Be My Baby (12 page)

He snatched the tie out of her hand. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I suppose.” He jerked the knot back down around the second button.

“Speaking of formal affairs, the pre-opening cocktail party is coming up. Do we need to rent you a tux?”

He bared his teeth at her. What was he, her charity case? “This is N’Awlins, Rosebud—Cotillion Central. Everyone owns a tux. I inherited mine from my daddy.” He grabbed her encroaching hands before they could recommence fiddling with his attire, and moved her back to arm’s length. “What’s got you feelin’ so frisky all of a sudden?”

“You think I look frisky? This isn’t frisky; it simply isn’t flustered, which is how you’re accustomed to seeing me. It must be the lack of a blush—that’s bound to confuse you.”

“Yeah, well, whatever it is, you mess with my tie again, and I’m gonna be forced to get physical—”

There was a sharp crack of sound, and bark exploded on the live oak behind them. Beau swore viciously, every sense snapping to red alert. “Get down!”

Juliet looked at him with blank incomprehension, and he grabbed her and thrust her to the
ground. Throwing himself over her, he heard another shot, and was reaching for the gun at the small of his back before the resulting shower of bark even drifted down on top of them. He raised his head and brought the gun around, trained in the direction from which the weapon had been discharged.

“Somebody
shot
at us?” Juliet demanded in incredulous tones beneath him.

The echoes of several women’s screams died away, but there was a lot of agitated dodging about, which made it impossible to pinpoint the shooter. “Fuck,” he muttered. He pushed himself into a crouch over Juliet’s prone body and, without looking away from the row of sweet olives beyond the boxwood maze, wrapped his free hand around her nape. “I want you to crawl backwards ’til you get to the tree,” he instructed her softly. “Then scoot behind it and stay put.” She didn’t respond immediately, and he demanded, “You hear me?”

“
Beau?
”

Her voice was unsteady and sounded as if she were thinking of arguing, and his fingers on her nape tightened warningly. “You hear me, Juliet Rose?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then, move.”

He felt her body brush his calves as she wriggled backward. Then she was gone. Sparing one quick glance to make sure she’d taken cover, he surged to his feet and ran a zigzag course past the boxwood maze.

The skies opened up just as he reached the sweet
olive trees, and he swore under his breath as he checked all the likely spots where the gunman might have stood. Great. Everyone was running for the parking lot, so not only was the physical evidence going to be severely compromised by the weather, but also half the potential witnesses would have dispersed by the time he could interview them. And leaving Juliet on her own suddenly didn’t seem like such a hot idea. Somebody’d had the
cojones
to take a shot at her with sixty-five people milling about; what was to prevent him from picking her off while Beau was looking for evidence back here? The more he thought of it, the more he figured the shooter had probably melded with the crowd and slipped right past him. Pulling out his cell phone, he punched in the number for Dispatch as he loped back to the live oak tree. He summarized the situation for the dispatcher and requested Forensics and another detective, specifically Luke if he was available. Rattling off his cell phone number, he requested a call-back ASAP from whomever was coming.

Juliet was huddled with her back against the tree, hugging her knees to her chest. She’d managed to keep halfway dry, but her dress was smudged, her hair was mostly down, and there was an angry-looking scrape along her right jawline. She looked up at him with dazed eyes, and Beau squatted down, reaching out to remove a long-toothed comb that dangled from a snarl of hair. “You okay?”

Her expression clearly questioned his intelli
gence, and she hugged her knees tighter. “Somebody
shot
at me!”

“I know they did, dawlin.’”

“Then I guess you also know that, while it would be inappropriate for me to hike up my skirt and bend over, if I were to do so, you’d see a great big bug up my—”

“Gotcha,” he interrupted. “You’re not okay.”

She looked like she could really use a hug, but he’d hung his badge case, badge side out, from his breast pocket, so he was now publically on duty in an official capacity. And besides, he was too pissed off. There was only one thing he did exceptionally well in this life, and that was his job. Now someone was making him look as if he were standing around twiddling his thumbs on this case. “I’m sorry, Juliet.” He grasped her hands and hauled her to her feet, then gently brushed the dirt from her arms. “I know you’re scared and shaken. But right now I have to concentrate on finding out who shot at you.”

“And why! Why would anyone want to shoot me?”

“Right, and why. I want you to stick near me until reinforcements arrive, okay? There’s too many people here, and unfortunately we don’t know who can be trust—”

She dove into his arms.

