Angel in Training (The Louisiangel Series, Book One) (21 page)

“Can we go inside?” Joshua asked, motioning
to the door.

I didn’t think Mrs. Montgomery would make it
inside before collapsing, but she did. She clung tightly to her
husband’s hand, and sat bolt upright with her eyes squeezed
closed.

“I’m really sorry to have to tell you this,
but your daughter, Emily, was killed last night.” Joshua told them
carefully.

I jumped as Mrs. Montgomery began wailing.
Her husband pulled her to him, allowing her to sob into his chest
while he remained surprisingly stoic. “How?”

“She was stabbed,” Joshua responded, causing
Mrs. Montgomery to wail even louder.

“And have you caught the person who did it?”
Mr. Montgomery demanded.

“Not yet,” Joshua almost sighed. “But we do
have some promising leads.”

“I want to see her.”

Joshua nodded. “I will arrange for someone to
take you to the city.”

“I am perfectly capable of driving us over
there,” Mr. Montgomery announced, rising to his feet.

I was on mine in an instant. “With all due
respect, you don’t want to do that,” I told him, placing my hand on
his arm. “It’s not a drive you want to make and your thoughts are
going to be anywhere but with the traffic. Let us arrange for
someone to take you?”

I was surprised as he nodded and walked out
of the room, leaving us alone with the sobbing wife. I glanced at
Joshua who was looking very uncomfortable and sat down beside her.
“Patricia?” I muttered, not knowing how I knew her name, but at the
same time knowing it was right. “I know it’s hard to hear this, but
your daughter, she’s being looked after right now.”

She looked up at me, tears streaming down her
face. “How do you know?” she moaned.

“You’re just going to have to trust me,” I
sighed. I don’t know why, but she nodded.

The Psychic

We waited until someone from Victim Support
arrived to take our place and take them into the morgue. After
making sure the door had been locked behind them, I followed Joshua
back to the car and sank in, exhausted. I can honestly say I would
rather flog myself to death on the treadmill than ever go through
that again.

“You want to get something to eat?” Joshua
asked me quietly.

“I’m not sure how hungry I feel,” I replied,
shaking my head.

He pursed his lips and pulled away, but
instead of taking the turn to lead us back to the causeway, he went
in the opposite direction.

“Where are we going now?” I asked him
wearily.

“To get some food.”

“But I said I wasn’t hungry,” I sighed.

Joshua firmly shook his head. “You said you
weren’t sure, and trust me, after that, you will appreciate a very
big steak.”

“Whatever,” I half agreed, keeping my
attention on the world outside the car. Despite living here for so
long, I had never really explored this side of the lake all that
much. In fact, as he turned off the main roads and onto the back
ones, I realized that I had no real idea of where we were.

I was too tired to argue anymore though. I
just sat back and watched the cars passing by. We drove for a while
until he turned off down a dirt road, driving carefully over the
uneven surface until we pulled up outside a structure that
resembled a shed, named ‘Gator Al’s’. I turned and arched an
eyebrow in disbelief.

He tutted at me. “Don’t knock it until you’ve
tried it,” he chided, getting out of the car.

I followed him into the shed to be greeted by
the most enormous man I had ever seen – both up and out. “Josh,
it’s been a while.”

“You got room for two, Al?” Joshua asked,
gesturing around the half empty bar. Al laughed – a long, deep
noise that had his belly wobbling at the effort. He indicated we
should follow and led us through to a table at the back, by a
window that overlooked the bayou behind.

I sat down, examining my surroundings.
Surprisingly it was much bigger on the inside than it looked from
out front. It looked like a redneck hunting lodge. There were dead
animals turned into trophies, hanging all over the room, ranging
from a deer head, raccoons, possums – right up to the twelve foot
alligator hanging over the bar. There seemed to be about four or
five different sets of furniture, which, like the floor, were
covered in a thick layer of dirt, leaves and the occasional
crawfish shell.

“You’re turning your nose up and you haven’t
even had the steak yet,” Joshua said, disapprovingly.

I wrinkled my nose. “A steak from what?” I
asked, eyeing the gator. “And for the record, if the kitchen is
anything like the floor, I'm not eating.”

“Just think of it as seasoning,” he grinned
at me.

