“T
his had better be good,” Gray said. He slid to face Nat in a booth at Ambrose’s, a bar and diner across from Café du Monde on Decatur Street.
“I got you coffee,” Nat said.
“And I got three hours of sleep last night. Maybe less.”
Nat had called before six and the summons to Ambrose’s didn’t fall into the friendly invitation category. Nat sounded pissed.
“Drink,” Nat said. “You aren’t the only one around here who’s sleep deprived.”
The coffee tasted burned, or old and reheated, but it was strong and that mattered to Gray. The tone of Nat’s voice on the phone had been irritating enough—and interesting enough to get Gray from his home in Faubourg Marigny to the appointed place in half an hour. The city wasn’t awake yet. Pigeons still snoozed on statues in Jackson Square. The pickings from sidewalk diners weren’t worth pooping for yet.
“Tell me what you’ve got and let me get back to bed,” Gray said. He hung over the table, hands clasped between his knees, head bowed.
Nat tapped the rim of Gray’s mug with a fork. “Shut up and drink some more coffee.”
The detective’s plate overflowed with a muffuletta big enough to roof a round shack. Olive salad and cheese spilled
from inside and Nat carefully stuffed every scrap back into the sandwich. He picked it up in both hands and took a big bite.
With a mouthful of bitter coffee not wanting to go down his throat, Gray watched his buddy chew slowly and swallow.
“Hey, Ambrose,” Gray called to the establishment’s owner, who sat on a stool beside a pocked, wooden bar and took all food orders. “I’ll have what he’s got.” He pointed at Nat’s plate.
That got him a grunt, but the food would arrive quickly and be good.
“Bucky Fist’s on his way,” Nat said. “He had a short night, too.”
Gray took a swallow from Nat’s water glass. “Damn,” he said. “It’s warm.”
“You hear what I said about Bucky coming?”
“Yeah. So I’ll bite. Do you and your partner hang out in here every morning, or does Bucky have news?”
Nat paused with what was left of the muffuletta halfway to his mouth. “Maybe he’s got something interesting to tell us.”
“You don’t know?”
“Where were you late last night?” Nat asked. He’d laced his own coffee with cream and tipped down half the mug. “Don’t tell me you were interviewing another singer.”
Evidently the Bucky Fist tack was a diversion. Gray left it alone. “I wasn’t interviewing anyone,” he said. He took Nat’s lead and dumped cream in his coffee. “How come this place makes the best food and the worst coffee?” he said, not expecting a sensible answer.
He got one. “Ambrose makes money on booze, not coffee. Order a Bloody Mary and you’ll go to heaven.”
“Why am I here?” Gray said, hoping the screwing around with “niceties” was over.
“I already said. Where were you late last night?”
“When did that get to be your business?”
Nat rescued several fallen olives and put them in his mouth. “When you came into my office with some bullshit story about looking for a woman we already knew was missing. That and other things.”
He could shut up and wait, let Nat get at this when he was ready or try to hurry things. Hurrying wouldn’t work. Gray got down more coffee.
“You were at Scully’s,” Nat said. “Down at the Hotel Camille.”
“If you know, why ask me?”
“Why do you think? To see if you’d own up to it on your own.”
Gray hated cat-and-mouse conversations. And he wasn’t thrilled with Nat’s manner. “How do you know where I was last night? I wasn’t followed.”
Nat’s eyebrows arched and he set down his fork. “You don’t know that.”
“I sure as hell do,” Gray told him. “I was at Scully’s, but I wasn’t followed there.”
“Maybe you were followed when you left.”
“Not then, either,” Gray said. “The streets were empty. You could have heard a gnat swallow. You know I’d know.”
Begrudgingly, Nat nodded. Gray had been a good cop, a good detective—and more than one said, a loss to NOPD. They used to say he had a sixth sense….
Screwing up his eyes, Gray swung from the booth and bought thinking time by wandering to the bar to check on his food.
Ambrose could be sixty or ninety. His white hair curled in a tight skull cap and his face shone dark and deeply lined. Gray had come here for years and Ambrose, sitting on the same stool every time, didn’t seem to change.
