Heather Graham (23 page)

She nodded again.

She pulled out, lifting a hand to wave to the others. “Go home,” Mark reminded her. He still stood on the roadway, barefoot, jeans hugging his muscled thighs, handsome in his red plaid shirt.

Going home was going to be easy right now. She needed a shower.

She needed clothing.

Shoes.

Coffee. Oh, God, did she need coffee.

“And stay there!” Mark called more firmly to her.

Stay there...

In lieu of everything that had happened, that might be harder to do.

A
NN SHOWERED, DRANK THREE
cups of coffee, and prowled her apartment, aware that the three cups of coffee had added to her restlessness.

She stretched, she sat in a chair, curled up, and relived the night.

It had ended so abruptly. Maybe that’s all that there could be right now.

She ached for more.

She didn’t want to let the tension of her feelings overwhelm her, and she prowled the apartment again, then decided that she was a fool—she needed to be working. She set a pad upon an easel and managed to sketch for a while. She needed to take a few pictures, she thought; when she wasn’t able to sketch her subject in person, she liked pictures. To do the painting of Cindy she wanted to do, she was going to need some Polaroids. She wondered if Cindy would mind; she doubted it.

Though her work kept her totally absorbed for nearly two hours, it wasn’t enough.

At twelve, she decided to go to the hospital. She tried to find out about Gregory. She was told that his condition remained critical, but that he was stable.

She wandered to the chapel, and sat there awhile. She tried to pray; she stared at the flowers on the altar. She felt numb, and helpless.

She left the chapel and found her way to Jon’s room in intensive care. She sat with him, talking to him.

The nurses told her again that his vital signs and color were really excellent. The nurses left her.

She didn’t just talk to Jon. She yelled at him. He needed to think about what he was doing; he needed to be careful. He had a daughter, for God’s sake, and it wouldn’t be long before Katie did phone home. And, oh, God, then what was Ann going to say? “Don’t worry, sweetheart, if Dad should come out of his coma, he’s going to be arrested for murder”?
Oh, Jon, you’ve just got to get well and solve this damned thing.

Even in the hospital, she grew restless. She phoned her house to check her messages, but Mark hadn’t tried to reach her.

Finally, she knew that she couldn’t hold back any longer. She went outside and hailed a taxi, and went to the club.

It was early afternoon; things were very quiet. A disc jockey was playing records.

Cindy was on the stage.

The slim girl behind the bar recognized Ann and offered her a pleasant smile. Ann ordered a glass of wine, and watched Cindy as she sipped it.

Cindy was, quite simply, really beautiful. She was probably at least five-foot-nine, and every inch of her length was well composed. “Delilah Delite,” the persona on stage, wore rose-colored lipstick, dusky eye makeup—and very little else. She swirled, twirled, dipped, ducked and undulated against one of the phallic-looking poles. Her very, very blond hair swirled around her face until she was joined by one of the male dancers, a handsome man with muscles like corded steel. The movements they made together were exquisite; Cindy so fair, the man so dark, the two of them so extremely supple. The dance was absolutely erotic. Ann realized that she was finding the pair more titillating now than she had found any of the dancers before.

Because, she admitted to herself, she’d suddenly discovered a sex life again.

A young black woman suddenly slid into the seat beside her. “You’re Ann Marcel.”

Ann nodded, studying the woman. She was very pretty. Again, she recognized her as one of the women she had seen on stage.

“I’m April Jagger. That’s my husband, Marty, with Cindy.”

“Oh!” Ann said, trying to smile, taken by surprise.

April laughed. “Don’t worry. They’re quite harmless together.”

Ann blushed. “It’s just so...”

“Right.”

“But beautiful. Really.”

“I hope so. Marty is really a good choreographer. He’s done some music videos, and naturally, some of us get jobs in them.”

“You’re all very talented.”

April laughed. “It’s not so difficult really. We can teach you to dance. Anyway, they’re almost finished. Cindy will be really glad to see you; she was worried sick about you this morning.”

“I knew she was back; I should have tried to call her.”

“It’s okay; the police got hold of us. We knew that you were okay. And we know, of course, that Gregory’s hanging in.”

