gone. But they were here. I swear they were.”
Nat used his own flashlight to look more closely at the concrete floor. “Do you remember where it was—the rack?”
“No. It was dark and I only found it because I felt it.”
“Could you have been by the wall, ma’am?” one of the officers said. “There’re pipes in places. And brackets. They could feel like a rack of some kind if you were nervous.”
“I was nervous,” Marley snapped. “Who wouldn’t be? But I felt a bike rack. And the wheel of a bike. Its seat. It was pushed into the rack.”
“There’s no sign of any of it now,” Gray said quietly.
“They were here,” Marley said stubbornly. “They’ve been taken away.”
“They’ll have to look for evidence of that,” Gray said.
“It’s late,” Nat said, joining them. “I vote I have my people come back in the morning and look at things in the daylight. I’ll have someone run each of you home.”
“If you still believed I was telling the truth you wouldn’t leave this place without taking it apart,” Marley said.
“I…I want to believe you,” Nat said. “In a way I do, but you can’t deny that the things you said were here aren’t.”
“I don’t understand it,” she told Gray. “Honestly, I saw someone on the ground. I didn’t have a chance to get close.”
Gray held her arm and Marley sucked in a sharp breath. If this went on with him, she’d have to discuss what it would mean if they…well, if they made love.
Still holding on to her, Gray went toward the door, but rather than walking outside, he pulled the right-hand door away from the wall.
“We could wait in here until morning if that’s what Nat wants,” she said.
“Nat’s going to want a bunch of things,” Gray said. “Look at this.”
He stooped to pick something up and when he straightened, Marley trained the flashlight on what he held.
One shiny pink bicycle helmet.
“This should help,” Gray said. “Must be the brand. We’ll need to follow up on dealers who carry them. Come and see this, Nat.”
On the back at the very bottom in black script were the words
Chapter 28
Four in the morning when temperatures pretended they were cool. It was the coolest part of the day, but it wouldn’t last long before the air warmed and the myriad scents of the Quarter rose about as fast as the familiar noises of the populace getting about their business.
“How are you doing?” Gray asked.
They stood outside the gate into the Court of Angels. “If I told you the first word that comes to mind, I wouldn’t sound polite,” she said. “Every one of my muscles aches. I don’t feel I could walk another step. But my mind is doing jumping jacks. I wanted to keep going and at least do
“I know,” Gray said. Most of all he didn’t want to leave Marley when he doubted he could think of anything else but her. He sure as hell wouldn’t be able to write and he needed to get back to a proposal he was working up for a piece on oil rig workers in the gulf. He didn’t want to think about it.
“Would you feel comfortable coming in and talking?” Marley asked. “I still don’t feel like I can wind down. Anyway, I don’t know how you’d get back to the Faubourg Marigny at this hour.”
He looked ruefully at his feet. “The options don’t appeal. If you can stand me a bit longer, I’d love to come in. I’ll make us some coffee.”
“I’d rather pour us a brandy, unless you don’t drink.”
“I drink.” He grinned at her. “Not Nat’s Bong vodka, but a glass of brandy would be perfect.”
She unlocked the gate and led him through a cool, dark alley with gray stone angels tucked into niches.
The alley opened out into what must be the Court of Angels and he saw how it got its name, even if a goodly number of gargoyles and questionable statues mixed, apparently harmoniously, with some really classy standing angels.
She put her finger to her lips. “Sykes won’t be here. He’s at his studio almost all the time—wherever that is. Willow and Uncle Pascal are heavy sleepers. But I don’t want to tempt fate—or a third degree.”
Gray followed her up green-painted metal steps, treading carefully to keep the noise down. He leaned forward and whispered to her, “I’m curious about where you live.”
She put a finger to her lips again and opened the door into a small hallway. She locked the door behind her, but still tiptoed along. “The living room,” she said, pointing into a dark room on the right. Next she said, “My bedroom,” and another dark cavern confronted him. “There’s a second bedroom like a boxroom where I have my computer and the kitchen’s back here.”
At last she put on a light and sent bright wash over an eclectic room where the appliances were the old, expensive kind, including an Aga cooker. A table built to fold up against a wall was lowered with three chairs pulled up to it. High above the speckled, green enamel sink two small windows reminded Gray of a pair of dark glasses. The walls were covered in unexpected red-and-white horizontal stripe paper with a shine to it.
“It looks like you,” Gray said and meant it. “A little bit wacky, but nice to be around.”
She gave him a sideways glance, then smiled. “That was meant to be a compliment. Thank you.”
“I don’t suppose too many people have sets of antique miniatures on their kitchen walls.”
Marley chuckled. “You just have to be able to spot the cheap and deceptive. All the paintings of doors were done by a guy who sets up in Jackson Square once a month.”
Gray laughed at himself. “Shows what I know.”
“That’s a little treasure,” she said, pointing to a slightly splotchy mirror with a plaster Rococo frame. “It’s English and very old.”
He tried to look sage and Marley burst out laughing. “You’d rather have the doors. Never mind. You can leave the art appreciation to me.”
She turned her back to him and found a couple of brandy bubbles into which she poured healthy measures from an unidentifiable bottle.
“I wish the guest room wasn’t full of junk,” she said. “I’d have taken everything off the bed if I’d known you might need it.”
He stepped back to let her leave the room first. “Have you forgotten we’re more or less strangers?” he said, and silently cursed himself for his drive to be disgustingly honest. “You probably wouldn’t want me sacking out in your guest room.”
“It would be fine,” she said, her voice completely steady. “You and I aren’t strangers.”
He almost missed his footing. “We aren’t?”
She went into the living room and put on lamps. Then she drew heavy green drapes over the front windows. “Do you feel as if we’re strangers?” she said. “Or do you sort of get the sensation we’ve known each other forever?”
Marley plunked down on the couch and patted the seat beside her.
“Well—” He blinked several times, then frowned. “I think we must always have known each other. How can that be? You were there, I just didn’t know it.”
“That’s because we were coming together. Slowly because that’s the way these things work. But it was part of the plan.”
He sat on the couch sideways so he could look at her. “How can you say things like that?”
“Because they’re true. Or they’re true in my reality. They don’t have to be in yours.”
“Did you know that the first time we met in Nat’s office?”
