DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS (14 page)

She shivered. “I should have known. There was something about that girl. She looked vaguely familiar, but she also seemed a little too eager. Not so much worried about her cat as worried about getting me to help her. So someone walked right into my house, got my phone out of my purse, and I didn’t even see them. Ethan, that really scares me.”

“It should. Any other time it might have been just a rather annoying incident with a neighbor. But you’re involved in a murder. Remember me telling you to be careful? To call me if
anything
unusual happened? The woman wanting you to come help her find her cat qualifies as unusual. You should have called me when it happened.”

“I know. I know,” Laney said, looking chagrined. “But why would anyone do that? What do they think I’m going to say on my phone that will help them?”

Ethan shook his head. “If it’s the murderer, he may want to find out for sure how much you know, or if you recognized him. You said the girl looked familiar. Have you seen her around the neighborhood before? Walking? Driving? Calling her cat?”

Laney shook her head. “No. I’m gone all day and I don’t know most of my neighbors. But when I say she looked vaguely familiar, it’s not that I’ve seen her around. I’m not sure I can explain it. It was more like she reminded me of someone. Like you’ll see someone who reminds you of an actor, but you can’t place which actor it is. You know?”

Ethan nodded without looking up. He was staring at her phone. She’d handled it all day and he’d handled it just now. If there were any usable prints of the person who bugged it, it would be a miracle. But he was going to try it anyway. “Can you get me a paper bag? If you don’t have one a plastic baggie will do.”

“For what?” she asked. “Wait. Are you thinking you can get prints? I’m sorry, but I wiped the case with a wet cloth when she gave it to me. I cleaned the screen, too. I doubt there’s anything left on it.”

“I’d still like to try,” he said.

While he waited for her to bring him the bag, he turned off her phone. When she held out a small paper bag, he slipped the phone into it, then stuck it into his pants pocket. “I’ll take it to the crime lab first thing in the morning. See if they can lift a print off the surface or the keys. It’s a long shot, since you cleaned it, but it’s worth a try.”

“And you’ll have the bug taken out?” she asked hopefully.

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. No. If we remove the bug, then they’ll know we’re on to them. But if I leave it bugged, you
have
to watch what you say. Remember, the man who murdered Senator Sills could be listening in.” He pulled out his phone. “And when you’re driving, I want you to turn the phone off. I don’t want them tracking you by GPS. Now, I’m going to call a couple of officers to canvass the neighborhood to find your friend Carolyn. I have a feeling they won’t have any luck.”

“If she was just distracting me while her partner bugged my phone, do you think he bugged the house, too? Can they hear what we’re saying now?”

“I doubt he had time to set a bug in here, but I’ll have your house swept. We don’t want to take any chances.” He quickly made the call.

When he hung up, Laney said, “You’re going to have all that done tonight? We won’t get any sleep.”

And as she predicted, it was after three o’clock in the morning before the last of the lab techs left. Laney felt as though she were sleepwalking. She’d made coffee for the techs but she hadn’t drunk any herself, fearful that she wouldn’t be able to sleep after they left if she filled up on caffeine.

When Ethan came back into the living room, Laney looked up at him with sleepy eyes. “So what did they find?”

“You want the full rundown? I told you once they finished with your room you could go to bed.”

“No I couldn’t. Not with my house being swept and scoped and whatever else, like a crime scene.”

“Nothing was scoped,” he said, smiling.

“Fine. Make fun of me. But wait until after I go to bed. Right now I want to know what they found.”

“Okay. Your phone was clean of prints and the techs agreed with me that if they removed the bug or tampered with it in any way, it would alert whoever is on the other end. The computer guy did look at it for a few minutes, to see what he could find. He couldn’t find anything he could trace. He said whoever bugged it was good. As far as your house, it’s clean. No bugs.”

“That’s a relief,” Laney said. “So what about Carolyn?”

“She doesn’t live around here anywhere. My officers knocked on doors all over this subdivision, and the phone tech back at the precinct checked every address and phone number within a mile radius. No Carolyn.”

“Wow,” Laney said. “I should have had more sense than to play into her little charade. I should have called you. We’ll probably never find out who she is.”

