her.'
'Ghosts!' Charmian snorted contemptuously and looked to Josephine. 'What do you think? Does Ms. Black have powers, the gift of sight? What would your mother say?'
'She know what you done. She know why you done it. She seen Richard's ghost and Bradford's, too. She a healin' woman, can fix Lila if you let her.'
'And what about you, Josephine?' Charmian's face moved in scorn. 'What about your forgiveness you need so badly? Can she give you that?'
Josephine turned her face away. 'Me, I'm not too worried about no forgiveness no mo'.' Her voice was a dull, hopeless echo in her hollow chest. 'How 'bout yo' own? You know how you done, how you lost yo' daughter.'
Charmian pretended to ignore the question, but her eyelid ticced, and she went on hurriedly. 'The deal is, I confess to killing Richard. I say I poisoned him with a preparation of black cherry seeds. I can prove it they can open the crypt and find traces of it in his remains. I confess and you don't tell anyone anything different.'
'Detective Guidry will ask why you killed him.'
Charmian improvised: 'Because he… he let my baby brother die in that swamp, let him go off on his own, drunk, and I lost my head and took revenge! Or he had an affair, or – '
'No.' For a moment Cree had thought maybe Charmian was right, maybe this one lie was the route through, but she quickly came up against another wall. 'Charmian, if you want Lila to survive, she has to face the ghosts – both her father's ghost and Bradford's. She might be able to buy in to your killing Richard, and that's what's most important. But when she faces Bradford, she'll know how he died, she'll know he died at the house and not in some bayou. She'll know he's the one who raped her. She'll know you lied. It'll all fall apart.'
Charmian snorted. 'You're assuming I believe in ghosts.'
'Lila has to face them whether you believe or not.'
Charmian's desperation grew. 'You don't understand! If I tell about Bradford, it will be the end of the Beauforte name, the Lambert name! It'll reach every scandal-mongering journalist in the country! We'll – '
'Decide, Charmian. Decide whether it's your daughter you want to protect or just your family name and your control. It's something you should have decided long ago.'
The dragon eyes looked baleful and wounded, but still Charmian held firm, said nothing.
'And then there's Temp Chase,' Cree said.
For the first time, Charmian looked frightened. She mastered the expression quickly, but a shiver shook her, and Cree realized she'd reached the limit of her self-control. Just beyond was collapse or violence. 'What about Temp Chase? He has nothing to do with this!'
'Temp came to you after Josephine's visit. He wanted to blackmail you. His career was falling apart, he'd had financial setbacks, he was desperate. Josephine had told him almost everything. He came to you and said he could feature it in an expose, or you could pay him a lot of money not to.'
Josephine's face folded in pain. 'I am sorry, Miz Charmian. Didn't know 'bout Lila killin' her daddy, I wouldn't have said nothin to him. But he say he already know about it! He say he your friend! I take it on my shoulders. This all on my shoulders.'
'I didn't kill Temp Chase, that's absurd!' Charmian was truly terrified now, breathless and trembling from head to foot.
Cree let her hang for a moment. The heat was stifling, and the smell of so many fears in the small room was choking her. Charmian's reaction now would determine the outcome of the whole case, for Lila, for all of them. 'No. I know you didn't.'
Hearing that, Charmian's body shook. The straight back seemed to falter, and she groped toward a chair, grasping its back to stabilize herself.
Out at the curb, the swamp rat had heard Charmian's raised voice and had stepped away from the car. His narrow face lifted toward the house as if he were straining to see into the shadowed interior, and both hands now rested on his gun. 'Hey, Gran'mere!' he called, just loud enough to be heard. 'Is it time? Nigger on the porch don't scare me, you jus' tell me when.'
Loup Garou took another easy step forward. On the porch, the shadow that was Hiram didn't seem to move, but the glisten along the barrel quicksilvered as the shotgun tracked Loup.
'Save me something,' Charmian whispered. 'Don't do this. Don't bring my son into this. Don't make this part of the deal. Don't make me protect one child only to lose another.'
Loup Garou took another step toward the house, calling Hiram's bluff by degrees.
'Call off the Werewolf. Tell him to go back to the car.'
Wide-eyed, Charmian shook her head, no.
God damn the woman for her stubbornness! Cree thought. 'Temp is dead. His killer has to pay!' She said urgently. 'Call him off.'
'Temp Chase stays out of it. Ron stays out of it! If it ever comes up, I'll confess to that, too. You know I will. Their investigation has gone nowhere in over two years! They already looked at Ronald! I can prove I had reason to kill him! You can tell Guidry anything you want, nobody can prove it, nobody'11 bother. Not with me confessing!'
Hiram stood up as Loup Garou came another step closer. The barrel of the shotgun shook with his tension. Cree gave the shotgun the edge, but Hiram was no gunfighter. One hesitation and Loup Garou would have the advantage. Either way, the house would have bad ghosts forever and another generation of pain would be born. And nothing anyone could do would help Lila.
'You tell Guidry you killed Richard because he killed Bradford! And you tell him why Pachard did it!' Cree insisted. 'You have to tell him about the rape! That much has to come out or it won't hold. And you tell Paul Fitzpatrick to cooperate with me on treating Lila whether he believes in ghosts or whatever the hell. And I don't bring Ron into it. Okay? Now call him off!'
Charmian hesitated for three more heartbeats, calculating, not breathing. Then she called, 'Loup! Go back to the car!'
He paused, only a few steps from the door.
'Now!' she shouted. 'Go back to the car! Get inside and wait.' She held herself there until he began backing away. Then she quickly took a seat and let her back fold.
Only when the Werewolf had gotten inside the big car did Josephine move again. Straight streaks of tears lined her face beneath both eyes. 'You doin' good, Hiram,' she called softly. 'Yo' great-auntie thank you. Better put it down now.'
44
' You have to really find it in you,' Cree repeated softly. She'd already said it five times in five different ways. 'You can't fake it or force yourself to feel it. You've got to offer him a real window of escape. Encountering you has got to provide resolution for him, and that'll happen only when you provide yourself some resolution – when you really accept what happened and let go of it. The promise of that closure must be so real and attractive that it draws him toward you, and then your reality will war with his obsession. It'll show him his world is unreal. Does that make sense?'
Lila nodded minutely.
The three of them stood beneath a streetlight on Washington Avenue, looking across at the walls of Lafayette Cemetery. Behind them, the lush streets of the Garden District settled into the relative tranquillity of a Tuesday evening. Though the cemetery was closed now, Paul and Lila had prevailed upon its staff to open the gate for one after-hours visit to a family tomb; the Beauforte name still carried enough weight for such favors. Now the dark figure of a cemetery attendant waited behind the main gate. Beyond, the innumerable low roofs and gables of the crypts were tinted with sad twilight blue.
Lila looked pale in this light, her skin almost transparent, as if the blood she'd lost had not been restored to her. Her physical health was not bad, but the revelations of the past forty-eight hours had wrenched her open, exposing her past and her hidden self. Charmian had gone to the police, had confessed to killing Richard, and had told them why: because he'd killed her brother. And she'd explained that, too: the rape. Not trusting Cree to keep
