Thunder rumbled again, right overhead this time, and then an even bigger deluge opened up and obscured her windshield. She slowed down and watched her poor wipers veritably groan with valiant effort. Well, Black and Holliday had certainly picked one hell of a night to want to talk about something that couldn't be discussed over the telephone.
The road was smooth and well-maintained tarmac, even if it was twisty and turny as the devil and led way back into the woods. It finally came out in a cleared grassy lawn that was about the size of a football field. Maybe Jack's clients practiced there. The rain smelled clean and fresh and full of ozone, but it was coming in off the coast and bringing plenty of thunder and lightning with it. There were lots of flower beds and English ivy climbing all over the oaks and trellises and everything else in sight, and empty concrete urns, which would no doubt be bursting with camellias and azaleas and blue hydrangeas as soon as spring showed up. No cheerful Christmas decorations, though, and no lights, no welcome mat, no wreaths. So, bah humbug, Jack. Something told her, however, that the house was going to be quite the sight to behold, maybe a Louisiana version of the Palace of Versailles.
Seconds later, Claire reached the point where the road curved around a large central fountain that sported gown-draped, stone-sculpted Greek maidens pouring water out of fancy pitchers. When the stormy night cooperated and lightning lit up the place, she got a good look at the house itself.
Wow, what a place, a real-life Tara of Scarlet O'Hara fame. Yes, sir, the sports agent did have a nice little crib out in the boonies. Too bad all the windows were dark. Who wouldn't leave at least one lamp on when he knew he was getting home after dark? Most women would, herself included, but a guy Jack Holliday's size could probably crush the bones of any interloper, even her. Some of the antebellum plantations she'd seen were decayed and dilapidated, old and weathered and neglected, but not this one. This one was grand to be sure and made sure everybody knew it was special.
A veranda, long and wide, stretched out across the ground floor with a matching one right above it. Tall, shuttered French doors lined both porches, about eight or nine on each level, and it looked like those galleries ran around both sides of the house, too. Claire pulled up in front, got out, and shined her flashlight on a tall flight of semicircular red brick stairs that were affixed with an intricate wrought-iron railing that ran up the middle. The newel posts on the gallery's balustrade were beautifully wrought wood and the end post at the top of the steps displayed a large fleur-de-lis that almost looked hand carved.
Eager to get inside and out of the weather, she climbed the steps, tried the door, and found it secured. She tried some more of the French doors and wondered if she could pick the locks, and then decided better of that idea. White wood rocking chairs were lined up along the balustrade and out of the rain, so she sat down in the closest one to wait. Forked white lightning promptly put on a magnificent laser show, streaking and jabbing in and out of the clouds between gaps in the treetops.
Wondering what was taking Black and Holliday so damn long, she sat back and tried not to be creeped out by the fireworks in the sky and the pouring rain and the pitch-black surroundings. One thing for certain, Black probably wasn't the one at the wheel. As fast as he drove, they would have beaten her out there by a mile. But hey, she was a grown woman, an experienced police detective to boot; she could wait outside in a fierce electrical storm that was getting her sopping wet with the best of them. On the other hand, she wished they would just hurry it up, already. After muttering a few choice Cajun curses that she'd picked up from Black, she sat back in the rocker and ate another Snickers bar, trying her best to be patient.
A Very Scary Man
Everything was going so well for Malice. He had been having lots of fun inside his little maze. He was learning new ways to terrify, and there seemed to be a never-ending supply of ingenious props and devices that popped up inside his tormenting-people-loving mind. And he no longer made stupid mistakes. Everybody he took out there eventually died. The length of their lives depended on how much fun they provided to him. The victims who merely cowered and cried for pity rarely lasted more than a day or two. The ones who fought and used some clever ingenuity to get out of his maze impressed and intrigued him a bit, so they often lived for weeks before he tired of them and fed them to the gators. Yeah, the gators around his little island paradise knew they'd get a meal sooner or later, if they just hung around long enough. The little group of them were almost like his pets now. He had even given some of them names: Razor, Hungry, and Bully, who was his favorite by far because he usually dove with as much of the carcass as he could before any of the others could get a bite.
