Rita was sure she was losing her mind. Carnival was supposed to be magic, not manic. Part of the crowd was still begging for beads. What with the fear of being watched racing through her, the shock of getting pelted by a strand of beads was too much for her nervous system to handle. She could feel her breathing getting calmer, shallower.
“She’s all right,” the man said, helping her to her feet. He smiled, injecting warmth into his hazel eyes. “I’ve been whopped myself. Hurts like the dickens, doesn’t it?”
He had smooth skin and a friendly smile. For some reason, he looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t pinpoint any particular feature. She brushed the debris off her backside. The crowd had lost interest in her. She obviously wasn’t wigged out enough. The woman was angling for another pearl necklace. Rita rubbed the bump on her head.
“You still look a little pale,” the man said. “Maybe we should get you back to your house. Wouldn’t want you to pass out on the street, would we?” He gave her a friendly pat on the arm.
She did feel a bit woozy, but the walk back to the streetcar looked awfully long. Christopher had the passes they’d need to ride.
“Come on, I’ll walk you.”
She pulled back. “I should get my friend…he’s waiting at O’Brien’s for me.”
He nudged her the other way. “Aw, he’s probably having a good time. You don’t want to spoil it, do you? Tell you what. Let’s get you back to where you’re staying, and I’ll find this friend and tell him where you are. Promise.”
She didn’t want to make Christopher leave just because she wasn’t feeling well.
“Believe me,” he was saying as he led her away, “you don’t want to pass out around here during Carnival.”
“Excuse me.” Rita pulled herself off-balance and tugged her arm free. “I appreciate your help, but I don’t want to put you out. My friend is right there at the piano bar, so I might as well go find him.” As she spoke, the urge to get to Christopher intensified. She wasn’t going to analyze her feelings or try to talk herself out of them. “Thanks, though.”
“Don’t you trust me? All I want to do is help you. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“I understand that. I just want to get to my friend.”
“You don’t trust me, even after I helped get all those people away from you,” he said in a hurt voice.
“I do trust you,” she heard herself say, though it wasn’t necessarily true.
“Then let me help you. I love helping people. You said you trusted me.” He’d turned her words against her, giving her a smile that rivaled any cherub. “I’m not trying to pull anything on you, I promise. Okay, you’re pretty, and I’d love to get to know you better. But I just want to make sure you’re okay. When I got hit on the head, I thought I was okay, but about ten minutes later I started getting sick to my stomach and nearly passed out. You want to be in the quiet haven of your room if that happens. I’m only going to walk you to your house, make sure you get in all right.”
He had a good point. A lot of them. He looked harmless enough, and there were people around in case he did try something. And she wouldn’t be alone out here. “Well…”
“Good choice,” he said, pulling her arm.
Except she realized she was talking herself into it. Trust your gut. That gut was tightening with anxiety. She stopped. “I need to find my friend.”
Frustration crossed his face; then his smile took hold again. “You’re just not going to let me help you, are you?”
“I’m going to O’Brien’s. If it’ll make you feel better, you can walk me to there. I’d…appreciate that.” How had this man gotten her to lie like this?
“Don’t do me any favors,” he spat out, turning away.
An icky feeling washed over her, and she pushed onward to the bar, not wanting to think about what could have happened if she’d let him walk her home. When she glanced back, he was there, watching her. There wasn’t a trace of Good Samaritan in his eyes now. How easily she’d been fooled.
She looked for Christopher among the crowd, but no luck. She shivered as she made her way down the corridor and into the bar on the right. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, for her ears to adjust to the sounds of the piano and raucous voices singing along. A hand slipped over her arm and pulled her around.
“Ahh!” She cut her scream short when she saw Christopher, who jerked at her reaction.
“Sorry. I just…” She rubbed the knot forming on her head. “You surprised me, that’s all.”
“I figured you wouldn’t be able to see me in here. I’ve got a table over there. You look like you could use a Hurricane.”
“If it has liquor in it, you’re right.”
She followed him to a small table toward the back wall as the song changed to Que Sera Sera. He ordered another beer and a Hurricane for her. She settled at the table and found it hard to believe it was light outside.
“You didn’t warn me these things were so big!” she said when her mammoth pink drink arrived.
She could barely see him, but his eyes looked full of shadows. He tipped his glass toward hers. “Que Sera Sera,” he said, and took a long drink. He’d apparently had a few by his languorous movements.
She took a sip of the super-sweet drink as she looked around the bar. In all of the confusion with the beads and hyperventilating, she’d forgotten about the reason behind her panic. She could still feel those eyes watching her. The bar was filled with people, and most of them she couldn’t clearly see.
“How’d lunch go?” He looked as though he’d been poured into the wooden chair.
“Tammy’s in love with Brian.”
“She is?”
“I didn’t learn much, other than that. She didn’t know where he went on Mardi Gras night and had never heard of Sira, supposedly. I’m not sure about her.”
“Obsessive love can make someone do things that have nothing to do with real love.” He looked as though he spoke from experience, and she got another shiver.
“I was trying to remember what Aris Smith looked like. She had very generic looks, nothing distinguishable. Tammy’s the same way. Take away the ever-changing hair and eye color—” She shrugged.
