Etched in Shadow: A Cassie Quinn Mystery

by L. T. Ryan

  The elevator dinged and opened. Once they oriented themselves, Cassie led the charge down the hallway to apartment 718. She and Jason hadn’t practiced what they would say, but then again, they didn’t really know what they were after.

  Anything, Cassie thought. Anything that helps us figure out whether Jasmine’s death was a mistake.

  Kiki said she wanted answers. Cassie could understand that. She still had so many questions about David, even if she fought to drive them from her mind during every waking minute. Because what would answers get them? Just more questions.

  Why did David have to die? Why did Jasmine? Those questions didn’t have a satisfying conclusion, and if anyone knew that it was Cassie. Why did people kill? Why did people have to die before they could grow old and lead a full life?

  Jason’s sharp knock drew Cassie out of her thoughts. She wished she could’ve shared them with him, but she knew better than to add to his burden. He was taking this investigation well enough, but she caught the sadness in his eyes when he didn’t think she was looking.

  After a second knock, they heard a muffled voice from the other side of the door. A few seconds later, a lock slid back, and the door cracked open. A chain kept the door from swinging wide.

  The woman’s voice was quiet. Confused. “Can I help you?”

  She was the exact opposite of what Alan had described. She had short, straight, blond hair and bright blue eyes. Her skin looked like porcelain, and her makeup was light. Cassie saw the barest hint of pink eyeshadow without any eyeliner. There was a natural beauty to her that emanated softness and fragility. Her tank top made her look even tinier and revealed the fact that she didn’t have any visible tattoos.

  Cassie stepped into view so the woman knew she was safe. “Hi, my name is Cassie. This is Jason. I’m guessing you’re not Charli?”

  The woman blinked twice and then shook her head. “My name is Stephanie.”

  “Hi, Stephanie.” Cassie put on her brightest smile. “Do you have a second? We have a couple questions about someone who might’ve lived here before you.”

  Cassie could see the woman calculating the odds. Were these people who they said they were? If she unlocked the door, would they try to come in? There must’ve been something in Cassie’s smile that put Stephanie at ease because she nodded once, closed the door, unlatched the chain, and then swung it wide open.

  Cassie didn’t make a move to step forward, and the woman didn’t invite them in. That was well enough because it didn’t look like she had much furniture for entertaining guests. What little Cassie could see of the apartment looked spartan. There was a table and a single chair in the kitchen, and a single recliner in the living room. Beyond that was out of her view.

  “Thank you.” Cassie didn’t allow her cheery façade to slip. “I’m guessing you haven’t lived here for long?”

  “About a month.” Stephanie’s voice was light and airy. Small. “I haven’t really had time to make it mine yet.”

  “That’s okay. I’m pretty sure I still have boxes I need to unpack that’ve been in my basement for years.” Cassie gestured to Jason. “We’re looking for a woman named Charli. We were told she lived here.”

  “I don’t know anyone by that name, sorry.”

  Cassie twisted her mouth to the side. They hadn’t come all this way for a dead end. “Do you know anything about the woman who used to live here? She had piercings and tattoos. She used to volunteer at the Tulane Medical Center?”

  “I never met the person who lived here before me, but I think the landlord said it was a woman.” Stephanie’s voice remained small, but she seemed to relax. “I think she used to work at a bar, though.”

  “Oh?” Cassie couldn’t decide if she felt elation or disappointment. Another lead was great, but she was tired of not finding anything of substance. “Do you know where it was?”

  “Hang on.” Stephanie retreated into her apartment, but kept the door open. She was back in less than thirty seconds, holding a glass in her hand. “There were a bunch of these left behind when she moved out. I didn’t have anything with me, so I kept them.”

  Cassie took the glass from the woman’s hands and peered down at the label. PETE’S BAR was emblazoned across the front in cherry red letters. She could see the silhouette of a pelican through the glass on the other side.

  “I remember passing a Pete’s Bar on the way over here,” Jason said. “It’s not far.”

  Cassie handed the glass back to the woman. “Thank you so much. This helps.”

  “I’m glad.” She didn’t smile. “I wish there was more I could do.”

  “It’s okay. It was a long shot, anyway.”

  “Is she in some sort of trouble?” the woman asked. “Did she do something?”

  Cassie and Jason exchanged looks. “No, she’s not in trouble,” Cassie said. “She might have some information about someone we know.” She didn’t want to give too much away, but she was hoping something might trigger Stephanie’s memory. Maybe there was something else the woman had left behind in the apartment. “Since she worked at the hospital, I mean.”

  “Oh, okay.” Stephanie hovered in the doorway, one hand on the jam and the other curled around the glass, which she clutched to her chest. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help.”

  “That’s okay. We appreciate your time.” Cassie took a step back, and after a moment’s hesitation, the woman smiled and closed the door with a soft click. They heard the latches slide back into place.

  “Onto the next?” Jason asked her.

  Cassie sighed. “Onto the next.”

  25

  By the time they had arrived at Pete’s Bar, Cassie was ready for a drink. Jason must’ve agreed because as soon as they sat down, he ordered himself a beer. Cassie wrinkled her nose and ordered a margarita.

