by Maria Luis
She had to wonder if the blow-up doll had kept a permanent place in Mr. Hugh’s bed until last night.
Windows nearly as tall as the ceilings themselves provided ample natural light and complimented the exposed brick walls. At first glance, nothing appeared out of the ordinary, save for the fact that a pull-down ladder to the attic had been lowered and that the cabinet full of DVD’s was missing three rows.
Mr. Hugh was right. Three rows of 80s lesbian porn was a collection.
Tanya lowered her duffel to the ground and unzipped the top. “I’d suggest getting started up there if I were you.”
Jade wanted to do nothing less. But it was her father’s advice that had her climbing the ladder’s rungs. Well, her father’s advice, as well as the fact that she was finally living her dream. Might as well enjoy it.
Twenty minutes later she found herself up in the stifling attic, sweating from pores she hadn’t known existed, as she looked down at what could only be classified as a “calling card.”
With her latex gloves snapped on, she smoothed out a part of the blow-up doll’s plastic flesh and shined her flashlight down on the words scrawled in pink Sharpie.
I’m better than the doll, it read.
Because that wasn’t creepy as all hell.
Her fingers traced the words, then flipped over the material. On the back, in precise block letters, the note continued: I took ur videos 2 ~ ur wife, Portia.
Well, then.
One point for Portia; zero points for Mr. Hugh.
Jade swallowed a laugh as she slipped the note into a plastic baggie. She’d have to check the rest of the attic space for any leftover evidence, but from the way things were looking, Portia was the thief. A woman scorned and all that—or not. Maybe Mr. Hugh just preferred the inanimate to the physically living.
Who was Jade to judge?
Even so, she couldn’t help but do a happy jig as she shimmied down the ladder. For a first day on the job, she couldn’t have hoped for more. Sure, it was just one creepy love letter—but it was one more creepy love letter than she’d had this morning. And it was also one more creepy love letter than Tanya Smith had.
Jade wasn’t the petty sort, but when she held up the baggie between her thumb and forefinger ten minutes later, there was nothing but pure satisfaction coursing through her at Tanya’s dropped jaw.
She could make it in New Orleans. She was making it in New Orleans.
Tanya Smith wasn’t getting rid of her yet.
10
Central City, New Orleans
“You back here again, boy?”
Yeah, he was back here again. Skimming his hand up the paint-chipped iron railing, Nathan took the porch steps two at a time, the old wood creaking under his weight. “Thought you might want some news.”
The rocking stopped and Ms. Bev turned in his direction. The afternoon sunlight settled in the age-worn creases of her face. “Is my Shawna all right?”
“All right” was relative. Currently Shawna Zeker sat behind bars for a murder she swore she did not commit—the evidence, and Ms. Bev’s claim, said otherwise. For nearly a week, Nathan had worked tirelessly to push the trial date back. He hadn’t done it for Shawna—you couldn’t murder your husband and expect leniency with the law. Instead, he’d done it for the woman seated in her rocking chair, the one who worried about leading her daughter down the wrong path.
Nathan got that sentiment on a personal level.
Pushing away those dark thoughts, he lifted a plastic bag. “Brought you some food in case you get hungry. Some jambalaya.”
Ms. Bev snorted. “I ain’t dead yet, Detective. I’ll get hungry at some point, I reckon.”
With a shake of his head, Nathan chuckled. And that was why he found himself caring about the outcome of Shawna’s trial. Because of all people—aside from Jade—Ms. Bev reminded him how it felt to be alive, even though she had to be nearing eighty. Her mind was as sharp as a finely serrated blade, her words even more so.
“I got Shawna’s initial court date pushed back by a week,” he told the older woman. “That guarantees nothing, mind you, but I’m hoping a good public attorney will step forward to represent her.”
“She’ll stay in jail regardless.” Ms. Bev reached for the pack of cigarettes on the armrest of her rocking chair. “You ain’t God, to be working some magic like that.”
“Not God, no, but with the right lawyer, the judge might cut her some slack.”
