Red Beans and Vice

by Lou Jane Temple

  Heaven looked at the regular-sized door next to the garage door. There were four brass slots for name tags next to four buzzers. Three of the buzzers had names next to them and one slot was vacant. Heaven rang all three of the buzzers with names. Nothing happened. She rang again.

  All of a sudden, the normal-sized people door opened and an apparition appeared. Heaven was pretty sure she had lucked out. She could work with this. An older woman stood there, a suspicious look on her face. She was dressed in ballet shoes, a long muumuulike dress in an exotic African print, and around her neck there were two or three pounds of Mardi Gras beads in the traditional green and purple, along with some silver and gold. Her gray hair was long and wild. “What do you want?”

  Heaven smiled her best smile and stuck out her hand. “I’m Heaven Lee. I’m a chef from Kansas City and I was cooking at the benefit for the Sisters of the Holy Trinity on Saturday night. You had that terrible explosion over here and it just about scared the bejesus out of me. All this week I kept thinking, gosh, I hope everyone in that house is okay, that no one was injured. So, I just decided to come on over and see for myself.”

  The woman didn’t shake Heaven’s hand but she didn’t slam the door in her face either. She pulled up her muumuu to reveal a bandage around one of her calves. “Flying glass,” she said by way of an explanation.

  Heaven leaned into the woman’s personal space and peeked around her into the door opening. “How terrible,” she said sweetly. “Was your apartment damaged?”

  The woman backed up slightly and indicated her apartment to the left. “Lost all my windows. I was watching TV. All of a sudden I was covered with glass.”

  Heaven stepped just inside the door sill. “Oh, I’m so glad the fire didn’t spread. What in the world happened? Was someone frying and their oil got too hot?”

  The woman snorted. She had been teetering between alarm and the desire to tell the whole story. Now that Heaven was planted inside the courtyard door, she decided to talk. “Hell, no. It happened in the vacant apartment, right across from mine. Those two boys live on the first floor over there. Been there for ten years. Below me is a nurse. Course she wasn’t home when we needed her. Works nights a lot.”

  Heaven looked across the courtyard. If this was the place Will had driven out of, the pretty table and chairs were gone, but they could be behind a tarp she spotted in the corner of the open space. There was room for two or three cars in the middle of the two buildings but only a Honda was parked there now. Lots of the greenery around the perimeter was trampled. Heaven presumed the firemen had done some damage with their equipment. At the upper apartment the door frame was charred and plastic covered the actual entry. Two of the windows were still covered with boards.

  “They’re fixing that one last, since no one lives there right now. Got ours done right away ‘cause they were keeping us at the Holiday Inn here in the Quarter till we could get back in.”

  “Do the firemen have any idea what caused that terrible explosion?” Heaven asked innocently.

  The woman looked around and whispered to Heaven, “Drugs.”

  “Really? How did drugs cause an explosion? Was someone on drugs and they forgot to turn off the stove? Was it an electrical thing?”

  “No, no. Its some kind of a speed drug. Someone must have broke in there and they were making it right up there. A meth lab, the firemen said. It doesn’t take much equipment to make the stuff. There’ve been police in there for days, picking up all the pieces of things and putting them in plastic bags. I guess it’s cheap,” she said conspiratorially, “at least compared to cocaine.”

  “You don’t think the boys on the first floor were involved, do you? Or the nurse?”

  Heaven had crossed the line. The women put her hands on her hips, ready to defend her neighbors against this outrageous idea. “Why would you say that? Some crack addict came in here, that’s all. I wasn’t feeling well and hadn’t been out of the apartment all day and everyone else was gone. They just set up shop for the evening in the vacant apartment. Probably thought they’d be gone by morning.”

  Heaven was confused. The way this woman kept using the word “they” made Heaven think she had seen the culprits, or at least knew how many of them there were. “I’m sorry. The whole thing was so traumatic for me. I just haven’t been able to sleep. I keep hearing that explosion. So I just thought if I came over here, I could see that everything was … No one was in the apartment, were they?”

