Remembered by Moonlight (8 page)

“Anyone I know?” Cee Cee asked as she closed the door to the crowded sweat box of a mobile office behind her.

From where he was sitting at the Formica-topped table, Philo used the toe of his boot to lift the cover from the figure stretched out on the floor. “You tell me.”

Boze Reading. At least that’s what she gathered from the portion of his face that wasn’t caved in.

“Dammit!”

“I take that to mean you were acquainted.”

Cee Cee dropped heavily into the chair across from the scowling redhead. “We were.”

“Seeing as how my dayshift is now two short, I think I’m gonna want a few more details.”

She eyed him cautiously, not sure how far he could be trusted. But then their only lead was lying at her feet. “He was going to be our inside man on an investigation into a Shifter fight ring.”

“Doan look like that worked out too well for him. He was carrying a whole lot of cash he didn’t get a chance to spend. He get that from you?” When she nodded, he asked, “You wanting it back, or can I use it to see him buried and give the rest to his mama?”

“That’d be fine.” With a heavy exhale, she let her shoulders droop. “Where did he turn up?”

“This morning in the dumpster outside. I asked around but nobody knew nothing.”

“There’s an epidemic of that.”

She met his defiant stare until he glanced away to mutter, “I ain’t involved in this.”

“He told me as much.” She let that lay between them as fact, not a statement of good faith.

Philo turned back to her, expression stripped down to bare candor. “I like you, Detective. I owe you for what you done for my brother, seeing him buried and for seeing those what kilt him just as dead. I believed you when you said you wanted to protect us. That’s what I want, too. But I can’t go in with those you run with.” Meaning Silas, Max and Jacques. “But that doan mean I can’t help you.”

“How 'bout we start by sharing what we know?” she suggested.

Philo started. “I ain’t been strictly honest with you.”

No surprise there, but Cee Cee simply said, “Oh?”

“I had nothing,
nothing
to do with that business the other day. I was glad to hear you and MacCreedy got out okay.”

She didn’t comment, instead urging, “What business
were
you involved in?”

“I been approached by a fella name a Casper Lee. I knowed him for a while. He be a bit of a shady character, but I ain’t never had no trouble with him.”

“What did Mr. Lee want with you?”

“He wanted to know if my Patrol could do some security work for him down on the bayou. I tole him that weren’t what we were about . . . at least not for the pay he was offering.”

“And what was that?”

“Barter. Our services for a taste of his product.”

Cee Cee straightened. “What kind of product?”

“I believe you already know. You come to ax me about it the other day. It wasn’t mentioned by name, but I believe you called it poison.” He reached into his pocket and put a small plastic pouch on the table. “I found that in Boze’s jacket. Probably what’s been making him such a riled up pain in the patootie these past few days. Now I don’t mind a good drunk and a respectable hangover, but this brain-scrambling stuff I got no truck with. And I don’t like it messin' with my crew or my Patrol. If there’s something I can do on the down low to make it disappear, I’m in, long as nobody else hears about it.”

They shared a look and a bonding nod.

“Just play hard to get for now,” Cee Cee encouraged. “Draw this Casper fellow out. Be coy but not skittish, like you’re entertaining the idea of getting in bed with him.”

Philo grimaced. “Something tells me he’d be right fine with that idea in ways I don’t care to reciprocate. Not that I gots anything against folks who play for their own side.”

“I’m asking you to get into his back pocket not his pants.”

“That I can do.”

“And be careful. I don’t know what this business with our dead friends has to do with the other.”

But she had a good idea of where they were leading. To Carmen Blutafino. He’d slipped justice too many times to be allowed to get away with anything more.

And then Philo Tibideaux knocked her thoughts out of the park by asking, “How’s your friend? The one who’s the nun?”

He evaded her surprised look, immediately snagging her suspicions. “She’s better.”

“Tell her I said hey.”

The awkward way he mentioned that suggested it wasn’t a polite inquiry over a stranger. The fiery color in his cheeks was even more telling and had her asking rather stiffly, “How do you know Mary Kate?”

“She was nice to my brother. Taught him to read music after school.”

