I leaned forward with my coffee cup between my hands. "We saw the chain, but there was no pendant. That could either mean that she was killed for the necklace or that the killer took it as a memento."
Carnie frowned like a sad clown. "That's what I was afraid of. That amber was priceless, and I made the mistake of telling that to Amber."
"But amber is fairly inexpensive," Veronica said. "What was so special about this piece?"
She hesitated. "It was from the Amber Room, the one that the Prussian King Frederick William I gave to Tsar Peter the Great in 1716."
Veronica gasped, and her eyes lit up like amber in sunlight. "That's the room the Nazis stole from Catherine Palace during World War II."
"Yes, and it has never been found. Experts say that it's worth at least three hundred and eighty-five million dollars."
After I recovered my ability to speak, I asked, "If the room is missing, how did you get a piece?"
"My grandmother was from Russia, and she was a maid in the palace." She twisted a crown-shaped ring around her French-manicured finger. "When the Nazis dismantled the room, small pieces of amber broke off. They picked up every piece they could find, but they overlooked one that had been cut like a gemstone. My grandmother took it and intended to return it after the war, but her family fled the country. And then when the Soviets began work on a replica of the room in 1979, my mother had the amber made into a necklace."
I swallowed the last of my coffee and placed the mug on the table in front of me. "So, technically, that pendant belongs to the Russians."
Carnie's face flushed, and her bulbous nose turned as red as Ronald McDonald's. "My mother believed that the Soviets were evil like the Nazis, and she didn't trust them to return the amber to the palace," she huffed. "Besides, after the replica of the room was unveiled, it didn't seem as important."
"Just to clarify," Veronica began in a high-pitched, we-can't-afford-to-lose-this-client tone, "are you hiring us to find the pendant or to investigate Amber's death?"
"Both," she replied. "As soon as I report the theft of the necklace, which I intend to do today, I figure I'll become a suspect in her murder."
She figured right. I knew from my time on the force that she would be questioned, especially now that someone had ripped the priceless pendant from Amber's lifeless neck.
"And even though Amber and I weren't close," she continued, pressing a hand to her ample bosom, "I wouldn't feel right if I didn't have you try to find her killer. I inherited some money with the necklace, so I can cover your expenses."
"It's very admirable of you to honor Amber that way," Veronica said, her voice soft. "We'll do our best to see that the killer and the necklace are found."
I was thinking that we should do our best to find that three hundred and eighty-five million dollar room too. "Is there anything else we should know?"
Carnie bowed her head, causing her double and triple chins to bulge. "Amber felt like bad things had been happening to her since she'd quit Madame Moiselle's, and she was getting really paranoid and superstitious about it."
"Can you give us some examples?" I pressed.
"Nothing specific. But I noticed that she'd started carrying around good luck charms, wearing talismans, things like that."
Veronica nodded. "You've given us some great information. We'll start by questioning the employees at Madame Moiselle's, and we'll check with Dr. Lessler to find out whether he saw or heard anything unusual during Amber's appointment. We'll be in touch in a few days."
Carnie rose to her feet. "I've got a show in an hour." She offered her baseball mitt-sized hand, bending daintily at the wrist. "You've been so kind."
I noticed that she didn't extend the same courtesy to me, but no matter. Because as Veronica saw her out, my mind was already fixated on Amber's superstitious side. And I wondered what, if anything, it had to do with the bizarre murder scene at the club.
I stepped inside Madame Moiselle's at a quarter after eleven and stopped dead in my tracks.
Glenda stood before me dressed like a stripper Sherlock Holmes.
"Howdy, partner," she exclaimed, adjusting her deerstalker cap.
"You're wearing the wrong hat for that greeting," I said, trying to hide my inner panic as I took in the tiny cape cropped well above her magnifying glass–shaped pasties. "Is that tweed?"
"Yeah, and it's itchier than poison ivy on your privates, so I had to make a costume change." To my dismay, she spun around to reveal her bony buttocks protruding from the round holes she'd cut from the seat of her boyshorts. But on the bright side, she'd left the crotch intact.
