LITMIR.BIZ

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I say he had a mean tongue.”

      “Ah, so that’s why he hooked up with Lucille. Like seeks out like.” Mary made a face as she read the sign above the door. “I hate this place, but at least Mommy Dearest keeps a well-stocked bar. Defend her all you like, Lisa, I still have a bone to pick with—” She stopped, frowned and backtracked. “Wait a minute, he was rich, right? Eden, didn’t I tell you earlier that Maxwell Burgoyne was loaded?”

      “You said big-time businessman. Lisa said horrible.” Eden used her remote to lock the car doors. “I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you.”

      “He might have left us something in his will,” Mary persisted. “You know, a conscience thing.”

      Lisa shook her head. “Maxwell didn’t have a conscience, Mary. There won’t be any guilt money.”

      “Oh, well, screw him then. Or sue him if the opportunity arises.” Mary poked the front door open with her fingertips. “I smell raspberries.”

      Eden looked up. The rain clouds had moved downriver but no stars shone overhead. The air felt heavy, almost suffocating. Cars rolled past on Canal even this late at night. She heard a saxophone down the street and the repeated zot of someone’s bug zapper.

      Everything seemed normal. So why, she wondered, couldn’t she shake the image of those stupid blue-tinted headlights in her rearview mirror—or the face of a cop who preferred shadow to light?

      “Losing it,” she decided and followed her sisters inside. “Hey, Ty.”

      “Hey back at’cha.” Lucille’s six-foot-six rail-thin assistant waved a ring-covered hand at the rear of the building. “She’s up in her office if you’re looking.”

      “Bring bourbon,” Mary called over her shoulder.

      Ty ignored her. “Bad day?” he asked Eden.

      “Okay day, not great night.” She squinted through palm fronds, people and tables to a trio of women on a small raised stage. “Is it blues week?”

      “Winding down now, sugar. Got a reggae band booked tomorrow. Tell your chippy little sister, Lucille still keeps a good bar upstairs.”

      Eden grinned. “Mary doesn’t really have a chip on her shoulder, Ty. She took a method acting course last year and hasn’t realized it’s over yet.”

      Ty chuckled and moved on. Eden headed for the stairwell.

      Lucille’s preference ran to freeze-dried palms, rattan furniture and dim lighting. Blues music drifted out of the private rooms, and the air did in fact smell like raspberries.

      Because she’d done her first filling at seven-thirty that morning, Eden’s head felt as fuzzy as the lights. She’d crossed, she reflected, into that weird realm between consciousness and sleep.

      The wall beside her was lined with oil paintings, most of them abstract, and every one as dark and mysterious as Armand LaMorte.

      “Hell.” With a sigh, Eden started up.

      “Hell, is it? And I thought you liked my place.”

      Her heart lurched. Pushing a fist into her ribs, Eden breathed out and turned. “I don’t need a coronary to make this night a bust, Lucille. Don’t you creak when you walk?”

      Lucille, a tall, fine-boned woman with straight, dark hair, a thick fringe of bangs and bloodred fingernails, gave Eden’s cheek a pat. “You were creaking enough for both of us, love. What are you doing here so late?”

      Eden relaxed. “Lisa wants to talk to you.”

      “I heard the story.”

      “The whole thing?”

      “Most of it. There was a police officer here tonight, an old friend. We chatted. He left twenty minutes ago.”

      For some reason, Armand’s face flashed in Eden’s head. She pushed it out and asked, “Is this cop a regular friend?”

      “Yes, but I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t use that word around Mary. Since my potpourri now contains a hint of poison, I’ll assume she’s upstairs with Lisa.”

      Humor crept into Eden’s tone. “Wanna run?”

      “It’s tempting.” Lucille plastered on a smile. “I’ll settle for letting you lead the way—in case she’s conned Lisa into buying her a gun.”

      Gun, cop, Armand LaMorte. The circle drew her in, as did all the problems Eden saw looming before her. Why couldn’t Mary look like Lisa instead of her?

      Barbs flew the moment they entered Lucille’s office. Eden ignored them and drank in the atmosphere to distract herself.

      The decor was Haitian with an abundance of ebony wood. Eden zeroed in on the sofa and dropped onto it. Five minutes passed before it occurred to her that Lisa had vanished.

      “She made a beeline for the lower balcony.” Mary gestured at a large outer terrace. “Digging helps her deal. She told me to fill Lucille in. Now that’s done, where’s the key to the liquor cabinet?”

      Lucille’s brows elevated. “You don’t seem concerned about Lisa’s state of mind, Mary. Since when can’t she speak for herself?”

      “She asked, I complied. Who am I to psychoanalyze her? She’s dealing, okay?”

      “By digging in my club garden at 2:00 a.m.?”

      “Digging’s what she does.” Annoyed, Mary paced. “Why am I talking, Eden, and you’re not?”

      “I’m too tired to talk.” She wasn’t even sure she could open her eyes now that she’d closed them. “I see disembodied teeth smiling at me. I think I have an extraction at nine-thirty tomorrow morning.” She forced her eyelids halfway up. “Lucille, why didn’t you tell us about Maxwell?”

      “Because he was a dreadful man. Not bad from birth, but he became that way over the years. For you to have known him would have served no purpose.”

      Mary prowled the room. “You’d never know she grew up in the bayou, would you, Eden? Bottom line, the guy was a creep.”

      “Did Dolores know about him?” Stupid question. Dolores knew everything about everyone in her life.

      “She agreed you shouldn’t meet him.”

      “But you must have realized Lisa would track him down eventually.”

      “I thought Lisa had put that obsession behind her. I had no idea she planned to hire a private investigator to search for him. I wouldn’t have expected her to bother.”

      “Well, no, seeing as you lied to us so convincingly.” Mary tugged on the armoire door. “You remember the tale, Lucille. Our natural father sailed off to the South Pacific with a team of scientists and their ship went down, blah, blah, blah.”

      Curious now, Eden asked, “What made Lisa look for Maxwell, Mary?”

      “Hey, I just found out about the P.I. thing myself. I have no idea what middle sis was thinking or why. Maybe the ship going down sounded hokey to her. It might have to me if I’d cared enough to think about it. I’d say you should ask Lisa, but she’s out of talk mode at the moment. As soon as we came in here, she got that ‘I need to get my hands in dirt’ look in her eyes and took off out the balcony door. Can we go now, Eden?”

      “As soon as my muscles reconnect to my brain. Have you spoken to Dolores yet, Lucille?”

      “Briefly. She said you didn’t have dinner with her last Sunday. That’s very generous of you. Unwise perhaps, but generous.”

      Guilt niggled as Eden recalled her resistance to the police lineup. “It was Mary’s idea.”

      “And a selfless one, I’m sure.”

      Lucille’s mocking smile

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