New Orleans for only five days! She really was a sort of medium. She'd seen two ghosts; soon she would learn who they were. She'd pinned down the dates. She'd asked about Josephine.
Josephine! The tension gripped Charmian's chest hard. Surely Cree couldn't find Josephine, not if Crescent City Confidential couldn't!
Or could she?
How to stop or deflect her? According to Ron, Lila had now hired Cree herself, slapped down a check for her retainer; there was no way to fire her. Maybe they needed to consider more strenuous means to be rid of the woman – something to consider there. Ron might have some ideas on that score. He certainly knew enough lowlifes who might be willing to take on an odd job.
Charmian inventoried the ways Cree might penetrate to the truth. One was certainly the photos. They were not at the house; they had not been there when Charmian had looked for them after Lila had announced her desire to move back in. But Charmian knew who must have taken them, the only person who could have, and Cree Black would no doubt find her way there eventually. Had he destroyed them, as would have made sense, or preserved them for some devious future use? Hard to say.
'You are in dreamland this morning!' Lydia said. 'I hope this doesn't mean you forgot to take your little smart pills this morning, darlin'? You haven't been listenin' to a word I've said!' The fat face loomed at Charmian, and suddenly she knew she couldn't do this, couldn't spend the day in Baton Rouge with the Garden Society and pretend that there was nothing the matter, and put up with Lydia and whoever else wanted to pour trivialities into her ear. She couldn't do it. Not when there was so much to be done. Not when the family was in danger.
That thought gave her resolve. But she'd have to act fast. The van had left the highway and turned north on Causeway Boulevard, and if she didn't get out now they'd get onto twenty-eight hellish miles of bridge and from the middle of the lake there'd be no turning back, she'd have to go to Baton Rouge and a day would be lost. And Cree Black would make more connections.
'I need to get out of this seat,' she told Lydia. 'Now. Stand up and let me out.'
Lydia's eyes widened in surprise but quickly narrowed shrewdly as she sensed Charmian's urgency. The woman had a radar that picked up other people's distress, which she positively fed upon. 'Why, Charmian Beauforte, whatever is the matter?' she drawled, speaking as slowly as she could. 'You look like – '
'Get out of my way, you prize sow!' Charmian hissed. 'This instant!'
Lydia gasped audibly, and conversation in the nearest seats stopped as the gray and blue heads turned. Charmian shoved at Lydia until the pig hoisted her bulk, moved out of her seat, and stumbled back a step, too shocked to speak.
Charmian gathered her bag and got up and limped quickly to the front of the van. She took hold of the driver's shoulder and shook it. 'Stop,' she told him. 'Pdght here. I need to get out of this vehicle.'
The driver, a big black man in gray chauffeur's livery, tried to mask his surprise. 'Uh, yes, ma'am. Uh, is there something I can help you with, Miz Beauforte?'
'Stop. Open the door. Now. I'm fine. I just remembered another appointment. Go on to Baton Rouge.'
'Yes, ma'am.'
He braked hard and pulled the door lever, and when it hissed open Charmian climbed down into the street. The whole van of Garden Society ladies looked at her out their windows, shocked, curious, calculating. Enjoy it, ladies. Something really juicy to talk about, Charmian thought savagely. The driver looked down at her briefly, hesitating, but at Charmian's imperious gesture shut the door and drove on.
Charmian straightened her clothes. She spotted a street sign and got her bearings, then took out her cell phone to call a cab.
Ronald's apartment was in a newer office and residential tower on the downtown side of Canal Street. Charmian paid the driver, got out, and went inside. It was not even noon, Ronald would probably still be regrouping from whatever excesses he'd indulged in last night. If she understood his schedule correctly, he'd expect to do some on-line work after lunch and maybe swing by his office by one-thirty, flirt with his secretaries and schmooze with a couple of clients. Well, today would have to be different. She hadn't called because she wanted to catch him by surprise, off balance, bowl him over and roll him right along, make him obey her before he had a chance to think about it. She'd tell him she knew he'd removed the photos, and what that implied, and she'd tell him that Cree Black was finding out everything, and that he'd better start believing in ghosts fast because they were about to come back and make his life hell.
She took the elevator up to the twenty-first floor and walked down to his apartment. She rang the bell insistently and for good measure slammed her bag against the door a couple of times. After a minute she heard the muffled noise of someone coming. The peephole eclipsed, and she heard him swearing inside as the locks rattled and the door opened.
'Goddamn it, Momma, what're you doing here? You know, I would greatly prefer it if you showed me the courtesy of calling before – '
'Let me in. We have some things to discuss.'
Ronald didn't move. He had his pants on, at least, that was good, but he stood holding the half-open door in one hand and didn't budge. 'Tell you the truth, Momma, this isn't the best time, thank you. I have company at the moment.'
She jabbed at his chest with her knuckles, backing him up, and pushed past him. 'Get rid of her. Now. And then get dressed and get your wits about you.'
She strode ahead of him into his living room, a huge expanse of floor furnished and decorated in what she thought of as playboy-modern. It was complete with the obligatory scattering of liquor bottles and glasses on every horizontal surface, and even a couple of little mirrors, lying flat and faintly dusted with powder, that revealed the more exotic tastes of Ro-Ro and his friends. One wall was all glass, filling the space with a big view of the nearer downtown buildings and then the darker, uneven rooftops of the French Quarter.
Ronald followed her, positioned himself in front of her with a defiant posture, and opened his mouth to argue. But the look she gave him shut him up fast. A door closed in the hallway to the bedroom, and after another glance at Charmian's face Ronald shrugged and headed down there. She heard their voices behind the closed door and the thump of things being moved around in anger.
Charmian waited for whoever it was to hustle past resentfully. She was thinking feverishly, the plan shaping up. She had always been afraid something like this could happen, but she'd supported Lila's moving back into the house because it meant there was at least the possibility that something like a family could be reestablished there. After Lila and Jack, one of Lila's kids, eventually grandkids. They wouldn't be Warrens, grandchildren of Jack's lineage of used-car dealers and barely two steps up from white trash. They'd be Beaufortes – the house would change them. But even that was the least of it, really. It was about Lila. Moving in would assert her victory over the past. It was worth the risk. Or so she'd thought, six months ago. Now she was no longer sure.
Rebuild, Lila, certainly, Charmian thought. Restore. Re-create. Renew, fust don't remember.
28
Madwoman in a car. That's what people see, Cree thought. Screw 'em.
She drove the Taurus toward Lila's house, having a one-sided conversation with Mike. 'What's she doing, Mike? How would you call it?'
He'd always had a shrewd eye for people's motives. They used to talk about their family relationships or work contacts, trying to untie the knots that came with any human interaction. Playing detective with the human psyche.
The Mike in her imagination didn't answer. He wasn't there; he was a memory from a day in Concord, that first autumn at the farmhouse. They'd just discovered that grapes still grew along the stone walls at the edge of their property. In the dry fall air, that fine New England light, you could smell the winey sweetness of them as you came near the sun-warmed stones. Finding the vines among the scrub had excited him, and as he looked eagerly for bunches of frosted-purple spheres he looked much younger, like a kid. The wind tugged his cowlick over and down across his eyes like an errant windshield wiper and he pushed it away repeatedly, unconsciously, so intent on finding the fruit. The animation in his dark, alert eyes.
