“Ma’am?” he said. “Have you ever heard the name Rosemary Delancey?”
“No,” she snapped hoarsely. “Never.”
She hadn’t. So why were the voices bothering her? And why did her pulse throb in her throat as if she were lying?
Detective Dixon Lloyd’s gaze burned against her closed lids. “No? Are you telling me you don’t recognize the Delancey name?” he asked, the tone of his voice demanding that she open her eyes.
“Well, y-yes,” she stammered. “Of course I recognize the name. Everyone in Louisiana knows about Con Delancey. But I don’t … I don’t know any of them.” She peered up at him. “Should I? Was it a Delancey who was murdered?”
“Yes,” he said, still holding her gaze.
“But …” She was having trouble focusing her thoughts. The voices were getting louder, loud enough to drown out all other sound. She rubbed her temple and grimaced.
“What about Lyndon Banker?”
She frowned. “Banker? What?” She had no idea what he’d said.
“The name Lyndon Banker. Do you recognize it?”
Rissshhhh, rozzzzzsss. Rissshhhh, rozzzzzsss.
“Are you all right?”
His words barely rose above the hissing in her head. She pressed the heels of her hands against her temples and squeezed. It seemed to help.
After a moment, she answered him. “Yes, I’m fine. What did you say about a bank?”
“Forget that.” He dismissed it with a wave of his hand.
Her eyes followed the bright metal of his watch. She noticed that it stayed in place on his wrist.
“Are you sure you don’t remember anything about a murder?”
“The murder happened around here?”
“Actually, it happened just off St. Charles Avenue in the Garden District, about six blocks from here. Twelve years ago.”
“Twelve …” The vision of Maman unwinding blood-soaked bandages assaulted her.
“Where were you twelve years ago?”
Rose turned her back on him and walked over to the window, looking out onto Prytania Street. She saw the old neon signs, the flickering lights from the curtained windows, the shadows on the window shades. Her neighbors, her friends.
She loved this neighborhood, this house. It was home. She hugged herself. “I was here,” she murmured. “With Maman. I was safe.”
She felt the detective’s burning gaze on her back. She heard his footsteps as he approached. Then she heard the rustling of cloth and felt something—warmth or energy—emanating from his body.
When he spoke, his voice was too close, too quietly intimate. “Are you sure about that?” he asked.
She whirled and almost hit him, he was that close. She tried to step backward but her heel hit the baseboard. She flattened her palms against the wall behind her.
“Sure about what?” she asked. Where she was or if she was safe? “I don’t understand these questions. What does any of this have to do with me?” she cried.
“Think about the name. Rosemary Delancey,” he said calmly, then leaned close to her ear and whispered, “Rosemary,” drawing out the S.
Rissshhhh, rozzzzzsss. Rissshhhh, rozzzzzsss. The whispers blended with his voice, swirling around her in a singsong rhythm. “I—don’t—know—anything about—Rosemary Delancey,” she bit out, suppressing the urge to squeeze her temples between her hands again.
“I think you do,” he said, staring down at her. He lifted a hand toward her hair.
She recoiled, alarm rising in her chest. She slid sideways, away from him. “Get away from me,” she cried.
He stepped backward, regarding her narrowly. His jaw tensed. “Rosemary,” he said. “Say it. Rosemary.”
“Stop it!” She squeezed her head again. “I don’t know that name. Why are you doing this?” Her temple throbbed again.
“I think you know why,” he said quietly.
Rose’s temper burst into flame. “Leave me alone! I don’t know anything! I never heard of her!”
Detective Lloyd’s eyebrows went up. “That’s surprising, because she was someone who should have meant a lot to you.”
“Why? How?” Rose asked, grabbing the sleeve of his jacket in her fist and shaking it. “Stop playing with me and tell me what you want me to say.”
Dixon Lloyd looked down at Rose’s hand on his arm. It was a pretty hand, with long slender fingers and short unpainted nails. Nails that didn’t go with the image stored in his head, but then, nothing about this woman matched up with the twenty-two-year-old girl he’d come to know.
He focused on the black fingerless lace gloves she’d put on as soon as she’d been able to get to the piano to retrieve them. Were they an affectation, along with the long flowing skirt and blouse? Was she trying to perpetrate a witchlike image, similar to the seventies and eighties pop icon Stevie Nicks? Or was all that gauzy feminine garb hiding something—like knife scars?
The thought surprised him. Then, as he considered it, a queasy anger turned his stomach.
Swallowing against the queasiness, he turned his attention to her face and studied her up close for the first time. Most interesting was a long scar that started at the level of her right brow and traveled jaggedly down her cheek to her jawline. The shriveled skin drew her mouth slightly on the right side and caused her right eye to slant upward.
His stomach turned over. Scars. Of course. That’s why her face seemed off. The photo he’d carried in his wallet all these years was of a pretty girl with good bones and the promise of classic beauty once she matured. She’d been barely twenty-two when she’d died. Disappeared, he corrected himself.
Now the scar, along with the character that came with age, made her face much more interesting. Still lovely. If possible, even more fascinating. Certainly no longer a Stepford beauty queen. She was stunning. Stunning and mysterious, a dangerous combination.
“—unless you explain,” she was saying.
“What?” He’d missed most of what she’d just said.
“What do you mean what? Everything. Why you’re here. Who Rosemary Delancey is. Why you think any of this has anything to do with me.”
She tossed her answer at him as a challenge, but Dixon didn’t think she was nearly as brave as her words sounded. Her face was pallid, her eyes were becoming damp and a fine trembling shimmered through her.
He steeled himself against her tears. She’d stayed hidden all this time—why? Because of the scar? He could understand a young debutante not wanting to be seen in public with what must have seemed like a hideous facial deformity.
But Rosemary Delancey was thirty-four now. Was she still so vain? Or was she afraid of whoever had attacked her? Whatever the reason she hadn’t come forward, she knew now that the gig was up.
It was time to hit her with the facts and gauge her reaction.
“Okay,” he said, holding up one finger. “First, Rosemary Delancey was the victim of a violent attack twelve years ago. She lost so much blood that the medical examiner concluded that she could not have survived. But that conclusion couldn’t be verified because her body was never found.”
He held up a second finger. “Second, I’m here because someone recognized you.”
Rose’s