Detective Defender

What had happened to William Fletcher had been a coincidence—not even a surprising one, according to gossip. He’d been warped in his tastes and careless in his pursuit of them, and Callie and Tallie’s mom had often said that one day the consequences of his actions would catch up with him.

That Saturday night they had.

But it wasn’t her fault, or Paulina’s or the others’.

Heaving a sigh that echoed with restlessness and sadness, she pulled on a bright yellow-and-pink madras plaid rain slicker and a pair of boots and headed out. Back in the day when the shop was new and finding its way, she’d made time to bake goodies for her employees’ breakfast and breaks, but business had luckily picked up about the time her baking interest waned. Now she visited Wild Berries, a small shop on Jackson Square, and bought treats far better than she could make.

The strange dampness made her pull the slicker hood over her head as she walked. It wasn’t raining exactly. It was more as if the drops of water were suspended in air and broke only when a person bumped into them. The few that trickled down her face were ridiculously cold and sent shivers all the way to her feet.

And all the weather people could say was Unusual weather patterns or Maybe a break this weekend. Anise, one of her employees, kept insisting the sun was never going to shine again, but then, Anise was a gloom-and-doom sort of person. With her distinctive Goth appearance, Martine hadn’t decided whether she added to the ambiance of the shop or scared the customers instead.

When Martine stepped inside Wild Berries, a bell dinged overhead, and a small high voice sang out, “The sun will come out tomorrow...”

She slid her hood back to revel in the brilliant smile the shop owner, Shelley, gave her. Even on her worst day she summoned more optimism than Martine could even imagine at the moment. Shelley was happy, she’d once told Martine—truly, seriously, contented all the way down to her soul. Martine knew days of deep satisfaction, but she envied Shelley her pure unwavering light.

“How’s business?” Martine asked as she strolled the length of display cases, her mouth watering with each new discovery. Lemon and brown sugar and chocolate perfumed the air, along with buttery pastry and cinnamon and coffee. If it was possible to absorb calories by osmosis, Wild Berries was the place to do it.

“My early birds are reliable. It’s slow right now, but it’ll pick up by lunch. How about your place?”

“People come, buy and go. Let me have twelve of your most decadent creations, would you? Make one lemon with a sign that says ‘Hands off. For Martine’s pleasure only.’”

With a laugh, Shelley folded a brightly decorated cardboard box and began filling it. “I thought I saw you pass by yesterday afternoon, but you were moving so fast, I wasn’t sure.”

Martine kept her smile in place by sheer will. “Yeah, I—I had a—a meeting.” With a woman who’d been murdered twelve hours later. God, that sent a chill through her soul. She wondered about Paulina’s parents: Where did they live now? When would they be notified? How thoroughly would the loss of their only daughter devastate them?

And more questions. Had she been married? Was there a husband out there worrying where the hell his wife had gone? God have mercy, what if there were kids feeling the same?

And what about Tallie and Robin? They should know, too, because they’d been Paulina’s friends, too. The five of them had shared a lot of history.

And they deserved a warning because, even if Martine didn't believe in the paying-for-their-curse business, it seemed someone else might.

Paulina had believed it, and she was dead. Callie had believed it, and she was dead, too. Martine couldn’t have helped Callie, and she hadn’t helped Paulina, but if she at least contacted Tallie and Robin...at least gave them a heads-up...

A flash of color wavered in front of her, and she blinked hard, bringing the plastic bag holding the pastry box into focus. Shelley wore her usual smile, but it was tinged with a bit of concern. “You okay, Martine?” she asked, and Martine was pretty sure it wasn’t the first time.

“Yeah, sure. Nothing a few days on a tropical beach wouldn’t cure.”

“You and me both. Sun, sand, cabana boys...my dearest dream. Maybe the lemon tart will take you away for a few moments, at least.”

Martine traded her debit card for the bag, then looked inside and located the tart underneath the box’s cellophane lid. In fine print across the pastry, Shelley had written with frosting, Reserved for Martine. With a laugh, she pocketed the debit card again. “My employees are most grateful, and so am I.”

