In Dreams

by Patricia Rosemoor

  Heart thumping, she opened the glove compartment and got a look at the weapon tucked in with the vehicle’s manual.

  “Is it loaded?”

  “Would there be a point to having an unloaded gun?”

  Lucy slammed the glove compartment door so she wouldn’t have to look at it, saying, “I hate guns!”

  “So do I. Luckily, I’ve never had to use one.”

  “You mean you’ve never shot it or that you’ve never even pointed it at someone.”

  “Never pointed it.”

  “Then why have it?”

  “I’m a private investigator. I never know when I may need it.”

  “Let’s hope not anytime soon.”

  She settled back and tried to calm her nerves as they crossed the river. They were headed for the Algiers neighborhood where, she guessed, the woman or Mr. Shoe Fetish lived.

  “So why do you think Erica Vaughn was hooked up with Sophie Delacorte?” she asked.

  “To find her sister Theresa, I’m sure.”

  “You don’t think she was counting on you to do it?”

  “I think she wasn’t above taking whatever help she could get. I wasn’t getting anywhere. No matter what our bartender Zeke said, fake IDs work all too well. Maybe Sophie spotted Theresa in the club.”

  “But how did they know each other? Erica and Sophie came in together that night. And apparently, they weren’t from the same social circle.”

  “No they weren’t. But a lot of people in New Orleans believe in tarot cards or palmistry or voodoo. Maybe Erica did, as well. Maybe she was one of Sophie’s private clients.”

  “And Sophie might have seen something in the cards that led her to the sex club. That would make sense.”

  Lucy bought the speculation. But then, why wouldn’t she with her history? Most psychics were fakes, sure, but who was to say Sophie Delacorte didn’t have the gift. As things stood, they would likely never know for sure.

  They’d left the bridge and were driving through Algiers Point, a neighborhood of old Creole cottages and shotgun houses, as different from the French Quarter’s two-story buildings with iron-lace edged balconies as one could get. The neighborhood was being improved, and renovation money had been sunk into this street.

  Ahead, the car pulled to the curb. Justin slowed and Lucy could see the occupants getting out of the other car. The thug had wrapped his arms around the woman and, to Lucy’s disgust, kissed and felt her up right there under a streetlight.

  “Where are you going?” she asked when Justin drove past them.

  “Ahead a bit. Unless you want me to stop right here and shine a light on them.”

  “No, of course not.”

  Lucy watched first through her side-view mirror, then less subtly through the rear window, as the couple broke the embrace and rushed to the door of a Creole cottage. The front porch light was on, and after the woman unlocked the door, the couple took the opportunity to make something of a display of themselves.

  Lucy couldn’t stop herself from watching them.

  It was like a car wreck—you didn’t want to look, but you simply couldn’t turn away.

  Justin pulled over to the curb and cut the lights, waiting only long enough for the thug to follow his “date” inside before bringing the car to life once more. He did a U-turn in the middle of the block, then came back and parked across the street and a short ways down from Mr. Shoe Fetish’s car.

  “So what’s the plan?”

  He pulled a notebook from an inner pocket. “First, I’m going to get his license and see if I can’t get it checked out, then we wait until he comes out and we follow him. Hopefully he’ll lead us to the man you saw kill Sophie Delacorte. If he doesn’t, he’ll at least lead us to his own place and either I’ll stake him out or I’ll find someone to do it for me.”

  “Who would know being a P.I. could be so boring?”

  “You’re bored with me?”

  “I didn’t say that. It’s the thought of sitting in the car waiting hour after hour that sounds boring.” She would keep the interesting activities they could engage in to pass the time to herself.

  “There are downsides to every job.”

  “What’s the upside?”

  “Reuniting family. Finding someone who just inherited a small fortune. Helping to put someone guilty of insurance fraud where he belongs.”

  Another reason to like Justin Guidry too much for his own good. She said, “The people connection.”

  “You got it.”

