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Six years and a relocation later, they owned the Gumbo Stop, which they’d grown from a concession trailer to a store that offered creole cuisine in boil-in-a-bag portions. After locating Val, they’d asked her to come to Las Vegas to live with them and their daughter, twenty-one-year-old Jasmyn.
Who was curled up on the couch in her pink capri pajamas, patterned with the word Paris in a flowery script along with miniature Eiffel Towers. She called them her Je rêve—French for “I dream”—jammies because her overriding desire was to live in Paris. Her parents accepted their daughter’s dream to live in the romantic city, but weren’t so thrilled about her wanting to work there as a burlesque dancer.
Jasmyn had years of training as a dancer. At ten she’d won a regional tap competition, followed by several summers working in the chorus for regional musicals. The past few years, she had been teaching tap and ballet to kids at the Dance-a-Rama Studio.
As a counteroffer to the burlesque-dancer-in-Paris dream, Char and Del offered Jasmyn full tuition to Le Cordon Bleu, which they called “a virtual Parisian experience,” which just happened to have a college in Las Vegas. Instead of struggling as a dancer, they argued, a prestigious culinary arts degree opened doors to a lifetime career as a chef.
Jasmyn’s interest in the idea was about as peaked as a collapsed soufflé.
“Hey, baby,” Jasmyn called out in her soft, lazy drawl. She twittered her fingers in greeting, her eyes glued to the black-and-white movie on the TV screen.
“Weren’t you watching that show last night?”
“I bought the DVD because this movie, Double Indemnity, defined film noir. Those old-time movie stars Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck are hawt, cuz.”
Sometimes they called each other cuz, although in the two years since Val had moved in here, she’d come to feel more like a sister to Jasmyn. Or what she assumed a sister would be like. They sometimes argued, sometimes irritated each other, but they were also each other’s sounding board and confidante.
Jasmyn played with a curl of her long raven hair. “Cuz, I’m thinkin’ of dyeing my hair platinum, the brassy but trashy color of Barbara Stanwyck’s pageboy wig.”
Val glanced at the screen. “Looks better than my brassy but trashy wig.”
Jasmyn’s gaze landed on Val’s hair, where it paused for a moment before darting down Val’s outfit, then quickly up. “Whoa, sugar, laissez les bons temps rouler!”
It was French for “let the good times roll,” a popular saying heard all the time in New Orleans.
“Actually, this wasn’t worn for fun.” She set the bag on the coffee table. “I worked my first investigation tonight.”
“Investigation?” Jasmyn punched a button on the remote. The room instantly grew quiet, the movie frozen on an image of Fred MacMurray looking at Barbara Stanwyck’s leg. “Isn’t that outfit the one you wore at that casino where you dealt blackjack and lip-synched Christina Aguilera’s songs?”
Val plopped down on the couch. “Has nothing to do with her, though. I dressed like this to...” Her heart and mind felt all jumbled up with everything that had happened tonight. She wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. “Hungry? I picked up some to-go from Aloha Kitchen.”
After shooting Val a knowing look, Jasmyn gestured at the bag. “I love them funny little rolls. You get some of them?”
“Lumpia Shanghai. Got extra just for you.” She handed her a few of the mini egg rolls stuffed with ground pork, carrots and onions on a napkin.
They ate in silence for a while. The air conditioner chugged quietly in the background. On the TV screen, Fred continued to stare at Barbara’s ankle. The way he looked at her—startled and hungry—reminded Val of the look on Drake’s face when she showed him the fleur-de-lis on her heels.
Like she cared. It was over. Dead. Gone.
She gestured to the screen with an egg roll. “What’s Fred looking at?”
“Her anklet. It’s a big deal in the movie.”
Chewing, Val made a keep-going gesture.
“The anklet is a symbol that represents sexual fascination.” Jasmyn grinned. “Read that in some film critic’s review on the internet. In my own words, that little gold anklet sends a signal as big and bright as a lighthouse beacon. It flashes ‘I’m a bad girl looking for trouble.’ Women who wore them were thought to be loose.”
