[Bayou Gavotte 00.0] Back to Bite You

by Barbara Monajem

  Well, the wet T-shirt plastered against her breasts for starters.

  Glancing at this chick was damned dangerous.

  Auntie June had said something about that. Not about hot women, of course, but she’d warned him to be careful. I know you have to go to Bayou Gavotte, she’d said, but I’m frightened for you. For a moment he’d thought June would burst into tears—that she really believed the gold digger might get her claws into him and kill him for the rest of the inheritance: the damned Pie Club, which he didn’t want anyway.

  He shook himself again. Gold diggers didn’t climb onto the roof of the dump they’d just rooked an old man’s heirs out of and nail new shingles down themselves. He had to stop thinking about sex and murder and act on the assumption that even though she’d had a few thugs for boyfriends, she was a decent woman like all Grandpa Arthur’s lady friends. He owed that to Grandpa just as much as he owed his aunts for taking in a bereaved ten-year-old all those years ago and doing their screwed-up best with him. Just as much as he owed his mother for bringing him up strong enough to survive his crazy aunts. Be patient with my sisters, Gerry, she’d told him when she knew she was going to die. And always, always let Grandpa know you love him.

  Thunder crashed; rain descended in sheets, coursed in torrents through the downspouts, and ran in rivulets under the house. “Ordinarily, I adore this kind of weather,” Mirabel said, squeezing the water from her T-shirt. It ran over the hem of her shorts and down her shapely legs. She shivered, and her husky whisper bathed him with untold promises. “It’s so invigorating.”

  This girl was nothing like the others.

  “But when the roof leaks . . . Oh! I can move the buckets!” she cried.

  She took off into the house, leaving the door ajar, so Gerry followed. “Anything I can do?”

  She stopped in the doorway to the living room and motioned down the hall toward the kitchen. “Check the buckets in the pantry and make sure they’re under the drips. Thanks!”

  He hadn’t been to Grandpa’s in over six months, and then only for a minute or two in the vestibule before taking Grandpa out for dinner and a reluctant hour at the club.

  He knew the old place was falling apart; he’d offered again and again to help fix it up, but he’d had no idea how bad it had become. The lean-to addition at the back of the kitchen wing, which served as a laundry room and pantry, no longer had a ceiling except for a few acoustic tiles lingering in the corners. A row of buckets caught the steady drips from the leaky roof.

  Easily fixed, though. New plywood, tar paper, and shingles, and the room would do. He moved a few buckets this way and that and found a pot in the kitchen to catch what must be a new leak. Back through the clean, dry kitchen, also minus its ceiling, but new plywood above showed the roof had already been repaired. He took a quick tour of the rest of the main floor.

  The little sitting room where Grandpa used to watch TV seemed fine, but mildew blackened the front corner of the formal living room, indicating a leak inside the wall―not surprising, since the sunroom was on the other side of that wall. One end of the crown molding had come loose. Wallpaper had peeled back at the seams, and patches of damp spotted the ceiling. A nuisance, but fixable. In the sunroom beyond, Mirabel was scanning the ceiling for signs of leaks. Gerry crossed the hall to the dining room.

  What a crying shame. Much of the ceiling had collapsed; someone had cleared the plaster away and pushed the table and chairs to one side. A steady trickle flowed down the wiring to the chandelier, and from there dripped into a rusty old tub on the floor. Another leak splashed crazily into the bottom of a teakettle, while a third dripped onto a towel in a cardboard box.

  There must be considerable damage to the bedroom on the second floor above the dining room—and the roof above that—to cause a leak this bad. Jeez, what a mess.

  “There aren’t any more leaks in the sunroom, so maybe the living room is safe now, too.” Mirabel skidded past Gerry, who still gaped like a fool in the dining room doorway, and replaced the box with a bucket and the teakettle with a plastic tub. She dumped the towel into the tub—“to catch the bouncy drips”—and turned to him with a smile that made his heart somersault with love.

  Love? He was out of his frigging mind.

  “Oh, no!” She clapped her hands over her mouth. “I keep forgetting not to smile. I’m so sorry!” She put out a hand as if to touch him, but quickly dropped her arm again.

