1 Limoncello Yellow

by Traci Andrighetti

  "Me?" I'd had to endure play-by-play reenactments of the ins and outs of his bowels—make that the outs—on a daily basis since the first day of our partnership. But Stan was too self-absorbed to ever be able to realize that, much less admit it. I could tell that this conversation was going nowhere fast, just like my career. There was nothing more to say.

  In that moment I knew it was over—I had to quit the police force. It wasn't because of Stan's utter lack of self-awareness or mentoring skills. (Although, after suffering through the many misadventures of his entrails, the idea of spending my days—or, in this case, my nights—joined at the hip of a partner had forever lost its appeal.). It was because I was tired of the kinds of people I had to deal with, the unpredictable situations and the humiliations. In the past few month, I'd been accidentally knocked head first into a steaming hot tub by another cop during a hotel fight, punched in the face on Halloween night by a drunken sorority girl who'd assumed I was wearing an "unsexy cop costume," and attacked by a disorderly circus clown's overprotective monkey, just to name a few. And now I had to add "spun and spanked by a German female wrestler with anger management issues who was fresh out of bed with my boyfriend" to the list. The time had definitely come to consider other forms of employment.

  * * *

  I shoved the crutch that the emergency room doctor had given me into the backseat of my 1965 cherry red Mustang convertible and winced as I climbed gingerly into the front seat. The pain in my sprained knee was intense, but it was nothing compared to the ache in my heart. I reached into my bag for my car keys but pulled out my phone instead. I glanced at the time on the display: 7:30 a.m. If I knew my workaholic best friend Veronica Maggio, she was already toiling away at her new detective agency. I debated waiting to call her until after I'd had some time to sleep on the devastating events of the night shift, but I decided that I'd rest a whole lot easier knowing how she was going to react to my news. So I scrolled through my contacts, tapped her name and held my breath.

  "Private Chicks, Incorporated," Veronica answered, her voice unnaturally clipped and professional. "If you give us the time, we'll solve your crime. What can I help you with?"

  I tried to pretend she was next door instead of five hundred lonely miles away in New Orleans. "Do you always answer the phone that way?"

  "In this economic climate, you have to be aggressive, Franki. You always have to be ready to give your thirty-second elevator pitch. Even when you're answering the phone." Unlike me, Veronica was extremely practical and all business. Though, no one could tell that about her at first glance because she looked and acted a lot like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde—petite, blonde, perky and perfectly put together at all times—only she had a cream Pomeranian named Hercules instead of a tan Chihuahua named Bruiser. Veronica was everything I wasn't, and that was putting it mildly.

  "Maybe," I responded. "But I don't know about the 'If you give us the time' part. It makes it sound like it could take you a while to solve a case."

  "It's an expression, Franki. It means that if you hire us, we'll solve your case."

  "I suppose."

  There was an awkward pause.

  "Is something wrong?" Veronica asked.

  I did my utmost to feign surprise. "Why on earth would you think that?"

  "Because you're doing everything you can to avoid telling me why you called."

  "I called because I've decided to take you up on your offer to join your PI firm. I'm moving to New Orleans."

  "Really? What about Vince? And your job?"

  "Vince and I aren't together anymore." There. I said it. And it had hurt.

  "Do you want to talk about it?"

  "Let's just say that I was in a committed relationship, but he wasn't."

  "I'm sorry, Franki."

  "Me too," I whispered, wiping away tears with the back of my hand.

  "But I really hope you're not leaving your job because of Vince."

  "He's got nothing to do with it," I fibbed. If I told her that I discovered Vince's betrayal thanks to a 911 call, she would never believe that I was leaving the force because it was the right thing to do. "The hard truth is that I'm just not cut out for the police force. I gave my two weeks' notice this morning."

  "Are you kidding? You're a born cop, Franki. I mean, you still need some experience and all, but you come from a Sicilian family, and you grew up in Houston. If you don't know crime, who does?" she joked, trying to raise my spirits.

  "Verrrry funny. Need I remind you that you're half Sicilian too?" I asked, half-heartedly playing along.