“You kin carry your own plate, then,” Ambrose said, flashing a gold front tooth. “You in such a a’mighty hurry t’eat.”
The food arrived from the kitchen as Gray got to the bar. “I’ll do that,” he told Ambrose. “Thanks.”
“Good to see you back on the beat,” Ambrose said. “Don’t be a stranger no more.”
Gray didn’t set him straight. “Thanks, Ambrose.” Loaded plate in hand, he made his way back to the booth, passing a few early customers and a few really late all-nighters on the way. The late ones had the fixed stares and disconnected hand-eye coordination of the past-drunk, legally comatose brigade.
He wondered how long Nat would take to get to the point and whether his ex-colleague was waiting for his partner before dropping some bombshell. If he had to guess, Fist either wouldn’t show, or didn’t have much to drop.
Nat waited until Gray’s mouth was full to say, “That nutty little redhead was with you at Scully’s, right?”
Two could play games. Gray kept his face in neutral and chewed. He pointed at his mouth to indicate he couldn’t talk yet and considered his response.
After a swig from his mug, he said, “I don’t know any nutty redheads.”
That brought Nat’s battered notebook from the pocket of his shirt. He slid a stubby pencil from the wire spiral and flipped a page over. “Marley Millet,” he said, looking down as if Gray would believe his ex-colleague would forget a name that fast. The kind of name that belonged to the kind of owner it had.
“Nice woman,” Gray commented.
“You were at Scully’s with her last night. The two of you talked to Danny Summit, the bartender.”
The picture got clearer for Gray. “How is Danny doing this morning?” Somehow he hadn’t expected Danny to follow through with his threat to call the cops.
Nat straightened against the back of the banquette. He indicated to a waitress that he wanted more coffee and Gray sat silent until the woman had come and gone.
This wasn’t going to work the way Nat wanted, which was for Gray to start saying things Nat might not already know.
The sound of cutlery on thick china didn’t bother Gray. Nor did Nat’s steady stare.
“You were there with her and Danny,” Nat said. “Now I want to know what you talked about.”
Gray smiled. “How do I know you know I was there? With Marley?”
“You already said you were there. And she’s Marley now, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Shit.” Nat threw the notebook on the table. “You could make this easy.”
“For whom?”
“Okay.” In a forceful move, Nat leaned hard across the table. “One way or the other you’ll tell me what you’ve found out.”
“Because you don’t know anything?” Gray said. “If that’s right, you’re off your game. I don’t know exactly how you found out where I was last night—although I can guess—but you’re on a fishing trip. Tell me what you’re trying to find out and I’ll see if I can help.”
“Did you call Marley at the shop where she works and make a date? That would have been after you left my office.”
“No, I didn’t. I’ll tell you this much and you ought to feel like an ass. Sidney, the woman Amber Lee sings with—I found out she showed up at Scully’s last night. I went there looking for information. Marley was already there. We talked and Danny Summit was there, too. That’s it.”
“Then you left with Marley?”
“I left right after she did.”
“You didn’t walk her home?”
“Yes.” Why deny it? “She couldn’t get a cab so I went with her.”
“And?”
“Nothing. Not a thing.” He wouldn’t voluntarily share that he hoped to see her again.
“Do you know some of the stuff they say about her family—and her?”
“I can imagine.”
“Witches, wizards, voodoo,” Nat said, but he smiled a little.
“That’s crap,” Gray said. “Maybe Marley thinks she sees things. And knows what’s going to happen before it happens.” Kind of like he was starting to do.
“And she says she leaves her body and goes other places—that’s what she told us,” Nat said.
Gray said, “Hmm.” She believed what she’d told them with enough conviction to pretty much convince Gray.
“Pretty crazy in my book. And they’ve all got red hair,” Nat pointed out.
“So what? Red hair runs in families.”
“From what I’m told,
every
member of the family has red hair. They only marry redheads.”
Gray spent a few moments on his food.
“A call came in a couple of hours ago,” Nat said. He pulled an already knotted tie from beneath his jacket on the seat and slipped the noose over his head.
Gray said nothing while he watched the man fasten the top button of his shirt, put up the collar, arrange his tie and smooth the collar down again.
