There was an art to getting what I wanted out of someone. A certain way of phrasing a question, pausing for just the right amount of time, that netted me information I wouldn’t get otherwise. I had taken great pride in that talent at one time.
But now I seemed to be just going through the motions, more aware of the shadows lurking behind me, trying to catch up and pull me into the darkness, than what lay in front of me.
Two messages from the precinct indicating emergency calls had come in while I’d been at the Josephine. Astrid, it had to be. My sisters had my cell phone number, so there was no reason for them to go through dispatch. I stopped at an intersection and scrolled through the calls. My ex-wife’s number popped up and I winced. Probably she was calling about Zoe again.
Throwing the phone to the other side of the bench seat, I continued driving. It wasn’t that I harbored any ill feelings toward Valerie. For all intents and purposes, me and my ex got along well. Val liked to say it was because I hadn’t been emotionally invested in our relationship from the beginning. I’d never gotten into pop psych, so I couldn’t tell you if that was the case. But she made a very compelling argument.
Alan, admit it—you married me to provide a mother for your sisters, she said.
Of course, I hadn’t admitted it. Because to do so I would be classifying myself as a jerk of the highest order. I mean, who married someone for reasons having to do with anything other than love?
While I hadn’t admitted it to her, I was grudgingly coming to realize that she might have been right.
Oh, Valerie was a looker. Tall. Brunette. Sexy as hell. And she had a generous streak a mile wide. She’d taken to the girls the first time she’d come by the house to meet me for a date. Since I’d had so much on my plate at the time, I hadn’t actively pursued her; rather she’d pursued me. And she had comfortably invaded every facet of my life as easily as a woman’s sweet perfume filled a room.
It’s not your fault, Alan, she’d told me when I’d come home five years into our marriage to find her packing. I’m the one who charged into this with my eyes wide open. It’s just…I don’t know. I thought that somewhere along the way this would turn into a real marriage and that we would start creating a family of our own.
But I hadn’t been open to a discussion relating to kids. Hadn’t I had enough on my hands with three parentless sisters who at the time had needed fulltime attention?
Of course, the task had become monumentally easier with Valerie’s involvement. She’d played the role of surrogate mother to a tee, supplying guidance and compassion along with packed lunches and allowing me to focus more on my increasingly demanding career.
But the girls had grown up and begun living lives of their own, shining a harsh spotlight on the fact that the life Valerie and I had shared had been more about the girls than us.
And the bond she had formed with my sisters had been much stronger than any bond we’d had between us. Evidenced by the fact that Emilie had called her, perhaps even before calling me, to share that Zoe had gone missing.
A man in a wrinkled overcoat stumbled out into the street in front of the car. I jammed on the brakes just in time to keep from making him a hood ornament. He looked at me and I stared back. He was maybe ten years older than I was and his eyes were bloodshot; he was clearly drunk. It struck me, sitting there in my car, that I could have been looking at a mirror image of myself down the road.
He hit the hood. “Damn it, watch where in the hell you’re going, dumbass.”
I blinked, shaking myself out of my reverie. He moved away in a jagged path back to the sidewalk, mumbling profanities, as I put the car back in gear and continued on. Five minutes later I reached my destination, parked and climbed out of the car wondering what the hell I was doing there. And just what in the hell I was going to do now.
I stood outside the small Hodge house on the edge of the Garden District and tugged at my tie. I prayed that during the past two calls Astrid Hodge hadn’t given her name to any of the precinct personnel when she’d claimed a family emergency and asked to be put through to my cell phone. If she had…
The door before me opened slightly. I blinked into the sliver of darkness, trying to make her out.
“Well, hello, Alan,” she said quietly, as if I’d just dropped by from out of the blue for a visit instead of been summoned by badgering phone calls. The door opened farther, and she stood leaning against it wearing a sexy pink robe made of some kind of slinky material.
All at once I became aware of why I’d slept with her. She was sexy as hell and had wanted me. That had been all the incentive I’d needed at the time.
Now I brushed by her into the house, my hands stuffed deep into my pockets.
I heard the door close behind me as I scanned the classically decorated house. Although the structure was small, it was ideally located in a wealthy part of town, and the furnishings were a mixture of antiques and upscale pieces befitting the woman who had just let me in.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Astrid asked, a cloud of expensive perfume enveloping me as she made her way into the living room.
She lifted a crystal decanter full of amber liquid and poured a finger into an etched tumbler. I became aware of an all-too-familiar burning in the back of my throat, as if I’d already downed the pricey bourbon.
“No, thank you,” I said with some difficulty, clenching the hands in my pockets. “I’d much rather you tell me what you want.”
“Suit yourself.” She considered the glass she still held out, smiled, then took a sip herself.
A dull pounding began behind my eyes as I caught a whiff of my drink of choice.
While I did what I wanted with my nights—which lately had included countless bottles of the stuff she was now drinking—I’d somehow managed to keep my thirst from intruding when I was on the job.
Of course, it wasn’t too long ago that bedding the captain’s wife, no matter how estranged, would also have been something I would have avoided.
But all that was water over the dam.