  He wiped a hand across his brow. “Sorry for smiling? Why?”

  She shrugged uneasily. “I can’t explain, but there might be consequences. Unpleasant ones. It’s only for another month or so, and then I’ll be good to go.” Her lips quirked irrepressibly, but immediately she straightened them again. “I guess you want to get yourself into dry clothes, so I won’t keep you.”

  He’d completely forgotten that he was soaking wet. “You’re going to deprive the world of your beautiful smile for a whole month?”

  He hadn’t meant to say that. It just popped out.

  She bit her lip, clearly stifling a grin. “It might be taken the wrong way. Like, for example, as if I was flirting. Which I’m not.”

  “Ah,” Gerry said, accepting the strangest brush-off he’d ever experienced, telling himself it was only his libido that felt a pang of loss. He was used to disappointing his libido. Aunt April might believe him to be discriminating, but when it came right down to it, women were simply too much work.

  “I’m just being practical,” she said, nibbling on her lip. He stared at her mouth and the pull of her teeth, entranced. She said, “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

  Oh, hell.

  “Somebody got hurt?” Grandpa Arthur, for instance? Such a flippant reference to death couldn’t possibly come from that kissable mouth. He didn’t believe it.

  “Many men.” Her delectable lower lip trembled in the slightest pout. “Badly hurt or even dead.”

  Maybe he had to believe it. A slow burn of anger uncoiled inside Gerry, tinged unmistakably with regret.

  She shook her head, as if to dispel her own regrets about the unfortunate necessity of murder. “That’s just the way it is. Thanks again. I’m Mirabel, by the way.”

  Fortunately, she’d already brushed him off, so he didn’t feel the least bit bad about telling her who he was. About making her sorry she’d as good as confessed to putting on an act, to pretending she’d loved Arthur when she’d actually done away with him.

  Unbelievable. To think Gerry had almost fallen for that humdinger of a smile. She wouldn’t smile when he introduced himself.

  “Nice to meet you,” he lied. “I’m Gerry Kingsley.”

  * * *

  “You’re Gerry? I’m so happy to meet you!”

  Oh, crap! She’d grinned again. Mirabel never knew for sure how she would affect a man, but a vampire smile was pretty much guaranteed to dazzle. Unfortunately, this guy was affecting her right back. Something about him made not just her body sing but her heart as well. This was the third time she’d smiled without meaning to, and she was doing a terrible job of keeping her vampire allure under wraps.

  It was way too soon. If Sergio found out, he would hurt Gerry Kingsley, and it would be her fault, which would totally suck. Gerry was a sweet, adorable, regular guy, not a tough, and Arthur had loved him. She couldn’t let him come to harm.

  At the moment, Gerry looked mighty pissed off.

  Oh, right. Gerry was a control freak. He has a poker up his ass, Arthur had said. That’s one reason I’m giving him the club. He needs to loosen up and enjoy himself.

  Funny, though: Gerry hadn’t looked like a control freak until just this second.

  “Arthur told me so much about you,” she said, trying to keep a straight face. What could she say that wouldn’t make her giggle, or maybe jump him? She certainly couldn’t mention the club. Just the thought of Gerry wallowing in dirt cake or slathered with pie had her close to cracking up.

  She straightened her mouth. “He told me I would l
ike you, and he’s so right.” Not that Gerry looked all that likeable at the moment. That scowl might have frightened a lesser woman. Or a woman who hadn’t fallen in love at first sight.

  It’s a good thing he’s a freak, she told herself. His need for control might save his life. He was attracted to her, but he didn’t want to want her, so he would leave and stay away. Stay safe. “Arthur said you were in Mongolia building yurts. I guess you’re back here to take over the club.”

  “I’m here to sell it,” Gerry said. “As soon as possible.”

  That figured. “You don’t like the Pie Club?” She giggled in spite of herself. “It’s a great place. I love it there.”

  “Too bad my grandfather didn’t leave you the club instead of this catastrophe of a house.” He sounded grim.

