Midnight in Ruby Bayou (45 page)

“Junior is upstairs. The rest are eating dinner.” There was an envious edge to Cindy's voice. Camping in the swamp had been bad enough. Now they were outcasts in a house with the most incredible cooking smells wafting through every room.

“Smells good,” April agreed.

“Walker brought us some leftover biscuits about dawn. I've been thinking about food ever since.”

For a moment April considered the problem of Owen Walker. There were some interesting gaps in his file, gaps that she hadn't had the time to fill before she flew out. Even without hard information, she was assuming that Walker's easy, drawling style was an act. Archer Donovan didn't employ dolts, not even amiable dolts. Walker had rapidly become invaluable to the Donovans.

Which meant that Walker was the sort of man who could get the job done, no matter what the job.

“I think I'll give dinner a try,” April said. “Maybe I'll be able to steal some leftovers for you.”

Peel managed not to say what a swell person April was.

Faith had just taken the last, creamy spoonful of she-crab soup from her dish when Tiga marched in from the kitchen with a huge platter of barbecued ribs and another of deep-fried hush puppies. A big bowl of coleslaw followed, the real kind of slaw, where the cabbage was crisp and the dressing was light and clean.

“Cold grape pie for dessert,” Tiga said, smiling at Faith, “so be sure to leave room, Ruby angel.”

Faith managed to turn a grimace into a smile. She had given up trying to convince Tiga that her name was Faith.

“I'll do my best,” Faith said.

“You always were a good one. Never a sound from the moment you were born.” She set the platter down beside Faith, then looked at the young woman intently. “I wanted to keep you, truly I did, but Mama said you were already gone, so long, sad song, wrong wrong, he never should have, but he could, so he did and did and did . . .”

The singsong voice sent chills over Faith, yet she managed to smile at Tiga.

“I heard you crying in silence, trying, sighing, dying, precious Ruby child. So good to see you, be with you, me with you, forever in the sea with the she-crabs and the red souls. The three small gifts were pretty, but not enough, not enough. Thirteen new souls just for me, and the fourteenth to set you free, a soul as big as your sweet little fist. I wish you could see it, Ruby angel. When you give me the thirteen, we'll both be free. Take more food, precious baby. The marsh is a hungry place.”

Speechless, Faith watched while Tiga stacked her plate with food. Walker waited until Tiga drifted down to her end of the table before he swapped plates with Faith and started eating. With the first bite, he made a rumbling sound of pleasure. Tiga might be nutty as a pecan farm, but she was one hell of a good Low Country cook.

For once, Mel wasn't hungry. She took a little slaw, a hush puppy, and a single rib. Then she pushed it all around on her plate as though trying to decide where the food looked best.

Jeff wasn't at the table. He couldn't bring himself to eat with Faith, the woman who had so completely fooled him. But he didn't want to upset Mel, who still refused to believe Faith was a thief. So he avoided the issue entirely by avoiding Faith.

“Eat something, Mel,” Faith said quietly. “The baby needs it even if you don't.”

Mel looked up, smiled despite the shadows in her brown eyes, and put a sliver of pork in her mouth. “I'm sorry Tiga keeps calling you Ruby.”

Faith shrugged. “No harm done. Who was Ruby, anyway?”

“Her baby.” Davis answered the question from the doorway. He had changed out of his ripped and bloody clothes, but he was still a long way from well dressed. His white shirt was almost transparent with sweat. The waistband of his brown slacks had wilted. He leaned heavily on the cane Walker had loaned him.

Mel's head came up. “Her baby? As in her
child?
”

Wearily Davis nodded. He walked slowly to the table and eased himself into his normal chair. Boomer crawled out from under the table and nudged the old man's hand. Absently he fondled the hound's long ears.

“I didn't know Tiga was married,” Mel said.

“She wasn't. The baby was a bastard.”

“Then the man who abandoned her was the bastard,” Faith corrected. “The baby was innocent.”

Davis looked at her. “Oh, the father was a righteous son of a bitch, sure enough, but that's not why he didn't marry her. He was already married. To her mother.”

