by Janet Dawson
There was silence on the other end of the phone. As it stretched out I wondered if Cindy Brixton had ended the call. Then she spoke, her voice sounding subdued.
“I have plenty to say about Slade. I’m at home. Come on over.” She rattled off the address.
* *
Cindy Brixton had to be the woman who’d confronted Slade at Laurette’s apartment.
She was tall, nearly six feet, and slender, with a body that seemed to be all angles. Her blond hair was short and sculpted around her head. She wore khaki cropped pants and a lime-green cotton shirt, her feet bare. I pegged her age as early thirties. Her manner was brisk and businesslike as she greeted us at her front door. She lived in a two-story double-gallery house on Terpsichore Street in the Lower Garden District. It was just off St. Charles Avenue, close enough that I could hear the streetcars going by. The house had been converted into condos and she had one of the upstairs units.
She ushered us into the living room furnished with sleek, modern furniture and waved us toward the sofa. “Can I get you something to drink? I’ve got iced tea and beer. In fact, I’ve already started.” She indicated the end table, where a bottle of Abita Amber sat on a coaster.
“A beer would be great,” I said. Antoine agreed.
Cindy headed for the kitchen and came back with two more bottles of Abita. I took a swallow of beer, enjoying the cold brew. Cindy sat cross-legged in a chair covered with a green-and-yellow geometric print. She picked up her beer bottle from the end table and took a sip, then cradled it in her hand. “Why are you looking for information on Slade?”
“He seems to have disappeared,” I said.
“And we’d like to find out why,” Antoine added. “And get a line on where he went.”
“Disappeared?” She gave a short derisive snort. “That doesn’t surprise me. That son of a bitch killed my brother. He knew I wasn’t going to let go of that, no matter what the cops or fire department did—or didn’t do. He’s probably running for cover. I don’t have any idea where, but I sure as hell hope the past catches up with him.”
She leaned over and picked up a small framed photograph. I recognized the young man in the picture. This was the same photo that had appeared in Ray Brixton’s obituary.
“Was it you?” I asked. “Waylaying Slade outside the apartment building a couple of weeks ago?”
“Yes, that was me. I’ll bet that’s why he left town.”
“We don’t know for sure that he left town,” Antoine said. “We think so, but we don’t have any confirmation of that. Right now, we’re trying to find out everything that went down and make some sense of it all.”
Cindy looked at Ray’s photo. “It’s been seven weeks. The police rang my doorbell and told me my brother was dead. My baby brother. Damn it.”
Her voice broke and a crack appeared in her armor. She brushed away a tear, then set the photo on the table. The wound of her brother’s death was still fresh. Not surprising. That kind of hurt doesn’t go away.
“Why do you think Slade killed your brother?” I asked.
She took a sip of beer. Then her mouth settled into a firm, no-nonsense line. “Slade owed my brother money. That’s what started it. Ray never should have loaned money to that bastard. But my brother was too damn soft-hearted. He was an easy touch. All he had to hear was that a fellow musician was having troubles. He would take out his wallet, or give the guy the shirt off his back, that sort of thing.”
“I hear that,” Antoine said. “Did Ray say why Slade needed money?”
“According to Ray,” Cindy said, “Slade was having car troubles. He needed cash to get his piece-of-junk car fixed so he could take his equipment from gig to gig. I guess he was hitting up a bunch of musicians and he found my brother. Who unfortunately was an easy mark for Slade’s scams. After a while, Ray was having some money troubles of his own. I offered to loan him some cash, but he said no, said this guy owed him money and he’d get it from him. So my brother wanted to get paid back and this creep Slade kept putting him off. Finally Ray told me he was going to meet Slade and get the money. He said Slade told him to meet him at his apartment. Turns out it wasn’t his apartment anymore, he’d been evicted. He must have kept a key, because that’s where my brother went to meet him. Next thing I know, I’ve got a couple of cops on my doorstep, telling me Ray’s dead.”
She grimaced and stopped talking, fighting down the emotions that made her voice shake. I gave her a moment to compose herself, then asked, “What do you think happened?”