"Well, I guess that about took care of it," I said, scanning the club to avoid checking out her cheeks. "Is the manager in yet?"
Mercifully, she turned back around. "Eugene? He's at the police station. Our bartender, Carlos, is in charge until he gets back."
I glanced to my right. "I don't see anyone at the bar."
"He's probably upstairs in the office. I'll take you up there."
Instead of leading me to the VIP Champagne Room staircase, Glenda led me past the main stage, and I noticed that the crime scene had been cleared.
Keeping my eyes fixed on the back of her head rather than on her backside, I asked, "Hey, do you know where the bathtub came from?"
"From the prop room," she replied, pointing to a door behind the stage. "It belonged to Lili St. Cyr."
"Who's that?"
Glenda turned and looked at me like I'd snapped her bra strap (if she'd been wearing one). "None other than the creator of bathtub burlesque, sugar."
As soon as she uttered the phrase, I wondered whether Amber had been recreating a sexy bathing routine for a lover who ultimately killed her.
"In the 1940s and '50s," Glenda continued, "Lili was as famous as Gypsy Rose Lee. Then she retired and ran a well-known lingerie business. Her deep plunge bra made Elvira a superstar. And on top of all that, she even got a mention in The Rocky Horror Picture Show."
"That's, uh, quite a list of credentials."
"You can say that again," she said, strutting toward a staircase in the corner. "When Lili passed in 1999, Madame Moiselle's started the 'Wash the Girl of Your Choice' service to honor her memory."
I started to say one of the usual clichés like "she would have been so proud," but I got distracted trying to envision how a client would wash a stripper when the club had a strict no-touching-the-merchandise policy.
Glenda pushed open a door marked Strippers and Staff Only and shot up the staircase in her gun-heel boots.
I climbed a few steps, and my message tone sounded. Grateful for the excuse to take a break, I pulled my phone from my bag and saw that the text was from Bradley.
"What's going on? Why didn't you return my call last night?"
My stomach did a belly flop. I should've called him back, but the past couple of days had been rough, to put it mildly. And after seeing Amber, I hadn't felt like talking. So, I sent a quick reply saying that I would meet him at the bank for lunch and explain everything—except for the part about me tarnishing his professional image, of course.
"Are you comin', Miss Franki?" Glenda called from above.
"Yeah, sorry." I shoved my phone into my bag, and when I finally reached the landing the tantalizing aroma of sausage teased my nostrils. "What is that heavenly odor?"
"That's Miss Eve cooking lunch for the girls."
"Wait," I said, holding out a hand to steady myself. "There's a kitchen? And a cook?"
She put her hand on her hip. "We don't call her a cook, sugar. She's a house mom. All the quality strip clubs have them."
I immediately began rethinking my career choice. Not that I was considering becoming a stripper. My parents and the Catholic Church had worked too hard to repress me for me to throw it all away by doing something as liberated as that. But an office with a house mom would be nice.
"C'mon," she said, gesturing for me to follow. "I'll introduce you to her."
As we walked do
wn the hallway, I took note of the layout. There were two offices, one across from the other. Then came the kitchen on the left and the girls' dressing room on the right.
Glenda took me by the arm and pulled me into a sunny yellow kitchen where a short, plump woman in her mid-fifties was standing over a huge soup pot. "Miss Eve Quebedeaux, this is Miss Franki Amato, my private investigator partner."
"Well, hiii," Eve drawled, sounding remarkably like Blanche Devereaux from The Golden Girls. She wiped her hands on an apron adorned with peaches, possibly symbolizing the state of Georgia. "Miss Glenda's told me so much about yewww," she said, grasping my hands. "I'll bet you work up quiiite an appetite doin' all that investigatin'. Can I git you some chicken Andouille gumbo and a slice of Bananas Foster piiie?"
I blinked and looked for the halo above her graying blonde curls. Then I sunk into a chair at the dining table and managed to utter a faint, "Yes."
"Uh-uh, Miss Franki," Glenda said, wagging her index finger (and, unintentionally, her boobs). "You can't have that pie. Miss Ronnie told me that you gave up sweets for Lent."
