Heather Graham (30 page)

She tapped on the door, then pushed it open. The lights were off in the room. It was filled with shadows.

“April?”

She stepped into the room.

Suddenly, the door closed behind her.

And the room was plunged into complete darkness.

She started to cry out, but a hand descended firmly upon her mouth.

And a hissed warning sounded in the blackness...

“Shhhhh...”

M
ARK SAT IN LEE
Minh’s office, reading the report on Jane Doe—now presumed to be Ms. Ellie Trainor of Los Angeles, California, thirty-eight years old, president and chairman of the board of Time Travel, Inc., a tour company specializing in preparing itineraries for people with very little time. She lived alone, lived for her work, made a small fortune, no children, no exes, parents deceased, greatly admired by employees and associates.

“The match just came in on the computer,” Lee told Mark. “We’ll verify, of course, but it looks like we’ve got the right identity now. She was due back from a scouting trip out here in New Orleans. She didn’t show. The statistics match—a five-foot-seven, one-hundred-and-thirty-pound blonde. We’re waiting for a reply from dental now, but I’d stake my reputation that we’ve got the right name on the right body.”

Mark nodded, glancing at the picture they had of the woman when she’d been alive. Very pretty, sleek, sophisticated.

“She had fish for dinner,” Lee said.

Mark stared over at him.

“Done up in a way only two places prepare it, that I know of, at any rate.”

“I knew you’d come through. Where?”

“Divinity’s, on Chartes Street, and Abelone, right off of Bourbon.”

“I’ll be right on it. Can I use your phone?”

“Be my guest.”

“Ms. Trainor’s place of business has been informed, right?”

Lee nodded.

Mark stared down at the report, punching in numbers. He glanced at his watch. “It’s afternoon in L.A. now, right?”

“Yeah.”

The phone was answered by a girl with a breathy voice. Mark identified himself, told the girl how sorry he was, and then asked for her help.

“Can you tell me anything about what she was doing in New Orleans, who she was seeing?”

“Well, there was one gentleman in particular. In fact, he was so charming. He told me not to worry when Ellie first...when we first realized that Ellie had disappeared.”

“Who?”

“The company has done a bit of long distance business with him before, but this time Ellie was planning on sending a lot of people in his direction.”

“Can you tell me his name?”

“Jacques Moret.”

Mark stared at Lee, thanked the girl, and hung up the phone.

Harry Duval and Jon Marcel studied one another in silence for several seconds.

“Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t do it!” Harry insisted.

“Well, I didn’t do it either,” Jon said firmly. “I was in love with her. You know that.”

“She made a fortune for me,” Harry Duval said.

“That would have ended if she’d married me.”

“I’m telling you, I didn’t do it,” Harry repeated. “The case is still far stronger against you. She had one hell of a past. She was seeing other people right up until the end. You weren’t naive enough to think that she’d given up all the others the moment you met?”

“I wasn’t naive in the least—I fell in love with her despite her life, and I’m willing to bet that Gina was killed simply because she almost had a real life with me. Someone wasn’t willing to let her have it.”

Harry Duval shook his head, staring down into a glass of Campari he’d had his bartender pour. He picked up the glass and swallowed the liquid, wincing as he watched the stage. Jon looked to the stage as well. Jennifer was on. She wasn’t as perfect as some of the other girls, but the guys at the front tables didn’t seem to care.

“I didn’t kill her. You didn’t kill her. Jacques?” Harry shook his head again. “I don’t see Jacques as a killer. He’s too much of a user. He would have tried to blackmail her, yes, but kill her...? I think that Gina was seeing someone else as well. Someone none of us really knew about.”

“The cop?” Jon grated. “Mark LaCrosse?”

Harry glanced at Jon, a curious smile curved into his features. “She liked the cop. Liked him a lot. She told me once he was the best she’d had, and she’d had a lot of men.”

Duval was irritating him for his own amusement, Jon realized. He determined to keep control of his temper. Duval sighed. “But I don’t know. Once...”

“Once, she left here with the other cop,” Duval revealed.

“What other cop?”

“LaCrosse’s partner. Deveaux. Jimmy Deveaux.”

“How many people knew about that?”

Duval shrugged. “I knew. I think she went with him because he had discovered that...”

