Authors: Tori Carrington
J
OSIE COULDN’T BELIEVE
that someone had gained access to the back door…again.
She positioned a two-by-four diagonally across the closed doorway and took a nail out of her mouth, then hammered it in. She repeated the process with twenty nails until she was convinced that there was no way anyone was going to be coming through that door again until she could get the locks changed.
She looked over her shoulder at the brightly lit kitchen. She only hoped she had locked the intruder out instead of in.
After picking up the shotgun from the cutting-board table, Josie made her way back out through the courtyard and into the lobby, Jez following on her heels. She’d switched on all the lights so not a shadow remained, and had even gone through the rooms upstairs, although she was relatively certain
whoever had gained access to the kitchen hadn’t made it up the stairs. She would have heard them.
She glanced down at the inexplicably friendly feline. “Have you decided to keep me company tonight?”
Jez rubbed Josie’s shin with her nose.
Josie picked her up with her free hand. “Good. I could use some.”
She’d already locked the front door and put a Closed sign in the window. While it wasn’t the first time she’d been alone in the hotel, that way, it was certainly the first time she was overly aware of it.
And if Drew returned?
For some reason she couldn’t explain, she knew he wouldn’t be coming back tonight.
And maybe not for any other night.
The possibility made her feel even lonelier.
D
REW SAT BACK FROM
where he’d been diligently working at the desk and glanced at his watch. After midnight.
Shit.
He’d been so engrossed with the information he was uncovering on his client, that he hadn’t realized how late it had gotten.
Josie…
His throat tightened. He was surprised that the
first person who entered his mind was her. Then again, maybe it wasn’t so much surprise as a realization.
What he was coming to understand was that his connection to the exotic hotel owner involved more than just fantastic sex.
He got up from the chair, checking to make sure he had his wallet, cell phone and card key before leaving the room. He took the elevator to the lobby then stepped outside. He envisioned her sitting at the front desk of Hotel Josephine, cooling herself with that lacy fan he’d seen her use the first time he’d laid eyes on her.
Days had passed, but rather than the city giving itself over to autumn, it appeared to be getting hotter still. He didn’t know if that was the norm, but he did know that he was getting used to the heat, his body adjusting so that he didn’t find walks like the one he was taking now as taxing as he would have a few days ago.
Instead, what the heat did to him, especially since he’d just spent the day in an air-conditioned room, was make his body remember all the hot things he and Josie had done last night. He glanced down to make sure that his arousal—brought on by merely thinking about her dark, lush body—wasn’t having an obvious effect. While more un
usual things had probably been seen on Bourbon Street, he was no exhibitionist.
This was a first for him, this incessant lust he felt for Josie Villefranche. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her, no matter how much sex they had or how often he was in her presence. In the year that had passed since his divorce, his social life had included a few select women, none of them making it far beyond the morning after. Hell, even with Carol, his ex, he couldn’t remember feeling this way. Perhaps he had, back in the beginning of their relationship, but what had transpired between then and now had sullied all that, making what he was feeling for Josie fresh and new and perplexing.
Never, ever had he turned his professional attentions toward helping a mark before.
He slid his right hand into his pocket, pondering that reality.
He was hired to do a job and he did it. That’s where his interest began and ended. Only this was no longer just a job to him. Not this one. Not Josie. So he’d begun digging. And he wasn’t so much surprised by what he’d uncovered as he was enlightened.
It seemed Rove had bought the two buildings to the right of Josie’s establishment, the private
residence to the left, and also held the deeds to a warehouse behind the Josephine.
Obviously Dick Rove’s intention had never been to renovate the hotel and make a go of it. He planned to raze it and build a bigger hotel, something more befitting the Royal Emperor Suites family of hotels.
If Drew hadn’t been so distracted by how smalltime the job had been and so focused on the next job he wanted to win, he’d probably have picked up on that.
Then he’d let Josie into his life.
Or, rather, she’d sneaked into his mind and heart like a bewitching enchantress.
So Rove had a lot more riding on the outcome of this project than Drew had originally suspected. Which led him back to his earlier suspicion that Rove also had someone else working the case.
But who? And was he or she responsible for what was happening?
