A Haunting Desire

by Julie Mulhern

  The beleaguered maitre d’ approached their table. The man ran his fingers around his shirt collar and gulped. He cleared his throat and a trickle of sweat ran from his receding hairline to his jaw. “Pardon me, Your Lordship.”

  Ned left off his exuberant explanation of the number of carats the mine produced each day. “Yes?”

  “Yes, well, ahem…” The maitre d’ ringed his collar again. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Em…there’s been a complaint about your companion.”

  Why wouldn’t the floor open and swallow her whole? It would be a mercy.

  Her brother raised an aristocratic brow. “Oh?”

  “Well…er…that is to say, the ladies don’t wish to dine in the same room as Miss Boudreaux.”

  Trula pushed her chair back from the table.

  “Trula, don’t move.” Ned’s voice was as cold as a North Sea glacier.

  “It’s fine, Ned. Really. I should go home.”

  “Don’t. Move.” Apparently her carefree younger brother had a bit of iron in him.

  Sissy Rowe and the other woman watched them with avid interest. They weren’t the only ones. All around them, ladies leaned toward Ned’s table. They couldn’t wait to see her thrown out. They hoped for humiliation followed by tears and apologies. Not likely. She’d be damned before she showed them they’d caused her the slightest bit of concern.

  “Your name?” Ned’s voice had the ring of privilege. He was a man who got his way.

  “Haywood Arnell.” The maitre d’ glanced over his shoulder at the avid women. Trula almost pitied the man. Almost. He was trapped between offending an influential guest and offending influential ladies from St. Charles Street.

  There was no question how it would end. Ned and the Duke would eventually check out of the hotel. Poor Mr. Arnell had to put up with the disapproving matrons forever.

  “I’m sure, Mr. Arnell, you don’t intend to ask my sister to leave.”

  “Sister, Your Lordship?” Arnell’s jaw worked, his eyes widened, and he raked his hands through his hair until the long strands attempting to cover a bald spot stood on end.

  “My sister,” Ned repeated. “Her father is the Duke of Aberdeen. Do you still wish us to leave?” He leaned back into his chair and crossed his arms over his chest.

  Haywood Arnell’s chest heaved harder than a cat coughing up a hairball. “She’s…”

  “My sister.”

  Arnell pulled at his collar until the celluloid cut into his skin. His eyes slid away from Ned and rested on her.

  Trula shrugged her shoulders, offered Arnell a wry twist of her lips, and nodded.

  “Oh dear God.” The man covered his eyes with his hand.

  She took pity on him. “Ned, I’m afraid we’ve put Mr. Arnell in an untenable situation.” She stood. “Will you please see me home?”

  For a moment, she feared Ned might refuse. She crossed her fingers in the folds of her skirt and silently begged her brother to pick a different fight.

  “You’re sure? You haven’t eaten.”

  “I’m sure.”

  With a scowl, Ned rose from his chair. “My father and I will be moving to another hotel this afternoon, Mr. Arnell.” His angry gaze travelled to the ladies who’d sent the maitre d’ to the table. His glare drove the satisfied smirks clean off their faces. “Their names, Mr. Arnell?”

  “Mrs. Rhodes Ashton and Mrs. Barton Rowe.”

  Ned’s voice rose high enough to carry. “Please inform Mrs. Ashton and Mrs. Rowe my father and I will not attend any event to which they are invited.”

  At the nearby tables, ladies’ jaws dropped. Someone gasped. Then a wave of whispers flooded the elegant room.

  Trula bit back a smile. Every hostess in New Orleans pursued her aristocratic brother and father. Mrs. Ashton and Sissy might remove her from the Hotel Grunewald, but with a few well-chosen words Ned removed them from every guest list in the city.

  “Are you ready, Trula?” He pulled out her chair then offered his arm. With a feeling that strongly resembled real affection, she took it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  First the embarrassment at the hotel and now a trip Back of Town with Zeke Barnes. Could this day get any more difficult? The last thing Trula wanted was to spend more time alone with him. She’d acquiesced in a moment of weakness.

  She widened the space between them. If she kept her distance, Zeke’s presence wouldn’t turn her into some weak-willed ninny or destroy her ability to reason or, worse, make her body melt into a pool of want. Then again, this trip to the cribs might send him running from her, the district, and maybe even New Orleans. He looked pale and drawn beneath his tan and he hadn’t yet seen the worst.