  “Too bad you couldn’t reunite Erica and Theresa,” Lucy said, thinking of the two women who had been murdered. Or was it three? “Do you think Theresa Vaughn is still alive?”

  “It’s hard to say. I was following her trail and then it was like she fell off the edge of the earth.”

  “I wonder if Erica and Sophie found her…or found out what happened to her.”

  “Their discovery of proof that Theresa was murdered could be the reason both women were killed,” Justin admitted. “Dead women can’t talk.”

  A fact that made Lucy remind herself of why she and Justin were working on this together. Erica and Sophie had been killed by the same man, and fate had somehow thrown her at Justin to see that these women didn’t simply become statistics in the NOPD cold case files.

  She decided to concentrate on that before she went to sleep for the night and maybe that would help come up with some answers.

  11

  HIS TONGUE SLID along the soft flesh, opening it to his rhythmic stroking. She tangled her fingers in his dark hair and opened herself wider, allowing him deeper access.

  He tested her with a finger, never stopping the titillation of his tongue.

  His fingers were inside her now. One…two… No more, she couldn’t take more. But she wanted more. She would take all of him if she could.

  She spread wider…arched higher…trying to hold on.

  Lucy orgasmed awake and then experienced a moment’s confusion.

  Light made her sensitive eyes squinch.

  It was morning…

  Rather than being liquid as usually happened after she came, she was stiff and sore and leaning sideways. And she felt trapped by a heavy weight. Blinking, she realized sunlight was becoming through the windshield of a car. Justin’s car. And that was Justin’s weight against her.

  He groaned and wriggled around as if starting to awaken also. His mouth was practically at her breast, and even through her clothing, her nipple reacted to the damp warmth of his breath. The sensitive flesh tightened and pushed toward him as if wanting to be suckled.

  Damn her dreams!

  Trying not to panic, not wanting him to get the wrong idea, Lucy closed her eyes, regulated her breathing and pretended to be asleep.

  “Mmm, Lucille…oh, hell!”

  With that, Justin apparently awakened and instantly moved away from her. Regretting the loss of his body pressed up against hers only for a moment, Lucy sighed in her supposed “sleep” and blinked her eyes and yawned.

  “Mmm, morning,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “How did we manage to fall asleep?”

  “I guess all that excitement last night did us in,” he said drily.

  “Coffee,” she croaked almost simultaneously with his explosive curse. “What?”

  She sat straighter and looking around, expecting to see some baseball-wielding maniac coming at their windshield. Any potential threat eluded her.

  “The guy’s car,” Justin said. “It’s gone! He got away while we were asleep.”

  “You mean we spent the whole night cramped up in this car for nothing?”

  “Afraid so.”

  Back to square one. Lucy moaned. “Great. Just great. Now what?”

  “Now we get some coffee.”

  Justin started the engine, and pulled even with the house they’d been staking out. He made a note in his book—the address, Lucy saw—before heading out.

  A few minutes later, they found a nearby place that had enough car
s lined up outside to convince them the food must be decent. Justin parked, and they both tumbled out of the car groaning and trying to ease stiff muscles.

  The restaurant was small, noisy and packed. Luckily, a couple was just getting up to leave as they entered.

  Along with cups of chicory-laced brew, they ate a breakfast that was filling, tasty and cheap. And while Lucy wolfed down her food, she remembered her latest dream and thought about her inability to keep her mind where it belonged. And about Emile’s suggestion that she learn to use her gift to her best advantage.

  Right now, you’re a receiver…learn to be more…

  If she tried, could she control her dreams? But how to accomplish that? Wondering if Gran would be able to help her there, Lucy figured there was only one way to find out.

  “I have some things to take care of sometime today,” Lucy announced as she pushed her mostly empty plate away. She’d eaten so much she felt near to bursting. “Checking in with Dana…” Paying Gran a visit.

  “This morning is as good a time as any,” Justin said. “I have some calls to make. For one, I’m going to try to run down those plates. And two, I’m going to get someone to house-sit in case our shoe-loving thug pays a return visit to his lady.”

