Unmasked (5 page)

After the sedate graciousness of the hotel’s interior, entering the street was a shock to the senses. The night was alive with movement and laughter. A woman in a spangled dress hawked Mardi Gras masks that had been stacked on a stick. Horse hooves clacked against the pavement as a calèche full of tourists rattled past a long black limousine. Buskers performed to clusters of onlookers, and a cacophony of music from at least four different sources echoed off the old buildings. Enveloping it all, the scents of fried shrimp and spilled beer drifted on the breeze, along with the underlying tang of the river.

Jackson inhaled slowly, his eyes half closing. “This is just how I remember it.”

She knew immediately what he was talking about. “I know what you mean. There’s nothing quite like the atmosphere of Mardi Gras.”

“Yeah, I’m glad I get the chance to soak it in while I’m here. You’re lucky, you see it every year.”

“As strange as it sounds, I don’t normally get the time to enjoy it. It’s mainly business for me.”

“It used to be the busiest time for the hotel when your parents ran things, too,” he said.

“I hadn’t realized how hard they worked back then. What I remember most were the colors. And all the movement. It seemed as if everything was in perpetual motion.”

“And the music.” He tilted his head as if to follow one melody in the mix. “The city was always full of music, but this time of year it explodes with it.”

Of course he’d remember that, she thought. Musical talent ran in his family; Jackson had inherited his love of music from his scandalous grandmother. He’d also inherited her long, supple fingers. And like his grandmother, he had chosen a career that had taken full advantage of those marvelous hands…

He was carrying her briefcase in his left hand, Charlotte realized. She looked at his right. He held it loosely by his side. The dark line on the back was barely noticeable in this light, yet now that she knew what to look for, she could see that there was something odd about the slack angle of his thumb.

“Go ahead and ask if you want,” he said.

She glanced up to find him watching her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stare.”

“It’s okay, Charlotte. I’m not used to my limitations yet either, so I don’t expect you to be.” He pressed closer to her side as a group of people brushed past them. “We never tiptoed around each other before. I can’t see any reason to start now.”

He was right. They’d always been honest—they hadn’t known any better. “Is it all right to move your hand around
like that?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you be wearing a sling or some kind of support?”

“Not at this stage. It will have to be completely immobilized after surgery, though.”

“Does it…hurt?”

“The upside of nerve damage is that I don’t feel much.”

“I would like to say I’m glad for that, but I’m not glad about any of it, Jackson. It’s just not fair.”

“I gave up expecting fair a long time ago. One of the first things I learned with my NGO work is that fate doesn’t play favorites.”

There seemed nothing more to add to that, so they started walking toward the lot where Charlotte had parked. “Have you seen your friend at Tulane yet?” she asked.

He nodded. “He’s going to do some more tests the day after tomorrow to gauge how much healing has taken place on its own.”

“
Could
it heal on its own?”

“Not anymore.” He sidestepped a pair of giggling young women who were weighed down with ropes of beads over their breasts. “That’s why I waited as long as I did to get treatment,” he said. “With an injury like this, it’s best to give the nerves a chance to regenerate. Everything that could already did.”

“Surgery could repair it, right?”

“I have to believe that, Charlotte.”

Although he spoke softly, his voice was threaded with steel. It was a stark contrast to the merriment that whirled around them.

“But Yves is too smart to make promises,” Jackson con
tinued. “His initial diagnosis is that I mucked myself up good. He’s considering prescribing a gris-gris.”

“He sounds like a character.”

“He is that, but he’s also a brilliant doctor. His research into nanotechnology and laparoscopic neurosurgery is cutting-edge stuff.” He glanced at her sideways. “No pun intended.”

She knew he’d meant to make her smile, but she couldn’t, not about this. “I hope everything works out for you, Jackson. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know. Same goes for me. I hope you work through your troubles, too.”

They drew near the nightclub at the end of the block. The wail of a saxophone spilled through the open doorway, adding yet another layer to the melody of the street. Charlotte waited until they had passed and the noise had faded before she spoke again. “I want to apologize for my behavior yesterday,” she said. “It was inexcusable for me to be so touchy about the hotel.”

“I’m glad you were. Otherwise you might still be trying to treat me like a stranger.”

Put like that, she couldn’t regret what she’d said, either. It felt good to be able to talk to Jackson like this again. “Well, I am sorry,” she persisted. “You were only trying to be my friend.”