  "Yeah, but I'm also half Swedish, which tempers the Italian-ness considerably. You've got it on both sides, so you're screwed."

  "You're just a laugh a minute, you know that? I tell you what, let's leave ethnicity out of this," I replied, as though I believed that were possible. Veronica and I had bonded as pre-law students at the University of Texas—not over our criminology classes, but over all things Italian: our Italian language courses, our families, endless bottles of Chianti and, of course, Gucci, Prada, Armani and Dolce and Gabbana (in Cosmopolitan and Vogue, that is). "I might have the makings of a good cop, but that doesn't mean I belong on the police force."

  "This doesn't have anything to do with your trusty partner, does it? What happened this time? Did the diarrhea king leave you high and dry again?"

  "Something like that." I thought of Petra heaving me repeatedly into the air and rubbed my wounded knee. "But Stan's not really the issue. I need to get off the night shift and return to the world of the living. And I want a job that's a little more predictable. As a private investigator, I'd have some say in the cases I take." And in the situations I find myself in.

  "Do you regret going to the police academy after UT instead of law school?"

  "You know I had no choice. I wanted to prove to my family that women could do more than make pasta and birth babies."

  "I know," Veronica said. "But I still stay that becoming a cop was taking rebellion to the extreme."

  "It was the best way I could think of to show them that I was as tough and capable as any man. Besides," I added, eager to change the subject from my family, "you weren't happy as an attorney, and I knew that I wouldn't have been either, especially not as a criminal defense attorney. I want to catch criminals, not defend or prosecute them. If I work for you, I can still do that but in a less restrictive environment. I can be my own boss. You know, call my own shots and that sort of thing."

  "I certainly understand wanting to be your own boss. But aren't you going to feel like you've proven your family right by leaving the force?"

  "They'll probably see it that way," I said. "But I'm just going to have to figure out a way to prove them wrong."

  "Okay," she said, although she didn't sound convinced. "As long as you're sure that you're leaving Austin for the right reasons, then I could really use your help down here."

  "I'm sure, Veronica. Austin was a great place to go to school, but now I need to move on. And with the New Year just two weeks away, it's the perfect time to start a new life."

  "And just in time for Mardi Gras. Laissez les bons temps rouler!"

  "Oui, cher!" I cheered in the Cajun custom—but with a joie de vivre that I definitely didn't feel.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The next two weeks seemed like an eternity. When I told Stan that I'd given my notice, he replied that there was nothing more he could do for me, as though he'd been diligently overseeing my training from the beginning. Even more ironic, he later informed me that my decision to make a change in my life had prompted him to finally make that appointment with the gastroenterologist. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

  Next I broke the news to my parents, which was no easy task. They were about as open to change as the Catholic Church, particularly where I was concerned. I didn't know if it was because I was the baby of the family or if it was because I was the only girl, but my parents persistently labored under the impression that I'd stopped maturing at ar
ound the age of sixteen. So, I had put off making the call until I knew they would be home from working at our family deli, Amato's, in downtown Houston. That way, they would be too tired to put up much resistance. And, with any luck, my nonna Carmela, my father's cantankerous Sicilian mother who had lived with us since I was a child, would be fast asleep. I'd dialed the phone and then held my breath as I listened to it ringing.

  "Hello?"

  "Hi, Mom."

  "Francesca? Is that you?" she asked in her shrill voice.

  "Yes, Mom. It's me." I rolled my eyes. "Your only daughter."

  "Well, I know that, dear."

  We're off to a smashing start, I thought.

  "Is everything all right, Francesca? It's Wednesday."

  "I know it's Wednesday, Mom."

  "You usually call on Sunday, dear."

  "Ah." I hadn't realized I was so predictable. "Listen, Mom, I'm calling because I have some things to tell you and Dad."

  "Well, I hope they're good things, Francesca. You know how your father worries about you. He just can't sleep at night if he thinks the slightest thing is wrong with his baby. And then he's absolutely miserable at work the next day. He acts like your brother Anthony, and me and the customers just don't matter."

