Page 9 of New Orleans Rush

She was doing it again, assuming the best in someone. Trusting her father had been unequivocal proof her intuition often failed her. Even worse was dealing directly with his loan shark, suggesting he allow her to cover Franklyn Baker’s debt. On layaway. Over ten years. All to save her father from his own bad decisions. The goateed criminal had given her a much shorter deadline, one that came with bodily harm if missed. She had smiled and thanked him. And fled to New Orleans.

Which brought her to the here and now, and another man testing her instincts. She would never again let her father, or any hint of gambling, back into her life. But Huxley could have made a much bigger deal about the damage to his car. He seemed genuinely nice, had put her to bed, fully clothed, under his precious cape. He’d bought her food and coffee. She also had nowhere to live and couldn’t afford rent.

If she asked to sleep in this scarlet dressing room, Huxley would likely request money upfront. Working in the theater, however, might allow her to sneak in and crash in a corner. Not ideal, but better than sleeping in her car.

Decision made, she tossed her keys toward him. “I drive a yellow Beetle.”

He caught them one-handed and smirked. “A bee driving a Beetle. You could make that into a picture book.”

Maybe he wasn’t so harmless. “Or I could use your magic wand and turn you into a blobfish.”

Her threat didn’t keep him from ordering her around. “Rehearsal starts in twenty minutes. Meet me on stage. Don’t be late.”

Her fuzzy head may have been crippling her ability to focus, but she still couldn’t fathom why he’d concocted this arrangement. Who would want a girl with stage fright and no experience working with them? Thoughts of capes and vampires plagued her once more.

As Huxley turned to leave, she asked, “What happened to your last assistant?”

A pirate smile shifted his features into another startling masterpiece. “I sawed her in half.”

4

Huxley’s trip to move his new assistant’s car took longer than intended. Beatrice Baker was a conundrum, one he intended to solve. It didn’t take a genius to know she’d typed gibberish into her phone, when supposedly texting a friend, and her agreement to work for him instead of facing the cops was suspect. Still, he didn’t snoop through her belongings. It wasn’t the civilized thing to do. He did, however, lose track of time once inside her yellow Beetle.

The first thing to hit him was the smell of watermelon. He’d noticed the sweet, fruity aroma last night, whiffs of it curling past his nose when she’d cuddled his arm.

As enticing as the watermelon in the car was, it was the interior of the old Beetle that distracted him most. Small paintings adorned the dashboard and doors, detailed sections of faces, whimsical in nature: a nose and lips here, eyes and eyebrows there, almost like slivers of people lived in the vehicle. Paint splattered the floor. A rainbow dangled from her rear-view mirror. But her steering wheel gave him the most pause.

One word was written on the rim in block letters: SMILE.

He did just that—he smiled. Huxley couldn’t help himself. Like he couldn’t help hitting on her the night they’d met. If the paint caked under his new assistant’s fingernails was any indication, this artwork was hers. An eccentric honeybee.

He wondered what she saw when looking at his face, how she would paint the burn on his eyebrow, the fibrous tissue of his scars. The ugly marks on his chest and abdomen. It made sense now, the way she’d studied him earlier, calling him a Monet as though fascinated. Not the flicker of interest he’d hoped he’d seen. It was how Huxley watched a fellow illusionist, picking apart each movement instead of enjoying the show. He was a curiosity to her. A subject.

The notion disappointed him.

He got lost studying her miniature paintings, picturing Beatrice, brush in hand, bringing these peculiar portraits to life. The corners of his lips lifted again, muscles that had atrophied over the years, until this firecracker had asked to nuzzle his cape. There was just something about her quirky paintings and watermelon smell that affected him while he sat in this unusual car that swelled with her uniqueness.

By the time he parked and walked toward the theater, he was late. Huxley hated being late. Lateness was a sign of irresponsible laziness and disorganization. His brother, Axel, was the poster child for that affliction. Strides quickening, he went to cross the street but stopped halfway. A man in a green Polo-style shirt and khakis was taking photos of his theater. The man dropped the camera around his neck and scribbled on a clipboard. Not a good sign.

A car honked. Huxley finished crossing the street, halting a foot behind the stranger. “Can I help you?”

The man kept scribbling. When he turned, Huxley bit his tongue to keep from cursing. On the right side of the man’s shirt, the name Evans was stitched. On his left side were words that had Huxley running a mental tally of his bank account and every City of New Orleans housing code his theater might have breached: Code Enforcement Inspector.

“The name’s Larry Evans.” The enforcer thrust his hand forward. Huxley returned the handshake robotically as his mind ran a mile a minute. Evans went on, “We had a blight complaint lodged a month ago against this building. I’m documenting the infractions. A hearing will be set afterward, usually thirty days from when we complete a title search on the property. Gotta say”—he shook his head at the deteriorating façade—“you have your work cut out for you.”

“The place is a dump.” Edna Lisowsky shuffled past them with her usual sunny demeanor. His two-hundred-year-old employee had worked the Marlow ticket booth since opening day. Her glasses were twice the size of her face. None of her teeth were her own. But her snake-headed cane doubled as a bludgeoning tool when pesky teens came sniffing around. The brats didn’t give them trouble.

Huxley was scared of the woman, too. “You can work from home anytime you like,” he told her, as he often did. “I’ll reroute calls there. We’ll open the booth in the afternoon instead.”

She shriveled her already shrunken mouth and tapped her cane on the cement. “My husband is at home. All day. Every day. Working in that stuffy booth, in this rundown theater, is a vacation. Come to think of it, you should open seven days a week. Lord knows you need the cash.”

She meandered off, and Huxley dragged a hand down his face. He didn’t need to be told how strapped he was for cash or that the theater was rundown. The shortcomings haunted him daily. The red-and-gold paint job was peeling in sections. The cornices and lintels were chipped, as were the bases of a few decorative columns. Two second-story windows were cracked, the exterior lights had rusted, and the fissures running through the foundation were probably why rats inhabited the building. There was also the broken fire escape and warped gutters.

After trying and failing to upgrade the property over the years, Huxley had studied the ins and outs of code enforcement, researching his worst-case scenarios. If this was a blight complaint, only the exterior would be analyzed, but it would hit hard. Without the cash to fix every violation, he’d be slapped with a Notice of Judgement. The City would put a lien on his theater, and they’d auction off his father’s pride and joy in a sheriff’s sale. If they somehow discovered his electrical wiring and plumbing weren’t up to code, they could shut him down now until it was fixed. Thank God it was only a blight issue.

He faced the enforcer. “Who lodged the complaint?”

Evans checked his clipboard. “A Ms. Loretta Welsh.”