Vieux Carré Voodoo (20 page)

“Be careful, Scotty,” Mom warned. “I’d like to keep him, you
know.”

“Wait a minute!” Venus cautioned. “That might be evidence—”

“That’s a bit of a stretch, Venus.” My father adjusted his
glasses. “It belongs to Scotty, and it wasn’t present in Doc’s apartment when he
was killed. If you want it, you need a warrant.” He folded his arms.

In that moment, I felt sorry for Venus. My parents are a
royal pain in the ass to the authorities. “Fine,” she said after a moment, “rip
the damned thing to shreds.”

I gave her a sour look, and she smiled back at me. I started
pulling out the stuffing, tossing it aside on the table. Mom grabbed a plastic
bag and started collecting it. I stuck my hand in as far as it could go, and
felt nothing. I kept pulling out the stuffing until there was absolutely nothing
left inside. I started to toss aside the empty skin in disgust when a small slip
of paper fluttered out of the hole.

I picked it up. It was folded into a little triangle, like
the paper footballs kids make to play table football. Holding my breath, I
started unfolding it.

I smoothed it out on the table, and stared at it.

“What does it say?” Mom sat down next to me and peered at
it. “Read it out loud—I don’t have my glasses.”

I took a breath and read it out loud:

“From Pleshiwar to the parish of the maid,

Who saved a city and was burned down to ash

To the park where so many still ply their trade,

Behind the spires of the saint, always asking for cash

Stands the fisher of souls with his arms open wide

Follow his left hand to the canopy of trees

Just beyond the orphan’s friend, go alongside

The Muses line up, to sing with the breeze

Just find the place for the blonds from the seas.”

“A
riddle
?” I exploded, tossing the paper down on
the table. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I glared at the rabbit. “It’s
not even good poetry.” As I said it, Venus’s phone rang. She walked into the
kitchen to take the call.

“Doc loved puzzles,” Dad said, yawning. “And riddles. He
said it kept his mind sharp.”

“Does this make sense to either one of you?” I sat back on
the couch.

Mom picked it up and squinted at it. After a moment, she put
it down with a shrug and walked into kitchen to get more coffee. I picked up my
own cup and took a drink.

“This was exactly the kind of thing Doc loved—a treasure
riddle that leads to where he hid the jewel,” Dad said, examining the paper over
the top of his glasses. “I can almost hear the old son of a bitch laughing.” He
sat down next to me. “Obviously, he would have made it hard, but he wouldn’t
have made it impossible to solve.” He patted me on the shoulder. “Let’s use our
brains, shall we?” He laughed. “You know how Doc was about brainpower.” He
covered a yawn, and closed his eyes. “This shouldn’t be too hard, really, if we
put our minds to it. Hmm,
the parish of the maid
? That’s New Orleans,
obviously.”

“Huh?” My mind had wandered a bit.

“Joan of Arc was called the Maid of Orleans. Don’t you
remember your history?” Dad said patiently, patting my leg. “So,
the parish
of the maid
would be New Orleans.”

“Oh, yeah.” I closed my eyes. There was a huge gilt statue
of Joan of Arc mounted on horseback, and carrying a banner, down on Decatur
Street where it split into two one-way streets. It had been a gift to the city
from Orleans, France. “Okay, the first line is referring to the Eye, obviously.
It came from Pleshiwar to New Orleans.” I sat up. “That was easy enough.” I
reread the second line. “But what the hell does the rest mean? And
the
blonds from the seas
? Who’s the orphan’s friend?”

“It’s a riddle—it’s not supposed to be easy,” Dad replied.
He frowned as Mom walked back into the room. She sat down on the other side of
me.

“I don’t get it.” I shook my head. “Let’s come back to that
one. The next line?” I cleared my head.
“The saint, always asking for cash?”
I sighed. “A saint statue? But which one?” There were literally hundreds of
statues of saints in New Orleans.

“I need to get back to the crime scene,” Venus said as she
walked back into the room, slipping her phone into her jacket pocket.
“Everything’s under control here, right?” She looked over at the riddle. “What
the hell?”

“This is all that was inside the rabbit,” I explained. “A
riddle.”

