Leslie Lafoy (12 page)

“It’s plausible,” she conceded with a shrug.

“It’s more than plausible.”

She sighed and removed the beater. Propping it carefully against the inner edge of the stone crock, she reached for the sugar shell, saying, “All right, as farfetched as it seems, I’ll allow that the chain of circumstances suggest that London is where we’re supposed to be.”

“Then we’re back to the question of who—other than Lafitte—would know that. Would any of Mignon’s circle of gentleman friends have known Lafitte well enough to have been privy to his secrets?”

She rolled her eyes and softly snorted as she sprinkled sugar over the cream. “You can’t swing a dead cat in New Orleans without hitting an old man who claims to have been one of Lafitte’s pirates. If you added them all together, he would have had a force larger than the British Navy. Some of them might have actually served with him, but separating the real pirates from those simply claiming the glory … I don’t know that it can be done without Jean himself doing the actual sorting.”

“Well, I don’t see that we have any real choice except to have something of a go at it ourselves. They’re the most logical suspects.”

“They’re the only suspects,” she countered dryly, setting aside the sugar.

“Start with the man most likely a former pirate and with the financial resources to travel.”

“That would be Neville Martinez.” Gently stirring the sugar in with a spoon, she continued. “I doubt he’s our murderer, though. He’s been confined to a wheeled chair for the last eight years. A riding accident. The horse cleared the hedge. Neville didn’t.”

“Next on the list.”

“I’d put Jacques de Granvieux second if he weren’t dead.”

Barrett grinned. “That does tend to limit his opportunities for mayhem.”

“Then there’s Emil Caribe. He was Mignon’s current lover. Of course, he’s the one who told me she’d sailed for England.”

An interesting possibility. Caribe certainly had more potential than a cripple and a dead man. “Might he have sailed after that conversation and before you did?”

“His wife is understanding, but not that understanding,” she replied, shaking her head. “And she’s considerably bigger and meaner than Emil is.”

“Any others?”

She pursed her lips and after a long moment shrugged. “The Choteau brothers, Etan and Pierre. The story is that they went to Galveston with Lafitte in the early twenties and then came back to New Orleans when the Mexicans asked Jean to move elsewhere. They were named as responsible parties in Mignon’s first divorce.”

“Both of them?” he asked, the mental image instant and sufficiently lascivious to utterly overwhelm his better judgment.

“I’m not telling you the details,” she declared, grinning at him.

“I don’t think there’s any need.” Damn, the kind of conversation he seemed to have with Belle on a regular basis … He didn’t know whether it was her or the nature of the circumstances in which they found themselves, but it was most decidedly a novel experience. And not in an uncomfortable way, either, he realized.

Although,
he amended as she lightly dipped her pinky into the crock. His loins tightening and his breath caught hard in the center of his chest, Barrett willed her to offer him the taste. She defied him, but there was only a shadow of disappointment in his low groan as he watched her slowly, contemplatively suckle her fingertip.

The impulse was too powerful to resist. He cleared his throat and ever so nonchalantly asked, “Does it need more sugar?”

To his everlasting delight and reward, she brightened, said, “I can’t decide,” swiped her index finger through the whipped cream and held out the generous dollop for him to sample. “You tell me,” she instructed half a heartbeat before she blinked in startled realization.

Grinning, he caught her wrist before she could pull it back. Holding her lightly, feeling her pulse dancing beneath his fingertips, he half rose from his chair. Leaning forward, watching her boldly, openly, he ever so slowly licked the cream from the very tip of her finger. Her breathing stopped, her pulse skittered, and the light in her eyes begged him to continue. He obliged her, opening his mouth and taking all of her finger inside. Suckling gently, swirling his tongue languidly about the length, he released his prize by exquisitely unhurried degrees.

She was swaying on her feet, leaning forward into his seduction, when he lightly nipped the end of her finger, whispered, “Perfect for my tastes,” and then slowly surrendered his hold.

“So very good,” she murmured, shaking her head. Then she started, blinked, and quickly turned away.

