Metsy Hingle - Flash Point

Once the police units had gone, traffic started to flow again. She noted that, despite the lateness of the hour, people were out in force. Cars hurried from one red light to the next and pedestrians, mostly in pairs or groups, waited on both sides of the street for the arrows to signal it was safe for them to cross. No doubt tourists or convention-goers, she reasoned, since few residents ever paid heed to the signal lights.

A blur of movement at the far corner of the street caught Kelly’s eye. A man, sporting a black cowl with horns and waving a devil’s red-tipped pitchfork in his hand, raced up to the crosswalk. Several similarly clad people rushed up behind him. She’d almost forgotten that it was Halloween. The devil led a group of what she suspected were college kids across the busy Canal Street intersection. Evidently they were planning a big night of partying in the French Quarter. Although at twenty-eight she wasn’t a great deal older than the college crowd, the idea of partying held little appeal for her. Turning away from the window, she stared over at the rumpled bed and debated whether or not to go back to sleep.

She was still jet-lagged, since she’d barely returned to New York before she’d hopped a plane for New Orleans. And the crying hadn’t helped. Yet, recalling the reason she’d awoken in the first place—the old nightmare about being trapped in a fire—she knew going back to sleep would be an exercise in futility. Besides, she reasoned, her body was still on European time and that little catnap had taken the edge off her exhaustion. Deciding that a shower and something to eat would be a better idea, she headed for the bathroom.

When Kelly exited the bathroom a short time later, she felt marginally better. The shower had helped. She suspected the crying had, too, since she’d allowed herself little chance to grieve after learning of Sister Grace’s death. She’d simply begun making the necessary arrangements to come to New Orleans. Despite the protests of Wyatt, her agent, at her abrupt departure, she’d been right to come back. She’d needed to come back. Not for Sister Grace, but for herself because she’d needed to say goodbye. Once she had done so, perhaps she’d be able to close that last link to her past and to the girl she had once been.

Kelly’s stomach grumbled. Pressing a hand to her middle, she acknowledged a hollow ache in her belly that had nothing to do with grief and everything to do with the simple fact that she was famished. When in the world had she eaten last? she wondered. And since she couldn’t remember ingesting anything besides coffee since the return flight from Paris, she decided it probably had been much too long.

After slipping into her favorite pair of DKNY black jeans, she pulled on a black-and-ivory cashmere turtleneck and the designer boots she’d picked up for a song while shooting in Italy. She ran a brush through her blond hair, scanned her appearance in the mirror and frowned at how pale she looked. Digging through the cosmetic samples one of the makeup artists had given her, she chose a soft pink blush and rubbed some on her cheeks to give her face some color. Then she swiped the rose-colored lipstick on her mouth. Satisfied with the results, she walked over to the table and picked up the hotel room key. She slipped it into her jeans pocket, grabbed her camera bag, which also functioned as her purse, and headed out the door in search of something to eat.

She found just what she wanted in one of the dozen or so hole-in-the-wall restaurants located in the French Quarter. What the place lacked in decor it more than made up for in great-tasting food—a fact that Kelly discovered after biting into the shrimp po’boy sandwich she’d ordered. In no time at all she had polished off the crisply fried shrimp served on half a loaf of French bread, topped with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and mayonnaise. She’d even washed down the monster-size sandwich with a bottle of ice-cold beer. Feeling stuffed from her meal, Kelly exited the restaurant, positive she wouldn’t be able to eat or drink a thing for at least a week.

But by the time she’d made her way down to Jackson Square and checked out the renovations under way at the historic Saint Louis Cathedral, she was already craving a cup of café au lait and beignets. Cutting across the Square, Kelly headed for the Café du Monde.

The place was packed—not an uncommon sight given that the sidewalk café, famous for its coffee and sugar-covered doughnuts, remained open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The fact that it was Halloween and people were in a party mood only added to the frenzied pace. Spying a table in the far corner that looked out over the sidewalk, Kelly quickly wound her way through the tight spaces to claim it. She flopped down in the seat. Within minutes a tired-looking young man dressed in a plain white apron and matching hat appeared before her. He stacked the used cups, saucers, spoons and paper napkins on his tray and swiped the tabletop with a damp cloth that Kelly suspected had been white at one time, but was now a dingy gray.

“What can I get for you, ma’am?” he asked in a drawl that hinted at northern Louisiana roots.

“Café au lait and an order of beignets.”

“Decaf or regular?”

“Better make it decaf,” she replied, deciding she’d have a difficult enough time sleeping without the added caffeine.

“Be back in a sec,” he told her as he took off in the direction of the kitchen.

There had been a time when she would never have even attempted to sit like this in a crowded café, Kelly admitted. Fear that she would find herself in a crush of people and that touching someone might set off a vision about a person’s past or future had made her avoid crowds when she’d been growing up. But the years of living in New York and her frequent travels had helped her. She’d learned to control her reactions far better as an adult than she had as a young girl or teenager.

While she waited for her order to arrive, Kelly did what she always did. She picked up her camera and looked out at the world through the viewfinder. Using the telephoto lens, she panned the scene across the street in front of Jackson Square. Named after Andrew Jackson, the onetime president and war hero who had been immortalized in the statue of him astride his horse, the Square had once been the heart of the city. But even as the city’s boundaries expanded and sprawled far beyond the French Quarter, the area remained the center of activity for the city, and a major destination spot for both locals and tourists alike. She scanned the area to the right where a string of fortune-tellers had set up tables along the side of the Square and were attempting to entice passing pedestrians to have their fortunes told. Kelly clicked off shots of one gypsy-clad woman as she drew her finger down the length of a man’s palm. Judging from the fellow’s expression, he seemed more concerned with the woman’s cleavage than her predictions of his future.

Shifting her focus to the left, she noted only two artists working—one doing a portrait in chalk of a woman dressed like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and the other doing a charcoal sketch of a middle-aged couple. She clicked off several shots, then scanned the length of the block in search of more of the artists who supported themselves by using their skill with a pencil or brush. But she spied only one. Far fewer than there had been when she’d left the city after graduating high school, she thought, and lowered her camera in disappointment.

But the moment the horse-drawn carriage pulled into view, she lifted her camera once more. The driver no sooner emptied the vehicle of passengers before he began loading new patrons into the carriage. As long as she could remember, the old-style carriages had been a fixture in the Quarter, and she began clicking off shots. This one was painted in black and white and was hitched to a chocolate-colored mule that sported a hat with flowers and an orange-and-black ribbon attached to its swishing tail. She adjusted her lens and focused on the carriage’s driver. Judging from the way he doffed his hat and waved his arms, the man was giving his passengers their money’s worth. She could easily imagine him in that same spot more than a century ago with a bevy of southern belles ready to embark on a spin around the city’s streets.