Dead End (14 page)

“Good evenin’,” he said to Reb, very formal. “I will sit, thank you.”

“Everything okay?” Cyrus asked him, and when Spike gave a slight nod and a confidential glance passed between them, Reb only just stopped herself from asking what was going on.

“Trouble?” Marc asked. He shook hands with Spike and said, “I’m Marc Girard. Clouds End belongs to my family. I’m staying out there while I get some business attended to in Toussaint. The house and grounds need a lot of work, too. Somethin’ goin’ on here tonight?”

“Spike Devol,” the deputy said. Spike had a reputation for being tough when he needed to be. “There’s nothing to be concerned about. I’m surprised to see you here, doctor.”

“Reb,” she told him, not for the first time. “Look around you. People bring their children here to eat and they all dance. There’s nothing wrong with Pappy’s.”

“There is when it gets later,” Spike said. “I avoid speaking about police business, but there are things going on down here that aren’t obvious. It would be better if you got along home before too long.”

Marc hooked both elbows over the back of his chair and tilted his head as if waiting for an explanation of Spike’s announcement.

“This is ridiculous,” Reb said and didn’t care if she did look and sound annoyed. “What do you and Cyrus think you’re doing? I’m not here on my own. You’re being insultin’. To me and to Marc.”

Color rose along Spike Devol’s cheekbones. He swiveled sideways in his chair and made as if to touch her arm, but his fingers remained suspended, inches from her skin. He cleared his throat. When he finally managed to meet her eyes, his absolute misery softened Reb. “Forget it,” she told him. “The man you were talking to at the bar—wearing a black suit—who is he?”

Spike looked toward the bar and so did Reb. The man had left.

Cyrus said, “Dante Cornelius. Visiting from New Orleans. Oribel told me he’s a friend of Chauncey’s.”

Gator Hibbs, sidling up beside Cyrus, doused any discussion. Gator settled his head to one side. He had no neck, and his jowl rested directly on his meaty collarbone. “The wife wants me to have a word with you,” he said, sniffing and hitching up his wide jeans. Almost free of lines, his smooth, ruddy face didn’t increase any impression of wisdom or wit. “Y’know how it is. These women worry. It’s about Wally. You’re letting him hang around too much.”

Cyrus thought for a long time. He bent his head forward, and the top of his black, thick curly hair glinted. Reb didn’t recall seeing him with a beard shadow before, but he had one now, and he looked tired—and maybe a little mad.

“See,” Gator said, “the boy stays away as long as he thinks we’re up. Then he sneaks in to sleep, and sneaks out again before we see him.

“If you didn’t let him make a nuisance of himself at St. Cecil’s, he’d come home. No respect. That’s what we get, no respect.”

Reb caught Jilly’s apologetic expression and nodded at her.

“You’re right,” Cyrus said, and not for the first time Reb wondered just how much it cost him to be perpetually reasonable and gentle. “Call Madge in the morning and we’ll make an appointment to get together and talk this through.” He deliberately turned his back to the other table.

“Maybe we should speak about this Dante Cornelius alone, Father,” Spike said, squared off to the table once more.

Cyrus appeared surprised, but said, “Surely.”

Reb saw Marc’s eyes turn hard and his lips pull back in a grimace, and she got to her feet. “Dance with me, Marc,” she said standing beside him. “Let’s see if we remember how.” Without waiting for a response, she walked to the floor and by the time she turned, a smile tacked to her face, Marc was approaching with an equally phony smile on show.

“One-two-three, one-two-three,” she said as he drew near enough to take her hands. “I think we can still do a killer Cajun two-step. How about you?”

His features softened. “I don’t think I trust myself to say the right thing—on any subject—right now.” He spun her to wrap one of his arms across her shoulders and clasp her hand. His other hand he placed over hers at her waist, and they swept into the circle of couples, revolving together and around the others. The band members were on their feet, with Vincent Fox plying the bow across his fiddle like a man who didn’t have enough time for all the notes he had to play. The accordion hissed and whined, and the banjo player picked and scraped his strings. The rhythm set every foot in the place stamping.

Reb looked up at Marc, and this time her grin was genuine. All around them colorful dresses whirled. Her own soft gray skirt floated and wrapped itself first one way, then the other around her body.

