City of the Dead Page 33

  But somehow, she thought that after ten years Faith might have understood that Chastity had done what she’d done to save them. Not to shatter them.

  The small, hurt girl in her told her to just walk away. Just to leave Faith to her own problems, as Faith had left her ten years ago. The adult she’d worked so damned hard to be kept Chastity standing there long enough to notice that tears were welling in Faith’s too-familiar fey eyes.

  They ran down her cheeks in silence, because Faith simply didn’t know what to do.

  Faith had never made it away from her abuse. Chastity had.

  So once again, it was up to Chastity to try and break the cycle. Whether Faith liked it or not. So Chastity made the first step, and suddenly found herself in Faith’s arms.

  “I’m sorry,” they both said at the same time, holding on.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” Faith admitted in a shaky voice.

  “How did you get here?” Chastity demanded, pulling back to wipe the tears from her sister’s face. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Did you know I’ve met Margaret Jane?”

  Faith’s face crumpled a bit. “I can’t look at her. She looks so much like Hope.”

  Chastity laughed. “That’s just what I thought.” She shook her head, overwhelmed all over again. “God, there’s so much we need to talk about. But we’ve got to get away first.”

  Faith pulled away. “No. No, I’m waiting here for a friend.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you are, Faith, but I think I have a better idea. We need time alone. And we can’t do that here.”

  “You can come to Kareena’s house,” Chastity heard behind her, and suddenly remembered they weren’t alone.

  “Heck, honey,” Luscious offered. “Bring it down to the club. I think this deserves an audience.”

  Chastity turned to see the drag queen had a lace hankie to her eyes. Kareena was grinning like a kid.

  “Kareena Boudreaux,” Chastity said with a small smile, “I’d like you to finally meet my sister Faith. Faith, this is my friend Kareena, who’s been helping me find you.”

  “Well, at least now I know why they offer you so much money for your eggs,” Kareena said with a sigh. “You just, like, the middle-class wet dream, huh?”

  Faith looked a bit stunned.

  “Pay no attention to her,” Chastity said with a chuckle that bordered on shrill. “She thinks nobody wants an egg with brown eyes. Did you go for yourself, Faith? Just tell me that. Tell me donating eggs was your idea.”

  Faith’s face fell again. “At first.”

  Chastity nodded, hurting for this woman who still couldn’t admit her own abuse. “Who took you to New Life, Faith?”

  Faith blinked. “New Life? That was Max’s idea. He…well, he needed the money. You know.”

  “For his gambling. Yeah, I know.”

  “He’s sure sneaky about that,” Kareena admitted, a bit of awe in her voice. “Nobody at Tulane knows about it.”

  Faith actually smiled, although it was grim. “Nobody knows anything Max Stanton doesn’t want them to.”

  That opened the door to so many questions. But before Chastity had the chance to ask even one, Faith patted her on the arm. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “You should be home.”

  “Why?” Chastity asked. “You never said, nor did any of your friends.”

  Faith lifted an eyebrow. “Who are dead.”

  Was it just old habit, or did Faith level a judgment on Chastity with those three words? Would it always be her fault?

  “I know, Faith. I was there. But you can help us put a stop to it. You can tell me what’s going on.”

  Chastity should have known better than to think she was going to get answers. She should have known better than to think that any of this was going to be easy.

  She was just reaching out her hand to Faith, a gentle nudge to begin guiding her out to the car and safety, when she heard quick footsteps behind her.

  “What did you do?” Tante Edie demanded in shrill tones as she pushed past a stunned Luscious. “What did you do?”

  Everybody in the room turned to see the little woman skidding to a halt so fast her hat tipped forward. For a second, Chastity thought she was going to smile. Tante Edie took care of that.

  “He’s here,” she snapped, right at Chastity. “You brought that man here with you!”

  The funny thing was that Chastity didn’t get it. She wasn’t sure what Tante Edie meant.

  Faith was sure.

  “You bitch,” she hissed, yanking away from Chastity’s touch. “You traitorous bitch, you’ve done it again! I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you!”

  Chastity swung back to see Faith reaching for a bundle on the couch. She saw the flight in her sister’s movements and got it.

  She got it hard.

  “Max.”

  She knew she sounded sick. She realized just as fast that Faith misinterpreted.

  “What, did he come too quickly?” she asked, her voice venomous. “How long were you supposed to hold me here for him?”

  Her arms holding her purse and a stuffed athletic bag, Faith whirled around on Tante Edie. “Help me. How do I get out?”

  “No,” Chastity objected, reaching for her. “I’ll—”

  Faith yanked away again, snarling. “You’ll go to hell! You helped him!” Her pupils were huge, and her face was suddenly pasty.

  “Back this way, girl,” Tante said, grabbing Faith’s arm and pulling.

  Chastity reached out. Tante Edie slapped her down like a pickpocket. “You done enough, don’t you think? Now come on, Faith, we’ll sneak you out the back.”

  “No!”

  Chastity chased them right out the door to the alley. She tried to grab hold of Faith as she ran, but Luscious, the six-foot tranny, grabbed her from behind and held on to her as Faith climbed into Edie’s car and sped away.

