Downtown Debutante

“Not when your mom’s footing the bill, you can’t. She got the Visa statement. There were charges from all over Texas and Louisiana. She was afraid you’d been kidnapped.”

“That does not explain why you broke into my hotel room.”

Brenna pointed at Heath. “And it doesn’t explain what he’s doing here.” She fastened her icy blue eyes on him. “I bet you’re not even FBI.”

Heath quickly produced his Bureau identification, which Brenna inspected thoroughly, as if she would know real credentials from fake ones. “I saw this guy coming into your room,” he improvised. “At first I thought he was your runaway fiancé. I came in thinking I would make an arrest.”

He glanced over at the other man, who amazingly did not contradict him.

“So you’ve been following me,” Brenna said on a rising note.

Heath saw no way out of this. “Yes, I was following you. I thought you might be protecting your fiancé. It’s a perfectly natural assumption. Romeo con men often inspire loyalty in their victims.”

“So you feel you were perfectly justified entering our room without our permission,” Brenna said, looking at first one man, then the other. “We could have you arrested,” she said, jabbing her finger into McPhee’s chest. Then she turned back to Heath. She almost jabbed him, too, then stopped at the last minute, as if she’d thought better of it. “And you. Unless you have a search warrant, I could have your badge.”

The last thing Heath needed was someone trying to get him fired. After his troubles in Baltimore, he was already skating on thin ice. Supervisory Special Agent Fleming Ketcher would have kittens if he knew Heath had been caught in an iffy search.

McPhee, obviously not intimidated by Brenna’s bravado, ignored her and sat on the bed next to Sonya. “I was worried about you, that’s all,” he said, his voice soft. “I really did believe someone might have kidnapped you.”

Sonya was unaffected by his attempt to mollify. “The only person you care about is yourself. If anything happened to me, you’d look pretty bad.”

“Sonya, you know that’s not true. Tell me what’s going on.”

She considered her reply for several long seconds. “Brenna’s an old friend, a sorority sister.” Brenna’s eyebrows flew up, but she said nothing. “Pretty soon I’m going to be an old stodgy married woman,” Sonya continued. “Mother had the wedding under control. I just wanted to have some fun, get it out of my system.”

Sonya was lying through her teeth. It sounded like she hadn’t admitted to anyone she’d been snookered by a con man. In fact, it appeared as if this John-Michael McPhee—a family friend?—and Sonya’s mother believed she was still engaged to Marvin.

Heath wasn’t going to rain on her parade. That was for her to sort out with her family. His concern was Brenna, the depth of whose involvement in Marvin’s various schemes was yet to be determined.

McPhee seemed to be evaluating Sonya’s explanation. But it was hard to tell whether he believed her or not. Finally he said, “Sonya, you need to come home. Your mother’s not well.”

Sonya rolled her eyes. “Mother’s never well. She’s the biggest hypochondriac I’ve ever known.”

“She’s not kidding around this time. She’s in the hospital. She’s…she’s had a heart attack.”

Brenna’s hand went to her mouth in alarm, while Sonya went white as a marble statue. “Oh, my God,” she murmured. “Is she okay? John-Michael, tell me the truth.”

“She’s stable. But you need to come home. Now.”

She nodded. “I’ll get packed. Would you wait for me outside, please? I’ll only be a minute.”

McPhee hesitated, then nodded. He stood, gave Heath a skeptical look, then held out his hand. “John-Michael McPhee. Thanks for not shooting me.”

Heath took the proffered hand. “Heath Packer. I usually ask questions first, then shoot.”

As Sonya threw clothes into her suitcase, McPhee headed for the exit. Brenna opened the door for him, giving him an unmistakable warning look. Then she transferred her attention to Heath. “You, too.”

“I need to talk—”

“Get a warrant.”

“Oooookay.” At least she wasn’t on the phone to his boss. Yet. Fleming Ketcher would not find this situation amusing.

ONCE THE INTERLOPING MEN were safely outside and the door closed, Brenna turned to Sonya. “Who is that gorgeous guy?”

Sonya continued packing without looking at Brenna, her movements sharp and ultraefficient. “He’s my bodyguard.”

Brenna couldn’t help it. She laughed. “You have a bodyguard?”

“It’s my mother’s idea. I’ve told you she’s a bit over-protective. After what happened to my father, can you blame her?”