Val wiped her fingers on a napkin. “This movie was made when?”
“Nineteen forty-four.”
“You just turned twenty-one, what, three months ago? And you know all about anklets worn nearly seventy years ago?”
Jasmyn gave a casual shrug. “It’s my thing, the forties and fifties.”
“Your noir thing.”
“More like my neonoir thing. Digging the old styles, but updating them, too.” She waggled a magenta fingernail at the screen. “Like that anklet she’s wearing. I’d wear one with peep-toe pumps, capri pants, a slim cardigan and Dita Von Teese’s bad-red lipstick, Devil.”
“You love that Dita Von Teese with her skintight dresses and corsets and elbow-length gloves.”
“She’s an artist, a burlesque queen.”
“I see you haven’t thought about this much.”
“I celebrate my life through my style, what can I say? I know you understand ’cause you go a little retro yourself, cuz.”
Val had a thing for simple, vintage black dresses. When she was a kid, she’d loathed reach-me-down—secondhand—clothes, and had sworn that when she grew up she’d always buy off-the-rack. But when that day came, she hated how stiff and scratchy new clothes felt against her skin. Missed the softness of reach-me-downs, so she’d started shopping at secondhand and vintage stores.
“Y’know,” Jasmyn said, “with your black-purple hair, pale skin and those hot-cute little black dresses you wear, you’d make a great noir chick.”
“I’m still not even sure what noir means.”
“It refers to the type of movies being made back in the forties and fifties. Dark and bleak with people who had no morality or sense of purpose.”
“Sounds like a badly lit casino in Vegas.”
“F’sure!” Jasmyn peeled off a throaty laugh. “That anklet is famous, by the way,” she continued, looking at the screen. “Right about here, Fred says ‘That’s a honey of an anklet you’re wearing’ and that term—honey of an anklet—is now one of the classic lines in film noir.” She paused, frowning. “Val, what’s wrong?”
“That word. Honey.” She picked up some wadded napkins and put them into the bag. “Tonight I did what in the P.I. trade is called a honey trap. Which is where a P.I. entices some guy to see if he’s unfaithful, which is a bunch of crock because enticing isn’t investigating.” Wouldn’t Jayne be proud to know Val finally understood? And sorely disappointed if she knew how Val reached that understanding.
“From the looks of you, cuz, you overshot enticing by a city block.”
“Thanks.”
“Just sayin’.”
“Got it.”
Jasmyn was thoughtful for a moment. “I thought your boss wasn’t going to let you do any investigations for four more months.”
“Jayne doesn’t know I did it.” Val felt ashamed to have repaid her boss’s trust with such insubordination.
“Dawlin’,” Jasmyn said gently, “what happened?”
“After she left work early, this new case walked in, and...you know my bullheaded streak.” She gave a halfhearted shrug. “Although that’s hardly an excuse for my misbehavin’. I’m feeling mighty bad that I took a case that I had no right to take because I wanted fast cash.”
“How much fast cash?”
“Two grand.”
Jasmyn emitted a low whistle. “That’s fast, all right. Now you can get your car fixed.”
“Already in the shop. I’m driving a rental until it’s ready.”
“You bad, bullheaded girl, you. Mama will be glad to know you got wheels.” She gave Val a knowing look. “Speaking of mamas, now that you’re a private eye in training, have you looked for yours?”
Val felt a stab of guilt. “No.”
During Katrina, when she and Nanny had been stuck on the roof of their building, her grandmother confessed she had lied about Val’s parents dying in a car crash when Val was two years old. Nanny’s daughter, Val’s mother, had survived, but left soon after that. “She was born Agnes Monte Hickory LeRoy, after your great-grandmother Agnes Lowell and great-grandfather Elias Monte Hickory, but if she’s remarried, her last name’s prob’ly different. Promise me, dear girl, you’ll try to find her, make my wrong right.”
Val made that promise.
