Heather Graham (5 page)

“I intend to sleep here.”

Again, Mark produced one of his cards from the inner pocket of his jacket. “If—”

“I know. If I think of anything, call you.”

He smiled grimly, staring at her. “If you think of anything in the next few hours, you can call me at the morgue. A woman is dead, you will recall.”

Her lashes fell. Her cheeks whitened again. But her eyes quickly focused on his once more.

“Jon Marcel is not guilty, Lieutenant. I’m convinced Jon is where he is now because he’s a good man, and he attempted to save her life.”

“Your faith is quite commendable, Mrs. Marcel. But it’s not enough. We need to know everything and anything. Jon Marcel said nothing more to you?”

“No.”

“Absolutely nothing?”

“I told you what he said, Lieutenant.”

“But he said nothing more?”

“No.”

He nodded. He longed to call her a liar to her face. Not only that, she wasn’t a good liar. She probably spent most of her time telling the truth.

But she was on the defensive right now. He’d probably have to resort to ancient torture—the rack, thumbscrews or the like—to get her to talk right now. And no matter what kind of bad press the force might get upon occasion, he thought dryly, they had yet to resort to thumbscrews.

“Jimmy, I think we’re finished here,” he said. He kept his eyes locked on Ann Marcel’s. “Mrs. Marcel, it’s quite obvious you’re not fond of my company, nor that of my partner. Please don’t behave stupidly because of that fact. You’re going to want to go home. To shower and change if nothing else. Don’t go home alone. Officer Holly Severt will be happy to see you back when you’re ready to leave. I’m not sure if the police have finished up gathering evidence at your place or not, but Holly can stay the night as well, to look after you.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. I don’t believe I need to be looked after,” she said.

“No?” Mark crossed his arms over his chest. “If you’re right, and your husband was attacked, you could be in very grave danger yourself, Mrs. Marcel. Especially if you’re not sharing with us everything you know—everything that he might have said.”

She didn’t reply. She appeared somewhat pale again, but that was all.

“Good night, Mrs. Marcel. Don’t go home alone.”

This time, she didn’t dispute him.

She stood like a regal statue, despite the fact that she was laden with dry blood. Small, delicate in face and stature, soft blond hair framing her face.

She could be hard as nails, he warned himself.

Obviously. Because when he turned to leave her, he knew for a fact that she had created a wall against him.

She was lying through her teeth.

Somewhere along the line, Marcel had said something else to her.

Something that mattered.

He knew it. Cop gut reaction.

Marcel had said something to her that would be the key to all the answers. What the hell was it?

And how in hell was he going to get it out of her?

A
NNABELLA’S WAS ALREADY IN
full swing for the evening when the girls began to whisper nervously back in the dressing room. “Undressing” room, Gina L’Aveau had called it. Shaking her head, Cindy McKenna wiped tears of disbelief from her face over the events of the evening.

Things had begun fairly normally at the club that night. Then an off-duty cop had brought in the word that Gina was dead. The guy who had done it was in the hospital, half-dead, probably dying himself. It was the artist, the cop had said. A New Orleans home-grown son, a fine handsome white man, apparently just freaked out over something Gina had said, something in her life. Oddly enough, the showing of Jon Marcel’s paintings of his
Red Light Ladies
had just opened; if the cop had things straight, the paintings were selling like hot cakes.

Nothing like a bit of the kinky or macabre to boost sales, Cindy thought resentfully.

The painting of Gina wasn’t in with the showing. Jon Marcel hadn’t finished his rendition of her. Not yet. Cindy had seen it, though—and it was his best. Everything fine and beautiful about Gina had been caught in that painting. Jon had said that he would never sell it.

Jon hadn’t committed the murder. Cindy knew it. For a fact. He’d cared about Gina. He’d cared about all the girls. He’d been curious about them. Like a writer might have been curious, like any man who wanted to find out about people and tell their stories. Only Jon Marcel told his stories with his paints. So the cops had the wrong guy.

