by Jean Thomas
The sedan was currently unoccupied, meaning its driver was probably somewhere inside the service station. As Mark watched the door of the station, waiting for his subject to exit, he could feel his hands down along his sides curling into fists. Could feel himself fired with a determination to cross the highway and confront this guy.
If he could just get his hands on him for a few minutes, demand the answers they needed...
Damn it, Griggs! What do you think you’re doing? This isn’t a combat zone.
And as Clare had warned him earlier, combat field or not, this particular enemy could be armed and prepared to use his weapon. All Mark had were his fists, because his own service sidearm was in an army lockup, which was required of a soldier when he came off duty.
Fists were no match for a gun, and if he was shot, Clare would be alone and defenseless. He couldn’t risk it. But he could go on watching that door. Getting a good look at the bastard would by itself be useful.
His effort was rewarded with frustration when, seconds later, a tall truck as long as a boxcar came lumbering along the highway, blocking his view of the other station. He’d exhausted his arsenal of profanities by the time the truck cleared his line of vision.
The sedan was still there, however, and its driver now with it.
Not a sinister-looking figure. Not even male. Nothing more dangerous than a teenage girl sliding behind the wheel and speeding away from the station to the deep throb of a rock ballad at full volume.
This time Mark cursed himself for being a complete ass. He had blue sedans on the brain. How many others could be out there? Same make, same model. A lot of them.
Clare joined him a moment later. By then he thought he had himself fully under control, but she must have perceived some lingering tension in him.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
There was no way he was going to embarrass himself by revealing to her what a fool he’d been. “Just wondering what was keeping you. What do women do in bathrooms that take them so long?”
“Spend the time making sure the men waiting for them outside are good and impatient before they join them.”
“Funny,” he grunted. “You ready to get on the road again?”
* * *
It was late afternoon and New Orleans not far away now when Mark, who’d been waiting for the right moment to approach the subject, made his casual bid.
“I’m going to need to find a room for the night. Any suggestions?”
“Yes, forget it. With New Orleans crawling with visitors, there won’t be an available accommodation anywhere this side of Lake Pontchartrain.”
“Well, it won’t be the first time I’ve slept out in the open. Unless...”
She gazed at him suspiciously. “Uh-huh, I get it. Unless I have a spare bed I’m willing to offer you.”
“Do you?”
“I don’t think I have a choice. Yes, I have a guest room, and you’re welcome to it.”
It was what he’d been hoping to hear. With the situation being what it was, he felt the need to stay close to her. It was imperative that she be protected, although the arrangement did suggest other interesting possibilities.
You’ve got a low mind, soldier. You’re supposed to guard her, not seduce her.
Mark tried to keep that in mind as they neared the first suburbs of the city. With a killer out there somewhere wanting his amulet, and not knowing whether it was still in his possession or Clare’s, the threat to both of them was very real.
That much he was convinced of now. He just wasn’t ready to believe what Clare, who apparently had started to check the outside mirror on her side again, announced a few moments later, “He’s back with us. Pulled out from a side road behind us. He must have been waiting for us there, knowing we’d have to pass here on our way back to the city.”
Mark glanced into his rearview mirror. A blue sedan was following them at a safe distance. He wasn’t ready to buy it, though. Not this time. Not after the episode back at the service stations.
“And you just know it’s the car that shadowed us up from New Orleans.”
“I do,” she insisted.
“Clare, do you realize how many blue sedans like that one are out here on the roads?”
“I don’t care. It is him.”
Mark didn’t bother arguing with her. Her mind was made up. She continued to ride shotgun as they approached the busy urban area.
“Take the next turn left,” she directed him. “It’ll put us on the expressway.”
He did as she instructed.
Twisted around in her seat now, ever vigilant, she reported, “He’s still here with us.”
“And so are a lot of other cars. It’s an expressway, Clare. Why shouldn’t he be on the same route?”
She was right. The blue sedan was still behind them. But although he was far from convinced this was their mystery man, Mark decided to humor her. Accelerating, he began to weave in and out of the traffic in an attempt to put other vehicles between the SUV and the sedan. It didn’t work. The sedan managed to catch up to them every time.
“You see. He is following us. Maybe it’s time we called the police.”
“And tell them what? That some guy we know nothing about is stalking us on the southbound expressway? How do you think they’d react to that?”
“You’re right. They’ll ask us questions we don’t want to answer.”
“That’s after they’ve already decided one or both of us is paranoid.”
“So what should we do?”
He had yet to believe this particular blue sedan was tailing them. But then why take a chance? “Lose him. Hang on.”
Without slowing or warning, he swung over to the right lane and zoomed down the next exit.
“It didn’t work. He’s come down off the expressway with us,” Clare said immediately.
