The Axeman's Jazz (Skip Langdon Mystery Series #2) (The Skip Langdon Series)

by Julie Smith

  Maybe she went to three meetings a day, like Mary Shoemaker. Skip dismissed the thought: Anyone who’d make that remark about my “spiritual life” couldn’t possibly have one.

  That was the ping; the pong said, You don’t really know.

  And the ping said, Don’t be silly. You’re just feeling guilty because she manipulated you into it.

  Over it all reverberated the part that really counted, the part that would be there for a long time, the phrase that even Steve Steinman wouldn’t be able to kiss away:

  Fat as a pig!

  Fat as a pig!

  Fat as a pig!

  NINE

  “I’M DI, AND I’m codependent.”

  “Hi, Di.”

  Di was a gorgeous woman, a woman of a certain age, but what age that was Skip couldn’t have said—thirties to fifties was the best she could do. It hardly mattered. She had probably been ordinary at birth, awkward at twelve, and magnificent at fifteen; she would die magnificent so long as she didn’t let her hair go gray. In ten or twenty years, even that wouldn’t hurt.

  She was small, a quality about which Skip was ambivalent at best. Yet she was so perfectly proportioned, so oddly beautiful in that dark, strange way of Southern women, that even tall people couldn’t miss her. She wore black jeans and a T-shirt with a hand-painted parrot on it, a lavender parrot. Her expensive, many-strapped sandals showed plenty of toe cleavage; her toenail polish matched her parrot. A lesser dresser, Skip thought, would also have worn lavender eye shadow, but Di had chosen a dull gold. She was as well turned out as she was beautiful. The odd thing about her was the oversized doll in her lap.

  This was obviously a hugely popular meeting—there were probably fifty people in the small, stuffy room, sitting either on the floor or on half-size chairs meant for children. It was a Sunday-school room in a Baptist church, a cheerful yellow room, the walls decked with children’s drawings, a room apparently chosen for ambience rather than comfort.

  Skip had chosen the floor over one of the tiny chairs, but still she felt huge and awkward, wildly uncomfortable, restless as a kid in Sunday school. Maybe that was part of the deal. It didn’t matter a damn because this was where she wanted to be. Fully a third of the people in the room, not one of whom was a child or even a teenager, cuddled teddy bears or dolls.

  Mary Shoemaker had described the group a little—it was Codependents Anonymous (Coda, to initiates) with an inner-child focus—but she hadn’t mentioned anything about toys. And why should she have? Tom Mabus’s teddy bear was one of those details that hadn’t been given to the press.

  Di led the group through virtually the same twelve-step ritual Skip had so detested at OA, but this time she found herself relaxing a little, almost getting used to it.

  Di said the subject was vulnerability.

  “I talked to my daughter today,” she said, “and she said to me, ‘Mom, you’re still a kid, you’re always going to be a kid.’ And I was hurt. Isn’t that weird? Nothing is more important to me than this group. Some of you know how hard I’ve worked to let my kid out, to really experience things like a child again, but when she said that, I thought, ‘You’re supposed to be a mother, not a kid. If your kid thinks you’re a kid, there must be something wrong with you.’ And I realized how vulnerable my inner child still is, how much more work I have to do, reassuring her and letting her know she’s loved.”

  There was more, some of which Skip followed and some of which she didn’t. Mostly, she found herself distracted, wondering why the hell a grown woman would be so hurt by something her daughter said.

  Fat as a pig! came at her like a slap in the face, and with it the memory of her feelings when she’d heard her mother share, some of them adult, lots of them childish.

  So that’s it. Your inner child is the part of you that didn’t grow up, that kicks in when your parents run the same old familiar numbers on it.

  But was that it? Di was talking about something that had happened with her daughter, not her mother. And what did the dolls and teddy bears mean?

  “I’m Leon and I’m codependent.”

  “Hi, Leon.”

  Despite the heat, Leon wore a coat and tie, the tie loose at the neck.

  He could have just taken it off.

