Bayou Nights (2 page)

He approached the body and crouched. Now that the demon was dead, the smell of sulfur had faded. The stench of rotting fruit lingered. The man’s pockets were empty. No money. No handkerchief. No identification. “Nothing.”

The woman huffed. “Of course not. That would be too easy. Now what?”

He’d promised aid finding her father, not disposing of a demon’s leavings. “The police.”

She crinkled her nose as if she’d caught a fresh whiff of rotting fruit. “I suppose there’s nothing for it. Molly, are you still walking out with that young detective?”

Molly offered up a quavering smile and nodded.

“Please fetch him.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Molly turned with a swirl of skirts, relief stamped on her lightly freckled face. She pulled open the front door and was gone.

The woman bent, picked a silk rose off the floor then smoothed its petals. “What a mess.”

It would have been exponentially worse without her Holy Water. “Does this happen often?”

She looked at him as if he was an escaped lunatic.

“I only ask because of the Holy Water. Most people don’t keep pitchers handy.” And what about the pin she’d pulled from her hair? Women—at least the women of his acquaintance—didn’t usually wear sterling hair pins.

“You’re the man Zeke sent to help me find my father?” She sounded disbelieving enough to be insulting.

“I am.”

“Have you been to New Orleans before?”

“Once or twice.” No need to tell her the reasons.

A resigned whoosh of air escaped her lips and her straight shoulders sagged. “What did Zeke tell you about my father?”

Practically nothing. “He’s missing.”

“He’s dead.”

He’d wasted a trip? At least now he could catch the next train north. “I’m sorry for your loss. When did he pass?”

“A few years ago.” She stared at him, daring him to doubt her.

The favor Zeke owed him grew far bigger than a whale. No wonder he’d asked him to come. Ghosts were tethered to a place or person. They didn’t go missing. “Perhaps he crossed over.” Drake dug for the handkerchief again.

Her left brow rose. Her lips pursed. Her thoughts seemed clear—she found it amazing he successfully pulled up his socks in the morning. Only an idiot would suggest that her father had moved to another plane.

This from a woman who sold hats that looked like bird nests complete with nesting robins? One need take only one look at her frilly, silly shop to know that the sensible one in the room was he.

“My father would not cross without telling me first.”

Ghosts didn’t behave like the living. Sometimes they just crossed. He made a sympathetic noise in his throat.

“He didn’t!” She looked ready to pick up her broken cane and whack him on the head.

In the short walk from his hotel to the hat shop, he’d seen no less than a hundred ghosts. The city was lousy with them. If she was right and Warwick Lambert had gone missing, finding him would be like searching for a specific lobster in the vast waters off the coast of Maine. To wit, impossible. The task was made still harder by his status as a stranger and a Yankee. In New Orleans, he had no contacts, no influence, no power. He wasn’t even here in an official capacity.

Her elegantly tapered finger tapped the edge of the glass countertop. Apparently, she expected him to respond.

He didn’t have an answer for her. Either her father had crossed and they’d never find him, or he’d disappeared into the veritable congress of ghosts haunting New Orleans and they’d never find him. Failure was inevitable. He wouldn’t offer her false hope.

The silence stretched.

With a huff, the woman cast her gaze heavenward. Then she skirted the corpse, locked the glass-paned front door, fastened the chain, and turned the sign in the window to
Fermé.
Why didn’t the placard say
Closed
? They weren’t in Paris so signs written in French were as pretentious as saying
lamb-bear
instead of
lamb-bert
. Silly store. Silly hats. Silly woman.

Her back bristled as if she could read his thoughts. He’d made her angry. Better that than hysterical. Thank God she wasn’t one of those women who dissolved into tears at the drop of a hat. Good thing, too. If she’d taken refuge in tears, he didn’t know what he would have done. Probably, he would have agreed to whatever it took to find her father. Women’s tears rendered him idiotic.

