Flynn returned briefly to her own apartment to grab some clothes and to check on Charlie. The cat still disapproved of her absence, displaying this by twice clawing her on the hand when she tried to stroke him. Flynn left him food, and water, and made sure to leave a window open for him to come and go by, and then she threw some clothes into a bag for her overnight stay. Charlie followed her around the apartment, meowing at her.
“Just one night,” she promised the cat. “I mean, I don’t think I could bear Aunty Pierce for more than one night. She ain’t the best patient.”
Before heading back to Boudreau’s place, Flynn stopped by Voodoo Realty again, and this time she found Ariel at home. Attired in a red silk kimono and nothing else, she drew Flynn inside and laid a hand on her chest, leaning in to kiss her.
“I need to talk to you,” Flynn said.
Ariel gave a mock sigh. “Just talk, Willie Rae? Again? Damn it, you’re killing me.”
Flynn smiled. “Sorry.”
Ariel preceded her upstairs to her apartment above the store, the familiar scent of cinnamon and patchouli wafting back to Flynn as she followed. At the top of the stairs, Ariel stopped and turned around, leaning against the wall and giving Flynn a slow, sexy smile. “Y’all keep coming around like this, a girl might start to get ideas.”
Flynn swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry as she paused on the top stair. “What kind of ideas?” she asked.
In response, Ariel hooked a finger into her belt buckle, tugged her close and kissed her. This time Flynn didn’t even try to resist.
“I do have something I need to do tonight—” Flynn heard the husky reluctance in her own voice. The sheer want.
“Well, that makes two of us then because I have something I want to do tonight, too…” Ariel arched one eyebrow and let her fingers trail lazily from Flynn’s belt buckle all the way down the front of her jeans.
Flynn felt herself moisten, her breath quicken, but she forced herself to step out of Ariel’s tempting embrace. Holding the smaller woman by the shoulders, she looked down into the luminous green eyes that teased her. “Seriously, Ariel. I have to baby-sit Pierce Boudreau tonight. She has a concussion.”
Ariel pouted. “Aw, poor Pierce. Doesn’t she have a girlfriend to do that?”
“She’s staying at her mama’s for a few days. And you and I really do need to talk. You’re familiar with a hustler named Johnny Cakes, right?”
Ariel blinked as she regained her equilibrium. “I know Johnny Cakes, yeah. He comes in the store to buy stuff. He’s always trying to impress me—” she rolled her eyes. “The guy is an ass-clown. So, why are you asking about Johnny Cakes, anyway?”
Flynn gave her a grim smile. “The woman he’s buying that stuff for might be a killer. Her name is Jean-Marie. That name mean anything to you?”
Ariel shook her head. “Who is she?”
Briefly, Flynn explained the possible connection between Jean-Marie and the murdered women. As she talked, she watched the color drain from Ariel’s face and impulsively she pulled the smaller woman back into an embrace, even though she knew where that could lead. “Stay away from Johnny Cakes and anyone else might be connected to this Jean-Marie person, please. ”
All at once Flynn no longer wanted to even pretend that she had come here just to warn Ariel about Jean-Marie. Tilting the smaller woman’s face up to hers, Flynn kissed her again. Lust made hard twinges deep in her own belly. She worked a hand between their bodies, untied Ariel’s kimono, letting it fall open in front. As she had suspected, Ariel was naked underneath. Her body, tight and smooth, the flesh pale so that the dark triangle of downy hair between her legs stood out starkly, made Flynn’s pulse race as she recalled some of the more unusual things that Ariel could do with that body. As though reading these thoughts straight out of Flynn’s mind, Ariel felt for the zip of her jeans, lowered it slowly, and slipped her hand inside. Flynn heard a low, reverberating sound of sheer yearning, and she realized—not without considerable shock—that the sound came from her own throat. Her head filled up with the cinnamon and patchouli scent of Ariel’s perfume.
“So whaddya think,” Ariel whispered, “you got time to stay for a little while?”
Flynn thought she could feel her insides melting. “Kiss me again and maybe I’ll find I do have the time,” she murmured.
