The Curse of a Single Red Rose (Haunted Hearts Series Book 7) (18 page)

She licked the jelly from the corners of her mouth and then smiled. “Sometimes you can be so profound.”

He grinned, going along with the upbeat mood she was forcing. The pretense was probably her way of trying not to freak out again.

After her nightmare, she’d slept a long time. He’d tucked her into Moreau’s bed in the small hours of the morning. She hadn’t even stirred. For hours, he’d curled up next to her, just watching her breathe in and out. He’d finally passed out around five.

It was past noon before she woke up. Moreau had come in, changed clothes, and gone to work hours ago, waking Collin up before he was ready to revive. Moreau had called to check on them a couple of times. Each time he’d called, he’d sounded more concerned when Collin had informed him Elsa was still sound asleep.

Her voice wobbled a bit. “Who has to die?” She sipped her coffee and stared at Collin over the rim of the cup.

As he had no answer to the unanswerable, he kept his mouth shut and stabbed another glob of scrambled eggs.

“He called me Celia.” She paused and shuddered. “I look a lot like my great aunt. Even Sheriff Soileau said so. What if he thinks I’m Celia? Does that mean he thinks I need to die?” Her voice finally broke, and she appeared to stuff back a sob. “Jerilyn said if I didn’t use my gift right I might die.”

He reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “You realize none of that stuff with Les Wakefield last night really happened, right?”

She sniffed. “He wants me dead. I know it.”

In a flash, he circled the table and wrapped her in his arms. “I won’t let that happen.”

She shuddered and leaned into him. “I feel so helpless. I’m not usually this…”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to be strong all the time.”

She sniffed back another sob. “Yes, I do. I’m always the one who has to be strong. Always.”

He pulled her to him so she wouldn’t see his smile. He’d fallen for a strong woman. He knew that. But even strong, independent women needed help once in a while.

“Don’t laugh at me behind my back, Collin McVey.”

“I wouldn’t dare.” He leaned away from her so she could see the sincerity on his face. “Let’s make a deal, okay? This time I’ll help you be strong. One day, I might need you to help me be strong. Then you can return the favor.” The seriousness of his statement settled over him. Their conversation wasn’t merely light-hearted banter.

She nodded, a solemn expression on her face.

The subject needed to go in a different direction before he spilled every one of his feelings for her at her feet. He sensed it wasn’t quite the right time. Something else was on her mind, and he was determined to pull it out of her. “I’ve been thinking about things while you were asleep…”

Anxiety rippled across her features. She’d almost stopped sniffing, but another hiccup of distress erupted from her.

He rushed to continue his thoughts, hoping to stall the waterworks. It had never been easy to watch a woman cry. “Whoever is leaving the roses for me to find has the curse thing all wrong. That makes me think someone is trying to scare me off.” He waited. She had a sharp mind. Would she fill in some blanks?

“I’ve been thinking the same thing.” Verbalizing the thought seemed to surprise her.

“Something else you’ve found it difficult to say out loud?”

She nodded and bit her lower lip before speaking slowly and distinctly. “There have been so many thoughts running through my head. I can’t keep up with them. I’m not sure what I’ve said and what I haven’t. What I’ve heard and what I haven’t. What I know and what I don’t. It’s really scary to be this confused. I like to know what I’m doing.”

Aye, that was so. Elsa liked to be in control of her world.

“Someone is messing with us.” An understatement.

Anger flushed her face. “Les Wakefield is trying to separate us…”

“By scaring me and my crew away from the hotel…”

“So I’ll be there alone.” She snorted. “As if I could do the work by myself. I don’t think he really cares if the work gets done or not. It’s all been a pretense. That’s why our discussions of the project have all seemed so…off.” Her backbone straightened, and the strong woman she usually was emerged again. “Why does he want me alone? So that he can…”

The thought of Elsa falling to her death over the railing of the third floor walkway zoomed across Collin’s mind. Was that what Les Wakefield wanted? Was Elsa supposed to be a stand-in for Celia? Like others had been over the years?

“Who was the original Celia?” The question slipped out of his mouth, natural and easy, an inevitable progression of his thought process. He didn’t expect an answer.

“The first Celia married Les Wakefield back in the 1930s. She didn’t want to marry him, but her daddy made her.”

