Dead End (13 page)

He was just warming to his topic when Reb had to say, “I want to talk to you about this, I really do, but I’m eating dinner with a friend.” She drummed her fingers on the table. “Just a friend. Bye.”

“You must give your cell number to anyone who asks for it,” Marc said. He set his teeth.

“They need to be able to reach me.”

“For medical reasons maybe—but only maybe. To chat and ask you personal questions? I don’t think so.”

Reb deliberately looked away, first at dancers on the floor, then toward the bar. “I’ve never seen Cyrus here…Oribel must have told him we were coming.” Why would she ever think the woman might not carry out her threats? “She said she was going to.”

“Does it make any difference if he’s here?”

Reb drank some of her water. “It does to me.”

Marc fixed his attention on her face. “Why?”

“We’re friends.” Not that it was any business of Marc’s. “We have been since Cyrus came here. He’s interesting, and good company.”

“Why would Oribel think she had to share your business with the priest? For that matter, why did you tell her?”

“Are you practicin’ to be some woman’s overbearin’ husband—” Reb poked a forefinger into a paper placemat where a map of the area suggested that Pappy’s Dancehall covered more geography than Lafayette. “That wasn’t a smart thing to say,” she said.

“Could have been. I could be plannin’ on being overbearing.”
Just not a husband.
Marc Girard wasn’t husband material any more than she was wife material. “I didn’t share any information. You did. She was visitin’ me and saw your note on the flowers.”

“Read my note, you mean? Wasn’t it in an envelope?”

Reb glanced at Cyrus and wondered if he was ever aware of how he caught the attention of every woman who saw him. Female faces turned toward him. Those that weren’t trying not to stare too hard at Marc. The ladies at Pappy’s were getting a double treat this evening: Marc and Cyrus. And Spike Devol wasn’t hard on the eyes.

“Did Oribel take my note out—”

“Yes. This is a very small town, and sometimes people forget about little things like respecting privacy. I don’t think Oribel thinks you’re honorable.” She smiled at him. “Or maybe she thinks you’re not to be trusted with my honor.”

“And maybe she’s right.”

Reb looked at him sharply and actually caught something other than the expected teasing grin. Marc stared back at her, and he was very reflective—reflective enough to send the message that he could be interested in more than kissing her.

“Cyrus keeps looking at me,” she said, and swallowed. “The poor man takes his responsibilities very seriously.”

A waitress brought them two more glasses of house red wine—the only kind available at Pappy’s—and cleared the plates. Once she’d left Marc said, “Cyrus isn’t responsible for you, is he?” and Reb heard a little edge in his voice.

“Only as a priest and my friend,” she told him. “And I think he likes to watch out for me because I’m pretty much on my own. He’s like that.”

Marc picked up his wine and said, “Too bad he wasn’t available to look out for Amy.”

“Marc…I’m sorry. Sheesh, I’m really sorry. You’re here because you’re looking for your sister and I’m not being as tuned in as I should be.”

“You’ve got a lot going on yourself.”

“Not so much that I can be excused for being thoughtless. I’m not supposed to be that way at all.”

He sought and held her hand again. “We’ll get around to Amy.
I
’
ll
get to her. What you can do to help me, I know you will. But I’ll need to go elsewhere—and ask a lot of questions—to get what I want.”

“You’re wrong about it being Amy, not Bonnie, who fell down those stairs,” Reb said, and threaded her fingers between his. “If it
had
been Amy and she’d asked Cyrus for help, he’d have given it, though. He gave Bonnie help by letting her stay at his house rent-free.”

The neon-lighted jukebox burst forth, and Elvis filled in for the band with “Blue Suede Shoes.” Carmen, the bouncer at Pappy’s, kept the old machine chained to a section of concrete road divider he’d “borrowed”—on account of the jukebox being a valuable temptation.

“Why would Cyrus take in a stranger?”

Sometimes men could be so single-minded they became totally obtuse about everything else. “I think taking in strangers could go with the job, Marc.”

“He wasn’t here before Amy left.” He rubbed the tips of his fingers across the inside of her wrist. “He wouldn’t know her.”

“What do you really want to get out of what you’re doing?” she asked him. “Do you
want
Amy to be the one who died?”

She knew her mistake as soon as his hold on her hand became rigid.

“I’m sorry. Of course you don’t want it to have been Amy, but you really believe it was, and you aren’t going to be persuaded otherwise.”

