Obsession

9

DREW HAD WANTED TO MAKE a beeline straight for Josie when he’d returned to the hotel, but was thwarted by the presence of a woman who had to be around Josie’s age but looked at least thirty years older. It was more than the colorful turban and the loose-fitting long dress. Her haunted eyes were older than her years.

Josie sat with the dark woman in the courtyard, tiny coffee cups between them, the other woman’s many bracelets jangling as she gestured with her hands while she spoke. Josie sat back, seeming amused by what her companion had to say, but also paying attention.

Drew stepped into the courtyard.

Josie looked at him, and the woman she was with studied him with a guarded expression.

“Drew,” Josie greeted.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Come. I’d like you to meet an old friend of mine. Anne-Marie Paré, this is Drew Morrison. He’s a…guest at the hotel. The only guest actually.”

Anne-Marie extended her hand toward him. Drew took it, noticing the cracked red nail polish she wore and the ashy appearance of her skin.

“A pleasure,” he said.

“Hmm,” Anne-Marie responded, her dark eyes intense as she looked him over. “I’d say Mr. Morrison here is more than a guest.”

Josie smiled. “Anne-Marie is a voodoo priestess.”

“Ah,” Drew said, extracting his hand from the uncanny woman’s bony grasp.

“Miss Villefranche?”

Josie looked over his shoulder to where a man stood wearing a wrinkled gray trench coat and holding a fedora.

“Detective Chevalier.”

“Do you have a moment?”

Josie excused herself, leaving Drew with Anne-Marie and her unsettling eyes.

“Please,” she said, indicating the chair across from her with a jangling motion of her hand. “Sit.”

“I’M GOING TO GO NOW,” Chevalier told Josie. “But my men will be upstairs for a little while longer.”

“Fine.”

He regarded the small notebook he held and squinted at her. “Is there anything else you’d like to add to what the responding police officer reported last night?”

Josie dropped her gaze then shook her head.

“No unusual characters hanging around?”

“No.”

“It says here you heard sounds?”

“Yes. And when I came back downstairs after investigating-” she left out that she’d had her unregistered, illegal sawed-off shotgun with her “-I found the back door to the alley open when I had already closed and locked it for the night.”

Alan made a check mark on his pad. “Okay. I guess that’s all for now.”

It was far from all, but Josie didn’t know what else she could do-until she thought to ask a few questions of her own. “Do you think the incident is connected to the murder?”

Chevalier looked at her. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

She looked toward the stairs, remembering the morning two weeks earlier when Monique had found the body in the same room where the ritual had been performed. “Has any progress been made on finding the killer?”

She hoped an arrest of the murderer would set things back to right and send customers her way.

“No.” He didn’t look pleased.

Seeing as Josie didn’t feel pleased, she figured they were even.

He handed her a business card, a twin of which she had tucked in a drawer somewhere from their earlier encounter. “When your guest Mr. Morrison returns, tell him to give me a call.”

Josie resisted the urge to look into the courtyard where the man in question was now sitting with Anne-Marie.

“I will,” she said instead.

He began walking toward the door.

“Detective?”

He turned around.

“A rain check on that tea?”

For what had to be the first time since they’d met over two weeks ago, he cracked a smile. Surprisingly, the expression made him look younger and almost attractive. “I just might take you up on that.”

FOR THE NEXT TWENTY MINUTES, Josie hung on the fringes of the courtyard, listening in on Anne-Marie’s conversation with Drew. Although it wasn’t a conversation, really. Rather, Anne-Marie had taken out her ever-present tarot cards and was doing a reading for Drew. He looked to be taking it all in stride, although there appeared to be a bit of tension around his handsome mouth.

At one point, he caught Josie’s gaze. She half expected him to give her a “help me” look, but instead he grinned at her as if just seeing her made him happy.

“You’re not what you appear to be, are you, Mr. Morrison?”

Anne-Marie made the declaration, snapping both Josie’s and Drew’s attention back to her.

“Pardon me?”

Josie identified the tower card Anne-Marie had just turned over across the knight of swords. “Mystery shrouds you and your intentions aren’t what you make them out to be.”

Drew blinked.

“That’s enough for today,” Josie said, stepping to the table and turning over Anne-Marie’s cards, then handing them back to her.

Her friend appeared none too happy. “Now look what you’ve gone and done, girl. You’ve messed with my mojo.”

Hojo, mojo, Josie thought. Just as she’d never put much stock in the voodoo rituals, she didn’t read much into Anne-Marie’s visions, either, whether they were conjured from her tarot cards or from out of thin air. If you could see it and touch it and smell it, then it was real. Otherwise, it was all a bunch of hokey BS.

“That’s all right,” Drew said, surprising her. “I’m curious to hear what your friend has to say.”

