In the Dark Page 7

  He wondered how she’d guessed that he’d been in there, though. Short of dusting her keyboard for fingerprints, how could she tell? He hadn’t touched anything besides her computer. He hadn’t even turned on the light. His hair wasn’t falling out, so she couldn’t have detected short, dark strands on her desk, and her carpet had a shallow nap, so his shoes left no obvious imprints in it.

  Maybe, like him, she had instincts. Maybe sensing a man’s former presence in a room was one of those women’s intuition things. Or maybe she’d just tossed out the question to see how he would react.

  Hell. He’d reacted by touching her. Not good.

  And for all that, he hadn’t been able to trace the e-mail to its source. After spending several hours searching through her e-mails and finding little of interest—if the woman had a private life, she sure didn’t discuss it via e-mail—he’d isolated the one e-mail from “4Julie” and rooted through various Internet systems, hoping to find out which one the sender had used. By one in the morning, he’d given in to exhaustion and headed for home, leaving his flash stick on Louise’s desk. Louise was Crescent City Security’s tech genius. He hoped she’d track down the sender.

  He descended the stairs to the service entrance and turned down the hall to the security office. Carlos had just arrived; he was removing his jacket as Mac swung into the tiny room. “Carlos, my man,” he greeted the kid robustly. “Do me a favor and find Nadine—see if everything’s okay with housekeeping.”

  Carlos gave him a curious look. “Nadine LeClaire? What’s up?”

  “It’s a long story,” Mac told him. “We had a little trouble last night. I’ll fill you in later.”

  “Okay.” Carlos hung his jacket on the chrome coat tree in the corner, then left the office.

  As soon as he was gone, Mac settled in at the desk and called up Luc Carter’s file on the computer. The screen filled with Luc’s personnel data. Mac had pored over it already, but he needed to jot down a few specifics. He had the file closed by the time Carlos returned to report that Nadine had encountered no problems that morning.

  Mac ceded the desk to Carlos. “I’ve got some people to talk to,” he said, hooking a two-way radio to his belt on his way out the door. “Hold down the fort, okay?”

  “Any chance you could bring me back a coffee?” Carlos called after him. “I didn’t have a chance to pick one up on my way in today.”

  “Cream, two sugars,” Mac shouted back before heading toward the lobby. At Charlotte’s behest, the hotel’s restaurant kept Mac’s department supplied with free coffee throughout the day. Charlotte believed that one good way to keep the security staff alert was to pump them full of caffeine.

  The lobby was bustling, as it usually was at this hour of the morning. Hotel guests streamed up and down the grand curved stairway, gathered along the antique credenza that served as the check-in desk, sat on the sofas and settees, which were arranged in cozy conversation groupings, or milled near the doors, clutching tourist maps and cameras. A short line of people waited to confer with Luc at the concierge desk. Luc was so busy recommending tours and marking routes on maps that Mac could scrutinize him without being noticed.

  Luc seemed friendly and helpful. He genuinely appeared to be enjoying his work. Why would he put glass in the hotel towels?

  After observing him for a few minutes, Mac continued through the lobby to one of the French doors that opened onto the courtyard. Yesterday’s clouds had drifted away, leaving a cool, crisp morning beneath a pale blue sky. The water in the pool glistened as if someone had painted its surface with sunshine.

  Mac moved across the courtyard to a shadowed corner, pulled out his cell phone and speed-dialed his office. “Crescent City Security Services,” Sandy recited.

  “Hi, sugar,” Mac said quickly, urgently. “Got a pencil?”

  “Sure, Mac. What’s up?”

  “I want you to find out what you can about this guy. Luc Carter. L-U-C.” He pulled from his pocket the slip of paper on which he’d made notes in the security office, and read off Luc’s Social Security number, his birth date, his birth place—Reno, Nevada, according to his personnel file—and his previous job at a hotel in Lafayette.

  “Is this for the Sullivan case?” Sandy asked.

  “As a matter of fact, no. It’s for the hotel.”

  “And I’m supposed to bill this how?”

