The Unmistakable Scent of Gardenias (Haunted Hearts Series Book 6)

by Denise Moncrief

  Once she completed the Wakefield job, she hoped her career would zoom and she could soon move into a much nicer place. Bigger. Not quite so claustrophobic or open to the world outside her front door.

  She stuffed her cell phone into the dinky little black bag she carried with her when she went out for an evening with her friends. “I’m starved. Can we get something to eat first?”

  “G.G. is already on her way to Pat’s. She wanted us to meet her there.”

  Great. Bar hopping in the Quarter. Just what her jangled nerves didn’t need. She’d hoped for something a little less active.

  She sucked it up because she didn’t feel like arguing. Maybe one of Pat O’Brien’s Hurricanes would erase the memories that crowded her mind and refused to vacate the premises. She could order some bar food. She hated the idea, but she couldn’t drink on an empty stomach.

  As she slid into the passenger seat of Treena’s Fiat, her gaze strayed to the other side of the road. A strip shopping center offered a lovely view across the road from her apartment complex.

  She squinted. The sight of someone who looked just like Les Wakefield parked across the street staring straight ahead as if watching her building shocked her out of her recently acquired comfort zone.

  She blinked. The man turned his head. Treena backed out of the spot, and the car across the street disappeared from view behind a misplaced palm tree. When Sophia was finally able to catch another glimpse of the parking lot across the street, the car and the man who looked like Les Wakefield had vanished.

  Chapter Four

  A double thump on the door drew Dylan’s attention away from the delightful aggravation left over from his call to Sophia.

  He opened the door for his college dorm suitemate Jordan Clark. He’d been older than most freshmen when he entered Tulane, so he’d ended up playing big brother to the younger guys in the dorm since he’d had no siblings. He still thought of Jordan like a kid brother. It had been too long since they’d seen each other.

  After they were done slapping each other on the back and doing the awkward man hug thing, Jordan stepped back and pulled a woman from behind him. So this was the woman Jordan had been telling him about. A curtain of hair covered most of her face. She tucked a strand behind one ear and peeked at Dylan from beneath long eyelashes.

  “Dylan, this is… She’s…”

  His hesitation seemed odd.

  Her head snapped up, and she shot Jordan a blood-curdling glare. “Girlfriend. I’m his girlfriend whether he likes it or not.” The hesitant kitten had turned into a ferocious tiger.

  Dylan stepped back from the heat in the woman’s attitude. “Whoa!” He glanced at Jordan. “You two have a fight on the way over here?”

  Jordan trained a steady gaze on Chelsea. “What I was trying to say… She’s the one.”

  Her attitude warmed, and her smile would have lit up the Super Dome. Stadium lighting. Mega-wattage.

  Dylan got it. Jordan had obviously told her about the way his sister Kristie used to tease him.

  “Ya’ll come in.” In self-defense, he gave the woman a wide berth and motioned toward the sofa.

  They sat so close Dylan would have been hard put to wedge a piece of tissue paper between them.

  Jordan sighed. “A lot has happened since we last threw back a few brews.”

  Dylan nodded. “For you and me both.” He glanced toward the woman. “You must be Chelsea.”

  His blunt observation seemed to startle her. “So he’s told you about me?”

  Jordan cleared his throat. “I told him some things about you. Not everything.”

  Her pained expression relaxed. “Okay. I trust you.” An odd response. She leaned closer to Jordan, if that was at all possible.

  “You trust this guy? Well, now, I wouldn’t go that far.”

  Her expression turned dead serious. “I trust him with my life.”

  Yeah, those two had been through some stuff that Jordan had yet to tell him about.

  Dylan slid onto the arm of the nearest chair. “Ya’ll up for some local cuisine. I know a place that makes some kickass shrimp creole.” He grinned. “On me.”

  “Sounds good. You owe me a meal from that time...” Jordan stopped and drew in a deep breath. “You know when.”

  Dylan rose from the chair arm and motioned toward the door. “Probably something we shouldn’t tell your girlfriend. Let’s go. We can get caught up on the way.”