Mark no longer questioned her certainty about the car. There was no coincidence here. This guy was definitely following them.
“I’m not through yet,” he promised her.
They were in an industrial region. Somewhere near the river, Mark judged. The sprawling area was a maze of narrow streets, train tracks and drab buildings of all descriptions, many of them looking abandoned.
It should have been the perfect place to shake their pursuer, but no matter how Mark twisted and turned, the blue sedan managed to keep them in sight.
It wasn’t until a warehouse loomed in front of them that he caught a break. An eighteen-wheeler was pulling out into the street from a loading dock. Reckless and dangerous though his action was, he floored the gas pedal. The SUV responded by leaping forward to the sound of Clare’s alarmed gasp.
Squeezing over to the right so far he almost jumped the curb, he managed to clear the nose of the truck by mere inches. Before its startled driver could brake his rig, the truck was blocking the width of the street, cutting off any passage. The blue sedan was left behind them.
Slowing just enough to safely lift his right hand from the wheel, Mark covered Clare’s trembling knee. “You okay?”
“That was an awfully risky thing to do.”
“Yeah, but effective.”
She had no further objection, only a regretful “It would have been useful if I’d just gotten a decent look at him. But I didn’t this time any more than I did back at Terry’s place.”
Returning his hand to the wheel, not satisfied that the sedan couldn’t still overtake them, Mark proceeded to execute a series of swift, confusing turns up one street and down another, all of them designed to discourage any further pursuit. In the end, he crawled into a deep alley, parking out of sight behind an enormous storage tank.
“This should do it,” he said, switching off the engine.
Except for the ticking of the cooling eng
ine, there was silence between them. He waited a moment before turning to her.
“We can’t spend the night at your place, Clare. This guy is determined. He’s bound to find us there. Are you listed in any phone directory?”
She shook her head.
“How about Boerner? You tell him your address? Because he could have shared it.”
He received another shake of her head.
“Even so, if someone is persistent enough, there are ways to locate addresses. This is the electronic age, Clare.”
“Right. Which is why we’re not going to spend the night at my apartment. We’ll spend it at my house.”
“Huh?”
“I realized a dream and bought a small house this past winter. I’ve been working on it weekends, redecorating and transferring what I didn’t need back at the apartment. I was supposed to move all the rest this past weekend, but then, of course...” She spread her hands in a gesture meant to convey that circumstances had intervened.
Mark understood her. Her brother-in-law had been murdered, her sister arrested and jailed and Clare’s move put on hold.
“The point is,” she continued, “my address is still the apartment. My line phone, too.”
“So we bunk down on the floor at your house.”
She shook her head. “I bought new beds and mattresses for the house. They’re already installed. But I’ll need to stop at the apartment for some clothes and a few other essentials.”
Mark wasn’t sure that was a good idea. On the other hand, he supposed their pursuer would need time to learn Clare’s address, providing he made the effort.
“Should be safe enough,” he agreed, “if we make it fast.” He started the engine. “Any idea where we need to go from here?”
* * *
Clare’s apartment was located on the second floor of a nondescript building near City Park. What identity its few rooms had possessed that might have indicated her tastes was largely gone. The walls were stripped of their pictures, the tables their ornaments, the shelves their books.
Except for the major furniture, like a table and matching chairs in the kitchen and the appliances that she informed him came with the apartment, the place already wore a barren, hollow look.
While Clare flew around, packing a suitcase in her bedroom, stuffing a pair of sacks with groceries in the kitchen, Mark stationed himself at a window overlooking the street. There was no sign of a blue sedan down there. Nor did he expect to see one. All the same, he was uneasy about this delay and thankful when she announced she was ready to leave.
He made certain the sedan wasn’t following them this time, checking his rearview mirror both when they pulled away from the building and through the streets along which she directed him.
Her house turned out to be several blocks away from the French Quarter. They’d almost reached it when he slowed the SUV to a crawl.
“What is it?” she asked.
“That,” he said, nodding off to their right.
“Ah, one of our famous cemeteries.”
Mark had heard about these Louisiana cemeteries, how the deceased were interred in whitewashed vaults above ground because of the high water table. Picturesque, he guessed, if a cemetery could be called that. He decided this one could, maybe because it was bathed in the golden glow of a flaming sunset.
“I’m just up here on the right, third house from the corner,” she indicated. “I don’t have a garage or a driveway. None of the houses along here do. They were built at a time when few people had cars, and certainly no one in this neighborhood had one. It’s different now. Most of these old places have been restored by people with comfortable incomes. You’ll have to park at the curb.”
Mark wasn’t happy about leaving the SUV in plain sight out front, but it looked as if he didn’t have a choice about it. Not, he convinced himself, that there was any chance of their pursuer finding it in a city as large as New Orleans.
