Downtown Debutante
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Kara Lennox
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19,2K
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16
Chapter One
It was November, and Heath Packer was sweating. It was only about seventy degrees, a temperature that would have been heaven in any other part of the country. But here in New Orleans, the air was still and the humidity hovering at a hundred percent. Plus, Heath was trapped in a car. Not even the tinted windows totally protected him from the sun’s warming rays.
He’d been surprised when Brenna and Sonya had taken off in the middle of the night. He and LaJolla had gamely followed them all the way to southern Louisiana, where the two women had checked into the humble Magnolia Guest House. He could only assume this trip had something to do with Marvin Carter.
Heath’s research into the Marvin Carter case had yielded lots of fascinating information about Brenna. Since no one else at the Bureau was much interested in Carter—as Brenna had indicated—Heath had taken over the case and combined it with the Thompson case. All indications were that Marvin Carter and Brenna Thompson were partners, while Sonya Patterson and Cindy Lefler Rheems were mere patsies. However, Heath had yet to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.
“You haven’t done much surveillance in a warm climate,” observed Grif Hodges, an agent out of New Orleans who’d been brought in on the case, since it was now in their backyard. Mercifully, the humorless LaJolla had gone back to Dallas.
Grif, a New Orleans native, had on gym shorts and a T-shirt. Heath was stuck in his regulation dress shirt and suit pants, his jacket and tie ready in case he had to do anything official.
They’d been parked on this street for an hour, watching Brenna’s room.
Finally, just as Heath was forced to crack the windows or suffocate, the women emerged. Sonya, as always, was dressed to the nines in a silk blouse, a coordinating jacket, slim black pants and spike heels. But it was Brenna who drew his eye. She wore overalls with a pink tank top underneath. Yet even in such shapeless clothing, there was no disguising her full breasts or rounded bottom. As she locked the door, she laughed at something Sonya said.
Heath’s mouth went dry. Who could believe such a perky pixie of a woman could have pulled off a world-class heist? But the evidence couldn’t be more clear.
As the two women headed off on foot toward the French Quarter, Brenna’s gaze swept the street. Heath’s heart almost stopped beating when her eyes fixed on his car, and for a moment he was sure she’d spotted him. But then she looked away and they continued down the sidewalk.
The agents prepared to follow Sonya and Brenna on foot, but the women turned into a tiny café at the end of the block.
“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Grif offered. “You see if you can get into their room.”
Adrenaline pumping, Heath quickly located the Magnolia’s manager. The blue-haired lady who ran the guest house took one look at his credentials and had no problem letting him into Brenna’s room.
“I’ll let myself out and lock the door when I’m done,” Heath said in a no-nonsense tone when Madame Blue Hair lingered in the doorway, looking worried.
“What do I tell them if they complain that someone was in their room?” she asked.
“They will never know I was here,” Heath assured her, shooing her out the door. “And I know you won’t tell them, will you?”
The room was small and spartan, with twin beds, a small table and chairs, a battered oak dresser and a noisy window air-conditioning unit. It looked as if each of the women had claimed a bed. The one by the far wall had only one open suitcase on it, a fancy brocade one, partially unpacked. Two matching suitcases were stacked in a corner.
The second bed was covered with wadded-up clothes. A plain black suitcase, also open, overflowed with what looked to be garments selected and rejected. Heath noticed the cream-colored silky tab of fabric peeking out. He couldn’t resist pulling it out, recognizing it as the garment Brenna had been wearing when he’d first confronted her. It was so delicate that he could ball it up and make it disappear inside his fist.
He put it back where he’d found it. He wasn’t here to entertain fantasies. He went through Brenna’s suitcase first, finding nothing but clothing, shoes and toiletries. Next he checked the dresser drawers. The ones on Sonya’s side were filled with neatly folded clothes. Brenna’s were empty. Likewise the closet featured several color-coordinated outfits, dainty sweater sets and tailored pants with designer labels. No clothes that could possibly belong to Brenna.
He checked the bathroom. One set of cosmetics lined up precisely, all the same brand, all looking as if they had just been pulled from the department store display case. On the other side of the sink, mismatched drugstore makeup and toiletries spilled from three different zipper cases.
