Present Day
Aron Wasabe groped in the dark for his cell phone on the bedside table and turned off the ringer before it could buzz again. He squinted at the display and grimaced, then threw back the covers and got up, sliding the phone into the pocket of his pajamas.
His wife, Carol, turned over. “Aron?” she whispered. “Don’t forget Amy’s soccer game. It’s at six.”
He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “Go back to sleep,” he muttered. She sighed softly. She was used to the phone calls and odd work hours. After all these years, she didn’t even ask questions.
Down in the kitchen, he started a pot of coffee, then gazed out the patio doors at the rising sun while it perked.
The president of Aron Accounting, Bruce Wexler, had worked for him for years. He was smart and capable. There wasn’t much he couldn’t handle. So if he thought something was important enough to call Wasabe this early, it probably was. It might even be important enough to warrant his having to work on Friday. He frowned. It had better not take too long. He was not going to miss another one of his daughter’s soccer games.
He decided to finish his first cup of coffee before calling Wexler back.
After filling a mug, he added a generous dollop of cream and three heaping spoonfuls of sugar. Then he walked out onto the patio where the sun bathed the flowers and trees in pale pink light.
He smiled to himself. Carol would probably call it mauve or puce or some other ridiculous word. She did a good job with the house and the yard. The patio was like an outdoor kitchen and dining room, beautifully landscaped.
She’d made a home for him and their six-year-old daughter and he loved her for it. He sat down in a glider and gently rocked back and forth as he enjoyed that first swallow of coffee of the day. It was the best.
His phone rang again. He took another long swallow before leisurely retrieving it. He checked the display. Wexler again.
“Bruce? Twice before seven? This better be good.” Wasabe allowed a slight irritation to color his voice, just enough to worry the president of his accounting firm.
“It’s important, Mr. Wasabe. There’s a kid running his mouth. Says he saw the Delancey girl. The one who was murdered twelve years ago. The Carnival Queen?”
Wasabe’s throat closed on a sip of coffee. He coughed. “So?” he asked, clearing his throat and trying to sound casual, but hearing the anxiety in his voice. “That’s what you woke me up for? Some yahoo trying to sell a bill of goods, like we hear every week?”
It couldn’t be true. Rosemary Delancey couldn’t be alive. Not after all this time. But a flutter of hope tickled the back of his throat. If she were …
“I know how you like Delancey stuff,” Wexler went on. “So I knew you’d want to hear about this.”
Wasabe had given his employees and associates hints over the years of his interest in the Delancey family. He’d never explained why. He’d left it to them to draw their own conclusions. Apparently, the majority of them believed he was obsessed with the infamous late-patriarch of the clan, Con Delancey.
Wexler was still talking and he’d missed most of it. “What did you say?” he asked.
“I said the kid is James Fulbright’s boy.”
“The loudmouth? He’s Councilman Fulbright’s son?”
“Yeah. He’s saying his pop was King of Krewe Ti Malice the year the Delancey girl was Carnival Queen.”
“Was he?” Wasabe asked. Wexler should know. The Wexlers had ridden in Mardi Gras parades for decades.
“Yes, sir. He sure was. Junior was probably about twelve. He claims she was his first crush. Said he’d recognize her in a whorehouse under a sweaty fat john.”
“How’d you hear about this?”
“Junior was bragging. He told me T-Bo Pereau was hanging around. Said Pereau sneaked off like a pup that had just snatched a bone away from a big dog.”
“And who the hell is T-Bo Pereau?”
“A nobody. In and out of prison for possession and small-time dealing.”
“Keep an eye on Pereau, and bring Junior Fulbright to the office. Noon. He knows Rosemary so well, he can find her for us. And if he talks to anybody else I’ll cut off his thumbs.” Wasabe grimaced. “And don’t be late. I’m going to my daughter’s soccer game at six.”
“Yes, sir.”
Wasabe hung up and picked up his coffee with a shaky hand. Twelve years ago, while working as a small-time collector for a loan shark, he’d made a choice that earned him a lucrative career as a contract killer. However, it left him effectively indentured to a powerful and ruthless man.
Was this his chance to close the book on that first botched job? If Rosemary Delancey really was alive, maybe he could finally earn his freedom by delivering her to The Boss.
IT WAS HER. He was sure of it. Detective Dixon Lloyd’s pulse hammered in his ears. That two-bit drug dealer he and his partner, Ethan Delancey, had collared for parole violation was right, and Ethan was wrong.
T-Bo Pereau had sworn he could tell them where Rosemary Delancey, the supposedly murdered Carnival Queen, was, in exchange for not putting him back in prison. Dixon had wanted to make the deal, but Ethan had scoffed.
You’re being suckered by the Delancey mystique, he’d told him. As soon as Pereau heard my name, I saw the wheels turning in his brain and the dollar signs in his eyes. Trust me. When you’re dealing with the Delancey name there’s always a story. A few years ago a murderer tried to get immunity by telling my brother Lucas who really killed our granddad. A couple of times a year the local tabloids will carry a photo that “proves” that Con Delancey is alive and living with a Cajun woman in the bayou or something just as outrageous.
Dixon had heard the stories himself, so he figured Ethan was right. Still, he hadn’t wanted to take a chance. Poor T-Bo Pereau had gone back to Angola, but Dixon had quietly called in a favor and gotten him a few perks in exchange for what he knew about Rosemary Delancey.
T-Bo’s information had been disappointing to say the least. All he’d given Dixon was a weak story about seeing a woman who’d looked like the murdered Carnival Queen catching the Prytania streetcar on Canal. When Dixon asked him how he could be sure it was Rosemary Delancey, T-Bo had replied, Everybody knows the Delanceys.
Dixon had figured he could write off his time and the favor he’d called in.
But now, as Dixon watched the woman walking down the street, he sent up thanks that he’d followed up on the two-bit dealer’s story.
Her hair was inky black and captured into a long, loose braid. She was covered from neck to fingertips to toes by a long skirt, a gauzy long-sleeved blouse and some kind of lacy gloves. But there was no mistaking that tilt of her head or that walk.
Dixon unconsciously touched his wallet, where he carried the photo he’d taken from her apartment all those years ago. A deep sadness still weighed
