Darkwater Lies

by Robin Caroll

  “You’re the general manager?”

  If she’d had any doubts about his simple-mindedness before, she didn’t now. Maybe this was her opportunity. “Yes. I’ve been there for about six years. I love it. Mr. Pampalon is the owner and can be a little demanding as a boss, if I’m being honest.” She kept going, hoping he . . . well, she didn’t know what, but she kept on talking.

  “His son, Dimitri, used to be next in charge, but he never liked being in that position so he’s the chef now. Mr. Pampalon’s daughter, Lissette, is training to take over for Mr. Pampalon. She’s only been there less than a year.”

  “Wait, what?”

  Ah. He didn’t know. She would so use information to her advantage. But she needed to keep it simple enough that he could follow her. “Yeah, it’s confusing, I know. None of us knew Mr. Pampalon had a daughter, but DNA proves Lissette is really his. Apparently her mother died not too long ago, so she got in touch with Dimitri, who helped her confront Mr. Pampalon. Now, Dimitri and I are training her in all aspects of the hotel business so she can take over when Mr. Pampalon retires.”

  “Lissette is going to take over?”

  “That’s the plan at least. She’s trying really hard to learn everything.” Maybe if she talked nice enough about Lissette, he’d tell Lissette and they’d let her go. Wasn’t likely, but then again, what were the odds that Lissette would have Addy abducted? And it had to be her plan. No way this simple man was capable of concocting such an idea. “She seems to be catching on rather well, too, so I’m guessing she’ll be able to run the hotel in no time. Talk about a real rags-to-riches story. It’s like a fairy tale.”

  If only Addy could figure out what Lissette hoped to accomplish with this. Nothing about it made sense.

  “Fairy tale?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, Lissette said she and her mom could barely afford groceries sometimes. Her mom got sick, from what I was told, and so it was really hard on Lissette. No one should have to grow up with that. But now . . . Well, now she’s Claude Pampalon’s daughter. She’s being groomed to take over the hotel. Has a really big and pretty office. Dimitri helped her get into a big apartment in the arts district, so she’s got a real nice place to live. She’s drawing a pretty healthy paycheck from the hotel.”

  She hoped she wasn’t laying it on too thick, but she needed to do something. “Oh, and last year she went to a Mardi Gras ball and met New Orleans’s most eligible bachelor, Malcolm Dessomes. I think they’re dating.” They’d gone out a couple of times, but Malcolm traveled a lot and was extremely busy. He might be a millionaire, but he was in no way a playboy who didn’t work for his money. “This is the stuff of a fairy tale. Not like my life.”

  He grunted. “What’s so wrong with your life?”

  Oh, where did she start? Dare she even tell him things about her?

  Personal things about her life? Could she? Should she?

  Why not? She really didn’t have much to lose. Maybe it would make him feel sorry for her and let her go. A long shot, maybe, but she was willing to try anything. “My mother was an alcoholic. Lousy mother. Left me and my father to fend for ourselves. She embarrassed me all the time. I never knew what I’d come home from school to find. She tried to set our house on fire a couple of times. Once when I was inside.”

  “That’s rough.”

  She nodded and rested her head against the wall. She didn’t really like revisiting painful memories, but if it helped build a bond between her and this man . . .

  “Yeah. She eventually died from cirrhosis of the liver, but not before she put all of us through the testing procedures. I think my dad has a lot of guilt for not being there all the time, but he had to work to pay the bills and put food on the table. I don’t blame him at all.”

  “Yeah. My dad wasn’t around at all when I was a kid, so you’re lucky there.”

  “My dad is really awesome. That’s the good part of my life. He’s always loved me and supported me. Maybe more than usual because of my mom.” Vincent had always been her rock. Never had she doubted her father’s love and devotion for her.

  “Sounds like your dad made up for the roughness of your mom.”

  “He did. Then I went to college.” Addy let out a long breath, surprising herself as she continued sharing, opening up about a subject that a year ago she couldn’t even tell the people she loved the most. Now she was telling a stranger very intimate details of her past, and it was okay.