“I’d love to be persuaded otherwise. But I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

Reb saw a group come into Pappy’s and relegated Cyrus and Spike to the back of her mind. She silently pressed fingers into Marc’s hand.

He swallowed the mouthful of wine he’d just taken. “What now?”

“Just tell me I can hope you won’t lose your temper with anyone this evening.”

He blinked and managed to make his eyes look innocent—and he pressed his right hand over his heart. “Moi? Why, I’m the most mild-mannered man you’ll ever meet.”

“Just promise.”

“I promise not to throw the first punch.”

“
Marc.
Trouble, or at least irritating people, are heading this way. You may not care about your reputation, but I care about mine. There won’t be any punches at all, no nastiness of any kind.”

“Who is it? Tell me, or I’ll have to turn around and look, and whoever it is will know you’re talking to me about them.”

“You have a really nasty streak. It’s Doll and Gator Hibbs and Jilly and Joe Gable. Jilly and Joe are wonderful, and I don’t know how they stand the Hibbses. Maybe the Gables are the only ones who see the good side of those two.”

Marc made motions with his head as if he were oiling the vertebrae in his neck. “I know what you’re trying to do,” Reb said.
“
Don
’
t
turn around, Marc. They’re still making their way over here. Slowly, because everyone in the place is as surprised to see them here as I am—and from the looks on people’s faces, they’re asking questions.”

Marc gave her hand a familiar squeeze and wiped all expression from his features. “You don’t have a thing to worry about with me, cher. Whatever you want from me, you get. As long as no one pushes me too far.”

The innocent expression cracked a little, and Reb couldn’t help smiling at him.

Doll Hibbs led the advance. Of medium height and build, she combed her fine brown hair back into a long, straight ponytail. Pale gray eyes, anxiously rounded, gave entirely the wrong impression of Ms. Hibbs. Reb was well-acquainted with the woman’s sharp tongue, persecution complex, and obsession with her own health.

Doll pretended not to see Reb and sat at the next table—which wasn’t the only vacant table at Pappy’s. Gator balanced his round rump on the chair beside her, pushed his Achafalaya Gold Casino baseball cap to the back of his bald head, and wiped his sweating face with a paper napkin from the table.

Marc cupped his jaw with one hand and rolled his eyes at Reb, but he didn’t look toward their newly arrived neighbors, so she decided to forgive him.

Not speaking to the Hibbses was ridiculous, but handsome, black-haired and blue-eyed Joe Gable and his half-sister Jilly reached the space between the two tables and immediately stopped to say hi.

“Well,” Jilly said, “If you aren’t a dark horse, Doctor Reb. How long you been hiding this tall, dark heartthrob?” Jilly’s mother, her father’s second wife, had been the child of a part black mother and a white father, and the result was Jilly’s marvelous honey-colored skin, her startling light hazel eyes, and long brown hair with natural blond highlights.

Joe stood at his half-sister’s shoulder and shook his head in the fondest way. “Hello, doc,” he said, but offered his hand to Marc. “Joe Gable, Marc. We were told you were in town. Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise.” Marc nodded at Joe. “I spoke to one of your staff this morning. Thanks for getting the pastries to Clouds End. They were great, right, Reb?”

Let the whole town know we were together there, why don
’
t you?
She raised her glass to the Gables and said, “The best.”

“He doesn’t get any credit,” Jilly said, elbowing her outrageously good-looking Cajun brother. “He does the books,
when he
’
s got time,
and criticizes. The rest of the time, he’s the lawyer. Is it true you two knew each other when you were kids?”

Reb almost groaned. “Our parents were friends.”

Joe winked at Marc and said, “Amazing what differences a few years can make to the kind of friendships we have, hm?”

“Amazing,” Marc agreed and flashed Joe a boy-to-boy grin that gave Reb an urge to stomp on his feet under the table.

“Well.” Joe was still smiling and now raised his fine black brows. He had the kind of thick, curling eyelashes a lot of women would kill for. “Our Reb isn’t the easygoing piece of custard pie she’d like you to think. Tamale pie would be closer, if you know what I mean.”

Speechless, Reb could only shake her head repeatedly.

“Jilly?” Doll Gater called from the next table, even though it was so close there was no need to shout. “We want to order.”