Tito Tibideaux was the mysterious boy Mary Kate had been tutoring during the fall of their senior year? Now they really had something to talk about!

Carefully, she asked, “Have you seen her lately?”

“No. Not for years and years. She just come to mind when I was . . . when I was cleaning out Tito’s place. I decided to take over the rent.” The sorrow in his voice just about broke her heart, a reminder that he’d not only been cut off from his friends but from his only family.

Cee Cee put her hand over his for a brief empathetic squeeze. “I’ll tell her. I’m sure she’ll be pleased to know you remember her fondly.”

His gaze shot up then quickly away. “Not exactly fondly. I didn’t really know her all that good. She was Tito’s friend.”

Ah ha! Another of Mary Kate’s conquests. The streets of New Orleans had been littered with them like broken bead strands after Mardi Gras. Cee Cee smiled at him. “As a friend then.”

He returned the smile, agreeing, “As a friend.”

Another press of his hand as she told him again, “Be careful. I don’t have so many friends that I can afford to lose any of them.”

“Ditto, Detective Darlin'.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

“I’m sure she’s all right.”

Max’s comment didn’t lessen Cee Cee’s white-knuckled grip on the screaming orange muscle car tearing out of New Orleans. Her reply was curt. “You don’t know her like I do.”

“That’s true.” He faced forward, focusing on the road ahead. “I don’t know her at all.”

He could feel her looking his way and knew her expression would be etched with contrition. He didn’t want her pity. He wanted her.

Max may not have remembered the scarred nun who’d moved like a ghost about his imprisoning room when she’d thought he wasn’t awake, but over the course of the day he’d learned about her history second hand from Giles St. Clair. About two best friends raised under St. Bart’s roof—Mary Kate Malone, a vivacious, outgoing orphan; and Charlotte Caissie, the darker side of the friendship coin abandoned by an alcoholic mother and, for the most part, by a workaholic father. The inseparable duo had been snatched off the street after a high school basketball game. Jimmy Legere intended to use them as leverage to keep Detective Tommy Caissie from testifying in a pending court action. The two men holding them in a dank dockside warehouse had other plans. By the time Max stumbled upon them four days later, the girls had been viciously brutalized. He’d taken one look at Charlotte’s snarling defiance as she struggled to protect her traumatized friend, and he’d been lost, heart and soul.

That was the story as Giles told it.

Breaking from his slavish loyalty to Jimmy, Max had rescued them. Mary Kate had helped Max burn the bodies after he ripped apart the men who’d violated their innocent hostages. And he’d left an unconscious Cee Cee at the hospital. She believed her memory of the beast that had saved them to be a nightmare and hadn’t understood her strange attraction to her enemy’s right-hand man. Not until after he’d breached her thorny resistance with a kiss, and she’d discovered that he wasn’t a man to be feared. He wasn’t a man at all.

It hadn’t been easy for her to accept her love for someone both mobster and monster, someone who opposed her values and beliefs, who challenged her sense of justice—of humanity, itself. But just like Max’s, her emotions knew no such reservations.

She’d had his back against enemies both human and unnatural. He heard the truth of that in Giles’s animated retelling. They’d sacrificed without hesitation, had given without restraint, all that they were to one another. Only to have that rich reward of happiness stolen.

Max wanted it back. He wanted those memories, but if he couldn’t reclaim them, he would find a way to recreate them. The tenacious female in the car beside him deserved that.

She was unsure of him. He got that loud and clear. Hell, he was unsure of himself. His brain was shredded, his emotions scrambled, and behind them both was that insistent throb of tension, its beat warning all might not be well.

“I just don’t know where she’d go other than St. Bart’s or the Institute,” his mate was saying. “I don’t know how she’ll react to what she overheard.”

“How 'boutchu, Charlotte? How do you feel about it?”

She shot him a startled glance as if her own response had never occurred to her. It probably hadn’t. “I’ve always anticipated the worst in people. Mary Kate’s not like that. She’s trusting and naïve.”

His reply was quiet. “Maybe you don’t know her as well as you think. She’d been arranging retribution against those who’d harmed her flock. That’s not particularly trusting or naive.”

