CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Is it true voodoo is still practiced in New Orleans?”
Finn smiled at the eager young man asking the question. In spite of feeling as low as possible after getting suspended from school, here, at least, was someone who could make her smile. Maybe life wasn’t awful.
She wrapped up her afternoon walking tour. She was on her way to her uncles’ voodoo shop before letting the tourists go their separate ways. They’d been walking along the street admiring the building beside them when this guy advanced on Finn with a decidedly playful gleam in his eye.
Voodoo? It was hardly an original question. She’d heard it too many times to count. Her own inner devil, though, prompted her to give a different answer each time.
She leaned in as if giving him, and only him, an intimate reply. “We-ell, I don’t practice it myself but—”
“You know people who do?” he finished for her. He seemed a bit older than the usual pimply teenager or annoying young adult who usually asked this type of question. And, for some reason, it was generally a girl.
“My two uncles own a voodoo shop,” Finn said. “That’s where we’re headed now. You’ll have to ask them. I’m sure they have lots of colorful stories.” She had one of her own but so far she hadn’t seen any effect from her personal voodoo doll—no unexplained pains anywhere on her body, no sore throat caused by a rope around the neck. If he’d asked, she would have said she didn’t believe in such things, but the folklore was good fodder for the tourists. Believe it or don’t; to each his own.
She herded the small group of six around the corner. They stopped beneath an overhang long enough to listen to a solo saxophonist playing for a few tourists. Since Finn had extra time, she listened with one ear as well, the upbeat music escalating with the increased crowd noise. It was a typical day, warm, sultry, the earthy scent of the river wafting into the Quarter.
When a mule-drawn carriage stopped to wait for a car to pass and caught her attention, she studied the driver. A dim memory floated to the front of her mind—Finn taking pictures with her digital camera of a couple kissing while sitting in just such a carriage. Franco and Barron. The beginning of her many problems.
As she watched, her mind drifting, the driver turned around to say something to the couple. He gestured to the restaurant to their right. Finn couldn’t hear what he was saying but knew that his chatter wasn’t much different from her own. A thought nagged at her, something about the driver. The way he moved or sat, something she couldn’t put her finger on.
When he turned around to drive on, a snippet of the couple’s conversation penetrated the noise around her.
“We need to find an ATM,” the male passenger said. “I’m about out of cash.”
Finn saw the woman’s lips move but the sharp clip-clop of the horse’s hooves and the pedestrian and street noise drowned her out.
“Oh. My. God.” Pieces of the past week fell into place like the tumblers in a combination lock. Finn clutched her chest.
She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud until several of her tourists turned to look at her with a question in their eyes.
Finn paused to take a breath and collect herself. In a slow, measured voice, she said, “It’s time to move on, folks.”
This was it! This was the recollection that had nagged at her. Why she’d thought she’d seen the man at the morgue before but couldn’t place him. She had seen him before. He was the carriage driver in the pictures she’d taken of Franco and his ladylove.
He hadn’t been the focus of the photos so his face had quickly deserted her brain but she knew that he was in a few of those shots. All she’d been concerned with at the time had been capturing the images of Franco and his girlfriend for the paying customer, Clarissa Franco.
How had the driver ended up dead? Why? She couldn’t put all the pieces together. Her mind whirled with myriad possibilities.
Jack would know.
They arrived at her uncles’ shop with Finn clueless how they got there. Attempting to compose herself as her group crowded inside, she stopped to greet her uncles with hugs and kisses, something she did twice a day. They always acted like they hadn’t seen her in months. The act tickled her because they loved it as much as she did. For the benefit of the tourists, Finis asked after the family when they both were perfectly aware of everything going on with Dorie and Dan, and, of course, Debbie. It was all Finn could do to keep from rolling her eyes.
Finn knew, as they spoke together, Debbie was even now in the backroom of their store learning how to string beads for a bracelet or how to put a curse on someone or some other crazy thing they’d concocted for her. God only knew. Finn didn’t want to know.
She shifted from one foot to the other impatiently waiting for her tourists to buy their key chains, shot glasses and Mardi Gras beads so she could talk to Jack.