Brenna sobered at the reminder. “So your mother doesn’t know about Marvin being a con man?”

“I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. All this time she thought I was chilling out at a spa. I didn’t think she’d worry. I mean, she never looks at her Visa bill. She has a financial manager who pays her bills.”

“You’ll have to tell her now.”

“I suppose.” Sonya looked up, her eyes filling with tears. “Oh, Brenna, she was so happy. Planning this wedding was the high point of her life. Since I became engaged, she’s talked of nothing but creating the perfect ceremony for the perfect princess bride. I couldn’t take that away from her.”

As flawed as Sonya’s logic was, Brenna understood. After all, she hadn’t told her own parents that her wealthy, suave art-agent fiancé was a big phony. It was a very tough thing, admitting not just that you were a fool, but a destitute one. But at least Brenna’s family hadn’t gotten to the wedding-plan stage.

“I’m sorry to leave you like this,” Sonya said. “I think you should give up the hunt for now. It’s not safe, and Marvin could be dangerous. Or…you could hook up with the FBI agent.”

Brenna snorted. “Yeah, right. He thinks I’m protecting Marvin. Of all the stupid assumptions.”

“He had to make sure,” Sonya said. “He was probably going by the statistics. After all, it would be easy for a naive woman to convince herself there’d been some mistake, that the love of her life hadn’t really stolen from her, that the FBI was in error. Agent Packer has no way of knowing you aren’t one of those women.”

“I can’t believe you’re defending him. He sneaked into our room! He was probably looking through our underwear.”

Sonya’s face hardened. “John-Michael is the one who broke in. Agent Packer was just trying to protect us.”

Brenna supposed that was marginally true, at least if she could believe Packer’s story.

“Promise me you won’t try to catch Marvin on your own,” Sonya said. “I don’t want to have to worry about you.”

Under the circumstances, Brenna had no choice. “I promise. Don’t give me another thought. You just go home and take care of your mother.”

Sonya zipped up her last suitcase. “I feel so guilty, making her worry.” She bit her lip. “I probably caused her heart attack.”

“You didn’t know she was ill. Don’t do this to yourself, Sonya.” Brenna went to Sonya and hugged her. Other than coming from wealthy families, the two women didn’t have a lot in common. They never would have sought each other out as friends under ordinary circumstances. But over the past few weeks, they’d shared a lot.

“With Cindy on her honeymoon and me going home,” Sonya said, “I guess The Blond Posse is officially disbanded.”

“I have a feeling we’ll see each other again.” Brenna helped Sonya carry her suitcases out. The bodyguard loaded them all in the trunk of his rental SUV as if they weighed nothing. Packer was nowhere to be seen, the traitor.

At the last minute Brenna took Sonya aside. “How well do you know this guy?”

“Way better than I ever wanted to. We grew up together, though he’s a few years older than me. But Mother hired him as my bodyguard when I was eighteen.”

“I could think of worse fates.” The bodyguard wasn’t hard to look at, but it was Heath Packer who’d caused Brenna’s hormones to jump up and take notice.

“Ugh. Please.” Sonya gave a very un-Sonya-like sneer. Then she gave Brenna a quick parting hug, climbed into the bodyguard’s SUV and was whisked away.

Brenna felt a wave of loneliness. What was she going to do now? Sit back and let the FBI go after Marvin? Yeah, like they’d been so effective up until now. That jerk Packer was wasting his time suspecting her, instead of going after the real criminal.

She supposed she better pay her restaurant check before Willie-the-Cajun-Waiter-from-Hell came after her with his coffee pot.

She returned to her room, pulled a twenty from her stash—at least neither of the room-breakers had found her money—and headed back to the restaurant.

“Hey, Willie,” she called to their surly waiter. “I got the cash.” She waved her twenty at him. “I told you I was good for it.”

Now Willie was all smiles. “Oh, not to worry, miss. Your bill was paid in full.”

“Oh.” Had Sonya—no, the SUV had driven down the street in the opposite direction. Then, somehow, without even seeing him, Brenna knew. She felt a tickle at the back of her neck and turned to see Heath Packer in a booth, eating a bowl of gumbo.

She marched over to the booth and slid in across from him. “So, you’re still here. I suppose you expect me to slobber in gratitude for paying our bill.”

He looked up from his gumbo. “A simple thanks would do.”

She slapped her twenty on the table. “Here. I refuse to be beholden to you.”

