Eleven
Sahara led the way through the winding hallways of the ground floor to a small room tucked away between a ballroom and a utility closet.
“This is it,” she said, as she opened the door, but Brendan stopped her on the threshold.
“Wait,” he said. “Don’t turn on the lights.”
“Why not? Is something wrong?”
“I thought I saw something. I want to see this in natural light first,” he said, pointing toward the mullioned windows and the sunshine coming through the leaded panes. Then he squatted at the doorway and began scanning the floor.
Curious, she dropped to her knees beside him and rocked back on her heels.
“What are you looking at?” she whispered.
He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her toward him, then pointed down.
“What do you see?” he asked.
She was so distracted by his arm around her shoulders that she couldn’t think what he meant.
“I see the floor and a little dust, which would freak Billie out. They used to hire weekly cleaners. Maybe the cleaners aren’t being watched as carefully as before,” she said.
“Look again, Sahara...at the wood.”
And then she noticed what he meant. She crawled into the room a few feet to touch the flooring where he pointed.
“It looks like a path worn on the floor, and it even feels different.”
“There’s another that goes straight to the bookcase. It’s the first thing I saw when you opened the door. Leopold Travis walked these two paths so many times that he’s worn off enough of the finish that it’s visible.”
He stood up and offered her a hand. She took it without thinking, curious as to where this was going.
“Now we go in...with lights.”
She flipped on the switch and glanced toward the desk, imagining Leopold sitting behind it, glaring at them for intruding into his private lair.
“Yes, well, we’re here because you’re not, so save it,” Sahara muttered.
Brendan turned. “Were you talking to me?”
“No, sorry. Just thinking out loud,” she said, then realized Brendan was already following the first path all the way past the desk to the corner of the room.
“This is strange,” he said. “There’s nothing here. No table, no liquor cabinet. No reason to wear a path to this spot. What used to be here?”
“Nothing that I can remember. But I wasn’t allowed in here, so I only ever caught stolen glimpses inside.”
He stood there a moment and then took a couple of steps back and looked down. There was a shorter piece of hardwood that finished out the corner. He squatted again, and when he pushed down against the plank, he felt it give.
“This piece is loose,” he said, pulling a Swiss army knife from his pocket. He opened the blade and within seconds pried up the plank.
“Oh my God,” Sahara said. “There’s a hole. Is anything in it?”
“Not anymore,” he said, and slid the plank back in place, then stood up and looked back across the room while Sahara moved to the desk and started going through drawers.
She went through all of them without finding anything of note and was about to quit when she thought to check the underside of the drawers, and started over.
It wasn’t until she got to the second drawer on the left side of the desk that she felt what she thought was a leather-bound book.
“There’s something underneath this drawer,” she said.
Brendan quickly helped her pull it out, then removed what looked like a journal that was taped to the bottom. The leather covering was old and cracked. The lined pages were yellowed with age, and each line had a single notation. The notations were similar. Each consisted of a letter of the alphabet, a date and then numbers.
“This is weird,” she said, leaning closer to read over his arm as he gave the pages a quick glance.
“It’s in code. There needs to be another book somewhere with names that correspond with the alphabet letter.”
“What would they mean?” she asked.
“Who knows...but it’s something he didn’t want to advertise or he wouldn’t have gone to these lengths to hide it.”
Sahara frowned. “Why does anyone keep a record of something they didn’t want known?”
“Oddly enough, for the same reason that serial killers often take a souvenir from each victim. Looking at them, handling them, gives these people a high, like reliving the murder all over again. In this instance, if this had to do with Leopold’s indiscretions, it could be one way to relive his conquests...or possible reminders of payoffs he gave them to make them go away.”
She sighed. “What about the other path on the floor? The one that leads toward the bookcase?”
“We just need to look at what’s there,” he said. “So, since they go all the way to the ceiling and I am an ungainly six foot five, how about I search the top five shelves and you do the bottom five. Maybe we’ll get lucky again.”
“You’re not ungainly,” Sahara said, eyeing his very fine physique.
