Out of Body coa-1

by Stella Cameron

  “Pay attention,” Gray said. “Please—note how polite I’m being—please don’t leave your body while I’m gone.”

  She bowed her head so he couldn’t see her smile.

  “Will you listen to me?” he said. “I’m asking a woman not to leave her body. This is what you’ve reduced me to. Say it. You won’t leave your body while I’m away.”

  She didn’t intend to, but what if something unexpected came up and she had to make a snap decision?

  “No promise from you means Gray’s not going anywhere. I’ll stick to you, lady.”

  Marley breathed in loudly through her nose. “Okay, I promise.”

  “Let me see your hands,” he said and when she showed them, he said, “Now say it again.”

  “Why?”

  “You might have had your fingers crossed.”

  She burst out laughing. “Well, I didn’t. But to repeat, I promise to remain in my body at least until I see the whites of your eyes again. Now stop here. If Pascal’s in the shop and sees the car he’ll want you to come in.”

  Gray frowned. “Why would he?”

  “Because Sister Willow has a big mouth and a cell phone—and Uncle will want to start the interrogation.”

  “Interrogation?” He pulled up to the curb on Royal Street while Marley chastised her own loose tongue.

  “Later,” she said, and hopped out. “Stay where you are. No need for both of us to get sodden.”

  “When you see Willow, tell her I think that’s some rig she’s got,” Gray said. “The green-and-white scooter with the little trailer on the back. Pretty hard to miss.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  She hauled Winnie out and set her down on the sidewalk where water ran in mini-eddies. “Poor baby,” Marley said. “Stuffed into that nasty old trailer.” Winnie whined and danced to keep her feet as dry as possible.

  Marley bent down and looked toward Gray, who turned in the driver’s seat. “See you,” she said. “Be careful.”

  “See you,” he echoed. “I care about you.”

  She couldn’t move for an instant. They stared at each other, unsmiling.

  “Go,” Gray said. “You’re getting soaked.”

  She slammed the door and ran with Winnie to the shop and inside the front door.

  He did care about her, Gray thought, turning off the windshield wipers and making the car a private place to consider what had just happened. No declarations of love, no kisses, but when he told her he cared he might as well have told her he loved her. He did. For the first and only time in his life he knew how it felt to love a woman.

  The car had already been at the curb longer than was allowed. He turned the wipers on again and looked in the wing mirror before starting to pull away.

  Straight ahead, a woman in wet jeans and a sweatshirt darted toward J. Clive Millet Antiques. In front of one window, she stopped and peered through the glass. She put a hand above her eyes to shield them.

  She took a few steps toward the door, then backed away. Quickly, she turned and he thought she would run away, but she skidded to a halt and returned, to look through the other window this time.

  “Well, hell,” Gray said under his breath. He turned off the car and got out. There would be a ticket, but so what?

  Unfortunately he didn’t get close enough to grab Pipes Dupuis before she saw him and started really running. She flung her arms out and cannoned off people she passed. This woman wasn’t a natural runner.

  He caught up with her just after she turned onto Conti Street. A truck passed, sending up a rooster tail of water that soaked them both from head to foot and he took advantage of her confusion to push her through an open gate leading to a passageway behind a hotel.

  “Let me go,” she said, hardly able to get the words out. “Please. I’ve got to go.”

  “You wanted to go into Millet’s Antiques. Why?”

  “I was just looking in the window.” She panted and shook.

  Gray didn’t like making her more frightened than she already was. “Calm down, Pipes. I’m not going to hurt you. I’ll help you if I can. Tell me what I can do.”

  She leaned to see around him, then looked behind her. “You just go out the way we came in,” she said. “I’ll go around the back of the hotel and find another way.”

  “You’re hiding,” he said.

  Her blond hair hung in wet, dark strands. Looking into her eyes was painful. She was desperate.

  “Has someone threatened you?”

  Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes and down her cheeks, mixing with the rainwater there. “I can’t say,” she whispered. “If you don’t let me go it might be very bad for me.”

  He took a risk Marley probably wouldn’t like. “How did you get those marks on the back of your neck?”

  If possible, she turned paler. She wrapped a hand around her neck. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No.” She shook her head hard.

  He wasn’t getting anywhere with the direct approach. “Are you still living with Sidney?”

  No response.

  “Sidney’s coming to Millet’s soon, did you know that?”

  Still no response.

  “Were you trying to talk to Marley before Sidney got there?”

  Pipes shook her head hard. “I…I need…” She made a choking noise. “You mustn’t try to follow me or do anything at all about seeing me. Don’t tell anyone. If you do—” She tried to push past him.

  “If I do?” He caught her by the shoulder and moved her hair aside. Two long red marks marred the white skin at the back of her neck.

  “Let me go!”

  He stood aside at once. “You need help,” he told her.

  “We need to live,” Pipes said, racing away, her arms flapping.

  Marley closed and locked the door to her workroom behind her and hurried to the bench.

  Fate had smiled on her and Uncle Pascal had been tied up with a customer when she and Winnie passed through the shop and went upstairs. But he had made signals that were supposed to make her stay down there and wait until he was free.