“Okay. How do you know that?”

Then Elsa told him of her visit with Grace Latiolais at The Grove. She kept talking until she’d told him what the old woman had said on her visit to Wakefield Manor. She finished with a recounting of the message she’d received from her Great Aunt Celia’s bones, and then he understood why a woman who was usually in control of her actions and reactions was suddenly a freaked-out mess.

He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. “Elsa, love, you’re imagining things.”

“Really, Collin? Do you really think so?” Her tone didn’t match her words. She wasn’t latching onto any hope he offered her. No. She was spitting mad. Her sarcasm flew all over the place. “If I’m hallucinating, then what drug am I on? Cause, if someone hasn’t drugged me, my imagination is really sick and twisted.” She sucked in a hitchy breath. “I’ve heard someone say more than once that someone has to die. It’s very hard not to believe that means me. I’m the one who’s supposed to die. That’s the way I’m supposed to stop him.”

He grabbed her and pulled her to him. “No. Elsa, you can’t think that way. Don’t fall for it. It’s a lie straight from hell. I know it in my heart. If you’re supposed to discover the truth, then the lies are trying to stop you.”

****

According to the registration desk, Les Wakefield had not checked out of the Sherwood. Nick leaned on a support column and pretended to text while he kept an eye on the elevator bank. He glanced toward the coffee shop side of the lobby and noted Petrie was in position watching the front entrance. Between the two of them, they had most of the lobby covered.

Though neither of them had actually seen the man in person, the South Carolina DMV had sent Nick a copy of Les’s driver’s license photo. He and Petrie had been waiting for several hours, and Nick was about to give up. He couldn’t waste any more time surveilling Wakefield. Petrie was growing restless and more than a little critical of Nick’s insistence on putting his eyes on the man.

Besides, Nick still had the death of Audrey St. Clair to investigate, an investigation that was so far going nowhere. Since her disappearance years ago, the woman had left no discernible footprint. No digital trail. It was as if she had ceased to exist, so tracking her movements had been impossible. Where she had gone between the time she showed up unexpectedly in Sophia Cannon’s apartment almost a year ago and the moment she’d been found in the trunk of Dallas Thoreau’s car was a mystery.

After talking with Collin McVey while Elsa Madsen slept off her traumatic experience, Nick was convinced more than ever that Les Wakefield had something to do with the mysterious way Audrey had ended up in the trunk of Thoreau’s car…or more to the point…how Thoreau’s car had ended up in the middle of McVey’s truck with a dead woman in the trunk.

Les was connected to Thoreau somehow, but Nick hadn’t been able to find any connection between the two men except for Brandon Wakefield’s fingerprint. That was a mighty thin link. Petrie was impatient with Nick’s speculation on the subject. He couldn’t blame the younger cop. Petrie hadn’t yet learned the fine art of listening to his gut instinct. He was in that in-between zone between rookie and seasoned detective.

Nick did a double take when a man that looked like the imposter, Brandon Wakefield, emerged from the elevator bank and strolled across the lobby. The supposedly dead connection between Les Wakefield and Dallas Thoreau walked straight toward him. Nick turned his side to the man and pretended to be on his cell phone.

Was Les Wakefield casually strolling toward the door to the street? If he was, he looked nothing like his South Carolina driver’s license photo.

Nick caught Petrie’s eye and nodded at the Brandon look-alike. Petrie’s posture stiffened. The other cop knew what Brandon Wakefield looked like. He’d done background on the guy since his fingerprints had been found in Dallas Thoreau’s car. Even across the lobby, Nick could see Petrie’s eyes widen with shocked surprise.

He recalled the one time he’d come face to face with the living Brandon Wakefield. Nick had been following up on a request from Charlotte Soileau. She had suspected the man who claimed to be Les Wakefield last year was an imposter. Nick had gone to the man’s office to interview him for her and ended up following him all the way from his office to a bar on Bourbon Street. He had interrupted Brandon’s attempt to strong arm Sophia Cannon into leaving the bar with him. It was the exact same tactic the man who now claimed to be Les Wakefield had used on Elsa Madsen. Elsa might have disappeared if Collin hadn’t intervened.

Nick was seeing a pattern he didn’t like.

