Darkest Journey (17 page)

“Thank you,” Ethan said, handing him his card. “Cell phone—you can reach me anytime.”

Charlie and Jude got up and joined Ethan, ready to leave, but Sean stopped her.

“Thank you,” he said. “You made my aunt very happy.”

Julio thanked them, as well, and walked them to the door. He said he, too, would try to think of anything that might help, though he didn't think that was likely. He did, however, take Ethan's card.

They made one more stop, and that was at the college, where they had arranged to meet up with Vince Raleigh, the local detective in charge of the case.

Raleigh couldn't see any reason to associate the murder of a cleaning woman with that of a professor—even though they worked in the same place—when the circumstances of the two killings were so different. He accompanied them to speak with Albert Lacroix, the dean of the college, who unfortunately had nothing useful to offer. They hadn't known that the professor was missing because he had arranged for time off and was supposed to be gone.

“I can't believe we've lost two members of our staff in such a short time, and to think they were both murdered...”

“We believe,” Detective Raleigh said, “that Mrs. Rodriguez was walking in the wrong place at the wrong time, while Professor Corley seems to have been targeted. We're putting all our resources into solving Mrs. Rodriguez's murder, I promise you.”

Charlie could tell that Raleigh was trying to hide his annoyance at the FBI's presence and their intrusion into his case, but his feelings simmered close enough to the surface for her to pick up on them.

“Dean Lacroix,” Ethan said, “do you have any idea who Professor Corley might have been meeting with in St. Francisville?”

“Old friends—that's all he ever told me,” Lacroix said.

Ethan and Jude thanked the detective and the dean for their time, and Raleigh led them out of the dean's office. The three men stopped in the hall to trade thoughts, and Charlie wandered away. She realized she was standing outside Albion Corley's office. The letters of his name had recently been pried from the outer door, but the “ghosts” of their forms still remained.

She looked back and saw that the men were still talking and found herself compelled to step inside, closing the door behind her.

She saw a tiny woman, dark-haired, older, with a pleasant face, standing by the window. She was wearing a faded blue uniform with a white apron.

And, of course, she was dead. Charlie realized that immediately.

The woman turned, caught sight of Charlie and walked over to meet her; then, smiling, she reached up as if to touch Charlie's face.

“Leticia...” the woman said.

“Charlie, Charlene Moreau,” Charlie said softly. “But, yes, I play Leticia on the show. You're Mrs. Rodriguez, aren't you? We're trying to find whoever killed you.”

The smile on the woman's face faded, and she looked as if she was about to cry.

Charlie wanted to kick herself for reminding the woman of what had happened to her. “I'm so sorry. Please, forgive me. But we really do want to help you.”

The woman nodded and walked back to the window.

It was as if she wanted to feel the sunshine just one more time.

“Who did this?” Charlie asked softly. “Can you describe them? Can you tell me anything at all?”

Selma Rodriguez turned back to her and shook her head slowly. “I was walking to the bus stop. It was late, because my shift starts when everyone else goes home. I like working late, though. It's quiet, you know?”

Charlie realized Selma was speaking in the present tense, as if she still hadn't fully accepted her own death yet, and glanced back to the door, wondering what would happen if Detective Raleigh were to step in and catch her talking to the empty room. “I understand,” she said. “Please...help us to help you.”

Selma shook her head and said something softly in Spanish, then switched back to English and said, “I don't know anything.” She suddenly appeared angry. “I am a nice person, a good person, but if I knew who the bastard was...” She clenched her ghostly fists at her sides. “I'd—I'd haunt him! I'd learn, and I'd trip him and shove him when he was shaving and...” She broke off with a little sob, her hand at her throat.

Charlie hadn't known how Selma had died. The police were holding on to that information, though she was sure Ethan and Jude knew.

And now she knew, too.

Selma's throat had been slit.

“He came from behind,” Selma whispered. “I was so stunned, I barely felt the knife, just something warm, wet...the blood...and then the night faded, and I was looking down at myself, my blood drenching the ground.”

“Selma, I'm so sorry.” Charlie glanced at the door again. “Can you tell me... Did Professor Corley tell you why he was going to St. Francisville?”

