City of the Dead Read online

  At least not among those plastic-covered brocade cushions.

  “Call me Chaz,” she suggested with a strained smile. “Chastity is only for when my mother was mad at me.”

  Chastity Ann, actually, spoken with that die-away air, as if Chastity were sucking the life out of her mother like a vampire.

  Again, Chastity was surprised by the threat of tears. Her mother was dead, and Chastity had lost her last chance to make amends. Yet another sin dropped into her box of atonement.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Dr. Stanton said, sounding anxious. “How ’bout getting settled in? I can show you your room.”

  In this house? Not likely. Just the thought made Chastity break out in a fresh sweat.

  No, she had a better idea. She had a contact in town who had offered not only technical support, but room, board, and transportation. Chastity had held off accepting until she knew just what her situation here would be. It looked like she didn’t have to wait any longer.

  But that was for later. Right now, Chastity had to get some information. And she wasn’t going to get it standing in this nightmare of a hallway.

  She sucked in another breath. “Uh, what’s the kitchen like?”

  Dr. Stanton brightened considerably. “Why don’t we go look? I have some sweetened tea you might like.”

  And then he was leading the way past all that suffocating white carpet to the hardwood hallway beyond. The familiar layout had a central hall with living room and dining room to the right and closed den and an overwrought oak staircase to the left. Chastity marched by them as if she saw neither.

  The kitchen and family room were spread across the back of the house with the master suite opening up beyond. Fortunately, the doors to the master suite were closed, and the kitchen was a high-tech wonder that bore absolutely no resemblance to the Byrnes childhood shrine. Chastity took the first good breath she’d managed since stepping through that front door.

  The kitchen looked like something out of Bon Appetit, all gleaming metal, gray granite, and glass cabinets. Plopping her bag onto the center island, she settled herself on a chrome and leather stool.

  “You the chef, Dr. Stanton?”

  “Max,” he insisted as he opened the steel refrigerator. “You must call me Max. We’re family, after all.”

  Well, if Chastity had had any question about that before now, one look at that living room would have settled it.

  “Max,” she amended with a slight nod.

  “And no,” he answered with a smile, pulling out a frosted glass pitcher. “Faith is a wonderful chef. It’s one of the ways she wooed me.”

  Chastity had trouble pairing the words Faith and woo, or even Faith and chef. But then, Faith had always been an enigma. A codebook Chastity had never cracked. Who knew what secrets she might have unleashed once she’d broken free of that house?

  That house she’d gone to such trouble to re-create.

  There was so much Chastity wanted to know. Stupid, little things Max Stanton wouldn’t understand. Painful things that wouldn’t make Chastity sleep any better, but might help provide imperfect plugs to stop up the gaping holes in her own life.

  “How long did you say you two have been married?” she asked.

  “Six years. We met at a charity function, and I just wanted her to be mine. You understand.”

  No, but he didn’t want to hear that. He was wearing that wistful, fretful look that betrayed the hours he’d spent alone in this house waiting for his wife to come home.

  “You said Faith is your second wife.”

  He pulled glasses from the cabinet and then rearranged the rest. “Why, yes. She helped me raise my two boys.”

  “You had custody?”

  “My wife died.”

  “I’m sorry. You’ve never had children with Faith?”

  His smile was easy as he set everything on the island. “I’d long since had a vasectomy. My boys were enough for us.”

  Chastity had seen those boys displayed in tasteful frames on the baby grand piano by the front window. Handsome, toothy kids with All-American smiles and thick hair.

  “They’re at university,” he continued. “Brand at Texas Christian and Louis at Stanford. I told them to stay where they were. They couldn’t do anything but fret here, anyway.”

  Chastity nodded. If worse came to worst, she could always get the boys on the phone. “And Faith has been gone how long?”

  He paused, the pitcher poised over tall frosted glasses. “Two weeks. I’m frantic.”

