“The bus? Oh, come on down, Erin. Gabriel will be angry if I don’t do this; plus, I’m double-parked.”
Drumming her fingers on the wall, Erin tried for a better excuse. Before she could give one, she heard Genevieve speaking faintly: “Yes, Officer, I see that I’m not actually in a parking space.” The voice grew louder and more insistent, designed for Erin’s hearing. “I’ll move my car in a twinkling, sir. As soon as my teacher friend comes downstairs. Why, yes, sir, I am a teacher, too.” The soft sounds of Creole and woman made the officer stammer out his admiration of Gen’s dedication to her students.
Erin couldn’t let her Good Samaritan get a ticket, regardless of Gabriel’s role in the matter. Resigned, she crossed back to the sofa to retrieve her briefcase. She slid the album into her bag, flicked off the lights, secured the door, and headed downstairs.
Outside, in the warm morning already edging toward sultry, Genevieve leaned against a silver two-seater, one finger tracing the officer’s shield. Seeing Erin, he tucked a scrap of paper, which she guessed contained Gen’s phone number, into his pocket. A deep flush crept up his cheeks, and he stepped away reluctantly.
“Morning, ma’am,” he offered politely.
“Good morning, Officer,” Erin replied, barely repressing a laugh at the young man’s chagrin. “Thanks for watching over my friend.”
“My absolute pleasure, ma’am.” The officer tipped his hat and gallantly opened the door for her. He escorted Genevieve to her side of the car and whispered something Erin couldn’t hear. Smitten, the officer watched as they pulled off and made their way toward the school.
Genevieve zipped along Esplanade, taking side streets at a terrifying speed. Erin clutched the door handle tightly, praying for a traffic light or a cop. “We’re not that late. And we are the professors.”
“I haven’t had a single accident in three years,” Genevieve protested. “My insurance rates are starting to go down again.”
“Oh, God,” Erin moaned.
“Don’t worry, Erin. I took a defensive driving course. I drive like a nun these days.”
“You drive like a maniac.”
Cupid-bow lips twitched in restrained laughter. “That’s not very polite. I’ve never heard you not being polite.”
“Teetering on the edge of death can do that to a person,” Erin explained, squeezing her eyes shut as they cut off an angry semi. She pried open one eye, afraid to miss her own demise, and gasped, “Watch it! A streetcar!”
Genevieve gunned the engine and leaped the tracks, barely avoiding a collision. “That was a close one,” she commented as she checked her rearview mirror. The raised fist of the conductor merited a friendly wave.
“Stop the car!” Erin clutched at the door handle. “I’ll walk!”
“Can’t. Gabriel gave me strict instructions. I’m to pick you up and drive you home today. No arguments.”
“I don’t take orders from your brother.”
Genevieve smiled softly. “Neither do I. However, for some reason, he’s worried about you.”
Erin’s lips warmed at the memory of their kiss, of the utter lack of pressure for more. That almost disturbed her more than the killer who stalked her. Which was absurd. “Do you always do what Gabriel wants?”
“If I agree.” Gen tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “I saw the headline on the Ledger this morning: ‘ABC Killer Stalks New Orleans Residents.’”
“Oh.”
The silver car turned into the parking lot for the social science building. Genevieve cut the motor and turned around to look at Erin. “Gabriel told me about as much when I asked him about his sources. In the next breath, though, he asked me to pick you up and take you shopping.”
“Shopping?”
“He’s a guy. They think the mall is the cure for every ill that a woman faces. I agreed because I care about you, Erin. I know we haven’t been close—” Neither had to point out whose fault it was. “But I would like to be your friend.”
Nathan had taken too much from her, Erin thought. Even friendship. Enough was enough. “I hate malls. And I hate shopping.” She talked over Gen’s appalled reaction. “But I would love to learn to drive.”
“You could take classes this summer. Or I could teach you. Though I don’t understand how anyone could reach the age of twenty-nine without learning to drive.”
“I traveled a lot.” Wistfully Erin gazed out at the treelined streets that graced the university. The fragrance of wild azaleas mixed with the scent of jasmine.
