On the Edge

  “She came to beg me not to talk about anything Antoine might have told me regarding the hours around Errol’s death. I told her I didn’t know anything, and that Antoine hadn’t had a chance to tell me, although he’d tried to. She just kept telling me that I mustn’t say anything, because if I did, she and her boys would suffer. She already had cigarette burns.”

  “What?” Jack reached her side so quickly, she took a backward step. He took her by the shoulders and kept her walking until she was well sway from the windows. “What did you just say?”

  “Antoine’s wife came to me with cigarette burns on her arms. Α man had waited for her in their apartment. He had something over his head so she wouldn’t be able to identify him. And he threatened her. He told her to come and warn me to keep my mouth shut or he’d make sure I did.”

  “And you didn’t tell me? Even after you went through that nightmare yourself? You must have assumed the two events were connected. But even if you hadn’t, why didn’t you tell me?”

  She pushed him, but he didn’t release her.

  “Answer me, Celina.”

  “You’re angry with me. I knew you would be.”

  “You bet I am. What would possess you not to talk to me about a thing like this? Was I a fool to think we’d reached a place where we were being honest with each other?”

  Cyrus arrived beside Celina and put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay. We’re all stretched too far. Let’s try to keep calm.”

  “My God,” Jack said under his breath. “What is Antoine doing about all this?”

  “That’s it,” Celina told him, her voice rising. “That’s why I didn’t know what to do. They’ve got Antoine. Or they had him. Now I don’t know how to find Rose again. They took him and hurt him. They gave Rose evidence of it to show me. Rose brought his shirt here, his T-shirt, and it was covered with blood. And one of his teeth. They were a warning to prove what they’re capable of. Rose begged me not to tell anyone.”

  Jack’s face froze. All expression gradually slid away into blank confusion. Cyrus held her even tighter.

  “His tooth,” Jack finally said. “His wife brought you one of his teeth?”

  “Part of one. With gold on it. Oh...oh, I don’t know what to do about anything. I don’t want to be here anymore. I want—No, no, I am not going to fall apart. I refuse to let those people do that to me or to anyone I love.”

  “And you didn’t have anyone you dared to ask for help,” Jack said, his eyes on hers. His laugh was short and bitter. “I can’t blame you, I suppose. We’ve all been spinning out of control. But we’re going to have to take that control now. Apparently it won’t be easy, because it takes longer than we’ve had to learn to believe in someone else. Or it does for some of us.”

  No matter what she said, he wouldn’t understand how she’d gradually slipped further and further from being able to confide in him about Antoine. “I’m sorry” was the best she could do.

  “I don’t think that’s going to help Antoine much,” he told her. “By the time they had him, it was probably too late to help, but it might not have been. I want your agreement that you’re not going to hold anything back from me again.”

  Cyrus left Celina and gathered up the two used glasses.

  “Celina,” Jack prompted.

  She felt such a failure. “I’m sorry,” she repeated.

  “I should let you two talk alone.” Cyrus turned toward the door.

  “Please don’t go,” Jack said. “I can’t imagine a more awkward moment for this, but I’ve already waited too long. Can I say something I’ve wanted to say to you, Celina? Would you mind if I said something personal in front of Cyrus?”

  “I’ll go outside,” Cyrus said rapidly.

  “Please don’t go away,” Celina told him. To Jack, she said, “I don’t mind.”

  He ran a hand over her tousled curls, rested the backs of his fingers on her cheek, touched the tip of a forefinger to her mouth—put his other hand on her stomach. “You’ve cut the ground from beneath me tonight. I thought we’d come much further than we have. That scares me, but I love you. I hope you feel something similar for me. And I hope that with this marriage we aren’t getting into something we’ll both regret.” She looked back at him for as long as she could before she bowed her head to hide her tears.

