Bad Moon Rising (7 page)

“Oops,” Holly offered, flashing him a knowing look. “Looks
like your friend isn’t pleased to see me. Maybe I’ll just take a seat at the
bar.”

“Right.”

As Holly headed for the bar, J.D. wove his way through
the tables, noting Beverly’s attention was focused on Holly. She might have the
patience of Job, but there was no denying her twinge of jealousy over women he
occasionally dated.

“Sorry I’m late.” He slid into the booth.

Beverly
forced her gaze across the table. “Who is she, John?”

“A client.”

She smiled tightly and reached for her tea. “Very
pretty.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.” He reached for his cola. “Every
head in the place turned to watch her cross the room. Unless you’ve been
stricken blind, you noticed.”

“Not my type.” He grinned. He wasn’t in the mood to
have his patience rubbed any rawer than it had already been.

“I know you better, John. You needn’t lie to me.”

“What do you want me to say, sweetheart? That her
fabulous ass turns me on and I fantasize about fucking her? Is that what you
want to hear?”

“Do you?”

Sitting back in the seat, he stared at her as his
stomach began to burn.

Her face blushing, Beverly lowered her gaze.

J.D. reached across the table and took her hand in
his. “Sorry. It’s been a tough twenty-four hours. I’m on edge. I didn’t mean to
take it out on you.”

“What you do with your life is no business of mine.”
She swallowed. “I just don’t want to see you hurt again. Call me protective.”

He squeezed her hand, her fingertips cold as chips of ice
against his own. “Okay, Protective, what’s up with Patrick?”

As she poured out the latest news about her son, J.D.
picked at his gumbo and did his best to focus on her voice amidst the din of
conversing diners. His attention continued to drift to Holly, who sat at the
bar, her long legs crossed, her dark hair lying in loose spirals down her back.

Beverly
had been right. It seemed every man in the place
watched her. Why not? She was every man’s wet dream. Pouty lips, sleepy bedroom
eyes, hinting of unbridled sexcapades. Though she wore nothing more figure
enhancing than a tight pair of faded jeans and white midriff cotton blouse,
she had the kind of body to stop traffic.

Some niggling memory continued to bother him, and as
he watched her chat with some beer-gutted man in a cheap suit, flashes of faces
and names zipped through his mind, but none of them fit.

“John, are you listening to me?”

“You found him with a porno mag.” He shrugged. “He’s
sixteen.”

“Hormones. Curiosity. Experimentation. I know. John,
he suggested I divorce his father.”

The man in the cheap suit sidled closer to Holly. He
was sweating now, his mouth stretched in a jackass grin.

J.D. felt like driving his fist into the guy’s teeth.

“He wants to live with you, John. That’s how miserable
he is at home. He said as much to Eric this morning. They got into a fight. I
mean a real fight. Patrick actually took a swing at him.” Her voice grew tight.
“Eric threatened to send him to military school. I’m at a loss as to how to
deal with this.”

“I can recommend some decent counselors.”

“Eric would never stand for it. God forbid anyone get
wind his family life is anything but perfect. All he can think about is his
damned political career.”

The creep reached out and touched Holly’s hair.

“I think Eric is going to run for the Senate.”

J.D. frowned. “You knew it was going to happen as soon
as Strong announced his bid for the presidency. Eric would be the logical
candidate to take his seat.”

“Like I’m going to divorce Eric now.”

“It would sure as hell shoot the wheels off his image.”

Holly gently shoved the man’s hand away.

“John, maybe it would be good for Patrick to come stay
with you awhile.”

He blinked. “You’re joking, right?”

“Maybe if he had some time away from whatever pressures
he’s going through right now.”

“Beverly, I can hardly take care of myself, much less
a sixteen-year-old.”

“Just for a couple of weeks.”

Holly slid off the stool, her fixed smile more furious
than friendly.

“Are you listening to me? For God’s sake, John.” The
man made a grab for her.

J.D. slid from the booth, plowing into a waitress and
sending her tray full of drinks flying. He crossed the floor in five strides,
twisted his fist into the back of the man’s suit, and wrenched him off his
feet, slinging him aside so he landed ass-first into a horrified woman’s bowl
of scalding jambalaya.

As the place erupted into a cacophony of screams and
scrambling bodies, J.D. clenched one hand onto the stunned man’s shirt collar
and drew back his fist.

“Enough,” Holly said as calmly as possible.
Cautiously, she moved closer, putting her hand lightly on his arm. “No problem
here, Damascus. The guy’s drunk and stupid. Let him go.”

J.D. looked into her eyes.

“Such chivalrous machismo turns me on, Damascus. But unless you want me to rip off my clothes right here, you’ll back off.
Besides, I don’t have the money to bail your cute butt out of jail.” He looked
at her mouth, curving now in a genuine smile.

J.D. took a deep breath and released the drunk who
scrambled toward the door. His rush of adrenaline subsided so swiftly he felt
as if every muscle in him had turned to rubber.

“Who the hell is going to pay for this mess?” the manager
shouted.

Only then did J.D. remember Beverly. He looked toward
the booth. She was gone.

The apartment where Damascus lived wasn’t
im
pressive by any means. A
scattering of empty cola and beer cans dotted the furnishings, and half-folded
newspapers were strewn at the base of the futon.

