“I’m okay,” Katie insisted at their worried faces. “I’m right next to Monty. He’s a great guy. If I was in danger, he’d be right there for me.”
“But doesn’t he work the carriages himself sometimes?” Adam asked her.
“Yes, but the dogs don’t go with him.”
“We’ll get someone to keep an eye on things around here,” Adam said, nodding at Axel. “All right, here’s one thing we need right away—”
“Sketches,” Dan interrupted. “We need a sketch artist, and Katie has to give us some kind of likenesses of the mystery couple who were on the boat when her parents were killed.”
“I was thinking about dinner. It’s gotten very late, and I’m not a young man,” Adam said.
“The four of us? Go to...dinner?” Dan sputtered.
“Yes. It’s a meal one eats at the end of the day,” Adam said, smiling.
“But I should get back to work,” Katie said.
“Katie, I’m sure you do fine. And your company will do well enough without you for a night,” Adam told her.
“Uh...”
Dan could see she was worried about forging any kind of an alliance with them.
She might not have been so worried if he hadn’t been there.
“Katie,” he said, wincing inwardly, “I am serious. I will stop trying to prove George did these things and look elsewhere. It’s best if we can both help on this...”
“All right, all right. I know a place that’s local, the owner is local,” Katie said. She stood. “Let me just tell Monty I won’t be working for the rest of the night.”
She was still wary; there was no way for her not to be wary of Dan Oliver.
But he did know the cases.
And now that she’d talked with him more, she thought Dan seemed like a haunted man. Not by ghosts—though, it appeared he was—but by the past. The murder scenes he’d witnessed had apparently done something to him. He was passionate about finding the truth.
“I think we should bring Dan into this on a double-pronged deal,” Adam said. They had ordered; she’d assured him the shrimp and grits here were about the best to be found anywhere, and the table had ordered the meal along with Mama Didi’s famous corn bread and salads.
“Ryder Stapleton, with the NOPD, told me I needed to have a survivor hire me,” Dan said, looking straight at Katie.
She sighed. “I do all right, but I don’t have the funds to hire a private investigator.”
“I’ll take a dollar,” he told her.
The man was serious.
“Of course, we’ll bring you in as a consultant,” Adam Harrison said. “I believe we’ll be taking lead in the case, and if so, that is all you need. But, Katie, yes—give him a dollar. Hire him officially.”
“Okay,” she said slowly.
Axel laughed. “Now. You need to give him a dollar now. It’s a verbal contract witnessed by Adam and me.”
She dug in her pocket for a dollar and gave it to Dan.
There was something in the pained look he gave her as he accepted it that suddenly made it all seem more palatable to her.
“So we’re set,” Adam said. “We have a great artist in the NOLA office. We’ll go to him for the sketches as soon as we’ve finished eating.”
Their food arrived. Dan compared it to a place a friend of his owned that was in the Irish Channel.
“You really have family here?” Katie asked Dan.
He hesitated and shrugged. “I have family here—they’re in Lafayette Cemetery. I do have a sister not so far away—she’s living in Baton Rouge. I grew up going back and forth. My dad’s family—and my mom—are in Lafayette Cemetery.”
“I’m sorry,” she told him.
He nodded and said quietly, “They had good lives. They were happy together. The two of them lived in Florida as their main home, but the house I’m living in has been in my family for years.”
“And it’s in New Orleans?” she asked.
“French Quarter,” he told her.
“Ah. Well, I guess that’s New Orleans, all right,” she said. She was surprised to feel her cheeks redden. She felt a bit bad about assuming he’d followed her to the city when she’d first seen him.
“Katie, you remember these people, right? What they looked like?” Axel asked her.
“Of course.”
“It was twelve years ago,” Dan said.
“You don’t forget a day like that,” she said.
“No, I guess you don’t,” Dan agreed. “And you’re right about this place. It could become one of my new favorites. Food is great.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Katie said.
Adam rose and was pleasant to the waitress as he asked for the check and paid at the counter.
He returned to the table and looked at Katie. “Ready?” he asked.
“Yes, but—”
“Barry Gleason is meeting us there. He’s one of the finest sketch artists I’ve ever met. He’s not just a fine artist, he also knows how to listen and adjust details of a person’s features.”
“It’s so late,” Katie said.
“Ah, well, there’s the thing. Criminals don’t keep office hours. Therefore, law enforcement can’t do that, either. He’s waiting for us.”
Axel drove. Katie found herself in the back seat with Dan Oliver.
She sat politely silent and to her own side.
They headed out to the city’s offices. Adam was apparently well-known; he was greeted by the security guards and then a woman who seemed to be guarding the inner sanctum.
Katie quickly found herself in a room with a desk and the artist, Barry Gleason. He was a tall, slender man with thinning white hair and a quick smile. He assured her he was happy to be working with her despite the hour.
“We’re happy for any help, Miss Delaney. If you can give us a good description, I can hopefully turn it into something valuable.”
She sat with the man, aware that Adam, Axel and Dan were silent against the wall as she spoke and Barry Gleason worked.
“The man I met as Dr. Neil Browne had dark hair, very dark. Almost black. He wore it short, but with a swirl over his forehead. His face... He had a young face. I thought he was young to be a doctor of anything...maybe
