“A friend fought off my attacker,” she said. “He got me out of there.”
“What kind of friend would do that without taking you to the hospital or calling the cops? I need to know this idiot’s name and address.”
“I told you last night, I can’t say.”
“You mean you won’t.” After studying her intently, he blinked and snapped his fingers. “It’s that guy who claimed his name is Marcus, isn’t it? He showed up yesterday with that picture, and he was there again last night, wasn’t he?”
She dropped her gaze. Despite her acting background, lying had never come naturally to her. But the idea of admitting she’d protected, even kissed, Marcus had heat rushing to her face.
And the dreams she’d had about him last night redoubled her discomfort.
“Never mind an answer. I can see it in your blush,” Reuben grumbled. “Now tell me, what lies did that piece of garbage fill your head with?”
Before she could stop herself, the words burst out. “He wasn’t lying. He was trying to help me.”
“Help you?” Reuben shook his head. “He’s trying to help himself to you. There’s a big difference.”
Moisture hazed her vision. “I know that, and I realize how it must sound. But if you talked to him, you’d see what he’s like.”
“He doesn’t want me or anybody else talkin’ to him. Take it from an old cop—this creep’s zeroed in on you. Sought you out when you were alone, then found himself an opportunity to cut you from the herd, maybe even by hitting you over the head himself.” Reuben pounded his fist on the counter. “You’re damn lucky you’re alive, chère. Unlike poor Megan Lansky.”
“Marcus didn’t murder anybody.” Much less replace his victim’s eyes with painted glass and dress her in a blond wig.
Shuddering with revulsion, Caitlyn wanted to get up, to run upstairs and lock herself in her room like a child, but Reuben’s sad gaze pinned her in place.
“How can you be so sure?” he asked. “And how could I think anything else?”
This time his point sank in, and her doubt leaked from the wound.
When she said nothing, Reuben picked up the phone. “I don’t know why you lied to me about this, but you’re going to explain it. If not to me, then to the detectives. I’m calling them right now, and believe me, they are going to want some answers.”
WHEN THE HEAT WOKE CAITLYN, she found herself slumped in a rocking chair beneath a ceiling fan that barely stirred the languid air. She rose stiffly, her legs sticking to the wood, and rubbed her damp neck, then checked the clock beside her bed.
Five-fifteen already? She would have sworn she had only sat down and closed her eyes for a few minutes, not for more than three hours.
Cursing the broken air-conditioning, she showered, allowing the cool water to sluice over her, but nothing could wash away the prickling of anxiety that had sent her upstairs in the first place.
Had the police found and questioned—even arrested—Marcus since she’d spoken to them? Was he in an interview room or a jail cell right now, wishing he had never met her, much less saved her life?
Which he had. She still believed that, regardless of anything Reuben or the increasingly exasperated detectives told her. She knew she’d seen concern in his eyes, felt tenderness in his touch.
As she dried herself and pulled on a clean cotton sundress, fresh doubts needled. Had she really made the right choice, telling the police the name of the motel where Marcus had taken her?
But what else could she do, with Detective Robinson staring a hole into her conscience, saying, It’s my sworn duty to give Megan Lansky’s family justice and to help them make sense of the terrible things done to their daughter. Don’t you think they deserve at least that much, Caitlyn? Don’t you want this killer, whoever he is, caught?
Downstairs, she stood in front of the open refrigerator door for too long, not wanting to eat but realizing she’d been too upset to think of food all day, and there would be another tour this evening. Sinister, who thought of little besides eating all the time, yowled up at her, so she paused to feed him a can of Prissy Friskers, the only cat food on the planet he would deign to eat.
Wrinkling her nose at the smelly fish, she made herself a meal of a sliced nectarine and yogurt with a handful of chopped walnuts. Halfway through it, she heard Reuben talking in the room they had set up as an office.
Since he frequently took reservations for upcoming tours, she at first thought nothing of it. But as she took a few more bites, she made out two distinct words, “Complete bull,” sounding clipped and angry. Was he arguing with someone on the phone or in the house?