Clare’s own place, he noticed as he helped her to remove her things from the SUV, was a narrow, freshly painted, white frame house squeezed between two others almost identical to it. Its lines were simple, but at the same time it possessed a character about it. Maybe because the long windows, one on either side of the door, were attractively shuttered, and there were potted boxwoods beside the doorstep.
There were no lawns fronting any of the houses. All of them opened directly on the sidewalk, making it easy for them to carry Clare’s suitcase and the sacks of groceries to the door.
“Is it my imagination,” he asked as she fumbled for the key in her purse and unlocked the door, “or is it growing dark already?”
“That’s another thing about New Orleans. We don’t have lingering twilights. It goes almost straight from sundown to night.”
Mark realized he was getting an education here from the teacher.
“Here we go,” she said, opening the door and reaching for a light switch.
He followed her into what he presumed was the living room. Or would be once it was fully furnished. Right now it was mostly a collection of unpacked boxes, two card tables and a few chairs. “This is a bit smaller than your apartment, isn’t it?”
A bit? The place lacked breadth. The house was only one room wide.
“Actually,” she said, “it’s larger than the apartment. This is a shotgun house, Mark. Something else unique to New Orleans.”
“Uh—”
He must have looked baffled, because she laughed softly. “Wait here, and I’ll show you.”
He watched her cross the room, open a center door to another room and switch on another overhead light. From there she moved on to other rooms, a whole series of them, each one directly behind the one preceding it. When all of them were blooming with light, she returned to the living room.
“Stand here,” she directed him. “That’s right, where the center doors all line up with one another. Now can you see why it’s called a shotgun house?”
Damned if he couldn’t. “Yeah, I get it. You stand here and fire a shotgun, and the cartridge travels from the front of the house clear to the back without touching a wall in between. Cool. Anybody ever try it?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. Come on, I’ll give you a tour.”
She led him through the first center doorway. “This is the only hallway in the house. I’m thinking it was once a third bedroom, but some owner, probably long before me, had walls erected that provided a full bathroom on this side and a laundry room and half bath on this other side.”
They went on into the next area, which Clare informed him was her bedroom. After that came the guest room, and beyond it was a spacious kitchen equipped with new appliances.
“Nice,” he complimented her. “Very nice, all of it.”
And he meant it. It was a snug home, and even though many of the furnishings had yet to be added, it already wore the warmth and appeal of her personality.
What had been completed were the walls. They were covered in every room with the pictures that had been removed from her apartment. Most of them paintings and prints of local scenes that reflected her love of New Orleans. He could see that in these pictures, hear it in her voice whenever she spoke of the city to which she was so attached.
Now why, of all things, should that make him a little sad?
They were retracing their steps to the living room when Mark’s attention was captured by an arrangement of framed photographs on the outside wall of her bedroom. He stopped to inspect them. The first one depicted a smiling Clare posed on the front steps of a brick building with children ranged on both sides of her.
“These your fifth-grade kids?”
“My current class, yes. I have photos of my others before this, but I haven’t mounted them yet.”
“And this one?” he asked, moving on to a photograph of
a young, African American woman with a piquant face.
“My friend, Monica. She teaches the fourth-grade class next to my room. We’re very close.”
But clearly not as close as she was with the smiling, good-looking man in the next picture. Clare shared the photo with him. More than shared. She was plastered against his side, his arm possessively around her waist as they stood at the rail of one of those old, restored stern wheelers that now served as excursion boats on the river. Why Mark should experience a sudden pang of jealousy was something he didn’t choose to examine.
“Who’s this guy?”
She paused before answering him, and then all he got was a brief “Alan Britten. We’d better bring the suitcase and groceries inside.” She turned away and headed for the front door.
Now what was that all about? Mark wondered as he trailed after her. She’d been pleased by his interest before this Alan Britten character. And then when he’d asked about him, she had clammed up. The tone of his question? He’d meant it to sound casual but was afraid it had come out more like a demand.
Maybe, but somehow he didn’t think that was the explanation.
* * *
Clare faced him in the kitchen, leaning back against the counter after they had unloaded the groceries and put the perishables away in the refrigerator.
“Are you hungry?”
“I can always eat.”
“Good, because I’m going to fix us dinner.”
“What’s on the menu?” he wanted to know.
“A New Orleans specialty. Shrimp Creole. It’s better with fresh shrimp, but I’ll have to use the frozen. Between here and the apartment it should already be mostly thawed.”
“Does the tourist industry know about you?”
“Why?”
“Because you do one hell of a job selling this city. Yep, I’d say you’d easily qualify as their secret weapon.”
“I have run on about my town, haven’t I?”
“I don’t mind. So, how can I help with dinner?”
“Do you know how to cook?”
“I know how to heat up MREs. Does that count?”