She was the key to everything. The murders weren’t about the victims, she’d told him. They were about the audience. Which meant he needed to know more about Erin.
The curiosity was more than professional, he knew. Since the moment he heard her laugh, a connection had linked them. One that she refused to acknowledge and that he couldn’t ignore.
Just as he couldn’t ignore the way he behaved around her. He had never been a bully. Or a lecher. If a woman said no, then the answer was no and he was on his way. Despite the fact that no was a word he rarely heard, he still respected the right of a woman to use it.
Still, whenever he found himself near Erin, the part of his brain that recognized boundaries clicked immediately off.
Certainly she was stunning, but he knew women who were more beautiful. Striking, gorgeous women who understood the value of a good hairdresser and the subtle uses of makeup.
Yes, she had eyes the color of dark brandy, but he’d seen prettier eyes. Eyes that didn’t flash distrust at him, alternating with fear. Eyes that didn’t accuse him of treachery simply for being alive.
Perhaps she had the legs of a goddess, but he’d been in closer contact with perfect legs before. Legs that had never been draped in worsted wool and protective hose.
What drew him, he thought, what made him refuse to walk away, were the secrets. He’d always been compelled to find the answers. And Erin Abbott’s lovely eyes and smart brain hid dozens of secrets.
Making his way past scattered tables, reams of paper, and cartons of ink, Gabriel didn’t spare a glance for the warehouse that was now the home of the Ledger. The cavernous space had seen better days, most of them before the turn of the century. Exposed red brick trickled with oxidization and age. Metal pipes vibrated with the sound of the tugs approaching the river. Thousands had been spent to remove, rewire, and refurbish.
Gabriel poked his head into the office next door to his. There Peter hunched over a computer in the makeshift managing editor’s office. Dreadlocks bound in a leather thong fell from a high forehead. Eyes the color of chocolate and with all the warmth of a glacier shifted swiftly across the screen. A black mustache slashed across the roughhewn face, dividing a pirate’s nose from a perpetual sneer.
Peter Cameron had been a reporter for more than two decades. He could track a rat through the sewers, beat the rodent to the other side, and never get dirty. And he never stopped working.
“Did you hear me?” Gabriel asked, his tone rough.
“The whole staff heard you,” Peter said mildly. “Erin Abbott. Got it. Want to tell me what I’m looking for?” Before taking on the project of starting up the Ledger, Peter Cameron had been the best investigative reporter in the Southeast.
From anyone else, such insolence would be unthinkable. But Peter didn’t have to worry. He’d trained Gabriel as a cub reporter at the Chronicle, helped get him his first job as a foreign correspondent. “I’ve had a long day,” Gabriel said. “She’s a part of a story I’m thinking about.”
“Good enough.” Peter pulled up a new screen on his computer. Gabriel Moss, like his father, had a sharp eye for hidden headlines. “I’ll see what I can find.”
With a nod, Gabriel walked next door to his office. Swinging inside, Gabriel surveyed the neat stacks on the desk he’d left behind for more than a month. Correspondence. Copy. Bills. Contracts.
He lifted the first stack of bills, took a seat, and started reading. When the words “Past Due” morphed into “Find me,” he dropped the letter. To distract himself, he dialed his business manager.
“Yeah, boss?” she answered on the first ring. Despite the late hour, the staff of the Ledger, twenty in all, understood the nature of a start-up. They worked long hours for meager pay and little recognition.
Gabriel had plans to change all of that. “I’ve seen the past due notices,” he drawled.
“Be right there.”
A few moments later, a gangly woman in torn jeans and a faded Grateful Dead T-shirt rushed into his office and dropped a folder on the teak desk. She moved quickly, not out of concern but because her body had no other speed. Neither did her mouth.
“I bought us another couple of weeks on the bills. And I got us an excellent deal with Tetrick Airways. Three-month spread, two-page color copy, and six weeks online. Nice deals. Cute guy is the sales rep, but he’s got a girlfriend. They always do. Scored an even better deal with DeLoach Tires and Treads. He’s up for a six-month weekly and Web site, with a bonus tied to sales. Customers bring in our ad enough, and he’ll make it a year. Take that, Chronicle. Plus, I’m meeting with the Chamber on Monday. Gonna pitch a package deal to members. Revenue report’s in the file. If the summer picks up, we might break even this month.”
