Marisa Carroll - Hotel Marchand 09

by Her Summer Lover

“Sophie Clarkson?”

  “Yes, Sophie.” Cecily smiled. She surely must love Alain to have volunteered for such a task, especially if it meant being cooped up in a car with his ex-wife for four or five hours.

  “Well, it should be interesting when she butts heads with Casey Jo.”

  Cecily’s smiled faded. “I just wanted to let you know everything’s okay,” she said rather more sharply than necessary. “Alain thinks they’ll be back around eight or so.”

  “Then, we’d better get moving.”

  “Moving? What are you talking about?”

  “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. We either get those drugs out of Past Perfect tonight or we forget about it. Sophie Clarkson is reopening the store tomorrow morning. They’re fixing the security system. We’ve been over this and over this.”

  Stomach acid began to churn and work its way up Cecily’s esophagus.

  “Go tell Alain you’re going over to your mother’s to explain what’s going on so you don’t tie up the phones,” Marie instructed. “She’ll be your alibi just like we discussed before. Leave your car at her place and walk from there. I’ll meet you behind the diner. Bring a flashlight. And, oh yeah, wear black.”

  She disconnected and Cecily was left with a dial tone ringing in her ear.

  Twenty minutes later she was in the alley behind the Blue Moon, waiting for Marie to make an appearance. It was dark and had rained off and on all day so there were puddles here and there waiting to trip her up and soak her shoes. She looked around a little nervously. Even in Indigo, where a lot of people didn’t bother to lock their doors at night, it was a scary to be in a dark alley alone.

  Cars passed in the street, and she could hear the voices of people coming and going from the General Store and the gas station, the only businesses open on a Sunday evening, but she still felt alone and vulnerable and it wasn’t a comfortable feeling. She had just made up her mind to go home and forget this whole ridiculous business when Marie drove up and parked in her usual space beside the back door of the restaurant. She got out and was momentarily illuminated by the security light above the door.

  “Mon Dieu,” Cecily breathed. “She looks like Cat Woman.” Marie’s dark pants and sweater were skin-tight and, damn it, she didn’t look half bad for a woman her age.

  Cecily stepped out of the shadows. “Why did I have to walk and you drive up and park back here like it was no big thing?” she hissed.

  Marie plopped her hand over her heart. “Good Lord, you just scared me out of a year’s growth.”

  “Good, then we’re even,” Cecily snapped back. “I don’t much like standing out here in the dark, either.”

  “I parked here because it’s where I always park and people are used to seeing my car here even when the diner’s closed. You left your car at your mother’s place so you’ll have an alibi.” Marie reached into the back seat and pulled out a lumpy bundle tied up in dark cloth.

  “What do you have there?” Cecily asked.

  Marie shut the car door. “Burglary tools.” She started off at a brisk pace. A block up and they would intersect with the alley that ran behind the opera house. As long as no one saw them cross Jackson Street, they would be okay.

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this. It’s insane. It’s only seven-thirty. No one robs a building at seven-thirty in the evening.”

  “We are,” Marie said.

  “We should be doing this in the middle of the night.”

  “It’s as dark as it’s going to get. Besides, once Casey Jo and the kids get back, there’ll be no getting away again tonight. Not as long as Dana’s not feeling well, you know you won’t leave her. I told you, this is our last chance. Now stop looking for excuses to wimp out and run home.”

  “I’m not looking for excuses to wimp out,” Cecily insisted, although it was a bald-faced lie.

  Marie looked both ways, put her fingers to her lips, and motioned for Cecily to follow her across the deserted street. “Do you really think you could get out of the house in the middle of the night without waking Alain? I bet he sleeps with his eyes open.”

  “He does no such thing,” Cecily insisted loyally. But Marie was right about one thing. Alain was a light sleeper, especially with a fussy child in the next room. He would hear her if she got up and left the house in the middle of the night. “There’s quite a bit of traffic around the square,” she whispered. “Someone will surely see our flashlights.” She was already out of breath and they were still two blocks from the opera house.