“Do I really need a reason?” she asked, running her tongue over her red-painted lips.
I followed the motion.
Women.
I’d given up trying to figure them out a long time ago. From my mother, who’d run out on me and my father without looking back, to my ex-wife, who I was closer to now than when we’d been married, to my sisters, and now Molly Laraway and her doe-eyed looks, I didn’t think I’d ever put together the puzzle that made them up.
Astrid Hodge at one time had probably been a knockout. One of those women that every man would want in his bed at least once. The type that stopped conversation when she entered a room and made men either wish they had worn looser pants or be glad that they had.
Not that she wasn’t attractive now. But at five years my senior and with a predilection toward the bourbon she was currently sipping, life had begun taking its toll—something she could hide well at night but that was painfully apparent in the light of day. Rather than smoothing out small imperfections, the makeup she wore seemed to cling to her skin like a mask, her lipstick a little too garish, her eyelids creased with color, her fake eyelashes looking like spiders climbing up her still-attractive face.
She smiled at me, apparently taking my attention the wrong way. “It’s good to see you again, Alan.”
“I wish I could say the same, Astrid, I really do,” I said, not liking that I was standing in the house she again shared with her husband, my immediate superior. “But I’d much rather be standing over a corpse than here.”
I knew my words were harsh, but I was in no mood for playing Mr. Nice Guy. It had gotten me into trouble with her before.
Besides, the dull headache behind my eyes was progressing into a pounding migraine.
“Do you have some aspirin?”
“Sure,” she said, motioning toward the hall. “In the bathroom upstairs.”
I didn’t like the thought of going anywhere near the bed
room on the second floor, but the alternative was to allow the pounding in my head to worsen still.
Besides, it would get me away from her for a couple of much-needed minutes.
I climbed the stairs and closed myself in the pink-and-gold lavatory. Little cherubs smiled down at me from the sides of the mirror before I opened the cabinet it concealed. The shelves held the regular household fare: lotions, shaving cream and mouthwash. I picked up a prescription bottle. Ativan. Shocker. I put it back, moved aside K-Y jelly and a case that looked as if it held a diaphragm, then grabbed the bottle of generic aspirin. I emptied a couple of tablets into my palm, then turned on the faucet and washed them down by scooping water into my mouth with my hand rather than using the shiny gold cup in a holder.
For long moments I stood staring at my reflection in the mirror, watching a droplet from the water cling to the stubble on my jaw. I wiped it away and grimaced. While it was all well and good to judge Astrid’s waning beauty as somehow lacking, judging my own appearance wasn’t something I was up to just then. Partly because I didn’t want to think about what my captain’s wife saw in me.
Mostly because looking at myself made me think of young and sexy Molly Laraway and how I didn’t deserve to look at her, much less encourage the attraction I saw in her big blue eyes.
I swiftly turned from the mirror and made my way back downstairs, relieved that Astrid hadn’t followed me and tried to lure me into her bedroom. Ten months ago, her husband had been living out of a hotel downtown because she had booted him out for having an affair. But signs that Hodge was not only back but that the couple was happier than ever—if the picture in the paper of them attending some sort of society function recently was anything to go by—made me decidedly more uncomfortable in this house.
“I’ve got to go,” I said once I reached the hall.
Astrid was leaning against the entryway into the living room. I caught a glimpse of her deep cleavage and the long length of thigh made bare by the way she was standing.
“You’re back with your ex-wife, aren’t you?” she said, her fingers tightening their grip on the doorway that supported her.
I frowned. What would make her think that? “No, Astrid, I’m not back with Valerie. But you are very clearly back with your husband.”
Her gaze went to the splash of amber liquid still in the tumbler. “In a manner of speaking.”
What in the hell did she mean by that?
“Goodbye, Astrid. And I hope this will be for the final time.”
I stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind me. A moment later I heard the bourbon glass crash against the door.
7
I DIDN’T QUITE KNOW WHAT to make of my visit to Astrid’s place. I was only glad that I hadn’t received another call since I’d stopped by.
I went home to clean up, grabbed a po’boy at the corner restaurant, then walked to the Gas Lantern, where Molly and I had arranged to meet.
As far as bars went, this one wasn’t bad. It was far enough away from the Quarter not to be filled with tourists and near enough that it still did a decent bit of business. There really was no decor that I could tell. It was more a dim-the-lights-so-you-couldn’t-make-out-the-stain-on-the-floor type of place. But those lights were dimmed just right. And the owner, Jack Cadieux, kept a clean bar, didn’t water down his drinks and was fair with prices. I came here often enough that I had a regular table in the corner, where I sat with my back against the wall so I could watch people coming and going. And the minute I sat down, a clean glass and a fresh bottle of bourbon were placed in front of me along with a bowl of hot nuts.
Jack didn’t seem to be in on any of the Halloween-week festivities. Which was just fine with me. If I never saw one more native or tourist dressed like a ghoul, it would be too soon.
