Stop Me (18 page)

His voice turned to a threatening growl. “What do you mean, ‘while she was here’? She’d better still be there.”

Bev wiped some of the mud off the camera. “She’s not.” The foulness of the curses that streamed from his mouth made her wince.

“What happened?”

Anxiety gnawed at the ulcer she treated with handfuls of antacids every day.

“My next-door neighbor heard the screams. With her standing in my kitchen, I couldn’t pretend I didn’t hear them, too.”

More cursing. “That bitch neighbor is too nosy for her own good.” Beverly liked Tattie. She was a busybody, but she meant well. She was the only one in the neighborhood who’d shown any sympathy for her when Francis was shot. “So what are you going to do? Kill her?”

“Shut up! We’re on the phone, for God’s sake. I’m just saying Phillip should’ve taken care of the problem before the neighbor got involved.”

“He locked her in the cellar. That was the best he could do.”

“The best he could do?”

“Taking care of that kind of problem is your forte, not ours.”

“It doesn’t require anything special. Only a club and the guts to use it.”

“Phillip had other things to do.”

“I bet he did.”

She didn’t bother to argue. They both knew her son had left to escape the situation. He didn’t like the screaming, the knowledge that he was the reason Jasmine Stratford was trapped—and what might happen because of it. Bev was angry that he’d abandon her when she needed him so badly. But at least he possessed a conscience. If only Francis had been more like Phillip, maybe she’d still have him, too.

“He’ll be back soon,” she said. At least she hoped he would. Phillip was becoming more and more unpredictable. Sometimes she feared he’d succumb to the depression that plagued him and kill himself—or turn them all in. But she wasn’t about to share her concerns with Peccavi. She knew what he’d do. No weak links.

That was his motto. Jack had become a weak link, and Peccavi had shot him, just like that. Then he hadn’t wanted to risk anyone seeing them remove the body, so he’d buried him in her cellar.

“Phillip’s a pussy! It’s his fault we’re in this mess!” 107

“He’ll be back,” she said again.

“So where’s the Stratford woman now?”

After slipping the strap of the camera around her wrist, Beverly climbed the ladder she’d passed down to Jasmine. “She just drove off with my neighbor.”

“Get hold of Phillip, and tell him to stay away from the house until after the police arrive.”

“Stay away?” She closed the trapdoor. “Why?”

“I want whoever shows up to be dealing with you.” Because no one would believe she could be dangerous. Beverly understood that. But she couldn’t understand Peccavi allowing the police to discover Jack’s body. “You don’t want to move…you know what?”

“No. Don’t touch it. It happened before Francis got himself in trouble. We’ll make sure he gets stuck with the blame. Everyone knows what a sick bastard he was.

And the police will be hoping for an easy answer. It’s Christmas Eve. No one wants to take on a cold case they’re unlikely to solve, especially on the biggest holiday of the year.”

Her youngest son was already immortalized as a monster. Beverly hated to add to that legacy. But she saw the brilliance of Peccavi’s plan. “What reason would Francis have had to…you know?” As much as it pained her to acknowledge it, Jack wasn’t Francis’s usual kind of victim.

“There could be a million reasons. Jack and Francis both worked for the same delivery company, right? They were friends. Maybe he got too close, got suspicious of Francis’s activities. Or they had a disagreement over money. Just play dumb. Cry and mention Francis’s name. ‘How could he have done this? Not another innocent person…’ That sort of thing. There won’t be much of an investigation if the culprit is obvious—and he’s already dead.”

Beverly was a little surprised by the risks Peccavi had taken in speaking so plainly, but she knew he had no choice. They had to get their story straight or they’d be sunk; the police could arrive at any moment. “Will Ms. Stratford buy that, too?” she asked as she shoved a sack of flour over the trapdoor.

“No. She’ll keep poking around, searching for answers.”

“How do you know?” Beverly removed her shoes, washed the mud off the rubber bottoms, then put them by the back door to dry. It’d be best if the police didn’t know she’d gone down to the cellar.

