by D P Lyle
“Did she say anything specific that led you to believe that?”
“Not really. I mean, she said he was nice and polite. And seemed like a good guy. But, it wasn’t what she said but how she said it. She had that glow. The one she’d get when she was happy.” His eyes glistened. “Truth is, I lived to put that look on her face.” A deep sigh. “Can’t believe I’ll never see that again.”
Life is weird. And a bitch sometimes. Unpredictable. Definitely unfair. I suspected that Owen’s guilt, so evident on his face, was that this was all his fault. At least he felt it was. And I couldn’t argue that point. No one-night fling, no breakup. No breakup, no Kristi and Kirk. And she would be alive and she and Owen would be planning a future. That load of bricks would be his forever.
“You weren’t aware of any friction between them?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Like I said, I only talked with her about it the one time.”
“Did you ever meet Kirk?”
“Nope. Didn’t really want to.” Another drag on the cigarette. “But I’d sure like to now.”
“Why?”
He looked at me. “To ask him exactly that. Why’d he do it?”
I nodded. “Something we’d like to know, too. If he did it, that is.”
He squared his shoulders. “Who else? From what I hear, they were alone in a hotel room. I don’t think anyone else could’ve.”
“We haven’t talked to him yet, but I understand he said they were both out of it,” Nicole said. “He doesn’t remember anything.”
“Convenient.”
“What about drugs?” I asked. “Was Kristi into anything like that?”
He stared at me, a note of confusion in his eyes. “Why do you ask?”
“There were empty wine bottles and some marijuana found in the room.”
“Look, Kristi barely drank. And drugs were definitely off-limits. In fact, she was active in our high school’s anti-drug program. If any drugs were found in that room, they’d’ve had to come from him.”
Made me wonder a couple of things. Were the joints found in Kirk’s room only for him? Did Kristi also partake? Had Kirk led her into that world? Obviously, I didn’t know Kristi, but the picture of her that was forming in my head was that of a nice, naive, inexperienced young woman who could have easily been swayed by the charms of an A-list Hollywood type. I made a mental note to ask Kirk those questions.
“I take it you know her uncle? Tony?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“What do you think of him?”
“I like him. Always did. I know he’s got a bad reputation.” He looked at me. “I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors.”
“We have.”
“He was always good to me. And he worshipped Kristi. Like she was the daughter he never had.”
“And her brothers?”
He smiled. The first emotion other than sadness I had seen from him.
“Robert and Kevin are okay. Not too bright, not overly motivated to do anything useful. But their devotion to Kristi was solid.”
“I understand Tony took the three of them in after their parents died.”
“He did. And Lord knows he tried to get Robert and Kevin to work. To focus on something. Anything. Moved them around from job to job. In one of his businesses or the other. But they always managed to screw up. Piss off the wrong people. That kind of thing.” He flicked an ash to the ground. “Those two aren’t easy to light a fire under. I think Tony tolerates them more than anything else.”
“From what I hear, Tony doesn’t suffer fools well.”
That got another half smile from Owen. “Not even close. If they weren’t family, he’d’ve kicked them to the curb a long time ago.” He dropped the cigarette butt and crushed it. “Let’s just say Tony isn’t someone you fuck …” He stopped and looked at Nicole, embarrassment on his face.
“I’ve heard it before,” she said.
He nodded. “Tony Guidry isn’t someone you mess with.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
NICOLE AND I left Owen leaning against the Mustang, working on his third cigarette. As she pulled away, I turned and glanced back to see a broken man, head down, shoulders slumped, the weight of life’s inequities draping over his entire being. I decided I liked him. Good kid. Hard worker, it seemed. Head screwed on straight, dealing with a pain that no one should ever have to bear. I also knew his guilt over what had happened—more imagined than real—would haunt his nights for years, probably forever.
You couldn’t help walking away from Owen’s world without thinking that your own life was pretty good.
Nicole obviously sensed my internal despair. Maybe not despair, but a load of sadness, anyway.
“What is it?” she asked as she sat not-so-patiently waiting for a light to change. Fingers drumming on the steering wheel.
“I don’t envy Owen.”
“He seems to be taking it hard.”
“And he always will.”
“Unless he’s acting,” she said.
“What?”
“I mean, he wouldn’t be the first killer to lie.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
“All that sad and aw-shucks stuff could be a cover for something darker.”
“You aren’t very sympathetic.”
“I’m just saying that he loved her, she dumped him and took up with a famous actor. I’ve read about murders with less motive.”
“Nicole Jamison, homicide detective. Or is it criminal profiler?”
She tossed me a glare, then smiled. “No, just a PI.”
“That’s right. I forgot.”
“Want me to show you my PI card?” she said. “Since I have one and you don’t, I’m more official than you.”
“Meaning?”
“I guess that makes me your boss.”
“It’s not the card that makes you boss.” I looked her up and down. “It’s all that other stuff.”
“You are so easy.” She laughed. “I like that.”
The light cycled and we were off again.
“What do you want to do now?” I asked.
“When are Ray and Pancake getting in?”
I glanced at my watch. “An hour or so.”
