Violent?
Joe had no violence in him. What he felt and what he lavished on her was intense ardor.
He scared Ellie.
Forcing her hands beneath his wrists, she slid inside his collar to press her fingertips into unyielding muscles. She gentled her mouth, let it soften, and sensed that he felt the change in her immediately. He moved his mouth from her lips to her cheek. “Say I haven’t waited too long to let you know how I feel?”
“Please, Joe,” she said, “please give us time. Nothing’s normal and you can’t know exactly how you feel when your world’s turned upside down.”
He rested the side of his head against the wall and looked down at her through slitted eyes. “Is there any hope for us?”
If I make it through without being murdered, do you mean? “I have hope,” she said, suddenly knowing what she really felt. “If we can hang together but still give each other enough room—and if what we feel turns out to be real rather than some reaction to my fear and your wanting to save me—we could have a chance.”
Joe nodded, but rather than relaxing, his expression turned hard, and so intense she didn’t want to analyze what was going on in his head.
“Don’t laugh at me, please,” she said to him. “Would you mind sleeping across the hall tonight?”
Shrugging away from the wall, he slid a forearm behind her neck and urged her face against his shoulder. He pushed her hair back and rested his cheek on her temple. “You’ll never know how grateful I am for that suggestion. Beats the hell out of sittin’ up in a dark room all night, lookin’ out the front window and listenin’ for any noise comin’ from the back.”
“I…I’m so grateful to you.” Ellie held him and kept her eyes tightly shut. “Do you think they’ll find him?”
“I do. I really do. Now, I’ve got to run back and make sure everything’s locked up. I know the back door isn’t.”
“Go,” Ellie said, and released him. “Are you hungry? I’ll look around and see what I’ve got in my kitchen.”
Joe slowly took his arm from around her neck. “Don’t worry about it. Let me do what I have to and get back. I hate it when you’re out of my sight.” He locked the door from the inside and slammed it on the way out.
Sometimes Ellie forgot Joe had her keys.
He had let her know, more than once, that she was important to him. One of the reasons she’d hidden herself away in Toussaint was to avoid more than casual friendships. Joe had changed her mind, at least where he was concerned.
The man had to be hungry and she wanted to feed him. “C’mon, Daisy. Here, girl.”
Daisy responded by taking another turn of the shop, snuffling and yipping as she went. Whenever Ellie mentioned Daisy’s flashes of high spirits and unpredictability in front of Ozaire, he pointed out that she couldn’t be considered full grown. Ozaire took exception to any negative comments about the dogs one of his good buddies raised.
“C’mon, girl,” Ellie said, smiling at the sound of the mat inside the shop door flipping under Daisy’s flying feet.
Death in Diamonds was still only in hardback. Ellie stood still. What was she thinking of to forget something that obvious? It should be out in paperback soon. Ellie headed back into the shop, this time using only a tiny lamp on the table in the reading area. Hardback fiction lined the back wall. She’d been right in saying she’d sold the three copies she got in originally, but maybe some reorders had arrived.
Thanks to Marc Girard, she now had sliding ladders along the three walls where the upper shelves were out of reach. He’d designed them, then turned up and put them in. Ellie smiled. She was so lucky in the friends she’d made.
She slid the ladder into place. As she inevitably did, Daisy showed up to sit at the bottom as if to keep Ellie safe.
An explosive cracking sound came from the windows behind her. Standing on the third step of the ladder, Ellie snapped around and almost fell. She stuck one arm through the ladder to balance herself and stood with her heels hooked over the rungs.
Daisy barked and Ellie cringed at the sound. The dog looked up at her, showing bared teeth.
“Stay.” Ellie didn’t want her dog in a position where she could be seriously hurt.
On the floor again, she grabbed Daisy’s collar and got out of sight at the end of a long row of bookcases. The faintness she remembered from yesterday came seeping back. Not so strong this time, but still familiar.
A bright light bloomed outside but didn’t wash into the shop.
