Phantom of the French Quarter

As the cat stared at him disdainfully, Caitlyn nodded. “I can’t think of any other reason. Did you see anyone else this morning? Any other people nearby?”

He opened his mouth to speak, then snapped it closed again to listen to the thinnest thread of sound. A sound that gradually grew louder, beneath the lightest pattering of the raindrops that had just begun to fall.

A siren, he realized as he backed away, head shaking. Obviously someone really had called the police after all.

“Wait!” she called. “Don’t leave. I didn’t…”

But the spell had finally shattered. Remembering his obligations at last, Marcus had turned away already. He broke into a loping run, vaulting the low gate to save the second it would have taken to pull it open.

As he swung into the gray sedan, he jammed the key into the ignition, then drove off wondering if Caitlyn had been stalling him from the start. Intentionally delaying his departure until the police arrived to take him into custody.

Chapter Three

His grandmother had collected doll babies by the hundreds, which his mother had arranged on shelves around the room where he’d slept as a boy.

How he’d hated those damned dolls, staring at him through the days and nights. How he’d pleaded with his mother to box them up, to let him put up his sports pennants and his model racecars—the kinds of decorations he wouldn’t have to hide from other guys.

Year after year she had stubbornly refused, saying it would be disrespectful of Grandmama’s memory to hide them all away, and that the narrow bungalow—a damned shack, really—was far too small to put them elsewhere.

“Then keep them in your room,” he had at first demanded and then pleaded, tears streaking down his red face.

But they both knew she wouldn’t, that the men who visited her at night could never do their dirty business with all those glass eyes staring at them.

And after a while, it was all right. He grew used to his silent companions. Grew to prefer them to the classmates he couldn’t invite over anyway.

DRIPPING FROM THE RAIN, Reuben returned from the hardware store, and Caitlyn quickly filled him in about her visitor.

“You opened the door to that man? Spoke to him like some old friend?” Shaking his head, he set the rain-spattered bag with the new deadbolts he’d gone to buy, after insisting the house needed to be better secured, on the kitchen counter.

Like nearly every part of their white elephant of a legacy, the once-rich wood needed attention. But that she could ignore for now, unlike the faltering air conditioner that had left the whole house stewing in its juices.

Back in Ohio, where she’d grown up, a summer rain would have cooled things. Here, it only made June’s heat more oppressive.

“I kept the chain latched,” she explained. “And I thought if we talked, I could find out—”

“Fat lot of good that would’ve done you if he’d had a gun. This is a serious situation. You’ve gotta use your head.”

She looked away, feeling her jaw tighten, wanting to explain that she had. She’d learned to trust her instincts about people, even if she couldn’t explain them in any way that made sense to Reuben and her sister, who thought the world was built of hard facts and right angles. And who assumed that anyone who saw it otherwise was hopelessly naive.

“Off the counter, Sin,” she scolded her grandmother’s ancient Persian.

Fluffy the cat, whom the sisters had rechristened “Sinister” in honor of his hateful, orange-eyed stare, hissed at her before twitching his tail and jumping down to pointedly ignore her.

“It’s my job to keep you safe.” Reuben’s tone softened a fraction. “So let’s not get all girlie on me.”

“He told me his name’s really Marcus.” She felt an echo of the electrical zing of intuition assuring her that this time he had told the truth. That he wouldn’t hurt her. “Would he have done that if I’d hidden and speed-dialed the police?”

“Marcus who? He show you any ID to back up that claim?”

“Oh, sure. And volunteered a cheek swab so you could run his DNA, too.”

Reuben gave a snort and grinned before changing the subject. “Anyway, what’s this about some picture?”

Still annoyed, she laid it on the counter. “It’s Mrs. Rill,” she said, for lack of another name to call the woman.

She had already filled him in on Lorna Robinson’s disturbingly clever anagram trick, the way the detective had hinted that Caitlyn’s involvement might be more than that of a potential victim. That perhaps someone might have cooked up a sick way to gain publicity for her fledgling tour-guide business.

Reuben had laughed when Caitlyn told him, and promised to call an old friend from his years on the force—Detective Robinson’s partner, Davis—to set the cops straight about that ridiculous idea.

Sweaty and exhausted, Caitlyn wasn’t sure which she found more upsetting: to be suspected of a crime or laughed off as a suspect.

Though he hadn’t touched the photo, Reuben studied it intently. “That’s the old bat, all right. I wonder how she’s mixed up in this? Can’t see a frail old biddy like her as the killer.”

At the word “killer,” the dead woman’s face flashed through Caitlyn’s mind. Only this time, she thought about the green eyes. Glass eyes, the same as she’d seen…

“Josiah Paine’s a hunter,” she blurted. “He has heads hanging all over his office.”

“Former employees?” Reuben asked drily.

“Deer, mostly, and this poor, moth-eaten black bear. An armadillo, too, and there’s even a whole stuffed alligator.” She shuddered, recalling how creeped out she’d been by his “curiosities,” though he swore the customers loved them. “Those animals all have glass eyes, too.”

“So you’re thinking…?” Reuben sketched out an arch with the tip of his finger, a bridge from one idea to the next. “That’s a pretty big stretch, from Bambi hunter to psycho killer. What sportsman doesn’t have a few old trophies hangin’ ’round his—”

“We already know he can’t stand me.”

“And I can’t stand Creole cookin’. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna kill and stuff a Cajun chef to intimidate them others.” He shook his head. “Listen, sugar, you’re one heck of a tour guide—I never get tired of hearin’ you tell stories ’bout the ghosts of old N’awlins. But you’d better leave the cookin’ to the Cajuns and the detectin’ to the pros.”

Heat stung her cheeks. “Don’t patronize me, Reuben. I’m serious about him.”

“Then tell it to the police—” he gestured toward the photo but still avoided touching it “—when we turn this thing over to ’em.”

WHEN DETECTIVES ROBINSON AND DAVIS ARRIVED to collect the photo, Caitlyn brought up Josiah Paine immediately, but Robinson’s partner, a pudgy, balding man with woolly gray brows and small, pointed teeth, was quick to shrug it off. “I know Josiah real well. Sure, he burns a little hot, likes to shoot his mouth off, but under all that, he’s a teddy bear. A guy you can always count on for a nice donation when we’re raising money for a cop’s sick kid or something.”

Looking toward Reuben, Davis added, “You remember him, don’t ya, Rube? Picks up rounds at Tujague’s every now and then.”

“That’s what I was tellin’ Caitlyn,” Reuben answered. “Paine’s a lot of things, but he’s no killer.”

Caitlyn might have grown up in Ohio, but she recognized Good Old Boydom when she heard it. Frustrated, she tried zeroing in on Robinson. “You only think you know him.”

Detective Robinson merely frowned and changed the subject. “Didn’t you call us about some picture?”

“In here,” Reuben said, and four sets of footsteps echoed on the marble tile leading beneath an immense chandelier hanging high above them from a vaulted ceiling embellished with hand-painted nymphs and satyrs. The nineteenth-century fresco had cracked and peeled in places, as badly in need of restoration as the rest of this white elephant of a legacy. But that didn’t stop Caitlyn from loving it completely—and hoping, scheming and praying for some way she and her sister might hold on to it.

They passed the formal parlor, filled with prissy, somewhat dusty furnishings that looked far too fine to sit on, and Detective Davis whistled through his small teeth. “Nice place.”

Caitlyn thanked him and said, “The photo’s right here, in the kitchen.”

After giving them a chance to look it over, she said, “She’s definitely the woman from last night’s tour. ‘Eva Rill.’”