But since then, she had not tried to find the mother who had abandoned her. Not once.
“Truth be told, Jaz, I can’t work up the desire to meet a stranger who gave birth to me, then abandoned me.”
Jasmyn nodded. “Everythin’ in its own time.”
Left up to Val, that time would never come. But she felt wretched breaking her word to Nanny.
“Wow, two thousand!” Jasmyn exclaimed, bringing the conversation back around. “Except for the sneaky part, of course, but who am I to talk? I’m the one sneaking around taking burlesque classes.”
For the past five months, Jasmyn had been taking private burlesque dancing lessons from Dottie “the Body” Osborne, a former headliner at the Pink Pussycats in Hollywood, a famous burlesque club where the dancers plied their G-string gimmicks in the 1970s. Val, sworn to secrecy about Jasmyn’s clandestine studies, knew if Del and Char ever learned about this, their daughter would be grounded until she was forty.
“The problem with secrets is that they can blow up in your face,” Val murmured. “I need to tell Jayne.”
“No, cuz, bad idea! Don’t blow this internship by gettin’ all confessional. Look at the money you made in one night! Plus you tackled your first case and probably learned a lot in the process.”
“No,” Val said solemnly, gathering the rest of the trash, “I learned investigations are about using the mind to solve puzzles, not playing body games.”
“Hey,” Jasmyn said, “enough with our heavy noir talk. Let’s dish about something fun. I think I got my burlesque name. Ready? Ruby Stevens!”
“Definitely sounds like a burlesque name.”
“It was Barbara Stanwyck’s real name. But they wouldn’t let her use it because—guess what?—it sounded like a burlesque dancer! Y’know how burlesque dancers gotta have a gimmick? I’ll be Ruby Stevens, and I’ll always wear a shiny gold anklet to go with my brassy and phony blond hair. Like your wig, only curlier.”
After a beat, Val said, “You know I love ya, right Jaz? Word to the wise. One of these days, you’re gonna need to have a sit-down with your mama and be up front about those burlesque lessons. Doing that gives both of you dignity.”
She wasn’t just talking to her cousin. She was talking to herself, too.
Because at that moment, Val knew she was going to be up front with Jayne tomorrow morning and tell her what she had done. Nanny used to say that secrets destroyed relationships, and she was right. If Jayne threatened to end her internship, well, Val would give her one hell of a side note on why she should stay.
After she and Jaz said their good-nights, Val dumped the trash in the kitchen and headed to her room, reflecting on all kinds of things, from blond wigs to honey traps to young women who needed to keep their word.
Just because a hurricane had wiped out Val’s world didn’t mean it had also taken her self-worth.
CHAPTER FIVE
AT EIGHT-TWENTY the next morning, Val pulled into the parking lot at Diamond Investigations. The office didn’t open for forty minutes, but she wanted a chance to talk to Jayne as soon as she arrived, which was usually a few minutes before nine.
Stepping out of the air-conditioned Honda felt as if somebody had opened an oven door in her face. When the monsoons finally rolled in, the moist winds and thunderstorms would bring lower temperatures. Meanwhile, Las Vegas baked.
After flipping on the office lights and setting a bag containing a warm cinnamon roll from Marie’s Gourmet Bakery on her desk, she checked herself out in the bathroom mirror.
This morning, she’d woken Jasmyn and told her about her plan to confess the honey trap to Jayne. “Cuz,” Jasmyn said sleepily, “you need to wear somethin’ to say grace over.”
Jaz helped her pick out what to wear, a vintage black crepe dress with a delicate white lace bow, swearing it gave Val a “demure innocence.” She wouldn’t go that far, but nevertheless played on the theme by pulling up her dark hair in a sleek, tasteful topknot and paring down her makeup to mascara and peach lip gloss.
After tucking a stray hair into the topknot, she went about her morning office tasks. First thing each morning, she fed the fish. Sprinkling vitamin-enriched brine shrimp into the tank, she watched a bright blue-and-yellow angelfish disappear into a dark crevice of a miniature castle. The first week Val was here, Jayne had explained how angelfish needed to hide or they stressed too much. A few fish nibbled at the fare, but as always Mr. Blue-and-Yellow lurked in the shadows of his castle.
