Joanna Wayne - Stranger, Seducer, Protector

“This is damp. You must have a leak in the wall, as well. That’s probably what caused the collapse.”

“I can live with crumbling walls.” She pointed at the floor next to a woven clothes hamper. “That has got to go.”

He stared at the rotting head. Definitely human.

“Someone must have decapitated her and buried the head inside the walls of the house,” Jacinth said, her voice steadier and her mood seemingly calmer now that he was on the scene with her.

“Looks that way,” he agreed. “I’m not sure the victim is female, though. A lot of male French Quarter inhabitants wear their hair long.”

She nodded. “At least the decay explains the smell,” Jacinth said.

“Not nearly as bad as I would have expected,” Nick said.

“But the odor was nauseating in this room when we first took possession of the house. My sister Caitlyn was convinced it was a backup in the sewerage lines. The plumber we called assured us the smell was from something that had died in the wall. We assumed he meant something like a rat or a squirrel. It never dawned on either of us that the source of the odor might be human.”

“What did you do?”

“Called an exterminator. He checked the attic, but didn’t find what was causing the stench. Thankfully, he got rid of some rodents we didn’t know we had. Then we hired a handyman to secure the structure to keep out future pests.”

“And the sickening odor?”

“The exterminator used some kind of expensive chemical to subdue it. It took three treatments.”

Nick settled on his haunches for a better look at the head. He couldn’t tell how long it had been rotting in the walls, but his educated guess was no more than eighteen months.

“How long have you lived in the house?” he asked.

“Just under a year, but our first visit was immediately after my grandmother’s will was probated. That was fourteen months ago.”

Old murder tales went with the house like crawfish and étouffée, but it rattled Nick to think this atrocity might have taken place after Jacinth and her sister had moved in.

“Where’s your sister?” he asked.

“On her honeymoon.”

He hadn’t realized she’d gotten married, though he’d thoroughly researched both sisters. Caitlyn was the drama queen who made a living by giving tours of the ghostly and sometimes dangerous Cities of the Dead that housed the Quarter’s famed crypts and tombs. She’d nearly gotten herself killed in that capacity.

Jacinth was the quiet and studious type, a graduate student with a teaching assistantship at Tulane. Brainy and sophisticated. Unquestionably, not his type.

Too bad she was so damned attractive. And that was without a trace of makeup and with her silky, dark hair disheveled and powdered with grayish, flaky plaster.

Best not to even glance at the cotton nightshirt that skimmed her perky breasts and danced about her shapely legs.

“I’m calling the cops,” Jacinth announced, “though I doubt they’ll rush right over to examine a decayed body that may have been entombed in the wall for years.”

Bringing in the cops at this stage of the game might complicate his mission, but there was little he could do about that now. He waited as she made the call, his mind dealing with ways to handle the new layers of intricacies.

“They’re sending a uniformed officer to deal with the situation,” Jacinth said once she’d broken the connection. “They said we shouldn’t touch anything before he arrives—as if I would willingly touch that head. But I guess I should get Sin out of here.”

Jacinth reached up to a shelf just over her head where Sin had settled, looking as if she were poised for an ambush. Jacinth’s nightshirt inched up her thighs.

Nick grew instantly hard. Sin avoided Jacinth’s grasping hands and pounced on Nick’s back, letting her claws scrape the skin at the back of his neck before it leaped from his shoulders to the top of the clothes hamper.

Jacinth scolded the cat. The feline demonstrated the stare that had earned her name. Nick was undaunted. He figured he’d had the scratch and the stare coming to him for the thoughts he’d had about the cat’s owner.

“Maybe we should go back downstairs and wait for the cop,” Nick said.

“I appreciate you coming to my rescue tonight, Nick, but there’s really no reason for you to stay. I’ll be fine now that I’ve calmed down—unless the house decides to hurl the rest of the corpse at me.”

“I wouldn’t rule that out.”

She looked back to the freakish head. “Good point. But it’s late and you probably still have boxes to carry inside.”

“Only a couple. And I’m a night owl. I’d be happy to stay.”

“In that case, I wouldn’t mind the company.” Jacinth covered her mouth and coughed. “My throat feels as if I’ve been eating grit.”

“More reason we should get out of here and close the door.” In truth, he’d like nothing better than to explore behind the walls and see what other gruesome surprises might be skulking there. Only he’d prefer to do that without Jacinth looking over his shoulder or even being in the house.

Jacinth stepped over to make another stab at retrieving Sin. The cat jumped from her reach and slunk out the door.

“She’s not the most cooperative of creatures,” Jacinth said.

“Have you had her long?”

“She came with the house. Mrs. Findley said she’d just shown up at the back door one day, and my grandmother had taken her in. She said the cat and Marie were equally cantankerous so they got along well.”

“Did your grandmother live in this house right up until she died?”

“All but the last six months of her life when she moved into a nursing/retirement center.”

“Who took care of Sin during that time?”

“Mrs. Findley, and sometimes her husband. My grandmother had left cases of food and given them a key to the house. She was here before us so now Sin thinks Caitlyn and I are the strays and she’s not too keen on letting us share the premises.”

“Too bad she can’t talk. She might be able to tell us who the head belonged to.”

Jacinth ran her fingers through her hair and a new shower of dust rained down on her shoulders. “Would you excuse me while I go wash up in some of the water I saved and put on something a bit more appropriate?”

“Not at all. Take your time. If the cop shows up before you’re ready, I’ll let him in.” And hopefully the officer would be someone new on the force who didn’t know Nick. The less Jacinth learned about him the better, at least until he’d had time to win her trust.

“You can wait in the den,” Jacinth called. “It’s to the left of the staircase, just opposite the Louis XIV style parlor. We veered away a tad from our adherence to strict historical accuracy of design in the small den and included a comfortable couch and chair along with the antique lamps and antebellum paintings.”

“I’m sure my back will appreciate that.” Nick enjoyed the view as Jacinth walked away. Images of her slipping out of the nightshirt plagued his mind. A menacing yowl jerked him back to reality.

He turned to stare at Sin who was glaring at him from the bottom step. “Got it, Sin. Jacinth is off-limits for reasons even you can’t fathom.”

JACINTH HAD RINSED her long hair over the sink with a pan of cool water. It was still dripping when she caught sight of flashing blue lights in her driveway.

She toweled it quickly and made a mostly unsuccessful attempt to smooth it back into place. She needed a shower so badly right now that she’d have paid triple overtime for a plumber.

A quick check in the mirror assured her she looked as ill put together as she felt. But the cream-colored sweater she’d pulled on over a pair of worn jeans was at least better than talking to a cop in her nightshirt.