by Stacy Green
“He’s going to be pissed that you’re running around his turf going cowboy before the new division is launched.”
“I’ll deal with him. How’s Emma?”
The baby had a nasty summer cold, and from the rough sound of Dani’s voice, she’d caught it as well.
“Sleeping, finally.” Dani coughed. “We’re both exhausted. Did you even bring an overnight bag and change of clothes?”
“Shit.” Add shopping to his list.
“I’m pretty sure I suggested that before you left. Her being booked under a different identity made it pretty clear this wouldn’t be the open and shut deal you said it would.”
He didn’t want to fight. They’d been arguing too much since Cage took the new position. He hadn’t sought it out. The Louisiana Bureau of Investigation had come to him on a recommendation from his superior. Dani initially supported him, saying Ironwood was too much for her now with the baby to care for. The restoration was taking longer than they’d planned, and Dani couldn’t be as hands-on as she wanted.
He changed the subject. “Did you hear from the committee?”
“We got the grant. The historic society will use the money to finish the restorations and then open it up for tourists.”
“It’s still ours, Dee. We can go back anytime, especially when the town’s not full of tourists.”
“I know.” Sadness layered her voice. She loved the old home as much as she loved her family. “Downsizing is the right thing. But moving out of town, to New Orleans … It’s just so much.”
Cage tried to keep the irritation out of his voice. “We talked about this. And I needed a change of scenery. There’s too many memories.”
His mother had succumbed to Alzheimer’s nearly a year ago. His father was too heartbroken to stay in the house Cage grew up in, so Dani and Cage had planned to move in while his father holed up in a retirement community outside of town. Then the LBI called.
“I worry about your dad.”
“He’s made friends. Jaymee and Nick can keep an eye on him. And it’s not like we won’t be back to visit. We’re not talking about the other side of the country.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s just all happened so quickly”.
“We close on the house in two weeks. We’re committed to this thing now.”
“Unless the LBI fires you for waltzing into the NOPD as an agent before you even start. Why can’t you just let the police handle this? She’s their responsibility now.”
“You know why.”
“How long are you going to blame yourself for being human?” Dani said.
He didn’t have the energy for the same old argument. “I have to go. I’ll call you later.”
6
“Walking would have been faster.” Cage fought the urge to start blaring his horn. Everything about the French Quarter was compact except for the traffic, which moved at snail speed.
“It’s hot as balls,” Annabeth said. “I still don’t see why we’re going to Gran’s house. She’s dead.”
“Lyric disappeared years before you did, and she was still alive when you were taken. That means she’s either important, or she’s involved. We need to search the house, and I’m hoping you’ll tell the whole story.”
“I have.”
“No, you’re not.”
She crossed her arms and huffed, turning to look out her window. “Did you really get that fat cop to drop the charges?”
“That was all Detective Bonin.” He hoped the patrol officer kept his mouth shut about Annabeth’s case.
“That hot, light-skinned woman?”
“That’s her.” He’d yet to tell Annabeth she wouldn’t be staying home tonight. Cage couldn’t risk letting her out of his sight. “Just promise you’ll stick with us. If I lose you, I’m out of a job.”
“Okay.” She ran her finger over the antique ring. “Thanks for giving this back.”
“Why’s it so important to you?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
Traffic inched forward. Someone in front of Cage blared their horn. A bicycle cart with two tourists holding giant fish bowls filled with a red liquid sliced around the cars. A group of college-aged kids tromped down the sidewalk, slurping from tall tubes filled with something green and frothy.
Historic Creole townhouses flashed by, the lower-level shops open for business. Above were the famous iron balconies and coveted French Quarter residences. Every building seemed to be built on top of the next structure, jammed together like an accordion. Here, the influence of the past overpowered the present.
“Do I have to go back to Mississippi?”
“I haven’t told your parents yet.”
“Couldn’t that get you in big shit trouble?”
He laughed. “Definitely, and I can’t put it off forever. As for going back, you’re a legal adult. No one can make you.”
“What are they like?”
“Who?”
“The Georges,” Annabeth said. “My parents, I guess.”
Sam George wasn’t a bad person, but he liked to call the shots and get his own way. The captain in charge had patiently listened to George every time he stormed in, demanding answers. He refused to accept the lack of evidence, despite numerous searches with multiple crime-scene technicians and volunteers. George’s denial had been understandable, and Cage’s captain allowed the man to vent countless times, often at any hour of the night. But the Adams County Sheriff had drawn the line when Sam George publicly accused the sheriff’s office of not taking his daughter’s disappearance seriously because Annabeth was a person of color.
Racism still dirtied the south, but the captain and her deputies had worked long hours—often off the clock—to bring Annabeth and Mickie home. The only role Annabeth’s skin played in their investigation was in her physical description in the state and national databases.
“They’re good people. She’s a teacher. He works for the county prosecutor.” And used his position every chance he got.
“Do I have any brothers or sisters?”
“No.”
“Did they think about having another kid? You know, as a replacement?”
Cage tried not to let his mouth drop open.
“Was that a bad question?” Annabeth watched him, almost childlike.