Al returned carrying two glasses of murky
looking water, along with two bottles of beer. He placed one of
each in front of us. “It’ll be a few minutes,” he told us, before
disappearing again.

“What will be a few minutes?” I asked as I
examined the water suspiciously.

“Dinner,” Joshua announced, taking a sip of
his beer. “If you’re going to look at the water like that, drink
the beer.”

I blinked. “I haven’t ordered anything.”

Joshua shrugged at me. “Al has one meal. You
don’t get a choice, and if you come to Gator Al’s, you come for the
food. Drink up.”

I gave the water a sniff before setting it
down and pushing it away from me. “It looks like it came from out
there,” I informed him, jabbing my thumb in the direction of the
swamp outside.

“It probably did,” Joshua agreed with a
smirk, taking another swig of his beer. He pushed the other one
towards me.

“I don’t drink,” I informed him, pushing the
beer next to the water. “Which I have told you before, although you
had almost drunk a bar dry at the time. More to the point, I’m
twenty, remember. Isn’t it a little irresponsible for an officer to
be handing me alcohol? And aren’t you on duty?”

“Who are you? The police?” he asked, rolling
his eyes at me.

“No, that would be you,” I retorted, holding
my hand out, palm up. “And if you’re going to drink yourself
stupid, at least give me the car keys.”

In a blink of an eye, his bedroom eyes had
made a reappearance. “You know, Al has a room he allows those who
have had too much to drink to use.”

“I am not spending the night here, with you,”
I responded, curtly.

“And still you play hard to get,” he sighed,
somewhat melodramatically.

“I'm not playing hard to get,” I informed
him. “I'm playing not interested.” I stood up abruptly enough to
send my chair screeching backwards and made to stomp out. I'd
spotted a phone by the door and I was ready to call a cab – or even
Michael.

His hand grabbing mine stopped me. “You have
really got to learn when I'm playing with you, darlin’,” he
drawled. “At least try the steak before you start walking
home.”

I took a deep breath and counted to ten
before I exhaled. This was going to end badly and I needed to get
out of there before I did something I was going to regret. Instead
I sat back down. “Fine.”

“That’s better,” he smirked as I slid back
down into my seat. I sighed and stared out the window, watching
something break the surface of the water enough to cause a ripple.
“What did you do in there?” Joshua asked me, quietly.

I looked back to him with a frown. “I don’t
know what you’re talking about.”

“When you spoke to Mrs. Montgomery. She
seemed to take comfort in what you said,” he said,
thoughtfully.

I brought my elbows to the table, resting my
chin in my hands. “I don’t know how I did it,” I admitted. “But if
she did take comfort in it, then I’m not going to complain.”

“I wasn’t trying to criticize,” he hurriedly
told me. “I just… I’ve had to deliver that news a few times now,
and I’ve been with Leon a couple of times as well. Every time I’ve
seen a person in hysterics, they have never come around from it so
quickly. In fact, I’ve seen some where a doctor has had to be
called to sedate them. What you did was… pretty impressive, however
you did it.”

“Oh,” I responded, slightly surprised. “Well
I suppose I can do something right,” I added under my breath.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked,
curiously.

I quickly shook my head. “I’m just not
getting much right these days.” Thankfully I didn’t have to
elaborate as Al arrived with two plates piled high with cheese and
bacon topped mashed potatoes, sweet corn, and a steak that took up
more than half of the enormous plate it was sat on.

“Hey Al, have you got any cans of Coke?”
Joshua asked before Al walked away.

“Coke?” Al repeated in disbelief.
“Seriously?”

“It’s not for me,” Joshua informed him with a
roll of his eyes, and nodded to me.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Al sighed, clearly
displeased at the fact I wasn’t drinking what he had brought
me.

I ignored his retreating back and turned my
attention to the food in front of me. There was enough on the plate
that Joshua and I could probably have shared it. It also smelled
delicious, much to my disappointment.

“It won’t kill you, you know,” Joshua pointed
out as he took the knife to his steak.

I pulled a face. “Have you seen the kitchens
to accurately assess that?”

“I thought I was the one that had to worry
about dying, considering you’re already dead?” Joshua asked with a
smirk.

