Dark Secrets: A Paranormal Romance Anthology

by Colleen Gleason

  It had only been two days, and she was already realizing that she was no transient. It wasn’t her personality. She needed her possessions, her life, surrounding her with familiarity and a sense of comfort, of sturdiness. But her life was all boxed up in a storage unit in Naples.

  When the phone rang, she dove for it, grateful for the distraction from her sleepiness. She was afraid if she sat down, she’d be out for the count, and then all possibility of actual REM that night would disappear.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Sara Michaels?”

  “Yes.” Wishing she had checked the number on the screen, Sara answered cautiously.

  “This is Robert Blackman with the Naples Daily News, and I wanted to speak to you about Dr. Marino’s acquittal.”

  Shit. Sara sighed. “No comment.”

  “Is it true you’ve moved to New Orleans?”

  “Who told you that?” she asked, shocked. It sent shivers up her spine to realize they were watching her, tracking her, in essence. Then in an attempt at recovery, hoping he would drop the issue, she added, “No, it’s not true.”

  “No? But I know you’ve sold your condo and your mother’s house and quit your job. So when Dr. Marino moves to the west coast, you’ll be going with him then?”

  A shudder of disgust rolled over Sara. “No.” She hung up, shaking. It wasn’t over. It had followed her.

  But she had known that all along. She could run, but she couldn’t hide.

  And the whole truth she had been trying so damn hard to accept and act on was that it was time to turn and face it.

  Conquer it.

  She picked up the phone with shaking fingers and dialed Gabriel.

  “Hi, it’s Sara.”

  Gabriel sounded surprised, but maybe, she hoped, pleasantly so. “Hi. How are you feeling?”

  “Much better.” Sort of. Sara took a deep breath. “Is the invitation to hit Bourbon Street still open? I think it could be fun after all.”

  If she had been worried about his reaction, he gave her a good one. He was definitely surprised. Definitely pleased. He answered without hesitation. “Of course it’s still open. And maybe we can grab some dinner first. The street doesn’t get really interesting until after ten.”

  “Great. I’ll be over in about an hour.” Just enough time to get ready. The idea of a drink on Bourbon Street suddenly held a hell of a lot of appeal.

  * * *

  October 9, 1849

  Interview with Mr. Thiroux, conducted by William Davidson

  Mr. Thiroux willingly agreed to questioning, and refused the right to contact his attorney. Interview was conducted in his suite on Royal Street, at the corner of Orleans. Mr. Thiroux expressed what appeared to me to be sincere remorse and regret over the death of Miss Donovan, and indicated he would be paying for her burial, as there is no family to take care of arrangements and expenses.

  When asked to explain what happened on the night in question, Mr. Thiroux gave this account:

  “I had several glasses of absinthe and smoked a small amount of opium. I fell asleep shortly after arriving at eight pm. When I awoke it was dark and I thought Anne was sleeping, since I could see she was on the bed, her arm lying by her side. I decided to sketch her and began to do so, after a few moments moving closer to see the expression on her face. I slipped in her blood on the floor, and glancing up, saw what had been done to her. She was obviously dead, horrifically so, so I went for Madame Conti. First though, I disgraced myself by vomiting on the floor, so shocked I was by the sight before me of what had been done to a woman I cared a great deal for.”

  If no one else entered the house, if there was no struggle or resistance from Miss Donovan, which witnesses verify, the sad conclusion I must draw is that Mr. Thiroux, under the influence of inebriants, entered into a violent rage and murdered his lover, with no premeditation, or memory of the incident. It is a horrific testament to the rage drink can bring out in a man, and Miss Donovan paid the ultimate price of liquor.

  * * *

  Chapter Five

  ARREST IMMINENT!

