The Whispering Room

“Yep.” He reared back in his chair. “See, I don’t think it’s stupidity so much as self-preservation. You ask the right questions, you might have to deal with the answers,” he said, his dark gaze burning into Evangeline’s. “Isn’t that so, Detective Theroux?”

By the time Evangeline got home that night, she was worn-out. It had been a long and trying day.

After they left Betts, she and Mitchell had gone their separate ways. He’d headed off to track down some of Paul Courtland’s neighbors while she’d dropped by the law firm in Canal Place to question his coworkers.

The interviews had not gone well. Courtland’s assistant had become hysterical at the news of her boss’s death. Evangeline had finally given up trying to question her.

And then the senior partner sent in to “handle” the situation had made it clear that under no circumstances would the police be allowed to go through Courtland’s office. With or without a search warrant. And he had flat-out refused to answer any questions about the firm’s relationship with Sonny Betts, neither confirming nor denying that Betts was still a client.

Evangeline had expected no less. She’d dealt with enough law firms to know how they closed ranks in times of crisis, all under the useful umbrella of attorney-client privilege. But she always suspected the defensive posturing had as much to do with CYOA—covering your own ass—as any high-minded code of ethics. She’d yet to meet the lawyer whose survival instinct didn’t run pretty damn deep.

Wearily, she climbed the porch steps and let herself into the house. Despite the shower, clean clothes and the hours that had passed since she’d left the crime scene that morning, the smell of death still clung to her nostrils, and she wondered if J.D. could smell it, too.

He began to fret the moment she picked him up, which in and of itself wasn’t so unusual. She and her son were still wary of each other, and after a day with the sitter or at his grandmother’s, he often seemed uneasy around her.

But rarely did he use his little hands to push himself away from her as he was doing at the moment.

“Don’t take it personally,” her sitter, Jessie Orillon, said with a shrug. “He’s been kind of crabby all day.”

Jessie was only nineteen, but she was really great with J.D. and he adored her. If money were no object, Evangeline would have tried to get the girl to move in and be a full-time nanny to the baby, but apart from the financial issues, Jessie had her own ideas about her future. She only babysat to help put herself through school. On the days when she had class—Tuesdays and Thursdays—Evangeline drove the baby to her mother’s house in Metairie.

If J.D. adored Jessie, he absolutely worshipped his nana, and he demonstrated his devotion, much to his grandmother’s delight, by protesting at the top of his lungs each and every afternoon when Evangeline came to pick him up. He sometimes fussed when Jessie left for the day, too, but not as loudly. The only time he didn’t carry on was when Evangeline left for work in the mornings.

She tried not to take that personally, either.

“He’s drooling like crazy,” Jessie told her. “I bet he’s cutting a tooth.” She pulled back her blond hair and fastened it into a high ponytail. Even after a day with a cranky baby, she looked lovely and fresh. Her crisp white shorts made her tanned legs look about a mile long.

Evangeline couldn’t remember the last time she’d put on a pair of shorts, or the last time she’d bought anything as cute and flattering as the apricot top Jessie had on. Since Johnny’s death, she hadn’t paid much attention to her appearance, but lately her dismal wardrobe was starting to depress even her.

Jessie reached for her backpack as she slipped her feet into a pair of white flip-flops. “My grandmother says you should make a clove paste and rub it on his little gums. She swears that’ll do the trick.”

Evangeline shifted the baby to her other arm. “Good to know.”

Of course, the advice would have been even more helpful if she actually knew what a clove paste was, but for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to ask. Her ignorance in the teething department was yet another way she felt totally incompetent as a mother.

Absently, she ran her finger along the baby’s smooth cheek. His little face always amazed her. He looked so sweet and innocent and yet somehow wizened, as if that tiny body harbored an old soul.

And those eyes. Like bottomless pools.

His eyes were so much like Johnny’s that sometimes Evangeline had to look away from him.

It was at those times that her son would grow very quiet, almost pensive it seemed to Evangeline, and she wondered if he could sense her despair. She’d read somewhere that babies were very intuitive and their keen instincts made them hyperaware of even the most subtle change in emotions or their environment.

She also wondered if he would one day hold all of this against her.

“What did you guys do today?” she asked as Jessie gathered up her iPod.