  “Not that they found,” the muumuu lady said, keeping the possibility open for dramatic effect. “Police said the perps must have gone out to get something and they had combustibles too close to each other.” The woman fluffed her hair a little, proud of using the slang “perps” in a sentence.

  “Well, I feel better now. I’m so glad no one was hurt seriously. But you better get off that leg. Keep it up as much as possible,” she said like she knew what she was talking about.

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “Heaven Lee. Oh, earlier, when you said ‘they’ kept you at the Holiday Inn, was that the insurance company”? She figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask one more question.

  “No, it’s our landlord. Tompkins Tibbets. He’s a real gentleman. Said he’d deal with the insurance company, and even if they wouldn’t pay he wanted us to be comfortable.”

  Heaven nodded. “You don’t find ’em like that much anymore. Thank you and bye now.” She slipped out onto the busy street.

  Heaven headed for Croissant d’Or for a café au lait and an almond croissant. So she had seen Will coming out of that drive on her first trip here. It was his fucking building that had blown up and he hadn’t so much as mentioned it this whole week. Was he trying to spare Mary more details than she needed right now? Was he trying to keep Heaven from putting two and two together? He was insistent that the explosion had nothing to do with Truely’s death, that it was a coincidence. How did he know that for sure? Because he’d been aware of what was going on in his apartment?

  As Heaven sat down and sipped her coffee, even she, with her wild hypothesis, couldn’t believe Will was behind some drug-cooking ring of meth addicts. Why? If it was his drug ring, he wouldn’t use his own property, surely. No, Heaven still didn’t think Will was the mastermind of anything. But why had he kept such a pertinent piece of information to himself? She could find that out soon, hopefully. She was meeting Will for lunch at Uglesich’s in an hour. Just enough time to stop by the library and get some information on manufacturing methamphetamine.

  The main library was in the Central Business District, conveniently located between the French Quarter and the restaurant she was due at soon. She found a parking place on the street and reached for some quarters for the meter. She slipped into the library and asked for the computer section. In a minute, she was online. She went to ask.com with the question, How do you manufacture methamphetamine? Several sites showed up and she skimmed them, printing out one from the Koch Crime Institute that seemed comprehensive. She paid for her copies and was back out in the car with ten minutes left on the meter.

  As she drove over to Baronne Street for lunch, she tried to figure out her strategy with Will. Would she just burst out with the fact that he owned the building where the explosion had occurred? Or should she try to trick him into, what, lying about his connection? What would that accomplish?

  Uglesich’s was housed in a plain cottage in a not-so-good part of town. It was open only for lunch, and New Orleanians say one of the worst things that ever happened was when folks from out of town discovered Uglesich’s. The owners had family connections with Croatian oyster farmers so the oysters were always fresh and delicious. Heaven loved their barbecued oysters, sauteed in hot sauce and butter and served with new potatoes.

  There was always a wait and she poked her head in the door to make sure Will wasn’t inside, then got in line. The owners, Anthony and Gail Uglesich, worked the front counter and took orders and money. Then as a table came up you sat down and s
omehow you and your food caught up to each other. Before she got to the ordering part, Will slipped his arm around her. “Hi, sugar. Good timing,” he said as they slid up to the old bar. “Gail, honey, I think we need a dozen raw ones to start. And I know this little gal can’t go back to Kansas City without some fried green tomatoes. And I’ll have the trout. What else you want, Heaven?”

  Heaven tried to hold her temper. How presumptuous of Will to order for her without asking. “And some barbecue oysters, please,” she said. “A Barq’s root beer to drink.”

  Will didn’t even notice he was in trouble. “And I’ll have some of that good Belgium ale, Chimay, is it?”

  Just then, a party of eight got up, freeing up two tables in the small lunchroom. After a couple of minutes of busing and pushing the tables apart, rearranging chairs, Heaven and Will were told to sit down.