Wiping her napkin across her mouth and tossing it in the trashcan, she went to investigate. Reaching the partly open door, she lifted her hand with the intent of rapping lightly to let him know she was there.
Instead, she froze as she caught what he was saying.
“…no publicity stunt. I don’t give a damn how strapped she is for money or what your good buddy Josiah Paine’s been telling you. Caitlyn Villaré wouldn’t make up this stuff, and she’d never be involved in murder.”
The food she had just eaten threatened to come up. Was someone—most likely Detective Davis, who had spoken so highly of Paine’s generosity—actually suggesting she might be involved with…
No. The idea was ridiculous.
Caitlyn nudged the door wider, but Reuben’s stiffened back was to her, the phone to his ear as he shook his head.
“Sure you know your job, Detective, but you don’t know this girl. Real sweet kid, for one of those crunchy-granola drama types.”
Though at another time she might have smiled at Reuben’s description, tears sprang to her eyes at the fierceness of his defense, especially considering how she had initially lied to him about her disappearance.
“She’s naive, that’s all,” he insisted. “You’ve got a better chance of busting a Disney princess for a criminal plot than this gal.”
Smile fading, Caitlyn leaned against the door. The hinges creaked, and Reuben turned, eyes widening when he saw her standing there.
“Listen, Davis,” he said into the phone. “I gotta go. Thanks for the update.”
Once he hung up, he turned to her and said, “I thought you were still sleeping. So how much of that did you hear?”
She willed herself to stand taller. “When you and Jacinth call me naive, what I really hear is stupid. Helpless. Someone who can’t be trusted with the pointy scissors.”
His brows shot up, and he snorted. “You want to get your knickers in a twist about that? When you’ve got a killer stalkin’ you, and Detective Davis is thinkin’ you might be part of some sick scheme to buy publicity?”
She winced at the reminder. “Thanks loads for making me feel petty.” Then she took a deep breath and willed herself to calm down. “Seriously, I really do appreciate your vouching for me.”
“Tell you what. Next time, I’ll let him know you’re a hardened gun moll, if that makes you feel any better.” He followed with a wink to show her he was joking.
“I don’t understand. Why would they suspect me?”
He shrugged. “First off, you were the only witness to the old lady comin’ to your place before dawn. They’ve been circulating the picture, but nobody’s recognized her.”
“She wasn’t a figment of my imagination. They saw the photo from the cemetery.”
“I told him it was her, too, the same lady from our tour the night before. But he’s tellin’ me somebody should be able to ID her.”
Caitlyn shook her head. “Maybe she doesn’t normally look that way. The black dress, the hat with the veil—the costume misdirects the audience, makes the actress the character in their minds.”
“I love it when you talk theater to me.” A sardonic smile tilted one corner of his mouth before he grew serious. “And you could be right about that. But there are other factors, like the fact that you were awfully slow to admit what really happened last night.”
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“I bet your detective buddy has been talking to Josiah,” she said. “Maybe collecting a few donations for the widows and orphans.”
The implication hung in the air only a moment before Reuben’s face went red. “That’s what you’re sayin’ now, that the detective’s corrupt? That he’s just another dirty cop in this town?”
“No, no. I didn’t mean to imply that your friend —”
“You damned well better not be, not when there’s good reason for the cops to look at every possibility. Especially with the media breathin’ down their necks.”
Uncomfortable with his anger, she seized on the change of subject. “The media?”
His anger faded into a sigh. “I feel bad breakin’ this to you, but some hotshot investigative reporter got hold of a photo of Megan Lansky with the blond wig, and then saw a picture of you leaving the crime scene. Didn’t take long for him to put two and two together—probably with the help of a leak out of the P.D.”
“Then it’s—it’s in the news that this is tied to me?” Caitlyn’s knees wobbled as the room began to spin around her.