There’d been a plot of jasmine on the balcony at their pied-à-terre in Paris, right outside her bedroom. That was when her parents had taken her to the Sorbonne.
Sebastian had explained the medicinal uses to her, and she’d tucked sprigs into her suitcase, the evening they left for Amsterdam. Or was it Lisbon?
The schools, the labs, had eventually run together, leaving no time for teenage rites of passage like earning a license.
When she lived with Nathan, he had refused her request to take classes. He preferred that she depend on him for transportation, for everything.
As though aware of the dark thoughts closing in on her, ones she didn’t understand, Genevieve offered gently, “If you really want to learn, maybe we can do a lesson this weekend. But it will have to be in my brother’s car. You’re not getting behind the wheel of my precious Audi.” She stroked the dashboard lovingly.
Erin nodded as they got out of the car. “I’d like that, Genevieve. Thank you.”
“So, no shopping.”
Hearing the longing, she relented. “Shopping today, driving lesson tomorrow.” Erin tucked her briefcase firmly under her arm. Together they walked to the building. “Hopefully, you teach more safely than you drive.”
“You’ll see,” Genevieve teased. “I’ll meet you at my office at one.” With a friendly wave, she sailed down the hallway to her office.
Erin headed for her office, her heels echoing in the nearly empty corridor. In ten minutes, students would fill the space, eager to finish tests and head off for the summer.
At her office door, Erin turned the knob and entered. And jumped. “Oh!”
Erin looked down at Jessica, her teaching assistant, who sat in the single office chair that faced the desk. The computer screen was filled with text.
“Dr. Abbott, you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Erin set her briefcase on the credenza. “You just startled me. I wasn’t expecting anyone to be in here.”
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” Jessica apologized as she cleared the screen. “I’ve been working on this for hours, trying to get a jump on my project. You said you didn’t mind if I used your computer. The one in the TA office is on the mend. Again. Someone downloaded a virus from the Net.”
Jessica popped the CD from the drive and came from around the desk. In the cramped quarters of her office, Erin bumped against a sheaf of papers stacked on the desk’s surface. The pile tumbled to the carpet in a flurry of white.
Jessica quickly knelt to gather the scattered pages, and Erin bent down to help.
“I’ve got it, Dr. Abbott.” Jessica hurriedly shuffled pages into a pile. “I’m so sorry about this.”
“No problem.” Erin shifted to help. “I remember dissertation proposal time. Back then, though, we used a chisel and hammer to etch out our papers on slabs of granite.”
Jessica chuckled appreciatively. “You’re funny, Dr. Abbott. I don’t care what the students say.” The TA glanced up, her mouth a moue of embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that out loud. Uh, the students love you.”
“You don’t lie well, Jessica,” Erin admonished, handing the young woman the last of the pages. Then Erin rose from her crouch on the ground and reached down to help the younger woman stand. “I know they think I’m hard.”
“They just haven’t gotten a chance to know you.” Silently, though, she had to agree with the students. Despite the woman’s fairy looks, Jessica knew there was nothing
soft about the strict, style-challenged Dr. Abbott. The woman reminded her of one of those spinster librarians in bad commercials, the ones with the stodgy buns and boring spectacles who hissed at patrons for silence, then transformed into sex goddesses behind closed doors.
“Jessica?”
Dragging her attention back to the moment, Jessica smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry. Late nights.”
“I asked if you had the tests ready. I left them in your box to be copied.”
Jessica lifted a smaller stack of papers from Erin’s desk. “Here they are. I had them collated and stapled.”
“Good.” Erin accepted the tests. “Hopefully, I won’t have a repeat of Murder 101’s tests,” she muttered.
“What happened?”
“Oh, I have a couple of students who don’t comprehend the idea of cheating as bad.”
Frowning, Jessica returned to gathering her things. “Who was it? If you don’t mind my asking?”
“Ms. Turner and Mr. Clark seem to believe in share and share alike. Not that I can prove it.”
“Are you going to fail them?”
“Not this time. But they’ll be getting a strongly worded lecture.” Erin loaded the tests into her arms. “Will you be around to help me grade?”
