S
heriff Spike Devol lived with his family at Rosebank Resort, where Max and his brothers had apartments. Spike had assumed part ownership of the resort when he’d married Vivian Patin. Charlotte, Vivian’s mother, remained a partner and also lived on the premises, as did Wendy, Spike’s daughter by his first marriage.
Drinking coffee at a window table in Hungry Eyes, a combination café and bookshop, Max kept an eye on the sheriff’s cruiser parked at the curb.
Spike was coming to meet him.
The suggestion that they have a chat in the café had been Spike’s, but the location also helped solve one of Max’s problems. He had to see Annie and he intended to hang around until he managed just that.
Annie drove an elderly red Volvo sedan. No sign of it yet. Max knew Annie usually entered the building through the shop if it was open, and used a door at the back of the café. Steps from a vestibule led up to her flat.
At Pappy’s, a night manager took over from Annie most evenings and Max counted on her coming home by six. Once she was upstairs he’d feel better. At least he’d know where to find her.
Engrossed, Spike talked on his radio while staring into the glow of a computer screen. He made Max nervous. When he issued the “invitation” to Hungry Eyes he had avoided saying what exactly was on his mind. Max volunteered to meet the sheriff at his office but Spike kept deliberately cheerful and said there was “No need for formality—yet.” The “yet” didn’t sound so friendly to Max who knew the topic would be Michele Riley.
What if there weren’t any leads?
Spike wasn’t coming here for nothing.
When he was alone again, Max intended to go outside to the street and take a right between Joe and Ellie Gable’s house and Joe’s law offices, into an alley leading to back entrances into the buildings. The back door to Hungry Eyes was also Annie’s front door. She could have gotten past without him seeing her.
She could well refuse to talk to him and shut him out. He drew his lips back from his teeth. Chatter at several other tables helped him feel anonymous. Max didn’t want to attract any attention.
He had already made up his mind not to be put off. Whatever it took, he would get to Annie. After her meltdown earlier in the day she had refused to be examined by a doctor, even after he’d set out for Reb Girard’s office. Annie would not discuss what had occurred, and something had definitely happened. All she had agreed to was going back to Pappy’s where she’d insisted she was fine.
“I haven’t really eaten today,”
she’d said.
“I think my blood sugar gets low. A little shakiness, that’s all it was.”
Sure, and a little shakiness made a woman say bizarre things, stagger about with unfocused eyes, then collapse. He had never believed in such things before but he was almost convinced she had seen some sort of vision in that clearing.
“Did you get my letter yet?”
Max couldn’t keep that Darth Vader voice out of his head for long. He’d heard it before, several times. The one call he’d tried to get traced had come from a phone box and the trail was an immediate dead end.
The rain had stopped and with the early evening came a lemon sun dressed in puffs of navy blue. Why wasn’t Annie here yet?
“She be here soon, cher.”
A soft female voice startled Max and he looked up at Wazoo (L’Oisseau de Nuit to strangers), whom Annie had told him ran the shop during recently extended hours.
Wazoo also lived at Rosebank where she ran housekeeping and obviously had a special place in Vivian and Charlotte’s hearts.
Calling Wazoo eccentric would be redundant. She was also a beautiful woman with olive coloring and an extraordinary face. And she was small, very feminine and the unofficial property of an NOPD homicide detective, Nat Archer. Or maybe that was the other way around. Wazoo wouldn’t take kindly to being called any man’s property.
“What did you say?” Max asked.
The woman didn’t meet his eyes and refilled his coffee as if she’d never spoken. But she had, and she must mean Annie. Wazoo didn’t know he and Annie were friends. Even if she did, how would she figure out he was thinking about her, waiting for her?
Wazoo balanced the curve of her carafe on the edge of the table. Slowly, she raised her face and her blank expression confused him. Then light sharpened in her eyes as she looked intently at Max. He saw her shudder.
“You like somethin’ else?” she asked, her voice flat.
He shook his head, no. “You said—”
“Nothin’,” she interrupted him. “I didn’t say nothin’, me.”
