by Robin Caroll
“Adelaide, you can’t help what happened to you. That was all Kevin Muller.”
She sighed and leaned back in her chair. “Don’t you see? He would be furious that it happened, then guilty because he wasn’t there to stop it or protect me, even though there was nothing he could have done. He’d be disappointed I hadn’t stood up for myself and gone to the police. And he’d be disappointed I hadn’t told him.”
Ah. There it was.
“I’m not trying to judge you in the least, Adelaide, but I have to ask. Why didn’t you tell him?”
“I couldn’t.” She gave him a weak smile that nearly broke his heart. “You don’t know who my father is, do you?”
He slowly shook his head, replaying every conversation they’d had about fathers for the last few years. “You talk about him a lot, and your loving relationship is obvious, but you’ve only really referred to him as Dad.”
“Because he’s a hermit, but he’s had to be. He was stalked, hassled, and harassed because of his name alone. He does very little in the public eye. He has to vigilantly guard his privacy, and his identity.”
Dimitri tried to recall anything about a Fountaine, but came up empty.
Her smile was warmer now. “My dad is Vincent Fountaine, but that’s a hard-earned secret. He’s an author and writes under the pen name of R. C. Steele.”
Dimitri tried not to let his jaw drop, but he couldn’t. “He’s like the best-seller of all time! I’ve read all his books, seen all the movies.” Excitement sped up his speech, but he didn’t care. This was R. C. Steele!
She nodded. “Exactly. When I was attacked, he’d just finished promoting his movie, Cries for Help. He’d made one of his few personal appearances. He was in the news everywhere. I couldn’t pick up a paper or turn on an entertainment show or cruise the internet without seeing Dad.” She lifted a pen and began to doodle on her desk pad. “If I had told him what happened, he would have dropped everything and come to Natchitoches to strangle the guy and then bring me home. Can you imagine the media circus that would have caused?”
Now the picture started to come into focus. Dimitri slowly nodded and scooted back in the chair.
“It would have been splashed everywhere for everyone to know. I would have been humiliated and my dad would’ve as well. With all the exposure he’d been getting, my assault would’ve been front-page coverage. I don’t know if he could’ve handled it. I don’t think I could have.”
“But when you came home, why didn’t you tell him then?”
She shook her head, not looking at him but concentrating on her sketching. “I couldn’t. He was so proud of me and happy to have me home. I couldn’t break his heart and tell him how broken I felt.”
Dimitri ached for her. “But, Adelaide, now . . . you should go ahead and prepare your dad, because this is going to get out. You know it will.”
“I know no such thing. I managed to keep it a secret when it happened, I’m pretty sure I can keep it a secret now.”
Oh, she wanted to believe that, but he had to make sure she understood the risk she was taking by not coming forward. “There wasn’t a murder then. A murder where your fingerprints are on the murder weapon, and you have a valid reason for murder. The police are going to ask you about your fingerprints. They will ask if you knew Kevin Muller. Do you plan on lying to them?”
She tossed the pen onto the desk. “No. I didn’t know Kevin Muller.”
“Adelaide!” She was going to get herself in such deep trouble, Dimitri didn’t know if he’d be able to help her. “You did know him.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “No, you’re mistaken. I knew a Brayden Colton briefly when I was a student at Northwestern University. That’s it.”
He could tell by the stubborn set of her jaw that she wasn’t going to budge on this. No matter what she said, if she didn’t tell the police about what had happened back in college, she would be lying.
Which would make her the prime—maybe only, suspect in the murder.
Twelve
Adelaide
The January wind gusted outside St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, rustling the leaves and adding to the creepiness of the location, but it didn’t bother Adelaide. She tightened her windbreaker around her and leaned against her car parked just outside the cemetery’s entrance. Not only had she grown up in the area, but she had memories of many nights in her misspent youth climbing the fence to get into the famous cemetery. Now it was just the place her best friend worked at midnight.