Shaking out of breath, Ellie peered out. The light came from a powerful flashlight held at about two feet from the ground and aimed upward. It illuminated a sign written in black on some sort of white surface.
The beam swiveled rapidly, picked her out before she could retreat. Ellie pulled back behind the bookshelf again. Daisy strained and made lunges until Ellie swung a leg over her back and clamped the animal between her knees.
“Joe.” She whispered his name automatically. He’d come soon.
The light faded out of the shop. Ellie crouched, almost sat on Daisy’s rippling back, and looked again. The sign read Do You Know Me?
Either she stood up, or she’d fall on Daisy. Ellie stood and squinted against the brilliance.
The flashlight moved again. This time straight up, straight up to blast over a man’s face. He stared ahead, into the shop, and Ellie took a half step into the aisle between two bookshelves.
The flashlight distorted his features, sank his eyes deep in his head. She couldn’t have identified him.
“Go away. I don’t know you!”
The beam moved again. Ellie read, Help Me. I Need You.
Ellie’s legs crumpled and she fell to her knees. Singing, singing, a whining song sawed at her ears and filled her head. She blinked to clear her vision. She didn’t understand what was happening to her.
Daisy sniffed her. Ellie couldn’t keep her grip on the collar and the dog rushed at the window.
The sign disappeared.
Once again the beam changed direction until it rested on the man’s other hand, on the gun he pointed at Daisy.
“No.” Ellie moaned. “No.”
Again the man hit the window, this time with the butt of the gun.
The light went out and the bay window fell directly down in millions of glittering shards.
Ellie huddled over and rested her cheek on the floor. She waited, listening, not daring to show herself. He was out there, that man. And all he had to do was climb through the open window and get her. Daisy could well have been injured by the shattered glass.
What felt like endless, dead time went on and on.
How long had it been? Ellie rolled onto one side. She was the only resident at the end of the square—except for Joe.
“Daisy,” she said. “Come.”
Her dog wasn’t in the shop, if she were she’d be at Ellie’s side.
The back door slammed open. “Ellie,” Joe yelled.
15
“Let’s go through this one more time,” Detective Gautreaux said.
Joe dropped backward to lie flat on the carpet in Ellie’s living room. “You sure you want to do that?” he asked.
“I don’t,” Ellie said. “I want to find my dog.”
Joe rolled his head to one side and saw her look beseechingly at Spike. Now, there was a man who looked like death and definitely not warmed over.
Spike had dragged a chair from the little table in the window. “I’ve got an officer searching for her,” he told Ellie. He sat astride the seat of his chair, his sun-streaked hair standing on end. His uniform was the same one he’d had on all day. And some sort of misery, something that had nothing to do with the present crisis, had settled in his eyes.
Joe pushed up onto his elbows. “Look at us. We’re shredded. Can we carry on in the mornin’?” Ellie crowded a corner of the couch and he winked at her. She tried to wink back but succeeded in closing both eyes.
“What’s so funny, Gable?” Gautreaux s
aid. He sat in an easy chair and leaned forward to rest his forearms on his knees.
Joe waved airily. “Who knows? I think my brain’s fried.”
A fresh battering at the shop windows momentarily silenced them all. Cyrus was down there, and Marc Girard, Paul Nelson, Gator Hibbs—who had brought Jim Wade, the property prospector, along from the Majestic Hotel—and Ozaire Dupre. Ozaire and Gator had been drinking beer and watching baseball on TV.
“They’re all so good,” Ellie said. “And Spike made sure they didn’t touch anything until things had been gone over.”
“Hit and run,” Spike said, his voice scratchy. “The fella was on his way when he hit that window. Must have used somethin’ real hard. Like an ice pick.”
“I told you it was a gun,” Ellie said. “But I didn’t hear him fire. If it had been an ice pick—”
“Don’t think about that,” Joe said. “Spike, why the hell would you say somethin’ like that?”
