Dead Spaces: The Big Uneasy 2.0

by Pauline Baird Jones

  “You’ll what?”

  He trailed a finger down the side of her face and found his grin fading with the movement. “Kiss your troubles away.”

  Her smile faded and she took a shaky breath, then said with attempted lightness, “Promises, promises.” She leaned forward and turned the key in the ignition, but she took another breath before she put the car in motion.

  Ferris, well, he was just glad he didn’t have to try to drive a car. He just scared himself to death with the notion that she was a girl he might, just might be willing to promise anything. If he could survive what her brothers might do when they found out. Seven guys and that tough old man asking you what are your intentions? He studied her profile. She might be worth even that grief.

  Eight

  Make sure of my ring.

  How many times had Bett said some variation of these words in the last few months? No, not just the last few months, but since Bettino became aware of the existence of Nell Whitby.

  What was the deal with the ring? Guido wrenched back the curtains and stared out into what used to be his uncle’s garden.

  His now. All of it. The house, the garden, the business. The power. All his.

  Except the ring.

  He would have cursed his uncle, but why waste the words? His final destination had been determined long before he died. It was a reunion Bett had not feared.

  Why the ring? It was such a small thing, easily lost, at most a symbol of something old and long gone. It was a pity he couldn’t talk it over with Claude or Afoniki. Oh yes, Afoniki would know what the ring meant. He probably knew both rings were missing. Might have them. Wouldn’t put it past the old devil.

  If Aleksi didn’t have it, well, it would probably turn up in a pawn shop somewhere. But it was…odd that two of the three rings were missing. Did that mean they were important? Or that someone wanted him to think they were important?

  If keeping the rings in their possession was so important, why had the men worn them? Why not a safe or placed with lawyers. No one cared about the rings but them. Except…it appeared that someone did care. Appeared.

  In this world of shifting shadows and uncertain loyalties it was challenging to discern what mattered and what didn’t. Was there anyone besides Aleksi who remembered that time? His lips twisted wryly. Of course there was, but he didn’t think Zach Baker would cough up any information. Besides, he’d been on the other side. The legal side. Funny, he could hear Guido saying he and Zach would have been friends if only one of them had been completely different.

  Ah, the Bakers. So very law abiding. His brows drew together. So why had he sensed something—off—from Hannah Baker that day in the morgue? He’d always had the gift for sensing when someone had a secret. There was, he’d learned, always a way to find out secrets.

  There was something quite delectable about the possibly bad doctor, even if she was a woman. Interesting. He usually preferred his partners less cerebral, more earthy, and with less figure. Never had a yen for a smart woman—when he had to have one. The smart ones were dangerous for a man such as himself. How sweet would it be to pluck some of the so-good Baker fruit and make it into something…sinfully different? Though if he had to pick just one, the youngest brother was also interesting.

  It was risky, of course. Probably be safer to go after the last ring. Could he take it from Aleksi’s cold, dead hand? Since the shooting, the old man had almost walled himself in. His uncle had been wary, too, but not wary enough? What—or who—had lured him to his death?

  Guido couldn’t be sorry it had happened, of course. Would be nice to know so he didn’t step into the same trap. When he considered who might have fashioned it, only one name came up.

  Aleksi Afoniki. But why now? It could have been self-protective, he supposed somewhat doubtfully. A reaction to St. Cyr’s murder? It was possible, though…

  Aleksi Afoniki was the original ice man. He liked power and pain in equal parts. That dinner party had been about stirring the pot and possibly a little curiosity. He might have wanted to see if he could marry Nell Whitby off to Dimitri in some strange, dynastic marriage that, in the real world, meant nothing. Guido controlled his uncle’s empire, no matter who the girl eventually married.

  Rings and old grudges wouldn’t change legal paperwork, and he had the strength to hang on to what was his. He’d earned it and no one was going to take it away from him.

  So why did it feel like he’d inherited his uncle’s unease with everything else? Why this sense of trouble coming? And when he felt that, why did the look in Dr. Hannah Baker’s eyes come back into his mind?