  Chastity was left standing there in the downpour, watching the tail-lights wink out in the rain. Her sister—no, her mother—whom she’d just found after ten years, was gone.

  Twenty-Three

  “Girl,” Kareena said, stepping up next to her, “we got to go, too. That man can’t find us here.”

  Chastity couldn’t seem to move. She should have chased Faith. She should have grabbed on to her and not let go.

  Faith shouldn’t have believed that she could be helping Max.

  “Chastity?”

  She finally turned to find her friend holding on to her arm, as if afraid she’d walk right back into the funeral home.

  Hard to do. Chastity and Kareena were the only two people standing in the alley, and the door was closed tight. The rain was easing up already. It didn’t matter. Chastity was soaked through, her hair plastered against her forehead and her good slacks and shirt dripping. Kareena didn’t look much better.

  “I have to go after her, Kareena.”

  Kareena took a quick look down the now-empty alley. “You won’t catch her, girl.”

  “How could she think I’d bring him here?”

  “She scared. But if you don’t leave now, that man gonna know you’re still in town.”

  Chastity finally snapped to attention. “Jesus, Kareena,” she said, “we gotta get out of here.”

  Kareena scowled. “Mais yeah, girl. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  The air hung heavy and hot. Clouds skimmed low, and the trees rustled with impatience. The drains were overflowing, pouring water right back out onto the streets so that it lapped at Chastity’s ankles. She thought she’d vomit.

  Swallowing hard, she high-stepped down that alleyway as if escaping prison, all the while with an eye to where her sister might have gone. The shock was wearing off, and she was getting angry.

  No, furious.

  She’d chanced everything, even her own sanity, to find her sister. And her sister had blamed her for it. Again.

  Nothing much had changed. Nothing much probably ever would.

  “Well,” she decided, “at le
ast if Max is here, then that means he’s not at home.”

  Kareena came to a dead stop, not two feet from her car. “You are not going back to that man’s house.”

  Chastity shrugged. “If I can’t get my sister away, the next best thing is to get enough evidence to make sure he can’t hurt her anymore. I have a very strong suspicion that I’m going to find that evidence at the house.”

  “And if he leaves the wake early?”

  Chastity cast a quick grin at her friend. “Then I know you can figure a way to get him called down to Tulane. Can’t you?”

  Kareena just glared.

  “And while I’m busy,” Chastity continued, “I figure you’d like to call that nice Obie Gaudet and tell him who we saw today. And where. He says you have beautiful eyes, ya know.”

  Well, that at least got Kareena in gear again. She flashed Chastity a bright grin. “That’s one fine-lookin’ man, him.”

  Chastity snorted. “Obie? He’s fifty miles of bad road.”

  “Yeah, but Kareena wouldn’t mind drivin’ over it a few times.”

  They reached Kareena’s car and piled into it as if it were the last helicopter out of Saigon.

  “I should have run after her,” Chastity said to herself.

  Kareena started the engine and pulled out of their space. “She shoulda stayed where she was. Now come on, let’s get outa here before somethin’ worse happens. And the way things have been goin’ lately, I don’t want to see how much worse it can get.”

  Kareena didn’t have to manufacture a lie to get Max to the hospital. Chastity had been sitting at Kareena’s kitchen table for only forty minutes when Kareena called to say a real patient had demanded the doctor’s attention down at the medical center.

  Chastity dragged James up from the chair where he’d been doing the Times-Picayune crossword puzzle and watching the hurricane reports and propelled him back into action.

  The latest front had passed, dropping about four inches of rain and a couple of tornadoes. The sky, for right now, was calm and flat and uninspiring. The trees drooped and gleamed with water, and the streets were awash. Chastity never again wanted to hear the sound of car tires splashing through water.

  Even worse, the traffic was a mess. The official evacuation notice had gone out, and half the roads were closed or blocked or rerouted. Fortunately, nobody was interested in going the wrong way over the Mississippi, so they managed good time, although Chastity did it with her eyes closed.

  It was only as they stopped to punch in the security code to open the subdivision gates that it occurred to Chastity that maybe they shouldn’t have driven the taxi. It was going to stand out in this subdivision like a cockroach on an OR floor. But if everything went the way she wanted it to, she’d be finished with Dr. Max Stanton after this trip.

  Max was an organized man. A precise, thorough man who cleaned to relieve stress. Chastity had a feeling he carried that organizational mania into his personal papers.

  Receipts, bills, contacts. They had to be somewhere, and since Chastity hadn’t stumbled across any evidence of them in the rest of the house, she figured Max had them carefully locked up in his office, where she could quickly peruse them.

  Before the hurricane came.

  Before Max showed up.

  Chastity wished like hell her sister would call. She’d sure left her number with enough people who could tell Faith how to find her. She had to know by now that Chastity couldn’t have brought Max to that funeral home. That a woman who had ruined her own childhood taking an abuser to task would never aid and abet another.

  But then, Faith had spent too many years locked in abuse to be logical about her abuser.

  “You sure this is legal?” James asked as Chastity unlocked the front door to Max’s house.

