by JoAnn Ross
"You had no way of knowing that. Your sister was headstrong, she. Hard to get Desiree Doucett to listen to anyone about much of anything."
Kate could certainly identify with that. She was also feeling horribly guilty. If only she'd been less stubborn, if only she'd made an effort to reconcile with her sister, Tara might still be alive.
It was growing dark. Sheets of lightning trembled against a vermilion sky curtained with rain.
Trying to sort out what to do next, Kate went over to the apartment window and looked down onto the writhing tangle of tropical plants. A crumbling stone statue stood in the center of the overgrown courtyard; the trio of satyrs chasing a comely nymph through the green, algae-choked water seemed a perfect metaphor for this sin-drenched, troubled city.
"She couldn't have committed suicide," she insisted yet again.
"It's been twelve years since you've seen her." Nick was leaning against the bedroom door frame, thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his jeans. Her illicit gaze followed the direction his fingers were pointing, right down to his groin.
When his penis flexed beneath the worn denim, Kate's pulse shot right off the Richter scale.
"People change," he said in a deep, raspy voice that caressed her every nerve ending and told her that he'd caught her checking him out—and that she wasn't the only one suddenly imagining him doing things to her. Her doing things to him in return. Wild, wicked things.
What was she thinking? She'd come to New Orleans to solve her sister's murder, not to have sex with a total stranger.
It was the electricity in the air that was getting thick enough to drink. It had gotten beneath her skin. She could literally taste it on her tongue.
"Now there's a pithy observation," Kate said, dragging her gaze away before she drowned in those eyes that had darkened to the color of midnight over the bayou.
Outside the window, the smoky neon sign from the strip club next door cast pink and green shimmers onto the rain-slicked cobblestones below. Inside, the burned wax scent of votive candles in red glass, along with another vaguely unpleasant odor hung in the stale air.
"Maybe you ought to embroider it onto a pillow."
"Dubois happen to say anything about you having a smart mouth, chère?"
"Actually, he did."
Her back was to him, but Kate had no trouble hearing the humor in his voice. To her mind, there was nothing funny about murder.
"Which I took as a compliment because it goes along with my smart head. Unlike Dubois, who undoubtedly found his shield in a box of Cracker Jacks. Dammit, there's no way, given the condition of this apartment, any cop with half a brain could've called this a suicide."
"So you keep saying."
"Right. And you might as well get used to hearing it because I'm going to keep saying it until I nail her killer."
"We nail her killer. Teamwork, remember," he said as she looked back at him over her shoulder.
"Besides," Kate insisted, "the furniture shoved against; the door is proof she was trying to keep someone out."
"Wouldn't be the first working girl to suffer herself some drug-induced paranoia."
Kate wished she'd been surprised to learn that her twin had grown up to be a prostitute. If only ...
No! She could give in to the dark emotions battering away at her and wallow in guilt later. Right now the objective was to put her sister's killer behind bars. With or without the help of the cops.
"I want her book. If we can get our hands on her client list, we can begin narrowing down the suspects."
"Remy said the cops are lookin' for that," he said with exaggerated patience, grating on Kate's last nerve. "But, being a murder cop yourself, chère—"
"It's Detective."
"Being a murder cop yourself, Detective Chère, you oughta know police investigations take time to do right."
Kate snorted. "What you mean is the cops are giving any city hotshots, who may have paid my sister for sex, time to cover their collective asses."
He sighed heavily. Pushed himself away from the door frame and crossed the room to smooth his big hands over her shoulders.
"Hey, darlin'. This is New Orleans." His drawled Cajun patois was as rich as whiskey-drenched bread pudding. "Folks have a certain way of doing things here."
"The Big Easy."
"That's what we call it, all right," he agreed.
"I meant the movie." She shrugged off his touch. "Dennis Quaid says it to Ellen Barkin."
He brightened at that, his smile a bold flash of white. "You like that movie, chère?"
"I hate any movie that glamorizes crooked cops."
He shook his dark head. "You're a hard woman, Detective Delaney."
"I'm a murder cop."
Rational. Logical. Tough-minded. Where others saw shades of'gray, she saw black and white.
Cops and killers.
Good versus evil.
As a gust of wind rattled the green leaves of the banana tree in the courtyard, Kate sensed a movement just beyond the lacy iron fence. A man, clad all in black and wearing a brimmed hat that shielded his face, stood on the sidewalk, beneath an oak tree dripping with silvery green moss.
The tree's thick, twisted roots had cracked the cobblestone sidewalk; the limbs Tara had crashed through on her fatal fall to the ground clawed at the window, leafy branches scratching against the glass.
"The landlord said other women have been killed in this building."
"That was before my time."
Broussard was standing close enough behind her that she could feel the heat emanating from his body along with musky male sweat and the tang of lemon which would've seemed incongruous on a man who reeked of testosterone if Kate hadn't known the cop trick of using lemon shampoo to wash the smell of death out of your hair.
"The way the story goes, a young slave was found in the formal parlor, her dark throat slit from one pretty ear to the other."
His hands were on her again, long, dark fingers massaging the boulderlike knots at the base of her neck.
