On the Edge

  Jack gave Celina enough time to answer. When she didn’t, he said, “They were. They were friends. Α man and a woman can be friends, can’t they, Father?”

  Cyrus’s stare wasn’t as open as usual. “Just Cyrus, Jack. Ι believe some men and some women can be friends. Others can’t. Ι didn’t know Errol well.”

  “And since you’ve heard about the problems he used to have, you doubt he’d make a great platonic buddy?” He kept returning his attention to Celina. Even though more than an hour had passed since she made it, her announcement to her family—and to him—continued to amaze him. “Celina was goin’ to talk to you about what happened at St. Peter’s when we went to ask Garth Fletcher to endorse Errol. Ι might as well do the honors. He refused. Said people were already starting to wonder if their children had been molested by Errol.”

  “Sick.” Cyrus looked tired. In an open-necked white shirt and jeans, he also looked very unpriestlike. “It’s as if we’re suspended in the middle of something horrifying. Like bein’ in the eye of a storm. D’ you feel that?”

  “I do,” Celina said. In her scarlet suit she was an exotic creature on the yellow couch. “And nothing is real. Since the original pieces in the paper right after the murder, there’s been almost no mention, except for the horrible thing Charmain wrote. Ι don’t understand her. You’d think that in a city like this there would be enough stories to make her move on from this one by now.”

  One small woman—one small, pregnant woman—would change his life, Jack thought. Nothing would ever be the same, and that would primarily be because of Celina Payne.

  And the idea held some appeal.

  The idea held a lot of appeal.

  “I think that’s what I'm sensing,” Cyrus said. “It’s all unreal. Murder is unreal anyway, of course, but this happened—right here—and apart from a gossip columnist who seems interested in anything but who killed Errol, nothing’s being done about it. That’s surely the way it seems to me.”

  “And to me,” Jack said. “There’s plenty of talk. That was obvious when Celina and I spoke with Fletcher at the hospital. But officially? Nothing. I called O’Leary this morning. I call him every morning, and I drop by. He gives me the blank-wall treatment. They’re looking for leads and don’t have any. But Dwayne says he’d know if questions were being asked in the Quarter. He hasn’t heard a thing.”

  Celina had curled herself up at one end of the couch. With a burst of motion she swung her feet to the floor and stood up. “It’s all wrong and it’s all frightening,” she said. “The silence is as if there are people waiting everywhere. Watching us. But we can’t see them.” She looked at the windows and took a step backward. “Some of the time we’re even behaving as if nothing happened. It isn’t as if the motive could have been theft. Something really sick went on in this house.”

  “I’m sure the police are at work on the problem,” Cyrus said. “We have only the TV interpretation of the way they go about these things. They’ve got a lot of cases they’re working on at the same time.”

  “Errol was loved by so many people,” Celina told him. “Could someone with a lot of influence stop a real investigation?”

  Jack met her eyes and said, “They could.”

  The possibility had already occurred to her, but she’d tried not to believe it possible. “It’s all wrong that the city isn’t demanding more action.”

  “I know.” Cyrus appeared oblivious to the depth of his sister’s tension. “We’ll have to be patient though. Our parents aren’t going to make life any easier either. I think they truly expected us to jump instantly and do what the Lamars want. Not that I have any idea why those people are so anxious—well, I can see why Wilson would see you as an asset, Celina, but for Sally to decide I’m the only candidate to become her spiritual adviser doesn’t make sense.”

  Celina chafed her upper arms. “You were always an innocent,” she said. “Sally Lamar hasn’t stopped wanting you. End of story.”

  Cyrus appeared more amused than shocked. “She’s a married woman. I think you’re seeing plots everywhere. Why didn’t you tell me you were carryin’ Jack’s child?”

  The man might be naive about what would or would not stop a woman like Sally Lamar from going after a man she wanted, but he didn’t pull any punches. Jack studied Celina’s face, and she lowered her eyes.