  The neighborhood was still as death, the driveways empty and the streets drying. In fact, every time she’d been here, the atmosphere had been the same. As if the place were a giant movie set waiting for the cameras to roll. Not real at all.

  A manufactured security that kept out the real world.

  Well, the swamps, anyway.

  Chastity was already shivering before she ever walked into that climate-controlled foyer.

  “Just as legal as the last time we were here,” she assured James. “Remember that Max himself gave me the keys and the security codes”—which she punched in quickly to prevent an alarm sounding anywhere—“and told me to look around. I’m not doing anything different than I did the last two times we were here.”

  She actually stood there for a minute this time, just to let the revulsion and shame wash over her like a big wave and then pass. Maybe if she just acknowledged what this place did to her, she could move on and focus on something else.

  “You’d think there’d at least be dust somewhere,” James said, looking around.

  There was no dust. There was no life in this house. It was as sterile as one of the operating suites Max spent so much time in. Another stage he set for his work.

  God, she hated it here.

  And she’d never asked Faith if she’d had any hand in the decorating.

  “So how do you get into the office, Houdini?” James asked.

  For the first time in this house, Chastity smiled. “There are some benefits to living on the street, fireman. Give me a couple of bobby pins and ten minutes, and I can crack the code on your firehouse.”

  He smiled right back. “You continue to show unheralded talents, nurse.”

  “I’m just a font of illicit information.”

  She started to walk back toward the bedroom, when it occurred to her that she had the chance to answer one of Sergeant Gaudet’s questions. She stopped next to the office door, her focus farther beyond. Past the kitchen, in fact, to where a door led out to the garage she’d never had the chance to investigate.

  She couldn’t be that lucky. Even Max wouldn’t leave that kind of evidence sitting in plain sight. But then, Max might not know what the police had found. And if nothing else, Max was supremely confident.

  Without saying a word to James, Chastity stalked off through that silent, oppressive house. Not saying a word himself, James followed.

  Chastity opened the door to the garage and found herself holding her breath. It simply couldn’t be this easy.

  Evidently, for a change, it would be. Chastity flipped on the light to discover that for once in his life Max Stanton had been sloppy.

  Max did indeed have a second car. It was sitting in his garage tucked away beneath a protective cover, right next to the empty space where the BMW lived. Chastity walked over and lifted a corner to reveal what lay beneath.

  And there it was. An almost new Cadillac Seville.

  Black.

  “I assume this means something,” James said.

  “It means we might have our first evidence,” Chastity said, pulling out her cell phone.

  She wasn’t going to wait: to get this information to Gaudet.

  “He has a black late model sedan in his garage,” she said without preamble when he answered.

  “You’re there legally, I know, Ms. Byrnes.”

  “Can’t get more legal than being given keys, security codes, and the request to search for information, Sergeant. Want the license number?”

  It took a few keystrokes on Gaudet’s computer and a second or two of silence. “Ellen Mayhew Stanton?”

  “His mother.”

  Gaudet huffed like a disgusted teen. “No wonder we couldn’t find it.”

  “His mother’s in Italy for the summer,” Chastity offered.

  “We’ll still need more for a search warrant.”

  “I’ll call you back.”

  “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you to be careful, Ms. Byrnes.”

  “I’m sure you don’t, Sergeant. But thank you anyway.”

  If nothing else, the discovery gave her an odd sense of power that enabled her to walk back into that house with more impunity. She was right, she knew she was right, a
nd for the first time she felt as if she could prove it.

  So when she took a moment back in her sister’s room to collect bobby pins from the vanity, she did so efficiently, not once tarrying over memories or expectations or regrets. She did have to remind herself to breathe in this house, though. She might have gained some power, but lavender was still lavender.

  “You weren’t kidding,” James said a few minutes later as the two of them heard the distinctive click of a lock opening.

  Chastity straightened from where she’d been bent over the lock and pocketed the bobby pins she’d bent to rake against the pins. Then, with a flourish, she opened the door. “It’s Max’s fault. He has such control in this house that he never felt the need to install more than a standard tumbler mechanism.” She took a moment there on the threshold to check the room. No key pads, no surprise alarms. “He was right, of course. I imagine nobody in his family ever considered walking in here without his permission.”

  “Is this still legal?” James asked, standing next to her.

  “That door was open, fireman. I’m surprised you didn’t notice.”

  “Ah,” he returned with a nod. “I was obviously confused by that door sticking and all.”

  “Exactly.”

  As far as Chastity could tell, nothing in the office had changed. She hadn’t really expected it to. Max would never believe that he was at risk, so why should he disturb his records? After all, nobody would think to look through them.

  Especially Chastity. He’d made sure of that by placing the picture of her father right on top of his desk.

  Chastity walked up to it and turned it on its face. She wanted to throw it in the trash, but she knew better. So she turned away from it and stood there a moment to assess the room.

  Desk, file cabinet, computer. Oh, the opportunities to leave evidence. But Chastity was not quite the whizz at computers that she was at breaking and entering. So she gave James the desk, and she bent to the file cabinet.