Midnight in Ruby Bayou (48 page)

“They said I don't have to worry about the Atlantic City crime family coming after me,” Davis added. “Sal wasn't real popular. Too old-fashioned, the Peel woman said. As for Buddy, well, that boy is just plain stupid.”

“That leaves the Russians,” Walker said.

Davis lifted the cut-crystal glass to his lips.

“April Joy have any ideas about that?” Walker asked.

“You know, I hear Yankees talking about southern women as steel magnolias and such,” Davis said, sipping instead of swigging on the potent liquor. “But for sheer balls, that little woman in the parlor beats any female raised on grits and gravy.”

“She's not going to help you?”

“If I give her the Heart of Midnight, she'll make me a saint. If I don't, she'll help my killer bury me.”

“Sounds like the April Joy we all know and love,” Faith muttered.

Boomer twitched and yipped softly, dreaming of the chase. Davis leaned over and stroked the big dog with slow sweeps of his hand. Boomer sighed and relaxed.

Walker sat down on a short sofa that faced Davis's overstuffed chair. He touched the seat beside him, but Faith hesitated. The love seat was an antique, made in an era when people were smaller. Gingerly she sat down. It was a close fit. And oddly comforting. The solid strength of Walker's thigh along hers was reassuring. The fact that she noticed it, and needed it, told Faith that she was still shaken by her search through Tiga's tragic past.

When Walker turned his hand over in silent offering, she put her palm on his. His warmth, like his strength, reassured her on an elemental level.

“We think we might be able to help you out with the stone,” Walker said.

“The Heart of Midnight?” Davis asked, startled.

Walker nodded. “I'm thinking you probably looked for the Blessing Chest from time to time.”

Davis paused. “Sure.”

Faith had the oddest feeling he was lying.

So did Walker. “Turned the house upside down, huh?” he asked sympathetically.

“Jeffy sure did.” Davis smiled, then grimaced at the pain in his split lip. “That boy was a fool for treasure hunting.”

“How about your mama? Did she search?” Walker asked.

Davis laughed dryly. “She made life in this house a living hell for a year after Pa died. Tore out walls, ripped up floors, dug holes in the garden. Purely crazy.”

“Find anything?”

“What do you think?” he retorted.

“I'm thinking she was skunked.”

“Amen.” Davis took another sip. Crystal sparkled with light and reflected fire.

“What about Tiga?” Walker asked softly. “Did she go treasure hunting?”

“No.”

“Why do you suppose that would be?”

Davis took a bigger drink of whiskey and cleared his throat. “She's not right in the head and never will be. Doctors, pills, we tried them all.” He sighed. “I can't bring myself to lock her up somewhere. She's harmless, and she loves the marsh.”

Knowing that a drinker often was more relaxed when others drank, too, Walker reached over to the bourbon decanter, picked a glass off the tarnished silver tray, and poured himself a shot. He tilted the glass against his mouth, inhaled the fragrance of aged bourbon, but didn't let any past his lips. “Was Tiga always the way she is now?”

“No.”

“Did it start after your father died?” Walker asked. “Or was it earlier, when he began raping her?”

Davis's hand jerked, making liquor lick up the sides of his glass like amber flames. He gave Walker a hard look.

Walker smiled gently. “I hear that Russian is a real artist with his knife. Takes a long time. A long, long time.”

“It started when he raped her,” Davis said hoarsely. “She was always a little fey, but after that . . .” He shook his head.

“Did you see your papa killed?”

“No.”

“Did your mama?”

Davis hesitated, thought about the Russian assassin, and said roughly, “Yes.”

“Did Tiga?”

Davis closed his eyes. “Yes. Dear Lord, yes. It broke her.”

“Which one pulled the trigger?”

“Does it matter? He's dead!”

“Do you know which one killed him?” Walker repeated calmly.

“I—I'm not sure. Tiga was screaming about how it was her fault and the Blessing Chest caused it, all those dead little girls in the chest, and how she had to bury them so they could never cause trouble again. I was eight years old and scared like I've never been, before or since. While Mama called the sheriff, I went back to bed and pulled the covers over my head and didn't come out until daylight. And that's where I told the sheriff I'd been all night, in bed with the covers over my head. He didn't get anything out of Tiga, either. She was drugged and rambling. Mama took care of everything. There was gossip, but it died out after Billy McBride was caught in bed with the preacher's wife. That gave all those tongues something new to wag about.”

