Three

Miss Payne could move fast, he’d give her that. Jack had heard the approach of sirens, and now feet clattered on the stairs from the courtyard. Only minutes had passed, but Celina had already sped to her rooms and back, and managed to exchange her robe for a loose white linen dress. She was still frantically buckling flat brown sandals.

Jack heard Antoine say, “He this way. Lordy, I don’t know what the matter,” and shot a warning glance at Celina before going to fling the bedroom door open. He was confronted by medics. They passed Antoine in the hall and hurried through the bedroom to the bathroom, carrying steel cases of equipment and a portable gurney.

“Mr. Petrie?” Antoine said. “What the matter, him? He sick? Mr. Charbonnet? Miss Celina?”

Celina went to Antoine and threaded her hands around one of his massively muscular arms. “We need you,” she told him. “It’s bad, Antoine, very bad.”

“Lordy, lordy,” Antoine muttered, wiping his spare hand over his sweating face. A giant of a man, his tightly curled hair had turned gray, and each flash of very white, gold-edged teeth chopped his dark, finely featured face in two.

“Thank you for showing the medics up,” Jack told him, feeling the depth of the man’s distress.

Antoine said, “I gotta go to Mr. Petrie, me.”

“Not now,” Celina said. “We have to allow the medics to do their job.”

Jack studied her face. Either she was concerned for Antoine or the lady could act.

“Mr. Charbonnet,” the man said, “you tell me what happen?”

“You know Mr. Petrie didn’t have a good heart,” Jack said. Antoine waggled his head. “He dead. You sayin’ he dead, him.”

More sirens sounded, quickly growing closer. Jack met Celina’s very blue eyes again. He saw a question there and raised his brows. if they hoped to salvage as much as possible here. she had to keep her cool.

Two cops appeared behind Antoine. One said, “Excuse us, podner,” and they made their way into the bedroom. Jack glanced behind him at the activity inside the bathroom. The medics worked over Errol’s body. When he turned back, Jack saw that Antoine cried silently and made no attempt to hide the tears.

One of the policemen left the bathroom. “Might be better if you three gave me your names, then took a seat in another room,” he said, flipping to a clean page in his notebook. “We’ll start with you.” He pointed his pen at Antoine.

By the time each of them had complied, another siren sounded and rapidly zeroed in. It cut off outside the building.

Within moments, loud male tones rose above other, more quietly spoken men’s voices. “I am going up there. If you want to stop me, you’re going to have to shoot me in the back. Right there between my shoulder blades. Just make sure you give me a chance to take off my shirt first. It’s linen and cost a bomb, I can tell you.”

Jack felt an urge to laugh at what he recognized as Dwayne LeChat’s dramatic declaration.

Compact, with blond curls still wet from the shower, Dwayne wore denim shorts and a flowing white poet’s shirt. He tore into the bedroom a few steps ahead of two more members of the New Orleans Police Department. Beneath a perfect tan, his round face was almost as white as his shirt. He pushed Antoine aside and started for the group in the bathroom, but stopped. “I knew it,” he muttered. He glanced at Celina and said, “Is he dead?”

“We’re afraid he may be,” Jack said quickly. Celina’s eyes darted to his and away again. He’d have to keep on top of things or she’d give them away. “Why don’t you go into the parlor, Dwayne? Errol would want you here. He thought of you as family.”

Dwayne chewed the knuckles of his left hand. “You’re talking about him in the past tense already. You think he’s dead for sure. Oh, my God. How?” He turned to Celina. “How did it happen, darling? He’s—oh, I don’t care, I refuse to speak of Errol in past tense. He’s the gentlest of creatures. He abhors violence. No one would deliberately hurt him.”

Jack stared at Dwayne, then shook his head slightly when a policeman, his cap pushed back from his sweating brow, asked, “What makes you think Mr. Petrie was deliberately hurt, Dwayne?”

“He’s as fit as a fiddle, Mulligan,” Dwayne snapped, his intelligent brown eyes sharp. “You gentlemen of the law are a trifle too quick for your own good—unless some law-abiding citizen needs you to actually think about something. Then your tiny little minds crawl—in reverse. I want to see Errol.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea at the moment,” Officer Mulligan said.

Dwayne gave him a pitying look and went toward the bathroom anyway. As owner of a drag club on Bourbon, he was on at least a last-name basis with most city cops. No one knew if LeChat was really Dwayne’s last name. Jack liked the guy. He was rarely serious, but he was a man who made a faithful friend.

“1’ll go and wait in the parlor,” Celina said, holding his gaze. She seemed to want him to get the message that she was in control. “I’ll take Antoine with me.”

“I should wait outside,” Antoine said, his expression desolate.

“You’ll wait with me,” Celina said firmly. “I need you, and Mr. Petrie needs you to be here too.”

A sudden, uncontrolled burst of sobs froze them all. Jack turned around in time to see Dwayne stagger backward, his hands pressed to his stomach. Mulligan caught him by the arm and led him to the others, saying quite gently, “I think this is too much for you, Dwayne. Why not give yourself a break and go sit in the parlor? Have a drink.”