“Maybe we can wander around the Quarter for a while?”
“Or crawl in bed?”
“Animal.”
“You complaining?”
She laughed. “No. But I need to walk.”
That settled that.
She pulled into the Monteleone parking structure, and we jumped out. A valet materialized, slid in, and the SL spun away up the ramp. We walked the block over to Bourbon Street and turned toward Jackson Square.
Many US cities have iconic streets. Peachtree in Atlanta. The Sunset Strip in LA. Broadway and Madison Avenue in New York. None of them are even remotely like Bourbon.
Bourbon Street actually has three personalities, depending on the time of day. The one most folks equate with it is nighttime when it becomes one big street party. Stretching from Canal Street to Jackson Square, the neon blazes, the alcohol flows, and some of the best music in the world spills out of bar after bar. Not to mention the strip clubs. Ones that cater to any and all persuasions. Short of murder, few things are off-limits. Of course, the Quarter sees more than its share of homicides, too.
During the day, Bourbon is an altogether different experience. For sure, you don’t want to see it around sunrise. It smells of garbage and stale alcohol, the detritus of the previous night. Like a decaying corpse. Refuse crews and street cleaners do yeoman’s work to prep it for a new onslaught.
But by noon, the trash is hauled away, the pavement dries from the hosing it has received, and the stench magically evaporates. People appear, street performers take up their stations, and music begins to crank up.
Circle of life in the Big Easy.
We did a lap of Jackson Square, checking out the artwork that hung on the fence that embraced it, stopping to listen to the various street
musicians. A five-piece Dixieland band, a stringy-haired guy in a forward-tilted cowboy hat beating out acoustic blues from a worn Gibson, and my favorite, a lanky black kid, couldn’t have been more than sixteen, with dreds to his mid-back, who huffed out some great jazz on a clarinet. I dropped a five in the cigar box at his feet. He nodded, never missing a note. He could play the stick for sure.
While we completed our circuit of Jackson Square, I revisited the Owen situation.
“You don’t really think Owen was involved in this, do you?” I asked.
“No. Just tossing out possibilities.”
“Did he even know where Kirk was staying? And if so, how would he have gotten into the room?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“He certainly doesn’t look or act like a Ninja killer.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“So, we’re agreed—Owen didn’t do it?”
“Mostly.” She took my hand. “Let’s shop.”
Yes. Let’s.
We visited several antique stores and clothing boutiques along Royal, Nicole purchasing an antique broach in one. It was cool. Overpriced, but cool. Of course, being smart, and maybe a little bit afraid to raise her ire, I told her it was perfect and a steal at that price.
A block later, we saw the gypsy. Not a real gypsy, but she was surely dressed like one. A loud floral dress, ropes of colored beads around her neck, and long fingernails, painted black. Her deep-set dark eyes added to the image.
She was a fortune-teller, her working name Madam Theresa. I know this because the sign over her door read: Madam Theresa, Fortune-Teller, Tarot Reader. I’m observant that way.
I was inclined to ignore her invitation to come inside, but Nicole stopped.
“Enter,” she said. “And learn what the future holds for you.”
Nicole grabbed my arm and tugged me inside.
The room was small with heavy drapes, dim lighting, and a round cloth-draped table where she plied her trade. There was a mustiness in the air and everything looked old and mysterious. The woman was also mysterious but not old. Couldn’t have been over thirty. Made me wonder if she was a scam. I mean, didn’t it take decades to learn to tell fortunes? Maybe she started at a young age. Like five.
We sat across from her. The tabletop was strewn with cards, dice, and what looked like a cluster of chicken bones. At least I hoped that’s what they were. Surely she couldn’t have human bones. But they looked sort of like finger bones. Creepy. I wanted to leave, but Nicole had that light in her eyes.
Before delving into the mysteries of life, she took care of business.
“It’ll be forty dollars.” She extended an open palm.
I thought about taking her hand and telling her that she had a long lifeline and would live to a very old age and have great wealth and happiness, but I wasn’t sure she’d see the humor in that.
And I had an uneasy feeling she just might be able to slap a voodoo curse on me. I mean, it was possible. This was New Orleans, after all. Instead I laid a pair of twenties on her. She folded them and slipped them into the top of her dress somewhere.
She reached across the table and grasped Nicole’s hands, her eyes closing, her breathing deep and slow, her brow furrowed in concentration.
“I feel great love in you,” she said. “For many. For the gentleman here with you.”
I looked at Nicole and smiled. She tossed me a mock frown.
The woman continued. “And great success. Your future will be long and bright.”
See, I could’ve done that.
The woman opened her eyes, released her hold on Nicole’s hands, and gathered up the cards, giving them a quick shuffle. She began turning them over one at a time. With dramatic flair. She was good.
“The cards say you are healthy and happy. You are at peace with your world.” She flopped down two more cards and her face tightened. “But there are dark clouds.”
“Oh?” Nicole said.
“Not for you. For a friend. A friend that is in trouble. Do you know of such a thing?”
Nicole sighed. “Unfortunately, yes.”
Two more cards. “But this person’s troubles are even worse than they seem.”
“Really?”