  He’d tried the direct approach. That left the forceful approach. He frowned. That would stir up more trouble than it was probably worth—at least for now. There was another way that might bear fruit.

  He pressed a button and his newly minted second-in-command came in.

  “I want a watch placed on Dr. Hannah Baker. Daily reports of everywhere she goes, who she talks to. Discreet, Aldo.”

  “You’re on to something there, sir,” Aldo said, looking past Guido, a signal that the news incoming might be unwelcome.

  “Am I?” Guido angled his head, his gaze sharpening.

  “St. Cyr and Afoniki are both having her watched.” His gaze flicked toward Guido then bounced off. “It’s in your briefing.”

  Guido leaned back, letting the chair rock once. “Well, how interesting. I hate to be late to a parade, but glad we aren’t missing it entirely.”

  There was an easing of tension in the line of Aldo’s shoulders. “I’ll get right on it.”

  Guido’s gaze slitted. “And find out if we missed anything important. I’m sure the other watchers will be happy to share.” He looked up, spearing Aldo with his gaze. “I do hate to miss the important.”

  * * *

  “I’m surprised you managed to get clear of Alex,” Hannah said, sliding her car into its spot and shutting down the engine. It wasn’t just the age difference that felt like the elephant in the room whenever she saw Ferris. It was also her seven big brothers who’d want to “chat” with him if they found out.

  Jeez, Zach, she wanted to say to him more than once, what were you thinking? She didn’t, of course. If he’d been thinking, she’d never have been born. And as much as they annoyed her on occasion, she couldn’t figure out which one of her siblings she’d wished not born, even when they annoyed the crap out of her.

  Not to mention that Zach still knew how to keep his brood in line. Had he had that look when he was a baby? She wished she had memories of Zach’s parents, but they were long gone.

  “Someone paid Roger Dunstead’s bail.” Ferris’s voice recalled her wandering thoughts. “Alex headed over to Nell’s from work.”

  Hannah exchanged a worried look with Ferris. “Be stupid for him to try again.”

  Ferris grunted agreement, but pointed out, “Man’s not that bright.”

  Hannah made a face and pushed open her car door, letting in a rush of warm wet air and lots of evening scents—not all of them pleasant since the trash bin butted up against the small parking lot behind her place. At least it had some tenant parking, no matter that it was on the seedy side. The street was a parking nightmare in the evening when everyone got off work. She paid extra rent to have it and had been offered more than that for the spot. Tempting, but she’d resisted. Most nights she was too tired to hike very far. And this was New Orleans. She knew better than most what happened here at night.

  “I think Helenne St. Cyr should be the most worried—I’ll get the food if you could grab the box out of my trunk. Didn’t she rat him out?” She popped the trunk and waited while he snagged it. “It’s a box of family photos and crap,” she explained, leading the way up the flight of metal stairs. “I waited until Zach went out,” she didn’t add ‘on a date’ because she didn’t want to think about her dad dating—a problem she shared with her siblings based on their comments, “and snagged it for this idea I have.”

  She
turned to wait for him to navigate the stairs with the box. Out of the corner of her eye, something flared in one of the dark cars parked along the street. After a second, the end of a cigarette glowed before dropping out of sight. Maybe it was because the car was tucked in between the other cars that it looked familiar. Headlights from a car moving down the street lit up the plates, and she made a mental note to write the number down, even as she chided herself for being paranoid.

  “Something wrong?” Ferris asked, glancing down the street, then back at her.

  “I sometimes forget that people still smoke,” she said, with a wry grin and headed for her door.

  “Okay.” Ferris propped a shoulder against the wall while she dug for her keys.

  “Sorry. I just saw someone light up down there. There are so many places people can’t smoke, you forget they do.”