Petrie lifted his cell phone to his face as if he were speaking into it just as the Brandon look-alike passed. Nick smiled. Petrie was very good at stealth photography, much better than Nick was.

He moved out of position and followed the man onto the sidewalk, staying a good six feet behind him, curious as to where the man was headed on foot. His phone pinged. A quick glimpse of the display indicated Petrie had sent him a text. The other cop had left the hotel and had cut across Canal, moving in the direction of the Quarter.

Nick crossed Canal at a corner further down the street, crossed three lanes of traffic going each way and two streetcar tracks in the middle of the road, and followed the man onto Royal. Several minutes later, the man used a key and entered the Royale Chateau Hotel.

Nick and Petrie watched the hotel for ten minutes before Wakefield emerged from the building carrying a black trash bag. Instead of tossing it in the nearest trashcan, he hauled the bag down two city blocks before he threw it into a dumpster on the curb. Once Wakefield was out of sight, Petrie retrieved the bag just in time before the weekly trash pick up carried it away.

Chapter Fourteen

Moreau placed a photograph on the kitchen table. “That’s a picture of Brandon Wakefield that one of our officers took last year. I interviewed him in a bar on Bourbon Street. That was the only time I’ve ever seen the man.”

Elsa studied the fuzzy photograph. “But that’s not Brandon. That’s Les.”

Collin picked up the photo and stared at it for a minute. “Or someone who looks a lot like him. That…It’s creepy how much they look alike.”

Moreau took the photo from Collin and placed it next to another picture on the table. “That’s Les Wakefield’s South Carolina driver’s license photo.”

Elsa placed her hand over her mouth.

Collin stuttered what she was thinking. “That’s not our Les. I thought Sheriff Soileau verified his identity. If our Les isn’t the man from South Carolina, who is he?”

Moreau flipped a third photo onto the table. “My partner took that picture this morning. He’s the man who’s staying at the Sherwood registered as Les Wakefield and using Les Wakefield’s credit card.”

Collin tapped the photo. “That’s definitely our Les.”

Elsa shivered as she edged closer to Collin. She still hated thinking of the man as
our
Les. She pointed at the picture taken that morning at the Sherwood. “He’s the man I saw at the hotel last night.” Thankfully, no one reminded her that she’d only seen him in a vision. She tapped the driver’s license photo. “I don’t know that man. He looks like Les, but I’m sure I’ve never seen him before.”

Moreau addressed Collin. “You never met Brandon Wakefield, did you?”

“No. He never came out to the manor house when we were working.”

“I sent all three photos to Charlotte…Sheriff Soileau and asked her to tell me which ones were Brandon and which ones were Les because she’s met both of them.” He pulled the driver’s license photo away from the other two pictures. “This is the one she said was the Les Wakefield she’d met. The other two she knew as Brandon Wakefield.”

Elsa pointed at the table with a shaking hand. “That is really freaky.” That was the only way she could describe it, but the word
freaky
didn’t seem strong enough. “If that’s the real Les Wakefield…” She nudged the license photo. “And that’s the real Les Wakefield…” She tapped the picture of the man who’d exited the Sherwood that morning. “They’re supposed to be the same man. They look a little bit alike, like they’re family, but not exactly alike. How can that be? Could Les’s looks have changed since he first came to Louisiana?”

He stabbed the older picture of Brandon. “What disturbs me the most… There seems to be a pattern. Brandon Wakefield had a criminal record. That man doesn’t look like his mug shot. I was talking to Dylan Hunter… Dylan’s friend Jordan knew that man when he was using the name Brandon Wakefield, when he was engaged to Jordan’s sister. When Jordan saw him again years later after he’d taken Les’s identity, his appearance had changed. We wondered…”

He dragged in a deep breath. “We wondered if the spirit of Les Wakefield the first, the one who died in 1937 is…” He stopped as if assessing the ridiculousness of what he was about to say. “I know this sounds incredible… His spirit seems to be able to take over other men, changing their features to look like him. After he does that, his spirit seeks out a woman to murder, a woman he insists on calling Celia.”

Elsa glanced at each photograph in turn. Things were starting to click and come together into a sort of illogical logic. “Collin told me about the weird DNA thing. Could that explain why so many men get by with claiming to be the real Les Wakefield? Sheriff Soileau told me there had been a lot of them.”

