No Safe Place

by JoAnn Ross

  "That's true for the most part. In most circles, anyway."

  "So, are you saying you weren't aware our mother is married to Martin St. Croix?"

  "No. Well." He whistled softly. "That's interesting."

  "You really didn't know?"

  "Desiree—Tara—never mentioned it."

  Unless he was a really good actor—which, given what she'd heard about SEALs going undercover, was possible—he really hadn't known that part of the equation. If her mother and sister had been involved in some scam that had gotten Tara killed, it could certainly explain why Antoinette was nowhere to be found.

  Which meant, Kate decided, she was going to have to help him track down her mother. And wasn't that going to be fun?

  "So, what did you learn at the station that made you think you needed to hire a private detective?" he asked.

  "It was more what I couldn't learn. It was obvious I was getting stonewalled. For example, when I asked to identify Tara's body, that obnoxious overweight detective in charge of the case—"

  "Dubois."

  "That's him. Well, he told me it'd already been identified. But no one could—or would—tell me by whom."

  "I saw her." He could not have surprised Kate more if he'd told her that he was running an al-Qaeda terrorist cell out of his boat.

  "You saw my sister's body? When?"

  "Yesterday morning. Shortly after the police had already arrived on the scene."

  While she'd been in federal court, testifying against a former love to that federal jury. "So it was you who identified her?" And wasn't that a handy coincidence?

  "No. But Desiree was the friendly type, well known in the Quarter. Any number of people could've told the cops who she was before I'd arrived on the scene."

  "And you just happened to be driving by?" Kate wasn't buying it.

  "That's pretty much it. And in the interest of full disclosure, I was across the street, and she was being put in the coroner's ambulance when I arrived, but it sure as hell looked like her. And the body was lying in her courtyard."

  "When I said I wanted to see her, Dubois gave me the runaround. He told me she was scheduled for an autopsy."

  "That's routine."

  "I know. But something's fishy. Neither he nor your pal Detective Landreaux could tell me when the autopsy's scheduled."

  "This is New Orleans. Post-Katrina," he reminded her yet again. "The crime rate's going off the chart again, gangbangers are shooting each other every night over turf, and a lot of neighborhoods are like Dodge City back in the cowboy and outlaw days.

  "Every public agency, including the medical examiner, especially the medical examiner, is backed up. The morgue's understaffed and working under less than ideal conditions. They're not set up for visitors."

  It was, damn it, the same thing that obnoxious Dubois had told her. And she couldn't deny that it made sense.

  Still...

  "I'm not a visitor," she said, repeating what she'd stated back at the station. "I'm a cop."

  "A Chicago cop. Which, down here, makes you a civilian. This isn't your jurisdiction."

  "God, you could be channeling Dubois," she muttered, folding her arms.

  "Ouch. Now that's a really low blow."

  He didn't exactly appear wounded. But she could tell he wasn't very flattered by the comparison, either.

  "I could get a court order."

  "You could try, sure enough."

  As an outsider her chances would be what? How about slim to zero? What she needed was to ally herself with someone who knew the territory. And the players. Someone with a total disregard for rules. Someone like Nick Broussard.

  "Look," he said on a long-suffering sigh. "That sound you hear is doors slamming all over the city. If your sister was murdered, and I'm not saying I necessarily believe she was, then the best thing you can do, Detective is keep a low profile. Because New Orleans doesn't work anything like Chicago.

  "We're our own little enclave here. We're not anything like the rest of the United States. Hell, we're not like the rest of Louisiana. Most folks who live here consider it an oasis, even now, after Katrina.

  "People have been coming to the Crescent City for years because we're a party city, then they stay. And they try to change us. But New Orleans has always been impervious to outside influences.

  "So, the thing is, if you start nosin' around in intimate southern closets, all you'll succeed in doing is make things more difficult."

  "Which is why I should hire you?"

  He shrugged. "At least I know all the players," he said, unwittingly echoing her earlier thought. "And where most of the bodies are buried." He cringed at that. "Sorry. Bad metaphor. But you could do a helluva lot worse. Of course, there's another alternative."

