Authors: Greg Herren
“My God,” Frank breathed, the words barely audible.
“And you also don’t know how long it’s been there. It could have been there for months, years even.” Taylor stood there, his arms folded, a smug look on his face.
“Good thinking, Taylor, but Colin scans the apartment every couple of days when he’s home—and I know he scanned the place right before he left two days ago,” I said, and when his face fell, I added, “But it was very good thinking, Taylor—you’re a natural at this!” He preened, which broke my heart just a little bit. Clearly, praise wasn’t something he was used to.
What is wrong with your parents?
I wondered for maybe the millionth time since I’d met him.
He’s bright, smart, healthy, good-looking—everything a parent would want. Why is gay such a crime to people like that?
“Well, we need a plan of attack,” I said, standing up and starting to pace. I always think better when I’m in motion. “Rain, you want to do some Internet research, maybe find out if anyone who has a grudge against me might be out of jail?”
“I can do that,” Taylor said, whipping his smartphone out of his pocket.
“Easier for Rain,” I replied, shaking my head. “She knows who to look for. Frank, you’re going to have to make a list of people with a grudge against you.” Frank had never, in all the years we’d been together, told me anything about any of the cases he’d worked as a special agent. The only one I knew anything about was the one he was working when we met. Come to think of it, I didn’t know much about Frank’s past—but that was something to think about later, once we’d found Dad. “And see whatever you can find out about the deduct box, Rain—anything, fact, fiction, legend, rumor—anything.” I looked over at Taylor. “You have a driver’s license, right?” He nodded. “Taylor and I are going to go interview Dr. Fleming.”
“What?” Frank exploded. “No way! He needs to stay here! I can—”
I cut Frank off. “No, baby, I want you to stay here with Mom, in case the kidnappers call again—you need to be here.” I held up my hand as he started to bluster again. “You’re trained to deal with kidnappers, aren’t you? You’re the best person for that job. Taylor and I will be fine.”
“I can handle it.”
We all turned to look at Mom. She was standing in the hallway, wiping her eyes. She looked terrible, the worse I’ve ever seen her look. It was like all the fighting spirit had been sapped right out of her. She looked haggard, worn, and tired. She was wearing a ratty old LSU football jersey and a pair of sweatpants that belonged in the garbage. Her hair, usually so tightly controlled in her long braid, had come loose and she hadn’t bothered to rebraid it. As we watched, she walked into the room, picked up a dead joint out of the ashtray, and relit it, taking a long, deep, healthy drag. She closed her eyes and held the smoke in for so long I began to wonder if she’d stopped breathing, before she expelled it in a huge plume that seemed to fill the room. She opened her eyes and smiled at us all. Her face slowly came back into itself and her eyes came to life.
“Yeah, I’m ready for those fuckers.” Her smile chilled me a little bit, and I hoped, for their sake, the kidnappers never came face-to-face with her. “Sorry.” She shook her head, the braid swaying. “This kind of took the wind out of my sails a little bit, knocked me down. But I always get back up, and now I’m ready for action.” She rubbed her hands together. “What’s the first move?”
“Mom, when you saw Veronica this past weekend, what else did you talk about besides Hope?” I asked.
She frowned. “Why do you ask?” Her eyes narrowed. “You think that had something to do with why your father was kidnapped?” She scratched her forehead. “I didn’t tell those cops about seeing Veronica—that was deliberate—but after finding the note and your father being gone…”
I understood her weird logic about not telling the cops—she didn’t trust any cops other than Venus and Blaine. “Did she say anything else, Mom, anything that didn’t have anything to do with Hope?” My voice was gentle. “There has to be a connection, Mom, think.”
She took a deep breath. “Finding Veronica like that—I’m sorry, son, you remember how shook up
you
were when we found the body, and you’ve seen a lot more dead people than I have.” She shuddered. “And she was one of my oldest friends. Nothing quite like facing your own mortality. Anyway, and then to come home to this?” She shrugged. “I was off my game. But I’m back, and we’re going to get your father back.” Her eyes took on a determined glint, one that I was used to seeing there. “And if they harm one hair on his head…”
“We get the idea, Mom,” I said, Frank and Rain were both smiling—I assume in relief—and Taylor was just staring at her, his mouth open, clearly awed. Mom had made a new fan, that was for sure.
