A Taste of Love and Evil (10 page)

Rose glanced at Jack. He spread his hands.

“The cops would have taken me to Grandma, and then I might as well be dead!” A tear rolled down Juma’s cheek. Angrily, she brushed it away.

Rose groped around for the tissue box. “I did come back, though,” she said gently. “I keep my promises. The point I’m trying to make is that some risks simply aren’t worth taking unless you’re desperate.”

“I
am
desperate.” Juma wiped her eyes.

“Not anymore,” Rose said. “I’ll take care of you, but I need you to promise me you won’t go bribing anyone else with sex.”

“I can’t promise that. What if I get into another mess and you’re not there? So far I’ve been lucky. I’ll keep hoping for the best. Anyway, Rose, not to be rude or anything, but you
bribed those truckers with kisses. What if Jack hadn’t been around, and one of them thought you wanted sex?”

Good
thing she didn’t see me with Biff.
“They knew I was just flirting,” Rose said. “I don’t need Jack or anyone else to protect me.”

“What about Stevie? He was about to rape you!”

“I would have stopped him if Jack hadn’t hit him first.”

“How? He’s bigger and stronger, and he—”

Unexpectedly, Jack broke in. “Trust me. She would have stopped him.”

“Okay, let’s say I believe that one, which I don’t, but whatever,” Juma said. “What if you were flirting with Biff and a bunch of his buddies, and they thought you really meant it? Maybe you can tackle one guy. How about two or three? How about if they have guns or knives?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Rose said. “All that matters is what I intend. If I offer sex, it’s because I’m willing. If I’m not willing, I don’t say I am. Period.”

The dark countryside flew by. Rose couldn’t bring herself to look at Jack. Now he’d think she would have willingly gone to bed with Biff, which wasn’t true. A month or two ago, she might have considered it. Now? No.

“But those guys are dangerous. They might not take no for an answer.”

“Juma, I’ve had a lot of experience with dangerous guys. I can take care of myself.”

“I’ll learn to take care of myself, too,” Juma said. “Self-defense classes or whatever.”

Rose strove to keep her voice level. “Self-defense would be good, but that doesn’t give you a license to prostitute yourself.”

“Oh, great.” Juma crossed her arms. “Now you’re calling me a whore, just like Dick.”

“I am not calling you a whore.” Rose gave up. “Speaking as one who prostituted herself for years, in a situation a thousand
times better than you’ll ever find yourself in, it’s not such a great life. Find a better way.”

“You were a
prostitute?”

“I was a gangster’s mistress. He set me up in a penthouse and paid my way through college, but only because I’m different from other women, because his friends envied him, and he felt like the world’s biggest stud. You’re an ordinary girl, and ordinary girls end up with shit. Or dead. Don’t do it.”

“Well!” Juma said furiously. “I know you’re gorgeous and sexy and guys are all over you, except maybe Jack, but people think I’m pretty, too, and I don’t see why with a little experience I couldn’t do just as well.”

Except maybe Jack.

“Now, you listen to me,” Rose said, quivering with rage. The camellia, which had so far stayed put in her hair, slipped down beside her ear.

“Hold on,” Jack broke in. “Your reasons are none of her business. Think before you speak.”

Rose’s head whipped around. The camellia flew off and Jack caught it. “What else am I supposed to do? She has to understand.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Jack said, his eyes back on the road. “You gave her good advice. If she doesn’t take it, it’s her problem.”

Rose faced front, fuming, desperate now in her own way. She
needed
to help this girl. She needed…

“This isn’t about you, Rose,” Jack whispered.

Helpless, Rose subsided into the seat.

“As for you, Juma, take my word for it. Rose
is
different. Most guys find her irresistible, and although you may think that would be great, it’s actually a major pain in the ass. She also has better self-defense skills than most girls can dream of. She cares enough to give you sensible and appropriate advice. So back off, shut up, and show her some respect.”

There was a long, long silence.

Jack’s voice broke through the chaos in Rose’s brain. “Rose.” Reluctantly, she turned her head. He held out the pink camellia, with a smile so faint and so rueful she wasn’t sure she saw it in the darkness.