  October 10, 1849- The police in three days have gone from being prepared to dismiss the murder of Miss Donovan as unsolvable, to having Mr. John Thiroux virtually TRIED and CONVICTED of the crime even prior to his arrest. No attempts have been made to investigate alternative suspects, and official police reports read by this reporter indicate sights are firmly set on the prosecution of the artist, philanthropist, and quiet scholar.

  Temperance advocates, gather your arguments, as this case will prove to be a testing ground for the tolerance of the citizens of New Orleans to excessive drinking and pharmaceutical use. Choose your side and line up accordingly, as the impact on our local businesses, residences, and the very tenor of our city could be drastically altered by conclusions drawn regarding the crime of murder and its correlation to alcohol consumption.

  * * *

  “So just like that, they arrested John Thiroux?” Sara asked Gabriel, seated across the table from her at Brennan’s restaurant on Royal Street. “With no evidence?” She ran her finger around the rim of her wine glass and turned the facts around in her head. It was interesting to sit and talk and work through the case logically, detached, removed by more than a century from the grim realty. For the first time, she could see the appeal of what Gabriel did for a living. Playing Hercule Poirot, but with no one to let down if you couldn’t actually reach any conclusions. Much easier than thinking about her mom.

  The sudden change of tenor in the original Anne Donovan investigation struck her as odd. Was Thiroux’s arrest really media driven? The police were afraid of negative press? It seemed too broad of a leap to make so early in her reading and research, but there had been a clear shift in the four days from murder to arrest.

  “Well, there was evidence. He was in the room, he had blood on his hands. No one heard a struggle. No sign of any forced entry. Circumstantially, it would appear that John Thiroux was the logical suspect. As for motive, well, that’s dicier, but he certainly had the opportunity.” Gabriel spread a thick glob of butter on a piece of crusty French bread and bit it.

  He’d already had three equally burdened slices and Sara was eyeing the butter with longing. It wasn’t fair that Gabriel was tall and lean, yet he could eat half a stick of butter without batting an eye or seeming to gain a pound. If she ate that, she would sprout love handles spontaneously by the time the check for dinner arrived.

  “If you think about it, under the exact same circumstances today, they would definitely take the person present at the scene in for questioning. You have to admit, he looks guilty.” Gabriel bit the second half of the slice of bread, finishing it off.

  “But you don’t think he is, do you?” Otherwise she didn’t think he would be investigating and writing about the case.

  “I think it’s all oddly inconsistent. We have a man, with no history of violence, under the influence of opium, which is a passive drug, and intoxicated from absinthe, which is non-hallucinogenic.”

  “You think. You said at the time they thought absinthe was a hallucinogenic. And can you really know what it was he took that night?”

  “No, I guess not. We just have his words. And I’m sure quality of the product varied.” After sipping his water, Gabriel added, “But he stayed in the room. He sketched her. Why would he do that?”

  “Because he had no clue what he was doing, what he had just done, out of it on drugs. Or because he took a sick pleasure in it? So he wouldn’t get caught leaving the house with blood on him?” Sara shrugged. “I don’t know. Why do criminals do anything? Crimes are random and weird.” She glanced over at the restaurant’s courtyard, its lush trees swaying in the night breeze, the fountain lit with a soft spotlight. There were tables out there, but none were being used, and it looked lonely, hidden, secretive.

  “Not as random as you think. The reasons for murder are usually fairly simple. Greed. Rage. Curiosity. Greed is calculating, rage is messy, and curiosity ki
lls are staged. It’s the psychopath who curiosity–kills, and psychopaths all have two things in common–they feel no remorse and they don’t want to be caught.”

  “Was John Thiroux a psychopath?”

  Gabriel’s dark eyes stared steadily at her. “I don’t think in this case anyone at the time ever considered it could be a premeditated crime. They seemed to assume it was a crime of passion, and I would have to agree, given the frenzy of the kill. Mutilating the face is considered a personal crime by modern profilers. If he did it, he probably wasn’t a psychopath, because it would be odd for him to stay at the scene of the crime. Psychopaths don’t want to be caught, and you would think he would have planned an escape if he had intended to kill her. But the police and the prosecutor never approached the murder as intentional. The entire court case revolved around Thiroux’s culpability, his state of mind at the time of murder… was he conscious of his actions? Strong enough in his stupor to kill violently? The coroner thought only a person of great strength could have committed the crime. The prosecutor contended that in a drunken rage, anyone can wield a knife to that fatal affect.”