  Not frantic enough to muss his hair. Chastity accepted her glass with a smile and sipped her tea. She guessed it wasn’t time to tell him that she didn’t drink it sweetened.

  “You said you’d talked to the police,” she said.

  “Yes. But they don’t seem to take this seriously. They say people go missing here all the time. They say people come to New Orleans to go missing.”

  Chastity thought that was just what had happened. “You’re sure they’re wrong?” she asked in her best nurse voice. “Could Faith, maybe, have just wanted some time off? A sabbatical?”

  He leaned against the gray granite counter, his handsome brow furrowed, his surgeon’s hand clasped around his sweating glass. “You said that before. On the phone. Why would you ask?”

  Because in their time, each of the Byrnes girls had run away. Chastity just figured it was Faith’s turn.

  “You said my mother died recently, didn’t you?”

  He looked even more uncomfortable than Chastity felt. “Yes, she did. She’d been ill for quite a while. This last year she’d been at Holy Cross Resthouse, a wonderful facility.”

  She should ask where that was, Chastity thought. Go talk to those people who had cared for her mother last.

  She didn’t. She wouldn’t. She could only do so much, after all, and her bowl was full. Hell, her tub was full.

  “I told Faith to let you know,” he said. “But she refused. She said…she, well…”

  “It’s okay. I’m sure I know perfectly well what she said.”

  “But why?” he demanded. “I’ve never understood.”

  For a very long moment, Chastity just sat there. Just waited for the instinctive panic and shame to pass. She sipped at the treacle in her tea glass and wondered what Faith had ever told this man about her family, and what Chastity should fill in.

  “I’m the black sheep,” she finally said, not ready yet for the harder truths. “The troublemaker.” She gave him a bright grin, hoping it didn’t look like a rictus. “Everybody has her place in a family. That’s mine.”

  “What about your other sister, Hope.” His words were hushed. “The one who died.”

  For a moment, Chastity could do no more than stare, sick and stunned. Well, at least she wouldn’t have to fill in every sin she’d committed. Faith had obviously gotten a start on it.

  Hope had been the best of them. But Chastity didn’t know this man well enough to share her sister with him. So she sipped her tea and ignored the look of naked curiosity in his eyes.

  “The point I was trying to make,” she finally said, “is that Faith and my mother were very close. It’s not uncommon for that kind of loss to send someone like Faith off for a few days.”

  It was even more likely for Faith, who had always protected their mother instead of the other way around. Who had forgiven her, rationalized for her, paved her way to guiltlessness. If there was nothing to protect anymore, then the need to remain and fight might have died as well.

  But then, Chastity didn’t know how Faith had negotiated the last ten years. She only knew how she had, and it had been tough enough.

  “Did Faith take anything with her?” Chastity asked, just as she’d asked on the phone. Repetition aided memory. Clarified mistakes, exposed lies. “Clothing, jewelry?”

  “No,” he said, his voice tight again, just like on the phone. “Nothing.”

  “How about credit cards? Debit cards, ATMs. Cell phone.”

  He shook his hea
d. “I even showed the statements to the police, just as you said I should. She hasn’t used them.”

  Not a good sign, any of it. Chastity knew he realized it. He didn’t need to hear it again.

  “How about medicine? Any prescriptions she needed refilled?”

  He shook his head. “No. She’s healthy as a horse.”

  “Her car?”

  “She was in between cars. We were looking for a new one.”

  “And you’ve talked to her friends?”

  “Yes. They all seem surprised.”

  Chastity nodded. “You said the missing persons report wasn’t filed from here.”

  “Well, I did make it here. But the policeman who spoke to me said they had to file it where she was last seen.”

  “And that was where?”

  “The Eighth District, up in the French Quarter. She went to Friday lunch at Gallatoire’s. Just like always.”

  “And who drove her?”

  “I did. She was going to take a cab home.” He seemed to think about that for a minute. “A cab.”

  “And how long before you realized she wasn’t home?”

