[Bayou Gavotte 03.0] Heart of Constantine (35 page)

Ophelia shrugged. “It happens.” She flushed, both face and aura. “Even with easygoing guys.”

“Not to me! I don’t know what got into me, but I hope I didn’t ruin anything. There was iced tea dripping down one of his guitars.”

“Serves him right,” Ophelia said. “When did Constantine talk to you about the concerts? Before or after Reuben told him about Professor Lutsky?”

“After.”

“Which means he still wanted to trust you, even after he knew. Trusting you made him vulnerable, though, which scared him.” She nodded sagely. “He’s sure he can’t maintain a relationship, so he destroyed it before it destroyed him.”

This sounded a lot like psychobabble to Marguerite, but she refrained from saying so. “Do you know anything about his childhood?”

“Not much,” Ophelia said. “He doesn’t talk about it, but something happened to Constantine when he was very young, before he came to New Orleans. Tony Karaplis has known him since he was eight or nine, and he’s always been like this. He doesn’t trust anybody, not really. He’s pretty close to Tony, and he relies on Lep more than anyone, but deep down he’s afraid of something. Betrayal, maybe? Or abandonment? I don’t know what it is, but it’s shaped his character. If you care about him, you’ll just have to live with that. There may always be a degree of separation, no matter what.” Pause. “Not that there isn’t always one, because a couple is still made up of two people, but it may be greater than you’d like. But you don’t seem like the clingy type.”

“I’m not.” But she needed to be trusted. She needed to be
believed
. She shook her head again. “After what happened today, it’s hard to imagine being with him again.”

The baby had fallen asleep at Ophelia’s breast. She smiled lovingly down at it. “And here I was hoping you two would make some gorgeous babies together.”

“I’m not making a baby with any man who’s lovey-dovey one minute and cold as ice the next.” Marguerite’s brain was beginning to clear. “You may be right about his fear of relationships, but that’s not what was going on today. We were having fun. He wanted to have sex again and went downstairs for condoms. He was gone for quite a while—way longer than it should have taken—and he came back looking completely wrung out.” A spark of hope fluttered into life. What if something had happened while he was gone? “All the arousal in his aura had vanished. The warmth and enjoyment were gone, too. His aura was flat and harsh, and the colors were ugly, and then he fed me all that crap.”

Ophelia frowned, her aura perplexed. “You can really see all that?”

“Yes, I can. You have every right to be suspicious,” she said belligerently.

“Am I suspicious?” Ophelia looked down at herself as if she expected to see tendrils of mistrust growing from her belly. She laughed. “One of these days, you’ll have to tell me all about myself, but if I’m suspicious now, it’s not of you. I have plenty of weird abilities of my own.” Her aura was busy again. “It’s of this whole situation. Something must have happened while he was gone that made him change his mind.”

“That’s just what I was wondering!” The spark of hope became a tiny, wavering candle. Marguerite thought back, remembering the faint sound of Lawless freaking out, but that had been over almost immediately, and they hadn’t returned for a good while after that. “Once he’d started dissing me, and I was getting good and irate, his aura relaxed. He seemed sort of smug.”

Ophelia’s fangs slotted down, then disappeared again. “Sorry. Just getting mad on your behalf.”

“Smug’s not the right word. Satisfied, maybe.” No, that wasn’t it either. “Relieved!”

“Well, duh,” Ophelia said. “What could be more obvious? Something happened to upset and really, really worry him. He wanted you out of the way, no longer associated with him, and therefore safe. He got rid of you to protect you. That explains why, after trying to maintain the distance by pretending to Gideon that he really suspected you of something, he couldn’t stop himself from also asking him to warn you.”

“Maybe,” Marguerite said, wanting and yet not wanting to hope, exhausted in spite of napping half the day. She rubbed her eyes. If she didn’t leave soon, she would fall asleep on the drive to New Orleans.

“There’s no maybe about it. Gideon!” She left the room, and Marguerite laid her head on the table and closed her eyes.

Ophelia came back several minutes later. “Proof!”

Marguerite roused at this.

“Reuben’s gone,” Ophelia said. “He was supposed to make sure you went to New Orleans, and when you didn’t, he reported that you were here, at which point Constantine said he could go. Constantine doesn’t want you staying home alone, but he’s fine if you’re here. He does care about you.”

“He cares about everyone who’s endangered,” Marguerite said, ruthlessly snuffing the candle. “He doesn’t want to be responsible for my death, but the fact remains that he won’t even speak to me.”

Ophelia flapped a hand. “I’m going to give him a good talking to.”

“Please don’t, or at least not on my account. He didn’t love his wife, but he cut her a lot more slack than he cut me.”

“He spoke to you about Jonetta?”

Marguerite nodded wearily.

“Even more proof! He never tells anybody about her. He wouldn’t even talk to me. He must be absolutely crazy about you!”

The candle within burst into glorious life. She tried to snuff it again and failed. She was in terrible shape if she still wanted a guy who’d treated her like dirt. Why couldn’t he have just told her what was wrong?

“Once this is over, we’ll sort him out. In the meantime, you’re staying here. Policeman’s orders. You’re unfit to drive tonight.”