  Unfortunately, Sara figured the prosecutor probably had the right of it. Adrenalin and rage could allow almost anyone to kill when the victim was in a vulnerable position like Anne had been– in bed, possibly asleep already. “But if it wasn’t him, who was it? Could someone have come in and murdered her while he was just sitting there drugged out?” Sara had a hard time picturing that. It seemed like he would have heard something. Had a sense of danger. But then again, she knew what two sedatives at bedtime could do. Her house could have burned down around her some nights and she wouldn’t have known. That had been the point.

  “Someone she knew? A stranger? I don’t know. But I imagine it wasn’t all that hard for someone to come and go undetected. The neighbors were used to seeing various men in and out of the house. No one would have paid attention.”

  “But none of the women in the house said they saw anyone.”

  He gave her a rueful smile. “Didn’t most of them also claim to be occupied at the time?”

  Sara felt an inexplicable blush creep up her face, which irritated her. They were prostitutes, of course they had been having sex. That wasn’t news, nor was it anything to be embarrassed about, since it wasn’t like she was talking about sex in relation to herself. Yet for some reason, there was heat in her cheeks as Gabriel smiled at her. “Yes, I think all but two of them were supposed to be occupied with men.”

  “And people living in that area, in that house, in that hand-to-mouth, vicious lifestyle tend to keep their nose to the ground and mind their own business. They don’t want to be involved in anything that might negatively impact them. We see that today too. You can have a gang shooting with seventy-five witnesses and they’ll all claim they didn’t see a thing.”

  “I’m sure.” Sara shifted back to let the server set her salad down on the table in front of her. When he retreated she asked Gabriel, “So what is the ultimate question here?”

  “Did John Thiroux kill Anne Donovan. That’s the ultimate question. How intoxicated was he and could a man in that state of inebriation kill with that kind of fury? If he didn’t do it, who could have? If he did do it, how was it possible that he got away with it? And if forensic science had existed in the nineteenth century, could they have solved the crime? Or is the human factor of the jury always the deciding factor in a criminal case in court regardless of the forensic evidence?”

  “Can we really answer any of those?” The task seemed daunting. The records were sparse. The evidence for the most part unavailable to them. Sara considered herself a lab technician, not an investigator. She conducted serological and DNA analysis of unknown substances and evidentiary material from crime scenes and then wrote a report about it. Even though she was determining questions like whether a dried rust colored liquid was blood or not, and if blood, whether or not it was human, she wasn’t involved in actually connecting that information to the criminal investigation. Wasn’t sure she knew where to start.

  But Gabriel raised his water glass to her in a cocky toast. “We’re going to try.” Then he glanced over at her salad as she stabbed a cranberry and his mouth curved up. “The Degas salad, huh?”

  “It’s very good,” she said, not sure how to read the expression on his face. He looked like something had amused him, a private joke. “Have you ever had it?”

  Gabriel didn’t answer, his fork sitting unused next to his own chopped salad. “I haven’t been here in a long time.” He glanced around the restaurant. “It hasn’t changed much.”

  “It’s very nice.” It was. A quiet, elegant restaurant with well-trained staff. She had been surprised that it had been his choice for a spontaneous dinner, for some reason expecting him to suggest sandwiches or burgers. “I guess the salad is named for the artist Degas. Didn’t he live here for a while?”

  “For about a year. So he gets a salad named after him.”

