Bad Weather

by Paul Austin Ardoin

  BAD WEATHER

  A Dez Roubideaux Novella

  PAUL AUSTIN ARDOIN

  Other Books

  by Paul Austin Ardoin

  Fenway Stevenson Mysteries:

  The Reluctant Coroner

  The Incumbent Coroner

  The Candidate Coroner (coming soon)

  BAD WEATHER

  Copyright © 2018 Paul Austin Ardoin

  All rights reserved.

  No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-949082-04-3

  Cover design by Ziad Ezzat

  Author photo by Monica Toohey-Krause of Studio KYK

  Edited by Max Christian Hansen

  Information about the author can be found at

  http://www.paulaustinardoin.com

  PROLOGUE

  The rain pounded against the floor-to-ceiling windows of the large, carpeted lobby at the Los Angeles Arts Center. A table stood at one end of the lobby, with a white man in a tweed jacket sitting behind it and a stack of hardback books on top. A line of people stretched from the table all the way across the lobby, past the concession stand, to the corner where the sign for the restrooms shone dimly. A security guard, his arms folded, stood ten feet behind the man.

  The man behind the table took a book from the person at the front of the line, signed it, and handed it back; the process then repeated. Sometimes the person in line had more than one book. Sometimes the man would take a book off the stack of hardbacks, sign that, and point to a woman at a smaller table with a placard reading Cashier. Often the person in line would talk with the man signing the books. Most of the conversations lasted less than thirty seconds.

  Seventy minutes after the start of the signing, two women, one black with short tightly-curled hair, and one Asian with long straight black hair, made it to the front of the line. They were both in their early twenties. The black woman, carrying both a paperback and a hardback in one hand, wore a short black dress, the Asian woman a short dress with a red-and-black floral print.

  “You’re next,” the man said.

  “My friend just bought your new book,” the black woman said. The Asian woman set down a hardback book in front of him.

  “Who should I make it out to?”

  “Audrey.” With her elbow, the black woman nudged the Asian woman, who crossed her arms and spoke.

  “Have him sign your copy of Exodus Nights too.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Sorry,” Audrey said to the man. “My friend Desirée is apparently embarrassed that she has one of your paperbacks instead of a hardback. But I told her you’d gladly sign it.”

  “Of course,” he said.

  The woman called Desirée rolled her eyes and set the paperback of Exodus Nights down in front of him, next to the hardback.

  The man’s eyes went to the cover of the other book in her hand. “What the hell is that?” he said softly.

  Desirée looked from the cover of the book to the man’s face and back again.

  “I don’t know what you’re playing at,” the man continued, “but get the hell out of line. And don’t ever come to one of my events again.”

  The woman didn’t move, staring at the man behind the table. The security guard took two steps forward.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize it would upset you.” She turned and put her hand on Audrey’s arm. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “What’s happening?” Audrey said.

  “He saw the other book.”

  Behind Audrey, another female voice released a bloodcurdling scream.

  Desirée pulled Audrey behind her; Audrey caught her heel on the carpet and fell to the floor.

  A white woman dressed in black jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt ran screaming into the lobby. She knocked over the display of hardback books, and held out a hunting knife with her right hand.

  The man jumped out of his chair, and the woman slashed at him. The blade caught the man’s right forearm, cutting through the sleeve of the tweed jacket. A small spray of blood came out as the man stumbled backward.

  The white woman in the hooded sweatshirt screamed again, and raised the knife.

  The security guard stepped forward.

  Three gunshots.

  1

  Three months earlier

  Five days of rain and no signs of letting up. The carpet in front of Dez Roubideaux’s door had started to get black.

  Dez sat on the checkered sofa, trying to ignore the stains in the carpet. Her roommate Rhonda constantly tracked in mud and didn’t wipe her feet, and it was also her turn to vacuum the living room this week, a duty she seemed to be ignoring. Dez picked up the remote control from the coffee table. She clicked away from MTV to the Weather Channel and sat back, bleakly staring the big blue capital L on the screen, the low pressure system off the Southern California coast which was sending bad weather to the whole Los Angeles area. The L just sat there, not moving—giving no clues if it would move on in the next couple of days, or if it would stick around another week—maybe even through the end of January.

  Dez had hoped to avoid this kind of weather when she joined the criminal justice program at Cal State Long Beach. She was a long way from the bayous of Lake Charles, but somehow it was never quite far enough. She turned the slip of paper over in her hand—Frankie. The 310 area code and seven digits were written plainly underneath.

  The door swung open hard, and Rhonda, a tall, muscular, olive-skinned woman, came in. Her windbreaker shed water like dandelions expelling white fluff in a stiff breeze. She had her mountain bike up off the ground, hefting it over one shoulder, her backpack, sopping wet, on the other.

  “¿Qué onda?” Rhonda said. “Really coming down out there.” She said it like she was proud of it.

