Bedroom Eyes (17 page)

The ring weighted her hand. She tugged it off and stared at it. At least she’d gotten rid of the roses, dropping them on a table in the entrance area of her building. Someone would find them, take them, and maybe even appreciate them.

“Eventful evening?” Mrs. Merlin sat cross-legged on the sofa, curiously looking at her hostess while keeping one eye on the small television Penelope had positioned on the coffee table.

She answered with a shaky laugh, crossing to the sofa and holding out the ring. “Just look at this diamond! And he absolutely insists he won’t take no for an answer. It’s almost scary.”

“Hmmm.” Mrs. Merlin used the remote to switch off the TV. She tapped on the stone with the end of her magic incense wand, then shook her head. “Men,” she said with a sniff. “Some of them you just can’t trust.”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you familiar with the expression, ‘All that glitters is not gold’?”

“Oh.” Penelope stared again at the ring. “How do you know it’s not a real diamond?”

“No fire.”

“No wonder he insisted I take it with me even though I said I wouldn’t marry him.”

“Oh, cubic zirconia is still pricey. And that’s a pretty good fake.”

“Gee, thanks for that.” Penelope dropped her head back on the sofa. “At least dinner was delicious. The most marvelous appetizer, escargots wrapped in escarole and served with a sauce of—”

“Stop!”

Penelope clapped a hand to her mouth. “I’m so sorry. How rude of me, when you’re living on oatmeal.”

“I like oatmeal.”

“It’s a good thing.” Penelope laughed. “Come on, I’ll make you a dish.”

In a flash, Mrs. Merlin vaulted off the couch. It amazed Penelope how she managed to zip around using her stick. She traveled in leaps and bounds, literally, into the kitchen and landed on the counter. Straightening her skirt, she said, “I think you’re ready to call on Mr. Gotho again.”

“Am I?”

She nodded, smiling as Penelope mixed oatmeal into the water.

“Why now and not before?”

“When you found out the ring wasn’t real, you didn’t take it personally.”

Unaccountably pleased, Penelope stirred the oatmeal. Mrs. Merlin did make a strange kind of sense.

“Maybe you should run over there now, dear, while your ego is properly aligned.”

“Tonight?”

Mrs. Merlin nodded. “But finish my oatmeal first and change your clothes. Go to the Quarter dressed like that and you’ll likely be mistaken for a hooker.”

“Mrs. Merlin!” Penelope flicked the burner off and filled a small dish with oatmeal. “The lady at Macy’s assured me this was a perfectly respectable dress.”

“So who are you trying to convince? You or me?”

Penelope thrust her hands on her hips. The neckline ruffles swayed. “Oh, forget it. I’m just not made to look sexy.”

Still on the counter, Mrs. Merlin dug into the oatmeal with her demitasse spoon. “Not true. You’re just wearing the wrong dress. How much did that cost? I bet that woman worked on commission.”

Penelope laughed. “An arm and a leg, and I did it just to torment that rascal of an ex-cop, and Hinson defeated my entire plan by taking me to a restaurant where the guy couldn’t see or hear me.”

Mrs. Merlin’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, he seems like a determined fellow.”

“David and I were the only diners. He had them open the entire restaurant just for us.”

“Why does he want to marry you?”

Penelope had headed into the bedroom, but she turned back at Mrs. Merlin’s question. Dropping into a kitchen chair, she said slowly, “That is a very good question.”

Tony saw Penelope delivered to the door of her apartment and watched Hinson drive away. Tom between a raging desire to find some excuse to see Penelope and the instinct that tonight Hinson would do something violent, he followed Hinson.

Another member of Tony’s undercover detail was already tailing him, but Tony wanted to be in on the chase.

No man with Hinson’s ego could take a rejection and not explode in some fashion. That he’d remained under control with Penelope spoke volumes to Tony. That meant he
needed
Penelope to marry him.

The call he’d made earlier had confirmed what he’d suspected. The law firm Penelope had joined represented the other party in a long-contested multimillion-dollar lawsuit that Hinson’s boss had been waging both in and out of state and federal court.

None of the wiretaps in place on Hinson or any of his boss’s several offices had disclosed any clue as to Hinson’s interest in Penelope. He’d kept completely mum. Hinson’s boss was on tape making one reference to how marrying settled down a man, but the comment had been made in passing.