  Broken bottles, cigar stubs, and bits of old paper littered the street. The smell of cheap whiskey, sweat, and sex permeated the air. Trula tiptoed around a stinking puddle then risked a glance at Zeke. He didn’t look pale, he looked green.

  The peeling clapboard cribs of Robertson Street faced the whitewashed walls of Saint Louis Cemetery Number Two. The desperate and the dead faced each other through long, hot days and longer, sordid nights.

  The cribs that lined Robertson were the last stop on a downward spiral for the women who worked them. After turning tricks there, a whore’s next home was a pine box. A box that would rest in a pauper’s grave far from the elegant environs of the graveyard across the street.

  The ghosts perching on the cemetery walls mirrored the poses of the crib girls. Limbs hung loose, spines curved in languid repose. Like the girls in the cribs, they followed the happenings on the street with no emotion, their eyes dead.

  “You’re sure about this, Trula?” Zeke’s voice tickled her ear.

  Trula’s head jerked. Her name on his lips made her heart beat faster. It shouldn’t. She shouldn’t let him affect her. She tossed her head, lifted the embroidered hem of her blue skirt, and stepped over another foul puddle. “I’m sure.”

  She stopped at the first set of open shutters. Inside, a naked woman’s skin glowed like burnished copper in the late afternoon light.

  Trula glanced toward Zeke then bit her lips to stop from smiling. He looked so uncomfortable. He’d fixed his stare at a point well above the woman’s head and a dark flush stained the planes of his cheeks.

  “What you want?” Missing teeth gaped like black holes in the girl’s mouth. Her tongue darted out to moisten dry, cracked lips. She fluttered her eyelashes in a caricature of seduction. “Maybe you both wanna go?”

  The strangled sound in Zeke’s throat was downright comical.

  “No,” said Trula, “but thank you for the offer.”

  Zeke choked.

  The woman shrugged. Her pupils were impossibly small and her brown eyes jumped a crazy hopscotch. Morphine. Trula knew the signs. The woman was an addict. How old could she be? Twenty? Twenty-five? Impossible to tell. Her jittery eyes looked worn as river stones and her body was disintegrating from abuse. Breasts that should still be firm sagged, and bruises bloomed dark beneath her caramel skin. She sat on an iron bedstead topped with a thin mattress and a sheet so dirty and stained it deserved burning.

  “What’s your name?” Trula asked.

  “Griselle. Who’s that?” The woman nodded her chin toward Zeke. Her brown eyes ran up and down his body. She wet her fingers against her tongue and drew them across one of her nipples. “He your fancy-man?”

  “No. He’s nobody important.”

  “That so?” Griselle leaned back in her chair, leered at Zeke, and let her hands roam over her body. Her fingers rolled her nipples until they hardened into dark nubs, then one hand drifted lower. Her naked legs parted and her fingers disappeared into a nest of dark curls. “What you want?” It sounded more like an invitation than a question.

  “Information,” Trula snapped. “I’ll pay you for it.” She ignored the near-overwhelming urge to elbow Zeke in the ribs. Just yesterday, he’d kissed her. Now his gaze locked on a naked whore who pleasured herself in an attempt to seduce him. Althoug
h, to give him his due, he looked…sickened. Was that pity swimming in his eyes?

  Griselle’s gaze floated away from a scarlet-faced Zeke. “How much?” Her fingers didn’t stop.

  Trula dug in her bag for a ten dollar bill. She held it between her fingers where Griselle could see it. The money probably meant bottles of Amersfoort’s Soothing Tonic or whatever concoction the woman favored. Morphine-laced patent medicines sold all too well in the district where hopeless women longed desperately for escape.

  “The men who died. Who did they visit?”

  Griselle spit in the street.

  Zeke’s hand tightened around Trula’s arm.

  She shook him loose. She didn’t need him to protect her. How many times had she told him? She donned the face that ended all arguments at her house. “Who?”

  Griselle’s stroking fingers stuttered to a stop. “What men? Men die around here all the time. You sure he ain’t your fancy-man?”