“Because she’s stubborn. I’ve seen her on TV, heard the way she talks.” Definitely not what Beverly wanted to hear. “But she knows she got lucky today. I saw it in her eyes. Maybe this scared her enough that she’ll go back to wherever she came from and mind her own business.”

“That isn’t gonna happen.”

“Why not?”

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“She’s been looking for her sister for years. If she was going to give up, she would’ve done it by now.”

Beverly felt a trickle of guilt for all the innocent people who’d been hurt. But there was nothing she could do about it. She knew too much to change anything now.

And she couldn’t pay Dustin’s staggering medical expenses any other way. “So what do we do?” she asked.

“I’ll take care of Jasmine Stratford.”

After cleaning the camera and hiding it in a drawer, Beverly went to the front of the house and peeked through the blinds. Jasmine’s rental car was still sitting at the curb, where she’d parked it. But the street remained as quiet as ever. No police yet. “Be careful.”

“Mom? Where are you? The pain’s coming back! Mom?” Dustin…Beverly’s heart sank. He was so miserable. And there was so little she could do to help him.

“I’ll be right with you, honey,” she called, but at the top of the stairs, she went into the room she used as an office, where she’d dumped the contents of Jasmine Stratford’s purse.

“Hang on,” she told Peccavi. “I might be able to help….” Shoving one of her cats off the chair—another stray she’d picked up at the transfer house a few months ago—she sat at her desk and shuffled through the wallet, address book, gum, candy and papers she’d examined earlier. She’d found a confirmation notice from a hotel in the French Quarter just as Tattie showed up at the door….

There it was. Plucking it from the pile, she held it up to the sunlight streaming through the window so she could read what it said. She hated to pass this information along to Peccavi. She was so tired of the violence, the secrets, the fear of discovery.

But the police would soon be at her door. Again. If she didn’t take preemptive measures, the situation could escalate, could get even worse than it had with Francis.

“She’s staying at La Maison du Soleil in the French Quarter,” she said. “And I’ve got her room key.”

“You do?”

“It was in her purse.”

“They’ll rekey it,” he said.

“Not if you get there before she does.” Then she hung up and swallowed some more antacids.

It was one of the worst days of Jasmine’s life. Not only had she been locked in a cellar and discovered a corpse, she’d lost her purse and everything in it—her cell phone, her wallet, the address book she relied on so heavily, her camera. Being stripped of those things made being away from home on Christmas Eve that much worse. She felt like a turtle that’d been turned on its back and couldn’t right itself.

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She sat in her rental car, watching the police officers going in and out of the Moreau residence across the street. They’d been working the crime scene for quite a while. She didn’t know how long. It’d taken her three hours to get a new set of keys and to have someone from the car rental company drive her out here. By the time she’d arrived, the police were engrossed in their work, and no one wanted to tell her anything.

She’d stopped one young officer, asking him to look for her camera while he was in the cellar. He’d agreed but hadn’t come out for over an hour, and when he did he told her he hadn’t seen it—in a voice that indicated it definitely wasn’t a priority.

Before he walked away, however, he mentioned that she should check with the home owner. Evidently, Mrs. Moreau was cooperating with the search, which surprised Jasmine almost as much as it relieved the police. They were in a hurry. Some were due to get off soon and wanted to go home to their families.

Spotting another man in uniform heading to one of the vehicles in front of Tattie’s place, Jasmine got out of her car. “Have you identified the body?” she asked.

The officer gave her a blank expression. “We don’t know anything yet.”

“When might that change?”

“I can’t say.”

Of course not. In his mind, she wasn’t anyone who needed to know. And she doubted it’d be different with any of the other cops. She was a civilian from a different state. She had no power here.

With a sigh, Jasmine got back into her car. Kozlowski had been off today, so there was no one she could ask for more information. The desk sergeant she’d spoken to when she’d called to report her discovery had said a detective would want her to come in to make a statement. She could talk to someone then. But, thanks to the holidays, it’d be Monday or Tuesday before anyone got around to her. This was obviously a very old killing and nothing would likely change over the course of three or four days.

Regardless of what the police would or wouldn’t do, she was wasting her time here. Even Tattie wasn’t out and about. Jasmine guessed she was inside the house with Mrs. Moreau; she hadn’t seen the neighbor since her return.