Or so Tony had thought until Squeek gave him the word from the streets.

Hinson must have told one of his favorite whores that he was tying the knot, no doubt, which is how the news had filtered to Squeek.

To visit one of those whores was no doubt where Hinson was headed at the moment, as he swung out of the Warehouse District and drove speedily toward the seedy end of Tulane Avenue. That bleak street, lined with hole-in-the-wall bars, run-down motels, and abandoned buildings no one would spend the time or money to repair, served as backdrop for many a prostitute.

Tony stopped at a red light, keeping Hinson in sight but making sure at least another car separated them. He hated to see how sad this stretch of the city looked, and nighttime showed it to better advantage than the harsh light of day.

He alone of all his family had remained in the city. Everyone else had migrated to the suburbs. Too dangerous, too full of minorities, too crowded, too expensive. He’d heard all the reasons, but he stayed behind, keeping up the shotgun house his grandparents had built in uptown New Orleans more than a hundred years ago.

Ahead, Hinson pulled his Lincoln to the curb. Tony watched as a young girl in a tight white dress slunk from the shadows and approached the fancy car.

“Bastard,” he said, and reached for his radio.

It crackled to life before he could send a message out for backup to create a diversion that would send Hinson scurrying off like a cockroach into the night. Hinson wasn’t to be arrested before he’d offered Tony a post, no matter what he did on his personal time, but Tony would be damned before he’d let him beat up a girl who looked no more than fifteen.

“Your favorite lady lawyer’s going for a drive,” said the voice over the radio.

“Roger.” Tony swung into a U-turn, sent the message he needed to send, and left Hinson and the girl’s fate in the hands of the uniformed law.

Where in the hell was Penelope going at eleven o’clock on a Monday night? To the office? Nah, not even Penelope Sue Fields qualified as that extreme a workaholic.

And even though his undercover assignment required him to track Hinson, and he knew Penelope wasn’t headed toward Hinson, he couldn’t stop himself from choosing to follow her.

He had to know what she was doing.

“Face it, Olano,” he said, “you’re obsessed with the woman. Not healthy. Not a good thing at all.”

On Canal nearing the turn toward the area where she lived, Tony slowed and tried to talk himself into returning to Hinson. Instead, he checked with the man he had tailing her, another private investigator whom he’d hired earlier that day under the auspices of Olano Investigations to help him keep an eye on Penelope when duty required him to be otherwise occupied. After what Squeek had told him, he had to protect her, without her or anyone else knowing he was doing so.

Tony got her location, headed into the French Quarter, and, ignoring the
NO LEFT TURN
sign, veered onto the streets of the Vieux Carré.

Penelope hugged her arms to her chest and hurried up the dark street. The lower end of Bourbon Street where the Bayou Magick Shoppe was located was residential, as different as night and day from the stretch where tourists traditionally came to drink, gawk, and act out in ways they never would have thought of doing back home in Iowa.

She’d had to park four blocks from the shop. Most of the house fronts were shuttered from the street. Warnings about muggings raced through her mind and she wondered why she’d agreed to chase after Mrs. Merlin’s stupid magic supplies in the middle of the night. And a work night, too!

Then she reached one house where lights blazed, a dinner party in full swing. Several young men sat on the stoop, drinking wine and chatting. For a moment she felt safer, and her spirits rose.

She crossed to the next block and the feeling vanished. Walking up the steps to the door of the Bayou Magick Shoppe, Penelope couldn’t banish the feeling that someone watched her. Probably Mr. Gotho, she tried to convince herself, as she rang the bell and waited anxiously for him to come to the door of the shop, a shop clearly closed for the night.

Her mood was darkened by her concern over something David had said at dinner. In her mind, she’d been working it over and over, the way she did when a popcorn hull got stuck in a tooth. Pretty soon her mind grew frustrated and she tried to let go of the worrisome thought that Hinson was more than he appeared on the surface.

More what? She shivered and rang the bell again. More dangerous?

Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. He’s a lawyer, same as you. Maybe he has some bad clients, but he also has good clients.

But how did he know which legal recruiting firm had found her the job in New Orleans?