  Fantastic. "Mom, can you just tell Dad to get on the line?"

  "Of course, dear. All you had to do was ask." She slammed the phone down onto what was undoubtedly the kitchen counter. "Joe! Get on the other line! It's Francesca!"

  Then, as though my dad was unaware of where I'd been living for the past fourteen years, my mother added, "She's calling from Austin!"

  She picked up the receiver again. "Franki?"

  "Still here, Mom." I sighed. "Dad knows where I live, by the way."

  "Well, you know your father can't hear anymore. I told him to have his ears checked, but he won't listen to me. He's got that wax build up that older men get. One second, dear." She slammed down the phone again and yelled "Joe!"

  To my complete relief, I heard my father pick up another line.

  "I'm here, Brenda. What's going on, Franki?" he asked in his nervously irritated, this-had-better-be-good-news voice.

  "Hey, Dad. I was just calling to tell you guys about some things that are in the works." I'd added that spunky "in the works" line in a desperate attempt to put a preemptive, positive spin on what I knew they would consider earth-shattering news.

  "I hope everything's okay," my dad said in a decidedly unhopeful tone.

  "Everything's fine, Dad," I lied through my teeth.

  "Well, that's good because I just don't know how much more bad news we can take around here," he said gruffly. "It's looking like your brother Michael's going to get laid off from the accounting firm, and Anthony's decided that the deli's just not good enough for him anymore. He wants to go and manage a bar, of all things. Sometimes I just don't know what's wrong with that boy. Amato's Deli is a solid business; I built it from the ground up, and I'm proud to go to work there everyday with our family name on that sign. Besides, you don't just leave a good job on a whim in times like these, whether your family owns the place or not."

  "Y-you're right, Dad," I stammered. "But anyway, my news is definitely good," I said with as much false enthusiasm as I could muster. "I've got a new job as a PI at Veronica's agency and a new place to live…and I'm single again!"

  There was complete silence on the other end of the line for what seemed like five minutes as we all searched for something to say.

  My mom, who has long suspected that I'm solely to blame for the fact that I'm pushing thirty and unmarried, was the first to speak. "What did you do to Vince, Francesca?"

  At that point, I decided to dispense with the pleasantries and make it painfully clear that I'd had nothing to do with this breakup, unlike a few others I could think of. "I caught him in bed with another woman, Mom."

  And with her characteristic talent for denial, she asked, "Now Francesca, are you sure you saw Vince in bed with another woman? You know how quick you are to jump to conclusions."

  I mentally replayed the scene of bursting into that motel room and seeing his naked backside in bed with pair of long and not-so-feminine legs wrapped around his waist. "Yeah, I'm sure, Mom."

  My dad, who has never spoken to me of sex in his entire life and who has taken great pains to feign sleep during unexpected sex scenes while watching TV with me, skillfully shifted the focus to my job situation. "You couldn't hack fighting crime with the protection of the law on your side in a nice college town like Austin, so now you're going to go it alone as a PI in a dangerous city like New Orleans. Is that what you're telling us, Franki?"

  "Dad, I made it onto the force, so clearly I can hack it. I just don't like the rigid structure of police work. And you'll be glad to know that being a PI is actually safer than being a cop. Instead of going toe-to-toe with drug dealers, armed robbers and murderers, I'll be investigating things like insurance fraud, infidelity and missing persons cases."

  "While you're out-a there looking for all-a those-a missing-a persons, maybe you find-a that husband you're missing," my nonna Carmela interjected.

  "Is that you, nonna?" I asked, silently cursing my parents for having three phones in their house.

  "Sì, Franki, it's-a me. Now, I have-a no problem that you're gonna go to New Orleans. You know that your nonnu, God rest-a his soul, and I raised your patri and his-a four brothers there. There are still a lotta nice Sicilian boys in New Orleans, even for a zitella like-a you."

  My nonna had been calling me a zitella, the Italian word for "old maid," since I was sixteen. She'd also been telling me that she had one thing left to do before she could die: see to it that I was properly sistemata, or settled, and making lots of babies and home-cooked meals for my husband.