Well, hell. He simply stood there for a moment, then, cautiously, he folded his arms around her. He rubbed her back. “Now, don’t think I’m makin’ a habit of this, ’cause I’m on the job, here.” Her arms tightened around his neck, and he brought a hand
up to stroke her hair. “I guess being shot at isn’t exactly run-of-the-mill for you, huh?”

A bitter little laugh vibrated against his soaked shirtfront. Beau peeled her away and held her at arm’s length. “I know this is hard for you, but I’ve got to secure as much of the crime scene as is still left to me.” He peered down at her. “I need you to be strong right now. You gonna be strong?”

She took a deep breath and then blew it out, and he watched her gather her composure. That patrician spine of hers pokered right up, just the way he liked to see it. “Yes,” she said.

“Good girl.” Wrapping a hand around her nape, he hauled her forward and planted a kiss on her forehead, then turned her loose. “Let’s go see what we can do about getting a few answers to some of our questions, then.”

B
eau herded people away from the parking lot and into the main salon of the plantation house so swiftly that Juliet practically had to trot to remain close to his side, where he insisted she stay. He was firm as he talked to people and he was polite…except in the few instances where someone attempted to pull social rank. Then his eyes developed a hardness and his voice a certain edge, and he became downright intimidating. In a matter of minutes everyone was gathered exactly where he wanted them.

Commandeering an antique cherrywood secretaire, he looked from it to the windows and peremptorily picked up a fragile chair and plunked it down several feet behind and to the right of the desk. He gently settled Juliet. Then he turned to a husky man. “You,” he said. “Give me a hand moving this.”

The man promptly moved to obey, but an outraged matron protested, “You can’t simply rear
range the furniture in here! These pieces are priceless.”

He and his recruit positioned the secretaire to blockade Juliet, leaving only enough room for Beau to fit in a chair for himself. Then he turned to the crowd.

“This,” he told them, thumping his knuckles on the desktop, “is a very nice desk, which I will return to its proper place when I’m finished here. Essentially, however, it’s an old piece of wood. This”—Juliet blinked as he indicated her—“is a woman who’s just had someone take a shot at her. And I’m not leaving her sitting in line with an unprotected window. Are we all clear on this?”

No one spoke up, and he nodded. “Good. Now, we’ve got a situation here, and it’s unfortunate y’all got caught up in it. I apologize for the inconvenience. But I need to question each of you, and if everyone cooperates things will progress smoothly. I’ll try to be as brief as possible, and I’m expecting backup to arrive soon, at which time matters will proceed even faster.” His cell phone rang and he excused himself.

Though a lot of folks strained with varying degrees of discretion to overhear his side of the conversation, Juliet doubted anyone actually did. His back was to her, and all she could hear was the rumble of his voice. If the unappeased curiosity on others’ faces was anything to go by, no one else was any more successful than she.

Beau disconnected and stuffed the phone back in his pocket. Then he looked at the people milling about. “I’m eventually going to want to talk to
everyone who was here this afternoon,” he informed them. “It will expedite matters if, while you’re waiting your turn, y’all put some thought into who left between the time the shot was fired and when we came in here, because I’ll be asking each of you, and I want names.” He pulled a notebook out of his hip pocket and tossed it on the desk. Taking a seat, he crooked his finger at the person standing nearest. “You, sir; let’s begin with you,” he said and got down to business.

Celeste tapped her toe impatiently as she and Edward awaited their turn to be interviewed. She ignored both the complaints and the excited speculation raging like a brush fire out of control around them.

The idiot thought she’d been aiming at
Juliet
. After she’d taken great pains and risked imminent exposure just waiting for the little chit to get out of the way. As she’d suspected from the beginning, Dupree was a fool. Unfortunately, he was a dangerous fool.

So close—she’d been so close. How was she to know the dratted Colt pulled to the left? Through sheer determination and breeding, she stood quietly at Edward’s side while lava-hot frustration bubbled through her veins. It was more than a body could expect, however, to withhold a sigh of pure aggravation as well.

For she’d tied up the rest of the afternoon and soiled a perfectly good pair of summer gloves for nothing.

Somebody hated her enough to shoot at her
. Juliet sat in her corner watching Beau work, and tried not to think about it. But that was a bit like telling herself not to think about pink elephants—especially with all the avid gazes watching every breath she drew. She’d never been actively
disliked
before, never mind hated, and the knowledge had a nasty tendency to keep cropping up in her mind. So much so, that she lost all track of time while she gnawed on the fact like a puppy with a T-bone.

