Let the Dead Sleep

Yeah. Big help she was.

Then he took a deep breath. Not fair, Quinn.

He thought about his own past. You didn’t know until...

You knew.

He’d been reprehensible before he’d learned the truth; she was merely ignorant.

But like it or not, he might be moving forward on his own.

With that in mind, he pulled out into the street. Time to hit a few of the shadier spots in the city of New Orleans.

* * *

The bastard.

The arrogant, crazy, single-minded bastard.

Danni watched Quinn drive away, her emotions raging. She was furious. It was late—and he’d just left her on the street, going off on his own.

Not that she’d wanted to go anywhere with him. But he’d dragged her into this, and now she felt guilt and sadness that a woman was dead—and total confusion. People could behave brutally, badly, cruelly. But he was obsessed with an object!

As far as she could see, the damage was done. Hank and Gladys Simon were both dead; the bust—the thing that had driven Gladys so crazy—was gone. Stolen. But surely the bust itself didn’t have any power. Power lay in the minds of people. Somehow Gladys had let herself believe the bust was evil, and therefore, in her particular reality, it was.

“Jerk!” she said aloud.

She headed for her own car in the dark.

As she drove home, she wondered how her father had come to know police officers and forensic experts—without her having a clue. Granted, she and Angus hadn’t been joined at the hip. Although she had her room in the shop, where she’d been staying since his death, she’d also had an apartment near Tulane, which, of course, she’d now let go. She’d grown up in the French Quarter, and leaving the sometime-insanity of the area for a place of her own had seemed a logical progression for her. She loved her art, fellow artists and a number of musicians. She went out with her friends; her father went out with his.

She’d just never imagined him delving into police matters. Knowing that Quinn person.

“Jerk,” she said again.

She bit her lip as she turned down Royal Street. She was hurt, too. Hurt that so much had gone on that she hadn’t known about. She reminded herself that she’d hidden a few things from her father while growing up—not terrible things, but she’d had her share of normal escapades in college. There’d been a few dates she certainly hadn’t wanted to share with him, and yet...

In all important matters, they’d been close. He’d been friends with Jarett Morrison, the love of her high school life, and although she and Jarett had split up in college, they’d somehow stayed best friends. Her father had been her rock when word had come that Jarett had been killed on a dusty desert road by a bomb while in the service; he’d held her through the funeral. He’d never met Aaron, the wacky engineer she’d dated for only a few months, or Hardy Wentford, the forlorn guitarist. She’d never brought a man home to meet Angus unless she was serious about him, and she hadn’t felt that way about anyone since her mad high school crush on Jarett, a crush that had just faded, as naturally as aging.

Lately, since before her father’s death, she hadn’t even met anyone she really wanted to have coffee with, much less get serious about.

The point was that she’d hidden a few questionable dates; he’d hidden an entire life’s project!

Royal Street was quiet but she could hear the distant, competing music from Bourbon Street—like the beating of the French Quarter’s heart. The real heart, of course, wasn’t in the blaring pop music, the strip clubs or the bars on Bourbon Street. It was in the centuries of history. But tourism kept the city alive, so those entertainers were important.

A few late-night diners were strolling back to their hotels or homes in the Quarter but her block was dead quiet. She hit the remote control button and drove her Acura into the garage. Billie’s little Beetle was pulled into its spot, she noted, but she’d expected that it would be. Billie was a homebody. When he wasn’t working, he might take a stroll down to Frenchman Street, where more locals played at the pubs and bars, but he was usually home early, up in his attic room, watching Storage Wars and gleeful when he convinced himself that no one had ever found treasures to compare with those at The Cheshire cat.

The garage door opened into what had once been a pantry; now it was a hodgepodge of stored objects. She walked into one of the shop’s display rooms. The emergency floor lights were on and she could see the blinking blue lights that indicated the alarm was working. She reset it and moved through the darkened rooms to the stairway, passing the knight in full armor, a life-size voodoo queen doll and a standing display of Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire characters. She paused in the shadows, smiling.

“We were a good team, Dad,” she said softly. He’d been the collector, but she’d known how to create displays that made the shop a not-to-be-missed venue in the city. It had gone from a confusion of objects to a showroom worthy of a museum.

She hurried on up the stairs to her own room. It was nearly midnight and she really should get some sleep.

