Читать книгу Behind the Mask - Joanna Wayne - Страница 6

Lindsey Latham lunged for the support rail as the jerky movements of the Mardi Gras float propelled her forward. She breathed deeply, determined to ward off a persistent bout of queasiness, and stared out into the never-ending sea of faces. They were all one now, a voluminous cloud of eyes and mouths floating in space. And hands. Thousands of hands, all waving wildly and begging for the baubles that glittered in the moonlight like precious jewels.

“Hey, lady, throw me something—for the baby!”

Lindsey adjusted her feathered mask for the umpteenth time and looked down at the demanding man, and at the small boy he lifted toward her like some heathen sacrifice. He was weaving dangerously close to the slow-moving float, throwing caution to the winds to get his share of the carnival bounty. But the child was adorable, no more than a toddler, grinning through lips coated with the sugary remains of cotton candy.

Lindsey reached into the box at her feet and took out a small stuffed alligator. The crowd around the man surged forward at the appearance of the cheap toy, all with hands outstretched, pleading for their chance at one of the prized throws. Prized, at least, for the duration of the parade.

She dropped it into the child’s chubby hands and then quickly threw a handful of doubloons to the crowd waiting patiently on the walk. She threw another one of the alligators, too, far into the crowd, to reward those who were heeding the safety warnings and staying clear of the unwieldy floats.

“I can’t believe this is your first time to ride on a Mardi Gras float, Lindsey. Don’t you just love it?” Brigit asked, her voice bubbly with excitement.

“It’s different,” Lindsey admitted. “The verdict is still out on the fun part.”

Lindsey watched as Brigit dangled a long strand of silvery beads, taunting the spectators so that they clamored around her, begging for the sparkling throw. She twirled the necklace in the air flippantly and then leaned over to drop it into the hands of an eager teenage girl.

“Wow, get a look at that!” Brigit yelled above the din of the crowd. “Just the guy I need to keep me warm at night.”

“Which guy? There’s only a few thousand out there,” Lindsey quipped good-naturedly.

“The hunk. Over there, in the LSU shirt.” She pointed with one hand and dug around in the overflowing box at her feet with the other. “I’ve got to throw him something good. Like my phone number,” she said teasingly as she caught his eye and tossed him a long string of imitation pearls.

He snagged them in his outstretched hands and blew her a kiss before adding them to the multitude already draped about the shoulders of the blonde who stood at his side.

“Glad you only threw the beads,” Angela offered, leaning over from her spot on the other side of Lindsey.

“Yeah,” Lindsey said, “I’d hate for you to waste a perfectly good phone number on a guy who probably has his own phone book.”

The procession of brightly lit and elaborately decorated floats made its way slowly down St. Charles Avenue as police on horseback tried in vain to keep the crowds pushed back. They were good citizens who’d never think of crossing an officer of the law at any other time, but carnival fever had hit. Fun was the supreme ruler from now until Fat Tuesday.

The float jerked and then came to an abrupt standstill. Lindsey clung to the side. “I hate these sudden stops,” she lamented. Even the most reserved parade viewers left their places on the walks and the neutral grounds that bordered the parade route to swarm around them. She backed away from the edge as the noisy crowd pushed closer, climbing atop friends’ and parents’ shoulders to shove hands and even faces into her space.

“Just relax, Lindsey. Have fun. This is the best part. The rough part comes later, when we hit Canal Street,” Angela said, the thrill of the night adding a lilt to her Uptown accent. She tossed a large supply of beads and doubloons into the street below them, clearly taking her own advice.

“Enjoy it. This is the best part,” Lindsey repeated to herself. She should be having a ball. The other seven girls on her float were.

But they were native New Orleanians, she reminded herself. Even in high school, they had been far more practiced at carnival revelry than she. Not that she hadn’t loved the Mardi Gras season. It was just that her tendency to order and organize had always made it a little more difficult for her to dissolve into a state of total chaos.

But here she was, back in New Orleans with her high school classmates, partying as if it hadn’t been ten years since they were young and eager seniors at Dominican High. She was here, and she had followed their urging, joining in all the Mardi Gras festivities. Parties, masked balls, coronations...

And the krewe’s big parade.

The float jerked forward, bucking like a nervous horse. The motion sickness Lindsey had been fighting all evening attacked again, this time with a vengeance. She held on to the sides of the float and silently ordered her stomach to cooperate.

She knew better than to ride in the parade. But saying no to this bunch of party animals had been about as useless as that last order she had given her stomach. Especially with Grace Ann resorting to her infamous pleading look. The one that had been known to topple powerful men like matchsticks.

Grace Ann had been one of her best friends in school. Sweet, pretty, incredibly rich and generous to a fault. And now she was Queen Grace Ann, of the Krewe of Minerva, a regal monarch who wasn’t willing to take no for an answer. What was the good of being queen, she had argued quite persuasively, if your friends wouldn’t help you celebrate?