“So who called?” Gray decided to throw Nat a couple of bones just to help his day. “And what did they want?”
“What did Danny Summit say to you?” Nat asked.
Gray yawned and shook his head. “If there’s nothing else, I’m going back to bed. I’m betting you know just about every detail about the missing women’s lives, who their families or whatever are and a bunch of other details. That’s all more than I know. I’ll have to catch up.”
“Why do you need to know anything? You can sit back and wait for us to sort this out.”
“I could do that, but you know and I know that there’s something obvious about these women. I spoke to two of them and was about to talk to Pipes—I’m not counting the dead woman. I never heard of her. Wouldn’t you want to do what you could to help solve this…if you were me?”
Nat frowned. “I—This isn’t about me. Gray, I want you to back off. Just tell me you’ll do that. Otherwise I’ll have to look for a way to…” He let the threat trail off.
“Something’s happened,” Gray said. “Did someone else go missing?”
“You’re messing with my case,” Nat told him.
Denying it would be pointless and an obvious lie. “I’m going through some harmless motions.”
“This Sidney. What did she talk to you about?”
“Not a damn thing, Nat. She said she had to get home.”
Nat didn’t look convinced. “So you backed right off and didn’t push her? That doesn’t sound like you.”
“It isn’t. I asked if we could talk later and she said she’d think about it. At least, that was the impression she gave.”
Massaging his temples, Nat stared into Gray’s eyes.
Bucky Fist arrived and clapped Nat on the shoulder. “Hey, my man,” he said. Young, not more than thirty or thirty-one, stocky with a good-humored grin that showed square teeth with a big gap in the middle, Bucky wore a baseball cap turned back to front. Sandy hair showed at his sideburns and nape.
“This is Gray Fisher,” Nat said.
Gray had met the man before, but he said, “Bucky,” and offered his hand.
Bucky pumped his fingers in a punishing grip and sat beside Nat.
“Just heard Shirley Cooper was a maid, not a singer,” he said. “She was last seen leaving work at a club. I don’t know why the boyfriend didn’t tell us that right off. He may not be involved but I’ve told him not to leave town.”
Nat grunted.
“Not a singer, huh?” Gray said. “Are we relieved?” He was. So far he hadn’t interviewed maids for any article.
“Ask me in a week if we still don’t have someone in custody,” Nat said. “The dead woman worked in a club. She could have been killed by someone who mistook her for a singer.”
Gray grunted.
“So what d’you think?” Bucky asked, looking from Gray to Nat. “I guess it could be true. But the kid could also be making the whole thing up.”
“What kid?” Gray said.
“I haven’t told him about that yet,” Nat said.
Bucky nodded. “A kid called down at the big house for Nat. A boy. I talked to him. He said he’d been told to let us know they didn’t like you interfering at Scully’s, Gray. The kid sounded scared.”
“Any idea who ‘they’ are?” Gray asked. This was coming from nowhere.
“Nope. He didn’t say it straight out, but he could be in danger. Someone doesn’t want you poking around in this case.”
That didn’t make Gray feel bad. “I’m getting under their skin so I must be doing something right. Are you sure it was a kid who called?”
“He more or less said you could get him hurt if you don’t quit meddling in this case,” Nat said. “He said he’s called Alan and he’s Amber Lee’s boy. We checked. Amber may have a son, but no one seems to know where we’d find him.”
Gray thought he saw a trap, or at least got a whiff of one. Amber hadn’t mentioned a kid to him and he thought she would have. But he hadn’t finished interviewing her yet.
His cell hummed in his pocket and he leaned away to work it out of a jeans pocket.
Any way he looked at it, Danny was behind contacting Nat and trying to pull Gray away from the case.
“Who’s that?” Nat said.
While the phone buzzed a second time, Gray stared at his old friend. “Do I ask you about your telephone calls?”
Nat shrugged. “Always worth a try. I could catch you off guard.”
Gray didn’t recognize the incoming number. When he clicked on and answered, the line went dead.
“M
arley,” Sykes hissed into her ear. “Pretend you’re with us, will you?”