Anne-Marie had encircled her hands as Josie had tried to give her the cards and now the voodoo priestess stared at her hard, as if trying to see beyond Josie’s intentions.

Anne-Marie finally blinked, then released her hands. “No, no. Josie is right. I’ve said far too much already.” She gathered the remainder of her cards then slid them into the small, red velvet pouch she kept them in.

Drew rose at the same time as his tablemate. “It was a pleasure making your acquaintance, Miss Paré.”

Anne-Marie extended her hand and allowed Drew to give it a polite shake.

HOURS LATER, BACK IN HIS ROOM, Drew sat on his bed with his briefcase open, reading some papers. He’d already done most of the preliminary investigating for the job he wanted next.

He sat back on the bed, the springs giving a low squeak. As hard as he tried to concentrate, his mind kept going back to what the tarot-card reader had said: “You’re not what you appear to be, are you, Mr. Morrison?”

That was all right. He supposed that many people in her profession used the same line. It could apply to everyone who had ever told a white lie, much less a black one, at any point in their lives.

But the follow-up comment about mystery shrouding him and his intentions not being what he made them out to be had struck home with an accuracy that left him wanting to explain himself.

Though justifying his actions was becoming less and less a possibility.

The sound of a trumpet playing a bluesy tune drifted on the hot air from the open doors. He dropped the papers in his briefcase and stepped to the balcony, watching a black man in a multicolored knit cap playing solo on the corner, most of the passersby ignoring the case spread at his feet for change. Not that the player noticed. He appeared to be playing for himself, no one else. At one with his instrument, which gleamed in the dim light from the street lamp.

Then his eyes opened and he seemed to be looking directly at Drew, even though he stood well in the shadows and a constant herd of people was walking by in front of him.

Drew backed up farther into the hotel room, a strange feeling of being exposed filling his gut. He ran his fingers through his hair. But that was ridiculous. Just as there was no way Anne-Marie could know the true nature of his visit to the city and to Hotel Josephine, surely no street performer could identify him and his reason for being there.

“He’s blind.”

Drew turned around to find Josie standing behind him.

She blinked, apparently seeing something in his eyes that startled her.

“I’m sorry. I knocked, but you didn’t answer. And the door was unlocked.”

Foolish of him.

Even more foolish was the way he wanted to envelop her in his arms.

“Who’s blind?”

She gestured toward the street. “The trumpet player. Clarence has been blind all his life.”

If the man was blind, then there was no way he could have been looking at Drew.

Just the same, Drew sensed that not only had he been spotted, but also that he’d been seen. The same way Anne-Marie had seemed to see him.

The same way Josie saw him now.

He found it difficult to swallow as his gaze swept over her beautiful face.

Damn, but the woman did strange, unfamiliar things to him. The instant she came into view, everything else disappeared, leaving only her and him.

His desire for her was so strong it seemed able to bridge whatever gap lay between them. Only there was no gap between them now, at least not physically. She stood near enough to touch. And he wanted to touch her with an intensity that set him off balance.

“Is Philippe watching the desk?”

Josie’s gaze lingered on his mouth. “Philippe never made it in today. Sick.” She licked her lips, her eyes shifting to look into his. “I put the Closed sign out.”

He remembered hearing the sound of other voices a little earlier. “Are we the only ones in the hotel?”

She slowly shook her head. “No. Frederique came back with another…friend. I, um, told her to close the door when she leaves.”

Drew reached out and stroked her silky cheek. “Now that the police are gone, it’s back to business as usual?”

“No. I mean, yes, but…”

Drew was as drawn to her as she apparently was to him. He could barely force himself to think of anything or anyone else. Only Josie, and how much he wanted to stroke her amazingly supple body. Lose himself in the feel, smell and touch of her.

She stepped into his arms, her smaller body somehow fitting perfectly against his larger frame. The move chased all air from his lungs. Not because of the impact, but because of her nearness. Up this close, he could smell the subtle scent of night-blooming jasmine that emanated from her skin. Absorb the welcome heat of her body. Feel the way her breasts pressed harder against the wall of his chest with each breath that she took.

She didn’t play coy. Didn’t ask questions or make nervous comments. She merely acted on an instinct that was purely primal, that made him respond in kind.

Drew smoothed his hands over her slender back then reached to tip her chin up so he could kiss her.

Damn, but she tasted better, sweeter, than anyone he’d ever met before. Like freshly picked fruit. Like cayenne pepper and milk-laced coffee and sugarcoated doughnuts. Like heaven and sin all at once.

The sound of the trumpet continued outside the open doors, and the squeak of bedsprings in the room next to his spoke of their neighbors’ activities. All of it a backdrop to the steady thrum of blood through Drew’s veins as he kissed the woman in his arms.

And prepared to make love to her for as long as she’d let him.