  She had smiled and jogged up the stairs. She didn’t want the interrogation to begin and she had a lot to do.

  Any talk of the Mentor must wait for Gray to agree. The story was his.

  “Lie down,” she told Winnie, who jumped on the recliner and did a lot of sighing.

  With the lights over the workbench fully on, the red house looked garish and out of place. Marley deliberately rested both hands on the roof with its curly corners. Her tummy made a nasty flip. She held still while her breathing speeded. She realized she was waiting and expecting the Ushers and the formation of a funnel with a tacky texture that stuck to her hands.

  Nothing happened.

  She pulled on her magnifying goggles and settled them above her eyes, ready for when they were needed.

  With the naked eye she could see how crazed and chipped the paint had become, but in a fine, close way typical of an old piece. At some time, she thought the dollhouse had been refinished—probably more than once. She could see the suggestion of a flake beneath another flake. It was set on a base about four inches thick and painted green.

  Here and there artificial bushes remained although she could see the places where others had been lost over the years. A low, wooden fence surrounded the garden. A border beside a pathway to the corner door was worn down to a gray stubble and more paths made a pattern across the grounds. Beds dotted with dusty flowers looked unlikely. An outbuilding could be a supposed stable. She pulled open a tiny door and found a tiny horse inside.

  There was a potting shed, a teahouse, a pool and elaborate white pool house. She smiled. Any child would have loved this when all the pieces were there.

  The corner door to the house troubled Marley. It didn’t fit with the rest of the architecture. Set at a forty-five-degree angle to the corner of the house, with a tiled roof, a window on either side showed piles
of little painted cakes—or bread rolls. Like a shop.

  There was no name over the door.

  With great care, she turned the house on its side. A small space showed between the bottom of the angled door and the base, and when she flipped the magnifying lenses down and used a tiny scalpel to explore the crack, she felt the whole facade of the entrance move.

  Sweat popped out on her brow and she swiped at it with a forearm.

  A few tiny, prying movements with the scalpel and the space around the door widened. Without warning, it popped off and Marley barely caught it before it would have fallen to the floor.

  With her hands behind her back and her nose only inches from the house, she studied what was a corner of the house that matched all the others, apart from the color of lacquer. Here the wall was a washed-out terra-cotta, very faded, but absolutely level with its neighbors. The color reminded her of stucco. The door on the corner had been an addition.

  She went from one side to the other, looking for any sign of another door. For the first time she realized there was no other door and the back of the house, which should open to allow a child to play with furniture inside, was secured shut.

  With pressure on one side of the base where it lay on the workbench, another gap had formed. The bottom was coming loose.

  Marley made a few more delicate motions, working the scalpel between the bottom of the house and the board it stood on. Slowly, the gap widened until the green-painted base, with the grounds, separated on three sides and slowly dropped away.

  She turned up the lights in her magnifying goggles, not that what she saw needed to be any clearer.

  A web of tiny pipes formed a grill beneath the bottom. Marley got a finger and thumb grip on these in two places and pulled gently. They parted and came wide-open in two panels.

  “A drain field?” she murmured. “Or something.”

  With the two parts of the grill open she looked into the open space behind them.

  She was looking at a basement.

  The walls inside were gray and were taller on one side than the other. In a square hole cut out in the middle, she saw the bottom of a flight of stairs descending. The stairs continued down and with the base closed would rest on the supposed floor. In one corner of the space a cubicle was walled off and there was a wide door. She pulled it open and jerked her hand back.

  What looked like little caskets or ice boxes had fallen to the side of the room. Attached to an overhead pulley system, doll-like bodies in harnesses hung from hooks—like the hooks she had seen revolving behind Liza and then Amber when she traveled to the place she couldn’t find. The sickening little figures also hung to the side closest to the workbench.

  With her heart pounding, Marley righted the house again and set to work on the sealed back. She levered the panel open and hinges long coated with adhesive that had solidified, broke off.

  There was no furniture on any of the floors inside, but off a room lined with wooden cabinets that was obviously a kitchen, was a miniature cupboard surrounded with shelves. The shelves were loaded with tiny cans and other goods, glued in place. And on a bottom shelf she saw a group of packages wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.

  She also saw another door that opened from the cupboard onto the top of a flight of stairs, the same flight that ran all the way into the basement.

  Marley wrapped her arms around herself. She had seen it all before. She had gone down those steps. With her eyes shut, she shuddered violently.

  Chapter 41

  Gray didn’t much like the atmosphere around Nat’s office. When Gray had arrived, the chief stood in the doorway. As he left, his parting shot to Nat had been, “That’s not possible. You know it, I know it, and I don’t want to hear another word about it. I’m getting crawled all over and if you don’t want to be broken down to patrolman, you get me the answers I need.”

  Chief Beauchamp had slammed the door with enough force to cause one of the mortally wounded window shades to fall down inside, then he bumped into Gray, apparently without either recognizing him or noticing he even existed.

  The man’s oversize face glowed an intriguing shade of sweaty purple all the way to his retreating hairline.