“An unusual one.”
She nodded. “Sorry. I do that sometimes, especially sexual stuff. My brain thing.”
“Is that what your neurologist said?” Bonin had left another message with the Tulane specialist. If he didn’t return her call soon, Cage would outsource.
Annabeth stuck out her tongue. “Dr. Douchey? He’s always got plenty to blab. Focal retrograde amnesia is the fancy name he sort of diagnosed me with. He says I’m lucky I didn’t lose my working memory.”
“What makes him a douche?”
“He says I don’t want to remember—even if my brain is capable—so I don’t try.”
“You think that’s true?” He squinted to read the street sign. St. Peter. At this rate, they’d never get to the Gaudet house.
“I do try.” Her voice was sharp. “And Gran didn’t like him, either. She said the therapy was too stressful, and I didn’t have to go.”
He left that one alone. “Charlotte was a Creole Voodoo priestess, right?”
Annabeth’s face brightened, and she twisted in her seat to face him. “She could trace her ancestors back to Haiti. They came during the Revolution. Voodoo is in her blood. She said it was in mine too. But so much for that.”
She scrubbed at the tattoo. “This was her idea. The scar was ugly and a reminder of what happened. Now I feel stupid.”
Cage pressed on before her mood shifted again. “Is there some sort of protection spell on the ring?”
She looked at him, wide-eyed. “What do you know about protection spells?”
“Nothing. But I spoke with someone who does. She knows Miss Alexandrine too.”
“Everyone knows Miss Alexandrine,” she said. “She
’ll fix things when she comes for me.”
“How does the ring protect you?” He hadn’t meant to sound sarcastic, but the clogged street and honking horns were getting to him.
Annabeth covered the scar with her opposite hand and turned away. “You don’t believe in it, so don’t worry about it. Turn right here.” Annabeth didn’t speak again except to give him directions.
He pulled in the alley next to a faded brick townhouse. A rusting iron fence protected a small patch of untended flowers.
“The house is over one hundred years old, and it shows. With my medical bills, Gran never had much money for repairs.” Annabeth looked at Cage. “Why do you think she did that when she knew I wasn’t Lyric?”
“My guess is you were the next best thing and all she had.”
They stepped into the sweltering heat, and Cage tried to get his bearings. The high peak of St. Louis Cathedral was visible to his right, and he knew Jackson Square and the famed Café Du Monde were just a few blocks away.
Annabeth lingered in the alley. “It was bad enough living here after she died, but now …”
A black car squeezed in behind Cage’s, and Bonin stepped out to join them. She offered her hand. “We haven’t been formally introduced. Detective Myra Bonin. I’m working with Agent Foster.”
“You’re wearing the wrong shade of lipstick for your skin.” Annabeth turned and headed toward the front door.
“Nice kid,” Bonin said.
“You talked to the neighbors?”
Bonin shaded her eyes to look up at him. “Lyric and Charlotte fought all the time over Lyric’s hard partying and friends. Charlotte couldn’t control her. Most people believed she ran away. They steered clear when she came back home, mostly because Charlotte ran them off.”
Annabeth had left the front door open, and they stepped into a small entryway. Thank God Annabeth had left the air on.
“Charlotte started her own investigation,” Bonin said in a low voice. “She tracked down and hounded Lyric’s friends, blamed them for not protecting her, and got pissed off when none of them knew anything. After a couple of years, everyone’s empathy was gone. No one wanted to deal with her. I’m sure she cursed every one of them.”
“That answers the question about why everyone accepted Annabeth was the missing granddaughter. Easier to believe than deal with her wrath.”
“This is New Orleans. Everyone in the neighborhood knew Charlotte as a Voodoo priestess. They wouldn’t question her word.”
Claustrophobia rushed through him. The cottage may be historical, but like everything else in the Quarter, it felt compressed and secretive. Annabeth sat on the floor in the front room, holding a framed photo with a vacant expression on her face.
The picture had faded, but the smiling girl in the pretty yellow shirt was missing two front teeth and clinging to a middle-aged, light-skinned woman with a beautiful smile. “She said this was me when I was six.”
Annabeth traced the picture with her fingertips. “She told me all about my growing up. Her stories were so vivid I sometimes thought I might actually remember it.”
“Did she mention that she and you—Lyric—weren’t getting along before she disappeared?” Cage asked.
“That’s not true. They were best friends.” Annabeth said this fervently, an edge in her voice. It didn’t surprise him that Charlotte had made up her own narrative. But it seriously hindered their chances of figuring out what happened to Lyric.
“Have you gone through Charlotte’s things yet?” Bonin asked.
“I couldn’t deal with it.”
“Will you give us permission to search the house?” Cage asked.
“Whatever.” She sat down in the threadbare recliner and put her head in her hands.
Cage hesitated as Bonin headed for the next room. “I know you’re hurt by Charlotte’s dishonesty. But I don’t think she knew who you were. She didn’t know Annabeth was missing or that her fingerprints and dental records were on file. She just knew you were lost, and she needed her granddaughter.”
“You don’t have to make me feel better.”
“I’m just giving you my opinion. You can take it or leave it.”
