Dead End (3 page)

“Straight ahead,” Father Payne said. “It’s the first door on the other side of the front door. Good view of the church—and anyone coming to the door here.” He chuckled. “I like to be prepared.”

Marc decided he could like Cyrus Payne. The man was open, but then he guessed a priest was supposed to be.

The hall was small, with another faded rug at its center, this one vaguely rose-colored. Stairs on one side rose to the second floor. Someone had run amuck with wallpaper…above the wainscoting, ducks in flight repeated all the way to the top of the stairwell.

A high-topped sneaker, laces trailing, descended on the hall floor. Its owner would be sitting a couple of stairs from the bottom and leaning against the wall Marc couldn’t yet see. A second sneaker joined the first, and a thin, brown-haired boy stepped forward. His hazel eyes passed over Marc without interest and settled on the priest. A large grin showed square teeth with a gap between the two upper middle ones, and his freckled nose wrinkled with pleasure.

“Hey there, Wally,” Father Payne said and didn’t sound surprised to see the boy. “Isn’t this errand time for your folks?”

Wally nodded and his smile disappeared. Marc didn’t recall seeing a kid look quite so worried, certainly not in quite so grown-up a way. It was hard to say how old he was, but Marc placed him around nine. Maybe ten.

Father Payne put an arm around Wally’s shoulders. “This is Marc Girard. He grew up in Toussaint just like you. Do you know that big old house on the way to Breaux Bridge—the one where we went to see Cletus?”

“Clouds End,” Wally said in an unexpectedly whispery voice. He lowered his eyes. “My folks said…They mentioned Mr. Girard was here and that he owns our hotel.” He reached behind him for a heavy brown sack folded over at the top and containing something square.

“Nice to meet you,” Marc said, not missing the wary way the boy held the bag tightly and sized him up. “It’s my mother who owns that property. And she never gives it a thought because your parents do such a great job of running it.”

The slight drop of Wally’s shoulders suggested those words had taken a little tension away.

As quickly as Wally’s shoulders had lowered, they rose again. He stared into Father Payne’s face as if he could make himself understood without saying a word.

“Wally—”

“Father”—Wally cut the priest off—“it’s, um, serious.”

“Don’t worry,” Father Payne told him. “I’ve got something to attend to; then I’ll come and find you outside. Okay?”

The kid’s nod wasn’t enthusiastic, but he left at once, letting himself out of the front door and closing it behind him.

“My buddy,” Father Payne said and smiled. He walked past Marc and said, “In we go,” opening the door he’d indicated. “Come and meet Madge. She tries to keep us all sane. If anyone could, she would, but she doesn’t have much to work with.”

Marc entered a study he’d enjoy having himself. A woman, talking on the phone, sat at a small desk that faced what was more a large, scarred cherry table than a desk.

“If this is a bad time, Father Payne—”

“Call me Cyrus, please.” When Madge hung up the phone, he added, “This is Madge Pollard. I’m told she’s a foreigner. She comes from Rayne.”

Rayne was a town around ten miles from Toussaint. Rayne, Frog Capital of the World, as it was billed, and murals of frogs on every wall in town were intended to validate the title. “I’m surprised they let strangers like you in,” he told her. “I’m Marc Girard.”

She said, “I know. I’ve been given some great descriptions, not that I wouldn’t have taken a second look all on my own and asked who you were.” Her grin made sure the comment wasn’t a come-on.

“Well, thank you, ma’am—I think.”

Her smile was a killer. “They’re gonna give me the keys to this town any day,” she said, her Cajun lilt as pronounced as Marc’s own. “All I gotta do is charm a couple cottonmouths out of the bayou and I’m in. I already got the basket and pipe.”

“Let me know about the ceremony and I’ll drop by.” He liked Madge Pollard and her springy black curls, and he didn’t miss the way she looked at the priest. The gentle pleasure in her dark eyes, innocuous because she kept her demeanor light, spoke volumes.

“I expect you two would like some privacy,” she said, getting up and revealing a nice body, nicely covered in all the right places and discreetly showcased in a soft blue dress that clung just a little. “I’ll put the phones through to the sitting room and work in there, Cyrus. Three calls so far on account of our visitor here. You are the man of the moment, Marc Girard. The town’s in an uproar. There’s folks don’t like you.”