  Dez got up to open the sliding glass door so Rhonda could put her bike in their covered, fenced-in patio. She deliberately ignored Rhonda’s Adidas squishing through the living room and kitchen before she went out the back door.

  Dez went back to the sofa and absentmindedly turned the paper over and over in her hand. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Rhonda on the patio, shedding the windbreaker and hanging it over the bike before she came in. Rhonda kicked off her shoes. Her eyes lit on the slip of paper in Dez’s hand and she smirked.

  “Oh, come on, Dez, don’t tell me you haven’t called her yet.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t do this to yourself,” Rhonda said. “You already cleaned the kitchen. You reorganized your CDs like five times. Just pick up the phone.”

  “Now, Rhonda, don’t pretend like you got this white girl all figured out,” Dez said. “Maybe she’s straight.”

  “She knew all the lyrics to Bring Me Some Water,” Rhonda said. “She’s not straight.”

  “Well then, maybe she’s not home.”

  “Leave a message on her machine. It’s not that hard.”

  “Maybe—”

  “Dez, we did not drive all the way up to a party in Westwood j
ust so you’d get scared off by some hot pin-up girl wannabe. Pick up the damn phone.” Rhonda went up the stairs, clomping in her wet socks, leaving Dez alone with Frankie’s number and the Weather Channel.

  Dez swore under her breath. She hated when Rhonda was right. She went over to the telephone table and picked up their cordless phone and dialed.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello,” Dez said, her heart racing. “Is Frankie there?”

  Dez liked the name Frankie. She liked deliberately taking a very feminine name and masculinizing it. It was what she had done to Desirée, after all. And shortening Francine or Francesca certainly qualified—plus, there were so many interesting connotations. Frankie and Johnnie, with the old song’s passion and heartbreak. Frankie Goes To Hollywood, the mention of which took Dez back a couple of years, hearing Relax at the all-ages club in Long Beach, before a white girl in dark red lipstick, who acted like she owned the place, started calling her names. And Relax made her think of sneaking into see Body Double at the movie theater back in Lake Charles, and seeing Melanie Griffith naked—well, that was right about the time Dez realized she was different from other girls.

  Dez also liked that the nickname contained the word frank, which Francine and Franscesca didn’t have. Frankness, openness, honesty. Which she could use more of in her life. Dez had gone through a breakup a couple of years before with Connie—whose name invoked just the opposite qualities: con man, con job, pros and cons.

  At the party in Westwood, Dez didn’t think Frankie looked like a Frankie. She looked like she had been a tomboy growing up, the kind of girl who wore flannel men’s shirts in high school but every boy still had a crush on. At the party, she wore a dress—one of the few girls there in a dress—and turned many heads. The dress, a summery, almost 1950’s pin-up style dress, had red cherries and green stems and leaves on a white background. The dress straps tied around her neck, and her curves pulled off the pin-up look without going overboard on the hair and makeup.

  She had come up to Dez—one of the few black girls at the party—and when she introduced herself, Dez didn’t think Frankie on any level. She thought Lauren, or maybe Elizabeth, but nothing that ended in an “ee” sound—it didn’t go with the dress. Dez saw where her dress strap met her collarbone and just stood there as she offered her hand. Dez finally took it, and looked up—looked at her large eyes, her wide mouth, her porcelain skin, too surreal to touch. But her hand was strong, her grip firm, her skin cool.

  “This is Frankie,” the voice at the other end of the phone said.

  Dez started, shaking herself out of her reverie. “Hey, Frankie, this is Dez. I went to that party last Friday. Over in Westwood.”

  “Oh, Dez, hi!” she said. “I danced with you to ‘Tainted Love.’”

  “Yep, that’s me all right,” Dez said. She wanted to ask Frankie her last name, but couldn’t think of how to do it. And suddenly, Dez realized that she had been psyching herself up for so long about picking up the phone and calling Frankie that she hadn’t actually thought of anything to say to her.

  “You want to go to dinner on Friday?” Dez blurted out. She hadn’t meant to say it, especially this early in the conversation; she wanted to appear cool. But she had said it, thrust out there now. All she could do was wait.

  There was a pause, during which Dez could only hear the blood pounding in her ears. “I’m meeting my agent on Friday night in Hollywood,” Frankie said. “It’s a whole production, he wants me to meet with some people. But if you’re free tonight, I could go for some coffee or dessert.”

  Dez heard the word agent and was thrown off a little. “No problem,” Dez said. “I can do that.” She had a class at nine the next morning—and she had promised herself that she’d stop going on dates the night before an early class. But she remembered Frankie, and that pin-up dress, and thought she could make an exception.

  “Where did you say you were?” Frankie said. “You’re near Huntington Beach or something, right?”

  “Oh, no. I’m not that far. I’m just a few miles down the road. In Long Beach.”

  “And I’m in Redondo Beach,” Frankie said. “So many beaches.” She laughed. It was a bad joke—not really a joke at all. It was a genuine laugh, though; Frankie seemed comfortable in her own skin, and Dez was immediately envious.