He grinned. “That’s what Mom used to say about me when I was a teenager. I just kept getting taller and taller. It kept my younger brothers in clothes for years, wearing my hand-me-downs because I outgrew the stuff before I wore it out.”
“Is your dad tall?” Sahara asked.
“We all are,” he said, then eyed her. “You’re tall. Is Leopold tall?”
She nodded, then added, “So were Billie’s parents. Her mother was from Jamaica. Her father was a merchant marine.”
Brendan sat down on the side of the desk and let her talk. They had all day to search, but talking was good medicine for her. Everyone needed to be reminded of their roots from time to time.
“I suspect there’s a story in that love affair.”
She nodded, then pushed a pen set and a day calendar aside and scooted up onto the desk beside him.
“Oh yes. They were utterly devoted to each other and died together in a car wreck when Billie was seventeen.”
Brendan frowned. “Which helps explain how Leopold managed to seduce her. Grieving young girl alone in the world, and probably wooed her with gifts until she gave in. It’s not until conquests become a burden that they get dumped.”
“I was the burden, and you cannot know how many times I wished we had been dumped.”
Brendan gave her a quick hug.
“Look at it this way, honey. In the end, your success is the best revenge.”
Sahara glanced up at him with a smile on her face, only to realize there were only inches between his mouth and hers. Breath caught in the back of her throat. She saw his nostrils flare slightly and knew he was feeling something, but what?
Brendan saw her eyes widen. Her lips parted. He wanted to kiss her. It would be a mistake, but he wanted it just the same.
It was his cell phone ringing that finally broke the tension. He looked away as he answered.
“McQueen.”
“This is Harold Warner. I wonder if I might speak to Sahara.”
“Sure. Just a minute,” Brendan said, and put the phone in her hands. “It’s Harold.”
She grimaced. “I should have called,” she whispered, then answered. “Hello.”
“You didn’t call me,” he said.
“I was in shock?”
Harold sighed. “Are you trying out excuses, or are you not sure why you neglected to tell me what’s happening over there?”
“A snake crawled out of a vase of flowers and was aiming for my neck when Brendan shot it. It was terrifying, and I pretty much lost my mind. I will not apologize for that. Where’s my phone? If I had my phone, I might think more about using it.”
Harold was horrified. “Oh my God. I didn’t know details. I’m sorry, honey. I’m so sorry. As for your phone, I put Adam in charge. I haven’t heard yet whether he found it or not.”
“Okay. Sorry I snapped at you.”
“It doesn’t matter. As long as you’re safe...that’s all that matters. Are you satisfied with Brendan?”
She shivered. “Yes.”
“Good, good. I sent a text to Detective Shaw suggesting he send the video to McQueen’s email, so tell him to be looking for it. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“No, I don’t need anything more than I already have. I’ll try to do better about staying in touch, even if I don’t have my phone, okay?”
He chuckled. “That would be appreciated. Goodbye, dear. Take care.”
“I will. Bye, Harold.”
She handed the phone back to Brendan. “He said to tell you he sent a text to Detective Shaw about sending the security footage, so you need to be watching for it.”
Brendan nodded.
She got up and headed to the bookcase, then stood there a moment, thinking of Leopold and where he would most likely hide the key to decoding the ledger.
“I’m going to start on the bottom shelf. You start on the top one. The Leopold I remember would never have put anything secret within arm’s reach.”
Brendan regretted that their moment was over, but got up without comment to do as she suggested. Soon the books were being pulled out of order and every page was searched.
After a while, a rumble of distant thunder sounded.
It was finally going to rain.
* * *
Adam had just come on duty when the workers repairing the elevator entered The Magnolia. He knew the crew boss by name and hailed him as they came toward him.
“Hey, Russell, we had a request from Miss Travis to see if we could recover her purse and cell phone. She says she lost them in the hallway between the elevator and the penthouse right after the bomb went off. Everything became so dusty and smoky she couldn’t find anything, and then, as you know, she was rescued from the roof with no chance to take anything with her. Will you be anywhere in that area today that you could look for it?”
The crew boss nodded. “She’s sure having a rough time now, isn’t she? I’d be happy to check that out for her,” he said.
“Thanks. If you do find them, bring them to me. I have orders to mail them straight to her.”