Jack’s rueful smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and he fixed his eyes on the road. Juma dozed off after a stony, sullen hour with
Beowulf
and a book light. Rose cradled the camellia blossom while Jack went from news to music to a football game on the radio. He made a few unsuccessful attempts to reach Gil and asked a couple of questions about features of her phone, but nothing could drown out the deep silence that hung between him and Rose.

Her cell rang: Miles. Soothing him wouldn’t be fun while Jack eavesdropped, but anything was better than this silence. She flipped it open.

“Rose! You tried to call me. Are you on the way back to Chicago?”

Maybe this wasn’t better. “No, of course not.”

Miles cursed. “Rose, I need you here. Titania’s made me a wonderful offer. It will save the shop!”

Rose tried to ignore the nausea burbling in her gut.

“She wants a costume, and she’s prepared to pay an absolutely obscene amount if we do it right away.”

“That’s great.” It was also bullshit. “But it has nothing to do with me.”

“Of course it does. The Elizabethan gown impressed her so much that she’s determined to have you and only you
make her costume.” Bullshit again, judging by the sneer on Titania’s face when she’d first seen the gown.

Rose twisted and turned the wilting camellia. “Here’s the deal. Get Titania to wire a fifty percent down payment to your account, and have her sign something agreeing that the down payment is not refundable under any circumstances.” She registered Jack’s jerk of the head toward her and away again, but ignored it. “Get a witness to her signature. No, two witnesses. Reliable ones. When that’s done and the money’s in your account, call me back.”

Silence, and then Miles said, “I don’t think she’ll go for that, Rose.”

“I won’t return for anything less.” She hung up, and before Jack could start asking nosy questions or offering help, she asked, “Where are you taking us?”

“To an apartment near Gil’s place,” he said.

“A safe house?”

“No, as of the last time I spoke to Gil, he hadn’t come up with anything in Bayou Gavotte. We have places in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, but we’re relatively new here.” He paused, and Rose went back to cradling the camellia blossom, as she had cradled it ever since Jack gave it to her.

But of course he hadn’t really
given
it to her, whatever she might wish. She pulled a petal off the camellia.

“I should be able to sort things out before those thugs find us.” Jack rolled his shoulders and shifted the arm that had been wounded only this morning. Her saliva had done a pretty good job, but the wound must be hurting him.

I could make it better,
Rose thought sadly, dropping another petal. She allowed herself a glimpse of his inscrutable profile.
Really
inscrutable, now that she thought about it. Smooth, empty of emotion, eyes straight ahead.

Was there more to the chameleon effect than she had imagined? He hadn’t spent much time smiling, so she couldn’t judge by the dimple alone, but…It was as if he had more
than one face, or rather a continuum of faces, ranging from the bland one he usually presented, to the cute, dimpled, almost sweet face she’d glimpsed once or twice. As if instead of blending against a background, he was blending against himself.

Wistfully, she glanced at him again. He’s
driving, dummy.
He should
be looking at the Rose
—
uh, road.
But that didn’t mean he wanted to look at her. Another petal fell.

But he defended me to Juma!
She caressed another petal and let it drop, then another and another.
So what? Just shrug and move on.
She rolled down the window and released the pink flower to the winds.

Jack’s voice dispersed her gloomy thoughts. “Busy day tomorrow?” Motioning with his chin toward the back, he added so quietly, so incredibly low and softly that no normal person could hear, “She still asleep?” He locked his gaze on hers for an instant before facing front again.

Rose quivered deep inside. Those eyes, and the intimacy of his tone, stirred her.

No. He just wanted to say something Juma shouldn’t hear.

She listened for a long moment to the girl’s slow, even breathing. Jack wouldn’t be able to hear her if she spoke at the same low level, so in a normal voice she said, “Yes, I think so. I have to bring the gown to my customer and do a fitting, for starters.”

“What else?” He lowered his voice again. “Did she talk to you at lunch?”

Oh, no you don’t.
Rose sent him a frosty glare, but he probably didn’t notice, eternally facing front as he was.

“Apart from picking up the supplies from Gil,” he said aloud, and then the whisper: “Anything about who she is, where she comes from?”