Holly suspected, sparse as it was, this apartment hadn’t
known a woman’s touch in a long time. But it was a place to crash until Damascus returned from his appointments, and until she could figure a way out of this mess.

Her car, her clothes, all the money she had saved—
everything was gone. She’d spent many years of her life in New Orleans and knew
the chances of finding her belongings were slim to none. The chop shops would
find little to interest them in the car, but she knew that whatever gang
member had hot-wired the Taurus wasn’t interested in the tires or pitiful
radio. Money and jewelry was what would interest them—anything they could hock
to buy drugs.

She might have made a few phone calls in the years
past. Put out the word they had hit the wrong cache and her car would
materialize where it had disappeared. Everything would be returned, including a
few hundred dollars extra to repay her for her inconvenience. Back then, she
could have used the same scenario with Melissa. One phone call would tell her
everything she wanted to know about her missing friend. She might have found out
who the john was with the slasher fantasy, if it was a fantasy.

Now she had the time to consider the situation and
suspected whoever had come jumping out of the door draped in black and wielding
a knife was someone the police department would want to keep anonymous, which
would explain why they dismissed her case.

When Melissa had called Branson, she was terrified.
The murders had started again. There was mammoth fear among all the New Orleans prostitutes. Angel Gonzalez had not been the serial killer who butchered his
way through the girls over a period of months.

Knowing Holly would be arriving, why did Melissa
disappear? It didn’t make sense. They had been like sisters .
..
closer than most sisters, Holly thought.
They had known one another since they were thirteen and placed with the same
foster family.

Family. What a lie. Ruth and Conrad Jacobson abused
both Holly and Melissa. Conrad enjoyed sex with little girls, and Ruth got off
on physical abuse. The two girls made a pact to stick with one another no
matter what nightmare besieged them.

Just one phone call and her questions and mounting
worry over Melissa would be assuaged, but she couldn’t take the risk. If word
leaked on the streets that Holly was back in town, she’d be dead before
sunrise.

Feeling the muscles in the back of her neck tense,
Holly opened the fridge. It was devoid of staples, stocked only with bottles of
beer, a chunk of moldy cheese on a plastic plate, half-eaten cold pizza in a
box, and a bag of chicory coffee with the logo of the Cafe du Monde.

Holly reached for a beer, unscrewed the top, and
turned back to the living area. She didn’t care for beer, but she needed
something to relax her nerves. Otherwise, Damascus would return to find her
hanging from the ceiling by her fingernails.

What had happened to Damascus in these last years?
Before her exit from New Orleans, the prominent A.D.A. had lived in a
renovated, plantation-style home in the Garden District. He’d looked and
dressed like a model for
Gentleman’s Quarterly.
The papers had lauded him and
Jerry Costos as future political candidates who would clean up crime and
corruption and bring respect to the state.

Something had happened to turn Damascus inside out.
Divorce? Maybe. This was certainly no home sweet home. But she doubted that
even the ugliest of divorces could bring this sort of destruction to a man’s
career. Still
...

Pictures of children were scattered around the living
room, on walls behind his unmade bed, in stand-up frames on the thrift-store
coffee table, and plastered to the fridge by Mardi Gras magnets. Freeze-frame
images of a boy and girl, smiling, beaming, some including J.D. in his better
days. None, she noted, including his wife.

The phone rang. The message machine picked up.

“John? It’s Beverly.” Pause.
“I
trust you’re okay. You’ve really got to get a handle on your
temper, you know.” Pause. “Or your jealousy. I sensed your mind wasn’t exactly
on our conversation, what with that woman being there
...”
Pause. “It’s simply not like you to be so .
..
distracted when it comes to Patrick. I’m
really disappointed in you. Call me.” Girlfriend?

Holly watched the red light of the machine flicker.

Maybe. She had watched them from the bar—before the
drunk had intruded with his bourbon-scented breath and his fresh hands. Watched
the woman’s face as she looked for any sign in Damascus’s body language that
indicated Holly was more than an acquaintance. For a second, her pretty eyes
had locked with Holly’s. There had been a nervousness in her gaze. A flash of
anger, perhaps. Certainly annoyance. The look had said, “Back off.”

Holly was well acquainted with those types of looks,
anytime she came within flirting distance of a woman’s husband. Damascus’s reaching across the table and holding her hand had helped.

Recalling the image, Holly felt a twinge of envy in
her chest. She tried to recall when a man’s touch had been proffered by
compassion instead of lust. Long ago, she had been naive enough to actually
believe a man’s gentle touch meant comfort and caring. But for her, such kindness
had always come with strings attached. Kindness preceded abuse. As a hooker in
New Orleans, she had lost the ability to trust long ago.

J.D. finished his two afternoon court
appointments, met his
after-hours clients, and assured May she would get paid for her overtime—just
as soon as his clients paid him. Then, he stopped by Fang Fang Chinese
Take-Out and returned home to find Holly already asleep in his bed.

Obviously, she had found plenty to occupy her time.
His clothes had been separated into clean and dirty. The clean were folded and
stacked on the bureau, and the soiled were in a pile near the bathroom door.
Newspapers and empty cans had been discarded, the trash removed from the
apartment. She had washed the food-encrusted dishes he had left in the sink,
dried them, and put them away.