  But she suspected Leon hardly ever took off his tie, maybe slept in it, if the worry lines around his mouth were any indication. She remembered Cindy Lou’s remarks about obsessiveness. Leon looked as if he had it in spades. He had thinning blond hair and a wiry body, could have been attractive if he’d known how to smile.

  “We don’t have vulnerability in my family. We work in banks or maybe shipping companies and we rise to the top.” He said the last four words in a mock bass and he did smile. And he was attractive.

  The teddy bear in his lap was the size of a two-year-old. He stroked it as if it were a real animal.

  “We don’t get hurt, we get mad. We’re an entire family of rageaholics. If somebody says to us, ‘Hey, Leon, baby, it kind of gets to me the way you always forget my birthday and never come home till midnight and always have to go to the office on Saturday,’ and I think, ‘I’ll divorce you now,’ do we get upset? Do we say, ‘Hey, I’m losing my wife, I must have really screwed up, this really hurts’? Not in my family we don’t. We stuff all our feelings of hurt and guilt and spew out bile. After we yell at her awhile, we say, ‘You know, she never was good enough for the likes of us. Her family comes from New Iberia and her butt’s too big and always was.’ And then we say, ‘If she thinks she’s getting a penny of our money, she’s out of her pathetic Cajun mind.’ ”

  Skip realized she knew who he was. He was Leon Wheatley, whose divorce was infamous Uptown; for days while it was happening, Alison Gaillard had fed her chilling stories of Wheatley arrogance and penuriousness. But here was Leon, from one of the fanciest families in New Orleans, making what amounted to a public confession with a teddy bear on his lap.

  “We always make it the other guy’s fault. We’ll do anything to keep from admitting we might be hurt. We don’t have an inner child. In fact, we never get to be children even when we’re under ten. So I’m having to kind of…” He paused, sweating from the effort, Skip thought, of what he was saying “…give birth to one. He feels bad sometimes and I let him do that. I just let him know that’s okay, it’s okay to feel bad. Nothing like that’s ever been okay in my family.”

  His voice was almost a whisper by the time he was done. He was still caressing the bear with strong, sensual strokes that he seemed to be using to distract himself. There was something weird about it, something raw and embarrassing—as if he were doing it to the bear because it was what he wanted for himself. Skip wanted to hug him, to comfort him, and understood that his need was so strong, had been so openly expressed, that it was practically impossible not to feel that way.

  Leon Wheatley!

  She couldn’t believe any adult on the planet could do what he’d just done in front of strangers, and certainly not Leon Wheatley.

  Again, she wanted to applaud, to go up and clap him on the back. Half of what he’d said made no sense at all to her, but the way he said it had seemed so real, had reminded her so much of Elizabeth speaking, that she couldn’t help being moved.

  A man named Abe shared next, another tall wiry one, wearing glasses. “I was the kind of kid who always got everything I wanted. I mean I came from that kind of family.”

  I bet. You’ve got that smug voice guys get whose mothers told them every day how great they were.

  And I’m jealous.

  “I’m trying to deal now with what happens when you can’t have what you want. I realize my kid just never developed those muscles—the ones that handle vulnerability. There’s a lot of things I want right now that I can’t have. I don’t even want to live in this city, but I have to now. I don’t want to be the age I am; I want things I can’t get anymore.”

  Things! You mean women, right?

  “I have to talk to my kid; I say, ‘Listen,
I’m trying to be a good parent—to you, and to my own birth-children—but it isn’t easy because I’m kind of a kid myself.’ ”

  Skip decided this wasn’t getting her any clearer on the concept and let her mind wander. She thought Abe seemed to be talking to someone in particular, and looked where he was looking. A lovely young blonde, no doubt the sort he couldn’t get anymore, might be the object of his affection, but she looked as if she was with the young man sitting next to her. (Of course he might be the target, but Skip didn’t think so.)

  They were a gorgeous pair—very WASP, very Southern, a Kappa, probably, and a Sigma Chi, barely out of LSU. She wondered what they were doing here. They seemed too young and beautiful to have problems.

  There were a lot of good-looking people here. She wondered if they were there to cruise, even whether this particular meeting had a reputation for having good pickings. It was certainly an odd idea, given the things that were coming out of people’s mouths. Could a woman who’d just heard Abe possibly be interested in him?