Collin shifted his focus away from the photo gallery and toward the cop. “That makes it hard to prosecute anyone, doesn’t it?”

“Can you imagine the mess this would cause if this thing became public knowledge? Can you see how complicated this has become?” Moreau rubbed the side of his face hard. “I can’t use the fingerprint we found in Thoreau’s car as evidence.”

A fingerprint? This was news to Elsa. Her gaze remained on the driver’s license photo of Les Wakefield from South Carolina. Something about his eyes, even in the grainy, state-issued picture, captured hers. The Wakefield eyes. He had them.

“Whose print was it?”

Collin had asked the question that Elsa had been reluctant to ask. The more she learned about the Wakefields, the less she wanted to know.

“The lift matched Brandon’s prints in AFIS, but how can I prove who left it if the Wakefield DNA can transfer from one person to another? How do I know it was really Brandon who left the print? It could be anyone who ever came in contact with him.” Moreau nudged the picture of Les that Petrie had taken that morning. “I saw that man at the scene of your accident hovering at the edge of the crowd. For a moment, I thought I’d seen the ghost of Brandon Wakefield.”

That piece of information sucked the breath out of Elsa. She turned told-you-so eyes on Collin. “He followed us just like I said he did.”

Collin grunted. “If he was following us, I didn’t see him. When I dropped you off, there wasn’t any traffic on Royal. I don’t remember seeing the car until I was on Magazine. It seemed to come up from behind me out of nowhere.”

Moreau huffed with disgust. “I’m no closer to finding out how Audrey St. Clair ended up in Dallas Thoreau’s trunk or who the woman is that was dumped in the hotel a year ago.”

An idea zoomed into Elsa’s consciousness. She had been searching her mind for links, like the link between her Great Aunt Celia and Delia DeCuir. There were links everywhere, if she could just sort through them and link things together that belonged together maybe the muddle in her usually organized mind could rearrange itself into something resembling order. Elsa hated disorder.

She blurted her speculation. “Are the two women connected?”

Her suggestion seemed to knock the wind out of Moreau. “I never even considered that.”

“Maybe the dead body Jeri was talking about was your Jane Doe.” Oh, Elsa hoped so. The thought of a dead body in the hotel that might possibly be Elsa’s dead body still generated stabs of fear in her.

“No.” Moreau sounded sure of his answer. Incredibly sure. “That’s an old crime. What Jeri’s talking about now is a new vision. She sees the future and sometimes the present, but never the past.”

Collin snorted with barely concealed contempt. “You’re that sure of her abilities, are you?” His Irish leapt and bounced in his accent, a sure sign he was agitated.

“Her visions have come true too many times to ignore them.”

“And she didn’t see the killer’s face?”

Moreau’s countenance turned dark. Collin’s sarcasm had hit a nerve.

“No, she only saw his blood-covered hands.” He moved back from the table. “I can’t talk about this any more.” The man’s face had turned a green shade of pale.

Elsa was willing to back off due to the cop’s discomfort, but Collin pressed him for answers. “You can’t ignore this no matter how weird and difficult it is. Les Wakefield might be a murderer. What are you going to do about it? Are you gonna stop it before it happens.”

Moreau growled under his breath before he answered. “I’m going to see if I can find a connection between Audrey and Jane Doe.” He gathered the pictures, stuffed them in his jacket pocket, and headed toward the door.

He turned with one last command for them, the voice of authority ringing in his words. “Stay here until I say you can leave. Give me time to follow Wakefield and find out what he’s up to before you go back home.”

Elsa hated the idea of spending any more time in Moreau’s house. “Are we under house arrest, then?”

Moreau stared at her a long time before answering. “If you leave this house, then you are responsible for whatever happens to you. I warned you to stay put and out of sight.”

“I’ve been responsible for myself a very long time, detective.” The snip in her tone nearly took his head off.

The cop waved off her comment as if he was done with her and left.

****

“So what was in the trash bag?” Nick had waited until he was in his car to call Petrie.

The curiosity had been killing him, but he had wanted to show Elsa and Collin the pictures first. The driving need to find out who was who had pushed him to go back home and lay the photos out in front of them. He’d ended up with no better grip on the identities of the participants than before he’d shown them his photo line up.

