Page 2 of One Last Regret

Sean is a private investigator. He had a practice in Wales before we met. He put it on hold to help me find Annie, and when I decided months ago to stop searching for her, he opened a new practice in Boston so he could stay with me. When I resumed my search, I told him to keep his practice. I would have felt terrible asking him to put his life on hold again. It’s enough to have him near me, and besides, he helps when I ask.

He chuckles at my question. “What would you say if I told you that the Cheetah Fur was in Mrs. Owens’s closet this entire time?”

“I would tell you that I’m not surprised.”

“Nor am I. She was quite put off when I informed her that I would still charge my fee despite the fact that it was her own stupidity and not a criminal act that resulted in the loss of her cheetah fur.”

“I’m sure she was.”

I open the coat closet to hang his coat in its proper place. Unless it has rained or snowed outside, I see no reason to clutter the foyer with our coats and boots. “Do you think she’ll be prosecuted?”

“I doubt it,” Sean replies. “The police don’t want to bother with cases like that. She’ll probably be fined, and if she doesn’t pay it, they’ll probably just drop the case.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate for cheetah lovers.”

“It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way it goes.”

I start to close the door, but I stop when I see a scrap of paper poking out from underneath one of the floorboards. I carefully remove it from a crack in between two of the boards.

It’s a playbill. Or a portion of a playbill. It advertises that a musical act called Jasper Jones and the Jazz Kittens will play at the Kensington Jazz House in New Orleans. The date of the show is twenty-eight years ago.

Why would this be in my house? My mother hated jazz, and my father didn’t care much for music in general. I was fond of jazz for a time, but I’ve never been to New Orleans, and Annie… well, I can’t remember what music she was into, and anyway, she disappeared nearly two years before this date.

An image floods my mind, visceral and vivid. I gasp as I see my sister, her body swaying as she played a tenor saxophone, her face twisted in the fervor of the piece, her soul swept away by the music.

“Mary? Mary!”

Sean pulls me from the closet, and my vision vanishes. He cups my face and looks in my eyes. “Are you all right?”

I nod and reply breathlessly. “Yes. Yes, I’m fine.” I take a deep breath and add, “I want to go to New Orleans.”

“New Orleans? Why?”

“Call it a hunch. I believe I’ll find evidence of my sister there.”

“In New Orleans?” His eyes fall to the floor where the playbill now rests against his boots. “Because of that?”

He stoops down and picks the playbill up. “Well, the date fits. This would be soon after she left California. But she never returned here. Why do you think she went to New Orleans?”

“I don’t know,” I tell him, “but I’m sure.”

He frowns, clearly not agreeing with my reasoning. He knows, however, not to argue with me anymore when I am determined to do something.

“All right. I’ll pack you a bag.”

CHAPTER ONE

I would blame no one for thinking me a hypocrite if I were to assert that fate intervenes by finding me a position in New Orleans less than a week after my arrival in the city. I don’t need money, but I do need information, and the family who hires me happens to have a long and storied history in the local jazz scene.

Marcel Lacroix is a man of no small renown in the world of jazz. An accomplished pianist, his career saw him work with the most celebrated names in the genre in addition to amassing a very respectful discography of his own. He was taken from us five years ago, victim of a heart attack in the middle of a performance, but his wife, Josephine, maintains an active presence in the scene as a connoisseur and occasional financier.

It cannot be coincidence that we meet at a local record store and I find that she has need of a governess for her twin grandchildren. Their mother is dead, and their father is often away on business. She is elderly, so she needs help with their day-to-day care.

Early in my life, I wished to be a psychologist. I believed my childhood with dysfunctional parents and a sister clearly impacted by her father’s indifference and her mother’s cruelty inspired me to want to understand the way people think and feel.

Once Annie leaves, however, I suffer a breakdown and spend eleven weeks involuntarily committed in a sanitarium. I remember only a little of my time there, but what I experienced must have been enough to turn me off to the profession because not only did I change my focus to education and become a schoolteacher instead, but I also developed a deep-seated distrust of psychologists that persists to this day.

I spent twenty-five years as a schoolteacher, but for reasons I’m not entirely sure of myself, I develop an urge to learn onceand for all what happened to my sister. I should mention that I only learned recently that she left Boston of her own accord. Prior to that, I knew only that she had disappeared.

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