Deadly Night

  Each of the women who had come to the area never to be seen again had been between the ages of twenty and thirty. Each had been starting out on a long vacation. They were all single. And in every case, the disappearance hadn’t been reported until they’d been gone for several weeks, because they didn’t live with anyone who would be concerned immediately. In two of the cases, they hadn’t been reported missing until they had been gone several months.

  “How the hell could that have been?” Aidan wondered aloud.

  “Joan Crandall disappeared ten years ago. She left Chicago for Houston, and was supposedly driving to New Orleans from there. She had worked at a fast-food restaurant, and, I suppose, lots of people just walked off the job, so her boss just figured she’d decided to stay down here. The other was Kristin Ford. She disappeared five years ago, and she was driving here from Memphis, but she hadn’t been there very long. She was working on again, off again as a stripper. She was only reported as missing when the neighbors noticed a terrible odor from her house. Apparently, a neighborhood cat had gotten in and died, and it was only when the authorities were called that she was reported missing at all. Her credit card was last used at a gas station just outside the Quarter. Her car was never found, she never wrote another check, and the trail just ended. In most of these cases, the investigators just reached a dead end, and since there was no one to push for action, they all ended up filed as cold cases.”

  “If these are all connected—and I think they are—then the killer’s definitely escalating,” Aidan said with a sinking feeling.

  “Want me to get on this, contact the local authorities that took the missing persons reports?” Zach asked.

  Aidan nodded, then looked at Jeremy. “Let’s go see your guitar-playing buddy.”

  As they left, Aidan looked back at the house. A workman was replastering a column. A painter’s van drew up and parked by the front steps.

  The old place wasn’t really such a white elephant after all. He could already envision how nice it was going to look with a coat of paint.

  Jeremy caught him looking at the house. “Halloween party, you wait and see,” he said.

  “Maybe,” Aidan agreed.

  There was still something that seemed off about the house. It wasn’t rot; it wasn’t decay.

  It was something else.

  A hunch.

  Damn, he hated hunches.

  Vinnie was expecting them.

  He lived in a large house down toward Rampart on Dauphine. It looked as if it needed paint even more than the plantation did, but inside, it was well-kept. He greeted them at the door, shirtless and holding a cup of coffee, and he invited them in politely enough.

  “If you had called, I’d have been ready,” he told Aidan with a slight scowl.

  “Had a late night, huh?” Aidan asked.

  Vinnie shrugged. “You were out just as late.”

  Had Vinnie been out even later, planting voodoo dolls on their lawn? Aidan wondered.

  Aidan and Jeremy sat in the parlor and drank coffee while they waited for Vinnie to grab a shirt. The room held a grand piano covered with a quilt, a few guitars on stands, and bookshelves with dozens of music books and a few novels. It didn’t look as if Vinnie was into the occult. His choice in reading, as evidenced by the one shelf that held commercial fiction, tended toward legal thrillers.

  When he reappeared from his bedroom, he looked like any ordinary guy, in jeans and a T-shirt.

  “Nice house,” Aidan commented.

  “It was my folks’. They moved to North Carolina, to a place in the mountains, to retire. I’m buying it from them, and since they bought it thirty years ago, the price isn’t bad. I could never afford it otherwise.”

  “Do you ever take in boarders?” Aidan asked.

  Vinnie shook his head. “I’m too hard to live with. Can’t keep a girlfriend, either.”

  “I wouldn’t think you’d have any problem meeting women,” Aidan said.

  “I don’t. I’m just the kind for one-night stands,” Vinnie told him. “Maybe I’ll change one day, but right now, there are too many pretty women out there. And they all seem to like sleeping with musicians.”

  Aidan glanced at his brother, but Jeremy shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I’m not a musician.”

  “Bullshit, man. You’re one hell of a musician,” Vinnie objected.

  “I’m not a working musician.”

  “You should be,” Vinnie told him. “But I guess you must be good at the investigation thing, too, huh?” He turned to Aidan. “You guys must do really well, to be putting that plantation back in order.”