  "And that would be?"

  "You could go back home and leave this for the cops."

  Right. Go back to Chicago? Where the best she could probably hope for would be meter-maid duty? Obviously, she'd burned all her Chicago bridges. But, dammit, Nick Broussard made her nervous.

  No. Not nervous. Edgy. Stirred up. Enough that under normal conditions, this would be the last man she'd want to work with. Unfortunately, this situation was far from normal; it was obvious the cops had already made up their minds about her sister's death, and it was also becoming more and more apparent that this Navy SEAL-turned-cop-turned-PI might well be her only chance to discover the truth.

  "I believe I'll hang around here a while. So, since this is your town, what do you suggest we do first?"

  "It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to check out her apartment."

  "Dubois told me it's still sealed off as a crime scene."

  "That's standard procedure. Probably even in Chicago."

  "In a suicide? When, as you pointed out, the police force is overworked and understaffed?"

  He tilted his dark head. "Good point."

  "I'm a cop," she reminded him. "It doesn't make any sense that they'd declare it a suicide, then keep it locked up."

  "Maybe they're still looking for something."

  "Maybe they are." And maybe, whatever it was, she'd find it first. "How good are you at breaking and entering?"

  His deep chuckle had something inside her turning over. "Sweetheart, you are now playing my favorite tune."

  11

  "HEY, NICE MINVAN," KATE SAID DRYLY AS Nick led her to a black Humvee parked in the lot.

  "Gotta keep up the tough-guy image." He could've been wearing Kevlar, the way the barb just bounced right off him.

  "Yeah. Hummer . . . the ultimate penis extender." She climbed up into the behemoth vehicle and decided the ALPHA stamped onto the back of the black leather seats in big block letters was definitely overkill. "If your ego's in such a need of a boost, why didn't you just buy a gun?"

  "I already have a gun."

  Obviously he was going to refuse to bite, which took all the fun out of the other penis jokes she had waiting in the wings.

  It wasn't that far of a drive back to the Quarter, where she'd suffered through that frustrating meeting with Landreaux and Dubois, but the neighborhoods they passed through would not have looked out of place in a war zone.

  Despite the optimistic photos she'd seen on the news of Jazz Fest and Mardi Gras, designed to show New Orleanians getting on with their lives, there were blocks and blocks of houses without roofs, many without walls. Several homes had washed off their foundations and stood open to the elements; broken furniture and plumbing fixtures littered vacant lots, rusting cars were overturned, sometimes piled up on top of one another, as if discarded by a giant toddler during a tantrum. Chest-high brown weeds grew up through the vehicles' windows.

  There were mountains of moldy Sheetrock and twisted metal littering the medians, which he told her were called neutral ground here in New Orleans, for miles on end. They passed two pickup trucks, one with Arkansas license plates, parked on the dead grass.

  "Damn scavengers," Nick said with acid derision as he watched the Arkans
an pile some of the discarded metal into the bed of his truck. "It's not so bad when they just take the refuse, so they can make money off taking it to the scrap center—because they are, in their own twisted way, helping with cleanup. But a lot of them don't stop with that. I've seen them ripping copper plumbing pipes out of houses that are still boarded up and waiting for cleanup."

  "What did you do?"

  He shrugged. "Shot 'em with my big penis-extending gun."

  "You're not serious."

  "No. But it's a damn nice fantasy. Remember that old Mel Gibson movie, Road Warrior?"

  "Of course." It was one of her all-time favorites, and not just because young Mel had defined hunk.

  "Well, sometimes around here, that story doesn't exactly seem like fiction."

  Refugee camps of unadorned house trailers hadi sprouted like mushrooms on parking lots of deserted strip malls; uniformed and armed national guard; troops dressed in camouflage and patrolling the near-empty streets in military Humvees added to the war-zone feeling.

  While several buildings remained boarded up, the French Quarter was in much better shape. Which, Kate assumed, contributed to many Americans' mistaken belief that the City That Care Forgot had nearly recovered.