Barrett watched as she bent over to take the dumplings from the warming oven. Jesus Christ. A week would be an eternity. If he had to wait a fortnight, he’d explode. Hell, if he didn’t put his mind back into safer subjects, the dumplings would be stone cold before they got back to them. He forced his gaze to the table in front of him, but the sight of the whipped cream didn’t do anything to bring his desires under control. Finally, he settled his attention on the window overlooking the rear yard and the carriage house.

“Do any of Mignon’s friends strike you as being the perfect suspect?” she asked, bringing two bowls to the table with hotpads.

“It depends,” he hedged as she put generous dollops of whipped cream atop each one. “Are any of them having financial difficulties? Were any of them noticeably resentful of you and Mignon having inherited the treasure map? Or maybe someone was overly curious?”

“I don’t know about anyone’s finances except in a most general way. And I didn’t live in Mignon’s pocket. If anyone was jealous or too curious, I didn’t hear about it.” She smiled weakly and sat down across the table from him. “I’m not much help, am I?” she ventured, picking up her spoon and beginning a dainty assault on her dessert.

Barrett shrugged, poked a hole in the top of his dump-ling, and absently watched the steam pour out through the vent. “As with most investigations, this one is a matter of asking the right questions and then collecting the right information. We need to figure out who would know that there’s a treasure, that it’s in London, be in a position to provide Mignon that information, and then have the resources to follow her here.”

“Well, I think we can exclude the Choteaus,” she offered, her loaded spoon resting on the edge of the bowl. “Pierre owns a popular gambling establishment and Etan owns a pleasure house that operates on the upper floors of it. I can’t see that either one of them would be willing to go off and leave their enterprises to be run by others. As trea-sures go, they have very profitable ones already.”

It was logical. Not necessarily irrefutable, but logical. “And you’re sure Emil’s wife would draw the line and he’d respect it?”

“His money is from her family. She says jump and he asks how high and to where.”

Barrett nodded, thinking that those kind of pathetic men seemed to be scattered all over the world. “Are you sure Henri is dead?” She started at the suggestion and he quickly explained, “My friend Carden’s wife thought her first husband was dead. It turned out that he wasn’t.” He smiled thinly and added, “Well, not soon enough, anyway.”

Curiosity, plain and obvious, lit her dark eyes, but she didn’t press him for the story. Instead, she blew on her bit of dumpling and then admitted, “I never saw the body. The official reports said that Henri was killed at Gettysburg and buried there. Still, on the off chance that a mistake was made and he’s alive, I haven’t seen or heard of him. I don’t see how he could have learned of the map.”

“And you’re sure that Jacques is dead?” Barrett went on, systematically gathering information.

She nodded and consumed the cooled bite of dessert before replying, “Absolutely certain. He clutched his chest and dropped dead on a public street. The battle between the family and Mignon over the will began the day after the funeral. It was not only very public, it was brutal.”

“Who won?”

“Guess,” she challenged, her grin wide.

Mignon, of course. As motives for murder went … And, now that he thought about it, there really wasn’t any tangible proof that she’d been killed for the map. It might well have been a matter of a wronged heir having finally tracked her down. It wasn’t likely, but it was a possibility. He’d seen stranger coincidences. “Who comprises the family? Any brothers? Sons?”

“His wife and two daughters. His sons were off in the war.” She blew gently on another bite. “And before you ask, no, they didn’t come home.”

“Not too many did, did they?”

She shook her head sadly. “Pretty much all we have left are old men and young boys. And widows. We have lots of widows. Until just the last few months, the only fabrics you could buy were black bombazine, black crepe, and black tulle.”

“Unless you were Mignon,” he guessed.

A soft smile tipped up one corner of her mouth. “She did live by her own rules. You have to admire her for that.”

Barrett suspected that Belle lived by her own rules, too. They simply weren’t as outrageous or predatory as Mignon’s had been. Nor did she go about flaunting them as her cousin had. Belle struck him as being more self-contained, more instinctively reserved than her cousin had been. But no less independent in her thinking.

And thinking overly much about her was going to get him into trouble, he silently reminded himself. Forcing his mind back to the puzzle of the map, of the murder, he searched for the point he’d reached before being distracted. “What about the man who was injured in the riding accident?”