  “And why hadn’t you told him about the baby by the time I got here?” Cyrus continued. “You were beside yourself when you called me. You said you were pregnant, and when I asked who the father was, you said you couldn’t tell me and the most important thing was that he never find out. What happened between then and now? What changed your mind?”

  What changed your mind, Celina? Jack knew he would give a great deal to know why she’d suddenly made her declaration. And he could hardly wait to hear what excuse she intended to give Cyrus.

  She had kicked off her shoes. Barefoot, she appeared even smaller, and if you knew what you were looking for, there was evidence that she was going to have a child. He swallowed. Even though he feared it, he wanted to know the truth about the father’s identity. He also wanted Celina. That probably made him a reckless fool, especially at a time when it was too late to step back from what he’d already set in motion elsewhere. Those responsible for his parents’ death were going to be punished. They were going to suffer almost as much as his innocent mother had. Would he step back from that now if he could? He didn’t think so.

  “If I’m causing you too much pain, say so,” Cyrus told his sister. “But it isn’t good to live with lies, and I think you are. Jack isn’t the baby’s father, is he?”

  Celina looked at Jack, question in her eyes.

  “This is your card to play,” he told her.

  “Okay. I didn’t say my baby was Jack’s. I said we were going to be married.”

  “To give the baby a father? If there’s no love between you, the child will suffer more than ever.”

  So said the priest. There were times when finesse was essential. “Celina and I are both real fond of children, Cyrus.”

  “Jack’s right,” Celina said. Her blue eyes were too bright, the patches of color in her cheeks too bright.

  “Oh, Celina,” Cyrus murmured. “You don’t have to tell me who really is the father, but I shall pray for all of you. And I’ll pray that whatever makes you want to deny your child’s real father will heal.”

  “It will never heal!”

  In the shocked stillness that followed, Jack dropped his hands to his sides and flexed his fingers. The desire to go to Celina and hold her was overwhelming, but she wouldn’t be grateful.

  “You’re angry,” Cyrus said gently. “Not the kind of anger that comes from sadness. I know that anger too well. Were you violated?”

  Jack stared at the other man.

  Cyrus pressed his palms together and tapped his fingertips against his mouth. He watched his sister with deeply troubled eyes.

  And Celina bowed her head. She didn’t speak, didn’t move, except to slowly bow her head.

  “I see.” Cyrus closed his eyes, and Jack saw his lips move as he appeared to pray silently.

  When Celina raised her face, tears glinted on her cheeks. She cried with wide-open eyes and without making a sound.

  And Jack felt yet again the urge to take another man—this one faceless—by the throat. His rage made its presence known too often, and could not be allowed to surface. Even if he choked on his fury, he must not show its depth. “Celina and her baby will be safe with me,” he said, hardly recognizing his own voice. “I know Ι don’t need to say it, but I have to. Please don’t disclose anything we’ve discussed among us.”

  “Νο,” Cyrus said simply. “Perhaps I should leave.”

  “You don’t mean leave New Orleans?” Something near panic surfaced in Celina’s expression. “I need you. We need you.’

  “To perform a marriage, if nothing else,” Jack said, trying to grasp for something light.

  “I didn??
?t mean I intend to leave New Orleans,” Cyrus said as if Jack hadn’t said anything. “I meant leave this house. Just to go and visit our parents. And to give the two of you a chance to talk through the decisions you’re making. I’ve never been a husband or a father—I never will be—but I’ve listened to so many who are and I’ve learned from them. That’s what I’m charged to do. To learn from those I am to counsel. Then we help each other. I hope that’s what happens. When you’re ready to talk to me about what you decide to do—if you decide—I’ll be there for you. I wouldn’t, of course, ask you to lie for me, but I’d prefer it if only the three of us knew that I have, in fact, already taken an indefinite leave of absence from my parish.”

  “Cyrus—”

  “Hush,” he told Celina. “You are my sister and you mean a very great deal to me.” He dropped a kiss on her brow, nodded at Jack, and walked out.

