At Risk (3 page)

Instead, she kept her gaze steady as she sat down in the hard metal chair across the scarred table from him.

“Do you have a list of the dishes you served tonight?”

“It’s in the restaurant kitchen.”

“And the ingredients.”

“I have the recipes.”

“We’ve also taken samples of all the dishes on the buffet table.”

Eugenia went very still.
She’d come in here telling herself she had nothing to be afraid of, and he was starting off with major intimidation. Not so much because of what he’d said but because of the way he’d said it, the way he’d done in the restaurant when he’d been talking to Rafe.

She dragged in a breath and let it out, telling herself it was a reasonable question.

“Are you saying you think there was a problem with my food?” she asked, managing to keep her voice even.

“One of your patrons is dead.”

“Was . . . was he poisoned?”

“The autopsy will tell us.”

She hadn’t done anything wrong, she told herself again. But as she took in the ‘got ya’ expression on his face, a terrible thought struck her. “Is anyone else sick?”

“Not that we know of.”

She let out the breath she’d been holding. “Thank God.”

Cumberland shuffled through the papers on the table in front of him, then took another line of attack.
“You had an illegal alien working in your restaurant.”

Her rejoinder was instantaneous. “That’s impossible.
I’m very careful to make sure everyone has the proper documentation.”

“It was one of Ms. Lacoste’s drummers.”

So that’s why the man had tried to run out. Only Rafe had dragged him back.

“Well, he wasn’t working for
me
. We didn’t discuss our personnel with each other.”

He dismissed her answer and went on to yet another topic.
“What were you thinking when you agreed to have a voodoo ceremony in your restaurant?”

“I was thinking it would bring in new customers.”

“How did that work out for you?”

She sidestepped the question with, “Voodoo is a legitimate religion.”

He laughed. “Yeah, and my mother is the Virgin Mary.”

When she didn’t respond, he asked, `“What’s your financial arrangement with Ms. Lacoste?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Are you refusing to answer?

“We split the cover charge.”

“So you’re having a religious ceremony, but you charge admission.
Isn’t that more like a sideshow?”

“Revival meetings pass the hat.
In this case, the money covers the cost of the food—and the . . .” She started to say “entertainment” but switched to “attendants.”

“How long have you been holding these ceremonies at your restaurant?”

“Nine months.”

“It looks like they brought you bad luck.”

She had had the same thought herself. Moreover, she knew he was baiting her.

While she was mulling that over, he asked, “Did you make an attempt to keep people away from the victim?”

“Of course. Except for Rafe . . . Mr. Gascon. He’s trained in CPR.”

“The two of you have a history, don’t you?”

“We knew each other when we were younger. We haven’t been in touch in years.”

“Strange that he showed up tonight.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

“Are you trying to say we cooked up some plot?”

“Did you?”

Eugenia answered with an emphatic “Of course not.”

Cumberland kept his gaze on her for a long moment before shuffling his papers together.
“You can go, but don’t leave the city.”

Chapter Three

As a PI, Rafe had known a lot of good cops—and others like Cumberland, who liked to make it clear that their position gave them power over ordinary people. Too bad he’d been listening to the 911 calls. After hauling everyone to the station house, he’d probably he had gone through a mental process of deciding who would be the most uncomfortable sitting around in the police station waiting to be interviewed. Since he’d figured Rafe would stand up to the waiting the best, he’d taken him first. It was a short interview, focused on the same questions he’d answered earlier at the restaurant—plus some probing into his past.

“You had some problems with Villars when you were a teenager.”

“As you discovered, I did nothing wrong.”

“You left town not long after that.”

“Not long? It was more than three years. I waited until I graduated from high school and joined the army.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I didn’t see a future for myself here.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d end up on probation.
Like your old man.”

Rafe tensed, then ordered himself not to react.
He heard himself saying, “He had a streak of bad luck. He straightened himself out.”

Cumberland made a tsking noise.
“Robbing a hardware store is bad luck?”

Rafe pressed his lips together.
He wasn’t going to explain that at the time his father hadn’t worked in a couple of weeks, there was nothing to eat at home, and the contents of the cash drawer had simply been too tempting.

When he didn’t take the bait, the detective asked, “So why are you back now?”

“I was trained as an investigator by the army. Decorah Security recruited me a couple of years ago, and they assigned me to this case.”

“This case?”

“The muggings.”

“You’re saying the New Orleans PD can’t handle it?”

Rafe knew the question was the equivalent of ‘have you stopped beating your wife.’ Anything he said was going to be wrong.

He shrugged. “I do my job.”