  "I still have-a some good friends there with-a some sons," nonna continued. "They might-a be divorced once or twice, and they might-a have-a some kids. And maybe they don't have-a no job. But remember, a zitella can't be choosy. I'll make-a some calls and get-a back-a to you."

  I swallowed anxiously. "Thanks, nonna. But I'd really rather meet men on my own."

  "Well, we can see where that's gotten you, dear," my mother said.

  My dad again turned the conversation away from me and men. "Franki, when is this move? I can help you, if you'd like. I wouldn't mind going down to the French Quarter to check in with everyone at Central Grocery. That's where I got my start in the deli business, you know. Making muffulettas."

  "Yeah, I know, Dad." As if I could ever forget that Central Grocery's famous muffuletta sandwich was indirectly responsible for my and my two brothers' entire existence. "But that won't be necessary. The apartment's fully furnished, so I'm not planning on taking much with me. Just what I can fit in my car."

  "What?" My mom and nonna shouted in unison.

  "You gonna sleep in someone else's-a bed?" My nonna had genuine fear in her voice. Next she shouted the inevitable "Porta iella!"

  I'd heard her use this phrase, which is Italian for "It brings bad luck," at least twice a week throughout my childhood. To my nonna, practically every single action you could name, if done improperly or in the wrong frame of mind, would either bring bad luck or invoke malocchiu, the dreaded "evil eye."

  "And besides that, it's just plain dirty, Francesca," my mother added. "You don't know anything about the people who slept in that bed before you. Some people don't bathe. And they might have had bedbugs. Or maybe—"

  "Okay, well, thanks for the advice, everyone! I'd love to keep talking, but I've got so much to do before work tomorrow! Bye now!"

  I hung up the phone without giving them a chance to respond—a technique I'd learned the first time I'd called home after moving away to go to college. Then I let out a long, slow exhale. And to think I'd briefly considered moving back home to Houston instead of New Orleans.

  * * *

  When moving day finally arrived, I packed up my Mustang, entered 7445 Maple Street into my iPhone maps app, and l
eft for New Orleans, or "Nola," as the locals call it. My beloved brindle cairn terrier dozed in the passenger seat with one ear up like a periscope listening for any signs of trouble for much of the eight-hour drive. I'd named him Napoleon after the Corsican-born French emperor for his I-may-be-short-but-I'm-a-bad-ass attitude.

  When Napoleon and I finally turned onto Maple Street, we were immediately greeted by a crowd of people in the street. I heard a live brass band playing "When the Saints Go Marching In" and realized that the crowd was walking in procession in time with the music. The people in the back of the procession were wearing casual clothes. Some were twirling parasols, others were shaking handkerchiefs. The people in the front, however, were dressed more elegantly and mostly in black. In that moment, I realized that I was following a jazz funeral. Not exactly an auspicious beginning to my new life.

  As I inched down the street, I caught glimpses of the horse-drawn hearse carrying a casket behind glass, and I watched as the funeral-goers danced joyously to the music. My father once told me that the people in the front, the family and friends of the deceased, were called the "first line." Those in the back were called the "second line" because they're not part of the funeral but instead are just passersby following along and enjoying the music. Life was certainly different in New Orleans, and so was death.

  I glanced at the street addresses on my left and saw that they were odd-numbered. I looked at the next address and discovered that we were close to 7445. "Napoleon! We're almost there, boy!" He cocked his head to one side, no doubt wondering if he would ever crack the mysteries of human speech, and I gave his head an affectionate little scratch.

  A few minutes later, I watched as the funeral procession entered a large cemetery. I looked to my left again and saw 7445, an old two-story house that had been converted into a fourplex. I realized that my new home was right smack across the street from that cemetery, and I gave a little shudder. Cemeteries, particularly creepy New Orleans cemeteries with their assortment of tombs, sarcophagi, obelisks, gothic statues, and alleged voodoo rituals, made my skin crawl. I noted with some relief that next to the cemetery was a tavern named Thibodeaux's, which it was looking like I was going to need.