  “I don’t care how, Sandy. You’re in charge of the bureaucracy. I trust you to figure it out.”

  She laughed. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a pain in the ass?”

  “Nope. You’re the first,” he joked before hanging up.

  He reentered the building near the two event rooms, across the courtyard from the lobby. According to the plans he’d reviewed, one of the two rooms would be cleared for dancing on Saturday, and the other would contain a portable bar and small tables for partygoers to rest their feet. Right now, neither room was set up, but Charlotte’s mother, Anne, stood in one, hands on hips as she surveyed her surroundings. He’d overheard enough of Charlotte’s discussion with her mother to know that Anne would be in charge of decorating the rooms. No doubt she was mapping the entire scene in her mind right now.

  Mac abandoned the event rooms and headed upstairs, hoping to find someone from the housekeeping staff. He needed to question everyone who had access to the supply room, not only to see if any of them could explain the towels but also to shake loose any information about Luc’s alleged romance with one of the maids. He might indeed be “getting biblical” with someone—Mac grinned at the memory of Julie’s sweet voice wrapping around that phrase—but if he wasn’t, then his story last night had been bogus. If he was covering something up, Mac needed to know.

  Reaching the second floor, he should have turned right to search for a housekeeper’s cart. At—he checked his watch—nine-thirty, the maids would be starting their rounds.

  But his feet carried him in the opposite direction, toward Julie’s office. He’d just take a quick peek, just one tempting glimpse of her black hair, the slope of her spine as she sat at her desk, the grace of her fingers dancing across her keyboard or the gentle murmur of her voice as she talked on the phone. He remembered she was wearing a burgundy outfit, a top and matching slacks that denied him the glorious sight of her legs. The color had enhanced the natural rosy hue of her cheeks.

  But if he saw her cheeks now, that would mean she could see him. Not a good idea. She figured he was a liar, and she was right. God knew what she’d thought when he’d caressed the underside of her chin.

  Luck was with him. Her back was to the open door. She was at her desk, staring at her computer monitor. Her shoulders were hunched; he could see the tension in them. Her hands weren’t dancing. They were clenched in fists on either side of her keyboard.

  He hovered in the open doorway, squinting to make out what was on her monitor. He couldn’t read the words, but he could discern shapes and the flow of the text.

  It was an e-mail she was staring at.

  Another badass e-mail.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “HI, DARLIN’.” Mac’s voice, smooth and warm, reached her like a caress. “Can you spare me a few minutes?”

  Actually, she couldn’t. She was standing in one of the event rooms, having just performed the daunting task of urging Anne Marchand to take a break. “Go get a cup of tea,” Julia had suggested. “Or a glass of iced tea, if you’d rather. You’ve been fussing over these rooms for hours.”

  “I haven’t been fussing,” Anne had retorted. “I’ve been imagining. I know we’re on a tight budget, but we could do some wonderful things. Not just with the flowers and centerpieces, but…I was thinking about draping some panels of fabric on the walls. It would give the rooms a mysterious feel…”

  Julie adored Anne, but she didn’t want to babysit her. She could use a snack herself. Her lunch today had been a cup of low-fat yogurt consumed at her desk while she worked. She had too much to do and too little time to do it and eat. Lunch
breaks were an indulgence she couldn’t afford.

  Worst of all, no matter how intently she’d focused on her various responsibilities, a part of her brain clung tenaciously to the two creepy e-mails she’d received yesterday and today. And a part of her soul clung to a memory of Mac standing too close to her that morning, stroking her chin and gazing so deeply into her eyes she’d felt as if he’d seen all the way to the center of her being.

  She shifted her gaze from Anne, who was bustling about the event room, muttering to herself about how she’d like the tables positioned, and turned to look at Mac. “A few minutes?”

  He smiled crookedly. “Okay, if you insist—a half hour.”

  She checked her watch. Three-thirty…and plenty of work still awaiting her upstairs in her office. “No, I can’t spare a half hour.”

