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“Who?”
“That sweet man up on the levee who pointed you out to us.”
That got Christy’s attention. “What man? What did he look like?”
“Why, I’m not sure.”
“I am,” piped one of her eager companions. “He had a dynamite smile and a butt to die for.”
Dallas McFarland! Jolted by the knowledge that she hadn’t shaken him after all—because she didn’t doubt for the space of a heartbeat that it was him, and never mind how he’d managed to catch up with them—Christy beat her way through the ranks of conventioneers.
There was another blast from the boat whistle. Frantic now, she sprinted up the stairs, arrived breathlessly on the broad top of the levee, but was too late. The paddle wheeler, passengers crowding the decks, was drawing away from the landing. Up near the prow stood a smirking Brenda Bornowski, not yet aware of the tall figure of Dallas McFarland stationed at the rail several safe lengths away from her.
The wicked grin that her infuriating rival directed at Christy down on the levee, informed her that not only had she screwed up what should have been an easy surveillance, but that he had somehow managed to snatch another potential client from under her nose. And just to be certain there was no question of that, McFarland stabbed a finger in the direction of a small figure who had arrived at Christy’s side. She looked down to see a boy in a Saints T-shirt extending toward her a rectangle of cream-colored pasteboard.
“Guy on the boat said to give you this.”
He delivered the offering and melted away. And while the Dixieland band went on playing under the April sunshine, Christy looked at what he had placed in her hand. It was one of her own business cards printed with Hawke Detective Agency against a logo of a golden hawk. A bold, insolent black X had been struck across the face of the card from corner to corner.
Chapter One
It fronted on Royal Street, and it had just about everything an old building in the historic district is supposed to have—lacy wrought iron balconies, shutters at the long windows, gas lanterns. A dream of a place, Christy would think whenever she returned to it. Ordinarily, that is.
The carriageway that tunneled through the building framed a view of the courtyard. Whenever Christy emerged from the dim passage, she would find herself delighted all over again by the fountain and vines and tubs of flowers. Ordinarily, that is.
The old converted slave quarters were at the rear of the courtyard. Christy occupied the small structure, her agency on the ground floor and her apartment tucked above it on the second level. It was a cramped arrangement, but, hey, this was the French Quarter and rents were high. So she would count herself lucky that the regular tenant, in a hurry to take a job overseas, had subleased the place to her at an affordable rent. Ordinarily, that is.
But not this afternoon. This afternoon Christy was oblivious to all this quaint charm—which she was in danger of losing anyway, reasonable rent or not—because the only thing she had time for as she stormed across the courtyard and through the door marked Hawke Detective Agency, was the image inside her head of Dallas McFarland sinking slowly in a bottomless pool of quicksand.
The office was silent. But since her assistant, Denise, was bouncing and swaying happily at her desk, Christy assumed that the jazz music she relished was pouring through the radio plug stuck in her ear. Fond though Christy was of the woman, she didn’t consider her much of an assistant. However, as Denise was a retired bus driver with an adequate pension, she was willing to work cheap. This was because she had a regrettable longing for P.I. excitement, the kind of action that was in short supply lately at the agency, a situation Denise frequently grumbled about.
The radio plug came out of her ear with a jerk as Christy slammed over to her own desk and slumped in her chair.
“Uh-oh. Looks like the Prince of Darkness beat us out of the running again.”
“I don’t want to talk about it!” Christy snapped. And then, surging to her feet, she proceeded to do exactly that as she prowled from one end of the small office to the other with Denise’s gaze solemnly following her. “I didn’t like the idea anyway! A controlling father wanting to spy on his daughter just because he thinks her boyfriend is no good and up to mischief! All right, so he’s a rich father, and we needed the money!”
“Uh-huh.”
“But a contest like that? Come on, it’s dumb! I shouldn’t have agreed to it!”
“Uh-uh.”
“I mean, why didn’t he just pick one of us, instead of pitting us against each other?”
“Maybe he gets his jollies that way.”
“And McFarland—McFarland just loved it!”
“Sure, he’s bad.”
“Got that right! Arrogant, unprofessional, no principles!”
“And one sexy dude.”
Christy rounded on her traitorous assistant. “What is it with you and the women in this town and that man? That—that bottom-feeder!”
“Guess by that you don’t want to hear what happened here while I was out to lunch. Guess you’re in no mood for it, huh?”
