Showdown in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law, #3)(9)
Raissa sat back down and thought for a minute. “I think, given my connection to Maryse, they figured you would warn me.”
Hank still looked doubtful. “You’re saying they’re sending you a message? What message?”
Raissa’s jaw involuntarily clenched. “That if I don’t disappear on my own, they’re going to help me.”
Zach sat low in his car just down the road from Raissa’s shop. He’d seen her coming down the block and wondered why she stopped before reaching her building. When she slipped the pistol from her ankle holster, he’d been ready to bolt from the car, but something had stopped him. The ankle holster for one. Sure, plenty of people carried in New Orleans, and a single woman living in a downtown apartment would be remiss not to have some form of protection, but an ankle holster was definitely not the most common place for a woman to carry a gun.
And it was the way she moved—as if she’d been trained for exactly what she was doing.
Against his better judgment, he’d waited as she entered the alley, giving her ten seconds before he hurried to assist. When the seconds had passed and she hadn’t appeared, he cursed himself and his stupidity and eased out of the car and across the street. He crouched behind a mailbox and listened. For a moment, all he heard was the regular noises of the street—paper rustling on the sidewalk, the sound of car engines in the distance—but then it trickled down to him. The sound of voices.
So Raissa’s instincts had been right. There had been someone in the alley, but apparently that someone was more interested in talking than in something more insidious. He was just about to move closer when Raissa and a man stepped out of the alley and hurried to her building. Her pistol was tucked in the waistband of her jeans, and she didn’t seem the least bit concerned about protecting herself from the man who followed her.
She glanced his way as she unlocked the door to her shop, and he ducked behind the mailbox, hoping she hadn’t seen him. A couple of seconds later, he heard the door click shut. He watched until he saw the light in the upstairs apartment come on. Deciding Raissa was done with whatever she was up to that night, he crept back across the street and climbed into his car.
Zach hadn’t recognized the man who had been hiding in the alley, but Raissa must have known him well enough to let him in her apartment. Which made him wonder why the man hadn’t called or simply rung her doorbell. Why lurk around the corner, running the risk of being shot?
Zach looked up at the apartment again. The light was on in the front room, and Zach could make out a silhouette of the man sitting at a table. A minute later, Raissa set glasses on the table and joined him. Surely, if the guy was a friend or boyfriend he wouldn’t have been hiding in an alley. Which left business.
He looked down at his watch.
Kinda late for a business meeting. He watched another thirty minutes and finally saw them rise from the table. A minute later, the man slipped out the front door, scanned the street, then took off in the direction of a lone truck parked at the other corner. Zach hunched down in his seat so the man wouldn’t notice him as he drove past.
He watched the rearview mirror until the man had turned the corner, then started his car and took off after him. The truck turned again at the end of the next block, and Zach pressed the accelerator. His quarry was entering the highway, which gave Zach the perfect chance to get his license plate without being made.
He followed the truck onto the highway and eased beside it in the next lane. Zach gave brief thanks that the license plate was clean and easily readable and jotted the number down before continuing on the highway past him. Two exits later, he merged right and exited the highway, heading for the police station. It should be almost empty this time of night. A great time to run a plate without someone looking over his shoulder and asking questions.
Only one cop manned the front desk when he walked into the station. Zach gave him a nod and went to his own desk. It only took a minute to open the database and plug in the truck’s license plate. Another minute and he was looking at pages of information on one Hank Henry. He scanned the pages, shaking his head. This Hank was a piece of work, and stupid.
He seemed to have the uncanny ability to be involved with the wrong thing at the wrong time.
But for over a year, his record was clean as a whistle. Interesting.
He checked another database, but no prison system had a Hank Henry listed as a recent resident. So the question remained: what was a man of questionable background and character doing hiding outside Raissa’s store? And why did she invite him inside for drinks?
Questions he couldn’t answer. Not yet. But Raissa Bordeaux definitely required more looking into.
It was a bright and sunny morning in Mudbug when Raissa pushed open the door to the Mudbug Hotel. Little bells tinkled above, alerting anyone inside to her entrance. No one was at the front counter, but she’d barely stepped inside before she heard Mildred, the hotel owner, yell, “Raissa, we’re in the office. Come on back.”
Raissa stepped down the hall, wondering who “we” was. For whatever absurd reason, Helena had insisted Raissa meet her at the hotel to “discuss an action plan.”
Since Hank’s visit last night, Raissa figured she had much bigger things to deal with than forming an “action plan” with a ghost, but on second thought, she decided an invisible partner did come with some advantages. Raissa had assumed the ghost intended to meet her outside the hotel, but after several minutes of waiting, she decided to try inside, even though she had no good explanation for Mildred as to why she’d be visiting her hotel in Mudbug when Raissa should have been preparing to open her shop in New Orleans.