He wasn’t ready to share every facet of his life’s history with her. “It’s nothing that need concern you. Just some philosophical differences of opinion.” Like whether a man was or was not responsible for his gambling debts, and whether that man should be extended special privileges because he regarded himself as a public figure rather than an overambitious lawyer.
After slightly too long a pause, Celina said, “Okay. I don’t think it’s a great idea for me to come to your place right now, Jack.”
He gauged how best to handle her without coming on too strong. “I’m not comfortable leaving you here alone.”
“Cyrus will be back.”
“Either you come with me or I stay until he does come back.”
“That’s ridiculous. Nothing’s going to happen to me. And I’ve got to see if I can find out why Antoine didn’t show up for work today. He tried to talk to me. It was when those awful Reeds came. Earlier. But he left without saying anything, and I haven’t seen him since.”
“Damn,” Jack said. “Damn, damn, damn. I’ve been so preoccupied. Dwayne told me Antoine went to him in disguise and—”
“Antoine in disguise? What are you talking about? And he wouldn’t go to Les Chats.”
‘‘His disguise consisted of a Stetson pulled over his eyes. And he did go to Les Chats. Dwayne said the same thing as you, that Antoine’s the kind of man who thinks his soul’s in jeopardy if he goes near what he regards as sin, but he did go there.”
“Why? What did he say?”
The hair on the back of Jack’s neck prickled. “I shouldn’t have set this aside. Antoine told Dwayne he saw something early in the morning after Errol was killed. I don’t know what because Antoine got spooked and left.”
“He went to Dwayne.” Celina was speaking to herself. “He likes Dwayne. He seems comfortable with him. He’s nervous about places like Les Chats, but that goes for a lot of people, and it wouldn’t necessarily stop him from going to ask Dwayne’s advice about something, I guess.”
“You’re right. It didn’t. Not until he behaved like he thought someone was watchin’ him and scooted outta there.”
“Βut what could he have seen here?” If he saw something, he’d have told the police, wouldn’t he?”
Jack shrugged. “I have no way of knowin’, Celina. But he surely has taken off. Can we contact his home?”
“They don’t have a telephone.”
“Go there, then?”
“I’ d have to find an address. Errol always dealt with Antoine. He paid him and told him what his duties were. Everything like that was between the two of them. I think Antoine had been with him a long time.”
“Well, we can’t just pretend he was never here—or wait and hope he shows up someday.”
The bell outside the door from the courtyard rang. A heavy, green-coated brass piece you rang with a chain, its clanger bonged inside an elongated casing.
“I’ll go,” Jack said when Celina started for the hallway. “Please see if you can find Antoine’s records among Errol’s files.”
He hurried to open the door at the top of the courtyard steps. A tall woman stood there. Tall, with a strongly boned face and large eyes that were so dark as to seem black, and with no pupils. Her hair was a tightly curly black cap and her skin was the color of chocolate without milk. Perhaps forty, her inexpensive blue floral dress, although shapeless, didn’t hide a voluptuously statuesque body that she carried with grace. She held a large brown purse.
“Good afternoon,” Jack said, although evening was almost upon them. “How can I help you?”
“Good afternoon.” Her voice was a surprise. Light, and Jack thought he heard something of New York. “I’m Antoine’s wife. I’ve come to see Celina Payne. Is she in, please?” The woman was also agitated but trying not to let it show.
Jack smiled at her and put out a hand. “Jack Charbonnet. I like your husband a great deal, Mrs.—”
“Thank you.” She made no attempt to fill in the name Jack now realized he’d never known. “I’m Rose.” She glanced around, and Jack knew without her saying another word that she wanted to get inside where she couldn’t be seen by anyone who came into the courtyard.
He obliged, ushering her into the hallway and waving her ahead of him. “Celina’s in. We were just tryin’ to figure out how to contact Antoine. Apparently you don’t have a phone.”
“No phone,” she said. “Why’d you want to contact him?”
They went into the study where Celina was going through a file cabinet. She turned and smiled, and Jack said, “This is Rose, Antoine’s wife.”