The woman scooped up the bones. I had hoped they were merely decorations, but she shook them in her hands and tossed them on the table. They clacked and scattered over the cards. She selected and slid her thumb back and forth along one and then another, running through a half dozen of them.
“This friend is male. He is accused of a heinous act.”
I felt Nicole’s body tense and she took in a quick breath.
She picked up one of the bones, folding it tightly in her hand. She placed the fist against her forehead, eyes closed. “But he is not the one. They did it. Not him.”
“They who?” Nicole asked.
The woman opened her eyes and placed the bone on the table. “That I cannot say.” She selected another bone and repeated the mystic reading process. “But your friend is in danger. Not from the act he did not do but from others.”
“From the ones that committed the mur—act?” Nicole asked.
“Perhaps. But I think not. There are forces arrayed against your friend. Powerful forces.”
“What can he do to protect himself?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe his fate is set. But, maybe not.” The woman leaned forward, her gaze stabbing at Nicole, a black fingernail tapping on the table. “It is possible that you are his salvation.”
Nicole looked at me and then back to the woman. “What? How?”
She sighed. “I’m afraid that those are questions only you can answer.”
Come on. Forty bucks and she couldn’t even guess? I felt cheated and started to say something, but Nicole spoke first.
“Thank you. This does help.”
It does?
The woman smiled, briefly, then her face turned darker. “What I give you is not only hope, but a warning. Tread carefully.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IF I HAD been a believer, the gypsy woman would have spooked me. I mean, bones for Christ sakes. I still wondered if they were human. Surely not—but then again, this was the Big Easy. A place where voodoo and ghosts and a bunch of other crazy shit were commonplace. Ever walked through a New Orleans cemetery? There are a bunch of them, and each even spookier than the gypsy lady and all her skeletal remains. If ghosts were real, those walled-off burial grounds would be a major hangout for them. Late-night postmortem dance clubs. And as opposed to being six feet under, I suspected all those aboveground crypts would be easier to escape from. Eerie even in daylight, if you visited after sunset you pretty much deserved whatever happened. I had done that exactly once—once—never again.
But, the gypsy lady had spooked Nicole. No doubt about that. When we left her standing in the doorway of her den of prognostication—like a spider waiting to trap and extract cash from the next unsuspecting soul—we walked two blocks in silence. Nicole gripped my hand with a little extra fervor, her gaze directed straight ahead as if deep in thought. I wasn’t sure if she had blinked once the entire time.
Finally, she spoke. “What do you think?”
“About what?”
She glared at me.
I shrugged. “I think she just made forty bucks.”
Nicole shook her head and let go of my hand. “Don’t be an ass.”
“It’s what I do best.”
“No argument there. But what about what she said?”
“Which part? About you being in love with me?”
“I don’t think that’s what she said.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“Because that’s what you wanted to hear.”
“My point exactly.” I was smart enough not to push that thought any further.
Another half block in silence, then, Nicole asked, “What about what she said about Kirk?”
“I didn’t recall his name coming up.”
“Come on, Jake. The friend in trouble? Who else could it be?”
“That’s the beauty of fortune-tellers. They can tell you anything, carefully vague, of course, and you can interpret it as you wish.”
“How did she know I had a friend in trouble?”
“Everyone does.”
“Really? Do you?”
My mind went blank. Then I went to my universal fallback position. “Pancake.”
“Pancake? He’s not in trouble. He is trouble.”
Hard to argue that point.
“She said Kirk didn’t do it,” she continued. “She said they.”
“I’m sure the jury will buy that. Maybe Kornblatt can put her on the stand. Madam Theresa, can you tell us what you conjured from your bones?”
“Ass.”
“Listen to yourself. A so-called fortune-teller says a bunch of generic stuff and you chose to apply it to Kirk.”
She stopped and turned to me, a scowl on her face. Uh-oh. Then she laughed and shook her head. “You’re right.” She parked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “Look, I don’t believe all that woo-woo stuff. But she did get me to thinking.” She looked up and down the street. “Let’s say she’s right. If not Kirk, then who?”
“I have no idea.”
Nicole took my hand again and we continued our walk up Royal Street. As we neared the Monteleone, two big guys turned the corner toward us. Kristi’s brothers. Robert and Kevin.
“Well, well, look who we have here,” one of them said.
We stopped. They approached, blocking the sidewalk, stopping ten feet from us. They didn’t look friendly.
“Nice seeing you two again,” I said.
“Probably not.”
“I don’t think we’ve officially met.”
The one who had spoken before puffed out his chest. His large chest. “I’m Robert. This is Kevin. We’re Kristi’s brothers. But you already know that.”
“Actually, we didn’t. I’m Jake and this is Nicole. Nice to meet you.”
“Probably not,” Kevin said.
An echo of his brother. Likely meant Robert was the older of the two, and the more alpha. Kevin the follower, taking his cues from his big brother. Also made me wonder if Kevin was capable of independent thought. I had my doubts. He had a Neanderthal look about him, ears a bit low set, eyes dull. I suspected he didn’t do well with math, but figured two against one was simple enough even for him. Tension gathered in my scalp.