  Chelsea stood, and Jordan grabbed her elbow as he pushed up from the sofa. The guy moved slow and deliberate, wincing every once in a while.

  “You’ve been wounded.” A statement not a question.

  “It’s been a few weeks, but yeah, my lung still burns sometimes. Through and through gunshot wound.” He messaged the spot where he obviously took the bullet.

  “You didn’t tell me that on the phone.”

  Before he could swing open the door, another knock rattled the wood and the windows in the wall next to it. Ever since Audrey disappeared, Dylan had been cautious about answering his door to unexpected guests. Too many times there had been some jerk with the local news on his front doorstep.

  One quick peek through the side window and he groaned with irritation. Det. Nick Moreau’s timing was bad. Always was. Always would be.

  He yanked on the knob and faced his tormenter. “Unless you can tell me something new, we have nothing to talk about.”

  Moreau didn’t seem startled by his attitude. He was probably used to it. The cop searched Dylan’s face and then shifted his gaze toward Jordan and Chelsea. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you had visitors.” Moreau motioned toward the interior of the house. “Can I come in?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Please. I have some questions—”

  “I just told you—”

  “About your new client Les Wakefield.”

  Dylan paused in the midst of ejecting Moreau. “What about him?”

  “Please, let me come in so we can talk.”

  He stepped back and allowed Moreau to enter. Might as well give the man what he wanted. Moreau was like a rash that wouldn’t quite disappear.

  Dylan pointed toward Jordan. “This is a friend of mine from Tulane. Jordan is with the Arkansas State Police. Detective Nick Moreau of the New Orleans Police Department.”

  The two law enforcement officers sized each other up. Typical cop behavior. Cops were cops, whether they were his friends or his enemies.

  Jordan offered his hand. “Nice to meet you.” After a firm handshake, Jordan slipped an arm around Chelsea. “This is Chelsea, my girlfriend.”

  The woman had turned pale when he’d mentioned Moreau was with the local police. Moreau’s expression revealed that he hadn’t missed her reaction.

  “Arkansas, huh? You taking a little vacation?” A typical cop question, always prying into other people’s lives.

  Dylan was about to remind the cop to mind his own business when Jordan willingly answered his rude question.

  “I’ve resigned from the job. I’m in the process of moving back down here.” He released his hold on Chelsea and settled into the typical cop pose. “I think I’d like to be in on your conversation about Les Wakefield.”

  Moreau blinked. “Why?” Apparently, professional courtesy only went so far.

  Jordan’s gaze shifted toward the woman. Her eyes turned sympathetic while her countenance remained impassive.

  “I lived the first twelve years of my life in Wakefield near the Wakefield family estate. I might be able to add something to the conversation.”

  That seemed to startle the crud out of Moreau. He agreed with a curt nod of his head.

  Dylan nodded toward the kitchen and pushed open the door. “So let’s talk.”

  Once they were seated around the kitchen table, Jordan started the conversation, much to Dylan’s surprise. Moreau always seemed to own any room he occupied.

  “My sister Kristie was engaged to a man named Brandon Wakefield who claimed he was from St
. Denis Parish. I know I was kind of young when my mom and I left there, but I was pretty sure no one named Wakefield had lived in the area for years. That made me suspicious from the moment I met him, even more so when my sister disappeared. Not long after Kristie’s disappearance, Brandon Wakefield disappeared, and I’ve been looking for him ever since. Now, Dylan tells me he’s doing some renovation work for a man named Les Wakefield on the old Wakefield plantation house. That got my attention. Brandon’s father’s name was Les Wakefield.”

  Dylan stirred in his seat. “That’s just a coincidence. Has to be two different men. There’s no way my client is old enough to be Brandon’s father.”

  Moreau leaned back in his chair and addressed Dylan. “You met Sheriff Soileau today.”

  An interesting shift in the conversation. A new topic, yet still the same subject.

