What had happened to the boy who’d defended her all those years ago? The boy she’d thought about many times in the years since?
“Can I help you?” His voice startled her out of her thoughts.
“I’ve come to speak to Claude Rousseau.” Her voice sounded weak and shaky, its volume barely rising above the pounding of her pulse. “This is Claude Rousseau’s home, isn’t it?”
“It sure is.” The man pulled the door open wider and held out his hand. “The name is Garner.”
“Sabina King.” She placed her hand in his. His grip was steady, his hand neither smooth nor overly rough with calluses. And as his skin pressed against hers, a warm feeling spread up her arm and curled inside her, low in her belly. So like the feeling she’d gotten years ago when she was still a girl, when her gaze had first met his across a crowded midway.
He held her hand too long for a simple handshake, as if he was as reluctant as she to break the contact. And when he finally did release her, the lines around his eyes and mouth seemed to deepen with regret. “So why do you want to see my father?”
His words jarred her like a splash of icy water. “You are Claude Rousseau’s son?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
The words of Valonia’s angry curse echoed through her mind. Justice is blind. Love is death. The law is impotent. So the boy she’d never been able to chase from her imagination was Claude Rousseau’s son. The son of Valonia’s curse. Was the curse responsible for his injured aura, the lines of worry and pain in his face?
She bit the inside of her bottom lip and kept the question to herself. It wouldn’t do her any good to share it, that was certain. Even if Garner Rousseau believed her story about Valonia’s curse, telling him he was cursed by the mother of the man she was trying to save was a sure way to blow any chance she had to save Carlo. “I need to talk to Claude Rousseau. I’ll explain why I’ve come only to him.”
“Only to him, chère?” Garner’s lips pressed into a bitter line. “Then I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“Where can I find him?”
“The family mausoleum. My father died of cancer two weeks ago.”
Chapter Two
Color drained from Sabina King’s beautiful face, leaving a gray cast to her skin. The shoulders she’d thrown back in defiance when he’d asked if she was from the carnival slumped in defeat. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
Garner reached out and grasped one of her arms, ready to catch her in case she pitched forward onto the porch floor. Her arm felt delicate under his touch, fragile. For a moment he was afraid it would break, the way her spirit had seemed to break at the news of his father’s death.
His father had always been good at breaking people’s spirits when he’d been alive. But never in a million years would Garner have thought the news of the old bastard’s death would affect someone this way. He would have been far less surprised had Sabina King jumped for joy. “Is there something I can help you with?”
She shook her head, her dangling earrings tinkling with the movement. “I don’t know. I’m…I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” Although she still seemed a bit disoriented, she seemed stronger, able to stand on her own now. Almost reluctantly, he released her arm. “Is there anything I can help you with? I’m trying to put his affairs in order.”
She paused for a moment, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. Finally she drew a deep breath. “I came to ask your father about a case he prosecuted ten years ago. My cousin was convicted of a murder he didn’t commit. He’s on death row. I was hoping your father could help.”
“Help?” Garner nearly choked. “Unless you want to make absolutely certain your cousin gets the needle, my father wasn’t the one to come to for help.”
Those delicious lips pursed. Obviously not what she wanted to hear. “I don’t know what to do. Your father was my last hope.”
“Your last hope for what?”
“To get the courts to listen to me. I have new evidence. And they say I have to go through proper channels, and Carlo has exhausted his appeals, and I can’t afford an attorney, and I don’t know what to do. If I go through proper channels, I’m afraid it’ll be too late. And then…” She stopped her rush of words, her breasts rising and falling under her loose dress. Her gold necklace jingled against the scooped neckline with each agitated breath.
Something had her upset, all right. Something his father had been part of. No surprise there. Claude Rousseau had a talent for upsetting people. Good, decent people, at any rate. And if Garner was any judge of character, he’d say Sabina King was a good, decent woman.
And a beautiful one, as well. Exotic. Colorful. So different from the monotonous gray his life had become. The monotonous gray he’d carefully cultivated to dull the pain.
