Phantom of the French Quarter

by Colleen Thompson

  In the steaming summer heat, the streets of the city of the dead were nearly empty, save for a cloud of industrious mosquitoes and three die-hard tourists, middle-aged women who fanned themselves with brochures as they argued over where to go next.

  Keeping his distance, Marcus took a few shots of the angel but soon found himself distracted by a heap of wilting flowers, a makeshift memorial left to honor the murder victim Caitlyn had stumbled over three days earlier.

  Remembrance dropped him to one knee, drove him like a nail back into the moment. To the old woman hidden behind the tomb, only spotted later in his photo. To the dead woman in the blond wig, to the living version who had knocked him down.

  Caitlyn…

  “Marcus?”

  At the sound of her voice, he stiffened, wondering whether an obsession could burn so bright and hot, it left behind a residue of madness.

  “Marcus, are you all right?” she asked, and he turned toward her, drawn irresistibly to the possibility she might be real.

  Rising, he took in her dark glasses, the same dark glasses he had spotted at the post office earlier. Same gauzy turquoise dress, too, only now she’d tucked her hair up beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat. Her lips were trembling as she stared, her body as taut as a drawn bowstring. He half expected her to fly away at his approach.

  “You followed me from the post office,” he accused her. As much as he had longed to see her, he couldn’t shake the feeling that there would be consequences, repercussions he could ill afford. “You came here—alone—after everything that’s happened?”

  “Please, I had to see you.” Her words touched him like a cool breeze. “Besides, my friend’s waiting in her car. If I’m not back in five minutes, she’ll call the police.”

  He wanted to remind her of how many things could go wrong within the space of a few seconds. But she shook her head and pulled off her sunglasses, revealing reddened eyes.

  “Don’t lecture me,” she pleaded. “I couldn’t help it. I needed to talk to someone who’d believe me. So when I saw your car…”

  He frowned, concern edging past his caution. “What’s happened?”

  She nodded. “Just before I spotted you leaving the post office, Josiah Paine threatened me out on the sidewalk.”

  Marcus’s anger flared like a struck match. “What did he say?”

  “It’s more what he implied.”

  “Which was…?”

  “That his cop buddies would look the other way while his criminal friends settled his scores for him. And I’m absolutely sure he meant me. He’s furious and embarrassed that the police took him in for questioning.”

  Marcus sucked in a deep breath to clear his head. Though he was tempted to track Paine down and squash him like the fat maggot he was, there had to be a more rational solution. “If he was brought in, then he can’t be friends with the whole force. Report what he said, and keep reporting it until you find someone who’ll listen.”

  “He’ll just claim I made it up.”

  “There were no witnesses?”

  She shook her head, her voice trembling with frustration. “People saw us together, but no one was close enough to hear what he said. For once in his life, he was careful not to yell.”

  He started to reach for her, but then, thinking better of it, dropped his hand to his thigh. “He really scared you, didn’t he?”

  “That’s the strange part. I’ve been yelled at by him so often, I’ve learned to mostly tune him out. But when he looked at me the way he did and went so quiet, I saw something in his eyes I’ve never seen before—something that made me think about what was done to Megan Lansky.”

  “You’re going to have to tell somebody. The police, your pit bull—someone who can help you.” As much as it pained him to admit it, he forced himself to say, “Because however much I want to, I can’t be the one to fix this. I have to leave here, Caitlyn. I have to leave here very soon.”

  When more of her hair slid free, she pulled off the hat and, with a nervous flutter, fanned her face with its broad brim. “I know you can’t help me. But at least you don’t treat me like some melodramatic airhead.”

  “First of all, you’d be crazy not to be upset after everything you’ve been through.” Finally giving in to the need to touch her, he took her hand and stroked his thumb across her knuckles. “And believe me, I have never seen you as an airhead, not for a single moment.”

  Leaning closer, he skimmed his lips over her soft cheek and whispered into her ear, “You’re the woman that I dream of. Or do you need a reminder of that, Caitlyn?”

  When he felt her shiver, he kissed her sweet mouth, the pleasure arcing hot and wild between them. He wanted to go on kissing her forever, to forget where they were standing, to forget that he was leaving any day. To forget he was on the run, a man about to lose his livelihood. A fugitive with no damned business feeling this way about an innocent.

  Caitlyn pushed at his chest, and as they broke apart, he saw both desire and pain flash through her green eyes. Shaking her head, she told him, “I can’t do this, Marcus. I have to go now, before Natalie gets nervous, but first I need—I want—to say I’m really sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “For running out the way I did the other night.” Moisture gleamed in her eyes. “And for telling the police where you were staying.”

  “You told them?” He reminded himself that he shouldn’t be surprised, much less disappointed. It wasn’t as if she owed him any loyalty.

  She nodded. “The detectives said they had to rule you out so they could move on with their investigation. They said I was holding things up, keeping information from them.”

  Dangerous as the police attention was, a rush of pleasure had him smiling. “You held out?”

  She nodded. “Until the morning, and I can tell you, they weren’t happy, especially Detective Davis.”

  “I’ve been following the news,” he said. “It sounds like they don’t have anything, not really.”

