Page 20 of The House on Prytania
Michael stood, too. “Friday night, then? Pick you up at seven?”
I thought of the repercussions Beau would face if I walked away from Michael now. If I shut the door on this opportunity to get inside Michael’s family and make them face justice for the abduction of Sunny Ryan. Beau would stop at nothing to get those answers himself, despite the danger. My phone buzzed again, and I realized that I really didn’t have a choice at all.
“Thursday,” I said. “My family arrives on Friday. I’ll see you then.” I hurriedly exited the park, turning left to jog down St. Charles toward Broadway. When I’d reached the next intersection, I slowed my pace to a walk so I could reply to Beau’s texts. With my head bent over my phone, I typed,I’m in.
Before I could change my mind, I sprinted across St. Charles Avenue and ran at full speed all the way back to my apartment, my breathing not loud enough to erase the one thought that kept racing across my brain.Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.
CHAPTER 7
Two days later, I leaned my bike against the front of my house, not bothering with the lock. My cottage continued to be a thief repellent—along with a delivery service, contractor, and visitor deterrent. The only intruders I experienced were the extremely large cockroaches that, according to Thibaut, would survive a nuclear blast and that all the roach bait and poison just made bigger and stronger.
Despite the air’s being still, the wind chime of blue glass by the front door swayed, the tinkling breaking the silence that enveloped my house like heavy fog. Even in the middle of summer, the nightly chorus of insects from neighboring yards ended at the perimeter of my property.
The faint smell of pipe smoke teased the air, and I turned my head toward the end of the porch, where I’d once seen the specter of Charles Ryan smoking his pipe. But that was before Beau and I had sent him into the light. It wasn’t unheard of for a freed spirit to return occasionally to check on the living. I turned the doorknob and pushed open the front door, pausing as I caught another whiff of smoke. A shudder went through me as I considered the possibility that he had unfinished business. Something that still tied him to my house.
The rousing beat of salsa music thumped upstairs. I closed the door loudly to let Thibaut and Jorge know I was there before climbing up the steps, stopping at the top of the stairs to peer inside the closet that had been nailed shut when I purchased the cottage. The door sat ajar, the vintage clothes, shoes, hatboxes, and Mr. Bingle doll found inside since removed to my apartment.
Jolene had sold most of the clothing items to a vintage clothing store in the Quarter, but the Mr. Bingle doll and one of the hatboxes, with its mysterious contents—a pipe, a yellow hair ribbon, a tie clasp, and an old camera negative—remained in the back room of the apartment along with a clientele book from the now-defunct Maison Blanche department store. Jolene and I had agreed to keep it all hidden, buried under a pile of monogrammed throw pillows, just in case. Not that we expected another attempted robbery, but we’d decided that there had to have been a reason for it all to have been locked in the closet since the murder of Jeanne Broussard in 1964.
Michael’s uncle had hired someone to break in and steal the Maison Blanche door we’d stored in my apartment. Fortunately, the thief had been thwarted by Jolene and her well-aimed blow from a large Barbie head. I tried not to think too much about that night, not only in deference to Barbie and the lessons I’d learned from her in terms of makeup application, but also because that was when I’d become aware of Michael’s betrayal.
But with the discovery of the truth behind Jeanne’s murder and Sunny’s abduction, there should have been no reason to keep the hatbox hidden any longer. Unless there was. And it wasn’t like we didn’t have enough monogrammed pillows. That’s why the box remained in the back room, camouflaged as a design statement. At least until I was satisfied that there really was no reason for anyone else to want it.
I continued into the newly studded hallway, listening as the salsa music grew louder. I almost tripped over a tennis ball as it rolled toward me. I stooped to pick it up, then followed the music to its source. I found the eighties-era boom box along with Thibaut andJorge in the back bedroom hand sanding the newly patched plaster on the far wall. They both turned when I entered, their attention drawn to the ball in my hand.
“Where’d you find that?” Thibaut asked as he leaned down to turn off the music. “We’ve been looking all over! We were practicing our juggling routine this morning to warm up our hands, and the darn thing rolled around a corner and disappeared.”
“I, um... well, I guess it was stuck in a corner and I must have accidentally dislodged it while I was walking.” Both Thibaut and Jorge stared at me, neither one reaching for the ball. I walked over to the far corner and placed it on the floor. “It’s here whenever you need it.” To change the subject, I said, “I hope you saved some of the wall patching for me!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Thibaut said, leading me through the hallway to the adjacent bedroom. Holes in the old plaster walls where new electrical outlets and switches had been installed, as well as a few irregular punctures that could have been made by any number of objects that I preferred not to consider, dotted the four walls like a patchwork quilt. “You told me how much you loved patching old plaster, so we saved this whole room for you.”
I rubbed my hands together. “I can’t wait! I’m taking a half day of vacation so I can really dig in. It’s slow right now at the office, and I’d rather be mixing plaster than cleaning the refrigerator.” I peered closely at a hole in one of the walls. “And it looks like I have some lath repair, too. That’s my favorite part.”
The giant of a man smiled, making it easy to forget his past. “It’s a bit like that game I used to play with my son—Tetris, I think. Like tile work, too—trying to figure out which piece will fit in where. Greggie was much better at it than me. I don’t think I ever beat his score.” Thibaut’s face softened at the mention of his son. He had never spoken to me about Greg, who had been raised by Thibaut’s late wife’s family and not allowed contact with his father.
“You must miss him,” I said. “How long has it been since you’ve seen him?”
“Fifteen years. Fifteen very long years. I haven’t even heard his voice. I’m not allowed to call him, and I don’t even think he knows how to get in touch. If I thought he’d call, I might actually get a cell phone.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged his giant shoulders. “Don’t be. I made my bed, and now I’ve got to lie in it. I just wish...” Thibaut studied me with eyes that looked suspiciously teary. “I just wish that we could talk about it. About what happened. I need to make sure that he’s in a good place about it. That he understands that I still love him.”
I wondered at his choice of words, not completely sure what sort of good place there was for a boy whose father had killed his mother. And why Thibaut was worried about his son wondering if his dad still loved him instead of the other way around.
He turned his head while he rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. With a forced cheerfulness, he said, “I don’t think I’ve complimented you yet on the excellent job you did on the bathroom floor tiles. I don’t think I could have done it better myself. Most beginners tile themselves into a corner and then have to wreck the floor to get out.”
“That’s crazy,” I said, faking a chuckle. “What kind of a clueless amateur would do such a thing?”
“I can’t imagine.” Beau’s voice came from the doorway. “Hopefully nobody who works for JR Properties. I’d like to think I did a better job of hiring.”
Avoiding Beau’s gaze, I made to move past him. “I’d better get started mixing that plaster—”
“Hang on a minute.”
I stopped, waiting for him to humiliate me in front of Thibaut by telling the whole story.
“I need a favor.”