She was grateful for the distraction when a slight commotion broke out across the room. Looking up, she saw Sergeant Gardner entering the main salon, and the crowd parted like the Red Sea before Moses as he strode toward the desk. When she saw who trailed in his wake, she surged to her feet.

Roxanne saw her at the same time. “Juliet,” she screamed, and rushed across the room, squeezing behind the desk and reaching out to haul Juliet into her arms.

Her embrace was strong and comforting, and that made twice now in less than an hour that Juliet had been hugged. She still couldn’t believe she’d thrown herself into Beau’s arms, but all she’d been able to think about at the time was how safe she’d felt when he’d held her after the car incident on the ferry. And she’d been in desperate need of that sense of security again. It was odd, but for all his sexuality, he had a way of offering comfort that was very…nurturing. She imagined he must be a terrific brother to his three sisters.

Her unprecedented neediness made her uneasy, though. Grandmother had raised her to be self-
sufficient, and God knows Father had hammered the precept into her often enough. She could hear both of them now, telling her an Astor Lowell stands on her own two feet. And she hadn’t. She slowly stiffened in the warm circle of her assistant’s hug.

Roxanne stepped back, holding her at arm’s length to subject her to a thorough inspection. She reached up and gently smoothed Juliet’s hair off her face. “Holy catfish, girl, I about wet my pants when Sergeant Gardner told me what happened. Thank God you’re okay. But look at you! Why didn’t anybody clean you up?”

Beau twisted around to shoot her a glance over his shoulder. “We’ve been a little busy around here, Miz Roxanne,” he growled and immediately turned back to his interview.

“Well, I’m going to clean her up now.”

To Juliet’s surprise, Beau didn’t argue. He selected two men at random and ordered them to accompany the women to the powder room, with directions to wait out in the hall and see that no one else went in while they were inside.

A small sound of dismay escaped Juliet’s lips when she caught sight of herself in the antique mirror in the ladies’ room a few minutes later. Her face was dirty and her hair was an explosion of snarls, tangles, and wild waves sticking out in a dozen different directions. She tilted her jaw to the right to examine the scrape. “I’m a mess.”

“Yes, you are,” Roxanne agreed from the sink. Craning her head around, she glanced at Juliet’s
reflection. “Nothing a little soap and water can’t improve, though.”

Juliet turned from the mirror. “Thank you for coming, Roxanne,” she said with quiet fervency. “It means a lot to me—I feel much less alone with you here. What a sweetheart Sergeant Gardner is to have thought of it.”

“Not Gardner, doll—it was Sergeant Cutie’s idea. He instructed Gardner to pick me up.”

“Beauregard did?” Juliet’s heart performed a little hop.

“Yep.” Roxanne turned from the sink, where she had soaked a small linen hand towel in warm water. “Sit down.”

Juliet sat, but she indicated the exquisite decorative towel in her assistant’s hands uncertainly. “I don’t think anyone is intended to actually use that.”

“Tough tomatoes. That scrape looks raw and I’m not about to use a scratchy ol’ paper towel on it when there’s a perfectly nice soft towel available. Besides, that’s why they invented washing machines.” A corner of her mouth tilted up. “I bet it was some Southern white chick who conceived the idea for the first one, too, right after the slaves were emancipated and she had to start doing her own laundry.”

Juliet blinked. “Oh—you’re bad.”

“Nah, just a strong believer in the Necessity Is the Mother of Invention Theory.” She tipped Juliet’s chin up and began gently swabbing the smudges from her face. When she had cleaned everything except the scrape, she returned to the
sink and thoroughly rinsed the towel. Turning off the tap, she squeezed out the excess water. Then she returned to the upholstered bench where Juliet sat and, tilting her boss’s chin up, carefully dabbed at the abrasion.

Juliet sucked in a breath, and Roxanne grimaced. “I’m sorry, I know it must hurt, but I want to get all the dirt out.” A few seconds later she straightened. “There. It could probably stand a dab of disinfectant, but at least it’s clean.” She handed Juliet the towel. “I’ll let you get your arms. Oh, look at your poor hand! Come over here to the sink.”

Juliet looked down at her right hand. The heel was discolored and her index and forefingers were swollen. It hadn’t hurt before she saw its condition, but now it began to throb. She flexed it experimentally. “Nothing’s broken. I must have jammed my fingers when I hit the ground.”

She washed up at the sink, but when she tried to brush out her hair, she couldn’t maintain a hold on the brush. Tears of frustration rose in her eyes, which only served to make her feel foolish on top of everything else.

“Here, let me do it.” Roxanne took the brush from her hand, removed a few pins that were still caught up in the mass, and gently worked out the snarls. Then she commenced to give it a thorough brushing.