But then, right out of the blue, things started going wrong. He had been keeping careful tabs on his victims that got away, just to make sure they didn't cause trouble for him. That's how he found out that there was a private investigator in town, sniffing around and doing a lot of talking to one of his escaped victims in particular. The one who was the most unstable, at that. She'd spent time in jail, was pretty much a junkie, and promiscuous as hell. So, she'd most likely tell the P.I. anything he wanted to know, especially if he offered her money. Malice didn't think she remembered anything that could identify him, but there was always the possibility she might mention something that could trace back to him.
All of that went on for a time, making Malice nervous as hell, but then when another guy entered the picture, a former football player by the name of Jack Holliday, he really got concerned. Not too long after Holliday got involved, a crack detective out of Missouri showed up and complicated things further. She was not on the case yet, but if the shit hit the fan, she was known far and wide for catching serial killers and probably would be consulted, so he had to make sure she didn't use her expertise to track him down. Damn it, things were getting out of hand and a little too close for comfort, and Malice knew he had to act and act quickly. If he didn't put the brakes on, and put them on hard, he just might end up getting caught.
So, one dark night he just showed up at Madonna Christien's door. She opened it, didn't recognize him as her abductor, of course, so she made the mistake of letting him come inside. As soon as the door closed, he got her around the throat with both hands and wrestled her down on the floor. She struggled desperately, but she was a tiny little thing and didn't have a chance. Once, though, she got in a good kick and ran for the door, screaming and knocking over everything in her path. He was on her in a flash, grabbing her and bending her over and bodily running her head into the wall. That stunned her pretty good, too, but he slammed her head down on her glass coffee table just to make sure, and that was all she wrote.
After she was subdued, he put on his gloves and pulled her up and beat the living daylights out of her when she was only half conscious, just because she deserved to suffer for all the trouble she had caused him. He should've done it all those years ago when he'd first had the chance. Her life had ended up in the garbage can, anyway. She certainly wasn't going to be missed by anybody, except maybe a couple of her johns.
When she finally died, he searched her apartment and found her cute little closet with an altar to Papa Damballah, which was really sort of cool. Maybe she wasn't so stupid after all. Maybe she'd learned something from him. Too bad she was already dead. She might've been a nice little piece to keep confined for his pleasure out at the maze. Except that she'd dedicated her altar to Jack Holliday, too, which might be the reason Jack had been hanging around her so much, but he couldn't take that chance.
On the other hand, it gave Malice the opportunity he needed to transfer the murder rap onto somebody else. Once he found the hurricane glass sitting on that altar, the one with a nice little white placard that labeled it as Jack Holliday's, the rest of his plan began to materialize in his mind. Jack had become a problem, anyway. Now Malice had a way to get rid of him. So he staged the crime scene, placing the hurricane glass with Jack's prints, just so, in the living room crime scene. The struggle had left a mess on the floor, but he made sure there wasn't anything with his DNA on it, picked up the victim, and carried her to his car parked in her garage.
All the way out to the maze, he had fun figuring out all the things he could do to the body before he set it up to be found. It didn't take long to come up with an idea that would get Claire Morgan off the case and out of his hair, too. Once that happened, he was probably home free. Now all he had to do was wash the girl up with some heavy-duty Clorox bleach and get out some sharp needles and embroidery thread. He laughed out loud, more excited than he'd been in ages.