Behind her she heard shuffling footsteps. Penelope whirled around.

An old man walking his dog glanced up at her.

“Evening,” he said. The dog lifted his leg against the metal post of the
RESIDENTIAL PARKING ONLY
sign. Penelope smiled weakly and turned back to bang on the door.

“Come on,” she said, wanting nothing more than to be in her bed safe and sound. She should have insisted on bringing Mrs. Merlin along with her, though she would have been good for nothing more than moral support.

But at this moment, with the wind picking up and the street darker than ever with the clouds covering the moon, moral support was exactly what she needed.

Mrs. Merlin continued to insist this mission had to be accomplished alone.

Penelope was beginning to get the feeling Mrs. Merlin pretty much made up her magick rules as her mood suited her. On the other hand, the kindly woman wouldn’t knowingly have sent her on a risky errand.

Of course, she probably hadn’t been on the lower end of Bourbon Street after dark for half a century.

She heard a lock scrape on the other side of the door. Another echoing slap of footsteps accompanied the noise. For a fleeting instant, Penelope wondered whether Tony was the source of her sensation of being followed.

The door creaked open and she discarded the idea. This time of night, he’d probably bedded down with his babe of the moment.

Mr. Gotho wore jogging shorts and an LSU T-shirt. With his inscrutable gaze, he studied Penelope as she stood framed in the door.

Her imagination had dressed him in a crimson dressing gown, pipe in hand, nightcap on his head. She didn’t know why; despite his silvery brown hair, he didn’t look too many years her senior. It was his eyes that looked as if they’d lived for at least a century.

Watching him watch her, though, she decided not to comment either on his wardrobe or his age. She wanted to pass whatever test he’d summoned for her, get the goods, and get home.

“Come in, Penelope,” he said in that low voice of his that sounded so mysterious.

She stepped inside the shop.

He shut the door behind her.

And locked it.

Penelope decided she’d lost her sense of adventure before it had a chance to blossom. “Uh . . .”

“Do not be afraid. You are safer in here than you are on the street. There is“—Mr. Gotho inclined his head sideways, as if listening—”evil out there. But there is also good.”

Yeah, right. Oops. Penelope told her mind to behave itself. How did one keep one’s ego in line?

Mr. Gotho smiled. “To wonder is to begin to understand.”

Could he read her mind? Penelope wanted to ask him, but she felt silly doing so.

“It’s okay to ask me whatever you wish,” Mr. Gotho said, walking to the back of the shop. He lifted the counter gate and waited for her to follow him. “I don’t read minds. But I do interpret expressions.”

Penelope laughed nervously. “And everything I think shows on my face, I guess?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” He paused beside the door where he’d been when he’d tossed her out the other day. The other day? Only the day before. Penelope couldn’t quite grasp that her life seemed to be changing with such lightning speed.

Certainly since she’d met Mrs. Merlin everything had been topsy-turvy.

And since you met Tony Olano, she reminded herself.

Tony? Tony is only a bossy, arrogant, troublemaking ex-cop who got himself thrown off the police force. Why should his existence make me feel as if my life has changed?

“Do you wish to go on?”

Mr. Gotho’s voice broke into her thoughts. Penelope blinked and stared at the snarling purple tiger on the front of his golden T-shirt. “Sorry,” she said, “I forget myself sometimes.”

“Of course,” he said, and opened the door.

Once inside the storeroom, Penelope stared at the rows of shelves covered with bottles, boxes and bags of all sorts, shapes, and sizes. Candles in a rainbow of colors lined one side of the room.

“Your list?” Mr. Gotho held out a hand.

“List?” Penelope knew her face fell. Mrs. Merlin had said she wouldn’t need a list. Then she smiled. Mr. Gotho was only testing her. “I only need what is necessary,” she said.

“Very good.” Her personal shopper in the realm of magick moved about the small storeroom, a gentle smile tugging at his lips as he pulled various items off the shelves and put them onto the tiny round table in the center of the room.

The candles were arranged by color, starting with white, then gray, then black along one wall. Another shelf held candles in varying shades of red. As she looked around, Mr. Gotho selected one of the cherry-red candles and placed it on the table.

“What a wonderful color,” Penelope said, reaching out to stroke the candle.