Drew neared the hotel, taking in the old place and her flower-decorated balconies and dark windows. Was the building on the city’s historical register? If it wasn’t, then Josie should take measures to make sure it was placed there immediately. Also, he needed to check into the laws that would prevent Rove from building something
not in line with the architectural integrity of the area. Laws Drew’s client may have already bypassed by greasing a few of the right palms.
The Mississippi River wasn’t the only thing that ran crooked down here.
Drew stopped in front of the double doors. Closed. He cupped a hand and looked inside. Dark.
Damn.
Had Josie closed up and gone to bed?
He rang the bell he knew would alert her up in her private rooms.
Nothing.
He stepped back and looked up at the fourth floor. He thought he saw movement near the balcony to what he guessed was her room, but he couldn’t be sure.
What he could be sure of was that she wasn’t going to answer the door. And he realized it was no more than he deserved after deserting her.
He waited for five minutes, then wove his way through the tourists back toward the Marriott.
J
UST AFTER DAWN
, Josie locked the hotel after herself, leaving a note for Monique and Philippe that they should take the day off and that she’d call them later. She tucked her handbag under her arm
and watched as Jez scampered down the street, surprisingly limber given her age. Apparently she was satisfied that her company was no longer needed and was off to do whatever it was she did between feeding times.
Josie glanced around the street before choosing a direction. At this time of the morning, the area looked like a ghost town. Stores and clubs and restaurants were closed up tight, discarded cups and litter dotted the curbs and sidewalks, and the stench of urine and beer was strong. At somewhere around ten, when everyone stirred to start the workday over again, employees would sweep and water down the sidewalks and street in front of their places of business. Until then, it looked like someone had held a party and left a helluva mess.
Josie was used to it. This was where she’d grown up. She knew which corners the homeless preferred for sleeping. Knew which puddles not to walk through. Which alleys to steer clear of.
Of course, trying to focus on her surroundings was a diversionary tactic that wasn’t quite working. She’d gotten little sleep last night. Not just because of her mysterious back-door visitor. But also because all she could see was Drew’s somber face as he’d stood on the street below, waiting for her to open the door.
For some reason she couldn’t define, she’d simply peered through the balcony doors at him, leaving him standing there. Perhaps it was an instinctual reaction designed for self-protection. Not from physical harm. But from emotional devastation.
She’d never have expected that she would come to feel what she was for the striking, grinning stranger from Kansas City. She’d had great sex before without attaching herself to the individual. But with Drew…
With Drew, all she had to do was think his name and her pulse thickened and her heart gave an off beat.
If pressed to point at any one reason for her uncharacteristic behavior, she couldn’t have done it. It was the way he put his hands on her and the way he didn’t. It was what he whispered into her ear and what he left unsaid. It was the way he slept with his arm protectively encircling her, as if he didn’t want to let her go. It was the way he did release her without her saying a word, seeming to understand her need for freedom and independence.
It was everything. It was nothing.
And she had as much control over it as she did her own heartbeat.
A trombone player was already setting up on a
corner, using his case as a chair while he polished his instrument, a small cigar box at his feet for change. He spotted Josie and smiled.
“Morning, Miss Villefranche.”
“Good morning, Harry. How’s life treating you?” She tossed a dollar bill into his box.
“Better all the time.”
She smiled and continued down the street.
It took her about twenty minutes to walk to her destination. Thankfully the caretaker had already opened the gates, which were closed at night because the voodoo queen Marie Laveau’s grave had been looted one too many times by tourists and locals alike. She passed the aboveground tomb in question, which was decorated with all sorts of mementos and voodoo icons, walking silently between the narrow rows until she reached the far wall. She paused for a long moment, unmoving, then touched the plaque engraved with her grandmother’s name.
In the past year, it seemed only this place was able to give Josie a sense of peace she’d lost along with Josephine Villefranche. Her mind cleared of all thought and her body relaxed, the act of being there giving her a sense of life’s cycles. Her, her mother, her grandmother and her mother before her. Each woman different yet with the same blood running through their veins.
Even her cousin figured in there, as part of a long line of strong Villefranche females.