  Jack rested both of his hands gently on her belly. “Any sane person would look at what’s happened to the two of us, and to the people around us, and say fate is really mad at us, but it would be a lie. If I could bring Errol back, I would. You know I would. But I can’t be sorry that you and I got together. And I’m not sorry about this baby. Now, let’s go home.”

  Chapter 36

  Jack heard gunshots before he saw the swirling lights of police vehicles. He swung Celina behind him, kept hold of one of her hands, and slid along the wall until he could peer around the corner into Chartres Street.

  Someone on a bullhorn yelled unintelligible orders toward the house opposite his own. Searchlights turned the facade of that building blinding white. A crowd, held back by barricades, had gathered at either side of the house.

  “Jack?”

  “Hold still,” he told Celina. “It’s not our place. Appears to be something in the old ladies’ house across the street.” The house Amelia had insisted was inhabited by ghosts and goblins.

  “Those were guns being fired.”

  “Just do as I ask, chère, and stay put. I need to listen.”

  Minutes passed. Jack was too far removed to see faces, but two men were brought from the building in handcuffs and shoved into a police wagon.

  Next to appear in the doorway was a frail-looking figure borne in the arms of a brawny police officer. Jack assumed this to be one of the old ladies. She was placed in a waiting aid car. Another woman, this one leaning on a stick but stomping along under her own steam and exuding ire even at a distance, followed her companion into the waiting vehicle, which promptly drove away. The wagon had already left.

  Instructions for the crowd to disperse came over the bullhorn.

  “Time to go home,” Jack muttered, and they walked against the reluctant tide of departing thrill-seekers until they got close enough to approach a cop.

  “Clear the area, please, sir,” the man said. Ridiculously young, his chest swelled with importance. “No more to see here tonight.”

  “We’re returning home,” Jack said, proud of his patience. “We live there.” He pointed toward windows where there were suspicious gaps between curtains. Two pale shapes behind the dark glass in Jack’s study needed no identification.

  “You go along home, then,” the police officer said. “Everything’s over now.”

  “What happened?” He could hope the cop was young and green enough to enjoy expounding.

  Taking off his cap and wiping a forearm across his brow, the boy—and he seemed little more than a boy—said, “Afraid I can’t say much, sir. Mob related evidently. They were using the house to observe someone they intended to take out.”

  Jack affected a suitably horrified expression and nodded.

  “Seems they tricked the two old ladies into letting one of them in to check out the gas or some such thing. Then they kept them prisoner in a back room for weeks. The one woman is a bit weak and wobbly, but the other’s more mad than anything, from what I hear. We’ve got the hoods though. Must be because of the Giavanelli thing. The whole family’s turned upside down, so they say. Those two got careless, and the feisty old lady took a cell phone from one of them and called us.”

  Jack wondered what the officer would reveal if he could say much.

  “Do you know who they were, er, staking out?” Celina said hesitantly.

  “Some dude by the name of Chardonnay. Never heard of him myself. Not that it matters now.”

  Jack decided he wasn’t offended. “Something happened with the Giavanellis, you said?” Keeping his tone impersonal wasn’t easy.

  “The man—Win Giavanelli—he got taken
out by his second in command. Then someone tried to take that guy out. Then, well, I guess there was quite a mess by the time they finished shootin’. It was in some restaurant called the Marina.”

  “Could that have been La Μurena?” Jack asked, although he was on automatic pilot now.

  “Yeah, yeah. Something to do with Italian fish, I know that.”

  “I think I’ve heard of it,” Jack said. “Did the other guy, the second in command—did he make it?”

  “The way I heard it, he’s in the hospital. In pretty bad shape.”

  But Win was dead. So why didn’t he feel elated? Jack wondered. Why did he feel flat and as if he’d just encountered the biggest anticlimax of his life? He looked at the woman beside him. She was real. She was important. And he hadn’t tried hard enough to let her know he’d come to think of her that way.

  The cop cleared his throat and put his cap on again. “Well, you go carefully now.”

  “Thanks, Officer,” Jack said. “You’re a credit to the force. I guess we’ll do as you suggest and go home.”