“You want me to say I’m sorry?” Spike asked, and stood up. “You aren’t the only one who’s had a long day. Damn it all, long day? It’s two in the mornin’.”
Joe took a second to recover. “Never mind apologizing to me, buddy. Ellie’s the one who doesn’t—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Gautreaux roared. “You, Ellie, I’m speakin’ t’you and not these clowns. You never mentioned a gun.”
No, Joe thought, she hadn’t.
“I must have,” she said, sitting straighter. “And don’t you pick on Joe and Spike.”
Gautreaux pointed his notebook at her. “You didn’t say anythin’ about a gun. Y’all said the guy broke the window. Why wouldn’t a gun be the first thing you said?”
Interfering at this moment wouldn’t be a good idea, Joe decided.
“I thought I had. It happened fast. At the time everything seemed to go slowly, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes at most.”
“I heard the glass go,” Joe said. Let Gautreaux take any tack he liked, but that wasn’t going to include beating up on Ellie.
Gautreaux’s black eyes pinned him. “Did you think it could have been shot out?”
“No gunshot,” Joe said. “And like I said, I didn’t hear a vehicle.”
“This is how it’s gonna be,” Gautreaux said.
Joe got to his feet.
“Ellie here is a marked woman,” the detective continued.
Spike caught Joe’s eye and neither of them said a word.
“She’s had two attempts on her life. I’m thinking about the Witness Protection Program,” Gautreaux said.
“You don’t have a single lead on Charles Penn,” Joe said. His head had been aching, now it felt as if his skull would break. “He’s been out for ten days. A woman died in that time, but you don’t have a thing on him, do you?”
“Take it easy,” Spike said.
“It makes sense to get Ellie out of the picture,” Gautreaux said. He shielded his eyes with one hand and didn’t sound so good. “To keep her safe, and to see what kind of moves our man makes.”
“Use her as bait, you mean,” Joe said. “No, sorry, I know what you mean but I don’t agree with you.”
“Because all that matters to you is keeping your bed warm?”
Joe started forward but Spike stepped in front of him. “That won’t help,” Spike said. “Guy wants to be cautious. So do we all.”
“And that excuses the mouth he’s got on him?”
“I’ve had it.” Ellie pushed herself upright from the couch. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, too. Did he try to kill me twice?”
“Ellie,” Joe said, reaching for her arm.
She moved out of his reach “Don’t touch me. I want all of you to listen. You’ve had people combing the area for Penn. So far you haven’t found him. He has to be somewhere here, so find him. Get enough officers out there to turn over every rock.”
“We’re doing that,” Gautreaux said. He didn’t show any chagrin and Joe figured that ticked Ellie off.
“Keep at it,” she said. Joe could read her mind—almost. She had decided the only way to stop herself from being trampled under big, clumsy male feet was to quit behaving like carpet. She continued, “Next point. It would have been easy to kill me in the woods behind Pappy’s. He didn’t. Why?”
“The time wasn’t right for him,” Gautreaux said. “He wanted to ask you questions but you got away from him. Were we in doubt about any of this?”
“I’m just clarifying things, Detective Gautreaux. You said someone tried to kill me twice and then you started talking about the Witness Protection Program.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d call me Guy.”
Joe smiled a little. Guy Gautreaux was a good-looking man. Joe figured the detective was used to females turning to jelly if he chose to switch on the charm.
All he’d managed this time was to make Ellie frown. She turned to Spike. “You don’t look so good,” she said. “Please go home to your family. Guy will be on his way shortly. He’s got a fair ride to New Orleans. We’ll make a fresh start tomorrow.”
Oh, but he loved the lady’s way of cutting bigger fish down to convenient sizes.
“Maybe she’s right,” Spike said, reaching for his hat.
“The hell she is,” Guy Gautreaux said. He pushed his notebook into a pocket and crossed his very muscular arms. “I don’t know how you run things around here, Spike, but where I come from the witness doesn’t decide procedure. I’m staying at the station house, Ellie. Lori’s been kind enough to let me use the bed in her office. I take it Spike had it put in on account of her pregnancy. So she could rest if she had to.”
