Wet Grave — Barbara Hambly

It's July 1835 and the relentless heat has slowed New Orleans to a standstill. When a once beautiful society mistress is found slashed to death in the city's most lawless quarter, there are few to care. But one is Benjamin January, who still recalls her blazing ebony beauty at a demimonde banquet years ago. Who would want to kill this woman now? Could it be one of the sexual predators who roamed the dark and seedy streets? Or was her killer someone she knew? Ben and Rose Vitrac, the woman he loves, fear the workings of a serpentine mind and a treacherous plot. Now they are fugitives of color in the stormy bayous and marshes of slave-stealer country, headed for smugglers' haunts and sinister plantations, where one false step. could lead to a...wet grave.