“He said he was going to talk to an old friend and fix a...a situation. He said he knew what was going on, and so did others, and that they agreed it was wrong, and he said he would fix it.”

“Did he mention a name?” Charlie asked.

Selma grew thoughtful, looking out the window once again. “Don...? No. Oh, I know! Jon. Jonathan. That was his name.” She looked at Charlie with pride at having pulled the name from her memory.

Charlie had to force herself not to scream, not to reach out and try to shake a ghost, not to tell a poor murdered woman that she was a liar.

“Thank you,” she managed, just as the door began to open.

Selma let out a little breath of air and vanished into the dust motes that played before the window.

9

C
harlie hadn't thought to ask about what arrangements Ethan and Jude had made for themselves when they reached New Orleans. Thinking about it as they drove, she assumed they were planning to stay in the same hotel as Alexi, Clara and the third agent, Thor.

For herself, she had what she thought was an amazing deal: a very small duplex that was part of what had once been a single family dwelling on Dauphine Street in the French Quarter. Alexi and Clara could have stayed with her, but she couldn't fit everybody.

She loved her apartment; it was over two hundred years old and had survived the fires that had ravaged the city in its early days. The plumbing was debatable, the electric sketchy, and the cable went out whenever it rained, but she considered herself lucky to be able to afford the rent. She shared a courtyard with an older couple, Laurence and Loretta Harvey, who had the unit on her right. They had retired from the countryside around Houma to live in the French Quarter. They loved being able to walk to anything they needed. Their children had moved to Nevada but sometimes brought the grandkids for extended stays. That was fine with Charlie; she got along great with eight-year-old Matilda and six-year-old Jeremy. And Laurence and Loretta collected her mail when she was gone. She couldn't have asked for better neighbors.

As they passed the Superdome, she cleared her throat and asked, “So, where are you guys staying?”

“We're all crashing at your place,” Ethan told her.

He grinned at her look of surprise, then laughed.

Jude leaned forward. “Actually, we're not going to your place at all.”

“No?” she asked.

“My parents are in London at a symposium,” Ethan told her. “We're taking over their place in the Garden District. It's just north of Magazine and near the port.”

“Oh,” Charlie murmured.

“We can stop by your place if you need anything, though,” Jude said.

“I'm good,” she said, then looked out the window, suddenly feeling a little guilty. She'd known Ethan's parents were in the city and only a cable car ride away, but she'd never made any attempt to see them.

In a little while they reached the sprawling late-Victorian house Ethan's parents owned. It was on a street filled with equally gracious mid-eighteenth-century homes with columns and porches and balconies. The Delaney home was painted white and surrounded by a cast-iron fence. The yard was shaded by magnolias and oaks. The place was the epitome of old Southern charm.

Charlie had no chance to feel awkward about the arrangements, because Clara and Alexi came racing down the steps of the board porch to meet them. They took turns wrapping Charlie up in a hug.

“It's late, but I'm glad you made it here tonight,” Alexi said. “We've got to practice our harmonies tomorrow. It's going to be fun. I just hope you remember the words to all the songs.”

Charlie nodded, but her attention was on a tall blond man standing at the top of the steps, waiting patiently. He wasn't wearing a suit, but he still looked like FBI.

Jude headed up the steps, while Ethan stood in the yard, waiting. Charlie realized he wasn't going to leave her unprotected until they were inside.

“Let's go in,” he said finally. “I'll get the bags later.”

They went inside, where she met Thor Erikson. She noticed how comfortable and easy they all were with one another and realized she was the outsider here. She might have known Alexi and Clara for years, working and even socializing together, but she was new to the group as a whole.

Clara had sandwiches ready, and since everyone was hungry, they immediately gathered around the table. Alexi produced a clipboard and went through the musical numbers she'd chosen for them to perform. “You've never worked on a riverboat, have you?” she asked. “Neither have I. Clara did one trip as a fill-in, once, so she's our pro.”

“I do know the
Journey
, even though I haven't performed aboard her,” Charlie said.

“Of course you do. Your dad is just about the most famous thing about the trip,” Alexi said with a smile.

Charlie nodded, lowering her head. She hadn't said a word to Ethan or Jude about the ghost in Albion Corley's office. When they'd come in and found her there, she'd told them she'd just wanted a look around and left it at that, still busy trying to process what the ghost had told her about her father.