  With Celina’s hand tucked against his body, he made sure the young policeman didn’t see where they were going, and went to ring his doorbell. The door opened as if Tilly had been waiting on the other side. She stood back and tugged on Celina’s sleeve to hurry her inside, then urged Jack in and whipped the door shut again.

  “It’s over, Tilly,” he said. “Win Giavanelli’s dead.”

  He felt Celina’s stare, but accepted Tilly’s hug and let his own eyes close.

  “Now you can let it rest,” Tilly said. “Your poor mother’s been dead a long time. With that man gone, you can let her rest at last.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Thanks, Tilly. Somehow, now that it’s over, it doesn’t seem so important.”

  “That’s the way it is,” she told him, letting him go and stepping back, smoothing down her apron. “We make things important by building them up. Then, when they’re over, they don’t matter a hill of beans. We’ve had excitement around here tonight.”

  “We know. We just got the scoop outside.” He followed Celina and Tilly upstairs, filling Tilly in on the details from across the street as they went.

  “I told you I saw someone watching, Daddy.”

  He spun around to see Amelia and Frog Prince in the hall. Amelia, her feet bare as usual, wore her favorite pink checked nightie. “You’re supposed to be in bed asleep, young lady.”

  “With men firing guns, and all those lights?” she asked, all prim disbelief. “I told you I saw funny red lights over there, and someone watching out the window.”

  “You said you saw ghosts over there.”

  She turned up a small hand. “So I got it a bit wrong. They were just bad people who lock up old ladies and spy out of their front windows. They were spying on this house, weren’t they, Tilly?”

  “Yes,” Tilly said. “A police officer came and spoke to me, too.”

  “So you’ll listen to me next time, won’t you, Daddy?”

  He looked at his daughter, and the rush of love he felt for her rocked him. He swept her up and hugged her until she cried, “Ouch!” and he nuzzled his face into her shoulder before setting her down.

  “I’ll go to bed if you come and tuck me in and tell me some more about Phillymeana,” Amelia said.

  “Philomena.” It wasn’t all over, not everything, but at least he could hope his child and the woman who would be his wife would be safe.

  “If you want to, you can come too.” Her face very serious, Amelia spoke to Celina. “But you have to be quiet while Daddy tells me a story, or he stops right in the middle of everything.”

  “Ι’ll be quiet,” Celina said. She still looked shocked and withdrawn. And they still had to decide how to deal with what they knew about Antoine and finding him...dead or alive.

  “Okay, then.” Amelia gave Celina an appraising look. “I don’t think you’re very well yet, are you?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  “No. I don’t think so. You’re one of those brave people who doesn’t make fusses. Like me. When Daddy finishes telling my story, you’d better sleep in his room so he can make sure you’re all right.”

  In the darkness, with Celina breathing softly and evenly beside him, Jack lay awake, his thoughts turning over all that had happened, and all that might yet happen.

  Before they’d left Cyrus, he’d explained Sally Lamar’s desperate telling of her theories about her husband, and he’d explained what the woman wanted, and how she hoped to get it. Jack found it hard to find sympathy for Sally, but nevertheless he found her pathetic, a wounded creature who would probably never be healed.

  He was convinced that the failure to find out what Antoine had wanted to say had been the biggest mistake made. But it was too late for that now. Whoever had taken him had proven the depth of their depraved determination to preserve themselves. It had rocked his confidence badly to discover that Celina had kept what Rose said to herself, but, again, he had to try to understand her reticence.

  The phone by the bed rang.

  He snatched up the receiver, holding his breath while he hoped Celina wouldn’t awaken. She turned toward him and curled against his side. Jack smiled and murmured, “Yes,” into the phone.

  “Mr. Charbonnet?”

  He hesitated. The hoarse voice wasn’t one he recognized. “Who wants to know?”

  “Is that Mr. Charbonnet? I need to talk to him.”