“Stop apologizing. I do tend to stick my nose in where it’s not wanted,” he said wryly. “And speaking of that, I’m guessing that your family doesn’t know how bad things are with the hotel finances. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been bottling things up that way.”

“You guessed right. They know our finances are precari
ous, but they don’t know how close we are to losing the hotel. I’ve been shielding them from the full extent of the problems.”

“Because of Anne’s heart condition?”

“That’s the main reason, yes.”

“And because the hotel means more to you than it does to the others.”

She closed her hand into a fist and gave his chest a light thump. “I can’t believe you still know me so well. It’s been two decades.”

He paused under the streetlight on the corner and tipped up her chin with his knuckle. His gaze moved slowly over her face. “I know who you used to be, but I’m not sure about this person you are now.”

“Have I changed that much?”

“Some. When did you start straightening your hair?”

“My hair? I’m surprised you noticed.”

Still using his knuckle, he brushed a lock of hair from her cheek. “I remember winding your curls around my fingers.” One side of his mouth lifted in a half smile. “I also remember getting your hair tangled in my watchband one night when you were trying to sneak past your papa.”

She gave a startled laugh and touched his arm. “Oh, I remember that. I was so late I thought I’d be grounded for life if I got caught. You wanted to break your watch apart so I wouldn’t cut my hair.”

“Your hair was so beautiful, I couldn’t let you lop it off.”

“And I couldn’t let you break that watch. You won it at the science fair.”

“So you ended up tucking my watch into your curls and wearing it to bed.”

“It worked. I didn’t get grounded, but I had a heck of a time combing that watch out in the morning. Thank goodness Renee helped.”

He smoothed his palm along her hair. “So when did you get rid of the curls?”

“Oh, ages ago. I think it was before my divorce.”

His smile dimmed.

What was it about Jackson that made her speak without thinking? Charlotte looked at her hand where it still rested against his arm. And why did she always seem to end up touching him?

A group of people staggered past them from the direction of the nightclub, their voices raised in slurred conversation. Someone stumbled into her shoulder, giving her a good excuse to start moving again.

Jackson remained silent until they had rounded the corner and were within sight of the parking lot. “I should probably tell you I’m sorry things didn’t work out for you and Adrian,” he said.

“It’s all right,” she began.

“But I won’t say that because I’ve never lied to you, Charlotte. I didn’t like Adrian.”

“You hardly knew him.”

“I didn’t move in the same circles as he did, but I recognized his type.”

It had taken Charlotte five excruciating years to recognize what type Adrian Grant really was and another three before she’d finally divorced him. Her stubbornness hadn’t been due to loyalty to the man she’d married, it had been from an unwillingness to let go of her dreams and face reality.

Still, she’d never spoken about Adrian to anyone. It was too
humiliating. “At the risk of making things awkward again,” she said, “I’d rather not discuss my marriage or my ex-husband with you.”

“No problem. It’s not a topic I would enjoy either. But while we’re on the subject of the past, there’s something I want to clear up.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t hate the hotel.”

“Jackson…”

“After all the time we spent together when your family lived there, it was like a second home to me.” He slowed his steps. “That’s why I didn’t consider staying anywhere else when I came back to New Orleans.”

“Yes, I suppose we both grew up there.”

“I have a lot of good memories in those walls, in spite of how it all ended.”

Each time she tried to throw some distance between them, he somehow made it dissolve.
Yes,
she wanted to answer.
We have more good memories than bad. I was your Charlie and you were my best friend…and my first love
.

Charlotte realized with a start that they had reached the entrance to the lot. She could see Desmond, the attendant, dozing on his stool in the kiosk, his head resting against one of the glass walls. The sounds of the Quarter’s ongoing party were fainter here, lending an air of hushed intimacy to the darkness.

How many evenings had she and Jackson spent strolling along these darkened streets like this, prolonging their time together? They’d always been loath to say goodbye.

But that was half a lifetime ago, she reminded herself.

“Which one’s yours?”

“Mmm? Oh, the beige sedan near the light pole.”

He put his palm on the small of her back as they walked through the lot. “As I recall, you used to dream of owning a Corvette like your papa’s.”

“The sedan’s more sensible. It gets excellent gas mileage, too,” she added, although she didn’t know why she felt it necessary to defend her choice of vehicle.

There were plenty of things she had dreamed about as a teenager that she knew better than to want now.

So it was only a sentimental longing that made her want to step into Jackson’s arms and linger over their goodbye. Merely an echo of the past that made her want to feel his fingers in her hair again. Just a side effect of the memories. Nostalgia. Stress. Habit.