  In this case, rightly so. “It is a mess, isn’t it? All his money and energy went into the club, except for those last few weeks. I told him it was awful to let such a lovely old house fall apart, and that seemed to get him going. We started with the kitchen roof, because a house needs a usable kitchen. He almost fell off the roof the first day.”

  “Did he really?” He sounded more sarcastic than appalled, but then, he’d known his grandfather well, known how energetic and determined Arthur had been despite his age.

  “Yeah, he was a stubborn old man and such a sweetie. He didn’t want to accept that his sense of balance wasn’t so great anymore. Fortunately, Ophelia was there to catch him.”

  His brows drew together. “Who?”

  “The landscaper. She works on the yard in her spare time for the cost of the plants and supplies, in exchange for doing what she likes. Her customers always want the same old stuff, and she gets bored.”

  “She caught Grandpa Arthur?”

  “It was something, I tell you,” Mirabel said. “He was on the roof of the lean-to, on his way up to the kitchen roof with a pack of shingles. He insisted on bringing them up himself, when he knew perfectly well I was strong enough to carry them.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, that old roof was slick as all get out. He slipped, but he couldn’t grab onto anything, and he slid over the edge. If Ophelia hadn’t been potting plants on the back porch . . .” Mirabel shut her eyes at the memory. “She caught his ankles and held him still until I could get down to the lean-to roof and pull him back up.”

  “You must be strong,” Gerry said as if he didn’t really believe it. “And so must the landscaper. Arthur was a big guy.”

  Duh. Vampires are always strong. But obviously Gerry didn’t realize what she was, unlike Arthur, who had known right away. Clearly there’d been a vampire in Arthur’s past, although he’d avoided Mirabel’s every attempt to find out more. “Maybe she’s my grandma or something,” she had coaxed, but to no avail.

  Gerry might not even know hereditary vampires existed. Generally speaking, guys with sticks up their behinds either didn’t know or didn’t want to know. So far, vampires had kept the gene that gave them fangs and made them irresistible—not to mention the enhanced strength and other perks—more or less a secret.

  “We’re strong, all right,” Mirabel said. “But if he’d fallen off the roof I was doing today, nobody could have caught him. He would have been a goner for sure.”

  “As it happens,” Gerry said dryly, “he’s a goner anyway.”

  “True,” Mirabel sighed. “But he knew his time was short. He was ready to go, and he died happy.”

  Gerry Kingsley’s face darkened alarmingly. For a horrifying second he looked as if he wished Mirabel were dead, too. “How do you know?” he snarled.

  * * *

  Mirabel paled. She gaped up at him with wide, uneasy eyes.

  Gerry didn’t make a practice of frightening women. He knew he had frightened this one, and he didn’t care.

  “Because—” She faltered and paled even more.

  He didn’t feel an instant of remorse.

  “Because he told me so,” she said, sad and sweet and devastatingly sincere. A tear trembled at the corner of one eye.

  Oh, hell. Now he wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her.

  And then rip off her wet clothes and fuck her. What the hell was wrong with him? She was a murderer.

  Probably.

  She wiped the tear away. A tremulous smile hovered on her mouth, and desire pooled in his loins. As if that wasn’t bad enough, love tugged at his heart.

  He couldn’t take it anymore. “I have to go find someplace to stay,” he said, turning away, heading for the door.

  She followed. “You’re not returning to New Orleans tonight?”

  He didn’t look back, just stomped out the door into the pouring rain. “No, I have club business to take care of.” And a murder to investigate, damn it all.

  Maybe. He really didn’t want to believe it. And there was no proof, only suspicion, but . . .

  “Your tools,” Mirabel said.

  He wheeled around, and without looking at her took the compressor in one hand and the nail gun in the other and headed for his truck. “Thanks.”

  “Good luck finding a hotel,” she said. “They’re all booked to the eaves because of the first game of the season.”

  He hadn’t thought of that. The rivalry between Hellebore University and LSU drew fans from all over. He dumped the equipment in the back and slammed the door shut. “What a damned nuisance.”

  Her voice pursued him. “If you can’t find a hotel, you’re welcome to stay here.”