“Now there’s no need—”

“How dare you think I’m so stupid that I would protect a guy who totally humiliated me and wiped me out, not to mention the damage he’s done to my reputation? If I don’t show up at that IJC show with my jewelry, my career is over!”

“I have to go with the information I have,” Heath said in an infuriatingly reasonable tone. “Agent Delacroix told me what happened in Faring, Louisiana. Your warning allowed Marvin Carter to escape.”

“That was an accident. He wasn’t supposed to see Cindy peeking in his window. Oh, why am I trying to explain anything to you?” Brenna stole a package of saltines from Heath and opened it.

“Didn’t you just have lunch?” he asked.

“I have a fast metabolism.”

Heath focused on his gumbo for a few minutes. He ate his way around the okra, she noticed. Obviously not a Southern boy.

“So what brought you to New Orleans?” he finally asked after a long, awkward silence.

“Internet sleuthing.” Brenna’s pride over how clever she and Sonya had been warred with her desire not to talk to Packer. Pride won out. “Sonya’s first contact with Marvin was in a chat room, so we figured he might use that MO again. Sure enough, we spotted him in a singles chat room. Different name, but using the same tired lines. He was flirting with a woman called ‘FrenchQuarterChic.’ Before we could learn more, they both dropped off. I discovered he’d downloaded maps of New Orleans from my computer.”

Packer gave Brenna a nod. “Good work.”

“She’s here, all right. And so is he.”

“It’s a pretty big city.”

“I know. But I figure he might try to fence some of the stolen jewelry here. There are a ton of estate jewelers on Royal Street. I looked in the Yellow Pages.”

HEATH HAD TO HAND IT to Brenna. She had a sharp mind. That was a pretty good story she’d cooked up—improbable, but barely believable. She also had quite an appetite. She polished off the last saltine from the cellophane packet, then started eyeing his cornbread muffin.

He pulled a paper napkin from the dispenser and set the muffin on it, pushing it toward her. “Jeez. I’d hate to see you if you missed a meal.”

She dug into the muffin without so much as a thanks.

“So what are your plans?” Heath asked casually.

“I don’t have any. I promised Sonya I wouldn’t track down Marvin Carter on my own. She thinks it might be dangerous, and she doesn’t want to worry about me.”

“And I’m sure you wouldn’t want to worry your old sorority sister.”

Brenna surprised him by laughing. “That was pretty funny. Me, in a sorority. I wonder if Mr. Beefcake Bodyguard bought it?”

“You thought he was good-looking?”

She gave him a sideways look. “Oh, yeah.”

And just what the hell had prompted him to ask a stupid question like that? Heath reminded himself to stick to business. Whom Ms. Brenna Thompson found attractive or unattractive was not his concern.

“Why does Sonya need a bodyguard?” he asked.

“She doesn’t. But her mom’s overprotective because Sonya’s father was murdered when she was ten. Sonya’s all her mother has left.”

A nasty thought occurred to Heath. Had Brenna befriended Sonya to get close to the wealthy Mrs. Patterson? Looking at her now, nibbling at his muffin, he found it hard to suspect her. But that was his job, after all.

“Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t the two of us work together?” This was the plan he and Grif had hastily come up with, now that she was on to their surveillance. Heath would pretend to be her teammate. Since she didn’t know Grif existed, he would continue to observe from a discreet distance to see if Brenna made contact with anyone when she thought no one was looking. Even now, Grif was seated at the opposite end of the restaurant, nursing a cup of coffee and reading a newspaper.

Heath hoped Brenna would make her move soon. Fleming Ketcher was pushing him to make the arrest, and was only marginally convinced that Heath’s plan to give her some line was a better idea.

“I don’t want to work with you,” Brenna said. “I don’t like you. You’re sneaky, and you think I’m a liar, or stupid, or both.”

“I don’t think you’re any of those things.” It was partly the truth. He didn’t think she was stupid. “I’m prepared to believe you really don’t know where Marvin is, and that you’re not protecting him.”

“Well, gee, thanks.”

He needed to convince her they were on the same side. “Listen, Brenna. Even if you don’t like me, I have resources you don’t. I have access to databases and a crime lab. And I can offer you some measure of protection.”

“But why do you need me?” she asked, not unreasonably.

“You can identify both the stolen jewelry and Marvin. All I have are the rough drawings you provided, and a couple of blurry photographs of the perp.”

