Dead and Breakfast (The New Orleans Go Cup Chronicles Book 2) (3 page)

Chapter Three

Dante followed me back inside the Canal Street Guest House and told me not to touch anything. The strong smell of the coffee I’d brewed still hung in the air. It was a strong coffee and chicory blend like Dante’s mother always brewed early in the morning for her husband and boys before they left for work or school. She would set it up the night before and put it on a timer so it would be ready for them when they got up. Dante was always the first one up. The aroma would drift from her kitchen across the narrow alley between our houses right into my bedroom. It was better than an alarm clock. I closed my eyes thinking of those mornings. Dante would pour us each a steaming cup and come over to sit with me on my front porch. He did this every morning before work and before anyone else was stirring in either house. We would talk about our plans for the day and plan to meet someplace after work. We would meet at either The Columns Hotel to sit out on the veranda or at The Napoleon House, my personal favorite in the French Quarter. We would have a drink and compare what really happened during the day as compared to what we thought would happen over coffee. Mornings were the only time we ever spent truly alone and the smell of the coffee reminded me of how secure I felt talking and sharing my day with him before anyone else was up. I had thought one day after we were married we would sit on our own porch having coffee discussing the three boys I dreamed of having, their little league schedules, having king cake parties and growing old together. We would wake up early and plan who would take the boys to school and who would pick them up, who would get them to their games or dancing school if I had a girl. Dante and I would cook dinner together and we would all eat every day at the same time before he would go off to help our children with their homework. I would press their uniforms and get their lunches ready for the next day. I would put a little surprise in them like a candy or note encouraging them if there was a test or tryouts after school that day. I would make Dante’s lunch and tuck a love note in with his sandwich. I would tell my husband how happy I was with him and put a lipstick kiss on it. I would add, ‘Be careful and come home to me tonight’ on every note. That was what I thought my life would be like.

I wondered what had happened to the happy little kids who grew up next door to each other, played every day at recess and after school. We shared childhood confidences, dreams and secrets. He was my first love, my first kiss, the first boy I danced with and my only boyfriend for most of my life. He was my first love but I guess I was only his childhood friend. Like a good southern, Irish Catholic girl I waited for Dante to bring up our future and marriage. I waited and waited. I guess we didn’t share the expectation both families had for us to get married, live on the same block and have a boatload of grandkids for them.

When he left for the military, I waited for him. He didn’t ask me to wait, he just kissed me on the cheek and said, “I’ll miss you. I’ll be back” when I stood with him at the railway station. He probably thought I’d finally move on without him here. I thought he enlisted to get away from me or he would rather be shot at than marry me. He wrote to me but never said he loved me or he missed me. He said he missed home.

He missed home, not me.

I decided to wait for him thinking when he came back we would move on with our lives, together or apart, but, at least I would have an answer. I stayed and lived at home with my parents who happened to be right next door to Dante’s parents and four brothers. I had both families keeping an eye on me. We never discussed our feelings for one another, we just heard what our parents said we felt for each other, how we were expected to live our lives together. No one asked us, and we didn’t ask each other. He must have hated me for the choreographed life our parents mapped out. I had to wait for him. I had to be right there, in his face when he came back, smothering him along with our parents. Then, to top it all off, when I did kiss someone at a parade, it was right in front of him.

It really didn’t endear me to him when I heard, incorrectly, he was gay. Thinking he was gay seemed to explain a lot. Now that he doesn’t see me everyday, he can act the way he really feels and I deserve it. He seems happy with his new girlfriend, his new life. I bet he does want to arrest me and lock me up so he won’t have to ever look at me again. I wish it had been different when I kissed Jiff at the parade, but I couldn’t control how that happened. I wish it had been different so we would at least still be friends.

I waited for him to read me my rights and handcuff me. “Can I sit down?” When I turned around, he was in my face.

“Do what you want.” He didn’t move.

“So how long have you and Hanky Panky been dating?” I asked trying to lighten the mood and ease the tension I could slice with a knife. However, it came out all wrong. I sounded snippy and catty, like a jealous ex-girlfriend.

“What made you think I was gay?” he asked, deliberately moving closer with each word, causing me to take an equal number of steps backward.