When they met together outside the shop several minutes later, she hurriedly herded them along to their original meeting place. She accepted their thanks and their tips and wished them well, all the while her brain whirled with questions.
Even though she stood next to the police precinct, she called Jack rather than go inside to see him and put up with that particular indignity again.
“Jack?” she said after tapping in his cell phone number.
“Finn?”
“The one and only. Have I got news for you.”
“Oh, yeah? Me, too.”
“You first,” Finn suggested.
“I know where your voodoo doll came from and the guy who had it made seems pretty harmless. Nutty as a fruitcake but harmless.”
“Was it your old girlfriend, Marie, who made the doll?”
“Yep. She was pretty helpful.”
Finn knew Marie. In fact, most everyone who spent any time in the Quarter knew Marie. She was the kind of woman, who, if a man and a woman walked into her store, the woman became invisible and the man became the undivided focus of her salacious attention. “I’m sure she was very helpful, but why did he do it?”
Jack laughed. He knew how Finn felt about Marie. He knew how all women felt about Marie.
“First things first. What d’you know?”
“I remembered where I saw that guy in the morgue before.”
“So you know his name?”
“I don’t, but I know he was a carriage driver.”
“How does he connect to Franco?”
“You know how Franco wants those pictures so bad, the ones I took of him and the Barron woman?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I thought he was worried about her pictures being circulated to the cops or feds or whoever, but there’s someone else in those shots.”
He snorted. “You got pictures of a threesome or something? I need to get Tommy to show me those pictures.”
“Will you get your head out of your pants? There’s no threesome. Before they found that quiet spot to make out, they took a carriage ride and I took photos of that, too.”
“You mean to tell me,” Jack said, the tone of his voice indicating a trace of humor, “that you can put the carriage driver and Franco together?”
“Not only is that what I’m saying but Tommy has the pictures to prove it.”
“This keeps getting better and better.”
“Only you would think that. A man is dead here.”
“I know, but look at it this way. The guy had one conviction already for attempted blackmail and now, not only was he seen with a woman with a boatload of embezzled cash who’s wanted by the FBI, but with a former felon known for his wicked bad temper.”
“The plot thickens.”
“Yes indeed.”
The gears clicked in Finn’s brain. “So it’s not much of a stretch to put him, your guy, whatever his name is, eavesdropping on Franco and Barron while they’re obliviously discussing her millions and trying to cash in on it, forgive my pun. Maybe said driver tries to extort money from Franco or his girlfriend, and then Franco objects to paying him anything and he kills the man. Seeing as how he’s known for his temper. I could totally see that happening.”
“I’ll make a detective out of you yet, Nancy Drew.”
“Thanks.”
“Now all we need is proof.”
“The pictures aren’t enough?”
“That only proves they were together. The forensics guys are doing their thing. We have to hope that Franco left his DNA somewhere on the body. It’s been in the river and isn’t in the best condition. Maybe on his clothes.”
Disappointed, Finn asked, “There’s nothing else you can do?”
“Oh no, chere. The greatest detective in New Orleans is on the case. I’ve got other irons in the fire.”
“So what do I do in the meantime?”
“Stay safe. This is big. I mean it. I’ll get those pictures from Tommy. They might shed some light on the case. No pun intended. We know Franco’s dangerous. With the photos, I might be able to get a warrant for his arrest for murder and not just for associating with the Barron woman. It’s thin but I happen to know a judge.”
“Knowing is everything in this city. Is she gorgeous?” Finn read the Times Picayune every morning over her bowl of Cheerios. She knew how these things worked.
“You got that right, Miss Jones. Knowing is everything. And she does happen to be gorgeous. This helps. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle and what you’ve told me puts a few more pieces in place.”
“Glad I could help. Glad I remembered.”
“Keep your head down. This will all be over soon. Take good care and I’ll talk to you as soon as I know something. I’ll see you at Gert’s tomorrow.”
“Bye, Jack.”
“Bye, chere.”
Wow. For a few hours she’d managed to forget how lousy she felt about the culinary school “incident” and the sidetracking of her career. Amazing how a little distance and someone else’s problems put her own in perspective. She was alive, single and healthy. Life could be a whole lot worse.
