Nessa smoothly interrupted his rant. “We can’t wait until after Easter—you know that. By then there’ll be another successful robbery, and the bank’s insurance company will be angrier than they already are.”
That made sense to Mac, but Ernie almost spat with fury. “It’s not the insurance company, is it? It’s that CEO, that head of your lousy bank. He has made the chief’s life miserable—”
“I know, Ernie.” Nessa verbally patted Ernie’s hand. “But Mr. Mac is merely the poor man who works for the insurance company, and he is very sorry to be a bother—aren’t you, Jeremiah?”
“Very sorry,” Mac repeated.
“But he has a job to do. And, Ernie, I promised to help him.” Nessa managed to look both sorrowful and determined.
“No choice, eh?” Ernie glanced at the ever-growing line behind them. “I’ll call Rav Woodland to take you back. Might as well give the boy a thrill.” He winked at her. “And, chère, I’ll see you tonight.”
She flopped a vague hand in his direction and walked toward the door that led into the inner sanctum.
Mac didn’t understand what Ernie meant about Rav Woodland until the young redheaded officer stepped into the lobby, caught sight of Nessa, and blushed all the way to the tips of his ears.
The kid was maybe twenty-one, and he was in love.
Had one of the thieves hid red hair beneath his wig?
“Rav!” Nessa stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “How’s your daddy?”
Mac thought she was using slang until the kid answered, “He’s good, Miss Nessa. That surgery cleared the pipes and he’s golfing again. How are Miss Hestia and Miss Calista?”
“Busy as always.”
“That’s right. Tonight’s the big party!” The kid’s eyes snapped with excitement as he led them through the locked door and into the depths of New Orleans law enforcement.
The big party. Nessa’s big party?
Mac observed her discomforted glance at him.
Yes. Definitely Nessa’s party. If ever a woman showed signs of guilt, it was Nessa.
“You see, Jeremiah, when Chief Cutter hires his officers, he tells them he’s giving them a pen, a club, and a pistol, and during Mardi Gras, they’re to use them all at the same time, all the time.” Nessa walked backward through the maze of desks and partitions. “The first year makes them or breaks them. Isn’t that right, Rav?”
“Last Mardi Gras almost killed me,” Rav agreed.
Mac observed that the chaos was organized back here, with handcuffed prostitutes and criminals being led through the paperwork of arrest, and every officer writing on a stack of forms or walking rapidly toward some unknown goal or scowling intently at a computer screen.
No wonder Nessa had been eager to bring him here. She wanted him to see the relentless pace Mardi Gras forced on the police department.
“Mardi Gras madness is why no one pays attention to the Beaded Bandits. I’ve got it.” Mac looked directly into her eyes. “But let me remind you that most thieves are not benign, and when they realize the weakness in my banks, they’ll do the job and do it right. We’ll be out a fortune, the insurance company will ask for my head, and the investors will scream bloody murder.”
She watched him with a half smile. “Your banks?”
Mistake. “I represent those banks.”
“Okay. Point taken,” she said.
“Let me tell the chief you’re here.” Rav knocked on a door and at a muffled call, leaned in to say, “It’s Miss Nessa Dahl with some guy wanting to know about the Mardi Gras Robberies.”
“Oh, for cripes sake. Send them in.” Just like everyone from New Orleans, Chief Cutter had an accent. But if Nessa’s voice was warm butter, the chief’s voice was grated horseradish.
Rav backed out at a speed that told Mac how quickly that horseradish could bring tears to the eyes. “See you tonight, Miss Dahl.”
Nessa performed that same vague wave she’d used on Ernie, and strode in as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She walked around the desk, leaned down to the dashing forty-year-old in the police uniform, and kissed his cheek, then danced backward as he made a grab for her. “No, you don’t, Chief. Last time you had an affair, your wife aimed your service pistol at you and shot a hole in your refrigerator, and I know for a fact she’s been taking lessons so that next time she doesn’t miss.”
“But, darlin’, a taste of you would be worth death.” Chief Cutter had narrow brown eyes surrounded by laugh lines, a face tanned by years in the sun, and rumpled blond hair.