“Does Cyrus talk about the death?” Marc asked. “He must have been there afterward.”

“Yes.”

He raised her hand above her head and twirled her, and held her tightly at his side afterwards. His thumb and fingers spread over her waist. He was warm. “What was his reaction?”

Reb made as if to stop dancing, but Marc kept her moving. “Humor me, cher, okay? I’ve got a lot of catching up to do before I know what everyone else knows around here.”

“Everyone else
doesn
’
t
know.”

He landed her against his chest and held her close. Instantly they were dancing their own intimate, swaying form of the number. Marc bent her backward, low over his arm, followed her down, and brought her up so fused to him she could feel the buttons on his shirt—and other things.

“We have real style together,” he told her. “Remind me to tell you more about what I want to do with Clouds End.”

Reb looked straight ahead where hair showed at the open neck of his shirt and mumbled agreement.

“So, everyone doesn’t know what’s going on, hmm? Must be some deep stuff a few of you are trying to keep under the rug.”

“No such thing, Marc Girard. What’s gotten into you?”

“When we’ve got more time, I’ll explain that in detail. Every time there’s mention of the woman who died in St. Cecil’s, Cyrus looks like a man in a lot of pain. Just wondered what that’s all about.”

She shouldn’t have expected Marc to be less observant than she’d known him to be. “I think he feels responsible.”

“For a woman’s death.”

“No, dammit!”

He kissed the side of her neck, took the lobe of her ear between his teeth.

“Stop that right now,” she told him.

“Now you know it’s all part of the dance.”

“You’re incorrigible.
Stop
it. I don’t want to have to make a scene.”

“Of course you don’t. And you won’t. Mmm, you are the softest, sexiest morsel I ever came across.”

She closed her eyes because she couldn’t keep them open.
“
You
are shameless and manipulative. And you’re incorrigible. I want to sit down.”

“And risk havin’ me argue with your champions?”

“Marc—”

“Why does Cyrus feel responsible? All he did was give a destitute woman a place to sleep.”

“He knew the other two,” she told him and snapped her teeth together.

“The ones who were murdered?”

“Drop it.” She pressed her face into his shoulder. This was the worst possible direction in which to lead him.

Up and down her back he smoothed his hands, up and down. And he hummed to the music—close to her ear. He danced beautifully. Letting him make all the moves was easy to do.

“Our table neighbors must think they’ve got what they came for,” he said.

“Looks like it.” Reb observed the Hibbses and the Gables talking together as they made their way out. “We won’t have heard the last from them.”

Marc grunted. “What about the woman who didn’t die, the one who took the murderer off the streets? Did Cyrus know her, too?”

“May Lynn? Of course. Everyone knows May Lynn.”

“You know what I mean. Did he know her in some special way, the way he knew the three dead women?”

“I’m not answering any more of your questions. If you’re goin’ where you may be goin’, you’re sick. You don’t know Cyrus, or you wouldn’t even think anythin’ so horrible. He’s the priest. People go to him for reconciliation. His only connection with those women was that—their confidences.”

She stopped dancing. “Oh, Marc! I left Gaston over there. He’ll be on the dance floor next.”

He released her and followed her back to the table where Cyrus and Spike still sat. Behind relaxed body positions, both of them gave off an air of discomfort.

“Don’t we make the pair?” Marc said, putting a hand around her waist again. “She was about eight when she nagged me into teaching her to dance and I agreed so she’d leave me alone.” He laughed, and tucked strands of her hair behind her ears. “You were a nice little girl, and I liked teaching you.”

And that’s what he’d always been able to do—turn on the charm just when a person was ready to let fly at him, and charm them into submission. The worm.

Gaston, his topknot bow—gray to match Reb’s dress—listing badly to one side, sat on Cyrus’s lap and ate fries out of a red checkered paper bowl. “He was hungry,” Cyrus said, sounding defensive. “I could tell by the way he looked at me.”

“No such thing,” Reb said. “You just know if you feed him he’ll be your best friend—until the food’s gone. He’s not supposed to be in here, let alone eating off the table.”

“The waitress felt sorry for him—him looking so scrawny—and went back to ask Pappy if it was okay. He said…well, he said anything I decided was okay was okay with him.”