  Kate suspected that up on Bourbon Street, with only two more nights remaining until Fat Tuesday gave way to Ash Wednesday, the carnival atmosphere would be in full swing. But in the part of the Quarter nearer the river, the streets were surprisingly quiet and hushed.

  Fog was drifting in from the river, the air so thick with humidity that Kate could feel her curly hair taking on a life of its own.

  Tara's apartment took up the top floor of an Ital-ianate three-story town house. Outside, the iron was rusted and the stucco was falling off the brick in large chunks; inside, the air was musty with age and dampness.

  "Well, one thing's for certain," Kate said as they turned the corner at the narrow second-floor landing. "Dubois didn't do the apartment investigation."

  "And you know this why?"

  "Because he'd be lucky to make it halfway up the first flight of stairs before he had a heart attack."

  "Good point. The man does enjoy a good meal. And it shows."

  "What shows is that when he's not enjoying that good meal, he spends the rest of his time sitting around on his ass," Kate said as they passed the second-floor landing.

  Yellow and black crime-scene tape barricaded the door to the top-floor apartment.

  "Damn. I was afraid they'd have used tape," Kate muttered. Like everywhere else in the building, the paint was peeling off the door, and she was afraid that once they removed it, they wouldn't be able to stick it back on again.

  "No problem." Nick snapped on a pair of latex gloves, then dug into the small duffel bag he'd brought along and pulled out a roll of identical tape. "Didn't I mention I was a former Eagle Scout when I was giving you my credentials?"

  "I don't believe so."

  She found it difficult to believe. Although she'd learned the flaws in profiling in the police academy, she would have pegged Nick Broussard as the quintessential bad boy.

  "You also don't believe it." He dug into the bag and brought out a small black leather case.

  "Let's just say I have a hard time imagining an Eagle Scout owning a lock-picking set," she said dryly.

  "You called that one right. My dad was a cop and he would've taken- a piece of my hide if he'd found one in my room." He pulled out a thin, flat-head tension wrench from the case. "Besides, I felt obligated to set a good example for my three younger sisters."

  "Do they live here?"

  "Hannah, she's the oldest, is a librarian in Honolulu. Sarah's a teacher in Maine. And Lara's the baby. She's a nurse stationed at a CASH—combat army support hospital—in Iraq."

  It was the first personal glimpse he'd allowed. Although she had trouble seeing this man living with three sisters, she could hear the affection in his tone.

  "You must worry about her."

  "Yeah." After a moment's study, he chose a long, thin pick.

  "They certainly all moved a long way from home."

  "I suspect that was the point."

  So much for personal insight.

  "Isn't a lock made a SEAL can't open." He stuck the wrench in the lock, then followed with the pick. "We'll rake it first. Maybe we'll get lucky and all the pins will fall into place."

  "You're quick." Kate believed in giving credit where credit was due.

  "When it comes to stuff like this," He selected another pick and tried again. "Other things I prefer to do real slowly."

  His grin was wicked and far too appealing. She was tempted to warn him that he was coming close to getting shot, but decided the best way was to just play it cool and professional.

  "Let's just get inside and check the place out," she said with chilly dignity.

  "Yes, ma'am." He didn't smile. But from the amusement in his deep voice, Kate knew he wanted to.

  12

  THE APARTMENT HAD BEEN TRASHED. Paintings torn off the wall, the canvases slashed; the couch was lipstick-red leather and looked as if it had been expensive. Unfortunately, the cushions had been viciously cut apart, the marks looking as if the destruction had been more methodical than the result of any violent rage,

  A small skirted table had been overturned, spilling carved wooden figures, candles, seashells, and shiny stones. A colorful silk, depicting two snakes entwined in an embrace, added to the surreal appearance.

  "Do you think the cops did this?" she asked.

  "Could've." He pulled another pair of gloves from the pack and handed them to her, then stepped over the stuffing from the couch cushions that was scattered over the wooden floor like fallen snow. "But they'd have needed a search warrant. Which they didn't have."