“You always do it your way, on your terms,” Val murmured.
She headed to the kitchenette nestled in an alcove next to the grandfather clock. In addition to a sink, the closet-size space housed an antique chest of drawers on which sat a coffeepot, cups and a wicker basket filled with packets of sugar, powdered creamer and spoons.
After starting the coffeemaker, she sat at her desk and checked emails. She deleted a spam message and responded to an inquiry—stating that Diamond Investigations was not accepting any new cases.
She paused, staring out the window. Any minute Jayne’s Miata would pull in beside Val’s rental car.
Scents of warm dough and cinnamon wafted from the pastry bag, but her stomach was like a big knot—no way could she eat. Listening to the coffeemaker burble and hiss, she busied herself by rearranging items on her desk. After stacking the notepads, making a pile of paper clips and tossing a couple of dried-out ballpoint pens, she stared at the grandfather clock.
Eight forty-six.
The front door clicked open.
Val jumped a little, knocking over the cup of pens. They clattered across her desk. She fumbled to pick them up with trembling fingers, listening to the soft click of her boss’s sensible heels crossing the floor.
They stopped in front of her desk.
Val looked up, the knot in her stomach tightening. She hadn’t seen the Miata pull up, but there it was, parked beside her Honda. And here Jayne was.
She wore a taupe linen blazer over an off-white shell top and...jeans? Her boss never wore jeans. Maybe that was a good thing. Meant she was relaxed, comfortable...ready to hear bad news.
“Good morning, Val.”
“Mornin’, ma’am—Jayne.”
On second look, she realized her boss’s eyes were slightly swollen. Had she been crying? Maybe this wasn’t the time to spring bad news.
“No calls have come in yet this morning,” Val said, doing her best to sound nonchalant, professional.
“Good. I had hoped my calendar was clear this morning because...” Jayne offered a tight smile. “I have something important to discuss with you.”
Val’s heart pounded like a tribal tom-tom. Did her boss already know about the honey trap? How could she? Didn’t matter. Val needed to seize the moment and explain, now.
As she opened her mouth, a thump-heavy tune blasted from a car on Garces Avenue. The women stared at each other as a loud, gravelly male voice rapped about pimps, gangstas and blunts for breakfast.
The tune faded as the vehicle continued down the street. The hum of the fish tank and the air conditioner again filled the room.
“You were starting to say?” Jayne asked.
Val eased her shoulders back, took a deep breath...and jumped as the phone on her desk jangled.
They both looked at the caller ID.
“Local number,” Jayne said. “Might be that private investigator I spoke with this morning, but I need to discuss the situation with you first. Take a message,” she said, walking away, “then come to my office.”
Val picked up the receiver, wondering why Jayne had met with another P.I. Was it there that she’d cried? What could have affected tough, no-nonsense Jayne so deeply?
“Diamond Investigations,” she answered.
“Is this a, uh, private-investigations agency?”
No, it’s a jewelry inspection plant. “Yes.”
“I think my apartment is bugged. When I walk over to a certain wall, I hear this pinging sound...”
As the guy rattled on about suspecting that somebody, like maybe his landlord, was planting listening devices in his apartment, Val waited for him to pause so she could give the not-accepting-new-cases spiel. But he was on a roll, rambling on about beeps on his phone, a funny hole next to a ceiling light where somebody might have planted a camera...
Just as she was wondering how many a’s were in the word paranoia, the front door clicked open.
She looked up and nearly dropped the receiver.
Sunlight etched the dark silhouette that blocked the doorway. She couldn’t see the man’s features, but she recognized the bulk of his shoulders and his slouched, wary stance.
Drake.
How did he know she worked here?
“...and sometimes at night, there’s this squeaky noise in the kitchen,” the guy on the phone rambled on. “It almost sounds like tiny little fingernails scratching. What should I do?”