  “Sure you can,” he said, tucking her hand through the crook of his elbow and escorting her out of the room before she could inform Anne she was leaving. Not that Anne would have cared. She was too busy visualizing the party decorations and jotting notes on a sheet of hotel stationery to notice Julie’s departure.

  Sighing, she let Mac lead her down the hall to the lobby. “Where are we going?”

  “Out for a little walk. You look like you could use some Vitamin D.”

  “Vitamin D?”

  “The sunshine vitamin.” He swept her through the lobby and outside before she could object.

  Five years after moving to New Orleans, she still wasn’t quite used to the city’s springlike January temperatures. In New York at this time of year, the ground would be caked in soot-gray snow and the air would be raw. Up in Montreal, where she’d gone to college, the wind would have felt like needles of ice against her skin. And here she was, strolling down Chartres Street with Mac, and even without a coat she wasn’t cold. No wonder Alvin Grote, the guest in Room 307, kept grumbling about the lack of winter.

  He’d phoned guest services that morning and been transferred to her line. She’d thought maybe he would have thanked her for finding him the cylindrical ice cubes, but no. He’d been calling to register his displeasure with the courtesy bottles of conditioning shampoo the maid left in his bathroom. “Everyone knows it’s better to have a separate shampoo and conditioner,” he’d complained. “This two-in-one stuff isn’t good for your hair.”

  Julie considered conditioning shampoo one of the great wonders of the world. Anything that saved her five minutes was a blessing. And having seen Grote’s scruffy little ponytail, she hardly considered him an expert when it came to hair grooming. “It’s a high-quality product,” she’d assured him over the phone. “We supply our guests with top-end toiletries. If you don’t care for it, however, there are plenty of stores selling shampoo within walking distance of the hotel.”

  Alvin Grote wasn’t her problem now. Mac was—although he didn’t seem to be posing a problem at the moment. He simply strolled beside her, leaving her hand tucked into the bend of his arm as he steered her around pedestrians and smiled at a saxophone player occupying a corner across the street, his instrument case open and filled with dollar bills from passersby.

  They walked another block and Mac ushered her through the gate into Jackson Square. The small urban park was quiet, its lawns green but its shrubs and bulbs not yet in bloom. Directly ahead of them loomed a towering statue of Andrew Jackson astride his horse. Beyond the statue, the three sharp spires of St. Louis Cathedral poked the sky. It was a lovely park, even in the heart of winter, and the city had done a wonderful job of repairing and replanting it after Hurricane Katrina.

  Lovely as it was, though, Julie had no idea why Mac had brought her here. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  He led her to an unoccupied bench and motioned for her to sit. “You looked like you needed some outdoor air.”

  “There’s outdoor air in the hotel’s courtyard,” she argued.

  “Non-Marchand air. Do you ever get out of that building, Julie?”

  She sighed. “It’s a busy time of year,” she said, rather than coming right out and admitting that she didn’t leave the hotel very often. “We just finished our New Year’s festivities, we’ve got the Twelfth Night party this weekend, and Mardi Gras’s coming up…”

  “It’s always a busy time of year,” he said. The afternoon sun imbued his skin with a golden sheen. “As my mama used to say, the right time never comes.”

  What a depressing thought. “Your mother must have been very sad.”

  Mac chuckled. “She’s pretty happy, to tell the truth. Her point was, if you wait for the right time to do something, you’ll wait forever. May as well just go ahead and do it.”

  “I see.”

  “So it’s probably not the right time for me to ask you this question,” Mac continued, “but I’m going to ask anyway. Is the Hotel Marchand for sale?”

  “What?” Julie’s eyes widened in shock. “Of course not. It’s a family business, and I’m betting it’ll remain in the family as long as there’s a Marchand alive to run it.”

  Mac absorbed her statement with a nod. He looked skeptical, though.

  “Why in the world would you think it’s for sale?”

  “I’ve been doing some digging.” He leaned forward, rested his forearms on his knees and tilted his head to look at her. Two pedestrians strolled past them, casting their shadows across her and Mac, but her attention remained riveted to him. “The financials aren’t good,” he said. “Bookings are down from a couple of years ago.”

