Veronica handed her a box of tissues. "Twyla, we don't know if Harry has done anything to you yet. All we know for sure is that he met with this woman two nights in a row."
Twyla's tears shut off as quickly as water from a closed faucet.
"You mean you don't actually know whether he's been unfaithful to me?" She dabbed her tear-stained eyes with a tissue.
I shook my head. "No."
"Well, Harry's quite fatherly, you know. Maybe that was the daughter of one of his clients, and he was just trying to be of assistance in some way?"
I looked helplessly at Veronica.
"Oh, you don't have to answer that, darling." Twyla patted my knee. "It was just a rhetorical question."
"We apologize if there was any confusion about our findings," Veronica said.
"Not at all, dear." Twyla rose to her feet. "I want to thank you girls for all your trouble. I'll let you know if I need you to investigate this unseemly matter any further, after I've talked to Harry, of course." She walked to the door and then turned to face us. "Whatever you girls do, don't make the tragic mistake of choosing a dashing man like my Harry to be your groom. Because if you do, you'll have to protect him from shameless trollops for your entire marriage."
* * *
"Bad boy, Napoleon!" I scolded for the second time since carrying him into the house. I'd taken him out for a walk, and he'd pulled the leash from my hand to chase a cat through the cemetery. Nothing like a romp through a graveyard just hours before you meet with an alleged murderer to lift your spirits, so to speak.
I hung the leash on a hook next to my front door and then looked around the living room. It was three o'clock, so I still had a good hour and a half before I had to leave to meet Stewart Preston at the Carousel Bar. I needed to find something to do to keep my mind occupied because I was starting to get nervous. Dust the furniture? Oh no, I was never that desperate. Read? I wouldn't be able to focus on the page. Have a snack and watch mindless TV? Sounded like a plan.
After grabbing a bag of Mint Milanos and the Nutella from the pantry, I headed for my bedroom. I swung open the doors of my hot pink and black armoire and switched on the tiny TV set I'd received as a hand-me-down from my parents. I flopped down onto the bed and began flipping through the channels with the remote. The first movie I came across was The Silence of the Lambs. FBI trainee meets cannibalistic serial killer? Definitely not. I shivered and changed the channel. Unsolved Mysteries? Not that either. After tonight, there was every possibility that I could become an unsolved mystery myself. I turned off the TV.
Now what? Eating the entire bag of Mint Milanos—dipped in Nutella—would while away some time. I pulled out the first cookie and heard a whimper coming from the floor below.
I narrowed my eyes. "Not a chance, Napoleon, especially not after that cemetery caper."
Luckily, my phone began to ring. Talking on the phone was always a good distraction. I checked the display hopefully, and my heart began to thud when I realized that it was Bradley.
Of course, I wanted to answer that call with every fiber of my being and ask him what the hell he was doing out with a bikinied bimbo when he was married. But I couldn't. Bradley's wandering ways were no longer any concern of mine. I just wished that I knew what it was about me that attracted cheaters. Was I not interesting or attractive enough to keep a guy? Or did I give off a cheat-on-me vibe?
When the ringing stopped, I waited with baited breath to see whether Bradley had left a voicemail. At least two minutes passed. I checked the voicemail box: nothing. The inconsiderate jerk. Now I had to find a way to take my mind off Bradley.
I decided to check my email. I grabbed my laptop from the bedside table and logged in. Some of the messages were obvious spam—an ad for Viagra, news I'd won an overseas lottery, and an offer of marriage from a Russian bride. But then I saw "photo request" in the subject line of one of the messages. It was the picture I'd requested from The Times-Picayune of Stewart Preston waving on the courthouse steps!
I opened the message and double-clicked the attachment. It wouldn't open. I tried two more times and then discovered that the file was corrupt. I started to reply to the email but then changed my mind. I was meeting Stewart in less than two hours, and I really wanted to know whether my hunch about his watchband was right. I checked the email for a signature and saw the name Dmitriy and a phone number. I entered the number into my phone and waited.
"Times-Picayune," a youthful male voice responded.