  Neither of them spoke until they had drained at least a quarter of their respective beverages. She could already feel the alcohol in her system. It relaxed her muscles and made the tips of her toes tingle. But it didn’t lift the burden from her shoulders.

  “What’s our plan?” Jason asked.

  Cassie looked around the establishment. It was rustic as far as bars went, but it had a certain charm. There were a few tables lined up along the back wall, but the extensive bar took up most of the room. About a dozen people were scattered down its length, either in pairs or solo. A single waiter ran the floor, and the bartender made sure everyone’s drinks stayed topped up.

  Cassie waited until there was a lull in orders before she caught the barkeep’s attention. He sidled up to them and flung a rag over his shoulders, just like she’d seen in the movies. “I have a question for you, if you’ve got a second?”

  “You’re in luck.” His smile was disarming. “I have several.”

  “This might take longer than several seconds.”

  “Doesn’t it always?” He leaned against the bar and looked between the two of them. “What’s on your mind?”

  “We’re looking for a woman who might work here,” Jason supplied. “Her name was Charli?”

  “Charli, yeah.” He looked wistful. Cassie had seen that same look on Alan’s face. “Couple of tattoos, a few piercings. She had a rough start here, but she got the hang of it, eventually.”

  “Rough start?”

  “I don’t think she’d ever been a waitress before.” He chuckled. “I’m not sure she’d ever had a steady job, actually. But like I said, she got the hang of it. Turned out to be a pretty good worker in the end. We’re gonna miss her.”

  “Did she quit?” Cassie asked.

  The bartender frowned. It took him a second to respond. “She died.”

  “Died?” Cassie and Jason exchanged a look. “When?”

  “About a month ago, I guess. Her sister came in, gave us the news.”

  Cassie resisted the urge to drain the rest of her margarita in one go. Another dead end. “What can you tell us about that?”

  For the first time, the bartender looked dubio
us. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Did you know Charli also volunteered at the Tulane Medical Center?”

  “No, I didn’t.” He processed the information. “I’m kind of surprised, actually.”

  “Why?”

  “If you saw her, you would know. I can’t imagine many people being comforted by her.”

  “There had been some complaints,” Cassie supplied. “The reason we’re asking is because she got fired, and we’re wondering if she knew something she shouldn’t have.”

  “Hang on a second.” The man walked the length of the bar and topped off someone’s beer. He took a slip of paper from the waiter and made another margarita. On his way back, he poured two shots and grabbed a bottle of cider out of the mini fridge behind him. “Sorry about that. Where were we? Oh, yeah, Charli working at the hospital. That’s news to me. Then again, I didn’t know much about her. She only worked here for a couple of months. We talked a few times on breaks, but we didn’t hang out. She wasn’t very social.”

  Jason drained his beer. “Glass of water? Thanks, man.” He waited until the bartender swapped his glasses. “How did you find out she died?”

  “Her sister came in.” He cocked his head to the side. “Well, I thought it was her sister. Maybe a cousin or something. I don’t know, she didn’t actually say. But they looked similar. I figured they had to be related.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “Charli won’t be coming in today. I asked why. She said it was because she died. I said I was sorry. She picked up her check and left.”

  “You didn’t ask how she died?”

  “Didn’t seem appropriate at the time.”

  “Fair enough.” Jason sipped his water. “Did you get the sister’s name?”

  “Didn’t ask. Sorry, man.”

  “That’s okay. Thanks for your help.”

  The bartender pointed at Cassie’s glass. “Another?”

  “Just the check, please. Thanks.”

  Jason drained the rest of his water. They paid for their drinks, then swiveled around in their chairs and exited the bar. Outside, Cassie let the breeze play with her hair. Neither of them wanted to get back into the car. It’s not like they knew where to go next.

  “What are you thinking?” Jason asked. He leaned on the fender of his car. She joined him.

  “I’m thinking we’re at a dead end.”

  “No such thing.”

  She laughed. “I wish that were true.”

  “In my experience, a dead end just means we made a wrong turn. Or we’re not seeing the secret passage. There’s always an answer.”

  She smiled up at him. Bumped his shoulder with her own. “You’re good at this.”

  “You are, too.”

  “I learned from the best.” The words left her mouth before she knew what they meant. She was talking about David, of course. But she didn’t want to. It was still too painful. “Do you think Charli is the right path?”

  “I think it’s interesting that she got fired and wound up dead a month later.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  Jason ran a hand over his head. “Lots of people dead. We might have a coverup on our hands. Except—”

  “Except that only makes sense if this had gone down in one hospital.”

  “And Don Chichetti upsets the balance. He connects UMC and Tulane.”

  “And leads us to a dead ex-volunteer.”

  “What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?” Jason chuckled, but she heard the nerves underneath. “What are we chasing?”

  “I’m not sure. And there’s a whole other dimension to this, too.” Cassie waited for Jason to lift an eyebrow in question before she supplied the answer. “The Ghost Doctor.”

