Knight Errant Read online

  “The owners took their insurance money and found a better life.”

  He gave her a curious look. “Maybe everyone has insurance where you come from, but not here. I guarantee you there’s not a place in this neighborhood with insurance. No one can afford it.”

  Her face turned pink at his mild rebuke. Maybe she was having a run of bad luck now—unable to find a job with decent wages, living in a plain apartment in a shabby building in a low-income, high-crime neighborhood, her life reduced to whatever she could carry in two gym bags and a backpack—but she hadn’t always been down. She was accustomed to better circumstances. Whatever she’d done in Atlanta, whoever she’d been, Serenity was a big step down.

  “The adults did most of the work on this place, but the kids helped. We cleaned it up, planted grass, put in benches and the swings. It was the only place on the street that had grass. The littler kids had never seen it before. They had always played in the dirt and the street.” He wondered if she had any idea how dismayed her expression was. “Bet you had a lot of grass back in Savannah.”

  “Savannah has its poor neighborhoods just like everywhere else.”

  “But you didn’t live in one of them.”

  “No,” she admitted. “We had a big house on one of the squares. It had been in my mother’s family for generations.”

  And now her father had it. Her father who, she claimed, killed her mother. The knowledge couldn’t be easy for her to live with.

  “She never had a job outside the house. He wouldn’t hear of it,” she went on, derision underlying her voice. “But I was glad, because she was always there when we came home from school. She was active in all the usual clubs and did volunteer work at the hospital, the museum and our schools, but first and foremost she was a wife. Her most important job was keeping my father happy, and with a man like him, that was never an easy job. Her favorite job, after being a mother, was gardening. We always had the prettiest yard on the square. To my father that was woman’s work, which he was above, so he never bothered her there. I spent hundreds of hours working with her, digging, planting, weeding, talking.”

  She fell silent, and Nicholas looked away. When she’d announced on the street corner this afternoon that her father had killed her mother, he had wanted to hear the details. He had followed her, intending to ask as many questions as were needed to get the answers. Now that she was talking willingly, he didn’t want to listen. He didn’t want to know even one of her sad stories. Hadn’t that been his policy for fifteen years? Don’t get involved. Don’t let anyone touch you. Don’t give a damn.

  But he did want to know just this one too-personal story. Then no more.

  “My father was very demanding. He had very rigid ideas of appropriate behavior, dress, interests, activities. My mother was an easy target for him. She’d been taught since she was a child that a woman’s first priority was always her husband, that he was always right, that if she didn’t please him, the failure was always hers. Of course, he was impossible to please. Nothing she did, nothing my brother did, was ever right. The only peace she ever found was in the garden. The only peace for my brother was away from the house.”

  She rolled onto her knees and went back to work weeding and deadheading the flowers, making two neat piles in the grass. Nicholas watched them grow, weeds in one pile, faded orange and gold flowers in the other, while he waited for her to go on. He didn’t prompt her, didn’t urge her to rush on with a story that was difficult to tell. He’d learned that in his early days as an attorney. There was a time to nudge, a time to ask questions, a time to draw the details out, and there was a time to keep your mouth shut and wait. This was one of those times.

  When she reached the end of the bed, she got to her feet, dusted her hands and looked around. He expected her to head for the back corner and its L-shaped brick planter, but instead she came around behind the bench and leaned against it. “The spring I was fourteen, we spent every free hour working in the garden. My mother was pretty easygoing about most things, but with gardening, she believed in all or nothing. We dug up the beds, tested and amended the soil, drew up plans, laid out plots. We put in hundreds of bedding plants, plus roses, azaleas, wisterias, jasmines, honeysuckles and forsythias. When we finished one Sunday evening, we had this beautiful garden that filled the entire yard, front and back. It was our best effort ever. That night she had yet another run-in with my father, with lots of screaming, yelling and hitting. The next morning, while my brother and I were in school and our father was at work, she went into the garden with a cup of tea and an overdose of barbiturates. I found her slumped on the bench there when I got home.”

