Celestial Bodies (2 page)

“It sounds like half of New Orleans will be there,” said Diana.

“I
do
wish you two would reconsider and come,” said Mrs. Bouvier.

Diana and her father exchanged a glance. He shrugged, which irked her. The gesture automatically put the onus of the decision upon her, and Mrs. Bouvier turned to her with hurt, pleading eyes. Diana shifted uncomfortably. Felix looked away, already losing interest in the mundanities of real life. Mrs. Bouvier’s lower lip trembled a bit.

“We’ll certainly do our best,” Diana hedged. Then she added, “Of course, I’ll have to be guided by Felix, who will want to consult the stars first.” Felix looked at her peculiarly, but Mrs. Bouvier seemed satisfied. She smiled before bidding them farewell and leaving the shop.

Once they were alone, Diana regarded her father with exasperation from the top of her stepladder. “Why didn’t you tell her
no
, in no uncertain terms?” she demanded.

“Why didn’t you?” he countered.

“I thought she was going to cry. And it shouldn’t be up to me to handle her. She’s
your
client.”

Felix frowned at the ceiling. “I’m worried about Mrs. Bouvier. There are some disturbing indications in the cards.”

Diana carefully descended the stepladder. “Like what?”

He shook his head. “Client—”

“I know.” Diana sighed. “Client confidentiality.” Her father took his role of helping people through astrology as seriously as a psychiatrist or lawyer, and he never violated their confidence, not even with his daughter.

“Hold these,” said Diana, placing a carton of jars in his arms and moving her stepladder down the aisle. She climbed up and began stocking more shelves with the items her father was holding. He stood looking perplexed and disturbed.

“You’re troubled by what you saw in the reading,” Diana guessed.

“Hmm.”

“Can you tell me anything at all?” She sensed he wanted to talk about it but was reluctant to risk violating his principles.

“A family member will bring chaos and turmoil,” he murmured.

“To Mrs. Bouvier?”

He looked up at her, his dark eyes troubled. “No. To us.”

Diana stopped her work and looked at him in surprise. Her father, she often reflected, looked just like a teddy bear. He was a short man, several inches shorter than her own five foot seven. The roundness of his face was emphasized by a halo of curly brown hair, touched with gray since the death of Diana’s mother, big brown eyes and big round glasses. She knew his female clients found him adorable, and she suspected that some of them harbored secret passions for him.

“A relative of Mrs. Bouvier will bring chaos and turmoil to us?” Diana repeated. “Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you tell her?”

“No.”

“What trouble did you say she has invited into her own life?”

Felix shook his head, indicating that he couldn’t talk about it.

“Is it connected to the trouble that someone will bring us?” Diana persisted.

“Maybe.”

“Felix!”

“That’s all I can say.”

“Then why did you bring it up in the first place?” Diana said in exasperation.

“I thought we should discuss it.”

Diana stared at her father and realized that to his way of thinking, they
had
just discussed it. She took a deep breath, trying to be patient, and brushed her long, strawberry-blond curls away from her face. She tried not to narrow her green eyes as she looked at him, since he had said it made her look disturbingly carnivorous.

“What time is my next consultation?” Felix asked.

“An hour from now. Can you watch the shop while I go to the bank? I need to make a deposit. Business has been good today.”

Felix agreed. Diana kissed his check and gathered her things together. On the way to the bank, she pondered her father’s warnings.

Her attitude toward her father’s work was ambivalent. She found it harmless. She knew he believed he was helping people and would never take advantage of his clients’ faith in him. Diana didn’t really believe in astrology or the tarot, yet Felix had an uncanny knack for prediction and precognition. Her father had been right too many times for her to ignore what he said, even when she found him exasperating and his predictions vague or improbable.

She returned to their shop to find things in a state of confusion. The House of Ishtar—named for their cat—was an eighteenth-century townhouse with a courtyard in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Diana and her father had invested in the building two years ago, and Diana’s hard work and flair for the business had made the House of Ishtar a popular spot. Lately there was too much work for her to handle alone, and Felix wasn’t much help.

“What’s going on here?” Diana demanded.

Felix waved his arms distractedly. “Well, this lady wanted some vitamin E oil, but I knocked it off the shelf when I was reaching for it, and it shattered all over the floor. Do you have to put it up so high? Then this man who came to ask about the yoga classes slipped, and I think he’s dislocated something. Then that group of students sat down out there, and I haven’t been able to figure out how to work the brewing machine. Then we—”

“Never mind,” Diana said on a sigh. “I’ll handle it. Why don’t you just go into your study and meditate until your next client arrives?”

Felix gratefully retreated from the scene, and Diana started trying to satisfy all her customers. One of her regular patrons offered to help clean up the spilled oil.

“For goodness’ sake, Diana,” the woman said, “why don’t you hire some help? You can’t run the shop, teach yoga, wait on tables in the courtyard and act as Felix’s secretary all by yourself!”

“Felix and I always intended this to be just a little family business,” Diana replied.

“But it’s not anymore, is it? You’ve made the House of Ishtar a popular success. This is no longer a quiet little bookshop that one person can handle alone.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Diana said thoughtfully. She was always exhausted lately, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a few hours to herself. It had been her natural inclination to grow the business. Since Felix wasn’t interested, the burden of running things rested solidly on Diana’s shoulders. She had painted herself into a corner. She could either hire someone to help her, or she could let the business dwindle to what it had been when she and Felix bought it—just a sleepy little bookshop.

