by Cassie Miles
“Subtle.”
Alyssa Bailey, the former accountant from Chicago, had transformed into a femme fatale. Those huge sunglasses hid her green eyes. The bright color of her dress was a distraction. Any witness describing her would focus on the long shiny blond hair. She had a natural talent for disappearing in plain sight. Rafe had years of undercover experience, and he approved of her disguise.
Chapter Eight
In moments, they were out the door and on their way, riding in the black SUV that had been parked in the detached garage behind the house. Scrunched down in the passenger seat, Alyssa felt twitchy and nervous. Not scared—not yet, anyway. The misty morning sunlight spread a sultry glow over the city streets near the French Quarter. Last night’s parade had left behind debris. Mingled with the trash and discarded flowers were glittery threads of fine memories. New Orleans was like a woman who’d spent the night in the throes of passion and was well pleased with herself on the morning after.
Alyssa envied the sensual indolence of NOLA. In comparison, she seldom allowed herself to relax, seldom let her guard down. When her life whirled off balance, she hated the disorientation from scary memories in the past and the threats of the future.
Behind her giant sunglasses, her brow furrowed. She had to remember and to plan and, above all, to trust no one—not even Rafe, even though he seemed to be helping her. In his blue suit and crisp white shirt, he looked as sharp and well groomed as any other gentleman on a Sunday morning. But not harmless. His eyes flicked from left to right and back again, scanning for danger as he drove. She hadn’t missed the fact that he wore a shoulder holster under his jacket.
With the sun visor pulled down, she took off her glasses and studied her reflection in the mirror. More blush, more lipstick. When she first started playing with makeup, she’d been amazed by how simple it was to change her appearance with a wig, eyeliner and a push-up bra. The bra had proved especially effective. Most men—and some women—were so impressed with her bosom that they barely noticed her face.
When she unpacked last night, she’d had a feeling that a disguise might be necessary and had taken this pink outfit that she’d named Baby Doll from her backpack. She’d shaken out the long blond curls and hung up the dress. Though she would have preferred platform heels to complete Baby Doll, her backpack was only big enough for pink ballet flats, which was probably just as well. She wanted to be appropriate for church.
Glancing over at Rafe, she asked, “Am I dressed okay?”
“You look fine.”
That rote response was the kind of thing men said to stay out of arguments. It didn’t tell her much. “Where I grew up in Savannah, our church was nondenominational Christian with a super-dramatic pastor, a lot of clapping and singing. Mom was a soloist in the choir, and she was really good. When she sang ‘Ave Maria,’ the congregation wept.”
“Are you sure you’re her child?” He teased, “I ask because I heard your singing voice at the parade. You almost made me cry, but not in a good way.”
“I didn’t inherit her talent.” And she didn’t appreciate the reminder. “Is the Hope and Peace Church the kind of place I’ll feel comfortable in a wig and sunglasses?”
“Don’t know, cher. I’ve never been there.”
The location and the anonymous phone call worried her. “Why do you suppose the mystery caller wants to meet at a church?”
He shrugged. “The message was left on your phone. And so, I suspect, the location is meant to have some kind of significance for you. When you think of church, what comes to mind?”
She closed her eyelids and concentrated. She hadn’t been a regular churchgoer in years, and her memories were mostly of Bible stories and games they played in Sunday school. “It’s not a bad place to meet. I don’t expect any of the bad guys to attack me in a church.”
“Are you afraid?” he asked.
Not something she wanted to admit. Alyssa opened her eyes and focused on him. “Did you go to church when you were growing up?”
“My family is Catholic. Nana Lucille took me to St. Louis Cathedral.”
An incredible building with triple steeples, sky-high vaulted ceilings, ornate carvings and statuary, St. Louis was a symbol of culture in Louisiana, one of the oldest cathedrals in the country. She was reminded that, unlike her, he came from a traditional family with deep roots. Maybe he’d grown up in a mansion with pillars that looked like Tara. “Do you still have family in town?”
“Not anymore.”
She sensed there might be an interesting story about the Fournier clan, but she didn’t want to hear too much about Rafe or get too close. He had charm, an enticing grin and silver-gray eyes that sparkled and flashed. But she didn’t dare trust him. Not until she understood what he was really after. Not until he shared the identity of his mysterious client.
Headed toward the Ninth Ward, he drove on mostly deserted streets toward the bridge across the Mississippi and the canal. “I want to hear more about you, cher. You never finished your story about why you’re in WitSec.”
She’d been hoping to avoid reliving the actual murder. She could have gone on and on about Mr. Horowitz and how much she’d liked working for him. “Where did I stop talking?”
“You had explained your job.”
“Right,” she said. “By the time I graduated from high school, I decided that I wanted to be an accountant, a CPA, which meant I needed to get a degree. Mr. Horowitz agreed to pay for my college if I promised to continue working for him for four more years after college.”
“A fair offer.”
She agreed. “He’s a really good person. I guess, maybe, I suspected that he was a fence. But is that so terrible? It’s not that different from an auction?”
“But it is,” he said. “A fence usually handles stolen goods.”
