He was right. Time to let it go, move on.
“I must be hungry,” she said, pasting on a smile she imagined looked just like Blackwood’s receptionist’s. “How about we see if that pizza place has any slices?”
Chapter Fourteen
10:25 A.M.
Micki sat at her newly appointed desk. Mardi Gras weekend had passed in a purple, green, and gold blur. The weather had been fabulous, the crowds huge but thankfully, peaceful. Fat Tuesday had become Ash Wednesday. A day of regrouping and reflection. Of cleaning up, literally and figuratively.
She’d made her official transition to the Eighth. Very little fanfare. Quiet day. One of the quietest of the year, Carmine had told her. Everybody was either doing penance or nursing a hangover. A bad one.
The quiet had given her too much time to think. Her mind kept going back to Vanderlund, splattered with blood, crown perched atop her head. Chablis sprawled on the sidewalk, confused and weeping. And Renee Blackwood’s calm, evenly modulated voice as she explained why psychotic breaks occur.
Carmine sauntered in, carrying a mangled pastry box and sporting a cross-shaped black smudge on his forehead. He eyed her. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“You’ve got that look on your face.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “We’ve been partners less than a week, and you already know my ‘looks’?”
“Mmm hmm.” He set the box on his desk and turned back to her. “You’re chewin’ hard on something.”
“Can’t stop thinking about Vanderlund, Chablis, and—”
“Blackwood.”
“Right.” Micki thrummed her fingers on the desk. “Why can’t I let this go? Accept the win and move on?”
“You want there to be more to the story. Don’t know why, partner, seems like a major energy suck to me.”
She changed the subject. “What’s in the box?”
“Leftover king cake. Wife wanted it out of the house. Want a piece?”
“Hell, yeah. Maybe it’ll improve my mood.”
He laughed and a moment later handed her a piece on a brown paper towel.
Processed white flour, sticky icing, sugar sprinkles dyed purple, green, and gold: a dietician’s nightmare. She took a bite. “Have you noticed most king cake tastes like crap?”
He took a huge bite. “Yeah.”
“Then why do we love it?”
“Tradition, Dare. It’d be wrong not to.”
Maybe that was it, she thought. The reason why she couldn’t let go. Murder investigations weren’t supposed to fall so neatly into place. She wanted to complicate things, make there be more to the story.
No. She wanted the shrink to be the bad guy. What was it about the woman that seriously rubbed her the wrong way?
What the Me-Oh-My bartender had said in defense of his friend popped in her head. Mind control. At the time she’d laughed it off, focused on having made the connection between the two murders.
Micki turned to her computer and googled Hypnotherapy New Orleans. A list of practitioners popped up. And there, large as life, was Dr. Renee Blackwood’s name.
“Son of a bitch.”
“What?”
“She lied. Blackwood—when I asked her if she practiced hypnotherapy. She told me it wasn’t her area.”
Mickie turned the monitor his way. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he sighed. “You’re going to make more work for us, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not.” She returned her gaze to the screen. “Absolutely not.”
She wasn’t going to make more work for anybody but herself.
***
Micki decided to swing by Blackwood’s office on her way home. Never mind that the Uptown address was nowhere near where she lived. She’d spent the afternoon—between a call to the scene of a domestic dispute and an armed robbery—researching hypnosis and hypnotherapy in an attempt to ascertain whether what she was thinking was even a possibility.
Could someone be programmed through hypnosis to commit a crime?
She had learned that under the right set of circumstances, it was plausible.
Plausible didn’t seem like a helluva lot to go on, but it was all she had.
Micki got lucky. She caught Blackwood’s smiling receptionist, locking up for the day. Micki tapped her horn to get the woman’s attention, then did a U-turn to swing into the parking lot.
“Hi,” Micki said, climbing out of her car. “Pam, right?”
The woman did not look happy to see her. “Yes.”
“You might not remember me, I’m—”
“I remember you. Detective Dare. Dr. Blackwood’s gone for the day.”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“Your boss.”
She shook her head. “I have nothing to say.”
“Is she good to work for?”
“She pays me well.”
“Which doesn’t answer my question. Is she a good therapist?”
“I guess so. Her appointment book is full and her clients keep coming back.”
The receptionist unlocked her car and swung open the door. Micki noticed that, like the other day, her hands were shaking. “Do I make you nervous, Pam? Because I’m a cop?”
“Of course not.”