On the Edge

  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 I 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. I 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.

  Chapter 19

  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.

  This wasn’t the first time Sally had received gentlemen callers in the pergola that dated back to her grandmother’s time. The thought made her smile and remember some pleasurable interludes.

  She arrived at the birdcage-shaped iron structure, opened the door that squealed on its ancient hinges, and went inside. Clematis vines completely covered the wrought iron bars that curved to a point overhead. A circular stone bench with a hole in the middle was the only inner adornment. Huge white blooms on the vines loaded the air with a heavy night fragrance.

  Sally went to the far side of the pergola. She put on her sandals again, faced the door, and reached to grip bars behind her head. Even from this distance she could hear the strains of the Dixieland band playing in the house, and she swayed from side to side with her eyes partly closed. Anticipation was half the fun, so they said. Well, she wouldn’t put it quite that high, but she did enjoy feeling her body get ready for a man.

  The door whined open.

  She leaned her head against the bars and watched Ben come in. In the almost complete darkness his eyes glittered, and his teeth shone very white. His high cheekbones gleamed paler than the rest of his face. He looked frightening. Almost satanic.

  Sally wriggled a little with delicious apprehension. “Hello, Ben.”

  “What is it?” he said. “What do you need to say that couldn’t be said in the house.”

  She was older, wiser, and a whole lot tougher than he was. “Sit down, Ben. We need to talk.”

  Rather than do as she told him, he pushed his hands in his pockets and sauntered around the pergola.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” she said. “You’re here because of me, because I showed an interest in you that first day. You think that gave you the upper hand. But all I have to do is talk to Wilson, and you’re out.”

  Ben picked a clematis blossom and held it to his nose.

  Sally’s skin prickled. He was too sure of himself. “What is it about you?” She was surprised she’d asked the question aloud.

  He crossed his arms
, held the flower against his mouth, and regarded her with inscrutable calm.

  “You arrogant little bastard,” she said through her teeth. “If you think you’re bulletproof, you are so wrong. My husband is a jealous man, Ben. What’s his is most definitely his. If I tell him you took advantage of me, you are in big trouble, honey.”

  The flower’s petals took a twirl on Ben’s chin.

  She gathered her composure and sauntered toward him, snapping her fingers as she went. “I’ve got it. You used me. Hah! Who would have thought it? You planned the whole thing. You intended to get close to me so you could figure out a way into a fat job with my husband. Oh, you couldn’t have expected that kid to try to rob us. That was an unexpected bonus. It speeded up the process. But that’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Is that all you wanted to tell me?” he asked when she paused to take a breath. “If it is, I’d better get back. Mr. Lamar might need me.”

  Tears of rage smarted in Sally’s eyes. Her jaw trembled with fury. “You have met your match, Angel. I see it all now. You’re afraid to touch me again because you don’t want to jeopardize your wonderful, cozy position with Wilson. Guess what, lover? You need to get a lot smarter before you try playing in the big leagues. If you don’t do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it, I’ll make sure you go back where you came from, and I don’t mean you’ll get the consolation prize. No one in this town would touch you once I finished with you—they wouldn’t touch you or your aquariums. I will destroy you—not that you’re anything but a pretty face and an efficient body anyway.”

  “Thank you for sharin’ that with me, Mrs. Lamar. Would you like me to escort you back to the house?”

  “I’d like to take you apart piece by piece. You want me. I can feel how much you want me. I can smell it. But you’re too scared to take me. You must have been terrified you wouldn’t pull it off that morning when I took you upstairs. But you held yourself together until you could do what you wanted to do and get out safely. You decided you’d try to frighten me, to make me think you could call the shots. And you wanted sex with me so you could have something on me, but you sure as hell didn’t want to get caught.”