Читать книгу Eden's Shadow - Jenna Ryan - Страница 12

“Mind you don’t make the fillings too white, dear. I don’t want to glow in the dark when I smile.”

“I’ll match your natural color,” Eden Bennett promised, “X-ray that upper molar again, and we’ll go from there.”

“So long as it doesn’t exceed thirty dollars.” The old woman cleared her throat, then asked, “It won’t, will it?”

“Twenty-eight thirty-seven, cleaning included. Open for me now, okay, and try not to swallow.”

The old woman snagged her wrist before Eden could position the wedge. “You’ll be gentle, won’t you? My roots are as weak as my ankles these days.”

Nothing wrong with her grip, though, Eden noted. She patted one bony shoulder. “I work on my grandmother’s teeth, Cornelia, and her roots are three years older than yours.”

Reassured, the woman relaxed into the padded dental chair. She didn’t watch the television Eden had mounted to distract her more squeamish patients, but rather kept her eyes fixed on Eden and her fingers curled tightly in her lap.

She was a sweet old woman, poor as Eden’s patients tended to be on Tuesday afternoons and evenings, but more trusting than many who ventured into her French Quarter office.

Since Cornelia wouldn’t let anyone else do the cleaning, Eden had sent her dental assistant home forty minutes ago. With luck, she’d missed the deluge that was currently making a river of the streets and sidewalks outside.

Eden was just touching her drill to one of Cornelia’s seven remaining teeth when the examination room door burst open. If she hadn’t learned from one of the best, Cornelia’s tooth count would have been down to six.

“Eden, you have to—” The woman on the threshold halted. “You’re still working? Do you know what time it is?”

“It’s 8:27, Mary—” Eden pulled her mask down “—p.m. I won’t be finished until after nine, and no, I don’t have any extra twenties in my purse.”

“I didn’t come looking for money.” Mary offered Cornelia a perfunctory smile. “Mary Tamblyn. I’m Eden’s sister. I didn’t realize patients came here quite this late. Myself, I can’t deal with pain at night.”

Not easily ruffled, Eden motioned at the door. “There’s coffee if you want to wait.”

“But…” Mary’s look of annoyance changed to one of resignation. “Oh, all right, but it’s important this time, Eden, or I wouldn’t be here.”

She really wouldn’t, Eden thought after coaxing Cornelia’s mouth open again. Mary liked the French Quarter well enough, but going to a dentist’s office instead of searching out a freaky party? No way. She must want more than money.

“Your sister doesn’t dress like you, does she, dear? Or look a great deal like you, either. So much blond hair…” Cornelia spoke around the wedge. “She has nice teeth, though. Are they all her own?”

“All but one. An ex-boyfriend knocked out her left incisor a year ago.”

Cornelia made a clucking sound. “Bad relationship?”

“Misdirected racquetball.” Eden replaced her mask and picked up her drill. “Mary isn’t big on sports, or men who play them these days. Okay, no more stalling. Open, and I’ll have you patched up in no time.”

“Will it hurt? I think I can still feel part of my gum.”

“Cornelia, I gave you enough novocaine to keep you numb until breakfast. I’ll go slow. You can pinch my left arm if you feel anything.”

EDEN KEPT HER MIND on her work and off Mary for the next forty-five minutes. By nine-fifteen, Cornelia was scraped, filled, filed and X-rayed. She handed Eden three tens at the door, squeezed her hand and told her to keep the change. Eden watched her climb into her brother’s 1965 Buick Wildcat and tried not to think about how a man with cataracts managed to drive at night in a downpour.

Mary came up beside her. “Those two should be using public transportation.”

Eden winced as Cornelia’s brother ran the right tires up over the curb. “They only have to go twelve blocks.”

“Huh. Big spender, too—tipped you a whole dollar plus change. Thirty bucks—man, you never give me deals like that.”

“You don’t live on a fixed income and have two sons who bleed you for what little pension money you receive.” Eden tucked the bills into the pocket of her pants, stretched as she walked to the rack and removed her lab coat. “So what’s the deal? Did you sell a bunch of pictures and you want me to spring for the champagne?”

Mary stared after the disappearing Buick. “They’re photographs, not pictures, and no, I didn’t. God, I hope I don’t end up like them one day.” Turning her head, she ran her gaze up and down her sister’s body. “Or you, either, for that matter.”

Eden made a quick check of her face and hair in the waiting room mirror. “What’s wrong with how I look?” Other than maybe a little washed out under the bright lights.