  “I was attacked while in my sophomore year. I was stupid and went off campus with a guy I didn’t know, and it turned out very badly. I tried to do the right thing and report it, but . . . Well, I dropped out of college and came back home, but didn’t tell anybody the real reason why.” The pain of what had happened so many years ago still could scrape across her heart, but she realized it was the first time she’d actually thought of the ordeal as part of her past. Telling it didn’t bring it front and center this time.

  “That is rough.”

  “Yeah. Keeping it to myself didn’t help. Oh, I tried. I saw a therapist and eventually went back to college and got my degree, but I was always scared without even knowing it. Without even knowing why. Every little sound in the night put me in a panic.”

  Could she go for the reach? Why not? “That’s why I’m so scared now. I mean, I’m here against my will, tied up, and blindfolded. I don’t know you. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me.”

  She bit her lip, praying she hadn’t pushed too far.

  “I’m not going to hurt you like that. Gosh, no. Don’t you worry about that.” The concern in his voice told her many things.

  She could use that. “I thought I could trust the other guy too. I couldn’t. So you scare me.”

  “I promise you that I’m not like that.”

  “Yet I sit here in an abandoned warehouse, tied up, and in a blindfold. At least he just attacked me, but then let me go.”

  His breathing filled the room. She’d carried it too far. He was going to retaliate. Her pulse pounded.

  “I can’t prove to you I’m not gonna hurt you, but how about I untie your hands? At least you might feel better then. You’d have to promise not to remove your blindfold or try anything, though.”

  Her heart sped up. “Yes. Okay.” Progress!

  “Just for a little while, okay? Just so you can drink on your own. I have a candy bar you can eat, too, if you’re hungry.”

  “Yes, thank you. That would be very nice.” First the hands, then her feet. And once those were gone? She was going to run.

  Run like her life depended on it.

  Dimitri

  Beau stared at him as if he’d sprouted another head. “Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that your father somehow got his hands on a missing Van Gogh painting that’s estimated to be worth fifty million dollars and planned to sell it to Edmond Jansen for Jansen to hold a black market auction to sell it, only to have it stolen from his safe inside a vault?”

  Dimitri nodded.

  Beau chuckled and shook his head. “Guess the universe told your dad in no uncertain terms: no.”

  In spite of everything, Dimitri smiled. There were many things he didn’t appreciate about Detective Beauregard Savoie, but his sense of humor wasn’t on that list. He could understand why he and Adelaide were such good friends.

  Friends . . . That’s all he hoped they were. A lump formed in the back of his throat. “I guess that would be accurate.” And explained why his father had acted the way he did.

  Beau pulled out his phone. “Let me call my partner and update him.”

  Dimitri nodded and pulled out his own phone. No missed calls. He tried Lissette’s cell again. Three rings, then to voice mail. He tried her home number again, just on the off chance she’d gone home and her phone was somewhere else. No answer.

  What was she up to? That she wasn’t answering made him extremely nervous. Surely she didn’t expect him not to find out what she’d done.

  “We’re sending a
unit back to Larder’s to go through everything, this time specifically searching for the painting. Marcel pulled up a picture of the stolen painting online and will get it to the unit.”

  Dimitri nodded. “What about Adelaide?”

  “If her phone is off, I can’t ping her GPS to locate her.”

  How could this be? Were they just supposed to sit around and wait? Dimitri didn’t think he could take it.

  “However, her car is equipped with an online service that can give us the location.”

  Relief flooded Dimitri’s chest. “How long will it take you to get a warrant to do that?” Hopefully not long.

  Beau smiled. “Getting a warrant could take several hours, but I don’t need a warrant.” He waved his phone, then made a call. “Vincent? Hey, it’s Beau again. Sorry to bother you.”

  Dimitri ignored the jealousy that Beau was so easily and longterm embedded in Adelaide’s life. Right now, all that mattered was finding her.