  Heaven couldn’t wait. ‘You asshole. Why didn’t you tell me that you owned the building where that explosion occurred?”

  “Whoa, now. Calm down, little lady,” Will said as their raw oysters arrived, freshly shucked, from a tiny oyster bar near the kitchen. Will jumped up and gave the shucker, a handsome black man wearing a head rag, a five-dollar bill.

  “Heaven, I don’t even have to tell you why, do I? Your imagination runs wild, girl. You didn’t need any more fuel for the fire. I’ve owned that building for twenty years. I didn’t think twice about it. When all that commotion occurred at the benefit, by the time I got to the street and saw it was my building, the fire trucks were there. I have a property management company that runs my buildings in the Quarter, but still I had every intention of going back in and asking Truely to watch my date for a few minutes so I could check it out. Truely knew I owned that place. Well, you know what happened then. I could give a rat’s ass about that building after we found Truely.”

  “She was pretty, your date. I forgot to tell you that. Did you happen to mention to Mary later in the week that it was your building?”

  “Well, for all I knew, Mary was aware that it was my building. But when she never brought it up, I didn’t either. Why give her another thing to worry about?” Will had been eating his oysters with gusto through this explanation. Now he pushed back his plate of shells. “And before you say another word, do I look stupid? If I was trying to kick up a ruckus so someone could kill my best friend easier, do you think I’d use my own property to do so?”

  “What about if you were the one running the meth lab out of your empty apartment?” Heaven said halfheartedly.

  Will laughed. “Until this week, you could have put all I knew about that crank stuff in a thimble, Heaven, honey. Now talkin’ to the police and the insurance investigators I know a little more. Seems like a terrible drug to me. It’s cheap, it makes folks mean, and you don’t need a botanical to make it. No waiting for the next poppy crop to bloom. That means an unlimited supply, as long as you can score some asthma medications and a few other things.”

  The rest of their food came. “You don’t sound ignorant. You sound very knowledgeable,” Heaven observed.

  “I told you I asked the cops about it, since it sure messed up my property. Now, how did you find out I’m the landlord?”

  “I went over there and met one of your tenants. An eccentric dresser. She told me about that nice Tompkins Tibbets who owns the building and sent them all to stay at the Holiday Inn while their windows were being replaced.”

  “Well, I am nice, something I just can’t get you to see. It could have rained so we boarded up the windows and that makes a place so dark. And I do have insurance.” Will offered Heaven a bite of his trout. Heaven took it. She might be angry with him but not so angry she wouldn’t eat his food. It was delicious. “Heaven, I should have known better than to try keepin’ something from you. You’re good, honey.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere. You’re not out of the doghouse yet. How come you didn’t tell me about Amelia and Truely?”

  Will blushed. “You don’t expect me to rat on a fellow Southern gentleman, do you? After the fact and after his death? Get serious, girl. But I am impressed with you. In one day you found out about Truely and Amelia and that I’m the unlucky landlord of the building that blew up. Are you gonna tell me how you do it?”

  “Will, I don’t like uncovering all this hidden stuff. I found a photo of Amelia in a teddy. Well, something like a teddy. And it was in Truely’s …” she realized she was going to tell on her own unlawful search if she didn’t watch out, “desk at home. I was using it today and I looked for a piece of paper and the photo of Amelia was stuck up in the drawer.”

  “Do you think Mary Beth saw it? She was going through there last night,” Will asked with worry in his voice. “Surely she would have said something.”

  Heaven, knowing the photo wasn’t really in the home desk said confidently, “No, it was stuck good between the drawer and the side of the desk. I just happened to feel it when I was looking for an eraser.”

  “Eraser, sure. Don’t tell me another lie,” Will said with a grin. “You were nosing around in Truely’s desk. I’m glad it was you and not Mary Beth. There’s no reason for her to worry about something that was over and done with.”