She held out her hand. “My car keys are in the briefcase,” she said.

He stopped at the rear bumper of her car, dropped the briefcase to the ground and grabbed her arm with his left hand. “Damn, not again!”

“What—”

He pulled her back to his chest and looped his right arm in front of her shoulders. “Hey!” he yelled, turning his head toward the kiosk. “Wake up!”

The attendant didn’t stir. Through the corner of her eye Charlotte could see Desmond’s motionless form silhouetted against the glass, but she didn’t turn her head. She couldn’t. Once again she pressed into Jackson’s embrace, frozen in shock, and stared at the destruction in front of her.

Every window in her car had been shattered. Crumbs of broken safety glass sparkled from the dashboard and the seats
like drifts of blue-tinted sequins. The upholstery had been slashed to ribbons, baring springs and spilling stuffing. A thin, long-bladed knife, like the one that had been driven into her desk the day before, was embedded in the top of the driver’s seat headrest.

And trailing from the handle of the knife like some macabre decoration was a string of Mardi Gras beads that had been fashioned into a noose.

J
ACKSON PRESSED HIS
head next to hers. His warmth steadied her, enveloping her in his strength. “Deep breaths, Charlie.” His lips brushed her ear. “You’re okay.”

Charlotte breathed hard through her nose, shoving back the urge to scream. Somehow the beads were more frightening than the knife. To shape something harmless, something that should have been fun, into a threat was just…obscene.

“Do you have your phone?” he asked.

“In my pocket.”

Still keeping his arm around her shoulders, Jackson patted the front of her suit jacket with his free hand. “I need you to call 911 for me.” He slipped the phone from her pocket and held it up. “I’m going to take a look at that attendant, okay?”

She fumbled to take her phone, tearing her gaze away from her car to look at the kiosk. The young man on the stool inside still hadn’t stirred. “Go ahead. I—”

“Charlotte? Jackson? Is everything all right?”

At the call, Charlotte looked toward the street. Her mother’s car was idling at the entrance to the lot, the interior light on and the driver’s door ajar. Anne Marchand was rounding the hood, her expression troubled. As soon as she caught sight of Charlotte’s face, she broke into a jog and headed toward her daughter.

Charlotte pulled away from Jackson, concern for her mother overriding everything else. “Mama, I’m fine! Don’t run! Please!”

But as usual, Anne ignored Charlotte’s caution and covered the distance between them like a woman half her age. “I was just coming home and I saw you both here—” Her gaze went to the car. “Oh, no! What happened?”

“Someone broke my windshield, that’s all.” She hooked her mother’s arm and tried to turn her away from the mess. “I’m calling the police,” she said, thumbing 911 into her phone with her free hand.

Jackson paused only long enough to scrutinize Anne’s face, then squeezed her shoulder and backed away. “Her color’s good, Charlotte,” he said, “and she’s not out of breath. So don’t worry.”

Anne whipped her gaze to Jackson. “Jackson Bailey, don’t you start treating me like an invalid, too. It’s bad enough that my daughter thinks I’m spun sugar.”

He didn’t take time to reply, turning away from them and loping toward the kiosk. By the time he stepped inside, Charlotte had the emergency operator on the line. While she was giving the location of the parking lot, she watched Jackson try to rouse the attendant.

“What happened to Desmond?” Anne asked.

Charlotte could see the gleam of blood on the attendant’s forehead. She told the operator to send an ambulance as well as the police, then put away her phone and took her mother by the shoulders. “There’s nothing you can do, Mama,” she said. “It might be best if you go home.”

“I’m fine, Charlotte. I wish you wouldn’t fuss so…” Anne
pressed her hand to her mouth, her eyes widening as she returned her gaze to the car. “Is that a knife?”

“Mama—”

“Mon Dieu!”
She shrugged off Charlotte’s hold and leaned over to take a closer look at the interior. “And beads? Why in the world would anyone do that?”

Charlotte tried not to moan in frustration. The last thing she wanted to do was cause her mother more worry. She strove for a calm tone. “You know how it is at Mardi Gras. Some people have too much to drink and do foolish things.”

“But this is so…gruesome.”

“The police will handle it, Mama.”

As if on cue, the sound of a siren rose above the traces of music from the other side of the block. Charlotte could see Jackson pressing what looked like a handkerchief to Desmond’s forehead with his good hand, evidently doing what he could in spite of his handicap. With relief she noticed that the young man had regained consciousness and was moving on his own.