  So her father had made her mother’s life so miserable that the only way she could cope was by ending it, leaving her children to live with the man she could no longer bear to live with. It had been a selfish solution, but maybe, for her, it had been the only solution. Just as leaving a six-year-old child in the care of a mean-spirited, coldhearted priest must have been the only solution Maria Carlucci could find to her problems.

  Now he knew more about Lainie Farrell than he wanted to know.

  Maybe.

  “You said your father hit your mother. Did he hit you?”

  She smiled, but there was nothing pleasant about it. “Oh, no. I was Daddy’s little girl. Scott could do nothing right. I could do no wrong. Even when I did something wrong, I was never punished.” She paused, then offered an example. “We were never allowed in our father’s study, but one morning I went in there anyway. While playing, I broke a decanter of scotch on his desk. I panicked. I didn’t tell anyone, didn’t clean it up, just ran out and closed the door. When my father discovered the mess a few days later, he was livid. The decanter was antique crystal, the scotch old and expensive. The papers on his desk were soaked, the leather desk pad was ruined, and the desk... Mahogany. Two hundred years old. Worth a fortune.” The smile grew tense, then faltered. “He blamed Scott. Even though I told him I did it, he didn’t believe me. If my mother hadn’t stopped him... I thought he was going to kill Scott.”

  And how had she stopped him? Nicholas wondered. By deflecting the brunt of his rage on herself? By letting him beat her instead of her son? How hard had that been for Lainie to live with?

  Hard. Though it hadn’t been her fault—she had admitted the truth and hadn’t tried to cast guilt elsewhere—she still blamed herself all these years later.

  “Is that why you haven’t seen your brother in twenty-five years?” No matter how innocent she’d been, Scott must have resented her preferential treatment at least a little. He must have wondered why she was so special, why her life was easy while his was so damn hard.

  “He left home right after Mama’s funeral. All his life she had been the only thing standing between him and daily beatings. With her gone...” She shrugged.

  So she had lived the next four years of her life alone with the man whom she blamed for her mother’s death and her brother’s disappearance. He wondered what her father had thought, felt, done. Had he ever accepted any responsibility for his wife’s suicide? Had losing half the family made him see the error of his ways? Had he ever felt even the slightest remorse? Probably not. People like him didn’t see life the way everyone else did. He probably considered himself the victim in the tragedy. He’d been a good husband, a good father and provider, and look how his family had repaid him. His wife had died, his son had run off and his daughter had disowned him. Ungrateful failures, every one of them. He deserved better.

  Jimmy Falcone shared the same kind of reasoning. In his mind, he had been the injured party five years ago, not the people he’d wronged, terrorized or killed. He was an innocent businessman, minding his own business, and Nicholas had betrayed him. He’d blamed the charges, the trial and the convictions all on Nicholas, as if his extensive criminal history had played no part.

  At least Lainie’s father had let his victims go. Jimmy rarely let one of his escape. Nicholas wasn’t expecting to be the first.
/>   Turning away from the thought, he stood up and stepped down to the ground. When he started around the park, she trailed along. “You weren’t here when they replanted this, were you?”

  She shook her head.

  “There used to be a lot more trees and bushes. A lot more private spots. Just about all of the kids in the neighborhood lost their virginity here.” He grinned. “That’s probably why there aren’t any private spots here now.”

  “Does that include you?”

  “It does.” It had been a warm fall Saturday night. He’d just turned eighteen—old age on Serenity for giving it up—and had needed a couple of beers to overcome his nerves. All she had needed was his kisses and his promises of love. He had loved her, in the only way he could at that time, but it had taken Rena to show him what real love was about. “Her name was Jolie. She was a pretty little green-eyed blonde who had no idea that it was my first time, too.”

  “Ah, the male ego.”

  He couldn’t deny it. “She’s married to the U.S. Attorney now.”

  “A big step up.”