“What?”
“That the answering machine got itself full up with messages, the fax machine is spitting faxes all over the place, the computer is loaded with e-mail and they’re all from your mama in Chicago lookin’ to hear from you.”
“I see. And all this happened while I was gone. Could it be possible, Denise, that you had a longer lunch hour than you planned?”
Denise thought about it. “Could be. Us full-figured gals need to keep up our energy.”
“I don’t suppose there’s anything else on one of those machines. Like maybe someone needing to hire a P.I. with money no object?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“In that case…” Christy returned to her desk and reached reluctantly for the phone. She hated having to call her mother, knowing exactly what she was going to hear before she heard it. No way around it.
She dialed home, or what used to be home for her, which was the main office of the Hawke Detective Agency founded by her mother and father back in Chicago.
“Hawke Agency.” The familiar voice was cheerful, efficient. It belonged to her mother, Moura Hawke, the energetic doyenne of both the family and its agency, which had branches throughout the country operated by Christy and her four siblings.
“It’s me, Ma. What’s up?” As if she couldn’t guess.
“A celebration, my darling. I hope. Did you win the Bornowski case?”
“Afraid not, Ma.” Oh, how humiliating it was for Christy to admit her defeat. She was twenty-six years old and still regarded as the baby who had to be protected from the big bad world, still fighting to be recognized by her family as a P.I. in her own right.
“Oh.” The eagerness faded from Moura’s voice. “I suppose it went to McFarland?”
“Looks like it.”
“I’m sorry.” There was a pause, and then Moura’s tone became very gentle. Christy realized what was coming. “The thing is, I’ve been doing all the accounts for the first quarter, and…well, basically, sweetheart, you don’t have a quarter.”
“I know, Ma. Things have been a little slow.”
Slow? They had ground to a halt, and both of them knew it. The other phone in the office rang and Denise answered it. Christy paid no attention. She was too busy being heart-broken. She had done everything but promise her firstborn to convince her parents she was competent enough to open her own branch of the agency, and now she was on the sharp edge of losing it.
Moura had a suggestion. “Eden has a break between cases. What if she came over from Charleston and just sort of helped you to—”
“No!” Christy loved her family, Eden included, but she was damned if she was going to let her sister rush to New Orleans to try to save her agency for her. If she had to go down, she would sink on her own, thank you very much.
“Then what about Devlin?” Moura said, offering Christy’s eldest brother.
It was Denise, bless her, who rescued Christy. She had lowered her own phone and, with a lot of head-bobbing and eye-rolling, was signaling Christy to take the call.
“Absolutely not. Look, Ma, I have to go. There’s a call for me on the other line. I think it may be a new client. Love to Pop.”
“But I haven’t told you yet what your father—”
“Later, Ma.” She hung up and eagerly whispered to Denise, “Is it a potential client? Do I get a miracle?”
“Now how’d I know if he is or isn’t? But you’d better pick up. He sounds serious. Real serious.”
Christy snatched up her phone, stabbed in the other line, greeted the caller with a brisk, “Christy Hawke speaking,” and felt her heart lurch in her breast as the mellow male voice, from a past she thought she had buried, spoke to her earnestly.
“It’s me, Christy. Glenn.”
“How are you, Glenn?” Now how did she manage to sound so cool when her heart was still misbehaving?
“Not so good, actually.” He seemed surprised that she could ask such a thing. “I need to see you, Christy.”
“Personal or professional?”
“Professional,” he said.
Should she resent him for contacting her like this? No, she decided, she had made peace with that particular episode in her past, forgiven him long ago. “Are you in trouble, Glenn?”
He paused. “Maybe.”
“Like to tell me about it?”
“I think we need to get together as soon as possible.”
Christy could appreciate his wish for a meeting. Clients rarely wanted to discuss their problems over the phone. “I’m free right now.” Oh, boy, was she free. “Do you know where my office is?”
“Uh, yes, but my lawyer doesn’t want anyone knowing I’m worried enough to consult a private investigator, and if I’m seen going into your office…”
A lawyer? Just what kind of trouble were they talking about here?
“Look,” he went on, “I’m already downtown. It was…well, necessary for me to be here.” Was there an implication in that she was supposed to understand? “So if we could meet somewhere….”
“Name it.”
“The Café Du Monde?”
“Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll be there.”
“See you then. And, Christy?”
