“So we’re pretty sure Armond has this silent partner for some of his dealings, and Mama Joe’s boys have confirmed that they’ve heard that rumor for years,” Connor explained later between bites of a shrimp po’boy sandwich. “He never gave me a name, but I always wondered what the deal was there. And me being me, I wanted to crack that mystery, but I searched that house and used every tactic I knew but I’ve never found anything—no phone records, no computer files, not even a flash drive.”
Josie nibbled on her own chicken-salad sandwich and gave him a skeptical glance. “Are you sure? What if Armond wanted you to believe that he had someone else ordering him around? I’m sure he has shell corporations all over the world.”
They were alone on the back porch of the restaurant with churning brown water below them and a rusty, wobbling ceiling fan over their heads. Connor had been on watch most of the day, just waiting for some stranger to walk into the Crooked Nail and mow them down. But Mama Joe had posted her own brand of protection all through the swamp. Big men with big dogs and shotguns and powerful rifles they used to kill alligators and wild hogs.
Josie had been on alert, too. She did the visual thing several times over. She still didn’t trust him, Connor realized. It was midafternoon and she’d heard nothing from Sherwood. Of course, they didn’t have the best phone service out here. They’d have to leave soon enough, but this was the safest resting place he could find.
He answered her question. “He does have hidden assets, bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands, but this is different. This person, whoever he or she is, is so hidden it’s like looking for gold on the side of a mountain. Hard to see.”
“And he wants it that way,” Josie countered, her cat eyes giving him that slant of disbelief. “We need to remember Louis Armond is a criminal.”
“I keep that in mind every day,” Connor retorted. “And I need to remember you’re FBI.”
“I’ll remind you of that every day,” she countered.
“You’re antsy,” he noted, giving her the once-over. She looked cute in the flowing skirt and T-shirt but she also looked different. Not so uptight and buttoned-up. Even her precise, longish bob had gone all curly from the humidity. She didn’t seem so on the job and let’s get the bad guys right now. The gun in her room proved that more than enough without her showing it.
“Mama Joe says word of Armond’s dead mistress is all the buzz in New Orleans. Everyone’s wondering if a hostile takeover is about to ensue. But no one’s talking about why or who or what. So we’ve got nothing. Except that we’re on someone’s radar. One of my informants told me this was bigger than Armond and the FBI put together, but he refused to say who, what, when and where. A lot of talk and most of it not so good.”
“I just love keeping company with you,” she said on a tease. “But we’ve got work to do.”
“So what’s the plan?” he asked her, figuring she already had a plan.
“The way I see it, we have to find out who’s trying to kill Louis Armond so we can save us, too. We also need to find out who this silent partner is, and if he or she is real, once and for all. It only makes sense that the partner has heard about Armond’s possible turn and of course they are not happy,” she said, all business now. Even if she was barefoot.
“Agreed,” he said.
“Now tell me about anyone else you might suspect.”
“His wife,” Connor said. “Vanessa Armond likes the lifestyle Louis provides, so she’s turned her head too many times after seeing him photographed with models and showgirls.”
“Such as Lewanna?”
“Yes, the now-very-dead Lewanna.”
“You think his own wife ordered a hit on the girlfriend and then him? But why, if she’s used to his philandering nature?”
“A woman scorned,” he said on a shrug. “Maybe she’s just had enough. It happens. And she’d stand to inherit millions.” He leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “Especially if she has decided to run off with the silent partner, or at least make a play for the other man. Or she could actually be the silent partner, the one who really calls the shots. She’d stand to inherit if Armond is dead. And...she’d also want me dead because she thinks I know too much.”
A splash in the water made both of them glance up. “If she’s found out you’re FBI, she’d want you dead, too.”
Josie’s eyes turned a rich gold-green. “Yes, it certainly does make sense when you put it that way. Money talks. Dirty money really talks. People will kill for that reason alone.”
“Are you thinking of your mother?” he asked, sincere now for once and wanting to get inside her psyche a little bit.
“Are you asking me about my mother?” she replied with a deflection maneuver he recognized.
“Yes.”
Josie stared out over the rich stream of dark water. “She loved a man who turned out to be a criminal. She turned the other cheek to stay with him, no matter what. Now she’s broke and bitter and living in a one-bedroom condo in Atlanta.” She shrugged. “Honestly, I’m surprised she didn’t do something desperate long ago to make him stop, but she’s still alive even if she is heartbroken.” She shivered and did her eagle-eyed visual again. “I don’t want to ever be like that.”
Ah, now they were getting to the heart of the matter.
“And you resent her and all such criminals as your father, right?”
She turned and gave him a direct glance. “Yes.”
“So you resent me and all I stand for.”
“Yes.”
So much for that together time when they’d bonded last night. He’d held her close, sniffed her lemony perfume and wondered what it’d be like to kiss her. Killer, from her point of view and the disapproving slant of her eyes.
“I can’t convince you I’ve changed,” he said. “So I’ll just try to show you.”
“You have convinced me, a little bit,” she replied, surprising him. “You could have left me here last night and gone away. But you stayed.”
