Dark Lily: Shadows, Book 4 (5 page)

Mitchell’s brows went up. “Craven did
Swamp Thing
?”

“In 1982. Can we get back to my personal nightmare?”

He’d dropped the thread. Between the scent of Gaby’s rain-damp skin and hair and his suddenly adolescent libido, the prospect of sex on the floor suddenly seemed a hell of a lot more appealing than delving into the ongoing horror show that was Crucible, a phantomesque hierarchy of directors and a homicidal lunatic.

“Mitchell!”

His mind snapped back. “There’s not a lot more I can tell you. Crucible isn’t a traditional ghost. At the moment, that’s where my knowledge of him starts and ends. He’s not your biggest problem in any case. If Phoebe’s right, CJ Best is the guy you need to worry about.”

“If Phoebe’s right.”

“She seems to think Best and Leshad were acquainted way back when. That suggests an intertwined history, and that’s never good.”

“Has Phoebe met Leshad?”

“I doubt it. If she had, she’d have provided a description of him. If not to Crucible, then to me or someone else.”

“So what you’re saying, essentially, is that my sleeping nightmares have now become my waking ones.”

“Pretty much.”

“What does Leshad want from me? Be specific.”

Lightning flashed and illuminated her features. Mitchell saw tension, but no real fear. Yet. “Phoebe thinks he wants you to remove a curse that your grandmother, Madeleine Lessard, placed on him.”

She stared for a moment and then laughed. “He what?”

“Give me a break here, Gaby, I’m not making this up. He wants you to remove a curse. You know the deal. When the moon glows green and Aquarius enters the seventh house, the Spanish moss is going to come to life and strangle him.”

Still laughing, she shrugged. “In that case, Leshad should stay out of the swamp.”

Mitchell regarded her in the next brilliant flash. “Are you going to stand there and tell me you believe in ghosts but not in curses?”

“No, I believe in curses. I just wouldn’t expect a man like Leshad to believe in them.”

“He’s insane.”

“I gather.” She squirmed a little. Taking the hint, Mitchell let his hands fall away. “It’s a lot to absorb,” she acknowledged. “Even for me. One way or another, I’ll give you an answer to take to Phoebe by the time the riverboat leaves tomorrow. Does Crucible know where I am?”

“No one knows. Or so Phoebe hopes.”

“Phoebe knows.”

“She’s been keeping tabs on you.”

“Exactly.”

“She has a strong mind, Gaby. And every intention of staying a full stride ahead of Leshad and his people.”

Gaby surprised him by setting a finger on his mouth. Leaning in, she brushed her lips over his. “It makes a person wonder though, doesn’t it? Being what they were and possessing the mental abilities they did, wouldn’t you think that Twila, Tallulah and even Madeleine Lessard herself would have had that very same intention?”

* * * * *

The address Miranda Montgomery had been given sat smack in the middle of the worst neighborhood in New Orleans. The air smelled rank, and they hadn’t even entered the apartment building yet.
They
being Miranda—Crucible’s personal assistant—and Killian, the liaison between Crucible and their magical mystery team of directors.

“Why do people looking to make a buck always drag us to rat holes?” Killian wondered aloud. “The river works for me. Why doesn’t it work for them?” He glanced at Miranda. When she merely smiled, he reached for the filthy outer door. “After you, your highness.”

She wiggled her fingers. “Fresh manicure.”

He wagged his damp ponytail. “Fresh out of the shower. We have backup in the alley, right?”

“I know my job, Killian. For what it’s worth, I don’t think this is a trap. The woman sounded scared.”

“Sounding scared means she’s playing both sides.”

“Always possible.” At the top of a stinking staircase, Miranda gestured forward. “That’s the place—2C. I’ve got your back.”

“It’s not my back I’m worried about.” Tugging on the hoop in his left ear, a nervous habit Miranda recognized well, Killian flattened himself against the wall next to the door. He used a firm knuckle to knock. “No answer,” he said after a pause and a second knock. “It’s like a bad script, and we keep doing retakes.” He primed his gun, regarded his partner. “On three?”

She nodded. He counted.

The TV screen was flickering when they swung in, one, two.
Night of the Living Dead
. How fitting was that?

“Patrice?” She called the name Crucible had given her. “It’s Miranda and Killian. We’ve come to take you…” She heard a long creak and broke off as something weighty that smelled like dying flowers toppled onto her. “Shit!” She jumped back, couldn’t help it, right into Killian.

He overbalanced and fell against the sofa. “Jesus! Snake on the cushion!”

He managed to avoid the coiled constrictor and at the same time prevent Miranda from being taken to the floor by a limp female wearing a blood-red body suit. Or more correctly, by a limp female corpse. Miranda didn’t need anything more than the grainy glow from the television screen to know the woman was dead. Her glassy eyes and rubbery limbs said it all.