“And this must be Taylor.” She crossed over to him and threw both of her arms around him. She was quite a bit shorter than he was, but she squeezed him so hard he gasped. At first he was stiff and rigid, but then he relaxed and hugged her back. She stepped back away from him and smiled. “You look just like your uncle.” She glanced over at Frank. “I’ve always regretted that I never got to see him when he was a boy—now I don’t have to anymore.” She cupped Taylor’s face in her hands. “Welcome to the family, son. You
always
will have a home here with us—you can take that to the bank, Taylor. You’re a Bradley now, just like Frank is.”
I choked up a little bit, and seeing Taylor’s eyes swimming with tears didn’t help matters. Frank put his arm around me, and I leaned into him a little.
“All right.” Mom clapped her hands together and sat down on the couch. “Taylor, I’m sorry your entry into the family had to be in the middle of this mess, but it can’t be helped and I’m not sorry you’ve entered the family. We’re not normal, in case you hadn’t noticed, so it’s probably just as well you joined us in the middle of a crisis.” She winked at him. “Yes, Veronica called me last week. I was shocked, to say the least. I hadn’t heard from her in years—that wasn’t a lie, Scotty. Your father and I sent her some money a few years ago—she said she was in trouble and you know we don’t ask questions. We just help.” She patted the couch next to her. “Sit, Taylor.” When he did, she put her hand on his knee. “That’s what you do when you love someone, son. You help and you don’t ask questions, you don’t judge. Judgment is for whatever higher power there is—if there even is one. When you love someone, you don’t ask questions. You just do.”
I tried not to roll my eyes. Taylor already worshipped her—and it had taken her less than five minutes. “She’s going to want him to move in here,” I muttered to Frank. “You just wait and see.”
“He’s going to want to,” Frank muttered back.
“Anyway, when Veronica called me on Friday and wanted to see me, of course I assumed she wanted money,” Mom went on. “Why else would she call me? I hadn’t heard from her in years—she used to call me for news of Hope, but that stopped long ago. I took my checkbook with me—I met her Saturday afternoon down on the river walk.”
“How much did she want?” I asked.
“Nothing. She didn’t want any money from me—I felt terrible for even thinking it. But I only heard from her when she wanted money, what else was I supposed to think?” Mom looked at me. “But she just wanted to talk. She asked me a lot of questions about Hope, which I was really happy to answer. It was a really hot day, and she was sweating a lot, so I brought her back here.” She stared off into space. “It was nice seeing her, but something was wrong, I could tell. I tried to get her to tell me what was going on, but she wouldn’t.” She looked at me. “That’s why I really wanted to go to the fishing cabin, Scotty. She told me then she was staying there for a while, lying low. She was afraid, and that worried me. In all the years I knew her, I’d never known her to be afraid before, not even when they accidentally killed that security guard in that lab explosion. Then, she was defiant, proud. She’s never been sorry about that man’s death—and to be honest, because of that I wasn’t sorry we drifted apart, you know? She changed over the years…” Her voice trailed off.
“Go on, Mom,” Frank said softly. “So the two of you came back here?”
She nodded. “I tried to get her to tell me what she was so afraid of, but she didn’t want me to know—didn’t want me to be involved. All she would say was it was something from the past coming back to haunt the present, but she was sure she could handle it. She kept saying that, like she was trying to convince herself. I don’t know, looking back now maybe she had a sense that she might wind up dead, you know?” She shivered a little. “Then, when Mike was kidnapped, I figured that must have been what had her so rattled and worried—that was a pretty major heist. I mean, a lot of planning had to go into that, and if one thing went wrong…” She whistled and shook her head. “I thought maybe if we went out there, Scotty, we could talk her into giving Mike back. I’m sorry, I should have told you the truth…but I was worried you’d want to just call the police.”
“Like I would have done that if you didn’t want me to,” I replied crossly. “You do need to tell Storm, though, Mom—if you didn’t tell those cops, you need to. You’re obstructing justice otherwise.”
Mom laughed derisively. “Tell bumbling Barney Fife and the rest of the Keystone Cops? Please. Besides,” she narrowed her eyes, “didn’t you tell me that the cop who talked to you was a Porterie?”
“He’s engaged to a Porterie.” I closed my eyes and tried to remember what else Donnie Ray had told me. “He said there were a lot of Porteries on the north shore, and they all were well aware of who Veronica was.”