  “As of this morning, they do.” Replacing her hat, she pushed a drooping strand beneath it. “Reuben heard, from one of the cops he used to work with.”

  “Heard what?”

  She glanced back over her shoulder and then shook her head. “I’d better call Natalie. I don’t want her freaking out or reporting me to Reuben.”

  Before he could say anything, she’d pulled a phone from her loosely woven shoulder bag and pushed a number.

  “Hey, Nat, I need another favor. I met up with my friend—mmm-hmm, yeah, the really hot guy from outside the post office.” Caitlyn slid a grin toward Marcus. “We’re going out for dinner. Think you can cover for me if I tell Reuben you and I went for a sandwich?”

  She listened for a minute before nodding. “I know I owe you. Tell you what, free babysitting for Kylie next time you want to go out with your new guy. All right, any Saturday. Thank you—and thanks again for the ride. I was going crazy stuck inside that sweatbox of a house.”

  After finishing her call, she sent a quick text message—to her pit bull, Marcus supposed—before she slid the phone back inside her bag. And when she smiled at him, he realized how wrong he had been to imagine a lifeless statue made of stone, however beautiful, as his world’s axis.

  This woman was far more compelling. A work of art he could study for a century and never tire of.

  But the gift of her beauty was nothing compared to the offering she had just made of her safety. By sending her friend home as she had, casting off her lifeline, she was telling him that she had willingly chosen to trust a man who couldn’t even offer her his entire name.

  Or could he?

  Heart pounding, he thrust out his hand, a hand callused from the menial labor he sometimes resorted to in order to send his sister extra money for their brother’s care. Shaking Caitlyn’s hand, he said, “Marcus Le Carpentier. I’m very glad to meet you.”

  Popping the lens cap on his camera, he took another risk by saying, “Let me make an honest woman
of you and take you to dinner.”

  And then she gave him yet another gift by smiling and following him back to his car.

  SHE THOUGHT SHE COULD escape him, going off with Villaré again, with his shining blue-black hair and dark eyes, and cocky self-assurance.

  As much a threat as ever, except…

  Wasn’t Micah Villaré dead? Hadn’t he been dead, and his stolen bride, Sophie, gone, forever?

  A buzzing like a cloud of flies began in his head, making him wish he were back within the windowless confines of the air-conditioned doll room, where everything still made sense, where none of the green-eyed girls laughed at him. Where no one had ever run off with a handsome and entitled bastard.

  Where he never felt the need to choke, to shake, to force them…a need that came roaring upon him, unstoppable, unbearable, until it was finally quenched.

  Chapter Eight

  As if by mutual agreement, Caitlyn and Marcus focused on the mundane, from the selection of a small, dark hideaway known to locals for its excellent food, to the location of a parking space and their choice of entrées. They spoke of nothing of consequence, limiting their conversation to the hot and yeasty croissants with honeyed butter served as an appetizer, the meal that arrived too soon—the rare strip steak Marcus had ordered, along with Caitlyn’s roasted tomato caprese salad, which thrilled her to the depths of her vegetarian soul.

  When the waiter came with the dessert tray, Marcus smiled and insisted, and Caitlyn took him up on it, choosing a sinfully delicious crème brûlée that she laughingly claimed was larger than her first apartment.

  They shared, until Marcus told her he was full and watched while she used the edge of her spoon to crack off the last bit of the mouthwatering burnt-sugar topping. Scooping it up with the final bite of the vanilla custard beneath, she closed her eyes, practically purring with pleasure.

  When she looked up, he was grinning. “I have to tell you, Caitlyn, seeing that was worth the price of dinner.”

  Her face heated as a new hunger in his dark eyes told her that he was imagining her pleasure in a far more private context. She struggled to keep her mind from following, from imagining him clothed only in a sheet and looking at her that way.

  Her spoon slipped from her fingers, chiming as it struck the crystal water glass. Mercifully, the waiter arrived and poured them each another cup of smooth, rich coffee.

  Marcus’s grin faded to a wistful smile. “I’ve almost forgotten what it feels like, enjoying a delicious dinner in the company of a beautiful woman.”

  She wanted to protest, to make some joke to ease the sadness that had come over him. But before she could, it infected her mood, too.

  As wonderful as it had felt, pretending they were two different people in different circumstances, she knew as well as he did that their time was fleeting and they couldn’t afford to waste it playing at this impossible flirtation.

  “It hasn’t hit the news yet,” she said, “but Reuben told me the police have come across several similar killings from the late eighties. Four dead prostitutes with blond wigs and those horrible green glass eyes.”

  “Here in New Orleans?”

  She nodded. “The cases went cold—for one thing, no one was exactly clamoring to solve the murders of streetwalkers—and when the killings stopped, everyone forgot. Until Megan Lansky.”

  “So they think it could be the same killer…? That would definitely make him—”

  “In his forties or fifties, maybe even older.”

  The conversation paused as the waiter discreetly dropped the check at Marcus’s elbow. She reached for her purse—and the one credit card she hadn’t maxed out—but he waved her off and paid the bill, along with a generous tip, in cash.