He checked everywhere. Nothing incriminating. No phone numbers or addresses or mysterious business cards that might explain Brenna’s presence in New Orleans. Definitely no stolen oil paintings.
He went back to Brenna’s suitcase and felt all around the inside. A suspicious thickness caught his attention. He realized there was a hidden zipper that had escaped his notice during the first inspection. He unzipped the secret compartment and reached inside.
Holy cow. Cash, enough to choke a rhinoceros. Now, this was interesting. Brenna had told him that Marvin Carter had stripped her clean, that she was destitute. He quickly counted it. Close to twelve thousand dollars.
He heard footsteps just outside and hastily returned the cash to its hiding place. When someone fitted a key into the door, he did the only thing he could think of—he darted into the closet. This search wasn’t precisely illegal, because the manager had let him in. But it wasn’t a hundred percent defensible, either. Besides, he didn’t want to tip his hand yet. If Brenna knew she was under surveillance, she would never lead him to Marvin Carter and the stolen painting.
The door opened, and he expected to hear the women’s voices. Instead he heard a man say a curt, “Thanks,” and the door closed again. What the hell?
Heath opened the closet door a crack. A wide-shouldered man in a leather jacket had his back to Heath. He was looking around the room, not touching anything. Could Heath possibly be this lucky? Had Marvin Carter just dropped into his lap? If he could capture both him and Brenna, surely one of them would flip on the other.
But when the man turned, Heath could see he looked nothing like the photos he’d seen of Marvin. This guy had shaggy blond hair, a square chin and chiseled cheekbones, nothing like Marvin’s soft features and trim, dark hair.
Unlike Heath, the newcomer spent little time on Brenna’s things, focusing instead on Sonya’s suitcase. He methodically checked the contents, then put everything back just as he found it.
A noise at the door startled the intruder, and he froze. Another key scraped in the lock. This place was Grand Central Station.
Suddenly the blond man wrenched open the closet door and lunged inside, closing the door just as Brenna and Sonya entered.
“I can’t believe you forgot the money,” Sonya was saying. “How embarrassing.”
“I got used to you paying for everything with your Visa,” said Brenna. “At least they didn’t make us wash dishes.”
“Yeah, well, we better return pretty quick with some cash. I didn’t like the way that waiter was looking at us.”
Right about then, the blond man realized he was not alone in the closet. But he displayed unbelievable control, because he didn’t make any noise except for a slightly audible intake of breath.
“Who the hell are you?” Heath whispered, pretty sure the women couldn’t hear him over the drone of the air conditioner.
“I was about to ask the same thing,” the blond man said.
“Wait,” said Sonya. “I’m going to hang this jacket up. I don’t need it.” And she swung open the closet door.
She opened her mouth to scream, but she stopped herself as her shocked gaze locked on the other man. “John-Michael McPhee, what are you doing in my closet?”
Brenna joined her at the closet door, equally surprised. “Agent Packer?”
Heath was going to have to do some fast talking to get himself out of this one. He exchanged a glance with the other man as they both stepped out of the closet. And for one brief moment, he felt they were in sync. Neither of them was supposed to be here, and they’d both been caught. And unless Heath missed his guess, McPhee had some law enforcement training.
He sensed an ally.
And speaking of allies, where was Grif? If he’d been keeping his eye on the women, he would know by now Heath was caught in here. Then he saw a face at the window. Grif caught his eye, smiled and waved, then disappeared. Apparently Grif had read the situation accurately, saw there was no immediate danger and had decided not to interfere.
“Your mother sent me to find you, Sonya,” McPhee began. “You’re supposed to be at Elizabeth Arden.”
Sonya sank onto her bed and folded her arms. “I’m not a child. I can come and go as I please.”
“Not when your mom’s footing the bill, you can’t. She got the Visa statement. There were charges from all over Texas and Louisiana. She was afraid you’d been kidnapped.”
“That does not explain why you broke into my hotel room.”
Brenna pointed at Heath. “And it doesn’t explain what he’s doing here.” She fastened her icy blue eyes on him. “I bet you’re not even FBI.”
Heath quickly produced his Bureau identification, which Brenna inspected thoroughly, as if she would know real credentials from fake ones. “I saw this guy coming into your room,” he improvised. “At first I thought he was your runaway fiancé. I came in thinking I would make an arrest.”