But after showering—she felt she had to; somehow death seemed to be clinging to her—she discovered that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop thinking. So she lay awake, hour after hour.

Michael Quinn. He was a celebrity once. But he’d been known for hard living, for dating a different beauty every week and attracting national attention, from sportscasters to pop stars. He’d been escorted out of a few establishments, and he’d been escorted into a few jails. Then there was an accident, and he’d disappeared from public view. For a few years, whenever a wicked football game was on, people would say, “If only Michael Quinn was playing!” and then even those sentiments died away.

Danni rose, turning the lights back on. Her iPhone was on her dresser; she walked over, booted up and keyed in “Michael Quinn.”

At first, it was all football stories—or stories about Quinn at local establishments. It was true that while he was a phenomenon, he promoted his city and its shopkeepers and tourist venues by being photographed in front of them all the time.

There was a picture of him being arrested. He was still smiling, and it was obvious that he couldn’t wave to the crowd because he was cuffed.

His hair had been longer then, falling over one of his eyes.

I died, he had told her.

She searched and searched and finally found an article. At least he hadn’t killed anyone else, nor had he had a passenger in the car when his alcohol level had skyrocketed and he had driven himself off I-10 and into Lake Pontchartrain.

Danni kept going from link to link, site to site.

He survived the crash, although his injuries had been extensive.

She came across a poor YouTube version of the news conference he’d held when he left the hospital. He announced he was leaving football, then thanked his family and a priest named Father Ryan and his doctors for his life. He said he didn’t know what he’d be doing yet, but probably, if the service would take him, he’d be joining the navy. Something warm stirred inside Danni; he was at a point many people came to. He’d nearly destroyed his life—he could straighten up, or go back to his wild ways. But there was a humility in his speech that touched her. There was sorrow in his eyes when he hugged his mother, a blonde woman who showed her age but, even with the aging he’d no doubt caused, had a gentle beauty. His father was tall and had tears in his eyes when he hugged his son.

The next reference she could find was a small news clip when he was accepted into the service and heading off to boot camp.

She found another brief mention when he joined the NOLA police force. And another, with a thumbnail picture beside it, when he left the force to begin his own business in private investigation.

She sat back, studying the screen, her stomach knotting. Her father was next to him in that picture. They were standing outside the station on Royal Street. Her father had one arm around Michael Quinn’s shoulder. She noted an advertising banner behind them for Jazz Fest three years earlier.

Danni sat back, trying to create a time line, trying to figure out how she hadn’t grasped a memory of his name when she’d first seen him in the shop. She’d been gone for four years of college, and she’d spent two years in New York City after that, apprenticing at an advertising company and then creating ads for clients. During summer breaks, she’d traveled with her father. She’d left the agency two years ago to come home and start working on her own projects; she’d done well, she could honestly say that. First, she’d sold watercolors on Jackson Square. Then she’d had work accepted by Colors of the World, a gallery down the street.

Her father had insisted they use the shop as a venue for her. She’d fought the idea at first, not wanting to fall back on family. Besides, it was a curio and antiques shop. And she really wanted to make it on her own. But then her dad had asked her to improve the look of the place—and she’d realized some of her oil paintings and watercolors could help in doing just that.

Michael Quinn was five or six years older than she was. So it seemed he’d come back from the service, joined the force and quit while she’d been gone. Not that she’d ever known him; she’d grown up in the Quarter while he’d been an uptown boy.

She clicked back to the picture of the man standing with her father.

And she thought about Gladys Simon.

It was late by then, but she threw on a robe and left her room, following the low-level emergency lights down to the shop and then to the basement level.

She paused for a minute. She’d never been afraid in the shop, her apartment or even the basement in the old house before. She’d always been surrounded by Egyptian artifacts, sarcophagi, coffins, death masks, antique weapons, ghastly movie props and more. She was as accustomed to these strange things as most children were to sofas, family photos on the wall and wide-screen televisions.

But that night, she was hesitant. The corners of the room appeared darker. A mannequin might have moved; a gorilla from a 1920s movie seemed to be staring at her from out of the shadows. A death mask of an Egyptian queen might have blinked.

“Ridiculous!” she said aloud. This was her home, her playground as a girl. She knew to be careful with these artifacts, but they’d never frightened her.