“Oh,” Celina said. “Coincidence. I was looking for his records. Is he okay, Rose? He wanted to talk to me the other day and I had visitors so I wanted him to wait until we could speak alone. Then he must have had to leave, and I haven’t seen him since.”
The woman fidgeted with her purse. She stood very straight and was almost as tall as Jack.
“Is Antoine sick, Rose?”
“I come to talk with you, Miss Payne. Antoine says you’re okay.”
“Thank you.” Celina glanced to Jack and back at Rose. “Please sit down.”
“I like standing.”
Celina closed the file drawer. “You aren’t from Louisiana?”
“New York. Brooklyn.”
An awkward pause settled in.
“You didn’t say if Antoine’s sick,” Jack said.
“I come to speak with Miss Payne.” There was more anxiety than stubbornness in Rose’s attitude. “Alone.”
Rose—who said she preferred to be called just that—didn’t relax when she was left alone with Celina. Rather she became more tense, looking over her shoulder frequently, her eyes sliding away and narrowing as she obviously listened for something.
“We’re alone, Rose,” Celina said, feeling edgy herself. “Jack has gone to his apartment. He won’t be back for an hour or so.” The thought of her being alone here didn’t have any more appeal to Celina than it had evidently had to Jack.
Rose put herself where she could see both Celina and the door. “You got to say you don’t tell nobody about me talkin’ to you. Nobody. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“That man. That Jack. Who is he? Antoine don’t talk about him.”
“Jack Charbonnet was a friend of Errol Petrie’s for many years.” She considered for a moment before saying, “Jack is a good man,” and feeling strange afterward. Only weeks ago she would not have imagined paying Jack’s character a compliment.
“No one but you. That’s the way it’s got to be,” Rose said. When she closed her mouth, she pressed her lips tightly together, but not before they trembled.
Celina felt an increasing premonition that bad times were going to get worse and that Rose was the herald of very bad times.
“You got to tell me you won’t tell that man what I come to say.” Still alternating her attention between the door and Celina, Rose fiddled with a button at the neck of her dress. Her hands were long-fingered, the knuckles large. A worker’s hands.
“Won’t you sit down, Rose?” Celina asked. “Let me get you some iced tea?”
“I need to get home. Tell me you won’t tell no one what 1 come to say?”
“What is it?” The premonition began to point toward danger. “Just talk to me, Rose. Antoine sent you, didn’t he? I wish I’d stopped everything and talked to him when he wanted me to. What’s wrong?”
“You got to tell me you don’t say nothing to anyone. Not to anyone.”
“Jack is my friend. He’s my boss now, and Antoine’s boss. Surely—”
“No! Not him. Not anyone. Otherwise…You tell me you don’t say nothin’ to him. Please?”
What could it hurt? And it meant so much to this woman. “I will, as long as you tell me why it’s so important.”
Rose held the purse higher and went to the window. She peered down into the street. “I was told only you. He said if I couldn’t get you to understand, it
wouldn’t matter anymore.” To Celina’s horror, Rose began to shake steadily. “You understand? You don’t give me your word, they punish us.”
“Rose, it’ll be all right.” The other woman’s reserve was something Celina felt. Touching her, even in an attempt to comfort, was out of the question. “I promise I won’t mention a word of what you say to anyone. Tell him he’s got my word.” If it was this important to Antoine for her to keep his confidence, she’d do it.
“Thank you.” Rose extended an arm and hitched up a short sleeve. “They bad people who got him. The man who come to me did this. Just so I remember he’s not making fun, that’s what he said.”
High on the inside of Rose’s arm two circular red wounds sent a shudder racing up Celina’s spine. “What man? I thought— A burn? This man burned you with a cigarette?”
Rose nodded. “He said next time he do other stuff. He said next time maybe he decide he rather have some fun with our boys.” She swallowed loudly. “He ain’t no good, that man. He’s a sick man, a bully. But I tell you, I’m scared. Antoine always told me he liked you and he trusted you. 1 got no other person to trust.”