With Winnie on her lap and still in her nightie and robe with a work smock over the top, she sat in one of Uncle Pascal’s green suede wing chairs. Sykes crouched beside her, wickedly handsome as ever in a white poet’s shirt, dark jeans and with his feet bare. “Yeah,” she muttered, but her mind wandered just the same.
Uncle Pascal had convened this meeting of all Millets present in New Orleans. Ten a.m. sharp. Marley was there in body, but whichever way her thoughts strayed, they found their way to Gray Fisher, Amber Lee and Liza Soaper.
And why hadn’t she, Marley, been able to stay and rescue the woman she had seen earlier that morning? A new twist occurred to her; there could be a limit on how long she could be away from her body.
This time the decision to terminate the trip had been made for her.
Frantic to reach the woman again, as soon as Marley had reentered her body, she attempted to travel back through the funnel. With her energy sapped, she had been powerless and the tunnel disappeared. She could not summon it up again.
“A discussion about the Mentor is overdue,” Uncle Pascal
said. “You’ve all lulled me into thinking I didn’t need to remind you. I was wrong.”
Marley looked hard at Sykes, who rolled his eyes, then at Willow who sank deeper into another of Uncle’s green chairs and wouldn’t meet anyone’s glance. She wore a green Mean ’n Green Maids T-shirt—standard issue to all those who worked for her maid service—over white crop pants. Her white tennis shoes had thick green soles and green laces.
“Before we get into reminders about our family pledges,” Uncle said, “I must tell you how disappointed you’ve made me, Marley. I don’t know everything you got up to last night, but I will. Sykes will help me make sure of that.”
Marley met Sykes’s blue eyes again and sent him a secret message.
“Talk to me before you talk to him.”
Sykes turned on his impassive face and just as she thought he would ignore her, she got the response.
“Don’t forget the Tally Book. Be thinking about what you’ll do to repay me for keeping my mouth shut.”
The Tally Book was imaginary, a childhood threat they had against each other.
“What have you already told him?”
“Nothing important,” Sykes said.
A corner of Willow’s mouth hooked upward, but flattened out quickly. Not quickly enough for Marley to have missed it. Who knew how powerful Willow might or might not be? She adhered so tightly to her story about not believing the Millets were different from any other family that she had almost convinced the rest of them she was nothing more—or less—than human. To various degrees, the Millets were in contact with several other psychic families. These people were also “normal” according to Willow.
Marley was almost sure her younger sister was picking up at least hints of the channels opening and closing between Marley and Sykes. If so, little Willow was a good deal more than human, even though it wouldn’t be possible for her to actually intercept conversation unless invited.
The biggest puzzle for Willow’s relatives was the reason for her apparent determination not to accept who and what she was—or probably was. There had been a relationship with Benedict Fortune, the eldest son of one of those families with whom they shared similarities and it had ended badly. Marley had never been quite sure why, and Willow wouldn’t discuss Ben. There was no doubt that she and Ben had appeared very much in love.
From the closed expression on Willow’s face, nothing was about to change her attitude soon.
Today had dawned with the promise of heat, and that promise had been kept. The overhead fans in Uncle’s clubby quarters above the shop did little more than move hot air around. Tired, desperate to be on her way, Marley had groaned when Uncle Pascal’s summons arrived. For her it had come while she was in her workroom and barely conscious after her unceremonious reentry from her travels.
Sometimes Uncle Pascal’s dark moods were immovable. This morning his frown was formidable and he kept sinking into long silences.
His shaved head shone. Marley knew the family story about how he had cut off his mahogany red curls. At that time he told his brother Antoine—her father—that he chose to have “no hair color at all if it means you’re going to stick me with your offspring and the care of this impossible family.” That had been when the final decision about Sykes had been made; a dark-haired male could not be entrusted with the Millets’ fate, not when he might well bring disaster on the family.
Sykes, so the story went, had laughed too much when he insisted he didn’t care that he was being cast out of his family position. He had said he wouldn’t have anything to do with such responsibilities anyway. Sykes, still a teenager at the time, had announced that he would spend his life honing skills none of the rest of them could hope to share.
