“I had some shopping to do on Royal Street,” Barton said. “Thought we could meet here.”
“You two don’t go into the office every day?”
Barton laughed. “This fellow? Work?” he teased. “Justin’s surname is Marceau, you know.”
“Hey! I’m available whenever needed,” Justin said. “I did a great job at the last marketing meeting.”
Barton shrugged and glanced at his watch then rose. “Well, I’ve got to get back. It was nice seeing you again, um, Ryder. Are you going to be here long?”
“I’m not sure just how long yet,” Ryder said pleasantly. “I never know when I’ll get a call to be somewhere, so...”
He left off, grinning and shrugging.
“Anyway, I should be off, too,” Ryder said. “Good to see you both. I’m glad to know that when I can’t be here, Stephanie has great people to call on.”
Justin lifted a hand in goodbye. Ryder went down the street and then slipped behind a colonnade in a building hallway.
He watched the two men as they rose and parted.
Justin started for Canal.
Barton Quincy paused, looking up and down the street. Ryder wasn’t sure, but he thought the man was watching one shop. Just one shop.
“A Beautiful Mind.”
Did he know Casey Nicholson? Was that why he was looking at the shop?
Or had he seen Casey head to the Marceau house? Was he—like Ryder—curious as to why the woman had gone to see Stephanie?
Curious, too, as to just what Casey Nicholson knew about the death of Lena Marceau.
* * * *
Casey left the shop that day as early as she could.
She had to forget Lena Marceau, Stephanie Harrow, and the angry FBI guy who had shown up in the store.
It was hot, and she was done early enough to head for the pool at her fourplex before the mosquitoes got too bad.
Her friends teased her that she lived at an old folks’ home—retired people rented the other three apartments in the building.
She loved the three couples, though. They watched out for both her and the building.
Plus, they brought her baked goods all the time. Only Miss Lilly—who had been an Olympic swimmer in her day—spent much time in the pool, and that was early. Miss Lilly might be found in the water any time after 6:00 A.M. Her husband, Joe, would sit in one of the lawn chairs and watch her, waving a hand and smiling and pretending he didn’t hear her any time she suggested he get in—he needed exercise.
But at this time of night, the place was hers.
And the water felt good. So good. The temperature had been in the eighties and nineties all day, and many people might have thought the water in the pool was a bit too hot—like a lukewarm bath.
It didn’t bother Casey at all. She loved the heat. And there was something special about water. She swam a bit, then just floated on her back and watched as the sun disappeared, and night slowly came on.
She wondered if she should go back to the cemetery and see if Lena was there. Did ghosts hang out in graveyards when they weren’t busy haunting people, asking them to take care of something for them? She had first seen Lena’s ghost in the cemetery.
And she’d fainted. Like a true coward.
She was a chicken. She simply hadn’t believed in ghosts.
But would she rather a ghost haunt her, or accept the possibility that she was totally losing her mind?
She wasn’t sure which she’d prefer at that point. She just knew that the water felt good. She tried to turn her mind to life and her commitments. She had promised that she would give a NOLA history and cemetery speech in the shop in two days for Miss Lilly’s granddaughter’s small study group. She needed to brush up on a few facts.
She had managed to think about the city and its history and enjoy the feeling of just floating in the water, looking up at the darkening sky, when she heard a hushed whisper. She blinked.
Lena was back. And she seemed to be drifting in the sky.
“Get out. Get out of the pool as quickly as you can!”
“What?”
“There’s someone here—someone’s out there. And he’s...he’s dressed in black. He’s stalking you. He’s in the bushes in the back of the neighbor’s yard, watching you. Get in and lock your door and don’t come out!” Lena’s ghost warned.
Whether she was crazy or not, Casey jumped out of the pool. She grabbed her towel off the lounger and raced for the back door to the fourplex, once a shotgun house with a hall that ran from the front to the back and offered doors to the four apartments.
She threw open the door and slammed into someone. She nearly screamed.
Someone tall and dark and ridiculously solid, yet still nothing but a hulking shape in the night.
But then the shape spoke.
“Miss Nicholson. I’m sorry if I startled you. A woman who said her name was Lilly let me in and said that I’d find you out back,” he said.
Him!
The man from the shop.
“Oh, my God. What are you doing following me here? Coming to my home?” she demanded in a desperate whisper.
She only realized then that he was holding her, steadying her.
“Trying to make sure you don’t get killed,” he said, his tone dry...
And carrying a frightening ring of truth.
Chapter 4
Denial. Seriously. She couldn’t really have spent the evening before chatting with a ghost. And if so, she had done what the ghost wanted.
She couldn’t be in danger herself.
Casey shook her head, trying to make something that resembled sense and logic out of it all.
“Back up,” she said. “I don’t understand. There’s no reason for anyone to want to kill me, to follow me,” she said, speaking quickly, trying to regain her sense of balance.
She stepped back at last, realizing he’d still been holding her. She murmured, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m soaked, and I just got you all wet. But—wait! You’re the one following me, you...how are you here? I don’t...I don’t owe you an apology. I...”
He couldn’t have been whoever Lily had said was out back in the bushes. He was standing here.
He took her by the shoulders, calming her, and he met her eyes with his own as he spoke in a soft voice. “Why are you in such a panic? This isn’t because I was at your back door just walking out. You were terrified of something else, Casey. What happened? What’s going on?” He gently tightened his grip. “And why are you still shaking?”
“I’m not. I—”
She broke off. What did she say to an FBI agent who had already knocked her for being a so-called medium?
“There was a noise in the bushes. I guess it scared me. I—I thought someone was back there.”
He froze and dropped his hands. A seriousness took over his entire demeanor. “Get in your room and lock the door after you lock this one and the front entry. When I’m back, I’ll ring.”
She nodded.
“I mean it, Casey. Do it. You may be in danger.”
“Yes.”
He stepped out the back. She watched him as he raced around the pool and disappeared into the hedges.
Lock the front door.
She hurried to do it and then slipped through her own door and locked it as well. For a moment, she stood there panting. Then she wasn’t sure what to do.