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Mary stared after the disappearing Buick. “They’re photographs, not pictures, and no, I didn’t. God, I hope I don’t end up like them one day.” Turning her head, she ran her gaze up and down her sister’s body. “Or you, either, for that matter.”
Eden made a quick check of her face and hair in the waiting room mirror. “What’s wrong with how I look?” Other than maybe a little washed out under the bright lights.
Mary shrugged. “Nothing. You’re gorgeous. Every man I date says so. But…” Her expression grew mysterious, and Eden sighed. She recognized the sign.
“‘For deeds long past, chère child will reap, my vengeance curse, of death—or worse.’”
Eden, who’d taken a moment to release her dark hair from its ponytail, gave her head a shake and her shoulders a roll. “Why do you love that old rhyme so much? You don’t believe in family curses any more than I do.”
“I know. But then it doesn’t apply to me, does it? I’m the youngest in our patchwork family.” Mary’s leather pants and jacket creaked as she headed for the door. “Let’s blow this spooky tooth palace. Something’s happened, and you’re the only one who can make it right.”
“I have to clean…” Eden started for the examination room, but Mary grabbed her arm. “I’m not being dramatic, Eden. This is big, or at least it could be, and it doesn’t involve you lending me money. It’s about Lisa.”
Something tightened in Eden’s stomach. Mary wouldn’t hesitate to plead her own cause, but she seldom championed anyone else’s. And she never looked rattled.
“What about Lisa?” she asked. “Is she sick? Hurt? In trouble?”
“The last thing.” Loosening her grip, Mary made a disgruntled sound.
“Okay, look, our middle sister, who pored over the records of every adoption agency in the city, found you, found me and brought us all together ten years ago, was questioned by two cops. They came to the house tonight. They were asking her questions about a man named Maxwell Burgoyne.”
“Someone she’s dating?” No, that couldn’t be right, Eden realized. Lisa didn’t date. She waved the question aside before Mary could respond. “Never mind. Just tell me who he is.”
“You want it straight?”
“Please.”
“Maxwell Burgoyne is our biological father—as in the unknown X chromosome that forms half the link between us.”
Stunned, Eden stared at her. “Lisa found our natural father? I thought he was dead.”
Mary’s red lips curved into a sardonic smile. “He is dead, Eden, deader than Dickens’s ghostly doornail. The thing is, he only got that way two nights ago. Maxwell Burgoyne was murdered in a plantation cemetery seventeen miles outside of New Orleans. And according to the city’s finest, Lisa was quite likely the last person to see him alive.”
THEY WENT TO EDEN’S French Quarter walk-up. It was ten minutes from her office on foot, less than three in Mary’s zippy black sports car.
Lisa had given her the car as a gift two years ago—or so Mary claimed. Eden had a feeling this gift, like so many others, had been bestowed out of guilt rather than generosity.
Not that Lisa wasn’t generous. She loved to give. She donated to several charities that Eden knew of and spent hours every week trying to entice Eden to move in with her and Mary. She would buy them a three-story house in the Garden District, large enough that they could all have private suites.
“I can afford it,” she’d told Eden only last month. “You know I hit the adoption jackpot, and now that my mother and father are both gone, their money’s just sitting there, waiting to be spent.”
“But not on us,” Eden had countered. “Take a Mediterranean cruise, Lisa. Meet men. Flirt, dance, do something that doesn’t involve soil, fertilizer and root rot.”
“I love my garden, and I don’t know how to flirt.” She’d started to take Eden’s hand, but stopped herself as she invariably did. “I inherited a lot of money, Eden, more than Mary knows about or could ever finagle out of me.”
“Invest it then—and I don’t mean in a bigger house.”
“You don’t want to move, do you?”
“Not really. I like my place.”
“It’s very nice, but it’s so small. You can’t spread out or grow bushes or even many herbs. I know you’re used to tiny spaces because of where you lived in San Francisco…”
Which had nothing to do with anything as far as Eden was concerned. Amused, she’d replied, “I grew up in suburbia, Lisa, not the backwoods. My parents left their hippie groove before I finished grade school. My mother actually went back to college and got her degree in philosophy.”
“And now she’s a professor at LSU,” Lisa supplied.
“Was.” Eden had propped her chin in her hands and tried to figure out how many different kinds of flowers were in the vase on Lisa’s kitchen table. “She accepted a position at Florida State last fall, remember?”
“She moved away?”