“I’ll go there first thing,” Russell said. “It’ll take me a bit to climb the ladder inside the shaft, but if the items are there, I’ll bring them right back.”
“Much appreciated,” Adam said.
* * *
It was just after 9:00 a.m. as Bubba headed out of New Orleans. It looked like rain later today, and he wanted this trip over with and to be back in the city before that happened. He had an address and directions to where Harley Fish lived. They knew each other only because they’d gone to school together, but he could never claim they’d been friends, and he was nervous about how Harley would receive him. With the wad of cash he had in his pocket, he was hoping the reception would at least be cordial.
It wasn’t until he left the main highway and began following directions that took him deeper and deeper into bayou country that he began to feel anxious. These roads were narrow as hell. One wrong turn and he’d be nose down in water with the gators.
Just when he thought he’d gotten himself lost, he saw a green mailbox with the name Fish on the side and took the turn up a narrow one-lane road.
* * *
Harley Fish was at the back of his cabin gutting a big-mouth bass when he heard the sound of a car coming toward his house. Harley didn’t entertain visitors, so he dropped the knife, grabbed his rifle and slipped into the trees surrounding the clearing, wiping his bloody hands on his pants as he ran until he found a good hiding spot. He had a perfect line of sight to his front porch when the car pulled up to his cabin and parked.
The first sense of relief was that it wasn’t the law, and then his relief was replaced by surprise.
“What de hell dat man be wantin’ wit me?” he muttered.
Then the man honked his horn as he got out.
Harley walked out of the trees.
Bubba saw movement from the corner of his eye and turned to see Harley coming toward him. The fact that he was carrying a rifle loosely across his belly made him shiver, guessing that same rifle had probably been aimed at him from the woods.
Harley had not aged well. His long, stringy hair was totally gray, and his squat little body had done nothing but get wider and his legs more bowed.
Still, he was the one who’d come into Harley’s world, so judgment was not needed. He lifted his hand in a greeting and smiled.
Harley neither waved back nor changed his expression, and he didn’t stop walking until he was within spitting distance.
“What you be doin’ on my place?” Harley asked.
Bubba had a job to do and wasted no time in lip service. He just pulled out the wad of cash.
“I have a job that needs to be done, and two thousand dollars for the man who’ll do it for me.”
Harley’s eyes narrowed. “What kinda job?”
“I need someone killed.”
Harley swung his rifle, pointing it straight at the other man’s head.
“Why you think I would do such a ting?”
Bubba shrugged. “I just heard that you were a good shot and that you didn’t mind getting your hands dirty.”
Harley scowled. “Murder and mud be two different tings. Prove to me you not wired up by de cops tryin’ to pin someting on me.”
Bubba shivered in spite of his intention to stay calm. “Prove it? How?” he asked.
Harley waved the rifle again.
“Strip where you stand. If dere be no wire, den we talk.”
“Take off my clothes? Hells fire,” he muttered, but started stripping where he stood.
Harley watched with interest but said nothing, and when all of the man’s clothes were on the ground, Harley went through them, checking for bugs.
“Okay...no wires. Now I listen.”
“Can I get dressed?” Bubba asked.
Harley waved the rifle again. “You. Take de clothes and follow. We talk in back.”
Bubba put on his underwear and picked up everything else off the ground and ran to catch up. Harley was already back at the butchering table, slinging fish guts into the trees.
He dressed quickly as he watched Harley cleaning the fish, and then took the money roll out of his pocket again as a reminder of what was at stake.
“So, who do you want to die?” Harley asked.
Bubba was trying to focus on Harley’s words and not what he was doing, but the grossness of the flies, the heat and the bloody table was getting to him.
“A woman in New Orleans. I’ll show you a picture. I’ll give you the address of the house. You kill her, and another thousand dollars like this is yours.”
“Why you want dis woman dead?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Bubba snapped. “Will you do it or not?”
“You cheat me, I gut you like dis fish.”
“Deal,” he said.
“Show me,” Harley said, and then watched the man pull up a picture on his cell phone.
“This is the woman I want dead.”
Harley frowned. “The movie star?”