Reuben grabbed the rolling chair from the desk and guided her to sit. “Sorry, ma chère, but it’s the lead story on every station. They’re runnin’ pictures of you off the website, in your costume, makin’ a big thing out of your—” he sketched quotes with his fingers “—‘flair for drama.’”
He pointed to a small TV, which was playing on mute. “I’ve been fielding calls for interviews all day.”
Caitlyn leaned forward, holding her head in her hands.
Reuben asked, “I should’ve made you see a doctor. I should have—”
She forced herself to look up. “I’m okay, it’s just—”
Her jaw loosened as she recognized the fleshy red face on the screen. A clearly furious man in his late fifties. “Oh, my Lord, is that Josiah?”
When Reuben reached for the power button, she said, “Not off—turn it up, please.”
She heard him sigh, but he did as she asked, and sure enough, Josiah Paine was mopping sweat from his face with a handkerchief and standing in front of the freshly painted sign advertising New Orleans After Dark Tours.
Sneering, he said, “Ungrateful and manipulative—that’s what Caitlyn Villaré was. Using me to get just enough experience to stab me in the back after I fired her for… Let’s just say that in a mostly cash-based business, it’s important to have totally trustworthy employees.”
Face burning, she shot up from her chair. “That lying— I can’t believe he would—would use this situation to—”
Choked by angry tears, she couldn’t even get the rest out. Especially not with thoughts about the matchbook Marcus had found dominating her thoughts. Not that the police had seemed the slightest bit interested when she had passed on word of his discovery.
Reuben’s knees creaked as he squatted beside her. “Paine’s just a small man with a big mouth. Everybody who matters knows that.”
“No. Everybody doesn’t. What they think they know about me now is that I’m some kind of conniving thief who’s wrapped up in this murder. Even the police think so. You said it yourself.”
“They’re just frustrated that your…friend—this Marcus fella—slipped away before the uniforms got to the motel.”
Her heart lightened for a moment. I hope you get away from here, Marcus. Heaven knows, I wish I could.
But there was no escape from her dilemma. She didn’t even have a car to flee in, since there had been no money to replace her clunker when it finally cratered a few months earlier.
With this public flogging, there would be no way for her to make her living, either. She couldn’t possibly lead tour groups while being hounded by reporters. Tears filled her eyes at the unfairness of it and the impossibility of explaining that she, too, was a victim in this—that she might be the next one murdered.
The newscast cut to another story, leaving the viewer one last glimpse of the raw hatred in Paine’s watery blue eyes. And leaving her to wonder, had he merely seized on this opportunity to trash her?
Or was he obsessed enough with avenging his wounded pride that he would kill an innocent to set this nightmare into motion?
Chapter Seven
Two more long days slipped past Marcus, days he counted off in newscasts watched in different motel rooms each night. Late each afternoon, he presented an Indiana driver’s license—a convincing fake in the name of Michael David Johns—at the city’s main post office in the hope that his general delivery package had finally arrived.
It came as a relief to claim it, to finally have the means to complete his photo series and put New Orleans behind him.
And put her behind me, too, he thought, understanding that his dangerous fixation on Caitlyn Villaré needed to come to an end.
Everywhere, he saw her. On TV and in memory, in his dreams each night. In every golden glimpse of blond he spotted in a restaurant or on the street. He had even turned around this afternoon, convinced he’d seen her leaving the post office as he entered.
He resisted the urge to run after the retreating figure, to tear the sunglasses from her face and ask if she was crazy to be out on her own. For one thing, it was none of his damned business if she decided to risk attracting the attention of her stalker or reporters. For another, it wouldn’t be her, just as it hadn’t been every other time he’d looked.
Retreating to his car, he cranked the engine and turned the AC on high. Instead of driving off, he kept the Chevy in Park and pulled his camera from its case.
If the lens was indeed the only part that had broken, he could quickly replace it and begin taking his photos. Within a few days—maybe less, if he could slip in and out of the cemetery without attracting undue attention—he could leave this city. Maybe he would drive west into Texas and then drift south across the border.