Cee Cee had no comment, but he could tell his had upset her. The irony of it was inescapable. He was desperately trying to find a past to cling to, and she was stubbornly refusing to accept what she knew about hers.

“I’ll help you find her,
sha
. I’m not without resources.”

The naked gratitude in her expression did funny things inside his chest. When she clasped his hand tightly, those sensations settled lower.

Smiling slightly, Max glanced at the road ahead. And was riveted.

They drove alongside a high brick wall topped with iron spears that seemed to stretch for miles. His breathing grew labored as they reached the secured entrance. Then the gates opened, and Max saw everything ahead through the eyes of a frightened boy crouched in the backseat of a limo that reeked of death. The child he’d once been.

Live oak sentinels lined a seemingly endless drive, framing the sprawling plantation house with its long windows, hugging porches and air of faded elegance. As they drove toward it, a sense of relief settled around Max like the wrap of a mother’s arms.

He was home.

The moment they stepped out of the car, Cee Cee knew she’d made the right choice. Susanna had warned that a return to River Road before he was ready would trigger responses Max couldn’t control. That’s what Cee Cee counted on.

Everything about who and what her lover was had been shaped, if not created, within the crumbling estate. Jimmy Legere had rescued a near catatonic child from the swamps where he’d clung to the lifeless body of his mother and brought him through the iron gates to live and serve. The clever mobster had cared for him, had raised him in sheltering isolation to answer one voice—his.

On an evening such as this, she and Babineau had come calling to question Legere about a brutal murder in the city. The moment Max slipped out of the shadows at her unprotected back to ask who she was wearing on her shoes, they’d begun a sexually charged cat-and-mouse that continued until the night she’d returned investigating Legere’s death. The night Max realized that Jimmy’s affection had come at a terrible cost.

Would he remember that price when surrounded by those tragic reminders?

He flinched when she took up his cold hand. His fingers finally curled tight about hers. Tension and a strained anticipation vibrated from him as his unblinking gaze fixed upon the front door.

I’ve got you, baby. I‘m right here.

She wasn’t sure he’d picked up the message until his clasp squeezed gently, then relaxed, but didn’t let go. And his relief was palpable when Giles met them at the door.

“Hey, boss man. C’mon in.”

“You could have said something about the visit earlier today.” Censure edged Max’s claim.

“Didn’t know about it until just a bit ago. You know how ladies like their surprises. Well, surprise. Welcome home.” He moved aside to let them enter, and Cee Cee felt the past buffet Max like a forceful gust.

He took in the surroundings with an emotionless attention to details. The wide, curving stairs, the marble tiles, the floor-to-ceiling doors opening into the formal parlor, and the set opposite that was closed. The ones leading to Jimmy’s office. Her questions buzzed to be asked. Did he recognize anything? What was he feeling? Were the sights and scents familiar? Did they spark any associations? But she bit her lip and let him take it all in slowly, at his own pace.

“Our guests have arrived,” Giles called out.

Brigit MacCreedy ascended the staircase like a glam '30s movie star. The cling of her shiny dress with its twists of glittery netting at the bold neckline made her look like an inviting flute of pale champagne. Gorgeous, composed and confident of her sexuality, she was everything Cee Cee wanted to dislike. Until Giles moved to the foot of the steps, a stunned stupid smile on his face. He offered his hand and murmured something that sounded like, “Goddess.”

As he lifted her fingertips to his lips, her beautifully superficial mask fell away for just an instant.

How could Cee Cee hate someone who gazed upon her friend with such obvious contentment?

Stroking his square jaw lightly, Brigit corrected, “I believe technically we are
their
guests.”

Stepping into the big house quickened a flurry of emotions in Cee Cee. It was the lair of her worst enemy, the place where she and Max had fought their fears and, at times, each other. The penthouse in New Orleans became a refuge away from the long simmering pressures within these walls, a pretense, an illusion of faux lives they’d created out of necessity and convenience. This rundown estate with its haunting souls and melancholy shadows held the truth of their relationship. The struggles, the betrayals, the passion, the dreams. What would that seeping atmosphere stir in Max? Something, she hoped. Anything, she prayed.