The thought had crossed his mind, but he’d shooed it away with the mosquitoes. He couldn’t leave this woman behind. He made light of it now. “For the French toast, yes.”
She actually laughed at that. And made his heart do a whirl that ran deeper than the water’s current. Seeing her face light up and her eyes dance could make him stay a lot longer than any French toast. But it would be just as sweet.
“Did you think I’d abandon you?” he asked, his eyes holding hers. “That I’d just run away to save myself?”
“When we first got here, yes. But I didn’t really think about anything after my head hit the pillow. And I didn’t think about it when I woke up and heard you laughing. If you’d left, I would have found you.”
“I believe that,” he said, glad for her bluntness.
“Now that we’ve settled that, why don’t we go over everything you know about this silent partner?”
“I know nothing.” He finished his sandwich, inhaling the crispy French bread with a satisfied sigh. “Armond really doesn’t trust anyone, so I had to draw him out. I think I’m only alive today because I helped him find the Benoits. He had to put up a fight regarding my fun time with the FBI to make himself look good, but surprisingly no one came forward and did me in. Now this.”
He threw a chunk of bread to a couple of wood ducks roaming the shore. “I didn’t give him up to the FBI because we really didn’t have anything to pin on him. He’s meticulous about hiding incriminating paperwork, but I’ve got a few hunches to play out. On the other hand, all the intel I was able to get is sitting on someone’s desk back at your office. The FBI left me twisting in the wind with a possible hit on my head.”
“The paintings are worth millions,” she said. “Could this be about the Benoits, then?”
“I don’t think so. He’s got them out on tour in a few select museums that are highly guarded and airtight. If anyone wanted the paintings, they’d hit the museums and art galleries first.”
She gave him a sideways glance, her hair falling like dark feathers over her cheek. “Art crime ranks high on the FBI list. I’m guessing you daydreamed about how to break that airtight security, right?”
He couldn’t deny it. “The Benoits are tempting, but if I wanted to steal his art, I could take my pick of the pieces in his mansion. Old habits die hard, but I’m done with taking what doesn’t belong to me.” He looked her in the eye. “Anything I acquire from here on out will be mine, legally and completely.”
She lifted a dark brow at that comment and probably at the way he was looking at her now. He’d daydreamed about her a lot, too, over the past few hours. But Josie Gilbert wasn’t someone who could be acquired. She was strong and sarcastic and a bit cynical. But lovely in a tough-girl way.
And not good for him to be around.
He longed for his old FBI partner. Not one bit of temptation there, if you didn’t count the doughnuts and chocolate cake that the big man had always shared. But his former “keeper” had retired at the required age of fifty-seven and was now fishing somewhere in Florida.
Connor could go for that kind of life right now.
Then he changed that and longed for someone like the woman who’d trusted him to stay. The woman who’d vowed to find him if he had left. The woman sitting here with him now, her mind razor-sharp and snapping, her ambition as strong and urgent as his own. New territory.
This was one of those ironic moments in life. He had a huge crush on a woman who could cart him off to jail with one wrong move, and they were running from people who could kill both of them, all because he’d blown his cover with a crime boss, then convinced that boss to let him hang around. Where was the justice in that? Justice, maybe. A challenge? Definitely.
“What about Armond’s son?”
She’d managed to get his head back in the game, just like that.
“Lou lives in Europe. A good life filled with yachts, mansions and red-carpet moments with actresses and models.”
“Like father, like son.”
“Yes, Lou supposedly runs Armond’s philanthropic organizations.”
“He has philanthropic tendencies?”
“He has money to hide or get rid of for tax purposes, yes. He made a big contribution to Princess Lara’s house-building project in New Orleans. For what it’s worth, Armond told me repeatedly that he’d made enough money to come clean and live legitimately.”
“So why didn’t he?”
“His smuggling operation is too easy to give up. And too secret for me to crack into. I’m telling you those receipts and that money—that was put there by someone who wanted to implicate him.”
“One of his own?”
“I don’t know. He pays his people well for discretion and for security. None of them are hurting and Lou is set for life.”
“Hmm. Somebody wants a piece of the pie.”
“Or the whole enchilada.”
“Do you think Lou would off his own father?”
“Money is motive, sweetheart,” he said, knowing it to be true. His workaholic mother had lived for money and had died at gunpoint on a dark street, leaving Deidre and him with mounting charge-card bills and no money to pay for any of her debts.
Josie must have picked up on his dark tone. “I’m sorry about your mother. Bad way to die.”
“Mugged and shot,” he said, the memories of that night hitting him with the humidity. “Deidre never quite got over her death.”
“And you? You became a criminal to provide for your sister?”
“At first. I wanted to be noble like Robin Hood, but the power overtook me. Like mother, like son. She pretended to have it all together, and I’ve pretended to be someone I’m not.”
“But you’re making up for it now, right?”
“I’m trying. Enforced nobility is the closest thing to being noble. So here I am living on the honor system, when really, I have no honor.”
“You’re a work in progress, Connor.”
“Maybe so.”
They’d stared at each other while they crossed another boundary. Did she finally get that he was trying? He prayed so.