For a moment, Lisa had appeared confused. That quality of losing her bearings had puzzled Eden ever since they’d met ten years ago. Mary called them day trips. Eden wondered if there might not be more to it than that.
She was thinking about Lisa as she unlocked the wrought-iron gate at street level and climbed the outer stairs to her apartment. Her sister had actually located their biological father. The why of it aside, Eden gave her credit for persistence. By all accounts, including that of their natural mother, the man had died years ago.
“It feels like a thousand degrees,” Mary complained. She’d removed her jacket and now wore only a faux-leather halter top with her tight pants and spiky heels. “Lisa could be in trouble up to her big green eyeballs, and—” Her own eyes widened. “Why on earth are your windows closed?”
“Because Amorin would jump out onto the porch. Then she’d dig up the courtyard garden or get hit by a car, and I don’t want either of those things happening to my cat, that’s why my windows are closed. The ceiling fans are on. But talk to me about Lisa, Mary. What did the police want from her?”
The question had a surly edge, Eden realized. Her experience with the New Orleans force as a whole hadn’t been good. With one member in particular, it had proved disastrous.
But that was a memory for another time—maybe twenty years from now.
It took three shoves, a kick and two thumps with her fist to open her apartment door. Thunder rumbled on the river, and for a moment after she touched the light switch, Eden thought the power was going to fail.
“Just what we need in Hemingway Central,” Mary muttered at her elbow. “A candlelight vigil.” At a look from Eden, she kicked off her shoes. “Yeah, I know, cut the chit-chat. What can I say? There’s background stuff, I suppose, but we both know whatever went down in that plantation graveyard, Lisa didn’t hit Burgoyne on the head and take off.”
Eden tried a second light. It flickered but stayed on. “Is she a suspect?”
Mary fussed with her hair. “She’s a person of interest at this point because, like I said, she’s the last person the cops know of who saw the guy alive. But that’s today, Eden. What happens if they can’t find anyone to pin his death on? It’ll come back to Lisa—or it could. Okay, we’d be talking circumstantial evidence, but Lisa says she didn’t think much of the guy the first time she met him, and I don’t get the impression she was any more enamored after the second meeting. She doesn’t have an alibi for the time of the murder, either, and I can’t give her one because I was out with friends.”
Eden struggled to digest everything as she turned on her temperamental air conditioner. “She met this man twice?”
“That’s what she says. I didn’t hear about either meeting until the cops showed up tonight. Anyway, my point is this. You know a few cops, right?”
“Don’t start,” Eden warned.
Mary tapped impatient fingernails on the tabletop. “Forget the past, will you? You do know some cops. You could get information.”
Eden could be stubborn, too. “Mary, the only cops I knew have either quit or been reassigned.”
“What about that prosecution lawyer you dated last year?”
“You want me to ask him to spy for us?”
“If necessary, yes. Look, I don’t think you’re clueing in here. This little scenario has the potential to go very bad, very fast.”
Circumstantial evidence…
Eden rubbed her temples. It was still hot in here. She really needed a new air conditioner. “Back up a little,” she suggested. “Did Lisa go to this plantation with—what was his name?”
“Burgoyne, Maxwell. She says no. They had dinner near Chalmette, or started to. He said something that ticked her off—which couldn’t have been easy since she’s virtually untickable—and she left. He followed her out. They got into their respective cars and drove away. Lisa went home. Maxwell went to the auction preview. Less than an hour later, someone slammed him on the head, and it was lights out for Mr. B.”
Unimpressed, Eden kicked her sister’s feet off the chair where she’d propped them. “Maxwell Burgoyne was a person, Mary, and he was murdered. You could try for a little compassion.”
“Why? Because he was our father?”
“Oh, no.” Eden swung around to face her. “No way was some stranger my father. You want to talk science and procreation, fine, but my dad, my real dad, had a ponytail until I was thirteen, which he cut off so I wouldn’t get bugged because he and my mother were going to chaperon my first spring dance.”
Because that same real dad had also died of cancer five years ago and Eden still cried when she thought about him, she halted her tirade there and forced her mind back to Lisa.
“Do the police have a murder weapon?” she asked after a pause.
Mary started to put her feet up again, caught Eden’s expression and shrugged. “I get the impression no. I think the sticking point is that several people in the restaurant where they ate heard Maxwell laughing—and not in a nice way, if you know what I mean. That’s why Lisa got upset and took off. You know how lame she is at hiding her feelings.”
“What did Maxwell do, professionally?”
“Businessman, big time.”
Eden leaned on the kitchen counter and stroked her white cat. “Powerful people tend to cultivate enemies,” she mused.