  Sure, if she were codependent. She’d probably want to help.

  A guy in the corner was eyeing her. No question, he was interested. He was staring at her, trying to get her attention. He was a beefy guy wearing cowboy boots when it must be ninety-five outside. His shoulders strained his shirt fabric. He was quite a bit older than Skip, late forties maybe, but he was dressed young—jeans, boots… no, it wasn’t the clothes. It was the expression. His head had the round look heads get when a certain portion of hair has gone, but no one would think of this man as balding—simply round-headed. He had a mustache like a pirate’s. He had a pirate’s expression. Skip realized he reminded her of Clark Gable as Rhett Butler. But it was purely attitude, not appearance. He was a walking testosterone bomb, and Skip could feel the radiation from clear across the room.

  The young blonde raised her hand. She was Missy and she was codependent.

  “I know my higher power is working for me tonight because of what Leon said about his family. I just want to thank you for that, Leon. I found it so moving because I know a family like that, and a person who suffers from all that Superman stuff. But my instinct is not to say that’s his problem and he’s got to deal with it, it’s to take it on as my problem. But that’s not even the worst of it. Instead of trying to help in a constructive way, a way that might say, ‘Listen, you’re great the way you are,’ my instinct is to help him become Superman.”

  The young man sitting next to her was either having a heat stroke or nearly fainting from embarrassment.

  “I’m so vulnerable to his feelings, his wants and desires. Sometimes I feel like I don’t know where his skin stops and mine starts.”

  Skip had a sudden flash: She’s my brother’s fiancée. Camille. They’re peas in a pod.

  “It’s really, really hard for me to be saying this stuff right now, because I know how much he’d consider it an invasion of privacy. But I know I have to do it, for me. It’s like the kid in me just got forgotten. I was born grown up, always taking care of everybody. And you know what? It’s so hard to get her to talk to me. I have pictures…”

  She fished snapshots from her purse, held them up—pictures of an adorable towhead.

  “I’ve started keeping these with me so I can look at her when I talk to her. But in my mind’s eye she wears a little power suit and little baby high heels—I can’t even see my own kid. I ask her what she wants and you know what she says? ‘Whatever you want.’ She’s just like me—another people-pleasing little dork.” Her face twisted, as if she hated herself, and Skip wondered how that was possible; she was every man’s fantasy woman, every mom’s fantasy daughter, every woman’s best friend, the one who brought chicken soup when you had the flu.

  “See how judgmental I am about myself?” She had turned red, as embarrassed as her companion. “But I’m working on it. I’m really trying.” She paused, getting ready to sum up. “I guess that’s all. Except that I’m really grateful to be here tonight.”

  Even as the next speaker began, the pirate, Skip kept watching her, fascinated that anyone could strip herself so naked in public, could let herself be so vulnerable so publicly. She thought Di’s subject particularly interesting in view of what was happening here. Missy wiped tears that streamed briefly, smiled at her companion, the very picture of bravery, and gave her attention to the pirate. She reminded Skip not only of Camille, but of Melanie in Gone with the Wind. Noble to a fault. The flower of Southern womanhood. She’d had no idea before tonight what these women were all about.

  The pirate was named Alex. His voice, like his manner, had a touch of a swagger in it. She was uncomfortably attracted to him, instinctively didn’t warm to him, but couldn’t help responding sexually.

  He was saying that he didn’t think men were taught much about vulnerability, indeed that the notion had never entered his head until recently.

  “I suddenly found myself at the mercy of the fates. I always thought I could control my life. It was easy. I could just use my talents and skills—the stuff men are taught—and there wouldn’t be any problems. I held all the cards. But I had a couple of reversals—me, Alex.” He waited for his audience to snicker. “That kind of stuff doesn’t happen to me.” He lowered his voice. “And then my mother died. I’ve spent the last year learning what it is to be powerless, to live a life that’s become unmanageable. But it’s really hard for me to admit that.”