  “Not unless they’re flying by the windows. You know they’re at least eight feet off the ground everywhere but the lobby.”

  “I know,” Cecily said. Marie had just shot down her last argument and she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  The opera house loomed over them, a dark bulk against the darker sky. The windows caught glints of light from street lamps in the square, but everything else was in shadow.

  “How are we going to get inside?” Cecily said under her breath. She hated being so passive but she simply had no idea how to go about breaking and entering.

  “There’s a window behind the stage with a broken lock.”

  “How do you know that?” She was completely out of breath now, and her bad knee had begun to ache. Why shouldn’t it? Most cat burglars weren’t fifty-six-year-old women who had already put in an eight-hour shift in a busy hospital emergency room.

  “Your mother told me,” Marie hissed back. “Maude told her about it just before she died. She told me at the wake. Maude never had a chance to get it fixed.”

  “Our lucky day,” Cecily said morosely.

  “Exactly. That and the fact that Damien Homier’s on duty tonight and not Alain. Homier’s dumber than a box of rocks.”

  Cecily didn’t share her companion’s low estimation of Alain’s newest employee’s intelligence, but she remained silent. Marie climbed the rickety metal fire escape that crisscrossed the back of the building, pausing at the landing at the top of the first flight of steps. Just as Cecily remembered, there wasn’t a window that opened onto the fire escape. The nearest one was at least two feet to the left of the waist-high railing.

  “Grab my belt,” Marie ordered as she tested the railing. “I need some leverage for this.” Cecily grasped her belt with both hands, ignored the pain in her knees, and set her feet. Marie leaned as far over the railing as she could and began to work the thin end of the crowbar under the window frame. Cecily mentally ran through the procedures for treating broken bones and concussion.

  With two horrendous squeaks, which Cecily was sure anyone in the town square—and even Damien Homier over at the station—could hear, the window slid open.

  “There,” Marie said, panting with exertion. “We’re in.”

  “How?” But Cecily was afraid she knew.

  “Climb onto the railing and slither through the window on your belly. Ready?”

  “I suppose so.” Slither? She hadn’t been the size to slither through anything for about fifteen years. Now she wished she’d told Marie how to immobilize a broken leg. Or warned the other woman not to let her swallow her tongue when she went into a seizure from landing on her head when she fell out of the window.

  Marie climbed onto the railing, angled her body into the window and pushed through. Two agonizing minutes later Cecily landed beside her on the dark, dusty floor. She sat with her back against the wall, gasping for breath and trying to decide if she’d broken a rib or only cracked one.

  “Are you okay?” Marie whispered, shining her flashlight straight down at the floor for a brief moment while she searched Cecily’s face.

  “I think so. You’d better call Alain right now to come and arrest us because I’m not going back through that window.”

  Marie reached out and hoisted Cecily to her feet. “Put your hand on my shoulder, and don’t trip and sprain an ankle. Then we’d really be in trouble. Here’s the curtain. Be careful climbing down off the stage.”


  Cecily kept her mouth shut with an effort. She would like nothing more than to give Marie Lesatz a piece of her mind, but the truth of the matter was she was totally out of her element and Marie wasn’t. She was moving through the Stygian blackness as if it was broad daylight. Cecily couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.

  Light from nearby streetlamps shone in through the high windows of the auditorium, allowing them to see vague shapes in the gloom. They hurried up the aisle toward the dark piles of furniture that Guy and his friends had so painstakingly rearranged to Sophie’s satisfaction.

  “I’m going to turn on my flashlight,” Cecily decided. “This place is a minefield of glass and china. I don’t want to break anything.”

  “Okay,” Marie said, not bothering to whisper. “Just keep it pointed down. We don’t want anyone glancing up at the windows and seeing our lights flashing around.”

  Cecily had had enough. “I know that much. What I don’t know is how you learned so much about breaking and entering?”

  “I watch a lot of TV crime shows.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  “Turn your light off—I’m going to open the doors. When I do, stay low.”