  “Well, the next morning. We had several emergencies that night, and I couldn’t break free. I left messages, thinking she was just…I don’t know. With friends.”

  “You’re a cardiothoracic surgeon?”

  “At Tulane.”

  Chastity nodded. “I’ll need to talk to her friends, Max. Check out her hobbies and schedules. And I’ll need to go through her things. Is that all right?”

  No. Not for either of them. Chastity didn’t want to look, and he didn’t want to let her. But he nodded anyway and then smiled. “I knew you’d know what to do.”

  “No, Max,” she said. “I really don’t. This isn’t at all what I do at work. I collect evidence and notify families. I’m not a detective.”

  Well, she did more than that. But she just didn’t want him to see her as a panacea. Faith might not come home, no matter what Chastity did. And Chastity would never force her.

  “But you know more than I do,” he said. “I can’t thank you enough. I know it must have been hard to get off from your job.”

  “I had a bit of vacation saved up.”

  About four years’ worth. She liked working.

  “As for Faith’s personal…things,” he said, “they’re in her little office, right off the master suite.”

  Another place Chastity was sure she didn’t want to see.

  “And except for my mother’s death,” she said, “nothing unusual happened recently?”

  Another shake of the head. Another pursed, bemused frown.

  “She hasn’t seemed different to you?” Chastity asked. “More unhappy? Frightened, maybe?”

  “She’s been sad, of course. She and your mother…”

  “Yes, I know. And I know this is difficult, Max, but was everything okay between the two of you?”

  “Yes.” He looked sincerely surprised. Truly befuddled. “Never better. It was a second honeymoon, with the boys grown. You know?”

  This time Chastity just nodded and pretended.

  “What has Faith told you about herself?” she asked. “Before you met, I mean?”

  A real conversation stopper, that. The good doctor stared at her as if she were speaking in tongues.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m wondering if something came back to haunt her.”

  Chastity was certain something had come back to haunt Faith. She was just hoping something else had come back to haunt her.

  “Wouldn’t you know?” he asked.

  “Not for the last ten years. Until you called, I had no idea where Faith and my mother were.”

  Another slow shake of his head. “Faith was an event organizer,” he said. “She helped plan the charity event where we met. She’s so perfect at it, you know. But the last few years she’s been devoted to the boys, to me, to your mother.” He seemed to fold a little. “She’s so lovely. Organized. Charitable. She has friends in the neighborhood, and through the hospital auxiliary and the Arlen Clinic, and the boys’ school, of course. I’ve never known her to say an unkind word about anybody….”

  “But me.”

  “Not unkind. She just wouldn’t talk about you.”

  “That’s too bad. It might have helped find her.”

  If she wanted to be found. Chastity didn’t know. With no activity on Faith’s credit cards or cell phone, though, she wasn’t as sure anymore that Faith had gone of her own free will.

  Chastity was now standing in the kitchen, marveling at the gleam of it and trying to decide where to go first, when the doctor’s beeper chirped. Unclipping it, he checked it and frowned. “Excuse me…”

  “Duty calls?”

  He flashed her a rueful smile. “I’ve been waiting to hear on a patient in with an angiogram. Will you be all right if I go?”

  “You’re heading up to the city?” At his nod, Chastity set down her tea. “Would you drop me off so I can hire a cab?”

  “You could use either of my cars.”

  This time the rueful grin was hers. “No, I can’t. I’m short a driver’s license for a few weeks. And you can’t be at my beck and call while I run around town. I have a lot of people I’ll need to talk to. A cab’ll be fine.”

  “They’re expensive.”

  “My trust fund is full.” Evidently, Dr. Stanton hadn’t expected that.

  “I’m not sure if Faith knew,” Chastity explained. “Our grandmother Dexter left me survival money.” Because the old woman had been the one to find Chastity on the street. Because she’d offered her a safe place to stay. Because she’d finally felt guilty that it had come to that. “I’m not broke.” For a moment, Dr. Stanton held her gaze. “How old were you?”