  “She deserved it. She’s the best damn reporter I’ve ever seen. She’s probably the person Falcone hates most.”

  “After you.”

  He stopped in front of Reid’s mural and studied it for a moment. Forty years ago, Serenity had been poor but livable. It had begun changing for the worst about the time Nicholas had entered his teens. By the time he’d left for Baton Rouge, everyone with a hope in hell had been dreaming and scheming to escape. They’d gone from poor to dirt poor, from grim to hopeless. The crime rate had shot up, the hookers and the drug dealers had started moving in, and the gangs had begun taking over.

  Fifteen years after that, it had been a war zone. He had used Jolie to pass along his evidence on Falcone to the feds, and they had made the exchanges right here in this park. His reputation and his association with Falcone had allowed him to come and go without risk, but Jolie had taken her life in her hands every time she’d driven down the midnight-darkened streets. He had been a selfish bastard to make her come here, but at the time he’d been incapable of thinking about anyone or anything but vengeance.

  He located a few significant places on the mural—the house where he and Marie had lived one floor below the Wades, white then, gray now; St. Jude’s, once the heart of the community, closed now for ten years or more; the tiny camelback house, divided into three tinier apartments, where the O’Sheas had lived; and this park, a bright patch of green with flowers and laughing children. Then, finally, he met Lainie’s gaze. “Jimmy doesn’t hate me.”

  “He wants you dead.”

  “True. But he’s always liked me. He said I was the son he never had. He trusted me with the most intimate details of both his business and his life.”

  “He considers you a son, and yet, given the chance, he would kill you.”

  It must sound strange to her, but it seemed perfectly logical to him. Maybe he’d worked for Falcone too long. Maybe he’d been dead emotionally too many years to have the same appreciation of life and love that she did. “Killing me wouldn’t diminish the affection he felt for me. It would be business, and Jimmy is first and foremost a businessman.”

  “He can separate business and emotion that completely.” She sounded skeptical.

  “Darlin’ ...” The endearment slipped out as he turned to face her, moving to stand directly in front of her. He tried not to notice it. “If you betrayed him, he could kiss you, look you in the eye and tell you he loves you and mean it with all his heart, then put a bullet in your brain. He would regret it when it was done, but he would do it. Nothing interferes with business.”

  For a long moment they both remained motionless, too close, gazes locked. She appeared just a little troubled. Surely not on his behalf. She didn’t even know him. Then again, the person most likely to regret his impending death was the one who didn’t know him. Those who knew him, with the exception of Jamey and Jolie and Smith Kendricks, thought death was no more than he deserved.

  She was about to speak when, next door, a door slammed and children’s voices filled the air. They came running past the fence and into the park, one black, one white, one Hispanic. Serenity’s own Rainbow Coalition. As one, they skidded to a stop just short of the swing set and watched them. It was unfortunate that kids had to be so wary in their own neighborhood park, but only a year ago, these kids never would have been allowed outside to play at all. Wariness was a small price to pay for fresh air, green grass and sunshine.

  Lainie broke the stillness that extended from them to the kids thirty feet away. “Hey, J.T., Javier, Adam.”

  “Hey, Miss Lainie.” It was the black boy who’d been in the lead who answered. “Who’s that?”

  “This is Nicholas.”

  “He’s the one that just got out of prison,” Adam said, his whisper carrying easily across the distance.

  In another neighborhood, that remark could be construed as a warning or a criticism, Nicholas acknowledged. Here, it was just a fact of life. Someone from Serenity was always in prison, going to prison or just getting out.

  “Where’s your mama?” Lainie moved away from him and toward the boys. He felt the precise moment she stepped beyond arm’s length and into the vast space that was acceptable distance between two people who barely knew each other. It wasn’t so acceptable to him.

  Neither was the knowledge that he wanted her closer.

  “She’s coming.” J.T. climbed onto a swing, standing on the seat and gripping the chains with both hands. “She said she was going to do some weedin’. She said if we helped her, we could go to the store for ice cream when we’re done.”