Tracey Glapion had been Adelaide’s best friend for as long as Addy could remember. Tracey’s long black hair, pale skin, and her ever-present bright red lipstick added to the mystique of her last name. Family legend claimed Tracey was a direct descendant of Louis Christophe Dominick Duminy de Glapion, the “left-handed husband” of renowned Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau.
Rumor had it, de Glapion was a man of noble French descent when in the 1830s he was in a placage relationship with Laveau. Together, it was said, they had at least seven children, but only two survived: both daughters named Marie, one the look-alike of Marie Laveau, who embraced the darker side of voodoo in Bayou St. John. It was from this line Tracey descended. Supposedly.
Addy didn’t believe or disbelieve her friend’s heritage, but it sure helped Tracey in her job.
“Some say if you listen carefully outside the cemetery, when it’s around midnight, the witching hour, if it’s quiet enough, you can hear Marie’s mumbled spells against those who wronged her.” Tracey finished her spiel, accepted the tips, then sauntered over to Addy.
“When you sit out here so casually, it ruins the ambiance.” She hopped up on the hood of Addy’s car.
“Sorry.” Addy inched up beside her.
Tracey nudged her. “What’s up? Gotta be something important to get you out here at midnight on a Friday night. Spill.”
Where to start?
“Addy?”
Once she started with seeing him again, it was as if the floodgates opened, and everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours spilled out in a gush until Addy sat still and breathless.
“Okay. I’m trying to follow this. You saw Brayden at your hotel, during the fire alarm, but you didn’t try to find him? Did you search for a reservation in his name?”
“It wouldn’t have mattered. He used a fake name back then. Because he all along planned what he was going to do to me.” She shivered, and it had nothing to do with the wind milling about Basin Street.
Tracey held up her hand, her bright red nails flickering by the almost half-moon’s light. “Okay. So you skip out of dinner with your dad, then eat something with the owner’s son before you go on a late-night run and then go to bed?”
“Right.”
“Next day, it’s business as usual until you get the call that someone missed checkout and you need the room. So y’all go busting in and find the body.”
“Well, we didn’t really bust in, but basically that’s it.”
“Only you don’t realize the dead guy is Brayden?”
Addy ran her hands through her hair and hung her head. “I know it sounds crazy. I never saw his face in the bathroom. I was too horrified by the blood, so Geoff and Dimitri got me out of there as quickly as they could.”
Tracey wrapped an arm around Addy and hugged her. “I’m sorry, sweets. I can’t imagine how you felt.”
“It was awful. It was like I froze.”
“Well, what else should you have done? Seriously.” Tracey squeezed her tighter. “So you didn’t find out the dead guy was Brayden until . . .”
“Until I saw him on the security footage Beau and Geoff watched to generate the murder timeline.”
“And you haven’t told anyone but Dimitri about it, right?”
“Right.”
Tracey shook her head. “You should’ve told your dad back then, Addy.”
“No. And I’m not telling him now.”
“You said that they found the
murder weapon and your prints are on the knife?”
“Yes.” Addy stared into the darkness. She couldn’t understand how her prints got on the knife. The knife that killed the man who raped her. “I know how it looks, Trace.”
“Do you? Do you really, Addy?” Tracey shifted and stared at her. “A detective will see a girl who saw her rapist who was never punished, had the means and opportunity, took advantage of the fate of having him in her hotel, and decided to settle the score.”
“Beau’s the detective, Trace. He won’t see that.”
“That’s even worse. You never told your dad or Beau or anyone when you came back. When it comes out now, how do you expect Beau to be able to defend you?”
“I told you.”
“And you swore me to secrecy, even when I begged you to tell your dad.”
“I know.” Addy let out a heavy sigh. “I know I’ve made a mess of things, but I promise, I didn’t kill him.”
“How did your fingerprints get on the knife?”
