Red Beans and Vice (18 page)

Heaven flopped from side to side in bed for a while, then grabbed the phone and dialed Murray. “Your voice sounds so good to me,” she cooed when he answered.

“What is this, some sex call?” Murray said a bit nervously. Murray wasn’t much for sex talk.

“I wish. Here’s what’s happening down here. The funeral won’t be until tomorrow and I have a seat on the evening flight to Kansas City. You can’t know how much I want to be on that airplane. But Mary has asked me to stay until Monday and try to sort out what is happening with Truely’s murder and the problems at the convent.”

“Well, do you want me to tell you that you have to come home? I will, you know, but it would be a lie,” Murray said, catching on right away to Heaven’s mood.

“Part of me wants to stay and poke around a little more. Part of me wants to get out of town while I’m still in one piece.” Heaven gave Murray the short version of what had happened to her on Sunday.

“Hank already called and told me about it,” Murray said with a touch of pride that he’d been Hank’s confidant.

“And then last night I fell asleep on the porch. Someone tried to break in through some French doors right where I was snoozing. I realize thieves read the obits to get ideas but I don’t think that’s the kind of break-in this guy was planning. There had been a hundred people
in and out of Mary’s house that night. It didn’t look like a deserted dead person’s house at all.”

“You think it had something to do with Truely’s murder?” Murray was getting interested now.

“Yes. So what should I do? Stay down here until someone finally injures me, or come home while the gettin’ is good?”

“The gettin’ was good when you came home from New Orleans last month. It’s all been downhill since then, babe. What if you do this—tell them you’ll stay if I can find someone to replace you in the kitchen, which you know I can. But if it doesn’t feel right, come home on Friday.”

“Good plan, Murray. A bald-faced lie, but with a touch of truth. After all, anything can happen in the restaurant world. You really could need me by Friday.”

“The thing to do is try and do some investigating that doesn’t involve being alone in dark places, okay, babe?”

“Daytime work, eh?” Heaven was sitting up now. Talking to Murray had brought her back. How could she think of leaving when there was so much to do? He was right, she could leave any day, citing an emergency. She felt much better.

“Just do me a big favor and call in every so often. You know how Sal will worry.” Murray could blame Sal for being the worrywart when they all knew Murray was much worse.

“It will be the highlight of the day. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have something to run by you. Something I discovered in the daylight in a crowded place.”

“There you go,” Murray said. “I’ll hold down the fort. Don’t worry about us. Oh, by the way, I told Jack.”

“Told him what?”

“That you’d talk to him about working in the kitchen when you got home.”

“Are you sure you didn’t say it was a sure thing because I’m such a softy?”

“No, nothing like that,” Murray said in a soothing voice.

“Until tomorrow then,” Heaven said, hung up and bounded for the shower.

In twenty minutes flat she was dressed and downstairs pouring a cup of coffee. Mary and Will looked up from their ham and eggs expectantly.

“Want some breakfast?”

“I’d love some breakfast. I can’t eat those messy shrimp with the skill that you New Orleanians do so I quit dinner early,” Heaven said cheerily. She walked over to the business end of the kitchen and talked to the woman manning the stove, a new person Heaven figured for one of the temps Mary had hired.

“Heaven,” Will began, “I’m sure sorry I didn’t take the matter with the burglar seriously last night. I apologize.” He sounded fairly sincere.

Heaven ignored him. “I talked to Murray, and he’s going to work on covering me in the kitchen. I still may have to leave, but at least I’m not going home on Wednesday.”

Mary held out her hand toward Heaven. “Thank you.”

Will tried again. “Yes, Heaven, thank you. Does this cold shoulder mean the last words I’ll ever hear you say to me is that good old-fashioned ass-chewing you gave me last night?”

Heaven turned grandly toward Will and smiled. “Apology accepted, Mr. Tibbetts. Now jump back, you two. I’m going to go do some investigating. Can you draw me a map to the new convent of the Sisters of the
Holy Trinity, the one they actually use?” A huge omelette appeared and she dug in.