“It’s goin’ to be all right, Rose. Trust me, please. First we need to put something on your arm.”
Pulling down the sleeve, Rose shook her head. “I can tend myself. If you be a friend to Antoine and me, that’s all I ask. Silence. That’s what the man said you gotta give. A promise you don’t never say nothing.”
Celina said, “I promise I won’t,” but felt confused. “Someone’s got Antoine? They’re keeping him?”
“They doing that.”
“What am I supposed to keep secret, Rose?”
“Whatever Antoine told you.”
With an even stronger sensation of unreality, Celina said, “Antoine didn’t tell me anything. He didn’t have time.” She remembered what Jack had said. “And he didn’t tell Dwayne either. He went to Dwayne to talk about seeing someone here the morning after Errol died, but he didn’t finish. So he didn’t tell anyone.”
Rose opened her mouth and pressed her flattened fingers over it. A strangled sound came in bursts. “They think he could have though,” she said indistinctly. “And they want to be sure no one tells no one else. I got to be able to say you won’t.”
“I won’t. But we need to go to the police and—”
“No!” Rose fell to her knees and bent over, her back heaving. “No. Please, Miss Payne, don’t you go doing that, or Antoine won’t ever come home to me.”
Celina’s heart beat so hard she backed to sit with a thud on the nearest chair. “I can’t believe any of this. You’re sure someone has Antoine?”
Rose rolled her head from side to side. “He gone. Since he left for work yesterday, I don’t see him. Then this man come and push into the place. Praise be he come when the boys at school, but I’m so scared.”
“The police—”
“You tell the police, Antoine dies. Maybe our boys be molested. And me.” Rose extended a hand, pleading. “Please, please, believe me. He said all I gotta do is make sure you understand that if they hear anyone’s comin’ their way, they’ll make sure there’s no one left who can point the finger at them.”
“I don’t even know who they are.”
“But Antoine do,” Rose moaned. “And they don’t believe he ain’t told no one.”
“It’s okay.” It wasn’t and probably never would be again. “I won’t say anything. Tell them you got my word and you believe me.”
“Thank you.”
“He’s coming back, this man?” A fresh wave of horror engulfed Celina. “He said he was coming back anyway?”
“He’s coming.”
“But— You’ve seen him. Rose, think about it. You’ve seen this man, so he must be watching and waiting right this very minute. He isn’t going to let you go to the authorities to report what happened and give a description of him, and he can’t be sure you won’t.”
“He got a thing over his head, a stocking. He inside my place, waiting for me to come home. He don’t look like nothin’ human. I been looking for Antoine.” Hopelessness drew its lines on Rose’s face. “I walk everywhere. Looking. I stood outside this place this mornin’, waiting. For hours. I don’t see him. Then I go home and when I shut the door, the man’s there with a stocking over his face, and a hat on. I don’t mind telling you, I screamed and screamed. He hit me, and I stopped. Then he tell me what I got to do. Make sure you understand you ain’t to say nothing. He burned me so I show you. He say if he gotta do other stuff to me and my boys, he might have to do stuff to you, too.”
Desperation all but overwhelmed Celina. How could she help Rose if she couldn’t tell anyone what was going on? “So you’re going home to wait for this sadistic pervert to come and do other stuff to you and your boys if he feels like it? And you absolutely believe that if you can tell him I’ve given my word not to mention Antoine to anyone, he won’t hurt you? How can you believe that?”
“It’s all I got,” Rose said, her voice falling low. “He say I gotta tell you if you don’t do like he says, he can get to you, just like he got to Antoine.”
Celina wanted Jack. And she didn’t care if it was bizarre to want him so desperately when she’d thought of him as the enemy such a short time ago.
The light was waning outside. She wanted to close the drapes but dreaded going near the windows. At that thought she almost smiled. Already she was catching Jack’s hang-ups.
“I’m sorry, Miss Payne,” Rose said. She climbed laboriously to her feet, a strikingly handsome woman with the most tired face Celina recalled seeing—ever. “I don’t want to bring no trouble on you. I say to the man that I gotta have proof or I ain’t coming to you. So he give me proof.”