“Let’s jot down names and arrange facts,” she said, taking the drawing paper Mama Joe had given her and placing it on the gray, weathered picnic table. “Maybe we can piece together some means and motive.”
“You know how to get to a guy’s heart, Agent Gilbert,” he replied with a hand over his chest.
“I’m a work in progress, too,” she said.
* * *
Four hours later, Mama Joe put a huge piece of fried chicken on Connor’s dinner plate, and they still hadn’t narrowed down one good suspect, just pieces of key people around Armond.
“Now, eat up,” Mama Joe said with false huffiness. “If you gotta run, you sure gonna need some fuel to get you going.”
“This is our third meal today,” Josie noted. “I haven’t eaten this much in years.”
Connor dipped mashed potatoes and lathered them with rich brown gravy. “Good thing I only swing by once or twice a year.”
“Your girl there needs some meat on her bones,” Mama Joe said as if Josie wasn’t at the table. “Feed that girl, Connor. I know you know all about what goes with what and all that fancy cooking, but this girl needs some nourishment for the soul.”
“I’ll take another corn-bread muffin, then,” Josie said, pointing toward the always-on stove at the back of the restaurant. “And some more of that crawfish-and-corn chowder.”
“It’s bisque,” Connor corrected with a grin. “But I’ll have some, too.”
Mama Joe put her hands on her ample hips. “Y’all see the stove. Help yourself. Me, I got to get off these tired feet and watch NCIS reruns.”
“She’s got a thing for Mark Harmon,” Connor pointed out.
“Don’t we all?” Josie jumped up and served herself in a true native way that made him laugh.
They’d be leaving at dark, starting with a pirogue ride through the swamp and moving on to a pickup truck hidden in some bramble somewhere on the other side of the bayou. This place had a system of getting people in and out and gone before any lawmen or angry men could find them. And Connor had already lingered too long. The shadows stretching toward the water could hold people who were willing to shoot all of them.
“So we have a plan,” Josie replied when she came back to the table. “We have to start at the beginning, which means the main estate and the garage. You think we might find something on the silent partner there?”
“Yes. He closeted himself in the office there a lot. We start back at the mansion on the river, move to his penthouse in New Orleans if we need to, and we might have to take a quick jaunt to Europe.”
“The bureau won’t let you leave the country, Connor.”
“But you might.”
“Hey, we’re not that comfortable with each other. I can’t allow that, so don’t even tease about it.”
“I am teasing,” he said, not teasing. He’d do whatever he had to do to get out from under the yoke of Armond’s weighty pseudo-friendship. He had to think of Deidre, and now he had to think of Josie. She wouldn’t like that, but it wasn’t his nature to put women in harm’s way. An old-fashioned notion but one he couldn’t break. He should have been there with his mom the night she died, but he’d been out looking for a good time.
Too late to make up for that mistake.
Never too late to learn from that mistake.
And as Mama Joe would tell him, never too late to pray for forgiveness and start all over with a born-again attitude.
Could he start fresh? He planned to do just that once this case was solved.
But first, he had one more question to ask Josie.
“What happened in Dallas?”
She dropped her buttered corn-bread muffin and sat openmouthed. “What does that matter now?”
“You obviously had to get out of Texas. I need to understand why.” He’d wondered about that all day. They might get into some heavy stuff before this was over. He wanted her to be prepared. He couldn’t have her falling apart on him.
His common sense told him that wouldn’t happen, but he needed to put up a wall between them so he wouldn’t get distracted.
Right now she looked aggravated, her expression heating up with a mad shine. “Is that a deal breaker, Randall? Do you demand a clean working record with all your handlers?”
“It might be an issue. I can’t have you choking on me.”
She glared at him over her sweet tea. “Are you serious? I mean, I’ve pretty much forgiven you all of your shortcomings, not to mention sticking my neck out to help you with Armond. And I trusted you not to leave me out here in this isolated swamp, and now you decide to interrogate me?”
“I just want to know,” he said. “Nothing to do with this Armond stuff. Just what happened.”
She gave him a look that caused the butter on her muffin to slide right off. “I don’t have to explain that to you.”
“Defensive, aren’t we?”
“Seriously, are you messing with my head for a reason?”
He leaned forward, twirled his straw in his tea. “Yes. You have my file, so you know my weak spots. C’mon, you answered when I asked about your mother, so I know you’ve overcome that. This has to be something else.”
“And you have to know this right now?”
“You answered about your mother right away. But you didn’t say much about your daddy. The one who’s in prison.”
Her skin paled. “Because you know about that. And you probably know about Dallas, too.”
He wouldn’t lie. “I was about to do some digging when Armond stepped back into my life. Now here we are.”
“I don’t want to talk about Dallas,” she said, dropping her spoon. “Let’s get on with our plans. I have to brief my supervisor.”
So Dallas was a sore spot. He’d find out, one way or another. He’d be more discreet next time he brought up the subject. “Let’s get going, then,” he said.
He turned to gather their empty plates to take inside. He’d made it to the screen and held it open, waiting for Josie to cross the big porch, when the first shots came whizzing through the air. One of the shots hit a plate he held and shattered it.
And the next one hit the table where Josie had been sitting. But he didn’t see her anywhere.