After putting on her seat belt, Jasmine started the engine. Earlier, she’d cleaned up as best she could in Tattie’s bathroom, but she was hungry and tired and wanted to get back to the hotel. Without cash or credit cards, she didn’t have any way to purchase a meal, but she figured she might be able to order from the bar downstairs and put it on her room bill. Even if she couldn’t, she’d have a hot shower and then a comfortable bed to sleep in until Skye could wire some money to the closest Western Union. While she waited at the car rental place, she’d canceled her credit cards and called her friends. But she hadn’t told them the whole truth about the 110

reason she needed help. She saw no reason to ruin their Christmas by telling them she’d run into trouble. It was easier to say she’d simply lost her purse.

She was just pulling away when she noticed an old Camaro coming from the opposite direction. With all the police vehicles clogging the street, the driver had to angle to the side to make room for her to pass, but his eye held hers a little too long

—long enough to let her know he recognized her.

Stomping on the brakes, she quickly shoved the transmission into Park and got out. A red flush to his cheeks gave him a flustered air, as if he was tempted to drive away, but she had him cornered.

She knocked on his window and he finally cracked it open a few inches.

“What do you want?” he demanded, wearing a dark scowl.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“None of your business.”

But Jasmine could guess. He looked almost identical to the picture of Francis Moreau she’d seen on the microfilm in the library: short and stocky with dark wavy hair, small dark eyes and a Roman nose. This had to be a close relative—most likely his brother.

“You’re Phillip,” she said.

The furrow between his eyebrows deepened, but he didn’t contradict her. He waved at his house. “What’s going on?”

She noticed a pack of cigarettes on his dashboard. “You can’t guess?”

“If I could, I wouldn’t have asked.”

Right. Was this the man who’d locked her in the cellar? Who’d left those butts? Or had the spark of recognition she’d witnessed come from having seen her on TV? “There was a body in your cellar.”

He didn’t react. “Who told you that?”

“I’m the one who found it.”

“You’re kidding.”

Jasmine didn’t read much surprise in that comment, or in his expression. “Did you know it was there?”

“No.”

A lie. She could tell by the whitening of his knuckles on the steering wheel.

“Who was he?” she pressed. “What happened?”

He opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, his mother called his name. Jasmine glanced up to find Mrs. Moreau standing out on the front lawn, watching them with her hands propped on her hips.

“Phillip! There you are. Get in here. The nightmare we went through with Francis isn’t over yet.”

He didn’t move right away. He looked at Jasmine almost as if he was pleading for something. Then the line of his mouth turned grim and his attention shifted 111

resolutely toward his mother. “It doesn’t exactly come as a shock. My brother was a murderer,” he told her. Then he nearly drove over her toes as he forced her out of his path, squeezing between her car and a cruiser.

Gruber Coen flicked his TV remote to replay the America’s Most Wanted episode he’d recorded on his satellite system’s hard drive. He’d just spoken to Peccavi. Peccavi had called to tell him Jasmine Stratford had come to New Orleans, but that wasn’t unexpected. Gruber had invited her here.

What did astonish him was the fact that she’d already connected the note he’d sent her with what he’d written on the wall when he dumped Adele’s body.

He whistled as he watched the way she used her hands when she talked and the emotion flitting across her face. He was especially interested in the sadness she exhibited when she talked about her little sister. He wished it roused some pity in him, some vestige of conscience. But it didn’t. His head told him he should feel sorry for her, be ashamed, stop his behavior, but the only thing he really felt was a stirring of the desire that made him do what he did—and a trace of admiration. He’d assumed Jasmine would connect her sister’s disappearance to Adele’s murder at some point—but not so fast. She was quick, much quicker than he’d expected.

The thought both excited and terrified him. Would she be able to stop him?

Had he finally met his match?

God, she looked like her sister. Except she was missing that fearful expression he’d liked so well in Kimberly. Jasmine wasn’t scared of anyone. She was shrewd, determined, strong.

Turning up the volume, Gruber listened once again as she described the personality characteristics of a recent sex offender who’d been victimizing little boys.