“Don’t bother with the sugarcoatin’, Detective. My baby girl is going to be locked up for life. You don’t kill a man and get away with it. No one is above the law.”
No one is above the law.
This time, it was Nathan’s turn to snort. Yeah, no one was above the law. Not him, not Josh Cartwell, not his biological father, not Shawna Zeker. But people like Ms. Bev or his mom? People like Jade or his sister, Lizzie? There was an innate goodness to them, a purity that never seemed to dampen.
Nathan hadn’t possessed that sort of purity, that bright innocence, since . . . ever, really. His father had stripped him of it, and Nathan had done his damn best to make sure Lizzie’s life was as easy as possible. Better to take the brunt of the darkness himself, and deal with the consequences.
He wondered if Jade’s sisters had done that for her, or if she’d grown up in a loving household.
The thought of Jade sent his brain’s trajectory to a shuddering stop. He hadn’t seen her since Sunday—bed building and pizza eating day. It was Friday. Not that he was counting.
“Stop sighing like a ninny over there, Detective, or I’ll ask you to leave.” Ms. Bev clamped her teeth down on the cigarette filter. “You wantin’ again, Detective?”
No. Maybe. Fuck it—yes, yes he was. He told himself that he only wanted her body, and he did. But he’d be lying if he said he didn’t crave her smile. Her laughter. Her vivaciousness. In the span of a short week, Jade Harper had turned him into someone he barely recognized.
Nathan scrubbed a rough hand over his jaw. “It seems silly to stop now,” he said dryly. “I’m too old to learn new tricks.”
Ms. Bev ignored his teasing jab. “Thought you said wanting was a weakness of yours?”
Nathan ignored her teasing jab. “You hungry, Ms. Bev? You aren’t dead yet.”
She commenced with the whole missing-the-armrest thing as she tried to tap the ashes from her cigarette. Her blindness didn’t deter her, nor shame her, and she tap-tap-tapped until she finally made contact. He’d learned from Shawna that Beverly Hansen hadn’t always been blind—a disease had robbed her of her sight as she’d aged. Nowadays, shadows were all she saw, so it made sense that she’d see right through him.
“Leave the food on the kitchen counter for me, Detective.”
With a nod she couldn’t see, he did as she ordered. It was the first time that he’d entered her home, and he was surprised to find it bare of personal items. He’d imagined her with photos of Shawna plastered on the walls or maybe some decorative items on the shelves. That wasn’t the case.
An old-school radio was set up on one of those wooden TV dinner tables, though there wasn’t a TV in sight. A single chair sat beside it. The space was oddly eerie. Hell, it looked unlived in, like a historic house museum come to life.
The kitchen wasn’t much better. Nathan left the jambalaya on the counter as instructed, and turned to head back to the living room. What the . . .
His feet stilled, then propelled him toward the open pantry.
Nathan pressed a flat palm to the door, pushing it wide. “Jesus,” he ground out, his gaze falling to the photographs crammed inside a paper shopping bag. They were all crammed in, some housed in frames, others printed on cheap computer paper. The bag sagged, its bottom threatening to give out due to the weight. Two more paper bags sat on the floor, all topped off with photographs.
Dropping to his haunches, he shoved a hand into the closest bag and began to pull them out one by one.
Shawna and Charlie Zeker.
<
br /> Shawna and Ms. Bev.
Another of Shawna and her husband.
Shawna and a woman Nathan didn’t recognize, but this photo . . . He squinted, holding the frame so sunlight from the kitchen window hit the glass entrapping the photograph. Yeah, Shawna hadn’t realized she’d been captured in this one. Her pretty face was drawn, her mouth turned down in a scowl. But it was the unknown woman who caught his notice. She stood in the center, her hand held out to someone outside the frame, and she looked so incredibly joyful that she reminded him of Jade. Open. Optimistic.