"Hi, could I please speak to Dmitriy?" I asked.
"You got him," he said. "How can I help you?"
"My name is Franki Amato, and I just received an email from you with an attached .jpg file. But, the file is corrupt."
"Was it the photo of Stewart Preston?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, mildly surprised that he would remember the picture.
"What is the deal with that image?" he muttered under his breath.
"Pardon?"
"Oh, no, I wasn't asking you that question. It's just that when I originally went to retrieve the photo, it wasn't on our server. Luckily, my friend Norm was the photographer assigned to that story, so I was able to get the picture for you from his personal archives. It's just weird that now there's a problem with the file."
I felt my heart rate speed up. "So, you're saying that the photo was deleted from your server?"
"Yeah, because it was used in an article, it should've been in our process file, but it wasn't there. It wasn't in our stock file either. But, hey, when your staff consists of mainly unpaid interns, these things happen. Someone probably deleted the image by mistake."
"Sure," I said, although I doubted that an intern would have accidentally deleted the picture from two separate files. "So, are you still able to open the file?"
"Yeah, it opens right up for me. It's a pretty big file, though. It could be that the picture didn't completely download from our server."
"Could you email it to me again?" I asked, holding my breath in anticipation.
"Yes, ma'am! I just hit 'Send' a second ago."
I breathed a sigh of relief and refreshed my inbox. The new message was there. I clicked the attached file, and this time it opened without incident. "Got it. Thank you so much for your help, Dmitriy."
After I closed the call, I laid back on my bed, stunned. Who would have deleted the file from not one but two places on the Times-Picayune server? Could it really have been a careless intern? Or was it someone connected to Stewart Preston? If it was the latter, then it could mean only one thing: There was incriminating evidence in that photo that Stewart or his family didn't want anyone to see. Just like I suspected.
I quickly picked up my laptop and scrutinized Stewart's raised hand and wrist in the photo. The watchband was protruding about a half an inch or so from the cuff of his suit coat. I began enlarging the area click by click until it consumed the screen. By the fifth click, I felt my body grow cold. Stewart wasn't wearing a chunky watchband at all. Hidden beneath the sleeve of his suit coat, he was wearing a bracelet of skull beads. And they were exactly like the skull bead that I had found lodged underneath the scarf rack at the scene of Jessica's murder.
My mind flashed to the night of the murder. Had Stewart gone to LaMarca wearing the bracelet? If he had, then it was possible that the bracelet had been broken during a struggle with Jessica. Maybe Jessica had even ripped the bracelet from Stewart's wrist and then lodged one of the beads under the rack to implicate him as he was strangling her. Unfortunately, the only person who could confirm that theory was Jessica herself. There was only one thing I could do: try to find out whether Stewart still had that bracelet. It seemed like an impossible task, but it was a matter of life and death.
Specifically, my own.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
"I just can't get over it," Veronica said. She was standing in front of her kitchen sink wringing water out of a cashmere sweater while I was wringing my hands. "I've looked at that picture of Stewart a dozen times
, and I never noticed anything unusual."
"That's because you don't like watches." I'd paced back and forth on Veronica's green shag carpet so many times in the past five minutes that I was starting to wear a path into it.
"True, but I still don't get it. What made you suspect that Stewart wasn't wearing a watch?"
"First of all, I've never seen a watchband with big bumps on it like that. Even the Gucci bamboo watch has a smooth silver link bracelet for a band. Plus, in the photo there's no buckle or clasp showing on the underside of Stewart's wrist. So I thought it might be some kind of bracelet."
"Well, I'm truly impressed." She carefully placed the sweater on a drying rack near the sink.
"Thanks, but now we have to figure out what happened to that bracelet. If Stewart wore it to the murder scene, then he must have picked up the beads after it broke, except for the one that rolled under the rack."
Veronica walked into the living room and took a seat on the couch next to a bowtie–adorned Hercules, who had been watching me pace with a wary eye. "In that case, I seriously doubt he would have kept the beads," she said. "He would have gotten rid of them right away."