“They don’t know me. Most of them never set eyes on me.”

“They’re expectin’ to, and they’re lining up to make reconciliation with Cyrus.”

“Why?” Marc asked, suspicious. “They plannin’ to confess first, then take out a hit on me? Didn’t think that worked.”

Cyrus and Madge laughed aloud, and Madge gathered papers and left the room.

When they were on their own, Cyrus looked at a brass clock on the mantel and said, “Noon. May I offer you a beer? Lemonade? Glass of wine.”

“No thanks, but don’t let me stop you.”

He shook his head. “Pick a seat.” He chose the window seat for himself and crossed long legs. “Don’t hurry. Start when you’re ready.”

So spoke the man of God, who listened to the woes of his flock every day. They said priests heard everything, but Marc figured what he was about to suggest to Cyrus might get his attention.

Settling himself in a swivel oak office chair with a red corduroy seat cushion, Marc followed instructions and didn’t hurry. He was going to say things that would take the shine off a peaceful day. A row of
Hornblower
books in one of the bookcases that covered the wall behind the big cherry table didn’t fit with his assumptions about what priests read, what they thought about. He almost smiled to see Delderfield’s
God Is an Englishman.
But it was a large collection of mysteries that really surprised Marc.

He looked at Cyrus.

Cyrus looked back. He didn’t smile.

The strains of a Zydeco number beat rhythmically from the next room.

“Madge loves her music.”

“A lot of people do,” Marc said, noncommittal. He’d begun to feel cold. This man might tell him he’d been drinking moonshine and advise him to sleep it off. “Bonnie Blue did.”

Cyrus grew still. Marc realized it was hard to know if the man’s eyes were blue or green, but they were fixed on his visitor’s face.

“I read about it in the papers. And Cletus—he looks after Clouds End for us, but you know that—he’s been filling me in on what he knows about the woman.”

“Why do you care?” Cyrus said. He made as if to stand but changed his mind.

“I have a big interest in this town. On my mother’s behalf. I’d be lettin’ her down if I didn’t keep an eye on how things are. I read that you knew Miz Blue.”

“Yes.” Cyrus let out a long, long breath. “We gave her a room in this house. As far as we know she came from New Orleans, where something bad had happened to her. When she arrived in town she had no money to speak of and no place to go. We decided to help her. She had a job at Pappy’s Dancehall over—”

“I know where it is.”

“Yes, I suppose you do. Bonnie sang there. Never heard her myself, but I’ve been told she had a good voice.”

“What do you know about her?”

Cyrus looked blank. He pushed open a window and let in a rush of humid air, and the scent of roses. “I know one of the Swamp Doggies—that’s the band at Pappy’s place—one of them met Bonnie in New Orleans and offered her a job with the band. Vince Fox, who plays the fiddle. He’s a decent family man with a big heart. Something like that pays almost nothing, but she jumped at it because almost nothing was better than nothing at all.”

“What did she look like? The only picture in the paper was taken at a distance and I couldn’t make out a thing.”

“Dark hair. Plenty of it. Quite long. A lot of makeup, but show business people do that.”

“How old?”

The priest spread his hands. “Hard to say. She didn’t make any secret about having used drugs and hitting bottom on more than one occasion. She had tracks on her arms, but she said she was clean and I believed her. Maybe she was fifty. Maybe older—or a lot younger. I was never told what they thought at autopsy.”

Cyrus Payne’s dispassionate references to a dead woman hit Marc like ice water. His hunches had felt real for too long now, but at this moment he was convinced his every conclusion was right, and he could hardly take in a breath.

“She kept to herself,” Cyrus said. Although he looked at Marc, his eyes were distant as if he saw something else and it froze his soul. “She was here a few weeks before…Bonnie was Catholic. She went to the church and prayed, and lit candles.

“She told me she planned to make a new life and put the old one behind her. I didn’t like the way she locked herself inside her room all day and didn’t come out till it was time to go to the dance hall. She was thin. If she ate, she didn’t do it here. Bonnie had something on her mind, something or someone she didn’t tell me about. I had the feeling she was afraid.”

Marc’s fingernails dug into his wet palms. He had scores to settle in Toussaint. Settling them wouldn’t be easy—or safe.

No point in circling any longer. “Bonnie Blue died mysteriously. Do you believe it was an accident? Or was she murdered?”