She bent with the grace of a dancer, picked up the hat covered with bows, and righted its stand. Then she put the hat in its proper place and tsked. “Ruined. It’s ruined.”

It didn’t look ruined to him. Its trip to the carpet hadn’t changed a thing. It had started out as ridiculous frippery and still was. He grunted.

“You don’t like my hats, Mr. Drake?” Her tone was sweeter than maple syrup, dripping over the edge of a stack of flapjacks fresh from the griddle on a hungry morning.

“No.” Whenever possible, he told the truth. Wasting a lie on ridiculous hats was…ridiculous.

She glanced at him, her gaze assessed his plain suit, then her mouth primmed. “How do you know Zeke?”

“Harvard.”

“They didn’t teach you the value of a white lie while you were there?”

His lips curled. “They tried—”

“But they failed.” She finished his thought.

Disconcerting, that. He dragged his gaze away from her butterscotch eyes. The body on the floor couldn’t finish his sentences. Drake looked at that instead. “What did it want?”

“No idea.” Something sharp lurked in the smooth honey of her voice. His gaze returned to her face. Fleeting as a summer wind, bright as a fire in winter, the lie flashed in her eyes.

Why would she lie?

“You’re sure? Barnes sent me to help you.”

“Then find my father.”

“What about him?” He jerked his chin toward the body. “What if your father’s disappearance and the arrival of a demon in your shop are related?” It stretched the limits of credulity to suggest they weren’t.

“You seem like a man who appreciates honesty, Mr. Drake.”

“My friends call me Drake.”

“I’ll be honest, Mr. Drake. I don’t know you and I don’t trust you.”

Probably smart, that. And surprising. The woman standing opposite him was dainty, far too pretty, and apparently addicted to the kind of gee-gaws he despised. When he’d expected hysterics, she’d shown him strength. His lips curled into a smile. “I’m completely trustworthy.” There was a lie worth telling.

“Every no-count man in Orleans Parish has uttered those exact words at some point in his life. Probably right before he betrayed some poor woman’s trust.”

The corner of Drake’s eye twitched. He’d saved her. Didn’t that count for something?

Her brows arched as if she could read his mind and disagreed with his conclusions. She was the one who’d doused the demon with Holy Water. She was the one who’d carved a cross into its forehead.

Maybe he hadn’t saved her but he’d helped. Maybe the damsel in distress had saved herself. Or maybe Christine Lambert would be lying dead on the floor if he hadn’t come into her shop. Drake rubbed the back of his neck.

Tap, tap, tap.

A woman stood at the door with a hatbox dangling from her hand.

“She can’t come in,” he said.

Christine favored him another look that questioned his intelligence. Apparently, the obvious need not be stated. She cracked the door without removing the chain.

“You have to fix this for me, Christine.” The woman shook her hatbox. “Now. Right away. I need it for tonight.”

“I’m sorry. We’re closed.”

“Pish.” The woman pushed on the still chained door.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Simms. We’re closed.” There was something—perhaps the tone of her voice, or the set of her shoulders, or the tilt of her chin—that gave Drake the impression that Christine didn’t like the woman at the door.

“Open the door.”

“We’re closed.” The voice. Dislike definitely lurked in Christine’s voice.

The woman lifted her hand to her face and peered through the glass.

Drake stepped into her sightline, blocking her view of the body.

“You have a man in there! I can see him.”

“Mr. Drake owns a department store in New York. He wants to carry my hats.” Christine’s lie was effortless. If Drake didn’t know better, he’d believe her himself.

“Why don’t you wear the hat you bought last week?” Christine asked. “It’s so becoming.”

Was that too a lie? Christine blocked his view of the customer demanding entrance but her petulant tone suggested a woman who depended on frippery to hide her lack of character. No hat on earth could disguise that.

“You know the one,” Christine continued. “It has that enormous brim and the black ostrich feathers.”

“It’s too much for the theater.”

“On the contrary. It’s perfect for the theater. Every woman there will be mad with envy.”

“You’re sure?” the woman asked.

