Goes down easy: Roped into romance

by Alison Kent

  “My name is Dawn Taylor. I’m a reporter with the Times-Picayune. I was wondering if you might be Della Brazille, and if I might ask you a few questions.”

  Perry took in the platinum-blond hair, the platinum watchband, the diamond teardrop in a platinum setting resting in the hollow of her improbably smooth throat. This woman was not the grieving widow of whom Perry had drawn a mental picture. This woman was anything but.

  Her heart racing, her mouth dry, Perry glanced over her shoulder toward the beaded curtain covering the entrance to the hallway, then quickly looked back. The reporter already had her pencil and notebook in hand.

  “No. I’m not Della. But I can schedule you an appointment to see her.” Swallowing hard, Perry reached for the plumed pen.

  Dawn Taylor’s gaze flickered in the same direction Perry’s had before returning to her face. She tapped her pencil to her paper. “Would you be her niece then? Perry? Perry Brazille? I understand her niece works for her. I don’t see other employees…”

  She looked away, glancing around the shop as if wondering how a business so small kept from going under. It was all Perry could do to stop herself from whipping out the shop’s tax return.

  “I manage Sugar Blues, yes,” she said, sitting straighter. “But I don’t know how I can help you unless you’d like me to show you around the shop.”

  Dawn shook off Perry’s offer. “One of my sources tells me that your aunt was at the old Eckton warehouse yesterday before the site was raided.”

  “Raided?” Perry arched a brow, praying it hid the tic she felt at her temple. “I didn’t know one could raid an empty building.”

  The other woman reached into her bag for a second pencil when the lead broke on the first. “Were you also there, then?” she asked, blinking rapidly. “Since you’re aware of the building being empty?”

  Shoot. Was it not common knowledge? Or had she just screwed up? “Everyone knows the building is empty.”

  “I doubt everyone has reason to know any such thing,” Dawn Taylor said, jotting notes, her cell phone ringing before Perry could respond.

  “Excuse me.” The woman—a girl, really—who’d come in behind the reporter, dropped a text on sun signs on the counter. “I can’t find a price on this book.”

  Perry grabbed two incense burners before they rolled to the floor. “If there’s not a price on the spine, there should be one penciled inside the cover. See? Nineteen ninety-five.”

  She darted a quick glance at Dawn Taylor, who’d turned to take her call, then said to the girl, “Would you like me to ring that up for you?”

  “No. That’s okay. I’ll come back for it. I didn’t bring enough money.”

  “I’ll keep it for you here at the counter until the end of the day,” Perry said, but the young woman was already out the door.

  Taylor clipped her phone shut to end the call and returned her notebook and pencil along with the cell to her purse. “I have an interview that’s been bumped up in my schedule. I’ve got to go, but I will be back for your story, Ms. Brazille.”

  “I’ll be waiting with bells on,” Perry muttered under her breath, watching the reporter breeze out of the shop. She took a deep breath, wondering what the hell that had been about, and if she’d really messed things up, then slid the astrology book under the counter.

  The bell hadn’t finished its closing chime before Jack pulled the door open and came barreling down the center of the shop toward her. “What was Dawn Taylor doing here? What did she want?”

  First things first. “Listen. If I’d had your cell number, I would’ve called you the minute she told me who she was.”

  He grabbed a crystal from the counter, rubbed it with his thumb. “Did she question you? Or talk to Della?”

  Perry shook her head, returned her gaze from the crystal he held to his face. “She asked what I knew about the warehouse discovery yesterday. I told her to talk to my literary agent since I’ll be selling the story, and that she’d have to make an appointment to see Della.”

  “Where is she now? Where’s Della?” he asked, ignoring her sarcasm and bouncing the crystal in his palm.

  “She must be in the kitchen, why?” she asked, glancing toward the door at the sound of the entrance chime.

  Book came charging toward them, his face drawn. “Where’s Della?”

  Frowning now, Perry pointed over her shoulder. “In the kitchen.”

