“Such as?”
Josie shrugged, leading Akela to believe that she knew more than she was sharing—which didn’t make much sense. Josie had been questioned at length about the circumstances surrounding the murder. But had she revealed all pertinent information?
She took out her notepad and thumbed through notes she’d taken from Chevalier.
“You were familiar with Lafitte, am I right?”
Josie sighed. “Look, I’ve already told the cops everything.”
“Cops hoping to convict him of the crime.”
“You’re not?”
Now there was a question. “Let’s just say I’m trying to keep an open mind about that morning’s events.” She turned a couple more pages. “Was there any one person Mr. Lafitte used to bring here more frequently than others?”
When Josie didn’t answer right away, she knew there was.
“Who is it, Josie?”
“Look, I don’t want to be getting Claude into any more trouble than he’s already in.”
The hotel owner knew something that would hurt, not help Claude’s case. “What’s her name?”
Josie stared at her for a long moment then closed her eyes. “Mimi Culpepper.”
Akela wrote down the name.
“She stripped up at Chantal’s for a while, but I don’t think she’s doing that anymore, at least not for Chantal.”
“Do you know where I might find her now?”
“I’ve already given you more than I probably should have.”
Akela didn’t move.
“Ask Chantal. She’ll probably know.”
“And what do you know?”
“Nothing but gossip.”
Gossip was never good.
Josie asked, “Look, if he’s innocent, you’ll help prove that, won’t you?”
Akela had the feeling that Josie was asking for personal reasons.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I will.”
“Good. Then you’ll want to watch what comes out of Mimi’s mouth, then. She’s a mean one.”
Akela nodded, closed her pad, then stepped from the cramped hotel, feeling as if someone was sitting on her chest.
She really hadn’t expected any results when she’d decided to stop by the hotel earlier. But if she’d dared to hope, it would have been for evidence that would help prove Claude’s innocence, not his guilt.
She glanced both ways down the street then followed Josie’s directions to Chantal’s.
11
“YOUR DNA WAS ALL OVER the victim’s body.”
Claude frowned into his cell phone, not liking the sound of his attorney’s voice. “Of course it was. She and I had just spent the evening having sex. If my DNA wasn’t on her person, I’d be suspicious.”
“What I’m trying to tell you is that there was no trace evidence of foreign DNA.”
“Foreign as in from a source other than myself,” Claude clarified, more for himself than Reginald. Foreign as in the real killer.
“Correct.”
“You received my fax?”
His attorney sighed. “Yes, I received your fax. Unfortunately, your list of those you’d been in contact with that morning—from the baker to the dancers—doesn’t help us at all. Not with the estimated time of death as imprecise as it is. You could easily have committed the murder before you left.”
“Except that I didn’t kill her.”
Silence.
Claude tipped back the hat he was wearing. Every corner he turned he seemed to hit a dead end.
“Has anyone been over to talk to her roommate?”
He had learned that Claire Laraway had roomed with someone in an apartment over on Canal.
“I have one of the firm investigators on it now,” the attorney said.
“Maybe I should—”
“Maybe you should stay as far away from the person as possible. Have you gotten a look at today’s papers?”
Claude had a handful of the newspapers in question laid across the outside café table in front of him. If he hadn’t made the front page, he was on the second page, photos of him obtained through public domain. The one he was looking at pictured him and Thierry at his brother’s wedding. His brother had been cut out and what looked like a high school photograph of Claire was superimposed where Thierry’s had been so it looked as if Claude was sneering at the teenager.
Not only was he a murderer, if you believed the papers, he was a child killer.
“Do me a favor and lie low,” his attorney said, “unless you’re ready to turn yourself over to the authorities.”
Claude’s fingers tightened on the small cell phone.
“I didn’t think so.”
Claude rang off shortly thereafter and absently scanned the news piece. Strange how they could slant any story to get the response they were looking for. He supposed the idea of a murderous Don Juan wandering the streets of the Quarter sold far more newspapers than the idea that someone had set him up.
His mind caught and held on the thought. Set him up. He hadn’t stopped to consider the situation from that angle before.
He asked the waiter for a pen, then used the margin of the top paper to make a list of people who might have it in for him. He stopped a few minutes later, then began drawing lines through those same names. While he had made his share of enemies over the years, he didn’t think he’d pissed any of them off enough that they would want to try to set him up for murder.
And that led him back to where he’d been before: Claire Laraway had been the target all along, not him.
He bunched the papers up, then threw them away in a trash bin. He didn’t care what his attorney said. He couldn’t sit there and wait around until the police caught up with him.
“SOME PEOPLE you can’t help protect, not if the one you’re protecting them from is themselves,” Chantal Gerard said.