  “Good. So where do we meet up later?” she asked.

  “Back at my place after lunch? Hopefully by then I’ll have something. At least a plan of action.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Very good. Enough time for her to have a heart-to-heart with Gran and put some distance between herself and the man who was turning her world upside down.

  AFTER HER BELOVED husband Jake had died of an unexpected heart attack twenty-odd years before, Gran—known to the world as Emma Louise Ryan—had given up ownership of their Greek Revival mansion with its Corinthian columns, double-galleried balcony and twin parlors that opened into a ballroom, to her only son Jack. Her only stipulation had been that she would be allowed to live for the rest of her life in the converted carriage house in the rear.

  Though Gran had seemingly retired from the Garden District social circuit, Lucy knew the invitations had never stopped arriving. Everyone had doted on dear, if eccentric, Emma Louise. And, of course, Gran had eventually risen above her grief to renew old friendships. While growing up, Lucy had spent much of her free time there with Gran, the one person in the world who had always understood her.

  Opening the black wrought iron gate with its familiar vine and rose design, nature’s perfume—the scent of the magnolia trees and flowering plants—welcomed her. The garden surrounding the carriage house had always been and was still Gran’s domain, and Lucy had often helped her tend to the beds.

  As if she knew Lucy was coming, Gran was waiting in the doorway for her. She hadn’t changed much since Lucy was a child. She merely had a bit more gray in her fading reddish-brown hair, and a few more wrinkles at the corners of her gray eyes so like Lucy’s own. But now in her early eighties, Gran was still youthfully trim. As always, she was elegantly dressed in pale rose trousers and a cream silk blouse as if she were ready to go to one of her Garden District Preservation Committee meetings.

  Once inside, Lucy threw her arms around Gran’s shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks. “It’s so good to see you.”

  Squeezing and kissing Lucy in return, Gran said, “Some lovely young people make it a point to visit their grandmothers on a more regular basis.”

  “I see you as often as I do my parents,” Lucy protested.

  “It’s not nearly enough.”

  An argument Lucy wasn’t bound to win. Sighing, she said, “Yes, ma’am, I get the message.”

  Gran’s bowed lips pulled into a foxy smile. “Good. Then we’ll set a date for a proper visit before you leave.” She fanned herself. “It’s passing hot this morning. Can I get you some lemonade or iced tea?”

  “Tea, please.”

  Lucy followed Gran into her kitchen, old-fashioned but still charming with melon-colored walls and a collection of fanciful teapots lining long shelves below the mahogany wall cabinets. Her grandmother usually only made herself breakfast and lunch and went up to the main house for dinner. And why not when Lucy’s mother had a part-time cook in addition to the full-time housekeeper?

  Parking herself at the kitchen table, watching her grandmother fill two tall glasses with ice cubes, Lucy stalled, wondering how to begin.

  “So what’s troubling you, child?” Gran prompted her.

  “How can you tell?”

  “I’ve been sensing something was wrong with you for a few days now.”

  That didn’t surprise Lucy. Her grandmother’s psychic abilities went far beyond her own.

  “You sensed something was wrong and you didn’t call me to find out what?”

  Gran pulled a pitcher of tea from the refrigerator and filled the glasses. “You’re not a child anymore. I knew you would come to me to talk about whatever it was when you were ready. When I awoke this morning, I knew today would be the day.”

  Lucy wondered how much else her grandmother knew. Gran might not be able to read her dreams, but she could have warning dreams of her own.

  “No, I don’t know what’s troubling you, Lucy.” Gran set a glass on the table before her. “Or I wouldn’t have asked.”

  A chill shot up Lucy’s spine. It was as if Gran had heard what she was thinking. She waited until Gran took the seat opposite her. Then she searched for a way to begin that was far more casual than she was feeling. She didn’t want to alarm her grandmother.

  “A couple of things are bothering me, actually.”