Venus shook her head. “I swear, every time I get involved
with this family, it’s something crazy.” She pulled out an evidence bag from her
pocket. She looked at me. “Can I take this?” When I nodded, she slipped the
rabbit skin and the stuffing inside it and sealed it. “I’m going to need to take
that riddle with me, too.”

“You sure you don’t want some coffee to take with you?” Mom
asked.

“Let me make a copy first.” I grabbed a pad of paper and
wrote it down. I scrutinized the handwriting, to see if there were any clues in
it. But no, it was just Doc’s usual precise lettering. I handed it to her.

“I’ll be in touch,” she said as she sealed it into another
evidence bag. “You know how to reach me if you need me.” She walked out the back
door.

“This is hopeless.” I sighed. “If Doc weren’t dead, I’d
cheerfully strangle him.”

“Nothing is hopeless, Scotty,” Mom reprimanded me. “And
don’t joke about killing people, even if they are already dead. You don’t want
to send that kind of energy out into the universe.” She shrugged. “So it’s not
easy? It’s something we have to do. Doc left this for you. He wanted
you
to find this Eye thing, maybe to return it to where it belongs.”

“Why didn’t he just return it?” I groaned. “Why did he keep
it all these years? Wouldn’t it have just been simpler to give the damned thing
back?”

“Well, we can’t very well ask him, can we?” Mom retorted.
“We may never know what he was thinking, or why he did what he did.” She got up
and walked over to one of the windows, opening the shutters and letting bright
sunlight spill into the room. “I can’t even begin to tell you how disappointed I
am in Doc.” She shook her head. “All that crap he used to spout about
colonialism and imperialism, the destruction of native cultures and its
appropriation by white supremacists, was all just a bunch of garbage.”

“What do you mean?”

She turned away from the window. “If he stole this jewel
from that temple—a jewel that was important to an entire culture—it’s more than
just a robbery, Scotty, don’t you see that? He basically spat in the face of an
entire culture, robbing them of their heritage. It’s no better than the way the
Europeans stole this entire continent from the natives. And if he really
believed the things he said, he would have returned it to where it belonged.”

“We may never know what he was thinking,” I replied.

She made a face at me. “Don’t mock your mother.”

I sighed and wrote out another copy of the riddle. “All
right, well, I am going to head home and see what’s going on around there. I
left Colin to watch the apartment, and I don’t trust him completely.”

“Scotty—” This was my dad. “Don’t you think everyone
deserves a second chance?” He gave me a sad smile. “He didn’t kill your uncles,
we know that now.”

I bit my lip. “He still went away and left us thinking he
did.” I swallowed. “Not a word in three years, Dad. Not an ‘I’m sorry I left the
way I did,’ not a ‘hey, I’m alive,’ nothing.” My voice broke a little bit. “You
weren’t the ones he left.”

Dad put his arm around me and shushed Mom as she was about
to splutter something at me. “Son, he did leave
us
, too. You always
seem to forget that. He was a part of our entire family, not just your
boyfriend.” He kissed the top of my head. “I know it’s hard. I know it hurt. But
we didn’t raise you to be so unforgiving. Just because he had to go away and not
say good-bye, or because you haven’t heard from him since, doesn’t mean he
didn’t care. Have you ever considered he might not have been able to? Maybe he
thought it would be easier on both you and Frank to just disappear. I mean, his
job is
dangerous
.”

“Every time he is on a case he could be killed, Scotty.” Mom
took over. “Even when he’s not on a case, I am sure he’s made a lot of enemies
who would love to see him dead—or maybe they’d want to harm people he cared
about to make him suffer.”

“Stop making sense,” I said, irritated. It did make sense,
and it was an angle I’d never considered. “I know he loves us, okay? I just wish
Frank were here. I don’t like having to deal with this alone. It concerns him,
too.” My heart sank as that thought sank in.
How the hell am I going to
explain all of this to Frank?

“Frank will be fine,” Mom urged. She held up her hand as I
started to speak. “No, listen to me. You have every right to blast him, to tell
him how hurt you and Frank were when he vanished like that.” She smiled. “Trust
me, he got an earful from me.”