Mary shrugged. “Nothing. You’re gorgeous. Every man I date says so. But…” Her expression grew mysterious, and Eden sighed. She recognized the sign.

“‘For deeds long past, chère child will reap, my vengeance curse, of death—or worse.’”

Eden, who’d taken a moment to release her dark hair from its ponytail, gave her head a shake and her shoulders a roll. “Why do you love that old rhyme so much? You don’t believe in family curses any more than I do.”

“I know. But then it doesn’t apply to me, does it? I’m the youngest in our patchwork family.” Mary’s leather pants and jacket creaked as she headed for the door. “Let’s blow this spooky tooth palace. Something’s happened, and you’re the only one who can make it right.”

“I have to clean…” Eden started for the examination room, but Mary grabbed her arm. “I’m not being dramatic, Eden. This is big, or at least it could be, and it doesn’t involve you lending me money. It’s about Lisa.”

Something tightened in Eden’s stomach. Mary wouldn’t hesitate to plead her own cause, but she seldom championed anyone else’s. And she never looked rattled.

“What about Lisa?” she asked. “Is she sick? Hurt? In trouble?”

“The last thing.” Loosening her grip, Mary made a disgruntled sound.

“Okay, look, our middle sister, who pored over the records of every adoption agency in the city, found you, found me and brought us all together ten years ago, was questioned by two cops. They came to the house tonight. They were asking her questions about a man named Maxwell Burgoyne.”

“Someone she’s dating?” No, that couldn’t be right, Eden realized. Lisa didn’t date. She waved the question aside before Mary could respond. “Never mind. Just tell me who he is.”

“You want it straight?”

“Please.”

“Maxwell Burgoyne is our biological father—as in the unknown X chromosome that forms half the link between us.”

Stunned, Eden stared at her. “Lisa found our natural father? I thought he was dead.”

Mary’s red lips curved into a sardonic smile. “He is dead, Eden, deader than Dickens’s ghostly doornail. The thing is, he only got that way two nights ago. Maxwell Burgoyne was murdered in a plantation cemetery seventeen miles outside of New Orleans. And according to the city’s finest, Lisa was quite likely the last person to see him alive.”

THEY WENT TO EDEN’S French Quarter walk-up. It was ten minutes from her office on foot, less than three in Mary’s zippy black sports car.

Lisa had given her the car as a gift two years ago—or so Mary claimed. Eden had a feeling this gift, like so many others, had been bestowed out of guilt rather than generosity.

Not that Lisa wasn’t generous. She loved to give. She donated to several charities that Eden knew of and spent hours every week trying to entice Eden to move in with her and Mary. She would buy them a three-story house in the Garden District, large enough that they could all have private suites.

“I can afford it,” she’d told Eden only last month. “You know I hit the adoption jackpot, and now that my mother and father are both gone, their money’s just sitting there, waiting to be spent.”

“But not on us,” Eden had countered. “Take a Mediterranean cruise, Lisa. Meet men. Flirt, dance, do something that doesn’t involve soil, fertilizer and root rot.”

“I love my garden, and I don’t know how to flirt.” She’d started to take Eden’s hand, but stopped herself as she invariably did. “I inherited a lot of money, Eden, more than Mary knows about or could ever finagle out of me.”

“Invest it then—and I don’t mean in a bigger house.”

“You don’t want to move, do you?”

“Not really. I like my place.”

“It’s very nice, but it’s so small. You can’t spread out or grow bushes or even many herbs. I know you’re used to tiny spaces because of where you lived in San Francisco…”

Which had nothing to do with anything as far as Eden was concerned. Amused, she’d replied, “I grew up in suburbia, Lisa, not the backwoods. My parents left their hippie groove before I finished grade school. My mother actually went back to college and got her degree in philosophy.”

“And now she’s a professor at LSU,” Lisa supplied.

“Was.” Eden had propped her chin in her hands and tried to figure out how many different kinds of flowers were in the vase on Lisa’s kitchen table. “She accepted a position at Florida State last fall, remember?”

“She moved away?”

For a moment, Lisa had appeared confused. That quality of losing her bearings had puzzled Eden ever since they’d met ten years ago. Mary called them day trips. Eden wondered if there might not be more to it than that.

She was thinking about Lisa as she unlocked the wrought-iron gate at street level and climbed the outer stairs to her apartment. Her sister had actually located their biological father. The why of it aside, Eden gave her credit for persistence. By all accounts, including that of their natural mother, the man had died years ago.