  “I don’t want you to worry, but we think Addy might be in a bit of a jam. No, no, we don’t know for sure. She’s just not where she should be and her phone is turned off.”

  If only he knew what Lissette was thinking. That she could be involved in Adelaide missing was almost unbelievable. Almost, but the facts didn’t lie.

  “No, I don’t think that’s necessary yet. We know she left in her car. Addy had told me years ago that you had her password for her OnStar. Could you get that information for me so I can call them and have them locate her car for me?”

  Dimitri opened the desk’s drawers. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but maybe there was something here that might give him an idea of what Lissette was up to.

  “Thanks, Vincent. I’ll call you as soon as I know something. Yes. Yes. I will.”

  Dimitri slammed the top drawer shut. There was nothing besides cardstock and rubber bands in there.

  “Yes, this is Detective Beau Savoie with the New Orleans Police Department. I need to get a vehicle’s location, please. I have the account number and the password.”

  Dimitri shut the second drawer. Only hotel paperwork in there. Beau rattled off the account number and password, then waited. Nothing in the drawers. What was Lissette’s end game? What had she done? Getting Adelaide out under the premise of meeting Claude . . . why? Did she want to talk to Adelaide? There’d be a much easier way to have a conversation than this. There had to be more.

  The possibilities of whatever that more was were endless, and many of them sent cold chills down Dimitri’s spine. He wasn’t one to just sit around. He had to be able to do something. At least Beau was doing something.

  Dimitri refused to let his own envy make him do something foolish. Sadly, he had a feeling that Lissette had let her jealousy make some bad choices.

  “On Basin Street? Got it. Thank you.” Beau slipped his phone into his pocket. “OnStar was able to ping the location and found her car. I know that part of town. It’s no place I want Addy to be.”

  Dimitri understood all too well. He knew the Basin City Projects area was a low-income neighborhood. Like eighty-five percent lower. Definitely not a place Adelaide should be. “What’s the address?”

  Beau rattled it off. “I don’t know what’s there, but Addy shouldn’t be.”

  Dimitri felt the blood rush from his face. “I do. I know that address.”

  “What?”

  Dimitri slowly nodded. “That’s real close to one of my father’s old properties. He bought some of the old warehouses after Hurricane Katrina, intending to resell them when the property values went up. They never did. Instead they took an even stronger nose dive. He couldn’t dump them all.”

  “So what’s there now?”

  Dimitri stood, every muscle in his body tensed to capacity. “The warehouses are abandoned. Nothing’s been there since Katrina hit in 2005. Probably wasn’t much there before then, to be honest.”

  Beau whipped out his phone as he rushed from the office. “Marcel, I need you to meet me at an abandoned warehouse.” He rattled off the address on Basin Street as he left the hallway and crossed the lobby. “Send backup and have emergency services on standby. It’s Addy.” He turned and locked stares with Dimitri as he continued. “We have reason to believe she’s possibly been abducted and is being held at that address.”

  Dimitri clenched his fists and watched Beau automatically reach back and touch the handgun at his side. “Yep. Meet you there.” He put the phone in his pocket and started across the lobby toward the front door.

  “Hey, I’m coming with you.” Dimitri fell into step alongside the policeman.

  “No, you aren’t. This is now a police matter.”

  “You don’t know that to be certain. We don’t know. She could be sitting there with Lissette just talking.” He didn’t believe that, of course, but it was possible.

  Unlikely.

  Beau turned to stare at him. They held eye contact for a moment.

  “Please. I need to be there to see that she’s okay.” Dimitri had never pleaded before, but this was Adelaide. “If you leave me here, I’ll just get in my car and follow. I’m technically one of the property owners. I can authorize you to enter.”

  “Fine. Come on.”

  Dimitri followed, sliding into the passenger’s seat as soon as Beau unlocked it. He fastened his seatbelt as the detective slammed the car into drive and gunned off.

  His heart raced as fast as Beau drove.

  Please, Lord, let her be okay. Let us be making more out of this than there is. I pray that You keep her safe. Amen.