“We will break even,” Gabriel corrected.
She lifted a paperweight from a pile of copy and began to toss the tourmaline rock into the air. “You’ve got to talk to Peter. He’s playing business manager again. I told him I was going to squeal on him, but who has time to argue with a curmudgeon? I think he just likes being ornery. An ornery Captain Hook. Just needs an eye patch and a foulmouthed parrot.”
Gabriel stretched long legs beneath the desk and laced his fingers behind his head. He fixed the chattering woman with a look. Then he grinned. It was good to be home.
“Hi, Kelly.”
“Hi, yourself.” Lifting a rubber ball in iridescent colors and a bottle of Liquid Paper, Kelly began to juggle the objects in the air. “We’ve got a meeting Friday with the bank. Our cash flow projections aren’t looking too healthy, and they may decline the loan.”
Gabriel slid a letter across the polished surface. “Too late. Already done. At least they had the decency not to laugh.”
She set the objects back on the desk in their appointed spaces. As she skimmed the brief missive, she thumped the letter. “New businesses take time. Any banker knows that. ‘Negative cash flow.’ Of course it’s negative. We’ve only been up and running for six months. Budget projections don’t have us breaking even until the fifteenth month of operation. Morons.”
“Without a doubt,” Gabriel agreed. “But they have a point. Even if we break even this month, the Chronicle has steadily eroded our advertisers. If we don’t increase readership, we won’t get them back.”
“More morons. If people read us and the Chronicle, they’d see who has the superior paper.”
Gabriel didn’t disagree. “The Chronicle is a daily. We’re a weekly.”
“We change our site every day,” Kelly sulked, tapping her foot on the chair opposite her own. “Besides, we’re much better.”
“Yes, we are.” Gabriel motioned to a leather chair angled across from his desk. Picking up the phone, he summoned Peter. When the older man trudged in, he scowled at Kelly and Gabriel as though their presence offended him.
“What?” he demanded, taking the seat next to Kelly.
“Good evening, sunshine,” Kelly responded in a bright voice.
He merely grunted. To annoy, Kelly smiled and tapped a pink sneakered toe on the bottom rung of his chair. Peter stared at her, then at the tapping foot with a mix of incredulity and exasperation. When the stare failed to have any effect, he growled menacingly, “Cut that out.”
Unperturbed, Kelly continued to tap. “Ask nicely.”
In response, Peter shifted his chair.
The tapping paused for a second, then returned as Kelly stretched her leg out farther, playing the cadence of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Gabriel stifled a laugh when Peter barely restrained himself from lunging. “Children. Behave.” Peter scooted his chair beyond the reach of Kelly’s foot, and in retort, Kelly began to hum beneath her breath.
“Kelly.”
The stern tone immediately cut off the tune. “Sorry, boss.”
Gabriel looked at the pair helping him keep his dream alive: the grizzled veteran and the business whiz kid.
Kelly Cole was a more recent find. Fresh out of business school, sh
e’d shown up at Gabriel’s doorstep on the second day of the Ledger’s existence. She showed him financial models, revenue projects, and sales pitches designed to make the paper a success. When he asked why she’d gone to all the trouble for a fledgling newspaper no one had ever seen, she answered simply, “Because I like to read and I like to win.”
Unlacing his fingers, Gabriel folded his arms across his chest. “I’ve got good news and bad news.”
“Bad news first,” Kelly decided.
“I was served with a cease and desist order from the Chronicle. We continue with the Bert Adams story, we go to court.”
“But that’s your story!” Peter said, bellowing. “You did the digging. You wrote the copy. Now that kiss-ass Burris will turn it into a fluff piece about Armani suits and Prada shoes.”
“I agreed to leave all stories behind when I left the paper. I fight, we’d probably lose.”
“So?” Kelly asked.
“So we can’t afford the legal fees or to pay a judgment. The story’s dead.”