When he eyed Nessa seductively, Mac wanted to jerk him right out of his polished black shoes.
Odd. Every guy they’d met today had hit on her. Why did Cutter’s attentions bother Mac?
Because Cutter was the kind of man with the experience and ability to entice a woman.
“That would be fine if she was satisfied with your death. But I’m afraid she’d want to kill me, too.” Nessa put the desk between her and the chief. “I’d like you to meet Jeremiah Mac, the insurance investigator for—”
“Yeah, I heard you were coming. Take a look, Mr. Mac.” Chief Cutter brusquely switched out of amiable mode. He waved a remote at the television set up in his office, hooked up to a five-disk DVD player. “Robbery number one. New Orleans, Mardi Gras. The thieves wore masks.” He flicked the remote. The picture changed. “Robbery number two. New Orleans, Mardi Gras. The thieves wore latex masks that looked lifelike.” He flicked the remote again. “And robbery number three, Baton Rouge, Mardi Gras. Lifelike masks again.”
Mac had seen it all before. Seen it many times. But, as always, the images on the screen commanded his attention. The on-screen robbers appeared in costume, passed a note, pointed a gun, collected the cash, and disappeared into the crowd outside.
“Hurricane Katrina comes through. Wrecks the city.” Chief Cutter was grim, telling the story as if he weren’t sure Mac had heard about the greatest natural disaster in American history. “The first year, Mardi Gras proceeded in defiance of fate. The next year, Mardi Gras was bigger, bolder. The Big Easy was back.”
“Well. At least…it had recovered a wisp of its old spirit.” Nessa pulled up a chair and watched the screen in apparent fascination.
“Those two years, the banks saw no action,” the chief said. “Then robbery number four, New Orleans, Mardi Gras. You’ll recognize the bank branch on Burgundy Street, the branch that got struck the second year. The same thieves, the same MO.”
“Two men, dressed as women, entered the bank and handed the teller a note demanding money”—Mac watched Nessa now, not the videos—“and giving fashion advice. Then they disappeared onto the street and they were invisible in the crowds.”
“While everyone in the bank claims to be bewildered and shocked.” Chief Cutter used the remote to stab at the screen. “Someone somewhere knows what’s going on.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Mac said in profound satisfaction.
“Isn’t robbing a bank is a federal crime?” Nessa asked—as if she didn’t know.
The two men nodded.
“Why isn’t the FBI involved?” Nessa looked from one to the other.
“The FBI has given some time to it, but they put a low priority on the case because of the lack of violence and the small amount of cash involved. As far as they’re concerned, our robberies are about one step above a raid on a kid’s piggy bank.” Chief Cutter was disgusted.
“In addition,” Mac said, “Agent Adams claims that when Mardi Gras rolls around, every professional criminal in the country heads for New Orleans for the easy pickings and a chance to party, and they’re too busy cleaning them off the streets.”
“That, at least, is true.” Chief Cutter gestured toward the packed lobby. “When I’ve got every cop on the force working as many hours as I can squeeze out of them simply to keep control over the crowd and deal with the vicious crimes, it’s damned hard to give these robberies top priority.”
“I’ve heard t
hat one before,” Mac said.
“Yeah, yeah.” Chief Cutter ran through the DVDs again. “I still don’t know what that CEO, that piece of dog doo you work for—pardon my French, Miss Nessa—wants me to do. He has every bit of information I have.”
“Good to know.” Certainly Mac recognized every piece of paper he picked up. “For a piece of dog doo, he’s very thorough.”
“Chief. Mr. Mac knows the, um, piece of dog doo,” Nessa said gently.
“Do I look like I care? What does that idiot think I’m doing here? Not solving the crime so I look stupid?” The chief’s voice rose with each question.
“Mr. MacNaught’s frustration is as great as your own,” Mac said in a clipped tone.
“I doubt that,” Chief Cutter snapped back.
Mac picked up a sheet of paper covered with scribbles going in all directions. “What’s this?”
“Whenever something occurs to me about the Mardi Gras robberies, I write it down.”