Juliet gloomily watched the volume grow thicker and wilder with each stroke. “I lost my comb and most of the pins. I’ll never get it back in its French roll.”

“I don’t see why on earth you’d want to. How
come you never wear it down, anyway?”

“Because I look like a perfect hoyden with it loose.”

The brush in her hair stilled. “Oh, wait. Let me guess. Grandmother told you that, am I right?”

All the time. Juliet didn’t say so, however. She simply shrugged at Roxanne’s reflection in the mirror.

“Juliet, hasn’t it ever occurred to you that your granny is a tad bit…old-fashioned? Holy catfish, your hair is
gorgeous
—bonafide Pre-Raphaelite.”

“There’s way too much of it.”

“Oh, poor baby.” She hesitated, then said firmly, “I don’t know how to break this to you, but that is not a bad thing. I know women who’d kill to have half as much body in their hair. And exactly what the hell
is
a hoyden, anyhow?”

“Someone whose hair is always in her face, who runs instead of walks, who raises her voice. Someone who has
fun
,” Juliet said with sudden defiance. She studied her hair in the mirror. It really was rather pretty.

Roxanne squeezed Juliet’s shoulder and handed back her brush. “Well, then, let’s hear it for all the hoydens in the world.”

“Yes.” Rebelliously, Juliet met her assistant’s gaze in the mirror as she returned the brush to her purse. “Here’s to them. I’ve been a perfect lady my entire life, and somebody just tried to shoot me, anyway. Grandmother was wrong. Goodness is not its own reward.”

The crowd had thinned considerably by the time they returned to the main salon. Snagging a chair,
they transported it behind the desk next to Juliet’s. There they sat, quietly talking, while Beau and Luke finished interviewing.

Finally the last person left. Beau tossed his pen on the desk and slumped back in his chair, grinding the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. Dropping his hands to the desktop a moment later, he demanded, “How the hell can forty-plus people not have seen a freakin’ thing?” He looked over at Luke. “How about you—you have any better luck?”

“Nope. Let’s just hope one of the people who left before you managed to stop the mass exodus will have something to share.”

“Surely they would have stuck around if they’d seen anything incriminating,” Juliet protested.

“We don’t assume anyone saw the shooter and then simply took off,” Beau told her. “But someone may have noticed a specific person down by the sweet olive trees.” He rotated his head on his neck, clearly trying to stretch out the kinks. “If we could place someone in the general vicinity at the right time, it would at least give us a place to start.”

Roxanne, who had walked over to the rain-streaked window, called softly across the room, “Sergeant, do you know there are men down in the lower part of the garden?”

“Yeah, it’s the forensics team. They arrived while y’all were in the powder room.” His gaze narrowed on Juliet with sudden intensity. “You look a little better. How’re you feelin’?”

“I’ll be fine.” Eventually.

“Looks like one of your forensics guys is headed
this way,” Roxanne said from her post overlooking the gardens.

The man entered the room a few minutes later and shook himself off like a wet dog before crossing over to Beau. “Sergeant, I thought you’d want to see this,” he said and placed a baggie containing a small lead sphere on the desk. “I just dug it out of the oak.”

Beau leaned over to examine it. Luke came over and perched on the corner of his desk, and without a word Beau picked up the plastic bag and passed it to him. Luke examined it also, then looked up at the forensics tech, a frown marring his handsome face. “What the hell kinda bullet is this?”

“Not the kind you can buy in your average gun shop, sir. It’s a ball from an old cap-and-ball-style pistol.”

Beau and Luke exchanged a look for a long, silent moment. Then, “Shit,” Beau muttered in disgust. “That’s just what we need. Another goddam case featuring an antique gun.”

The rain finally let up, but the sun had set by the time Beau wheeled the GTO beneath the Garden Crown’s porte cochere. He looked around for his evening replacement…and didn’t see him. Anywhere. Every single muscle in his neck immediately tensed up.

What the hell was it with Pfeffer? The man stuck him with this detail when no one actually believed there was a threat to Juliet, and now that they knew there truly was, he assigned a baby cop who was nowhere around when he was needed. Only in
New fucking Orleans would someone who everyone knew was an incompetent idiot be appointed to fill in a high-ranking position while a real cop took his long-awaited vacation.

He glanced over at Juliet. Her normally golden-hued complexion looked sallow, her posture lacked its customary ramrod precision, and she frankly looked worn right down to a nub. Even her amazing hair looked slightly wilted as she leaned her head back against the headrest.