  “So that leads me to ask. Was it really over and done with, because if it was, then maybe Amelia was mad enough to seek some kind of vengeance. I’ve seen her temper before.”

  “Yes, the affair was definitely over. Not that Truely and I discussed it very much. But I knew he was seeing her, so he told me when he’d cut it off. He said she never thought it was going to be a permanent thing, that she was a little hurt, but he’d bought her something nice to remember him by.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t ask, sugar. Now as to your friend Mary Beth. I’m as sure as I can be that she didn’t know a thing about it. Truely never showed off with Amelia. Although I’m shocked he was so careless with that photo. Heaven, you sure have been a busy girl. Why don’t you just slow down a little, get your blood pressure cooled off.”

  Heaven got up and threw some money on the table. “Besides your former best friend, who’s dead, I’m the person who’s had the roughest time of it. I’ve been threatened, chased, shot at, and run off the road. It’s personal, Will.”

  “Where are you going in such a hurry?” Will said as he tried to give Heaven her money back. She was already halfway to the door.

  “I’ve got homework to read,” she said and waved over her shoulder.

  When Heaven got to Mary’s house, it was empty. The maid was gone and so were Mary and the part-time help. Maybe all of them were helping get ready for the party out at the roasting plant. Heaven was glad to have a moment of privacy. She took the paper on meth to the porch and spread out on the chaise lounge. When she finished reading it, she called Murray. He was steamed.

  “I thought you said you’d call in every morning,” he said in lieu of hello.

  “Murray, is something wrong? You have the number down here. Why didn’t you call me if something was wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. You just promised you’d keep in touch. It’s Friday. Are you coming home?”

  “I’m staying until Monday, like I promised, or kinda promised Mary. Unless you need me.”

  “We’re just fine. Has anything else happened?”

  Heaven thought about the dead bird and breaking into the coffee warehouse. No need to bother him with that. “Nothing major. But the plot is getting thicker.” She told Murray about Will owning the house that had exploded last Saturday, about Amelia and Truely having an affair, and about the fake cross. “So what do you think I should do about this cross business? I can’t let Nancy Blair scam the nuns. Or, if it’s not her, her antique dealer friends.”

  “Nancy has to know about it because she said she was going to New York for the auction. If she was totally innocent, her antique dealer friends wouldn’t let her come along to a sale of something she thought was safe and sound at the convent,” Murray said patiently, like he was talking to
a novice reporter.

  “You’re right, of course. I knew it would help to talk to you. Even if she didn’t start it, she’s going to get a cut of it now. So do I call the cops?”

  “Well, you said she was a pretty cool old gal. Why not give her a chance to withdraw the cross from the sale before you go calling the NYPD?”

  “You mean confront her?” That idea gave Heaven a nervous stomach. It was hard to imagine being a hard-ass with someone over seventy. Especially someone like Nancy Blair.

  “You wouldn’t have to mention that you tracked down the real cross in New York. You could say you went over and looked at the cross and compared it with the old photographs and you’re sure it’s not the same, but do it completely straight, like you never in a million years thought she had anything to do with it,” Murray suggested.

  “Good idea. But that’s not what I called to talk to you about. Are the waiters all there, by the way? How are reservations for tonight?”

  “The early crew is here working on the dining room. We have two hundred reservations but all is well. Now what did you call about?”

  “What do you know about methamphetamine?” Heaven asked, thumbing through the pages on her lap.

  “That they make it in motel rooms all around the Kansas City metropolitan area.”

  “Can you remember any big stories about it at all? I’ve got the list of ingredients here. I went to the library. They use paint thinner or battery acid to make the stuff, for God’s sake, and iodine.”

  “You can take the active ingredient out of cold medicine and use that, I think,” Murray added.

  “Yes, because you can turn the pseudoephedrine that’s in cold pills into ephedrine, which is a controlled substance.”

  “I remember!” Murray shouted into the phone.

  “Remember what?”