Boomer shifted and snuffled. He awoke and nudged Davis's knee, disturbed by the agitation in his master's voice. Automatically Davis scratched the hound's long ears in reassurance. With a groan, Boomer flopped down again.

“So Tiga took the Blessing Chest,” Walker said.

“I don't know.”

“Sure you do,” Walker said gently. “Your mama tore up the place looking. Jeff tore it up. Tiga didn't. You didn't, because you knew your sister had taken it to the marsh.”

“I don't know where the damn thing is!” Davis took a hard hit of bourbon, coughed, and cleared his throat. “Do you think I would have gotten in bed with Sal if I had the Blessing Chest?”

“No. And you didn't find it years ago, either.”

“How did you know?” Davis asked. “I never told anyone.”

“No one found any sign that you or your ma started spending money that couldn't be explained. In fact, you were dirt-poor after your mother sold a ruby brooch—Tiga's birthday present from her daddy, I suppose?”

Davis nodded and cursed wearily. “It was the only family piece that wasn't in the Blessing Chest the day Papa died.”

“And you never saw another piece?” Walker asked.

“Never,” Davis said grimly. “Not ever.”

“Tiga never showed up with another ruby bauble?”

Davis's laugh was as brittle as the crystal glass he held. He emptied it with a toss of his head and watched Walker with pale, haunted eyes. “My dear, crazed sister with a handful of rubies? Hell, no, that would have been too sane. She was out of her head. She took the Blessing Chest somewhere out there—” he waved the empty glass toward the windows “—in that maze of marsh and bayou, buried it, and never bothered to remember where.”

“I take it you asked her,” Walker said.

“Asked, coaxed, scolded, threatened.” Gingerly Davis put his fingers just above the bridge of his nose and massaged the headache that wouldn't go away. “None of it made a difference. She just looked through me with those sad, fractured eyes and started talking like a girl, then she would scream and hold her hands over her mouth and say, ‘Mustn't scream, mustn't, good girls don't scream.' ”

Faith's nails dug into her palms. She didn't even feel it.

Davis made a rough sound and closed his eyes. “I stopped asking. I couldn't bear sending her back to that time when he was alive and she was—” His voice broke. “Christ Jesus, how could a man do that to his own daughter?”

There was no answer. There never had been. There never would be.

A faint flicker of movement at the edge of Faith's vision made her turn her head toward the hall door. Walker's hand tightened in hers as a warning. He didn't want Davis distracted right now.

“On the theory that lightning doesn't strike twice,” Walker drawled, “we'd like to lock Mel's necklace in your safe until the wedding.”

Davis would have laughed if his lip didn't throb so much. “I can guaran-damn-tee that Jeff won't be opening it. Neither will I. Our bungling-burglar days are behind us.”

“There you go.” Walker stood and held out his hand. “Why don't you just open the safe and watch us put the necklace in. Boomer, move your lazy butt.”

A nudge from Walker's foot got the hound to his feet. He gave Walker a hurt look and moved closer to the fire.

Painfully, with Walker's help and using Walker's cane, Davis stood and hobbled over to the safe. Walker made a point of turning his back and moving off a few feet while Davis fiddled with the dial. Both Faith and Walker were careful not to look at the doorway, where they hoped an eavesdropper hovered like a flesh-and-blood ghost.

“She's open,” Davis said.

Walker reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out the chamois-wrapped necklace.

“It was in your pocket all the time?” Davis asked, shocked.

“More or less.” Gently Walker took the necklace from its protective wrapping.

Gold glowed in sheltering curves, whispering of angel wings and eternal safety. Rubies shimmered as though they were alive, gathering light, transforming it into silky, incandescent red.

Thirteen curves, thirteen souls.

Davis's breath came in with a whistling sound that was close to a cry of pain. “Lordy, Lordy, would you look at that. It's as beautiful as anything my ancestors ever wore.”