While she checked for a pulse, on the extremely remote off chance that the woman was still alive, Killian called it in and did a quick walk-through of the apartment.

He joined her ninety seconds later, nodding at the closet from which the body had fallen. “Door was rigged to open when we came in. Someone used a rope and a crude pulley system. We pushed in, latch popped, body landed at our feet.”

“Not quite at our feet, Killian.” Miranda took a moment to mourn the loss of a life. Also the loss of a scarlet earring shaped like a feather. She ran a hand through the woman’s straight brown hair. Might be nothing, but given the scene and what her eyes had just now spotted in the woman’s cleavage, who knew? “Patrice told Crucible she worked at a blues club near the Quarter.” She glanced over. “We need to know everything there is to know about her workplace. About this place as well.”

“On it.”

Killian got busy on his iPhone. She knew he’d have called Crucible first thing. Now, he’d contact the directors.

That was his job. To keep the powers that be informed. Hers was to determine what a server who worked in an unspectacular blues club on the fringe of the French Quarter could have discovered that would have necessitated her death.

Miranda considered the all-too-familiar card she’d glimpsed between the dead woman’s breasts. Obviously, someone in Leshad’s camp had gotten here ahead of them and left the usual memento behind. Not quite so obvious was what—other than perhaps an earring—that person might have taken away in return.

Chapter Six

A gauzy layer of haze covered the delta island long after the storm crept north. Despite a late night and the never entirely gone image of a black Irish cop looming in the back of her mind, Gaby fell into bed and dreamed.

About Mitchell was a given. And it stood to reason Phoebe would be there. Even the dashing silver fox CJ Best made sense. But the woman with lank brown hair, wearing a red body suit and a single feather-shaped earring puzzled her. She circled the dark, fetid dreamscape like a wary cat.

“Who’s there?” the mystery female demanded in a shaky voice. “Who are you? You said there’d be money.”

“Why would I give you money?” Gaby asked, still circling.

“Because I have information you want. I overheard a conversation in the club where I work. I think the new owner’s going to fire me.”

“Why? No, scratch that. It’s not relevant.”

“It is to me,” the woman spat. “Got bucks, got clout. Got a rich granddaddy. Screw him, lucky bastard.”

“Forget the bastard. What do you know?”

“Woman came in, wanted to talk to him. I eavesdropped like I always do. I heard the name Leshad. I heard other names too. One of ’em’s got muscle in the government.”

“CJ Best.”

“Damn straight.” There was a tiny hesitation then, “You’re not him, are you?”

“Do I sound like him?”

“No, you sound like her.”

Gaby’s teeth gnashed. “I’m not her.”

“Then who are you?”

“I’m an emissary for Leshad.”

“A what?”

“Representative,” Gaby lied. “I’ve got major bucks in my hand. Talk to me about what you overheard.”

Dead brown eyes came into view and stared dully. “Show me the bucks first.” The dead eyes shifted in suspicion. “What’s that noise?”

Tuning her mind in to it, Gaby sighed. “Damn.” She watched the tacky dreamscape shred like worn black silk. “It’s my alarm.”

There was no point attempting to recapture the scene. Not once her eyes opened to misty gray light. But one particular aspect of the dream haunted her.

A hazy figure, a shadow really, had been circling her in the opposite direction. A woman’s figure, Gaby felt certain. Not Phoebe’s or Celia’s. Not Madeleine’s either, yet known to her in some obscure way. Someone she remembered from another time and place.

She moved the memory to a lockbox in her head. She’d either pull it out later and examine it or wait until she saw the figure again. For now, it was time to switch gears, hand their false police chief his walking papers and make sure he left the island.

Since honesty was her way, Gaby wondered how she would have felt if Mitchell had been thirty years older and sporting a Homer Simpson beer belly. Something told her, not quite the same as she did at present.

From the moment they’d met, she’d understood that Mitchell Stone posed a threat to her emotions. Why wouldn’t he, with his black, black eyes, his nearly black hair and his not-perfect, but still to-die-for features? And she hadn’t even gotten to his smile yet. It might be seldom used—she suspected it was—but when he used it? Lethal weapon. On women, at any rate.

No doubt about it, the man needed to be gone, as quickly as she could make that happen.

After sliding out of bed, Gaby went through her usual morning routine. Coffee, treadmill, shower, more coffee, food for three stray cats, and a waning ray of hope that she’d remembered to lock her cash box down at the Lily. Because, sadly, on top of being a firebug, Harley Ficket had extremely sticky fingers. Annie at the hotel had taken to setting mousetraps in the reception desk. That recent precaution had made Gaby’s shop his primary target by default.

“Yogurt and raspberries ain’t much of a breakfast, Gaby doll.”

“Morning, Celia.” Container in hand, Gaby swung down the stairs from her apartment and into the darkened Lily. “What brings you here at—” she regarded the pentagram clock over the front door, “—six forty-three in the morning?”