And it didn’t matter if Jon Marcel was wearing Gina’s blood. Marcel hadn’t done it. Simple. Case closed. Cindy wondered if she’d get a chance to see Jon. Maybe she’d go to church tomorrow morning and say a few prayers. Maybe she’d go see Mama Lili Mae out in the bayou and try a potion to keep him alive. Maybe she’d try both prayers and voodoo to help with the situation. Cindy McKenna had left her home and gone for nearly four years to a good Ivy League college, but it just seemed true that you could take the girl out of the bayou, you just couldn’t take the bayou out of the girl. A good Catholic bayou girl went to church.

And she went to Mama Lili Mae’s.

“Cindy, you’re on,” April Jagger called to her, something of a warning note in her tone. April was tall, lithe, stunningly beautiful. Her skin was such a silky shade of black that almost everyone in creation felt the temptation to touch it. No one did. April was married. She danced at the club, and that was that. Dancing made her good money. She had a one-year-old baby girl and intended to move far away from Louisiana within the next few years. April hadn’t had the opportunity for a college education herself, but she was smart. Her father had died in a storm working on another man’s boat; her mother had raised eight children alone. April and her husband, Marty, one of the four male dancers at the club, had already invested their incomes well.

“Honey, you’re on!” April persisted.

Duval got ticked when his girls didn’t make their cues on time. He could be a tough boss. Harry Duval, like a lot of his girls, had grown up the hard way, half in the bayou, half in the streets. Somehow, Harry had come out one striking-looking man. There was white blood in him and there was black blood in him, and he was copper-toned with surprising green-gold eyes and strong, well-molded features. He kept himself up, too. At six-something, he was tall and powerful. He’d never beat a girl, not that Cindy had heard, and modern day as it might be, lots of guys who ran clubs still beat their women. He paid fair; when his girls kept men “company,” he expected a commission. And no girl had to take on any john. Working for Harry might be sad, and Cindy had enjoyed her years of education enough to know that she was damned sad; but life being what it was, she had responsibilities, and Harry kept her supporting those responsibilities.

“I’m going; I’m on my way,” she promised April. Usually, they would have joked. They would have made some silly comment to one another. Not tonight. They were both white-faced. Gina had been murdered.

“You okay, honey?” April asked her.

“Yeah.”

April shivered fiercely. “I’m not. I mean, you think a girl has met a decent guy, and...my God, do you think he could have done that to Gina?”

“You mean Jon?”

“Yeah, I mean Jon.”

“No. No, I don’t,” Cindy said.

“Stranger things have happened, I suppose.”

“Yeah, sure. But—”

“But what?”

Cindy shrugged. “Gina was keeping lots of company; she had lots of friends.” Again, she hesitated. “Gina was a magnet. People fell for her, loved her. She made people mad because they loved her sometimes. Friends turned enemy and the like.”

“Well, you be careful, do you hear? I’ve got Marty, and I won’t be leaving here without him, I can promise you.”

“I’ll be careful. Very careful,” Cindy promised, shivering herself.

“Get going!” April urged.

Cindy hurried from the dressing room hallway to the stage wings. She was somewhat breathless when she heard the announcer.

“Here she is, gentlemen—and you ladies out there enjoying the fine, sweet jazz sounds of Annabella’s—a little bit of ever-lovin’ fluff from home-grown waters, Miss Delilah Delite!”

The voice booming huskily over the speakers introduced Cindy. Some of the girls used their own names, or stage names that played off their own names. She did not. On stage, she was a different person.

The lights were down as she took her position by the long, phallic dance pole stage center. The music started with a slow gyration. She followed it with practiced undulations of her body, letting her Grecian costume—held together in strategic locations with Velcro—flow sensually.

Full house tonight. Men were packed into the tables right by the stage. All men. Women did frequent the club, many of them, as a matter of fact. Some nouveau riche, some tourists, some locals who just really knew where to find the best local jazz music. And there were, of course, the four male dancers—each guy in a different shade, built like Adonis. But despite the male appearances, women usually sat at the back tables, in the shadows. Some necked, some sipped drinks. Sometimes they watched when the girls danced; sometimes they didn’t.

Cindy knew her routine. It was as natural as breathing. It was easy enough to follow with her mind engaged elsewhere.

With Gina.

Gina was dead. They’d be crucifying Jon Marcel for what had happened.