“Well, I hope we do, because she and the person who walked into your house and bugged your phone are both working for the murderer.”

Laney shivered and stood, ready to go to bed. But she thought of a question she should have asked hours ago. “Ethan? These people obviously know where I live. If they—if the murderer wanted to find me and—you know, kill me, he wouldn’t have any trouble. So why the GPS and the bug?”

“Think about it. What happened this afternoon? That guy in the sports car knew where you were. He waited for you to come out of the storage lot and then he rammed you. He probably wanted whatever you were picking up from your storage building. Did you tell anybody on the phone that you were going by there?”

“No, I don’t—oh, wait,” she said. “When I talked to Senator Sills’s secretary about the meetings this—well, yesterday morning, I told her I had to leave by four o’clock because I wanted to go by my storage building in Kenner before it got dark. Oh, I don’t like this.”

“So he figured you’d be getting something from your storage building that pertained to the case. But now they probably know that I’ve got it, since you had that truck driver call me to tell me about your accident.”

“But if I turn the phone off when I’m driving, they can’t track me, and if I don’t say anything on the phone, they won’t know where I’m going.”

“That’s the plan.”

* * *

E
THAN
TURNED
OVER
for about the thirtieth time and tried his best to stay asleep. But this time there was more going on than just being disgustingly uncomfortable. His phone was ringing. He sat up, trying to remember exactly where he was and why he’d slept on a lumpy couch. Squinting, he peered around him. This wasn’t his place. It was Laney’s house. He was sleeping, or trying to, on her lumpy couch. The night before and Laney came back to him in a flash. Odd that it hadn’t felt lumpy when they were both on it. Although, as intense and sexy as their coupling had been, he doubted he’d have noticed a tsunami.

When he stood and looked at himself, he remembered that he’d taken off his pants, knowing that he was going to have to wear them again today. They were draped over the opposite side of the couch. He leaned forward to grab them.

“Is that your phone or mine? You have both of them.” It was Laney, standing in the foyer doorway with a sheet wrapped around her. She held the two edges together with a hand at her chest.

Ethan grabbed his pants and held them in front of him as he turned around. It occurred to him that for all their intimacy of the night before, they hadn’t yet seen each other naked. And now they were standing in front of each other as if they’d never seen each other before at all. “Yeah. Sorry if it woke you.”

It rang again at that instant and he groped in his pockets until he found it. It was Dixon. “Hey, Dix. What’s up? You’re calling awfully early.”

“Not that early,” Dixon answered. “It’s after eight. What are you doing? I ran by your house last night and you weren’t there.”

“That’s right. I’m at Laney’s.”

“I got your message about Laney’s accident, the phone bug and everything, but you didn’t mention you were planning to stay there all night. What the hell are you up to?”

Ethan clenched his jaw. “What did you call about, Dixon?” he grated. He saw Laney turn and head back down the hall.

“I got corralled about Laney’s accident as soon as I walked in the door this morning. Seems a Detective Benoit of the Kenner Police Department thought you’d have sent him the official request you promised first thing this morning. He said it’s for some evidence that was found in Ms. Montgomery’s car.”

“Well, I considered first thing to be more like nine o’clock than eight. They get ’em up early over in Kenner, don’t they?” Ethan said. He heard the water come on in the bathroom. “I’ll get that request sent as soon as I get in. We should be there at the station no later than nine. Depends on how long it takes Laney to get dressed.”

“Delancey?” Dixon snapped. “I hope you’ve got better sense than to do what I’m really afraid you’ve already done.”

Ethan was not going to answer that. “That accident was no accident, Dixon. She stopped at the storage facility to pick up her dad’s financial records, which, by the way, you’ll be seeing today, because her dad withdrew large sums of money every week for the past ten years.”

“Ten years?” Dixon’s voice grew excited.

“Yeah. How long do you think it’ll take to get those withdrawals matched with Sills’s deposits?”

“If they match.”

“Yeah, right. If they match. But they’re going to match, I’ll guarantee it.”

