The Whispering Room

She walked over to the window and parted the curtains to glance out. It was still early and she could see a light shining in the window of the house next door. But the fact that her neighbors were up and about did little to assuage her disquiet.

As she turned from the window, she saw something on the floor. She thought at first it was a piece of transparent paper that had fallen off the mobile or out of the box that it had been packed in. But when she stooped to pick it up, she jerked her hand back in revulsion.

It wasn’t paper, she realized with a shiver.

It was a bit of molted snakeskin.

Eight

By the time Evangeline dropped the baby off at her mother’s house the next morning, listened to the latest tirade about her father and fought rush-hour traffic back into the city, she felt as if she’d already put in a full day.

Waking up tired was getting to be an annoying habit with her, but she supposed it was the same with any new mother. This time, though, she couldn’t blame her exhaustion on the baby. He’d slept soundly through most of the night, but even with the house so quiet, Evangeline had slept fitfully. Paul Courtland’s grisly murder had mingled with that piece of molted snakeskin to create some very disturbing nightmares.

She was convinced the skin had fallen out of the box the mobile had come in or else she or Jessie had carried it inside on the bottom of a shoe. Just in case it had come from the crime scene, Evangeline had used tweezers to bag the skin, and then she’d put it in her purse to drop off at the lab.

With her heart in her throat, she’d gone through the house checking in cabinets and underneath furniture, although she didn’t see how a snake could get inside. For all she knew, the skin could be an old one. The reptile that had shed it was probably long gone.

Still, the very thought of a snake lurking somewhere in her house gave her uncontrollable shivers, and before she’d left that morning, she’d arranged to have a professional exterminator come and search every square inch of the house, including the tiny attic. She’d left a key with her neighbor, who had promised to come over and supervise the search.

The fact that the skin had been in J.D.’s room made Evangeline all the more nervous. She was glad he would be spending the day with her mother in Metairie.

As soon as she got to the station, she went straight for coffee, but she barely had time to stir in a packet of sweetener before the captain called her and Mitchell in for a briefing. The Courtland homicide was shaping up to be a high-profile investigation, and that was exactly the kind of case that Angelette Lapierre liked to micromanage.

She was seated behind her desk reading the Times-Picayune when they entered her office. Motioning for them to take seats across from her, she held up the paper. “Either of you see this?”

“Not yet,” Mitchell said as he settled into his chair. Like Evangeline, he’d carried in a cup of coffee, which he placed on the corner of Lapierre’s desk. “What’s going on?”

“Paul Courtland’s murder made the front page. You two should be happy they got your names right.”

“You hear that, Evie? We’re famous. Think we can parlay our fifteen minutes into a book deal?”

“I’d rather you parlay it into an arrest,” Lapierre said dryly. She was a gorgeous woman, the kind that generated controversy and gossip everywhere she went. But she wasn’t exactly known for her sense of humor.

“Goes without saying,” Mitchell muttered.

She gave him a withering look. “The murder of a wealthy white attorney puts a different face on the violence down here, so you better believe the media will milk it for all it’s worth. And once they get wind of how Courtland died, they’ll go ape-shit crazy. That’s why I want to keep a lid on this thing until we know what we’re dealing with. Don’t go talking to reporters, either of you. Let me handle the press.”

Evangeline resisted the urge to shoot Mitchell a knowing glance. “Fine by me.”

“Yeah, me, too,” he agreed.

Lapierre folded the paper and tossed it aside. “Where are we on the investigation?”

“I’ve located Courtland’s loft in the Warehouse District,” Mitchell said. “I’m meeting his landlady over there this morning.”

“And I’m looking into the brother’s death,” Evangeline added. “No way can that be a coincidence.”

“What about the wife?” Lapierre’s gaze went from one to the other, giving them each a turn on the hot seat. “How do you like her as a suspect?”

“I don’t think she had anything to do with it,” Evangeline said. “Her shock seemed genuine to me, but I know we’ve all come across some pretty good actresses in our time.”

Lapierre turned to Mitchell. “Hebert?”

“I agree with Evie. I think the brother’s death pretty much puts the kibosh on the Widow Courtland as a suspect, but if we find out she and the brother were engaged in a little horizontal mambo, I reserve the right to change my mind. Likewise if we turn up a mistress at Courtland’s loft.”

“I think we need to lean a little harder on Sonny Betts,” Evangeline said.