***
The next afternoon, Finn stood still long enough to admire Gert’s garden. It was beyond beautiful. Magnificent described it, with lush jungle-like vegetation and an all-encompassing quiet found only in the Garden District. Giant banana trees and elephant ear plants vied for attention with spiky dracaena and spider plants in potted terracotta containers. Colorful flowers abounded galore. The glorious magnolia tree shaded a three-tiered gurgling fountain. Gert added a contemporary lap pool along the high-backed brick border wall when she married health-conscious husband number three.
A seasoned brick walkway wound through the yard, front to back and side to side, but even it looked a bit bedraggled, overgrown and weed-strewn. However, the scene improved once Jack walked through the gate and graced it with his confident, masculine presence.
He came prepared to work wearing khaki utility shorts, work boots and a short-sleeved white t-shirt, which showed off his lean, muscled arms and broad chest. Finn couldn’t quite take her eyes off those damnable boots. She’d once seen a picture in a Playgirl magazine of a guy dressed in work boots...nothing but work boots, a hardhat and an impressive erection. Oooh. Boy. Finn dragged her thoughts away. She had a real live man in front of her. No need for erotic images. Of course, this one was fully dressed.
Jack brought his own pair of gardening gloves and wore his ever-present sunglasses. Bent over, staring at something in the fountain, was perhaps his best side, but certainly not his worst, and it took Finn’s mind off naked men in nothing but work boots.
Finn stared. She really, really hated to leave him alone with the weeds but if she was going to prepare a dinner of biscuits, her own version of cochon de lait—the essential Louisiana-style pulled pork, and her homemade barbecue sauce made with peppers, cane syrup, vinegar and her newly discovered secret spice ingredient, crushed tamarind, she had to hop to it. She already had the pork in the oven where it had been simmering for hours. It smelled like heaven on a platter, the scent drifting in the air.
He turned, caught her staring and grinned. “Smells great.”
“Thanks. I could help,” she offered, gesturing to the yard.
“Nah. Get inside and put your apron on.” He swatted her backside with the gloves. “I think I know the difference between a weed and a plant.”
She hoped so.
Thirty minutes later Jack came in the house, sweaty, dirty and grinning. He marched to the sink, turned on the cold-water tap and stuck his head beneath. Finn idly wondered what had happened to the gardening gloves. When he came up sputtering and swiping water from his face, he said, “Nothing like manual labor to make you appreciate your day job.”
She handed him a dishtowel. He wiped off his face and started for the door, dropping it on the counter. “Had to take a break and tell you my stomach’s rumbling from the terrific smells coming from in here. Almost done. See you in a few.”
One hour later, Finn stepped outside. She shaded her eyes with one hand as she took in the yard. “Wow. It looks great.”
Jack wiped his brow with the back of his hand, then pointed out the places he’d worked. As he moved around the yard, he said, “I couldn’t wear those damned gloves. They made my hands sweat.”
“Some weeds can make your hands itch,” she warned. “You can even get a rash or blisters.”
“Is that the voice of experience?”
Finn nodded.
“I’ll be okay. I’ve never had any problems before.”
Famous last words. Within thirty minutes, she looked out the window and he was scratching his face and arms. Surreptitiously he scratched an even more personal area. Finn tried not to stare as she remembered he’d come in and used the bathroom. She fought a grin. She located an antihistamine and the calamine lotion in the bathroom medicine cabinet.
She gave the sauce one last stir, humming a song to herself, before she rescued Jack. When she heard an odd scraping noise and voices coming from the yard, she peeked out the window over the kitchen sink. She gasped.
Jack stood with his back to her, a rake raised threateningly in his hands, wildly gesturing and yelling obscenities loud enough to be heard on the street out front.
She couldn’t see who he was yelling at but the angry tone didn’t sound like Jack. She couldn’t ever recall hearing him raise his voice. Easy-going Jack seldom got mad. Except with Tommy. And her. This Jack, however, was extremely, crazily, mad-scientist psycho.