“I think my brother went to that apartment to meet Slade and Slade killed him. Then he torched the place to cover it up. I can’t understand why the cops haven’t arrested that bastard and charged him with my brother’s murder.” Her hand tightened on the beer bottle. “Now you tell me Slade is missing. He must have known they were coming up on his ass and he left town. That son of a bitch. If I ever catch up with him, I’ll...”
Later, as we left Cindy’s condo, I said, “It could be the reason. She’s pressuring the authorities, convinced Ray was murdered. Then she tracks Slade down to Laurette’s apartment, confronts him. So he decides to leave.”
“And persuades Laurette to go with him?” Antoine nodded. “Possible. I wonder what happened, there at Slade’s apartment.”
“We may never know. But what Cindy told us might fit. Slade and Ray meet at the apartment. Ray thinks he’s going to get his money. They get into some sort of altercation, Ray’s hurt, or dead. Slade sets a fire to cover his tracks.”
Now that we were outside, I pulled out my cell phone. I’d silenced it before we went to Cindy’s condo. I leaned against Antoine’s RAV4 and looked at the screen. I had two voice mails. The first was from Davina and the second from her mother.
I listened to Davina’s message first. Her voice sounded excited. “Jeri, we’ve heard from Laurette. Call me as soon as you get this.”
Chapter Fourteen
Sabine Tedesco’s message said much the same, asking me to come over to the Tedescos’ house as soon as possible. I relayed the message to Antoine and we headed for Mid-City. As he drove, I returned Davina’s call. It went to voice mail and I left a message, saying we were heading for her folks’ house.
When we arrived, I introduced Antoine to George and Sabine.
“Laurette called,” Sabine said, excited. “She said she and Slade are on a road trip and that she’s sorry she didn’t check in sooner, but she lost her phone. I’m so relieved to hear from her. I guess I was overreacting. I’m sorry about that. You had to stay in town looking for clues. But it’s all right now. Thank goodness.”
Overreacting? I didn’t think so. Not with all I’d learned about Slade in the past few days. But I kept my opinion to myself, for the time being.
“She sent a video,” George added. “Would you like to see it?”
“Yes, I would.”
Sabine picked up her smart phone and accessed the video. It was about twenty seconds long. Laurette was outside, her long brown hair ruffled by a breeze, and she was laughing as she talked. “Hi, Mom and Dad. I just want to let you know that I’m all right. Lost my phone, got a new one now. Slade and I are on a road trip. We’ve been to San Antonio and Austin and some other cool places. I love seeing all these places I haven’t been before. Now that I have a phone I’ll be in touch more often. Love you. Bye!”
“When you talked with her on the phone, before she sent the video, did she say where they were right now?” Antoine asked.
Sabine looked confused. “She said San Antonio and Austin, on the video.”
I shook my head. “They’re in Santa Fe. At least they were there when the video was shot.”
Antoine shot me a look. “How do you know that?”
“Play the video again. I’ll show you.” Sabine started the video, then handed the phone to me. About midway through, I touched the screen and paused the playback. I pointed at a building behind Laurette, long and made of adobe, with thick wooden pillars. “That’s the
Palace of the Governors, on the Plaza in Santa Fe. I’m sure of it.”
Sure of it, I thought, because that’s where Dan was, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, working on his travel book. He’d sent me a photo of the Santa Fe Plaza just two days ago, showing the native American vendors selling pottery and jewelry at the Palace of the Governors.
“They have adobe buildings in Austin, too,” George pointed out.
“True enough, but I’ve been to Santa Fe and this looks like the Palace.”
“Texas or New Mexico, they’re still out of town and a long way from New Orleans,” Antoine said.
When I found out Slade had lived in Austin before coming to New Orleans, I’d entertained the notion that he’d decided to move back to Texas. Admittedly, that theory was fueled by Luis Ortega’s comment that Slade was finding it difficult to break into the NOLA music scene and was thinking about returning to Austin, or heading for another city to try working the music scene there.