  His cell phone vibrated, and he leaned to dig it out of his back pocket.

  Beau took a hard left, nearly slamming Dimitri into the window. “Sorry.” But he didn’t sound too sorry.

  The phone vibrated again. He glanced at the display, and his chest constricted. He slid to answer the call, but lightly punched the detective’s arm and spoke loudly. “Hi, Lissette. Where are you? I’ve been trying to call you.”

  Beau motioned to put the call on speaker, so he did.

  Lissette’s voice filled the car’s cabin. “I see. Look, I had some things to do. I know you’re mad, but so am I. That you didn’t stand up for me really hurt my feelings. I thought we were on the same page.”

  “We are. We are.” Beau made a motion to keep talking. Dimitri nodded his understanding. “I’m sorry you felt like I wasn’t taking your side. That’s not the case. I’ve already put in another call to the lawyer’s office, demanding that they figure out something we can do.”

  “I don’t know, Dimitri. I looked up the forced-heirship laws. If I turn twenty-four and Claude’s still around, well, then I get nothing.”

  “I told you before, even if something like that were to happen, I wouldn’t let it. I’d give half of whatever I got to you.”

  “But there’s nothing we can draw up that would legally bind you to that.”

  Dimitri didn’t like the sound of her voice, nor the way she was answering. “So what do you suggest we do?”

  “Nothing. I think Claude will mess up, do something bad or something. If he does and goes to jail, say, then his estate would fall under the forced-heirship laws and everything would be divided between you, as his named heir, and me as his forced heir.”

  “Lissette, what are you up to?”

  “Don’t worry. Just wait, brother. Just you wait.” The phone went dead in his hand.

  25

  Addy

  “Thank you.” Addy rubbed her wrists where the rope had been. It hadn’t been too tight, but any kind of restraint . . .

  “Just remember not to touch your blindfold.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Here’s some water for you.”

  She held her hands out and gripped the water bottle he put against her palms, then opened it herself and took a drink. Small victories, but she was grateful. Who knew? Maybe God was working for her and she didn’t know it yet. That’s what she could hope for.

  At least she’
d made progress with her captor. He didn’t seem so bad or scary now. Well, he was taking orders from Lissette. “So, tell me about yourself.”

  “What?”

  “I told you about my life. What about yours?”

  He was silent, but his breathing sounded a little heavier in the otherwise silent building. It was more than a little eerie, but Addy chose to not think about that.

  She focused on getting him to talk. Maybe he’d say something she could use to help herself. How, she didn’t know, but it was worth trying. “Hey, you don’t have to tell me, but what’s it going to hurt? We’re just two people in an old warehouse passing time.” She took another sip of water. When she bent her head, she could see a sliver over the blindfold from where she’d worked it loose earlier.

  He had a scraggly beard, but the scar running along the length of his right cheekbone drew the attention. Even though by the look of it the injury had happened years ago, its anger still vibrated as he spoke.

  He stared at the floor, his hands resting on his knees. “My dad ran off when I was little. I don’t remember him much at all.”

  “I’m sorry. I know how that must have hurt.” Addy did a quick check of herself and realized she really did feel sorry for the little boy whose father had abandoned him. She couldn’t imagine her life without her father.

  Even though he didn’t realize Addy could see him, he shrugged. “My mom worked a lot to make sure we had food. She wasn’t home a lot.”

  Addy took another sip of water.

  “I didn’t do so great in school. I never liked it much. I was never any good at it. I couldn’t play sports because I didn’t have a ride. We didn’t have money for the fees anyway. And I had to babysit my little brother.”

  Sadly, his story was a common one.

  “I dropped out of school and went to work, helping my mom with the bills. I have two brothers, one older and one younger. My older brother started hanging out with the wrong people and doing things we all knew were wrong. He didn’t use drugs or anything, but he made our lives miserable. One of his friends even hurt me once.” His finger went to the scar on his face. “My brother was sorry, but it didn’t stop. One day . . . I’m not real sure what the truth is on what really happened, but my brother was shot by the police and died.”