Downtown Debutante

She supposed she better pay her restaurant check before Willie-the-Cajun-Waiter-from-Hell came after her with his coffee pot.

She returned to her room, pulled a twenty from her stash—at least neither of the room-breakers had found her money—and headed back to the restaurant.

“Hey, Willie,” she called to their surly waiter. “I got the cash.” She waved her twenty at him. “I told you I was good for it.”

Now Willie was all smiles. “Oh, not to worry, miss. Your bill was paid in full.”

“Oh.” Had Sonya—no, the SUV had driven down the street in the opposite direction. Then, somehow, without even seeing him, Brenna knew. She felt a tickle at the back of her neck and turned to see Heath Packer in a booth, eating a bowl of gumbo.

She marched over to the booth and slid in across from him. “So, you’re still here. I suppose you expect me to slobber in gratitude for paying our bill.”

He looked up from his gumbo. “A simple thanks would do.”

She slapped her twenty on the table. “Here. I refuse to be beholden to you.”

“Now there’s no need—”

“How dare you think I’m so stupid that I would protect a guy who totally humiliated me and wiped me out, not to mention the damage he’s done to my reputation? If I don’t show up at that IJC show with my jewelry, my career is over!”

“I have to go with the information I have,” Heath said in an infuriatingly reasonable tone. “Agent Delacroix told me what happened in Faring, Louisiana. Your warning allowed Marvin Carter to escape.”

“That was an accident. He wasn’t supposed to see Cindy peeking in his window. Oh, why am I trying to explain anything to you?” Brenna stole a package of saltines from Heath and opened it.

“Didn’t you just have lunch?” he asked.

“I have a fast metabolism.”

Heath focused on his gumbo for a few minutes. He ate his way around the okra, she noticed. Obviously not a Southern boy.

“So what brought you to New Orleans?” he finally asked after a long, awkward silence.

“Internet sleuthing.” Brenna’s pride over how clever she and Sonya had been warred with her desire not to talk to Packer. Pride won out. “Sonya’s first contact with Marvin was in a chat room, so we figured he might use that MO again. Sure enough, we spotted him in a singles chat room. Different name, but using the same tired lines. He was flirting with a woman called ‘FrenchQuarterChic.’ Before we could learn more, they both dropped off. I discovered he’d downloaded maps of New Orleans from my computer.”

Packer gave Brenna a nod. “Good work.”

“She’s here, all right. And so is he.”

“It’s a pretty big city.”

“I know. But I figure he might try to fence some of the stolen jewelry here. There are a ton of estate jewelers on Royal Street. I looked in the Yellow Pages.”

HEATH HAD TO HAND IT to Brenna. She had a sharp mind. That was a pretty good story she’d cooked up—improbable, but barely believable. She also had quite an appetite. She polished off the last saltine from the cellophane packet, then started eyeing his cornbread muffin.

He pulled a paper napkin from the dispenser and set the muffin on it, pushing it toward her. “Jeez. I’d hate to see you if you missed a meal.”

She dug into the muffin without so much as a thanks.

“So what are your plans?” Heath asked casually.

“I don’t have any. I promised Sonya I wouldn’t track down Marvin Carter on my own. She thinks it might be dangerous, and she doesn’t want to worry about me.”

“And I’m sure you wouldn’t want to worry your old sorority sister.”

Brenna surprised him by laughing. “That was pretty funny. Me, in a sorority. I wonder if Mr. Beefcake Bodyguard bought it?”

“You thought he was good-looking?”

She gave him a sideways look. “Oh, yeah.”

And just what the hell had prompted him to ask a stupid question like that? Heath reminded himself to stick to business. Whom Ms. Brenna Thompson found attractive or unattractive was not his concern.

“Why does Sonya need a bodyguard?” he asked.

“She doesn’t. But her mom’s overprotective because Sonya’s father was murdered when she was ten. Sonya’s all her mother has left.”

A nasty thought occurred to Heath. Had Brenna befriended Sonya to get close to the wealthy Mrs. Patterson? Looking at her now, nibbling at his muffin, he found it hard to suspect her. But that was his job, after all.

“Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t the two of us work together?” This was the plan he and Grif had hastily come up with, now that she was on to their surveillance. Heath would pretend to be her teammate. Since she didn’t know Grif existed, he would continue to observe from a discreet distance to see if Brenna made contact with anyone when she thought no one was looking. Even now, Grif was seated at the opposite end of the restaurant, nursing a cup of coffee and reading a newspaper.

Heath hoped Brenna would make her move soon. Fleming Ketcher was pushing him to make the arrest, and was only marginally convinced that Heath’s plan to give her some line was a better idea.

“I don’t want to work with you,” Brenna said. “I don’t like you. You’re sneaky, and you think I’m a liar, or stupid, or both.”

“I don’t think you’re any of those things.” It was partly the truth. He didn’t think she was stupid. “I’m prepared to believe you really don’t know where Marvin is, and that you’re not protecting him.”

“Well, gee, thanks.”

He needed to convince her they were on the same side. “Listen, Brenna. Even if you don’t like me, I have resources you don’t. I have access to databases and a crime lab. And I can offer you some measure of protection.”

“But why do you need me?” she asked, not unreasonably.

“You can identify both the stolen jewelry and Marvin. All I have are the rough drawings you provided, and a couple of blurry photographs of the perp.”

He could see she was mulling over his words. On second thought, she was mulling over his gumbo. “Do you want something else to eat?”

She waved at Willie the waiter. “Can I have a bowl of that gumbo, please? Large.”

Chapter Two

If this was what FBI agents did all day, Brenna thought, she wondered why she hadn’t applied to the Bureau. She and Heath had spent all afternoon hitting every jewelry store in the French Quarter, checking out the inventory for any sign of Brenna’s stolen pieces, then showing Marvin’s photo to the proprietors asking if anyone had seen him.

No one had.

Still, Brenna was in her element. She lingered over some of the gaudy estate pieces, trying on rings that cost more than she made in a year, imagining how she might reinterpret the designs in her own style.

She also enjoyed watching Heath in his macho FBI role. The suit, the badge, the subtle bulge of his gun in its shoulder holster had seemed a bit out of place in Cottonwood, Texas. But here in New Orleans, the costume afforded him respect. People took him seriously. They listened when he spoke. Some were decidedly afraid of him. And the women, especially, responded to him in an obviously sexual way, even the senior citizens.

She sighed. Respect was one thing she’d never really gotten in her life. As the youngest of six kids, she was the one always craning her neck, looking up to her big brothers and sisters.