  She moved purposefully toward the big double doors, opened one, with more ear-splitting squeals of old hinges, and slipped into the showroom. Cecily wasn’t good at crouching so she got down on her hands and knees and crawled behind the counter. Marie was halfway to the big highboy where Sophie had arranged the contraband toys before Cecily began to follow. “They’re here,” Marie whispered. “Make sure no one’s walking by outside. I’m going to have to stand up to get them.”

  Cecily scurried forward and crouched below the front door. Already three cars had driven by, their headlights giving her palpitations when they flickered through the windows. She lifted her head and looked first right, then left. “Coast’s clear,” she hissed.

  She heard the rustle of plastic as Marie pulled a shopping bag out of her back pocket. She kept her eyes on the street and resisted the temptation of turning her head to watch Marie scoop the toys into her sack.

  “Got them!” Marie crowed.

  “Wait! A car’s coming.” Horror tightened Cecily’s insides. This time the car passing by wasn’t an ordinary one. It was a patrol car. Not Alain’s Explorer, thank goodness. But a police car, nonetheless. And it was stopping outside. “It’s Damien Homier. He must have decided to start his patrol early. Get down. Hurry!”

  She heard a little plop as Marie dropped to the floor. But there was no time for Cecily to get back to the relative safety of the counter and the dark shadows of the auditorium. She scooted behind a table and pulled the lacy tablecloth around her as best she could. Footsteps sounded on the porch boards. A flashlight beam cut across the room. Someone rattled the doorknob. Cecily sucked in her breath and wondered if her heart was beating loud enough to be heard through the door.

  Evidently not, because after another rattle, the beefy outline of Indigo’s rookie police officer disappeared from the far wall. Cecily couldn’t hear his retreating footsteps as he left the porch because the blood was still pounding in her ears. Straining, she heard a door slam and the blessed sound of a car pulling away from the curb.

  She caught movement as Marie crawled toward her. She laid her hand on Cecily’s arm.

  “C’mon,” Marie whispered so quietly Cecily could scarcely hear her. “We have to go.”

  She nodded, not trusting her voice, and crawled as quickly as her aching knees would allow into the musty darkness of the auditorium. Marie eased the crack in the big doors shut and turned the latch so slowly it barely made a protest.

  She slumped against the wall, the bag of little animals between her outstretched legs.

  Cecily pulled her legs up and laid her forehead on her knees. It had always been so simple: the members of their little smuggling ring got their medication at reasonable prices, Cecily’s cousin got five percent of the cost of each prescription from the members of the group for her time and trouble, the toys, relieved of their contraband burden, got a good home with grandkids and nieces and nephews, and everyone went away happy. Well, except maybe for Byron McKee, the town druggist, but you couldn’t please everyone all the time.

  Marie stood up and held out her hand to help Cecily to her feet. “Come on. We’d better get out of here before Homier decides to check the back side of the building and finds the window open.”

  “Don’t even think it.” Cecily shuddered as an image played in her mind’s eye of Marie and her, coats over their heads, hands handcuffed behind their backs, being perp-walked into Alain’s jail. She didn’t watch as much TV as Marie, but she’d seen such arrests often enough on the evening news to make the vision frighteningly real.

  Actually, it didn’t turn out to be quite that bad.

  At least, Cecily thought, as she raised both hands over her head and walked out onto the fire escape ahead of the flabbergasted young policeman, he hadn’t caught her with her fanny hanging out of the window, dangling fifteen feet off the ground. No, he’d been waiting halfway up the fire escape, only his shocked face and drawn gun was visible as Marie stuck her head out of the window to reconnoiter their escape route.

  “Police,” he said, not loudly at all. “Don’t move.”

  “Run!” Marie kicked the bag of stuffed animals blindly in Cecily’s direction, then raised both her hands, all the time bent over like a pretzel with her head out the window.

  It wasn’t a flattering pose, Cecily thought a little hysterically.

  “Don’t shoot, Damien. It’s me, Marie Lesatz.”