“I just came from the hospital. They told me that he was still critical but stable. He must have taken one awful whack on the head.”

“That storm was fierce. Worse than a few hurricanes. Amazing how quickly they can come up and then comes the morning, and the wind and rain are just gone as if they’d never been. Anyway, they both should have seen how bad the weather was getting. The middle of one of those storms is no time to be running around in a bayou. Anyway, come on backstage. See what the other half is like. Bring your wine.”

Ann took her wineglass and followed April through the darkened center of the club around to the left side of the stage. They entered into a large hallway with numerous doors leading off it. “Lots of us share this one,” April said, opening the door to one of the rooms. She stretched out an arm, indicating that Ann should precede her. Ann did so.

The room had one occupant, a very buxomy brunette with a feathered headdress that surely swept the ceiling. A few feathers made up the rest of her costume, carefully placed. Some would stay, Ann assumed, when she was done with her appearance. Some would not.

She was standing, just finishing an application of lipstick.

“Jennifer, this is Ann Marcel. Jon’s wife.”

“Hi, nice to meet you, he was a dear, is a dear, he’s still alive, right? Oh, sorry, that sounds so terrible. I’m late as usual. It’s really nice to meet you; I hear you’re as nice as he was. Is.”

“Thanks,” Ann said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“You takin’ a job here, honey? I thought you were an artist as well?”

“I am. I’m not taking a job.”

April laughed. “We’re waiting for Cindy. Then Cindy and I are going to give her a few pelvic gyration lessons and see if we can’t tempt her.”

“Go to it, girls. See you in a sec.”

Jennifer flew out, her feathers waving away.

“Have a seat,” April offered. “I’ve got to get dressed myself.”

She indicated a comfortable sofa near a rack of costumes. The sofa faced a long makeup counter with five individual mirrors. To the far right of the room was a dressing screen. April selected a skimpy tigress costume and strode behind the screen.

“I heard that the strangled woman the police found had been in the club that night,” Ann said.

“Yep. I saw her myself,” April said, “right before I left for the night.”

“You did.”

April, her head appearing above the screen, nodded. “She was right up at the bar.”

“Maybe she came alone.”

“There was a drink in place next to her.”

“Well, someone must have ordered the drink.”

“Not from the bartender.”

“Then how—”

“Somebody must have ordered the drink I saw from one of the waitresses—which would mean it could have belonged to a hundred people. It is amazing. There isn’t a soul in this place who could begin to describe who she was with.”

“Scary, isn’t it?”

“Terrifying.”

Cindy, a terry robe wrapped around what remained on her of her costume, burst into the room. “Ann!” She walked right to the sofa and offered Ann a warm hug. “God, I’m so glad that you’re all right, at least. I was so worried. I’m off for a bit now. I think I’m going to head over to the hospital and see about Gregory. I’m just sick; it was all my fault.”

“How can a tree falling be your fault?” Ann demanded.

“Because I was restless, because I walked away, and Gregory, being Gregory, was going to make certain nothing bad happened to me. We were all so dangerously stupid—not you, you don’t know the swamp. But once we were out there and that storm started, we should have all just stayed with Mama Lili Mae. Big slumber party. We’d have been fine. And Gregory—” She paused, her eyes filling with tears. “Gregory wouldn’t be in the hospital.”

“But thank God that Ann was all right,” April reminded her.

“Well, the detective of the year went after Ann.” She smiled, then sighed. “But that didn’t help Gina any.”

“Gina and he weren’t an exclusive thing,” April said.

Cindy stared at Ann. “I didn’t know that you and Mark were an exclusive thing. Actually, I didn’t know that you were a ‘thing’ at all. I mean, Jimmy Deveaux told me that he’d gone out to the bayou, but...”

“He came out to the bayou and found me, and we’re not an exclusive thing,” Ann said, impatient to ask questions rather than answer them. An incredible uneasiness was sweeping over her. “I didn’t realize that he and Gina...were a thing.”

“Well, they weren’t a thing. They were upon occasion. Or had been upon occasion.”

“Well, you know, they kind of grew up together,” April offered.

Cindy sighed. “You didn’t know? Mark and she saw each other. Mark is a descendant of an aunt of Mama Lili Mae who married a LaCrosse. So they were distantly related. Which makes him distantly related to Jacques as well. But as to Gina, well...”