“I can’t, sorry. I’m living in the library getting ready for the committee meeting.”
One of the perquisites of being a professor at a university was service on dissertation committees. Jessica had sought Erin out within days of her arrival at Burkeen, and the grad student had convinced her to oversee her dissertation. Proposals were due. Two others had been able to con Erin into service as well.
“Do you know if Neldra or Walter is presenting next week?”
“Walter is. I think Neldra postponed.”
“Will you let them know I’ll be around?”
Jessica nodded. “Absolutely.”
“Good.” Erin shifted the exams into one arm. “Make sure you take some time to enjoy your break.”
“I will, Dr. Abbott.”
Erin walked out with Jessica, scanning the exams. Five pages, fifty-five questions. Challenging but not impossible.
She entered the lecture hall and set the pages on the desk. Students had already entered and filled the seats, ready to finish the exam and move on. The test asked her criminal psychology class to speculate about the composition of murder. What drove man and, less often, woman to take human life? What churned inside a psyche and erupted in such irrevocable destruction? The harsh, pungent nature of violence drew the class’s imagination in a way little else did.
While the students pored over questions, her encounter with Detective Iberville replayed in Erin’s mind, and she wondered if she’d tried hard enough to convince her. Maybe if the detective knew about her previous life, where she’d been a master of language, the woman would believe. But to reveal that would be to reveal all, a chance Erin wouldn’t take. Not her life for a stranger’s, not when there was still another way: working with Gabriel.
After the room emptied, Erin remained behind to grade their tests, grateful for the distraction. She plowed through the stack, impressed by the responses. It seemed this class proved slightly more attentive than her psychopathology students and less prone to sharing answers.
“If you’d been my professor, I’d probably have been a better student.”
The sudden announcement startled Erin and she clutched her pen like a dagger. Looking up, she met the mildly lecherous smile of Dr. Kenneth Bernard, chair of the psychology department. She was doing her best not to overreact to every sound, but the emotion always hovered close to the surface. Slowly she relaxed her fingers. “Kenneth. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I was passing by and saw you inside. Getting ready to leave?”
Hooded eyes watched her with a sharp gaze. His narrow face was pale from its infrequent adventures out-of-doors. Of medium height, he tended to favor hand-tooled leather boots. He worked out precisely thirty minutes per day, never in a gymnasium. The stench of sweat and body odor did not settle well on his stomach. He preferred the artificial lights of well-air-conditioned buildings to the oppressive heat of actual sun and the privacy of his treadmill to public gyms. In both places—outdoors and in gyms—too many of God’s inferior creatures prowled their restless bodies over every spare inch of earth to suit his urbane tastes.
He favored the refined and aloof city dweller to the tumescent average local resident. Erin Abbott had the bearing of someone who understood the distinction. Lightly tapping the test she had graded, Kenneth shook his head.
“Such dedication, Erin.” He balanced on the edge of the desk and casually draped his arm across a thigh muscled from Pilates and yoga. He wore loose linen pants in a soft burgundy and an elegant ivory shirt of the same fine weave. Against the linen, the muscles were outlined nicely. “You’ll wear yourself out.”
“I have miles to go before I sleep,” she quipped. She assigned a B+ to the exam and conceded silently that her respite had evaporated. Apparently, the rest of the papers would have to wait for the quiet of her office or her home.
“I thought I overheard you telling your teaching assistant you’d caught some students cheating.” At Erin’s raised brow, he lifted his hands in apology. “I wanted to ask you to lunch, but you were obviously occupied. We really don’t tolerate academic dishonesty at Burkeen. This must be reported.”
“I’d rather not.” She folded her hands, dismayed at the thought of Kenneth running to the dean with a complaint about cheating. Academic investigations were never secret, and too much hinged on the outcome. Cursing herself for even mentioning it, she explained, “I will speak with the students directly. There isn’t enough evidence for an inquiry.” To change the subject, she asked quickly, “I thought you were already off on vacation? A conference in Versailles.”
“Excellent memory. I didn’t think you listened to me.” Leaning close, he caressed her temple and pretended not to notice her subtle flinch. He’d startled her, that’s all. Deliberately, he repeated the caress. “You always seem so far away.”
