Under a Gilded Moon(107)

Then, finally, a lever sprang up. Tumblers shifted.

Pocketing the nails, Sal slipped through the cell door, crept past the snoring Leblanc. Glancing back toward where Wolfe sat hunched, head down in his desk chair against a wall, Sal thought he saw the sheriff’s head raise just an inch. But Sal didn’t stay to be sure.

He had no idea what direction to go to find Nico. Only that Kerry MacGregor once mentioned that the Bratchetts, the nearest neighbors to her own farm, helped care for her father. But Sal had only a general idea what direction Kerry walked in the evenings when she went home: north from the stables and up farther onto the ridge.

Outside on the street, he dodged away from the streetlamp’s pool of gold light and into the shadows. Biltmore Estate would be where they’d look for him first. But also where he’d need to start to find the way to Nico.





Chapter 50

In the vaulted room with the horse stalls, Lilli stood still, listening, just inside the door that led to the stable’s corridor near the tack room. Her voice echoed across the polished brick. “Were you looking for someone?”

More footsteps sounded from the other side of the door—slow and deliberate. The door swung open, the man stepping inside.

“Name’s Leblanc. But then, you know very well who I am.” A pause. “With the Pinkerton Detective Agency now.”

“Bien s?r. Yet you work also still for my father, non?”

A pause. “Only he prefers going through Pinkerton now. Calls less attention.”

“Since when, Mr. Leblanc, has my father wanted to call less attention to himself? It is a family failing. Your purpose here today, Mr. Leblanc?” She’d play dumb if need be.

“The dago your daddy sent me to find—and I damn well caught—broke out last night of the tin can these people here call a jail.”

Lilli felt her heart rate drop—alarmingly.

“A breakout, did you say? Mon Dieu. How very unfortunate for you. I know you’d so hoped to appear at least marginally competent.”

Having just turned away, Leblanc rounded on her. In the red of his face and the bulge of his eyes were the words, vulgar and raging, that he could not let himself say to the daughter of Maurice Barthélemy.

“You know,” she said, “my friend Emily—Mr. Vanderbilt’s niece—told me of your visit at Christmas.”

“Dago bastard. But I’ll get him the hell back. And make him pay for the trouble.”

Stepping to her right, Lilli bumped a girth stretcher and sent it clattering to the floor. “Why, how clumsy of me. Is it in there with the stalls that you’re wanting to go?”

She fumbled with righting the stretcher. “Goodness, it’s surprisingly heavy.” She could hardly get the words of helplessness across her lips, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Even if that meant feigning a weakness she’d never felt in her life. “Why, Mr. Leblanc, I wonder if you could assist me.”

Leblanc’s voice softened slightly. “Glad to. Only where are the damn grooms who ought to be helping a lady?”

“I’m sure there are some about, perhaps in the carriage house at the other end or cleaning the courtyard. But, of course, as you point out, Mr. Vanderbilt has lost one of his stablehands to your hunt.”

She extended her hand to the detective’s coat lapel and pulled him in closer. Laid the palm of her free hand on his chest. Saw his eyes go hungry on her. Felt the swell of her own power.

“Mr. Leblanc, as one New Orleans native to another, let us be perfectly frank with each other. I have something to tell you.”





Chapter 51

Lilli’s pulse had dropped to only a distant flick, it felt like. No thud at all.

Somewhere out there in the woods or fields, or in the alleyways of the village, was the man her father had evidently paid a detective to track for four years. But he couldn’t have gotten far yet. Leblanc would have looked here first once the escape was discovered.

This much was clear: the longer Leblanc stayed here, the farther away Sal could run. If she’d learned anything from the example of the Napoleon of New Orleans, it was that some men could be made to do things they’d no intention of doing.

Lilli was sure her face had gone the pale of abalone. But this Leblanc would not be able to see fear in her—or hear it.

Lilli leaned in toward the detective. “Comme c’est triste.” Her voice came out soft. Seductive. Steady. “Mr. Leblanc, I have a confession to make.” She lifted his hand to her waist, just under one breast.

“I am telling you this only because I believe I can trust you. Because I sense you know what it is to be swept away by passion.” She looked deep into the man’s bloodhound of a face—small, droopy eyes with jowls dropping well below his jawline. No man ever looked less likely to have been swept away by passion.

His palm had gone clammy against her waist.

“Lillian!” came a shout from the carriage house at the other end of the complex. “Lilli, are you here?”

Emily. Who could easily ruin the scene and Sal’s chance of escape.

Putting a finger to her lips, Lilli sniffed dramatically. Averted her eyes. “Before I am found, I will confess to you, Mr. Leblanc, what no one else knows.”

Emily’s footsteps approached from just a few feet away on the other side of the door, left slightly ajar. Another step more and she would be in earshot.