Stephanie smiled at him. “I know. It’s okay. I had nothing, either. Only the fact I knew my sister.”
Lena’s ghost gave Detective Wild a hug. He shivered.
“This is a really good guy,” Lena said. “I know he tried to do the right thing.”
“All right. If all is well, we’re going to head over to the Central Business District and the Marceau building,” Ryder said, but he was looking at Casey.
Had she really only known him for two days? Had they really just spent an incredible night together?
A premeditated night?
She wanted to touch his face. She wanted to respond to the light—and the worry—in his eyes. She refrained.
He didn’t. He pulled her into his arms and held her for a minute, then lifted her chin and tenderly kissed her lips.
“They’ll know,” Casey whispered.
“Yeah, they will,” he answered.
They were both startled when Stephanie and Detective Wild—and Lena’s ghost—applauded.
“I could have told you that you two would hit it off. In fact, I was going to bring you here, Ryder, the next time you came to see me. At least...well, I put Casey in danger, but at least I put the two of you together,” Lena said happily.
“And now, we will get going,” Ryder said.
“You need to open the door to the shop,” Detective Wild said. “They frown on police opening doors without probable cause.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Casey said. She turned the bolts as Ryder and Stephanie turned to go back to the car.
Ryder turned again and waved. Casey waved back. She wondered if she’d have a chance—with Detective Wild in the shop—to tell Lauren she’d taken her up on the concept of premeditated sex, and it had proven to be an excellent idea.
She walked in and told Detective Wild to make himself at home. He did. He looked around and enjoyed the art and the little souvenirs before sitting down in one of the chairs by the coffee service. Casey pulled up the computer and unlocked the cash register and card reader.
She noted it was after ten, and neither Lauren nor Jared had arrived.
They were seldom late, but maybe they’d met up at ten to head to a music venue. They did that now and then.
She was rearranging a jewelry display when her phone rang.
She didn’t usually answer numbers she didn’t know, but with Lauren and Jared both running late, she was worried.
“Hello?” she said.
“Miss Nicholson, don’t hang up, and don’t let that cop in there know anything is wrong at all. Just listen...”
The voice, coming through a distortion machine, broke off.
Then, she heard a scream. A terrible shriek of pain. And then Lauren’s voice, “Casey, don’t do whatever it is...they can’t get away with it. They can’t—”
“No.”
The word came out as a whisper.
“Shut the hell up and quick! It would be so easy for me to kill her in the blink of an eye. You’d better not even make the kind of face that cop can read. I will kill her. I have a knife at her throat. If you tell the police? You may be fine. But I promise you, this little artist lady will be dead. Escape the cop somehow in the next few minutes. Get to the cemetery. And if you alert anyone—cops or FBI—we’ll know. Do you want to hear the guy scream, too? I can make that happen. Get out of the shop and get to the cemetery unseen if you want these two to live.”
Whoever it was hung up.
Casey stood there, frozen. She sank onto the stool behind the counter and tried to remain impassive.
This was how they got away with murder. They used a person’s loved ones against them.
Casey had known that. And she knew that obeying the voice would be doing exactly what they wanted.
Be at the cemetery. New Orleans had dozens of them.
But she knew which one.
Call Ryder! her subconscious screamed.
She wanted to call him. Desperately. But someone was watching. And she knew she couldn’t risk Lauren’s life. Or Jared’s.
She couldn’t save her own...to risk theirs.
* * * *
“None of this has made any sense to me,” Stephanie said. She was still riding in back. Ryder had assured her that he didn’t mind looking like her chauffeur. “I mean, why would they want to get rid of all of us? Oh, I know those guys want to increase the prices on a lot of necessary drugs. But still, if something happens to Annette, it’s not like the money goes to one person.”
“Stephanie, do you remember if Anthony—or you, Lena—ever offended any of them personally?” Ryder asked as he drove. They’d been over the question before with Stephanie, but it didn’t hurt to revisit the situation. Stephanie had been so lost and in such deep mourning when Lena died, she hadn’t been thinking straight.
Lena might remember more now.
“Anthony was the nicest man in the world,” Lena said. “He was so careful never to offend anyone.”
“I can’t think of anything,” Stephanie said and then sighed. “I do know Barton Quincy thought Anthony was a flake. I heard him telling Anthony one time that he couldn’t run a major corporation and act like St. Theresa at the same time.”
“But Barton wouldn’t just get everything,” Lena protested. “Not even Justin would get everything, and he’s a Marceau. And besides, Justin isn’t like those guys. He’s a free spirit.”
Stephanie couldn’t hear Lena, but her mind must have worked along the same lines. “Not Justin. I can’t see it, I just can’t.”
“Money can do very strange things to people. And I don’t think one person could have managed all this alone,” Ryder said.
“Conspiracy theory?” Stephanie asked. “Seriously, Ryder. You think that many people can be that horrible?”
“If frightened for their own well-being, possibly,” Ryder said.
“But all four of them?” Stephanie asked.
“Maybe not. I don’t know. But I believe with my whole heart that at least one of them is guilty. None of this makes any sense at all otherwise,” Ryder said. “Maybe one is seriously psychotic—death means nothing to them.”
“Trust me, it means something,” Lena said bitterly.
“When you have a person like that, and others who have an agenda and are willing to go along with something heinous if they don’t have to perform any bloody acts themselves, you can easily have a conspiracy.”
“Only one man threatened me and forced me to take the pills,” Lena murmured.
“And we’re back to the fact that the property video went blank at just the right time. And one of these guys must have figured out a way into the house. Maybe they managed to copy Anthony’s keys and get code information off his phone... I don’t know.” Ryder grimaced.
At the Marceau offices in the CBD, they headed straight for the meeting room.
As they paused to check in with the receptionist, Lena murmured, “I’m going on ahead, to see what they’re up to.”
Stephanie chatted a minute with the receptionist while she checked to make sure the other board members had arrived and were going to the conference room. She was still talking when Lena’s ghost came back to Ryder.