  “Whoever’s inside, open the fire escape door slowly and come out with your hands up.” Cecily did as she was told, her hands shaking so badly it took two tries to turn the deadbolt on the door.

  “Good Lord, Mrs. Boudreaux. Is that you?” The young cop’s eyes were as big as saucers in his round face.

  “Yes, Damien, it’s me,” she said. She wished she’d had the courage to take Marie’s advice and run into the darkness of the auditorium, but no matter how much they argued and sniped at each other, Marie was her friend and she wasn’t going to leave her to face the consequences of their stupidity alone. “Put your gun down, will you? It’s scaring me to death.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “THEY’RE BOTH ASLEEP. Thank the Lord. I don’t know what I’d do if Dana decided to upchuck on your leather seats.”

  “They’re washable,” Sophie replied in a low voice. She had hoped the very mild sedative the urgent-care doctor had given Dana would allow the poor little girl some rest, and it seemed to be working. She wasn’t seriously ill, thank heaven, just worn out from too little sleep, too much excitement and too much rich food. She’d kept down the electrolyte drink they’d given her at the clinic, and a little later a protein shake that tasted enough like chocolate milk to pass muster with an exhausted and petulant seven-year-old.

  It had been Guy, not her mother, who had talked a pale and teary-eyed Dana into cooperating with the doctor to avoid a time-consuming and scary-to-a-little-girl IV to treat her dehydration. Sophie hadn’t been present in the exam room, but the walls of the Biloxi walk-in clinic were paper thin, and both Dana’s voice and Guy’s carried to where she sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair.

  “You’d never get the stink out of them and we both know it.” Casey Jo settled back into the bucket seat of Sophie’s Lexus and braced her foot on the dash. “My God, what a day.” Sophie kept her attention on the road, watching the approaching headlights of a big semi-rig through the swish-swish of the windshield wipers. The silence lasted for a minute or two and then Casey Jo spoke again. “I suppose I’d better get this over with. There hasn’t been time, what with sittin’ in the doctor’s office and packing the car and all, but I want to thank you for driving Guy all this way to get us.”

  “It was nothing,” Sophie said automatically.

  “Bull—” Casey Jo glanced over her shoulder at her sleeping children.

/>   Sophie found their reflections in the rearview mirror at the same time. Dana was curled up against Guy’s side. His arm was wrapped protectively around her shoulders while he sprawled in the corner of the seat, his jacket rolled up beneath his head as it rested against the car window. His mouth was open and he was snoring, just a little.

  “Bullcrap,” Alain’s ex-wife replied. “It’s a hell of an imposition and I have enough manners to say thank you when someone deserves it. But I don’t think you did it just out of the goodness of your heart,” she added bluntly.

  Sophie had had a lot of time to think about why she had made the trip, and although she tried to tell herself it was only the act of a Good Samaritan, or a good friend, she knew she was lying. She had done it because she loved Alain, and by extension, his children. For that simple, earth-shaking, life-altering reason, and no other.

  “You’re in love with that stick-up-the-butt ex-husband of mine, aren’t you?” Casey Jo wasn’t looking at Sophie but staring straight ahead into the gathering night. The other woman hadn’t bothered with her hair or makeup today, or more likely just hadn’t had the time to spend on herself. Tonight she looked tired, not so young as she once was, and just a little worn around the edges.

  Sophie considered not answering her, but didn’t give in to the urge to dodge the question. “Yes, I am.” If she and Alain did manage to carve out a future for themselves, this woman would be part of it whether Sophie liked the idea or not. She didn’t intend to run away from Casey Jo ever again.

  “Did he ask you to marry him yet?” Casey Jo shifted a little in her seat, one foot still propped on the dash like a teenager.

  “No. We haven’t discussed marriage.”

  “You want him, though, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Sophie said. “I do want him. With all my heart. I have for a long time somewhere deep inside. But we never did anything to dishonor the vows he made to you, Casey Jo.”

  She waved her fingers in the air. “Hell, I know that. Alain’s too full of himself to sneak around on me.”