“What are we waiting for?” Jilly asked when they’d paused at the bottom of the steps to Zinnia’s place.
“I guess we’re waitin’ for Trudy-Evangeline to jump out at us,” Guy said. “Let’s go.”
A different wedding dress stood in the window of the shop. Jilly said, “That’s really beautiful,” and Guy glanced at her face. She was entranced and the idea scared him to death.
Why should it, you clown?
“Ready?” Nat said, and turned the door handle without waiting for a response. The door opened and he went in. Guy followed with Jilly behind him.
Overhead a cane-bladed fan revolved noisily. A radio played the Huckberry Ramblers singing “Frankie and Johnny.” An old-fashioned ledger lay open on a glass countertop and a land phone had been set down on top. The receiver was off the hook.
Guy whistled and ran his eyes over boxes of shoes—little white satin numbers, he imagined—a case filled with beaded things for the head, a display of veils. On a round table beside a comfortable-looking chair stood several piles of large books. He went closer and discovered they were filled with sample wedding invitations, thank-you cards and the like.
“Full-service shop,” he muttered.
“Nice,” Jilly said, then, “Hello?” She raised her voice and tried to see into the open workroom.
“Mrs. Sedge?” Nat added.
Something slammed in the direction of the woman’s living quarters. “Here she comes,” Guy said. He turned to Jilly. “From Trudy-Evangeline’s description it sounds as if this is a reticent person. Private. Best to be low-key.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Jilly said.
Minutes passed with no sign of Zinnia Sedge.
Nat started to pace and Guy said, “I wonder if there’s a back way out of here.”
“Why would she run out?”
Guy stared at the phone receiver, then picked it up. A recorded voice asked him to hang up, a beep followed and the message was repeated before the line went silent.
“I think she’s taken a powder,” he said. “She could have plenty of reasons not to talk to us.”
He knocked on the door leading to the flat and opened it at once. “New Orleans Police Department,” he shouted. “Zinnia Sedge?”
“There’s water running,” Nat said, frowning and looking up the stairs. His expression cleared. “She’s takin’ a shower.”
“After leavin’ the phone off the hook?” Jilly said. “Like she was talkin’ to someone and went to check somethin’?”
“She could have forgotten the phone,” Guy pointed out. He went upstairs to the bedroom door and knocked again. Nat was right, the shower was on. “She’s not gonna be happy if we walk in on her.”
“She’d probably have a heart attack,” Jilly said. “Let’s wait in the shop.”
Nat, who had joined Guy, lifted a foot and they all looked down. The boot had made a soggy popping noise. Blue fitted carpet had turned dark outside the bedroom door.
“It’s flooding,” Jilly said. Water slipped under the door, visible now, spreading through the carpet while they watched.
Nat said, “I think it might be a good idea for you to go check on that dog, Jilly.”
Her response was to push past and go into the bedroom. Guy caught her by the arm but she narrowed her eyes at him and said, “If it was me, I’d rather a woman helped me.”
How did you explain to a layman that after years on the force, trouble was something you smelled?
His nose could be off today. Guy let Jilly go but he dodged around her and paddled through a thin layer of water running from the bathroom over wood and carpet.
“Let me just take a look, huh?” he said to Jilly.
She had stopped moving. Her face had turned a chalky white. She felt trouble, too, now.
Nat squelched over the floor, his mouth set and his nostrils flaring.
“Did she know you were coming?” Jilly asked quietly.
Nat shook his head but said, “Maybe. If Miss Trudy-Evangeline told her.”
“Stay put, Jilly,” Guy said, and he made sure she heard that he meant it.
He nudged open the door and moved inside fast.
“Shit,” Nat said, drawing his gun as he joined him.
Deep pink water bubbled over the side of a white tub. The shower curtain had been closed. The water ran over the floor like thin red ink.
Guy ripped back the curtain. “Found,” he said, dimly realizing how stupid that sounded. Going to his knees, he stared down into the water. “Turn it off,” he told Nat. “Try to preserve what you can.”
