Worry beads, p.5
Worry Beads, page 5
“He was crossing a street.” The guy came up the steps and took Laura’s hands in his.
“Hit and run.”
He nodded. “Witnesses said the car never braked.”
She pulled her hands free and turned away from them both, her arms wrapped around her middle.
The desire to comfort her, to hold her shocked him.
“I can drive you home,” the guy offered.
Archie didn’t move a single cell, but the guy’s gaze shifted toward him as if he sensed Archie had wanted some cells to move.
She turned around, her lips twisting. “Thanks, Frank.” Her gaze shifted to Archie. “Archie can drive me home.”
“Archie?” Frank’s brows rose.
“This is my brother, Frank,” she offered. “Archie is a friend of Becca’s.”
Frank nodded, but his gaze was still narrowed. Now that he knew, Archie realized he should have seen the resemblance to Zach, and to a lesser degree, Alex.
“No one was at the house,” Frank said.
“Zach is inside with Alex.” She half turned toward the street and stopped. “My car is in the alley.”
Frank hesitated, his gaze moving between Laura and Archie, then he held out his keys. “We can trade back later.”
Archie took the keys. Laura dug in a pocket and handed him hers. “Thanks.”
As she moved to pass him, he gave her an awkward half hug. His gaze shifted to Archie. He looked like he wanted to ask or order. Gunn wasn’t sure which.
“Thanks. I’ll see you at the house, Laura.”
It was very close to an order. Frank, Archie recalled, was FBI. Frank hesitated once more, then turned and entered the house. And he was alone with Laura. A still shocked, still reeling Laura, but there was something else.
Now her steady gaze was a steely, “We’re gonna talk.”
Seven
Laura didn’t speak as he held the door for her, stayed silent when he climbed in the driver’s seat, and eased her brother’s car through the cluster of emergency vehicles.
He didn’t have words for how much he didn’t want to leave without knowing what had happened to the necklace, but he was nothing if not pragmatic. If it had been found by Henri’s attacker, it was already gone. If it hadn’t been found, it wasn’t going to be found until Henri told them where it was. His last sight, before he turned a corner and left Henri’s street behind, was of a stretcher being loaded into the ambulance.
Looked like, for now, that Henri was alive. He opened his mouth to ask her to let someone know to post a guard—and closed it. Zach might not know Archie’s story, but he’d been a cop and could add. As long as the cop wasn’t dirty, Henri had a chance.
And so did he. If—
He glanced at the silent girl next to him.
Shock still kept the color from her face. Her lips were tightly compressed. Her hands clutching each other. After a small hesitation, he reached over and covered her clenched hands with one of his.
They were icy, clammy.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She licked her lips. “I am, too.”
She glanced at him, and the grief in her eyes made him want to slam on the brakes and take her in his arms.
“He was a good man. A good partner. Good at saving lives.”
Gunn wasn’t sure what to ask or say, so he waited, his gaze moving from her to check behind them. They could have picked up a tail back there. What was one more car in that mess?
He made some random turns. Watching for trouble, waiting for Laura to ask.
“Is there a connection?”
She’d have had a lot of practice at channeling calm in a crisis, but Gunn was still impressed.
“It’s possible,” he admitted. “We were probably followed last night,” he reminded her.
“My dad’s house…”
He didn’t speak, just waited.
“We should go to the morgue,” she said, managing to surprise him.
She’d said that before, but…
“Okay.”
She gave him the next few turns. Take a right. Take a left. Not that street. This one.
“Are we being followed right now?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. If they were, they were hanging back. Not being obvious. Or they’d been waiting near the alley entrances. “We might have lost them by taking this car.”
“Why kill him?” The words came out with suppressed passion. “He didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“He was there.” Gunn hesitated. “You said that your hit and run said ogre, too. Did he say anything else?”
She bit her lip. And then she shifted to look at him. It was not a comfortable examination. He was, he knew, being assessed. Could she trust him? It wasn’t easy to endure, because he wasn’t sure she could trust him. There was more on the line, more than his past, or their lives. He didn’t want to poke that bear or think about it. But he felt the risk of being this close to her. He had tried this before and failed. And in the end, she’d have decided for herself. Words from him or anyone else were useless right now.
Slowly, as if she had to tell it all, she began to speak. “He asked me if I was a real blonde and I asked him if he would believe me if I said I was. He had always liked blondes, he said. And then he moved.” She drew in a breath. “Must have hurt like hell because he was busted from head to toe. But he sort of offered the beads. They were covered in, well, everything they could be covered in.”
She looked away for a moment.
“Take them, he said. Pretty girl should have beads. They’ll bring you luck, he said. Not lucky for him, but LaFon said it would make him feel better. So I took them. I mean my uniform was already covered in crap, too. So I did. I…promised I’d hang on to them. For luck.”
Gunn bit back the impulse to ask more, drill for more. She needed to hold onto to the thread of it.
“Then he said ogre. Hunt ogre. At least that is what it sounded like.”
“Hunt?” He allowed himself the small question.
“Yeah, it didn’t make sense, but neither did ogre.”