She waved her hand. “The deduct box—that must have been what she was talking about when she said ‘something out of the past.’” She noticed loose hair on her shoulders and frowned, pulling her braid around and loosening it. “I just assumed she meant the security guard’s death, but I must have been wrong.” She started rebraiding her hair, and I was amazed at how fast she was at it.
“Taylor and I are going to go talk to Dr. Fleming, see what we can find out,” I said. “Mom, maybe you could call Veronica’s mother? See if either she or Hope is willing to talk to us? And you need to call Storm.”
Rain stood up, her cell phone in hand. “I’ll call Storm. I promise.”
Frank leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “I’m going to call one of the local feds, one of the locals I worked with on the Perkins case.” He winked at me; that was the case he was working on when we first met, “and see what they can do to help us out on the down-low.” Mom started to protest, but he cut her off. “There’s no way the kidnappers can find out, Mom—I’ll use my cell phone and I won’t call from inside, okay? I’ll ask unofficially.” He handed me the car keys. “You and Taylor be careful out there, okay?”
I kissed him back with a big smile on my face. I’d forgotten how much I loved being in the thick of things. It had been a while.
I almost felt sorry for the kidnappers.
“I thought you wanted me to drive,” Taylor said, puzzled, as I unlocked the driver’s side door of the Explorer.
“It was an excuse to get you to come with me,” I replied, climbing up in the seat and hitting the auto button to unlock all the doors. After Taylor climbed into the passenger seat and strapped himself in, I went on, “I just wanted to spend some time with you, okay?” I made a face at him, which made him smile. “You kind of got thrown into the middle of crazy, for one thing, so you need to know this isn’t normal for us.” I thought about it for a moment. “Well, it’s not like this kind of thing hasn’t happened to us before, it doesn’t really happen very often.” I pursed my lips. “Okay, I mean, when I first met your uncle, it was because I got involved in one of his cases and one of my friends wound up being murdered…” I let my voice trail off. “Same weekend we both met Colin, actually.”
“So what does Colin look like?”
I pulled out my phone and touched the Pictures app, then swept through them with my finger until I found a particularly hot shot of Colin. He’d just gotten back from a job, and his white tank top was soaked through and stuck to his skin like a bandage. He was grinning at the camera, and I couldn’t help but smile as I looked down at it. I turned it so Taylor could see him. “This is him.”
Taylor’s jaw dropped. “Oh. My. GOD.”
“Right?” I smiled at him and took the phone back, putting it into one of the cup holders between the seats. “He looks better in person, if you can believe that.”
“Wow.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Jean-Paul wasn’t even remotely close to being built like that.”
“How serious is the thing with you and Jean-Paul?”
He shrugged. “I mean, it was fun while it lasted. But I knew I wasn’t going to be moving to Paris, so it wasn’t going anywhere. I’m kind of young to be getting serious about anyone yet, anyway.”
“Smart boy.”
“So, how are you doing?” he asked, pulling out his own phone. “I mean, about the whole dad-being-kidnapped thing.”
I put the key into the ignition and started the Explorer. I leaned back and looked at him. “Something I’ve learned over the years is that life doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle—it’s how you handle it that matters.” I took another deep breath. “Yeah, I’m worried about my dad. He’s a great guy, you’ll be crazy about him—but worrying myself sick isn’t going to change anything. But we can do something, right? And doing
something
is better than not doing
anything
.” I shrugged. “Can you Google Barney Fleming’s address for me?” I waited while he played with his phone, and finally he rattled off an address on Constance Street. “Punch it into the GPS.” I frowned. The address sounded pretty far uptown—the 5500 block—but I wasn’t exactly sure where it was.
Once he finished fiddling with the GPS, I grinned. Barney Fleming lived between Octavia and Joseph Streets, which meant it was just on the uptown side of Jefferson Avenue. The GPS instructed me to drive down Decatur Street.
“Forget the GPS,” I said, reaching over and turning it off. “That’s
not
the fastest way from the Quarter to get there.”
Taylor gave me a quizzical look. The parking lot where we rented spaces was in the center of a block on Barracks, just around the corner from the apartment. A major secret of the French Quarter is the hidden parking lots for the residents. Ours was hidden by an innocuous-looking garage door that blended in so well with the buildings on either side of it that it was unnoticeable. Parking is always a problem in the Quarter, and for me, it was well worth it to pay the ridiculous amount of money every month so we never had to find a parking place. The street in front of our apartment was metered, so that wasn’t an option. “But—”
“GPS finds the shortest distance,” I said, turning the key and starting the engine, “and in New Orleans, that’s not necessarily the fastest way.” We’d gotten pretty wet on our way back from Mom’s, and it was still pouring outside. I backed out of the space carefully—the spaces are incredibly narrow, and the last thing in the world I wanted to do was scratch the side of Colin’s spy Jaguar in the spot right next to the SUV. I clicked the remote and the garage door slid up. I pulled out onto Barracks Street and turned right on Chartres.