  He might as well tell Moreau what he wanted to know. Or the truth. Actually, that might not be the same thing. “The sheriff asked me if she could speak to Les Wakefield. I told her he wasn’t there and that as far as I knew he hadn’t been on the property yet. She asked me if she could see his wife. I told her Les isn’t married.”

  A skeptical expression settled across Moreau’s face. In a heartbeat he’d gone from forced congeniality to suspicious cop. “Charlotte…Sheriff Soileau said she saw Celia Wakefield in town today. The man who lives down the road from the Wakefield property says he saw Les Wakefield at the house last week.” He paused for what Dylan could only assume was lethal effect. “You’re the one she’s suspicious of.”

  “Just because I told her who I am.”

  Moreau smiled through perfectly straight teeth. “Yeah, just because.”

  Jordan interjected his opinion. “You obviously think someone’s running a scam. I’ve known Dylan a long time, Moreau. He’s always been a what-you-see-is-what-you-get sort of guy. If he says he didn’t kill Audrey, then he didn’t kill Audrey, and he certainly isn’t pretending to be Les Wakefield. You should advise your friend, the sheriff, to turn her suspicions somewhere else.”

  Moreau smirked. “Are you a mind reader?”

  “No. I’m a cop.”

  Moreau stood. “Fair enough.” He studied Dylan before he made a move to leave. “Stay out of trouble, would you?”

  Dylan grumbled under his breath. “Why do cops always tell me that?”

  Moreau was long gone before Dylan dared catch a glimpse of the expression on Jordan’s face. To his relief, his old friend seemed more amused than concerned.

  “He’s kind of full of himself, isn’t he?”

  Dylan grinned. “Kind of like you.”

  Jordan stood and Chelsea did likewise. Her mouth twisted a few times before she finally spoke her mind. “Jordan, why didn’t you tell him what you found out about Brandon?”

  There was more?

  “It’s not always good to tell a cop everything you know.”

  Dylan knew exactly what Jordan meant. “He’s not going to leave this alone is he?”

  “I don’t think you satisfied him. He’s gonna keep digging until he figures out what you’re up to. Cops are just stubborn that way.”

  Chelsea’s face lit with a strange mix of amusement and disbelief. “Jordan, you’re a cop, remember?”

  Jordan laughed and shrugged. “Why do you think I know these things about cops?”

  “He’s going to be disappointed because I’m not up to anything.” Dylan pushed through into the living room and walked the few paces to the front door. “Come on. I’m starved.”

  While they were on their way, quiet settled over the car. Only the constant thwamping of the tires over buckles, bumps, and holes in the road spoiled the silence. Dylan sighed. Apparently, the incident with Moreau had created more tension than any of them were willing to admit.

  ****

  Dylan set his bottle on the table after sucking down an ounce or two of cold beer. “So this guy Brandon Wakefield…you never met his parents?”

  “Neither did my sister.” Jordan’s tone held a lot of unspoken meaning that wasn’t too hard to interpret.

  “Didn’t she think that was odd?”

  Jordan shook his head, a pained expression shadowing his weary smile. “You know how it is, Dylan. She was in love. She didn’t want to hear my suspicions.”

  “Why didn’t she marry him?”

  Jordan studied the peeling label on his bottle. “I have a theory, but I’d have to do some checking to verify it. I think she went down to Wakefield to meet his family.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Gas charge at a station on the Wakefield exit the day before she disappeared. Of course, when she started asking around she would have discovered that there hadn’t been any Wakefields there for years.”

  “Well, yeah. It wouldn’t have taken her long to find that out. So you said you wanted to verify your theory. What do you want to find out by going back to Wakefield?”

  Jordan shook his head. “I don’t know. I want to know who she talked to. I want to know what they said to her. Why would she run away after that? I can understand her confronting Brandon and calling off the wedding, but to leave without saying goodbye? That doesn’t make sense to me. I want to put it all together. Then maybe I’ll understand why she left.”

  Dylan leaned back in his chair and studied his friend’s tired face. The aftereffects of a gunshot wound creased pain lines in his otherwise abnormally handsome features.

  “You remember Royce?”