“I don’t know. I mean, now I know I had wrong information. I, uh, guess it’s because our relationship wasn’t physical or romantic. I didn’t see it-us-going anywhere.” I was being honest. I inched backwards and got a tight feeling in my stomach from him invading my personal space.

“I bought you a ring. I was waiting on you to set a date.”

“How was I supposed to know that? You didn’t say anything. Dante, our relationship was stuck in neutral. We were more like friends, not lovers. We never talked about getting married. Our parents did.”

“I was waiting on you to bring it up.” He continued to move into me until my back was up against a wall.

“You were waiting on me to bring it up?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I think that was your job.” Then, he was so close to my face I couldn’t focus on him, so I closed my eyes.

He grabbed my hands, laced his fingers through mine and pushed my arms up over my head, forcing them against the wall. I wanted to slap him but couldn’t free my hands. He stepped into me until his body totally pressed against mine. Our knees were touching. Dante had never handled me like this. The sensation of his body so close and completely all over me stirred both fear and arousal at the same time. His mouth was all over my neck, then my face and when he moved onto my mouth, I kissed him back. Then he let go of me and pushed himself away.

“Is that physical enough for you?” He stormed off to the kitchen.

I stood there waiting for the heat to leave my body. When I regained my composure, I forced myself to think of the issue at hand, which was to help Julia with the problem of the dead guy in the guest room on her first day open for business, and followed him.

Dante was in the kitchen, head down, writing in his notebook. I didn’t know how or where to begin. He looked calm, sitting at the table leafing through his notebook until I saw the blood vessel on the side of his face bulging and getting larger by the second. This had always been Dante’s tell.

“Dante, I noticed something in that room upstairs when y’all got here and we went back into it.”

“You were in that room before we got here?” he asked in total control of his voice, not looking up and writing in his notebook.

“Yes, Julia called me for moral support when she found him. I came right over---”

“What time was that?” he asked, getting back to being Detective Deedler, as though the incident in the hallway never happened.

“I got here at 6:20 a.m. and Julia was so upset that I made the call to the police. I don’t know the exact time.”

“What time did Julia call you?” He scribbled away keeping pace with the pulsing blood vessel.

“She called me about 6:00 a.m. and I drove over here as fast as I could.”

“Dispatch logged you in at 6:45 a.m. Why did you wait so long to call?”

“Really? Did you see Julia when you got here? She was in shock.”

“Please answer the question.”

“Are we going to talk about time and temperature or what happened in the hallway?”

“This is a homicide. Please answer my question.” He stopped writing but continued to look at the notebook.

“Okay. As best as I can remember, Julia called me around 6:00 a.m., I finished getting dressed, in a hurry I might add, and came over here right away. I got here at 6:20 a.m. I let myself in the kitchen, walked around looking for her and found her upstairs in the guest room. I asked her what happened and it was hard to get her to say anything standing in the room with the dead guy so we came downstairs. I called the police. Then, I made a pot of coffee to calm her nerves and tried to get her to start talking. And, just so you know, if you had ever kissed me like that, and by that, I mean like you just did in the hall, while we were dating I’d be married to you by now with three kids.”

“How did you get in here? Do you have a key or know who else has a key? Don’t you think I wanted to kiss you like that? I’ve always wanted to kiss you like that. Maybe I respected you too much to push that agenda.” He was scribbling again on his paper.

“I know the four-digit code on the back door, so I let myself in through the kitchen. How would I know what you wanted, since we never discussed anything? I wish you would have respected me a little less and kissed me like that a little more.” This interrogation was taking a weird direction and I was hoping that not all of it was being written down alongside the murder information.

“So you found Julia standing over the body? Why did we have to discuss anything? You knew how I felt about you.”

“Yes, I found her standing over the body. Dante, think about it. Do you really think she would kill him, take a shower, get dressed--
with makeup
--make breakfast, bring it upstairs, drop it all over the floor and not clean it up? You know how compulsive Julia is. Under normal circumstances, she would have cleaned it up and steamed the rug before anyone got here. I wish you had told me every now and then how you felt about me. I would have liked to hear you say it.”

“Anything else you remember or that she told you before we got here? I always said you looked nice.”

“Well, two things. She did say that he wore some purple stone, an amethyst I think, on a black leather cord around his neck. You know, the short kind that fits snug. He told Julia he never took it off. It was some custom made piece given to him by an old girlfriend. It wasn’t on him when I got here. I looked nice? Let’s see, ‘You look nice’ means I love you. How did I miss that?” I bumped the palm of my hand to my forehead. “Yeah, I see how I should have figured out that’s what it meant.”

