Marilyn Pappano - Detective Defender

Paulina had believed it, and she was dead. Callie had believed it, and she was dead, too. Martine couldn’t have helped Callie, and she hadn’t helped Paulina, but if she at least contacted Tallie and Robin...at least gave them a heads-up...

A flash of color wavered in front of her, and she blinked hard, bringing the plastic bag holding the pastry box into focus. Shelley wore her usual smile, but it was tinged with a bit of concern. “You okay, Martine?” she asked, and Martine was pretty sure it wasn’t the first time.

“Yeah, sure. Nothing a few days on a tropical beach wouldn’t cure.”

“You and me both. Sun, sand, cabana boys...my dearest dream. Maybe the lemon tart will take you away for a few moments, at least.”

Martine traded her debit card for the bag, then looked inside and located the tart underneath the box’s cellophane lid. In fine print across the pastry, Shelley had written with frosting, Reserved for Martine. With a laugh, she pocketed the debit card again. “My employees are most grateful, and so am I.”

“Have a good day. And don’t let the weather get you down. No matter how dreary, it’s still New Orleans, and that beats a sunny LA or New York or Chicago any day.”

Martine waved as the bell dinged above her again. Shelley was right. A bad day in New Orleans was better than a good day anywhere else. She’d had a lot of dreams growing up, but in terms of distance, they’d ended fifty miles from her hometown. She enjoyed traveling, but at the end of every trip, she was happy to be home where she belonged.

Would always belong.

And no one—no old friend, no murderer, not even Detective Jimmy DiBiase—could take that from her.

She was halfway past Saint Louis Cathedral when the nerves between her shoulder blades prickled. The power of a look never failed to amaze her: this one was as physical as an actual touch, and it made shivers dash down her spine. She tried to casually glance over her shoulder to see who was watching her, but when she moved her head, the hood of the slicker stayed where it was, instead giving her a good look at the pink lining. Stopping and actually turning around was a bit obvious, but when she reached the intersection, that was exactly what she did.

It was truly raining now, so much more normal than the earlier damp that some pressure deep inside her eased. The few people around were intent on getting to their destination, except for a crowd of tourists huddled beneath a lime-green golf umbrella and conferring over a map. No one showed any interest in her. No one seemed to notice she existed, despite her yellow-and-pink slicker.

Nerves. She wasn’t a person usually bothered by them, and they were making her jumpy. Bad weather, slow business, Paulina, DiBiase... It was all enough to give anyone a case of the creeps.

Satisfied that was it, she headed down the street again. Her path took her past the house where Evie and Jack lived, with its smaller entrance leading to her psychic shop. Guilt curling inside, Martine ducked her head and lengthened her stride. She would talk to Evie soon, but not yet.

Only half a block separated her from the dry warmth of her shop when footsteps sounded behind her and, too quickly for her to take evasive action, Detective DiBiase caught up with her and flashed that grin most women found so charming. She had once found it charming. If he ever caught her in a wildly weak moment, she feared she might find it so again. “Wild Berries. I like their stuff.”

One of the lessons Callie and Tallie had taught her early on was that ignoring people who didn’t want to be ignored was a waste of time. They had pestered her relentlessly until she gave in and dealt with them. She fell back on that now. “Think of more questions, Detective?”

“A few. You have one of those caramel bread puddings in there?”

Crossing the street between parked cars, she dug in her pocket for her keys, unlocked the shop’s old wooden door, jiggled it a bit and pushed it open. Rain made the wood swell and stick, but the door with its wavy glass was decades old. She hated to replace it with something new and inferior.

The lights that were always left on—one above the display window, others over the checkout counter in the middle of the room—banished some of the gloom but not enough for Martine. She flipped switches as she walked through the shop, pushed aside a curtain of beads and went into the storeroom/lounge, where she set down the pastries, then stripped off her slicker. She didn’t need the slight squelching sounds behind her to know that DiBiase had followed. Just as she’d been aware of someone’s attention at the square, she felt it now.

Damn, had he followed her all that way without her realizing it?

“What do you want?”

His gaze slid to the pastry box inside the wet bag, reminding her of a hopeful puppy. Grimacing, she shoved it across the table toward him, then started the coffee. The clock ticking loudly on the wall showed ten thirty, but it was still set to last summer’s time so she had thirty minutes before opening the store, probably twenty minutes before Anise arrived. Wonderful. DiBiase could annoy her that long without even trying.

“You like lemon tarts, huh?” His deep Southern drawl scraped along her skin, an irritation she couldn’t banish, like the cold, the fog and now the rain. “Appropriate.”

Her gaze was narrowed when she faced him. “What does that mean?”

“Well, you are a bit sour.”

He helped himself to a generous serving of cheese Danish, the ruffled white liner contrasting vividly against his dark skin. On a general scale of attractiveness, he ranked high. Even Martine couldn’t deny that. With dark hair, devilish eyes, the grin and muscles that still impressed though his college football years were long behind, every woman she knew thought he was gorgeous. The problem was, he knew it and took advantage of it. Everywhere he went, he was waylaid by women wanting great sex, and he was happy to comply.

Even six years later, it still embarrassed Martine that she had almost been one of them.

It angered her that, on rare occasions, she even kind of regretted that she hadn’t been.

“Consider the company,” she said in response to his calling her sour. Then she turned her back on him and her thoughts, lifted a couple of boxes from the storage shelves and carried them to the front of the store.

* * *

Of course Jimmy followed her—not to the counter where she was ripping open the boxes with too much enthusiasm, but through the beaded curtains. He turned down the first aisle he came to and followed it around the perimeter of the shop. Despite living in Louisiana his whole life, he had little personal experience with voodoo. His parents had seen to it that the family was in church every Sunday—in their small town, it had been more a social event than a sacred one—and they had never encouraged questions about other beliefs. When he’d thought as a kid that he was so much smarter than them, he’d assumed it was because they were so tenuous about their own beliefs that they didn’t feel qualified to debate them. Later he’d realized that their unwillingness to debate had also been more a social thing than religious. In a small town, it was easier to go with the flow.

Most of the merchandise on the shelves could be bought in a dozen places in the quarter. Some was strictly fun, some for tourists, some for posers. But in the room behind a door marked Private, that was where the real stuff was, according to Jack—the stuff that couldn’t be picked up just anywhere. The stuff for the practitioners, the true believers.

Jimmy watched Martine over a display of crudely made dolls and wondered if she was either, or merely a supplier of goods. Her mouth was set in a thin line, and her brows were knitted together. She didn’t want him here, and that was okay. In his job, he was used to people distrusting him. The prejudice against police officers that had surged in the past few years made a tough job a hell of a lot tougher. When it got bad, he wondered why he spent his days wearing a gun, walking into dangerous situations, doing his damnedest to protect communities that didn’t appreciate it, but the answer was simple. He was a cop. He’d saved a lot of lives. He’d helped out a lot of people. He’d found justice for a lot of victims.