Colleen Thompson – Phantom of the French Quarter (страница 1)
“I have to leave here, Caitlyn. I have to leave here very soon.”
When more of her hair slid free, she pulled off the hat and, with a nervous flutter, fanned her face with its broad brim. “I know you can’t help me. But at least you don’t treat me like some melodramatic little girl.”
“First of all, you’d be crazy not to be upset after everything you’ve been through.” Finally giving in to the need to touch her, he took her hand and stroked his thumb across her knuckles. “And believe me, I have never seen you as a little girl, not for a single moment.”
Leaning closer, he skimmed his lips over her soft cheek and whispered into her ear, “It’s a woman that I’m touching, a woman that I dream of. Or do you need a reminder of that, Caitlyn?”
Phantom of the French Quarter
Colleen Thompson
To every booklover who’s ever passed along a favorite story and
told a friend, a sister or a perfect stranger,
“You absolutely have to read this.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
After beginning her career writing historical romance novels, Colleen Thompson turned to writing the contemporary romantic suspense she loves in 2004. Since then, her work has been honored with the Texas Gold Award, along with nominations for RITA®, Daphne du Maurier, and multiple reviewers’ choice honors, along with starred reviews from RT Book Reviews and Publishers Weekly. A former teacher living with her family in the Houston area, Colleen has a passion for reading, hiking and dog rescue. Visit her online at www.colleen-thompson.com.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Caitlyn Villaré —A beautiful young tour guide with a passion for old French Quarter cemeteries, Caitlyn will do whatever it takes to save her fledging business—even if that means trusting the mesmerizing dark-eyed stranger she first glimpsed among the tombs.
Marcus Le Carpentier —Brooding and mysterious, this funerary art photographer has every reason to avoid police attention. Yet he cannot ignore the evidence his images have captured…or the smoldering attraction that threatens to ignite each time he encounters Caitlyn.
Josiah Paine —Caitlyn’s hot-tempered former boss was furious that his best tour guide left to start a rival business. Has his thirst for vengeance gone beyond his angry words?
Max Lafitte —Jealous of Caitlyn’s overnight success, does this aging tour guide have a far older reason to despise her?
Mrs. Eva Rill —Hidden beneath her black veil, this mysterious white-haired woman bristles with angry accusations—accusations that may only be a ruse to lure Caitlyn to her death.
Reuben Pierce —Hired to protect Caitlyn from the dangers of the Quarter, this retired cop-turned-bodyguard sees no greater threat than the fugitive photographer who seems so determined to spirit her away.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Epilogue
Chapter One
In an old French Quarter cemetery that cradled saints and sinners alike, dawn stained the slumbering fog bloodred. Layer after layer, it awakened, rising like the resurrected dead and swirling in soft eddies around the young woman cutting through it.
“It has to be here somewhere,” Caitlyn Villaré called over her shoulder. Tension tightened her voice, and perspiration curled damp tendrils of long blond hair that clung to the fair skin at her temples and behind her neck. Her hand swished impatiently through the clotted June air, disturbing a small cloud of biting gnats.
From the next row of graves, a bull of a man wearing a rumpled chino blazer and a salt-and-pepper buzz cut shot her a grim look. “Let’s not get your hopes up too high. I saw the rock that old bat was wearing, and if some lowlife caught sight of it out here…”
Reuben Pierce let the words die, but his grim brown eyes did the talking for him. An old friend of her father’s, the retired cop served as her assistant, fellow tour guide and bodyguard. Or babysitter, as Caitlyn thought when she was most exasperated with her over-protective older sister, Jacinth.
But he was right, Caitlyn admitted to herself. As soon as the two of them had escorted her party of tourists out through the cemetery gates last night, unsavory types had undoubtedly descended, trolling for any leavings—and hoping to surprise any straggler foolish enough to return for a private viewing.
Only last month, a lone tourist—not one of her clients, thank goodness—had been found here, his pockets turned out and his throat slashed, his cooling corpse lying in a congealing pool of blood. She shivered at the thought of it, hurrying her steps, and said to Reuben, “If I don’t find that ring, that horrible old woman will tell everyone I stole it.”
Caitlyn’s stomach tightened with the memory of the shriveled crone, a tiny, wrinkled figure who’d worn a black lace veil over the silken white coil of her hair. At first Caitlyn had taken her attire for a costume, not unlike the gypsy storyteller outfits she herself wore to help enliven her tales of New Orleans’s famous cities of the dead. But at four o’clock this morning, when the old woman calling herself Eva Rill had furiously rapped her cane against Caitlyn’s front door, she was still dressed entirely in black, right down to the little round hat with the raven’s feathers and the lacy cloud of netting.
Widow’s weeds, her getup would have been called in an earlier century, but Caitlyn, who loved costuming as much as any of her fellow theater students, imagined them the garments of a dark witch…or an Old World sorceress.
“You should have heard the shrieking,” Caitlyn went on. “She said she’ll file a complaint with the police if I don’t return the ring by noon today. Swore she’ll have my license pulled and I’ll lose everything I’ve worked for…everything Jacinth and I are turning ourselves inside out to try to—”
With the fog lifting, she saw the roll of Reuben’s eyes and heard his scoffing laughter.
“Come on, kiddo. Calm down. First of all, what kind of idiot wears a rock the size of a pigeon’s egg around the Quarter after dark? Even a tourist should know better. And who’s gonna honestly believe you could somehow manage to slip that ring right off her bony finger without her noticing and screaming bloody murder?”
“Josiah Paine, that’s who.” Caitlyn grew morose, thinking of her former boss, the man who’d taken a chance on hiring her not long after she and her sister had come to New Orleans to settle their grandmother’s estate. They hadn’t planned on staying in the city their mother had refused to speak of, the city where their father had been murdered when Caitlyn was an infant. Nor had the sisters planned on falling in love with the crumbling Esplanade Avenue mansion they’d inherited, or the decaying, magnolia-scented tales of a place that all too quickly felt like home.
“Or at least he’ll pretend he buys it,” she grumbled, “so he can scare off every potential customer in earshot.”
“Paine can be a pain, all right.” Reuben gave a shrug. “But the more he trash-talks your business, the more free advertising the fool’s giving you. I’ve told him as much myself.”
“I’d rather find the ring than test your theory.” Caitlyn poked among the weeds screening a stone obelisk, her mood darkening with the memory of the night her former boss had erupted, accusing her of holding back tip money, which he claimed as his due.
She’d grown used to his moods, his tendency toward pitting the employees against one another, even his shouting, but that night he had laid hands on her, slamming her so hard against a wall that she’d found bruises later. Embarrassed that she’d put up with his abuse for so long, she’d told no one, instead walking out and putting the whole sordid episode behind her.
And savoring the sweet revenge of seeing her dramatic delivery and winning people skills earn her the sort of word of mouth his cowed and miserable employees never could. Though she still couldn’t afford an office of her own, she was booking more and more business using her home phone and computer.
Caitlyn moved along the row of tombs, weathered structures built in deference to the high water table’s alarming tendency to float coffins to the surface. Some of the houselike vaults, mausoleums and monuments were more recent, clearly well tended, while others tilted, crumbling within the confines of fenced familial plots. Losing sight of Reuben, she followed the route she had taken last night, the pathway leading to the cemetery’s oldest section.
So intent was she on her search that she never noticed how the chorus of morning birds fell silent. Nor did she pay any heed to the fiery disk of the sun climbing above the bruised horizon.