  “We’re good at our jobs,” Aidan said evenly.

  “Come on, we can walk over to where Jenny was staying,” Vinnie suggested.

  Jeremy glanced at his watch, then looked at his brother apologetically. “Can you two take it from here? I’m due to make a public service announcement at noon. We’re giving away two tickets for the gala Saturday night.”

  “We’re fine,” Aidan said. “Aren’t we, Vinnie?”

  “Yeah, just like two old pals,” Vinnie said dryly.

  It was a three-block walk. They passed a man walking a dog and a woman getting out of a FedEx truck. Both of them knew Vinnie and seemed happy to see him.

  There were no tourists in evidence, but then, this was a residential area of the Quarter. Some tourists probably took a walk around the area now and then, admiring the old houses with the pots of flowers on their porches, but it didn’t offer the bars of Bourbon Street or the shops found on Royal or Decatur, so there was no draw to bring most people here.

  “Why do you have it in for me?” Vinnie asked Aidan suddenly.

  Aidan turned to look at Vinnie, surprised by the question. The guy seemed sincerely puzzled.

  “The trail ends with you, that’s all,” Aidan said.

  “The trail, as you say, ends at the place where I’m taking you now,” Vinnie said firmly.

  They came to a house that was only a little larger than Vinnie’s. A nice-looking place with a big veranda sporting a traditional porch swing, a stone wall out front, and a sign that advertised La Fleur Bed and Breakfast.

  Vinnie walked on ahead, trying the front door. It wasn’t open, so he knocked.

  A tiny woman with glasses and a gray bun at the back of her head opened the door. “Hello. Are you looking for a room?”

  Aidan stepped ahead of Vinnie. “Hi, how are you? No, we’re looking for some help, ma’am.”

  She arched a brow. “Well, I’m delighted to help you if I can.”

  Aidan thanked her, introduced himself and produced the picture of Jenny Trent. He explained that she’d been in the city three months earlier, that Vinnie had walked her to the bed-and-breakfast, and that she hadn’t been seen since. But before he even finished, she was frowning and staring at him. “I wondered when someone would come,” she said.

  Kendall was nervous. She couldn’t help worrying about Sheila.

  She wandered aimlessly around the shop, brewed tea, sold some Halloween decorations, then found that she was scheduled for a reading. She looked at Mason. “Want to do this one?” she asked him.

  “It’s Gary, one of the guys from the Stakes. He asked for you.”

  Gary was a nice guy. He had glossy shoulder-length blond hair, the kind that made women jealous. He tried to talk her into singing with the band more often, but she begged off and gave him the cards, telling him to cut them, wary of what was going to happen. She laid out his spread. The cards looked like cards. She was so relieved that she talked with him for a long time, telling him honestly that the cards were just a way for him to look at his own life and know his own mind, and that his spread suggested he needed to work harder at pursuing his goal.

  “How am I supposed to do that?” he asked. “We play almost every night. And even when I’m not playing with the Stakes, I can usually find work on my own or with other groups. But it doesn’t feel like I’m really going anywhere, you know?”
r />   I don’t know, she might have told him. You’re looking at someone who caved early on and easily, afraid that her dreams would never earn a living.

  “You keep your eyes open,” she said instead, “and you listen for every opportunity. Take gigs that support a cause or could get you some good publicity. Maybe you need to look for opportunities, too, even create them. Don’t just wait around for opportunity to find you.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. You’re good.” He winked at her. “Better than any shrink I’ve ever seen—or bartender, for that matter.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks,” she told him.

  She looked at the cards. They were still just cards. She left the little inner room with him, they exchanged a few pleasantries, then he gave her a kiss on the cheek and left.

  “You okay?” Mason asked her.

  “Sure.”

  “The reading was fine?”

  “Yeah. I spewed my usual uplifting bull.”

  “Alas, what an unbeliever.”

  “And you really believe?”