  "How do you know that?" As soon as she heard herself ask the question, Kate knew the answer. "You checked?" Before she'd even shown up at his door to hire him? Once again he'd managed to surprise her. "Why?"

  "Let's just say I was curious."

  "Let's not. And remember that we're supposed to be a team here, Broussard. Like back when you were in the SEALs."

  "Yeah." He rubbed his jaw, and although he didn't flinch, she viewed a flash of pain move across his eyes, revealing that his bruised and battered face hurt as badly as it looked to. "Though I gotta tell you, chère, if any of the guys on my team had looked like you, I would've re-upped for another tour."

  Flirting appeared to be as natural to Nick Broussard as breathing. There was no reason to take it personally. A man as sexy as this undoubtedly went through life charming women from eight to eighty.

  Twenty minutes later, Kate had discovered her estranged sister had owned 140 pairs of shoes, two dozen designer bags, more clothes than Kate could ever imagine owning in her life, enough lingerie to open her own Victoria's Secret store, and more than enough sex toys, whips, blindfolds, and handcuffs to start hosting neighborhood dungeon parties.

  "Looks as if she took her work home with her," Nick said as he picked up a black leather riding crop.

  "Different strokes," Kate murmured. Then could have immediately bit off her tongue.

  He lifted a dark brow at her unintended double entendre, but chose not to comment.

  "You know," she said, "speaking of taking her work home, Dubois wasn't real forthcoming, but he did seem to enjoy letting me know my sister was a prostitute."

  "Yeah, I can picture him getting off on that. But what she chose to do for a living didn't necessarily make her a bad person. Just one workin' outside the margins, which isn't that unusual down here. Like I said, people liked Desiree. She was real friendly.w

  "Sounds as if you knew her well."

  "I wasn't a client, if that's what you're implying."

  "But you were friends?"

  "Is this an interrogation?"

  "No." Yes. "I'm just trying to get a handle on the situation. You said that in many ways, this is a small town, with everyone knowing everyone else. That makes sense. Bu
t I'm getting the impression that your relationship with my sister was a bit more personal."

  "Depends on how you define personal. Did she tell me she had a sister? Yeah. Did I know her maman was a little shady? Yeah, she'd dropped some hints about that. Did she mention that same mother had recently moved here and married one of the richest and most influential wheeler-dealers in the city? No. Did 1 ever sleep with her? Hell, no. Does that about cover it?"

  She'd pissed him off. Tough.

  "For now," she said, annoyed at how the sight of Nick absently tapping the crop's handle against his broad, palm sent an illicit thrill zinging through her.

  Tara's collection of pornographic videotapes was also extensive, covering just about every kink imaginable, but not unusual given her career choice, and certainly nothing Kate hadn't seen during her days working sex crimes and Vice. And none, she was vastly relieved to see, featuring juveniles.

  "All commercial," he said after they'd checked each tape by taking it from its cardboard sleeve. "No homemade movies."

  He sounded a bit surprised by that. Then again, although she couldn't imagine ever taping herself making love, Kate decided that any woman who actually owned a copy of Harlots of Hell—No Boys Allowed undoubtedly wouldn't have all that many sexual inhibitions.

  Kate had never considered herself sexually inhibited. But compared to her sister, she might as well have been living in a convent.

  Thirty minutes later, Kate knew her sister's taste in music tended toward hip-hop; her reading material was mostly fashion magazines, with a scattering of erotic novels; but rather than the Playboy Channel, or some other adult fare, her TiVo was set up to record old 1950s sitcoms that reflected an idealized world neither Tara nor Kate had ever personally known.

  If the pint cartons in the freezer were any indication, her favorite Ben and Jerry's flavor was Half Baked frozen yogurt. She drank Russian vodka she kept iced and Jose Cuervo margaritas.

  Which was more than Kate had known before arriving in New Orleans. But she still had no idea what mess her twin had gotten into that would've gotten her killed.

  "I wish I'd known," she murmured, only realizing she'd spoken out loud when Nick stopped skimming through a stack of mail that was strewn over the kitchen counter and glanced up at her. "If I'd known she was in so much trouble. I could've helped."