Worry Beads

Chapter 1

1

The smell in the alley was not subtle, but was sadly familiar. At least it was cooler this time of year, so the smell wasn’t getting amped up by the heat. Even if it had been chilled, Laura Baker would be taking whatever she was kneeling in home with her. Garbage, urine, and of course, blood. Lots of blood. He lay where the car had tossed him, legs and arms bent at angles they’d never been meant to go. And because it was New Orleans, jazz played in the distance, the sound carried in by the cool January night air, while their emergency lights pulsed across the scene.

She was working on getting his vitals. LaFon was still trying to find a vein for the cannula.

Guy hadn’t moved since they got there. Based on his vital signs, he wouldn’t be—

His lids lifted, the fog in his eyes clearing just enough for him to focus on Laura.

His blue lips moved. “You a real blonde?”

Her lips twitched.

“Would you believe me if I said I was?” she asked, her gaze holding his while her hands continued their all too familiar task.

“I would,” LaFon said, a white grin cutting across his dark face.

“Always liked blondes,” their victim muttered. The hand nearest her twitched, shifting in the pile of she-didn’t-want-to-know-what it was. He winced, the effort adding more gray to his face, but he managed to lift his hand enough so she could see he held some Mardi Gras beads.

She almost sighed. Orleanians did like their beads, but she wasn’t going to show him something to get them.

“Take them. Pretty girl should have…beads.” Air bubbles popped in the blood that oozed out with each word.

She met LaFon’s gaze and he half shrugged. “Make him feel better, girl,” he advised.

Laura gingerly extracted the strand from fingers almost as twisted as limbs and held it up. It was strung with what was probably the usual fake pearls and a huge bobble hung off the Krewe badge. With a smile hiding her sigh, she slung it around her neck. He was dying and she’d had worse things on her uniform.

“How does it look?” she asked, giving him a sultry smile, even as she returned to the futile task of trying to save his life.

The edges of his mouth moved. “Hang on…bring…you…luck…”

The beads hadn’t brought him luck, but she smiled again and thanked him. “I’ll hang on to them,” she promised. “For luck.”

The man’s gaze slid sideways, as if looking to see if anyone was near. The beat cops were keeping the small crowd back. Most people were a couple of streets over on Bourbon Street. The distant music changed to something slower and very jazzy.

“Ogre…” The effort exhausted him and his eyes closed. “Hunt…ogre…” he said again.

“We’ll do what we can,” she said, trying to sound reassuring.

“Bay…”

“Bay?” Laura tried not to make it a question, hoping that her calm tone would reassure him.

“Ba…by…”

Her gaze flicked to LaFon who shrugged. It wasn’t unusual to call someone baby around here, but the way he said it was neither the affectionate or the creepy version. More like…scared.

“Baby.”

His lids flickered, lifting enough for him to see her again. “Pretty girl…careful…”

“I’m always careful.”

Suddenly his eyes opened wide. “Treasure.”

He said the word clearly and she shot LaFon a startled look. Then the man’s eyes dimmed, light fading from them as he flatlined.

No way to do CPR on a crushed chest. LaFon shook his head, rubbing his forearm against his forehead in a weary gesture.

“He was gone before we got here.”

Laura started to take the beads off, but it felt wrong to toss them aside, no matter how slimy and hideous—and she had promised—so she flung them around so they lay against her back, out of her way, and then signaled the uniform keeping the crowds at bay.

“He’s gone.”

“He say anything about who hit him?”

“An ogre,” LaFon said, with a tired grin.

She started to collect their equipment. The uniform spoke into the walkie-talkie on his shoulder, then crouched to help. Since he didn’t know what he was doing, he was more hinder than helper. She handed him the body bag.

He held it up, gulped, and handed it on to LaFon. “Baker, right?”

Laura sighed. When you had as many siblings as she did…she nodded. “Yeah.”

“Was at a shooting with your brother a couple of hours ago.”

She didn’t ask which brother because she figured she knew. Alex had managed to get back on the day shift and stay there for an extended period. He did have a big incentive to stay home at night now that he and Nell had tied the knot.

“Long day,” Laura said. She glanced at her watch. Speaking of long days, theirs had inched past the twelve-hour mark about half an hour ago. The cop helped them shift the body onto the stretcher. She reached for one of their cases, but the uniform beat her to it.

“Thanks.” Laura managed a smile for him.

He must be new if he was moving on her, especially after meeting Alex. She gave him a quick glance. Not bad, but young, too young to stand up to her seven brothers. That would take someone with some big brass ones. She tried to imagine what that guy would be like, other than as annoying as her brothers. Of course, could just be a guy being friendly. She was not exactly hit-on worthy covered in blood and garbage.

He lifted the case into the spot she indicated.

“I’ll see you around,” he said, a bit wistfully.