“What’s the other thing? You said there were two.”

“This might not be anything. I wanted to ask Julia but you whisked her away before I could. I remember the front window being open when I first got here. When we went up with you, the curtains blowing in the wind made me realize I wanted to ask Julia if they slept with it open. You know what they say about old flames, where there was fire, there are ashes.”

“What does that mean? Are you talking about us?” Dante looked confused.

“It means where there was passion, you know, fire, there will be ashes when the fire’s gone. It means there’s always something left from a relationship. The longer the fire burns, the more ashes, the more memories. We have a lot of memories. I’m sorry I hurt you. I never wanted to.”

There was a knock on the front door. He stood up to go answer and said, “I’ve been in love with you for twenty-seven years—since the day I first saw you when your parents brought you home from the hospital.”

The knock on the front door announced the arrival of the forensics/crime scene people interrupting the only personal conversation Dante and I had ever had regarding our future. It was only 8:15 a.m. and I felt drained. I still had to call an attorney for Julia and get to Central Lockup to bail her out of jail.

Chapter Four

Dante said I could leave the guest house when forensics arrived. He said Hanky would come back for him and they both needed to see what they could find at the crime scene. On the way to Central Lockup on Broad Street, I drove to my office, which was inside the main switching station for all data and voice traffic for one of the biggest telecom companies in the world. After punching in the code to raise the steel door to the parking garage on the first level, I took the elevator. After entering another code so the elevator would deposit me on the correct floor, I ran in, grabbed mail and messages from my office, and advised our assistant I would be working at home and to please forward all calls to my cell phone. I’d been recently promoted from sales to the group that investigates telephone and internet fraud. I still had the same large customers like hotels, shipping companies, and several universities in the state, only now I worked with them on different issues. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the F.B.I. vetted me, and my association with the local police, i.e. Dante, when I applied for the job. All I knew about Dante’s tour in the military was that he didn’t care to discuss any of it. If I asked him any questions about his whereabouts or jobs while on active duty, our conversation would stop abruptly, or he would walk off and ignore me. I thought this promotion had something to do with my affiliation with Dante, even though I didn’t feel comfortable asking anyone to confirm it. Some of Dante’s military pals came to visit him and I met them one evening. All of them did the zip the lip move when I inquired about what they did in the service. I decided it was better if I didn’t know.

I flipped through my mail and called Stan Fontenot, now an attorney and my friend from childhood who had helped me in the past. The conversation did not go well for Julia.

“I don’t take criminal cases.”

Stan did take criminal cases, but his history with Julia wasn’t favorable and he had made it clear he didn’t want to be anywhere near her ever again.

“Criminal? Julia is a felonious pain in the neck, but a criminal? C’mon Stan. I know Julia is a little outspoken. You know I’ll be there.” Julia needed to work on her people skills and she was often in dire need of a filter before she spoke or thought. Honestly, I think Stan was afraid of her. “If you take it, I’ll buy you lunch or dinner at Commander’s—your choice.”

Stan said, “I’ll buy you
lunch and
dinner every day for the rest of your life at Commander’s Palace if you don’t ask me to take this case. Brandy, you know I luv ya, but you can’t control what comes out of her mouth. Given the circumstances she would be better served by an attorney who has more experience with criminal cases. They know how to avoid the case going any further and by not going any further I mean get a firm who can put this matter to rest before you have to have Julia speak in front of a judge, courtroom or jury.”

“Oh, c’mon Stan. I don’t think Julia’s feeling particularly flippant over this.”

Then, Stan suggested I call Jiff Heinkel’s office. That was a laugh. My Jiff. Parade kiss Jiff. No more trying to talk Stan into this one.

The Heinkel father and son law firm in New Orleans had a big criminal practice. Jiff and I were working on a relationship since he’s the guy I kissed recently at a Mardi Gras parade and the reason I broke up with Dante. I called him, explained what happened this morning and asked if he would represent Julia, or at the very least help me get her out of jail.

“Brandy, are you all right? I’m so sorry you had to see that this morning, someone who’d been murdered. That’s tough,” Jiff said.

