Magnolia Moon

by JoAnn Ross

  “He stroked it again, then again, changing the pressure, sometimes hard, sometimes light, fast, then slow. Her back was against the stall, but her hips were thrust out at him, offering, begging for more.”

  The muscles in her legs contracted. Regan was breathing quickly now, and no longer cared if he could hear her. The world narrowed to his voice, the story of Antoine and his mystery woman, her tingling, burning clitoris.

  “He knelt at her feet like a man worshiping a goddess, which to him, she was, and put his mouth on her. She climaxed instantly, cried out, and tried to jerk away, but the stall was so small there wasn’ any room to move. And besides, his hands were on the backs of her legs, and he wasn’t quite finished with her yet.

  “He feasted on her like she was the sweetest, ripest fruit, loving the way he could make her come again and again, and when he felt her body going limp, he stood up again and lifted her onto him.”

  Oh, God! Regan bit her lip to keep from crying out herself as the orgasm ripped through her.

  “Well, when Antoine felt her hot body tighten around him, it was like nothin’ he’d ever felt before, like Mardi Gras fireworks goin’ off inside him. Her lips pressed against his throat while the water streamed over them, and that’s when he found out he’d been right about her not bein’ a witch.

  “His blood turned hot and thick as her sharp white teeth sank into him, and his own explosion, as he came into her, was like nothing he’d ever felt before. As they sank to the floor, arms and legs entwined, Antoine found himself looking forward to the idea of spending eternity with this sexy vampire.”

  “I should have seen that one coming,” Regan managed to say. “Seeing how we’re not that far from Anne Rice country.”

  She also belatedly realized that he’d never broken stride in the narration. “Did you…?” Regan, who never blushed, felt the blood flow into her face, making her doubly glad he couldn’t see her right now. “Never mind.”

  “The story was for you, chère,” he said simply, gently. “A bedtime tale to help you get to sleep.”

  Amazingly, it had worked, she realized. The sexual release had left her more relaxed than she’d been in ages. Certainly since Nate Callahan had arrived in Los Angeles and turned her life upside down.

  “It seems I keep having to thank you.”

  His deep chuckle rumbled in her ear. “Believe me, sugar, it was my pleasure. Sweet dreams.”

  She hung up the phone, pulled the crisp sheet back over her body, and instantly fell into a deep, nightmare-free sleep.

  “I don’t see why we’re bothering to do this,” Josh grumbled the next morning as they drove from Nate’s West Indies–style home into town.

  “It’s not that complicated. You’re a kid. The state of Louisiana, in one of its rare acts of wisdom, decreed kids need to go to school. Ergo, you’re going to school.”

  “My name isn’t Ergo. Besides, what’s the point of enrolling in school if I’m just going to be gone in a few days?”

  “You still planning on leaving?”

  “I may be.”

  “Well, I’d just as soon you didn’t go taking off without any word.”

  “Yeah, your life dream has always been to have a delinquent kid around to screw up your sex life.”

  “Did I say you’re screwing up anything?”

  “No.” He’d give him that. “But you probably would have been with that cop last night if you hadn’t had to stay home and play prison guard to me.”

  “Should I be offended that you called my home, which I built with my own two hands, a prison?” Nate asked mildly. “And yeah, I might have driven over to the inn to be with Regan last night. But not for the reason you think.”

  “You saying you don’t want to fuck her?”

  “There are a great many things I’d love to do with Detective Delectable. But when you get older and have some experience, you’ll discover that there’s a huge difference between fucking someone and making love.”

  “So you’re in love with her?”

  “I’m not saying that. I’m jus’ stating that there’s more to being with a woman than what fits where. That’s just plumbing. What two people do together should be more special than that.”

  “Sex is sex,” Josh said stubbornly. Hell, he’d probably listened to more sex in his life than this guy, as cool as he seemed to be, had ever experienced.

  “We’ll have to continue this discussion later, when we have more time,” Nate said as they pulled up in front of a redbrick building.