Surely, in Mexico, he would see far fewer blondes. And with time and enough tequila, maybe he would even stop dreaming about the taste of Caitlyn’s kiss, the silken heat of her skin. Once he could eat and sleep again, he would be able to wrap his mind around the problem of how to earn enough money to keep Theo in caregivers and medication.
Those were his only real responsibilities. Caitlyn had both the police and what amounted to a full-time bodyguard to keep her safe from whatever lunatic was bent on doing her harm.
Swallowing hard, he removed the new lens from the packing material to check it. “Let this take care of the problem so I can be on my way,” he whispered.
While his heart and body breathed an altogether different prayer.
ONCE CAITLYN FINISHED mailing the package to her sister, she hurried out of the post office toward the spot where Natalie was waiting in the car. Her friend had wanted to come inside with her, but with no spaces available, Natalie had been forced to park illegally, and she wasn’t about to have her Honda towed for the second time this month.
Reuben would have had a fit, but Caitlyn was thrilled to escape what she thought of as protective custody, to pretend, even for a few short minutes, that she wasn’t being hunted by both the media and a killer. Besides that, she felt safe in such a busy public place, with plenty of witnesses and a huge pair of sunglasses hiding her face. More of a theatrical disguise than a real one, she knew, but at times like this a pinch of self-delusion was good for the soul.
When she came out, Natalie and her car were both gone. A police officer on bike patrol was clearly the reason why. Frowning, Caitlyn jogged out of the officer’s line of sight and toward the corner, where she hoped to spot the small red car somewhere along the street.
Instead, she was the one spotted—by Josiah Paine, who came striding down the sidewalk, looking bent on adding her to his collection of stuffed creatures.
A big man, he was already sweating through a shirt that looked more Hawaii than New Orleans, his fleshy face as red and angry as it had been on the news.
“You!” he shouted, pointing straight at her face.
Though her he
art was pounding wildly, she didn’t give an inch. “Careful, Josiah. You push me here, in front of witnesses, and you can be sure I’ll press charges.”
“You backstabbing little bitch. You tell my pals I killed that college girl? What kind of sick—I oughta sue your ass for libel.” Spittle flew as he closed in, looming over her.
She hated the fear crowding against her lungs, the quivering of her knees. Hated it so much, it made her furious. “You mean slander, don’t you? Either way, you’re out of luck. I didn’t tell them you killed anyone. But they asked me about enemies, so of course, your name came up.”
“You have a hell of a lot of nerve—”
“Oh, come off it.” She noticed several people stopping to watch. She hoped at least one of them would shout for the bike-patrol officer if things got out of hand. “After the way you trashed me on the news, you can’t go around acting like it’s a big secret you can’t stand me.”
“They took me in. You know that? Hauled me in for questioning, in front of God and everybody.”
She lifted a palm. “And yet you’re still walking free.”
“That’s right, Caitlyn.” Leaning even closer, he dropped his voice to speak in quiet tones more terrifying than all his shouting. “I’m walking free. Guess you didn’t realize I’ve got friends in the department. Friends in the department and even better friends outside it. The kind of friends ready to do any favor to help a buddy settle an old grudge.”
INSIDE HIS CAR, Marcus put the camera back together and found all its functions seemingly intact. Still, he would have to test it, then check the quality of the shots on his laptop.
He could do it here, in the central business district. But looking up, he noticed sunlight forking through the clouds that had been building all day. Immediately, he recognized conditions with the potential to highlight his dawn angel to breathtaking effect.
Before the decision even registered, he found himself driving to the cemetery, his mind filling with the statue, which seemed to spin on some hidden axis. Or perhaps the angel was the axis, with the whole world whirling around her. By the time he found a place to park and walked the two blocks to the cemetery gates, he had envisioned her from every angle, in every kind of light and weather.
Phantom of the French Quarter Page 6