Max drummed his fingernails on his cup. He raised one eyebrow in question.
“I got to get back to work,” she said, frowning deeply, still staring at him. “Take care of what you love.” A wide smile transformed her. “Wazoo’s gettin’ tired. Enjoy the coffee.”
When she turned away her dress swished. As she returned to the counter, she stopped to fill cups for other customers.
Laughter came from deep in the shop, on the book side. Max couldn’t see anyone between the stacks.
A man sitting alone rustled his paper loudly and felt around for part of a sandwich on his plate. He carried the food behind the paper.
What had Wazoo meant, dammit? What did she know?
He glanced toward Spike’s cruiser again. How much should he volunteer to the sheriff? Nothing? Everything? Mentioning the call would be pointless. Once his history spread through Toussaint, he would be second-guessing every look that came his way. And if Michele didn’t show up fast, he’d become the prime suspect in her disappearance.
Spike got out of his car and Max studied the man: A tall, muscular guy, good-looking with blond hair and a Stetson tipped forward over his eyes. His khaki uniform fit him well. He flashed a smile at a woman leaving the shop and carried on to the door.
This day continued to stink. More clouds piled over what was left of the sun and daylight faded fast. Max’s pulse beat off the seconds, double time, while he waited. He expected bad news to keep on coming.
The shop bell rang and Spike stepped inside.
Max turned to greet the man but Wazoo cried, “Be still, my heart. Here come that sexy lawman. You come on in, Spike, I been needin’ a gorgeous man to play with my mind. What you want? I got gumbo—best around. And…no, no, de gumbo best. I give you a bowl a gumbo.”
Spike swept off his hat to reveal hair that stuck up in front, and bright blue eyes. His easy grin sent Wazoo twirling, her long black curls flying and the purple lace dress swirling about her feet. She held her hands over her heart and went into a mock swoon.
Several customers laughed and so did Spike. “Guess I’ll be havin’ the gumbo, Wazoo. I’ll be with Max over there—” he nodded in Max’s direction “—and I’ll take black coffee with that.”
The woman was odd, Max thought. She said whatever came into her head and everyone around knew she did. No one took her seriously and neither should he.
Spike took the chair opposite Max and they shook hands over the blue-and-white check tablecloth. “You know Wazoo?” Spike asked.
“I live at Rosebank, remember?” Max said. “So does she. I don’t think she’d allow me to ignore her.”
“True.”
“She seems to have a lot of jobs.” Max glanced back to the road. “I only found out about this one a few nights ago.”
“Wazoo works for Jilly Gautreaux over at All Tarted Up, too. She helps with the early bakin’. Then she’s back at Rosebank makin’ sure the rooms are made up the way she likes ’em. And here in the late afternoon.” Spike leaned closer. “Don’t say anythin’, but I think Ellie Gable came up with this evenin’ openin’ thing ’cause Wazoo needs more money.”
“Sounds like something Ellie would do,” Max said and almost followed up by saying he should be able to find something for Wazoo at the clinic. There were only so many hours in the woman’s day and she’d probably be a disaster around patients.
Max hadn’t known about Wazoo’s job in the kitchens at the pastry shop where just about everyone in town passed through between early morning and midafternoon. He didn’t add to Spike that he’d been told Wazoo was an animal therapist—therapy for emotionally disturbed critters—and that she also dealt in a little hoodoo and gave foreboding predictions. And sang at funerals.
Wazoo moved around rapidly behind the café counter, pausing frequently to snap her fingers in time to a country beat coming from an old radio. A glass jar filled with salt-water taffy kept the radio safely wedged on a small shelf. At a signal Max couldn’t hear, she opened the door to the back vestibule and stared down. A moment later she draped a tiny, mostly white cat around her neck. The animal stretched her small body to an impossible length and looked as if her dark markings were Egyptian, including the kohl-like lines around her eyes.
No doubt the health department would have something to say about a cat in a café, but several of the patrons crooned, “Irene, baby, Irene, cher,” so he guessed the cat was a fixture.