“More beautiful,” Walker said. “Faith designed it.”

Desperately Faith wanted to look over her shoulder, to see who, if anyone, was eavesdropping. Instead, she watched Walker hand over the necklace.

Davis took it reverently, placed it in the safe, and spun the dial. “Almost hate to lock it up. I only ever saw one thing more beautiful.”

“The Heart of Midnight,” Walker said.

Davis nodded. He glanced toward Faith. “You did a fine piece for Mel. Shame she won't get to keep it.”

“Is the FBI going to use it as evidence?” Faith asked.

“They don't give a damn about the Russian stones. It's Sal they want.”

“They'll get him, thanks to you,” she said.

He grimaced and shifted against the pain that throbbed through his body in time with his heartbeat. “Yeah. I sure do hope they kick that mean bastard's ass hard. Real hard. As for the necklace, well, I'm figuring Ms. Joy will have something to say about it. I guess the goods I've been getting from Tarasov came from museums and such.”

Walker hoped that he would be in a position to bargain with the lovely Ms. Joy. Part of that bargain would include Mel keeping the necklace; it was too beautiful a piece to be trashed just for its rubies. But all he said aloud was, “There's a lot of housecleaning going on in the former Soviet Union. Hard currency is scarce.”

“Surprising, though,” Davis said. “Except for the Heart of Midnight, most of the stuff I saw was, well, ordinary, the kind of thing any wealthy woman might have owned in the eighteenth or nineteenth century.”

“Museum basements are stacked full of fairly ordinary things,” Faith said. “Especially state museums. Only the best goes on display.”

Walker was more worried about a Russian assassin than the quality of goods in Russian museum basements. He had a lot to do tonight. The sooner they left the library, the sooner he could begin.

“You're looking like a man who would rather be in bed,” Walker said to Davis. “I'll help you upstairs.”

Davis glanced at the bourbon decanter, then firmly looked away. “I'd appreciate it.”

As soon as the two men left the room, Faith shut off the light and swept open the drapes that covered the French doors leading to the gallery. She left the hall door open for good measure as she hurried after the two men.

Walker had been very definite about two things: First, the trap had to be baited with real rubies. No sleight-of-hand switch this time, no artificial stones.

And second, once the trap was laid, Faith had to stay in his sight.

Always.

Dressed in clothes that blended with the dense, cloud-covered night, Walker crouched in a thicket of azaleas, camellias, and feral rambling roses that once had been the far edge of the Montegeau garden. The night was alive with a warm wind that sent leaves to rubbing and whispering over each other and made grass and long-needled pines sound like dancers wearing long silk skirts. The air smelled damp, earthy, with an overlay of brine and secrecy.

But even on the darkest night, there is always some light. The night-vision goggles Walker had borrowed from Farnsworth and Peel sucked up every bit of stray illumination and turned it into a sickly green glow. The lenses gave him a surprisingly clear view of the interior of the library.

Peel's night-vision goggles were buckled around Faith's head. Like Walker, she was wearing dark clothes. Unlike him, she was wearing a dark cap as well, concealing her telltale pale hair. She was watching the back door of the house and the path that led to the bayou and salt marsh. Without the glasses, she would have been seeing ghosts every time the wind stirred trees, marsh, and water. With the glasses, she only jumped half the time.

Until the past few hours, she had never guessed how much a sapling resembled a human being.

“Bingo,” he said very softly.

Faith stiffened. “The library?” she asked, her voice as low as his.

“Yes.”

“Who is it?”

“Can't tell. Just a dark silhouette with two arms, two legs, one head. Not limping, so it isn't Davis. No way he could do anything but hobble.”

Faith tried not to think of her hard work and beautiful design vanishing into a thief's pocket.

“Don't worry,” Walker murmured, guessing her thoughts. “I'll get it back for you.”

“You should have let the FBI do this.”

“We've been over that twenty times. They're city cops, not bayou hunters.”

She bit her lip. He was right. She just didn't like it. “No necklace is worth your life.”

Walker's teeth flashed in a pale curve against his black beard. “I'm not fixing to die.”