Gina’s killer would walk free.

Would walk free...maybe. Oh, God, would they pin it on Jon? Would everyone else associated with Gina still be in danger now?

She was jarred from her thoughts at the end of her number when well-known sounds of one of the trumpets suddenly halted. The other musicians quickly picked up the sound and the beat. Someone not accustomed to the perfection of the jazz band might not have even noticed a slip in the music.

Cindy looked toward the dais across the room where the Dixie Boys played.

Crouched down on the floor, swaying her hips to the last few notes of her routine, she tossed back her hair to watch what was going on. Gregory Hanson. She had known, of course. She loved his trumpet, loved his talent, and she knew instantly that he had been the one to suddenly cease to play.

The news had just gotten to the band. Gina was dead.

Gregory was leaving the dais.

He was a huge man, muscled like a prizefighter, ebony black, sleek as a panther. Virile, striking. A power in himself. As Cindy watched, he strode across the room.

Only to be stopped by Harry Duval.

The men were probably shouting; they were both tense and fierce. Furious. Arguing.

Yet, miraculously, no one seemed to realize or notice the altercation. No one noticed because the band kept playing, and because the gentlemen in the room had burst into applause for her dance.

And her final pose, she was quite certain.

Gregory slammed a palm against Harry Duval’s shoulder. Harry’s eyes narrowed, sharp and glittering, but he didn’t respond with violence. He set a hand on Gregory’s shoulder, speaking softly and quickly.

The two men disappeared together, stepping through the crowds and outside of the club.

Cindy wondered just when Gina had been found, if the police had determined when she had been murdered. Neither man had reached the club until ten
P.M.
that night. She hadn’t gotten there until nine, and the men had come after her.

The applause continued to crash down around her. She rose, smiled, bowed, waved. She spun around to leave the stage, exiting with all the speed that she could.

Only then did she allow the tears to slide down her cheeks. Tears of pain for a friend. And tears of...fear.

For herself.

Dr. Lee Minh, one of the city’s top medical examiners, would perform the autopsy on Gina L’Aveau. He and Jimmy and Mark had worked together often enough to cement some strong professional bonds between them.

When they left the hospital, Mark sent Jimmy home and went on to the morgue himself. Lee had prepped the body for autopsy, then waited for Mark.

“Sure you want to be here for the whole thing?” Lee asked him. “You know I’ll give you a complete, detailed report.”

Gina lay on a stainless steel gurney, naked, ready for Lee’s knife.

He should go home, Mark thought. No one required him to be here. Lee would give him a detailed report. Lee missed nothing.

He walked to the gurney, looking down at Gina. The dead stripper had once been a beautiful girl, not yet too hardened by the life she had chosen to lead. Her lifeblood had drained from her through the gash at her throat; she was as pale as snow. Her eyes were now closed. Minus the gaping red gash, she might have been Snow White asleep on a pillow, dark hair still rich and lustrous, framing the white beauty of her face.

He owed her.

He backed away. “If I’m not bothering you, I’ll hang around,” he told Lee.

Lee nodded.

The medical examiner began without touching a knife. He commented on every scrape, bruise and tiny wound on her body, noting his findings clearly for the microphone suspended above the gurney where Gina lay. He was slow, methodical, detailed. With an assistant, he scraped underneath Gina’s nails. Swabs were done of her body orifices. She’d engaged in sex during the day, but it didn’t appear that the act had been forced. The sperm would be analyzed, possibly helping to pinpoint her killer.

Lee’s voice droned on. None of his findings was surprising.

Yet, no matter how professional and courteous Lee’s treatment of Gina’s body was, Mark was forced to think of how impersonal and humiliating death could be.

He ached for the dead woman on the slab. Meat. She was dead now; her butchering was still going on.

Lines were drawn; Gina’s chest was opened. More fluids were taken for the lab. Organs were removed for testing. As Mark watched and listened, Lee gave his conclusive statement at last.

“Death caused by severe loss of blood from severance of the carotid artery...”

No mystery. It hadn’t taken a forensic genius to figure that one out.

I could have said that,
Mark thought.
Any fool could have said that...