Page 50 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

“Then we’ve got a bigger problem than a conversation can fix.”

“And if she’s being used?”

“Then somebody’s putting a woman who buries children and grandmothers in danger without her knowing it, and I’d rather handle that quiet than loud.”

I nodded, filing that away—Kaisen thinking two steps past the obvious, same as he always had.

Fontenot’s sat on a quiet stretch of Elysian Fields, a squat brick building with white columns out front that had probably looked grand sixty years ago and now just looked well-kept—the kind of place that took care of what it had instead of chasing something newer. A small lot on the side held a hearse and two black sedans, all three washed clean enough to catch the morning light. A hand-painted sign, gold letters on black, read FONTENOT’S FUNERAL HOME — SERVING NEW ORLEANS FAMILIES SINCE 1961.

I parked across the street, and we sat a minute, watching. Nothing moved out front. A light was on somewhere toward the back of the building, past the main chapel windows, the kind of light that told you somebody was already inside working, even though the front door had closed.

“How you want to play it?” I asked.

“Not through the front. Not yet.” Kaisen was already looking past the building, toward the alley that ran along the side to what had to be a loading area. “I want to see the back before anybody knows we’re here. Delivery entrance, refrigerated storage, whatever vehicles they got parked back there. We go through the front first. We’re just two men asking questions. Fontaine’s got no reason to answer.”

“You thought this through.”

“I think everything through now,” he said, and there wasn’t a drop of humor in it. “It’s all I got left to do.”

I didn’t have an answer for that one, so I didn’t try to find one. We got out, crossed the street at an angle that kept us out of the sightline from the front windows, and walked the length of the building toward the alley Kaisen had already clocked from the truck. The smell hit before we made the corner—flowers, heavy and sweet, laid over something colder underneath, chemical, clinical, the smell every funeral home carries no matter how many roses they put out front to cover it.

The alley opened onto a small loading dock, concrete and chipped paint, wide enough for a single vehicle to back in and unload without being seen from the street.

The back door was a steel frame with a keypad lock and a dead bolt, both newer than the rest of the building. Kaisen looked at the keypad, then at me.

“You want to knock?” he said.

“No.”

I pulled the override device from my jacket—same one Teal used on secured loading docks during the Tchoupitoulas job—and held it against the panel. Took eleven seconds. The dead bolt was manual, which meant somebody had left it unlatched from the inside.

I pushed the door open slowly and we went in.

The back corridor smelled like the same combination out front, just stronger. Fluorescent lights ran the length of the hallway, half of them off. Prep room on the left, door propped open. Records room on the right, locked.

I went to the cold storage first.

The keypad on this one was different—newer model, commercial grade, the kind with a fourteen-digit code and an audit log. I looked at the hinges, the seal around the door frame, the way the floor had been scuffed in a half-circle pattern consistent with regular use. More traffic than four or five bodies a month would explain.

The lock I couldn’t bypass without the code or more time than we had.

I turned to the prep room.

Kaisen was already inside, moving methodically—cabinets, drawers, the shelving along the back wall. He wasn’t rushing. He picked up a supply log from the counter and flipped through it, page by page, his face flat, reading without expression. He did it the way he used to do everything, which was with his full attention, but the energy was different now. Like something he was doing because it was next on a list inside his head.

“Supply orders,” he said, setting the log down. “Refrigerant purchases going back six months. Volume’s up forty percent from the same period last year.”

“She billing the estate accounts for it?”

“No. Cash payments. Logged as equipment maintenance.”

That was enough. Not proof of what was moving through that cold storage, but enough to confirm that somebody was managing this off the books with enough care that it looked boring.

The records room took longer. Kaisen worked the lock while I went through the hearse bay. Two vehicles. Both clean. I checked the undersides, the cargo areas, the wheel wells. The first one was empty. The second one had a false floor in the cargo bay—shallow, maybe four inches, currently holding nothing but a folded tarp and two heavy-duty zip ties.

Not Rahsaan. Not tonight. But recently.

I came back to find Kaisen standing outside the records room with the door open and a ledger in his hand.