He’d been right. In addition to being an impressive psychic power, he sculpted figures from lumps of stone and rarely finished a piece without more than one buyer demanding to be the owner.
But although they made light of their parents’ decision to leave New Orleans (and Papa’s rightful place as head of the family) and search for answers about the family curse, Marley, Sykes and their sisters doubted just how hard Antoine and Leandra Millet were looking—and they were quietly saddened by the willing defection of the older Millets.
“Willow,” Uncle Pascal said, “you will have to put in more work improving yourself. It’s time you got over this silly
business
nonsense. You know you have special gifts and ignoring them won’t make them go away. It will make them sag a bit. Think of them as flabby and unreliable. A quick-minded, quick-moving, fit young thing like you shouldn’t want to be associated with anything
flabby and unreliable.”
His voice didn’t rise, but he emphasized each word.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Willow said. “No, I don’t know at all and don’t want to.”
“Then you can sit there and I’ll tell you.”
Willow’s beeper went off. She unhooked it from her waist and took a look. “Time’s up,” she said. “I’ve got a business to run.”
“Business?” Uncle Pascal echoed ominously.
Willow got up, yawned and stretched, then let her arms fall heavily. “You’re all an embarrassment with your gifts and powers garbage. I don’t know why you hauled me in here to watch you play games. G’bye.”
“Willow,” Uncle Pascal said, and the warning was implicit.
She smiled and stood on tiptoe to kiss his chin. Her hair, currently the reddest in the clan, bounced.
“Let her go,” Sykes said although Willow had already opened the door to the flat.
The door closed again and Uncle Pascal threw up his hands. “She’s living a lie. Eventually something will happen and she’ll have to face up to what she really is. What a terrible shock that could be.”
“I know,” Marley said. “When I’m not feeling wobbly I worry about her.” She let her eyes close and knew it was useless to hope Uncle Pascal and Sykes hadn’t noticed what she’d just said.
“Wobbly?” Uncle said on cue. “Yes, yes, of course that’s how you feel and it’s because you’ve strayed from the Mentor. You must correct yourself at once.”
Marley sighed at the imperious tone of voice. Whether Uncle Pascal liked it or not, he had possessed the qualities needed to head the family after what was now referred to as Papa’s “abdication.”
In addition to having a strong mind, Uncle Pascal lifted weights and it showed. Even in the green robe—he favored green a good deal—he wore over workout gear, his muscles were impressive.
All the Millets were good-looking, or so Marley had been told often enough, and her uncle was no exception. Anyone who didn’t know he dealt in obscure objets d’art would never associate him with anything other than a very physical occupation.
“I’ve heard from Antoine and Leandra,” he said abruptly. The grim set of his mouth warned that he had not learned anything that pleased him. “Apparently Alex and Riley are enjoying their stay in London.”
Sykes stood. “What does that mean?”
“Just what I said. My brother and his wife—your parents whom you only see if you follow them around the world—are having a charming visit with your sisters.”
Marley got to her feet, as well, tipping Winnie to the floor, but quickly sat again. She was light-headed.
“Look at you,” Uncle Pascal said to her. “You’re worn
out. You’ve been experimenting with something again and it’s against the rules unless you make sure I’m informed.”
That was only partly true. She had a right to use her powers without telling anyone, Uncle Pascal included, unless she was certain she needed help. As long as Marley thought she could manage alone, she would do so.
“The Mentor means for us to rely on one another,” Uncle Pascal said.
“Am I the only one who’s been wondering about the Mentor lately?” Sykes said. “Seems a long time since anyone has pointed out that we’re no closer to finding out if there ever was an actual Mentor.”
“The Millet family Mentor is a fact,” Uncle Pascal said flatly. “What we don’t know is whether the term refers only to the code of honor we live by, or if there was once a being the family referred to by that name.”
“And our parents have contacted you to say they’re still no closer to finding out the truth?” Sykes said. “You didn’t have to bring us here to say that.”
Uncle paused and they listened to the ticking of a rare French industrial clock in the form of a fishing boat. Uncle Pascal spared a smile for the shimmering gilt piece before he responded. “Eighteen-eighty,” he said of the clock. He made a habit of stating details of the treasures that filled his flat. “You’re right, Sykes. I have more on my mind but I choose to start with just how little progress your parents have made.”