Marguerite let herself be shown to the spare bedroom. She showered and crawled thankfully into bed.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

T
he body drifted up against a snag a mile or so downriver, a ghastly pale face with blank staring eyes and gaping mouth. Zeb swallowed and forced the vomit back down his throat. He retrieved the folded paper and stuffed it in his own back pocket, then kicked the body off the snag and sent it away again downstream. He followed it for what seemed like hours, guiding it past dozens more snags before letting it go, hoping it would get washed a mile or two further before another dead tree across the river held it. He waded and swam and waded again across to the other bank, and slogged upriver in the shallower water. It didn’t seem likely the cops would canvas the entire river for footprints; anyway, his shoes were new and could belong to anyone who ran.

On the way down the river, he had figured out where to go. Zelda’s Aunt Ophelia, who was a landscaper, lived somewhere along the river, but she also owned some property on the water a short way upriver from her house. There was a big new greenhouse and an old trailer. Zelda had taken him there once to take pictures of the bat houses along the bank, when he’d needed visual aids for a public speaking class at school.

By the time he spied the bat houses on their poles, the first desultory birdsong before dawn had already begun. He pulled himself out of the water by the roots of a cypress, thankful for more drenching rain. With luck, what footprints he left would be washed away, and Ophelia wouldn’t visit her greenhouse. The pathway he’d followed with Zelda was somewhat overgrown now but still passable. It was beginning to be light; he threw off the exhaustion that threatened him and hurried, smudging his footprints as he went just in case. It seemed longer than before, but eventually the greenhouse loomed, and then he was at the trailer. To one side there were woods, and to the other a couple of houses, but no lights showed yet in the windows. He found the key to the back door in the same metal box under the stairs where Zelda had left it. He fumbled in the gloom with the lock, opened the door, and went inside. He didn’t dare use the lights for fear the neighbors would notice, but it didn’t matter. He was safe for now.

The moment he relaxed, he was sick as hell. He groped his way to the bathroom, fell to his knees before the toilet, and it all came up. Not that there was much in there, but he retched and retched anyway. Finally, he got to his feet and flushed. He took the folded paper out of his pocket and set it aside to read when he had some light. He peeled off his clothes and propped himself in the shower. By some miracle, the water was hot. Maybe Ophelia showered here from time to time when working in the greenhouse, but whatever the reason for this blessing, Zeb gave thanks. He stood under the water for ages, trying to think what to do next.

By the time he got out of the shower, it was daylight. He dried himself with a towel from the rack, rinsed his clothes and shoes, and hung them over the shower rail.

Dizzy with fatigue, he took the paper to a window. The thick paper had weathered the soaking well, and so had the charcoal sketch on it. He had no difficulty recognizing Constantine and Marguerite—and not only that, Marguerite’s drawing style. Tired as he was, he still snickered at the ridiculous length of the penis. He laid the sketch on the towel to dry and looked for someplace to crash. All he needed was a few hours’ sleep, and his brain would start working again, and he’d figure out what to do.

Astonishingly, he found a bed in the room at the end of the trailer. Maybe all this unexpected comfort was an omen; on the other hand, maybe he was making himself a sitting duck. At this point, he just didn’t care. He sagged onto the thin cotton bedspread and fell immediately into an exhausted sleep.

Constantine finally packed it in an hour or two after dawn. Agony had its uses; working together, he and Lep had come up with some truly excellent songs during the night. He should probably feel more of a sense of accomplishment, but numbness would have to do. Lep yawned and headed down to the kitchen for something to eat, and Constantine retired to the bed, which smelled of sex and Marguerite. He shut his eyes and willed himself to sleep.

His cell phone woke him. He turned away and put a pillow over his head, but it rang again a few minutes later. Groaning, he reached for it.
Gideon.

The cop didn’t waste time on preliminaries. “Do you have an alibi for last night and this morning?”

Huh? “What’s up?”

“From the time Marguerite left you till, say, eight
A.M.
?”

“Lep was with me,” Constantine said. “He came up shortly after she left, and we jammed all night.”

“Thank God for that,” Gideon said. “Someone stabbed Nathan Bone and threw him in the river during the night.”

“Jesus Christ.” Then: “Is Marguerite all right?”

“When I left home, she was asleep in my spare bedroom,” Gideon said. “I’ll tell her you asked.”

“Don’t! She’s better off hating me. She’s got to stay away from me. I cannot risk having her death on my account, too.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” Gideon said. “I’d say this was another attempt to implicate you, but how could he have known whether you would be alone?”

How indeed?

“Nathan said on his blog yesterday that you had threatened him,” Gideon said.

“No, I warned him that his anonymous informant might be dangerous.” Constantine sighed. “He had no idea who he was playing with.”

Gideon’s voice sharpened. “And you do?”

“Yes and no,” Constantine said. “I think I know who did it, but I don’t know his name.”

“Say
what
?”

“I’m doing my best to remember, but it’s from a long time ago. When you’re done with the cop stuff, come and see me.”

Constantine lay back. Time to dredge up the childhood memories he’d been keeping at bay all his life.

Marguerite tossed and turned for hours, finally falling asleep as the birds began to sing before dawn. She roused briefly at the sound of a phone ringing and later to the baby’s cries, but she didn’t wake properly till past noon. She showered and dressed, and found Ophelia at the kitchen table drawing a garden plan, complete with meandering pathways and a bridge.

“For a customer?” Marguerite said.

“I hope so,” Ophelia said. “They may not go for it. It’s going to be pricey.” She gave Marguerite a look. “Pour yourself a coffee. There’s news.”

Judging by the expression on Ophelia’s face, not to mention her uneasy aura, it wasn’t good. “What?”