That afternoon she put a sign into her shop window:
Help Wanted. Inquire Within.
She would discuss it with Felix over dinner that night, in their rambling apartment on the third floor.

Nick Tremain sat glumly in his office. Leaning back in his chair with his hands folded behind his head and his feet propped on the windowsill, he gazed out at the Mississippi River. He heard an irritating buzzing noise and realized that it was coming from the intercom line on the telephone on his desk. He ran a hand through his hair, rumpling it. He had really gotten lost in his thoughts today. And it wasn’t going to, do him or his partner any good, he thought with disgust.

It was time to stop this endless introspection and self- recrimination. If he was ever going to save the agency from the mess he himself had created, he had to act. But how? What could he do to influence the course of events?

He reached for the telephone and answered the secretary’s summons. “Yes, Mrs. Milne?” Their secretary addressed them by their first names and sometimes scolded them, as if they were her own sons, yet he and Peter always addressed her formally and treated her with deference. She made Nick think fondly of his mother, his favorite teacher, and his first piano instructor. Luckily she created that same sense of trust and respect in their clients, too.

“I was beginning to wonder if you were going to answer,” Mrs. Milne said reproachfully. “No point in curling up to die yet, Nicholas. There’s still plenty of work to do.”

“Did you interrupt me just to tell me that?”

“No. You have an unexpected visitor.”

“I do?” He frowned. Another lawyer? Another reporter? Someone else from the state licensing board? Or even worse, another client coming to withdraw his or her business? “Who is it?”

“A Mr. Claude Bouvier,” said Mrs. Milne.

That surprised Nick enough to make him momentarily forget his own troubles. “Claude Bouvier?” he repeated in astonishment. “What does he want?”

“He says his business is of a confidential nature.”

Nick wondered if Bouvier had come to gloat, now that the end seemed imminent. “Well, show him in.”

“Shall I make some coffee?”

“No. I don’t think we’ll be needing any. Just show him in, Mrs. Milne.”

Nick was still seated, his feet still propped on the windowsill, when Mrs. Milne showed Claude Bouvier into his office a few moments later. Bouvier nodded dismissively at the dignified secretary and closed the door behind her. He regarded Nick’s relaxed pose.

“I see you still haven’t learned any manners,” he observed.

Nick narrowed his eyes. “Now did you come all the way to Algiers from the Garden District just to check out my manners?”

“May I be seated?”

“Suit yourself.”
 

Nick studied Bouvier as he sat down. Neither of them had changed that much in the five years since they had last met. Bouvier was still tall, slim, and blond, with aristocratic features and skin tanned by the very best salons in New Orleans. Nick’s own black hair and naturally dark complexion contrasted with Bouvier’s looks as sharply as their personalities did.

“You’re looking well,” said Claude. “Considering,” he added with a touch of malice.

Nick shrugged. “It’s an active life.” He ignored the jibe. If Claude had come to talk about the past, he could damn well be the one to bring it out into the open.

“It must be five years since the Montreaux case,” Claude said, his eyes assessing Nick with blatant condescension.

“Yes, five years. Did you heal all right?” Nick asked conversationally. He saw Claude’s face go red under his tan. Nick had beaten the tar out of Claude Bouvier during the course of that investigation.

“I could have sued.”

“I doubt it,” said Nick. “I was trying to keep track of Mrs. Montreaux’s diamonds, as I was paid to do, and you got in the way at an important moment. And just to pick a fight over some silly society girl. How was I to know you weren’t setting me up?”

“That ‘silly society girl’ said you had compromised her,” said Claude.

“All I did was tell her I wasn’t interested. She was young and drunk and spoiled. But very pretty, as I recall,” Nick added reflectively, “and more than a little flirtatious. Were you and she—”

“I don’t care to discuss it,” Claude said frostily.

“Actually, neither do I.” There was a long, heavy silence. “Surely you didn’t come here to rehash a case that was over years ago?”

“No.” Claude took a deep breath, as if preparing himself for a dangerous feat. “I need your services.”

Nick felt his eyes widen involuntarily. “
You
need a private investigator?”

“Yes.” Claude’s voice dripped with distaste.

Nick frowned. “Not that I’m not glad for the business, but I have to ask—why me?”

“That’s hardly a confidence-inspiring sales pitch.”

“You’re a very wealthy man, and we’re a small agency. You don’t like me personally, and that’s an understatement. What’s more...” He let his words trail off, not sure how to continue.

“What’s more, you may lose your license any day now.”

“You know about that?”

“I know Maurice LeCoz rather well.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess you two travel in the same circles,” Nick said glumly. Maurice LeCoz was a former client of Tremain and Lowery Investigations. Nick’s handling of the LeCoz case had brought the agency to the brink of ruin where it was now poised, awaiting the final push that would send it tumbling into defeat and oblivion.

Claude said, “Maurice LeCoz has bandied your name about, full of dire threats and slander.”

Nick stared at him. “So why are you here?”

“Well, as I say, I need the services of a private investigator. The matter is extremely delicate, and at least I know you. What’s more, in the light of your current situation, I felt you would be rather eager for the business.”