“The story is the front page of next week’s edition and the teaser was going to run on the site tomorrow,” Peter said sourly. “Hell, it’s pretty much the whole paper. All we got left are the police blotter and the wire stories.”
Gabriel smiled slightly but did not respond.
Kelly imagined the calls asking for ad copy refunds and expanding pools of red ink and asked glumly, “You said there was good news?”
“There is. We’re moving to a daily edition.”
Silence greeted his announcement.
“No questions?”
Peter erupted first. “Have you lost your ever-lovin’ mind, man? You just told us we’ve lost the Adams story. Little Ms. Perky never ceases to remind me that we’re broke. How in the hell do you plan to increase our production with no stories, no circulation, and no money?”
“Especially with no money,” Kelly added, lifting the denial letter from the desk. “The bank said no, boss. Not Maybe. Not Come back and see us next week. They said no.”
“I haven’t been on vacation, guys. I’ve been raising money. Finding investors.” Gabriel lifted the rock Kelly had played with earlier. The gleaming stone had been a gift from his father. Holding it, he knew his dad would approve of his next move. “No one wants to invest in a weekly. Not when there is a viable daily in the community. However, Mirren Enterprises has created a raft of enemies around the country. Small papers, midsized dailies, all wiped out by the Mirren machine. They come in, buy out the strongest paper, and fire the troublemakers. Then they relegate local news to a couple of pages in section B and clone the headlines from everywhere else. Mirren won’t run the Adams story because Adams is voting on antitrust rules in the next session. The vote goes their way and Mirren will be able to buy radio and television stations. One source, one story.”
Kelly stopped tapping her foot. “I hope this is somehow leading to the good news, boss, because I’m getting more and more depressed.”
“When I was up in New York, I met with a group of investors who want to reclaim local news. They are willing to pour money into papers in major urban cities, as test cases. But there’s a catch. They only fund dailies.”
“Which we’re not,” Kelly reminded Gabriel.
“Which we’re going to become,” Gabriel said, ready for Peter’s explosion. He didn’t have long to wait.
“Which brings me back to my original point. We don’t have the stories. No big headlines. Sure, I can fill the pages with local interest, but that doesn’t bring in readers. Scandals do.”
“So does murder.”
Peter watched his old friend and suddenly relaxed. “You’ve got a story. And Dr. Erin Abbott is a part of it.”
“I can feel it.”
“I ran a quick make on her. She’s a criminal psychology professor from Mississippi. Graduated with her Ph.D. two years ago. Bought a place on St. Bennett. Teaches at Burkeen.”
“She’s not from Mississippi.”
Nodding in agreement, Peter scooted forward. “Probably not. According to what I could find, which wasn’t much, she didn’t do anything but go to school. Published an article on profiling serial killers, but that’s it. Then the job here at Burkeen came available, and she slid right in.”
“Family?”
“None on record.”
“Is she a murderer?” Kelly asked.
“No,” Gabriel said in a tone that brooked no argument. Realizing how his vehemence sounded, he explained, “However, our professor has an interesting theory about recent deaths in the area. I’m calling it the New Orleans ABC Murders.”
Aghast, Kelly stared at Gabriel. “You can’t print that story. It sounds like Sesame Street after the Mansons have moved in.”
“It will sell papers. And ad space.” He lifted a pen and his notebook and began to issue orders. “Peter, I need you to keep digging on Dr. Abbott. Also, assign a reporter to gather information for me on these deaths.” He ripped out the page where he’d scribbled the names Erin had read aloud to Sylvie. Gabriel handed Peter the list. “Pull their obituaries, too.”
“I’ll have it by tomorrow.” Peter studied the list of names. “Who’s our police contact?”
“Don’t have one. The police weren’t interested in Dr. Abbott’s theory,” Gabriel mumbled. He had been dreading this part of the conversation.
Peter looked up sharply. “I don’t do tabloid. We don’t do tabloid. That’s Mirren’s shtick.”
“I wouldn’t besmirch your ethics, Peter,” Gabriel said soothingly. “I overheard her explanation to the NOPD. It didn’t sound like fiction to me. Today, she and I did a little investigating. I found enough to know there’s a story here. One the Chronicle has no hint of.”