He could see she was mulling over his words. On second thought, she was mulling over his gumbo. “Do you want something else to eat?”

She waved at Willie the waiter. “Can I have a bowl of that gumbo, please? Large.”

Chapter Two

If this was what FBI agents did all day, Brenna thought, she wondered why she hadn’t applied to the Bureau. She and Heath had spent all afternoon hitting every jewelry store in the French Quarter, checking out the inventory for any sign of Brenna’s stolen pieces, then showing Marvin’s photo to the proprietors asking if anyone had seen him.

No one had.

Still, Brenna was in her element. She lingered over some of the gaudy estate pieces, trying on rings that cost more than she made in a year, imagining how she might reinterpret the designs in her own style.

She also enjoyed watching Heath in his macho FBI role. The suit, the badge, the subtle bulge of his gun in its shoulder holster had seemed a bit out of place in Cottonwood, Texas. But here in New Orleans, the costume afforded him respect. People took him seriously. They listened when he spoke. Some were decidedly afraid of him. And the women, especially, responded to him in an obviously sexual way, even the senior citizens.

She sighed. Respect was one thing she’d never really gotten in her life. As the youngest of six kids, she was the one always craning her neck, looking up to her big brothers and sisters.

Marvin had sensed that lack in her life. He’d known exactly what to say, how to look at her, how to listen to her, to make her believe he valued her as a person and recognized her intelligence and talent.

Intelligence. Right. She’d been a real smart one, letting a weasel into the chicken house.

“Brenna, let’s go,” Heath said impatiently. “We have a lot more shops to check in the French Quarter alone.”

Brenna realized she’d been lost in thought as she gazed at an aquamarine brooch in the shape of a dragonfly. She could do dragonflies, she realized, sleek, modern critters that would look as if they’d lit for an instant on a scarf or jacket lapel, shimmering with pavé diamonds.

She shook her head to clear it. “Sorry. Can we stop and get something to eat?”

“Two lunches weren’t enough?”

“It’s almost four o’clock. Teatime. Come on, I’ll treat,” she said as they cut through the colorfully named Pirate’s Alley to Jackson Square, where the living mosaic of sidewalk artists, musicians and mimes took Brenna’s breath away.

Heath seemed not to notice any of it. Not even a child doing an energetic soft-shoe dance while another little boy played the banjo could coax a smile out of the stoic agent.

Brenna tossed a few coins into the kids’ banjo case. Then she spotted the Café du Monde, which she’d just read about in a brochure at the Magnolia Guest House.

“This way.” She could already smell the rich coffee and chicory, not to mention the beignets.

“How are you going to treat?” Heath asked. “I thought you were broke.”

“I have a little bit of money,” she hedged. She didn’t want to tell him about the twelve thousand dollars in the lining of her suitcase. With Cindy eloping to Italy for her honeymoon, she would never be able to prove where she’d gotten so much cash.

They lucked out and found a table near the edge of the café, where people-watching was at its best. Brenna dug into her order of beignets, which were light-as-a-cloud, doughnutlike pastries drowning in powdered sugar. They melted in her mouth—she’d never tasted anything so exquisite. She polished hers off in no time, washing them down with the rich coffee, then noticed Heath had only taken a couple of bites of his.

“Don’t you like the beignets?”

He made a face. “Too sweet.”

“There’s no such thing as too sweet.” She batted her eyelashes at him, which had the desired effect. He pushed his plate toward her.

“Go for it.”

“Thanks.” As she savored the last few bites of pure fat and carbs, she pondered her new partner. She was grateful he’d joined forces with her. The prospect of abandoning her pursuit of Marvin had depressed her. But Heath Packer wasn’t nearly as much fun as Sonya and Cindy had been. At least with Sonya she could dish about men and clothes and makeup. And Cindy had been just plain fun, with her baby and her puppy and her straightforward way of talking and looking at things.

Heath hardly said a word. He was always at attention, those blue eyes of his darting around on constant alert, as if bad guys were going to accost them at any second.

They would have a lot more fun if he would loosen up a little.

“So where are you from?” she asked. “I know you’re not from Texas because of the way you talk, but I can’t quite place the accent.”

“Most recently from Baltimore.”

“What brought you to Dallas? That’s where you work out of, right? Dallas?”

“I was transferred there.”

