His hand slid down and rested briefly at my hip before he let it fall.
I started, “That’s another—“
Luca pressed his index finger against my lips. “Not now.”
When he pulled it away, I returned to the conversation about Henri. “Someone who avoids a story for twenty years and then steps back into it—“
“Isn’t doing it by accident.” Luca finished my thought. “He’s been watching the anniversary plans develop for eighteen months. There has been no public announcement, but he knows the concert is Dominic’s farewell.”
“And he’s going to use that knowledge.”
Luca looked at me. “To set his plans in motion.”
“They’ve been in motion,” I said. “We’re catching up.”
After another brief kiss and saying goodnight, I took my tablet to the guest room and sat at the desk without turning on the overhead light. The ceiling fan turned in the dark, with the pull chain ticking like a metronome.
I sent Michael a note asking for Henri Fontenot’s financial records for the past eighteen months and any documented contact between him and the Orpheum’s current production staff. Then I asked for any visible overlap between Bridget Marchand and Henri in the past year.
My phone showed 1:08 a.m.
Down the hall, the gap under Luca’s door was dark.
The Orpheum performance was eight days away.
***
We returned to the theater for another rehearsal the next day. The Orpheum had been standing on University Place since 1921, meaning it had outlasted two world wars, a catastrophic hurricane, bankruptcy, abandonment, and a thorough restoration effort.
We arrived at eight-thirty in the morning, an hour before the first rehearsal call. Dominic sat at a folding table stage left, working through score annotations with the orchestra librarian.
I began my sweep. The floor was original pine, dark with age. I’d read that Ella Fitzgerald had performed here, as well as Louis Armstrong.
I looked up at the balcony. This time, I climbed the stairs to the balcony itself. I was at the railing when Luca stepped up beside me with a man I didn’t recognize.
Jules Guidry was the musician from Lafayette who had been in Jackson Square in 2006. He propped his saxophone case against the seat beside him and carried coffee in a foam cup in his opposite hand.
He was a black man in his sixties, tall and broad-shouldered, with gray hair fringing a bald crown. According to Luca, he was a fixture in the city, a jazz musician who wouldn’t bepart of Dominic’s orchestra, but almost everyone present would recognize him on sight.
Jules smiled at me and offered a hand to shake. “This here kid from Jackson Square said you wanted to meet me.”
Luca laughed. “I wasn’t a kid when I met you and put twenty dollars in your case.”
Jules snapped his fingers. “You listened to me play ‘Saints,’ and yeah, you were a skinny kid. Look at you now.”
“I was twenty-five.”
Luca formally introduced us, and Jules assessed me with an open expression. When Luca said Dominic had hired me for security, Jules nodded. “Mr. St. Clair runs a tight ship.”
We asked about 2006.
In a languid storytelling style, he confirmed what Dominic had told us the night before. Henri had made the calls. Jules received one himself. He’d been in Lafayette since the storm, staying with a cousin while trying to decide whether to return to New Orleans.
Henri tracked down his number and called on a Tuesday evening. They talked for forty minutes.
“He didn’t ask me to perform,” Jules said. “He only asked me to come home.”
Jules drove back the following week.