Finn forgot all about the itch medicine and rushed out the kitchen door into the yard still holding the spoon she’d been using. The sun blinded her. She shielded her eyes and stepped from the sun into the shade of a tree. Again, she heard Jack swear loudly.
“Jack?”
He swiveled, brandishing the rake like the deadly weapon he’d made it, his eyes wild, his face stark with an emotion Finn couldn’t quite read. “Go inside, Finn, lock the door and call 9-1-1.”
She couldn’t move. Johnny Franco held a gun on Jack. A huge, black gun that looked big enough to blow both of them to Kingdom Come.
He pointed it at her, a sneer on his smug face. “No, stay, sweet-cheeks, and watch me shoot your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” Okay, that was a stupid thing to say. It was the first thing that came to her rattled mind, but stupid all the same. Common sense returned when she opened her mouth to speak. Okay, not common sense. Common sense dictated that she turn her butt around and go back in the house. But she couldn’t abandon Jack. “Why shoot him? He hasn’t done anything to you.”
Franco glared at Finn, his piercing eyes dark as Hell on a moonless night. “He’s keeping me from you. And it’s you I want to shoot, bitch.” He swiveled the gun toward her. Finn stood rooted in place, incapable of movement, unable to look anywhere else. “I killed one man because of you. I can do it again. I ain’t afraid to shoot no woman.”
Franco focused on her, his furious, black eyes narrowed, his jaw tense. Jack shifted a fraction to his left. He positioned the rake on his shoulder, and swung it like a baseball bat. It crashed against Franco’s gun hand. Franco howled like an alley cat and dropped the weapon.
Jack kicked it beneath a flowering basket of impatiens. It disappeared from view. He raised the rake to hit Franco again but Franco grabbed the handle with his uninjured hand. They wrestled over control, trampling the newly de-weeded flowerbeds.
They tripped over each other’s feet and fell into a patch of weeds. Neither man held the rake. Finn rushed forward and grabbed it. She followed the men at a safe distance searching for her chance to do something, anything to help, as they wrangled in the dirt like a couple of pissed-off kids, cussing, fists flying, kicking, scratching, anything to maim each other.
Finn edged closer to Franco and Jack. She zigged and zagged. They zigged and zagged. She avoided flying fists and spinning legs and got behind Franco.
When they moved to within inches of the lap pool, Finn held her breath. Franco took a step back, and Jack took a step back, then dropped his head and bulled forward, his arms outstretched, hollering at Finn to get out of the way. The two men fell into the pool with a loud splash, kicking up twin fountains of cold water. Both men sank to the bottom.
Franco hit the bottom first, then bounced up through the water. When he attempted to climb out, Finn seized the opportunity. She didn’t hesitate. She took the flat end of the rake and hit him as hard as she could over the head. He fell back into the pool as if in slow motion, drifting toward the bottom again. She winced when she saw Jack. He surfaced, sputtering and spewing water, bedraggled and irritated. He gave Franco a disgusted look, then swam down to retrieve the unconscious man.
When he got him to the surface, she helped haul the deadweight from the water. They left him on the deck, alive and breathing.
Jack climbed out and lay on his back wheezing, his sunglasses missing, his clothing soaked and clinging to his body, his hair dark with dripping water. His no-longer-white shirt had one shoulder ripped off and the scrap of fabric clung to his wrist. He gave Finn a slight grin. “Nice job, chere, ‘though I really would’ve liked to take my new boots off before I went for a swim.”
“I’ll try to warn you the next time.”
He shook his head. “See if you can get my cell out of my pocket and call the cops. If it still works. I don’t think I can move. That jackass weighs a ton and hits like Evander Holyfield.”
“Your phone won’t work now. You just want me to put my hand in your pocket.”
“True on the second count, but I have a waterproof cover. Should be fine.”
She kneeled beside him and pointed. “This pocket?”
When he nodded, she yanked the phone from his tight, wet pants and ignored his grin. “Are you okay?”
“No.” He rolled to his side, then when Finn handed him the phone he slowly sat up and gave the 9-1-1 operator the pertinent information, then disconnected. “I hoped you killed the son-of-a-bitch. He fights mean.”