“It’s horrible.” Anne crossed her arms and rubbed her hands briskly over her sleeves as if she felt a chill. “I know the city has its problems, but it seems as if our family is seeing far more than our share of crime lately.”

Charlotte tried to keep her thoughts from showing on her face, but her mother’s comment set off alarms in her head. Detective Fergusson had said something similar the day before. They
had
been experiencing far more problems than was reasonable. This incident of vandalism was obviously deliberate and had targeted her personally, like the last one. But what about the earlier troubles?

It had been all she could do just to get from one day to the
next. What if all their troubles hadn’t been simply bad luck and coincidence?

She looked at the shadowed street. Just minutes ago the darkness had felt intimate. Now it felt threatening, as if someone was out there watching…

She stooped to pick up the briefcase Jackson had dropped. “I’m going to walk you home, Mama. There’s nothing you can do here— Oh!” The briefcase latch must have been damaged when it hit the pavement. The bag sprang open as soon as Charlotte tried to lift it, spilling papers across the ground. She gathered them mechanically, barely looking at them, until a long white envelope caught her eye. She paused to study it and saw that her mother’s name was scrawled across the front in black ink.

A knot of ice tightened her stomach. Charlotte knew with complete certainty that she hadn’t put this envelope in her briefcase herself.

The last time she’d seen it had been the previous morning, when Dan Corbin had tried to push it into her hands.

M
IKE
B
LOUNT LEANED
back into the seat cushions and drummed his fingers against the armrest. Lights from the police car that squeezed past on his left flashed through the tinted windows of the limousine. The vehicle’s armor plating muffled most of the noise from the siren, but Mike nevertheless felt an unpleasant rush at the sound.

Richard Corbin craned his neck to watch the cruiser turn down the street toward the parking lot. He sat beside his brother in the seat that faced the back, his leg jerking up and down as his heel thumped rhythmically against the floor.
Trashing the Marchand woman’s car had excited him—he hadn’t been able to keep still yet.

By contrast, Dan stared out the window, following the police car’s progress. “Are you sure you delivered our message, Luc?”

Mike turned his head to look at the man who sat beside him and waited for his reply. Carter had been off balance since he’d seen Mike in the lobby. That had been one of the reasons behind his surprise visit—keeping people off balance made them easier to manage.

“The purchase agreement is in Charlotte’s briefcase,” Carter replied.

“Excellent,” Mike said. “If they don’t understand their position by now, they will soon.”

Carter tipped his head toward the retreating cruiser. “If the Marchands can put the pieces together, so can the police.”

“Don’t worry about the police,” Mike said. “They won’t be a factor.”

“You have to keep your cool, Luc,” Dan warned him. “The cops still don’t have anything to tie us to the Marchands’ problems. They can speculate all they want, but there’s no direct evidence that would stand up in court.”

Richard interrupted his twitching to point at Carter. “You better hope the cops don’t come looking, because if they do, you’ll be the first one they’ll notice.”

A muscle jumped in Carter’s cheek. “It would help if you quit showing up here. We can’t be seen together or the Marchands will stop trusting me.”

“Yes,” Mike said. “I hear you’ve made yourself indispensable. That’s good. The Marchands wouldn’t keep someone
around who is no longer of any value to them.” He paused deliberately. “Neither would I.”

Carter picked at the crease in his right pant leg. “What do we do next?”

Mike looked past Carter to the far side of the street, where the lights of the Hotel Marchand glowed majestically. With the wrought-iron balconies that stretched over the sidewalk and the hanging pots full of greenery it was a classy place, a jewel of the French Quarter. Its reputation was as flawless as its appearance.

And once the hotel was his, he would turn it into a gold mine. Not only was it the perfect location to expand his gambling operation, it would attract the kind of clientele who liked their hookers in a higher income bracket. No more would Mike need to use his syrup company for cover. He would be presiding over one of the most prestigious addresses in the Quarter, rubbing shoulders with the city’s elite…and he’d be smiling all the way to his favorite Cayman bank.

“Next?” he repeated. “That depends on how quickly the Marchands accept the Corbins’ generous offer.”

Richard snickered. “They’ll be sorry they waited. The price already went down.”

“You need to give them a chance to respond before we stage anything else,” Carter said. “They’re not going to react well to intimidation.”

“Are you telling me how to conduct my business, Luc?” Mike asked, his voice dangerously soft.