She was quiet for a whole block, and he had to fight with himself again to stay silent and wait for her.
“I told him we’d do what we could and then he said ‘baby,’ at least that is what it sounded like. I repeated it, and then he looked worried maybe or scared. He told me to be careful. And then…”
She stopped, and Gunn almost broke the steering wheel gripping it.
“Treasure. He said, ‘treasure.’ Very clearly, no question.”
“Treasure,” Gunn repeated the word, feeling it echo through his mind.
“He flatlined right after that. There was nothing we could do for him.”
She sounded exhausted and sagged in the seat with her eyes closed.
“Did you tell anyone else?”
She opened her eyes, giving him a wary glance.
“Was anyone else at the scene close enough to hear?” he amended.
“We signaled to the on-scene cop. He was the one in the car last night. The one who stopped to see if we were okay outside the restaurant.”
“I remember.”
“He asked if he said anything about who hit him and LaFon—” her voice broke, and it took her a few seconds to go on— “told him it was an ogre. But that’s all.”
Except she ended up on the news wearing the beads. Who else had seen them? Had that single word ended up in a police report? And who had seen that?
“Ogre,” he repeated. He couldn’t fault her on her hearing, because Henri had said the same thing.
“Ogre,” she agreed. “And now I’ve told you my story, it’s your turn.”
“Yes,” he agreed heavily. He had to take his hand off hers to reach into his inside pocket. He extracted a partially folded letter-sized envelope and handed it to her.
With a wary glance at him, she opened it and took out a photograph. They paused at a light long enough for him to watch her expression as she took it in.
“But that’s—” she stopped.
“Is it the same?”
“I can’t be sure, but it looks like the same beads.”
It was interesting that she saw them as Mardi Gras beads and not as an obviously expensive necklace.
She looked at him. “This is from a collection?” Her eyes widened. “Treasure? It’s all…missing? Stolen?”
“Until I saw those around your neck the other night, I’d have sworn—and I’m not the only one who believed this—that this collection had been completely destroyed.”
“Destroyed?”
“Seventeen years ago.” He had to pause to steady his voice. Even now he could feel the shock of it vibrate through him. “September eleventh.”
He heard her shocked inhale.
“The twin towers.”
“The twin towers,” he echoed.
“Who—” She stopped.
How, he wondered, had she known there’d been someone and not just the “treasure?”
“My brother.” He said it flatly but heard the echoes of old pain flooded back in a tide.
The pause felt long, but this time it was her hand that covered his fist where it rested on his knee. Her hand felt cold but still managed to generate warmth as her new grief and his old grief forged something between them he couldn’t think about right now.
“There,” she said.
For a moment his brain fumbled, then he remembered. The morgue. Where—
“The one that looks like the front of a funeral home.”
He looked at her, a brow arched, and she nodded.
“Yes, it was. We’re supposed to be getting a nice, shiny new morgue but so far…” She shrugged. She reached for the door handle, but Gunn grabbed her arm.
“Wait,” he said. He clambered out and studied the street behind and ahead of them, but his gut wasn’t twitching—other than with fear for this woman and worry about her effect on him. Finally, he went to her side and opened the door, extending a hand for her.
“Let’s go meet my sister,” she said.
Archie studied Hannah for so long that Laura had to resist the urge to tell him Hannah was taken. She didn’t know why he needed so much time. They were all pretty much alike.
“You’re both very different, aren’t you?” Archie finally said.
Hannah arched her brows and gave Laura a “we have to talk” look before leading them back to her “office.” It was a desk in the corner of one of the examining rooms. There were stacks of file folders on her desk. She picked up the top one, and opened it, bit her lip, and looked up at them.
“I only had time for a quick look at your victim,” she said, giving Laura a veiled look of annoyance this time. “He’s not on the list for an autopsy.”
Laura had a feeling she’d only agreed to meet them so she could get a look at Archie. Rumors would be swirling in the sibling network, but they’d all be wrong, she thought with a sigh.
“We’re trying to find out more about him,” Laura explained when Archie didn’t speak. So, no one had claimed his body. “Do we have a name?” LaFon was the one who had secured and bagged his personal items that night.
Hannah lifted a bag that was also lurking on her desk clutter. “I didn’t log in his personal items.” Her gaze ran down the list. “No wallet.”
“That could have been stolen before we got there.” Laura sighed. In that neighborhood that was more than likely. If he’d had a wallet. “So no ID?”
Hannah frowned at the list. “Says here the victim was Hebert LeBlanc. There was a social security card in one of his pocket’s.”
Laura’s lips twisted. “Two of the most common names in Louisiana.”
“Did you notice anything unusual, anything that would give a clue to where he’d been?” Archie finally spoke.
Hannah hesitated. “Well, obviously he had a lot of vehicular-related injuries.”
“But,” Laura prompted.
“He had a bite on his leg.”
“A bite?” Archie’s voice left the neutral zone.
“Without an expert, I can’t say for sure…” Hannah hesitated again, then sighed. “It looked like it could be a gator bite.”