  Students were headed up the wide front steps in groups, talking, laughing, seeming to have a high old time. Josh felt the familiar new-school clench in his gut and, although he’d chain cement around his ankles and throw himself in the bayou before admitting it, he was glad he’d allowed himself to be convinced to take off his Dead Rap Stars T-shirt and change into a plain old black one Nate had pulled from his own closet. Apparently the guy wasn’t lying when he said there was a no-message-shirts dress code.

  Not that he cared about fitting in. Since he wasn’t going to be staying in Blue Bayou all that long.

  20

  Things were definitely going downhill. Not only hadn’t she been able to find a California marriage license for Karen Dale, or a divorce decree for a Karen Hart, the death certificate was proving yet another dead end. Regan had been working her way through neighboring state licensing files and had found several doctors with the same name, but calls placed to their offices turned up a big fat zero.

  The stocks were obviously the way to go. Surely either the mother or the son knew something. Twenty-five thousand dollars might not be a lot of money to a family who owned an oil company. But it wasn’t chicken feed, either.

  She was going to solve this crime. Linda Dale deserved to have her murder solved and the perpetrator put behind bars. Then Regan would donate the stocks to a local charity, return to Los Angeles, and get on with her life.

  She had just gone off-line when the phone rang. She paused for a moment, wondering if it was Nate, calling to tell her he was on his way. Or perhaps it was last night’s first caller, wanting to make certain she’d gotten the message. The lady or the tiger. Wishing hotel phones had caller ID, Regan picked up the receiver.

  “Hey, partner,” Van said, “I was thinking about you last night. Rhasheed and I rented The Big Easy, and I was wondering if you’d met up with one of those sexy Cajun men.”

  “There are a lot of Cajun men down here. Some, I suppose, are sexy.”

  “I hope you’re passing yourself a helluva good time.”

  “Of course.” Regan forced a smile she hoped would be echoed in her voice. She told Van about Cajun Cal and Beau Soleil, and meeting Jack Callahan, whose books Van enjoyed as well. She did not mention Nate or her real reason for being in Blue Bayou.

  “I’d better run,” Van said after about twenty minutes. “My sister’s throwing me this baby shower. Can you picture me sitting in a room decorated with paper storks, nibbling on cookies with blue frosting and crustless sandwiches?”

  “Just keep focused on all the loot you’re going to get.” Regan’s contribution, which she’d sent to Van’s sister before leaving L.A., was a music-box mobile from the registry list at Babies R Us.

  “Easy for you to say,” Van grumbled. “You’re not the one playing name-the-baby games.”

  “Seems a small price to pay for a feng shui miracle.”

  Van laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind when I’m huffing and puffing through delivery.”

  “That’s what you get for being one with nature. If I ever find myself about to give birth, I’m calling for heavy drugs at the first contraction.”

  They joked a bit longer, sharing cop stories about babies born in patrol cars, on the beach, in jail. After Van had hung up, as happy as she was for her partner, Regan felt a little tug of regret at how much she was going to miss their daily bantering. The problem with life, she thought as she went downstairs to wait for Nate, was that it just kept movi
ng on, taking you right along with it.

  Regan was vastly grateful when Nate didn’t mention last night’s phone conversation, other than to ask if she’d received any other threats. In the bright light of morning, she was uncomfortable with her behavior. She would have been even more embarrassed if he’d had any idea of the dream she had of him just before dawn. A dream that had involved a steamy shower and a bar of soap.

  Blue Bayou might not make much of a mark on the map, but Regan certainly couldn’t fault its architecture. The mayor’s office was housed in a majestic Italianate building with wide stone steps, gracefully arched windows, and lacy pilasters. A red, white, and blue Acadian flag hung on a towering brass pole below the U.S. and Louisiana flags. There was a life-size statue of a soldier astride a prancing horse. The carving at the base of the bronze statue identified the soldier as Captain Jackson Callahan.

  “Is he an ancestor?” she asked.

  “A bunch of great-grandfathers.”

