Blood Ties in Chef Voleur (7 page)

Jack stood and stretched, then went around the table and opened
the refrigerator door. “Want some water?” he asked.

“Hmm?”

He looked at her. She was still looking down at the letter in
her hand. Obviously she hadn’t heard him.

“Water?” he said again.

“Oh. Yes, please.”

He set a bottle beside her and went back to his chair. As he
sat, she reached for her grandmother’s letter.

He snatched it up. “Hang on. I can’t read everything. I want to
take another look at it.”

“No. I want it back,” Cara Lynn said. “I don’t want anything to
happen to it.”

“Hey,” he said, holding it out of reach when she tried to take
it again. “Watch out. I’ll give it back to you when I’m done with it.”

“I don’t want it torn or wrinkled.”

“Then stop grabbing for it. Come on, Cara Lynn, why would I
want to destroy your grandmother’s letter to you. It confirms what my
grandfather said. He didn’t kill Con Delancey. She did.”

“What?” Cara Lynn snapped. “She does not say that.”

“Oh, come on. She says right here, ‘I shall wait until you
marry to give you the last journal. Not until you have a love of your own, can
you know the joy and heartbreak of love and then perhaps, you can understand why
I did
something, something
—”

“Well
something
is not
kill my husband
.”

“No,” Jack said. “But I think it says
did
what I did
or
what I had to do
. Then she
goes on to say, ‘My hope is that you hide or
something
the journal, but I will be gone so it is yours. Do what
you will with it. Nothing can
something
me any
longer and I do not
something
anything.’ I’m sure
that’s
nothing can hurt me
and
I do not regret anything
.”

“You don’t know that. You said you couldn’t read her
writing.”

“I can read it well enough to figure out what she’s saying.” He
waved the letter. “You can’t deny that this sounds like a confession.”

Cara Lynn thumped the paper with her knuckles. “I can deny it
all I want to. This isn’t proof of anything. It’s your grandfather’s word
against—against...hers. Now give me my letter,” she said, folding his
grandfather’s letter and handing it back to him.

“In a minute. I want to ask you something first.”

“Give me my letter!” she demanded, reaching for it.

“Cara, damn it, stop. If you want to get into a scuffle, I’ll
guarantee you I can take you. And if you think I won’t because you’re a girl,
then keep grabbing at the letter.”

She crossed her arms, leaned back in her chair and fixed him
with a stony glare. “Fine. Go ahead.”

He held onto the letter while he spoke. “I need you to promise
me that you won’t tell your family about all this.”

She laughed. It was a short burst that had no humor in it. “Are
you kidding me?” she said incredulously.

“No. I’m not kidding. I’m absolutely serious. If I’m going to
trust you to work with me to find out the truth about who killed your
grandfather, I’ve got to know you won’t betray me to your family.”

“Betray— You’ve got a lot of gall, asking me to promise you
something like that.”

“Oh, and I need to know if you’ve already told anybody and who
they are. All of them.”

“Who would I have told? I just found out.”

“Not just. You found out yesterday morning, didn’t you, when
you came back by the apartment to change clothes and found my notepad,” he said.
“You’ve seen your mother since then, and who knows who else. You could have told
all of them for all I know. And of course, you have a phone. You could have told
the entire Delancey clan, hell—most of the city, by now.”

“I—didn’t,” she said evenly, although how she made her voice
even he didn’t know. Because her expression was twisted into a mask of anger and
something else he couldn’t quite identify. Could it be hurt? Had he hurt her
feelings?

“First of all, I’ve already promised not to reveal your ‘true
identity—’” she surrounded the two words with air quotes “—to any of my
family.

“As for all this—” she gestured at his briefcase and the letter
from his grandfather. “How can I talk to them about all this and not tell them
about you? So I think I’ve covered that. Now, you have to promise me the same
thing.”

“The same thing?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean don’t tell your family. And for sure as hell, don’t
tell my family.”

Jack shook his head tiredly. “My
family
consists of my mom, who lives in Florida with her sister.
Papi was my dad’s father. So Mom cares nothing about all this. All she cares
about is that her
murderer
father-in-law is finally
dead. So you don’t have to worry about my family.” He heard the bitterness in
his voice and was a little surprised. He’d never spent much time thinking about
how his mother had reacted to his grandfather’s imprisonment. His dad had
already been sick at the time and died only a couple of years later. That was
probably at least part of the reason that he, Jack, had been so close to his
grandfather. Papi had filled the role of father for him.

