Darkest Journey (Krewe of Hunters #20)(50)

“Did he mention a name?” Charlie asked.

Selma grew thoughtful, looking out the window once again. “Don...? No. Oh, I know! Jon. Jonathan. That was his name.” She looked at Charlie with pride at having pulled the name from her memory.

Charlie had to force herself not to scream, not to reach out and try to shake a ghost, not to tell a poor murdered woman that she was a liar.

“Thank you,” she managed, just as the door began to open.

Selma let out a little breath of air and vanished into the dust motes that played before the window.





9

Charlie hadn’t thought to ask about what arrangements Ethan and Jude had made for themselves when they reached New Orleans. Thinking about it as they drove, she assumed they were planning to stay in the same hotel as Alexi, Clara and the third agent, Thor.

For herself, she had what she thought was an amazing deal: a very small duplex that was part of what had once been a single family dwelling on Dauphine Street in the French Quarter. Alexi and Clara could have stayed with her, but she couldn’t fit everybody.

She loved her apartment; it was over two hundred years old and had survived the fires that had ravaged the city in its early days. The plumbing was debatable, the electric sketchy, and the cable went out whenever it rained, but she considered herself lucky to be able to afford the rent. She shared a courtyard with an older couple, Laurence and Loretta Harvey, who had the unit on her right. They had retired from the countryside around Houma to live in the French Quarter. They loved being able to walk to anything they needed. Their children had moved to Nevada but sometimes brought the grandkids for extended stays. That was fine with Charlie; she got along great with eight-year-old Matilda and six-year-old Jeremy. And Laurence and Loretta collected her mail when she was gone. She couldn’t have asked for better neighbors.

As they passed the Superdome, she cleared her throat and asked, “So, where are you guys staying?”

“We’re all crashing at your place,” Ethan told her.

He grinned at her look of surprise, then laughed.

Jude leaned forward. “Actually, we’re not going to your place at all.”

“No?” she asked.

“My parents are in London at a symposium,” Ethan told her. “We’re taking over their place in the Garden District. It’s just north of Magazine and near the port.”

“Oh,” Charlie murmured.

“We can stop by your place if you need anything, though,” Jude said.

“I’m good,” she said, then looked out the window, suddenly feeling a little guilty. She’d known Ethan’s parents were in the city and only a cable car ride away, but she’d never made any attempt to see them.

In a little while they reached the sprawling late-Victorian house Ethan’s parents owned. It was on a street filled with equally gracious mid-eighteenth-century homes with columns and porches and balconies. The Delaney home was painted white and surrounded by a cast-iron fence. The yard was shaded by magnolias and oaks. The place was the epitome of old Southern charm.

Charlie had no chance to feel awkward about the arrangements, because Clara and Alexi came racing down the steps of the board porch to meet them. They took turns wrapping Charlie up in a hug.

“It’s late, but I’m glad you made it here tonight,” Alexi said. “We’ve got to practice our harmonies tomorrow. It’s going to be fun. I just hope you remember the words to all the songs.”

Charlie nodded, but her attention was on a tall blond man standing at the top of the steps, waiting patiently. He wasn’t wearing a suit, but he still looked like FBI.

Jude headed up the steps, while Ethan stood in the yard, waiting. Charlie realized he wasn’t going to leave her unprotected until they were inside.

“Let’s go in,” he said finally. “I’ll get the bags later.”

They went inside, where she met Thor Erikson. She noticed how comfortable and easy they all were with one another and realized she was the outsider here. She might have known Alexi and Clara for years, working and even socializing together, but she was new to the group as a whole.

Clara had sandwiches ready, and since everyone was hungry, they immediately gathered around the table. Alexi produced a clipboard and went through the musical numbers she’d chosen for them to perform. “You’ve never worked on a riverboat, have you?” she asked. “Neither have I. Clara did one trip as a fill-in, once, so she’s our pro.”

“I do know the Journey, even though I haven’t performed aboard her,” Charlie said.

“Of course you do. Your dad is just about the most famous thing about the trip,” Alexi said with a smile.

Charlie nodded, lowering her head. She hadn’t said a word to Ethan or Jude about the ghost in Albion Corley’s office. When they’d come in and found her there, she’d told them she’d just wanted a look around and left it at that, still busy trying to process what the ghost had told her about her father.

The two men had discussed the case in the car, both of them convinced that Selma had been killed because someone assumed she knew something about Corley’s murder. It would have been easy for Charlie to say something, but instead she’d sat in silence, unwilling to tell them even part of what she knew for fear they would sense that she was hiding something. She was anxious to see her father tomorrow, and after that she would decide what to do next.