He glanced over at the other man, who amazingly did not contradict him.
“So you’ve been following me,” Brenna said on a rising note.
Heath saw no way out of this. “Yes, I was following you. I thought you might be protecting your fiancé. It’s a perfectly natural assumption. Romeo con men often inspire loyalty in their victims.”
“So you feel you were perfectly justified entering our room without our permission,” Brenna said, looking at first one man, then the other. “We could have you arrested,” she said, jabbing her finger into McPhee’s chest. Then she turned back to Heath. She almost jabbed him, too, then stopped at the last minute, as if she’d thought better of it. “And you. Unless you have a search warrant, I could have your badge.”
The last thing Heath needed was someone trying to get him fired. After his troubles in Baltimore, he was already skating on thin ice. Supervisory Special Agent Fleming Ketcher would have kittens if he knew Heath had been caught in an iffy search.
McPhee, obviously not intimidated by Brenna’s bravado, ignored her and sat on the bed next to Sonya. “I was worried about you, that’s all,” he said, his voice soft. “I really did believe someone might have kidnapped you.”
Sonya was unaffected by his attempt to mollify. “The only person you care about is yourself. If anything happened to me, you’d look pretty bad.”
“Sonya, you know that’s not true. Tell me what’s going on.”
She considered her reply for several long seconds. “Brenna’s an old friend, a sorority sister.” Brenna’s eyebrows flew up, but she said nothing. “Pretty soon I’m going to be an old stodgy married woman,” Sonya continued. “Mother had the wedding under control. I just wanted to have some fun, get it out of my system.”
Sonya was lying through her teeth. It sounded like she hadn’t admitted to anyone she’d been snookered by a con man. In fact, it appeared as if this John-Michael McPhee—a family friend?—and Sonya’s mother believed she was still engaged to Marvin.
Heath wasn’t going to rain on her parade. That was for her to sort out with her family. His concern was Brenna, the depth of whose involvement in Marvin’s various schemes was yet to be determined.
McPhee seemed to be evaluating Sonya’s explanation. But it was hard to tell whether he believed her or not. Finally he said, “Sonya, you need to come home. Your mother’s not well.”
Sonya rolled her eyes. “Mother’s never well. She’s the biggest hypochondriac I’ve ever known.”
“She’s not kidding around this time. She’s in the hospital. She’s…she’s had a heart attack.”
Brenna’s hand went to her mouth in alarm, while Sonya went white as a marble statue. “Oh, my God,” she murmured. “Is she okay? John-Michael, tell me the truth.”
“She’s stable. But you need to come home. Now.”
She nodded. “I’ll get packed. Would you wait for me outside, please? I’ll only be a minute.”
McPhee hesitated, then nodded. He stood, gave Heath a skeptical look, then held out his hand. “John-Michael McPhee. Thanks for not shooting me.”
Heath took the proffered hand. “Heath Packer. I usually ask questions first, then shoot.”
As Sonya threw clothes into her suitcase, McPhee headed for the exit. Brenna opened the door for him, giving him an unmistakable warning look. Then she transferred her attention to Heath. “You, too.”
“I need to talk—”
“Get a warrant.”
“Oooookay.” At least she wasn’t on the phone to his boss. Yet. Fleming Ketcher would not find this situation amusing.
ONCE THE INTERLOPING MEN were safely outside and the door closed, Brenna turned to Sonya. “Who is that gorgeous guy?”
Sonya continued packing without looking at Brenna, her movements sharp and ultraefficient. “He’s my bodyguard.”
Brenna couldn’t help it. She laughed. “You have a bodyguard?”
“It’s my mother’s idea. I’ve told you she’s a bit over-protective. After what happened to my father, can you blame her?”
Brenna sobered at the reminder. “So your mother doesn’t know about Marvin being a con man?”
“I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. All this time she thought I was chilling out at a spa. I didn’t think she’d worry. I mean, she never looks at her Visa bill. She has a financial manager who pays her bills.”
“You’ll have to tell her now.”
“I suppose.” Sonya looked up, her eyes filling with tears. “Oh, Brenna, she was so happy. Planning this wedding was the high point of her life. Since I became engaged, she’s talked of nothing but creating the perfect ceremony for the perfect princess bride. I couldn’t take that away from her.”
