Joyce sobered. 'I got news – you're already a little crazy.'
'A lot crazy, then. And I need you to trust me when I do.' Cree was shocked to hear an echo of Lila's voice in the plea: Stay with me.
'I'm not sure I – '
'Just that I've realized I have to take this case very personally if I'm going to make any progress. But I don't want you to worry too much. Don't… overreact or something.'
'Don't worry? Don't worry? I'm worrying already! What does Ed think about all this?'
'I haven't talked to him. And if you do, tell him I'm fine, I'm doing great. No need to get him all -
'I don't know what you're asking me to agree to, Cree. But I don't like the sound of it.' Joyce's voice had risen, drawing the archivist's disapproving gaze.
Cree stood up and gathered up the papers and folded them into her purse. 'Gotta go. This is great work. I'll see you tonight, okay? We'll look for some Cajun food. I promise.'
The promise didn't seem to make Joyce any happier.
27
Charmian could remember when she'd actually enjoyed these outings. It had once given her pleasure to visit the marvelous formal gardens in and around New Orleans and Baton Rouge, to trade tips on planting and pruning, or where to buy the best bulbs or slips. It was an opportunity to get out of the house and see some countryside while you shared complaints about your servants and your grandchildren and your husband, if you still had one. Which most of the Garden Society did not, any longer: The van was full of puffs of blue-white hair.
My 'geriatric buddies,' Charmian thought sourly.
But over the last couple of years the outings had become nearly intolerable. She went along only out of a sense of obligation as their chairwoman. The rides were tedious, the van claustrophobic, the gossip savage and as small-minded as it was hugely irrelevant. The blue-haired blue-bloods looked refined, but Charmian knew that for what it was: a veneer of delicacy over a hard, ruthless core. They were vicious social carnivores only too eager to use their money and position against the less privileged or each other. After two decades of rising crime in New Orleans, most of them had even started carrying pistols in their purses Charmian herself had succumbed to the fashion. The little ladies' guns were supposedly for self-defense against the criminal underclasses, but looking at the busy blue heads now she suspected it was only a matter of time before their disagreements about how to fertilize an oleander, or what dish to order at Antoine's, brought the guns out.
It was an uncharitable perspective, she knew, one sharpened by the knowledge that it applied to herself as much as the others. But now even the gardens had lost their appeal. Especially since the events of the last few months.
Still, this time she'd been actually relieved when the van had come, grateful that Tarika had interrupted her talk with Cree Black. An excuse to escape, to have time to think. She'd felt some of her resolve slipping, indecision stealing in as the woman probed her.
Inconceivable: Charmian Celeste Lambert Beauforte beating a retreat from someone of Cree Black's class and background!
Being undecided was an invitation to the world to wreak its worst upon you. Decisiveness was the foundation of strength. Even if you made the wrong decision, making any at all allowed you to act with authority, the certainty born of resolve. And that was always better than vacillating, hesitating, allowing the world to act upon you rather than you upon it. And you never retreated.
'You heard about Billie? Isn't it just too terrible?' Lydia Lanier whispered loudly.
Lydia was a plump, shapeless old thing with excruciatingly bad taste in expensive clothes, and her face showed that however terrible Billie's misfortune might be, Lydia was loving every minute of it. When Lydia had clumped aboard the van, Charmian had prayed that she wouldn't choose the empty seat next to her. There were other seats – only eleven members had opted for this tour. But she had, obviously because she was burning to tell Charmian this little tidbit. And she was a big woman, overflowing the seat next to Charmian, crowding her with upper arms the size of hams and thighs like sofa cushions.
'Terrible,' Charmian agreed. Whatever it was. She turned her face to the window to signal her desire to be left alone with her thoughts. The van headed north through the city toward the Ponchartrain causeway.
The thing to do was to regain composure, take the initiative. Pull back to a different line of defense and consolidate it. Clearly, from what she'd seen and what Paul Fitzpatrick had told her, she'd underestimated Cree Black. The woman was not the persuasive charlatan she'd hoped would spread some palliative balm on Lila's problem, calm her down, help her past this crisis. She had some freakish talents of insight or perception, and she had a quality of… what? Not idealism, because she had clearly seen and experienced too much to be naively optimistic about the human condition. Charmian tried various words, and none of them quite fit Cree Black, that quality that made her so dangerous. Maybe commitment was the word: She had a deeply held philosophical belief that you had to get to the bottom of things, that doing so was always the best path, always the best foundation of healing.
So maybe she was naive after all.
'Not that we all couldn't see it coming,' Lydia Lanier went on nastily.
Charmian turned to look at her, affronted at her intrusion, and gave her a gaze that would have withered a vase of zinnias. But Lydia was either too stupid to notice the look or too arrogant to acknowledge it. Charmian almost said something sharp, but there was no point: It'd only get passed around and cause a ruckus, get all the busy hens squawking.
'Tell me what you've heard,' she whispered conspiratorially.
Lydia tipped her big head toward Charmian, lowered her voice, and told the tale. Charmian tried to look appropriately scandalized and tuned her out.
The van took them up the ramp onto Route 10, and the city dropped away beneath them. In few moments, the huge cemetery complex opened on both sides of the highway, the innumerable crypts mottled gray after the rain, squalid looking. The sight gave Charmian a charge of energy. A little memento mori.
Okay, so Cree Black was determined to get to the bottom of this. And with her abilities, there was some chance she just might. What made Lila hate herselfso much she breaks mirrors? – that was too close for comfort. But she could be obstructed. Better, she could be channeled, directed down paths that led only to partial, manageable truths. Charmian would need to decide the most secure line of defense and stick to it. Paul could help there.
She had thought it through so long ago, had done her best to figure all the probabilities and angles, had made decisions, and it had more or less worked. True, Lila had become the weak little thing she was, and in carving away the rotten places in her memory she had left big holes in her life; but she had managed to marry, to have kids, to have a halfway decent house. And Charmian had come to believe it was done, closed, that all the guilts and ghosts had been permanently sealed away.
Until Josephine had reappeared and changed everything! Who would have thought the woman would live that long? She was older than Charmian, eighty at least by the time she'd appeared at Charmian's door, two years ago: tall, broad-shouldered, her hair a cloud of frizzled gray, her long, sinewy arms as tight and creased as hard salamis, her dark face drawn long with that tiresome excess of piety, sobriety, contrition. InteDectually, Charmian had long since forgiven her, but still the unexpected sight of her awakened a surge of rage that she had barely repressed.
The recollection made the area around Charmian's breastbone tighten, and for a few seconds she had a hard time breathing. She deliberately mustered a full, slow breath, hoping that Lydia wouldn't notice.
After Josephine's sudden reappearance and that one afternoon of confession and accusation, she'd disappeared again without a trace. Once Charmian had sorted through the implications of her visit, she had even discreetly hired Crescent City Confidential Services, a highly recommended private detective firm, to locate her. But they'd come up dry. And then Temp Chase got himself murdered, and it had seemed best to just let Josephine fade away again.
Cree Black had zeroed in on everything, every question she'd asked had been relevant. And she'd been in