“Yes, and she’s in New Orleans right now. You’ll have to do it at her house because she’s staying out of sight. There are security cameras everywhere and she has a bodyguard, so make sure you stay in the shadows. Use a hunting scope on your rifle if you have one. If you do it at night, know that there are motion detector lights all over. Look for the rooms with lights, and then make it happen.”
“Give me the address. Give me de money you bring. You come tomorrow morning with rest or I come after you.”
Bubba held out a thousand dollars.
Harley motioned for him to lay it on the table.
His nose curled as he tried to find a spot not covered in blood and guts.
Harley stabbed his fish knife through the bills, pinning them to the table to keep them from blowing away, while the man wrote down an address on a scrap of paper he’d pulled from his pocket, and slipped it between the stack of hundred-dollar bills.
“You go now,” Harley said.
Bubba didn’t have to be told twice, but he had to make himself walk calmly. It wasn’t until he knew he was out of sight that he ran the rest of the way to his car and drove away.
Harley slipped the address and the money into his pants pocket, gathered up the fish and went inside. He hadn’t had breakfast, and it was nearing noon. This bass would fry up just fine.
But while Harley was heating up a skillet, Bubba was getting uneasy. He’d started a fire that he couldn’t put out. Harley Fish was a wild card. Either this could be the denouement he’d been trying for, or it could go to hell in a handbasket. The biggest fear he had was that Harley would fail and get caught. He didn’t trust the man to keep his mouth shut, but he’d already started this ball rolling, and he was a thousand dollars into the deal. He just had to trust that it would play out in his favor. After all the mishaps so far, he was due for a win.
* * *
Brendan and Sahara’s search of the bookcase wasn’t any more successful than finding that empty hole in the floor. Whatever Leopold had done with the key to the journal, it wasn’t going to be found easily. By the time they’d handled every book in the case, they were covered in dust, especially Sahara.
“That’s all of them,” she said, as she got up from the floor.
There was dust on her shoes, all over the top of her hair and on her clothes because every book Brendan pulled off the shelf above her had shed a little of the dust down onto her.
He grinned. “You look like you’re raising a litter of dust bunnies. There’s not a clean spot on you.”
She laughed. “No thanks to you.”
“Not my fault you were sitting at my feet.”
“Whatever,” she said, brushing uselessly at her shoulders and the seat of her shorts.
He picked a bit of fuzz from the crown of her head and then dropped it on the floor.
She didn’t care about dirt. She wanted answers, but their search wasn’t yielding what they needed. In frustration, she threw up her hands and then shoved them through her hair.
“Where is that key? What did he do with it? What if it’s not even in here? This old mansion is huge. We could look for years and still never find it. I should have known this would be futile.”
Brendan shook his head.
“Just calm down,” he said. “Leopold would keep the journal and the key to it close to each other. Whenever he wanted to go through them, he wouldn’t be running all over this museum of a house trying to gather them up.”
“I guess,” she said.
“Let’s think of this from another angle. What if the key wasn’t written in any kind of book?”
“I can’t think like this. I feel gross,” she said, and pulled up the tail of her shirt to wipe the dust off her face, baring her belly and most of the bra cupping her very shapely breasts.
Brendan grunted beneath his breath and turned his back, but far too late. What the hell was it with her? She was the least modest woman he’d ever known, and it was driving him crazy.
“Okay, I’m thinking now,” she said.
He took a deep breath. “Let me know when you get an idea.”
Sahara began to pace the room from one end to the other, then back again, kicking at chairs, rattling cupboards filled with dusty little figurines and poking behind furniture.
“You could help,” she muttered.
“I wouldn’t know what’s out of place,” he said.
“Well, hell, McQueen. Neither would I. It’s been fifteen years since I set foot in this godforsaken house. And I wasn’t allowed in here.”
“Then tell me what’s familiar. Start with furniture.”
She pivoted, pointing things out one by one.
“The desk. The bookcase. The mantel over the fireplace. The—” Her lips parted as she stared at the fireplace. “It’s brick. It used to be stone.”
“Good work,” he said, and headed for the fireplace again, only this time he began looking from a different perspective.