“You think Tammy is the nurse?”
“Here in New Orleans, nothing is what it seems. What if she found out Brian was involved with someone else—me—and tried to kill him? You know, crime of passion.” What do you know about passion, Rita? “If she got onto his PC and saw my emails, she could track me down just like you did. And she’d probably erase them.”
He regarded her with no small amount of disbelief. “How could that woman push a man Brian’s size off a roof?”
“Maybe she took him by surprise. The railing isn’t that high.” Rita rubbed the knot on her head and winced. All this thinking made her head ache. She took another sip of her drink, noticing that he hadn’t touched his beer since his silent toast.
“Nice beads,” he said. His smile was laced with mock suspicion. “A woman doesn’t get beads like that without showing some flesh.”
“Given the choice, I would have preferred the flesh way of getting them.” She fingered the beads for a moment, then looked up at him. “I thought I was being followed on my way here.”
He stiffened. “What made you think that?”
“It was a feeling. I don’t usually go around thinking people are watching me.”
“You don’t often meet people in comas either, do you?”
Did he believe her? She couldn’t tell. “No, I don’t.”
“Did anyone look suspicious?”
She laughed at that. “Are you kidding? Everyone looked suspicious. But no one in particular. Then some beads hit me on the head, and I lost a few seconds.” She left out the hyperventilation part. “And this guy offered to walk me back to the house because I still looked shaken.”
Christopher leaned closer. “What guy?”
“I don’t know, some guy. He looked safe en
ough, but I decided to come here instead, since I was so close.”
He pushed aside his beer and waved for the waiter to bring the bill. “Good thing you did.”
“Definitely. He got weird when I declined his offer. He had this way of turning my words around, getting me to say things I didn’t mean.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Creepy.” Her eyes widened. “Wait a minute. I think…no, I’m pretty sure. When he first offered to take me back to my house…he said house. Wouldn’t you assume that someone down here was staying at a hotel?”
“I would.”
“I’ll bet that’s why I got a feeling not to go with him. My subconscious picked up on his faux pas even when I didn’t realize it.”
“Don’t trust anyone around here.” His fingers wrapped around his glass as he studied her in the near-darkness.
“Not even you?”
“Not even me.” He paid the tab. “I found something in Brian’s office. I don’t know what it means, but you’ll find it interesting.”
“Lemme see.”
“When we get back to the house. Come on, let’s go. If you see the guy who wanted to help you, subtly point him out to me.”
She rubbed her arms as they emerged into the sunlight. How did this guy fit into all this? Or did he? She glanced around but didn’t see him. Instead of getting answers, she was only collecting more questions.
He wanted to make this right. It was his fault for not catching Rita’s last email to Brian, but Sira’s fault for not taking care of Rita in Boston. He wanted to show Sira he was strong. He followed Rita and Christopher out of O’Brien’s and spotted a rolled-up tube of paper in his hand. Uh oh. He recognized that type of sketch paper. It was the same kind he’d taken from Brian’s bedroom. Christopher had gone into Brian’s office at the hotel, but he hadn’t been worried because he’d checked it out. But had he missed something?
He had trashed the purple cap and turned his coat inside out so the plaid interior was now on the outside. He’d put on his curly wig and ditched his contacts. Rita had looked right at him when they’d exited O’Brien’s but didn’t recognize him. He rounded the corner and ran to Exchange Alley, down to Canal and back up to St. Charles, approaching the couple as they reached the streetcar stop.
He boarded the streetcar right behind them, holding onto the strap as the car moved forward. They had to stand too since the car was full. He looked straight ahead but watched them from the corner of his eye. What were they onto? How much did they know?
He stepped off the streetcar one stop ahead of them and walked casually down the sidewalk like any other tourist. Up ahead, he saw them get off the streetcar and head down Napoleon. When they disappeared from view, he stepped through the dainty gate of one of the houses and then let himself inside. It was dark, just as he liked it. He stepped out of his clothes, relishing the cool air that brought his flesh alive with goose bumps. He walked into the narrow room on the right. Green eyes stared at him from the darkness. He wasn’t alone.
Sira was there, and she wanted control again. She was stronger. It wasn’t right. I’m the boy. I’m the boy, a childhood voice chanted, but it didn’t matter. It never had. Boys are stronger. But Sira always won.
“You failed,” she said. He didn’t mention that she had failed, too. He was afraid to.
It was early, but Sira walked over to the French doors in back and swung them open. Then she turned on the computer and opened the music software. She clicked Play and changed into her black cat suit.
“I’ve got the fever,” she sang along with Peggy Lee as she cut through the line of trees that separated the corner of her yard from Brian LaPorte’s. “And it’s going to burn you up.”
CHAPTER 14
“I figured you’d think I was crazy, feeling like someone was following me. Or for any number of other reasons.” Rita hung up her coat and the beads and followed him into the kitchen where he started a pot of that coffee he liked so much. That she now liked.
He concentrated on filling the carafe with water from a gallon jug. “I don’t think you’re crazy.” He said it so seriously, it caught her off-guard. There was something strange in his expression.