He closed his eyes against her jade eyes and colorful clothing. He didn’t need this reminder of how exquisitely beautiful life could be—and how exquisitely painful. He liked his safe, gray life. He needed it.
But he couldn’t just stand by while his father made innocent people suffer from beyond the grave. He’d caused enough suffering while alive. Garner opened his eyes and met Sabina’s gaze again. If he could help her, he would. And when she left, he would retreat into his monotone world and stow his memories of her in a safe spot in the back of his mind. “Slow down and tell me what this is about.”
“A murder that happened ten years ago.” Her lips crooked into a cynical frown incongruous with the freshness of her face. “The Gypsy murder.”
Recognition clicked in his mind. A person couldn’t live within a hundred miles of Les Baux without hearing about the Gypsy carny who’d murdered the mayor’s wife. The case had headlined newspapers and fueled the town gossip machine for months.
“My cousin Carlo is innocent.”
“I’m sure he is.” He was sure of no such thing, but it seemed a kind thing to say. If he remembered correctly, the carny had been in trouble before the death of the mayor’s wife. Bar fights. Petty theft. The kind of activities that reinforced stereotypes that had followed Gypsies for centuries. But under the force of Sabina’s sincerity, his doubts as to her cousin’s character didn’t mean much. He wanted to believe her. He wanted her to be right about her cousin. He wanted her cousin to live up to the faith she obviously put in him.
“I have evidence. Evidence the police covered up.”
He shouldn’t ask. He should wish her well with her evidence, bid her goodbye and close the door. He looked into her eyes. “What kind of evidence?”
She opened the folder she’d been clutching and held it out for him to see. After she’d explained the significance of the fingerprint in the photo and how she’d come to have the photo in her possession, she raised her gaze to his face, searching his eyes for a response.
“Very interesting.”
“You believe me?”
“Why wouldn’t I? In Les Baux, police corruption is about as common as crawfish étouffée. But if I were you, I wouldn’t stop there. The gumbo and jambalaya can be found in the D.A.’s office.”
Her luscious lips quirked into a smile, despite her desperation. “Don’t tell me. You’re a chef.”
“No. Just a public defender who likes to eat. And I know what my father was capable of.” Garner felt the old familiar tightening in his gut at the thought of his father and what he did to clear cases and win himself another term in office. The evidence he manipulated. The innocent people he hurt. Innocent people Garner had spent his career protecting. Innocent people like the woman before him. And maybe even her cousin. “And let’s just say your cousin would have been an ideal scapegoat.”
A little crease formed between her eyebrows, as if she was mulling over his admission and formulating a plan. “You said you’re a public defender? That means you defend people who can’t pay, right?”
His breath hitched in his throat. He knew where her thoughts were leading. And he couldn’t go there. “I can’t take you
r cousin’s case. Although I passed the bar in Louisiana, too, I’m a public defender up in the St. Louis area. Not here. I only came back to Les Baux to clean out my father’s house and settle his affairs. I’ll be here just a couple of weeks.”
“But isn’t this part of your father’s affairs? He convinced a jury to convict my cousin for a murder he didn’t commit. Convinced them to give him the death penalty.”
His gut clenched. His father’s lack of ethics and habit of scapegoating people who couldn’t defend themselves was the reason Garner had become a public defender. The reason he’d devoted his life to looking out for the little guy.
“You could work on his case just while you’re here. Help me get a start. You wouldn’t have to do any leg-work. Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. We’ll work together. Please.”
Just what he needed. To work side by side with this beautiful, exotic woman. Days going over court transcripts. Late nights drafting requests for appeal. His groin tightened.
Damn. He was in trouble. Deep trouble. And standing here—close enough to smell her fragrance, close enough to reach out and touch her—was only digging him in more deeply.
“Maybe I can help another way. My father’s files are still in the attic. It’s a mess up there. But we can take a look and see what he has on the case.”