  “I never mock what my heart tells me,” he assured her. “I’m going to lunch, and it’s going to be a long lunch, okay? There are more boxes to open in back, if you get bored.”

  She wasn’t bored; she was restless. On the one hand, she couldn’t stop thinking about the fact she was actually engaged in a sexual relationship with a man who was fascinating, compelling and unbelievable in bed. At the same time, she kept telling herself that no matter what she’d told him, she still wasn’t sure she even liked him. But she did want to see him again. Talk with him, even argue with him. Definitely sleep with him. And maybe…more. That was the scary part.

  She tried not to think about Aidan, but not thinking about Aidan made her more nervous. She wandered into her office and picked up the deck of tarot cards she always used for readings. Since she was alone, she brought them back out front with her. She shuffled them and turned them up, not in a spread, but one by one.

  When she found the Death card, it just stared up at her. It was flat. It was inanimate. It was a card.

  She wasn’t doing a reading, though. Maybe she should read her own tarot spread.

  No. No way.

  But the thought of doing a reading made her even more anxious about Sheila Anderson.

  She put through a call to the historical society where her friend worked, but Sheila’s boss seemed surprised by her call. “You know she isn’t due back until this weekend, right?” he asked her.

  “Right. Thank you.”

  Frustrated but still uneasy, she hung up.

  She carefully returned the deck to her reading room, went into the back, pulled out the boxes Mason had mentioned and opened the first to find a new shipment of voodoo dolls. She walked out front and looked up at the shelf. There had been ten dolls in their first order.

  She remembered selling two right away, and she had sold another three earlier this week.

  But now there were only two on the top shelf.

  When had Mason sold the others? This morning? Or…

  There was no way out of it. Three were missing. Exactly three. The same number that had been found in front of Flynn Plantation.

  The woman who owned the bed-and-breakfast was named Lily Fleur. Her husband’s name, she explained, as she cheerfully led them out to an old carriage house that was now her storeroom. He’d passed away a few years ago, and her daughter had moved to New York and her son to California. They were always urging her to move out to be with one of them, but this was her home, and she loved running a B and B.

  “I called the police when she didn’t return,” she said now, “and they suggested I just hold on to her belongings, said she’d probably come back. I didn’t hear from them again, and quite frankly, I put the things away and then kind of forgot about them. I should have been more persistent, I guess, but I wasn’t. And I think I got her name wrong, anyway, because they didn’t find any record of her. I’ll show you where she signed in. It looks like she wrote Sherry Frend, not Jenny Trent. We talked a bit when she checked in, but she was only here for the night, and she paid me cash.” She opened the door to let them in.

  “It was just the one backpack, so I figured she’d left most of her luggage in her car, or that she knew how to travel light.”

  Aidan was glad she was so willing to turn the backpack over to him, rather than contacting the police again.

  “Is Sherry all right?” the elderly woman asked. “Jenny, I mean.”

  “I’m afraid she’s missing, Mrs. Fleur,” Aidan told her.

  “Missing?” The woman was clearly upset. “That’s terrible!”

  “She was trusting,” Vinnie said suddenly. Aidan looked at the man. He looked genuinely worried, more subdued than Aidan had ever seen him, as if he’d finally realized that something might really have happened to the girl he had walked home that night three months ago.

  “Let’s see what she left,” Aidan said.

  “Oh,” Mrs. Fleur said suddenly. “Should I be letting you do this?”

  “I’ve been hired by her next of kin to try to find her,” Aidan assured her.

  “You’ll take her backpack, then, right?” Mrs. Fleur asked, as if she had decided that she needed to back off from anything that might have belonged to the girl, as if that would distance her from anything bad that might have happened.

  Aidan nodded. “Yes, I’ll be taking it.”

  “I only saw her when she checked in, you know, and then before she went out for the night,” Mrs. Fleur said nervously.

  “So you don’t know if she actually came in or not after Vinnie here walked her home?” Aidan asked.

  “She made it to the porch. I know that,” Vinnie said.