“I’m positive.” Christine spoke with absolute assurance, a woman who knew her hats.

“A shop in New York, you said?” Her fears about the suitability of her headwear assuaged, Mrs. Simms now wanted gossip.

“We haven’t yet come to terms.” Christine eased the door toward its jamb. “Have a lovely time at the theater.” The door clicked closed.

She turned and faced him. “What’s the name of your store?”

Drake stared at her. “I don’t have a store.”

“Good plan. A couple of the ladies in the Garden District travel to New York regularly. They’d know if we made something up.” She tilted her head. “You’re thinking of opening one and you travelled all the way to New Orleans because you heard I was the best hat-maker in the whole United States.”

“What are you talking about?” The stress of the afternoon had obviously affected her. She was raving.

“That was Yvette Simms. The rumor will be all over the Garden District within an hour.”

“Do I look like the kind of man who owns a department store?”

“It was the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment.” She tilted her head farther and studied him. “There’s nothing for it. You’ll have to get yourself a decent suit and pretend a certain knowledge of fashion.”

“I will not.”

“I thought you were here to help, Mr. Drake. That’s what Trula’s wire said.”

He was here to find her father, not engage in fantastical lies. “You could admit to the lie. The truth will come out when that woman learns there was a dead body in your shop.”

“Why would she learn that?”

“It’ll be hard to hide.”

“No, it won’t.” She shook her head and a dark curl brushed her cheek. “This is New Orleans. All it takes to hide a body is money.”

He crossed his arms over his chest.

“Yvette Simms isn’t part of the New Orleans that would believe a demon attacked me.” She glanced at the man on the floor then at him. “She’d make up something better, something like a love triangle gone wrong. A lie is more believable than a demon—especially a lie about a Yankee wanting to sell my hats.” She squinted at him. “Although, if she sees you up close, she won’t believe that either. You dress like a down-on-his-luck undertaker.”

He resisted the impulse to smooth his lapels. “Clothes do not make a man.”

She sniffed. “We’ll agree to disagree on that point.”

Why did the urge to buy a new suit hit him now? He snorted. How dare she? His suit was serviceable. He didn’t need anything more.

“Perception is reality, Mr. Drake.” The left corner of her mouth lifted in a wry smile.

She was wrong. Reality was reality.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

What now? Another customer she’d charm with sugared lies?

Molly and a young man waited outside.

Christine unlocked the door.

The two entered and the man’s gaze went directly to the body on the floor. He paled.

“What happened, Miss Lambert?” He pronounced her name
lamb-bear
. Of course he did.

“Detective Kenton, thank you for coming.” Her eyelashes fluttered. “This man came into my store and attacked me.”

Kenton stepped closer to the body, bent and peered. “He did? You’re sure?” Then he jerked his chin toward Drake. “Who are you, sir?”

“I’m—”

“He’s one of Zeke Barnes’ colleagues,” piped Christine.

Now she told the truth? Now? Life would have been much simpler without announcing his presence to the local police.

Christine’s pronouncement earned Drake a closer look. Kenton pulled at his collar as if his shirt had grown too tight. “Then you can tell me how he got here?”

Drake hadn’t the slightest idea why a demon had walked into the hat shop. “Pardon?”

“The body, sir. How did it get here?”

“I told you,” said Christine. “He walked through the door and attacked me.”

A wrinkle creased Kenton’s brow and he shifted his gaze to Christine. “No, ma’am, that’s not possible.”

“He did,” she insisted.

“No, ma’am.” Kenton repeated then he rubbed his forehead. “This man was in the morgue this morning. I took him there myself.”

Drake’s gaze flew back to the man on the floor. “Dead?”

“Yes, sir. That’s why I took him to the morgue.” The young man’s face flushed but his gaze remained steady and forthright.

Kenton’s assurance raised disturbing questions.

Demons had to be invited and a dead man couldn’t ask for anything. Whatever had possessed the man on the floor, it wasn’t a demon. So what was it?