“It feels like a thousand degrees,” Mary complained. She’d removed her jacket and now wore only a faux-leather halter top with her tight pants and spiky heels. “Lisa could be in trouble up to her big green eyeballs, and—” Her own eyes widened. “Why on earth are your windows closed?”

“Because Amorin would jump out onto the porch. Then she’d dig up the courtyard garden or get hit by a car, and I don’t want either of those things happening to my cat, that’s why my windows are closed. The ceiling fans are on. But talk to me about Lisa, Mary. What did the police want from her?”

The question had a surly edge, Eden realized. Her experience with the New Orleans force as a whole hadn’t been good. With one member in particular, it had proved disastrous.

But that was a memory for another time—maybe twenty years from now.

It took three shoves, a kick and two thumps with her fist to open her apartment door. Thunder rumbled on the river, and for a moment after she touched the light switch, Eden thought the power was going to fail.

“Just what we need in Hemingway Central,” Mary muttered at her elbow. “A candlelight vigil.” At a look from Eden, she kicked off her shoes. “Yeah, I know, cut the chit-chat. What can I say? There’s background stuff, I suppose, but we both know whatever went down in that plantation graveyard, Lisa didn’t hit Burgoyne on the head and take off.”

Eden tried a second light. It flickered but stayed on. “Is she a suspect?”

Mary fussed with her hair. “She’s a person of interest at this point because, like I said, she’s the last person the cops know of who saw the guy alive. But that’s today, Eden. What happens if they can’t find anyone to pin his death on? It’ll come back to Lisa—or it could. Okay, we’d be talking circumstantial evidence, but Lisa says she didn’t think much of the guy the first time she met him, and I don’t get the impression she was any more enamored after the second meeting. She doesn’t have an alibi for the time of the murder, either, and I can’t give her one because I was out with friends.”

Eden struggled to digest everything as she turned on her temperamental air conditioner. “She met this man twice?”

“That’s what she says. I didn’t hear about either meeting until the cops showed up tonight. Anyway, my point is this. You know a few cops, right?”

“Don’t start,” Eden warned.

Mary tapped impatient fingernails on the tabletop. “Forget the past, will you? You do know some cops. You could get information.”

Eden could be stubborn, too. “Mary, the only cops I knew have either quit or been reassigned.”

“What about that prosecution lawyer you dated last year?”

“You want me to ask him to spy for us?”

“If necessary, yes. Look, I don’t think you’re clueing in here. This little scenario has the potential to go very bad, very fast.”

Circumstantial evidence…

Eden rubbed her temples. It was still hot in here. She really needed a new air conditioner. “Back up a little,” she suggested. “Did Lisa go to this plantation with—what was his name?”

“Burgoyne, Maxwell. She says no. They had dinner near Chalmette, or started to. He said something that ticked her off—which couldn’t have been easy since she’s virtually untickable—and she left. He followed her out. They got into their respective cars and drove away. Lisa went home. Maxwell went to the auction preview. Less than an hour later, someone slammed him on the head, and it was lights out for Mr. B.”

Unimpressed, Eden kicked her sister’s feet off the chair where she’d propped them. “Maxwell Burgoyne was a person, Mary, and he was murdered. You could try for a little compassion.”

“Why? Because he was our father?”

“Oh, no.” Eden swung around to face her. “No way was some stranger my father. You want to talk science and procreation, fine, but my dad, my real dad, had a ponytail until I was thirteen, which he cut off so I wouldn’t get bugged because he and my mother were going to chaperon my first spring dance.”

Because that same real dad had also died of cancer five years ago and Eden still cried when she thought about him, she halted her tirade there and forced her mind back to Lisa.

“Do the police have a murder weapon?” she asked after a pause.

Mary started to put her feet up again, caught Eden’s expression and shrugged. “I get the impression no. I think the sticking point is that several people in the restaurant where they ate heard Maxwell laughing—and not in a nice way, if you know what I mean. That’s why Lisa got upset and took off. You know how lame she is at hiding her feelings.”

“What did Maxwell do, professionally?”

“Businessman, big time.”

Eden leaned on the kitchen counter and stroked her white cat. “Powerful people tend to cultivate enemies,” she mused.

Mary snorted. “What was that you said about compassion? Oh hell, I hear a cell. Is it mine or yours?”

“Must be yours. My ring tone doesn’t sound like bad disco.”

“It’s Beethoven.” Mary dug the phone out of her shoulder bag. “What is it? I’m busy.”