“Interesting stuff.” Mac turned the paper back and forth as he read.
“It seems as if I’m one step away from figuring it all out, but I can’t make that leap.” Chief Cutter leaned back in his chair and sounded truly frustrated. “For the first couple of years, I was sure it was a couple of tourists. Then came the Baton Rouge robbery. Now I think they have to be Louisiana people.”
“Because…?” Mac lifted his eyebrows.
“Did you know that Baton Rouge has a Mardi Gras, Mr. Mac?” Chief Cutter asked.
“Call me Jeremiah,” Mac said. “And no, until I started studying the case, I didn’t know that Baton Rouge had a Mardi Gras.”
“For most of the country, Jeremiah, Mardi Gras is New Orleans. Not Baton Rouge, not Galveston, Texas, sure as hell not Biloxi, Mississippi.” Chief Cutter stood up and paced back and forth behind his desk. “So I called in a linguistics specialist from Tulane, and put up with an hour listening to the most pompous bore in the entire world while he expounded on the number of foreign flags that have flown over the city and how the different languages formed the unique patois that is our accent today. Or some such horse pucky—pardon my French, Miss Nessa.”
“What did you find out?” Nessa asked.
“That when I isolated the voices, he definitely, positively, almost completely believed they were native New Orleans speakers.” The chief ran his hand through his thick blond hair, ruffling it in a way Mac thought both pretentious and potentially attractive to Nessa.
“Let me hear them,” Nessa said.
“You bet, darlin’.” Chief Cutter smiled at her and hustled over to the table. He located an iPod and earbuds.
“Can I make a copy of these?” Mac indicated the scribbled sheets of paper.
“Over there.” Chief Cutter waved a distracted hand toward the printer/copy machine. “Nessa, darlin’, my headphones would be better, but that scoundrel daughter of mine took them to school and left them in her locker. Or so she said. I hope she’s telling the truth.” He tried to help Nessa put the earbuds in.
Nessa briskly removed them from his hands. “If you come near me, not only would your wife shoot you, but if she missed, that daughter of yours would finish the job.”
“You’re a hard woman, Ionessa Dahl,” the chief said sorrowfully.
Mac listened as Nessa handled Cutter. Everyone in the damned police station either loved her as a niece or a girlfriend. To Mac’s surprise, that irritated the crap out of him. “Assuming the thieves are New Orleans natives—what good does that do us?” he asked.
“It narrows down the number of people who could be the perps to, oh, one-point-two million.” Chief Cutter peered over Mac’s shoulder as he made the copies.
“They have to be oddballs to study the layouts at the bank so thoroughly and then steal such quirky amounts every year.” The copies were light but serviceable.
Both Nessa and the chief laughed with varying degrees of attitude, and Cutter said, “We in New Orleans pride ourselves on our oddballs and eccentrics.”
“I’m related to a couple of them.” Nessa smiled fondly as she popped the earbuds in and started the iPod.
Mac thought of his mother and her dedication to maintaining her hard-won middle-class image, of his grandparents and their stiff-necked horror at scandal—specifically the scandal his birth had brought on them—and he tried to decide how he felt about this casual tolerance for peculiar conduct. He was not seduced; these madmen were making a fool of him. On the other hand, if he gave in to his wholehearted disapproval, was he not just like the rest of his miserable, narrow-minded family?
When he turned back to the room, Nessa sat listening to the iPod, a slight smile on her face. “What do you think?” he asked. “Are the thieves from New Orleans?”
“I think Jeannine did not get Chief Cutter’s propensity for harmless curse words,” she answered.
“What do you mean?” The chief snatched the iPod.
Nessa offered the earbuds. “Your daughter appears to have recorded over the thieves.”
He pushed one in his ear, listened, and groaned. “Drat the girl! Where was she when she attended a party like this?”
“Probably your house.” Nessa stood up.
Cutter’s eyes widened. “You don’t suppose that while I took Dorothy to the Bahamas to, you know, smooth things over, she had a party?”
