Detective Defender. Marilyn Pappano
insistent on the phone. You have to come now. I really have to talk to you, Tine.
When a ghost from your past broke twenty-four years of silence with both fear and anger in her voice, what could you do besides go now?
No one sat on the benches in Jackson Square or lounged on the grass, a rare emptiness that was as strange as the chill. The walkways along the four sides saw a bit more traffic, but people seemed eager to go from one place to another. Like them, Martine didn’t linger but lengthened her stride instead. It was only a handful of blocks from her shop on Royal Street, and the walk to the river normally took ten minutes or so as she strolled and dawdled and exchanged hellos with fellow Quarter residents. This afternoon she cut the travel time in half, jogging across Decatur, crossing the trolley tracks, reaching the Moonwalk in record time. It was even colder here by the river, but that wasn’t what caused the prickling of her nerves.
It was the sudden absolute sense of...wrong. This weather was wrong. The phone call from Paulina was wrong. The panic in her voice was wrong. The queasiness in Martine’s gut was wrong. It was a normal Tuesday in a normal week in a normal January in a normal French Quarter, and the uneasiness, the nervousness, the weirdness, were all wrong.
But it wasn’t a normal day, a normal week, a normal month.
The broad path stretching in both directions atop the riverside levee was empty. There were trees, benches and trash cans, all shrouded in swirling fog, but not a sign of life in either direction. Martine reached inside her jacket, touched her fingers lightly to the charm that lay beneath her shirt, then gripped it as a figure materialized a dozen feet ahead of her. A gasp escaped her before she recognized Paulina, but even recognition didn’t slow the pounding of her heart.
“Never thought I could hide behind a little tree, did you?” her old friend commented. Though she still looked very much like the girl Martine had grown up with, she was significantly different, too. Teenage Paulina had always carried an extra ten pounds that gave a soft roundedness to her beauty; she’d rarely been without a smile; her blond hair had gleamed and her blue eyes had glistened with life, love, anticipation and promise.
This woman needed an extra ten pounds to fill out the hollows in her face. Her hair hung dull and limp, and her eyes were hollow, too. She wore black pants that bagged on her skinny frame, a dingy white shirt and a gray fleece jacket that helped her blend into the steely day.
She would have been voted “the girl most likely to...” if their generation had done such things. Most likely to sleep with the boys. To talk back to the teachers. To flirt with the handsome football coach. To get suspended for being a wild child and named homecoming queen in the same year. To go to college, to live life loud, to run wild and travel far, to have the perfect career, marry the perfect man, birth perfect children.
Like the day, the weather and everything else, that title would have turned out to be wrong.
Realizing she was still clenching her charm, Martine let it drop and slowly closed the distance between them. “It’s been a long time, Paulina.”
“Not long enough. I’d hoped I’d never see you again.”
Though the baldly spoken sentiment stung, Martine couldn’t take offense because subconsciously she’d reached the same conclusion long ago. For fifteen years they’d been best friends—the two of them plus Callie and Tallie, the Winchester twins, and Robin Railey—but one June night had ended that. Robin had refused anything to do with them starting the next day. The twins had moved their summer visit to relatives in England ahead by a month and left without a goodbye, and Paulina had escaped to college two months early. As far as she knew, none of them had ever returned home.
“Why don’t we get out of the cold? Get some coffee?” Martine gestured vaguely to her left, her wave taking in Jax Brewery and Café du Monde.
Paulina shook her head and went straight to the point. “Someone knows.”
Without thought, Martine reached for the charm again, caught herself and forced her hand away. A chill swept through her, unsettling and eerie and totally irrational. She knew that last part in her brain—had tried to convince her friends of it twenty-four years ago but never could. She gave herself a mental shake and Paulina a faint smile. “Knows what, Paulina? That five girls who’d had too much weed played some silly games in the woods one night?”
Paulina’s features looked as if they would crack if she tried to return the smile. They were masklike, the coloring off, the contours exaggerated, the eyes shallow and empty of any emotion that might come down on the lighter side. A not-real mask of how a real Paulina might look if she were scared to death.
Scared to death? Because of something they’d done when they were kids?
“They know what we did, Tine. I don’t know how—maybe they saw us, maybe Callie or Tallie or Robin told someone—but they know, and they’re...they’re...” Her gaze swept the area, her eyes wide. She hunched her shoulders and lowered her voice. “They’re coming after us.”
Martine shuddered, reminded of too many late girls’ nights watching horror movies on TV or wandering the entire town after everyone else was in bed, snitching tomatoes from Mrs. Bush’s plants, peaches from Mr. Everard’s trees, sharing plans and jokes and stories to scare the pants off each other. Paulina had always been best at those, holding a flashlight so her face was mostly shadows, creating voices for every character, including low, growly, vicious ones for the villains. She’d never failed to make Martine shriek with good-natured fear, followed by laughter.
But a look at Paulina showed the great release of laughter wasn’t on the agenda today.
Again, Martine gestured toward the more populated area a few dozen yards away. “Come with me, Paulina. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee and some beignets. You always said they were God’s dessert, and they’re as good today as they were then.” She even took a few steps before realizing that Paulina hadn’t moved.
“Have you talked to Callie or Tallie or Robin?” the woman asked. “Heard anything about them from your family or on Facebook?”
Retracing her steps, Martine returned to her original spot. “No.” The end of their friendships had come too fast, had been too hard. She’d moped around alone and lonely after they’d abandoned her, until finally she fled, too, though not far: only the fifty miles to New Orleans. She’d put them out of her head and eventually out of her heart, and she’d made new friends and built a new life with no room for them. The day she’d realized she could think of them dispassionately—Oh, that blonde looks like Paulina or She reminds me of Robin with the way she walks—had been a very long time coming.
“Well, you can’t talk to Callie. She’s dead. They tried to kill Tallie, but she got away. No one knows where she is. I haven’t been able to find Robin, so I don’t know if she’s still alive. And that leaves you and me, Tine. Me, I don’t stay in one place very long. You, though...you’re living over there on Royal Street. Hell, you’re even listed in the phone book. You need to leave. Run. Find a dark little hole and pull it in on top of you, because they’re coming after us, and they’re not going to stop until we’re—we’re...”
She said the last word in one of those scary-story voices, little more than a whisper but still loud enough to echo inside Martine’s head: “Dead.”
A passing ship chose that moment to blast its horn, both muffled and amplified by the heavy air. Martine gazed at it a moment, headed downriver. Once it reached the Gulf of Mexico, its crew could go anyplace they wanted in the world. A tiny part of her wished herself on the deck, where soon the sun would shine and all of life’s possibilities would open up before her again.
But she couldn’t run away, wouldn’t, especially from a problem that wasn’t even really a problem. Those foolish kids from twenty-four years ago hadn’t done anything deserving of punishment. Besides, she had a business here, a home and the best friends a woman could be blessed with. Who gave up perfect to run from unfounded fears?
Apparently Paulina. When Martine turned away from the ship and back to her friend, Paulina