If she hadn’t seen it happen, Eden wouldn’t have believed it was possible. Within five seconds, the blood had drained from Mary’s face, leaving her pasty white and gaping.

She hissed into the phone. “You can’t be serious. When? Are you sure?” She closed her eyes, groaned. “This can’t be happening.” Jamming two fingers into her temple, she breathed hard. “Okay, let me think, let me think.” Her eyes opened, slid to the window, then slowly, very slowly traveled to Eden’s face. “A lineup,” she murmured. The fingers she’d been pushing into her temple pointed at Eden. “Hey—yeah, it could work. It really could… What? Oh sure, I know the precinct. Thanks, Dev. No, just lock up and go home.”

“Who was…?” Eden began, but Mary had already ended the call, grabbed her hand and started dragging her toward the bedroom.

Eden yanked free. “Are you crazy? Who was that?”

“A neighbor. The cops came again. Lisa’s been taken in for further questioning.”

A streak of lightning over the old city caused the power to flutter for several seconds. Eden rubbed her wrist.

“Go on. I know there’s worse to come.”

“They have a witness.”

“Someone saw Lisa murder Maxwell Burgoyne?”

“Apparently.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“No, that’s New Orleans.” Thunder shook the foundations of the old building. Mary’s eyes glittered. “You know the justice system, Eden. All it takes is one bad cop. He wants Lisa guilty, bam, she’s guilty.”

“It’s hardly that simple, Mary.” And Eden didn’t want to go there in any case. “What’s your point?”

“Look at you, Eden.” Planting both hands on her shoulders, Mary propelled her to a plantation mirror in the hall. “Look at your face. Look at your hair—dark, thick, long. Green, green eyes. Gorgeous features.”

Eden saw it coming. She might be a step behind, but only a baby step.

“You and Lisa are ringers for each other.” Her sister sounded both triumphant and relieved.

Eden resisted the idea. “Mary, we’re not…”

“To a stranger, you are.” She caught Eden’s glare and shrugged. “Well, okay, you’re close enough, or you will be once I fix your hair and you put on a pair of jeans and a pink T-shirt.” She frowned. “I think that’s what Lisa was wearing today. Pink or peach.”

“I don’t have a pink T-shirt.”

“Close’ll do, Eden.” Exasperated, Mary tugged and twisted until Eden’s hair was wrapped in a messy bun. She found a pencil on the hall table and stuck it though the knot to secure it. Then she stood back. “It’ll work.” She spun Eden around. “You have to do this, okay? Lisa’s our sister, and we both know whoever he or she is, this witness is lying. Lisa doesn’t even swat flies. She wouldn’t hit a man on the head and kill him.”

“Mary…”

“Please, please tell me you don’t have an alibi for Sunday night.”

“I don’t need one.”

“Stop being difficult. What did you do on Sunday?”

For Lisa’s sake, Eden relented. “I had dinner with Dolores at her place.”

Dolores Boyer was their natural grandmother and the only family member Lisa, Mary and Eden all got along with. She made her home north of New Orleans in the bayou and only came to the city when she absolutely had to.

“That’s perfect.” Mary arranged strands of loose hair around her sister’s face. “She’ll go along with you when she realizes what’s at stake.” She stopped styling. “You were alone, right?”

“Yes.” Eden removed the pencil. “Look, Mary…”

“There’s no look. Our neighbor specifically said the word lineup. You have to be in it.”

Eden studied her reflection. Lightning forked through the night sky, threatening the power once again. But even though the lights trembled and faded and the hall was poorly lit, she saw Lisa’s features in her own.

Struck dead in a graveyard, Mary had said. No way had Lisa done that. But there was a witness…

“Must’ve been drunk,” she decided. With a sigh, she took the pencil from her sister, wound her hair back up and headed for the bedroom.

“Where are you going?” Mary demanded.

“I have an old red T-shirt somewhere. I also have to phone Dolores and tell her about Sunday night.” The lights popped off then on. “Look, let’s get this done while I’m still feeling halfway sane.”

For some reason, the words Mary had recited earlier ran through her head.

“‘…For deeds long past, chère child will reap, my vengeance curse, of death—or worse.’”

It was a family curse, Dolores had told them, passed through her to their birth mother Lucille, then on to Lucille’s eldest child. In the para-scientific world, that made Eden the target of its voodoo wrath.

And for the first time since she’d heard it ten years ago, the malice behind it made Eden shiver.