"Later eight other bodies were discovered buried in the garden. They'd all been raped. Brutalized. And each one had a gad cut into their breasts."
He paused, waiting for her to ask.
The silence stretched between them, broken only by the sound of the wind, moaning like lost souls outside the window.
Kate blew out a frustrated breath. "So, what the hell is a gad?"
"A protective tattoo designed to protect the wearer from evil spirits. The guy who built this place was a bokor. A priest who specializes in the dark arts, what Voodoo practitioners call the left-hand way. They're not all that common, though we've got a handful of 'em living here in the city."
"Obviously the tattoos weren't much protection."
Having grown up with a mother who staged fake séances, Kate didn't believe in magic, white or black. Or any other woo-woo things that went bump in the night.
He shrugged. "Hard to stop a man with killin' on his mind."
She couldn't argue with that.
"Your sister had one."
"One what?" The rusty gate squeaked.
"A gad."
She glanced up at him. "The police report didn't mention that."
"It'll show up in the coroner's report."
"Dubois still should've put it in."
"Like you said, Dubois isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer."
The man was now in the courtyard, staring up at the window. A lightning bolt forked across the sky, illuminating what appeared to be malevolence in eyes blazing like turquoise fire in a midnight-dark face.
Kate, who'd always prided herself on her control, tensed.
"What's wrong?" Broussard's fingers tightened on her neck.
"That guy in the courtyard." White spots, like paper-winged moths, danced in front of her eyes. She blinked to clear them away. "He's—"
Gone.
Kate stared down into the thorny tangle of scarlet bougainvillea and night-blooming jasmine. The ma
n had vanished. As quickly and silently as smoke.
13
ALTHOUGH NICK SUSPECTED SHE'D UNDOUBTEDLY throw herself out the window herself before admitting it, the lady was shaken. Her complexion had been the light ivory of a natural redhead. Now she was the palest person he'd ever seen. So pale he wouldn't have been surprised if he could've put his hand right through her.
She'd also begun to shiver, and although it might have been his imagination, as the bells of St. Louis Cathedral chimed the quarter hour, Nick thought she swayed. For just a moment.
"How long has it been since you've eaten?"
"Eaten?" She repeated the word as if he'd spoken in a foreign language.
"Breakfast? Lunch? Maybe an early dinner?"
Nothing. She was standing there on her own two feet, her eyes were open, and from the rise and fall of her breasts beneath that ugly-as-sin black jacket, she was still breathing. But she'd pretty much checked out.
"Some nuts on the plane?"
"I had a Snickers bar."
"That's something." He supposed sugar and chemicals beat nothing at all. "When?"
"Yesterday." She thought back. "Around noon. I bought one from a vending machine. Along with a cup of coffee."
"Yesterday. Around noon." He shook his head. "Christ, it's no wonder you nearly passed out."
A spark of life brightened eyes that had been spook-ily distant only a moment before. "I did not almost pass out."
It was a lie and they both knew it, but not wanting to waste time arguing, he decided against calling her on it. Instead, he took hold of her arm.
"Let's go."
"Where?"
"To get some food in you."
"We haven't finished searching the apartment yet."
"Take a look around. The place has been thoroughly trashed. If there was anything in here to find, it's already been found."
"I hate it when you're right." She drew in a deep breath that had an interesting effect on her breasts beneath that tidy white blouse. "You mentioned a gad being a Voodoo symbol."
"Yeah." Nick had a sinking feeling he knew where this conversation was headed and didn't like it.
"That would suggest my sister was involved with Voodoo rites."
"I figured she must have had a passing interest in it, to have that tattoo in the first place. And the shells and wooden dolls lying pn the floor point to some ritual work. But we never discussed religion."
Her eyes cleared. Sharpened with renewed determination. "We need to check all the Voodoo shops in the city."
"Do you have any idea how many you're talking about?"
"No. Do you?"
"A bunch." Though, like everything else in New Orleans, fewer than there'd been before the hurricane.
"Well then, we'd better get started."
"First we eat."
"We can eat later."
"Look, maybe you've got some sorta anorexic thing going for you, cupcake, but this body needs fuel on a regular basis. I haven't had anything since lunch, and I'm due. We'll eat," he repeated. "Then I'll take you to the hotel. You do have a hotel room, right"?"
"I thought I'd find something when I got here," she said. An uncharacteristic lack of pre-planning, Nick suspected. Which showed how upset she was about all this.
"That's gonna be a bit difficult, given that a lot of the hotels haven't reopened yet, and it's Mardi Gras."
"I forgot about Mardi Gras." Nick was not surprised by that.
"Don't worry. Ill make a few calls, see what I can find. Then, after we get you settled in somewhere, I'll start making the rounds of the shops."
"I appreciate the help. And I suppose I could eat something," she allowed, appearing to know when she'd reached the upper limit of his willingness to compromise. "Then we'll start making the rounds of the shops."
Christ, the woman was stubborn. And driven. Then again, could he blame her? Wouldn't he do the same thing if it had been his sister who'd died under mysterious circumstances?
Hell, he'd be shaking the entire city down, looking for answers.
Resigned, he practically dragged her across the cluttered wood floor to the door. "We'll talk about it over dinner."
