“And very nice underwear it is,” says Dr. Lenz, looking at the cream silk bikinis.

“Come on, tape it on.”

“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” Lenz protests.

“Give me that,” snaps Baxter.

He takes the transmitter from Lenz, and under the close scrutiny of the other two leans over and tapes the transmitter and antenna securely to my inner thigh, high enough to give me goose bumps despite my bravado about modesty. When he’s done, he hands me the tiny microphone, which is connected to the transmitter by a thin wire.

“Run that under your waistband and up to your bra.”

“Why don’t you guys shut your eyes for this part?”

They do, and I secure the mike between the cups of my Maidenform with the tiny clip attached to it. “Ready or not,” I say softly. “Let’s do it.”

They open their eyes, and Kaiser opens the back door.

“Remember,” says Baxter. “You get a weird vibe, sing out, and the cavalry will bust in there.”

“Nothing’s going to happen.”

Laveau’s rooming house needs a new roof and a coat of paint, neither of which it’s likely to get in the next ten years. The door to her second-floor apartment stands at the head of some rickety wooden steps attached to the peeling clapboard exterior of the house. I cling to the handrail as I climb the steps, since I’m about as comfortable in heels as I would be in snowshoes. The door and facing are scarred from years of careless tenants. I knock loudly and wait. After a moment, I hear footsteps.

“Who is it?” calls a voice muffled by the wood.

“My name is Jordan Glass. I want to talk to you about your paintings.”

Silence. Then: “I don’t know you. How did you know where to find me?”

“Roger Wheaton sent me.”

There’s a sound of bolts sliding back; then the door opens to the length of a chain lock. One dark eye peeks out and examines me.

“Who did you say you are?”

So much for my face rattling her into a confession. “Ms. Laveau, do you know about the women who’ve been disappearing from New Orleans over the past eighteen months? Two were taken from Tulane.”

“Do I know about them? I’ve been carrying a gun for three months. What about them?”

“One of them was my sister.”

The dark eye blinks. “I’m sorry. But what does that have to do with me?”

“I found some paintings of the victims. The paintings were in Hong Kong, but the FBI found special sable paintbrush hairs stuck in the paint, and they traced them to Roger Wheaton’s program at Tulane.”

The eye widens, then blinks twice. “That’s crazy. Paintings of the kidnapped women?”

“Yes. They’re all nudes, and the women are posed like they’re either asleep or dead. Ms. Laveau, I’m trying to find out if my sister is alive or dead, and the FBI is helping me. Or letting me help them, rather.”

“Why would they do that?”

I feel odd talking to a crack in a door, but I’ve done it more than once in my life, and you work with what you have. “Because my sister and I were identical twins. The FBI is parading me in front of suspects, hoping I’ll rattle the killer into revealing himself.”

“Or herself?” asks Laveau. “Is that what you’re telling me? That I’m a murder suspect because of some brush hairs?”

“No one really believes you’re involved, but the fact that you have access to these special brushes forces the FBI to try to rule you out.”

“I guess you want to come in?”

“I’d like to, if you’ll talk to me.”

“Is my choice you or the FBI?”

“That’s pretty much it, yes.”

The eye disappears, and I hear her sigh. The door closes, the chain rattles, and then the door opens again. I slip through before she can change her mind, and she shuts it behind me.

Facing Thalia Laveau at last, I realize how misleading the photograph of her was. In the pictures I saw last night, her black hair looked cornsilk fine, but it must be kinkier than that, because today it’s done in long thick strings that look like dreadlocks but aren’t, and that hang almost to her midriff. Her skin is as light as mine, despite her African blood, but her eyes are a piercing black. She’s wearing a colorful robe that looks Caribbean, and her expression is that of a woman comfortable in her own skin and amused by the pretensions of others. The overall effect is exotic, as though she were a beautiful priestess of some obscure tribe.

“Why don’t you come into the back?” she says, waving at the tiny front room. “There’s not enough room in here to cuss a cat without getting fur in your mouth.”

Her voice is throaty and devoid of accent, which tells me she’s worked hard to get rid of the sound of her childhood. I follow her through an empty door frame into a larger room.

I half expected a den filled with beads, incense smoke, and voodoo charms, but instead I find a conventional room furnished with rather spartan taste. There’s a comfortable sofa, which she motions me to, and a chair with an ottoman, which she takes. After she sits, a heavy striped cat that looks half wild creeps out from behind her chair. It gives me a suspicious glare, then leaps onto Laveau’s thighs, preens, and settles into her lap. Laveau tucks her feet beneath her and strokes it between the ears. She sits with remarkable ease, watching me as though she could wait forever for me to explain myself.

On the wall behind her is a painting of the St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square. This surprises me, because the cathedral is probably the most overpainted image in New Orleans, done and redone by students and hacks who hawk them to the tourists in Jackson Square. It seems an unlikely adornment for the apartment of a serious artist, though this rendering seems several cuts above the usual.

“Did you paint that?” I ask.

Laveau chuckles softly. “Frank Smith painted it, as a joke.”

“A joke?”

“I told him he wasn’t a New Orleans artist until he’d painted the cathedral, so he took an easel, walked down to the square, and sat for four hours. You never saw anything like it. By noon all the artists in the square had gathered round him like the Pied Piper. They couldn’t believe how good he was.”

“That sounds like him.”

“You’ve talked to Frank?”

“Yes.” Suddenly self-conscious, I pull my skirt down over my knees to be sure she can’t see the transmitter taped to my thigh.

“Who else?”

“Roger Wheaton. Gaines.”

“So, you saved me for last. Is that good or bad?”

“The FBI suspects you the least.”

She smiles, revealing white teeth with a hint of gold toward the back. “That’s good to know. Did your plan work? Did any of the others freak out when they saw you?”

“It’s hard to say.”

Laveau nods, acknowledging the fact that I can’t be completely candid about some things. “Were you close to your sister?”

The question takes me aback, but I see no reason to lie. “Not in the way most sisters would say they were. But I loved her.”

“Good. What was your name again?”

“Jordan. Jordan Glass.”

“I like that.”

“However things were between my sister and me, I have to find out what happened to her.”

“I understand. Do you think she could still be alive?”

“I don’t know. Will you help me find out?”

“How can I?”

“By telling me what you know about some things.”

Her lips disappear between her teeth, and for the first time she looks uncomfortable. “Talk about my friends, you mean?”

“Is Leon Gaines your friend?”

She wrinkles her lip in distaste.

“May I call you Thalia?”

“Yes.”

“I won’t lie to you, Thalia. After I leave, the police are going to come here and question you about your whereabouts on the nights the women disappeared. Will you have any trouble giving alibis for those nights?”

“I don’t know. I spend a lot of time alone.”