Ariel obliged.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dana Jordan had been surprised to find Pierce Boudreau absent from the press conference. It was usual for the lead investigator on a case to be present. Taking her place with the other reporters in the lobby of the police building, Dana had listened to Captain Willard Embry, standing alone on the podium set up for the press conference, give out a rote statement.
Yes, the NOPD were investigating the double homicide of a mother and daughter from Kenner. No, they were not currently thinking in terms of a serial killer. Yes, they had a suspect. No, there would not be any information given out on that suspect, not at this time.
Embry had played down any suggestion of Voodoo being involved in the murders, and fielded most of the assembled reporters’ questions with the skill of a born politician. After the unproductive conference, not feeling much the wiser and still pondering where Boudreau had got to, Dana returned to the newspaper office and wrote the best follow-up story to her initial piece that she could using the information she had. Sy then asked her to check out another story, and that took her the best part of the afternoon. When she finally did get back to the office, she found two messages awaiting her. A Special Agent Erin Krueger from the FBI field office in New Orleans had called, requesting that Dana call her back ASAP. That raised her eyebrows. Sy also had left a note telling her that Detective Boudreau had been injured at a crime scene. Flynn, his note added, might have been with Boudreau at the time. Sy had gone home for the day and didn’t pick up on either his land line or his cell. A call to the NOPD switchboard got Dana nowhere either. Concerned, but not yet worried, she tried Flynn’s cell, only to have it go straight to voice mail.
She seethed with frustration, muttering to herself, “What the hell is it with everyone today? Is no one answering their goddamned phones?” she left a terse message for Flynn to call her back, and then she turned her attention to the mysterious FBI agent. The Bureau rarely called reporters unless they needed a favor from the media.
Before calling Agent Krueger back, Dana did some online research and discovered that Erin Krueger came to the FBI in 1998, having transferred there from another branch of the Department of Justice. Krueger had served out of three different field offices, starting in New York, moving to West Virginia, and finally six months ago, she landed up in New Orleans. There was nothing specific in her online bio regarding which agency she served with previously, leading Dana to wonder if it had been the CIA, or maybe the NSA.
“So what do you want, Agent Krueger?” Dana murmured as she dialed the number.
The voice which answered was dark and smoky, with the hint of a Midwest accent lurking beneath the carefully modulated speech. “Federal Bureau of Investigation, New Orleans office. Special Agent Krueger speaking.”
“Hello. This is Dana Jordan, with the Orleans Weekly. You called me, Agent Krueger?”
A hint of warmth crept into the agent’s voice, but Dana suspected it, too, was carefully planned. “Yes, indeed I did, Miss Jordan. First of all, allow me to thank you for getting back to me so promptly. What I need to talk to you about is not something that I’m comfortable with going into over the phone. I wonder, would it be convenient for you to come over to my office where we can chat more freely?”
As if the feds ever did anything ‘freely’. Dana actually considered refusing, and instead forcing Agent Krueger to come to her, but only for a moment. You didn’t want to piss the feds off. It was always better to play nice with them. “I could certainly do that, Agent Krueger. When would you like me to come over?” she asked.
There was a brief beat of silence. Then Agent Krueger suggested, “How ab
out right now?”
The New Orleans FBI field office was housed in a modern four-storey building situated on Leon C Simon Boulevard and constructed especially for the purpose of housing an FBI field office. The flat-roofed rectangle of red stone and beige-painted stucco looked liked the world’s most impersonal layer cake. Dana parked in the visitor’s lot, entered the ugly building through a high arc of glass panels that were, in her opinion, a pretty useless stab at cheering the place up with Art Deco. An obviously junior agent met her in the foyer, escorted her through various security checks and onto an elevator to the third floor where he delivered her to Agent Krueger’s office. It bore the generic stamp of all government offices: gray carpeting; gray walls; acoustic tiles on the ceiling; functional furniture. Efficient air conditioning hummed quietly in the background. Levelor blinds—also grey—had been drawn all the way aside to allow natural light to enter through the large window. Dana knew that all of the windows in the FBI building had been replaced after 9/11 with bomb—and bullet-proof glass, and she often wondered what difference that was expected to make if the bomb were planted inside the building? She also knew that agents low on the totem pole were given offices at the front of the building, with a view of the parking lots and the traffic on Leon C Simon, and that those higher up were awarded offices to the rear with views of the Mississippi River. Agent Krueger’s office had a spectacular river view.