  He was around the corner and through the beaded curtain before she finished speaking.

  “What’s going on, Jack?”

  “With him? I don’t know. But Della told me this morning that she saw Eckhardt drowning. Guess what one thing never clicked?” he asked, his eyes sparkling, his excitement nearly palpable.

  She, unfortunately, had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. “What?”

  “Taylor. He killed himself by jumping from the Causeway Bridge. But it wasn’t the fall that killed him. I pulled the information this morning. Coroner’s report said it was death by—”

  “Drowning,” she said, finally catching on.

  “Exactly. What if what Della was seeing was Taylor instead of Eckhardt?” he asked, lobbing the crystal to her over the counter. “It’s way too much of a coincidence that both men drowned—”

  “She’s not in the kitchen,” Book barked out, the curtain swinging in a wild tangle of beads behind him. “She’s not in the utility room or in the courtyard.”

  Perry got up from the stool, a flitter of worry tickling her spine. “I’ve been here all morning. I would have seen her go upstairs.”

  “I’ll check,” the detective said, already climbing.

  “The reading room, maybe?” Jack asked, heading toward the corner of the shop. “Did she have an appointment booked?”

  “Yes, but the client never showed up, and the rest of her morning is clear,” Perry said, grabbing the appointment book and scanning the page. “We had breakfast, then I showered and changed upstairs. When I came back down, she was finishing up the dishes. I’ve been out here ever since. I would have seen her if she’d gone upstairs.”

  She glanced up at the sound of Book’s voice calling Della’s name. As he came thundering back down the stairs, Perry’s throat began to burn.

  And she could hardly find her voice to ask Jack, “What’s going on?”

  He shook his head, scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Dawn Taylor is involved. She’s gotta be.”

  “Dawn Taylor? The widow? What about her?” Book demanded.

  “She was just here,” Perry whispered, her eyes beginning to water, her chest growing tight. “She was looking for Della.”

  And now Della was gone.

  “Perry. Walk me through exactly what happened,” Book said, digging through his suit pockets. “Everything you can remember.”

  She started slowly, mentally retracing the morning’s steps. “I was behind the counter. I’d just climbed onto the stool and was thinking about a conversation Della and I had earlier. I heard the chime and looked up, and that’s when Dawn Taylor came in.” Blew in. Like a hurricane. “She obviously wasn’t here to shop because she marched right up to the counter and asked me if I was Della.”

  Book finally came up with a pen and notebook. “Did she tell you what she wanted with Della?”

  Perry thought back, nodded. “She introduced herself first, then asked if I was Della because she had a few questions for me.”

  “Then what?”

  “When I told her she could make an appointment, she asked if I was me. She knew I worked here. I told her I didn’t see how I could help, but that I’d be happy to show her around the shop.” Perry stopped, pushed her hair back off her forehead. “That was when she said a source told her that Della had been at the warehouse before yesterday’s raid.”

  Book bit off a string of foul words. “Who the hell is talking to this woman? Where is she getting her information?”

  Jack looked from Book back to Perry. “What did you tell her then?”


  “I told her I didn’t know you could raid an empty building, and she asked how I knew it was empty.” She shrugged sheepishly. “I thought it would be obvious. I didn’t even think.”

  “Don’t worry about that now,” Book said. “What else?”

  Eyes closed, Perry rubbed at her temples. “She broke her pencil. Her cell phone rang. While she took the call, another younger woman brought a book up to the counter to check on the price. I told her what it was. She left, and then Dawn Taylor left, saying she had an interview.”

  Book scribbled a line of notes. “Tell me about the other woman.”

  “She was about twenty with bright red hair. Wearing dark jeans, a dark turtleneck and sneakers. She was looking at a book on sun signs.”

  “Did she buy it?”

  “No. She said she didn’t have enough money with her. I told her I’d hold it for her until we closed for the day.”

  “Did she say she’d be back?”

  “Uh, no. She just left.”

  “Where’s the book now?” Book asked.