As flawed as Sonya’s logic was, Brenna understood. After all, she hadn’t told her own parents that her wealthy, suave art-agent fiancé was a big phony. It was a very tough thing, admitting not just that you were a fool, but a destitute one. But at least Brenna’s family hadn’t gotten to the wedding-plan stage.
“I’m sorry to leave you like this,” Sonya said. “I think you should give up the hunt for now. It’s not safe, and Marvin could be dangerous. Or…you could hook up with the FBI agent.”
Brenna snorted. “Yeah, right. He thinks I’m protecting Marvin. Of all the stupid assumptions.”
“He had to make sure,” Sonya said. “He was probably going by the statistics. After all, it would be easy for a naive woman to convince herself there’d been some mistake, that the love of her life hadn’t really stolen from her, that the FBI was in error. Agent Packer has no way of knowing you aren’t one of those women.”
“I can’t believe you’re defending him. He sneaked into our room! He was probably looking through our underwear.”
Sonya’s face hardened. “John-Michael is the one who broke in. Agent Packer was just trying to protect us.”
Brenna supposed that was marginally true, at least if she could believe Packer’s story.
“Promise me you won’t try to catch Marvin on your own,” Sonya said. “I don’t want to have to worry about you.”
Under the circumstances, Brenna had no choice. “I promise. Don’t give me another thought. You just go home and take care of your mother.”
Sonya zipped up her last suitcase. “I feel so guilty, making her worry.” She bit her lip. “I probably caused her heart attack.”
“You didn’t know she was ill. Don’t do this to yourself, Sonya.” Brenna went to Sonya and hugged her. Other than coming from wealthy families, the two women didn’t have a lot in common. They never would have sought each other out as friends under ordinary circumstances. But over the past few weeks, they’d shared a lot.
“With Cindy on her honeymoon and me going home,” Sonya said, “I guess The Blond Posse is officially disbanded.”
“I have a feeling we’ll see each other again.” Brenna helped Sonya carry her suitcases out. The bodyguard loaded them all in the trunk of his rental SUV as if they weighed nothing. Packer was nowhere to be seen, the traitor.
At the last minute Brenna took Sonya aside. “How well do you know this guy?”
“Way better than I ever wanted to. We grew up together, though he’s a few years older than me. But Mother hired him as my bodyguard when I was eighteen.”
“I could think of worse fates.” The bodyguard wasn’t hard to look at, but it was Heath Packer who’d caused Brenna’s hormones to jump up and take notice.
“Ugh. Please.” Sonya gave a very un-Sonya-like sneer. Then she gave Brenna a quick parting hug, climbed into the bodyguard’s SUV and was whisked away.
Brenna felt a wave of loneliness. What was she going to do now? Sit back and let the FBI go after Marvin? Yeah, like they’d been so effective up until now. That jerk Packer was wasting his time suspecting her, instead of going after the real criminal.
She supposed she better pay her restaurant check before Willie-the-Cajun-Waiter-from-Hell came after her with his coffee pot.
She returned to her room, pulled a twenty from her stash—at least neither of the room-breakers had found her money—and headed back to the restaurant.
“Hey, Willie,” she called to their surly waiter. “I got the cash.” She waved her twenty at him. “I told you I was good for it.”
Now Willie was all smiles. “Oh, not to worry, miss. Your bill was paid in full.”
“Oh.” Had Sonya—no, the SUV had driven down the street in the opposite direction. Then, somehow, without even seeing him, Brenna knew. She felt a tickle at the back of her neck and turned to see Heath Packer in a booth, eating a bowl of gumbo.
She marched over to the booth and slid in across from him. “So, you’re still here. I suppose you expect me to slobber in gratitude for paying our bill.”
He looked up from his gumbo. “A simple thanks would do.”
She slapped her twenty on the table. “Here. I refuse to be beholden to you.”
“Now there’s no need—”
“How dare you think I’m so stupid that I would protect a guy who totally humiliated me and wiped me out, not to mention the damage he’s done to my reputation? If I don’t show up at that IJC show with my jewelry, my career is over!”
“I have to go with the information I have,” Heath said in an infuriatingly reasonable tone. “Agent Delacroix told me what happened in Faring, Louisiana. Your warning allowed Marvin Carter to escape.”