Chapter Twenty-two
Almost fifteen minutes later, thunder cracked like crazy right above Claire and growled like an angry lion on its way north toward Baton Rouge. The rain poured down, rattling the palm leaves and giant elephant ears and the banana trees growing very close to the veranda railing. For some reason, a sudden and strange sense of dread assailed Claire. The old
something wicked this way comes
sensation that always electrified the hairs on her arms and made them stand straight up. She put her hand on her weapon, where it was still snug inside her shoulder holster. She felt very vulnerable sitting out there alone in the dark. Yep, what she needed was to take some deep breaths and chill out.
But she was freaked out big time, didn't like the old place one bit, as lovely as it appeared to be. And she didn't like sitting with her back exposed and vulnerable to possible attackers combat-crawling up behind her. So she stood up and descended the steps and moved a few yards away from the porch. Cold water spattered atop the hood of her rain slicker, but the thick boughs above impeded most of the rain. So she stood out there inside some crouching shadows and tried to figure out what was making her jumpy. She wasn't usually so jittery, so why was she now? Maybe it was getting blown clean off a boat in a grenade blast? Could be.
“Git your hands up! I mean it, girl, I got me a gun pointed straight at you.”
Claire nearly jumped out of her skin at the raspy voice coming out of the dark. She had her weapon out in half a second and held it extended with both hands and pointing at the shadowy figure standing on the veranda up to her left. It looked like a man, and it looked like a man holding a shotgun, the butt braced against his right shoulder and aimed straight down at her head.
“Police! Drop your weapon! Do it now!” Her voice meant business. So did the shotgun. It didn't waver. Damn, looked like they had themselves a standoff.
Then her assailant demanded in a cigarette-gruff voice, “Who the hell are you? This here's private property. And you trespassin' and skulkin' around in the dark and sayin' you the po-lice. You think I'm stupid, or somethin'?”
Well, yeah, pretty much.
“Okay, listen to me, sir, I'm a Lafourche Sheriff 's Office homicide detective. Put that gun down, or I'm going to have to arrest you, understand? Please step out where I can see you.”
He didn't appear cowed by her credentials or her threats. “Don' you move till I git the lights on. You hear me, girl?”
Okay, maybe lots of young women liked to trespass on Jack Holliday's estate and steal his underwear, or something. Maybe this was a nightly occurrence and Shotgun Sammy standing up there was sick and damn tired of it. She kept a tight, two-handed bead on his chest with her nine-millimeter as he slowly backed up to the door, opened it with a bunch of jingling keys hanging off his belt, and hit a light switch.
Big lanterns flared on, all up and down the porch. When Claire got a good look at him, she saw a small man, rather wizened and wrinkled, who reeked of tobacco. She could smell it emanating from his clothes from where she stood several yards downwind. He looked to be in his late seventies or maybe even early eighties. Holliday must have a real thing about hiring white-haired senior citizens who weren't friendly to his guests. His haughty butler, the Mighty Yannick, came to mind. The old man had a long white beard, wire-rimmed glasses repaired with black electrical tape between the thick Coke-bottle lenses, and a blue-and-black-checkered flannel shirt underneath denim overalls. In other words, he was Grandpa Jones. Claire took her badge folder off her belt with her left hand and held it up to the light. He was still aiming his weapon at her so she did this slowly and carefully and hoped his eyesight was better than it looked. “I'm going to walk up the steps and show you my badge, sir. Don't you move.”
“No need you comin' up here close. I kin see what you got.” He lowered the shotgun. Claire waited until he propped it nice and gentle-like up against the wall behind him, and then she sheathed her own weapon.
“You don' look like no po-lice to me, you. You look like a tall, skinny gal that's trespassin' on Mr. Jack's land.”
Claire ignored that, although it was rather descriptive and probably not a compliment. “I'm a detective from Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office, just like I said.”
“That don' mean you not trespassin'. What you want here, girl? Mr. Jack don't let nobody come in here wit' out tellin' me. And he din't tell me nothin' 'bout the law comin' out here.”
Well, thanks a lot, Jack.
“He'll be here any minute and will verify who I am. So you tell me, who are you?”