I stopped in my tracks. "So what do I do? I can't just say, 'Hey, Stewart, did you ever happen to own a skull bead bracelet from Marie Laveau's?'"
"Actually, you could ask him that and see what kind of a reaction you get," she replied, stroking Hercules's fur.
"Unless his reaction is to lunge for my throat, that won't tell me anything definitive." I resumed my pacing. "I'll have to think of some other way. Maybe I could work voodoo into the conversation somehow."
Veronica crossed her arms on her chest. "Well, whatever you do, don't mention Odette Malveaux. I don't believe for a minute that Stewart Preston is the Hollywood movie–style voodoo worshipper that Concetta made him out to be."
"Maybe not." I pointed at her and added, "But he did wear a skull bead bracelet to court. That has to mean something."
"It just makes me think that he's one of the countless people in New Orleans who are superstitious enough to turn to voodoo trinkets in moments of crisis."
"I guess that makes sense. It's just so unsettling to find out about the bracelet and then the whole missing photo thing right before I meet the guy."
Veronica furrowed her brow. "Yeah, the fact that the photo disappeared from The Times-Picayune archives looks bad for Stewart, doesn't it?"
"I'll say." I put my hand on my neck. "I've had heartburn ever since I found that out."
Her face softened. "I know you're scared. To be honest, I'm a little worried too."
I rolled my eyes. "Well that doesn't make me feel any better!"
"Just remember what you told me: you'll be meeting Stewart in a public place during the daytime. And don't forget that I'll be there to back you up."
"Ah, yes, with the pink breast cancer special."
Veronica blinked, as though offended by my jab at her girly gun. "It's a nine millimeter handgun, Franki. Its color won't affect its performance, I assure you."
"You're right. I'm just on edge." I collapsed into the armchair. Ten minutes of pacing was an intense workout.
"Can I get you something? A nice hot cup of tea might help calm your nerves."
I looked at the angry island god perched on the back of my chair. "I think it would take a couple of shots of tequila."
She frowned. "This is definitely not the time for a drink."
"I know, I know." I sighed. "Let's just go back over the plan."
"Okay." Veronica leaned forward. "We're going to rent a car for you so that Stewart can't trace the license plates. Then I'll follow you from the rental lot to the Carousel Bar in my car. We'll both park at the Hotel Monteleone."
"Do they have a parking lot?"
"Yeah, it's beneath the hotel. You pull into the garage, and a valet takes your car and parks it underground for you."
"All right. After we park, I'll go to the bar and—"
She shook her head. "It rotates like an actual carousel. You know how dizzy you get on merry-go-rounds."
"True." It was a well-known fact that I'd never gotten my carousel legs. Within seconds of stepping foot on one of those things I was on my knees, puking.
"Besides, there's no way you'd be able to have a private conversation with Stewart at that bar. It's always crowded, and the seats are too close together. You'll have to meet him at one of the seating areas in the lounge. It's down a small flight of stairs, which is great because that way I can sit up at the bar and have a clear view of the two of you."
"So, if he's at the bar when I get there, I'll ask him to move downstairs."
"Right, and then if you leave before he does, I'll stay and keep an eye on Stewart. I'll text you when I leave. Does that work for you?"
I nodded.
"Okay then. Go get ready," Veronica said as she adjusted the bow on Hercules's head. "We leave in thirty minutes."
* * *
I pulled my rented Chrysler convertible around the back of the Hotel Monteleone and promptly encountered a line of cars waiting to get into the parking garage. I looked nervously into my rearview mirror and was relieved to see Veronica waiting three cars back. So far, so good.
As I waited my turn, I leaned my head back on the headrest and looked up at the sky. Usually, when I put the convertible top down and let the wind blow my hair and the sun shine on my face, it was an instant stress reliever. But not today. All I could think about was that I was going to be meeting a murderer. Well, someone I was fairly sure was a murderer, anyhow. And unlike my cop days, I had no uniform, no badge and, worst of all, no gun. I mean, I had a gun—nothing pink or disease-related like Veronica—just a plain purple Ruger. The problem was that I couldn't legally carry it because I still hadn't obtained my Concealed Weapon Permit from the State of Louisiana.