GPS was right—the most direct way to get uptown was to take Decatur Street, which turned into Tchoupitoulas after it crossed Canal Street. Tchoupitoulas ran along the river all the way to Audubon Park, and once you got past Jackson Avenue, you could fly at about forty miles per hour. There were only lights at Louisiana and Napoleon, and a stop sign at Jefferson. GPS didn’t take into consideration that it was never quick to drive down Decatur Street through the Quarter. The street was always clogged with cars, donkey-drawn sightseeing carriages, pedal cabs, and of course, the tourists who simply walked across the street without looking to see if a car was coming.
Claiborne Avenue, also known as Highway 90, was much faster. The major streets of the city that run to and from the river are much closer to each other on Claiborne; they spread farther apart the closer they get to the river. There’s also the added bonus of not losing your mind and screaming at the stupid pedestrians who are everywhere in the Quarter. I’m not the greatest driver to begin with, and any route that helps me keep my cool is greatly appreciated.
I turned left on Esplanade and headed up to Claiborne. From Esplanade to right around the Superdome Claiborne seems like a frontage road for I-10. Around the Superdome, I-10 makes a ninety degree turn north, while 90 West splits off and crosses the river. 90 East continues through New Orleans and runs to the river, eventually merging with Jefferson Highway to run alongside the river all the way to Baton Rouge.
Taylor didn’t say anything until I’d successfully navigated the spaghetti-like snarl of on- and off-ramps to come down safely on the other side of I-10 and stopped at the light at Martin Luther King. “Wow, that was crazy.” He turned to look out the back window. “They couldn’t come up with an easier way to do that?”
“I’ve always just assumed the engineers who designed the highway system here were somehow related to an important politician,” I commented as the light turned green. “It’s a wonder there aren’t more accidents here, especially the way people drive.” I smiled at him and turned my eyes back to the road. It was still raining, and there was a lot of water on the road—probably a couple of inches, which made me even more glad we’d brought the SUV. The Jaguar was far too low to the ground for me to be comfortable driving it in the rain.
And I don’t like driving the Jaguar. Blackledge had really souped it up for Colin, and I’m always afraid I’m going to launch a cruise missile by hitting the wrong switch.
“Louisiana is really corrupt, isn’t it?” Taylor asked.
I sighed. “I don’t know that Louisiana is any more corrupt than any other state,” I replied with a slight shake of my head. “I think the primary difference between Louisiana and everywhere else is here, we
expect
our politicians to be crooks, and always have. We call it a banana republic for a reason. It’s not a shock when one of them gets caught, and we all just shrug it off or laugh at them for being so stupid.”
“Like the congressman who was keeping cash in his freezer?”
I nodded. “Exactly. And no one would have even known about that if he hadn’t commandeered resources while the city was underwater to
get
the money. One of our senators was involved with a brothel on Canal Street and he’s been reelected since that story broke. We even reelected a former governor who’d been convicted of taking bribes in office. Of course he was running against a former president of the Klan—and went right back to jail after that term in office for taking bribes again.” I laughed. “The irony is if he ran again, he’d probably win. We do love a charming scoundrel down here.”
I slowed down to turn left onto Jefferson. The rain was letting up, and the sun was trying to peek out from behind the clouds.
“You know, Taylor, I’m glad you’re here,” I went on as I drove down Jefferson Avenue toward the river. “I’m sorry you had to go through what you went through with your dad—I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But Frank is really delighted you’re here, and so am I.” I hesitated. “I think it’s always bothered Frank to be distant from his family.”
“Oh, dealing with my dad wasn’t that bad,” he said, pulling out his phone again. He started fiddling with it. “I mean, I knew how Dad was going to be—he wasn’t as bad as I was afraid he would be, you know? We’re Church of Christ—do you know anything about it?”
“No, can’t say that I do.”