  “Maybe it’s not named after him. Maybe it’s a coincidence.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  Sara swallowed her mouthful of lettuce and pecans and stared across the table, past the dancing candlelight in the votive, at Gabriel. He was an attractive man, his skin flawless, his cheekbones graceful, chin proud, hair unexplainably long, yet perfect for him. Overall it was a pleasant package of a man. Worth glancing twice at it, but nothing so extraordinary you should remember five minutes after walking past. Just another reasonably good-looking male. It seemed that should be the case. Until she met his gaze, and was reminded every time of how she couldn’t dismiss him, couldn’t push him from her thoughts. When she met those brown eyes, whether by intention or an accident, they arrested her. Just absolutely stopped her, drew her in, held her. And she could see depth there, sorrow, a silent, desperate plea.

  It had to be her. She was seeing what she wanted to see. Reflecting her own emotions onto him. Wanting to not be alone in her confusion, her grief, her search for a future that she could understand, embrace.

  “What do you believe in?” she asked.

  That sent his gaze skittering over her left shoulder. Then he picked up his fork. “I don’t know. I’ve forgotten.”

  Definite secrets there. A story. “Like you don’t hear music anymore?”

  “Yeah, something like that.” He stabbed his salad. “So how long have you been a forensic scientist?”

  Not very subtle, but she’d let him change the subject if he needed to. “Seven years. I got my degree eight years ago, but since I haven’t been working this year I guess I can’t call it being a forensic scientist for eight years.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up for taking some time off.”

  Easier said than done. “I can’t help it. It makes me feel useless.”

  He shrugged. “So be useless for awhile. Who cares? You’re entitled to be useless in your grief for a bit.”

  Sara was so shocked by his response that she actually let out a brief laugh. She had expected a pep talk, a variation of the same one she’d heard from friends repeatedly over the past year about how she needed to forge ahead, work through it. No one had ever given her permission to be useless before.

  “Who the hell said you had to spend every minute doing something meaningful? You can’t busy work your emotions away.”

  God, that was the truth. She had tried to do that for two months after her mother’s death, and had discovered that when she ignored her feelings, they just reared up and bit her in the ass when she was least expecting it. “You’re absolutely right.”

  Finishing her wine, she stared at him in wonderment. It was odd, surreal, weird, yet so completely right that she was sitting across from him, at that particular moment. And with one casual sentence, he had banished a year’s worth of guilt she had been carrying around. She had been through something brutal and debilitating, and while some people could brazen their way through, she couldn’t. And that was okay.

  “So you
’re a writer, a pianist, a photographer, and a philosopher. What other hidden talents do you have? Tell me about yourself.”

  Tell me your story, she really wanted to say. Share that pain in your eyes with me. It was a palpable need, the urge to hear his sorrow, to comfort him the way he was with her, just by his company. His silent acceptance of her oddities.

  “What do you want to hear?”

  Everything. “Why the Degas salad bothers you.”

  Gabriel laughed. “It just does. No other painter gets a salad. What makes him so special?”

  Sara dropped her fork, suddenly getting it. “You paint too, don’t you?”

  “No. Not anymore.”

  Of course. Not anymore. “What do you still do?”

  “I write true crime books.” He lifted his fork, smile charming. “And I have dinner with beautiful blonde women.”

  “One at a time, or in groups?” Sara couldn’t believe those words came out of her mouth. She was flirting. She actually remembered how, and she was enjoying it.

  “Always one on one. I prefer no distractions.”

  She had the feeling that she would really enjoy being the sole focus of Gabriel’s romantic intentions. “Are you distracted easily?” Sara picked up her glass of chardonnay, swishing the liquid around and around before taking a sip.

  His eyes dropped to her glass before immediately returning to her face. “No. I’m not distracted easily. I’m tenacious in my pursuit of what I want, whether it’s wise or not.”

  If that was a warning, Sara was fairly sure her hormones weren’t heeding it. She felt the smooth caress of his words all the way down her body, and the warmth between her thighs wasn’t the result of wine.