  Jack frowned and held the phone closer. “This is Jack Charbonnet. Who wants him?”

  “I’m in a hospital, me. They no know who I am. Mr. Errol, he trust you. You always good to me, too.”

  It couldn’t be. He couldn’t get this lucky, not just when he didn’t know what to do next. “Antoine?”

  “I hear that name, me,” the man said. “I hit my head. They don’t know who I am. You understand? No one here know who I am. That mean no one who want me find me. That Antoine, him had lots of trouble. Him afraid for his people, his woman and boys. But he alive.”

  “The police—”

  The phone was hung up on the other end.

  “Merde,” Jack muttered. Slowly he put down his own receiver. The caller had been Antoine, who was obviously terrified and hiding out. Now all that could be hoped was that he’d call again. Next time, if there was a next time, Jack would examine every word before he spoke it.

  Antoine had to make contact again.

  The phone rang again. He switched on the light and was too tense to feel remorse at the sight of Celina opening sleepy eyes and blinking with confusion.

  He put a finger to his lips.

  She pulled herself to sit up and nodded, her face too pale, and her eyes too dark. His T-shirt—that fell off one slender shoulder—didn’t help the waiflike impression.

  The phone bell went off again, and he answered this time. “This is Jack Charbonnet.”

  “Is Celina Payne with you?”

  He gritted his teeth. Now was not the time to lose his temper. “If you want anything out of me, friend, you’ll identify yourself.”

  “I‘m calling on behalf of Mr. Wilson Lamar.”

  “I don’t care if you’re calling on behalf of the President. Who the...who are you?”

  “Who I am doesn’t matter. I’m Mr. Lamar’s employee. He’s too upset to make his own calls, but he thought he should try to get a message to Miss Payne. Since she and her family may be drawn into what’s going on.”

  “You could be talkin’ another language. I’ll give you one more chance. Keep it simple, sweetheart, or I’m hangin’ up and unplugging this phone.”

  “Because of something that happened last night, Miss Payne’s brother is bound to be taken in for questioning by the police. Her parents have already been contacted and they aren’t taking it well. Mr. Lamar asked me to let her know that. She isn’t at her Royal Street address, so I was instructed to see if you can get a message to her.”

  Celina bent forward. Her head rested on her kne
es. Jack stroked her back and rubbed her neck. “I can do that for you.”

  “Thanks. Mr. Lamar’s wife went to meet with Father Cyrus Payne this evening. Shortly afterward she was found stabbed to death beside her car.”

  Chapter 37

  How much had the bitch told Cyrus Payne? Wilson wasn’t a praying man, but he decided he’d pray now that Father Cyrus would feel he had to keep whatever Sally had said to himself.

  He’d unplugged the phone in his suite, but he could hear the intermittent drone of ringing elsewhere in the house. Wilson intended to use his “bereavement” to best advantage for as long as possible. After all, a man distraught over the violent killing of his wife couldn’t be expected to attend to business too soon after the event. And while he was in seclusion, he’d be thinking his way through the maze his life had become. Or he would when he was finally in seclusion.

  Charmain came out of the bathroom nude. He watched her with a mixture of irritation and arousal. They had been sleeping together for years, but this was the first time in this house. He’d never planned for them to do so, ever, but she’d arrived around midnight, minutes after the police had delivered their bombshell about Sally and then left. Charmain had intercepted police radio messages and was, as ever, ready to offer Wilson “comfort.”

  “I’d better blow,” she said, putting on her diamond watch before grinning at him. “Of course, there’s more than one way to blow, isn’t there, lover? I’m ready, willin’, and available. Might cheer you up.

  “Thank you,” he said tightly. “But I think you about wore us both out for now. You’d better go out down the back stairs.” A horrifying thought struck him. “Where did you leave your car?”

  She giggled and ran her hands through her short hair, still spiky and wet from the shower. “On a side street, silly. Would I park in the driveway at a time like this?”