“Church of Christ makes the Southern Baptists look like Methodists—at least in Corinth County, Alabama.” He made a face. “Makeup on women is a sin, dancing is a sin, mixed swimming is a sin…” He sighed. “Some Church of Christ kids were excused from PE because they’d have to shower and change in front of other kids—show their nakedness.”
“Are you fucking serious?” I took my eyes off the road for a moment to look at him. “That’s nuts.”
Thank you, Goddess, for not giving me parents like THAT.
He nodded. “Yeah, but it was funny how you could pick and choose. They wanted me to be a jock—I played football, basketball, and baseball—and I couldn’t be excused from PE and be able to play sports, you know? And my older sister was a cheerleader, and my younger brother…and some of the women, including my mom and my aunts and my sister and my cousins, they all wore makeup
to church
.” He laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “When I started figuring out, you know, that I liked boys the way I was supposed to like girls…well, that was when I began thinking about the things they’d say in church, and what it said in the Bible, and it didn’t match up, you know?” He scowled at his phone and started playing with it some more. “I couldn’t wait to get away to school. They sure didn’t want me going to Paris, either—but my grandmother wouldn’t let them say no.”
The light at St. Charles was red. “Wow.”
“It is what it is.” He shrugged. “They’ll come around someday.”
And what if they don’t?
I thought.
Why worry about it, though? That’s just borrowing trouble. And he’s here with us—we can help him grow into the person he’s supposed to be.
We drove the rest of the way in silence. I made a right turn onto Constance Street and started looking for house numbers after we went through the intersection at Octavia Street.
Barney Fleming’s house was a double shotgun camelback in the middle of the block facing the river. It was painted fuchsia, with black trim. There was a black wrought iron fence running alongside the sidewalk, which was surprisingly level. The house, originally a two-family dwelling, had been converted into a single home at some point in its history. There was a battered red Chevrolet Cavalier parked in front. I parked behind the Cavalier and shut off the car.
“That’s it,” Taylor said in a hushed town.
I stared at it for a moment. Something was off about the place—I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
I opened my car door and slid down to the street. I walked over to the gate and put both hands on it, leaning on it for a bit. I couldn’t shake the sense that something was wrong.
“What are we waiting for?” Taylor said behind me.
I pushed the gate open and walked up the sidewalk, which was made up of red bricks set into the ground. The neighborhood was really quiet other than an occasional car driving by on Jefferson Avenue a block away. I climbed the steps to the porch with Taylor right behind me. The sun had come out now, and it was starting to get hot again. A bee buzzed around one of the rose bushes in front of the porch. I rang the doorbell, but didn’t hear any noise from inside. Thinking the bell might be broken, I opened the wrought iron screen door and knocked on the door, which swung open silently.
Okay, this is definitely not good
,
I thought, taking a step back “Hello? Is anyone here?” I called. There was no response, but I heard something—a sound of some sort from the back of the house. “Stay here,” I hissed at Taylor and stepped inside the house, making sure to leave the front door open. I turned back to him. “If you don’t hear from me in five minutes, get in the car and call the cops, okay? Lock yourself in.”
He nodded, his eyes opened so wide they looked like they might pop out.
I turned back around.
The walls separating the front rooms on both sides had been removed to create one enormous room. The hardwood floor was polished so it shone. There was a black, red, and white Oriental rug underneath the gray sofa to my immediate left. An enormous flat-screen TV hung on the opposing wall, and a mahogany coffee table stood in front of the couch. Framed black-and-white artistic male nudes hung on the eggplant-painted walls. The lights of the chandelier over the coffee tablet were on, the blades of the ceiling fan turning slightly and making a faint squeaking noise. To my right was what appeared to be a sitting area, with another gray sofa and some matching gray reclining chairs gathered around a glass-topped table. There was a tall table with bottles of liquor, glasses, and an ice bucket set out on top.
I moved forward, trying to make as little noise as humanly possible. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, loud and rapid. Adrenaline surged through my body. I crept into the next room, which was a dining room. That day’s paper was scattered all over it, and there was also a pile of mail—magazines and unopened envelopes—close to the far left corner. A coffee mug with a cigarette butt floating in it was next to the disheveled newspaper pages.
The door to the next room, which I presumed to be the kitchen, was closed.
“Hello?” I called again, my voice only slightly shaky. “Is anyone here? Dr. Fleming?”
I heard the slight thump again. It was coming from the other side of the door.
I crossed the room and put my hand on the door handle. I heard the slight thump again, and took a deep breath, twisting the knob at the same time.