“Coming,” Jilly said, frowning at her visibly aggravated brother and pulling him toward the Hibbses. “Maybe we can visit some more later.”

Cyrus came their way carrying a glass. “What an interesting evening,” he said when he reached the table. “We seem to have half the population of Toussaint here, and I don’t think some of them ever came through the doors before.”

Reb held back from saying that Cyrus was hardly a regular.

“Sit down,” Reb said to him. “Unless you want me to leap up and ask you to dance.”

Cyrus sat beside Marc. “Is the doctor giving you a hard time, too, Marc?”

“We’re friends from way back,” Marc said.

“I gathered that.” Cyrus put his glass of beer on the table. “Good friends, I hope.” He smiled, but Reb could tell he wasn’t happy.

“Our fathers played chess together,” she said. Something wasn’t sitting right with Cyrus. He’d made fists on the table and his knuckles were white. He seemed…uncomfortable, as if he couldn’t decide how to behave.

“Reb was a little tyke when I first knew her,” Marc said. “Pushy already, though.”

“Then you knew each other at Tulane.”

“Uh uh,” Marc said, and his lips had thinned. “Only for a while. I was a senior when she arrived. It was good to have her there, though. She was always a good listener.”

Amazingly, Cyrus leaned in front of Marc so that Reb couldn’t see either man’s face. “So that’s the only reason you’re hanging around her—so that she’ll listen to you?”

Reb held her breath. That comment was as close to something unnecessarily confrontational as she’d heard from him. She was grateful Marc had taken his hand away from hers. She was also grateful when Cyrus turned toward her again.

“Now you mention it,” Marc said tightly, “Havin’ Reb care about what’s happenin’ to me does make me feel a whole lot better.”

Oh great, the local priest and a man
most of Toussaint thought was a plague, getting all riled up over the town
’
s lady doctor.
“I’m a lucky one,” Reb said. “I have wonderful friends. I’m grateful.”

Cyrus and Marc cast flat stares at one another. She wasn’t helping things around here.

“Well,” Doll Hibbs said loudly. “Whatever next? A man of God frequenting a place like this.”

Cyrus smiled benevolently at Doll, then at each person sitting at her table. “I’m changing my ways. What’s good enough for my flock is good enough for me. I can’t have all of you out here drinking and dancing and socializing and be too holy to join you, now can I?”

Marc’s cheeks were blown up with air. He craned his neck to look toward the windows. Heavy droplets of rain sparkled in the reflected lights from inside Pappy’s. Thunder rolled in the distance.

“What’re the rules on exhumation, Father?” Doll asked.

Reb felt as if water traveled beneath the skin on her legs. She dared not look at anyone.

“Why would you ask a thing like that?” Cyrus said.

“You can’t expect people not to overhear things when they’re said real loud in the parish house”—she angled her head toward Marc—“ by this one. We heard he wanted to take that poor thing, Bonnie Blue, out of her resting place. No matter. We know you won’t have nothing to do with that.”

“Hush,” Reb said, pulling her chair close to their table. “You know better than to start rumors on hearsay. “You’re going to upset people with talk like that.”

Doll looked around with relish. “If there’s something wrong going on in this town, the people have a right to know.” She leaned past Reb. “We know these two were at Tulane together, don’t we, Gator? Reckon there’s more to that than meets the eye. And there’s plenty of theories. Come back to make an honest woman of her, have you, Mr. Girard?”

This would be a perfect moment for the floor to open up and swallow her, Reb decided. She shunted her chair back to their own table.

The Doggies resumed their places, and dancers took to the floor once more, surefooted in the almost elegant patterns they’d been taught by parents and grandparents.

The atmosphere at the table was heavy. Spike Devol appeared, skirting the dance floor on his way toward them. He carried his Stetson. Blond, blue-eyed, his appealing face tanned and showing his mother’s Scandinavian roots, Spike advanced their way. His regulation shirt, with its precisely ironed-in creases, fitted broad shoulders, a good chest, and flat stomach like a coat of khaki paint. If his somber manner hadn’t made Reb uneasy, she might have come to like him a lot. Regardless, she was glad to smile at him now and wave him toward the seat beside her. Rather than smile back, he frowned. A girl popped from her seat near Pappy’s eighteen-foot-long stuffed and varnished alligator and stopped Spike. She stood on her toes to whisper in his ear—probably asking him to dance. Spike shook his head but did manage a smile this time.