Saria made a small sound in the back of her throat. Her face was so white it was nearly gray. That was his woman. Smart. Quick on the uptake. She’d come to the same conclusion as he had.

“Mahieu,” she whispered.

Remy shook his head. “Don’t worry about him, cher, he’s leopard. None of these people ever saw it comin’ and had no chance.”

“We need to go the Mercier house so we can be certain,” Drake cautioned. “The team’s at the Marsh, baby. If there her ow sign of someone murdered, they would have found it by now. And Mahieu would never meet her alone in the marsh. You know he’s smarter than that.”

“Charisse, we need your permission to search your house and the grounds,” Remy said.

Charisse looked up with tear-drenched eyes, glanced at Saria and then nodded.

Chapter 20

20

BEHIND the magnificent mansion that had been built as an obvious showpiece, the crumbling remains of a longforgotten plantation home lay partially buried by the creeping vines and heavy brush of the swamp. Charisse’s laboratory had been constructed in part of the foundation of the original plantation house. Most of the earlier structure was crumbling and eaten away by worms or rotted by the dirt and vines of the swamp as it reclaimed its land.

Charisse used sections of the older house to connect between the greenhouse and her laboratory. Their contractor had preserved one long room to serve as a hall between the two new buildings. Not only did the long room keep the rain off, but it gave Charisse a large storage area for the equipment both for her laboratory and greenhouse.

Drake led the way through the laboratory to the storage room, heading toward the greenhouse. Obviously the killer had spent time in the greenhouse and it was possible they could find something to lead them to wherever the opium was being placed in the soaps that had been manufactured in town.

“Wait,” Charisse whispered as they moved through the darkened storage room. The early morning light couldn’t penetrate the layers of dirt and grime on the windows. She stepped out of the line and placed her hand on the wall. “Can you smell that? Blood. I can smell blood. It’s faint but it’s this way.”

“That’s a wall, Charisse,” Remy felt compelled to point out.

She shook her head. “I used to play in there when I was a child. It’s a hidden passage that was for the servants long ago when this area was a plantation. There’s a narrow hallway that leads downstairs to a rambling, condemned series of rooms that had been used at one time to house slaves. I haven’t been down there for years, but I can smell the blood. I’m certain, Drake.”