“Call an exterminator.” She watched Drake step inside and close the door, his eyes never leaving hers. He looked about as happy as a homicide detective arriving at a crime scene.
“I’m serious,” the guy said, his voice rising, “this is freaking scary!”
“Tell me about it.” She hung up.
As he walked toward her, her insides whirled like seagulls circling before a storm.
He wore the same crisp white shirt as last night, although it no longer looked crisp or white. Like his pants, it was wrinkled and creased with dirt. As he drew closer, she saw shadows under his eyes, a slash of grime on his chin, a ragged tear in his shirt.
He stopped, the muscles bunching in his jaw. His eyes were dull, flat. Not even a glimmer of the passion they’d shared last night. He towered over her desk like a vengeful, brooding Heathcliff, his appearance ragged and dirty as though he had walked through hell itself to get here.
Considering he reeked of smoke, maybe he had.
She swallowed almost convulsively as thoughts zigzagged through her mind. Had he followed her last night, this morning? Was he here to report that she’d played a honey trap? But the questions didn’t stack up. Something else had obviously happened, some ordeal that had nothing to do with her.
Be cool. Think.
They hadn’t ended on bad terms last night. In fact, they had ended on hot, excellent terms. A full-body clutch, a kiss in the works. If her phone hadn’t rung, the next moment would have been one smoldering, memorable lip meltdown.
Which meant...maybe he didn’t recognize her.
Compared to her sexpot look last night, today she could pass for a prison matron. Didn’t explain why he was here, but life was full of crazy coincidences.
“May I help you, sir?” She tried to flatten her speech to mask her New Orleans accent.
He gave her a look that made her insides shrivel. “I’m here to see Jayne,” he said in a low, rumbling tone.
“I’ll check if she’s available.”
But he was already heading to her boss’s office.
Despite her banging knees, she managed to stand. “You can’t go in there—”
“Like hell.”
The door shut behind him with a solid thud.
* * *
TEN MINUTES LATER, which felt like several lifetimes to Val, Jayne’s office door yawned open. The older woman stepped outside, a strained look on her face.
“I don’t want any walk-ins during our meeting,” she said, “so please lock the door, then come directly in here.” She retraced her steps.
Val stood, her heart racing, regretting last night as she had never regretted anything in her life. If only she had obeyed Jayne’s rule, if only she hadn’t been so greedy to take the cash, if only...
Her body felt drained of life force, yet somehow she managed to walk to the front door. She had hoped her new look had fooled him, but so much for that la-la dream. Now she seemed doubly dumb, first for conducting the honey trap, second for pretending she didn’t know the subject of the honey trap.
No, there was a third dumb move. She should have confessed to Jayne the instant she walked in. Spilled her guts, laid it all out, talked right through the rap music, the jangling phone. Now it appeared as though Val had been trying to hide her double-dealing.
After locking the door, she walked into Jayne’s inner sanctum. The room had always unnerved Val because it felt oddly remote. She had always chalked up her reaction to the cool, off-white walls and sparse decor consisting of a modern, glass-topped desk, two metal guest chairs and several silver-gray filing cabinets. The only real color was the soft jade-and-rose area rug and a painting of the San Francisco skyline, its heavens a mix of vibrant golds and blues.
Jayne sat behind her desk, fiddling with a fountain pen, turning it over and over like a slow-motion propeller blade. Drake leaned against the far wall, his arms folded imposingly across his chest, glowering at Val as though she were a bug he wanted to quash.
She stopped near a chair, but didn’t sit. Seemed more respectful to stand. Overhead, a ceiling fan quietly thumped, measuring out the painful moments.
For an unguarded moment, she returned Drake’s granite-hard stare. Damn, even the presidents on Mount Rushmore gave back warmer looks. Her gaze dropped to his downturned, sullen mouth and its sensuously curved bottom lip, and for a surreal instant, she remembered his large hands kneading her, his hot whispers turning her insides molten.
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