City of Masks

43

Josephine's rasping voice ceased suddenly, and Cree felt the light in the room change. She turned her head to see a dark silhouette at the screen door, eclipsing the light from outside.

In another instant, Charmian Beauforte had opened the screen door and stepped onto the porch, and then she was coming through the open inner door. She wras dressed impeccably in a beige suit over a white silk blouse, holding her ostrich-skin purse close to her side. She didn't have her cane, but she mastered her limp almost completely as she came into the dim room, stood regally, and fixed them with her raptor's gaze.

"Can't just come in my house like this!" Josephine gasped.

Charmian ignored her. "You know why I'm here," she said to Cree. "We need to end your investigation. One way or another. Today."

"My investigation is over."

"Yes, it certainly is. Now, you two are going to do exactly as I say. We're going to make a deal, right now, the three of us. Your lives depend on making this deal and sticking with it."

Josephine stood up from her chair, mustering a formidable power of her own. "Miz Charmian. This my home. This my family home. You don't come here an' tell me what I do or don't do."

Charmian didn't back down as the taller figure approached her. "Josephine, look out the window. See the man leaning against the big car? His name is Loup Garou." For Cree's benefit, she translated, "That means 'Werewolf,' and they call him that for a very good reason. There's another man, just down the street. So get it through your head, right now – I do tell you what to do. Here or anywhere else."

Cree turned in her chair to look out the window, and it was as Charmian had said. An older Cadillac had pulled up, right at the end of the front walk. The man leaning against it wore an oversize checked shirt, parted enough to reveal a mat of dark chest hair above a sleeveless T-shirt. A big automatic pistol was stuck in his belt. Though he wore sunglasses, it was clear he watched the door of the house with interest.

"How did you know where I was?" Cree asked.

"Paul Fitzpatrick has been most helpful to me throughout this escapade. He told me you'd locate Josephine. I just had you followed." Charmian must have seen the astonishment come into Cree's face, because her mouth hardened, the tiniest smile of gratification at revealing this betrayal.

Josephine had studied the man at the car, and now she looked back at Charmian. They locked eyes. Cree could see the arc that leapt there, the ancient antagonism between these two old women, the bitter contest over which would possess Lila's heart, the unforgiven failings they accused each other of. After a moment, Josephine took two steps to the kitchen hallway and called down it. "Hiram! Go get yo' uncle's shotgun from out my closet. Then you come on out the front room."

But Hiram must have heard some disturbance earlier, because immediately Cree heard the sound of a shell being jacked into the chamber, and then Hiram was coming out of the hallway with the big gun leveled. He was still shirtless, his dark skin still glistening with sweat, and he towered over Charmian with a baleful look.

Charmian looked him up and down with contempt.

"Hiram," Josephine instructed, "you go sit on the porch, an' you watch that man at the car. He start to come up here, you shoot him dead. I call you, you turn around shoot this ol' lady dead. She like a witch, you don't trust her neither, you understand?"

Hiram moved silently past Charmian, out onto the porch, where he took a chair facing the street, the shotgun held low but aimed at the man outside. When the Werewolf saw him come out, he straightened out of his slouch and one hand strayed to his pistol.

The guns scared Cree. The powers of the two women held each other in a tense stasis. The motionless air was charged with latent action, and the guns made any shift of balance potentially lethal.

"You don't tell me what I do," Josephine said quietly. "No more. You not my judge, and you not my maker. You not even my boss. And this is my home. This be a good time you learn humility, Miz Charmian."

Charmian eyes blazed at that, and she seemed to inhale, swell with rage. If she upped the ante another notch it would all blow apart.

"Charmian," Cree broke in. "What deal? What do you mean?"

"I will protect my daughter," she said through her teeth. "That's the deal. The only deal." The compressed fury in her had only grown in the face of Josephine's resistance and Hiram's dark presence twelve feet away. Against her will, Cree had to admire the strength of her.

"We all want that! But how, Charmian? You told her to forget. She did her best. But the ghosts won't let 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."