  Jack waited only long enough for the outer door to click before scrubbing his face and asking, “Who, Celina? Why didn’t you turn the bastard in?”

  She shook her head.

  A chill raised the hair at the back of his neck. “Not Errol?”

  “How could you say that? How could you?” She flew at him, stopping with her fists raised. She let them fall impotently against his chest. “You have defended him every bit as strongly as I have. Now you ask me if he raped me?”

  “You told me he was your baby’s father.”

  “Ι—” Narrowing her eyes, she gripped his forearms. “You and I are going to be locked together in whatever comes, Jack. And I’m not talking about marriage. You don’t have to marry me. I would never hold you to a thing like that, and I’m sorry I blurted it out in front of my parents, but I thought you were going to ask me again. Right then, while they were here.”

  “I was.”

  “Cyrus is very wise. Maybe we shouldn’t—”

  “Cyrus is a good man. He’s doing what he has to do—trying to make us change our minds if they can be changed. I’m not changing mine.”

  “Because my pregnancy shows? And you know the questions will begin soon, and even if I don’t say anything, there are those who will decide Errol and I were lovers?”

  “That used to be the reason.”

  Her gaze flickered away and back again. “Errol was gentle. You know that. He would never have forced himself on me.” She frowned. “Is that what you’re worrying about, that I’ll accuse Errol of rape?”

  “No. Even asking if he did it was reflex on my part. He never forced himself on women—he wouldn’t know how to be physically violent. There was never anything like that.”

  “I think he came close to rushing out and getting violent when I told him,” she said, sounding distracted. “He was so angry.”

  His mind grew still. “You told Errol who assaulted you?” Celina hesitated an instant too long before saying, “No. I only meant he was really angry.”

  Jack decided he wouldn’t delve any deeper now.

  “I don’t know if you understand this, but I have never felt more safe than I did with Errol,” Celina told him.

  She was right, he didn’t understand. “I’m glad. If you felt so safe, why did you refuse to marry him as soon as he asked you?”

  “I wasn’t—” She turned her back on him.

  Jack waited, then said, “You weren’t what?”

  “Errol was a father figure to me.”

  In other words…”Are you payin’ me a compliment, ma’am? Accidentally, of course?” He should know better than to press the issue of what she did or didn’t feel for him, especially now. “Forget I asked that. It isn’t important.”

  “It is. Very. But we’ve got too much to work our way through. Once Cyrus has spent some time with my parents, I’ll talk to him and decide how to deal with them.”

  “You’ll tell them you will have nothing to do with Wilson Lamar. Nothing.”

  The slow way she blinked suggested his comment surprised her.

  “I’d like to take you back to my place. We can be on our own there and no one will interrupt. I don’t want to wait, Celina. There’s no reason to wait. We can be married in a couple of days.”

  The slow blinking continued.

  “I didn’t put that well. We should make some plans and we don’t have a lot of time. The sooner we get the marriage out of the way, the better.”

  She smiled.

  “You know what I mean,” Jack told her. “We won’t pretend the baby was still a twinkle in your eye on our wedding day, but if we move quickly, some people will forget that it wasn’t.”

  “An old-fashioned man,” Celina said wryly. “I’m surprised, but I think I like it. Why so adamant about Wilson? I didn’t even realize you knew him.”

  He had to be careful. “I don’t know him well.”

  “But you were going to the fund-raiser. I’d forgotten that.”

  “I decided to go only because you’d told me you’d be there.” It was partly true. He had gone because of Celina, but he hadn’t been invited.

  “Should I take that as a compliment?”

  “It was a compliment. I don’t like it that Lamar thinks he can issue orders to you. I don’t like it, and I don’t understand it. But I don’t necessarily have to on either count. I’m going to make it impossible for him to ask anything of you without running head-on into me.”

  Celina regarded him speculatively. “You have some sort of history with Wilson, don’t you?”

  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?”