“Mr. Savoie, Detective, welcome home.”

That their dour housekeeper would include her in that greeting clutched about Cee Cee’s heart. The solid woman who’d once been so disapproving followed that pronouncement with an accepting nod toward her.

“Thank you, Helen. I’m looking forward to a decent meal at a real table.”

“It’s ready any time you are.” Though she deferred to Cee Cee, Helen’s attention was on Max who’d grown up under her care. Having controlled a mobster’s household for decades, her features were carefully schooled, but there was no disguising the softening of her gaze as they beheld one another. Max gave away nothing but then, Helen would be used to that. Until she said with a gentle scold, “You are far too thin for my liking. We’ll have to do something about that.”

He blinked away a suspicious shininess before rumbling, “I’m in your capable hands, as always.”

The four of them sat down at Jimmy’s banquet-sized table to a meal befitting a 5-Star city restaurant. While Helen’s pretty daughter Jasmine served, Giles and Brigit directed conversation with a relaxed banter, putting the other pair at ease.

“How’s my brother?” Brigit asked with feigned indifference. “Has he recovered from your adventure at the docks?”

“Thanks to Max and Giles’s timing,” Cee Cee assured her. “Back to work with hardly a hobble.”

“Ummm. Always the job first. Tell him his sister worries and that a call wouldn’t have killed him. Though his neglect of her just might.”

Sensing the other’s carefully hidden hurt under the air of annoyance, Cee Cee smiled. “I’ll remind him of his priorities. Family first.”

And that was all it took for Brigit to warm up to her. “Now that Tina and Oscar have moved back home, I have way too much time stuck out here with nothing to do but imagine the worst.”

Giles caught her hand as she reached for her wine, giving it a playful kiss. “You have me.”

“And a delightful distraction you are when you’re not in the city or doing homework.”

“Homework? You weren’t just kidding before?” Cee Cee shot the big bodyguard an “explanation needed” look. He just looked uncomfortable. Brigit filled her in with great relish. And pride. Another reason to like her.

“He’s taking classes to finish his degree. He was in law school at Harvard when Legere got his hooks into him and made the law something to hide from instead of something to pursue.”

Both Max and Cee Cee stared at Giles until a ruddy color rose in his cheeks.

“It’s no big deal. Something to fall back on when I retire from being a thug.”

“It’s a very big deal,” Brigit corrected. “He’s going to intern with Antoine D’Marco until he can go out on his own.” Her gaze slanted toward Max. “Seeing to business interests in more acceptable circles than D’Marco can reach.”

Shifting awkwardly in his seat, Giles mumbled, “I’m doing it for my family, not to extort work from my boss. Bree, stop embarrassing me.”

“Tony will take care of you,” Max assured him. “He knows the law, not just how to bend it. He had a well-respected practice before some dealings with Vic Vantour got unpleasant media attention and him almost disbarred. Kinda limited his clientele after that. You’d be wise not to make the same mistakes.”

“No worries,” Giles promised. “My days as a wise guy are winding down. Gotta look toward providing for my other half’s expensive tastes.” He grinned as Brigit gave him a swat then ravaged her with a look. “Worth every penny.”

“You’ve always got a place to stay here. These ole rooms could use some laughter and good times to shake the dust off 'em. I’d be honored if you’d think of it as your home.”

The couple stared at Max then at each other, Brigit hopeful, Giles a bit more reserved.

“'Til we can get our own feet under us, at least. Can’t say I know what the future holds, but for now, we appreciate the roof over our heads, boss man.”

Max’s brow furrowed. “I don’t think of you as an employee, Giles.”

Giles grinned wider. “Yeah? Just don’t go taking me off the payroll. Got obligations to see to. Need that health plan.”

Max smiled, appreciating his humor, and turned to the remainder of his meal with more gusto.

Watching him, Cee Cee tamped down the flicker of excitement. When he’d spoken of the estate’s attorney, he wasn’t reciting something he’d heard.