He and his mom talked, and he visited her during the holidays,
so he supposed they were as close as many mothers and sons. But, when his
grandfather died, Jack had felt as though he’d lost his family. Maybe that was
why clearing his grandfather’s name was so important to him.

He just wished he’d started digging for the truth years before,
instead of waiting until after Papi had died.

“Jack?” Cara Lynn said. “Will you promise?”

He shook his head sharply and blew out a frustrated breath.
“Sure. I promise I won’t tell my family.”

“Or friends, or
my
family. I don’t
want my family upset for what’s probably no reason.”

“Or friends or your family,” he repeated. “I solemnly
swear.”

“You don’t have to be so sarcastic about it,”

“Sorry,” he mumbled, sliding the sheet of fine parchment paper
across the table to her. When she took it, he saw her fingers trembling. She
carefully folded it and stuck it back into its fragile envelope. Then she rubbed
her temple shakily. “Thanks,” she said shortly. “Now, I’ve got a headache. I’m
going to bed.” She stood, gripping the back of her chair.

“What’s the matter?” Jack asked.

She shook her head, then rubbed her temple again. “Nothing. I
think I forgot to eat. I’ll be fine.”

“I could fix you a sandwich—”

Cara Lynn held up a hand, her expression pained. “Don’t!” she
said. “Don’t start offering to do things for me. We may still have a marriage
license binding us together, but as far as I’m concerned, you and I—” she
pointed back and forth between them “—are
nothing
.”

Chapter Seven

Paul was becoming desperate. He’d spent his entire adult life as caretaker of Claire Delancey’s Garden District home, while she lived in France. He’d struck a deal with her to live there rent-free and care for, repair and renovate the beautiful but decaying old home.

Now Claire was dead and her will stated that her home and all current furnishings and décor would go, not to Paul, but to her newly found granddaughter, Hannah Martin. Suddenly, it occurred to Paul that he was about to be homeless.

It had only been a matter of a couple of months since Claire had told him she’d reconnected with her estranged daughter, who was dying from liver failure and waiting for a transplant. To Claire’s surprise and delight, her daughter had a child—Hannah, who was twenty-six years old.

It had all come to light when Hannah witnessed a murder and fled to New Orleans to ask for help from her mother’s best friend, and instead had met the best friend’s son, MacEllis Griffin—one of Dawson’s D&D Security investigators. The two of them had been instrumental in breaking up a drug distribution ring and rescuing Hannah’s mother, who’d been kidnapped and left for dead.

At the time, Paul had been happy for Claire, not considering what her newfound family would mean to him. Somewhere along the line, while he’d been living on Claire’s money and doing his favorite things—remodeling and redecorating, he’d lost track of what belonged to him and what did not.

Claire’s lawyers hadn’t mentioned her checking account on which he was signatory, but he knew it was only a matter of time before they’d get around to closing it. Luckily, he’d recently bought materials to overhaul the two-story porch that wrapped around the entire front of the house. He’d already made a deposit to his own account in the Cayman Islands.

He sat at the French Provincial writing table in Claire’s master suite, comparing his bankbook from his Cayman account with Claire’s household checking account. Beside the account book was the police scanner he liked to listen to. The night had been quiet, very few break-ins or domestic disputes, and nothing more serious than that. He turned it off and picked up his tumbler of bourbon and stared at the account book in front of him.

Over the past twenty-plus years, he’d spent every bit of the money Claire had given him in quarterly transfers. The issue, if the lawyers discovered it, was that less than half of Claire’s money had gone into the house. The rest he’d spent on himself.

To Paul, that seemed perfectly reasonable, given that in his opinion, redoing an entire twenty-five hundred square foot house from roof to foundation over a period of a couple of decades was a full-time job. However, he couldn’t be sure that her lawyers and accountants would agree that a caretaker’s personal expenses other than shelter over twenty years equaled approximately three million dollars. After all, that was only a hundred and fifty thousand a year.

Looking at his Cayman account balance, he was extraordinarily pleased with himself that he’d managed to pad material and labor expenses enough to sock away just over a million. Not a bad retirement, he thought, sipping bourbon, for a job well done.

Despite what the lawyers might suspect, he felt relatively confident that there was nothing they could prosecute him for. He and Claire had set up this arrangement verbally. And as quickly as possible, he’d switched their correspondence from telephone to email, so he had proof of what she had expected from him. He had saved every email she’d ever sent him, even the few where she’d requested explanations for what had seemed to her outrageous expenses.