  “Not on my beat,” Ferris said, with a grin. He shifted the box in his grip and then followed her inside. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving…”

  * * *

  “Oh my gosh, look at Zach in high school,” Hannah said, tapping a photo in one of his school yearbooks. “Well, there it is. Proof positive he was young once.” She grinned at Ferris as he bent to take a closer look.

  “He had the Look way back then, I see.”

  Hannah arched her brows. “He’s been using it on you?”

  Ferris shrugged. “Maybe he just forgot to turn it off.”

  “Or his face froze like that.” Hannah chuckled. “Alex used to trot that one out regularly.”

  “He still does,” Ferris said, grinning. “Told a perp his face was gonna freeze like that, just the other day.”

  Hannah laughed and caught a flare of something in Ferris’s eyes. Not ready for it, she turned a page. “If Charlie was anything like Zach—”

  “Will that help or hinder?”

  “That is a good question,” Hannah admitted. Would scientific method work on one’s parent?

  “Here’s another one of Charlie,” Ferris said, presenting his yearbook for her inspection. He lowered it and met her gaze. “What exactly is it we’re looking for?”

  “Charlie,” Hannah said. “We’re looking for Charlie.” She leaned back against the couch, shifting to ease the pressure of the wood floor on her tush. The carpet got thinner with every ten minutes that passed. “I’m not a detective, and we don’t have the resources of the department to help us. So I’m trying to treat this like an autopsy.”

  “This?”

  “Our old, cold not-case.” She lowered the yearbook to her lap, because she needed her hands to talk. “Pretend it’s a body on the table. A body is just unified parts, but still parts.”

  “Interesting.” He looked thoughtful. “You’re dissecting his past.”

  “And where the past doesn’t help, we use Zach to help fill in the gaps.”

  “Zach?”

  “In an autopsy, I’d try to match sibling DNA, when they let me have money, which they mostly don’t. But if I could, I would. There are common threads with brothers, or there can be.”

  Ferris half shrugged. “Your brothers all seem pretty distinct to me.”

  “You never had to use the same bathroom they did.” Hannah grinned. “And my brothers actually give us more data to work with. The model will have variations, but there are common threads we can pull out to build a working theory on what Charlie did then, and what he is likely to do now. Then we test the theory.”

  “Okay.” He looked a bit doubtful. “What do you want me to do?”

  Kiss me. She dropped her eyes, lest he pick up on that thought. This was a working meeting. For now? Well, a girl could hope.

  “Zach was the younger brother. You’ll notice that he followed a lot of what Charlie did, choosing the same clubs, trying out for the same sports.”

  “Okay, we’re doing a profile on Charlie. I get that. But—”

  “We might be able to predict present behavior based on past behavior. Or at least, that’s what I’m hoping.”

  “Behavior? You’re trying to figure out if he’s targeting the wise guys?”

  Hannah blinked. “Nothing so complex yet. I’m just trying to see if I can figure out which retirement home he’d pick if he did come back.”

  “Oh.” A pause. “What if Ellie came back alone? Or did the picking?”

  “Then I’ll be wrong. Unless—” Hannah frowned. “If I’d lost the love of my life, I might try to finish what he started? Do what I believed he’d do? And she’d have a lot more data to work with, since she actually knew him.”

  “That’s pretty romantic,” Ferris said. “For a scientific theory.”

  She looked up and realized that’s what he wanted. He was close, close enough for her to see the variations of color in his eyes. She’d have listed them if her thinking hadn’t slowed to a crawl. And this sort of shiver hadn’t run through her.

  “Your brain is flat-out amazing,” he said, his voice husky. His gaze flicked down, then up. “And the rest of you is pretty amazing, too.”

  Hannah was close enough to read the truth of his words in the way his pupils reacted and his pulse rate. Though only a small part of her brain noted it. The rest was hoping he was about to keep his promise to kiss her troubles away.

  “Usually men aren’t that impressed by my brain,” she murmured.

  “They’re fools.”