  She gave Gran an abbreviated summary of the dreams that had been plaguing her, talking about seeing “romantic moments” with Justin rather than “erotic encounters.”

  Gran’s eyebrows raised. “And this would be a problem…why?”

  “Gra-a-an! I have more important things on my mind than…well, romance.” She’d almost said sex.

  “Like what?”

  No way she was going to tell Gran about the murder, so she danced around it. “Something that’s important to me. Something I want to, well, let’s call it research. I want to dream about that, instead of…romance.”

  “Maybe if you told me more about whatever that was?”

  Gran was frowning now, and Lucy feared she was getting some kind of reading off her, and that with a little effort, she would know everything.

  “Look, the reason I came to see you was to find out if it was possible to push my dreams in a particular direction, to use them as a tool to get this information I need to have. Have you ever been able to pull that off?”

  “At times,” Gran said before switching subjects. “So you don’t want to dream about this young man of yours?”

  “No! And Justin isn’t mine.”

  “Then why do you have that nice color in your face when you think about this Justin?” Gran’s eyes widened. “Oh, those kind of dreams.”

  Rather than appearing horrified, she seemed amused, Lucy realized, wanting to sink right through the floor. And from somewhere came a vague memory of her earthy grandmother giving her the sex talk that her mother had refused after saying a well-bred lady never discussed such things.

  Gran said, “Well, it’s about time you got serious with someone.”

  “Who said I was serious about anyone?”

  “Your dreams, child, your dreams. When you can’t control them…he’s got to be the one.”

  “No, he can’t be.”

  “I don’t believe you have anything to say about it. Some things are simply destined.”

  If that were true, Justin would be shot because of her. “I must have something to say about it,” Lucy muttered. “I can’t just let that happen.”

  “Lucy, what’s going on?”

  She looked up to meet her grandmother’s worried expression. Great. Just what she hadn’t wanted to do was alarm Gram.

  “The situation is complicated, Gran. Trust me, and I’ll tell you everything when I can, I pro
mise. In the meantime, can’t you just help me out here?” Lucy pleaded.

  Though she seemed uncertain, Gran nodded. “Of course I trust you. You’ve always been a good girl, always done what was right.”

  Relief washed through Lucy. “Thank you. So what do I do to get the dreams I want?”

  “Don’t wait for them to come to you. Decide where you want your mind to take you.”

  “I tried that,” Lucy said, thinking of the car scenario. “Didn’t work.”

  “You have to make the dreams come.”

  “How is that even possible?”

  “Anything is possible,” Gran insisted. “You’ve allowed your gift to develop at its own pace, but you’ve never tried to master it before, so the fact that you didn’t succeed the first time isn’t surprising. Liken the process to self-hypnosis. Before you go to sleep, concentrate on the question. Lose yourself in it to the exclusion of everything else. If your will is strong enough—and knowing you, I believe it can be—your dream will give you the answer.”

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  “No one said it would be easy. Knowing is never easy.” Gran got a faraway look in her eyes and murmured, “Sometimes I think knowing what’s going to happen to someone you care about is the heaviest burden in the world, because no matter how hard you try, you simply can’t change fate.”

  Lucy nearly choked on her tea. Certain that Gran meant Justin’s getting shot because of her, she asked, “How in the world did you know?”

  Gran started. “Oh, dear.” Then took a deep breath. “Well, I guess there’s no harm in telling you now. At sixty, your grandfather was a virile, healthy man, and when I had a vision of him having that heart attack watching the bonfires on the Mississippi. I made him go to the doctor and tried to change everything I could, from his diet to his exercise program to where we spent Christmas that year. But it didn’t matter. There were no bonfires at our resort in South Carolina, but I saw my Jake die anyway. I simply couldn’t do anything to stop it from happening.”

  Horrified, Lucy stared at her grandmother, whose eyes shone with unshed tears. “Gran, you never told me.”

  “I never told anyone. Not before. Not after. First I didn’t want it to be true. Then I couldn’t forgive myself.”