”
Sounding mean again.
He guessed it was just his nature.

“Errol was pretty good at it. Did you ever see him with the parents of a dying child? He was wonderful. Now he’s the one who needs something. He needs champions who won’t give up until whatever happened to him—and why—is brought into the open.”

No wonder she was so good at her job. She knew how to drive the knife to the heart if that’s what it took to get what she wanted. Convincing people to make fabulous donations to Dreams must be child’s play to Celina Payne. “Come in,” he said, hoping Tilly—who frequently reminded him that Amelia needed a mother—would buy it that this was business and leave it at that.

He ushered Celina up the stairs in front of him and guided her to his study. When Celina entered the room, his daughter was seated in his leather chair with her arms crossed and her feet straight out in front of her.

“Would you run and tell Tilly a business associate has dropped by, Amelia? We have some things to discuss and we don’t want to be interrupted. Then go to bed. Sorry about the story. If you’re still awake when Miss Payne leaves, I’ll tell you some when 1 tuck you in. Okay?”

“I’m Amelia Charbonnet and this is Frog Prince, F.P. for short,” Amelia said to Celina. “Sometimes Daddy forgets his manners.”

With a completely straight face, Celina said, “I’m Celina Payne. I’m pleased to meet you and F.P.”

With evident reluctance his daughter climbed from the chair and went slowly from the room, not taking her eyes off Celina until she had to.

“I didn’t know you had a child,” Celina said. “Errol never mentioned her. Neither did you.”

“You and I have hardly been in a situation where we swapped personal information. Errol knows—knew I prefer to keep my private life private.”

“Is that because of what happened to your parents?”

She stopped him for an instant. He didn’t answer her question. “As Amelia says, my manners are a little rusty. I don’t suppose you want a drink, though.”

“Charming offer,” she said. “Thank you. I’ll have a gin and tonic. Make it very light. Oh, actually just tonic.”

“I don’t have any tonic. Or gin.”

She looked at him and said, “Oh.”

“I’ve got some wine. At least, I think I do. A merlot.”

“That would be nice.”

He left the room and went deeper into the apartment, to the kitchen—and jumped at the sight of Tilly standing in the shadows with her arms crossed. This was where Amelia got many of her mannerisms. “Everything’s under control,” he told Tilly. “Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” That was very true.

“Who’s the woman?”

He was accustomed to Tilly’s blunt manner. “Celina Payne. She worked for Errol.”

Tilly shook her head, an exercise that didn’t move her tightly permed gray hair. “Mr. Petrie. What’s this world coming to? A nicer man never walked the face of the earth. Picked off in the prime of his life. Plucked from the garden when his scent was still full. They say the Lord takes only the best blooms. It’s hard, though. We need those blooms down here among the sinners.”

“We do indeed,” Jack said. “I need that bottle of merlot I got as a gift.”

A pinched expression pulled Tilly’s thin features together. “She’s a drinking woman?”

At first Jack blanked, then he shook his head no. “Just being polite,” he said. “Miss Payne was there this morning when we—when I found Errol. She suffered a terrible shock, just as I did. I’m concerned for her. She looks very pale.”

Tilly didn’t move, except to cross her arms even tighter. “You care about this Miss Payne? Are you planning something with her?”

“I’m planning to have a short business discussion with her.”

“So why do you need to ply her with alcohol?”

Ply her with alcohol?
“Where’s the wine, please?”

Small and wiry, Tilly had large feet and wore “sensible” lace-up shoes with leather soles that slapped the floors. They slapped the floors now when Tilly marched to pull out a step stool, and climb up to remove the lone bottle of merlot from a cupboard above the refrigerator.

“Thank you,” Jack said, searching for and finding a corkscrew, then taking down two wineglasses and dusting them.

“Looks like you’re planning a seduction to me,” Tilly said. “Don’t forget there’s an impressionable five-year-old child in this household.”

“I won’t,” Jack said.

“Maybe I should take Amelia up with me. I could play music to drown out any sounds of passion from down here.”

“We’re going to talk,” Jack said, dangling the glasses upside down between his fingers and picking up the bottle. “Amelia will be perfectly fine in her own room. It’s time we worked on makin’ sure she stays there when she’s put to bed. The
first
time. 1 think we’re spoiling her.”

“I knew it. A woman comes into the picture and you lose your focus on what’s important. Your first responsibility is to that motherless child.”

“I thought you believed I should be looking for a new mother for Amelia.” The devil made him say it, Jack thought, and grimaced. “Not that Miss Payne is in that sort of category. But how would I go about findin’ someone if you don’t even want another woman in the house.”

“You’re changing the subject. Certainly on a first visit it isn’t suitable to be drinking and shutting yourselves away. You’ll give everyone the wrong idea.”

` `Everyone?”

“You know what I mean.” She pulled out a chair, produced a sewing basket, and sat down at the kitchen table. “I’ll just stay here in case Amelia needs anything.”

Jack rolled his eyes and left the room. When he returned to his study he found Celina exactly where he’d left her, standing in the middle of the carpet with the strap of her brown leather purse still over her shoulder. There were dark, purplish marks under her eyes, but that didn’t stop them from being bright and beautiful—and very troubled.

He put the glasses down on his desk to one side of windows that opened onto the gallery, and poured wine into each. He gave one to Celina. “Sit there,” he told her, pointing to his own chair, the only comfortable one in the room. “Put your feet up. You look as if you need some TLC.”

Her raised eyebrows suggested that an offer of TLC from Jack Charbonnet had been the last thing she’d expected, but she said, “Thanks,” and did as he suggested. “Errol trusted you, Jack. He used to relax when he heard your voice on the phone. I watched it happen time after time.”

Jack swallowed hard. He’d never be able to forget Errol, but he wished he didn’t have to think about the way he’d found him that morning.

“You were kind to me today. Thank you for that.”

“I got you out of the Royal Street house, that’s all,” he told her. “Anyone would have done the same thing.”

“Not if they hated my guts, and you do.”

She silenced him with that.

“I appreciated the lunch and a chance to get myself together. I apologize for my mother. She didn’t mean anything by what she said at the house. She’s led a pretty sheltered life, and she doesn’t think sometimes.”

“I don’t hate you, Celina.” He wanted to let her down lightly where her mother was concerned, but the sight of a chink in his own armor scared him. “But you do have a way of believin’ what you want to believe, don’t you? Your mother is sheltered? It’s too bad she didn’t shelter you rather than push you through all those kiddie beauty pageants.”

Celina looked away. “You know about that?”

“Everyone does. How could they not? You were Miss Louisiana and there was talk about how your mother pushed you from when you were a kid. They showed a lot of cute footage. As a parent, it scares the shit out of me to think that stuff still goes on.”

“She did that for me.”

“Bunk.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“I said
bunk.
Your mama had one chick and decided to live through that chick.”

“My mother could have gone places herself. She chose to dedicate herself to me instead. I’ve got to respect her for that.”

Maybe this was a nice woman after all. She had to know she was spouting what her ambitious mama would love to hear, which was absolute garbage. Jack detested people who didn’t protect their children from the world as much as they could without stunting them and making them unable to cope. And the word he’d use for a parent who exploited a child was “criminal,” and that would be on a day when he was feeling generous.

He sat in a straight-backed cane chair some distance from her and sipped his own wine.

“This is a nice room,” she said.

“Thanks.”

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for a reading man.”

“I’ve got a lot of books. That doesn’t make me a reading man.”

She looked sideways at him. “Aren’t you?”