  Perry glanced beneath the counter. “It’s right here.”

  “You don’t think…” Jack started to say, letting the sentence trail off.

  She looked from one man to the other. “Think what?”

  “She may have been a diversion. Dawn Taylor came in and steamrolled you,” Book said, and then he began to pace, gesturing with one hand as he talked. “The phone call could have been a signal.”

  “You’re saying Dawn Taylor could be behind the Eckhardt kidnapping? And that maybe she’s taken Della to keep her quiet? But why? Della doesn’t know anything.”

  “If Taylor’s not behind it, then she’s being fed information from someone following the case—”

  “Or from someone involved,” Jack finished for him.

  “So what are you going to do?” Perry wasn’t even sure who she was asking.

  “The book. The one the woman didn’t buy.”

  Perry reached for it, and stopped when the detective held up a hand. And then she broke the bad news. “If you’re thinking about her prints, you won’t find any. She had on mittens.”

  “Mittens?”

  Perry nodded, shrugged. “It’s cold outside.”

  “I’m calling in a unit to go over the kitchen,” Book said, grabbing his phone from the holster at his waist. “Lock up the shop. Don’t let anyone else in, and you two stay out of the kitchen as well. I’ll get a unit out here ASAP. And a patrol car to check up and down the block, find out what anyone may have seen.”

  “What about her walking stick?” Perry asked.

  Book frowned. “What about it?”

  “She’s had it with her ever since getting her foot stitched.”

  The detective ran both hands down his face. “Damn. It’s on the kitchen table. I just saw it. I didn’t even think.”

  Perry swallowed hard, fought back tears. “What do you want me to do?”

  “You stay by the phone. I’ll make the calls and secure the kitchen,” Book said, already halfway there. “And then I’ll be at the Times-Picayune offices.”

  Perry turned to Jack. “Does he really expect me just to sit by the phone?”

  But Jack didn’t answer because now he was the one pacing.

  “Jack! What am I supposed to do?”

  He stopped, looked back up. “You do what Book says.”

  “And you?”

  “I figure while he’s at the newspaper, I’ll pay a visit to the Taylor home.”

  BOOK LEANED against Della’s kitchen door, his hands on either side of the new window, bearing his weight. Her walking stick lay on the table behind him—a big fat reminder of the support she’d provided him with the last two years.

  He thought back to yesterday morning, to their time in bed before she’d had him find the stick in the attic. He knew she’d been trying to help, to make him feel better.

  He just didn’t see how anyone could understand the guilt he lived with when he didn’t understand it himself. Then again, he hadn’t given her a chance.

  Of all people, Della would be the one to see the pent up emotion and the history behind what he’d stored. But now she wasn’t here.

  He’d been harsher than he’d meant to be, when all she’d been was concerned. Yeah, he knew he put in too many hours. Thing was, it was never enough.

  Didn’t the fact that she wasn’t here prove it?

  He’d brought her home this morning, after her visions during the warehouse visit had proved to be too much. He’d made sure Kachina would be around until Perry returned. All of that, and Della still wasn’t safe.

  He hadn’t been able to keep her safe when that was the one thing he knew how to do. Was trained to do. And yet, his experience didn’t mean diddly.

  She’d been snatched out of her own kitchen with her niece not fifty feet away, and a brand-new door between her and the world.

  He didn’t even want to think what she was going through. As strong as she was, she was still so fragile. So sensitive to the world around her.

  He knew she was a survivor.

  He just didn’t know if she’d come home the same woman she’d been when she’d left. That frightened him, because that woman was the woman he loved.

  And he didn’t know what he’d do without her.

  14

  AFTER DIGGING furiously through papers stashed in his computer case like so much loose change—a mess Becca would kill him for making—Jack located Dawn Taylor’s home address in his notes.

  He couldn’t remember when or where he’d found it, or why he’d written it down. He was just damn glad that he had.

