Cities of the Dead (23 page)

“Come on, Armand. If you were so innocent back then, why did you bilk Fontenot out of his share of the loot? Why'd you tell him T-Bob ran off with the money?”

“He would have had something on me the rest of my life if I'd told him I killed T-Bob. The way he was when he came out of that jail, he would have used it. Something happened to Joe in prison. It was a different man walked out.”

Spraggue took two steps forward. Armand, now deep in the past, didn't seem to notice.

“Besides,” he said faintly, “I got used to thinking of that money as mine. I opened my own restaurant, lived my dream. I never had that rich uncle, only the dream. I was settled. I paid my debt to Fontenot, with his daughter.”

“Fontenot believed in your rich uncle?”

“Right up until they opened that tomb.”

“Why not?” Spraggue said. One more step. “You were friends.”

“Yeah, we were friends.”

“He knew as soon as he saw the article in the newspaper?”

“He knew we'd planned to meet at the cemetery.”

Another step. “Let me take Dora out of here. That's all I want.”

“Stop!” Armand held the knife to Dora's chin, freezing Spraggue in his tracks.

“She's no good to you with a knife in her throat, Armand. Her death has to look like suicide or the confession won't stick, right?”

“She can stab herself.” Armand's hand moved slowly. “In the gut, maybe. Like Joe. She will, if you come one step closer.”

“It won't work, Armand. Very rare, a knife suicide. And they'll do an autopsy, find whatever you gave her, wonder why she took something first. And besides, there'll be a witness, won't there?”

That made him pause. His tongue flicked out and licked his lips again. “Yeah,” he said. “I see. Now, listen to me. You don't want her cut right now, you walk over here real slow.”

Where the hell was Rawlins?

“You figured out where she'd go to kill herself,” Armand said softly. “You tried to stop her. She picked up a knife and—”

Armand's arm flew upward. He shouted, and Dora was out of the chair, a ribbon of red across her forearm where the knife had sliced a path. She was up, conscious, but too drugged to stand. She clung to Armand's neck, bowing him with her weight. His hand moved with the knife.

Spraggue was there, grabbing Dora by the shoulders, throwing her as far as he could, away from the knife. She fell like a dead weight, but he couldn't worry about her now. Armand had forgotten her and was coming for him.

Spraggue's hand searched the table behind him, found a pot lid, threw it in Armand's face. The man ducked but kept on coming, waving the knife before him.

Out of the corner of his eye, Spraggue could see Dora struggling to her feet. “Stay down,” he hollered. “Get out.”

Armand turned his head. Spraggue had the handle of a pot now. Hoping it was a huge skillet and not some tiny crêpe pan, he aimed it at Armand's forearm.

The chef turned back, moved his arm, and scored a slice on Spraggue's wrist. Spraggue dropped the pan, but was able to put a table between himself and Armand.

Dora was hanging onto a red-checked table cloth to keep herself upright, staggering toward Armand, not away. Her lips were moving, but Spraggue couldn't make out any words. She grabbed something off a table. It flashed in her hand.

Armand turned first one way, then the other. He decided on Dora. He could get her out of the way quickly, drugged and staggering as she was, then come back for Spraggue.

A slim metal rod hung overhead, chained to the ceiling, dangling heavy Calphalon pans. Spraggue clambered onto a tabletop, put one hand on either end of the rod and pulled, letting his weight bring the whole assembly down.

The clatter stopped Armand, but only for an instant.

Spraggue freed the rod, a shaft of steel six feet long. One end had the chain still attached. He jumped off the table. He couldn't see Dora.

The banner was white with bright red script.
Chicago Cutlery
. The upright cabinet had sliding glass doors. Locked doors. He swung the metal bar like a baseball bat. The glass cracked and shattered. He ran the bar around the frame, loosening jagged fragments, clearing space for his arm. He stuck one blade, Shakespearean dagger size, in his pocket and grabbed a longer knife by its dark wooden handle.

“Armand!” he yelled. “Dora!”

A clatter of pots and pans came from his left, two rows away. He vaulted over a table, pushed a cart aside.