  “I’m sure.” She didn’t have to look at Zeke to know he wore a grin. Probably, he’d raised one of those devilish eyebrows. “Cade Simpson and Hite Denman. Did you know either one?”

  “I don’t ask for names.” Griselle resumed her rubbing.

  “They were found dead in this street.” Trula waved the bill through air so thick with humidity it was almost solid. “Are you sure?”

  Griselle’s eyes tracked the money’s progress. Trula heard her swallow. “Cade Simpson? Brown hair and a scar on his forehead?”

  Trula cocked her head and glanced quickly at Zeke. He answered with a brief nod. “That’s him.”

  “Deserved what he got.” Griselle left off stroking her nether regions to lift a mason jar filled with amber liquid to her lips. She drank deeply.

  “What did he do that was so awful?”

  The black pupils of Griselle’s eyes were tiny, hardly more than pinpricks. The whites had yellowed. It gave her an otherworldly look, as if she’d escaped from hell. Then again, what could Satan have up his sleeve to match the torments of her daily existence?

  “He dragged Posey outta her crib. Then he and his buddy tied her to a light post. We figured he was fixin’ to take her up against the pole.” Griselle’s lids fluttered closed. “He stuffed a handful of firecrackers up inside her and lit the fuse.”

  Trula’s stomach turned and bile burned her throat. She ignored it. The weakness in her knees was the real concern. Just this once, she wished Zeke would grab her elbow. Instead, he stiffened. His long fingers tightened into fists and she sensed barely controlled violence simmering below the surface of his skin. If Zeke had known about Simpson and found him before the murderer, the man would be equally dead.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Posey was young, new to the life. She didn’t have a fancy-man to protect her. I reckon that man was lookin’ for the job and she told him no. She died on the street while he and his friend laughed. He liked it so much we were all afraid he’d do it again.” She waved her hand toward the block of decrepit cribs holding desperate women who’d feared being blown to smithereens.

  “Did he come back?”

  “Only to die. I figure he got lucky. He didn’t explode.”

  “The police didn’t do anything about Posey?” Zeke’s expression was as harsh as his voice.

  Griselle snorted. “The police don’t give a damn if a whore up in the district gets herself killed.”

  “The other man? Hite Denman. Was he the friend? Was he there? Have you heard of him?” Trula’s shaking fingers dug through her bag and closed on a second bill. She pulled it out slowly, making certain Griselle saw it.

  The naked woman cleared her throat and took another gulp of whatever was in the jar. “Ain’t never heard his name.”

  Griselle’s whole body focused on the twenty dollars in Trula’s hand. The liquid in the glass jar sloshed. Her scent wafted under Trula’s nose when she leaned closer to the bills. The crib girl smelled like stale sex and illness and unwashed body. A wave of pity Griselle would despise overwhelmed Trula. She handed over the money. “Thank you.”

  Griselle clutched the bills as if they might save her. They wouldn’t. She’d spend them on patent medicines like the one in the jar within a few hours. Trula didn’t care. Nor did she care if Zeke followed her hurried steps. She couldn’t stand to be on Robertson Street for one more second. She hurried away, lifting her skirts while leaping over piles of refuse. If she didn’t escape quickly, the contents of her stomach might add to the unpleasant puddles dotting the road.

  Monstrous things happened to girls in houses like Emma Johnson’s. Worse things happened to crib girls. No wonder Griselle drank morphine-laced swill like water. Despite the syrupy warmth of the afternoon, Trula shivered.

  Her steps didn’t slow until she turned the corner and the cribs lay behind her.

  Zeke rested a hand on her shoulder. “Barbaric.” A hard light flashed in his eyes and anger chiseled the lean lines of his cheeks. “I had no idea.”

  “We didn’t really learn anything.” Tears prickled at the back of her eyes. Silly to cry. Griselle didn’t feel sorry for herself and she certainly hadn’t asked for Trula’s pity. The dead girl, Posey, was beyond her sympathy. But they’d once been little girls. They’d played with dolls and dreamed of pretty dresses. No girl dreamed of becoming a whore. The life was forced on her.

  “Maybe Griselle was wrong,” Zeke said. “Maybe a fancy-man was looking out for Posey. Maybe he killed Simpson after Simpson killed Posey.”

  Trula swallowed a lump in her throat. “It wasn’t a man.”