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“Good.” Mike flipped open the control panel that was built
into his armrest and pressed a button. The door beside Carter unlocked with a soft click. “You should get back to work before someone notices your absence.”

“But—”

“We’ll be in touch when we need you again.”

Carter reached for the door handle a little too slowly in Mike’s opinion. Narrowing his eyes, he watched until the man disappeared into the hotel, then signaled his driver to move off.

The Marchands might be foolish enough to trust Carter, but Mike didn’t. He would leave him in place for now, though. The concierge’s position on the inside was still of value to him. That idiot Richard had the right idea: if something went wrong with the next phase of the plan, it would be Carter who would take the fall.

C
HARLOTTE PULLED THE
blanket around her shoulders and picked up her coffee cup, listening to the familiar sounds of the hotel awakening around her. A gray dawn rain pattered against the window of her mother’s living room, lending a sense of timelessness to the scene. Although Anne was the only one who currently lived here, Charlotte could feel the presence of the rest of the family.

Sipping her coffee, Charlotte moved her gaze over the framed snapshots that her mother had placed around the room. There was
Grand-mère
Celeste, her chin lifted regally, the impact of her patrician features undiminished in spite of her eighty-four years. On the entry table was a snapshot of Anne with her brother, Pierre, the uncle Charlotte had never met. He’d been a troublemaker in his youth, and the uncompromising Celeste had ordered him out of their home by his eigh
teenth birthday. Yet Anne still loved him and never had given up hoping she would see him again.

She moved toward the mantel, where she could see her father’s bighearted smile. Remy was frozen in time, holding his arms out for baby Melanie to toddle across the lobby carpet. Charlotte looked at the next photo and could almost hear Sylvie’s laughter in the courtyard as she chased the bubbles that Renee blew from a plastic wand. And she could still feel the pride in her mother’s gaze as she straightened Charlotte’s graduation cap. As Jackson had said, there were memories in these walls, as well as so much love.

She tightened her grip on the coffee cup and took an unladylike but fortifying gulp. There was no way she was going to surrender this place, especially not to a pair of vultures like the Corbins. She couldn’t. This hotel was her parents’ legacy. And it was her life.

But it wasn’t only
her
life that was involved, was it?

The suspicions that had taken root in the parking lot yesterday had grown into certainty over the course of the night. She should have seen it before. Yet sensible, responsible Charlotte wasn’t given to paranoia any more than she was given to flights of fancy. If there was a rational explanation for something, she would find it. The idea of a deliberate plot against the hotel had seemed too far-fetched to consider.

Yet at what point did rationalization become denial?

The attempted carjacking her mother had fallen victim to was unlikely to have been random. The hit-and-run that Melanie had been involved in the month before couldn’t have been an accident. She was sure of that now. And regardless of what
Detective Fergusson claimed, Charlotte suspected faulty wiring hadn’t caused this week’s fire, either.

Then there were all those problems that had eaten into the hotel’s profits. Taken separately, the incidents could be explained away. But once she pulled back to look at the big picture, the pattern that emerged was frightening.

Worse, it was escalating.

Charlotte set her coffee cup on the mantel, braced her fists beside it and regarded the snapshots once more. She’d sheltered her family from the full truth of how grim their finances were, but if she sheltered them from this truth, their ignorance could put them in danger.

Her phone trilled, breaking the hush of the rain-dimmed room. Charlotte pushed away from the mantel and lunged for the chair where she’d left her clothes. She took the phone from her suit jacket before the second ring.

“Hi. Did I wake you?”

Jackson’s voice, so steady and familiar, brought his presence into the room as easily as the photographs had brought her family. “No, I’m on my second coffee,” she replied.

“How’s Anne doing?”

Charlotte glanced down the hall to make sure the door to her mother’s bedroom was still closed, then moved over to sit on the sofa where she’d spent the night and tucked the blanket around her shoulders. “Fine. Annoyed with my fussing over her health but happy for my company.”

“Did you tell her your suspicions about the Corbins yet?”

Charlotte pressed her free hand to her temple. “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

“Never have.”

“I remember. And, yes, I’m going to tell her. I need to tell my sisters, too. We have to decide how to handle this together.”

“Want to hear what I think?”

“That’s why you called me, isn’t it?”

His low laugh warmed her more than the coffee had. “I called you because I figured phoning would be safer than showing up on your doorstep at this hour. You never were a morning person.”

She sighed. “And you were always disgustingly cheerful. You have no idea how many times I was tempted to heave my schoolbooks at your head.”