“Have a good day. And don’t let the weather get you down. No matter how dreary, it’s still New Orleans, and that beats a sunny LA or New York or Chicago any day.”

Martine waved as the bell dinged above her again. Shelley was right. A bad day in New Orleans was better than a good day anywhere else. She’d had a lot of dreams growing up, but in terms of distance, they’d ended fifty miles from her hometown. She enjoyed traveling, but at the end of every trip, she was happy to be home where she belonged.

Would always belong.

And no one—no old friend, no murderer, not even Detective Jimmy DiBiase—could take that from her.

She was halfway past Saint Louis Cathedral when the nerves between her shoulder blades prickled. The power of a look never failed to amaze her: this one was as physical as an actual touch, and it made shivers dash down her spine. She tried to casually glance over her shoulder to see who was watching her, but when she moved her head, the hood of the slicker stayed where it was, instead giving her a good look at the pink lining. Stopping and actually turning around was a bit obvious, but when she reached the intersection, that was exactly what she did.

It was truly raining now, so much more normal than the earlier damp that some pressure deep inside her eased. The few people around were intent on getting to their destination, except for a crowd of tourists huddled beneath a lime-green golf umbrella and conferring over a map. No one showed any interest in her. No one seemed to notice she existed, despite her yellow-and-pink slicker.

Nerves. She wasn’t a person usually bothered by them, and they were making her jumpy. Bad weather, slow business, Paulina, DiBiase... It was all enough to give anyone a case of the creeps.

Satisfied that was it, she headed down the street again. Her path took her past the house where Evie and Jack lived, with its smaller entrance leading to her psychic shop. Guilt curling inside, Martine ducked her head and lengthened her stride. She would talk to Evie soon, but not yet.

Only half a block separated her from the dry warmth of her shop when footsteps sounded behind her and, too quickly for her to take evasive action, Detective DiBiase caught up with her and flashed that grin most women found so charming. She had once found it charming. If he ever caught her in a wildly weak moment, she feared she might find it so again. “Wild Berries. I like their stuff.”

One of the lessons Callie and Tallie had taught her early on was that ignoring people who didn’t want to be ignored was a waste of time. They had pestered her relentlessly until she gave in and dealt with them. She fell back on that now. “Think of more questions, Detective?”

“A few. You have one of those caramel bread puddings in there?”

Crossing the street between parked cars, she dug in her pocket for her keys, unlocked the shop’s old wooden door, jiggled it a bit and pushed it open. Rain made the wood swell and stick, but the door with its wavy glass was decades old. She hated to replace it with something new and inferior.

The lights that were always left on—one above the display window, others over the checkout counter in the middle of the room—banished some of the gloom but not enough for Martine. She flipped switches as she walked through the shop, pushed aside a curtain of beads and went into the storeroom/lounge, where she set down the pastries, then stripped off her slicker. She didn’t need the slight squelching sounds behind her to know that DiBiase had followed. Just as she’d been aware of someone’s attention at the square, she felt it now.

Damn, had he followed her all that way without her realizing it?

“What do you want?”

His gaze slid to the pastry box inside the wet bag, reminding her of a hopeful puppy. Grimacing, she shoved it across the table toward him, then started the coffee. The clock ticking loudly on the wall showed ten thirty, but it was still set to last summer’s time so she had thirty minutes before opening the store, probably twenty minutes before Anise arrived. Wonderful. DiBiase could annoy her that long without even trying.

“You like lemon tarts, huh?” His deep Southern drawl scraped along her skin, an irritation she couldn’t banish, like the cold, the fog and now the rain. “Appropriate.”

Her gaze was narrowed when she faced him. “What does that mean?”

“Well, you are a bit sour.”

He helped himself to a generous serving of cheese Danish, the ruffled white liner contrasting vividly against his dark skin. On a general scale of attractiveness, he ranked high. Even Martine couldn’t deny that. With dark hair, devilish eyes, the grin and muscles that still impressed though his college football years were long behind, every woman she knew thought he was gorgeous. The problem was, he knew it and took advantage of it. Everywhere he went, he was waylaid by women wanting great sex, and he was happy to comply.

Even six years later, it still embarrassed Martine that she had almost been one of them.

