He walked up and down, up and down.
He knew the police had searched, but things would have been a lot more chaotic then, with Jeff being rushed to the hospital, and both Rowdy and Lily in shock, unable to speak with much coherency.
He walked down a couple of blocks and then walked back slowly. He did it three times. The attacker could easily have picked up his shells, but bullets didn’t just disappear.
He returned to his original position.
Then he looked at the tree.
It was scrawny; he actually had no idea what kind of tree it was. He looked at the two square feet of dirt in which the tree sat in its oasis amid the concrete. Ducking down, he searched through the dirt with his fingers.
“What the hell?” a passerby murmured.
The man at her side whispered back, “It’s New Orleans. Just keep walking.”
There was nothing in the dirt. Quinn slowly rose and realized that he was staring right at a bullet that had pounded its way straight into the trunk of the scraggly little tree.
He pulled out his knife and the handkerchief he kept folded in a pocket for just such occasions. In less than a minute he had the flattened bullet cut from the trunk, along with a few chips of wood. He kept searching and was soon rewarded; the second bullet was lodged higher and covered by the few leaves that sprang from the bony branches.
He had them both. The attacker had found his casings, all right. But not even he had known where to find the bullets.
“May you prosper and live forever,” he told the tree then turned to hurry back across Esplanade to the French Quarter and then toward the station.
*
The Cheshire Cat was quiet, and everything seemed to be going smoothly when Danni returned from visiting Natasha. Wolf greeted her enthusiastically. There was no living being in her life—Quinn included, she thought—who greeted her with the same display of love that Wolf gave her. Dogs were the best, their love unconditional. Whether she’d been gone a few days or a few hours, Wolf greeted her in a way that let her know how much he loved her.
“Anything new?” Billie asked as she bent down, scratching the dog behind his ears.
“We’re going to become musicians,” she said, one eye on the two women who were studying the Egyptian display.
“Overnight?” Billie asked politely. “And just what instrument will you be playing, Danni Cafferty?”
“I have no idea, but I’ll be faking something,” she said. “Natasha said we have to become part of the music scene. Anyway, I’m going to head down to the basement for a bit. You all right there?”
“If a horde walks in, I’ll call for you,” he assured her.
Danni headed out of the shop, Wolf trotting by her side. When she was there, he was always at her heels. She didn’t mind. In fact, she liked it.
She passed her studio and glanced in; the canvas she was currently working on—a view of the river—sat on its easel. It would have to sit there for a while longer, she thought then paused, looking thoughtful. During their previous cases, her artwork had proved to be very important. She abhorred the fact, but she was known to sleepwalk—and sleep-draw or even sleep-paint. She didn’t know if she illustrated what her subconscious mind was trying to tell her or what the inspiration was, and sometimes she had no idea what the resulting artwork meant. But sometimes, when she looked closely at what she had created, she could see what had been there all along that they simply hadn’t noticed.
She decided to put away her watercolor of the river and set out a fresh canvas.