One

The towel settled over the man’s face, his shoulders, his chest. A big towel, Jack Charbonnet thought, and damp. It made a white death mask of Errol Petrie’s features, a shroud for his body on the stark tiled floor.

Jack watched the scene framed by the partially open door into the bathroom.

He took several more steps into the bedroom and reached the foot of the empty bed. He heard the beat of his own heart, but felt nothing. Nothing.

An urge to shout imploded. If he shut his eyes and opened them again, he’d see more clearly, and Celina Payne wouldn’t be standing over Errol.

Bamboo ceiling fans turned slowly, clicked on their rods, their long, discolored cords swinging in the humid air. When Jack had entered the courtyard of the Royal Street house, another day was heating up in the Quarter. The warm breeze brought snatches of noise, and the scent of gardenias and old beer past the arched grillwork gate that closed off the yard.

Only minutes earlier he had walked through the streets, annoyed at Errol for insisting on a meeting before nine in the morning, when he knew Jack took his daughter to school every day, and wasn’t available until later.

None of that mattered now. Errol’s message must have come in while Jack was explaining to his mother-in-law that he couldn’t bring Amelia to her for the weekend. That had been after midnight. Then he’d turned off the ringer so he wouldn’t hear if she called again. And he hadn’t checked for messages until he got up. If he had listened before he went to sleep, he’d have called Errol back. .

Celina made a noise, a faint, choking sniff. He noticed she wore a loose yellow bathrobe, and that her short, red-brown curls shone in the yellow overhead light. Her feet were bare. Disjointed parts of a picture he didn’t want to see.

Closing his eyes wasn’t going to make this go away. “Celina?” His voice grated obscenely in the still morning gloom behind closed shutters in the bedroom.

She choked again, and spun around. Her face shocked him afresh. Blοοdless, the skin might be fused to bone, and her dark blue eyes were vast and unblinking. She looked at him without recognition and caught hold of the doorjamb.

“Good God!” Jack said. The numb sensation in his limbs dissolved. He trembled inside, but adrenaline pumped through him and he strode to throw the bathroom door wide open.

“Εrrol,” Celina muttered. “Errol.”

Jack faced the bathroom. The footed porcelain tub came into full view. Pools of water puddled into dips in the uneven white-tiled floor where the boards underneath had warped.

He smelled what he should have smelled before: liquor. He’d brought the remembered scent of gardenias muddled with beer into the house with him, then been vaguely aware of Celina’s incongruously innocent lemony fragrance. The pungent odor of bourbon hadn’t registered.

His stomach constricted, and this time he did glance at Celina. She continued to grasp the doorjamb. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and she moaned.

Errol knew better than to take a drink—didn’t he?

Jack looked down at an outflung hand and forearm. Below the white towel, Errol’s long, muscular body was naked.

Naked but for a brilliant green rubber ring on his flaccid penis.

Celina gave a thin, broken cry. “Not Errol. He’s got so much to give, so much to do. We need him.”

Crouching, Jack used a finger and thumb to lift the towel until he could see Errol Petrie’s face, his sky-blue eyes wide open and glazed in death.

Celina cried out and stumbled to the foot of the bed. She clung to a mahogany post.

“What happened here?” His heart beat harder and sweat stuck his shirt to his back.

Her mouth opened and closed, without a sound now, as if she fought unsuccessfully for air.

“Speak to me.” Death, even violent death, had touched him before, but it hadn’t hardened him to the horror. “Celina, say somethin’.” The urge to shout had returned. He controlled it.

“Why are you here?” she asked at last, in barely more than a whisper.

“What the—” He bit back an expletive. “Errol called me late last night. He asked me to come first thing this mornin’. Not that it matters a damn why I’m here. Where’s the aid car? How long ago did you call the aid car?”

She shook her head.

“Tell me.”

She said, “It’s too late. He’s dead. He’s so cold, Jack.” He knew she was right, but he knelt and put an ear to his old friend’s chest and listened.

“I knew his heart wasn’t good,” Celina said. “He must have been in the tub when the pain started. But he wasn’t supposed to die. He’s too young to die. Dreams—”

“Dreams isn’t the issue right now,” he said, and didn’t care how sharply. “The foundation will land on its feet. I’ll see to that. You still haven’t told me what I want to know. How long has he been… How long, Celina? And what happened that would cause him to have a heart attack?” He was sure he already knew, but he wanted to hear it from the fair lady’s lips. He’d warned Errol to get rid of his so-called assistant, but he wouldn’t listen.

She had pressed her lips together and looked fixedly across the room. He followed the direction of her gaze and got up. A tangle of clothing lay on the blue and green silk rug near an antique sea chest that had been in Errol’s family for more than a hundred years. Jack walked closer.

Celina made another strangled noise. He didn’t turn back. The clothing was underwear, a woman’s skimpy black silk bra and panties, garter belt and stockings. To the left, between the bed and the bathroom, there was something else black. A long piece of silk, like a narrow scarf. Another scarf caught his eye—still tied to one of the posts at the head of the bed. A glove made of shiny black fur poked from beneath a rumpled pillow.

Fury pumped the blood through his veins. He turned on Celina Payne, ex-Miss Louisiana, the woman he had feared for months was spending more time with Errol than either of them would confess. “I warned him to stay away from you. I told him you were bad news for a man like him.”

“And you were wrong,” she shot back. “He already had a bad heart. That wasn’t my fault.”

He pointed to the heap on the carpet. “What do you think it would do to New Orleans’s favorite charity if a picture of this room made its way onto the front page of some rag?”

“What he did with his own time should be his business.”

He laughed and felt his throat tighten. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? If anything grubby could be brushed under the rug just so you could continue to be the Dreams Girl? You and your parents got plenty out of Errol’s nonprofit organization, and you want to keep on gatherin’ the goodies. And all in the name of makin’ the dreams of dyin’ children come true.”

The speed with which she moved caught him off guard. She flew at him and he barely stopped them both from falling. Her fists threw a frenzy of ineffectual punches at his body and head. He flinched, but captured her wrists and shook her.

At once she stood still. The anger in her eyes fled, replaced by...resolve? Resolve, and intense dislike for him. Not that there had ever been any doubt about their mutual distrust.

“The police have to be called,” he told her.

“The aid car has to be called,” she said without inflection. Her soft voice reeked of old New Orleans society, the kind of old New Orleans society that couldn’t be bought. “The aid people will call the police,” she added.

Suddenly she was so cool. He released her and put some distance between them. “You seem to have this all worked out.”

“Someone has to. If you think about it, you’ll see I’m going to do what has to be done.”

He looked back at Errol, then at the floor.

“You made your point very well, Jack. The last thing we can afford is mud on the reputation of Dreams. So we’re going to help each other make sure that doesn’t happen.”