“Same as what got you up and moving at the crack of dawn, I expect. I hear our new police chief’s as tasty as my garden peppers and twice as hot.”

“Wouldn’t know.” After setting the empty container down, Gaby hopped past, tugging on her left hiking boot. “Haven’t met him yet. By the way, I need more hanging garlic. And a better set of instructions on how to make those scented purple bath crystals out of African violets.”

“You know where to find all that at the house. Why don’t you like him?”

“I like him just fine.” The cash box wasn’t locked, and it only took a glance to tell her it was light. “Well, hell.”

Celia grinned. “Harley Ficket’s fingerprints are still fresh on that lid, I bet.”

“It’s my own fault.” Gaby searched the drawer, just in case. “I let myself get distracted.”

“By a scorching-hot garden pepper?”

Closing the lid, Gaby placed the box back in her antique desk. “Mitchell Stone isn’t our new police chief, Celia. He’s a messenger from New Orleans.” She considered sidestepping the truth but twitched a shoulder instead. “My biological mother sent him to me with a warning.” When Celia didn’t respond, Gaby regarded her friend, narrow-eyed. “Why do I sense you’re not surprised?”

“Trouble that got Twila and your Auntie Tallulah killed was bound to arrive on your doorstep eventually, young Gaby. Had to on account of your birthright.”

“Were you aware of that birthright when I moved to Bokur?”

“Can’t say I was aware so much as I suspected. Maybe the knowledge was in my head once, but holes begin to develop in a person’s memory after she passes. It’s mostly frustrating, but in your case it could’ve got you killed just as surely as it did Madeleine. I’m sorry, Gaby, truly sorry for this particular hole.”

Gaby walked through her shop, rearranging jars and shuffling the Creole music she played in the background. The air smelled like spicy swamp flowers after a heavy rain. Like Celia’s garden would smell right now.

“Holes can’t be helped. I understand that.” She perused her stock of old books on the far wall. “I’m not upset. Not with you anyway.”

“With someone though. The messenger maybe?”

“That would be petty. I’ll let Phoebe Lessard bear the brunt of my annoyance for now. And the political worm who’s apparently my natural daddy. Senator CJ Best. I think I actually voted for him in the last election.”

“Lotta folks did.” Celia inspected the shelves for dust. “As I recall, he’s a handsome devil.”

“Devil being the operative word. More unsettling is the word that he’s on Leshad’s payroll. Allegedly.” Gaby reorganized a set of books on Cajun history. “Celia, why didn’t I sense my relationship to him?”

“Lordy, girl, you think what’s in you has rules as to how it works? You got the knowledge now, that’s what counts. Be grateful.”

“I am. I guess.” She picked up and ran a long strand of blue beads through her fingers. “Mitchell says Phoebe’s dying. I’ve been trying very hard since last night to care about that.”

“You’ll care when you care, and not before,” Celia promised. “You got the right to take some time on that score.”

“I do, but she doesn’t. Mitchell says she’s got three weeks, maybe less, to live.” A knock sounded on the door while Gaby was rolling a kink from her neck. “Not open yet,” she called out. “Come back at nine. Unless you’re Harley Ficket, in which case, you get your skinny butt in here and give me back yesterday’s profits.”

“I’m not a customer,” Mitchell said from the other side.

“It’s my hot-as-your-garden-peppers messenger,” Gaby informed Celia wryly.

Mitchell was leaning a shoulder on the frame when she opened the door, a dream in worn, slightly faded, head to toe black. “If you’re interested, it’s official,” he said. “All the rooms at the hotel leak. My bed was soaked when I woke up this morning.”

“Look on the bright side,” Gaby suggested. “Soaked bed means Annie’ll eat your bill.”

“Oh, better than that. She’s offered to let me stay at her place.”

“You’ll love her mother and every one of her four kids, all under the age of five. You’ll never know her bastard husband who ran off to Florida six months ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear it, but remember I’m not that bastard.”

“No.” Two steps ahead of him, she spun. “You’re Mitchell Alexander Stone, only grandson of Henry Jenson Stone, whose corporate holdings range from car lots to supermarkets and beyond. I Googled you last night. Looks like I copped me one high-priced messenger.”

“No pun intended, I assume.”

“Pun fully intended, former Lieutenant Stone. Is there a reason you neglected to mention your illustrious background?”

He regarded her with care. “Are you going to jolt me again?”

Gaby tipped her lips into a smile. “That would be rude. After all, in a sense you’re Billy’s guest.”

“Right. Billy, the floating doll. I dreamed about him while I was swimming in my bed last night. Him and you.”

“Back at you, Mitchell, minus Billy and with the puzzling addition of a woman in a red body suit.”