“That was an accident. He wasn’t supposed to see Cindy peeking in his window. Oh, why am I trying to explain anything to you?” Brenna stole a package of saltines from Heath and opened it.
“Didn’t you just have lunch?” he asked.
“I have a fast metabolism.”
Heath focused on his gumbo for a few minutes. He ate his way around the okra, she noticed. Obviously not a Southern boy.
“So what brought you to New Orleans?” he finally asked after a long, awkward silence.
“Internet sleuthing.” Brenna’s pride over how clever she and Sonya had been warred with her desire not to talk to Packer. Pride won out. “Sonya’s first contact with Marvin was in a chat room, so we figured he might use that MO again. Sure enough, we spotted him in a singles chat room. Different name, but using the same tired lines. He was flirting with a woman called ‘FrenchQuarterChic.’ Before we could learn more, they both dropped off. I discovered he’d downloaded maps of New Orleans from my computer.”
Packer gave Brenna a nod. “Good work.”
“She’s here, all right. And so is he.”
“It’s a pretty big city.”
“I know. But I figure he might try to fence some of the stolen jewelry here. There are a ton of estate jewelers on Royal Street. I looked in the Yellow Pages.”
HEATH HAD TO HAND IT to Brenna. She had a sharp mind. That was a pretty good story she’d cooked up—improbable, but barely believable. She also had quite an appetite. She polished off the last saltine from the cellophane packet, then started eyeing his cornbread muffin.
He pulled a paper napkin from the dispenser and set the muffin on it, pushing it toward her. “Jeez. I’d hate to see you if you missed a meal.”
She dug into the muffin without so much as a thanks.
“So what are your plans?” Heath asked casually.
“I don’t have any. I promised Sonya I wouldn’t track down Marvin Carter on my own. She thinks it might be dangerous, and she doesn’t want to worry about me.”
“And I’m sure you wouldn’t want to worry your old sorority sister.”
Brenna surprised him by laughing. “That was pretty funny. Me, in a sorority. I wonder if Mr. Beefcake Bodyguard bought it?”
“You thought he was good-looking?”
She gave him a sideways look. “Oh, yeah.”
And just what the hell had prompted him to ask a stupid question like that? Heath reminded himself to stick to business. Whom Ms. Brenna Thompson found attractive or unattractive was not his concern.
“Why does Sonya need a bodyguard?” he asked.
“She doesn’t. But her mom’s overprotective because Sonya’s father was murdered when she was ten. Sonya’s all her mother has left.”
A nasty thought occurred to Heath. Had Brenna befriended Sonya to get close to the wealthy Mrs. Patterson? Looking at her now, nibbling at his muffin, he found it hard to suspect her. But that was his job, after all.
“Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t the two of us work together?” This was the plan he and Grif had hastily come up with, now that she was on to their surveillance. Heath would pretend to be her teammate. Since she didn’t know Grif existed, he would continue to observe from a discreet distance to see if Brenna made contact with anyone when she thought no one was looking. Even now, Grif was seated at the opposite end of the restaurant, nursing a cup of coffee and reading a newspaper.
Heath hoped Brenna would make her move soon. Fleming Ketcher was pushing him to make the arrest, and was only marginally convinced that Heath’s plan to give her some line was a better idea.
“I don’t want to work with you,” Brenna said. “I don’t like you. You’re sneaky, and you think I’m a liar, or stupid, or both.”
“I don’t think you’re any of those things.” It was partly the truth. He didn’t think she was stupid. “I’m prepared to believe you really don’t know where Marvin is, and that you’re not protecting him.”
“Well, gee, thanks.”
He needed to convince her they were on the same side. “Listen, Brenna. Even if you don’t like me, I have resources you don’t. I have access to databases and a crime lab. And I can offer you some measure of protection.”
“But why do you need me?” she asked, not unreasonably.
“You can identify both the stolen jewelry and Marvin. All I have are the rough drawings you provided, and a couple of blurry photographs of the perp.”
He could see she was mulling over his words. On second thought, she was mulling over his gumbo. “Do you want something else to eat?”
She waved at Willie the waiter. “Can I have a bowl of that gumbo, please? Large.”