  On the other side of Nat’s door, the mood was just as grim. The grunt the detective aimed at Gray might have meant anything but the most likely interpretation was: “Fuck off and die.”

  Gray cleared his throat and Nat paused his pacing to aim a glare at him.

  “You asked me to come, Nat.”

  Another glare.

  Gray shrugged, used a foot to hook a chair against one wall and sat down. He crossed his arms.

  “How come it’s always the fools who make it to the top?” Nat said, but Gray didn’t kid himself he was supposed to have an answer.

  Nat pointed at Gray, then in the general direction Beauchamp had taken. “You and I know this case isn’t straightforward.”

  Gray laughed.

  “Don’t,” Nat said and his expression was tortured enough to wipe the smile off Gray’s face. “We also know we’ve found out a good deal. It just doesn’t want to fit together, is all.”

  Gray cleared his throat. “Right.”

  “That horse’s ass is believing his own opinion of himself.” He jabbed the air again, clearly referring to Beauchamp. “He thinks he’s God. He thinks he can make something so, just because he says it is.”

  “Whoa,” Gray said. “Slow down, Nat. We have found out a lot—much more than I think we had even a day ago. Don’t tell me you tried to tell Beauchamp what happened at River Road.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t talk about Marley and…you know?”

  Nat sighed. “I probably should have. I’d be farther ahead—maybe.”

  “Now I know things are bad,” Gray said. “I’ve got a couple of things to pass on, but you start.”

  Nat mumbled and went to fall into the chair behind his desk.

  “I missed that,” Gray said.

  “Beauchamp can’t think outside the box.”

  Gray got a sinking feeling. “What exactly did you tell him?”

  “I was going to talk to you first, but he showed up here yellin’ about the public. All he thinks about is the public.”

  “They do pay the salaries around here and they elect some, remember?”

  Nat looked at Gray. “We don’t have much time,” he said. “That fool is going to have people crawling all over my investigation and I don’t think that’s going to help, do you?”

  A clear, cool sheath settled over Gray. He understood where Nat was going and what that meant. And he felt the rush and crush of time sucked away. They had to run ahead of the chief and the rest of the posse he would bring in to safeguard his own position. A lot happened in this town and it could be pretty bizarre, but there were limits even here. Four women had gone—one of this second group found immediately, the other three just…gone. Pearl Brite was the latest and he knew the details of how not only the woman but her bike and everything to do with her had gone, too, had been leaked to the press.

  And memories of the last and wider swath of disappearances that cut across the city had freshened and raised questions about connections.

  In a city where voodoo was a tourist attraction, the natives were looking over their shoulders.

  “They don’t know we’ve got the helmet?” Gray said.

  Nat’s intelligent eyes bored into Gray’s. “No.”

  “Good. Better to let them run around talking about alien abductions. That’s the last snippet I saw on the news.”

  “Might as well be aliens,” Nat said. “I gotta settle down. Look, I think we could have something. Pipes Dupuis. I think she’s hiding something.”

  Gray felt completely calm. It was as if he had expected Nat to talk about Pipes right out of the box. “Keep going.”

  “She’s got a little girl. Five, I think—pretty little thing, anyway. Pipes said she took the kid to her mother because she was ne
rvous having her here with all the business going on around singers.”

  “I remember.” He had to be quiet and let Nat finish before spilling the encounter he’d just had with Pipes.

  “If Pipes left New Orleans in the relevant period, we can’t find any record of it. We were thinking she must have gone by car, but Bucky Fist says she doesn’t have one. She and the girl lived in a room and they’ve got about nothing. Pipes doesn’t date and she usually takes Erin everywhere with her. She didn’t fly out of here or take a bus or train that we can find out. But Gray, more than that, we can’t find any family for Pipes Dupuis.”

  Gray thought about that. “Including a grandmother for Erin?”

  “You’ve got it. Pipes came to New Orleans from New York. She was pregnant with the girl. She had the baby here—apparently in the room where they live. The landlady is the only one worrying about either of them. She helped Pipes with the baby. No insurance, no nothing, but the landlady’s got a friend who came in, a midwife. They managed.”

  “God,” Gray said with feeling. “How could that happen?”

  “It probably happens every day—somewhere. We don’t have time to start some sort of movement right now. Gray, there is a kid. Her name is Erin. We don’t know where she is but we don’t think she went to some family member of Pipes’s.”

  “Have you tried to talk to Pipes?”

  “What do you think? She’s sticking to her story and says she doesn’t have to tell us exactly where Erin is and she won’t. She doesn’t know who could be watching to see what moves she makes and she thinks her daughter might be in danger. Pipes is still staying with Sidney Fournier.”

  “I don’t get that. Why would Erin be in danger? This joker’s going after adult, female jazz singers, not little kids.”

  “She told me she’s been threatened—Pipes, that is.”

  Gray stood up. “When, when did she tell you?”

  “A couple of hours ago. We waited for when she was leaving Scully’s. This time she said there was nothing to worry about with Erin. She’s safe and will stay safe if we leave her alone—both of them alone.”

  “Nat, what she’s really saying is she’s been threatened. That means she’s had contact with our guy. Didn’t she give any idea who he is?”