He strolled through the shop, scanning the various nooks and crannies. “Why does that description sound familiar to me?”

“No idea. Maybe you slept with her.”

“What?” He scowled. “Where the hell did that come from?”

Gaby glanced into a shadowed corner, saw Celia’s disapproving expression and shook her head. “Nowhere that’s fair. Sorry. Bad sleep. Sometimes it translates to a bitchy morning.” She worked up a genuine smile. “Can you handle a po’boy for breakfast? It’ll be my farewell treat. Jassy makes the best in town over at the Mud Hole.”

“A po’boy could work.” He regarded the street still covered in gauzy white. “How rough is the water likely to be today?”

Already en route to the door, she tossed him a smile. “Only ripples you’ll see will come from gators as they slide slowly into the water.”

“There’s good news.”

She leaned back across the threshold after Mitchell followed her out. “You can eighty-six the smug expression, Celia. He’s leaving at noon.”

“Maybe he is.” Celia nodded at Gaby’s cash desk. “Then again, maybe he ain’t.”

Gaby’s eyes shifted to her left. And there he sat, in the middle of the desk. Unmoving. Wooden. Familiar. “Billy,” she murmured.

The doll stared back at her, his teeth bared. He had a black lily clutched in one hand. And blood smeared across his painted face.

* * * * *

A po’boy for breakfast at the Mud Hole. Diner by day, local watering hole at night. Could it get any more weird?
Well, yeah
, Mitchell reflected,
on Bokur, it definitely could.

He’d seen the doll again, glimpsed it anyway. He was sure of it. Had there been blood on the thing’s face? Hard to tell. He’d go with red paint for now and hope the shadows in the Lily had skewed his vision.

Gaby was staring into her coffee. She hadn’t touched her sandwich. She looked damn gorgeous doing it, but still. Staring and not eating.

“Are you worried your deputy’s going to rush in and slap a badge on my chest?” he asked after several minutes of relative silence. Waylon Jennings at half volume covered a handful of sleepy voices. All eyes, however, were glued to the window booth where he and Gaby sat. “Or is it more that you didn’t expect your friend Billy to pay you such an early visit.”

“What? No. I was thinking about getting Fred’s brother to tow my vehicle out of the swamp.” She frowned at him. “You saw Billy?”

“In your shop. The Lily, right?”

“Dark Lily. It was Celia Beauchamp’s shop before it was mine. She named it after her grandmother, Lily Dark Beauchamp. Celia died three years ago at the ripe old age of ninety-four. She ran the shop until her heart gave out. She willed it to the town with the understanding that it would only be sold to an acceptable purchaser.”

“Acceptable in what way?”

Setting her elbows on the table, Gaby picked up and sipped her lukewarm coffee. “In Celia’s way, I guess. Sign went up and stayed up for nearly two years. Four different people wanted to buy it, but…”

“No acceptable purchasers, huh?”

“The town council was fine with all the offers. Yet whenever anyone tried to take the sign down, it refused to budge.”

Mitchell swallowed. “Seriously?”

Her eyes sparkled. “Pissed most of the council members right off. Scared the prospective buyers back along the waterway. One of them swore he saw Billy glaring at him from the shop window before he left.”

“After last night, not a single part of that story surprises me. What did the sign do when you arrived?”

She grinned. “Well, it didn’t burst into song, but it did come down. Billy was waiting inside when I opened the door, so I knew I’d done the right thing. And now you’re going to say again that you saw him sitting on my cash desk before we left this morning.”

Drinking some of the strong coffee, Mitchell sat back to study her. “Did he have blood on his face, or was that my imagination?”

“No, there was blood, on his face and on the flower.”

Mitchell stopped the mug halfway to his mouth. “He had a flower? How the hell did I miss that?”

“I don’t imagine you’re used to having dolls appear out of thin air.”

“Do people actually get used to that kind of thing?”

“Some do, more don’t. Be glad you won’t have to. Damn!” She snapped her head around. “The boat’s leaving.”

“What boat?” Mitchell followed her gaze through the window to the still-shrouded street. “Morgan’s?”

“I can hear the engine.”

“Lady, you’d need bionic ears to hear that. We’re miles from the dock.”

“Get your things.” She shoved out of the booth. “I know a shortcut. We might make it before he pulls out.” When he didn’t move, she grabbed his hand. “Do you want to be our new police chief?”

“If you’d known my grandfather, you’d understand when I tell you it’s a tempting offer.”

“I’ll untempt you while we drive. On my tab, Jassy,” she called to the woman behind the bar.

If Jassy answered, Mitchell didn’t hear her. Gaby dragged him through the door and across the road to his Jeep, before the Mud Hole’s front door swung shut.

When he saw she had her cell phone out, irritation took over. “You don’t have to call him, Gaby, and we don’t need to break the land-speed record getting there. Morgan’ll be back later today, won’t he?”