  “You think a woman committed these murders?” Incredulity deepened his voice, made each syllable sharp and distinct.

  Trula shrugged off his hand. He would laugh at her. It didn’t matter. “It was some sort of spirit.” She waited for an explosion of laughter, a guffaw, a mocking chuckle. She didn’t hear it.

  Zeke caught her arm. His gaze searched her face. He didn’t look amused or sardonic or remotely derisive. His brows drew together and his firm lips pursed. He looked worried.

  “You knew?” she asked. Only Zeke’s hand on her arm kept her from sagging to the banquette. It was one thing to hear about evil spirits from Eulie Echo or Granny Amzie. It was another thing for the very modern, very solid, very northern Zeke Barnes to tacitly acknowledge an evil spirit roamed the streets.

  “It’s what I do. I investigate occult crimes.”

  Trula blinked in the late afternoon sunshine. He what? She glanced at his handsome face. His brows formed a serious straight line. His eyes failed to glint with amusement or lust. He meant what he said. If she was a woman who swooned, she’d do it now.

  “How did you guess it was a spirit?” he asked.

  Trula couldn’t speak. Zeke Barnes, the high-handed Yankee who’d bedeviled her since the moment she met him, investigated the occult.

  “Trula? Are you unwell?”

  She gulped. He must think she’d taken leave of her senses. “I need a drink.”

  …

  Zeke escorted Trula to Tom Anderson’s saloon. The air inside was hardly cooler than outside, but at least they escaped the sun.

  The sour smell of spilled whiskey rose to the embossed tin ceiling where lazy ceiling fans spun the scent back down the length of the mahogany bar.

  A few hollow men drank; open bottles of rye stood ready at their elbows. Others played cards or chatted with the women who dotted the saloon. The women wore few clothes: corsets that pushed their pillowy breasts upward and cinched their waists, and frilled cotton petticoats that barely covered their striped stockings and lacy garters. Half-dressed and blowsy, they couldn’t hold a candle to Trula. Hell, they couldn’t even hold a match.

  He hadn’t planned on telling her the truth. Ever. But Trula got under his skin, straightened the most twisted of intentions, and made him long for something different. She made him blurt secrets he’d be better off keeping. That she hadn’t laughed in his face was astonishing. That she believed him was mind-boggl
ing. Then again, she believed in voodoo spirits.

  He led her to a table, his thoughts as muddied as the river. She saw ghosts? She believed him? She sat and the barman called, “What’ll it be?”

  “I’ve only seen you drink Champagne.” What did she want? The bar didn’t look as if it stocked French wine. Countless bottles of Raleigh Rye ranged behind its length, partially covering a row of arched mirrors.

  Trula had walked through the wet heat without uttering a word. She hadn’t ignored the questions he asked. She simply hadn’t heard them. She might as well have walked down Beacon Street in Boston, her mind was that far away. Now she spoke. “Old Forrester. Still sealed.”

  Zeke swallowed his surprise. Bourbon?

  A waiter brought two glasses, a pitcher of water, and an unopened bottle to their table. Trula held the bottle in her delicate hands and peeled away the wax covering the cork. She looked up from her task, her eyes as wise and sad as an old woman’s. “The seal’s the only way to know no one has tampered with it.” She glanced over her shoulder, nodding her chin toward a bluff man holding court at a corner table. Zeke recognized Tom Anderson.

  Anderson nodded back.

  “Not that Tom would water his whiskey.”

  “Oh?”

  Her eyes narrowed and her voice lost its soft edges. “Smart women don’t drink from opened bottles. Not if they don’t want to wake up in an alley. Girls come to Storyville, fresh off a dirt farm or some sad little town. They’ve rolled in the hay once or twice so they know how the world works.” She shook her head. “They’ve got sap written across their foreheads. They take a drink or two and wake up on their backs in an alley.”

  Zeke pictured a girl opening her swollen eyes in a dirty alley, her skirts pushed to her hips and the bodice of her dress ripped open. His jaw clenched and his fingers gripped the edge of the table. Bile rose in his throat. The girl wore Trula’s face.

  Surely she wasn’t speaking from experience. Of course not. She’d come to New Orleans with Dupree. She was too smart to end up on her back in an alley. “You didn’t…”