I didn’t have a reply.
Dominic’s dry observations never came without a deeper meaning. I remembered that I’d used the same line when I described to him my visits to the east end of Bourbon Street as a younger man.
I was nineteen. It was the summer after my first year at Tulane. I spent too many nights in a specific bar.
A regular occupied the same stool night after night. I pegged his age at forty-five to fifty. He watched the room with one hand wrapped around his glass. He was handsome, with broad shoulders and a sculpted jaw, and he always wore a suit. Every night he sat alone, often with a gentle expression of amusement on his face.
Finally, as the summer was winding down in the sweltering heat of August, I crossed the room and climbed into his lap to find out what would happen.
He laughed, and then he bought me a drink. We talked for over two hours about architecture, of all things. I went home at three in the morning, having learned a lesson about being bold.
I decided the outcome frequently justified making myself vulnerable, risking embarrassment.
I had worked from that understanding, more or less, ever since.
Thiago had finished his call. He stood near the courtyard wall, crouched beside one of the potted lemon trees, studying the bricks where the mortar had worn shallow with age.
I joined him.
He ran his fingers along the rim of the pot and then pointed toward the paving stones beneath it. “Look at this.”
At first, I saw nothing. He reached out and took my hand.
It was direct and unceremonious. He closed his fingers around mine as he guided my palm downward.
“Here.”
Thiago pressed my hand against the edge of the stone. The surface felt rough, but along one corner the texture changed. There it was smooth.
I frowned. “That wasn’t there last week.”
“No.”
He released my hand and traced the edge of the stone with one finger. “Someone stepped here repeatedly,” he said. “Same spot. Same angle.”
I followed the line of his gesture upward, from the stone to the rim of the lemon pot. Then from the pot to the courtyard wall.
“It’s a climbing point,” I said.
“Likely.”
I looked back down at the stone, feeling the faint smoothness where my hand had touched it. “That tree’s been here for years. It’s the heaviest, and I don’t move it, even during storms.”
“Which means whoever did this knew it would hold weight.”
I glanced toward the balcony above us. The wall no longer looked decorative. It looked utilitarian.
Thiago stood and brushed his hands together. “I’ll still need that full access list.”
“By noon,” I said.
I went back inside and thought about climbing into someone’s lap.
Chapter four
Thiago
Iwas still waiting for Luca’s access list. “Who has keys to the house?” I asked.