Because, even when she complained, she still had stated over and over that she had expected him to spend money on the house and to compensate himself. Not only that, he had sent her photos of progress on specific projects, and he’d saved those emails, too.

Claire’s death was extremely annoying. Paul knew he was going to be harassed by the accountants and lawyers, and forced to produce two decades of receipts and invoices and bank statements. And, once all that was over, he was probably going to have to leave New Orleans. And none of those were even his biggest problem.

What was feeding his panic was something much worse. Claire had sent Lilibelle Guillame’s priceless tiara and her last and most revealing personal journal to Cara Lynn on the occasion of her marriage. And Paul knew that even if the lawyers or accountants found discrepancies in his record-keeping, his fiduciary indiscretions of the past twenty years couldn’t hold a candle to what he had done twenty-eight years ago. If the truth about Con Delancey’s death ever came out, the Delanceys would destroy him.

But every moment that he did not have the journal in his hands was another chance for someone to read it and find out what had really happened that fateful day, twenty-eight years ago.

He didn’t have the journal, but he did have an important piece of information that he was pretty certain nobody else had, except the little princess, Cara Lynn. They were the only ones who knew there had been a letter in the box. And she had it.

Paul had seen her catch the white paper in her fingers just as the lights had gone out. He’d counted the seconds until the emergency generator kicked in and was looking directly at Cara Lynn when the lights turned on again. She was slipping the bit of white into her small evening clutch.

He couldn’t swear that what he’d seen was a letter. But he would bet it was. It only made sense that Lili or Claire or both of them would write a note to accompany the gift. Whether it had been written by Lili or Claire, whether it was a long letter or a brief note, it could contain information harmful to him.

He had made plans from the beginning for getting into Cara Lynn’s house on the pretense of helping her with her genealogy research. However, she’d already put him off several times, claiming she was too busy, so he was going to have to change his plans. One way or another, he had to get his hands on that letter—and soon.

Picking up his tumbler of bourbon, listening to the ice pinging against the sides of the glass, he walked over to the bed. He dropped his dressing gown and climbed under the covers, propping himself up against the headboard. As he sipped the whisky, he thought about the best way to get that letter.

Picking up his cell phone, he paged through his call log, looking for the name he’d called a few times before, when he’d needed help. As he watched the names slide by, he asked himself if he was confident that if he did this, he could keep Cara Lynn from being hurt.

He spotted the name and clicked on it.

* * *

C
ARA
L
YNN
WOKE
in the dark, her head pounding. She couldn’t see. Someone had turned off the lights or covered the windows or blocked out the sun. It was hard to breathe, too. She tried to turn over and couldn’t.

Her head was covered. Her nose was pressed into the mattress. She clawed at the covers, trying to loosen them so she could get a full breath.

She had a vague recollection of taking migraine medication and lying down. She must have gotten twisted in the covers. She rolled her head back on her neck—or tried to. But the covers were too tight.

Panic rose like bile in her throat and she sucked in air desperately. She struggled to tear her way out of the covers. She had to have air. Forcing her mouth open, she wheezed and sucked every molecule of oxygen she could into her lungs.

“Help—Jack!” she tried to scream. But no sound came out. She just wasted air. She got her arms under her and pushed, but something weighed her down. She couldn’t get any purchase with her legs, either. This wasn’t just twisted covers. She pushed against the weight again. This time she identified the source of the pressure. Something—a hand—on her head was pressing her face into the mattress.

“Who—? Get off me!” she mumbled against the mattress.

Then something cold and round pressed into the soft flesh of her neck.

“Shut up!” a gruff, muffled voice said.

Terror hit her chest like a fist, knocking what little air she had left from her lungs. “Can’t—breathe!” she rasped. “—can’t—”

“Shut! Up! And be still!” the voice said, but the hand on the back of her head let up—a little. Her lungs spasmed and her head pounded as she finally managed to gulp in enough air to stop the burning in her chest. She pushed with her arms again, an instinctive move to gain some control of her body, but the hand on the back of her head shoved her back down and her face was mashed against the bedclothes again. Then the cold heaviness against her neck pressed harder, deeper—so deep it hurt.

“Be still or I’ll shoot you!”

Gun!
Cara Lynn’s pulse throbbed where the barrel of the gun pressed into her neck. That increased the pain in her head and she felt nauseated. “Let me up,” she begged. “Who are—”

“Don’t talk. Listen.”

The voice echoed in her ears like the low, eerie growl of an alligator in the swamp at dusk.