“They had a relationship awhile after Mark’s wife died. Then they cooled off. Then they had a relationship again. Then they were friends, then...”

“So, he might have been sleeping with her when—when she died?”

“She really was in love with Jon, I think, at least,” April said.

“Yeah,” Cindy muttered. “Well, she might have been in love with him, but that didn’t stop her from keeping some other people dangling at the same time.”

“She did spend a fair amount of time up in Duval’s office the Monday before she was killed.”

“And what about Jacques Moret?” Ann asked.

“Oh, well, I never did know what his hold over her was. She saw him,” April said. “It was never love. Maybe they got together now and then when one of them was lonely.”

“I don’t know,” Cindy murmured. “It seemed to me that they got together when Jacques felt like it.”

“Well, it didn’t matter. Jon was the one she cared about. I think it could have worked,” April said. She stepped out from behind the screen dressed in her costume.

“Go get ’em, tiger,” Cindy teased.

“I think I still have a few minutes,” April said. “Ann, come on, get up. We’ll teach you how easy these movements really are.”

“Oh, God, no, I really can’t. I’m forty-five years old, I’m not—”

“Anyone can be!” April laughed.

“Be what?” Cindy asked.

“Whatever it is. Come on, Ann, get between us. Think of it as an anatomy lesson. It will help if you get into painting
Red Light Ladies
.”

“It will, it’s easy,” Cindy insisted.

She wasn’t sure that she would have had the physical power to resist the two if she had decided to struggle. They actually had her laughing, even though she was seething inside—but determined not to let either of them know it. Before she knew it, she found herself being “costumed.” The girls—not at all shy themselves—had her street clothing. She was prodded into an exotic, flaming fuchsia, daring harem-type outfit, complete with outrageous headdress.

Something in her felt shattered. Her world was a mess, but her night had been beautiful. She’d been falling for him, living him, breathing him, falling in love with him...

And he’d not only been trying to fry Jon, but he’d been trying to fry him while
he’d been sleeping with Gina at the same time
.

“Undulate, undulate!” April commanded. “Think where all the parts of the body are!”

“I am undulating!” Ann laughed.

“Loosen your body,” Cindy said. “Let the hips follow the knees, think like a snake. That’s it. Very sexy. Very nice. That’s it, that’s it...”

“She’s damned good!” April applauded.

Jennifer came back into the room. “April, you’re up, better get moving—you two are teaching the artist how to dance? Cool. Show her some of the arm movements. Actually, though, half of us did take dance lessons the whole time we were kids. Did your mom stick you in ballet?”

“Ten years of it,” Ann laughed.

“No wonder. See, it all comes back. The body learns, and the body remembers,” April said.

“April, get going,” Cindy warned.

“I’m out of here. Ann, that was fun. If you take off before I get back, please come see us again.”

“I will, thanks.”

Ann inched backward toward the doorway. She didn’t think she could remain calm much longer when she wished she could go back to the morning and crack Mark LaCrosse on the head with the sauce pan instead of his sad-eyed partner.

She changed back into her own clothing as she spoke. “Cindy, I wanted to make sure you were okay. I think I’m going home for some sitcoms and a good night’s sleep. If you hear anything, give me a call. If I find out anything, I’ll get with you.”

“Thanks, Ann.”

“Oh, Cindy! Can I take some pictures of you tomorrow? I like to work from photographs.”

“You’re going to paint me?” Cindy seemed pleased.

“If you don’t mind.”

“No. I’m an egotist. I’ll love it.”

“Great.”

“Yeah, it’s great; we’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll get you out on that stage after all.”

Never, Ann thought.

But she smiled. “The lesson was fun. Bye, now.”

Ann walked out of the dressing room, through the back, around the audience in the darkened center, past the bar area and dais, and to the door.

Odd.

She felt...

Watched.

Everyone watched her, she reminded herself wearily. They all watched her, because she didn’t belong. She was Jon Marcel’s ex-wife. And Jon Marcel...

Well, they all seemed to feel almost the same way about Jon.

They all liked him.

Yet some people seemed to think him guilty.