“Miss Jordan,” Agent Krueger greeted her. “Thank you for coming over at such short notice.”
In complete contrast to her drab surroundings, Special Agent Erin Krueger was a woman of startling beauty. At least five-feet-ten or -eleven, with the athletic build of someone who did a lot of swimming and running and other highly physical pursuits, Agent Krueger was either a natural blonde or she knew the whereabouts of the world’s greatest hair stylist. She had ice-blue eyes and a bone structure that was good enough to have put her on the cover of Vogue. Dana supposed if ever the FBI needed a poster-child for recruitment, they could do worse than put Erin Krueger’s picture out there. The agent smiled, showing white straight teeth which were a triumph of both genetics and a great dental plan.
“Please—have a seat,” she invited.
Dana sat, surreptitiously lowering her gaze to the agent’s hands where they rested on the desktop. No rings adorned the long, slim fingers.
“Can I get you anything, Miss Jordan? Coffee? A soda?” Agent Krueger closed the file she had been reading and crooked an eyebrow at Dana, who shook her head to indicate that she was good. The cool gaze lingered on her for a moment. “Yes, I am a natural blonde—lucky me—and no, I’m not married, which is why I don’t wear any rings.”
Dana blinked. Agent Krueger smiled, allowing a hint of humor to glide through her ice-blue eyes. “I spend every day observing people, Miss Jordan, their body language, what their eyes are saying that their lips aren’t. And, without being boastful, I am considered to be very good at it.”
“Okay…” Dana gave a slow nod. “Remind me never to get into a poker game with you. So, what did you want to talk to me about that couldn’t be said over the phone?”
“Willie Rae Flynn.”
Dana blinked again at the unexpected turn of the conversation. Krueger believed in getting straight to her point apparently.
“How well do you know Willie Rae Flynn?”
Dana shrugged. “We’re—friends, I would say.”
Reclining in her chair, crossing one leg over the other at the knee, Agent Krueger rested her elbows on the arms of her chair and made a steeple of her fingers. Not everybody could get away with steepling, Dana reflected, but it suited this woman. Her ice-blue eyes became once again unreadable. “Let me tell you a little about Willie Rae Flynn,” she began. “Starting in 2001, when the body of a New York businessman who had known connections to a prominent Mob family was fished out of the Hudson River. He had been garroted. Whoever did it, they used piano wire and it was clearly a professional job.”
“A Mob hit?” Dana guessed.
The smallest of smiles played on Agent Krueger’s mouth. “It may well have been the Mob who ordered the hit, but it was certainly not any of their usual people who carried it out.”
Dana fancied she could feel Agent Krueger’s stare prying into her head, gauging her every reaction, looking for tells. It was easy to imagine a suspect, locked in an eight-by-twelve concrete box with this woman’s implacable ice-blue gaze for company, developing the irresistible urge to confess—even if it was to something they hadn’t done.
“We became involved on that case because the deceased was scheduled to testify in a RICO case against his former Mob bosses. I was the agent in charge. Long story short, Miss Jordan, we were able to ascertain information led us to believe the hitter may have been a woman who used the alias ‘Hilda Bergen’. We checked it out, but all we found was a tenuous connection between ‘Hilda Bergen’ and another woman named ‘Sally Cooper’ who ran a high-class matchmaking agency. The office out of which both women supposedly operated, in fact turned out to be a derelict building.”
“Sounds like you hit a pretty solid dead end,” Dana remarked.