She nodded as best as she could with the twin pressures of the man’s hand on her head and the gun. Her nose and mouth were half pressed into the too-soft sheets, so that she still had to struggle to breathe, but at least she could get air in. “Please—” she gasped, “don’t hurt me.”

“Then
shut up
and listen. Where’s the letter?”

“What?” Cara Lynn blurted. “The what?”

The gun jabbed her, sending screaming pain up the side of her head. “The letter you pulled out of the journal.”

Something was odd about the voice. It sounded like the man was deliberately deepening it, making it more bass and gravelly. The intense pounding pain in her head kept her from thinking clearly, and the grating roughness of the voice made it hard to understand him. “Journal?” she said, trying to think through the pain.

The gun jabbed again. “The
letter
. That was in the journal.”

“Oh,” she said, finally putting his words together into sentences that made sense. The letter. Whoever he was, he’d been there, seen her slide the letter out from between the pages of the journal, just before the lights went out, or sticking it into her clutch as the lights came on. And then it hit her. It didn’t matter what he’d seen. What mattered was that this was someone she knew.
Dear God!

“‘Oh’ is right,” he growled. “Where is it?”

The man’s hand shifted on the back of her head, letting up on the pressure a little more. Enough so she could answer him. Then she realized that his hand was trembling. He was nervous. He wasn’t some all-powerful monster. He was a man and he was not completely confident of what he was doing. She tried to lift her head and he pushed her face into the sheets again.

“Watch it!” he growled.

“Please—need to breathe.” She hoped a direct appeal might help. But he wasn’t buying it.

“Hah. You’re not dying, at least not yet. You’ll
know
when you’re dying.”

“I don’t—”

She felt his knee come down on the middle of her back and his voice was suddenly right in her ear. “Don’t even try it.”

She shivered. “I don’t know—”

“I swear to God, woman, I will shoot you. You have that letter and I want it, now!”

Cara Lynn felt the gun barrel trembling, and something wet—a drop of his sweat?—fall on the back of her neck. He wasn’t just nervous. He was terrified. Maybe she could use that to get away from him.

She remembered hearing her brothers talk about people who were inexperienced with guns and how dangerous they were. Their trembling hand might jerk, the finger they were already pressing too tightly against the trigger might spasm and
Boom!
Their victim was dead.

This man could shoot her without meaning to. He had her pinned down on the bed. His gun was pressed into her flesh. If he pulled the trigger, she would die instantly and the noise would be muffled by the mattress.

“Okay,” she said, the fist of terror in her chest squeezing her heart. She had only one chance. She had to give him what he wanted. She took a breath, her chest heaving in a staccato rhythm with her racing pulse. Her head still screamed with pain, so much that she could barely think. She prayed to God that she was doing the right thing. That once she told the man what he wanted to know, he wouldn’t kill her anyway.

“It’s in the briefcase, by the door,” she whispered.

“You better be telling me the truth,” he said, his mouth still close enough to her ear that she could hear the tremolo in it. “Because you won’t live through the day if you’re lying.”

The nausea that was pushing against the back of her throat began to increase, not helped by the heavy knee in her back. The pain in her head was a constant throbbing now. She couldn’t remember when it hadn’t hurt. It felt as though the gun’s barrel rose and fell against her neck with each beat of her heart.

Then, the barrel jabbed again. She moaned.

“I’m going to get the briefcase and leave. If you move a muscle...” She felt him straighten, felt the pressure of his hand and the gun’s barrel lessen. Immediately, without moving a muscle, she suddenly found it easier to breathe.

“I won’t—” she gasped.

“If you make one noise, move one inch, I will come back in here and shoot you right in the heart. Do you understand?”

She moved her head slightly, nodding. “I swear I won’t move.”

“And if that letter isn’t there, I’ll come back here and shoot your husband and you in your sleep.”

Bile burned her throat. She swallowed as nausea curled in her stomach and acrid saliva filled her mouth. “Please,” she rasped. “I swear I won’t move.”

“Count five minutes—three hundred seconds— before you move,” he said, letting go the pressure on her head.

The gun barrel stayed at her throat and she could feel the man’s hand, hovering over the back of her skull, waiting—just waiting—for her slightest movement. Then he picked up a pillow and put it over her head.

A burst of sheer panic cut through her like a laser.

“Put your hands over the pillow, on the back of your head. Clasp your fingers.”

She did what he said. Without her hands to hold her head and upper torso away from the sheets, her nose and mouth sank into the soft bedclothes again. She was back in the nightmare. No matter that her head was turned sideways, she still felt as though she were suffocating.