For a moment Faith thought she had misunderstood. Then she was afraid she hadn't. She set her fork down with a clatter. It bounced from her plate and went spinning off the table.

With a lazy motion, Walker caught the fork. “Davis, you have a purely uncivilized turn of table conversation.”

Davis's laugh was as dry as his throat. He hadn't had a drink for three hours. As far as he was concerned, it wasn't an improvement. “Don't like the truth, boy? Stop up your ears with good bayou mud, then.”

“Daddy Montegeau, please don't,” Mel said.

He leaned his elbows on the table and gave his future daughter-in-law a look that was both sad and impatient. “Don't worry, darlin'. Jeffy ain't anything like the randy bastard his grandfather was. Neither am I, thank the good Lord. Besides, it happens in the best of families.”

“Incest?” Faith asked in disbelief.

Tiga stood suddenly, shoved back from the table, and said in a clear, childish tone, “I am a naughty girl. He tells me every time how very, very naughty I am. I flaunt myself.” She smiled with a terrible kind of desperation, a prayer whispered in the face of disaster. “I don't mean to, Papa. Truly I do not. Please. Don't. I won't ever. Again.” Her long, pale fingers trembled. “But I do and he does and Mama sees my ruby birthday gift and Papa goes away, away, thunder and lightning. My fault. I flaunt.” She looked vaguely around the room. “It's blessing time. The crabs, you see. Dinner at eight. Don't be late.”

No one spoke after Tiga left. Mel gave a shuddering kind of sigh. “Does Jeff know?”

“Probably,” Davis said. “Kids always know, even when their parents don't want them to.”

“Kids have a way of learning too much,” Walker agreed quietly.

Faith knew he was talking about himself as much as the Montegeau children.

“You spend much time hiding behind doors when you were a kid?” Walker asked Davis.

“Doesn't everyone?” He swore tiredly. “Papa was a drunk who liked girls best before they were ready. He didn't much care whose little girl he poked. Even his own.”

“Pity that burglar didn't kill him sooner,” Faith said distinctly.

Davis shrugged. “There are more like him. Lots are worse.”

“Lots are better,” she shot back.

“Don't much matter. It was a long, long time ago.”

“Not for Tiga. For her it was yesterday, today, and tomorrow.”

Davis eyed the bourbon decanter. Nearly empty. He would have to hobble into the pantry, rummage in the sacks of rice and flour and sugar, and find his stash. He wondered if he had the strength.

“Bet it wasn't a burglar,” Walker said.

“Huh?” Davis asked, distracted.

“Did Tiga pull the trigger on your dear old pappy, or did his wife finally stand up on her hind legs and do it?”

For a moment Davis looked startled, then speculative. “Could have. Ma was hard as a shovel handle before she took sick that last time. But then we wouldn't have lost the Blessing Chest, would we? She was always screaming at him for paying off his little girls with rubies from the chest.”

Tiga's words echoed in Faith's mind, words that almost meant something yet never added up to anything real. The unhappiness was there, always, the fixation on rubies as dead or lost souls. She wondered if Tiga had seen family jewelry on other young girls and known just how the rubies had been earned. It would explain her obsession with them, her belief that rubies were the price of a soul.

“Maybe after all those girls, the chest was empty,” Mel said softly. “As empty as your father's heart.”

“Sweet thing,” Davis said in a weary voice, “hearts have damn all to do with wealth. I saw the Blessing Chest not long before Pa was murdered. There was jewelry in it. The kind that sets a boy to dreaming of being a pirate and having his own silver chest overflowing with rubies and gold.”

“Sell treasure maps,” April said sardonically as she strolled into the room. “You'll make more money than passing off salt marsh as a world-class golf course.”

“Who the hell are you?” Davis asked, looking over the beautiful, confident Amerasian who stood in the doorway as though she was queen of Ruby Bayou.

“April Joy,” Walker said before she could. “Figured you would turn up sooner or later.”

“Bet you were hoping for later.”

“Hope is a good thing,” Walker said, smiling slow and almost shy.

April gave him a second, narrow-eyed look, and almost smiled herself. “Do men have to pass a handsome test before they're allowed into the Donovan empire?”