I looked back down at the road when I heard the car in front of me pull ahead, and I slowly inched the Chrysler forward. As I approached the garage, a flash of bright red caught my eye. It was a guy dressed like a giant crawdad—complete with red tights, torso and tail, and a headpiece with eyes and antennae—leaning against the wall smoking. He'd had to remove one of his pinchers to hold the cigarette in his hand. While I was taking in his costume, our eyes met. He narrowed his gaze seductively as he took a drag and nodded appreciatively in my direction. I looked hurriedly away. After my last experience with a crawdad, I really didn't want any more trouble.
Finally, my turn arrived, and I pulled up to the waiting valet. I was so nervous that I practically jumped out of my car and jogged the few steps from the garage entrance to the hotel. As I crossed the busy lobby, I had the unshakable sensation that I was walking toward my doom. Nevertheless, I gathered up my courage and forged ahead. I was so close to solving Jessica's murder that there was no way I could turn back now. So, I took a deep breath and entered the Carousel Bar and Lounge.
With Mardi Gras season in full swing, the place was packed and buzzing with an electric energy. As I scoured the patrons for Stewart Preston, I tried not to look at the brightly lit merry-go-round-style bar as it rotated slowly beside me. I was already nauseated from fear. I didn't want to add motion sickness to my existing stomach woes.
When I didn't see him, I turned to scan the customers sitting in the lounge. I spotted Stewart immediately. He was sitting on a couch in the middle of the adjoining room, a glass of some sort of whiskey in his hand. As I looked at him from the top of the steps, he stared up at me and then lowered his gaze to my breasts. My fear of Stewart turned into instant anger.
I balled my fists and marched resolutely down the stairs. As I approached him, I was struck by how bloated his face was. Could that be from drug use? I wondered, again thinking of Odette Malveaux's mysterious warning to "Watch out fo' dem who take magic."
"Stewart Preston?" I asked.
He took a leisurely sip of his drink and then, with bloodshot eyes, gave me a slow, insolent once-over.
"I'll take that as a yes," I s
aid as I sat down on the couch directly opposite him, my back to the bar.
"So, what is it that you're calling yourself?" he drawled, raising his cleft chin. "Tina, was it?"
He clearly wasn't buying my cover. "Gina. Gina Mazzucco."
Stewart narrowed his eyes. "Why don't you drop this little charade and tell me who you really are?"
I swallowed hard. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Lady, you and I both know that Angelica Evangelista didn't have any girlfriends. And if she did, they sure as hell wouldn't be investigating her murder."
The jig was up. I had to stop playing games with this guy. Otherwise, he might walk out. I quickly calculated my risk and then went for broke. "That's not true. Immacolata Di Salvo was her friend."
Stewart showed no sign of emotion at the mention of Immacolata's name. "What would make you think I care about Immacolata Di Salvo?"
I looked at him defiantly. "I know that you were charged with her murder."
A muscle worked in Stewart's jaw. "And I was acquitted," he said in a dangerously soft voice.
"I know that too."
For some reason, he relaxed visibly. Then he grabbed a handful of mixed nuts, leaned back against the couch and propped his foot on the coffee table between us. "So, you're a private investigator."
I didn't bother to respond.
"I'll take that as a yes." He sneered and then popped a few nuts into his mouth.
I seized the moment to look at his jewelry. He wasn't wearing a voodoo bracelet, just a top-of-the-line gold Rolex on his left wrist.
He took another sip of his drink. "So what is it you want to know?"
I went straight to the point. "I want to know if you killed Angelica Evangelista."
Again, no reaction from Stewart. He merely turned and flagged down a passing waitress. As she approached us, I looked quickly over my shoulder at the bar. Veronica was there with a strawberry daiquiri looking right back at me.
"I'll take another Maker's Mark, darlin'. Get this lady here whatever she wants."
1 Limoncello Yellow Page 25