  Lily Fleur shoved the backpack quickly into Aidan’s arms. “I hope you find her.”

  She sounded sincere, but she was clearly dismissing them.

  Aidan thanked her for her help. “Mrs. Fleur,” he asked, “do you remember any commotion that night—late, after she would have gotten back to her room?”

  “Good heavens, no. I run a quiet place.”

  “And you’re sure that if anything was going on in a room here, you would hear it?”

  “Of course! I’m old, not deaf,” she said huffily, as she led them back through the house and down the hallway to the front door. Aidan picked up one of her cards as he passed the front desk, thanking her again and alerting her that he might need to call her again.

  Distressed, she nearly pushed them out the door.

  “We can check out the pack at my place,” Vinnie suggested. “It’s closer than your hotel.”

  He still seemed worried. As they walked, he met Aidan’s eyes. “I don’t know why you’ve decided you don’t like me, but I swear to you, I’ve never hurt anyone in my life.”

  Aidan decided going to Vinnie’s was a good idea. It would let him watch the other man’s reaction to whatever they found.

  When they dumped the backpack, they found several guidebooks, along with a hairbrush, ten pairs of skimpy underwear, several bras, a heavy sweatshirt, two pairs of jeans, a pair of shorts, and two knit dresses that would work for a casual occasion or a night out. Aidan noticed Vinnie staring at one of the dresses.

  “What?” Aidan asked.

  Vinnie looked at him. “She definitely went back to her room after I left her. She was wearing that dress when she came to the bar.”

  Aidan looked at Vinnie assessingly. “You said you two just flirted. She obviously liked you, and she let you walk her home. Why didn’t you try to get her into bed?”

  Vinnie flushed. “I didn’t say I didn’t try. I understand signals, and I respect the word ‘no,’ so I left her on the porch and went home. I swear.”

  “Did she seem anxious about anything?” Aidan asked.

  Vinnie pursed his lips, thinking. “She did keep looking at her watch. And she was excited, but she was one of those bubbly people, anyway, so I just assumed she was all excited about her trip.”

 
Aidan picked up one of the guidebooks as Vinnie spoke. He leafed through it, and something fell out.

  He picked it up.

  “Well, now we know she never left the country,” he said.

  “Why? What is it?” Vinnie asked.

  “Her passport.”

  12

  Aidan started with Jonas Burningham.

  Jonas was in his office, and he came right out when Aidan asked for him, ushering him back to his office quickly.

  “I was going to call you,” Jonas said.

  “Oh? You have something, too?”

  Jonas frowned. “Too? Why are you here?”

  Aidan flung the backpack onto Jonas’s shiny wooden desk. “The other day I went out to see Jenny Trent’s cousin-in-law. And I traced her last charge to a bar—the same bar where we all seem to be hanging out these days, by the way. Our guitar-playing friend Vinnie walked her back to a B and B, where she’d paid cash for her room. She left this backpack there. Her passport is in it, by the way.”

  He had returned everything to the backpack. Except for the brush. He wasn’t sure why, but something had just told him to hang on to it, even though it was the most reliable source of Jenny’s DNA that they’d come up with.

  Jonas stared blankly at the backpack for a moment, then turned to Aidan. “Oh.”

  “Why did you think I was here?”

  “I thought maybe…nothing.”

  “Okay, yes. I heard Matty came looking for you, and that you were fooling around. That’s your business. You’re an idiot, but hey, you’re a grown man.”

  “I love Matty,” Jonas said guiltily.

  “I told you, your marriage is your business. Now pay attention to me, damn it. This girl came to New Orleans and was most probably murdered here. Would you get on the stick?”

  Jonas looked up at him. “If you think that she was murdered here,” he said, “it’s a matter for the local police.”

  Aidan leaned on the desk. “Jonas, in the first place, Hal Vincent refuses to pay any attention to me. And in the second place, if what Zach turned up is right, she’s part of a serial case, and that puts it right smack under the Bureau’s jurisdiction, so do you think you could help me out here?”