Armand knelt over Dora, his upraised hand clutching the knife. Her hand gripped his forearm, pushing it back, but the look on her face said she couldn't keep up the battle much longer. Her eyes were open and unafraid.

Spraggue crooked his left arm around Armand's throat, pressed his blade against the man's back. “Drop it,” he said.

The chef's knife fell to the ground and Spraggue kicked it away. It glittered on the carpet like a fallen branch from a silver tree.

“I'm taking Dora out of here,” Spraggue said.

“I thought she was unconscious,” Armand muttered. “I thought she was dead.”

She lay huddled on the floor. Spraggue could hear her panting weakly. He couldn't see her face. Blood welled out of deep cuts on her forearms.

“I've got to get her to a hospital.”

“Go ahead.”

“The police will be here soon.”

“I won't leave.” Armand stared at the knife on the carpet, four feet away, out of reach. “It's over.”

“That depends on you,” Spraggue said.

TWENTY-FOUR

The witchcraft shop lost a lot of magic in the daylight. The crowded shelves were less enticing through a film of dust, the gimcracks tawdry instead of bright. A fly buzzed Spraggue's ear as he stooped to pick up a blue plastic voodoo doll marked with darker blue arrows and circles. He wondered if the price included pins. If the place had been lit only by candles, he couldn't have read
MADE IN TAIWAN
on the tag.

Dressed in a bland skirt and blouse that could have outfitted any salesclerk, Sister Delores in the daytime wasn't half the treat she'd been at night either. Spraggue hoped his aunt would enjoy her “psychic reading” none the less. He thought she would. Rawlins was with her, and occasional explosions of laughter erupted from the back room.

He closed his eyes, The shop still smelled of potent magic.

“Your aunt,
monsieur
, she will be ready soon to leave for the airport?” Dora's voice startled him. She'd lost some of that fine-drawn look of the past week, but her voice was tight and quavery. She hadn't smiled since she'd woken up at the hospital, unsure of where she was, of what had happened. They'd hardly spoken since.

“As soon as Flowers comes, we'll leave. Don't worry.” He replaced the voodoo doll on the counter and turned to investigate a bookshelf.

“
Monsieur,
” Dora murmured. “I wanted to thank you.”

“Look, you didn't kill Fontenot. The jury would have come to that conclusion if the police hadn't realized it before it got that far.”

“No, not for that. I don't thank you for freeing me from jail. It sounds terrible, I know, but I wish to thank you for Paul Armand's death, for his silence.”

Spraggue stared at the wooden floor. “You can thank me for his silence. I don't want credit for his death.”

Rawlins had described the scene in the Imperial Orleans display room. Suicide by knife. Rare, but it happened. Spraggue didn't want to think about it. He was sure he would dream about it often, red splashed against the golden carpet.

“Can I ask you something?” Spraggue said to chase the memory away. “That night when you tried to sneak out of the hotel …?”

“It must have been Armand. I got a phone call, a whispery voice, disguised. Someone said if I went to the Old Absinthe House I would learn something about my daughter.”

Spraggue thought, if she'd gone out that night, she'd never have come back.

“Did the voice tell you to leave a note in your room?”

“Yes. Later, I ripped it up. I couldn't leave because you were there, and I didn't know whether to believe the voice.”

“You recognized the voice when he called again?”

“Yes, and by then I knew he spoke the truth, because I had seen her for myself.”

“You knew she was your daughter, right off, when she came to the hotel. How? She doesn't—”

“No,” Dora said softly. “She doesn't look like me. But when I saw her standing in the light—my mother died when I was young. I haven't thought of her in years, but I could see her standing there, my mother. My daughter.”

“Armand must have been watching the hotel. Or watching Aimee.”

“He said she killed him. That she was my little girl and she killed him. I believed him. I shouldn't have, perhaps. But I didn't—I don't know her, and that man, the man my Jacques had become, I could believe any vile thing of that man.”

“You haven't told her? Told Aimee?”

Dora's voice was a whisper. “I can't.”

“Why?”

“Jeannine.”

“What do you owe Jeannine?”