Hearing Reb O’Brien’s unmistakable husky voice, raised above her dog’s excited barking, relieved Cyrus. Marc Girard had hit him with a broadside, and he needed a few moments to gather his wits. “Here comes exactly the woman you need to talk to,” he told Marc while Reb could be heard informing Oribel that she didn’t need help finding anything in the house.

Girard’s expression was blank—all but his black eyes, and they were narrowed and unreadable.

“Reb’s something,” Cyrus told the man. “A dynamo who doesn’t have much patience with small-mindedness. At least one parishioner wants her excommunicated.” He laughed and went to open the door. “Apparently straight talk is a mortal sin.”

Reb, with her apricot poodle Gaston, still in the chest pack she used to carry him on her motorcycle, entered the room but halted at the sight of Marc Girard. Apprehension flared in her eyes and her lips parted. Reb appeared to be in fight-or-flight mode. The look came and went quickly, but stayed long enough to let Cyrus know that these two weren’t strangers.

“Reb O’Brien, meet Marc Girard. Marc Girard, meet Reb O’Brien—and Gaston the Attack Poodle. Forgive me, but would you mind if I took a few moments to check on Madge? We’ve got a lot going on around here today.”

Marc and Reb regarded one another directly. Neither flinched—or said a word.

“Well, I’ll be back,” Cyrus said. He was no coward, but he was circumspect. Let them deal with whatever was between them—including any information on Bonnie Blue—while he decided how much he ought to say to Marc.

Later, Reb thought, she would let Cyrus know what she thought of a so-called friend who left her alone with a man he assumed was a stranger to her. Cyrus had looked as if he was desperate to escape and he’d used her to do it, damn his chicken-livered soul.

Marc Girard.

He was on his feet. Marc at twenty-two, when she’d last seen him, running up a flight of stairs at Tulane and sending her a final, unfathomable smile, had been painfully impressive to her. Every move he had made that afternoon became indelible in her mind, and she could still recall how his athletic body moved inside his clothes, and feel again the shock waves stirred by any chance contact with his muscle—or skin. In his thirties he was commanding without doing a thing but standing with his thumbs hooked into the pockets of washed-out jeans, looking down at her.

He extended a hand, and she held it. He didn’t say a word, but then, neither did she. His hand was that of a man who didn’t spend all his time over an architect’s drawing board. Exposed by a rolled-back shirtsleeve, his big forearm flexed, and only with difficulty did she bring her eyes back to his. She caught him in a familiar downward flicker of his black lashes over dark eyes.

When she was seventeen, that intense regard had made her blush and bow her head. She wasn’t blushing today, or being coy, because she was too busy absorbing her responses to renewing her acquaintance with the man the boy had grown into. With the slightest raising of his shoulders, this man moved air. He took up space as much with his presence as with his tall, powerfully made frame.

Marc Girard might have perfected a nonchalant set for his face, but his eyes gave him away. He was as uncomfortable as she was. It showed, and she took pleasure in that. A small, small pleasure.

Getting the upper hand with him had always been important to her—almost always. “Good day to you, Marc. You back to make sure Toussaint’s as bad as you thought it was?”

“Some things don’t change,” he said.

“Get
on.
Any town changes in the number of years you’ve been away.”

“I wasn’t referring to the town.”

She shook her head. “You never could take straight talk from me.” Gaston wriggled and looked up at Marc with teeth bared—not a good sign.

“I understand straight talk gets you in a lot of trouble.” He smiled at her, and she saw more than a shadow of the boy he’d been. “How about we sit down? Or is that too intimate?”

He wasn’t as attractive as he’d been when she last saw him at Tulane. He was a whole lot more so. Back then he’d been a college senior and she a freshman who was barely seventeen and emotionally too young for campus life. Marc, a sought after man-of-note at the school, was kind to her—until she blew it.

Reb sat down in Cyrus’s well-worn green recliner and scratched Gaston’s tummy inside his carrier. “If I’d known you were visitin’ I’d have worn my Sunday best. I don’t bake cakes.”

“If you’d known I was here you wouldn’t have come.” He sat in Cyrus’s swivel chair and pushed backward until his legs were outstretched. “Does the dog always grin?”

“If you think he’s grinnin’, that’s a good thing.”