The Kindness of Strangers (Skip Langdon Mystery #6) (The Skip Langdon Series)

THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

A Skip Langdon Mystery

BY

JULIE SMITH

Praise for THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS, the SIXTH book in the Skip Langdon series by EDGAR AWARD-WINNING author Julie Smith.

“No one writes about New Orleans, its steamy charms and its seamy sins, as well as Ms. Smith. She catches the tricky nuances of Louisiana speech as well as the sights, smells, and sounds of the Delta City.”

—
Dallas Morning News

“Skip’s grittiest, most disturbing adventure yet… Like a good Grisham: taut, fast, and thrilling, but with a lot more heart and soul… . Whether she’s concocting delectable murder and mayhem in the Golden City or stirring it up Cajun style in the City that Care Forgot, Julie Smith is still the best tour guide going.”

—
The Clairion-Ledger

“As usual, Smith serves up a gritty, gripping story along with a big helping of action and a pinch of humor, all appropriately seasoned by the wonderfully steamy seaminess of New Orleans.”

—
Booklist

The Skip Langdon Series
(in order of publication)

NEW ORLEANS MOURNING

THE AXEMAN’S JAZZ

JAZZ FUNERAL

DEATH BEFORE FACEBOOK (formerly NEW ORLEANS BEAT)

HOUSE OF BLUES

THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

CRESCENT CITY CONNECTION (formerly CRESCENT CITY KILL)

82 DESIRE

MEAN WOMAN BLUES

Also by Julie Smith
:

The Rebecca Schwartz Series

DEATH TURNS A TRICK

THE SOURDOUGH WARS

TOURIST TRAP

DEAD IN THE WATER

OTHER PEOPLE’S SKELETONS

The Paul Macdonald Series

TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURE

HUCKLEBERRY FIEND

The Talba Wallis Series

LOUISIANA HOTSHOT

LOUISIANA BIGSHOT

LOUISIANA LAMENT

P.I. ON A HOT TIN ROOF

As Well As:

WRITING YOUR WAY: THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL TRACK

NEW ORLEANS NOIR (ed.)

booksBnimble Publishing

New Orleans, La.

The Kindness of Strangers

Copyright 1996 by Julie Smith

Excerpt from Crescent City Kill copyright © 1997 by Julie Smith

Cover by Nevada Barr

ISBN: 978161750758

Originally published by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.booksbnimble.com

All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First booksBnimble Publishing electronic publication: July 2012

Digital book(s) (epub and mobi) produced by
Booknook.biz
.

To Elisa Wares and Leona Nevler, as brilliant and sensitive a team as a writer could hope to work with.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter One

SOME FIND IT amusing that the coroner of New Orleans is a gynecologist. Few know that the city’s first black mayor is buried next to Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen—by request, the tour guides say.

Even those who have lived there for years and those who were born there and those with the sensitivity of a barnyard beast and those who have spent the last twenty years drunk in the gutter can feel the strangeness of the city, its seductive perversity.

It hangs in the air like the cooking smells that pervade the streets and the old houses. Sometimes when you enter a Creole cottage, you could swear there’s a pot of red beans simmering somewhere, but the scent comes from the brick itself perhaps, or from the ghosts that everyone talks about as freely as they gossip about their neighbors.

The smells are unmistakable and complex; mysterious; elusive. Yet oddly pleasant and reassuring—delicious, even.

The strangeness is like that. After you give in to it, it is a warm embrace, and more than that. It is like the endless variations of a lover’s fingers on your body; familiar and yet different; titillating, yet safe and warm.

Each new discovery, each seeming contradiction is surprising, yet perfectly expected. Because they’re pieces of the crazy quilt, even the repugnant aspects, like the city’s (indeed the whole state’s) cynical style of political corruption, and the stupid ones, like drive-in daiquiri stands, are somehow tolerable. If you are not willing to give in to it, you generally leave town in a hurry.

Skip Langdon had done that, almost the minute she was old enough. Eventually she had come back, and bit by bit she had begun to give in, to let the thing wash over her, an inevitable tide of events.

For months now she had felt as if she would drown.

Becoming a cop was in some ways the most constructuctive thing she’d ever done; it had given meaning and focus to her life.

Lately it had turned on her.

Some days were better than others, but this wasn’t one of them. It was Sheila Ritter’s fifteenth birthday, and Sheila was the closest thing she had to a daughter. If ever there was a reminder that life goes on, this should have been it, and was.

That wasn’t the point. The life cycle wasn’t in question. The problem was that it simply didn’t cheer her up to remember that.

She couldn’t explain it any more than she could predict when she was going to burst into embarrassing tears. All she knew was that a feeling of hopelessness had come over her and would not leave.