It was, Kate realized, the closest thing to a concession she was going to get from him. She hadn't missed that way he'd rolled his eyes toward the ceiling—or the heavens—like a man praying for patience. Nor was she supposed to. It had been done for her benefit.
Obviously, given his SEAL and cop background, he was used to being the alpha male. Well, he'd just have to get used to the idea that he'd met his match.
The restaurant was a block away, and given that parking was difficult to find, Kate readily agreed with Nick's suggestion to leave the Hummer where it was and walk.
Charmaine's Place was situated on the second floor of a building that may have once been red, but had faded to a soft rose adorned with lacy wrought iron. As soon as Nick opened the door, the rich scent of Creole spices and crawfish, mingling with the aromas of fresh bread waftingup from the French bakery below, had Kate's mouth watering.
A thirty-something woman, whose white chef's apron couldn't conceal a body that looked as if it'd stepped out of a centerfold, broke into a huge smile as she spotted Nick.
"Hey, sweetcakes, it's been a while." She put down the tray of frothy pink Hurricanes she was carrying, flung her arms around his neck, and kissed him smack on the mouth. ''Where y'at?"
"Awright," he drawled, his hands settling comfortably on her hips, seemingly in no hurry to back away. "Where y'at?"
"I'm doin' a helluva lot better than you, it looks like," the waitress said, sweeping a fond glance over his face. "Don't you look like somethin' the chat dragged in."
"You should see the other guy," he said, repeating what he'd told Kate.
She trailed a bloodred nail down his bruised cheek. "It'd take more than one guy to cause this amount of damage." Her gaze was concerned.
"It'll heal. They—"
"I know." She sighed heavily. "They always do." Shaking her head, she turned toward Kate. "Hey, chère. I'm Charmaine Réage."
"Kate Delaney. So you're the owner?"
"Owner, cook, cocktail waitress, and more often than not, what with it being so hard to get decent help these days, chief bottle washer," she said with unmistakable pride before turning her attention back to Nick. "You wanna eat indoors or out, cher?"
"In, I think," he decided, glancing at Kate for confirmation.
"Definitely in," Kate agreed. Although it'd been in the eighties when she'd arrived, the temperature had begun dropping rapidly as the sun disappeared.
"What can I bring you to drink?" Charmaine asked after she'd led them to a table overlooking the street.
"Just tea for me, please," Kate said.
Although there was no way she'd admit it to Nick, she was already dead on her feet. No way was she going to risk alcohol knocking her the rest of the way out.
"And I'll take whatever you've got on draft." He handed Charmaine back the menus she'd placed on the table. "Why don't you just choose what's best tonight," he suggested. "If that's all right with you," he said to Kate.
"Works for me."
The opening course of shrimp remoulade was delicious and definitely lived up to New Orleans's reputation for great food, but Kate couldn't focus on it. Not when her mind was whirling with possibilities.
"We need to talk to people Tara knew," she said after Charmaine had taken away their shrimp plates and delivered two huge platters of crawfish étouffée. "Girls she might have worked with. Dubois actually seemed tickled to pieces to tell me she'd been hooking, but he refused to give me any details, claiming the information was on a need-to-know basis."
"And he didn't feel you needed to know."
"Apparently not."
The étouffée was so hot, Kate was amazed it hadn't set off the smoke detector. She took a drink of ice water, hoping to extinguish the flames engulfing her tongue. "Which pisses me off, because you'd think, especially as
shorthanded as the force is right now, he'd be happy to have someone willing to work the case with for free."
"It's a turf thing. How would you feel if Dubois showed up in Chicago trying to hone in on your territory?"
"I wouldn't let Dickhead Dubois look at one of my murder books if he showed up with a search warrant signed by the chief justice of the United States. But I get your point. Which is why I hired you."
"A good decision for more than one reason. Because I not only know where she was working, I've moonlighted at the place."
"You've moonlighted as a male prostitute?"
When that idea caused an unwanted flare of heat, she took another long swallow of water.
"Damn. I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted. Especially after that crack insinuating that I was size-challenged when it came to a certain vital body part."
He rubbed his square jaw. Looked thoughtful, as if he were actually considering the matter.
Since she figured she owed him after that earlier Hummer dig, Kate put down her fork, folded her arms, and waited, allowing him to play the moment out.
"So," he said finally, "I suppose I'm going to choose to be flattered."
"I'm delighted. But to get back to where my sister was working—"
"It's a cruise ship offering gambling trips down to Mexico. The girls are officially hostesses, but everyone knows there's more going on than roulette on board. The guy who owns the place, Leon LeBlanc, is a local wiseguy."
"Surely it's not legal for a mobster to get a gaming permit?"
When her smooth brow furrowed, Nick's fingers itched with the urge to smooth those lines away.
"Even here in Louisiana," she tacked on.
"You make us sound like Sodom and Gomorrah."
She colored a bit at that. A pretty little flush on those cut-crystal, Kate Hepburn cheekbones that chased away the paleness that had lingered even after he'd gotten some food down her.
"Well, you can't deny that the state's never exactly been known for its strict interpretation of laws," she said.
"Which is important to you."