“
Granme,
I need your help,” she said quietly, the raised lettering defined under her fingertips. “I’ve fallen in love.”
She hadn’t been aware that’s what she was going to say when she’d opened her mouth, but there it was. Two women had been murdered at the Josephine, and she was in danger of losing the hotel altogether, but it was her conflicted emotions for Drew Morrison that had drawn her here, searching for some of her grandmother’s no-nonsense advice.
Although, she understood that even her grandmother hadn’t always been the wise woman she remembered. Josie’s mother and aunt stood as clear reminders of that. When Josephine Villefranche had been younger than Josie was now, she’d fallen for a man. A brush salesman traveling through town. A handsome white man whose name Josie had never learned, although he had been her grandfather.
“Beware of love, Josie.” She heard
Granme’s
voice as clearly as if she’d been standing right beside her. “Love is the one thing over which you have no control. It can make you stronger or it can destroy you.”
Josie had been all of ten at the time and had
knocked on her grandmother’s door during one of her “spells,” short periods of time when she’d withdraw from hotel duties and stay in her rooms, shut off from the world.
“Which did it make you,
Granme?
” she’d asked, settling into an armchair across from where her grandmother sat staring toward the windows. Windows that had been covered by sheers, blurring the scene beyond.
“Both.”
Josie opened her eyes and stared at the plaque.
If you didn’t have a choice in who or how you loved, did you then not have a choice in how that love affected you? Could you decide whether it made you stronger or destroyed you?
And therein lay the danger she suspected her grandmother had been trying to make her aware of.
Here she was with problems piled on her doorstep, and rather than seeking ways to save a hotel that was as much a part of her heritage as her grandmother had been, she was instead searching for answers to questions that had no practical relevance.
“Men are the devil, Josie. Especially white men. They mean no harm. They saunter in with their natty clothes and charming grins and make you feel like the most beautiful woman on earth.
But then they’ll leave you behind like a bag of garbage at the curb.”
“How are white men different from black men,
Granme?”
She’d pointed a gnarled finger at Josie. “Because you expect the black men to stay.”
So had her grandmother expected, or at least hoped, that her white lover would stay and marry her? Had he even known their brief affair had produced a child?
And had Josie’s mother decided not to make the same mistakes her own mother before her had? Had she seen her chance to get that forever and sacrificed everything in order to get it?
Were there days she regretted her decision? Or was she even now completely happy and content?
Josie dropped her hand from the plaque.
“This place, this hotel, it will never betray you, girl. It will never take up with another woman, or leave you pregnant, or move on to the next town without you. Remember that. Respect that.”
Josie opened her purse and fished inside for a silver dollar, which she placed on a small shelf below the plaque. She left her fingers on top, pondering the many words her grandmother had imparted. The advice, the warnings, the wisdom.
Never had she considered the possibility that much of it was born of a woman scorned.
She squared her shoulders. “I’m going to save the hotel,
Granme.
Of that you can be sure.”
Then she turned and made her way back through the graveyard, a new resolve filling her.
D
REW KNEW ONE THING
and one thing only: he had to come clean with Josie. Tell her exactly who he was and what he had come there to do…and what he now wanted to do. Or, rather, wanted to help
her
to do. And that was to save her hotel.
At around nine-thirty the next morning, after having made calls to check the liquidity of his cash resources, he headed to the hotel, only to find a note on the door meant for Josie’s employees. He read it, then returned it to where it had been.
Where was she? While he would be the last to profess to know Josie better than anyone else, he sensed that she wasn’t the type of person just to up and leave her hotel with the Closed sign hanging in the window if there wasn’t a good reason.
Was she inside?
He rang the bell then stepped back to look up at the doors to her rooms. In fact, the doors to
all the rooms were closed. It was the first time he’d seen that.
He knew a moment of concern. Then another thought quickly followed: had she given up and was even now arranging to sell the hotel to Dick Rove?
He dialed his client, his back teeth clenched tightly together at the thought of Rove taking the hotel from her.
Rove’s secretary told him he was unavailable but offered to take a message. Drew didn’t leave one. Instead he slapped his cell phone closed and looked around the street. He wouldn’t know where to begin looking for her. He just hoped she wasn’t with the other “closer” Rove had hired to work Josie.
