Black Silk

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“We both know the news will go down better without me there,” Cole told him. And it was true. He and his father were civil to one another, but just barely. Besides, they had nearly come to blows last night when he had ripped into J.P. for encouraging Francesca’s actions against Holly.

“You’re probably right,” Aaron replied and stood. “I’m just not sure how he’s going to take this. You know how he is when he thinks he’s in love with a woman.”

He did know, Cole admitted silently as he stood. He’d seen

J.P. fall into lust more times than he could count when he’d been growing up. And each time, J.P.’s new fling had taken precedence over everything in his life—including each of his wives and his children. “I don’t think you have to worry about J.P. He’ll bounce back fast enough,” Cole said. “You’re probably right about that, too.” I am right, Cole thought. His own mother’s grave wasn’t cold before J.P. had married Aaron’s mother. He walked his brother to the door and placed a hand on his back for a moment. “Don’t worry about telling Holly. I’ll let her know what’s happened. Are you going to tell the twins or do you want me to do it?” he asked, referring to his two youngest half siblings.

“Christ! I forgot all about them. They’re probably getting ready for the wedding right now,” Aaron said. “You’d better tell them. I don’t know how long I’ll be at the old man’s place and I don’t want them to hear about it on the news.”

“I’ll tell them,” Cole promised. He walked his brother out into the hall, down to the elevator bank, and pushed the button. After the elevator arrived, he rode with Aaron to the parking level.

When they exited the elevator into the garage, Aaron said, “Boy, talk about a mess. The press is going to have a field day with this and the timing couldn’t be worse. We’re waiting for approval on J.P.’s application for a new gaming license.”

“I’d be more concerned with finding Francesca’s killer than with any bad publicity her murder might generate for J.P.,” Cole told him, irritated that his brother’s thoughts were on business and not the tragedy of a young woman’s death.

Aaron’s eyes darkened and he shot him a look of annoyance. “You don’t have the market on empathy, Cole. I’m just as concerned as you are. I even liked Francesca. But someone has to look out for the business.”

And because Cole had walked away from his father and the career path that had been planned for him, that duty had fallen to Aaron. Unfortunately, since Aaron had earned his law degree, J.P. had taken full advantage of his son’s legal skills. As a result, Aaron had never pursued the brilliant career or personal life he could have had outside of J.P.’s shadow. “I hope J.P. realizes how lucky he is to have you,” Cole told him honestly.

“He’s my father,” Aaron said as though it was the only explanation needed for giving up his own career to work as his father’s attorney and right-hand man. “He’s your father, too. It wouldn’t hurt for you to remember that.”

“Trust me. It’s something I never forget.” And Cole had certainly tried. In fact, he’d spent most of his life trying to distance himself from the man. Being J.P. Stratton’s son was something about which he had never taken pride. As far as he was concerned, the only good thing that J. P. Stratton had ever given him was his half siblings. It was because of them, and only them, that he maintained any relationship with the man at all. His brothers and sister were also the reason he had not destroyed J.P. as he had vowed to do following his mother’s death.

The zap-zap of Aaron activating the door locks of his car with the remote broke into his thoughts. When they reached the vehicle, Aaron turned to him. “We’re going to need all the help we can get with damage control. It would help if you’d make a call to that friend of yours at the TV station to counteract any bad press.”

“J.P.’s no stranger to publicity. I’m sure he can handle it.”

“It’s not him I’m worried about. It’s Holly. What do you think they’re going to do when the story gets out about her crashing the rehearsal dinner last night and throwing wine in Francesca’s face?”

Cole had heard all the ugly details from his sister last night. It had been a stupid and immature thing for Holly to do. Of course, she’d regretted her actions later. But by then the damage had been done.

“How do you think Holly’s going to handle having the press in her face?”

Aaron was right. Holly was as beautiful as a hothouse flower and just as fragile. And ever since that mess J.P. put her through eight years ago, she had never been the same. Having the press all over her would only unnerve her. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Charlie stood, waiting impatiently for the M.E. to complete her preliminary examination of the body. As she did, she kept seeing that silk stocking lying next to the victim. But instead of seeing Francesca Hill’s face, she saw Emily’s. The memories came tumbling back like slides from a home-movie reel…back six years ago…back to another dreary and cold afternoon….