“I don’t know. I eat in the kitchen all the time. To have mine and Dimitri’s and Ethan’s prints, it had to have been taken from the kitchen.”
“And used to kill a man who raped you.”
“I know, Trace, I know.” She let out a long breath.
“Have they determined how the killer entered the room?”
Addy shook her head. “They know he didn’t come in through the door because of security footage.”
“The balcony?”
“That’s not really feasible. I mean, I guess it’s possible, but most likely not.”
“Then how?”
Addy grinned. “I told you the hotel had lots of hidden passage ways.”
“Does one go into that room?”
Addy nodded. “There’s a passage that runs along that side of the building. Every room on that side of the hall can access the passage if they know where it is.”
A scream, then a girl’s giggle sounded from the other side of St. Louis Street.
Tracey slipped off the hood of Addy’s car. “Who all knows about the passageway and how to access it?”
“Inn management. Security. A couple of staff who’ve been at the hotel for decades. Maybe some previous guests. Why?”
“Because it’s limited information, it narrows the list of people who knew how to get into that room without being seen on security footage. And it might make your guests a little unnerved to know their rooms aren’t as secure as others.”
A couple of teenagers turned the corner onto Basin Street. They kicked a beer bottle, rolling it across the broken cement to land against the curb.
“We usually take those rooms out of service, but when we’re at full capacity . . .” Addy sighed. “That still makes me a viable suspect. Motivation. Access. And my prints are on the murder weapon.” Addy slipped off the car and buried her face in her hands. “I just don’t know what to do.”
“You should tell Beau about Brayden being Kevin Muller.”
“I just can’t. I have to figure out another way.”
“Come on, Addy. Give me a ride home.” Tracey opened the passenger side of the car and slipped inside. She put her cell phone to her ear.
Addy got behind the wheel and started the car. “What’s wrong?”
Tracey held up a finger. “Hey, it’s me. Listen, there’s a group of kids right outside the entrance of St. Louis No. 1. One of the teens is wearing one of those masks. Thought you might want to check it out.”
Addy stared at the kids she hadn’t paid much attention to before. There was one wearing a mask, one of the popular “city of the dead” masks selling in just about every gift shop in the Quarter.
“I will.” Tracey ended the call, but instead of putting her phone away, snapped a couple of pictures of the group heading toward them. “Drive away.”
Not waiting for further direction, Addy put the car in drive and wove around the group. “What’s going on?”
“Just these kids. The closer it gets to Twelfth Night, the more they act out. Wearing those silly masks and vandalizing cemeteries and certain areas in the Quarter. Congo Square was desecrated twice last week. Part of Armstrong Park was vandalized earlier this week. Some of us have been keeping our eyes open and working with local security.” Tracey shook her head. “Kids messing around in something they know nothing about.”
Addy turned onto St. Ann Street. “Speaking of kids, what do you know about kids putting snakes in mailboxes?”
“Snakes in mailboxes?”
Addy eased into Tracey’s driveway and turned off the headlights. “Yeah, Dimitri found a small boa constrictor in his mailbox. Thinks some kids did it as a prank.” She shivered in the darkness.
“That’s not a prank, Addy.”
Even by the dashboard light, Addy could see Tracey’s face had paled. “Then what would you call it?” But before Tracey answered, the hairs on the back of Addy’s neck rose to attention.
“Someone’s practicing voodoo on him.”
Beau
How in the world had Addy’s prints ended up on a knife used in a murder?
Sure, she worked there, had easy access to the kitchen utensils, but this particular knife? And Dimitri Pampalon’s prints on it too? And Ethan Morrison’s?
Beau shook his head as he locked up his files for the end of his shift. He glanced at his notes:
FIND WOMAN FROM BAR
TALK TO ELEVATOR ATTENDANT
QUESTION BARTENDER
He lifted his pen and added: QUESTION ADDY, PAMPALON, & MORRISON. Just writing her name with theirs tightened the knot in his gut.