  She wanted to ask him questions. Some of them about when he first noticed her, but some about the future, too. She was a woman and a scientist. She liked to know what came next. Only—he was a guy. She knew from listening to her brothers that guys ran from questions about the future. Would “what is this?” scare him? It scared her. Made her vulnerable if she asked it and he ran. The dead couldn’t talk, but the living often didn’t say the right things anyway. If they even knew what they needed to say.

  “Keep your promise,” she muttered, spreading her hands across the sides of his face. She didn’t tug, except with words. He’d promised to kiss her troubles away, which was kind of funny, because he was the biggest trouble in her life.

  His mouth came on hers in a rush that pushed her back against the hard couch edge. She didn’t care. The discomfort was nothing. Everything was fusion. Heat. Life. Feeling alive. Hadn’t known how numb she’d been for so long…

  He broke from her, his chest heaving, face flushed, heated gaze scorching over her on-fire face. “Hannah—”

  Whatever he’d intended to say was halted by the knock at her door.

  “You expecting someone?”

  Hannah shook her head, tried out her voice. It was huskier than usual. “With my family, I don’t always get advance notice.” She scrambled upright, her knees on the spongy side, but made it to the door’s peep hole. “I think it’s UPS.”

  This knock was louder.

  “He can see the light,” Ferris said. “Knows you’re home.”

  She looked at her watch. “Kinda late.”

  “You expecting anything?”

  She shook her head.

  He pulled his weapon and stepped to the side of the door. It was a bit overprotective, but nice. He nodded. She opened the door, stepping to the side closest to Ferris to block him from sight. Over the guy’s shoulder, she saw the red glow from that same parked car.

  “You’re out late,” she said.

  “Picking up a route for someone. Need you to sign here, ma’am.” He held out his machine, and she squiggled something on it with her finger. He handed her a small box.

  “Thanks. Good luck with the route pick up.”

  “Thanks.” He made a vague gesture and took off without looking back.

  Hannah turned the box over, noting the return address was local but not familiar. Before she closed the door, she looked at the car again. No glow. Was it her imagination that made her see the vague outline of a figure. No reason to think it had anything to do with her, but she still felt uneasy. She locked the door and looked at Ferris before lifting the package and giving it a s
mall shake. It rattled softly.

  “Something small.” She looked at the address again. Didn’t ring any bells—or did it? She handed it to Ferris and pulled out her phone. Entered the address. Stared at the result.

  “What?” Ferris asked, giving the box a small shake, too.

  She held up the phone. “Happy Endings Retirement Community.”

  Ferris looked confused for a minute, then his eyes widened. “Charlie?”

  “Ironic and romantic.” She tapped the box. “And unexpected. I have to meet this guy.”

  Ferris held up the box. “May I?”

  “Please.”

  He ripped at the tape and pulled the flaps back. Dug through the paper and pulled out…

  “Your missing evidence.” The ring had been cleaned and it shone in the light from her overhead lamp.

  “Is that all?” Hannah took the box and sifted through what was left. At the very bottom she found the note. She held it up, then opened the single fold and read, “If you’re determined to meet me, lose the parade.”

  Nine

  “What?”

  Dunstead heard her shriek through the walls. Might have heard it in Mississippi. Didn’t know the old broad had it in her. Alone in the room next to hers, he allowed himself a grim smile. Thought she was playing him like old Miz St. Cyr had played him. She was wrong, but by time she realized it, he’d have what he wanted. And she’d pay for it. She’d pay for it all and give him his walking away money.

  He moved closer. The more he knew, the better it was for him. She was hiding something. Her voice was quieter, as if she’d remembered, but stress and panic kept it shrill and penetrating.

  “What do you mean—science? Harold didn’t care about science! He added and subtracted, he didn’t—exactly which organs did he donate to these grateful recipients? Problem? Of course not, it’s just such a shock. And his funeral—having it without his body makes me uncomfortable, Mr. Jensen. It’s a jazz funeral, too.”

  Like that made a difference. Dunstead almost snorted. Women. There was a longer pause, but he heard her efforts to calm her breathing, even through the wall.