Not that I’m willing to tell you.
Rose retrieved a stray camellia petal from her lap, pondering. She put on a perky
voice and said, “Also, I’ll see if my customer has friends who need costumes. Friends are the most valuable resource of all, in business and in life, but you have to treat them right.” She caressed the petal’s smooth softness. “Maybe I’ll check out the clubs and theaters, see if anyone is hiring a costumer.”

His head jerked toward her and immediately away. “You’re planning on
staying
in Bayou Gavotte?” He sounded appalled.

Her perkiness deserted her. “What’s it to you?”

“I thought you lived in Chicago.” His tone accused her; his eyes focused grimly on the road. “What about Miles?”

“He wants me to get away from the mob scene and find someone ‘suitable,’ but he doesn’t know what I am. He’s been like a father to me.”

She didn’t add that her father figure—in a horrible echo of her stepdad years earlier—had shown signs recently of degenerating into another lascivious male. Amazing, that she’d been happy at first when Titania showed up.
Anyone but me,
she had thought.

Rose folded the camellia petal into a squashed, pathetic lump and dropped it to the floor. “I bet there are plenty of guys who like vamps in Bayou Gavotte. It’s probably the perfect place for me.”

The heavy silence reasserted itself. Faced with the dreadful prospect of Rose permanently in Bayou Gavotte, Jack seemed to have forgotten about Juma.

“Rose.” There it was again, hardly a whisper. Damn, it shook her down to her guts, down to her soul.

What?
she mouthed at him. When had she become so ridiculously needy?

Another whisper: “Not a matter of friendship. You just met her.”

Perhaps, but Juma had spoken in confidence.

Jack breathed, “For her own good.”

Maybe, maybe not, but that was irrelevant. “Maybe you don’t value friendship the way I do,” said Rose. “I’ve learned to treasure every second of friendship that’s offered to me, because most guys only want one thing, and most women…” Damn, she was getting maudlin again. “It doesn’t matter how good my intentions are; I am who I am, and things always fall apart. I can’t relate to my mother, I haven’t seen my little sisters in years, and although women frequently confide in me, they always end up hating me.” Which Juma already did.

“I don’t see how all this applies to someone you hardly know.”

She wanted to clobber him. “It applies to everyone. Don’t you care what people think of you?”

“Way too impractical,” Jack said. “I have no control over what other people think. My own opinion of myself is all that matters.”

A gasp erupted from Rose. “And you said I was conceited!”

“I misjudged you,” Jack said. “Later, I apologized.” Softly then, for her alone: “I didn’t say I had a good opinion of myself.”

Shaken, she faced the road stretching ahead of them in the darkness.

Like a shawl of kindness, he dropped his next whisper. “You’d see it as a betrayal of her trust.” His understanding rippled all the way to her solar plexus, which was absurd. She closed her eyes, trying to shut off the gratitude that threatened to well up through her voice.
Way too needy. He tosses you back and forth like a shuttlecock. And you let him.

He took the turn for Bayou Gavotte, and their brief, bizarre intimacy was over.

“I have no idea how much risk we’re facing,” Jack said a few minutes later. “There’s no reason, as far as we know, why they’d expect either of you to show up here, or that I’d be
with you, but since our puzzle’s missing most of the pieces…Ah, I see Juma’s awake. Keep your eyes and ears open, both of you, please.”

They trundled slowly through well-lit streets, past banks and gas stations and a mall, past side roads leading to darker residential areas, and on into downtown Bayou Gavotte. Juma, wide-eyed and anxious but at least speaking to her again, explained the layout to Rose.

“I ran away to Bayou Gavotte last summer and stayed with a friend in her dorm for two weeks before Grandma found me. Downtown’s about the size of the French Quarter in New Orleans. Most of the clubs are over that way”—she motioned left—“including Blood and Velvet and the Threshold, the dive where Stevie works. The other way leads to Hellebore U.” She pointed to a funky-looking restaurant with a blue
CLOSED
sign in the window. “That’s the Impractical Cat. Constantine Dufray’s drummer, Leopard, owns it, and Constantine hangs out there when he’s in town. He’s on tour now, though.”

“So far, so good,” Jack said. He turned suddenly down a side street and abruptly veered again, and then again, until by twists and turns they arrived at a tumbledown brick warehouse less than a block, if Rose’s sense of direction was correct, from the Impractical Cat. Jack turned off the headlights, pulled sharply up to a yawning doorway blocked by wrought-iron gates, and stopped. He rolled Rose’s window halfway down and said under his breath, “Look, listen, smell…”

“What’s going on?” Juma squeaked.