Dora shrugged. “She raised my child as her own. Think of it,
monsieur
. If your life was based on a lie, a lie you told once a long time ago, almost as much to yourself as to the rest of the world, would you want someone to come along and jerk the tablecloth and smash all the crystal?”

“Jeannine set too elaborate a table. She could have told Aimee she was adopted.”

“How? With Joseph there?” Dora's hands moved over the shelves, touching, brushing, lifting, as if they had a will of their own. “I told myself once that it would be enough for me to know that somewhere in the world I had a child, to imagine that the child was happy.”

“It's not enough?”

“Not today.” She dropped a deck of Tarot cards, using their recovery as an excuse to duck her head and look away. “Today I want to make everything over in my life. I want to take that girl in my arms and say to her, anything I have is yours. Just let me make up to you the time I took away from you. And then, I realize that she doesn't know. For her everything is the same. She'll never know.”

Dora placed the Tarot cards carefully back on the shelf, lining them up with the edge, squaring the pack. Her hand shook. “In my head, I think that Jeannine had no right to make it as if I never existed. I think, in my head, it would be wrong for me to say a word. Aimee has a mother. Jeannine has a daughter. With a word, I could tear them apart. And my heart would like to say the word.”

A floral-print tourist marched in the door and announced to her camera-toting companion that the place was just too precious. Spraggue searched for comforting words. None came. None adequate. He put his hand on Dora's shoulder.

“I'll wait outside,” she said. “For the cab.”

Damn all impossible choices, Spraggue thought. Where was Flowers anyway? Shouldn't he have picked up Pierce and the luggage at the hotel by now?

He picked a handful of colored gris-gris charms out of a basket. Blue, gold, white. Love. Money. Protection.

What was his hurry? No acting job to scramble back to. Nobody else's life to lead. His old actor's terror seized him, the feeling that somehow, without someone else to play, without a mask to slip over his real face, he would disappear.

No lover. No son, no daughter.

The cloying smell of aromatic herbs made him cough.

Aunt Mary and Rawlins emerged from the back room, with the sergeant beaming like a novice poker player trying to conceal a royal flush. Sister Del's melodious voice invited them to stop by again, any time.

“Your aunt has an aura of positive energy,” Rawlins said to Spraggue.

“I could have told you that,” Spraggue said.

“A lot you could have told me,” Rawlins said.

“Your line was busy,” Spraggue said. “Maybe I should have kept on trying, but I wasn't sure they'd be at the Imperial Orleans. I thought we'd have a better shot if you checked the other possibilities. I'm sorry.”

“And I'm sorry for not gettin' there on the dot. That damned cabbie of yours—”

“Stop rehashing it,” Mary said. “It all worked out fine.” She tucked her hand into the crook of Rawlins' elbow. Her aura of positive energy had mussed a few of her red and silver curls and tangled them over her forehead.

“Sister Del spin you a good tale?” Spraggue asked. “Fame and fortune?”

“Romance,” Rawlins said. “Definitely romance.”

“Michael,” Mary said, gazing straight at Rawlins though she spoke her nephew's name. “If you and Pierce can manage without me for a few days—”

“I can. I don't know about Pierce.”

“I've never actually seen Mardi gras,” she said.

Rawlins' grin spread over his face and lit up his eyes.

Magic.

Flowers pulled the cab halfway up onto the sidewalk and tooted the horn.

Acknowledgments

Lt. Byron L. Anderson, Commander of the Homicide Unit of the New Orleans Police Department, graciously answered my many questions concerning the workings of the Homicide Unit. I would like to thank him for his help.

My Louisiana friends, Craig Braquet, Mike Broussard, Marcy Clerc, and David Landskov, quided me through restaurants and graveyards, and checked the manuscript for accuracy. Their kindness is greatly appreciated.

Steven Appelblatt, Richard Barnes, Susan Linn, James Morrow, and Karen Motylewski commented on the manuscript in various stages of completion. Their suggestions were generously given and gratefully received.

About the Author

Linda Barnes is the award-winning author of the Carlotta Carlyle Mysteries. Her witty private-investigator heroine has been hailed as “a true original” by Sue Grafton. Barnes is also the author of the Michael Spraggue Mysteries and a stand-alone novel,
The Perfect Ghost
.