  “Hurricane Katrina threw everything out of whack,” she reminded him. “It’s a miracle the city—and the hotels—have recovered as much as they have.”

  “Anne Marchand took out a second mortgage on the place a few years ago, before the storm,” Mac said. “That’s a lot of debt to carry.”

  “It’s a four-star hotel. Business has been picking up. And with all the Marchand daughters here in New Orleans, working for the hotel… I just don’t see the family ever giving up its hold on this place.”

  “Even if that hold’s tenuous?” Mac asked. “The place is ripe for a takeover.”

  She let out a slow breath, as if she could exhale the uneasiness his questions had roused within her. “Would-be buyers have sniffed around the hotel before, but Anne has no interest in selling. It’s a family business.”

  “So you’ve said, several times.”

  She eyed him dubiously. “Have you heard something I don’t know? Is Charlotte talking about selling the place?”

  “No. I haven’t heard anything.” He laced his fingers together, studied his thumbs, then turned back to her. “I don’t know a lot about finance, Julie, but my—this guy I used to work with before I took the hotel job does. He’s told me that when you’ve got a venerable business like the Hotel Marchand, where the name and reputation are more valuable than the business itself, and its financial health is shaky, it becomes a prime target for a takeover.”

  “You’ve been discussing the hotel’s financial health with some guy you used to work with?” Julie’s eyes widened again, this time with outrage.

  “I haven’t talked about this with anyone, until now. With you. All I’m saying is that he used to explain this stuff to me. And I’m looking at the hotel and thinking, this seems like a good example of what he used to describe.” He straightened up, ran a hand through his hair and then leaned back, stretching his arms out along the back of the bench. If Julie shifted slightly, he could arch his arm around her. She held her posture rigid so that wouldn’t happen. “You may think this is none of my business,” he conceded. “You may be wondering why I give a rat’s ass about whether the hotel is at risk. But it is at risk when stuff like that glass in the towels happens. If those towels had wound up in a guest room, and a guest cut himself while drying off with one of the hotel towels, word would get out and the hotel would become even weaker and more vulnerable to a takeover bid. You’d wind up with horrible press. Maybe a lawsuit. It could be a disaster.”

  “Which is why we’re
very lucky you found the glass before the towel wound up in a guest room.”

  “Play let’s-pretend with me for a minute, chère. Let’s pretend someone deliberately put the broken glass in those towels because they wanted to weaken the hotel and make it vulnerable.”

  Julie swallowed. Mac was making her nervous. Everything he said made sense. “I can’t imagine who would be trying to undermine the hotel. The laundry service certainly wouldn’t. They’ve got a lucrative contract with us. We pay them a fortune to do our towels and sheets.”

  “The service ate the cost of relaundering that one batch of towels. This could mean either they wanted to protect the hotel, or they were guilty and knew their reputation was on the line.”

  “Do you believe they’re responsible for the glass?”

  Mac thought for a minute, then said, “No.”

  “Do you think it’s Luc? Or someone from housekeeping?”

  “I don’t know.” He gazed steadily at her, as if hoping she could help him puzzle it out. “I’m wondering if it could be someone on the outside, someone with his eye on the hotel, causing problems that’ll hurt the hotel just enough that he can sweep in and buy the place at a bargain-basement price.”

  “Who would do that?” Julie considered Mac’s theory and shook her head. “I’ve heard nothing about any outsiders interested in buying the hotel. And if they were outsiders, how would they have gained access to the towels?”

  “An ally on the inside.”

  She didn’t want to play let’s-pretend, not in the context of the Hotel Marchand’s future. “You’ve got a good imagination, Mac, but I don’t know why anyone would want to buy the hotel. Everyone knows it’s a family business. That’s part of its appeal.”

  “Its appeal, sweetheart, is that it’s in a prime location in the French Quarter and it’s cash poor, which makes it a cheap takeover target. Some bad press, more falling revenue, that second mortgage pressing down on the budget like a two-ton weight, and someone could pluck this baby right out from under Charlotte’s nose.”