“Spike is one of the best,” Ellie said.
She smiled at Spike, who looked uncomfortable, then returned her unblinking attention to Guy. “Tonight that man out there could have shot me and gotten away, just as easily as breaking the window and getting away.”
“What’s your point?” Guy asked
“His second sign just read, ‘Help me. I need you.’”
“Sure, then he broke your windows and ran like hell. Since you know everything and you say he doesn’t intend to kill you, what does he want?”
“To kidnap me.” She let that sink in. “The first time he went after me I didn’t do a single thing he expected me to do, and I think he heard Joe coming, too. Last night Daisy ruined everything for him. He wanted to shoot her but that would have make me too difficult to handle.”
Joe breathed in real slow. He believed the same thing but didn’t understand why that would make Ellie feel any safer.
“Okay, and if he did manage to kidnap you, what then?” Guy asked.
Spike said “Hell” under his breath. He arched his neck. “Damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”
“Yes,” Ellie said. “He wants me to be able to say I didn’t see him do anything on Bourbon Street when Stephanie died.”
“Doesn’t make any sense,” Joe said. “You already made a statement that you didn’t recognize him.”
“What I believe he wants,” Ellie said, “is to find a way to make me say I did see who killed Stephanie Gray and it wasn’t him. That’s why all he’s going to do is frighten me, not kill me.”
“You scare the hell out of me,” Guy Gautreaux said.
Joe came close to adding, me, too.
Spike put on his hat and dipped it forward over his eyes. “This is going to be hard, Ellie, but I think you should accept protection. Penn has a violent past.”
“I already have accepted protection,” Ellie said, smoothing nervously at her wrinkled shirt and slacks. “Joe has agreed to stay in the other apartment.”
Women, Joe decided, were completely unpredictable. He nodded, making sure he showed only serious concern. Now wasn’t the time to reveal he was doing cartwheels in his mind; low-life, infatuated man that he was. “That’s correct,” he said. “As long as she isn’t all alone here at night, I don’t think we’ve got as much to worry about. Wazoo will come on
loan from Vivian and Spike during the day for as long as necessary. This guy’s going to step right in it, we all know that. This town’s too small to make a good hiding place.”
Damn Guy Gautreaux’s eyes. He couldn’t resist giving Joe a boy-to-boy look.
“My father, Homer Devol, he’s going to help keep Ellie covered during the day,” Spike said. “Homer’s no pushover.”
“No,” Guy said. “Not good enough.”
“It’s going to have to be,” Ellie told him, but gave Joe a long sideways glance. “I’m not going anywhere. Got it? My plans are made and I’ll be safe with my friends. I’m also going to get a gun.”
“No.” Guy and Spike echoed Joe. Joe went on alone, “Don’t do anything hasty, okay, Ellie? You don’t know anything about weapons and this isn’t the time to start with them, not when you’re scared.”
“I know about guns,” she said, and shut her mouth tight.
“Whatever,” Guy said. “Promise you won’t get a gun unless one of us is there to check you out on it. If you don’t promise, I’ll find a way to bring you in.”
“You threaten that a lot,” Ellie said.
Guy smiled faintly.
“I won’t get a gun unless one of you is with me,” she said, biting her lip while humor warmed her eyes. “It’s quiet. I’m going down to see what’s happening and find out if there’s any news about Daisy.” She went into the kitchen and returned with a key, which she gave to Joe. “You’ll find everything you need over there. Tomorrow we’ll see about making it more like home for you.”
This time Joe let himself enjoy Guy’s raised eyebrows. He could think whatever he wanted to. All Joe hoped was that every hot thought Guy had came true.
Cyrus waited quietly in the shop. The glass had been cleared away. Most of the small leaded panes had clung in place.
Now You See Him Page 12