Celestial Bodies (15 page)

It was untidy, just as his room in the House of Ishtar had always been. The desk was covered with files, papers, and periodicals, pieces of his clothing were scattered about the room, and a number of his personal possessions—including an autographed baseball and a catcher’s mitt—added to the cheerful clutter.

“Have a seat,” he said uneasily. “Coffee?”

She stared at him.

He blinked. “Oh, right. No stimulants. Well, I’m afraid we don’t have any herbal stuff here.”

Diana lowered herself into a chair in front of his desk. He slouched into his seat and watched her with a veiled expression. An unexpected wave of concern swept over her. He looked tired and depressed, even through the air of crackling vitality that always surrounded him. And his cheekbones were a little more prominent than she remembered. Had he lost weight during the past two weeks?

A merciless iron fist closed around her chest and squeezed with cruel fingers. It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t Nick look ugly and degenerate? Why couldn’t she feel revulsion when she saw his hands, his lips, his arms, when she remembered the way his body had felt, sliding rhythmically against hers, thrusting into her with a force and passion that had flooded her soul?

She swallowed and tried to think of something to say, something to change the dangerous direction of her thoughts.

Nick watched Diana with a carefully stony expression while he tried to control the impulses rushing through him. Upon hearing who awaited him in the lobby, he had flung the door open, wondering, hoping, praying that Diana wanted to patch things up, that she was prepared to forgive him.

One look at her face, though, had assured him that she would probably cut out his heart and feed it to Ishtar before she would excuse what he had done.

“So what brings you here?” he asked, trying to keep his voice level. Despite everything, he wanted to touch her so badly that he could feel his hands trembling. There were faint smudges under those fierce, cat-green eyes that had haunted and entranced him. Was she losing sleep the way he was? Were her days dreary and her nights fevered? Did she remember and still want, just the way he did?

“Believe it or not, I need your professional services,” she said, managing to make the statement sound like an insult.

“You need a private investigator?” He didn’t try to mask his astonishment. That was about the
last
thing he had expected her to say.

“Yes.”

“I... Diana, why me? I must be just about the last man in the world you want handling your private problems.” Would she say she trusted him? Would she say she had reconsidered?

“You are,” she agreed tersely.

So much for vain hopes. “Well? Why me? There are plenty of private investigators in New Orleans.”

“Yes, but they’re very expensive.”

“Someone told you I come cheap?”

“No. But considering your current troubles, I thought...” She let the words trail off; her implication dangled unpleasantly between them.

He sighed. “So you know about that?”

“I know that you will probably lose your license soon for mishandling the case of a prominent New Orleans family. It wasn’t that hard to find out, once
I
started checking up on
your
background.”

Nick shook his head, considering all the things he might say and discarding them, one by one. “We’re in a bad position, Diana,” he admitted. “I shouldn’t take on any new clients. Especially not cut-rate ones,” he added, feeling a little animosity of his own.

“What’s more,” Diana went on, “I think you owe it to us. After what you did to us.”

Nick didn’t know what to say to that. In a sense she was right. He had let things become personal, and his conscience about the Stewart case wasn’t clear. But Diana had hurt him. She had thrown him out without even giving him the chance to explain—and she’d done it when he had needed her most. And all on the basis of a tarot card! That was the part that was the hardest to bear. Claude Bouvier should have had the Stewarts certified insane rather than investigated for fraud.

“Is that the real reason you came?” he asked tiredly. “Because you think I owe you something?”

He saw the flicker of uncertainty in her eyes and her nervous sideways glance. He wondered what it meant. “Diana?” Was there something else? Was he a fool to try once more? “Isn’t there another reason you came here?” he prodded hopefully.

She fiddled with the hem of her gauze skirt. “Felix insisted,” she muttered at last.

“What?”
 

“He... um...” Diana rubbed her palm across her flat stomach in a gesture that drew his hungry gaze. He remembered doing that, too. He remembered how smooth and firm she was, how responsive, no matter where he touched her. “Felix is in danger, Nick. There’s no doubt about it. And he insists that the cards keep telling him that you’re the only one who can protect us.”

Nick felt as if she had punched him in the solar plexus. The damned cards again. “You’re here because the
tarot deck
says you need me?”
 

Diana looked at him with wounded eyes. “And you pretended to believe! ‘I was
called
here,’” she mimicked. “All those long conversations you had with us about yoga and astrology. How could you have been so condescending?”

“It’s my job,” he snapped impatiently. “And
you
were the one who kept insisting that you didn’t believe in the tarot and the stars. Or have you forgotten?”

“I don’t! I mean, I haven’t! I never did!” She uttered an explosive sound of exasperation. “I didn’t even want to come here today! But my father insisted, and he’s in trouble. He was so kind to you! Don’t you even want to know what’s wrong?”

That made him feel guilty. It was true. Felix had been kind to him, and it was disturbing to think that the astrologer might be in real trouble. “Of course I want to know what’s wrong,” he said more calmly. “Tell me about it.”

She licked her lips. He wished she would stop doing that. “Well, within days after... after you left our place, Felix started receiving threatening notes.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“They were brief, no more than a sentence or two. Each one told him to stop interfering in people’s lives, or he would suffer for it. They were anonymous, written on ordinary typing paper, typed by a poor-quality typewriter with smudgy letters.”

“How many has he received?”

“Three altogether. The last one arrived four days ago.”

“Can I see them?”

“No. He, uh, gives them to Jora Lemon to burn.”