“Really?”
“Really.” He left it at that, but she knew there was more to it. Maybe it had something to do with the tube he’d found.
“Velda’s playing her music already,” she said, nodding toward the house behind them. “It’s early.”
“Maybe she’s entertaining.”
“Ew. Don’t want to think about that.” She held out her hand, and in Emmagee’s accent said, “I don’t want no details, you know what I mean.”
His smile caught her full in the stomach. And I’m not doing a thing about it. Remember how you feel about Brian. She didn’t feel that way anymore, she realized.
He glanced up at the clock. “Babylon starts at six-thirty.”
“The Babylon 5 TV series?”
He laughed. “You watch too much television, you know that? It’s a parade.”
“Oh.” He handed her a mug of coffee after he’d poured it. Then, amazingly, he handed her the creamer. He remembered, and that made her smile. “Do you really think I watch too much TV?”
“Just because you know at any given time of the evening when a show you want to watch is on, just because you can tell me the history on everything we’ve watched, just because you know the names of all the characters…nah, what was I thinking?”
She’d only babbled on about that because she’d been nervous. The night she’d watched television, he’d joined her for a while. “I think you’re analyzing me now.”
He walked up to her. “Don’t like it much, do you?”
“I don’t care.” Marty would have hooted in laughter if she’d heard that.
“Yeah, right.”
For a moment their gazes locked to one another, and then he leaned forward and she held her breath, wanting to see if he was going to kiss her, waiting to see how she’d feel about it. Instead, he reached past her and grabbed the roll of paper he’d taken from the hotel. “Come upstairs.”
She released a breath and convinced herself it was a good thing he hadn’t kissed her. She pulled the envelopes from her pocket and followed him up the stairs. “Tammy gave me some mail for Brian.” The room smelled like Christopher, a mixture of his after-shave and that grape gum he chewed. “Is this your old room?”
“No, it was Brian’s childhood room.”
“Mm,” was all she could say, wondering why he’d chosen to stay here instead of in his old room, which must be…the one she was staying in.
He threw the rumpled sheets off the bed, dropped down onto his stomach, and unrolled the sketches. She looked around for someplace to sit besides the bed. Bad idea, that. Real bad. Then why was she staring at that wrinkled place next to him? Spotting the chair at the table, she dragged it over.
He unrolled the paper cylinder. “I found these under his desk mat.”
The charcoal sketches were well drawn in broad strokes. The first was a man draped in robes, shoulders held high and a crown on his head. Beneath it were the words “King Alta.” Christopher peeled away that picture to reveal a woman in a cat suit, with a mask, cape and knee-high boots.
“She looks like Xena, Warrior Princess,” Rita said, realizing she was giving away her television addiction again. He pointed to the name written below her picture.
“Sira,” she said on a breath.
“I thought they were Mardi Gras costumes until I saw the name.”
“This is the woman I saw, the one who pushed Brian! She was dressed in a bodysuit and this style of mask. I’m pretty sure it’s also the one I saw in Boston. The police found a black feather in the car that hit mine. If we could find the mask, I bet they could match them up.”
He didn’t give her a skeptical look. In fact, an oddness had permeated his expression since she’d met him at O’Brien’s. He held up another picture. This one was a cityscape. No city she’d ever seen before,
though. The buildings were dome-shaped and clustered together. The sun setting behind the city gave it a surreal glow. Beneath it was the word “Xanadu.”
“Like the border in his bedroom,” she said. She went back to Sira’s sketch. “Did Brian draw these?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. When we were kids, he used to write stories, and he drew illustrations for them. He kept them all hidden from our parents, even from me.” At Rita’s questioning look, he added, “I was nosy, what can I say?”
“Wait a minute.” She went to Brian’s current room and returned with the science fiction magazines. “I think he still wrote stories. I found these in one of his drawers. Guess I’m nosy, too.” She opened each magazine to a story that was flagged by a Post-It note. “Each of these stories is written by Brian Caspian. Maybe it’s a pseudonym.”
“He got it from Prince Caspian.”
“From the Chronicles of Narnia?” He looked surprised that she knew, and she shrugged. “I must have read the set at least five times. But why would Brian use Caspian for a pseudonym?”
From the look on his face it had to be from one of the tableaux.
He set the sketches and the stories’ black-and-white illustrations side by side. “They’re the same style.” He flipped over the magazine covers. “These were published five years ago. Are there any more?”
“This was all I found.” She scanned each of the stories. “I don’t see any mention of Xanadu or Sira, though, so these still don’t answer any questions.”
He came to a sitting position and faced her. “You knew the name Sira because of what Brian showed you while you were in a coma.” It wasn’t a question, yet he didn’t sound quite convinced, either.
“You believe me?”
He scrubbed his fingers through his hair. “I’d like to say hell no, but the truth is, you know too much. Brian wouldn’t have told anyone about our last swordfight. You knew what he told me at the funeral, and it’s not likely he’d share that with anyone. Especially someone he wanted to impress.” He lifted one of the sketches. “And you knew about Sira.”
What She Doesn't Know Page 17
