The Forbidden (Krewe of Hunters #34) - Heather Graham Page 0,4
There are tons of local projects now. I’ve got a callback for that new TV series that’s due to film soon. I love the character. She’s kick-ass. Way tougher than I am, but, apparently, I have the look they want.”
He smiled and nodded. “You look great,” he said. “Considering we were all out on Bourbon Street last night.”
“I left after that drink we all had together. My favorite music is often on Magazine Street or Frenchman Street—not that they don’t have great bands on Bourbon. But I was tired. I knew it would be a long day today.”
“I didn’t even say good-night.”
“That’s because you were chatting with that cute guy from New Jersey at Pat O’Brien’s!”
“Okay, so, yeah.” He frowned. “I just don’t see it, though.”
“Don’t see what?”
“Cindy not showing up. No matter how late she was out. She is usually so professional.”
“She probably overslept.”
“She’d still be up by now.”
“I’m sure she’s got a reason—and she’ll make it up to Boris. She’ll have an explanation. I’ll admit I’m happy Lauren worked today.”
“Well, anyway,” Kevin said, pausing to sweep his arm around to indicate all of the cemetery, “I’ve brought you to my office here for a reason.”
“Oh?”
“I just wanted to thank you, thank you, thank you!” Kevin said excitedly. “This part is going to mean so much for me.”
“You’re perfect for it. It’s got nothing to do with me.”
“Boris wanted you, too,” Kevin told her. “I’m pretty sure we were a package deal.”
They had wandered more deeply into the old place. It really was so hauntingly pretty. Angels wept. Obelisks rose to the sky. Elegant tombs crouched in the lingering sunlight.
Looking ahead, Avalon paused. There was someone else in the cemetery. Playing a joke, or perhaps trying to surprise Boris, or something.
She looked back. She could see Boris, Terry, Leo and Brad were looking at a monitor, reviewing some of the camerawork. “Are they filming a backup scene of what we just shot?” she asked Kevin.
“No way. They got dozens of angles on everything. Why?”
“Then...who is that? What’s going on?”
Ahead of them, slightly to the left of one of the grand family tombs, was a sarcophagus tomb, just like the one she had been lying on.
She blinked. Was it a ghost, playing a trick? Enjoying the moviemaking, and being dramatic?
No...not a ghost. Flesh and blood.
An actress was there, stretched out upon the tomb just as Avalon had been on the other.
Long white gown, dark hair...the palest flesh.
Curious, drawn, but feeling a sense of dread, Avalon moved toward the tomb. A thought weighed in her mind: had Lauren Carlson outdone herself again?
The woman on the tomb was stunning and terrifying.
No, Lauren had left.
Avalon began to run.
She reached the tomb, and the woman lying there upon it.
Flesh and blood...
Pinpricks in the skin at the throat.
The woman wasn’t just as pale as alabaster death...she was dead.
Cindy West had an excuse for not being on set that morning.
She was dead.
Avalon began to scream.
* * *
They just had to be filming a movie.
The corpse could have so easily been a part of it—she was laid out beautifully.
Finley Stirling stood a slight distance away, watching as the medical examiner did his preliminary work, shaking his head as he looked at the corpse, then looking up at Finley next to Detective Ryder Stapleton.
Christy Island had no police force of its own. It was privately owned, and while other mainland facilities were closer, there had never been any crimes committed on the little island—so many years before, it had been put under the jurisprudence of the Orleans Parish Police Department.
The commissioner had called Ryder, who was with the NOPD. Ryder had called Adam Harrison at the FBI; he knew Adam had team members in the vicinity and the case was strange enough for Adam’s Krewe of Hunters unit. Fin figured Ryder had asked specifically for one of his agents because the crime was macabre.
When Fin had received the assignment from Adam Harrison that morning, he’d learned Ryder thought his being called in on a murder an hour to the south and west of NOLA made no sense, either. But he’d been made lead in the investigation of the murder on the island, and that was that.
Fin knew Detective Stapleton by reputation: he’d worked alongside the Krewe on the recent “Axeman’s Protégé” case. Ryder was a good guy—the kind of person who became a cop to help people and not for any kind of power trip. That he cared about his work showed; he was in his midthirties, just