“Name's Old Nat Navarro. Mr. Jack done tol' me to stop people from openin' up that gate down yonder or climbin' over the wall and gettin' up here close to the house. Don' think you is the first sex-crazy gal to climb that wall and try to get at him. If you a po-lice, why you here? Mr. Jack in trouble wit' the law?”
Okay, she'd give Old Nat Navarro the tall, skinny gal thing. But
sex-crazy
? Come on. And
Old Nat
, what was up with that? The guy looked his age all right, now that she could see him better. She wondered if he used to call himself Young Nat or Middle-aged Nat, and then graduated up to Old Nat when he got some wrinkles.
“Nope, nothing like that, I assure you. He and a friend of his asked me to meet them out here, said that he had something to tell me.”
Old Nat scratched his somewhat scruffy white beard. Well, okay, it was really scruffy. “He don' ask many folks to come out here, especially this late. He got a phone he carry 'round wit' him. Why din't he tell me 'bout you showin' up?”
“You got me. He must've gotten a wild hair and not checked in with you. You know, maybe he felt all footloose and fancy free.”
“He don't get no wild hairs. He ain't footloose and fancy, neither.”
Claire contemplated a witty retort to those remarks, but didn't come up with anything appropriately clever or that made much sense, so she just looked at him.
“Well, why din't you ring the bell at the gate like reg'lar folk do? All you had a do was show your badge.”
“I didn't see any bell. The gate was open, anyway.” Claire wondered if she was wandering around in some kind of stupid dream, cast down into the briar patch with a shotgun-toting crazy man. All he needed was a moonshine jug hooked on a forefinger and Daisy Mae on his arm.
Old Nat stared a hole through her, as if he didn't believe a word she said. Claire decided to play nice and make some polite chitchat. “Mr. Holliday didn't mention that he had a night watchman. Apparently, he's running late.”
“Don' sound like somet'ing a po-lice'd do. Just comin' up here and hangin' âround in the dark.”
Luckily for Claire, and since her attempts at small talk didn't pan out so well, Holliday and Black decided that was the moment to show up. She and Old Nat turned in tandem and watched a slick sports car slow down and turn off the road, and then headlights speared the darkness as it negotiated the curves on its way up toward them.
Holliday was driving, just as she had figured, and he parked underneath the bricked porte cochere. He and Black swung open the doors and climbed out of the coolest, shiniest black Ferrari convertible she'd ever seen. She had trouble believing that Holliday could get his long legs in or out of the expensive sports car, but he managed it somehow.
“Sorry we're late, Claire,” Black said, heading over to her. “Have you been here long?”
“A little while, but Old Nat over there kept me company with his shotgun.”
“What?” Holliday looked shocked. He turned to his minuscule but heavily armed gatekeeper. “Sorry, Old Nat, I didn't think to call and let you know I had company coming out.”
“S'okay. You tell this girl here that she kin open the gate and snoop up here and try to git in the house?”
Holliday and Black both looked at Claire.
“So I tried the front door. Thought I'd wait inside out of the rain. Sorry.”
“You be needin' anyt'ing else, Mr. Jack?” That was Old Nat, of course, and still rather grumpy.
“No, we're good. Good night.”
Old Nat picked up his shotgun and shuffled off down the gallery with nary a good evening or a “nice to hold a gun on you, tall, skinny po-lice gal.”
Nobody said anything until he was out of sight, and then Black got the show on the road. “Let's go inside. We need to talk, Claire. It's really important.”
“So you said. Nice place you got here, Mr. Holliday.”
“Thanks. It's my grandmother's pride and joy. Old Nat's been out here with her for the last forty years, worked here even before that, I think. He's harmless.”
Until he shoots somebody dead on your porch
, Claire thought. “I thought the house in the Garden District belonged to your grandmother.”
“That's where she liked to live. She grew up there, her parents owned it, and her grandparents before that, but this was her grand project.”