The two men had discussed the case in the car, both of them convinced that Selma had been killed because someone assumed she knew something about Corley's murder. It would have been easy for Charlie to say something, but instead she'd sat in silence, unwilling to tell them even part of what she knew for fear they would sense that she was hiding something. She was anxious to see her father tomorrow, and after that she would decide what to do next.

Why had he lied to her? He'd said he'd barely known the victims.

“So here's the set list,” Alexi said, breaking into Charlie's thoughts. “We're doing a mix of Confederate and Union songs. We'll do the old standbys, of course, ‘Dixie' and ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic,' and then ‘Bonnie Blue Flag,' ‘Lorena,' ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas,' ‘Just Before the Battle,' ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home,' ‘All the Pretty Little Horses,' ‘The Southern Wagon'...probably a few more. You know all those, right? Clara and I had a chance to run through them, and we want to throw in some more harmonies, maybe create a medley of some lesser-known songs. Here's the thing. We pretty much came up with this whole thing on the spot, so we have to sound good without much of a chance to rehearse. You're good to go, right?”

“Remember who my dad is. I can do them in my sleep,” Charlie assured her. She tried to smile and listen and nod at appropriate moments as Alexi went on to explain more of the logistics as the three men got up and wandered off to talk near the front door.

She wasn't really listening, though; she was too worried about her father.

What she wanted to know wasn't what songs they were going to sing in what order. She wanted to know what Ethan, Jude and Clara's boyfriend, Thor, were talking about. If they had something on her dad and Ethan wasn't sharing that information, she was going to be furious. She knew she was being hypocritical, since she was withholding information herself, but she didn't care. This was about her
father
, for heaven's sake.

Suddenly she realized that, despite the late hour, Ethan was about to leave.

She stopped pretending she was paying attention to Alexi and Clara, excused herself and walked over to join the men.

“Where are you going?” she asked Ethan, letting suspicion creep into her tone, though she hadn't meant to.

He smiled. “I'm not plotting anything,” he said, but the look he gave her made it clear that he hadn't forgotten she'd done some plotting of her own. “I'm just going to see my great-grandmother before we plunge into all of this tomorrow. And not to worry—she's a night owl, and I've let her know I'm on my way.”

“I can go with you.”

“That's all right, you'll be fine here. Jude and Thor will keep you safe.”

“Like a pair of rottweilers,” Jude said.

“Oh, no, I'm not worried,” she said. “I'd just like to see your Tante Terese,” she told Ethan, using the name all the children had called her. Afraid that wasn't going to be enough, she added, “Plus, my apartment is near her place in Treme, and I realized I wouldn't mind grabbing a few things.”

He was hesitant, and she wondered if he was angrier than she'd realized. Then he shrugged.

“Sure. Let's go.” He looked at the other two men, and they nodded. Without a word being said, she knew they'd just agreed to lock up and stay vigilant.

Ethan continued to be distant, politely opening the car door for her but driving in silence. Charlie broke that silence. “How is Tante Terese?” she asked. Ethan's great-grandmother had been like a strange goddess when she came to visit St. Francisville. Her mother had been the granddaughter of a slave. Her father had been a sailor who had swept through New Orleans, then been killed at the tail end of World War I. Tante Terese would reach her hundredth birthday at the end of the year. She was a natural-born storyteller, and the kind of babysitter who never had to raise her voice, and yet every child obeyed her. Word was Tante Terese was a voodoo priestess and could see what they were doing when she wasn't even looking at them.

“Remarkable,” Ethan said. He glanced her way and smiled. “She still doesn't look a day over sixty.”

They arrived at her Treme neighborhood, just the other side of the French Quarter, off Rampart. Her home was a little whitewashed cottage built in the late 1800s. Her backyard was huge, and since one of her late husband's nieces owned a carriage company, she kept and cared for some of the aging mules when they retired from taking tourists around the city.

It was nearly midnight, but when they arrived, they heard her call to them from the back. They walked around to the stables, where Terese was patting the neck of a mule whose halter bore a nameplate that said Lafayette.

She quickly hugged her great-grandson, then turned to Charlie.