“Are we surprised?” Sykes said. Apparently he didn’t care how disrespectful he was. “I’ve got a thought for you. What if this Mentor of ours still
is?
What if he or she—or it—is still lurking around the planet and the parents do dig it up one day? That would be by accident, of course, but it might happen.”
“I hope it does exist,” Marley said. She needed chocolate. “I’ve got questions that need answers and so do you.”
“So do I,” Uncle Pascal added. “When I agreed to take over the reins for Antoine, I didn’t expect it to be for twenty years! He was supposed to come back with answers and help figure out where we go from here. Someone has to carry on after my generation.”
“Yes,” Marley said, looking pointedly at Sykes. “We’ve got to get over our hang-ups. This old tale about a curse is crazy. A dark-haired male Millet can’t take his place as head of the family? Good grief, we still say head of the family, as if we were in the middle ages.”
“Our problem was around then, too,” Uncle Pascal said. “Do you question your powers, Marley?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Of course not.”
“That’s what I thought. So why question the curse unless you have some proof? It’s dangerous.”
“Let’s move on,” Marley said. “Someone has to run the business. Let’s talk in twenty-first-century terms. And since the Millets remain stuck on a male heir, and you don’t want to keep doing the job, Uncle, then either Papa should come back or Sykes must take over.”
“Your father can’t return to his former position,” Uncle Pascal said, his mouth pursed. “Once he stepped down that was it for him. I’m a sort of stand-in till we come up with the next in line.”
“You may be standing-in till your legs fall off, then,” Sykes said with a smirk. “As Marley points out, according to the curse, a dark-haired Millet running things means disaster, and we wouldn’t want that.”
“Only if you marry.” This time Uncle Pascal did shout. “Which you show no signs of doing.”
Winnie made sounds like a crying piglet and Marley whispered, “Hush.”
“We don’t know what I may do one day,” Sykes said. “You can’t take the risk of trying to leave things with me.”
Marley was grateful that her brother didn’t grin when he
said that. He often announced that his parents’ dysfunctional marriage was a warning and he intended to stay single. “Have you met someone?” Uncle asked.
“I meet lots of people,” Sykes said. “And I could meet a woman I want to…It could happen that I find a woman I really like one day.”
Marley had been holding her breath, hoping Sykes would say the
B
word. She should have known better. “Someone to bond with,” she prompted, energized by her own daring.
Sykes gave her a withering look. “If I ever feel the slightest hint of a bonding,
you
will be the last to know.” He spread his broad artist’s hands and looked at the ceiling.
“Bonding.
Now we’re really heading into the weeds with all this. It isn’t as if I live like a monk, and I’ve yet to feel shivers up my spine.”
What he meant was that as long as there was no bonding between him and a woman, a casual relationship worked just fine for him. “Is there someone now?” Marley asked. She made big eyes at Sykes.
He shook his head as if weary and didn’t answer.
Uncle Pascal lost interest in the exchange and paced again. “I want to spend more time training,” he said. “And collecting. I’m sick of sending someone else after rare finds when I’ve hunted them down. It annoys me more all the time. I want to be free to travel the world myself.”
“We can’t solve that here and now,” Sykes said. “Did you want to talk about something else?”
Marley felt sorry for their uncle, but she saw Sykes’s point of view. Why would he want to give up total freedom to watch over the Millet fortune—whatever that consisted of these days.
“The code,” Uncle Pascal said, his chin jutting fiercely. “It’s simple enough, but I’m not sure how careful everyone’s being about the most important rules. First—Only use your powers for good.”
Marley nodded and saw Sykes do the same.
“Second—Never invade another family member’s mind without an invitation,” Uncle continued. “If you begin to intercept accidentally, leave.”
She didn’t remind him he’d come close to doing that last night. True, he had made a tentative approach at first and waited for her to acknowledge him, but finding her like that, remotely, had been over the top, even if he had been worried about her. But she took some comfort in knowing he’d had to go to Sykes for help and he wouldn’t make a habit of that.