ARMAND LAMORTE stood in the shadows on the glass side of a two-way mirror and regarded the assortment of women behind it.

Without looking away, he spoke to the officer who’d just entered, a veteran cop with a gimpy leg and a ratty clipboard. “What’s the woman’s last name, Al?”

“Mayne, Lisa. She’s twenty-eight. Owns two big garden supply shops and a catering company in the city. You know the family?”

“I’ve heard of them. She inherited well.”

“Every dime of the old family money. She was the sole heir, adopted at twenty-two months. She has two blood sisters but no siblings in the legal sense.”

“The three were split up?”

“At a young age. Don’t know the story there.” Al flipped through the wad of papers on his clipboard. “I do know the other two weren’t as lucky moneywise. The youngest crapped out totally. Her old man lost his job and turned to alcohol. Her ma died when she was ten.”

Armand’s gaze settled on the most striking of the women behind the glass. She wore a snug fitting red T-shirt that ended just above the waistband of her equally snug jeans.

Al followed Armand’s gaze. “That’s Eden Bennett, one of the sisters. She’s older than the suspect by a year.”

Armand half smiled. “I met her ex once.”

“Then you’ll know she’s not a fan of cops or cop stations. She called in a favor and got herself into the lineup. I’ve seen the pair of them close up. There’s a strong resemblance.”

“That should confuse your witness nicely.”

“You don’t have to sound amused,” Al grumbled. “I’m stuck with the paperwork on this one, and trust me, between Burgoyne and his holdings, a tardy witness, no murder weapon and now a doppelganger tossed into the mix, I’ll be filling out reports for the next six months.”

Armand kept his eyes on Eden. “You think Lisa Mayne hit him?”

“Personally? No. Poison’s a woman’s weapon.”

Armand’s lips curved. “Some would call that a sexist remark.”

“I’m sixty-two and deskbound. I’m entitled. I told you, I’ve seen the woman. In my jaundiced opinion, she wouldn’t have bludgeoned the guy.”

“Maybe she has a Jekyll and Hyde personality.”

“Not from what I saw. A little off in space, maybe, but hey, she’s rich.”

Armand couldn’t resist a grin. “You need to get out more.”

“What I need is for Parker to get his butt in gear. He’s handling the witness. Name’s Robert Weir. He looks like a librarian.”

“Credible?”

“On the surface. Says he freaked when he saw Burgoyne get hit. Did I mention they were business partners?”

“Burgoyne and the witness?” Armand regarded Eden through half-lidded eyes while he rolled that tidbit over. “What’s Weir’s story?”

“He panicked when he saw the murder, took off and hid out at home for two days.”

“Didn’t want to get involved?”

“Something like that. He told us up-front he wasn’t fond of his late partner.”

Armand slid his gaze sideways. “So if the surviving partner had no love for the dead one, where do you read the words credible witness?”

“We have no priors on the guy, in fact no charges of any kind. Three parking and two speeding tickets in the past fifteen years, all paid in full. He has an ex and a kid, a daughter. No problem there. He’s on the books for child support, and there haven’t been any gripes from his former wife, so he must be coming through. He has a condo in the Warehouse District and he went to Tulane.”

“Your alma mater.”

Al’s expression grew pensive. “I wanted to be a pro running back in those days.”

Armand ran his eyes over Eden’s legs. He’d bet a month’s pay they were the longest in the room. “There’s no security in pro sports, Al. You’re better off here.”

“Uh-huh. And while we’re on the subject, you’re here tonight because…?”

“Why else? I missed your smiling face.”

Al snorted. “I haven’t smiled since that bullet shattered my kneecap three years ago. You got nothing better to do, go hunt up Parker and tell him to get in here with that witness.”

She didn’t paint her fingernails, Armand noted. And he could see the green of her eyes from here. “You need to slow down, Al, lay back.” He smiled. “Take a vacation.”

“Love to. You wanna do my job while I’m gone?”

“Sorry, already booked.”

“That’s what they all say.” His head came up. “Is that Parker’s voice?” He paused on his way out. “You gonna leer at Lisa Mayne’s sister all night or check out that waterfront hotel you mentioned earlier… Is that you, Parker?” He raised his voice before Armand could answer. “We’re in 5C,” he called. “Later, Mandy.”

Armand nodded. Eden had a look of alertness about her that he found intriguing. She wouldn’t miss a trick—which would make her extremely difficult to deceive.

A smile curved on his lips even as his eyes lingered on Eden’s face. He pushed off from the wall. He had his work cut out for him.