  “I thought your father moved here from Chicago.”

  “He did. But his grandfather was originally from the area. Great-grandpère Callahan moved north looking for work during the Depression, found it, and stayed. When Maman met Dad at a fraternity party, they started talking and it turned into one of those ‘small world’ kind of things. Dad always said that they were destined to find each other, and though he didn’t buy into a lot of the voodoo stuff that coexists with Catholicism down here, he also believed that he and Maman had shared previous lives and kept finding each other over and over again.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “I always kind of thought so. Even though I’m not so sure I buy into the concept, myself.”

  “Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  He laughed at that, then sobered a bit. “I think, along with wanting a safer place to raise his kids and knowing Maman was homesick, he wanted to get back to his roots.

  “Old Captain Jack was one of our local success stories. He’d been orphaned on the boat coming to America from Ireland, and had pretty much grown up wild and barefoot here in the swamp. When they started recruiting for people to fight against the Yankees in the War between the States, he figured this might be his chance to make something of himself. Being Irish, he could identify with the little guy fighting against an oppressive government, so he signed up with the Irish Sixth Volunteer Infantry, which got the nickname the Confederate Tigers.”

  “Because they fought so hard?”

  “Like tigers,” he agreed. “Jack, he entered the army as a private and ended up fighting in every eastern-front battle, beginning with the Shenandoah Valley campaign in 1862 under Stonewall Jackson. Since those battlegrounds were pretty much killing fields, the men who managed to survive to fight another day won a lot of battlefield promotions. When Jackson returned home as a captain, folks around here considered it pretty much of a miracle. A lot of people still believe that touching his horse’s nose brings good luck.”

  Regan was not as surprised as she might have been only days ago at the way he spoke about hundred-year old events as if they’d just happened yesterday. And even though it made her feel a little as if she’d just landed in Brigadoon, a very strong part of her admired his connection with the past.

  Antoinette Melancon had strawberry blond hair, a pink Chanel suit, very good pearls, and an attitude.

  “I understand the concept of Mardi Gras,” she said for the umpteenth time. “After all, my husband is not only a member of the Knights of Columbus but a deacon at Holy Assumption, and the women in my family have belonged to the Altar Guild for decades. I understand that is an opportunity to party before we begin preparing during Lent for Easter. I merely do not understand why Blue Bayou can’t set the standard as a community who celebrates with grace and style.”

  “It’s Fat Tuesday,” Emile Mercier, owner of the Acadian Butcher Shop, pointed out. “Not Lean Tuesday. People are supposed to have a good time.”

  “It’s unseemly.” Her pink lips, color-matched to her suit, turned down in a disapproving frown. Regan suspected the Puritans had probably passed a better time at their Sabbath meetings than Charles Melancon’s wife did on Fat Tuesday. “However, I suppose I should not expect anything different from a man who makes a very good living supplying sausage for the cookout.”

  He folded massive arms across his chest and glared at her from beneath beetled gray brows. “Maybe in my next life I can come back as an oil king,” he shot back. “And make a fortune dumping poison into the bayous and rivers.”

  She lifted a chin Regan suspected had been sculpted a bit. “I take offense at that remark.”

  “Well, some of us take offense at ending up with bags of three-legged, three-eyed bullfrogs when we go out gigging,” a bearded man in the back of the room growled.

  “Melancon does not pollute.”

  “Tell that to the EPA,” a woman who Regan remembered was an assistant DA for the parish shot back.

  “That complaint is in error. My husband is working with the government to correct the misunderstanding.”

  “Meaning he’s lining some congressman’s pockets,” Cal, who’d winked a welcome to Regan when she’d first arrived, suggested.

  Nate was leaning against a wall map of the parish, legs crossed at the ankles, watching the meeting with patient resignation. Now he pushed away from the wall and entered into the fray.