Cumberland had continued to try to get him to make a wrong move. He’d hung tight and finally made it back to the waiting area.

He asked if Eugenia had been interviewed yet, and when he found out she was still cooling her heels waiting for Cumberland, he’d retrieved his Sig from the front desk and taken a cab back to her restaurant where he picked up his rental car.
Now he sat in it across from the entrance to the station, waiting for her to come out.

He saw Calista leave, walking with her head bent.
Probably Cumberland had given her a nasty grilling.

And probably the civilians had all gotten off easy.
Although, if someone had really poisoned Villars, and he hadn’t died of natural causes, anyone could have done it.

Hanging around gave Rafe plenty of time to think.
Cumberland had brought up his run-in with Villars—and his leaving the city. He’d said he saw no future for himself, which was certainly true. What was he going to do, work his way up to Popeyes manager? He’d done well in the army. When he’d gotten out, he could have joined a local police force anywhere he’d wanted to live.

Instead, he’d bumped into Frank Decorah at a law enforcement conference.
Decorah had struck up a conversation after a session on investigators using their intuition. He’d liked the guy, and when Frank had offered him a job when his tour was up, he’d decided it was good idea.

Intuition?
Had Frank suspected Rafe had something beyond what most detectives could rely on?

His mind went back to the first time he’d left his own body.

He’d been thirteen and starting to mature, and probably the hormones triggered a change in his brain.

He’d been walking down an alley when he saw something interesting put out with a load of trash—a bike with a slightly bent front fender.
Someone was throwing it out, and maybe he could take it home and fix it. When he closed his fingers around the handlebars, the scene around him vanished. He was somewhere else. On a road out in the country, pedaling along, unaware that a car was coming around the curve too fast, heading straight for him. But he found out pretty quickly, when the vehicle loomed in front of him. Whoever had been riding the bike swerved off into the weeds at the side of the road and landed with a splash in a drainage ditch. And Rafe had slammed back into his own consciousness, shaking, disoriented, and terrified. That first time and a few times afterwards, he hadn’t understood what had happened, and there was no one he could talk to about it. Certainly not his father whose brain was tied firmly to the reality around him. It would have taken longer for Rafe to figure out what had happened if he hadn’t read a science-fiction story about a guy with the ability to touch things and get impressions of the people that had held them. That was similar to his newfound power—except that he got more than impressions. He went back in time—to a memorable event in someone else’s life.

Sometimes he could go for months without an incident.
And sometimes it was an invaluable tool in solving a crime. At first he’d had no control over the experience once he got there. Then he’d found that his own consciousness could be a secondary participant. He was someone else, but Rafe Gascon was still there.

He got up and stretched his legs, wondering what Cumberland was hitting Eugenia with.
While he was waiting for her, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed Pete Grady. Rafe and Pete had grown up together in Bywater. The two of them had gotten into some scrapes together, and they’d been friends up until Rafe had left town.

They hadn’t kept in touch because Rafe had cut his ties with the city when he’d left except for his father.
But he was pretty sure Pete would talk to him.

He kept an eye on the door, watching for Eugenia to come out.
Then he dialed his old friend.

Pete was still on duty and picked up after three rings.

“Detective Grady.”

“Hey.
This is Rafe Gascon.”

“Rafe.
I could ask what you’re doing here, but I already know.”

“Yeah.”

“It sounds like you got into something with your old friend, Cumberland.”

“Unfortunately.”
He dragged in a breath and let it out. “I’m with a company called Decorah Security. We specialize in unusual cases.”

“Like a society restaurant owner getting mixed up with voodoo?”

“Yeah, like that,” he answered, although that wasn’t precisely the reason he’d been hired. He cleared his throat. “We probably shouldn’t talk about it over the phone.”

“Right.”

“We could meet for coffee tomorrow morning, and you could fill me in on what you’ve been doing since I left town,” Rafe said, although he had a folder on Pete’s career in the NOPD. And his friend undoubtedly knew Rafe’s main interest was in tapping into a source of information about the Villars case.

“How about Café LaBret around seven?”

Rafe remembered the place. Its beignets were as good as Café du Monde and breakfast that was better than the Magnolia Grill. But it wasn’t as pricey.

“Sounds good.”

He hung up, glad he’d made the contact. Although he wasn’t going to jeopardize the man’s job by pressing too hard, he wanted a source of information in the police department—in case Cumberland decided to do something stupid—like setting up Rafe Gascon and Eugenia Beaumont for a murder charge.

He glanced at his watch.
It was after eleven. Too bad Eugenia was getting the third degree in there.