Rose fumbled to open her shabby bag.
“I don’t need any proof,” Celina said. “I believe you. We’ve got to have some sort of plan. We’ve got to get Antoine back.”
“The man said Antoine will come home when they decide the time’s right. If I make sure no one says nothing they don’t want them to say. Oh, Miss Payne, if I lose my Antoine, I’m not sure I can live no more.”
“Don’t talk like that. You aren’t going to lose him.”
Rose took out a crumpled brown sack and dropped her bag on the door. She opened the sack and pulled out a wad of cloth that had once been white but was now filthy and bloodstained.
Celina couldn’t stop herself from exclaiming and drawing back.
While she straightened the ruined fabric, Rose cried openly. What emerged was a ruined T-shirt, mostly soaked in blood, but with the words THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE still visible on the front.
“Antoine’s,” Celina whispered. “He was wearing it the last time I saw him.”
Rose hiccupped and nodded her head. “Me, too. That man give me this, too, just in case I don’t believe him.” She unwound a scrap of tissue and held it toward Celina.
Resting there was part of a front tooth with a gold rim.
Nineteen
Ben had moved into a room next to the one Sally shared with Wilson. It made her nervous, his proximity. His arrogant treatment of her only grew more overt. He behaved as if she were absolutely no threat to him. He ought to be cautious around her and the fact that he wasn’t had to mean there was something she didn’t know.
Tonight Sally intended to find out exactly what she didn’t know about Ben.
Every morning he came strolling into Sally and Wilson’s bedroom and Wilson actually asked her to go into the bathroom and “start makin’ herself pretty” while he talked to his new bodyguard about the plans for the day. And Ben never as much as looked in her direction, even when she climbed half-naked from the bed.
She would find out what that was all about too. So much for the wonderful surprises he’d promised her back on that first delicious morning when all he’d been angling for was a permanent job on the household staff. He hadn’t touched her since.
On the night of that same day,
at the last fund-raiser, Wilson had singled Ben out and appointed him his almost constant sidekick. Sally had begun to wonder if Wilson’s tastes ran in
directions she’d never guessed at. There was no doubt that Ben had a cute ass.
Sally was looking at that ass now. Once more the house was filled with Wilson’s adoring followers, including Neville Payne, who had surprised them by arriving without Bitsy and with some excuse that she wasn’t feeling well. Wilson had barely hidden his anger when Neville told him that Celina would not be coming. Cyrus has been invited too but hadn’t arrived. So far this evening wasn’t going at all as Sally had planned.
But it was time to do something about Ben.
She waited until Wilson was deep in conversation with the president of one of the most prestigious banks in the South, then walked nonchalantly close to Ben, who looked so irresistible in evening dress.
She put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Evenin’, sugar,” in a voice meant only for him. “I’m really wounded that you haven’t found the time to thank me for your wonderful new job yet.”
He glanced sideways at her with those marvelous smoldering eyes of his and said, “Thank you for helping me be in the right place at the right time.”
“Think nothing of it, lover. Don’t I remember you talkin’ about some surprises you had in mind for me. Didn’t you tell me I was goin’ to have to be on my toes because I was never goin’ to know when you’d decide to give me one of those surprises?”
His blank stare angered her.
“Well, Ben, you may think you don’t need me anymore, but you’re wrong. I’m goin’ for a walk in the gardens. I anticipate bein’ in the old pergola in about five minutes. In case you don’t know where that is—it’s out back of the house. On the other side of the greenhouses. No one goes there anymore. If you want to keep your wonderful new job, you’ll meet me there.”
Sally walked quickly away, smiling and nodding to the guests she passed. Holding her head high and swinging her hips in the short, stretchy, black-sequin-covered halter dress she wore, she left the house by an open door at the end of the passageway that bordered the kitchens.
Excitement mounted with every step, and confidence. She would teach him to respect her. Her backless high-heeled sandals slowed her down, so she took them off and carried them in one hand. And she hurried, because she wanted to have time to collect herself before Ben got to the pergola.
French Quarter Page 22