“Discovered what?”

Duval stared at Jon and smiled slowly. “Silly play. Gina wanted more than the spiritual advice Mama Lili Mae gave her. She liked the spells and incantations. Some ritual was performed in the cemetery, and apparently Deveaux was planning on taking her in on some kind of destruction of public property charges.”

Jon stood. “What cemetery?” he demanded.

“It’s me, it’s me, it’s me!” came a whisper.

The hand was gone. Ann inhaled deeply. “April! Dammit! You scared me half to death!”

“I’m just trying to be really careful.”

“My heart nearly stopped beating!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just didn’t want anybody to see me talking to you. I’m getting really spooked around here. Duval called Cindy up to his office today, and she hasn’t reappeared since then. I’m just so uneasy! We heard that Jon was out, and ever since then everyone here has been staring at everyone else. But there is something that I never told you; I don’t know whether it will help or hurt, but I think that I know something not many other people do.”

“What, tell me, April!”

They still stood in the dark. April opened the door to the dressing room, looking out into the hallway. She half closed the door, watching the hallway as she spoke in a tense whisper. “Gina had some kind of a secret correspondence going on. With someone practicing an illegal form of voodoo. She was involved with a cult. They performed rituals at the cemetery.” She lowered her voice even further. “This cult slips in and out of there fairly frequently without getting caught. Gina loved that damned cemetery. She’d do a lot to protect it—and the cultists who met there. She told me once to look for ‘Manning’ if I ever needed help and couldn’t get it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before? Why didn’t you tell the police?”

April shook her head. “I don’t know. I didn’t think that it mattered, that it could mean anything. I thought it was just so silly at first. I mean, who would take people killing chickens in a cemetery seriously in this day and age? I didn’t want to hurt Gina’s friends. Maybe I wanted Jon to be the killer so that everything would be safe.”

Suddenly, out of the darkness, they heard a groan.

Both women froze, then looked into the darkness of the dressing room.

Ann hit the lights.

Cindy was lying on the sofa, curled into a fetal ball. She looked so very small—like a wounded sparrow.

“Cindy!” Ann cried. She hurried over to the young woman and knelt down beside her.

She was dressed in dark jeans and a denim shirt. Most of her body was covered; but the sleeves of her shirt were rolled up, and it appeared that she had bruises on her arm.

“Cindy!” Ann cried again.

“Ohh...” Cindy sat up, blinked, and stared at the two of them.

“Oh, my God, what did he do to you?” April demanded.

Ann stared at April in horror. “Duval?” she queried sharply.

“No, no...,” Cindy protested. She tried to smile. “Harry had nothing to do with this.”

“Who did?”

“A shrimp.”

“What?”

“I think I ate bad shellfish.”

“And got a bruise on your arm?” Ann demanded.

“I got sick and fell. Really. I just need to lie down awhile longer. I took something for it. I’m feeling better. I swear. I was sleeping until I started hearing your voices.”

“Oh, Cindy,” April said.

“Cindy, you’ve got to tell me the truth! Someone else could wind up dead.”

“I’m telling the truth!” Cindy insisted. “Please believe me, Ann. You’ve got to believe me.”

Ann hesitated. “I’m going to go give that man a piece of my mind.”

“Wait, please!” Cindy said. “You could just make matters much worse—”

But Ann had already left the dressing room in a hurry. She skirted the tables in the darkened area, and came back around to the bar. Jon was standing, as if he was ready to leave.

Ann set her small form in front of her ex-husband, facing Duval furiously. “Did you hurt that girl?”

“What?”

“Cindy!”

“What’s the matter with Cindy?”

His manner was both sincere and annoyed; Ann began to doubt her own conviction that Cindy had been lying about her condition to cover up for Duval.

“She’s—sick,” Ann said.

“I told her not to eat the damned shrimp. She reacts to them every damned time. I hope she can work tonight. I haven’t talked you into taking a job yet, have I?”

“No, no, Ann and I have to go,” Jon said. He glanced at her anxiously. “Actually, we need to go really quickly and get a few things done before the friendly police of our Parish of New Orleans find me and follow me again. We’ll be seeing you, Duval.”