Heaven didn’t mess around. In just a few more minutes she was in the car with the map that Mary had drawn for her. After several wrong turns she located the neighborhood the convent was in. New Orleans was so damned hard to navigate because the city wound around right beside the river. There wasn’t a grid anywhere except the French Quarter. All the rest of it turned back on itself. She drove slowly around the area where the convent was located, then parked her car on a side street and pulled out her cell phone and dialed. “Amelia?”

Heaven smiled at Amelia’s hello. “Thanks for giving me your personal cell phone number. I guess since I’m always in the middle of trouble, it was a way for you to angle for an exclusive.”

Amelia’s response made Heaven get out of the car and start walking toward the corner. “I’ll get to the point,” Heaven said. “I’m sure you’re ready to go on the air soon. Do you have a researcher that you could throw a job to?”

Heaven walked farther out in the road, scrinching her eyes to see down the street. “Will you have them find out who owns the condominiums named the Chalfant? And also a complex named Annunciation, and then Creole Cove. Can you meet me later for a drink? Napoleon House is fine. After the six o’clock news, about six thirty. Don’t let me forget to tell you what happened to me Sunday,” she said and clicked off the phone.

Heaven got back in the car and headed for the the other side of town. She needed to retrace her steps from Sunday night in the daylight. For one thing, it might help her find a reason for the truck hit-and-run. For
another, she needed to see that she was on a perfectly normal stretch of highway, not the southern equivalent of Sleepy Hollow, where that headless horseman ran up and down the road. The images in her mind were less concrete than they would be after she saw the fishing camps and lakes in the daylight. When she reached Versailles, the Vietnamese enclave, she considered stopping at the cousins’ but decided against it. If she told them what had happened on Sunday they would feel responsible. If she didn’t tell them, she would feel uncomfortable, lying by omission. Hank was right. It was better not to include them in her sordid affairs unless they had to know.

Heaven slowed down after she passed the last Vietnamese shopping area. She was curious and detoured down a side road; seeing neat brick houses, a school, an old woman walking on the side of the road with the traditional peaked straw hat on her head. This must be the neighborhood where the cousins lived. She drove down to the end of the main road through the residential area and turned around, back to the highway continuing east.

Pretty soon Heaven saw the first sign that announced the fishing camps, this one named JOLLY ROGER. Will and Mary had explained that this strip of Highway 90 was between Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne. The Gulf of Mexico was up ahead somewhere, it and Lake Borgne seeping into each other.

Heaven had always been a little scared of Lake Pontchartrain. The brackish water looked so lifeless when you flew over it, and the lake itself was so big. Once, years ago, Heaven had driven across the the long bridge, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, that took so many New Orleans workers home each night to largely white
suburbs like Mandeville and Covington. She vowed she would never do it again, it shook her so badly. She imagined all kinds of automotive emergencies that would be impossible to handle on the narrow strip of highway shooting down the middle of the lake. Now she shuddered thinking about her attackers in the pickup truck and how much worse their assault would have been if she’d been driving on the causeway.

When Heaven saw the house sign DO OR DIE, she pulled off and stopped the car. The deep tire tracks were still there, where the tow truck had pulled her car up from the ditch. No one seemed to be home, the fishing boat was still safely tucked under the stilts of the house where it had been on Sunday night. Heaven noticed a freshly painted plaster rendition of the Seven Dwarfs on the lawn. Where was Snow White? Heaven walked up the drive, poked around under the house, not really looking for anything, walked back to the car. She made a pretense of checking out the other tire tracks, the truck’s. They were bigger and heavier. She was sure an evidence technician could take a plaster cast and tell exactly what make of truck and tire had pushed her in the ditch. And if there had been a fatality, they would have done that. As it was, the police didn’t have the resources to do that kind of work for a bump and run without a real injury to Heaven.

She got back in the car and continued east, not really having a plan. She was glad she’d made the trip, for her own mental health. The area was almost comical in its hominess. It wasn’t the scary place it had seemed when Heaven had discovered that she’d taken a wrong turn in the dark.