So here she was, Lindsey mused, atop a tractor-pulled contraption of brightly painted papier-mâché figures, her costume slipping off her shoulders and her mask riding her nose like a loose saddle. And she was trying not to even think what her stomach was doing while the float snaked along at the pace of an aged snail.

Brigit leaned over the edge, dropping toys and decorated plastic cups to a group of youngsters who were all but climbing in with them. “Come on, get with it,” she told Lindsey playfully. “Your adoring public is begging for treats.”

Lindsey tossed a supply of beads into the crowd, high above the heads of those who swarmed around her. She tossed more toward a balcony full of gray-haired women hanging over the rails. Brigit was probably right about this being the best part of the route. Huge oaks and massive old homes lined the wide streets. And the crowd, though rowdy by her standards, was mostly families, out to enjoy a beautiful evening and all the excitement of Mardi Gras.

She reached for more beads, but the float jerked to a stop, sending her swaying against the rail.

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Here? Now? You can’t be.” Brigit offered a reassuring pat. “But, if you must, aim for that tall guy with the stupid hat. He grabs everything I try to throw to anyone else,” she suggested, only half joking.

Lindsey smiled in spite of herself, although Brigit would never see her expression beneath the stiff masks all the float riders were forced to wear. “I’m serious. I may have to bail out. I could signal one of the policemen to get me a ride.”

“Sure, there are plenty of medical people around,” Danielle threw in, stepping from the back corner to join in the conversation, “although it’s usually the marchers that pass out, not the riders. But you’d miss all the fun.”

“But I don’t know how much more fun I can handle,” Lindsey countered. “The two hours of serious toasting before we even started rolling is a tad more than I’m used to.” She leaned back, resting her head against the float’s center frame. “I’ll try to make it a while longer, though,” she conceded. “Who knows? I might get the hang of this, if I last long enough.”

The band that marched in front of the float swung into a popular rock tune, and the fun-loving spectators broke into applause. The faces in the crowd were shifting now, moving and swaying to the music as the float inched forward. Lindsey stood between her two friends and strived to adopt their carefree manner. She stared into the night, trying to focus on eyes, mouths and noses that appeared and then disappeared, like Alice’s Cheshire cat. Now you see them, now you don’t.

She flung a multitude of colored beads into the distance. Patterns of purple, green and gold swirled magically through the night sky, falling like manna from heaven into the upstretched hands.

A beam of light caught Lindsey’s attention and held it. A tiny sliver of illumination in an otherwise darkened house. There were no people on this balcony, just a lit window in the middle of a rounded turret. The curved French window was pushed open, and the night breeze caught the wispy curtain, billowing it like a sail.

A couple danced into view. The girl was dressed in flowing velvet, her long blond hair encircling her face like an ethereal halo. The man held her close, and she rested her head on his broad shoulder.

They were dressed for the evening. She was the traditional Southern belle, he the dashing uniformed soldier. But they were obviously in no hurry to leave the privacy of home for a costume ball.

Young and in love. Lindsey remembered the feeling well. Too well. Especially here in this town, where it had all begun for her. Begun and ended. Squeezing her hands into fists, she smiled determinedly. She was here for fun, not to be tortured by old memories.

Mesmerized, she watched the young lovers, ignoring the chanting crowds around her. She sighed as he tipped his face toward the girl’s and slowly lowered his mouth to hers. Framed in the golden light, they were as clear as a motion picture, acting out their roles, celebrating carnival in their own intimate way.

He ran his hand along her arm, down to the sheath at his side. His lips never leaving hers, he pulled a shiny dagger from the sheath. He was a picture, all right, the brave young soldier, ready to protect his woman.

No, not to protect. Lindsey’s heart leaped to her throat. Oh, God! It couldn’t be!

She watched, a scream stuck in her throat, suffocated by the terror that washed over her, bringing with it bone-chilling paralysis. Watched as the dashing soldier raised the weapon high above his head and plunged it deep in his lover’s heart.

Lindsey blinked and shook her head to clear it of the warped confusion. The images couldn’t be what they seemed. A deception, a cruel joke, but not what they seemed.

Yet the woman was slumping to the floor, the green velvet pooling around her, drinking up the crimson river that flowed from her chest. The man turned, for an instant, for an eternity. Then his eyes bored into Lindsey’s. For a moment, they were as one—the cold, hard perpetrator and the silent witness.

Her body began to shake, spinning as the float jerked forward, but still she couldn’t scream. And she couldn’t look away, couldn’t tear her face from the nightmare that had begun with a kiss.

Then, suddenly, the sliver of light went black. Lindsey fell forward, and her whole world was bathed in darkness.