“Yep, we’ll be seeing you,” Ann agreed as Jon propelled her out of the club. The guy with the patch on his eye was still watching the door. He smiled broadly and waved goodbye to them.

“We need a taxi,” Jon said. “Quickly. The cops will definitely have figured out that I’ve left the hospital by now. And they’ll come here.” He glanced sharply at Ann. “Were you followed?”

She shook her head.

“I can’t believe they don’t have somebody watching you.”

“They do. I think.”

“You think?”

“It was Mark’s partner today.”

“Mark’s partner?”

“Deveaux.”

“I don’t trust him—and I’m not even sure I trust LaCrosse. At least I knew LaCrosse had slept with Gina—I just found out that she had an evening out with his partner as well.”

“Really?” Ann shivered. “He was the one watching my house, but I went out through the back of the shop on the ground floor.”

“Good for you. Still, we’ve got to get moving.”

“Wait! I know something. We’ve got to go—”

“Duval was just telling about—”

“You don’t understand! April said Gina was leaving messages—”

“There were voodoo practices going on—”

“At the cemetery.” They finished in unison. Jon stared at Ann blankly.

“You shouldn’t come there,” Jon said.

“I’ll be with you. We’ll be all right. For God’s sake, Jon, I’m not letting you go alone. There’s a cab, flag it down, quickly!”

She shoved Jon. He jumped into action in just the nick of time to flag down the cab.

The driver didn’t believe their destination. “Full moon tonight, folks. More crazies than ever going to be out.”

“Yes, well, that’s all right,” Jon assured him.

“The cemeteries are closed up at night!” the cabbie said firmly.

“We just want to walk around,” Ann told him.

“Somebody will shoot you in the head, you walk around too much.”

“We’ll be careful,” Jon said.

“You want me to wait for you?” the cabbie asked.

“No!” Ann said. She glanced at Jon. “We—we have friends picking us up.”

The cabbie let them off; Jon tipped him well. He kept muttering anyway.

“Dead friends. That’s what you’re going to have. Dead friends.” Then he laughed. “Hell, it’s a cemetery, a full moon, and I just dropped the whackos off with the dead folks. It’s a hell of a world, a hell of a world!”

At last, he drove off.

They stared at the walls, and the fences. “I’ll give you a boost up,” Jon said.

“You’ve got stitches! I’ll give you the boost.”

“I’m the man.”

“But I’m in the best shape.”

“Ann—”

“Sh!” she cried suddenly. “Listen!”

They could hear something.

Chanting.

“Give me a boost!” Jon said. He leapt for the wall; Ann gave him a firm push. He was quickly atop it, reaching down for her. She accepted his hand and crawled up. They both dropped silently to the earth on the other side of the wall. Once there, they remained very still again, listening.

“It’s coming from the rear of the cemetery.”

“Jon, this is really scary. Maybe we should wait for the police to follow us.”

“We’ll never find anything out if we do. The first second these guys hear the police, they’ll break, and they’ll be out of here.”

His fingers curled around hers. “Come on. We’ve just got to stick together.”

They moved through the cemetery.

It was a frightening place by night. Time and weather had eroded a number of the tombs. Cherubs, dancing above a vault, had been chipped, and they now seemed to stare down at Ann with evil leers upon their chubby faces. The full moon shining down upon effigies and tombs caught them in a strange reflection.

The chanting began to become louder. It was sing-song, all in patois.

“We’re getting closer,” Jon whispered.

Ann suddenly tripped. She nearly cried out; Jon clamped his hand over her mouth. She sank down on the broken stone beneath her, rubbing her shin.

“I almost fell over that broken cross!” she hissed.

Jon wasn’t really paying attention to her. He was looking toward the far end of the cemetery.

“They’re back there!” he whispered. He stood straight, staring in that direction, ambling just a few feet from her. “Can you walk, Annie?”

She didn’t answer him at first, but rubbed her shin. As she looked up, she suddenly noted a family vault. The surname was chiseled out cleanly at the top of it.

MANNING.

She inhaled sharply and rose, automatically walking toward the tomb. She came onto an overgrown stone path leading to it, and kept going.

There was no longer a closed gate on the tomb; the wrought-iron closure hung on its broken hinges and wedged into the earth. Outside the tomb, Ann hesitated.