Nathan checked over his shoulder, waiting for footsteps to call him out for snooping. Nothing. He went back to the photos, digging more out of the paper bag and laying them out by his boots. There had to be nearly a hundred, most of which featured Shawna. Some had her as the focus, others not so much. But a reoccurring figure popped up—the woman Shawna didn’t seem to care for.
He reached for the last photograph from the first bag. It was another of the same, unknown smiling female. Shawna was seated in the background, blurrily unfocused, though her frown was crystal clear.
“Who are you,” he muttered, flipping it over.
A date was scrawled on the back.
One month earlier.
His fingers tightened on the picture. There was something he was missing, something he didn’t see—
“Detective!”
“Shit.” He scanned the photograph one last time, noting the woman’s bright eyes and red hair, and her surroundings, then dropped it into the paper bag. Hastily, he plucked the others off the tiled floor and added them to the bag as they’d been before.
Though she probably would never know he’d invaded her privacy, Nathan closed the pantry door to its original angle. His knees popped as he stood.
Ms. Bev’s raspy voice greeted him as soon as his boots hit the aged, sighing porch. “You get lost in there, Detective?”
He forced a wry note to his voice. “Took a wrong turn by the TV dinner table.”
She huffed loudly. “Ain’t like I got loads of company around—except you. You keep coming by. Three times, Detective. They missin’ you at work?”
“Just want to make sure you’re all right since Shawna isn’t able to look out for you.”
Another huff, this one half hidden behind a new cigarette. The woman was a chain-smoking professional. She’d give any marine a run for their money. She stabbed the cig in his direction, her sightless gaze settling on his chest. “Now, I love my girl, but she was too busy chasing after that husband of hers to care about me.”
They both fell silent, as if all too aware that Shawna wouldn’t be chasing anyone anytime soon. And those photos . . . His gut urged him to ask why they were hidden away in the pantry like a dirty secret. Had they graced her walls at one point? Had she had them taken down the moment she’d learned what her daughter had done?
Nathan awkwardly cleared his throat, his mind working to find a way to broach the topic without giving himself away. “I’m surprised you don’t have any photos of Shawna up in the house.”
Her rocking creaked to a halt. “You bein’ nosy, Detective?”
Hell yes. “No, ma’am,” he said instead. “Just thought with how much you love your daughter . . . ” He trailed off as the rocking kicked back into gear, a little faster this time, as though mimicking her growing agitation.
“Thank you for the jambalaya, Detective.”
Yeah, that was a dismissal if he’d ever heard one.
“It’s no problem.” He backed up, heading for the porch steps. “You have a good day now, Ms. Bev.”
The minute he slipped out from the shade of her covered porch, the sun beat down on the back of his head and shoulders, and the heat rose in waves of steam off the concrete. He yanked at the collar of his shirt, pulling it away from his skin.
“I’ll try to stop by in a day or two to check up on you,” he called up to the old woman rocking back and forth on her porch. “What do you want next time?”
He waited with his hand over the car door handle for her to reply. “I always wanted to try that sushi thing,” she hollered.
“Done.”
Maybe he could sneak another look at those photographs while he was at it.
He clapped his hand on the toasting roof of the car and slid inside. Just before the door slammed shut, Ms. Bev shouted, “Whoever she is, Detective, don’t stop wanting now!”
Nathan chuckled roughly.
Bev Hansen had no idea what he wanted, but his brain was already one step ahead. He’d recognized that bar from the photo with the smiling woman. Who was the woman to Shawna? A friend? Something else?
He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel as he contemplated his next move. Then, without allowing himself the time to talk himself out of it, he leaned over to the glove box and withdrew his cell phone. He opened his contact list, momentarily hesitating over her number.
Inviting Jade on a non-date to a bar that maybe held the answers to those photographs probably wasn’t what Josh had in mind when he’d told Nathan to tour her around the city.
Do it.
He had nothing to lose.
Opening a new thread, he typed out a message: I need a partner in crime tonight—you in?