Nick frowned. “Who’s Jora Lemon?”

“She’s the psychic who helped expose your real identity.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Seeing her brows swoop down ominously, Nick held up his hands. “Sorry, sorry. Why, for the love of God, is she burning the evidence?”

“So she can see something in the fire.”

“What?”

“See it psychically,” Diana clarified. “Physically, she’s more or less blind.”

Nick sighed. “All right. So that evidence is destroyed. Have there been any other warnings?”

“Don’t you want to know what Jora saw in the fire?”

“No, of course not.” When she tried to interrupt, he got impatient again. “
Diana
. Just get on with the facts.”

“Well, there have been three events of disturbing violence.”

That alarmed him. “Have either of you been hurt?”

“No.”

“What happened?”

“Last week, Felix was nearly run over by a car at dusk, right outside of our house. They didn’t have their headlights on, and they didn’t honk or stop to see if he was all right.
 
Then a few nights ago, we came home from Jora’s to find that someone had vandalized all the tables and chairs in the courtyard, spilling paint and glue all over everything and breaking what they could.”

“Did you report this to the police?”

“Of course. They were very polite to us, but it’s clear that they don’t know who did it, and they’re not going to catch him.”

“You said there were three incidents?”

“Yes.” She shifted nervously in her chair. “Last night someone threw a brick through the window of Felix’s study, while he was meditating. It missed his head by inches.”

Nick rested his feet on the edge of his desk and leaned back in his favorite thinking position. He didn’t like the sound of any of this. The Stewarts were obviously being harassed, and sooner or later one of them was bound to get hurt. It would be bad enough if it were Felix, but if anything happened to Diana...

He already had one possible suspect, but didn’t want to jump to conclusions. “Do you have any idea who might be behind these notes and incidents?”

Diana leaned forward, wide-eyed and serious. “Felix says it’s someone connected to Mrs. Bouvier.”

Nick was startled. “How does he know that?”

“I’m not sure. He sees it in his readings.”

“Oh, for the love of—”

“Listen to me,” she snapped. “He’s been seeing it since before we met you. He says that a relative of Mrs. Bouvier will bring chaos and turmoil into our lives. That’s why, when you first came to the shop, I thought you might somehow be connected to her.”

Nick felt a little ill. Some of his distress must have shown in his face, he realized, because Diana vaulted out of her chair and braced both hands on his desk, studying him with an alert and suspicious expression.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” she exclaimed. “That’s the connection! You were sent by a Bouvier!”

“That’s confidential,” he said weakly.

“Oh, come off it. I know you’re being sued for disreputable practices. How much can a little thing like client confidentiality mean to you?”

“Now just a damned minute,” he began.

“If
I’m
your client now, don’t you think I deserve to know if your last client hired you to harass us?”

“He didn’t hire me to
harass
you! What do you take me, for?”

“I take you for a meat-eating, beer-guzzling, skirt-chasing, gun-toting private eye who lied to me every step of the way. Even in bed.”

“I was going to tell you!”

“When?” she challenged.

“As soon as you came back upstairs that night.”

“Why didn’t you tell me
before
we, uh, got so tangled up?”

“I meant to, but I lost my head.” He reminded her, “You did, too.”

Diana drew in a sharp breath. Still leaning over his desk, she could see the fine lines around his eyes, the velvety sheen of his dark curls and the long-boned strength of his hands, and she remembered too well how he’d felt and sounded and tasted in her arms. She sat down again with a graceless thud.

“I think we’re getting off the subject,” she said hoarsely.

He looked at the floor. “Maybe you’re right.”

“The point is, if a relative of Mrs. Bouvier’s
did
hire you, that has a bearing on my problem, now that
I’m
hiring you. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes, I do, Diana,” he agreed wearily. “But for perfectly logical deductive reasons, and not because your father’s tarot deck says so.”

“Well, then. Who hired you?”

Nick stared at her for a long moment. He might have told her because he cared about her and Felix, because his relationship with them had already gone beyond professional boundaries. He might have told her because Claude Bouvier had forfeited his rights by threatening and denouncing the agency and refusing to pay his bill. He might have told her because, former client or not, Bouvier was now a suspect.

But her nasty cracks about his professionalism stung. He was caught in the middle again, just the way he had been ever since meeting her. So he was going to do this by the book.

“Before I break my former client’s right to confidential treatment, Diana, I’m going to ascertain if he is indeed our primary suspect.”

“Don’t you dare—”

“I agree,” he interrupted loudly, “for my
own
reasons, that my former client is the logical place to begin my investigation. However, I’m not violating my professional ethics without reasonable evidence of his culpability.”

“
What
professional ethics?”

“Don’t push me,” he warned.

Diana glared at him. “You were eager enough to violate your professional ethics with
me
.”

“Why did you even come here, then?” She was making the hurt as fresh and raw as it had been two weeks ago.

Diana’s lips trembled. She scowled and pressed them together, then cleared her throat. “I told you. Felix keeps saying you’re the only one who can help us. You’re our destiny.”

“He still thinks that?” Nick asked curiously. At least Felix was apparently prepared to forgive him.

“He keeps turning up the Knight of Swords—a young man of courage and skill. It symbolizes heroism. He says it means we must turn to you for help, that you will be our champion and protector.” Diana avoided his eyes.

Unable to help himself, he asked quietly, “Does he know about us?”

“I don’t know.” Diana straightened her shoulders. “Anyhow, there’ll be nothing more
to
know. From now on, it’s strictly business. Understood?”