Finn looked at the inert, waterlogged man. Blood dribbled from the back of his head. “Would I be in trouble if I killed him?”
“Not as far as I’m concerned.”
“What should we do with him?”
Jack glared at Franco’s prone body. “As long as he stays put, we’re fine. You were impressive, chere. You could give any action star a run for his money. Watch out, Jason Statham.”
“Or Bruce Willis. Or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Or Steven Sagal. I don’t know Jason Statham. Is he famous?”
He laughed out loud. “Don’t get to the movies much, do ya?”
“Who’s got the time?” she complained as she worriedly contemplated Franco. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation with him right there, out cold. He tried to kill you.”
“And you.”
“What’s wrong with him anyway? He said he killed someone else. Who? And, geez, it’s a bunch of photos. What difference does it make to him whether I see them or the whole damned world does?”
“He’s a psycho.”
“Is that the technical police term?” She couldn’t believe any of this. It was like an episode of CSI. She couldn’t help returning his infectious grin.
“Yep. Did you see where that gun got to?”
Finn walked over to the potted red impatiens she saw it slide beneath earlier. When she spotted the dark metal of the gun’s grip peeking out from an over-hanging bloom, she pointed. “There. It’s right there.”
Jack struggled to his feet, limped over to where she stood, his boots squishing, water droplets following him like a trail of breadcrumbs. He reached into his back pocket for the gardening gloves he’d stuck there earlier and picked up the gun with one of them. “Some days I hate these guys.”
“What guys?”
“The bad guys.”
Sirens wailed in the distance. Finn gave Jack a grim smile. “The cavalry is arriving.”
“About time.” He absent-mindedly scratched at his forearm.
“Do we need an ambulance for Franco?”
“Not that I care, but I’ll let the EMTs make that call.”
“You’re a cop,” she reminded him.
“Not today. Today I’m a gardener.” He took in the trampled yard and scratched his arm again. “And not a very good one.”
Finn eyed the damage. “The flowers’ll bounce back. You didn’t break too many stems. Without all the weeds, it still looks better than it did.” He’d stacked a pile of pulled weeds in one corner of the yard. “Of course now I’ll have to call the pool guy. There seems to be an awful lot of dirt in it.”
“Very funny. Be careful or I’ll sic the cops on you, too.” He swung his gaze around as several police pushed open the garden gate and stepped into the yard, guns drawn, gazes wary. Jack pulled his badge from his shorts pocket and held it high. “At ease, boys. I’m on your side. The jerk is out cold thanks to Finn here, my fearless savior.”
As they gave their statements to the police officer, the other one cuffed Franco moments after he came to. He growled at the officer and glared at Finn. “It ain’t over, bitch.”
“Shut up.” Jack gestured with one hand in a shooing fashion. “Get that ass out of here.”
“What now?” Finn asked.
The cops were gone.
Franco was gone.
Jack sat down at an outdoor table and removed his wet socks, boots and ripped tee. Maybe it was the adrenaline but he looked even more delicious than usual with his broad bronzed shoulders and washboard abs.
He leaned back and closed his eyes, allowing himself to relax and dry out in the sun. He opened one eye and looked up at Finn. “Let’s eat. Gert got any beer in there?”
“I’m sure she does.”
“You want me to come inside and drip all over or should I stay out here?”
“Stay. I’ll serve. You deserve a little pampering.”
“Got that right.” He leaned back, stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles in front of him. “Detective Boyle saves the day again.”
Finn brought the food out on a large tray. They ate together, laughing over Franco’s antics even knowing they could’ve been killed. The dunk into the water must have cooled off Jack’s itching because Finn forgot all about the anti-itch medicines she had been going to give him.
He regaled her with the story of Peter La Fontaine and how he thought she’d put a spell on him that cost him his ability to get it up. He thought it was hilarious. She refused to take the blame for scaring the poor man into erectile dysfunction.
She sent Jack off an hour later with leftovers then cleaned up. She hadn’t told him about being suspended from school even though it weighed heavily on her mind. He didn’t know she’d even been in school so what was the point? Still, she didn’t want to lie to Jack even by omission. What did that mean about their strange relationship?