The dim interior of the dancers’ club down the street from the hotel wasn’t that unlike the interior of dozens of other strip joints just like it, the difference being that this one was run by a woman, a former dancer herself, and that she was highly thought of, from what Akela could gather. Her dancers tended to stay there longer than anywhere else, and a high percentage of them actually moved on to better jobs, graduating from college and pursuing higher education. The instant she’d sought out the woman of note, she’d noticed the employees gather closer, as if prepared to protect their mother hen.
They had no cause for worry. Akela meant Chantal no harm.
“I’m not sure I’m following you,” she said, squinting at the other woman across the small, round table between them. In the background, the dull thump-thump of bass-heavy music sounded, and on a stage nearby, a woman half danced, half tried to follow their conversation.
“What’s to follow? Mimi came here looking for a job, wearing sunglasses to try to cover the black eye she’d gotten from her boyfriend. I gave her a job, but I couldn’t give her any pride.”
Back in the day, Chantal had probably been a looker. Blond, pretty and well-endowed, she still did justice to her tight, pink suit with sequined lapels. But time and probably atmosphere had taken their toll. Her skin hung a little slack. Her brown eyes weren’t bright. And her rumbling cough spoke of a long smoking habit.
“Mimi set her sights on Jean-Claude the moment she saw him in the audience her first night.”
“But you said she was involved with someone.”
“Mmm. I would have liked to believe otherwise, but then her boyfriend came in and watched her like a hawk from the corner. Bad for business, that one.”
“And did Claude become involved with Mimi Culpepper?”
Chantal smiled at her in a way Akela wasn’t sure she liked. “About as much as Jean-Claude becomes involved with any of the girls.”
Akela had to imagine she was included in that wide sweep, and that her involvement with Claude was just as meaningful.
“Of course, it didn’t stop him from throwing out Mimi’s boyfriend when he tried to pull her by
her hair from the stage one night.”
“Because they were dating?”
“Because the boyfriend was doing wrong.”
“A rebel with a cause.”
“Jean-Claude has always protected my girls. He has a great respect for women.”
Or great appetite, whichever worked.
“Do you think he did it?” another woman, wearing a tiny silky skirt and what was akin to a bikini top, asked from where she’d just served a customer a beer.
“Of course he didn’t do it,” Chantal said quickly.
“How can you be so sure?” Akela asked.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong. All men have it in them, you know, violence. But I don’t think Jean-Claude would be stupid enough to get caught doing it.”
Akela shivered, not sure she liked the answer and what it conveyed.
“Do you have a forwarding address for Mimi?”
Chantal sent the waitress to the back room. Moments later, she came out with a Rolodex card. “I always try to keep track of my dancers.”
Akela gave an inquiring look.
“In case they need help.”
A dancer-slash-strip-club-owner with a heart of gold.
Akela copied the information down from the card then handed it back to Chantal, thanking her for the contact and for her help.
“You know, we have amateur night here every Wednesday,” Chantal said, giving her open consideration. “The guys like fresh blood, you know, if you ever feel the desire.”
Akela stared at her. “Thanks, but no. There are others who need the help more than I do.”
“Oh, sometimes people don’t realize the kind of help they need, Agent Brooks.”
She wasn’t all that sure she wanted to know what the club owner meant by that as she gave the older dancer a business card and asked her to contact her should she remember something that might help in Lafitte’s case.
“You don’t think he did it, do you?”
Akela squinted at her through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “Pardon me?”
“Jean-Claude. You know he didn’t do it.”
“Just checking all angles,” she said.
Chantal gave her that knowing smile again. “Mmm. Just make sure you keep your wits about you, girl.”
Akela wasn’t sure she liked the cryptic reference. Was Chantal implying she was at risk? Or was there a deeper, more disturbing meaning to her warning?
She navigated the web of tables and customers, making her way toward the door that stood as a beacon of light at the end of the tunnel-like joint. She was blinking to adjust her eyesight when a figure stepped into view.
“Imagine running into you here, Brooks.”
Akela closed her notepad and stared at where Detective Alan Chevalier was looking at her closely.
“Detective.”
She moved to pass him.
“You know, if you come across anything that might be of interest in the Lafitte case you’re to report it to me.”
She thought about what both Josie and Chantal had said about Mimi Culpepper and the fact that she might hurt rather than help Claude’s case and decided to keep the information to herself.
Instead, she said, “You’re the first person on my list.”
She understood that the way things stood, she and Chevalier were now officially on different sides of the same case. Where she was now determined to prove Claude’s innocence, he was growing more determined to pound the final nail in his coffin.
She walked down the street, not looking back until she was sure Chevalier had gone into the strip joint.
She took out her cell phone and did some checking around on Mimi Culpepper. Still at the same address, utility records showed.
She climbed into her car, thinking she really should make another stop first.
CLAUDE WAS PACING his brother’s office, not sure he was liking the way Thierry was talking down to him. In fact, he was positive he couldn’t stand it.
“Goddamn it, Jean-Claude, what is it going to take for you to straighten up and fly right?”