“Yes, I’m fine although I’m exhausted already and it isn’t even 9:00 a.m. Can you help her? I need to go bail her out.”

He said he would make a few calls and try to get her released by the time I got to Central Lockup to pick her up. I advised him I would be there in an hour after I made a few more calls.

“Don’t rush because you may still have to wait when you get there. And, hey, what are you doing for Jazz Fest this week? I’ll take off work and we can go Friday. I hate going on the weekend. It gets too crowded,” he said. “Plus it might be a bit of fun after all this craziness.”

“That sounds great. I’ll see if I can play hooky from work too. Call me later.” Smiling from ear to ear, I heard the dial tone and sat a minute with the phone still to my ear wishing we had more time to talk. Jiff was the perfect guy. He was accomplished, came from a great New Orleans family, his mother was a judge, his dad had the law practice with Jiff and his brothers. Jiff’s sister was in law school waiting to join the family firm. He was a classy guy, great dresser, a lot of fun and was always up for anything I wanted to do. He took me sailing, we went to wonderful parties for the charitable causes he supported. He loved to see me get dressed up and take me out. He also loved dogs, Schnauzers in particular, the breed I volunteered doing rescue work for. The fact that he had one was a bonus in my book.

I made as many phone calls as I could before leaving my office trying to handle work issues before I went to Central Lockup. When Dante had released me to leave in my own car, he had said I was still a person of interest and he knew where I lived if he had more questions. He knew where I used to live, and that was with my parents right next door to him and his parents. I never told him I’d moved into an apartment in Mid City that I shared with Suzanne, but I’m sure some Nosey Nellie Neighbor had. Even if you’ve never met a person before, you only needed to talk to anyone who grew up here for five minutes to discover that you know someone they know. Everyone knows someone you know in New Orleans. It’s the biggest small town in the U.S.

Nothing in New Orleans happened fast, and neither did Julia’s release from Parish Prison. New Orleans criminal complex at the corner of South Broad and Tulane Avenue is a plethora of buildings dedicated to every infraction of the law you can imagine, often done by those to those they know and love. Police Headquarters is located here. Even if you didn’t know that, it’s easy to tell because there are a zillion police cars parked everywhere—illegally. The Criminal Court building is here, Night Court is here, the Municipal Court for minor offenses is here, and the Orleans Parish Prison—the jail—is here. Everything about this complex of buildings is utilitarian and appears to be in constant need of pressure washing, both inside and out due to never ending shuffle of the unwashed masses through the system.

When I arrived at Central Lockup, I had to stand in the filthiest waiting area for what felt like forever. The only furniture there was fiberglass molded seats nailed to the floor. Every surface in the fifteen by fifteen square foot room was marked with profane words and suggestions. It provided the only reading material in the lobby. Reading misspelled four-letter words carved on every available surface—the result of our stellar public school system—helped to pass the time. The creative spelling kept things challenging. ‘Go screw yourself’ looked like ‘go skruw yoself’ or ‘skru you’. Crap appeared as krap, or crappe.

There was always a line of twenty to thirty people waiting to speak to the officer at the window. He sat behind a window of four-inch bulletproof glass reinforced with wire mesh and only spoke to the person on the outside through a speaker. The speaker was probably installed when the Pope was an altar boy. It would squelch every time either side pressed the button when it was their turn to talk. He had the control of when he wished to stop listening to a vulgar, threatening rant that we still had to endure on our side of the window. He indicated this by cutting them off in mid-sentence with a blast of what sounded like metal scraping along metal then blasting “NEXT” over the speaker. He and Julia must have gone to the same charm school.

The air in the waiting area of Central Lockup in New Orleans Parish Prison swirled with putrid odors from alcohol induced vomit, feces, and urine. There wasn’t enough Lysol in the universe to get the nasty odor out of this place. My shoes stuck to the floor with every step and they made a crinkling sound when they peeled off to take the next one. I thought if I stood in one place too long my shoes would permanently adhere to the vinyl floor. I would be stuck here forever or walk out barefoot.

“Next,” boomed through the small room with the decibel power of a Klaxon horn. Everyone in line shuffled forward a half step as a woman moved up to the window.