“Yes?”
“The circumstances being what they are, I appreciate your willingness to offer your services.”
Was that something else she was supposed to understand, she wondered as she put down the phone. She didn’t, of course, but in fifteen minutes she hoped to. Denise was ready to pounce as Christy got to her feet.
“We got us a client?”
“I think so.”
Denise grunted her satisfaction. “Maybe finally get some action around here. Where you goin’?”
“Upstairs. I need to change before I meet him.”
“Must be some real important dude. Must be somebody you got to impress.”
“Never mind.”
Drat the woman and those shrewd jet eyes of hers, Christy thought as she tripped up the narrow stairway to her tiny apartment overhead. It was just like Denise to practically accuse her of wanting to look as attractive as possible when Glenn saw her again after all these years. All right, that’s just what she wanted to do and she was a pathetic fool for caring. So what?
So what if Glenn Hollister had a wife now and was a father, as well, though she’d heard his marriage was foundering? And so what if he’d dumped Christy for the elegant Laura Claiborne, an episode which had left Christy’s heart grievously scarred? Yeah, so what?
She didn’t have an answer for that reckless so what until, about to burrow into the battered old armoire for an outfit guaranteed to please, she caught her image in the long mirror on the door. There was Christy Hawke in long shorts and running shoes, her honey-colored hair crammed under a Cubs baseball cap. Okay, so that much of Chicago was still a part of her. But, hey, it wasn’t her fault. If New Orleans ever got itself a team, she was willing to switch her loyalty.
The brim of the cap shaded a piquant face and a pair of aquamarine eyes that defiantly said, “Here I am. This is what you get.” So why was she getting ready to turn herself into some kind of baby doll? Forget it. Whatever dumb torch she might once have carried for Glenn Hollister, he would have to take her as she was.
And so much for all those so what’s, she concluded as she firmly closed the door of the armoire, grabbed her bag and headed for the stairs.
THE CAFE DU MONDE was located on the river in the old French Market, which had once supplied the city with fresh fruits and vegetables. These days, the long colonnaded structure contained shops, most of them serving the tourist trade. The place was close enough to Christy’s office to permit her to reach it on foot, but just far enough away to put her curiosity about Glenn Hollister into overdrive as she walked there.
That curiosity was at maximum speed by the time she arrived and stood searching the outdoor tables. They were crowded with the usual tourists hunched over beignets and café au lait. Christy was still looking for Glenn when he appeared suddenly at her side.
“I don’t deserve this,” he said out of nowhere in that kind voice that had always been a pleasure to hear. “Not after the way I let you go.”
She turned to face him and realized immediately that she had probably made a big mistake. He was slender, fair-haired and had a face that could still soften her heart. Oh, yeah, not just probably but definitely a mistake for her to be here. On the other hand, with the wolf at her door….
The moment deserved something brilliant, witty, but all she had to offer was an inane, “Helping people is what I do, Glenn. Uh, where can we—”
“I have a table over here.”
He conducted her to a shady corner and tried to seat her so that she faced the view. But since that view was of the nearby Jax Brewery, the scene of her recent defeat, Christy preferred to take a chair looking inward.
When Glenn had settled across from her, and they had ordered coffee neither of them wanted, Christy treated herself to a second examination of the man who had once meant—well, if not everything to her, pretty close to it. And she decided all over again that, yeah, he still looked good. He also looked like hell, which was something she’d missed the first time around. There was a grimness in the little smile he directed at her, a haunted expression in his eyes.
“The circumstances being what they are,” she said, leaning toward him. “That was what you said on the phone. Does that have an explanation, Glenn?”
His gentle gray eyes widened in disbelief. “You don’t know? How is that possible when it must be all over the news?”
She’d been so busy fighting Dallas McFarland for possession of Brenda Bornowski that she hadn’t watched a newscast or read a newspaper since early yesterday. And, of course, Denise couldn’t have told her anything. All Denise ever listened to was her beloved jazz. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I’ve been out of touch. Just how bad is it, Glenn?”
“Laura,” he said, referring to his wife. “She’s dead, Christy. And I’m about to be charged with her murder. That’s how bad it is.”
Beneath her shock, Christy felt a rush of affectionate sympathy for him. But it was one of those “What can I say? What do I say?” moments. The waiter helped her. He arrived to serve their coffee, giving her a few seconds to marshal her thoughts.