She glanced back and gave him a wave, noting the television news camera near the street. The crowd was starting to thin on either side of the small news crew, and her attention was caught by a tall, thin man standing half in shadow. As if he sensed her attention, his head turned her way. His flat, cold gaze made her skin crawl. Then he stepped back, melting into the crowd. Though the glimpse had been brief, she’d know him if she saw him again. And as the daughter of a cop, she hoped she never would. Crap people didn’t always telegraph their crappiness, but this guy, well, what he telegraphed wasn’t anything close to nice.

She realized the cameras had started to track their direction again, and she turned back to loading and getting away fast. She and LaFon each closed a rear door, then trotted around to their respective sides of the ambulance and clambered in. She heaved a sigh of relief as they pulled away.

The necklace dug into her back so she lifted it off, stared at it without seeing it for a minute, then shoved it in her pocket. Their hit and run wouldn’t care now.

Laura Baker not only had seven brothers, she also had five sisters, all of them varying degrees of blonde and okay looking. They should have all had mildly active dating lives. But the seven brothers—and their ex-cop dad—loomed over the Baker girls like Stonehenge. Alex’s partner, Logan Ferris, had managed to break into the circle with Hannah, but he was going to have to put a ring on it to get anything. He was being closely monitored for any signs he’d lost that hungry look of longing.

Alex might have hoped the rules didn’t apply to him and Nell, but she’d had a different kind of Family—the criminally organized type—watching them, so he’d done the only thing he could do. He’d married the girl. Nell was one of them now, for better or worse.

Laura bent to wash her face and felt the unyielding mass of the Mardi Gras beads inside her jacket pocket. She extracted it from the pocket. The strand was longer and chunkier than the beads she was used to. And it was even nastier in the bathroom light than they’d been in the street light. She almost tossed them in the trash, but the memory of the look in the dying man’s eyes—and his words, particularly the last word—stopped her. Treasure. She dangled the string between two fingers. They did look to be the “good” kind of beads, the ones you usually had to show your boobs to get. Of course, if she wore them, everyone would think she’d lifted her shirt for them.

She hesitated again, then ran some water in the bowl and gave them a good cleaning with some disinfectant hand soap. She patted them dry with paper towels and held them up again. Cleaned up, the beads weren’t totally awful. That big blue stone that dangled below a Krewe badge that looked like it had been carved out of wood. The blue stone caught the light, flickering with a muted blue fire. She lifted it closer so she could study the Krewe badge. She didn’t recognize it. The beads looked aged, almost like real pearls. Back in the day, Mardi Gras strands used to be made out of glass, she recalled. These looked aged enough—or had been faked to be aged, she decided. Granted their victim had been tossed in the garbage, but there’d been something seedy about him that did not indicate a lot of prosperity.

She rubbed the beads between her fingers, her daughter-of-a-cop’s brain wondering if there was a connection between a hit and run and this strand. Treasure? What had he meant by that? And don’t forget the ogre or the scary baby, she reminded herself. Where treasure was concerned one should never forget the ogre, though the baby was a new twist. She half smiled, then frowned at the strand. Could they be valuable?

How could she know? She came from blue-collar stock, the kind without family jewels. She hesitated once more, then wrapped the bead string in more paper towels and tucked it in the pocket of her light jacket. She released the clips holding her hair up, feeling tension releasing as her hair fell around her shoulders.

Outside, dawn was just edging over the city, spilling light on glass-sided buildings and the Greater New Orleans bridge. She rubbed her tired face as her car pulled up with her brother Frank at the wheel. She clambered in next to him, arching a weary brow in his direction.

“Couple more days in the shop. Thanks for the borrow.” He looked back, pulled into the street, and then relaxed enough to slant a glance at her. “Must have been a slow news night. I saw your backside on TV at eleven. Not the lead, but right after it.”

“At least they got my best side.” One thing all the Baker girls had learned growing up with seven older brothers, show no reaction or the hits would ramp up. She slid down until she could rest her head against the door and gazed out at the passing city through sleep blurred eyes.

“What was with the nasty beads?”

She half frowned and glanced at Frank, but he was looking at the road. Which he should be. How did he know—the news camera. Apparently, the beads had also made the local news. Yay. “My reward for being a real blonde.”

He glanced at her with a quick grin. She saw the next question in his eyes and said, “Don’t—” She looked ahead with a sigh. “He didn’t make it.”

“Sorry.” His tone was the one men used in the face of emotion.

That was one of the advantages of being an EMS. She could kill the conversation faster than her dad.

As the second youngest, she’d kind of hoped it would get easier as siblings peeled off to their own places, their own lives. Sadly, she’d seen no sign the brothers had lost interest in any of the sisters’ dating lives. And she’d lost the toss for who had to move back in with their dad when Alex moved in with his wife. Speaking of which—she saw the house come into view as Frank turned the corner. At least she didn’t have to look for a parking space, something that was almost impossible to find this time of day.

The car jerked to a stop in front of the partly blocked driveway. The frat boys didn’t park so well when they were plastered.

“Thanks.” She managed to push the door open and climb out, though it wasn’t pretty or graceful. She gave a vague wave as he drove off. She went round to the back door and inserted her key.

There should be a sign over the door, she thought blearily, as she pushed the door open.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here.