As he waited for her, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about the past—his and hers.
They’d met when he’d gone to her house with his father to help out with a brick patio the old man was building in the Beaumont backyard. There had been a lot of bricks to carry and a lot of sand to haul, and Rafe had been the one doing most of the heavy lifting.

The project had taken three days, and Eugenia had come out to watch—and to bring them lemonade and some things she’d baked.
Pecan pie. Blueberry muffins. Even back then, she’d been a good cook.

They’d started talking, and they’d been attracted.

He wasn’t the kind of boy she usually met, and she certainly wasn’t the kind of girl who went to his downscale public school, but they’d gotten to talking. Her polished blond good looks had drawn him. And maybe she saw him as a dark and dangerous bad boy who could spice up her sedate society life.

At any rate, she’d asked him if he could help her set up a “clubhouse” in the loft of the detached garage at the back of her parents’ property.
He’d agreed, and they’d ended up spending a lot of time there together—in activities none of their parents would have approved of.

He’d wondered if she’d back away if he tried to kiss her, but he’d taken the chance, and she’d responded to him.

He had a lot of vivid memories of those days. Although he’d never gone all the way with her, they’d done just about everything else.

Since coming back to town, he’d tried not to think about their close encounters.
Now as he waited for her to emerge from the police station, he remembered the feel of her soft lips against his. The honey taste of her and all the steps they’d taken toward intimacy.

He’d been a horny kid back then, but he’d been respectful of her, partly because she was Miss Beaumont and he was the handyman’s son.
But as she’d accepted the things they were doing, he’d gotten bolder. He remembered the first time he’d unhooked her bra, then reached to the front of her, cupping his hands under her breasts, feeling their wonderful softness in his palms and the tightness of her nipples. He’d stroked his fingers across those wonderfully firm tips, feeling himself get so hard he could barely breathe.

He remembered the first time he’d slipped his hand past the elastic waistband of her shorts and into her panties, touching the most intimate part of her body. She’d been hot and moist, and the feel of her had thrilled him. He remembered when she’d finally dared to close her hand around his cock and squeeze him.

Both of them had been pushed to the limit by then, and he remembered the first time they’d made each other come—each of them—hesitantly at first—telling the other what was going to work for them.

He was hard now as memories of those teenage intimacies assaulted him.
He knew he had to think about something else. But he couldn’t stop himself, not yet. He’d lain on top of her, naked. His cock pressed to her silky underpants because putting it inside her was the one thing she wouldn’t do with him—which was probably a smart decision because getting her pregnant would have been a disaster. They’d come that way and just about every other damn way you could do it. He knew the taste of her clit. He knew what it was like to thrust a finger into her as he brought her to climax with his mouth. And he knew what it was like to almost reach climax in
her
mouth, because she’d always finished him with her hand.

He hadn’t protested because he wasn’t going to press his luck.
Which was considerable, as far as he was concerned. He’d taken everything she would give him and given her all the pleasure he could with his hands and mouth. In the process he’d learned a hell of a lot about pleasing a lover.

But all good things had to come to an end.
As spring of their senior year approached, he knew he had to make plans for the future.

Dad had taught him most of the handyman skills by then.
Rafe could replace the flushing mechanism in a toilet tank, spackle damaged drywall, get the leaves out of gutters, build and put up shelving, even take down or build interior walls. He could make money that way, and the work was satisfying because you saw the results of your labor immediately, but he’d seen his father scramble to get jobs and seen him work at cut rates and have trouble making the rent or putting food on the table when none of his regular customers needed anything done.

He’d decided he had to find a more secure profession for himself—a real career and not a series of projects that depended on the whims of others

With no prospect of going to college, he’d seen ads on TV that made sense to him. Join the army and learn a marketable skill. Most guys might have wanted to fly helicopters or shoot big guns. He’d been thinking that he’d be a good detective. Maybe his special talent would even help him. And the weapons training he’d get wouldn’t hurt.

He knew the army had an investigative service, and he’d aimed at getting into that.

When he’d told Eugenia his plans, he’d seen sadness in her eyes. Although it had killed him to leave her, he’d known he had to do it.

He got rid of his arousal by thinking about how she’d hurt him—and why.
He didn’t actually know why. He supposed that after he’d left, her high and mighty society queen of a mother had persuaded her not to keep up the contact with that low-life Gascon boy.

oOo

By the time Cumberland was finished grilling Eugenia, she was too done in to think straight. Still, she knew one thing. She wasn’t going to break down crying.

When she heard footsteps hurrying toward her, she looked up to see Rafe crossing the street.