Instinctively Erin inched away. “I’m right here,” she demurred.
“So it appears.” Kenneth sidled closer, his hip just brushing her fingers where they rested atop the exams. He cocked his head, studying her. “We haven’t had much of an opportunity to talk since I hired you, Erin. I think we’d like to get to know each other, colleague to colleague.” A cool, smooth hand covered hers where it lay atop the papers. “Don’t you?”
Frissons of distaste wound through her, but she didn’t dare move her hand away, lest she openly insult him. Men seemed unusually preoccupied with her hands, she thought with exasperation. But where Gabriel’s unwanted caresses catapulted her stomach into somersaults, Kenneth elicited only a sensation of oily distaste. If this groping trend continued, she’d ask Madame Bee Dowdell on Bourbon Street for a wart-causing potion.
“Maybe lunch, when you return?” she suggested casually. “Genevieve and Dr. Meyers mentioned that we should try to get together over the summer before the students return.”
“That would be nice.” Kenneth restrained a surge of irritation with effort. He had little to no interest in sharing air with the coarse Anthony Meyers, and his flirtations with Genevieve Moss had proven fruitless years before. His sights were solely focused on the dreary little Dr. Abbott. She appeared to be as fussy as he, and malleable.
Unaware of his thoughts, Erin asked, “When do you leave for the conference?”
“Next week. Morning flight. First class.” He preened a bit. “As a featured speaker, I insisted.”
“How nice for you.” Unobtrusively Erin increased the distance between them. Though Kenneth had been nothing but gracious since her arrival, his unabashed contempt for their young charges, coupled with his constant chastely lurid attention, disturbed her. And, if she was honest, so, too, did his faint resemblance to Nathan. Perhaps it was the profession or the palpable disdain for the less-gifted, or e
ven the slick charm coated in brilliance, but whatever the cause, she studiously avoided prolonged conversations with Kenneth.
She discreetly removed her hand to lift her satchel and she shuffled the papers inside. “Which paper will you deliver?”
“I evaluated the response–reinforcement correlation during modeling phase to determine the acquisition of novel responses by observers’ subjects.”
“Fascinating.” Erin stood and slung the strap over her shoulder. “I look forward to hearing all about it.”
Kenneth rose to his feet and shifted to block her departure. Another habit of men she had quickly grown to despise. Gabriel seemed to make it a point of honor to get in her way. Incensed by the way her thoughts invariably returned to him, she smiled recklessly at Kenneth. “Have a wonderful trip.”
“Rushing off so soon?” he asked, encouraged. “I thought we might have time for coffee.”
A headache began to thud dully, and Erin shook her head, unconcerned about appearing rude. She needed to be alone, away from disturbing men and their unwanted attentions. Away from killers and their byzantine clues. Away from guilt and sacrifice.
Before she could make her excuses and dash, Jessica appeared in the doorway. “Dr. Abbott. Oh, Dr. Bernard,” she stammered over her greeting. “I didn’t mean to, that is, I didn’t know you were—”
“We were just talking about Dr. Bernard’s trip, Jessica.” Erin motioned her inside, grateful for the interruption. “Can I help you?”
“Actually, I wanted to ask you both about our meeting next week.” Jessica smiled sheepishly, her eyes darting adoringly at the head of the department. “Would it be okay if some of the other students heard my presentation?”
“Certainly,” Kenneth responded, without looking at Jessica. “I may make attendance mandatory.”
Jessica beamed. “It would be a great learning experience for us. With defenses next year, a lot of us could use the coaching.”
Kenneth nodded.
“Send me an E-mail with the time.” Erin grabbed onto the date like a lifeline. “Sorry, but I have to go.” Moving past him to the door, she ignored his sputtered protest. She hurried through the open door and into the hallway, careful this time to check for occupants. She saw no one. With unseemly haste she rushed out of the building and out to the curb. Genevieve would have to forgive her, but she didn’t want to hang around the school, in case Kenneth tried to corner her again. The street promised no assistance by way of a cab. As she was condemned to walk home, the humidity mocked her and the confining suit.
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