A person Drew suspected might be setting him up to take a fall, as well.
Damn.
A bar across the street had just opened its doors and a young man wearing an apron was spraying down the sidewalk and curb.
Drew held out a twenty-dollar bill. “Have any coffee in there?”
The kid smiled. “No, but I will.”
Drew took a seat right near the door with a clear view of the front of the hotel. He had no choice but to wait.
“W
HERE IN THE HELL
have you been? I’ve been waiting here for over an hour.”
Josie considered Philippe where he’d appeared next to her. It was just after two in the afternoon and it had been a long day for her so far.
She unlocked the front door and took the note and the Closed sign off before leading the way into the lobby.
“Seeing to a few things,” she said noncommittally.
“I’ve been worried sick. What do you mean by closing the place like that? You could have waited until I came in to do whatever business you needed to do.”
She wanted to reassure him, but she was so physically and mentally weary that she merely spared him a look as she put her purse away under the desk.
“What was so urgent that you needed to see to it so early, anyway?”
“Business matters.”
“What business matters?”
Josie stared at him for a moment. Philippe had never taken that much interest in the business aside from wanting to know when he’d get paid.
He ran a hand through his already tousled hair. “Sorry. I guess I’m just all worked up.”
She shuffled through some papers.
“I was worried about you.”
She smiled at him.
He smiled back. “Why don’t I go fix us a bite to eat and we’ll have a chat.”
Josie tucked the papers under her arm. “Can’t. I have some things to do.” She started toward the stairs. “And you don’t have the time, either. Open up the balcony doors to air out the rooms and see to the front desk until I come back down.”
“Josie?”
It wasn’t Philippe who’d said her name. Rather, someone who’d just entered the lobby had. And he wasn’t alone.
Claude Lafitte and FBI agent Akela Brooks.
It wasn’t all that long ago that Claude had been a regular at the Josephine. Then he’d been accused of the murder of Claire Laraway and had then taken Akela hostage at gunpoint.
That had been almost three weeks ago and all had turned out well so far as Josie could tell. The newspaper had been filled with the news that a romance had developed between the former captor and captive. A definite case of opposites attract, given Claude’s deep bayou roots and Akela’s high-society family background.
“We heard about the second murder,” Akela said, not bothering with niceties. Something for
which Josie was thankful because she wasn’t in a nice mood.
Claude cursed. “More like we were paid a visit by Chevalier to check up on my whereabouts on the night in question.”
She eyed Claude for a long moment. The first murder had never been solved, and since Claude had been with the victim the night before she’d been killed, he’d been the police’s first—and apparently only—suspect.
She still wasn’t straight on all the details, but Claude had been cleared.
The telephone on the front desk rang and Philippe picked it up.
“Josie, it’s for you.”
She was about to take it when Akela asked, “Do you have a few minutes?” Her demeanor was calm and cool, but her eyes held shadows of worry.
Josie regarded her, then looked toward the front desk. “Take a message, Philippe. And can you fix some coffee for the three of us?”
D
REW STOPPED PACING
the length of his hotel room and slowly closed his cell phone. At least he’d finally gotten an answer.
This morning, he’d sat at that bar for over three hours waiting for Josie to return. He’d finally
given up and had returned to the Marriott where he’d called the Josephine every ten minutes or so. He eyed the papers strewn across the king-size bed. But why wouldn’t she take the call? Since Philippe had asked for a message—that Drew hadn’t left—he assumed the guy hadn’t known who Drew was, so he had no reason to believe she just didn’t want to talk to
him
.
He hated that he hadn’t been able to speak with her but he did feel better knowing she was back at the hotel.
Gathering up the documents, he put them in order then dropped them into his briefcase before snapping it closed.
Since he knew she was at the hotel, then he could go see her.
J
OSIE SAT BY HERSELF
in the courtyard long after Claude and Akela had left with promises to check back later and see how Josie was doing.
Claude had been released from custody and all charges against him dropped. Physical evidence had been found that didn’t belong to him or the victim, namely a hair inside the neck wound itself, as if purposely placed there.
Why hadn’t she been told about this evidence?