“Peachy,” Marc commented, holding Reb’s chair until she sat, then sliding back into his own. “Are we talkin’ about the same Pappy who owned this place years ago?”

“Yes,” Spike said. “A lot older from what I’ve been told, and he doesn’t move as fast anymore, but the same man. He doesn’t like people, that’s why he keeps to himself in the back room.”

“Countin’ the money he makes from the people he doesn’t like, I suppose.” Marc’s expression had returned to its pre-dance belligerence.

This time it was Spike who broke the ice. “I’d say you’ve got that about right. The more he makes, the more he retreats, but he’s got a good heart.”

“A good man,” Cyrus agreed.

Reb couldn’t miss how Cyrus took every opportunity to study Marc—and that he didn’t look too pleased with what he saw. She glanced at Spike and thought, as she had before, that he was too quiet. He needed to meet just the right woman to bring him out of his shell, and she’d have to be something special.

“Were you called to the church after the death?” Marc said.

Spike hesitated only a moment before answering, “I was.”

“And you thought it was an accident?”

“I don’t make decisions about the cause of death in those circumstances. But it looked like an accident to me, and that’s what it turned out to be—a terrible accident. I think she was knocked out before much of the damage was done, though.”

“Really?” Marc’s posture, the way he held himself so still, cut Reb. “How could you know that? Why isn’t it just as likely she was conscious until she landed on that stone floor?”

“She may have been,” Spike said. “But the steps and walls are also stone, and she hit a lot of them.”

“Stop it,” Reb said.

Marc wasn’t stopping. “What do you know about what brought the woman here? You all say she was a stranger, a singer who showed up in Toussaint with no money.”

“Vincent Fox met her in New Orleans,” Spike said and inclined his head toward the band. “He’s the fiddler. He met her casually in a club and felt sorry for her so he brought her back to sing with the Doggies. There wasn’t much money in that, but it would have put her on her feet eventually.”

“Bonnie Blue,” Marc said, apparently to himself. When he added, “How did you establish her identity?” it wasn’t for his own benefit. Another glance passed between Cyrus and Spike.

“I know she ran out of gas and must have decided to walk home,” Marc continued. “Only for some reason she decided to go to the church in the early hours of the morning instead. And climb up to the belfry.”

Cyrus pushed his glass away. “Don’t you think I’ve asked myself why she did that? I keep on asking myself. She was a Catholic and devout—”

“Well,” Spike said, and shrugged.

“It isn’t our place to judge others,” Cyrus said. “I’m not just supposed to say that, I want to. Whatever Bonnie had been through before coming here, she was working to make her life simple, and the Church was part of that for her.”

“You didn’t say how you confirmed her identity” Marc said, and the stillness had left him. He gestured with his hands and leaned toward the other men. “Did she have something other than a driver’s license? A checkbook maybe? With an address on it. Well, there would be an address on the license, but the checks would be more likely to have the most recent one. Why couldn’t you locate her next of kin?”

“What’s your interest in Bonnie?” Spike said. Reb felt him bristle and assume his all-business role. “These aren’t matters I can discuss with just anybody.”

Marc made fists on the table. “You don’t have to discuss them. I’ll just tell you the answers. What you don’t want to say is that when you tried to trace Bonnie Blue you couldn’t find anything. The I.D. she had was phony, right? Where are her things now? What does it take for me to get permission to look at them?”

“It helps if you can stay calm,” Cyrus said.

“I asked how I can see her things.”

“She had about nothing,” Cyrus said. Gaston had finished his fries and turned to gaze into his benefactor’s face. “A few clothes in her room. An old suitcase. Makeup—”

“And in her wallet? What did she carry around with her? An address book? Everyone has an address book.”

“Hush, Marc,” Reb said. “This isn’t the place.”

“It’s as good a place as any. All I’m asking for are some simple answers.”

Spike swiped the sweat from the side of his glass of Coke and seemed poised between answering and telling Marc what he could do with his interrogations. He answered without looking at the other man, “Bonnie’s wallet is missing. All her personal papers, whatever they were, are missing. Or we can’t find ‘em. But she did have a license. I saw it because—well, I saw it.”