Irene baby curled her lip at every would-be friend, and she wasn’t smiling.
“You called,” Spike said.
Max looked at him quickly. “I called you back.”
Spike gave a slow smile and nodded. “Is that the way it went? Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind, then I’ll tell you what’s on mine.”
Playing it cute wouldn’t earn him any points with the sheriff, Max decided. “Michele Riley is on my mind. I’m hoping you invited me here because there’s good news.”
Wazoo brought Spike’s coffee, glanced from one man to the other and slipped away quickly, but not before the cat gave Max a narrow-eyed stare. “This isn’t what I wanted to tell you,” Spike said. “We don’t have any leads, Max. All we have is what you told us. She had dinner with you and your brothers and afterward you drove her back to the Majestic. You saw her inside. And she disappeared.”
“We both know that didn’t happen,” Max said. He stared outside again. He hadn’t driven away from the hotel until the lights went off in the hall. What the hell could have happened to Michele? “She went into the hotel. If there was—I don’t know, an attack—why didn’t Gator and Doll and their boy hear? Why isn’t there evidence of a struggle?”
“You tell me.”
Max’s skin tightened. “Come again?”
“I said, you tell me why there’s no evidence and no one heard anything. I’m fresh out of ideas and, unlike you, I never saw the woman at all.”
Max frowned. He caught Wazoo’s eye and pointed to his cup, more because he needed whatever thinking time he could buy than because he wanted more coffee.
Wazoo came with Spike’s bowl of gumbo in one hand and a carafe in the other. She set down the bowl and filled both coffee cups. “Be right back,” she said, her eyes making a swift study of their faces. “You got trouble,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “Big trouble. I keep smelling somethin’ real bad.” She sniffed the air and returned to the counter.
Max didn’t meet Spike’s eyes. First Annie passed out in front of him and came around begging not to be burned, then Wazoo talked about smelling something bad—like burning, maybe? If he was the type to run, he’d already be on his way, but running wouldn’t stop the madness.
Carrying corn bread and a dish of honey butter, Wazoo returned and this time she slid into a seat at the table.
“You’re deserting your post,” Spike said.
She snorted. “No such thing, lawman. I’m right here and I got real good eyes.”
“I think I see someone back in the books waving for you.”
Wazoo gave Max a pitying look. “They know where to find me, not that I’m any book expert. The reading group’s at the back—they answer anyone’s questions—makes ’em feel important and suits me. This Michele, they sayin’ she come lookin’ for a job at Green Veil. That place used to be called Serenity House, y’know.” She disentangled the cat and sat it on her lap where it rested its nose on the table and switched its green-gold gaze between the men.
“We know what the house was called,” Spike said. “But thanks for the reminder.”
“She’s dead, that one. I know what I see.”
“Who’s dead?” Max shot back at her. “What do you see?” If she said something about fire, he might lose it.
“It isn’t that easy,” Wazoo said. “I can’t turn it on like a picture show. Gotta wait for stuff to come clear, but that Michele ain’t with us here no more.”
“You shouldn’t play around with things as important as this,” Max said. He prickled all over.
Spike spooned up gumbo, chewed vegetables and managed to appear almost disinterested.
“Vivian,” Wazoo said abruptly, pointing a long forefinger with a red-painted nail. “How is she? This baby is blessed, I feel it.” She closed her eyes, raised her chin and breathed hard through her mouth. “The last little one couldn’t stay, had other places to go. This one has things to do right where he is.”
The expressions that flitted over Spike’s face intrigued Max. The even-tempered, almost flip facade was gone, replaced by a sharper and definitely worried frown. “We don’t know if we’re having a boy or a girl,” he said. “Thanks for the kind words, though. Only a few weeks to go now.”
“Now you listen to me,” Wazoo said, settling a hand on top of one of his. “There’s nothin’ to be afraid of this time around. That little one is takin’ all the energy it needs from Vivian. It’s wearin’ her out but like you say, it’ll soon be over. She’s worried now because of losing the last baby, but she doesn’t need to give it a thought.”