Play it cool, play it cool. It was just a text. No biggie. He’d sent countless of them to women before; some he’d taken to bed after, some he hadn’t. This wasn’t any different, except, if anything, he was solidly in the friend zo—his cell buzzed with an incoming text and Nathan all but launched himself at the device.
Am I going to need bail money?
A grin pulled at his mouth. He liked her sass. A lot.
You’re not allowed to sleep with her, he reminded himself as he stared down at her text. Belatedly, he realized that he was baking in the sun, hadn’t even turned on the car. Shoving the key into the ignition, he flicked the AC vents to aim at his face.
With the cool air pumping, Nathan turned back to his phone.
I’ll cover the bail if things get a little too close for comfort.
Her response was instantaneous, like she’d been waiting for him. You’re so gallant.
Nathan chuckled, then sent off his reply. Count it as making a return on the pizza.
Does this mean that dinner is included on our adventure tonight?
Considering that they were hitting up one of the city’s oldest restaurants, probably so. He typed out his message and hit SEND.
Food is included. Drinks are optional.
I’ll be home by five. Let the criminality proceed right after. I’ll be in all-black.
A mental image of Jade Harper wearing all black, with her hair as dark as night and her skin a golden glow, swept through him and affected both the head attached to his neck and the head tucked in his pants. He shoved his face in front of the AC. If he could have stuck his head into the vent to cool his lust, he would have.
Two points for guessing which head he was talking about.
He had a feeling tonight was going to prove more difficult than he’d originally anticipated.
11
The French Quarter, New Orleans
“This it?” Jade glanced down at the engraved tiles, which spelled out the name of the restaurant. “Is this place really named after Napoleon Bonaparte?”
“Yup.” Danvers stepped closer, propping open the door for her so she could enter before him. “Legend has it that a nineteenth-century mayor was obsessed with Napoleon, and planned to offer him refuge here in the city.”
“Interesting.”
“Sarcasm?” he asked.
“Not at all. I was an archaeology major in college. History is my middle name.”
“Ah,” he said with a widening grin, “you’re one of those people, then.”
Jade recognized her words being thrown back at her and she eyed him with a lifted brow. “One of which people?”
“An Indiana Jones lover.”
Since it was true, Jade only laughed as they steppe
d aside to wait for the hostess to seat them. She quickly scanned the front part of the restaurant, and it was . . . well, nothing less than breathtaking. An old Victorian-era bar sat to the left, while open-bay windows allowed guests to sit and watch the commotion of the French Quarter while they chowed down. The stucco walls were cracked with age, and antique paintings of Napoleon Bonaparte covered nearly every inch of available space, even the ceiling.
When she’d received Danvers’ text message earlier in the afternoon, she hadn’t known what to make of it. They hadn’t spoken in days, not since he’d helped her to put together her furniture. Not since their conversation had strayed a little too uncomfortably toward the personal. Thing was, she hadn’t felt odd opening up to him. Quite honestly, she had no idea what to make of that—what to make of him.
The shadows in his eyes were tempered by his boyish grin, and the slow, methodical way he moved was opposed by his quick wit.
She wished he weren’t so intriguing . . . or hot.
Tonight, he wore dark-washed jeans, his customary boots, and a fitted black T-shirt. In other words, he was the equivalent of Mr. Dark, Dangerous, and Handsome. She noted the bulge of his firearm beneath his T-shirt when they took their seats at a table in the open courtyard. Encircling his wrist was a fancy gold watch—her gaze snagged on it, and then traveled up, taking in his thick, corded forearms, and the dark hair dusting his skin.
Her mouth watered, and, if anyone were to have asked her, she would have blamed it on the delicious aroma wafting from the kitchens to their right.
“Thanks for coming with me tonight.”
The rumble of his voice jerked her gaze from his body to his face. Oops. Caught red-handed. “Do I get to know what sort of debauchery we’re getting into tonight?” she asked, fiddling with the napkin on the table. “I brought bail money.”
His gray eyes dipped down her body in a slow, measured perusal. “Seems like you actually fulfilled your promise on the black attire thing, too.”