Nat did as he was asked and stood over Guy. “I knew we were getting close to sensitive parts,” he said. “No one’s answerin’ any questions. Everyone I’ve talked to suddenly got amnesia.” He flipped on his radio and talked rapidly. This place would be overrun soon.
“Cruel bastards,” Guy said. “I want to take her out of the water.” Automatically he felt for a pulse. Not a flutter.
“But you won’t get her out,” Nat said. “No point.
You don’t get any deader than this lady. The boys will want to see all this just the way it is.”
“You’ve got to find who did this,” Jilly said.
Guy looked over his shoulder, hating that she was there. “They’re gone,” he said, drawing his own weapon, “but take a look around, anyway, Nat. And be careful. We don’t want anyone pointing out we don’t have a warrant.”
“Sure.” Nat patted Jilly’s shoulder and went back into the bedroom.
“They made sure she wouldn’t talk to you,” Jilly said.
In the tub, dark hair fanned from a small woman’s head. Her throat had been cut, but the wound seemed a pointless afterthought. Her teeth showed between parted lips and a bloody lump trailed by a thread of flesh from the corner of her mouth.
“They cut out her tongue,” Jilly whispered.
28
It had been a long night and it wasn’t over.
Each time Guy spoke to Nat he got a one-word answer—not a reassuring sign. Nat refused to make eye contact—a lousy sign.
“Okay, enough of this,” Guy said, hauling exhausted Nat to a stop at the back of the squad room at NOPD.
“This is a shortcut to the chief’s office,” Nat said.
Guy formed an expletive but bit it off. “I know my way around here as well as you do. I’m not talking about routes. Why are you behaving like a jerk and why do I suddenly have to talk to the chief?”
“Jilly seemed as anxious to leave town as you were to have her go,” Nat said.
Guy hadn’t seen things that way, not at all, but he let it go. “I asked you a question.”
Nat turned tired eyes on him. “The media will likely go after this one. The chief just wants to get up to speed in case he has to go on camera. Sound bites. You know the routine.”
“Like he isn’t already up to speed? That would be a first. If he needs anything else he can get it from you.”
“You’re more articulate than I am.”
That was a new one. “I’m not even supposed to be here.”
“You thought that meant he didn’t know you were?”
“I’m just helpin’ out because you asked me to,” Guy told him. “I could step away at any time.”
Nat snorted. “Sure you could. You don’t have any personal interest in the case, do you?”
“Smart-ass. I’m in on this one now but we still haven’t tied the Sedge killing to Toussaint, and I sure don’t see a connection to Jilly. One matchbook with some scribble on it doesn’t make the case.”
“Maybe not,” Nat said. “But it probably will and you think so, too. Pip Sedge knew something was going to happen in Toussaint—in Parish Lane.”
“He could have picked up the matchbook by mistake. Maybe he never knew anything was written on it.”
Nat pushed through a double door. “Sure. And his ex died in a random murder? None of this is linked?”
“Damn it,” Guy said.
He leaned against a wall. “I think a lot of things and most of them make me edgy. I’ve got nothing to learn in here. It’s all out there.” He made a vague gesture to the Quarter outside. “Except for the rest of what Fleet turned up. Get that and we could really have somethin’.”
“Agreed,” Nat said, scuffing his boots back and forth and leaving black marks on the floor. “There’s an unofficial, official instruction that nobody goes near his ex-wife. Don’t ask me why. I wanted to ask her if he said anything useful about what he was doing around the time Paula Hemp died. Mentioned it to the chief and he about took my head off. Said he’s seen his share of cop divorces but Fleet and his missus’s story was about the saddest ever. Off-limits, that’s what he said. And he reckons the couple’s biggest problem was Fleet’s work—big surprise—and they had an agreement that Fleet never mentioned his work.”
Guy shrugged away from the wall. “He’s right. She wouldn’t know anything. If she did she’d have told us by now.” Their eyes met and each of them gave a half smile. Nothing was ever for sure.