Annabeth traced her fingers over the picture. “She made me feel loved.”
“That’s more than a lot of people can say.”
“You should check her closet first. That was the only place off limits to me. It’s the back bedroom on the left.” She closed her eyes and tucked her knees under her chin. “There’s a box of pictures and keepsakes in my room. They’re supposed to be Lyric’s. I’ll get them and meet you upstairs.”
Charlotte Gaudet’s records of her search for Lyric consisted of a thick, spiral-bound notebook and roughly nine hundred sticky notes. She had considered every person in her granddaughter’s life a potential suspect. Countless sticky notes were devoted to specific people in Lyric’s inner circle. Some had alibis. Others had angered Charlotte with their lack of information, and she’d labeled them worthless.
“This is a mess.” Bonin gathered up the unattached sticky notes. “I can’t read half of them.”
A wrinkled piece of brown paper slipped from the notebook. Cut in a perfect square, one side bore the Rouses Grocery logo. The other side contained a long paragraph written in another language with a fine-point blue marker. Candle wax had splattered the paper, along with some other residue that smelled like Dani’s herb garden. Rosemary? Thyme?
Bonin snatched it off the floor and donned a pair of tortoise-shell reading glasses. “This is a spell. It’s in Creole. ‘Sean Andrews, I command you cast away all lies and speak only the truth to me. In the name of the Father, the son, and the Holy Ghost, I compel you. Tell me the truth!’”
“A spell?” Cage was already sick of the word.
Bonin glared at him over the top of her glasses. “Yes, a spell. She used blue ink because that’s the color of truth. Looks like she used an orange candle and specific herbs that would give her power over him. That’s why she wrote her name over his. But the targeted person has to touch the paper in order for a spell like this to work. Their skin needs to come into contact with the herb oil on the paper.”
Cage skimmed back through notebook pages until he found the list of names. “Sean Andrews’s name isn’t crossed off. Guess her spell didn’t work.”
“Or she wasn’t satisfied with his answers—if she even gave it to him,” Bonin said. “It took four months for the original investigators to find him after Katrina. He was evacuated to Ohio, and he’d only just arrived when the original detective found him.”
“If I didn’t know you were a rational, decorated investigator,” Cage said, “I might think you believed these spells work.”
“People only need to believe to make the spell work. Growing up here around Voodoo and conjure, you see enough to believe.” Bonin smiled. “Spend enough time in New Orleans, and you might too. This city does that to a person, but that’s something you have to experience to really understand.”
Cage turned the page and his heart stopped.
Blue pickup.
A door slammed shut downstairs.
Cage barreled down the stairs as Bonin ran to the window. “She’s cutting through the back alley.”
7
I race toward the sound of squealing trumpets and bumping tubas. A second line parade is strutting down Decatur Street, and I slip into the throng of marchers.
Cage is going to be mad, but I need time to think without his constant questions. I’m not really doing anything wrong—Bonin got the charges dropped.
I can’t get my breath. What if Cage catches me?
A buzzing sound tears through my head, drowning out the band. My heart keeps racing. Someone brushes my arm, and I twist around in panic. Has he found me?
“Sorry, girl!” One of the costumed dancers bopping between the second line and the brass band tips his hat and smiles.
Running, running, running. Don’t look back. Pain in my shins. I need my
track shoes. Stupid—you’re naked.
“Shit.” My knees hit the pavement first, and the dancer grabs my arm before I face-plant. People prance on, but the dancer helps me stand.
“You can’t walk with your eyes closed ’round here,” he says. “Especially in the second line. You gonna need to clean that.”
Blood trickles from my knee. The dancer’s too close. I back away, pain shooting through my arms.
“You all right?” Most of the second line’s moved on, and I’m exposed.
“I have to get out of here.” I turn and run, dodging the stragglers. My heart’s pounding too fast.
The band cuts left, but I sprint ahead until I burst into the French Market. This time of day, with the summer heat on full blast, the market’s not too crowded with shoppers. But there’s about a million people trying to sell their crap. A couple of ladies selling overpriced silver jewelry stare at me.
I find the ladies’ room, and it’s about fifty degrees hotter. I splash water on my face and then take a long drink from the faucet. I wet a paper towel and clean my knee the best I can. My head feels heavy. I glare at my smushed-face reflection. The cracks in the mirror make my face even more distorted.
“You’re ugly. And it’s your fault.”
I plop down on one of the benches near the restrooms. My shirt’s drenched with sweat and water, and the wet paper towel is stuck to my bleeding knee.
Cage thinks I can tell him something about the real Lyric that will magically lead him to the kidnapper, but I got nothing. Gran always said “we” were best friends, but that was another lie. All the other so-called stories and memories she told me probably were too.
I told Cage the truth. I have been dreaming about the girl—the real Lyric—telling me to run. But other memories seeped through, and they won’t stop.
This is your fault. Why? Why?
I didn’t know who screamed that until today. Now I can’t get her out of my mind, and I don’t know what any of it means. The only person who might be able to help me is Miss Alexandrine, and her house is the first place Bonin will look.