Sheila was the niece of Skip’s landlord and best friend, Jimmy Dee Scoggin, who had become Sheila’s guardian and that of her younger brother, Kenny, when his sister died. Though he had now had nearly a year and a half to adapt to fatherhood, Jimmy Dee hadn’t. Sheila was having her first boy-girl birthday party, and he was a wreck. Railing about the impossibility of making it through a teenage party alone, he had invited no fewer than four adults to help him weather it.

Skip’s presence and that of Layne Bilderback, the man Jimmy Dee loved but barely saw anymore, due to Layne’s fierce allergy to the children’s dog, were de rigueur. But he also required assistance from Darryl Boucree and Cindy Lou Wootten, or said he did. It was just an excuse to have them over, Skip thought, and indeed they were all fulfilling their responsibilities by eating pizza and drinking wine around the kitchen table. Music of a sort issued from the room where Kenny and Sheila usually watched TV.

The adults were talking about the upcoming mayoral election, a subject that made Skip’s stomach clench for reasons she couldn’t get anyone to understand. She knew something about one of the candidates that terrified her— knew it, didn’t imagine it—but when she brought it up, everyone dismissed her. She found this puzzling and alienating, so she kept her mouth shut tonight, and tuned out the conversation. That left her with her own thoughts, which weren’t pretty.

“I’ll go check on the kids,” she said, and slipped away, aware that she was making people uncomfortable, the way she’d forget to laugh when anyone said something witty or got to a punch line.

The lights were on in the elegant parlor Jimmy Dee called the family room. A few kids were dancing, but most were just talking. Sheila was standing very close to a tall, short-haired, slightly overweight boy whose chubby cheeks flamed. Skip could see panic in his eyes and despite her mood, it made her smile.

Sheila was tall and a little too heavy—like Skip herself—but even at thirteen she’d had a sexual presence. At fifteen she was developing confidence.

She had dark, shiny long hair, luminous skin, and cheeks nearly as bright as her shy swain’s. Skip had often noted that adolescence will cause some feature or other to gain temporary prominence—noses or Adam’s apples on the unlucky. Sheila had been lucky—ripe, pouty lips dwarfed her other features.

Another boy came up behind her, touched her lightly on the waist, and she turned to him, a belle accepting her due. The other boy, the panicked one, looked hugely disappointed.

You never know what you want
, Skip thought
, till it’s taken away
.

She checked the room for Kenny, who had been bribed to stay in his room and not embarrass Sheila with his puerile, if exemplary, presence. Apparently the promise of a fishing trip had worked.

Music blared, conversation buzzed. All seemed in order except for the girl on the sofa, who looked like Skip felt. She was beautiful, this girl, as slight and wispy as Sheila was opulent. Her hair was dark and hung to her shoulders, a little messy, as if she never thought about it. Her skin was light—much lighter than Sheila’s—and her oversized feature was her eyebrows, which were bushy and strong, and which most kids would have plucked. She wore jeans and a white T-shirt, and looked as if she’d just lost her best friend.

Which is possible
, Skip thought, remembering her own youth.
I wonder how bad I’ll embarrass her if I talk to her.

But there was something so sad about the girl that Skip was drawn to her.
If misery loves company, she’ll adore me.

She sat down, not next to the girl, but close enough to talk. “Hello. I’m Skip.”

“Oh. Auntie.”

That was what Skip liked the children to call her, but they seldom did. “You know about me.”

“Oh, yes. Sheila talks about you all the time. I’m Torian, by the way. Torian Gernhard.”

“Oh, of course.” Torian was a neighbor, one of the few kids in the French Quarter. She and Sheila had met that summer when Torian saw her walking Angel, the black and white dog that Layne was allergic to. They were best friends, Jimmy Dee said, but this was the first time Skip had seen her.

She was looking neither at Skip, nor apparently at anything else. Gently, Skip touched her arm. “‘Torian. Is something wrong?”

“Wrong?” She seemed genuinely puzzled. “With me?”

“You’re sitting here all alone.”

“Oh. I’m just tired.”

Skip smiled. “Okay. I didn’t mean to be pushy.”

“Oh, you weren’t.” Torian smiled back, warming to Skip, perhaps. “It’s okay. Sheila says you’re a cop.”

“Does she talk about all of us?”

“Sure. But I know Jimmy Dee and Layne. Is Darryl here tonight?”

“Uh-huh. Do you want to meet him?” Of course Sheila would have talked about him—he was her grown-up crush, and Skip had a thing for him herself.

Torian nodded serenely, suddenly interested, not nearly so sad.

Skip took her into the kitchen. “This is Cindy Lou Wootten. Do you know about her?”

Torian nodded. “The psychologist. Also known as Lou-Lou.”

Skip said, “Sheila talks about us.”

“Woo. I hate to think,” said Lou-Lou, and everyone laughed except Torian.

“And this is the famous Darryl.”

Darryl gave Torian a grin that would probably cause her to run a fever. “Famous for what?”

“Sheila said you found her that time.”

Sheila had once run away, and Darryl had tracked her down. Skip was in the rescue party as well, but apparently Sheila hadn’t noticed.