A small spark of hope ignited in her eyes, making them seem all the more electric, all the more dangerous. Dangerous because looking into her eyes made him want more. Made him feel alive.
“And I’ll take you to see Leon tomorrow morning.” The offer escaped his lips before he could bite it back.
She raised her eyebrows in question. “Who?”
“Leon Thibault. He was my father’s chief deputy. Now he’s the district attorney in this parish. If anyone knows what went on ten years ago, it’s Leon. Maybe we can pry some answers out of him.”
“Thank you.”
He forced himself to look away from her eyes, and swinging the door wide, he ushered her inside with a wave of his hand. “Don’t thank me yet. We haven’t found anything. And we might not.”
She stepped past him and into the foyer. “I’m thanking you for your kindness. I haven’t found much kindness lately. It’s a welcome gift.”
“I can’t imagine anyone being unkind to you.” Just looking at her made him want to do anything to help her. No matter what the cost to himself.
A sad smile flitted over her lips. “Unfortunately I don’t have to imagine. People are unkind to Gypsies as a matter of course, it seems.”
He nodded. “Yes, I remember.”
She crooked a slender brow in question.
“The night we first met. At the carnival. The Breton boys were being unkind, if I remember correctly.”
Her lips curved in another smile. But this wasn’t one of sadness. This one was intimate with shared memory. “You saved me from their pranks. That’s what I remember. You stood up for me.”
Garner’s breath seemed to catch in his throat. He had. He’d been scared out of his wits, but he hadn’t been able to walk away. Not when she was in trouble. “I couldn’t believe they backed down and didn’t just beat me to a pulp. I was so scared I must have been shaking for an hour afterward.”
“You didn’t seem scared. I remember thinking how incredibly brave you were.”
He chuckled. “Oh, I was scared, all right. The only time I was more scared was once when I dove into the bayou on a dare. Thought I was going to drown before the alligators even had a chance to get hold of me.”
Reaching out, she brushed his arm with her fingertips. “I guess I have even more reason to thank you, then.”
The warmth of her touch lapped at his defenses. He was crazy, looking into this case. Crazier than when he’d stood up to the Breton boys or dived into the bayou. Hell, being around her was more along the lines of diving into shark-infested ocean waters, no land in sight. But he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to be around her, wanted to be around the color and life she exuded. Color and life he could never possess, but that he drank in, anyway, like a thirsty man drinks saltwater, knowing it will only make things worse.
Much worse.
EVEN WITH THE AIR conditioner blasting, the courthouse was warm and sticky as Sabina and Garner sat in the hallway outside the district attorney’s office. She lifted her heavy hair off her neck with one hand. Damp tendrils framed her face and tickled her cheeks. At least she wasn’t wearing a business suit like the deputy district attorneys rushing back to court after lunch recesses. How a person could wear something so confining in this bayou heat, she’d never understand.
She glanced at Garner sitting in the chair next to her. Dressed in a polo shirt and khakis, he seemed very cool, very relaxed. He’d helped her a lot already, staying up with her sorting through his father’s files until the wee hours of the morning. Picking her up before noon at the carnival to drive her to lunch at the Bayou Vue Caféin Houma and then to the district attorney’s office. And waiting with her now.
She knew that Garner was dealing with issues of his own, issues that likely convinced him to help her with Carlo’s case, issues to do with his father that she couldn’t even begin to understand. But something inside her wanted to believe that there was more to his helping her than his need to right his father’s wrongs. There was a bond between them. A bond far too strong to have been forged in the few hours they’d known each other. And she wanted to believe he felt that bond as strongly as she did.
She shook her head, trying to chase the ridiculous thoughts from her mind. She wasn’t a silly romantic girl anymore. Not as she’d been when she’d first laid eyes on Garner. For better or worse, she was now a woman. A woman who’d tasted the bitter flavor of failure, of rejection. A woman who didn’t want to taste it again.