She drove on. She remembered once going to a charming little town that she was pretty sure was just up
ahead. Sure enough in twenty minutes Heaven was walking down the street in Bay St. Louis. She had lunch in a little joint, ordering the recommendation of the waitress, chili cheese fries and a shrimp po’boy. It was a fine fried-food establishment. She spent the early afternoon visiting several little shops, bought a little piece of folk art, a painting of dancing crawfish, then started back toward the city.

All day, without letting it overtake her, she’d been trying to be conscious of whether someone was following her. By this time, about three in the afternoon, she was relaxed and certain that no one was tailing her today.

On the way back to New Orleans Heaven spotted a sign that said Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge. A little wildlife would make this day complete. She turned in. On one side was the bayou, water still and dark green, with a bicycle path next to it. On the other side was a hiking path that struck off into the woods. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around. No other cars were in the parking lot. There was a covered gazebolike structure with picnic tables and pamphlets on the wildlife area. It was empty.

Heaven got out of the car and headed toward the bayou. These incredible trees—she supposed they were live oak, tall with curved branches—were dripping with Spanish moss. There wasn’t much of a breeze, but the weight of the moss was so slight that it swayed gracefully every time there was the slightest ripple of air currents. There was nothing like it in the Midwest, that was for sure. She was mesmerized. She walked down the bicycle path, watching the herons and other waterfowl speed through the air over the water.

Heaven was not a nature girl. Her exercise was lifting large pots of boiling chicken stock, not jogging or any
other outdoor sports. She had skied with one husband, played golf with another, but usually she would go antiquing while the man played sports. At this point in her life, she lived in a commercial space without benefit of a yard or garden and she liked it that way. When she did walk, it was at the gym on an elevated indoor track.

But for the moment, Heaven thoroughly enjoyed ambling beside the winding strip of water, listening to the calls of various other living creatures, admiring the trees and watching closely for an alligator to come charging out of the bayou. Heaven liked being outdoors with no other people around for a change. There’d been enough crowds lately. She slowed down so she wouldn’t frighten a snowy egret that was walking on the side of the bank, staring intently at something in the water.

Then it happened. The first shot rang through the air, splitting the serenity of the moment. It took Heaven a second to recognize it as a gun shot. When it registered, she ducked down in the tall grass, her movement and the noise scaring the egret. It started flapping its wings for a take-off, rising awkwardly off the bank. But the second shot hit the big bird and it collapsed right on top of Heaven with wings flapping wildly.

She shrieked in spite of herself, but instead of jumping up, getting the bird off of her, and running like a madwoman for the car, she made herself lie still, the dying bird convulsing on her head and shoulders. She stayed like that for ten minutes, afraid to move for fear she would be a target for the marksman. Finally, she decided to throw the poor dead bird up in the air. If the shooter was still out there, that should draw a shot.

She flung the body as hard as she could and it made a clumsy trajectory up and back down, landing beside Heaven with a soft thud. No gunshots. After another five
minutes of relative silence, no yelling, no footfalls, Heaven got up, grabbed the dead bird by its leg, and ran to the car.

“J
o what happened then?” Amelia Hart asked.

“You mean, what did they say when I went walking in the Vieux Carre police station with a dead bird and told them it was evidence?” Heaven polished off her Pimm’s Cup and waved to the waiter for another. She had made it to her six thirty date at the Napoleon House only a few minutes late. “Well, they didn’t cart me off to the loony bin, but I don’t think they were very impressed with my line of logic. I realized at some point that no one in this whole mess has been shot at before. It’s a first.”

Amelia started ticking things off on her fingers. “Let’s see. There was graffiti, termites, a cross stolen, you were chased through town, Truely was stabbed, you were run off the road, and now either someone was trying to scare you, kill you, or they were poaching egret feathers and you got in the way. It is the first gunshot.”

“And don’t forget the hate mail. Put that on the list. But there are no other bullets to compare the one in the bird to. I figured that out after I’d already arrived at the police station, thrilled that I had a clue.”

“So are they going to dig the bullet out of the bird anyway, do an autopsy?” Amelia asked, a small grin appearing on her face despite her attempts to remain serious. The image of Heaven taking a dead bird to the police station was choice.