“Shh!” Jack held up a cautionary hand.

Rose peered into the darkness and listened hard. Dance music sounded from at least a block away; boisterous conversation came from somewhere on the far side of the warehouse. Much closer, garlic and ginger in hot oil made her nostrils twitch. Here, nothing but the tiniest rustle far away
in the shadows and the odors of brick dust, mildew, citrus, and fresh rodent droppings. “There are rats in there. And oranges nearby?”

“Satsuma tree in the yard.” He looked a question, and Rose shrugged an okay. They did make a good team, just as Cindy said. Sadness swept over Rose again at the thought of what might have been.

Jack got out and opened the gates. “Here goes nothing.” Slowly, he drove into the pitchy depths of the warehouse. “Warn me of any impending collisions. I can’t see a thing.”

Clearly he knew his way well even in the dark, for unerringly he took the van past piles of bricks and bags of mortar mix, and a wheelbarrow topped with two shovels. Near the far corner, Rose spied a metal table with some apparatus on top, and beyond that the light-colored sides of what might be a kiln. And beyond that…

“A raku kiln? I love doing raku. Is that metal table a slab roller?”

“Gil’s a potter,” Jack said. “He used to have a store in New Orleans.”

“How can you see anything in here?” Juma said.

“It’s diet related,” Jack said sardonically. “Right, Rose?”

“Not right,” Rose retorted. “It’s genetic. It doesn’t matter what I eat. I assume you know there’s a wall up ahead?”

A little light penetrated from glassless windows high above them. Jack took a right and followed the wall into an area that no longer had a roof. He pulled up and asked Rose to listen once again, then jumped down to open a metal garage door in the wall ahead. The door rose slowly onto an empty courtyard flanked on three and a half sides by old brick buildings. A low-slung car covered by a protective cloth huddled next to one wall. Across the yard, an alley led to another street. Jack parked the van opposite the car and out of sight of the street.

In silence, they unloaded the van. Jack took the confiscated
guns and the larger suitcase, and led the way up an external staircase in the dark. He unlocked a door on the landing and ushered Rose and Juma inside. With a minimum of words in a dry, businesslike tone, he showed them a clean, sparsely furnished apartment with high ceilings and tall windows: a bedroom and living room, a kitchen in need of redecorating, a bathroom with a dream of a shower in decadent Italian tiles. Thick curtains covered all the windows; a Persian carpet graced the aged pine floor.

Jack removed a classical guitar from the futon couch and placed it on a stand by the wall. “The futon will fold down into a bed for one of you. The other can use the bedroom. Blankets, sheets, and towels in the closet, shampoo and soap in the bathroom. There’s a bowl of satsumas on the table, and probably something to snack on in the fridge.”

He shoved to one side the small amount of clothing in the bedroom closet—actually a wood-encased nook in the wall with a rod to hold hangers—partly covering some largely empty shelves. “Rose, you can hang the costume and whatever else you want in here. The chest of drawers is available, too.” He dropped Rose’s car keys into her outstretched palm and showed her a spare key to the apartment on a nail by the kitchen door. “I’ll be over in the morning. You can stay here as long as you want, but you’ll need a less conspicuous vehicle until we’ve sorted things out. I’ll get you a loaner in the morning.” Pause. “Juma?”

Reluctantly, Juma turned her attention from a glass-fronted cabinet with a distressed finish, its shelves full of books.

“Was anyone else with Stevie and Biff this morning?”

“Nope.” She zoned in again on the bookshelves.

Jack made an impatient noise. “Neither Stevie nor Biff carried ID. I need to know everything you can tell me. Have you met Biff before? Any idea where he works or whom he works for?”

Juma reached for a book. Jack put out a hand to stop her.
“If you don’t answer my questions, I’ll take the books away. All of them. If you do answer, I might lend you a few.”

Juma’s expression wavered between annoyance and delight and resolved into a light frown. “Nuh-uh. Stevie was talking about him is all, when we were driving up there. He wants to be just like Biff, but he’s a little scared of him, I think.”