  “That age range would fit Josiah Paine,” Caitlyn continued, once they left the restaurant. “And one of his tour guides, too, a man named Max Lafitte. He’s been mad at me since I outshone him in front of Paine, and he’s still holding on to some kind of grudge against my parents.”

  She told him about the ride the man had given her the night she’d run from the hotel. Shivering, she hugged herself as she finished.

  They walked back toward where they’d left the car, and he took her arm, guiding her around the places where the sidewalk had been tipped or broken by the roots of the huge old trees lining the mostly residential street. Soon they stepped into the shadow of an old church that looked more like a castle.

  Marcus stopped, murmuring, “Excuse me,” and pulled the camera he’d brought with him from its case.

  While she waited, he photographed a detail she never would have noticed, a stained glass window glowing from the inside, lit by the setting sun behind the building.

  “You got your camera fixed?” she asked. “Or did you have to buy a new one?”

  “Just the lens.” He quickly put away the camera.

  Remembering the stunning shots she’d seen on his computer in his motel room, she suspected he might be a travel photographer. But how could he work for any legitimate publication while on the run from the law? How would he collect his fees?

  Clearly distracted, he started toward the car again. “I was just thinking about something. Wondering how that old woman fits into all this.”

  Caitlyn shook her head. “She was playing up the creep factor, dressing all in black and giving me a number that turned out to belong to a local mortuary.”

  “You said she claimed she’d lost the ring the victim was found wearing.”

  “A priceless heirloom, that’s what she told me, but it turned out to be a piece of inexpensive costume jewelry, just part of some plan to lure me to the cemetery that morning.”

  “To kill you, too? Is that what you think?”

  “Maybe. But I took Reuben with me, and you were there, too.”

  “Speaking of your pit b—your assistant—I should get you back home.” Regret deepened in Marcus’s eyes. “You really need to talk to him about what happened with Paine.”

  Her throat tightened as she realized that their interlude was over. That in the end it had solved nothing but only intensified her need to be with him again.

  Shaking her head, she said, “That won’t help. Reuben’s never going to get his buddies at the station to hear it. Not about the guy who used to buy him drinks at Tujague’s.”

  “If you can’t make Reuben do something about it, you should fire him. Hire someone who understands who’s giving the orders.”

  She made a sound of disbelief. “Fat chance I’d ever find anyone half as qualified who’s willing to work for what I pay him.”

  Marcus stopped in his tracks and stared a question at her. “If he’s any good, why does he work so cheap?”

  She shrugged, explaining, “He’s got his police retirement, for one thing. And he was a good friend of my dad’s, back before he died and my mother left town with my sister and me.”

  Marcus opened the car door for her, his manners and the old-fashioned cut of his clothing reminding her once more how she’d described him to Detective Robinson. He might have stepped out of the Renaissance, or a pirate movie.

  Or maybe he had been plucked from her own dreams, a drop-dead gorgeous fantasy she didn’t dare embrace.

  She slid inside the car and waited to speak until he pulled into traffic. “I’ll take your advice. Talk to Reuben and the detectives. If they won’t listen, I’ll find some cop who will. At least Natalie spotted Paine getting in my face before he took off. She might not have heard the words, but she’s a trained actress. She knows body language when she sees it.”

  So did Caitlyn, and Marcus’s spoke volumes as he drove back to the Quarter. Frustration, anger, longing—all were written in his clenched hands, the tension in his shoulders, the aggressively stiff line of his back and his refusal to meet her eyes.

  Still not looking at her, he parked a few streets over from the mansion on Esplanade. “I don’t want Reuben to get a look at the car.”

  “I can walk from here,” she said,
though in this neighborhood, she shouldn’t. Particularly not with nightfall nipping at dusk’s heels.

  “Not without me right beside you.”

  He locked the car but once again brought his camera with him.

  They said little as they walked, with Caitlyn stopping and splaying her hand across his strong shoulder to help her balance as she dumped a nonexistent pebble from her sandal.

  Too soon, the old white mansion came into view, its columns and its verandas and its towering live oak tree all unwelcome sights.

  “Thank you for the dinner,” she said, her voice softer than the breath of evening that stirred the leaves of a magnolia. “And I wanted to tell you, I’m really…”

  What good would it do to tell him that she would miss him? To say that part of her wished she could climb into his car and disappear with him forever?

  She still had no idea what he was fleeing, or if Marcus Le Carpentier was really his name. Besides, it was nothing but a fantasy, the work of stress and hormones, to think she could leave behind her responsibilities to Jacinth and their legacy.

  “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.” Her words came out clipped and abrupt, a shield to hide her grief. “Sorry I broke your camera.”

  “I’m not.” Marcus’s voice went rough. “Because if you hadn’t, I never would have met you, and we never would’ve… I know it hasn’t been much, but…”

  Unable to finish, he made a move to open the mansion’s front gate as they reached it. She grasped his hand, meaning to warn him that the hinges squeaked and might bring Reuben running.

  Before she got the words out, her gaze snagged on a shape that shouldn’t be there. A shape that made no sense in the context of the flowering lantana and half-hidden by the tree trunk as it was.