“Okay, friend,” Nat said as they reached the big boss’s door. “I’ll be leavin’ you here. You’ll find me in our office. I’m gonna try givin’ Wazoo a call.”
Guy started to say something, but closed his mouth. He wasn’t Nat Archer’s mother. For a few seconds he watched the other man walk away, his shoulders back, swinging confidently again. One stop-’em-in-their-tracks dude going to “our” office. Damn but some decisions left ugly fallout no matter which way you chose to go.
He knocked on the door and opened it when Chief Carson growled “Yeah” from inside the room. Carson saw Guy and pulled his bushy gray brows low over his eyes. “Oh, it’s you.” The man’s seamed face looked ready to be immortalized on some canyon wall. Yellow from too much time inside, too much hooch and too much nicotine, one feature hadn’t lost any light; his eyes were the color of gray agates in the sun. If they didn’t see through you, they were lying. He didn’t like wasting time getting his hair cut and tight gray curls often looked as if he’d whacked a few off himself.
“I got a message you wanted to see me while I’m visitin’, Chief,” Guy said, emphasizing “visiting.” The sooner he made his situation clear, the better. On the other hand it had struck him that Carson might have been looking for an opportunity to kick his AWOL detective’s ass out of the department permanently and he, Guy, had just given him the perfect excuse.
“Did I contact you and ask you to work on the Sedge killin’—killin’s?” Carson asked. He stubbed a cigarette out in an overflowing tin ashtray and immediately lit up again. Little piles of ash lay on his gray-painted metal desk where admirers had left sweet notes, like “Fuck you, dumb-ass” and “They say you good to you’ mama. When you gone, I be good to her, too.”
“Well?” Carson snapped.
“No, sir,” Guy said, wondering how it would go over if he sat down. “You didn’t ask me to do that. Can I pour you a cup of coffee?” he said, suddenly inspired. He wanted to sit down and Carson would have to ask him if they had coffee.
“There’s nuthin’ but mud in that pot,” Carson said, opening the right bottom drawer in his desk and removing a brown sack. From this he took a steel flask covered with greasy smears. He unscrewed the cap, filled it with whatever and tipped it straight down his throat. He poured a second capful and held it silently out to Guy.
Turning down the chief’s hooch would not be smart. Guy tossed it back, felt good Scotch burn a blissful path into his veins and gave back the cap. “Thanks,” he said.
“Siddown,” Carson told him. “Not over there. Pull a chair up here. I prefer to keep my voice down on sensitive issues.”
Sensitive issues. Now, there was a comment to curl a man’s nose hairs. But he dragged a metal folding chair close to the other side of Carson’s desk and flopped into it.
“Archer’s been through three partners since you left—I mean since you left for a mental health break or whatever the hell you said you needed.”
“Yeah? I didn’t know that.”
“You do now. That boy hasn’t been the same since you went sunbathin’. Doesn’t want to work with anyone but you, so he says. I’ve offered him some of the best and brightest we got but he turns ’em down.”
In other words, Guy was chopped liver. “That’s too bad.”
“I can’t afford men who rile things up around here. Other officers don’t like it when Archer treats ’em like piles of dog shit.”
“Nat isn’t the kind of man who—”
“He gives ’em the silent treatment then goes off on his own. They never know what’s goin’ down. But you do, don’t you, Gautreaux? You two are pals. In a hot moment he told me he’s keepin’ your seat warm as well as his own. He’s workin’ with you on the Sedge cases.”
Lying wouldn’t ease whatever pain was coming. “Yes, sir.”
“How’s it going?”
Guy looked at the rangy man suspiciously. He knew softening-up tactics when he heard them. “Frustratin’ case but some parts are starting to wave at one another. We feel real bad about Mrs. Zinnia Sedge.”
“We all feel real bad about it, too,” Carson said, his eyebrows shielding his eyes again. “The whole force feels bad. I feel bad. My boss feels bad. I can’t help but wonder if it could have been avoided if this case wasn’t being dealt with piecemeal. Maybe I need a whole new team on the case, a team where everyone works full-time for the department and can be where they’re needed in ten minutes rather than a couple of hours.”