  Skip recognized a paraphrase of the first of the twelve steps, admitting powerlessness, but it seemed not so much that as a rote repetition. Saying he found it hard to admit, she thought, was supposed to be a kind of admission of vulnerability, an asking for help, a courageous confession that a macho man was having trouble. Why did it sound like a clever performance?

  “But I’m like Missy,” he continued. “I’m working on it.”

  Sure you are.

  She wondered why she was so suspicious of him, and figured it was because he was so attractive. It paid to suspect attractive men if you were Skip Langdon.

  I wonder if I should go to Sex Anonymous?

  No, I’m not addicted to sex. I’m just a girl who can’t say no.

  She hated herself for wondering if Alex was still watching her as she went to introduce herself to Di; she certainly wasn’t going to turn around to check. She chatted briefly and, once again finding the notebook setup, managed to tear out last week’s phone list, which she was stuffing into her purse when she heard a voice at her elbow.

  “Joining us for coffee?”

  It wasn’t Alex, but Abe. “I beg your pardon?”

  Di said, “After the meeting, we usually get together for coffee at PJ’s. Join us, won’t you?”

  Abe and Alex both came, and Missy without her companion. Seeing Missy alone, Abe quickly abandoned Skip and sat next to the one she was sure was his first choice. Another attractive woman, a redhead in pink jeans, plopped down purposefully next to Alex. Good. That meant she could sit by Di and pump her.

  She was glad Leon hadn’t joined them. If she knew who he was, he probably knew her too—that was the way with New Orleans, which might as well have been a village. She had always taken that for granted, but for once it didn’t ring true. It was true for her and for Leon, and certainly true for Alison Gaillard, but it hadn’t been true for Linda Lee Strickland or Tom Mabus, must not be true for most of the people at these meetings.

  She thought it might have been more accurate for most of them to say they were lonely instead of codependent. But even if you were part of the village, you could be lonely. I’m lonely.

  She would have given her father’s fortune to see Steve Steinman that night. Something about the way this thing worked was making her melancholy.

  Or horny. Maybe that’s all it is. All these stupid hormones in the air.

  Di asked, “Have you been in New Orleans long?”

  “I was born here, but I moved away. I came back about a year and a half ago. And you?”

  “Born here. Went to L
SU, moved back. Are you going to a lot of meetings?”

  This wasn’t the way Skip meant it to go. She meant to do the interrogating. But she guessed it was normal for Di to take the initiative, considering she was the new one. She had a semi-cover story ready and waiting.

  But surprisingly, she didn’t need it. All Di’s questions related to Skip’s experience with twelve-step programs; she supposed the eschewing of personal questions was a form of protocol, of respecting people’s anonymity, and found it refreshing.

  “Is the group usually the size it was tonight?” she asked.

  “Usually. Sometimes it’s bigger.”

  “I was just wondering—I know somebody from another meeting who goes sometimes. Tom—do you know him?”

  Di looked pensive. “Tom. No, it doesn’t ring a bell. He might be one of those people who never share.”

  She pronounced hardly any r’s at all; her voice was like butterfly wings. Skip had an overwhelming urge to trust her. She fought it hard.

  Abe said, “Can I walk you ladies to your cars? Somebody got murdered in the Quarter a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Oh, the Axeman. That’s a weird one.”

  But no one took the bait.

  “I’ve got a seat on the back of my hog,” said Alex.

  “Macho man,” said Di.

  And as Skip walked to her car with Abe, Di, and Missy, Alex sailed by on a Harley-Davidson, the redhead on the back, holding on to his middle. Skip was glad it wasn’t she. Touching Alex wouldn’t be a good idea at all.

  Di pulled out right in front of her. Skip, who’d started to fret about how to find out people’s last names, quickly jotted down her license number.

  At home, she took a cursory look at the phone list. There was no Linda Lee on it, but there were two Toms. Excited, remembering the teddy bear, she looked up Tom Mabus’s number—sure enough, she had a match.

  TEN

  THE NEXT MORNING she told Joe about the teddy-bear meeting and could have sworn she saw a fleeting pleased look in his eye. Especially when she told him Tom had been there. Then she got busy with the list.