Charlie adjusted the rearview mirror of her car in an attempt to diffuse the blinding headlights from the car that was practically on her bumper. When the other driver pulled out into the oncoming lane to pass her, horns blasted as the car nearly collided with the SUV coming from the other direction. Gasping at the near miss, Charlie hit the brakes of her car when the driver pulled back into the lane in front of her.

“Idiot,” she muttered when her heart began to beat almost normally again. The jerk could have gotten himself killed, not to mention the people in the SUV and her. Of course, she wouldn’t even be on this road if it weren’t for Emily.

Emily. Just thinking of her younger sister annoyed her.

This was payback. She knew it was. Her sister was punishing her by not answering her apartment phone or cell phone because Charlie had refused to drop everything and race over when she’d called yesterday. Emily’s claim that it was urgent usually meant one thing—guy trouble. Younger than her by four years, she and Emily couldn’t have been more different in appearance or personality. Emily was petite, feminine and blessed with the sexy curves that teenage boys dream about. Whereas she was tall, on the skinny side and more comfortable in jeans and T-shirts than a dress. Guys had been tripping over their tongues to go out with her younger sister from the time she’d gotten her first bra at the tender age of twelve. When it came to Charlie, the boys were more apt to ask her to play a game of catch than to go to the movies.

She didn’t mind that Emily was always considered the pretty, ladylike one while she…she was the smart, athletic one. She never had minded. She was even glad to see that their baby sister, Anne, was turning out to be a good mixture of the two of them—pretty and feminine, athletic and smart. She loved both of her sisters, would do anything for them. But she resented the heck out of Emily screwing up her plans by playing stupid games.

Because that’s just what she was doing by not answering her phone, Charlie reasoned. Emily knew that their mother would worry and insist that Charlie drive right over and check on her younger sister. And, of course, she would never refuse her parents—especially when her mother offered to make the drive from New Orleans to Baton Rouge if Charlie couldn’t.

As a result, here she was driving clear across town and dodging idiotic drivers just to make sure that Emily was okay, when what she should be doing was studying for her criminal-law class. And she really, really needed the extra study time if she wanted to finish at the top of her class. You’d think by now their folks would be used to the fact that Emily was a drama queen, she reasoned, growing more resentful with each mile she drove. She didn’t know why her sister had bothered to take premed courses when she clearly belonged on the stage. Everything in Emily’s world was of major importance. Even a blemish popping up on her face the day before the senior prom in high school had been a life-or-death matter to her younger sister.

Charlie smacked the steering wheel, irritated all over again that she had to put her own life on hold to come check on her sister. Finally she turned off onto the street where Emily lived. She pulled her car to a stop in front of the small cottage that their parents had leased for Emily at the start of the new semester. When she spied Emily’s Honda in the driveway and lights on inside the house, she fumed. She turned off the engine, slamming the car door as she exited, and marched up to the porch.

She jabbed the doorbell with her thumb and held it there for an extra moment or two. Five seconds, ten seconds ticked by and she hit the doorbell again. When her sister still failed to answer, Charlie pounded on the door with her fist. “Come on, Emily. I know you’re in there. Open the door!”

After several moments passed and her sister failed to answer, Charlie tried to peer through the frosted glass set in the wood panel of the door, but all she could see was the glow of lights. Since the drapes were drawn, she didn’t bother trying to look in the windows. Instead, she banged on the door again.

When she still got no response, Charlie began to worry. Tilting the potted fern beside the door, she retrieved the spare key that her sister kept there. Quickly, Charlie inserted the key in the lock and opened the door. “Emily,” she called out as she stepped inside and pushed the door closed behind her. She could hear music coming from somewhere in the house, a mushy love song from that CD her sister had purchased a month ago and had played incessantly when she’d been home for the weekend.