Gabriel had an instinct about mysteries, and this one sank its teeth into him, down to the bone. The lovely professor was on the trail of a killer, and she had personal skeletons she desperately wanted to hide. Whether the two were connected or not, he intended to discover.
If he saved his paper in the process, so much the better.
“Kelly, run the numbers if we move to a daily. I need to send a revenue projection to the investor group by Monday. Calculate the likely circulation increase if we ran a story about a serial killer, with teasers on the Web site. If we can sell one hundred and fifty thousand copies, that’s the proof we’ll need for the investors.”
“One hundred and fifty thousand?” both Peter and Kelly repeated in unison.
“To start.” Gabriel paid no attention to the incredulous looks. “We don’t have a lot of time here. If the doctor’s theory is true, then we’ll have the Chronicle for lunch.”
“Or start a panic.”
He didn’t disagree. But sometimes, the ends and the means had to learn to get along. “Or maybe, we’ll catch a killer.”
CHAPTER 9
Like any grand old dame, New Orleans showed a properly powdered face to company and rouged and bawdier side to relatives and bosom friends. The French Quarter embodied her delectable, if misspent, youth. But when she had a mind to, she’d share a glimpse of her majestic past or regale with epic tales.
She’d chosen her more refined side today, Erin decided. Esplanade Ridge teemed with early weekend tourists, eager to view the contents of the New Orleans Museum of Art or tour the half-remembered glory of Faubourg Tremé. The area, known as Tremé to its inhabitants, had been the site of great civil rights victories. Their triumph faded as the struggle moved east to Selma and Atlanta, but New Orleans remembered her sacrifice.
It was difficult, Erin thought, to reconcile the pieces of New Orleans into a whole. It was a difficulty she recognized in herself. Perhaps that’s what had drawn her to the city, when she and Sebastian were creating her new life.
New Orleans was more than a survivor. The city reveled in its contrasting sides, in its rebellious youth and horrible missteps. Maybe, Erin hoped, she could find redemption here, too.
She’d begin by retracing the lives of vi
ctims Burleigh Singleton and Phoebe Bailey.
Mr. Singleton had been employed at the First Bank of New Orleans, which had a branch on nearly every street corner. Erin kept an account at one near the school. Standing in the marble atrium, she looked around to get her bearings.
“Welcome to First Bank. May we help you?”
Erin turned. The chirpy voice matched the speaker. Sunshine yellow had been whipped into a froth and poured into a snug suit that stopped midthigh. Pale golden skin, bright blond hair, and a toothsome smile completed the picture. Her name tag introduced her as Amber.
“Hello … Amber.” Erin glanced around the bank. “I’m looking for an old friend of mine. Burleigh Singleton?”
Amber’s good cheer evaporated. Suddenly somber, she said, “Mr. Singleton is no longer with us.”
“He’s not? Do you know where I can find him?”
“Excuse me, what was your name?”
“Erin Abbott.”
“Well, can you hold on a sec? Just a sec?” When Erin nodded, Amber hurried away toward the offices in the rear of the bank.
Hopefully, Erin thought, Amber would introduce her to a co-worker or preferably his secretary. She wanted to get a picture of Mr. Singleton’s life and check for connections to Julian Harris. A night on the Internet had revealed little about Singleton. She had found a brief bio and a mention of his recent promotion to the branch’s chief loan officer position. He was beloved by his alma mater, where he gave annually and often recruited graduates to work with him. The alumni association had named an award after him, which was the angle she planned to use.
The bank interview was her best shot, because, according to his obituary, he left a wife and two children in a tony home in Lakeview. She thought about talking to Mrs. Singleton, but she doubted she’d get past the front door. There would be no repeats of the Harris B and E.
On the plus side, that meant no Gabriel to ask questions he knew she wouldn’t answer.
He was a liability she could not afford. Self-preservation demanded that she resist the lure of good looks and good humor. She couldn’t risk an attraction to a man who’d been able to see through her painstakingly fostered image of the distant, fashion-challenged professor.
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