  Dez realized there was a pause in the conversation and started to panic about what to say. She grasped at the first thing she remembered.

  “Now did I hear that right? You say you’re meeting your agent?”

  “Right,” Frankie said.

  “What do you have an agent for?” As soon as she heard the words leave her mouth, Dez winced. That didn’t come out the way she wanted it to.

  Frankie clicked her tongue. “I thought for sure Linda would have told you.”

  “Nope, she didn’t say anything to me.” Dez had no idea who Linda was. Maybe she lived at the party house in Westwood.

  “I’m a writer.”

  “Oh, cool,” Dez said, not recognizing the tone in her voice. “What kind of stuff do you write?”

  “Novels, mostly,” Frankie said offhandedly. “I have a book of short stories that didn’t sell very well and a memoir my agent didn’t want to touch.”

  “Novels,” Dez said. She liked crime novels and mysteries, although with each criminal justice class she took, her enjoyment of the books dampened; she was starting to see that the way things worked in the novels was a fantasy compared to how the police actually investigated. She had found herself, lately, reading P.D. James and Martha Grimes: British writers using the unfamiliar Scotland Yard as a backdrop didn’t mess with her sense of reality quite as much. And, upon the advice of a couple of her friends, she had read some Toni Morrison and Patricia Cornwall the last year, although she found them more depressing than empowering.

  “I guess you’d call it ‘literary fiction,’” Frankie said, then stifled a yawn. “I just write the stories as the muse dictates, of course, but I find genre fiction—and especially romance and police procedurals—all so tiresome.”

  Dez winced. She’d never read a Harlequin romance—they weren’t written for her—but she’d cut her teeth on Ed McBain.

  “And I’d like to wring Stephen King’s neck,” Frankie continued. “Now everybody thinks they can put a rabid dog or a murderous clown into a story and be the next big thing.”

  “Well, I hate to say this, but I don’t think I’ve heard of you—what’s your last name?” Dez asked. She tapped her pencil eraser on the table a few times in succession.

  “Oh, I don’t use my real last name on my literary fiction.” Frankie’s tone was distracted, buoyant. Dez felt like the conversation was a helium balloon and she was desperately trying to hang onto the string.

  “Really? I thought for sure that most people would want their name on literary novels. You don’t want to leave your fake names for the crappy formula novels that put food on the table?”

  Frankie cleared her throat. “I guess I’m not most people.”

  Dez nodded. She could feel her throat go dry. “So, uh, what name do you use?”

  “Oh, right. I use my middle name as my last name.”

  There was silence for a moment. “And what’s your middle name?” Dez finally asked.

  “Bethany.”

  “Oh, wow, Bethany. Now that’s a beautiful name.” The words were out of Dez’s mouth before she could stop them, and she silently cursed herself. The string of the conversation balloon slipped through her fingers.

  “Thank you, I guess.”

  No use stopping now, Dez thought. “Hey, I’m not joking, girl. I really like that name.”

  “Fine.”

  “Frankie Bethany, novelist. I like the sound of that.” Dez started to walk around the coffee table, holding the portable phone tightly to her ear. She actually wasn’t sure if she liked the sound of the name, but it was too late—and too pointless—to back out of it now. The two double-e sounds at the end of each name sounded too
playful. It wasn’t sober enough for a serious novelist. Perhaps that was why Dez had never heard of her writing before.

  “So,” Dez said. “You said you were free for coffee tonight?”

  “Sure. There’s a cool little bistro just a few blocks away from me. They’re open late, and they make some nice after-dinner coffee drinks. Or if you’re feeling adventurous, I think they have some limoncello.”

  Dez had never had limoncello, but she had heard Rhonda talk about getting the worst hangover in the world from it. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

  Frankie gave Dez directions to her apartment. “When did we say? Eight?”

  “Eight sounds great,” Dez said. “See you then, chica.”

  Dez hung up, her heart still pounding in her ears. Had she really called Frankie chica? She backtracked around the coffee table as if the phone hadn’t been cordless and she had to unwrap herself. She put the phone back on the cradle to charge.

  “Sounds like someone’s got a hot date,” Rhonda called from upstairs.

  “Aw, shit, Rhonda, you were listening?”

  Rhonda’s head appeared at the top of the stairs. “Of course I was listening.” She started to walk down and stopped about halfway, sitting on a step. “Nothing exciting ever happens here. You’re going to be the most boring cop in the world if you keep this up. But now you’re going on a date with a hotshot artiste. Maybe you can be her kept woman and just sit around eating bonbons all day.”

  Dez laughed, a little uneasily. “I don’t know about that. She’s written books. I don’t think she’s rich.”

  “Don’t play me, girl. I know a sugar mama when I see one. She’s gotta be older than you, Dez. You were talking about agents and shit?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Rhonda got a thoughtful look on her face. “She sure doesn’t look older than you, though. I saw you looking at her at the party. Incredible body. All boobs and butt. I could do with one of those girls.”