“Yeah, okay. But even if they do match, what have we got? Obviously Montgomery didn’t kill Sills.” Dixon sighed. “I’ll let you know what I find out. The reason I called was to tell you that we have Sills’s safe-deposit box. So if you can tear yourself away from Ms. Montgomery, why don’t you come on over to the courthouse and I’ll show you some interesting stuff.”

“I won’t have any problem
tearing myself away
from Laney, Dixon. So get that superior smirk off your face right now. I can’t see it but I know it’s there.” Ethan heard a noise and turned to see Laney standing in the living room doorway, dressed. The hurt look on her face told him she’d heard what he’d said about tearing himself away from her. He held up a finger to signal to her that he’d be just another minute.

She turned and went into the kitchen without acknowledging that she’d noticed him at all, much less seen his signal.

“We’ll be there within half an hour, okay?” he said, the irritation obvious in his voice. “I’ll see you then.” He hung up. “Laney?” he called. “How’re you feeling this morning?”

She stepped out of the kitchen into the foyer. “I’m fine,” she said coolly. “So don’t worry for a second about having to tear yourself away from me. I can take care of myself.”

Ethan scowled at her. “Look, Dixon was kidding me, giving me a hard time for staying over here last night. I was repeating what he’d said, that’s all. Don’t take offense to something I say to my partner. Most of our conversations are a mixture of ribbing and a sort of shorthand that we use to communicate when we’re at a crime scene or tracking a perp.”

She shrugged. “Thanks for the explanation. Are you taking my phone in this morning? When can I get it back?”

“You can get it back now. One of the lab techs examined it and took prints last night. I cleaned it and left it on the table near the front door.”

She retrieved the phone from the table and started back toward the kitchen. “What time are you leaving?”

“I’m not leaving—
we’re
leaving,” he answered sharply. “Haven’t you been listening to me?”

“No, I’d rather not go to the station with you. I’d rather stay here, in my own house, where I’m perfectly safe. You can call me and let me know which dealership has my car. I’ll get in touch with them and have them bring me a loaner. Then I can be out of your hair completely.”

“Okay, that does it. You’re coming with me. There’s no way I’m leaving you here alone. I’ve already explained to you several times that you could be in danger. After yesterday, I’m certain you
are
in danger. Now, Dixon has Sills’s safe-deposit box. I want to find out what’s in it. Don’t you?”

“You mean I can see it?”

“No, you can’t see it. But you can wait at the station and when I find out what’s inside it I’ll let you know.”

“I can wait here,” she said stubbornly.

“I suppose you could, but you won’t,” he replied, just as stonily, “because I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

* * *

T
HE
NEXT
DAY
Dixon knocked on the door of the small shotgun house on Perrier Street while Ethan stood aside. When the door opened, Dixon smiled. “Hey, Boone,” he said.

Detective Boone Carter had been near retirement when Dixon had caught his first homicide—the purported murder of Ethan’s cousin, Rosemary Delancey, who was now Dixon’s wife. Ethan had never met Detective Carter, but he’d heard a lot about him. The detective had been a legend on the streets of the French Quarter back in the day.

“Hey, Lloyd. Man, you still look wet behind the ears to me. How long has it been?” Boone held the screen door open for them.

“Boone, this is my partner, Ethan Delancey,” Dixon said, once they were inside.

Ethan held out his hand and Boone took it. “Yep. You definitely look familiar. Your granddaddy was Con Delancey, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Con Delancey,” Carter said again, shaking his head. “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle! You look a lot like him, son. He was a son of a bitch, but he was a grand man.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” Ethan said.

Boone gestured toward the back of the house. Ethan followed Dixon through the small house that had gotten its name because a person could stand on the front porch and shoot a shotgun through the front door and hit nothing but air, if all the doors were open.

“Go on, go on. Out the back door,” Boone said. “You’ll see what I been spending my time on since I’ve been retired.”

They stepped out the back door onto a concrete patio with a stone fountain square in the middle of it. The fountain was about the size of the kitchen they’d just walked through, and the bowl of the fountain held several koi. Surrounding the fountain and the patio were assorted ferns and other tropical plants.