“Emily,” she called out again. Still no answer. A shiver of unease skipped down Charlie’s spine as she checked out the combination living room/dining room, but the room was empty. Charlie hit the off button on the CD player and suddenly there was silence. Too silent, she thought.

Moving down the hall, Charlie glanced in the kitchen. The light was on, the room neat. Two empty wineglasses sat on the counter, washed but not put away. A dish towel had been folded in half and draped across the sink. But there was no sign of Emily.

Charlie continued through the house to the next room, the spare bedroom. She flipped on the light, found it empty as well. Then she came to Emily’s bedroom. The door was closed, but she could see a faint light shining from beneath the bottom of the door. She tapped on it. “Emily?”

Nothing. No response. No sound at all.

With her heart pounding, Charlie opened the door.

The heavy scent of honeysuckle hit her. Charlie noted the gutted candles, recognized the silky-sweet scent that Emily loved and that had driven her crazy when they had both still lived at home. But beneath the overpowering sweetness, she detected another scent. An unfamiliar scent. An unpleasant scent.

Adjusting her eyes to the dimmer light, she saw her sister lying atop the bed, her body and face turned slightly away. At first glance, Charlie thought she was sleeping. She looked small in the four-poster bed, surrounded by the lacy yellow pillows and with the floral duvet draped over her lower body. She was wearing one of those silky, frilly nightgowns that she’d always favored over nightshirts and pajamas. A pair of matching black satin mules was askew on the floor. Although Emily’s face was turned away, her long blond hair cascaded across the pillow. One arm was lifted so that her hand rested on the pillow. Within reach of her fingertips lay a black silk stocking.

For a moment, Charlie simply stared at her sister. Then she was struck by her stillness. Emily wasn’t moving, Charlie realized. Not even a slight rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. Nervous, Charlie’s heart began to pound like ajackhammer. A knot formed in her stomach as she moved toward the bed. “Emily,” she said her name again, this time unable to keep the fear out of her voice. Reaching out, she touched her sister’s shoulder and Emily’s body shifted. Suddenly Emily’s arm fell limply over the side of the bed; her head tilted toward Charlie like a broken doll. As she stared at Emily’s lifeless brown eyes, Charlie began to scream.

Charlie yanked herself back to the present. Shaking off the memory, she tuned into what the M.E. was saying to her and Vince and hoped that neither of them had noticed her lapse in attention.

“What about a time of death, Doc?” Vince asked.

“You know I can’t tell you that until I get the body back to the lab and examine it more closely,” Dr. Penelope Williamson said as she stripped off her gloves.

“Come on, Doc. Just a ballpark idea,” Vince responded.

“Well, based on lividity, I’d say she died sometime between midnight and four this morning. I should be able to narrow it down once I complete the exam.”

“What about the cause of death?” Charlie asked her, even though she was sure strangulation would be ruled the cause—just as it had been for her sister.

“My initial assessment is death due to strangulation. But like I said, I’ll know more once I get back to the lab and do a full exam.” She motioned for her team and they moved in and began to bag the victim for transport back to the coroner’s office. “I heard this one was a robbery turned homicide. Judging by some of the artwork left behind, your perp isn’t very bright. There’s a small fortune just on the living-room walls.”

“He may have settled for the cash and jewelry because it was easier to get it out of here without attracting attention,” Vince offered.

Or maybe the robbery had nothing to do with the murder, Charlie thought, because it simply didn’t feel like a robbery to her. “You’ll let us know if anything interesting shows up—like someone else’s DNA,” Charlie stated, knowing without asking that she could count on the other woman. Not only was Penelope Williamson a good doctor, she was thorough in her exams. Nothing got rubber-stamped on her watch.

“I’ll let you know, Detective,” Dr. Williamson assured her in that cool, calm voice that reminded her of her high-school English teacher, her words perfectly enunciated and no hint of the South in her tone. “And I’ll also let you know if anything shows up in the toxicology report. From the looks of things, your victim liked to party.”

If the champagne bottles and caviar in the other room were an indication, Francesca Hill liked to party in style, Charlie thought.