Now Laurette said they were on a road trip. That implied that eventually, they’d come back to New Orleans.
But I wasn’t so sure.
* *
After leaving the Tedescos’ house, Antoine drove back to his place in Treme, so I could pick up the rental car I’d left parked there. I then turned in the car, since I was heading home the next day. At the hotel’s business center, I used one of the computers to book a seat on a nonstop flight home to Oakland.
When Antoine arrived, we walked over to Bayona, on Dauphine Street. Antoine ordered the pork chop with dirty rice and smothered greens. My plate held sautéed redfish with spinach and fingerling potatoes. It was delicious, just like the earlier meals I’d had at this restaurant.
Now, as we talked, I made patterns with my fork in the sauce on the plate. “This may be over as far as Laurette’s family is concerned, but I don’t think so.”
Antoine cut a slice from his grilled pork chop. “You’re preaching to the choir. I agree with you, a hundred percent. The Tedescos seem to be satisfied that Laurette is safe, but I’m not.”
I nodded as I speared a potato. “First of all, I don’t like this business of Laurette not calling her family because she lost her phone. She could have used Slade’s phone to call them. I am assuming he has one. Almost everyone these days does.”
“I’m with you there. I’m not buying it. Sounds like they wanted to be off the grid for a while.” Antoine raised a forkful of rice to his mouth.
“We’ve found out too much about Slade, too much that’s disturbing. It bears following up. I can give it some pro bono time.”
“Same here.” He paused and reached for his wineglass. “I’ll work the Austin angle, when my buddy there calls me back.”
“And I’ll head back to California and check out Millicent Patchett.” I ate some redfish and sighed. “I’ve been gone for over a week. I’m sure I’ve got plenty of work waiting for me. It will take a while to dig myself out.”
We talked of other things as we finished our meal and the bottle of wine we shared. When the server brought the dessert menu, we decided on coffee and one shared dessert, the peanut butter banana pie, which had toasted meringue and candied peanuts. It was delicious, but I could only eat a few bites. Antoine had no such compunctions. He finished it off.
It would be good to get home, but I certainly had enjoyed the food in New Orleans. Antoine and I left the restaurant and strolled back through the French Quarter to my hotel. We said good-bye and I headed up to my room. Tomorrow I’d have one last foray to Café du Monde for café au lait and beignets. Then Antoine would take me to the airport.
I couldn’t get past the unsettled feeling I had about Laurette, Slade and this case I considered unfinished. But George and Sabine Tedesco had been overjoyed to hear from Laurette, to know that she was alive and apparently just fine.
After I had my nightly check-in with Dan, I got ready for bed. Then Davina returned my call. “I’m sorry I sent you off on a fool’s errand,” she said. “I know how busy you are. And you had to stay extra days in New Orleans. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
“There’s nothing wrong with extra days in the Big Easy,” I told her. “We’ll talk when I get home.”
Chapter Fifteen
As the jet broke through the cloud cover, I looked out the window. My flight was due to land at Oakland International Airport at six-thirty Friday evening. Sunset reflected on the water transformed San Francisco Bay into a shimmering pool of copper and gold. Below me, I saw the flat white salt evaporation ponds at the southern end of the bay. Ahead were the bridges, the Dumbarton and then the San Mateo, alive with cars and trucks during the evening commute, head- and tail-lights twinkling as vehicles crossed the spans. In the distance was the Bay Bridge and the San Francisco skyline.
Home. And glad to be there. Or almost there. Home to my cats, home to my own comfortable house and familiar surroundings, my routine. As Dad always said, it’s nice to get away, and it’s even better to come home and sleep in one’s own bed.
I shifted in my window seat as the flight attendant came by and asked the man on the aisle to put his seat upright. We were coming into Oakland, over the water now as we approached the runways that had been built on the land reclaimed from the bay. The plane touched down, a fairly smooth landing, and taxied to the gate at the end of Terminal Two. I turned on my phone and found a text message from Madison Brady, the tenant in my garage apartment, who was picking me up at the airport. Her message said she was waiting in the Park-and-Call lot. I responded, telling her we’d just landed. Once I’d collected my suitcase, I sent another text message to Madison, letting her know that I’d be waiting at the end of the passenger pick-up area.