“Why? Was it something you requested, or does the FBI move people around arbitrarily?”

“It was a mutual decision.”

Brenna’s nose quivered. She sensed a story there. “I bet there’s a woman involved.”

He looked at her sharply. “What makes you say that?”

“Men don’t just move halfway across the country for no reason. So, you’re running to something or away from something. I doubt it’s anything work related, since you appear to be conscientious about your job. So it must be a woman.”

He gave her a look that said she was out of her tree, but he neither confirmed nor denied.

“Okay, I won’t pry. I’ve never been to Baltimore. Is it nice?”

“Yeah, it’s a nice city. Pretty harbor. Nice old row houses. Fancy ballpark.”

“But not your hometown.”

“What makes you say that?”

“There’s no passion in your voice. If you’d been born and raised there, you’d either love it or hate it.”

He took his time responding, but he finally did. “St. Louis.”

Brenna snapped her fingers. “Of course. You’ve got a midwestern accent, which to me sounds like no accent at all. I spent four years in Kansas City, at the Art Institute. I should have guessed.”

“You went to the Kansas City Art Institute?” He seemed surprised.

“I not only went there, I graduated,” she said proudly. It was her one tangible success, her single piece of evidence that she wasn’t a complete screwup. Her parents hadn’t come to her graduation. They hadn’t understood what a big deal it was. They thought art school was insignificant compared to law school or business school.

She and Heath lapsed into another silence, and Brenna flipped through a jewelry magazine she’d picked up at one of the stores they’d visited. Suddenly she stopped turning pages. Her heartbeat accelerated. “Oh, my God.”

“What?” Heath looked around, his right hand reaching inside his jacket for his gun.

“Back down, there, Mr. FBI man. It’s not a physical threat. Take a look at this.” She turned the magazine around and showed him the ad that had so captured her attention.

“Synthetic emeralds by mail?”

“Not that ad, this one.” She tapped impatiently on the one she meant. “Big gem-and-bead show. This weekend, right here in New Orleans. If I were wanting to unload some hot jewelry fast, that’s where I’d do it.”

“You think Marvin will be there?”

“I’d bet on it. It’s one of those shows where anybody with the money for a booth can exhibit anything they want.”

“We’ll go, then. The doors open this evening.” He paused, regarding her thoughtfully. “How come you didn’t know about this show before? You’re in the business.”

She shrugged. “There are so many shows these days I can’t keep track. Besides, once I got accepted to the IJC show, I totally forgot about everything else. I needed all the time I had to get ready for New York. I get a ton of jewelry-trade magazines, but I haven’t cracked one in weeks.”

“Guess Marvin blew your chances to make a big splash in New York, huh?”

She sighed. “I’ve been thinking about it. If I pull out of the show, they’ll probably never invite me to come back. The IJC is run by a bunch of snobs—cream-of-the-crop designers who want to protect their own positions as top dogs. On the other hand, if I show up with a less-than-stellar collection, they’ll also never ask me back.”

“So there’s no way out?”

“I have to find the stolen jewelry.” The more she talked, the more depressed she felt about her situation. “Let’s keep working the stores. Somebody, somewhere in this town knows Marvin.”

HEATH DIDN’T KNOW what to think about Brenna. Her parents hadn’t mentioned anything about a degree from the Kansas City Art Institute, and it hadn’t shown up on a background check. That was a pretty decent school. The way the elder Thompsons had presented Brenna, she’d sounded like a dabbler, a hobbyist. But she didn’t strike him as that way now.

Then again, what did he know about the jewelry trade?

Fueled by caffeine and sugar, Heath and Brenna visited several more jewelers. But Brenna’s enthusiasm waned as afternoon wore into evening. No one recognized Marvin, and there was no sign of the stolen loot.

“Are you ready to go back to your hotel?” Heath asked.

“Yeah. My feet are killing me. Where are you staying? Somewhere fancy? Our tax dollars at work?”

“Actually, I’m in the room next door to yours.” But he would probably spend most of the night in his car, alternating shifts with Grif—who was, speak of the devil, sitting down at a table uncomfortably close, his ubiquitous newspaper in hand. Brenna’s back was to Grif, so he grinned and waved at Heath.

Heath suppressed his urge to grin back. Grif was a good guy, fresh out of the academy and still having fun with the job. Heath sighed quietly, remembering when he was like that.