“I don’t know, Chief. She’s your daughter. At that age, what would you have done?” At Cutter’s stricken expression, Nessa burst into laughter. Her dancing eyes met Mac’s, expecting him to share the joke.
And he had to admit, he liked the idea that the official Casanova of New Orleans had problems with his daughter.
“Do you have everything you came for, Mac?” Nessa asked.
“For the moment.” He rattled the papers in his hand. “I’d like to study all Chief Cutter’s thoughts and discuss them with him later.”
“Sure. Anytime,” Chief Cutter said. “We can do it tonight if you want.”
“Tonight?” Mac asked…as if he hadn’t already figured it out.
“At the Dahl House for the annual—” The chief stopped suddenly.
Out of the corner of his eye, Mac saw Nessa shake her head.
“Take the weekend, Jeremiah,” Chief Cutter said.
“Good. I’ll spend the weekend in my hotel room. Alone. Studying your notes. Chief, I’ll see you…Monday. Have a wonderful weekend.” Mac took possession of Nessa’s arm. As he led her toward the door, he reflected that if all went as he planned—and things always went as he planned—before this Mardi Gras was over, he would have proved the guilt of his primary suspect.
And he would personally oversee Chief Cutter as he arrested Ionessa Dahl for the crime of organizing and directing the annual robberies of the Premier Central Banks. Then this weird obsession of his would be cured, and he could go back to being Mac MacNaught, the meanest bastard in banking.
The warm scent of Nessa’s vanilla perfume rose to encircle him.
He only hoped that the arrest didn’t come too soon.
Eight
Nessa and Jeremiah stepped out of the police station into the late afternoon, heavy with humidity and unseasonable heat. Only a few blocks down, Bourbon Street was in full swing, with music and screams of laughter.
“I’ll get a cab.” Nessa pulled out her cell phone.
“How far is it?” Jeremiah asked.
“Fifteen blocks.”
“It would be faster to walk.”
In one short day, he’d discovered the truths about travel within New Orleans; during Mardi Gras, cabs were hard to hail, they had to take the long way around to get anywhere, and they frequently got stuck in traffic. “You’re right—the parades start at six. But we have to cross Bourbon Street to get back to the bank.”
“Great.” As they walked, Jeremiah loosened his tie. “How do you stand this day after day?”
Nessa didn’t like his tone. She didn’t like it at all. Typical Northerner. Judgmental, convinced his w
ay was superior, and rude. So rude. At the police station, he’d bothered to smile only when she prompted him.
But as the aunts always said, “Honey, you have to make allowances. Yankees are barbarians and don’t know any better.”
So Nessa said pleasantly, “Stand what? The weather or the celebration?”
He glanced at the sky. Clouds were clabbering toward the west; the heat would break soon. “You can’t do anything about the weather.”
“Well, bless your heart.” Damn you and your shriveled, nasty-minded little self, she meant.
But he didn’t understand. Yankees never did. “How do you stand the noise? The smells? The parades blocking the streets? The constant celebration?” He observed the steady stream of policemen who led men who staggered and women draped in beads.
“It doesn’t happen day after day. This is Mardi Gras.”
“The weeks between Epiphany and Lent.”
“The tourists come from everywhere to drink, dance, listen to the music, and, frankly, after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans needs the revenue.” The crowds got thicker, rowdier. “But my family has been here since long before the War Between the States, and we live the tradition.”
“I see.”
She didn’t believe he did. Everything about him declared he understood nothing of celebration, or joy. She’d never seen a man so stern, so at odds with the spirit of the Big Easy.
The increasing crowds and the raucous noise made it impossible to carry on a conversation, and she was glad. Glad, because no matter how hard she justified her reluctance to invite him to the Dahl House party, a shred of guilt tugged at her conscience. Leaving a stranger to fend for himself during Mardi Gras was the antithesis of everything she’d been taught. Yet if she invited him to the Dahl party, he would cast a damper on the festivities. She’d be the one responsible for trying to make him part of the celebration, and this year, she didn’t have the spirit. When she remembered how this morning she had foolishly hoped her promotion had come through at last, she knew she would need to concentrate merely to maintain a happy facade.
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