“Why, child, you've grown up just as beautiful as I knew you would. Still sweet as can be, too, I imagine. You were a lovely child, and so polite every time I'd visit your mama and papa. I'm so happy you've come to see me. I was just asking Ethan about you. I heard about the bad things happening up your way. Will it never end? Anyway, I've finished saying good-night to Lafayette here, so come on in. I have tea ready to go.” Terese slipped an arm around Charlie's shoulders and said, “I had to have one of the kids show me how to watch you on that YouTube thing, but my, my, I loved it when I did. Always knew you were going to be a performer, Charlie. I remember how you used to tap-dance all around the kitchen when you were just a wee thing.”

Charlie smiled, glancing over at Ethan. It was almost impossible to believe Terese's age. She was still straight as a stick and nearly six feet tall, making Charlie feel short, though she was a respectable five-ten herself.

“I'm so glad you brought Charlie by, Ethan. You know, Charlie, you're not even a stone's throw from me in the Quarter. Now that you know where I am, you've got to come by more often.”

“I will,” Charlie said.

“Ethan, get the tea, please, and bring it into the parlor, will you?” Terese asked, then took Charlie's arm. “Come on, let's sit.”

As soon as they were settled on the couch, Terese leaned toward Charlie, her amber eyes concerned. “You doing okay, Charlie?”

“Yes, yes, fine.”

“I know you've got it, child, got it rich, the sight. Ever since you were a girl. But it can be a hard road, helping the dead. Hard to hear what they have to say sometimes. I see it around you now, you know. It's a shadow. They need you now, Charlie, but you have to take care, you hear?”

“You know, Tante,” Ethan said, coming in with the silver tea tray, “I
am
here to help.”

“And a good strong man you've become, too, but there's something about Charlie right now. They'll be seeking you out, dear,” she said to Charlie. “Has Mr. Corley shown himself to you, or Mr. Hickory?”

Charlie shook her head.

“Well, I can feel it. Someone is going to be talking to you.”

Ethan smiled at her, setting the tray down and pouring the tea. “Maybe, Tante, if you've got an in with anyone, you could ask them to speak to me.”

“We all see Anson McKee, Tante Terese,” Charlie told her. “Just as we did years ago.”

Terese nodded and sipped her tea. “Yes, he's strong. He watches over the area. He was there the day the war stopped, and he was there when they turned the
Journey
over to the Union with all their sick and wounded aboard. I believe he tries to watch over the two of you.”

“He does,” Ethan said. “Did you ever see him, Tante?”

Terese smiled and nodded, leaning back comfortably. “I never did live in St. Francisville. New Orleans has always been my home. Except, of course, after the hurricane, when they made me head out to California for a month or so. Went with your folks, Ethan, and it was a nice vacation, but this—this is my home. But years ago I was up in St. Francisville visiting, and I saw him there, in the graveyard. He walked right over to me, put his hand on my cheek and smiled, and I felt...peaceful. There was something so kind and good in his smile. You heed him. When he talks to you or tries to show you the way, you heed his directions, you hear?”

They both nodded.

Then Terese sighed and looked at Ethan. “I forgot one of those fool pills the doctor says I have to take for my heart. They're on the kitchen counter, Ethan. Would you mind?”

“Not at all,” Ethan said, and rose, leaving them alone together again.

Terese leaned forward and spoke softly to Charlie. “Don't you worry none, Charlie. I know your papa, and he didn't do any of this. I know you're scared, but you have to tell the truth about everything you see, everything you hear. The truth at every turn is what is going to help bring this to an end. Do you understand?”

She spoke quickly and was already leaning back against the pillows again before Ethan returned.

She thanked him and took the container, then shook out a pill. “That snarly old Doc Berlin. He says I have to take these pills and not depend on any of my old cures. Well, I take his pills, but when he gives me a hard time, I say, ‘Hey, Doc, what are you worried about? That I'm going to die young?' Ah, well. Never hurts, the man did study hard.” She grinned at Charlie. “It's tough sometimes when you knew your doctor when he was in knee britches.”

Charlie laughed softly. Terese turned the conversation to family, and they stayed a while longer. It wasn't until they were leaving that Terese spoke to her pointedly again, this time including Ethan.