I shot her a seething look. I knew this hiring Glenda thing was going to be a big bust, and I wasn't referring to her breasts.
"We're actually trying to find Carlos," Glenda continued, planting her bare bottom in the chair across from me. "We've got to question him about Amber's murder."
"Oh, that poor girl," Eve lamented as she fixed me a heaping helping of gumbo. She placed the bowl in front of me and poured me a glass of milk. "I didn't get to know her all that well because she only worked here for two months, but I feel just awful about what happened."
"What was she like?" I asked and then inhaled a huge spoonful of the Cajun goodness.
Eve sat down at the head of the table. "She kept to herself, mostly. Some of the other girls thought it was because she was uppity, but I think she just didn't know how to act in a family setting."
I would've had a hard time seeing a strip club as a "family setting," but now that I knew they had kitchens complete with house moms like Eve, I was a believer. "I've heard that Amber was essentially an orphan. Did she ever mention any relatives to you?"
"Never." She rested her chin on her fists. "The only person I ever saw her with was her pimp."
I almost choked on a piece of chicken. "She had a pimp?"
"Uh-hu-h," she replied in three syllables. "He came here right before she quit the club."
So, Carnie might have been right about Amber working as a prostitute after she left Madame Moiselle's. "Do you know what he wanted?"
"He came to pick her up. And while Amber was changin' into her street clothes, I served him a plate of sauce picante, and we got to chattin'. He said his name was King, and I could see that deep down he was a nice man. So I encouraged him to repent his sins and let Jesus into his heart."
I smirked as I took another bite. The chances of a pimp finding God were about as high as Glenda joining the Cloister.
Eve touched my arm. "And would you believe that right after our conversation he became a minister?"
I lowered my spoon, openmouthed. "How do you know that?"
"Because when I'm coming to work I usually see him at the corner of Bourbon and Dumaine, preaching the gospel to passersby."
Eve's angel status just got elevated to saint, but I wasn't so sure about the status of the pimp preacher. I planned to find that out after lunch.
A Hispanic male who looked to be around twenty-five entered the room and removed a bowl from a cabinet. "Are the girls ready to go, Eve?"
"Oh!" She jumped up from the table. "I'd better go see. Be right back, ladies."
"Carlos, this is Franki, my PI partner," Glenda said. "We wanted to ask you some questions about Amber."
He glanced in my direction. "You're talking to the wrong person. I barely knew her."
"Any information might be important," I said in an encouraging tone. "But could I ask what time you left on Saturday night? It would help to know when the doors were locked."
"Eugene would've been the one to lock up." His thick, black brows furrowed as he spooned gumbo into his bowl. "I had to leave at four fifteen when the club closed because Iris and I got arrested."
"Good grief, Carlos," Glenda exclaimed. "How'd you two end up in the hoosegow?"
He removed a spoon from a drawer and sat beside me. "Things got a little rowdy with some customers who didn't want to leave after last call. So we all went to the tank."
By this point, I was seriously starting to wonder if I'd missed the memo about using euphemisms for "jail." "Who's Iris?"
Glenda flipped her hair. "The bouncer, sugar."
This Iris must be a big girl. "When did you get out of jail, Carlos?"
He splashed Tabasco sauce on his gumbo. "At one o'clock yesterday afternoon after Eugene posted our bail."
So, he and Iris had airtight alibis. "Did you notice anything unusual before you got arrested?"
"Nah, it was business as usual," he replied, stirring his food. "And I haven't seen Amber around here in a few months."
I looked up from my bowl. "I thought she quit a year ago."
He took a bite and then shifted the food to one side of his mouth. "She did, but she came in sometimes for a drink."
On a hunch I asked, "What did she typically order?"
"The same thing she did when she was dancing here," he replied, resting his elbows on the table. "Amaretto, neat."
Glenda's two-inch false eyelashes opened wide. "It wasn't Amaretto di Amore, was it?"
He shook his head. "We don't carry that brand. Even though it's made here in New Orleans, it doesn't sell as well as Disaronno."
