“My mother’s watching her, but I need to be there when she wakes up.”

“Sure. Of course.”

“I know! How about we meet for brunch tomorrow? Sandi’s spending the day with her dad.”

Yvette agreed, and a short time later, Stacy climbed into her Explorer. No sooner had she slammed the door behind her than her cell phone buzzed. It was Dan, one of the surveillance team.

“I appreciate you wrapping that up,” he said. “I’ve been in this friggin’ van so long, my ass’s asleep. And the guys send their thanks for recruiting us for Sunday duty. We were hoping to spend the day in here, on top of each other.”

“World’s smallest violin. I tell you what, seeing it’s so late, I’ll dewire myself. I promise to be really careful with your little toys.”

“Your generosity overwhelms.”

She laughed. “See you tomorrow, at one.”

“One last thing, Killian. Your ex’s name is Barney? Real smooth.”

“At one,” she repeated, and hung up to the sound of laughter.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

1:05 p.m.

When Stacy arrived, Yvette was already at a table in the light-dappled courtyard, sipping coffee and reading the Times-Picayune.

“Hey,” Stacy said as she reached the table. “Sorry I’m late.”

“You’re not. I came early.”

Stacy sat. “I don’t know about you, but I’m fried this morning.”

Yvette folded the section of the paper she’d been reading and laid it on top of the rest, which was at her feet. “I’m used to it.”

“Just wait until you’re thirty. How’s your neck?”

“Sore. It hurts to swallow.” She had draped a floral-print silk scarf around her neck to hide the bruises. “I got one of the girls to switch tonight for tomorrow night. I just don’t feel up to dancing, you know?”

Stacy murmured that she did, and they fell silent.

The guys in the van would be happy to hear they had a twenty-four-hour reprieve. Yahoo. She, on the other hand, would prefer to keep the investigation moving forward.

The waitress took their orders-they both decided on the Lost Bread-filled their coffee cups, then left them alone.

“Have you…thought any more about what happened last night?”

“Should I have?”

Stacy shrugged and added cream to her coffee. “Thought you might like to talk. Sometimes it makes it better.”

“I pushed his buttons. He snapped. I won’t do it again.”

She sipped the coffee, working to maintain a “girlfriends” kind of tone, chatty and intimate. “What do you know about his other life?”

Yvette narrowed her eyes. “Other life?”

“Away from the Hustle. You know.”

“Actually, I snooped a bit.” She leaned across the table, expression mischievous. “Borrowed a car and followed him.”

Stacy’s heart beat a little faster. She hoped the transmitter was working. “Really? What did you find out?”

“His wife is one of those uptight country-club types. The kind who think they’re too good for the rest of the world. Especially types like me.”

Stacy heard a note of little girl hurt in Yvette’s voice, one she would vehemently deny. Obviously Yvette had been on the receiving end of that kind of thinking more than once.

“If she was so great, why would he need you?”

“Exactly!” Yvette beamed at her. “That’s part of what set Marcus off last night. I threatened to tell her about us and to go to the-”

She bit the last back, though Stacy had a good idea she had been about to say “police.”

She tried a gentle nudge. “Go to who?”

“The press if I had to.”

“Maybe his wife holds the purse strings and that’s why he stays with her.”

Yvette shook her head. “I don’t think so. He reps commercial property. Does real well. Besides, I don’t really care if he stays with her or not. I just want to be paid what I’m owed.”

Before Stacy could counter with another question, Yvette pointed to the paper. “I was reading about that body they found in City Park. They think that guy got her. The one who chops off his victims’ hands.”

“I heard about that. So creepy.”

“I’ve got a theory on that.”

“Yeah?”

“Know how they’ve never found any of his other victims? And how there’s been no high-profile thing about girls going missing?” Yvette leaned forward. “They’re working girls.”

“You mean prostitutes.”

“And girls like me.”

“Could be he traveled around and that’s why no other victims have turned up or been reported missing.”

“Uh-uh.” The waitress arrived with their French toast. Yvette dug in immediately, eating as if starved. Stacy followed more slowly, preparing how to steer the conversation back to Gabrielle.

“I’ve thought a lot about this,” Yvette continued. “Nobody cares much about working girls. A lot of ’em either don’t have families or their families don’t know where they are.”

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a serial killer had targeted prostitutes. But she couldn’t tell her that.

Instead she nodded. “True.”

“Can I tell you a secret?”

“Sure.”

“I might know who that girl is. Or was.” She lowered her voice even more. “My old roommate.”

When she’d arranged this brunch, Stacy hadn’t expected to get information about the Handyman. She imagined the expressions of the guys in the van. “How do you figure?”

“They think this girl was killed right before Katrina struck. That’s when Kitten disappeared.”

“So did about a million other New Orleanians.” That number wasn’t an exaggeration, and it represented eighty percent of the metro area’s 1.3 million residents.

“But she never came back. Left all her stuff.”

“I don’t know, Yvette. Lots of folks did that.”

Yvette looked irritated. “I’ve got a strong feeling about this, Brandi. I mean, we were both going to wait out the storm. We stocked up on water and junk food, then she disappears.”

Yvette glanced over her shoulder, then back at Stacy. “I think he calls himself ‘the Artist.’”

Now she had her. Stacy leaned forward. “Why?”

“She had this weird stalker. Sent her notes all the time. Called himself ‘the Artist.’ Real creepy dude.”

“Did he threaten her?”

“She felt threatened. That’s pretty much the same thing.”

Not to the police. An overt threat always beat out an implied one. “Go to the cops. Tell them what you know and let them handle it.”

“Right,” she said sarcastically, “go to the cops. My good friends in blue.”

“They’re not all bad.”

Yvette eyed her suspiciously. “They are if you’re me. The cops and I have a history. None of it good.”

She had a record. Solicitation. Resisting arrest. Possession.

And all that after her eighteenth birthday. Her run-ins with the law had started well before that.

“What are you going to do?”

She shrugged. “Nothing, I guess.”

“But she was your friend. If he killed her…wouldn’t you want him caught?” Stacy leaned forward. “Besides, if he’s not caught, he might kill someone else.”

“You tell ’em, then. I’ll deny it all.”

Arguing the point would do nothing but lose her Yvette’s trust. So, she approached from another angle. “You still have her stuff?”

“Boxed up in the apartment. It’s a real pain in the ass, too. She’s not paying any rent and it’s taking up half the second bedroom.”

“Maybe you could go through it. See if there’s an address or phone number, someone you could contact. At least then you’d know if she was okay.”

“Yeah, maybe.” She scraped the last piece of her toast through the well of syrup on her plate, then stuck the dripping bite in her mouth.

As if on cue, the waitress brought the check. Yvette grabbed it. “I’ve got it.”

“You don’t have-”

“You came to my rescue big-time last night. How ’bout we call us square now?”

Stacy agreed, and minutes later they exited the restaurant. The day was bright and warm, the humidity blessedly low. They stopped at the corner of St. Peter and Royal Street.