Yeah, and grand hit the nail on the head, too. “Project?”
“She got this back into the family, I don't know, twenty, thirty years ago, I guess. It was falling down, a total disaster. My granddad bought it for her and gave her carte blanche for a total restoration. Said it'd keep her out of trouble.” Black and Claire listened politely, both ready to get down to business.
Holliday pushed open the front door, and then stood back and let them precede him inside. And to think Claire had thought his house on St. Charles Avenue was nifty. Carte blanche obviously meant “How many millions do you need?” in Grandpa Holliday's checkbook lingo. The place could host prime ministers or royalty, or better yet, Beyoncé and her entire entourage.
The central hallway was floored with shiny black-and-white tiles, wide and long, stretching all the way to the back of the house, where a door probably led to a rear gallery. All the doors had etched glass inserts adorned with giant fleurs-de-lis. A tall, gilt-edged mirror on their right looked like something Granny had probably picked up at the Louvre's basement sale. A wide staircase rose in superb splendor off to their left. A glittery crystal chandelierâwith what, about eight-thousand-plus prismsâhung in the center over a round table with a white marble top. A giant blue and white spice jar with Chinese peasants and rivers painted on itâMing Dynasty, not Pier One; bet on itâsat on top.
“I'd forgotten how nice this place is,” said Black.
Claire said, “And you really live out here, huh? All by yourself?”
“The Garden District's a little too formal for me. Too many tourists. So I live out here where I can get some privacy.”
Claire stared at him. “You don't consider this place formal?”
“Not as much. Grandmother still owns the townhouse, but she signed this one over to me when she moved to her chalet outside Paris after she got her ambassadorship. I guess this's as good a place to live as anywhere. It's mine, anyway. Old Nat's pretty good at keeping people out.”
Ambassadorship, is it? Not so shabby, that.
The rain still drummed on the roof and sluiced down the windowpanes. The fresh scent of rain was blowing in through the open front door. “Make yourselves comfortable. I'll be right back.”
Holliday strode off toward the back of the house, and Claire looked at Black. “This is getting ridiculous. What's going on?”
“It concerns your case. You want to hear this, believe me. He's been putting it off. I convinced him to get you out here and tell you the truth.”
“Tell me now, damn it.”
“Just be patient. Here he comes.”
Then Holliday was back, carrying three bottles of beer. Turbodogs, like he'd ordered at the Cajun Grill, obviously his favorite kind of beer. Whatever he had to tell her, he needed some liquid encouragement or thought she needed it. She and Black took their bottles, but both set them aside on the coffee table in front of them. Jack took a swig and sat down on a blue velvet chair. Black and Claire took places on a red brocade antique sofa. Claire was getting a very bad feeling and didn't intend to wait any longer.
“What is this, Holliday? Am I going to find some kind of evidence against you, is that it? Something you failed to tell us when we interviewed you? Please don't tell me you killed Madonna and Wendy.”
Holliday frowned. “Hell, no. I didn't kill anybody.”
“Did you lie to us about your relationship with Madonna?”
Then came the hesitation, the dragging of feet, and the looking everywhere but at her. Crap, that did not bode well.
Finally, Holliday came out with it, or part of it. “Okay, just listen. This is complicated.”
Claire stared at him and then looked at Black. “I'm all ears. Just fire when ready.”
“It's about your case, but it's a personal thing, too.”
Personal?
“Well, forget the personal. Tell me how it relates to my case.”
“I'm going to tell you something about somebody.”
Good grief. This guy knew his way around procrastination. She fought a desire to pull her gun and tell him to get on with it or die where he sat, but she tamped down that rather deadly impulse.
Patience, patience
. A virtue that Claire knew very little about. “That sounds like a good start, Jack.”
Holliday walked to a desk across the room and opened the top drawer. He pulled out a thick green file folder with an oversized red rubber band around it. He held it up. “I've been working on this a long time. Over ten years, to be exact.”