I decided it was probably not the best time to tell her he’d
probably shot himself to get his foot in the door. I also realized there wasn’t
any point to continuing the argument. They’d forgiven him and would think I was
an awful person if I didn’t at least try.

I couldn’t win.

“Okay, I’ll talk to him.” I threw my hands up.

Mom and Dad smothered me in a huge hug.

I broke away from them and headed down the back stairs.

I opened the gate, and peered up and down Dumaine Street. It
was a sunny day, and the coast looked clear. I shook my head and shut the gate
behind me, making sure it latched. I headed down to Decatur Street, figuring it
would be safer for me to walk up that street. It was similar to Bourbon Street
in that every block was lined with restaurants and bars. There were also little
shops that catered to the tourists, selling all that crap People Not From Here
always seem to be convinced is symbolic of the city: feather boas, beads, little
masks, etc. Farther up the street, closer to my house, there were a lot of
secondhand shops that always came in handy when trying to put a costume
together.

The coroner’s van was pulling away from in front of my house
when I got there. The Crime Lab van was also gone. I unlocked the gate and
walked back in. I climbed the back stairs. I walked into my living room, and
moaned. Crime scene tape was stretched across my French doors. Colin was sitting
at my computer, typing away.

“So, I gather the balcony is off-limits?” I snarled,
starting a pot of coffee. “Did they say for how long?”

Colin smiled at me. “No, they didn’t, but I doubt they’ll
need to come back and check anything out. I mean, he obviously wasn’t killed out
there.”

As the coffee started, I walked over and peered through the
curtains. There was a chalk outline of a body where Levi had landed. I felt a
bit nauseous, and turned back to Colin. “Did she say anything else?”

He nodded. “He was killed on the roof—they found traces of
blood up there. He was bludgeoned. The body was cold, so they aren’t sure of the
time of death. That’s going to take an autopsy. But I think it’s pretty safe to
assume he was probably killed sometime last night.” He gestured around the
apartment. “When you got back here with Venus last night, you thought the place
had been searched, right?”

I nodded. “But why throw the body onto my balcony?”

“Here’s what I’m thinking.” He turned around and faced me.
“While you were at the parade, Levi searched your apartment. He came down here
and hired you after you got back—he was probably waiting for you. He fed you
that line of bull, hired you, and then you went back out again. I think he came
down here and started searching—”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t wash, Agent.”

He frowned. “Why not?”

“Because, dumbass, there was no reason for him to search my
apartment.” I folded my arms and smirked at him. “He had no idea Doc was going
to give me the stupid rabbit—no one could have known before it actually
happened. No one could have known Doc would dump water on me. Nobody could know
I was even going to walk that way on my way to the parade.”

He picked up a pencil and started tapping the eraser against
his front teeth. “Well, Doc was obviously planning on doing something with the
rabbit.” He smiled at me. “And was the Eye inside of it?”

I shook my head. “Nope. All that was inside that rabbit was
stuffing. Ratty, rotting, dirty disgusting stuffing.”

He made a face. “Then where—”

“Doc was a lot smarter than that.” I plopped down on the
couch. I was exhausted, and just wanted to go back to sleep. “He left a riddle
inside the rabbit. I’m assuming the riddle is a clue to where he actually hid
the Eye.”

“A riddle?”

I nodded, and yawned. “I tried figuring it out, but my mind
is fried. Maybe I should just take a nap.”

“Why don’t you do that?” He sat down on the couch. “Give me
the riddle and I’ll see if I can figure it out while you sleep.” He held out his
hand.

I just gave him a look. “Yeah. That’s going to happen.”

His face fell a little bit. “You can trust me, Scotty.”

“Can I really?” I replied. “Tell me about it, Colin.”

He took a deep breath. “Look, I know it was incredibly
shitty of me to leave the way I did. But it’s my life, Scotty. The truth is,
when I first moved here I thought I could give up that life. I really did. And I
thought that—” He paused, and glanced over at the balcony doors. “Did you hear
that?”

“Hear what?” I followed his gaze. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“Shh.” He pulled his gun and got to his feet, and started
creeping toward the doors.

But when he reached the end of the couch, the center doors
exploded open, slamming against the walls with a huge crash as the glass inside
of them shattered.