Now it was a clearly rueful smile that flickered on the agent’s lips, gone almost in the instant it was formed. “We were not getting anywhere on the dead businessman or the hitter, I admit that. At least not until a woman named Barbara Calabrese came forward. Mrs Calabrese was the wife of a high-ranking member of the same Mob family who had employed the dead businessman’s services. She claimed that her husband was the one who arranged the hit, and that she had been with him when he spoke to the hitter. She wasn’t supposed to be there, but a series of those unfortunate coincidences often occur in life, led to her presence at the meeting. She saw her husband and a woman talking, which surprised her enough that she decided to be a tad nosy.”
“I’d probably have felt the same way,” Dana said.
“Mm. Mrs Calabrese thought she recognized the woman to whom her husband talked—granted, it was dark and they were standing maybe twenty feet away—but she was pretty damned sure all the same.”
Dana made a face to reflect the skepticism she felt. “That would hardly stand up well in court.”
“Probably not,” Agent Krueger admitted. “Mrs Calabrese’s reason for coming to us would have made any testimony look suspect also. She found out her husband was having an affair, decided to take her revenge by ratting him out for arranging the hit. In return we agreed to place her in the Witness Protection Program.”
Dana shook her head in disbelief. If she tried to take this to her editor, she would have been thrown out of his office. No newspaper would accuse someone of being a hired assassin based solely upon the word of a jealous soon-to-be ex-wife. No respectable newspaper anyway.
“It didn’t matter in the end—” Agent Krueger bit a corner of her lip, grimaced at Dana. “Barbara Calabrese was killed in a hit and run three days after she made first contact with us. It looked like an accident. I’m certain it wasn’t.”
“Do you think the same killer hired to take out her husband also made the hit on Mrs Calabrese?” Dana asked.
Agent Krueger shrugged. “I had no way of determining that. All we had was a conversation with Mrs Calabrese that was never recorded. She refused to talk to us on the record until we had protection in place for her.”
“What did the conversation concern?”
“Barbara Calabrese had a brief fling with a younger woman whilst she was in California, attending college there to study for a nursing degree. It was several years ago and Mrs Calabrese admitted that she had liked to party back then in a very serious way. Alcohol, drugs, sex, the works, She did think, however, that the woman with whom her husband met, was the same woman with whom she’d had the fling.”
Something dark and secretive slid behind the agent’s ice-blue eyes, making Dana think of a shark gliding beneath the surface of cold blue water. “The description she gave rang bells for me. I remembered briefly meeting a woman on a
n occasion when I was working for, uh, another agency. I only met this woman fleetingly, in a hotel bar in Havana. She told me that her name was Wynne Foster and that she was an assassin.”
Dana blinked. “She just came out with it? She was joking surely?”
Agent Krueger shook her head. “I had the feeling she was telling me the truth. I also felt she recognized what I was back then—” as Dana opened her mouth to ask a question, the agent held up a hand for her continued silence. “No, Miss Jordan, I will not be going into any detail about what that was. Suffice to say it wasn’t as though I could do anything with the information she gave me. But I knew in my gut that the New York hitter was the same woman I had met in Cuba. I tried to investigate—I really did—but I got nowhere. Every avenue I turned down, it was a dead end. This woman suddenly just did not exist in any reality.”
“A ghost,” Dana murmured.
Agent Krueger twitched a smile. “I don’t believe in ghosts, Miss Jordan. Anyway, the whole investigation was shut down, and all of us agents were all assigned to other cases. I was transferred out of the New York office to West Virginia. But, Miss Jordan, I didn’t stop looking into the New York hitter. I became obsessed with the idea of finding her.”
“Why?” Dana asked.
Agent Krueger shook her head. “I’ll get to that in due time. For now, let me tell you about another case. A kidnapping. Little girl, aged four, snatched from outside of her home in West Virginia, in broad daylight. The local police wasted two days before calling us in.”
The first forty-eight hours in a kidnapping were crucial. During that time the kidnappers would be most likely to panic and dispose of the victim, most often dead.
“By the time the locals got their heads out of their asses, the trail had all but gone cold as yesterday’s dinner, ” Agent Krueger went on grimly. “We had to start our investigation from scratch, which wasted even more precious time. We finally discovered an old boyfriend in the wife’s past who had been put away for kidnapping and assaulting a girl of five years of age.”
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