“Don’t patronize me.” An irritated sigh puffed through her lips. “What I’m trying to say is that a lot of the jewelry that gets sold in a nasty divorce might as well be stolen. The same goes for expensive works of art used to pay gambling debts.”
“Possession is assigned by law.”
And she believed in the law. “You’re right, but I hate to think of Mr. Horowitz doing anything illegal. It made me furious when the FBI agents questioned me and kept insisting that he committed fraud and laundered money. According to them, the fact that he’d disappeared after the murders was proof that he’d ripped off his clients.”
“Did they have other evidence?” Rafe asked.
“Nothing but vague accusations.” She hated their lies and how those suggestions implicated her. “Mr. Horowitz was kind and generous. I saw him give two thousand dollars to a widow who had to pawn her husband’s Purple Heart. Later in the day, he arranged for the medal to be returned to her.”
“It’s possible to be a decent human being and a criminal at the same time.”
“Is it?”
“I should know,” he said. “My ancestors were pirates.”
“Those guys in the FBI are so damned self-righteous. Again and again, they asked if I might have made an accounting mistake. Of course I might have. It’s called human error. I didn’t always balance to the penny. But they were talking about a ridiculous sum—seven million, six hundred thousand dollars.”
He stomped the brake, whipped to the side of the road, tore off his Ray-Bans and glared at her. “Repeat.”
She did so and added, “I never should have told you.”
“Au contraire.” His unshaven jaw clenched. “That money is a powerful motive. It gives over seven and a half million reasons why those guys are after you and why they need to take you alive. They think you know where the money is.”
“They’re wrong.”
“They might also be after your boss. Do you know where to find him?”
She lifted her chin to confront him. “Even if I did, I’d never tell.”
He rattled off a long string of French phrases, some of which she recognized as curse words. Then he put the SUV in gear and merged into traffic. “Do you remember the names of any of the agents who questioned you about the money?”
“There were a bunch of them in Chicago and in court. Be more specific.”
“What about the locals?” he asked. “Have you spoken to Agent Darren Jessop?”
“Tall and muscle-bound, blond hair and baby blue eyes,” she said with a nod. “I remember him. The guy looks like he works out three times a day. Do you think he’s after me? Working with Woodbridge?”
Instead of answering, Rafe stared straight ahead through the windshield as he drove onto the bridge. “Finish your story. I might as well know it all.”
The dark waters of the river stretched as far as she could see on either side. So many secrets roiled beneath the surface. She’d confided in Rafe. A mistake? It felt like he knew more than she did and therefore had an advantage. They needed to be on equal footing. “I told you about the money. Now it’s your turn. Why are you interested in Darren Jessop?”
“He knows my client, the man who hired me to protect you.” He looked toward her. “I had hoped to talk with Jessop today.”
“In person?”
“Or on the phone.” His shrug had a touch of French nonchalance. “Back to your story. You claim that your job was not dangerous. And yet, you witnessed a shooting.”
“Not in the pawnshop. My upstairs office was totally protected and private. I didn’t deal with the people who came to pawn their treasures, and I didn’t mess around with the merchandise. Other people did the stocking and made sure everything went where it was supposed to go.”
“What was the regular procedure?”
“Lots of stuff was kept at the store, especially if Mr. Horowitz thought the person who pawned it was coming back. There was a huge walk-in safe downstairs, but much of the valuable stuff was stored at a separate location, a warehouse in Bedford Park.”
In her mind’s eye, Alyssa saw the neighborhood, which wasn’t gritty but wasn’t gentrified like the Fulton River Warehouse District. The warehouse used by the pawnshop was a square two-story redbrick building with a two-bay loading dock. Unremarkable on the outside, but the inside had been broken down into smaller containers with clean, white walls. These enclosed spaces were humidity and temperature controlled to maintain the artworks in peak condition and to keep the wood on antique furniture from warping. Walking among these containers had reminded her of a labyrinth.
Memory crept over her, and she shuddered. The air-conditioning in the SUV felt icy cold. She didn’t want to talk about this. They exited the bridge, and Rafe drove east.
“Are we almost there?” she asked.
“We have enough time for you to finish your story,” he said. “Tell me what happened at the warehouse.”
“I hardly ever went there. In the five years I worked for Mr. Horowitz, I’d gone to the warehouse only ten or fifteen times by myself. On that day, I was checking balances in the ledgers against inventory sheets for an audit, and I discovered a discrepancy.”
“How large was this discrepancy?”
“At the time, I thought it was huge, close to twenty thousand dollars, and I figured it had to be a mistake—my mistake. I was juggling a heavy schedule in college while working full-time, and I was exhausted. I didn’t want to think I’d written the numbers wrong, and I hoped this was a simple matter of merchandise being misplaced in the warehouse. Mr. Horowitz was out of town, and I figured I could clean up the error before he came back.”
As the memory became clear, she went silent. If she’d stayed in her office behind her desk, none of this would have happened. But she’d been full of herself, thought she could fix the problem with a wave of her hand. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
“Tell me about the discrepancy,” he said.
“When I got to the warehouse, I should have known right away that something wasn’t right. Frankie Leone, the warehouse supervisor, wasn’t behind his desk. At the time, I was glad to slip inside unnoticed.”