It angered her that, on rare occasions, she even kind of regretted that she hadn’t been.

“Consider the company,” she said in response to his calling her sour. Then she turned her back on him and her thoughts, lifted a couple of boxes from the storage shelves and carried them to the front of the store.

* * *

Of course Jimmy followed her—not to the counter where she was ripping open the boxes with too much enthusiasm, but through the beaded curtains. He turned down the first aisle he came to and followed it around the perimeter of the shop. Despite living in Louisiana his whole life, he had little personal experience with voodoo. His parents had seen to it that the family was in church every Sunday—in their small town, it had been more a social event than a sacred one—and they had never encouraged questions about other beliefs. When he’d thought as a kid that he was so much smarter than them, he’d assumed it was because they were so tenuous about their own beliefs that they didn’t feel qualified to debate them. Later he’d realized that their unwillingness to debate had also been more a social thing than religious. In a small town, it was easier to go with the flow.

Most of the merchandise on the shelves could be bought in a dozen places in the quarter. Some was strictly fun, some for tourists, some for posers. But in the room behind a door marked Private, that was where the real stuff was, according to Jack—the stuff that couldn’t be picked up just anywhere. The stuff for the practitioners, the true believers.

Jimmy watched Martine over a display of crudely made dolls and wondered if she was either, or merely a supplier of goods. Her mouth was set in a thin line, and her brows were knitted together. She didn’t want him here, and that was okay. In his job, he was used to people distrusting him. The prejudice against police officers that had surged in the past few years made a tough job a hell of a lot tougher. When it got bad, he wondered why he spent his days wearing a gun, walking into dangerous situations, doing his damnedest to protect communities that didn’t appreciate it, but the answer was simple. He was a cop. He’d saved a lot of lives. He’d helped out a lot of people. He’d found justice for a lot of victims.

It was what he did best.

That, and piss off pretty shop owners who had a thing about fidelity.

As he finally circled to the counter, Martine began sliding small plastic bags onto rods extending from a display case. “Don’t you have better things to do this morning than aggravate me? Like, I don’t know, telling Paulina’s parents what happened or, here’s an idea, maybe even finding the person who did it?”

“Her parents live in Alabama. The police over there are making the notification. By the way, her name is Bradley now. Was Bradley.”

Her fingers slowed, the tips tightening briefly around the plastic package that held an astrological charm. “Did she have children?”

“No.” That always seemed a good thing to him with murder victims. Not having kids meant less damage, less grief. But without children, what do they leave behind? his father sometimes asked. Jimmy figured the old man didn’t want the family name dying out. He was the only son his dad had, and neither of his sisters had been willing to hyphenate their married names. Poor Pops was stuck.

Jimmy picked up a worry stone from a dish filled with them, his thumb automatically rubbing the depression in the middle. “When Paulina called you yesterday, what did she say?”

“She wanted to meet me.”

“No chitchat? Hey, long time, how are you?”

She glanced out the window, and Jimmy followed her gaze. The fog had risen high enough to cover a few inches of the glass. It was like being in a dream: the street disappeared from sight; a man walking his dog, both of them legless; a delivery truck driving by, its wheels invisible. There were going to be a lot of trips and falls and battered shins as long as this lasted.

“She said, ‘Tine, it’s Paulina. I need to see you. Meet at the river as quick as you can get there.’ I told her I was busy. I had customers. She said, ‘You have to come now. I really have to talk to you.’ So I went.”

Still rubbing the stone, he walked around to stand near her. “First contact in more than twenty years, and she demands you meet her on a day like yesterday, then tells you that someone’s after her.”

Martine paused a moment before nodding. After hanging the last of the charms, she stuffed one empty box inside the other, moved a few feet to a tall display of candles, guaranteed to bring a person health, riches, love or whatever else his heart desired, and started rearranging them.

“Did she ask you for money?”

“No.”

“For help?”

“No.”

“For advice? Sympathy? Directions? Did she want to say goodbye? Did she leave a message for her parents or her husband?” He watched each tiny shake of her head, then impatiently asked, “Then why the hell did she bother calling you, Martine? Just to say, ‘I think someone wants me dead. Hey, I like your hair that way, and I hear your shop’s doing pretty good. I’ll probably die in the next twenty-four hours, so I won’t be seeing you again. Have a good life’?”