  “When all hell broke loose? Sixteen. Why?”

  He just shook his head and cleaned out his glass. Ten minutes later Chastity was sitting in the buttery soft seat of his BMW heading back through that electric gate toward the swamps and the bridge that arced high over the river.

  Dr. Stanton went out of his way to drop Chastity off at a taxi stand in the French Quarter. Not that anyplace else in the city wouldn’t have attracted taxis, but Chastity gently guided him to the stand in front of the Royal Orleans on St. Louis, where she thought a certain cabby might be waiting.

  Max never asked why Chastity felt compelled to drag along her overstuffed backpack and laptop, and Chastity had no intention of telling him. At least not until she’d contracted with her ride and contacted her friend for a place to stay. She waved Max off with no small amount of relief and turned to consider her next move.

  For a moment, away from that awful house and that terrible water, Chastity wasted a long moment just taking in her surroundings.

  The French Quarter certainly didn’t disappoint. Bustling, boiling, the narrow, cobbled streets churned with life. Cars and bikes jostled with horse-drawn carriages. Pedestrians ranged from suited businesspeople and tattooed shopkeepers to tourists draped in bright beads and carrying to-go cups at five in the afternoon.

  The buildings were pink and blue and green, and looked as if they were spun from marzipan and iced with grillwork balconies. Marble-fronted hotels dripped flags and geraniums. Tinny music echoed from some storefront, and overfull trash bags blocked the sidewalk. Chastity could smell fresh bread and raw fish and rotting vegetables, and tasted the slow, seething energy of the place on her tongue.

  She found herself wanting to wander off down one of those tight, cluttered little side streets and find out what life was like there. She wanted to hum and sway in her jeans and pretend that life wasn’t waiting outside this odd fairyland.

  Maybe when she was finished with Faith…

  She deliberately turned away. She had a cabbie to find.

  There were six cabs in a row along the street in front of the hotel. Most were a bit battered, all were well used. The cabbies mostly waited outside, watching the street scene and exchanging news
over cigarettes. Chastity walked past a rasta man who reeked of ganja, two hard bleached blondes who disagreed about the proper placement of a Harley tattoo, and a hefty black woman who coughed with a suspiciously tubercular rasp.

  Finally, though, she saw who she’d been looking for. He was a white guy, maybe in his thirties. Tall and lean, with choppy black hair, light eyes, and a quiltwork of old burn scars that ate up most of his neck, left cheek, and left arm. His left hand was a claw, wrapped in a permanent burn brace. His mouth drew south on that side just a bit. He was leaning against his rig as if he had nothing better to do, sucking on a Camel and watching the pretty girls go by over the tops of his dime-store sunglasses.

  She shouldn’t be doing this. One look at him was all Chastity needed to know. Even with an endorsement, this guy was more than Chastity thought she could handle. Darker, harder, and too good-looking, even with the scars. If she had any sense, she’d hire somebody else.

  But then Chastity caught sight of the sticker on the back window of his cab. IAFF. International Association of Fire Fighters. If she couldn’t trust a firefighter, who could she trust?

  “What’s the going rate?” she asked, letting her backpack slide to the sidewalk.

  He didn’t perk right up. Simply turned her way, still leaning there in his cotton shirt and battered jeans and thousand-year-old eyes.

  “Where you goin’?”

  Chastity shrugged, doing her best to ignore a fresh set of shivers and an increased heart rate. Damn, she really should just walk away. She knew better. She really did.

  It never mattered.

  So she sucked in a breath and did her best to ignore the fireworks that were going off inside. “Everywhere. I need somebody to be my chauffeur the next week or so while I go around town searching for my sister.”

  “Hire a real chauffeur.”

  “I want somebody who understands the town, speaks English, and doesn’t stand out. You understand the town?”

  “Sure. I was born here.”

  “You do your fire duty here?”