Just as he had suspected would happen, Elsa and Collin hadn’t identified the right picture as Les Wakefield. Nick’s stomach sank to his toes. With all the ambiguity about the man’s identity, Nick could never be sure whom he was dealing with, which made sorting out the truth infinitely more difficult.

Brandon Wakefield was dead. Or was he? Les Wakefield the first was dead. Or was he? Brandon was Les, and Les was some other guy. How many other men over the course of time had carried the name Les Wakefield? Was anyone really Les Wakefield? Had the older Les died without heirs and all the subsequent claimants to the name had simply been very convincing imposters? The twisted mess had given him a horrendous headache.

“After I cleaned the pasta sauce off the bag…”

Petrie had been complaining, and Nick only caught Petrie’s last gripe. “Yeah, yeah. So you had to go dumpster diving.” Nick stifled a derisive chuckle.

“You asked me to get my clothes dirty for nothing.” Petrie was a bit persnickety about his appearance. Somehow the younger cop could make a cheap suit look expensive.

Surely, Petrie had overlooked something significant. “There must have been something in it that Les didn’t want anyone to see. Why else would he dump it two blocks from the hotel?”

“There wasn’t anything in the bag except old hotel records from the 1960s.”

Documents from the 1960s? That was not a coincidence. And that might be significant.

Petrie grumbled low under his breath and then burst forth with his demand. “Don’t you think it’s time you told me what this is all about?”

Moreau ran his fingers through his hair. “Hotel records from the 1960s might be relevant. They might relate to an unsolved murder from 1965.” That wasn’t the whole story. Maybe Nick would tell Petrie more of the tale. Maybe he wouldn’t. It all depended on what Sophia Cannon had to say.

“When are you planning to tell me what I need to know to help you work this case?” Petrie’s miffed attitude came across loud and clear.

“I don’t know. Not right now. I’m following a new lead on the Jane Doe case. I’ll call you when I’m done.”

Petrie exploded with his objection. “You shouldn’t do that without me.”

It wasn’t proper protocol to interview a potential witness alone, but Sophia wasn’t exactly a witness. Truthfully, Nick had been bypassing protocol a lot lately. Should that make him feel guilty? Probably. Did it? Not really. “It’s not a big deal, Petrie. The woman I’m going to interview isn’t dangerous.”

Petrie snorted. “Really, Moreau? All women are dangerous. Especially if they are murder suspects.”

“Are you speaking from personal experience?”

Petrie grumbled under his breath before barking his question. “So what do you want me to do with this stuff?”

“Dump it in a file box. I’ll look at it when I get back.” He signaled a turn onto St. Charles.

“So where is Wakefield now?”

Nick had followed Wakefield while Petrie had sorted through the trash. He’d asked another officer to pick up his surveillance while he went to talk to Sophia Cannon. “Sullivan took over from me. Last time he checked in, he’d followed Wakefield back to the Sherwood. Unless the guy took the stairs and left through the service entrance, he’s still in the hotel.”

Nick wouldn’t be surprised if Wakefield left through a back door unnoticed. Sullivan was only one man and he could only cover the front entrance and lobby.

“So what do I do now?” Petrie sounded petulant. Not a pretty attitude.

He shouldn’t have to lead Petrie around by the hand, but to be fair Nick hadn’t given him much to work with, keeping much of the details of the Wakefield investigation to himself for what he believed where legitimate reasons.

The realization that he couldn’t handle it all alone hit him hard. He had to let Petrie in on the multitude of cases he was investigating, cases that more and more seemed to be connected. Petrie was already asking the right questions.

So Nick asked Petrie to do something he had planned to do himself. “Call Audrey St. Clair’s mother. If she’ll meet with you, take a picture of Jane Doe and ask her if she’s ever seen the woman before.”

“Jane Doe? You think the cases are related?”

“Call it a hunch.”

No, it wasn’t a hunch. Elsa Madsen had started a chain reaction of speculation, but Nick thought he ought to keep that to himself. He didn’t want to involve Elsa if he didn’t have to. Bringing her into the case might expose the strange paranormal elements.

He winced. He should have already brought some of this to his Uncle Ed. If it all blew up in Nick’s face and some of the fallout landed on his uncle again… Ed might not be so forgiving the second time.

Once again, he had tuned Petrie out to dwell on his own thoughts. “What did you say?”