  His GPS navigator mapped out the drive, leaving him free to work at making sense of everything that had happened in the last two days. The fact that Eckhardt had been held at the warehouse—and recently—was indisputable, as was Della’s vision of the severed finger before Perry had even found the damn thing.

  What he was having trouble reconciling, however, was Della believing Eckhardt to be dead, then believing him to be drowning. And since nothing about her way of looking at things was scientific, there wasn’t much he could do with the information but file it away.

  If he’d been anywhere else, he might have started searching bodies of water. But New Orleans sat smack in the Mississippi delta, way too close to where the mouth of the river said hello to the Gulf of Mexico. And then there were the area’s lakes and bayous and swamps…a needle in a haystack would be easier to find.

  Most of all, however, he couldn’t figure out what the kidnappers expected to gain by grabbing Della—except for the obvious. They’d taken Della to keep her from revealing to the police her visions about Dayton Eckhardt and his whereabouts. And damned if that wasn’t eating at Perry.

  Perry had barely been able to talk to the officers who’d responded to Franklin’s call. And Jack hadn’t been able to hang around for support. He’d wanted to be there for her; it killed him to leave. But he’d had this one window of opportunity to act.

  He was supposed to stay out of the way, to mind his own business.

  Like he could. Like he would. Time was still on Della’s side, and Jack wasn’t about to waste a second more than he already had.

  He circled the block before parking two houses down and across the street. The neighborhood wasn’t what he’d expected, and the house certainly wasn’t one he would’ve imagined belonging to a reporter and a warehouse foreman.

  Then again, the posh modern house could easily have been widow’s spoils. Or a kidnapper’s booty. Except that there hadn’t been a demand made or paid out. Cindy had filled him in when he’d talked to her earlier today. She’d been glad to get the update, to see that he’d been busy.

  Yeah, he’d been busy…cleaning up broken glass, replacing and painting doors, sitting for a psychic reading, falling for the psychic’s niece and losing himself in her body. Not exactly how he was supposed to be earning his per diem.

  To be fair, he had spent time in intervie
ws, researching newspaper archives, following what leads he’d managed to turn up. Right now, however, none of that seemed like enough. If he’d done enough, he wouldn’t be in the middle of breaking and entering and putting his PI license on the line.

  It was almost as if he was losing his edge…

  He’d knocked at the front door, watched for movement at the neighboring houses, checked the garage windows and a couple that were hidden by high growing hedges before making his way to the back of the house.

  The door nearest the driveway opened into a utility room that opened into the kitchen. He found nothing on any of the entrances indicating an alarm, but he still planned to get in and get out quick like a bunny.

  Problem here was, he had no idea what he was looking for. It wasn’t like he expected to walk into the dining room and find Dayton Eckhardt digging into a bowl of gumbo.

  Or to find a war board set up in Dawn Taylor’s den outlining each step of the kidnapping plans. Though he wouldn’t mind discovering a series of arrows on the floor, pointing his way to the end of the maze.

  The biggest challenge to digging up clues was deciding what was a clue and what wasn’t. The obvious didn’t always pan out, even while those were the easiest onto which he could hook his trailer. Yet it was the tidbits of what seemed like useless minutia that often held the keys to opening the biggest doors.

  But when he took his first step into the kitchen, he slammed to a halt, all thoughts of clues and minutia sailing right out the window of his mind. Della sat blindfolded at the eating nook table, her hands bound to the frame of the white garden chair.

  She frowned and tilted her head to one side, listening as if knowing someone unexpected had arrived. He started to speak, to let her know he was there, but didn’t have time. A twenty-something punk slacker stepped out of the pantry and back into the room.

  “Dude.” He dropped the box of Raisin Bran he held. He dropped his jaw as well. “What the hell are you doing here? No one’s supposed to be here.”

  He was a scrawny pup, wearing black slip-on Vans, baggy khaki-colored jeans and a white logo T-shirt over a long-sleeved striped one. A black skullcap sat snugged low over his ears, causing the ends of his hair to stick out from beneath like so much dry straw.