As I'd suspected, there was something weird about that bottle of amaretto beside the bathtub, but I still wasn't sure what. "Is that the kind Amber drank?"
"No, she used to tip me to keep a bottle of Lazzaroni Amaretto under the bar for her."
"Any idea why she wanted that particular brand?" I asked as Eve returned to her place at the table.
He smiled as though remembering something funny. "She liked it because it's the only kind made from an infusion of the Amaretti di Saronno cookies."
I memorized the name Lazzaroni, both because it was pertinent to the investigation and because it was as close as I was going to get to cookies during Lent.
"What are the other amarettos made from?" Glenda asked, twirling her cape tie around her finger.
Carlos swallowed and wiped his mouth with a napkin. "Almond essence or apricot pits."
Eve rolled her eyes. "Amber definitely didn't like that kind."
My body tensed because I sensed that she was about to say something important. "Did she talk to you about amaretto?"
"No, but one time an anonymous admirer had a bottle of amaretto delivered to her here at the club. When she opened it, she got really mad and threw it across the kitchen. It took me hours to clean up the mess." She gestured toward the kitchen window. "And the worst part was that it ruined my chiffon curtains."
My pulse started racing. "Do you remember the brand?"
"Yes, because it was such a pretty name. A-muh-rhet-toe dee Uh-more-ay." Eve sighed and squeezed her shoulders together. "Doesn't it just remind you of a romantic trip to Italy?"
Actually, it reminded me of a senseless killing at a strip club.
And of a murderer with a message.
6
"You must have been starving," Bradley said as he topped off my champagne.
"Mm-hm." I chewed the last piece of a fourteen-ounce prime rib eye steak smothered in pepper-cream bourbon sauce. Of course, I hadn't been all that hungry since I'd eaten Eve's gumbo before coming to the bank. But Bradley had gone to the trouble of having Dickie Brennan's Steakhouse deliver lunch to his office as a belated birthday surprise, so who was I to disappoint him?
Dabbing my mouth with my napkin, I discretely scoured the room for any sign of the restaurant's famous creole cheesecake. "What's for dessert?"
He looked at me fro
m beneath thick, dark lashes, and the corner of his mouth lifted into a sexy half smile.
I met his gaze, and a warmth spread through my body.
"I was going to order the praline chocolate mousse," he began in a husky voice, "but then Veronica called and told me you'd given up sweets for Lent."
That warmth turned as cold as Veronica's gelid heart. Just who did she think she was, anyway? A Catholic cop?
"However," he continued, his blue eyes twinkling, "I do have this for you." He pulled a rectangular box from his desk.
I covered my mouth with my hands. "What is it?"
"You'll have to find out," he replied, sliding the box in front of me.
I opened the lid and gasped. Inside was a gorgeous ruby and diamond necklace. The pendant was teardrop shaped, which, given that this was a thirtieth birthday present, seemed particularly appropriate. "It's stunning," I whispered. "Thank you."
"You're stunning," he said in an earnest tone. "Especially in red."
My chest swelled with happiness. Bradley and I had been dating for a little over a year, and even though I'd had reason to doubt him—actually, two reasons considering that he'd neglected to tell me he was married when we started dating and that he once broke up with me to hook up with his evil ex-secretary—it was times like these that I remembered why I was so crazy about him (and, obviously, when I found out that there were logical explanations for the above discretions). But as I gazed at him from across the table, I sensed that something was on his mind. "Is everything okay?"
His jaw tensed, and he glanced at his half-eaten steak. "The bank lost a couple of its biggest accounts last week."
"I'm sorry to hear that," I said, concerned. "Do you know why?"
"I don't." He rubbed his eyes. "I thought that I had a solid relationship with both of the clients too."
I hated to see Bradley upset. It always made me feel helpless, which I didn't like. "Have you tried contacting them?"
"They haven't returned my calls," he replied, depositing his napkin beside his plate. "But enough about business." He clasped his hands in front of his mouth. "Let's talk about you."
Franki Amato Mysteries Box Set Page 59