“Sean, just one minute,” Dr. Williamson called out to one of the men with the body bag. Frowning, she said, “Excuse me, Detectives.”

She and Vince watched as the other woman went over to her crew and had them wait while she tucked the victim’s hair inside the bag and away from the zipper. She stood there a moment longer, giving them instructions.

Charlie had come to admire Penelope Williamson immensely in the year since she’d joined the New Orleans Coroner’s Office. To her surprise, the doctor had a sense of humor—something that helped make an often gruesome job more tolerable. Charlie had seen Dr. Williamson approach the most grisly of crime scenes without hesitation. And she’d seen her handle broken and bloody corpses with the same tenderness and care she would administer to a child. Penelope Williamson cared about the dead victims. It was something the two of them had in common, Charlie thought. She also felt in her bones that if anyone would be able to provide her with the information she needed to identity Francesca Hill’s killer, it would be Dr. Penelope Williamson. And her every instinct told her that when she found Francesca Hill’s killer, she would find Emily’s killer, too.

“I know what you’re thinking, Le Blanc. And you shouldn’t start jumping to conclusions,” Vince warned.

But before she could respond, Dr. Williamson returned. “Sorry about that.”

“No problem,” Vince said.

“How quick can you get us the autopsy results?” Charlie asked.

Vince placed a hand on her arm and gave her a look. “Doc, what my partner’s trying to say is that we need the results on this one yesterday. So we really would appreciate it if you could process this one right away.”

“Kossak, you and Le Blanc always need your cases processed right away. But you’re going to have to wait like everyone else. The weekend’s not over yet and I’ve already got five bodies lined up in the crypt waiting for me,” she told him, referring to the two homicides and three accident victims from the previous night.

“But this one can’t wait,” Charlie began, only to grimace when Vince stepped on her foot.

“The word from the top is that this case is a priority,” Vince explained. “We’ve been ordered to solve it quickly and quietly or heads are gonna roll.”

“I don’t like politics, Kossak. They have no place in police business,” Dr. Williamson informed him.

“I agree with you,” Vince returned. “But the victim’s fiancé has friends in high places and those friends are putting pressure on the captain.”

The comment irritated Charlie—especially because she knew that despite the mayor’s efforts to rid the city of corruption, there were still a great many who held on to the good-old-boy system of doing business. “It doesn’t matter who her fiancé was or who the man is friends with,” Charlie said as she watched the body bag being carried out. “What matters is that a woman is dead and we need to catch the animal who killed her.”

“You’re right, of course,” Dr. Williamson told her. “You’ll have the autopsy results as soon as I finish.”

“Thanks. We owe you one, Doc,” Vince told her.

“You owe me several, Detective.” She shifted her gaze to Charlie and back to him again. “Both of you do and one of these days I intend to collect by having you treat me to a lavish dinner at Commander’s Palace.”

“Anytime you say, Doc. Right, Le Blanc?” Vince nudged her with his elbow. “Right?”

“Um, right,” Charlie said, pulling her thoughts back to the present.

“I intend to hold you to that,” Dr. Williamson told them, and after she gathered her bag, she headed for the door.

“Snap out of it, Le Blanc, and start focusing on this case,” Vince said in a low voice near her ear before heading for the tech guys in the next room and barking orders about the surveillance tapes.

Telling herself that Vince was right, that she did need to concentrate on the case at hand, Charlie made another sweep of the crime scene. Pictures had already been taken, evidence bagged and tagged. She walked through the bedroom, attempted to re-create where each piece of clothing, each shoe had been found. She looked at the bed, noted the markings on the mattress, outlining the position of the body when it had been found. She looked over to the spot where the stocking had been draped beside the body. As she did so, she called up the images forever etched in her memory from Emily’s bedroom six years ago. The similarities couldn’t be dismissed.

It’s the same guy.

She was sure of it—could feel it in her bones. He might have gotten away the last time, but not this time, she vowed. This time she wasn’t an unprepared law student who didn’t know enough to preserve the crime scene. This time she was a cop, one who knew what to look for and where to look for it. If he’d made a mistake, no matter how small, she would find it.

And then she would find him.