“Stop it!” she demanded. “She’s dead! Show a little respect.”

“I’m not disrespecting her.” It was part of the problem today: everyone wanted respect, even when they were lying, cheating, stealing, killing and telling the rest of the world to screw themselves. Martine didn’t want to be questioned again, she didn’t want any pressure even though she’d been less than forthcoming the first time around. Whatever she was hiding could be nothing. It could be personal, between her and Paulina. Or it could be integral to solving the case. It wasn’t up to her to decide.

Her face was pink, her breathing unsteady, when the rattle at the door announced a newcomer. A woman—early twenties, shiny black hair, pale face, dark makeup, black clothes—stepped inside, gave a shake like a great big dog, scattering rain everywhere, then looked up at them through water-splattered glasses. “The sun’s never gonna shine again,” she said in a doleful voice. She shuffled over, a huge black tote bag hanging from one shoulder, and stopped a few feet away. “I’m Anise.”

Though he could feel hostility radiating from Martine—or maybe because of it—he grinned at the girl. “I’m Jimmy.”

“Don’t talk to him, Anise,” Martine snapped before the girl could open her mouth again. “He’s not welcome around here. In fact, if you could do a few wards to banish him from the premises, I would be most grateful.”

Jimmy shifted his full attention to Anise. “You can banish me? Where, like, I wouldn’t be able to walk in the door?”

“Maybe. I’m just a novice, but I’m pretty sure I can at least make it very uncomfortable for you to be here.” She pushed her glasses higher on her nose.

He made a dismissive noise. “Your boss can do that with nothing more than a look.” Once upon a time, she'd made him very uncomfortable with no more than a look...but in a most desirable way.

The color in Martine’s face deepened. She murmured something—he saw her lips move but heard no words and figured it was a prayer of some kind—then with a deep breath faced him. “You should go now.”

He good-naturedly shook his head. “You should tell me the truth now. All of it.”

“I—”

“Have kept all the good parts to yourself, like why someone wanted Paulina dead, what happened to your friendship, why she came to you. You’re a bad liar, Martine. I know it, and Jack knows it.”

The look she gave him was defiant, with her jaw jutted out and her eyes darker than usual. A muscle quivered in her jaw, and her lips were thinned. He moved a few steps closer and lowered his voice for his last volley. “I intend to find out what you're holding back and why. So I’ll be back, Martine, no matter how many wards Anise casts. I’ll find out the truth, and God help you if anyone else gets hurt in the meantime.”

For a long moment, their gazes locked. There was the usual annoyance and dislike in her eyes that sparked the usual regret in him, but along with them was fear. He hadn’t thought she was even capable of the emotion.

It made him that much more determined to find out what the hell she was hiding.

* * *

Without enough customers to keep two employees busy, much less four, after a few hours, Martine gave up, said goodbye and went out the front door. The stoop to her apartment door was only a few feet away, just one big step when she could actually see it, but with the fog lingering, she went down the shop steps, up the other steps and let herself inside. The staircase was narrow and dimly lit, and she reminded herself for the tenth time to buy a couple of higher-wattage light bulbs for the top and the bottom.

As soon as she got to the top, though, the airy colors and tall windows that usually let in the sun made her forget about the stairs. They were just the gauntlet she had to run to reach the cozy comfort of her home.

Grabbing her laptop, she went into her workroom, curled in a chair next to the window and logged on to a search engine. There she paused. Paulina and Callie were dead. Tallie was in hiding, and Robin had long been lost, according to Paulina. Martine had zero idea how to find them, so she did what she used to do when she was stumped: she called her mother.

Bette Broussard still lived in the house where Martine had grown up, not that she spent a lot of time there. A few years after divorcing Martine’s father, Bette had made herself over into a travel writer, taking advantage of everything the internet had to offer, and had become successful enough that these days, “vacation” meant staying at home for longer than a weekend. She’d finagled her travel-tip columns onto some very prestigious websites, had her own YouTube channel and boasted social media followers in the mid–six figures.