“No, ma'am,” Walker said promptly. “This ol' boy would have flunked, anyway. They hired me for my skills, not for my looks.”

This time April did smile. “Modest, too. I think we'll do just fine together.”

Walker was much too smart to show his response to that suggestion. “Have you eaten, ma'am?”

“Is that an invitation?”

“For supper, yes,” Faith said clearly. “Dessert is optional.”

Walker gave her a smile that was very different from the one he had given April. “Dessert, huh? Is that how you think of it?”

April measured the two of them and dropped the idea of divide and conquer. Walker had found the woman he wanted, and that was that. Experience had told April that some men strayed easily and others never even looked over the fence.

Walker wasn't looking over the fence.

With a shrug, she sat down at Jeff's place, where an empty plate waited for someone to care. “Forget dessert,” she said. “I'd like some of those ribs.”

“Who are you?” Mel asked bluntly.

“Government.”

“FBI?” Mel asked.

“No.”

“Then what?”

Walker handed over the platter of ribs. “If she tells you, she'll have to kill you.”

“Funny,” April said. “Really funny.” She piled ribs on her plate. “Ms. Buchanan, you're not cleared to take part in the discussion I'm about to have with these people. If you stay, you'll end up in protective custody along with your future father-in-law. That's assuming that the wedding is still on?”

“Valentine's Day,” Mel said, standing up. “Two days from now.”

“I doubt that the matter will be cleared up by then,” April said, picking up a rib. “Your call.”

Mel hadn't been hungry to start with. She had even less appetite now. She tossed her napkin on the table. “I'm glad you find our situation so amusing.”

There was no humor in April's clear black eyes when she looked up from her plate. “Ms. Buchanan, I'm doing you a favor by letting you walk out of here. I could jail both you and your unborn child as material witnesses with criminal knowledge about an international smuggling operation.”

“She doesn't know anything,” Davis said roughly. He scrubbed his hands over his face, flinched at the pain, and stopped. “Damn it, she doesn't know!”

“He's right,” Mel said in a tight voice. “All I know about the Montegeau finances is that Daddy Montegeau held the reins until very recently.”

“So take a walk and keep your ignorance intact,” April said. She bit into a succulent rib and chewed thoughtfully, as though comparing southern barbecue with the Hunan her grandmother made.

Mel stalked out of the room. She shut the door behind her. Hard.

April worked on the rib until the bone was as clean as the Cheshire cat's smile. Then she licked her fingers, scrubbed them off on her napkin, and said to Walker, “I'm giving you the same invitation I gave Ms. Buchanan.”

“I'm turning you down.”

“You figure you owe Archer Donovan enough to risk protective custody?”

Faith slammed her knife down on the table, drawing April's attention. “Walker doesn't know anything about the Montegeau money,” Faith said flatly.

“You keeping him in the dark, is that it?” April picked up another rib, bit into the spicy, savory meat, and began cleaning the bone.

“Is that supposed to mean something?” Faith asked sardonically.

“You're a Donovan, so you can't be as stupid as you sound.”

Beneath the table, Walker's hand closed over Faith's thigh. She stiffened, then relaxed. There was nothing intimate in the pressure of his fingers. He was simply warning her to be careful.

April glanced at Davis. “Nothing to say?” she invited.

“I told the FBI every—”

“Tell me,” April said coolly. “Tell me how you got the Heart of Midnight.”

“I thought that was just a legend,” Walker said, lying easily.

“It's as real as the blood that will be spilled if we don't get that ruby back to Russia real fucking quick.” April's voice was flat, like her eyes watching Davis. “How did you get your hands on the stone?”

“In a shipment with other jewelry.”

“From?”

“Marat Tarasov.”

“You do much business with Russian
mafiyas?
”

“Tarasov is a businessman. At least, I believed he was.”

April's quick tongue flicked over her fingers while she watched Davis with eyes like slices of midnight. “So are half the businessmen in the former Soviet Union. What about Dmitry Sergeyev Solokov? You do business with him, too?” Even before Davis answered, she read the blank look on his face.
Bloody hell. There goes that possibility.
The clean bone hit her plate with a faint clinking sound.