I threw him an unimpressed look and took a
small bite of the steak. It was good. Very good.

“I told you so,” Joshua told me smugly,
seeing the surprised look on my face.

“So how many notifications have you had to
give?” I asked him, curious, after Al had returned with a can for
me.

Joshua shook his head and quickly swallowed
his mouthful of food. “Nope. No shop talk when I’m eating. That’s
the rule.”

I returned to eating my meal in silence. The
concept of a conversation not involving ‘work’ was alien to me. The
furthest my imagination had gone certainly didn’t involve
‘talking’, I’ll be honest.

“You’re blushing,” Joshua noted.

“No I’m not,” I objected, almost choking on
my food.

Joshua laughed, his eyes sparkling. If I
wasn’t blushing before, I was now. “So, Angel, what do you do in
your free time?” he asked me.

“I don’t really have any free time,” I told
him, frowning as I considered it. “Technically, I’m on call all the
time. I went out with a couple of angels,” I added as an
afterthought. “But if I’m not with you, I’m training in some
respect.”

“Well, what did you do before you became an
angel?” he asked.

“Drinking and dancing,” I grinned. “Far too
much of both. Otherwise, I was studying.”

“Sounds like an enriching life,” he muttered,
although he was smirking again.

“I never said it was,” I pointed out. “But I
was never the sporty type, I don’t read unless I have to, and I
don’t write. I can’t play any instruments, I can’t sing – in fact,
I’m tone deaf. Children can draw better than I can, and I don’t
have any patience when it comes to collecting things. And what
about you? What do you do?”

“I read,” he told me, surprising me. I didn’t
take him as a reader.

“And?” I asked, waiting impatiently for him
to continue.

He shrugged at me. “That’s all you’re
getting.”

It might be all he was admitting to, but I
had learned a few other things in the past couple of days,
including the fact that he had a thing for cars. His was immaculate
and I had caught his eyes following the cars he liked as they drove
past. “Alright, when is your birthday?”

“Not for a couple of months,” he told me,
cryptically.

I rolled my eyes. “If you’re not going to
talk ‘shop’, at least make some effort on the other topics,” I
instructed him before resuming eating, grumpily. He was somewhat
infuriating.

There were a few moments of silence while we
both attacked what sat on our plates. Then he sat back, washed down
what he had eaten with that swamp water, and cocked his head. “I
always knew I was going to be a cop. My daddy was a cop, so was his
daddy and his daddy. I never intended on being a detective
though.”

“Why not?” I asked.

For a moment, I thought that was all I was
going to get. Then he responded. “I wanted to work on the front
line – catch the bad guys without getting caught up in the
paperwork.”

“So what changed?”

He shrugged. “Beth was always telling me I
could help more when I was a detective.” He sighed when he
registered my blank look. “Beth was my sister. After Katrina,
things changed. Maggie was having problems with the insurance and
the builders who ripped her off – I needed more money to help her
out, and the hours helped too. When Asmodeus offered me the chance
of getting on this accelerated detective program, I accepted.”

When he continued eating, I knew he wasn’t
going to share anymore. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” I
admitted, quietly. “When I told Maggie I was still trying to find
my way, it wasn’t far from the truth. If I wasn’t doing this, I
still don’t know what I would have been doing, or what I was going
to do.”

He nodded. “I wouldn’t know what else I would
do if I wasn’t doing this.” He paused, frowning. “And for the
record, I don’t drink that much.” When I nearly choked on my food,
he rolled his eyes. “On the anniversary of Katrina, I have a couple
of drinks for my sister, that’s all.”

A couple? There had certainly been more
than
a
couple
of empty bottles
on the table when I had found him in The Salty Dog, and I also had
a suspicion that I’d know when Beth’s birthday was, because I would
find him back in a bar having another
couple.

I kept my mouth shut. For the rest of the
meal, (which I had to reluctantly admit to Joshua was the best
steak I’d ever eaten, followed by a reluctant thank you for making
me eat – both of which kept a smug grin on his face all the way
back to New Orleans), conversation was limited to trivial things
like the weather and how the Saints were going to do this season.
Regardless, it had made me feel slightly more at ease with
everything. Then he threw another wrench into the works.