“Neville Martinez?” She considered the idea for a few moments. “I suppose,” she finally drawled, “that if he were willing to hire someone to be his legs and his fists…”

“He’d be a possibility?”

She nodded and ate a bite of dumpling and cream. “He’s a banker. Rumor has it that he’s always been heavily involved in smuggling and, more recently, in offering protection to businesses. Both of which I tend to believe. He’s always—even in the deepest, darkest days after the war—had money. And those businesses who bank with him—the Choteau brothers for example—are never raided by the authorities.”

Barrett ate several bites of his dessert, momentarily losing his larger train of thought in the wonder of what Belle could do with a simple piece of fruit, sugar, flour, butter, and cinnamon. “My compliments,” he offered, spooning up another. “It’s heavenly.”

At her radiant smile, he again sought refuge in their puzzle. “Did Mignon know Neville well? Would she have accepted any information he gave her?”

“Emil’s wife occasionally snaps her fingers and forces him to dance attendance on her. And Mignon wasn’t the sort to sit at home alone. There were wagers being made—at Pierre’s—that she’d throw Emil over for Neville before the year was out.”

“Why would he want the treasure?” Barrett mused aloud, eating and pondering all the pieces he’d acquired. “He’s a wealthy man already.”

“Why did Mignon want it?” Belle posed in return. “She didn’t need it any more than Neville Martinez does.”

She was right, of course. Greed wasn’t a rational thing; it simply existed, driving people to take otherwise inexplicable actions. “It’s a relatively easy matter to hire thugs. Controlling them is another issue entirely. You need to be about to supervise them.”

“Obviously matters weren’t supervised in the alleyway or Mignon would still be alive.”

“True,” he allowed, thinking that a wheelchair-bound American with a Southern accent wouldn’t be all that difficult to find. Especially a wealthy one; the man would consider most of London’s corners to be unacceptable for a person of his status.

“Did you see anyone at the theater in a wheeled chair?”

“No,” Barrett admitted, bringing his attention back to the moment. “That doesn’t mean he wasn’t there, of course.”

“Some investigator you are,” she teased, her eyes sparkling, her smile broad and easy.

“I had other things on my mind that night,” he protested good-naturedly. “I was trying to keep my parents from marrying me off in the lobby.”

“And then you noticed Mignon,” she countered, scraping her bowl clean. “After that moment, like most men, you couldn’t see anything else.”

She was right yet again. Not that he was going to openly admit it. There was something particularly embarrassing about being as blind and stupid as every other man on the street. He finished off his dumpling while thinking back to that evening and the events that had been set in motion. “I wish it had been you at the theater instead,” he ventured. “Things would have gone very differently.”

“You wouldn’t have noticed me.”

“Oh, yes I would have,” he assured her. “You’re every bit the beauty your cousin was. Without the sharp edge of calculation.”

A sweep of pink colored her cheeks and her smile was soft and shy as she pointed out, “But I wouldn’t have left there with you, Barrett. Most certainly not to come here and … pause.”

He laughed and laid his arms along the back of the chair. “That would have been all right. I’d have found a way to see you again.”

“Your mother wouldn’t have been at all pleased by that.”

“I’m not overly restricted by my mother’s opinion.”

“Says the man,” she countered, chuckling, “who’s contemplating the moving of his life to China.”

“Now that I’ve had some time to think about it, India might be better,” he offered, enjoying their easy banter. “My friend Aiden’s wife is the daughter of a raja. I’m sure I could beg a favor or two out of her. They do speak English there, having been a British colony and all. Life would be considerably simpler than in China.”

Leaning forward, she propped her elbows on the table and cradled her chin in her hands. “You have interesting friends. One whose wife wasn’t a widow as she thought and another whose wife is Indian royalty.”

“You’ll like them.”

“The wives or the husbands?”

“Both,” he said. “As much as they’ll like you,” he added, recognizing the truth of it. “I think we’ll go see Carden and Seraphina tomorrow. We need to compare the treasure map against those of London, and Carden, being an architect, has a collection of them.”

She nodded her acceptance and he grinned. “I feel I should give fair warning, though. Their household tends to be something of a zoo. Between dogs and cats and children, it’s always on the verge of complete chaos.”