  “We’re here to discuss the band situation,” he reminded everyone in the same easygoing tone he might use to order a po’ boy from Cal’s. “Now, the Dixie Darlings pulling out at the last minute put us in a bit of a bind, but I played ball with Steve Broussard at Tulane, and since I read he and his group have given up touring for six months to work on their new CD, I thought, What the hell, tracked him down in Houma, and invited him to come play for us.”

  “Like Broussard and his Swamp Dogs are going to play for us,” the attorney scoffed. “Their last CD went platinum after they did the sound track for that movie.”

  “Said he’d be glad to,” Nate said calmly. “And the best part is that the band agreed to donate their fee to the boys’ and girls’ club.”

  “Awright,” Cal said as nearly everyone in the room broke out in spontaneous applause. Even the ADA looked impressed. Toni Melancon did not, but Regan had already gotten the feeling there was little about this parish that she would find to her liking.

  That the woman was a snob was obvious. That she was probably as cold-blooded as those hibernating alligators was also apparent. All of which had Regan wondering, yet again, if her husband might been sleeping with Linda Dale. Although she certainly didn’t condone adultery, she could imagine why a man married to such a woman might stray. And now that she’d gotten an opportunity to see Toni Melancon in action, it didn’t take a huge mental leap to imagine her killing a rival. Not for love; Regan suspected she didn’t have a romantic or passionate bone in her body. But money was always a prime motive. Granted, the name was still all wrong, but there was still an outside chance that the murder didn’t have anything to do with the mysterious J.

  Which didn’t, she mused, explain why, if Linda’s lover hadn’t killed her, he seemingly hadn’t said a word to anyone when she’d died.

  The meeting drew to an end. Toni Melancon was the first to leave, Nate and Regan the last. As they walked from the steps to the sidewalk, Nate reached out and touched the horse’s nose.

  “Are we going to need luck?” Regan asked.

  “A little luck never hurt, sugar.”

  Of course, sometimes luck just needed a little help.

  Toni Melancon was standing beside her racing-green Jaguar, the toe of her Bruno Magli pump tapping furiously on the sidewalk.

  “Got a problem?” Nate asked.

  “This stupid car won’t run.” She looked as if she was considering kicking the tire. “I told Gerald we should buy German. But no, he wanted this piece of British trash.”

  “It’s a classic,” Nate said. “When it came out back in ’68,
it was called the most beautiful car in the world.”

  “It’s classic trash.” So much for grace and style. Her petulant behavior reminded Regan of Josh, who probably had an excuse for his bad attitude.

  “Why don’t I take a look at the engine, see if I can spot anything?”

  “All right.” She sighed heavily, seeming more put out than grateful for his assistance.

  Regan watched as he opened the hood and began fiddling with wires as if he knew what he was doing.

  “Well, the good news is that it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a real big problem to fix.”

  “What’s the bad news?”

  “I’m not going to be able to get it running.”

  “Why not?” she said, seeming to take it personally.

  “See this red-and-white wire?”

  She sighed again and humored him by glancing in the direction of the engine, but she clearly wasn’t willing to risk dirtying her suit by getting too close. “What about it?”

  “It leads to the solenoid on the starter motor. It’s loose, which we could fix, but if you look here”—he pointed to a spot about three inches from the dangling end of the wire—“it’s also stripped. It’ll have to be replaced.”

  “I knew we should have bought that BMW,” she huffed.

  Regan wondered who he’d gotten to take a pocketknife to that wire.

  “No problem. I’ll just call Earl on my cell phone, have him pick it up and tow it over to Dix Automotive, and I’ll drive you out to the house.”

  His quick, boyish grin appeared to charm even this gorgon. “I suppose that’s the best solution.”

  “It’ll be my pleasure,” he assured her. “You don’t mind if Ms. Hart comes along, do you? I’ve been showin’ her around the parish.”

  The older woman looked at Regan as if noticing her for the first time. “You must be the new sheriff I’ve been hearing about.”

  “People are mistaken. I’m just visiting.”

  “Well, that’s too bad, because we could certainly use one. I still don’t know what you were thinking of, hiring Dwayne,” she complained to Nate.