It had taken Martine five years just to get her shop’s very simple website online.

After a couple of rings, her mother’s husky voice greeted her. “Ha! When I got up this morning, I crossed my fingers and turned in a circle three times, chanting your name, and here you are!”

“You know, you could have picked up your phone and called me without risking getting dizzy and falling.”

“I can’t fall. I’m sixty-five years old. It could be dangerous.”

“Just because you say you can’t doesn’t mean it can’t happen anyway.” Would that it were true. Martine would be spinning in circles and chanting her heart’s desires until she passed out. Paulina can’t be dead. Callie can’t be dead. Tallie and Robin and I can’t be in danger. I can’t have to see Detective DiBiase one more time.

“In my world, it does.” Bette said something in an aside, and Martine heard a British-sounding, Yes, ma’am, of course, ma’am. “Where are you?” she asked.

“Home. Where are you?”

“London. That was Chelsea. She’s my translator on this trip.”

“They speak English in London, Mom.”

“Yes, but apparently they don’t think I do. It was impossible to get anything done with them constantly asking me to repeat myself.”

“Because they love your accent.” Her mother sounded as if she’d stepped straight out of Southern belle charm school, her words all rounded and sweet and enchanting, gliding slowly one into the next and putting a person in mind of sultry afternoons on a veranda, sipping mint juleps and saying y’all a lot.

DiBiase’s accent was pretty much the male version of Bette’s.

Martine scowled hard until the thought disappeared from her mind.

“What’s going on with you, Tine? You rarely call me in the middle of your workday.”

Too late, of course, Martine rethought the call. Did she really want to deliver sad news to her mother while she was on a business trip? Bette had adored her daughter’s friends, and they’d felt the same about her.

But her mom was always on a trip. She could handle news, and she would want to know.

“You remember Paulina? And Callie?”

Bette snickered. “That’s like asking if I remember your father. Those girls practically lived in our house. I never really knew what happened between you all, but you know, it was like losing part of the family. One day I had all five of you underfoot, and the next you were all gone. Moved on. I knew it was inevitable, of course, but I wasn’t prepared for it. Then your father left, and I...”

Martine remembered her mother’s shock as well as her own when Mark Broussard had packed his bags and moved into his fishing cabin ten miles outside town. He hadn’t had an affair. He hadn’t wanted a divorce. He’d sworn he was happy and loved Bette and Martine as much as ever. He’d just needed some time alone.

Bette had given him time—six months, a year, two, her life effectively put on hold—and then she’d given him an ultimatum: life together or divorce. He’d refused to choose, so she had.

Twenty-plus years he’d lived in that cabin, working when he had to, fishing when he could, communing with nature and his own spirit and still insisting that he loved Bette and Martine as much as ever. It was strange, but Martine believed he was genuinely happy.

Bette’s sigh was long and blue, then her voice brightened. “Have you heard from the girls? Is that why they’re on your mind after all this time?”

“Sort of. I saw Paulina for a few minutes yesterday. She was, uh...” Martine had to stop, had to close her eyes to push back the tears that threatened. When she thought it safe to continue, her words wobbled with emotion. “She was murdered last night, Mom.”

For an instant, the silence on the line was thick, then her mother’s own voice wobbled. “Oh, honey... Good Lord, how awful. Her poor parents... Was it a mugging or a robbery or what?”

Her fingers aching, Martine switched her phone to the other hand. “I don’t know. Just...her body was found this morning, and Jack is assigned to the case.”

“Well, it’s good to know New Orleans has their finest on the case. Still...so sad. Heavens, I can’t imagine what Paulina’s parents are feeling right now.”

“Not just Paulina’s parents. It’s weird, Mom, but she told me Callie had been murdered a few months ago.”

That bombshell rendered Bette speechless. Martine worked her boots off, then drew her feet onto the chair and gazed forlornly out the window. The tiny courtyard below that never failed to make her smile failed now. The fountain was turned off, the bright-colored cushions for the chairs stored downstairs. The plants drooped as if they might collapse under one more drop of rain, and everything looked sallow and depressed, in need of a dose of brilliant sunshine.