  He made a noncommittal noise.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “Oh, I believe you.” His eyes were wide, almost crazed. “But I’m not sure she has anything to do with this. Unless she can hop from one hospital to the other?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.” Cassie didn’t finish her thought. Then again, I’m not sure what she’s capable of.

  After a moment of silence, Jason spoke again. “I keep going back to Charli. She’s fired and then she dies. Something’s off here.”

  “She could’ve found out something she shouldn’t have.” Cassie was guessing at this point. “Maybe both hospitals are dealing with an overload of malpractice lawsuits? Maybe they’re working together to cover it up?”

  “It’s possible.” Jason’s tone indicated it wasn’t likely. “If that’s the case, then we need to find out what happened to her. But we don’t have any more leads.”

  Cassie held up her phone. “We know a few details about her. Might be enough to find her social media profiles. If we can do that, we could track down her sister.”

  Jason slid off the fender. “It’s worth a shot.”

  “Good. But I don’t want to do this on my phone. We need a computer.”

  “You want to go back to Granny Mabel’s?”

  “I had somewhere else in mind.”

  26

  The New Orleans Public Library was right across the street from the Tulane Medical Center. It was a massive building full of books, newspapers, computers, and just about any resource they might need.

  Cassie made a beeline for the bank of computers near the front entrance and snagged a station at the end. There weren’t too many people milling about, but she didn’t want to risk anyone seeing them cyber stalk a dead woman.

  Jason pulled up a chair and watched as Cassie’s fingers flew across the keyboard. “What are you looking for?”

  “Anything.” She tapped a few more buttons, then clicked around on the page. “First, we start with Facebook.” She gestured to the computer in front of him. “You start with Twitter. Then we go from there. Instagram. YouTube. LinkedIn. Yahoo Answers.”

  Jason’s fingers hovered over his keyboard. “Yahoo Answers?”

  “Just kidding. Kind of.” Cassie never took her eyes off the screen. “We need a last name and the names of her relatives. If she has the same username across all her social media accounts, like most people do, then we might find her in other places where she hasn’t attached her name.”

  Jason took his instructions like a champ. But answers wouldn’t come easily. Cassie couldn’t find a single Charli on Facebook who lived in New Orleans and had worked at either Tulane or Pete’s Bar. She’d even checked everyone’s profile pictures, in case Charli hadn’t put that information on her page. But she came back with nothing.

  They kept digging. An hour passed. And then two. They couldn’t find a single Charli that fit the description they’d gotten from either Alan or the bartender at Pete’s. No social media presence. No work history. There wasn’t even an obituary.

  “It’s like someone erased her,” Jason said.

  Cassie stretched her arms over her head. She saw Jason looking at her out of the corner of her eyes, but she found she didn’t mind. “It’s like she never existed.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “It’s not. Even if she had no online presence—which is pretty impossible these days—there’s bound to be a relative who has one. You’d think she’d be in a picture somewhere. Some photo with all the cousins barely tolerating each other just so Grandma can hang it on her fridge.”

  “Which takes me back to her being erased.”

  “That would be difficult to do.” Cassie thought for a moment. “But not impossible.”

  “The real question is why.”

  “The question is always why.”

  Jason continued to think out loud. “What did she know that was so big someone felt the need to erase her from the internet?”

  “Something that could connect both hospitals and dozens of patients.”

  “Something doesn’t add up.” Jason had rolled up his sleeves at some point during his search, and Cassie liked the way his muscles flexed as he worked out the problem. “It’s
not just that we can’t find her. It’s that we can’t find anyone even related to her. No one is talking about her being dead.”

  “No one we can find.”

  “Maybe she didn’t have anyone. Maybe she was all alone.”

  Cassie bobbed her head. “That would make sense. She’d be an easier target to get rid of if that were true. But we know she had a sister or a cousin who picked up her check.”

  “Or someone who pretended to be her sister.” He shook his head. “And if that’s the case, then it puts us back at square one.”

  “Another wrong turn.” Cassie echoed his words from earlier. “Maybe we went down the wrong fork in the road.”

  He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning there was another reason why I wanted to come to the New Orleans Public Library.”

  “Oh?”

  Cassie stood, knowing Jason would follow. She looked for the signs that would point her in the right direction, and once she found them, she headed for the section housing the city’s local history. It was a robust area, and Cassie’s heart quickened at the chance of finding answers.

  Jason picked a book up off the shelf. “You think Charli is going to be in a yearbook from 1923?”

  “No.” Cassie laughed and took the book out of his hands, placing it back on the shelf with reverence. “I think we need to set Charli aside for a minute. Just a minute,” she said, when he raised an eyebrow. “I want to know more about our Ghost Doctor.”

  “I can’t say I’m not intrigued. Where do we start?”

  “She dressed like someone from the 1940s. And she looks like a doctor. I’m guessing there weren’t too many female doctors back then. We’re bound to find her.”

  “UMC isn’t that old of a building.” Jason frowned. Then his eyes widened. “But Tulane is old. It used to be a medical university.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  Jason shrugged, but pride shone through his smile. “My dad likes history. Sometimes I remember what he says.”