The brick had been laid in a herringbone pattern, and this time he started at the floor and began working his way up. About halfway up on the right side, he saw a slight gap between the brick and the grout and pushed. A picture hanging above the fireplace swung forward like the page of a book, revealing a wall safe hidden behind it.
“Shoot. Now we don’t have the key or the combination,” Sahara said.
Brendan stood there a minute, thinking, then asked, “What was Katarina’s birthday?”
“Uh...January 2, 1947.”
He turned back to the safe, spun the dial to clear it, then made the first turn to right 1, left 2, then right 4, left 7. The click was loud and distinct as the door opened.
“Bingo,” Brendan said, and thrust his hand inside. “And that’s why they always say to never use obvious dates or names as your password.” He pulled out a small black notebook, opened it and then looked at Sahara and grinned. “This is it! Grab that journal from the desk and let’s go back to our room. You can clean yourself up while I see what I can make of all this.”
Sahara threw her arms in the air and did another little pirouette.
Brendan sighed. She danced when she was happy. That might have just sealed the deal with him. He wanted her and was getting tired of fighting the truth.
“Lead the way,” he said.
He shut and locked the safe, replaced the picture and then closed the door to the little room behind them as they left.
A half hour later Sahara was in the shower and he was sitting at the writing desk with both books open, scanning back and forth from book to key and back again when his phone rang. He glanced down, saw it was his brother Carson and answered.
“Hey, Carson.”
“Brendan, I heard about the attempt on Sahara’s life. Is everything okay?”
“Yes, we’re good. How’s the research going? Do you have anything for me?”
“I hacked Leopold’s bank records as far back as they had them in the system, but not sure it was far enough back to help.”
“Did you see any kind of payoff patterns? Anything suspicious to show he was handing out money on a regular basis?”
“He loaned thirty thousand dollars to a man named Sutton Davidson a number of years ago, but the man paid him back in full.”
“Yes, that was a housekeeper’s son. Sahara said the woman worked here for a while. Sounds like he was helping him start out a business.”
“Got it. Okay, here’s another one. About thirty years ago he made a large onetime payment of twenty-five thousand dollars to a woman named Julia Bennett, then twenty-eight years ago another large onetime payment to a woman named Barbara Lovett, and three more payments like that in subsequent years to other women.”
“Sounds like he was paying off his playmates,” Brendan said.
“Maybe,” Carson said. “I’ll look into the Travis family charitable donations tomorrow. Both kids are sick and so is my honey. I’m on doctor duty until further notice.”
“Oh man, I’m sorry to hear that,” Brendan said. “Hug the babies from Uncle Bren, and tell Shelly I’m sorry she’s sick and to get well soon.”
“Will do. When I have more news, I’ll let you know.”
“Just don’t get yourself in trouble on my account,” Brendan said.
“It’s all good,” Carson said, and disconnected.
Thunder rumbled again, this time a little closer. When Brendan got up and pushed back the curtains to look out, he could see that the wind was rising.
Sahara came out of the bathroom wrapped in a bath towel.
“Keep your back turned, McQueen.”
He continued to look out the window, but his heart rate picked up with the knowledge that she was naked behind him.
“Carson called,” he said.
“Did he find anything?”
“A few things but nothing definitive. The wind is rising. That rain will be here soon.”
“Billie and Lucy should be home by now,” she said, as she hurried into the large closet and pulled the door partly closed.
She quickly stepped into underwear and a clean pair of shorts, then pulled a sports bra over her head and a T-shirt after that and pushed the door aside. “I’m decent. You can turn around.”
He turned.
Her long legs were bare and so were her feet, and even though her hair was up, it was still damp and leaving little wet spots on her shirt where the tendrils were hanging.
“Shiny as a new penny,” he said.
“It feels good to be clean,” she said, and started toward him, then remembered the windows and stopped.
At that moment, the security alarm chimed, indicating that a door had been opened.
“Billie’s back with groceries. We should help,” Brendan said. He folded up the two books he’d been reading and slipped them into his suitcase and shut it.
“Then let’s go,” Sahara said, moving past him to the door with Brendan bringing up the rear.