Death of a Beauty Queen

When he’d come down the stairs, he’d expected her to be nipping at his heels, making sure he left. But she hadn’t followed. He didn’t like that she’d trusted him to leave.

However, because she hadn’t followed him, he’d had a couple of seconds to check out the official-looking form he’d noticed on the foyer table when he’d first come in. He’d scanned it quickly, with the help of the high-intensity laser light on his keychain. The form was a permit renewal for a vendor space on St. Ann Street, signed by Rose Bohème.

The name on the form was Renée Pettitpas, but the renewal date was after Maman Renée’s death. A thrill ran through him as he realized what he was looking at. He glanced back toward the stairs, then back to the form.

Judging by the diagram, the space appeared to be right in front of the praline shop. Dixon had walked by that small square of land dozens, maybe scores of times in the past twelve years. Had Rose been there every time? How had he not noticed the beautiful black-haired gypsy reading her tarot cards or holding a customer’s palm?

He was at once gratified and disappointed that he hadn’t sensed her there. Disappointed because he might have been able to close her case years earlier, but gratified that he wasn’t so in tune with Rosemary Delancey that he could have actually sensed her presence in the middle of bright, busy Jackson Square.

Now he reluctantly headed for his Dodge Charger. He felt an irritating compulsion to stay all night and watch over her. Her reaction to his questions about her attack had worried him. But when she’d threatened to call 911, he’d been forced to acknowledge that the last thing he wanted was to find himself explaining to local uniformed police why he was harassing her.

And for damn sure he didn’t want Ethan to know what he was doing. Rosemary Delancey was his partner’s first cousin, and in his family’s minds, she’d been dead for twelve years. Dixon didn’t want to give them false hope or listen to Ethan telling him how gullible he was to believe a broken-down addict looking to score a few perks in prison.

He was going to need more proof than her terror and his obsession before he turned the Delanceys’ lives upside down. He tried not to think about what he was doing to her carefully insulated life.

Glancing back at the house once more, he noticed that the faded sign was rocking slightly in the wind. Maman Renée, Vodun, Potions, Fortunes.

Rose had lived here, safely hidden away. It was arrogant to assume that now that he’d found her, she wouldn’t be safe without him.

FIFTEEN MINUTES FROM the time he drove away from Renée Pettitpas’s two-story shotgun house, Dixon was sitting on the cracked, uneven patio of the home he’d bought out of foreclosure four years ago. He’d finally decided two things at age thirty-two: he wasn’t the marrying kind, and renting was like tossing his money into the Mississippi River.

He leaned back in the teak chair and took a sip of the brandy he’d chosen instead of a beer.

He swirled the snifter, admiring its amber color in the reflection of the goldfish pool lights. Amber—the color of Rosemary Delancey’s eyes.

He’d stood in front of her less than an hour ago, and yet now, the whole experience almost seemed like a dream. He closed his eyes, trying to conjure up the vision of her at twenty-two. The girl whose image had soaked into his brain like her blood had soaked into the hardwood floor of her apartment. But that innocent, smiling girl no longer existed.

Now all he could see was midnight-black hair, shocking in contrast to her dark red brows, the ugly scar that only made her face more interesting and fascinating, the casual flowing clothes that he was sure Rosemary Delancey, debutante and Carnival Queen, had never even considered wearing.

He shifted in his chair and reached for his wallet.

“No,” he said out loud, stopping himself. He stood and picked up the jar of fish food sitting on the glass-topped table beside him.

“Here you go, Pete, Louie. Remember I told you about Rosemary Delancey?”

Louis Armstrong and Pete Fountain, his goldfish, were much more interested in the food he tossed them than his conversation.

“Come on, Louie, you remember. My first homicide. She was the Carnival Queen?” He took a sip of brandy, trying to forget about the photo in his wallet. He didn’t want to look at her twenty-two-year-old face. He was no longer obsessed with that girl anymore. That pretty debutante was dead.

“You ought to see her,” he told Louis. “She walks like she’s on a runway. Her hair is black as night, but those eyes …” He held up the glass of brandy. “See how the pool lights hit the brandy? That’s the exact color of her eyes.”

Louis gulped down the last of the food floating on the surface of the pool, turned sideways and gave Dixon a sour look, then headed for deeper water.

Pete was still swimming around, looking for one more morsel. Dixon was pretty sure Pete wouldn’t appreciate hearing about Rose Bohème’s attributes. She was already jealous of Louis. As if she could hear Dixon’s thoughts, Pete flipped her tail and disappeared beneath the philodendron leaves that floated on the pool’s surface.

He smiled wryly and finished his brandy. “Don’t be jealous, Pete. I doubt you’ll have to worry about her. You’ll probably never meet her.”

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. His pulse jumped. Could it be Rose calling him? But when he looked at the display, he saw that it was Ethan.

He sighed and answered. “Hey, what’s up?” He really didn’t want to go out on a job this late. Not when he planned to be up before dawn tomorrow.

“Nothing,” Ethan said, and Dixon breathed a sigh of relief.

“I just wanted to double check about the time tomorrow.”

“Time?” he echoed as he turned off the pool lights and headed inside.

“Were you asleep?” Ethan asked.

“No. What about the time?”

“The Saints’s scrimmage? That you wanted to go to?” Ethan said. “Don’t tell me you forgot.”

“The—” Dixon stopped. He had forgotten. “Sorry, I can’t go,” he said. “Something’s come up.”

Ethan was quiet for a split second. “Something’s come up since this morning?” he snapped. “What the hell?”

Dixon thought fast. “It’s Dee. She needs me to—to move some stuff.” He winced. He didn’t like lying to his partner, but what was he going to tell him? I’ll be busy chasing down a lead on your dead cousin? Yeah, that would work.

“Right. Your sister is insisting that you change your plans to help her. That’s so like Dee,” Ethan said flatly. It wasn’t a question. It was a very sarcastic, disgusted statement.

“Come on, Ethan. You ought to understand family. Dee didn’t insist. She just looked so disappointed.” It was a low blow, playing the family card, but Dixon knew it would work with Ethan.

Another second of silence. “Yeah. Fine. I’ll see if Harte wants to go.”

“Why don’t you take that girl you’ve been dating?” Dixon suggested, hoping to redirect Ethan’s ire.

“Why don’t you mind your own business?”

Dixon laughed. “Uh-oh. Trouble in paradise. What’d you do? Make her get her own drink?” Ethan had been going out with the daughter of a prominent New Orleans attorney. He’d complained about her being high-maintenance.

“No. I didn’t do anything.”

“She doesn’t like football, does she?”

Ethan muttered a curse word. “If it’s not cappuccino or designer shoes, she’s not interested. Have fun moving furniture.”

“Yeah,” Dixon said, and started to hang up, then he thought of something. “Hey, Delancey,” he said. “When your cousin died, she was living in her own apartment, right?”

“Dix, really? More questions about Rosemary? That T-Bo really got under your skin, didn’t he?” Ethan sighed. “Yes, she was living in her own apartment. Why?”

“I was wondering if there was any friction between her and her parents. Was that why she left home?”

He heard Ethan sigh. “I have no idea. Anything else?”

“Nope,” Dixon said and hung up. He scrubbed a hand down his face as he set the phone on its charging station. Eventually he was going to have to tell Ethan that his cousin Rosemary was alive and living less than six blocks from where she was attacked.

Dixon headed through the kitchen to his bedroom. He needed to get to sleep. It was after ten, and 5:00 a.m. would come way too soon.