“Did you say Leone—Frankie Leone?”
She nodded. “Do you know him?”
“Continue with your story,” he said. “You were glad to be unnoticed because you hoped to correct the discrepancy without anyone finding out.”
She wished he’d stop saying discrepancy. It was her choice of word, and she hated herself for trying to be aloof, trying to turn her twenty-thousand-dollar mistake into something less stupid. “I botched things up, okay? If I hadn’t gone to the warehouse, Ray McGill and his brother would have cleaned up the body and gotten away with murder. But I was there. I was a witness.”
“Not your fault, cher.”
“Then why do I feel guilty down to my bones?”
“This was a large warehouse, yes? What kind of outsize items were stored there?”
“Construction equipment, motorcycles and vintage cars,” she said. “Once I saw a speedboat.”
“Do you know Diamond Jim Davidoff?”
“Everybody knows Diamond Jim. I bought a used Honda from him.”
“And so? You are personally acquainted?”
She shook her head. “He’s much too important to work on the lot, but I shook his hand at a fund-raising event. When I called his office about buying a car, he passed the word to the car salesman that I was a special customer.”
“Continue your story, s’il vous plaît.”
“I wandered through the containers until I found the wall safe where furs, designer gowns and jewelry were stored along with small antiques like clocks and lamps. I used the combination, opened the door and went inside the ventilated, temperature-controlled safe. That’s when I heard gunshots.”
And her heart had stopped. She hadn’t wanted to believe that the popping noise was gunfire and went to the door of the safe to look out. “A man staggered toward me. His sweatshirt was covered with blood. When he got closer, I recognized him as Frankie Leone. Before he collapsed in my arms, I saw Ray McGill shoot him one more time. I grabbed Frankie and shut the door to the safe. It automatically locked.”
“And you were trapped inside with Frankie Leone, a man who was dying.”
She appreciated the way he mentioned the name of the dying man. The FBI agents and the marshals had always referred to him as the “victim.” Not acknowledging his given identity seemed to diminish his passing. “There was so much blood. I could tell that he was in pain. His eyes squeezed shut. He passed out.”
Every time she spoke of those helpless, painful, terrible moments, Alyssa felt one step closer to death. She’d called 911 on her cell phone and managed to get a tenuous connection before the phone went dead. Desperately, she’d needed to believe that help was on the way, but she didn’t know for sure. Frankie Leone lay unconscious in her arms. How to save him? She tried to remember first aid. Was she supposed to wake him? Or put pressure on the wound? She didn’t know CPR but had seen it done.
When she pushed up his sweatshirt, any thought of pushing on his chest was erased. Blood oozed from his wounds. He’d been shot several times. From outside the safe, she heard more gunshots, which had to be McGill and his pals trying to break inside. She wrapped Frankie in a full-length mink coat to make him comfortable.
“He never opened his eyes,” she said. “His breathing stilled, and then it stopped. The police took over an hour to arrest McGill and get the safe opened. By then, Frankie had started to turn cold.”
She’d held him tightly. Though Frankie was beyond help, she’d wanted to protect him. This might be the hundredth time she’d told this story, but it never got easier.
To her surprise, Rafe reached across the console, placed his hand on her forearm and gave a gentle squeeze. He didn’t say anything, but the physical contact soothed her. The warmth of his hand melted the chill that had enveloped
her body.
When she looked up at him, she could tell that he had experienced a similar trauma. They didn’t need words to communicate. Coming close to violent death had changed her forever, and she was certain that he felt the same way. If she hadn’t been strapped in by her seat belt, she would have climbed across the console and wrapped her arms around him, pressing herself against him so she could absorb his heat and his strength.
He pulled over to a curb and parked.
“Are we at the church?” she asked.
He nodded.
She’d been so distracted by the telling of her story that she hadn’t noticed their surroundings. The Ninth Ward had been devastated by Katrina when the levees broke, and parts of the area still looked like a war zone. Other streets—like this one—had been rebuilt and replanted. The road itself was in need of repair, but the homes on either side were tidy frame houses, some painted with bright colors. She noticed a one-story house with purple and yellow stripes. The church took up several lots on the corner and had a parking lot, which Rafe had chosen to ignore.
The rebuilt church had a simple design with a white steeple. Along both sides were tall, narrow windows with gray hurricane shutters. Behind the main building, she saw a patio with a barbecue and a garden. A long, low one-story structure, probably a recreation hall, stood on the other side of the patio. The church entrance was up two wide stairs and had an arched double door made of heart pine. Two women stood outside talking. One was black, the other white, and both wore sundresses.
Alyssa pulled herself together. “I’m ready.”
“If we encounter danger,” he said, “we leave. Immédiatement. Do you understand?”
“I get it. The bad guys might recognize me. I know my disguise is distracting, but I’m not invisible.”
He came around to the passenger side and opened the car door for her like a gentleman. She was equally ladylike in her Baby Doll pink with the rhinestone sunglasses. She took his arm as they strolled up the sidewalk. The clean concrete looked like it had been recently poured.