  “Good. It’ll save me from having to finish it tomorrow.” She helped Javier into a swing, pulled it back a few feet and let go, then gave Adam a couple of pushes as she passed him. After tossing the weeds she’d pulled into the trash and scooping the dead flowers into one hand, she waited at the gate. For him or J.T.’s mother? The latter, he suspected, but it didn’t stop him from joining her.

  He leaned against the warm iron of the fence, shoving his hands into his pockets. From the other side of the gate, she turned toward him and smiled, a warm, friendly, welcoming smile. The sort of smile that could tie a man’s stomach in knots. The sort of smile that a person who had never received many such smiles needed to grab and hold on to with both hands.

  It was the sort of smile that was rarely directed at him.

  “Hey, Shawntae. J.T. tells me you’ve enlisted them in the weed brigade. My knees and fingers are grateful.”

  “It’s their park, too. They can’t expect you and Karen to do all the work.”

  While they talked, Nicholas slipped past the young woman and onto the sidewalk. It hadn’t been a bad way to spend an afternoon, he’d thought earlier, and he still agreed with the assessment. He didn’t need another day like it, though. He didn’t need confidences from unhappy pasts, didn’t need talk about sex when his body was starting to crave it. He didn’t want to know private things about her, didn’t want to think intimate thoughts about her. He didn’t need to stir up desires that she couldn’t fulfill, didn’t need to want things that she wouldn’t give.

  All he needed was to be left alone, and right now, right this minute, he was. Lainie was still occupied with J.T.’s mother. All he had to do was walk away. By the time she noticed he was gone, he would be halfway to O’Shea’s. By the time she got there, he would be in his apartment with the door locked—though he didn’t know whether for her protection or his.

  Better yet, he could bypass O’Shea’s and head for Bourbon Street. He’d known a dancer down there, a pretty little redhead who’d been too good for him, but she hadn’t cared. Chances that she was still there were slim, but if she wasn’t, someone would have taken her place. Someone who would be eager, willing and far more attainable than Lainie Farrell.

  All he had to do was walk away.

  But he didn’t. He waited. For Lainie.

  Chapt
er 3

  It had taken Lainie a week or so to become accustomed to the sort of work she normally did at Kathy’s House. Between yard work, making minor repairs and doing a little painting, she spent much of her time on her feet, bending, lifting, stretching.

  It took less than eight hours Monday to miss the physical labor.

  She’d been playing chauffeur all day, taking one young mother and her baby to a local hospital for a consultation and driving another client to her lawyer’s office to discuss her pending divorce. Now she was sitting in the waiting room at the Social Security office while elderly Mrs. Montoya tried to straighten out some problem with her monthly check. Driving and waiting were not her favorite ways to spend an entire day.

  “Hello, darlin’.”

  Lowering the newspaper she was reading, she was all set to intimidate away whichever male had made the mistake of thinking that she might be interested in anything he might say. Instead she found Sam, looking as disreputable as anyone in the city and grinning from ear to ear. “Don’t call me darlin’,” she said automatically. “I don’t like it.”

  But that wasn’t exactly true. She hadn’t minded it yesterday in the park. Even though Nicholas’s use had been totally casual, totally meaningless, some unruly part of her deep inside had liked the way it sounded, had liked the way it felt.

  As she folded the paper, Sam took the seat next to her. “How’s it going?”

  Karen had asked the same question yesterday. Lainie offered the same answer today. “Fine.”

  “Seen much of Carlucci?”

  “Some.” Not enough. After they’d returned to O’Shea’s from the park, he had gone to his apartment, then left again soon after. She hadn’t heard his door close or his footsteps on the stairs. If she hadn’t decided to eat her dinner in the closed bar with the television for company, she never would have known he was gone. But she’d gotten interested in a cable movie and had still been down there when he’d finally wandered in after eleven. His key in the lock had startled her into pulling the pistol from its holster. Luckily she had recognized him in time to hide it under the table.