Claude stopped in front of his desk. “I wasn’t aware I was flying wrong.”
“You’ve been accused of murder.”
“Wrongly.”
“So you’re saying all this is simply a matter of being at the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Story of your life, isn’t it, li’l bro?”
Claude didn’t know which pissed him off more: the way Thierry was looking at him with barely veiled contempt, or the way he seemed to indicate that everything Claude touched was quickly tarnished.
In that one moment it was hard to believe that at one time they’d been close, that the two brothers had been inseparably joined by blood and by creed. Then Thierry had gone to work for Brigette’s family, then had married into it, and everything had changed. Suddenly the world his brother had once lived in was no longer good enough, and that went for everything in that world, including his younger brother.
“I didn’t do it.”
“What does it matter? So long as the police say you did it, you did it in the court of public opinion.”
Claude felt as though he’d just taken one to the jaw. “There was a time not so long ago when my word would have made a world of difference to you.”
Thierry had at least the good sense to look abashed. “Yes, well, that time has long passed.”
“What is it that you dislike about me so, brother?” he asked. “That I refused your help? That it was important for me to make it on my own without your financial assistance?”
Thierry turned away, shoving his hands deep into his pants pocket.
“Or does one woman hold that much sway over one man.”
His brother narrowed familiar eyes on him. Eyes that Claude saw in the mirror every morning.
The Lafitte brothers had a lot in common physically. Oh, Thierry might be a couple of inches taller than him, while he was by far the more physical, but the color of their dark blond hair and green eyes was the same, their unusual features made slightly different by their chosen hairstyles, Claude’s longer, Thier’s shorter, neater. Their demeanors and choice of clothing were what distinguished them most, though. Even when at the office, Claude preferred jeans and T-shirts, while his brother, no matter what was on tap for the day, preferred designer suits, striped shirts and ties and shiny shoes.
Despite that they shared so much physically, Claude found he didn’t recognize the expression on his brother’s face anymore.
“You know, Thier, I’m half-surprised you didn’t call the police the minute you realized it was me outside your office door.”
His brother scratched the back of his neck, the motion more telling than either one of them wanted to admit. Once he’d become a murder suspect, it was all right if contact was kept through the telephone. But the instant Claude showed up in person, it was as if he was threatening a way of life his brother cherished more than anything.
“I won’t have you tainting my life with your problems,” he said, proving Claude’s theory.
“Life? What are you talking about? Your public life? The man you’re trying hard to build up as some sort of saint in the Garden community?” He snorted. “That’s not a life—that’s an illusion.”
“It’s a far sight better than what you’ve got going on.”
Claude leaned his hands on his brother’s polished desk. “Do you think if this had happened to you, that things would have gone down any differently? Do you believe for even an instant that you wouldn’t now be in the same sinking boat I’m in?”
Thierry shook his finger at him. “Don’t even try to paint me with the same brush.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Because it’s too ridiculous to contemplate—I would never be in your situation.”
“Why? Because you’re choosier about whom you bed and where you bed them?”
He was unprepared for the fist hi
s older brother sent flying in his direction. He managed to move out of the way at the last moment, but felt Thierry’s knuckles nick his chin nonetheless.
The buzzer on the desk sounded like a much-needed reminder of where they were. Namely, they were on the tenth floor of one of the city’s newer business buildings overlooking the Mississippi River, home base for Southern Cross, Inc., his brother’s wife’s family’s company.
“Mr. Lafitte, there’s an Agent Brooks here to see you.”
Akela.
Claude felt an immediate desire to prevent her from hearing whatever it was his brother might have to say about him, especially considering Thier had just tried to clock him.
His brother walked him to a secondary door that would lead him around the back way, well away from the lobby where Akela would be waiting.
“Just remember, I won’t have you messing up my life with your problems, Jean-Claude.” He practically shoved him through the door.
“Trust me, brother, messing up your life is not what I intend. I’m merely trying to save mine.”
12
AKELA’S FEET ACHED. Considering that she’d been on them more than off them all day, that wasn’t a surprise. She absently rubbed the arch of her right foot under the kitchen table at her parents’ house in the upscale twelve-block Garden District, close to the French Quarter yet worlds away. She sipped her herbal tea, the contents of the growing file in front of her beginning to blur.
It was nearly eight o’clock and the big house was starting its slow wind down. Akela could tell exactly what time it was by the sounds that she heard. By the voice on the news channel that came from her father’s library down the hall. By the maid, Gisella, moving around her quarters on the other side of the kitchen. By the running water upstairs as her mother began her nightly beauty regimen.
Well, usually her mother would have begun her hour-long regular routine. But Akela’s return a month ago had upset the delicate balance of the household. Rather than smearing cold cream on her face, her mother, Patsy Brooks, was now reading to Akela’s four-year-old daughter, Daisy, in the double canopy bed Patsy had had delivered the instant she’d learned her only daughter was finally coming home.
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