He was repeating something he remembered.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The meal was heaven. Warm, rich, delicious, each mouthful an explosion of flavors and spices. Max imagined sitting to Helen’s table would have been the best part of living in this mobster’s paradise. He forced himself to eat slowly to savor and enjoy when his instinct was to consume everything with the urgency of someone who’d known hunger. Never under this roof of plenty. Those learned behaviors would have come from the darkness of his childhood. From things best not recalled.

As he drank the wine Cee Cee poured so generously, Max began to chafe with unsettling déjà vu. Like whispers of a conversation just out of earshot, the familiarity of the room, the food, the very scent of his surroundings had him straining to understand what they were trying to tell him. That dull pulse of pressure returned to muddy interpretation. A troubling restlessness continued to build, stirring anxiety like ripples in a pond.

It’s not real. It never happened. This is all a lie.

He gave his head a shake to clear it, but the insistent whisper continued, soft and sinister.

They aren’t your friends.

No. That wasn’t true. Who’d planted such an idea? Giles’s was the first face he recalled, the rock he’d clung to. Charlotte was the heart of his past, the dream of his future.

They’ll hurt you.

His breathing quickened. His heart began to race as he clutched at the edge of the table. He didn’t look up, afraid what he’d imagine behind the smiling faces surrounding him.

Run, Max! Run!

Max pushed back from the table with a screech of wood across wood, drawing their concerned stares.

“Too much wine,” he announced. “I’m going to walk it off for a bit. If that’s all right?”

Catching the defensive challenge in his words, Cee Cee was quick to soothe, “Of course. It’s your house.”

They want to use you, hurt you. Get away while you can.

He forced himself to walk calmly to the door when self-preservation screamed for him to flee. Glancing back, he could see them murmuring together.

Conspiring
. . .

Once out of sight in the cavernous foyer, Max pressed the heels of his hands to his temples, trying to squeeze out the doubts and troubled fears pounding beneath the surface. These
were
his friends, he reminded himself. He
was
safe with them. He
could
trust them.

So why the crippling sense of alarm? Was it this place that agitated him? Or was it the whisper of returning madness?

He’s not what he seems.

Max glanced down the long hall, his gaze fixing upon the closed door. The urge to seek safety inside both compelled and repulsed him. Instead, he entered the parlor for a look at the pretentious and uncomfortable antiques. He was drawn to the ornate sofa to trace fingertips along the carved wood. There on the sumptuous fabric he could envision an inviting Charlotte stretched out, naked and sated. Her dark, liquid gaze lifting to seek his.

Max took a quick step back, breath catching, shivering as if a ghost had reached out and brushed an icy hand against his cheek. In a sudden claustrophobic crush, he back-peddled into the hall, escaping the press of walls by slipping out into the heavy weight of early evening.

A storm was moving in off the Gulf. Moisture, thick and cloying, saturated the air into a damp curtain that dragged across bare skin. Cicadas screamed from the trees, their constant whirring adding to the unpleasant white noise in his head. For a moment, slightly feverish and disoriented, Max thought he might get sick, but the queasiness passed when he bumped against the porch glider. The hypnotic swing, back and forth, held him for a long moment, making him think of those pearls. Again, cool specters of the past crowded close, pushing aside the steamy touch of the night to quiver through him. Tendrils of fright, of pain, of confusion and distress roiled inside, so acute he nearly went to his knees. A child’s fear. A child’s anguish.

What the hell had happened to him in this house?

Cautiously, he walked along the rail, keeping his distance from the walls and dark windows that both imprisoned and invited. The feeling of being watched crawled over him. The surveillance cameras. Or ghosts from that past he couldn’t quite embrace? His attention turned to the long slope of rough-cut lawn that surrendered to a tangle of woods beyond.

Chase me. Find me.

The tease of those words sketched a brief smile on his face. Charlotte.

Don’t you run from me, you coward!

Max winced away from the anger steeped in that echoing shout. He began to move more purposefully along the old porch boards, as if he could outrun the murmuring all around him. Words he didn’t remember stirring feelings he couldn’t comprehend. It was too much. And not enough. He couldn’t make sense of them. Part of him didn’t want to.

And then a voice he did know coming from the open doors to the dining room.

“What if he doesn’t get better? What if none of it comes back? Are you still thinking about going back to Chicago?”