She pressed her fingertips to her temples, trying to recall seeing anyone else on that fateful morning.
Then there was the fact that the police suspected Frederique’s murder had been a copycat killing. It had been determined that she had been brutally raped before being killed, a detail not in line with the first murder.
Philippe took the empty chair opposite Josie.
“You ready to tell me what’s going on?”
She blinked at him, taking a moment to attach his words to their meaning.
Seeing him made her recall what she had been about to do before her visitors had arrived. She got to her feet, gathering up the papers on the table in front of her.
“Nothing’s going on, Philippe,” she said quietly, her mind already on the tasks she needed to see to. “At least nothing I can share right now.”
He got up, as well. “Then that means there
is
something going on.”
She started toward the lobby, heading for the stairs beyond, and was startled when Philippe grasped her arm.
She stared at him.
“Come on, Josie, don’t you think I deserve to know what’s going on? I mean, my job’s on the line here.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll let you know the minute I think it’s something you should know.”
She couldn’t really explain why, but he was beginning to irritate her. She looked down at where he still held her arm.
“Everything all right, Miss Villefranche?”
Josie glanced at Detective Chevalier standing in the garden doorway wearing his requisite wrinkled overcoat and holding his hat. While he’d spoken to her, his gaze was very obviously on Philippe.
Philippe released her abruptly, looking abashed. “I’m sorry. I’m just really worked up about everything going on here lately,” he said quietly.
Josie smiled at him softly. “I know. I am, too.” She glanced at the detective. “Everything’s fine.”
Philippe disappeared into the kitchen and she turned to face Chevalier, crossing her arms over her chest. “What can I do for you, Detective?”
He fiddled with the brim of his hat, turning it in a circle. “Could you have Mr. Morrison come down, please?”
Josie straightened the papers she still held in her hands. “Mr. Morrison isn’t here.”
“Do you know where I might find him?”
“At the convention is my guess.” She brushed past him on her way toward the front desk.
“Ah, that’s right. He’s in town on business, isn’t he?”
There was a touch of unmistakable irony to his voice that caught Josie’s attention. “Has there been any progress on solving either of the murders that occurred in my establishment, Detective?”
He squinted at her. “I don’t know. It all depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“On what Mr. Morrison has to say.”
She leaned against the front desk. “I’ve already told you, he was with me the night of the murder.”
“Yes, but you also told me he was in town for a convention.”
“You just said yourself he was here for business.”
“Yes, but apparently an auto-parts convention doesn’t factor into that business. It’s my guess that Mr. Morrison wouldn’t know a gasket from an air filter.”
Josie didn’t like where this was heading. Her skin felt suddenly cold. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m sure you don’t.”
She carefully placed her papers on the desk. Getting anything from Chevalier was like pulling teeth and up until now she hadn’t made the effort. Although, given the information Claude and Akela had shared, maybe she should have.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on, De
tective?” she asked, crossing her arms again so tightly that she cut off circulation. “Or are we going to play more word games?”
He stepped to the other side of the desk and put his hat down. “How well do you know Mr. Morrison?”
Josie felt her cheeks flush. She’d already answered that question and didn’t care to have to repeat herself.
“Oh, wait.” He took his notepad out of his overcoat pocket and thumbed through its battered item. “You and he are engaged in a sexual relationship. Temporary.”
She glanced toward the courtyard, unable to meet his gaze. She’d been the one to add the word
temporary
. Because at the time, that’s what she’d believed it to be. The problem was she was coming to see that there wasn’t anything temporary about her growing feelings for Drew.
“That’s right.”
“So is it over?”
She recalled Drew standing outside on the street late last night and her chest gave a none-too-subtle squeeze. “Seeing as Mr. Morrison has checked out, I’d chance a yes.”
Chevalier smiled as he put his notepad back into his pocket.
“Oh, I have it on good authority that he’ll be back,” he said, placing his hat on his head.
Her heart gave a hopeful lilt even as dread spread in her stomach. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because he hasn’t done what he came here to accomplish yet.”
She didn’t say anything as he walked toward the door.
He turned before stepping outside. “He hasn’t gotten you to sell the hotel.”