  So she could seduce him into giving her the club? She must think him even more of a fool than Grandpa. He ripped open the door of the truck.

  “Arthur would have insisted,” she said. “He loved you very much.”

  How dare she?

  “Yes, he did,” Gerry said through clenched teeth. “I owe him a lot.” Including justice.

  He steeled himself to turn. Mirabel stood halfway down the walk, her face uplifted to the rain. She was blissfully alive, while Arthur was dead.

  By her connivance.

  Or not.

  “Thanks for the offer.” Gerry got into the truck and turned the key. He closed his eyes and gathered his thoughts.

  Realistically, there was no better place to get to know Mirabel Lane than right here. She’d given him the perfect excuse.

  Or an invitation any red-blooded man would find it impossible to resist.

  Except that she wasn’t flirting for another month, probably because she didn’t want people to think she was a gold digger. It made no sense at all. She made no sense.

  He had to talk to the lawyer and the club manager. He needed a clear picture of how Grandpa Arthur’s heart attack had come about. Maybe what he learned would make it plain that Mirabel hadn’t done anything wrong.

  And if it didn’t . . . He would return with his passion for justice fully aroused, and his libido definitely not.

  “I may just take you up on that,” he said and drove away.

  * * *

  “Isn’t she a lovely girl?” Gerry’s old friend Stan, a lawyer who could be pretty hard-nosed at times, gazed dreamily at nothing, or more likely at some vision of Mirabel inside his head. Fat lot of use he was turning out to be.

  Gerry strove for a tone somewhere between irritable and indifferent. “She seems nice enough. Grandpa did her no favor when he left her that house. It’s falling to bits.”

  “You’re damn lucky she came along when she did, given the terms of the old will,” Stan said.

  “What terms?”

  “Arthur bequeathed the house to your aunts, but he left the contents to you and Hellebore University. All his Mardi Gras keepsakes were to go to the university museum, and the rest was yours. He stipulated that you personally had to go through the house and dispose of the contents before the old ladies were allowed to cross the threshold, much less take possession. Otherwise, you were stuck with the house, too.”

  “Jeez.” Gerry rubbed his face with his hands. “I know he didn’t trust them, but that was going way overboard. They d
idn’t know about that stipulation, did they?”

  “Nope. It would have been hell dealing with them. As it is, Mirabel got the whole thing—lock, stock, and barrel.”

  “That’s pretty weird, seeing how obsessive he was about the collection.” Grandpa had spent all his spare time organizing and cataloguing it during Gerry’s childhood.

  “He trusted Mirabel,” Stan said. “She helped him go through most of his possessions. He donated a bunch of stuff to the university just before he died. She’ll make sure everything else gets there before she sells the place and goes back to New Orleans.” He heaved a lovelorn sigh. “I don’t blame old Arthur for going overboard for her, and if your aunts sent you to tell me she seduced him into giving her the house, they’re wrong. For one thing, I doubt if he was up to it, and for another, she was shocked to find out he’d left her the place. She cried when I told her.”

  Because she’d expected to get the club instead?

  “She was broken up when he died,” Stan said. “One moment they were having a good time at the club, and the next he was lying dead in the alley.”

  “In the alley?”

  “They’d just left the club to walk home when he collapsed. She called 911 on her cell, but it was too late.”

  The alley, dark and usually deserted. “No one else was there when he had the attack?”

  “Why would anyone else be in an alley? They only went that way because it was quicker.” Stan pursed his lips and shook his head. “Mirabel worried that old Arthur was overdoing it. She wanted to call a cab, but he insisted on walking, so she made him take the shortest route. They’d walked home fine other nights, but I guess all that activity became too much for him.”

  Either that . . . or she tripped him, he fell, and had the heart attack.

  Don’t be ridiculous. That was no surefire way of killing anybody, even a ninety-year-old man.

  Gerry finished with the lawyer and headed for the club. Compared to the rest of the fetish clubs for which Bayou Gavotte was famous, the Pie Club was pretty innocent, but Gerry wasn’t a fetish sort of guy. And if he wanted a fetish, he wouldn’t pick a messy one like food fighting.