“My God!” Dwayne pulled away from the policeman as if he were afraid of being hurt. “He is dead. They’re going to take him away and cut him up. They’ll take his insides out and paw him and poke him and make their nasty, sterile little notes. And they won’t know anything about who he was. You can’t open a man’s body and find him inside. Errol Petrie isn’t in there anymore.”

Jack pinched the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t good at shows of emotion.

“Go sit down, Dwayne,” Mulligan repeated. “Maybe you could take him, sir,” he said to Jack.

With a nod, Jack took Dwayne firmly by the elbow and guided him from the bedroom and along the corridor to the parlor. Once inside, he steered the other man into a daffodil-yellow armchair and poured him a brandy.

Celina came to stand in the middle of the room. Antoine hovered awkwardly to one side. Both declined a drink with a shake of the head.

Jack heard more footsteps in the hallway but didn’t bother to find out who else was descending on this house of death.

Celina touched his sleeve hesitantly and immediately dropped her hand. He wanted to take that hand in both of his and press her palm to his cheek. He wished they were alone. He’d wished that on a number of previous occasions, but never as desperately as now. Wanting her was suicidal, and even allowing the thoughts he’d had about her to surface at a time like this was bizarre.

Without warning, Antoine bowed his head and wept. His body jerked with each racking sob, and Dwayne leaped up from the chair to mutter to himself and pace.

Agitated, Celina said, “Stop them, please,” and clapped her hands over her ears. “This is too much.”

He agreed, but couldn’t allow himself to give in to an urge to yell for calm. “You’ll be able to leave soon,” he told her, not at all convinced he was right. “The police will have some questions to ask, but then they won’t keep you.”

“I won’t be going anywhere.” She sat on the couch that matched the daffodil-yellow chair, crossed her legs, and twitched her skirts around her knees in an unconsciously provocative gesture.

Jack’s glance at her legs wasn’t so much unconscious as inevitable. They said her legs had bought her the Miss Louisiana title. Jack didn’t believe any woman got to be Miss anything that a lot of people coveted on the strength of their legs, or any other thing God had given them. Not a pair of long, long legs, or a pair of deceptively innocent navy-blue eyes—or a mouth many would consider too big.

Or did they?

Taken a piece at a time, Celina Payne might not be spectacular. Put all those pieces together and she was physically irresistible—except to Jack Charbonnet.

Antoine’s sobbing subsided and Dwayne threw himself back into the chair.

Jack cast about for something other than Celina to hold his attention. He ran his gaze up the high white walls to gold crown moldings, a still life in oils that hung over the fireplace, and vowed to improve his timing when it came to admiring the female of the species. Thanks to Celina’s redecorating talents, and Errol’s indulgence of her influence over him, the room was tastefully beautiful.

When she spoke again, he realized she’d expected him to respond to her last statement. “I take it you don’t have a problem with that, Jack,” she said. “I’ll be staying here for the present anyway. I’ll have a lot of work to do to keep things running.”

She’d have a lot of work to do? Jack studied her again and decided he might not enjoy some of the battles that lay ahead. On the other hand, they might not be all bad....

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” he told her, taking some pleasure in the surprise on her face. “Your help is going to be needed, I’m sure. Errol told me many times that you kept him on the straight and narrow around here.”

A rap sounded on the open door and a man with an official air but dressed in rumpled plainclothes stood there. “Detective O’Leary,” he said. “NOPD. I’m going to ask all of you to remain here, please. I’ll be asking each of you to speak with me alone. Nothing to worry about. Just formality at this point.”

Jack straightened up and pushed his hands into his pockets. “Sure. I’ll be glad to do anything I can, but couldn’t you let Miss Payne take a rest first? She’s had a terrible shock, Officer.”

“Detective,” O’Leary corrected. “And haven’t you had a shock too, sir? Under the circumstances, it might be as well if Miss Payne hung in here until we’ve spoken with her. Just procedure. I’m sure you all understand. Did you turn the victim over, Mr. Charbοnnet?”

“Over?”

“You didn’t?”

“Why would I?”

“No reason. I was just asking.”

Why didn’t the man come out with whatever he was almost saying? Jack walked to the door. “I’d be glad to be questioned first,” he said. “But how about you tell us all what’s on your mind?”

“Nothing definite to tell until the autopsy’s been performed.”

Antoine said, “Lordy, lordy,” and shook his head repeatedly.

Celina wrapped her arms tightly about her middle and blinked back tears.

“You’re not suggesting”—Dwayne rose from his chair—”that is, Errol had a heart attack, didn’t he?”

“He may have,” Detective O’Leary said. “The medical examiner will tell us if he did. And if he had one, the examiner will tell us when he had it—before or after.”

The detective enjoyed his little games. Jack didn’t. “I’ll bite,” he said. “Before or after what?”

“Before or after what probably killed him.”

His chin jutting, Dwayne walked toward the detective.

“What kind of a goddamn comment is that, O’Leary? You don’t have a heart attack after you’re dead, do you?”

O’Leary took out a smashed pack of cigarettes, lit up, and squinted from Dwayne to Jack to Celina and back to Jack. He exhaled slowly and said, “I guess Dwayne’s got a point there, huh?”