I loved my city. My connection to it ran through my veins as surely as my Chevalier blood. But I could do without the city-of-the-dead stuff that authors wrote books about and filmmakers made movies about and the tourists hungered to experience, taking the haunted tours and stealing items from local graveyards as keepsakes. A nonstop topic among locals was whether the reality had created the fiction or, as I was prone to believe, the fiction had created the reality.
The Creoles, via Haiti, had indeed brought their voodoo religion to Louisiana, packed in their suitcases along with their underwear. But in my experience, the rituals were harmless and the shops on Bourbon Street little more than fronts to sell voodoo dolls and incense to curious tourists. With a few bizarre exceptions. The other shops, the ones that might be the real deal, lay outside my district and thus outside my interest.
Anyway, that entire aspect…well, that had little to do with the place I knew. The New Orleans I knew was about the thick heat, the spicy food and the jazz. And two centuries of history chock-full of tradition. A tradition my father and my grandfather before him had taken pride in passing on. A tradition that I respected but had shrugged off early on.
A path my youngest sister, Zoe, seemed to also be following, much to my dismay. The first chance she got, she’d moved out of the house to live on campus while attending Tulane, even though the commute between the two was short. She was rebellious and independent and waved off anything having to do with tradition and expectation at every turn, frustrating her older sisters.
Me? Aside from moments like this one, I got a secret little kick out of her antics.
I rubbed my stubble-covered chin and checked my cell phone. No more calls. I wasn’t surprised. I’d called Laure to tell her that I had yet to get a line on the baby of the family. She’d likely passed on the news to Emilie. And Valerie, as well, the Chevalier women tight-knit no matter the severing of marital ties.
I’d stopped by Zoe’s dorm at Tulane and asked questions earlier in the day. No one seemed to know where she might be, including her roommate, who appeared to have an MP3 player permanently inserted in the side of her head and who looked as blank as a clean sheet of paper.
The Old-Timers, a jazz band that was a regular fixture at Jack’s, warmed up in the far corner, the lead singer welcoming the crowd of about twenty-five or so scattered throughout the establishment. I poured a finger of bourbon and turned the glass around and around in front of me. I should have been keeping a clear head, with Molly Laraway still to deal with. But my head pounded despite the aspirin I’d taken at Astrid’s, and my mouth watered with the desire to down the fiery shot.
The front door opened and closed as I continued staring at the golden liquid. When I looked up, the new visitor was at the bar, her back to me. I eyed strappy black shoes, then followed the line of her long legs up to the hem of a short dark-red dress that clung to all the right curvy places.
There was a time not too long ago when I might have gone up to the bar and stood beside the new addition, checking out the front as I had the back to see if she was possible one-night-stand material. A little something to provide temporary entertainment, much like the alcohol in front of me. But after the disaster of Astrid, I’d kept pretty much to myself. Besides, the way I looked these days, the woman would more likely move farther down the bar than closer to me.
I stared at my watch, then at the door. Molly was running late. I frowned. She had struck me as the punctual type. Always on time and always with a pad nearby. I took my hat off and put it on the table next to the bourbon, still debating draining the glass’s contents.
Jack, who was talking to the new visitor, said something, then pointed in my direction.
The woman in the short dress turned.
Molly Laraway.
Sweet Jesus.
I picked up the glass and downed the contents.
MOLLY WASN’T SURE WHAT she’d expected when she’d walked into the Gas Lantern. Truth was, she’d been a little preoccupied since stepping out of her hotel room in the ultrasexy dress she had on. And it had taken a little concentration to walk in the stiletto heels, higher than anything she’d strapped on before. But Alan’s dumbfounded expression m
ade every awkward step worth it.
With a confidence she had in spades in the professional arena—and that she was beginning to acquire in the sexual field—she sauntered over to his table.
“This chair taken?”
He got up so fast he nearly knocked his own chair over.
“Please…sit,” he said.
For a minute she thought he might pull her chair out for her. She didn’t give him a chance as she smoothed the back of the dress down and seated herself, carefully crossing her legs so as not to give a flash of her panties. There was sexy and there was raunchy. And she wasn’t about to cross that line…yet.
Funnily enough, Alan’s fumbling response touched off something interesting within her, a power source she had never tapped into before if only because she hadn’t known of its existence.
Was that why Claire had dressed the way she had? Had she liked and encouraged the feminine power a mere change in clothing could bring about?
Of course, beyond an irrepressible desire to wear the impulse purchase—as well as a practical attitude that since she’d spent the money, she should really wear it—she thought the dress might help her convince the detective to reveal more than he wanted to.
She hadn’t factored into the equation that his reaction would awaken in her a side of herself she hadn’t known existed.
“Can I get you something?” a young waitress asked, balancing an empty tray in her right hand.
Molly eyed the bottle on the table. “Just another glass, please.”
“You’re late.”
She placed her clutch purse next to his hat, resisting the urge to finger the soft brim of the fedora. “I had a little trouble finding the place.”
The waitress brought the glass, then left them alone again.
For long moments neither of them said anything. And then Alan seemed to realize that she had an empty glass. He picked up the bottle of bourbon, splashed a portion into her glass, then his. She noticed the way his knuckles whitened where he held it.
Submission Page 5