Squelch. “State your business,” stuttered over the oldest looking speaker on the planet. I’m not sure how old it really was or if the amount of rust and dust encrusting it made it look like a relic and, I’m sure, negatively impacted its function. It, along with everything else in the area, appeared to have been left off any cleaning or maintenance schedule. Standing in a line this long allowed you to hear the same format over and over so that even if you didn’t hear all the words, you could figure out what was said.

“I want to know when you gonna release Theodore Smalls?” the woman asked.

The officer, without informing the woman, left his seat to get an update or take a break or go to lunch. No one knew. We all just had to stand and wait. He returned after what felt like his lunch break and the P.A. squelched to announce an answer was forthcoming.

The officer remained standing to look out the glass to see how long the line was and then read it from a clipboard, “Theodore Smalls was transferred to the emergency room at University Hospital. You have to go there and see what they plan to do with him.”

“Today? You let him outta here today? After he beat on me, you gonna let that good fo’ nuttin’ go after he been talking with that skank?” The woman became animated, punching the glass in front of the officer’s face and screaming so loudly that two deputies flew out from behind a steel door, each grabbing her by an arm and escorting her to the exit commanding her not to return. When she tried to re-enter they stood shoulder to shoulder blocking the doorway. One deputy said, “You come back here and we’ll arrest you for throwing hot grits in his face. That’s why he’s at University Hospital.”

University Hospital was now the default public hospital since Katrina devastated Charity to the point it had not reopened and didn’t look like it would. The woman left jabbering away something incoherent and waving her arms over her head.

The man in front of me was looking back over his shoulder at the excitement. We made eye contact so I said, “Boy, she must be some jealous type if she got that angry over her man talking to someone.”

“Talking is slang for sleeping with that other woman,” he answered.

I didn’t make any more comments or even eye contact with anyone else for fear of getting into an altercation over the local lingo and provoking the two deputies to reappear and escort me to the exit.

Next up was another situation regarding similar indiscreet communication. The woman stated this was her fifth time at the window and her persistence to learn her husband’s exact release time made me wonder why there wasn’t a metal detector where we had to walk through to get in here. We all knew he was better off inside the big house because the little woman found out he was fooling around with her sister.

No one was spared or given the slightest shred of discretion. Forty-seven minutes later I stepped up to the glass and asked about Julia’s release time. The speaker stuttered that there was no information on Julia Richard at this time and to check back later. Did they think we all had nothing to do but stand—not sit—in this hellhole and wait for another opportunity to get back in line for the same stimulating conversation over the airways?

When it was my turn again, I advised the officer on duty that I was there to pick up Julia Richard or Julia Sawyer. She was back to using her maiden name of Richard. He informed me she was still in booking. To take a break from the redundant nature of Central Lockup’s waiting room, I walked across the street to gulp air not laden with disinfectant fumes, and bought a coffee at the Latte Da Coffee House. I took my time drinking it while sitting in the luxury of what looked like a federal reserve café with bars on the windows and enough bullet proof glass across the counter reinforced with wire mesh to stop an assault with an automatic weapon.

Like the waiting room of Central Lockup, this coffee shop had a two-way speaker to place your order through, and then you’d put your money on a Lazy Susan type revolving plate. The plate spun around with the money and at no time did a sliver of an opening from the inside allow infiltration from the outside. After they had your money, you got your order, with any change, on the plate turned back to you. I requested additional napkins and the turn style spun back into action sending out one more paper napkin.

After I got my order, I wiped off a chair to sit and sip my coffee. Unlike Central Lockup, a comforting smell of coffee and baked bread wafted in the air.

I remembered Dante told me once, “Someone, most likely in a bar during happy hour said, eating hot and spicy food in hot climates is supposed to make you feel the heat less.” The idea is supposed to force the body to open its pores thereby allowing your internal temperature to equalize with external and fool yourself into thinking you weren’t melting. Not me. The coffee had the same effect the kiss from Dante had on me. My internal thermostat felt like it was pushing steamy mercury up my spine from my toes to my head. I sipped the hot coffee, closed my eyes and I was back against that wall in the hallway with Dante pressed all over me. I felt his mouth all over my face and I closed my eyes swallowing the hot liquid, feeling it spiral down, then shoot a heat wave right back up my spine. I was going over every detail of that encounter with him in my mind, adrift in an erotic, sensual moment…when a voice that sounded like the fingernails on a chalkboard kicked me out of my warm and fuzzy state.