Mary snorted. “What was that you said about compassion? Oh hell, I hear a cell. Is it mine or yours?”
“Must be yours. My ring tone doesn’t sound like bad disco.”
“It’s Beethoven.” Mary dug the phone out of her shoulder bag. “What is it? I’m busy.”
If she hadn’t seen it happen, Eden wouldn’t have believed it was possible. Within five seconds, the blood had drained from Mary’s face, leaving her pasty white and gaping.
She hissed into the phone. “You can’t be serious. When? Are you sure?” She closed her eyes, groaned. “This can’t be happening.” Jamming two fingers into her temple, she breathed hard. “Okay, let me think, let me think.” Her eyes opened, slid to the window, then slowly, very slowly traveled to Eden’s face. “A lineup,” she murmured. The fingers she’d been pushing into her temple pointed at Eden. “Hey—yeah, it could work. It really could… What? Oh sure, I know the precinct. Thanks, Dev. No, just lock up and go home.”
“Who was…?” Eden began, but Mary had already ended the call, grabbed her hand and started dragging her toward the bedroom.
Eden yanked free. “Are you crazy? Who was that?”
“A neighbor. The cops came again. Lisa’s been taken in for further questioning.”
A streak of lightning over the old city caused the power to flutter for several seconds. Eden rubbed her wrist.
“Go on. I know there’s worse to come.”
“They have a witness.”
“Someone saw Lisa murder Maxwell Burgoyne?”
“Apparently.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No, that’s New Orleans.” Thunder shook the foundations of the old building. Mary’s eyes glittered. “You know the justice system, Eden. All it takes is one bad cop. He wants Lisa guilty, bam, she’s guilty.”
“It’s hardly that simple, Mary.” And Eden didn’t want to go there in any case. “What’s your point?”
“Look at you, Eden.” Planting both hands on her shoulders, Mary propelled her to a plantation mirror in the hall. “Look at your face. Look at your hair—dark, thick, long. Green, green eyes. Gorgeous features.”
Eden saw it coming. She might be a step behind, but only a baby step.
“You and Lisa are ringers for each other.” Her sister sounded both triumphant and relieved.
Eden resisted the idea. “Mary, we’re not…”
“To a stranger, you are.” She caught Eden’s glare and shrugged. “Well, okay, you’re close enough, or you will be once I fix your hair and you put on a pair of jeans and a pink T-shirt.” She frowned. “I think that’s what Lisa was wearing today. Pink or peach.”
“I don’t have a pink T-shirt.”
“Close’ll do, Eden.” Exasperated, Mary tugged and twisted until Eden’s hair was wrapped in a messy bun. She found a pencil on the hall table and stuck it though the knot to secure it. Then she stood back. “It’ll work.” She spun Eden around. “You have to do this, okay? Lisa’s our sister, and we both know whoever he or she is, this witness is lying. Lisa doesn’t even swat flies. She wouldn’t hit a man on the head and kill him.”
“Mary…”
“Please, please tell me you don’t have an alibi for Sunday night.”
“I don’t need one.”
“Stop being difficult. What did you do on Sunday?”
For Lisa’s sake, Eden relented. “I had dinner with Dolores at her place.”
Dolores Boyer was their natural grandmother and the only family member Lisa, Mary and Eden all got along with. She made her home north of New Orleans in the bayou and only came to the city when she absolutely had to.
“That’s perfect.” Mary arranged strands of loose hair around her sister’s face. “She’ll go along with you when she realizes what’s at stake.” She stopped styling. “You were alone, right?”
“Yes.” Eden removed the pencil. “Look, Mary…”
“There’s no look. Our neighbor specifically said the word lineup. You have to be in it.”
Eden studied her reflection. Lightning forked through the night sky, threatening the power once again. But even though the lights trembled and faded and the hall was poorly lit, she saw Lisa’s features in her own.
Struck dead in a graveyard, Mary had said. No way had Lisa done that. But there was a witness…
“Must’ve been drunk,” she decided. With a sigh, she took the pencil from her sister, wound her hair back up and headed for the bedroom.
“Where are you going?” Mary demanded.
“I have an old red T-shirt somewhere. I also have to phone Dolores and tell her about Sunday night.” The lights popped off then on. “Look, let’s get this done while I’m still feeling halfway sane.”
For some reason, the words Mary had recited earlier ran through her head.
“‘…For deeds long past, chère child will reap, my vengeance curse, of death—or worse.’”