Something about this case rubbed him the wrong way all over. His detective “spidey sense” was tingly all over, and that was never a good sign.
He finished his duties, said good night to Marcel, then headed to the car. He sat behind the wheel, staring out the windshield.
The sun would soon drag itself up from the horizon and settle dawn over New Orleans. Twelfth Night. Tourists and locals alike would fill the streets with revelry and carnival mind-sets—drinking, smoking, partying. These people would allow themselves to do things they would normally never do in their everyday lives. Something about a Big Easy festival caused defenses, and, sadly, too often common sense, to flee like the rumored witches on All Saints Day.
Beau started the car and turned it toward home. His mind continued to race about the case. Addy and Pampalon’s prints on the murder weapon. He’d seen how cozy the two of them appeared, even on the security footage. Were they more than employer and employee? It sure appeared that way. Pampalon had kissed Addy’s head in quite a possessive way.
As if he had a right to hold and comfort and kiss her.
Beau tightened his grip on the steering wheel as he turned onto his street. He couldn’t allow his feelings for her to get in the way of the investigation, no matter how much it made his stomach turn to think of Addy with the pompous Pampalon.
He passed Vincent’s house and slowed, as he always did, to see if there were any lights burning inside. There weren’t, which was probably a good thing. He couldn’t talk to Vincent about the case, which was very unusual—normally, he and Vincent discussed all his cases. It felt wrong not to be able to talk to the man he thought of as a father. He’d talked to Vincent about girls in high school, his parents’ deaths, his desire to follow in his father’s footsteps to be a cop, and even now, as a man, he discussed things that bothered him with Vincent. Except things that had to do with Addy, like his feelings and this case.
Only one other time had he deliberately kept something important from Vincent. Now, over a decade later, he still kept his secret. No amount of guilt could change the past anyway.
After parking under his carport, Beau made quick strides into the house and turned off the alarm. Columbo met him at the door, weaving through his legs and meowing insistently.
Beau lifted the large cat into his arms. Weighing in at almost twenty-five pounds, Columbo was categorized as obese, a
nd his vet stayed on Beau to put him on a diet.
Beau couldn’t do that to his buddy. The cat turned up his nose to all but one brand of cat food and demanded to eat all day. Who was he to deny the finicky feline? “Did you miss me, buddy?”
He rubbed the cat’s head to the response of purring and head-butting his hand. As always, Columbo made a stressful day better. With a final rub, Beau set the cat down, refilled the food and water bowls, then snatched up the mail he’d brought in with him.
Two more invitations to Mardi Gras balls. He knew he was only on the invitation list because of his position in the police department. Still, over the years, he’d tried to work up the courage to ask Addy to attend one of them with him. He’d never been able to muster the courage, and now this year, it looked like it would be an impossibility.
He tossed the invitations and junk mail onto the counter. He should make himself something to eat but found himself with no appetite, unlike Columbo, who crouched his elitist self over the pricey cat food.
Instead, Beau headed to the bathroom and turned the shower on. Maybe the steam would clear his head and let him get some rest. He had a feeling he was going to need it as long as the case remained unsolved and open.
He let the hot water sluice over his head, pounding his scalp.
If only it wasn’t Addy’s hotel. If only it didn’t seem like she and Pampalon were on such a personal level. If only her prints weren’t on the murder weapon.
If only he’d been able to tell her how he felt before now. If only he’d been able to tell her and her father the truth so many years ago.
Thirteen
Adelaide
“Voodooing him?” Adelaide sat in Tracey’s kitchen, sipping hot tea.
“Come on, Addy. You’ve lived here all your life. You know what it means when someone’s got someone messing with them using voodoo.”
“All because of a snake in his mailbox?” She took another sip of tea, not that she liked the bitter stuff, but it gave her a moment of warmth.
“Seriously, Ads?” Tracey shook her head and set her cup on the table. “A boa constrictor just happened to end up in his mailbox?”