Outside, mist was in the air, damp and cool, with the promise of rain. Indeed, to the northwest I saw clouds, high and dark blue in the sky. After the New Orleans heat, the chill felt good. A few minutes later, Madison’s Subaru hatchback pulled up to the curb. I hefted my suitcase into the back cargo space and got in.
“Welcome back.” Madison checked her side mirror, then pulled away from the curb, entering the flow of traffic. “Your fur babies will be so glad you’re home.”
“I’m glad I’m home. Can’t wait to hug the kitties.”
“Black Bart always acts like it’s my fault that you’re gone,” she said. “Abigail, not so much. She sleeps a lot.”
“I know. She’s getting old.” I’d had Abigail, my tabby cat, since she was a tiny kitten, just out of the litter and small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. She was elderly now, a geriatric cat, and I dreaded the thought of losing her. Black Bart had been a kitten, too, somewhat older when he showed up on the patio at my old apartment. I had put out food and water for the little guy and it had taken a while for him to trust me enough so that I could catch him.
“Everything’s fine,” Madison continued. “I watered your indoor plants and brought in the mail. The outside garden looks good. We had rain several times while you were gone. Did you solve whatever case it was that developed in New Orleans?”
I didn’t normally talk about cases with civilians, but Madison wasn’t exactly that. She was a graduate student, working on her master’s degree in City Planning at the University of California in Berkeley. We’d met last fall when she came to me after the death of her father, a man I’d worked with at the Seville Agency. Madison was sure her father’s demise wasn’t an accident. She was right. Cal Brady had been murdered and I helped find his killers. At the time that case was winding down, the previous tenant of the studio apartment above my garage was moving out. I asked Madison if she wanted to take over the rental. At the time she had been sharing an apartment with several other grad students and had jumped at the chance to have a place of her own. That gave me a live-in caretaker and cat-sitter, whenever the need arose.
“Let’s just say I got the answers to some questions, and I have still more questions,” I said now. “Which will have to wait, though. Business was slow when Dad and I left for New Orleans, but I
have a lot of catching up to do when I get to the office tomorrow.”
We talked about New Orleans—the food, the music, the architecture and ambiance—the rest of the way home. The first thing I did when I came through my front door, from this and any other trip, was pick up Abigail and snuggle her close. She meowed indignantly, as she always did. Her vocalizations were easily translated. “Where were you? How dare you leave me alone?” She also gave me plenty of welcome-back head butts, using the scent glands that cats have on their heads to mark me as her own and eliminate any alien smells. Of course, Abigail hadn’t been alone in the house. For company she’d had Black Bart. He was mostly black, but he had one white forepaw and an uneven white mask. That’s why I had named him after the elusive California bandit who robbed stagecoaches. As was usually the case when I’d been away for a time, he hid in the bedroom closet until he was sure that it was me, then he sauntered out, his tail up, to greet me in his own way.
I unpacked and put away my suitcase. Most of the clothing went into the laundry basket, to be dealt with when I got around to it. Then I got ready for bed. It wasn’t yet eight o’clock, but I was tired, and still on New Orleans time, two time zones ahead. I climbed into bed and made a couple of phone calls. The first was to Dad, letting him know that I was home. We made plans to meet for dinner on Saturday night. Then I called Dan. He was in the Jemez Mountains north of Santa Fe, at Los Alamos, site of the World War II–era Manhattan Project and still home to a Department of Energy lab. It was also near Bandelier National Monument and he was hiking trails there.
During my long conversation with Dan, both the cats had jumped on the bed to join me, wedging themselves against me on either side. I leaned over and turned off the bedside lamp. I was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.
When I woke the next morning, Black Bart was still tucked into my right side. Sometime during the night, Abigail had moved to the pillow, draping herself above my head. I propped myself up on my elbows and she meowed at me in protest. “I’m getting up,” I told her. “You can have the whole pillow.”