  Jordan nodded and lifted his bottle to his lips.

  “He’s the new president of the bank in Wakefield. He thinks it’s peculiar that a Wakefield would show up and claim the family fortune just as the trust was about to expire. He wanted me to snoop around the house and see what I could dig up.”

  Chelsea propped her elbows on the wood table top, engrossed in the conversation. “Do you think Brandon Wakefield is pretending to be Les?”

  Dylan smiled at her. The woman might have come from a hard, uneducated background, but she was sharp.

  She continued her evaluation. “From everything Jordan has told me about him, Brandon seems like the kind of guy that would work a con.”

  Jordan set his empty bottle on the table. “For a long time, I thought Brandon had done something to Kristie and that was why she was missing.”

  Dylan rubbed his lower jaw. “And you know differently now.”

  Jordan had told him the story. The same crew that had kept Chelsea prisoner for five years had held Jordan’s sister Kristie captive as well. Kristie had died from the fumes she’d been forced to inhale while she cooked meth in Arkansas. Chelsea had been fortunate enough to survive after everyone else had died. She’d also had the miserable task of being forced by her captors to bury Kristie. Finding out the truth about what happened to his sister couldn’t have been any easier for Jordan than taking a bullet.

  Jordan glanced at Chelsea. “Yeah, I know differently now.”

  Chelsea leaned her head on Jordan’s shoulder. Yeah, Jordan had found the one. She didn’t appear to be his type, but together they seemed like two parts of one whole. He’d never sensed that about any other couple he’d ever met.

  She sat bolt upright as if a new idea had popped into her head. “We want to help you figure out what’s going on. Brandon and Les have to be the same person.”

  Jordan nodded as if Chelsea had just uttered the most profound statement ever. It seemed that Chelsea had his permission to speak for both of them. Their unity was a bit depressing.

  Chelsea’s eyes glittered with excitement. “Let me meet Les. I’ve been around criminals enough I know what they look like, what they smell like, and what they act like.”

  “Yeah, she would know.” Jordan slipped an arm around her. “I want to get a good look at this guy without him knowing I’m watching him.”

  Conversation ceased as the waitress set their food in front of them. There was no more discussion on the topic while Jordan and Dylan introduced Chelsea to the sav
ory delight of shrimp creole followed by the best rum-soaked bread pudding on the east bank of the Mississippi River.

  ****

  Four other people besides the trio of friends snuggled around the circular table, elbow to elbow. The crowded space made Sophia twitchy to leave.

  G.G. drained the last slurp of her Hurricane. “Whoo hoo! Friday did not get here fast enough.” She crashed the glass on the high top.

  “Amen, sister.” Treena had always been quick to agree with anything G.G. said.

  She’d actually been named Katrina, but she insisted on the shortened version after the storm hit New Orleans. For a while, reminding New Orleanians of what they’d gone through had put Treena in a mighty uncomfortable position. So she’d changed it out of respect for those that the memories still haunted.

  Sophia liked that about Treena. She cared about how other people felt. Maybe she cared too much about G.G.’s opinion. G.G.’s influence on Treena was questionable at best. If it weren’t for Treena, Sophia and G.G. would have probably stopped being friends years ago.

  G.G. zoomed in on Sophia, her sweet breath too close for comfort. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Just what Sophia wanted. But G.G. apparently had more bar hopping in mind. The three of them linked arms and were keeping each other balanced as they headed up St. Peter walking one block from Royal to Bourbon. A flash thunderstorm had pelted the Quarter while they were inside Pat O’Brien’s and left the streets smelling like wet garbage. Too bad water didn’t have the effect of cleansing the area. As they turned onto Bourbon, the putrid odor of stale beer and fresh pee hit Sophia’s nose. No amount of rain could wash the stench away.

  Sophia’s shoes were killing her feet. “Where are we going?”

  G.G. circled her finger in front of Sophia’s face. “Why are you in a funk? You’ve been Debbie Downer all night.”

  Treena spilled what she knew even though she’d been sworn to secrecy. “She saw Dylan today.”