“Understood,” Guy said. The old crust wasn’t getting a rise out of him.
“A big mouth managed to let me know Nat fell off the wagon couple of nights ago,” Carson said. “I thought he didn’t do that anymore. Bad sign. Word has it he’s not reliable when the booze is in.”
“Shit,” Guy said with feeling. He’d like to know who squealed to Carson. “Nat’s overtired, is all. He didn’t realize he’d gone too far until it was too late.”
“Bullshit. He’s trying to do two men’s work because he’s makin’ sure he keeps your space open.” He glared at Guy. “And I don’t want you suggestin’ I’ve been ridin’ him, because I haven’t.”
“He’s anticipating you will,” Guy said quietly.
“We’ll get back to that. I’ve read through everything we’ve got on the case so far. Maybe it’s more than it looks. I sure as hell hope so.”
Guy tipped onto the back two legs of his chair. How he hated the sick-colored walls in this place. “I don’t want to sound like a fool, but I feel like it’s going to take one good, solid piece of information to put us over the top. We haven’t had any luck finding what it is that glues the events together, but it’s there, take it from me.”
Carson looked up through his beetling brows. “You may be right, but from the rate we’re losin’ citizens we can’t sit back and wait. This Zinnia Sedge murder will be front page. Quiet little woman like that getting her tongue cut out.” He shook his head and Guy figured his own desire to snicker was hysteria.
“I agree with you one hundred per cent,” Guy said. “I’d better get back to it.” He longed to ask Carson’s permission to approach Fleet’s ex-wife but figured he better not push too far.
“Guy—” Carson stubbed out a butt that had burned all the way down between his fingers “—we gotta get some things straight. You know we can’t go on like this forever.”
Guy’s throat tightened. His forehead turned moist. He knew what was coming.
“It’s been more than a year since we agreed you needed some time away from the force.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I never expected it to be this long before you decided to come back. Are you back now?”
Nat was falling apart and Carson blamed him. They had a big, showy case on their hands and he was needed full-time. And to boil it all down, Carson was about to tell him to put up or shut up. Damn, he was too tired for this now and he wanted to check on Jilly.
A
nd there was his curse and his blessing. Jilly. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the force. In a way he was a natural detective and he enjoyed the work when it wasn’t making him spitting mad. But he wanted more out of life. He wanted Jilly and now he had to make a choice. He could ask her to give up everything for him, but that would be an ultimatum: show me how much I mean to you. All or nothing. Unless she did the unimaginable and convinced him she’d been born to play second fiddle to the law, that she wanted a man in her life whose career was his mistress, not on the side but right out in the open. Some chance.
“Gautreaux, I asked you somethin’.”
“And I can’t answer you except to say I’m definitely not ready to make a final decision yet. With your permission, I would like to work on this case with Nat.”
Carson lit another cigarette from a smouldering butt in the ashtray. “I’m on the ropes, Guy.”
The first name rattled him. “I’m sorry to hear that, sir.”
“I’m being asked questions. They want answers. We can’t afford to keep an inactive body on the roll.”
“Afford? You aren’t paying me.”
Carson’s only reaction was to reach for his flask again. “I gotta have a return date.”
Should he come right out and say he was quitting? Guy wondered.
“How about one more month to be sure?” Carson said. “Sometimes we need a time frame to make us concentrate on making a decision.”
A month. Sweat slithered between his shoulder blades. “Gimme another six.” He took the whiskey-filled cap from Carson again and drank the stuff down.
“Sorry,” Carson said. “If it was up to me you’d get it, but I’ve got people breathing down my neck. A month, Guy. Then I’d like you to come back here and tell me your decision. I hope it’s to stay with the force. You’re a good man. We need you.”
Time was running out. But so what, all he had to do was make a decision that would make or break the rest of his life.
29
A Grave Mistake Page 28