Fallen (Seven Deadly Sins #2)(13)
Author: Erin McCarthy

But she didn’t see herself begging off the plans either.

Gabriel had stopped walking and was taking his lens cap off again.

“Is that the house?” He was staring across the street at an innocuous light blue structure that came right up to the sidewalk like all the buildings in the French Quarter. The house had darker blue shutters closed tightly on both the bottom and top floors. Only the little third-floor dormers were open to light. While it certainly looked old, it wasn’t decrepit. A little tired maybe, but not falling down. “It doesn’t look very big.”

“It’s not. Just a parlor, which was for gambling and drinking, a private salon that served as Madame’s office, and six small rooms for the girls on the second floor. Madame Conti used the third floor as her private suite.”

“There were only six prostitutes working there? From that article I read I got the impression there were more.”

“There were. Only not every girl was entitled to her own room. Some doubled up. And some entertained their clients in the parlor.”

The image of that made Sara grimace. Sometimes she thought modern women had a glamorized vision of bordellos, but the truth didn’t sound at all sensual or glamorous. It sounded cheap and dirty. A hard and dangerous way to eek out a living. “And a lot of the street was similar houses?”

“Yes.”

“I wonder what led women to prostitution,” she mused out loud. What had caused her great-great-grandmother, Anne Donovan, to feel such desperation? Or had she actually enjoyed it, sought it out? Likely Sara would never know.

“Drugs, alcohol, poverty, rebelliousness. Not much different than now.” Gabriel squatted down on the sidewalk and lifted his camera.

“Are you a photographer too?” she asked, realizing he had said these shots were for the book.

“No. It’s just easier to take my own photos.”

But he did have an eye for it. Sara could see that. He shifted to the left, looked up at the sky, in and out of the lens, adjusting his shots, adjusting his zoom lens.

“It’s not called number twenty-five anymore.” There was an address plate above the mailbox, to the right of the door, with its single brick step leading down to the walk. It was a quiet street, with no traffic and little activity. The light blue house looked lonely, lacking in foliage or flowers. “Do the owners know a murder happened here?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never spoken to the owner. The house is owned by a trust, and when I contacted the lawyer in charge of it, he gave me a big old no when I asked permission to take interior photos. He tried to tell me the crime happened in the house next door.”

“How do you know it didn’t?”

He turned and looked up at her. His dark eyes were unreadable. “Trust me. I know. I do my research.”

Sara shivered. The hair on her arms had suddenly gone up, even though it was an easy eighty-five degrees. She looked past him to the house again. “What do you know about Anne Donovan? How did she end up here? Drugs, alcohol, or poverty? Or all of the above?”

“From witness accounts of her behavior, it was poverty. No one mentions drugs or alcohol at all.”

“In relation to her. They said her lover used opium and alcohol.”

“Yes. Absinthe in particular.”

The heat and humidity were bothering Sara, which had to be caused by the lack of sleep. She was used to the air feeling like a wet towel on her head, since she had spent the majority of her life in Southern Florida. But she felt like she needed some water desperately, dizziness creeping up on her in unexpected waves. There was also a persistent ache in her right side that she thought might feel better if she wasn’t standing, so she forced herself to squat down on the sidewalk next to Gabriel. Pulling her skirt over her knees, she found her balance. She didn’t actually want her legs or backside to make contact with the ground.

“Is absinthe alcohol? I think I’ve heard of it, but I’m not sure.”

“It’s the famed Green Fairy, an alcoholic drink made with oil of wormwood, and served diluted with sugar water. It was thought to have hallucinogenic and addictive properties, so it was made illegal in the early twentieth century.”

“Does it?” Sara turned to Gabriel, wobbling slightly. She wasn’t strong enough to hold herself up without effort, though he wasn’t having any problem.

Gabriel stared back, close enough to her that she could see the faint blond stubble on his chin. “It’s addictive in the sense that once you’ve been to that place where you feel brilliant and charming, intelligent and attractive, you want to revisit it frequently. And eventually you never want to leave.”

Then he stood up, abruptly, and crossed the street without looking either way. It had almost sounded like he had personal experience with addiction himself. Or maybe she was just reading that into everyone because she was so hyperaware from her own problems. With the sleeping pills, she hadn’t wanted to feel intelligent and attractive, she had just wanted to sleep. Hard. To escape. And there had come a time when she hadn’t wanted to wake up, to get out of bed, and that had scared her. That’s when she’d gone to rehab.

Maybe Gabriel had a story. Maybe he didn’t. Sara watched him take pictures of the front door, of the shutters, of the street going right and left, and the street sign. It was a strange surreal moment, the lonely, lovely little house behind him, sagging under the weight of its history, yet forging ahead, while Gabriel paced in the sunlight. He was an odd juxtaposition—fast and sporadic when he was in motion, yet completely and utterly still when he wasn’t—and she liked to watch him. If anyone had told Sara two years ago she would be hunched down on the dirty cobblestones in New Orleans staring at a true crime writer she would have laughed. She hadn’t expected to go anywhere, least of all this city. Yet her life had irrevocably changed and she had arrived in this moment for better or for worse.

The sky was fabulously blue behind the house, white clouds floating by, framing the roof. The third-floor windows were dusty, but the light was hitting them, enough so that when her eye roamed over the left window, she could see that a man was staring straight back at her from behind the glass. Sara lost her balance and fell sideways onto the sidewalk, her heart racing. No one had been there before, she was sure of it. She caught herself and looked back up at the window. There was nothing there now.

“Gabriel!” she called, though she wasn’t sure why. It was probably just the owner, curious to see who was out on the street. Who was staring at his house.