Hannah “let” them see Hebert’s body. He’d been cleaned up after he arrived at the morgue. He wasn’t as old as Laura had thought. She had, she realized now, slotted him into the homeless, possibly alcoholic, category, but with the muck gone there were none of the usual signs of alcoholism. This did not bump him into a prosperous category. His nails hadn’t had a manicure for a while—or ever—and his hair needed a better cut.
Laura looked away while Hannah zipped the bag down and exposed the bite. That she did study. Not that it provided much insight. She’d seen a wide variety of injuries but had not yet encountered an alligator bite. Something to look forward to.
“According to the tech who processed the victim, the wound was wrapped in a tee shirt, and he cleaned off a lot of algae in and around the wound.” Hannah flipped through the pages, then looked up. “That’s all that seemed interesting.”
“Algae?” Archie arched a brow.
“Like swamp algae?” Laura asked.
“Louisiana has algae in a lot of places,” Hannah said dryly. “Looks like the tech saved some samples, but I can’t send them out for testing without authorization.” Something in Archie’s face perhaps prompted her to add, “Our budget is pretty sad. Unlike TV shows, we don’t get to go off testing things that look curious whenever we want.”
“I understand,” he said. “Is there any chance we could get one of the samples to test ourselves? I might know someone at UNO…”
Hannah hesitated, but it wasn’t as if nothing ever walked out of here without permission. Only last spring a crazed killer had waltzed in, stolen evidence, and strolled out again. Hannah set both the file folder and the property list down on her desk and left. Laura looked away as Archie used his phone to snap photos of each page of the folder, and the cover letter for Hebert’s personal belongings. His phone was put away and the file closed by the time Hannah came back. She set the samples down and turned to Laura, her back to Archie.
“It’s a pity your victim didn’t say anything before he died.”
“But—” Laura hesitated, but she’d gone too far.
“There’s nothing in the file,” Hannah pointed out with a frown.
“Well, maybe no one wanted to write down ogre.”
Archie had shifted so he was part of their little group again, and the samples were gone.
“Ogre?” Hannah frowned.
“That’s what it sounded like to me and LaFon—” Her voice broke as she said his name. “He told the beat cop, but more as a joke.” She took a shaky breath. There’d been more. Had LaFon told someone—the wrong someone—the rest of the conversation? He hadn’t seemed to take it any more seriously than she had, but what if someone had asked him? Only the three of them knew Hebert had said anything that night. It was a sad, weird story with beads and an ogre. Another war story.
“Maybe the cop didn’t write it down,” she suggested. He was young, and all he’d been handed was ogre. Fast way to get teased if he had written it down. He’d been there last night but before they were followed…she was too tired to be paranoid and too tired to not be. Too tired and too…sad. LaFon. His hit and run might have nothing at all to do with the beads.
“I wonder…” Hannah’s voice trailed off.
“What do you wonder?” Archie’s voice was carefully bland as if the answer didn’t matter at all.
“Well, maybe he was saying Auger.” She spelled the word, then repeated it with a more French pronunciation.
Laura’s eyes met Archie’s. “Ogre. Auger.”
“Does that name mean anything to you?” Archie asked, his brows drawn together.
Hannah half shrugged. “You should talk to Frank.”
Frank. Laura rubbed the ache between her brows. The one thing they did not need was a link to organized crime. But—she thought the family knew all the Family names, thanks to Alex’s wife, Nell.
“Not a local family,” Laura protested, though half-heartedly. She was not an expert on crime in New Orleans or anywhere else. She was EMS, despite the high number of law enforcement professionals in her family. She had been called to crime scenes, of course, but only when the victims were still alive. The law enforcement part she avoided. It was probably Freudian or something.
Hannah hesitated, her gaze flickering to Archie, then repeated, “Ask Frank.”
Eight
Was Laura in danger? Archie considered the events of the last twenty-four hours, trying to figure out an answer to that question.
Two people connected to Hebert LeBlanc were now dead.
Someone had followed them last night. But with what intent?
Laura had been the one wearing the beads on TV, and he wouldn’t have noticed them if the camera hadn’t zoomed in close. He’d felt a chill at the shape of the Krewe badge, and the streetlight had caught the diamond, making a modest flash even with the dirt obscuring part of it. And he wouldn’t have been here to see her or the necklace if not for the strange tip he’d received…
Was her partner dead because of what he’d heard Hebert say? If he was, then Laura was in danger.
Ogre. Auger.
Had someone acted to make sure the name stayed out of any official report? What about the beat cop, the only other person who’d heard ogre mentioned? Archie could make the case for the cop to be clean and too embarrassed to enter the word ogre into his report—or dirty for not entering it. No way to know without asking someone with access to the report.
Hannah Baker wanted them to talk to their brother Frank, but Archie wasn’t sure he wanted more Bakers involved. In fact, he’d like to reduce the number of involved Bakers to zero. Archie glanced at Laura. How did he ease her out? Would she be wise enough to be careful? Not that being around him—if the beads were the beads—was any safer. But at least he knew there was danger and was watching out for it.
“I’m not super thrilled about calling Frank,” Laura said, breaking into his thoughts.