And Garner Rousseau obviously lived with his own pain, his own agony. It was in his injured aura, raw as an open wound. Something had happened to Garner Rousseau, too. Something horrible. And she could only hope her aunt’s curse wasn’t the cause.
“It looks like some things never change,” Garner said, bringing Sabina out of her reverie.
She followed his gaze down the hallway. A gray-haired man in an impeccably fitted suit strode quickly away from them, as if he was making an escape out the back door. “Who is that?”
Garner’s lips drew into a line. “State Senator Richard Granville.”
Surprise darted through Sabina. “The husband of the woman my cousin Carlo was convicted of murdering?”
“The same. He was always tight with my father. Apparently he still has business with Leon.”
Sabina didn’t have time to digest what implications Richard Granville’s appearance might have on the district attorney’s willingness to hear her case on Carlo’s behalf before the receptionist’s lilting voice interrupted her thoughts. “Mr. Rousseau? Mr. Thibault will see you now.”
Garner unfolded his powerful body from the chair and held out a hand to Sabina. “Ready?”
She took his hand and stood, clutching a folder in one hand, the copy of the fingerprint photo tucked securely inside. This was it. Maybe her last chance of saving Carlo from the injection scheduled to take his life. She had to focus on that. Not on the way Garner’s touch made her feel. Not on silly notions of a mysterious bond they shared. This meeting was the important thing, and she couldn’t blow it.
She released his hand and smoothed her palm over the straight black skirt she’d dug from the back of her trailer’s closet this morning. She’d bought the skirt when her former husband, Joe, had insisted they shun everything Gypsy: the clothing, their names, and even the Gypsy purity code of marime. Right before he’d decided she was also one of those Gypsy things to be shunned. Raising her chin, she pushed past humiliation from her mind and faced the long hall to the district attorney’s office. “I’m ready.”
Garner nodded. “Let’s go.”
The district attorney was leaning a hip on his wide mahogany desk and flipping through a file
when they entered his office. A wide nose, round, deep-brown eyes and the ruddy complexion of a Cajun who enjoyed his food and drink, Leon Thibault was younger than Sabina had expected, though he was probably one of those men whose age was hard to discern. And although the aura surrounding him was muddy and indistinct, a seemingly genuine smile lifted the corners of his lips as his gaze landed on Garner. “Garner, my boy. How are you holding up?”
Garner crossed the room and took Leon’s offered hand. “I’m doing well, Leon. You know my father and I were never close.”
Leon shook his head. “I know. I don’t think Claude was very close to anyone, truth be told. I just worried that his death would be hard on you on top of everything else that has happened.”
Pain registered in Garner’s aura. Drawing a deep breath, he waved Leon’s words aside hastily, as if eager to rid the room of the utterance. “That’s all in the past, Leon. All behind me. What we’ve come to talk to you about today is very much part of the present.”
Thibault nodded and for the first time since they’d entered the room, his gaze landed on Sabina. “Though it started in the past, from the sound of your message this morning. You want to talk about the Gypsy murder, is that right?”
A damp shiver crept over Sabina’s skin, following the path of Leon Thibault’s gaze. She nodded. “I have new evidence. Evidence that shows that someone besides Carlo Mustov murdered Theresa Granville.”
Thibault’s bushy brows crooked toward his receding hairline. “Evidence? Of another murderer? Excuse my doubt, Miz King, isn’t it? But I worked on that case, and that Gypsy boy was guilty as sin.” He slurred the words as if to imply all Gypsies were guilty merely for being Gypsy.
She drew in a deep breath. She hated referring to non-Gypsies by the term gadje. Even though the term wasn’t inherently disrespectful, it seemed bitter. A reaction to the oppression and prejudice the Romany people—or Gypsies—faced over the centuries. But in some cases—bigots like Leon Thibault—she felt the term was justified. She raised her chin and looked him straight in the eye. “My cousin Carlo is innocent. And I have proof. Evidence the police withheld.”
Gypsy Magic Page 9
