“Registering.” He opened the door and held it open for her. “I’ve got a reservation here.”

“No way,” she said.

“Way. I talked to someone named Freya? She booked me for a week.”

“But you said that you slept in the pickup because you didn’t have a reservation.”

“That was for last night. I think I’m booked in the Garden View Room tonight.”

“Forget it. There’s a Motel Six across town!”

“Sorry, darlin’,” he drawled. “Don’t want to lose my deposit.”

“I’ll give it back to you. Full refund!” God, he couldn’t stay here.

“Too late.” He was already reaching for his duffel bag.

“No way,” Val said, but a sinking sensation rolled over her. Hadn’t Freya pushed to tell her something “important”? Something about Slade. “Look, this isn’t going to work. I don’t care what happened, but you can’t stay here,” she said just as she noticed a television van for a local TV station turning down the street. “Oh, no.” Somehow the press had sniffed out that she was a murder victim’s sister. Already. “Oh, great,” she muttered under her breath, and stepped inside where a few guests hovered in the lobby.

One man in his eighties with a big, toothy smile waved at her.

“Good morning,” Val said, though it was anything but.

“Morning!” His wife, a little, birdlike woman who wore visors in her perfectly coiffed white hair, grinned widely and slipped a pair of pink-rimmed sunglasses onto her nose. “We’re off to the French Quarter!”

“Enjoy.” Val forced a smile she didn’t feel as the couple walked out the front door, and Freya swept into the foyer. One glance to the front walk caused her to grimace.

“Oh, God, Val, I’m so sorry.” Her face was a mask of sadness, and she threw her arms around Valerie.

“Thanks.” Val fought an onslaught of tears and the need to collapse as the doorbell rang. “Oh,” she groaned, assuming some perky reporter was on the other side of the vestibule.

“Don’t worry, I’ll handle it.” Slade dropped his bag near an umbrella stand, walked to the door, and opened it, filling the doorway with his long frame.

“Brenda Convoy with WKAM. I’m looking for Valerie Renard.” An evenly modulated woman’s voice slid through the crack, and Val caught a glimpse of a slim, twenty something woman with a wedge of short black hair and big doe eyes.

“She’s busy,” he said, not budging.

“And you are?”

“Her husband.”

She brightened. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask a few questions about a story we’re following. One of the nuns at St. Marguerite’s Convent was killed last night—”