“Surprised you held off that long.”
I closed my eyes, wishing for the first time in a long time that I was up in my old room in my parents’ house, reading a mystery novel or watching an episode of Magnum, PI. My arms and legs felt like lead. Somehow, my pride overcame my weakened state. Swallowing back the acrid taste of bile, I pulled myself back into the car. I slammed the door.
“Drive.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He jerked the wheel again to pull back onto the road, more for effect than necessity, considering the time of night.
The car’s gold-tinted, analog clock showed the time was 5:45 a.m. Sunrise was at least another hour away, but if my mother decided to check on me before heading out to the gym, I was going to be dealing with another issue. It was amazing to think after less than a week home, I had managed to get myself into more trouble than I normally did in a year in Boston. I shook off that thought, however, because there were far greater things at stake than my mother’s feelings.
As we turned onto North Rampart Street, my anxiety and nausea began to subside. Taking a deep breath, I glanced down at my phone screen. No texts. No messages. I sighed. Jon has almost always been able to find out something with his cousin Sophie’s help. I could only hope she would unearth something about Natalie’s situation. And soon.
~ ~ ~
Hopeless. That’s how I felt. In the two years since I began my career as a private investigator, I had had some cases where leads dried up. I had had some cases where it took a lot of finessing and plain dumb luck to get things back on track. But I had never had a case where I felt hopeless. Until now.
I walked up and down Bourbon Street amidst a sea of late-night revelers. They were the ones who stay at the bars until last call, the ones that feel most at home in the Quarter because last call never comes. I wanted to believe that Natalie was fine. I wanted to believe this was just another instance when Natalie was having too much fun. That she lost track of time doing her own thing. It was possible.
I hadn’t seen her since high school. She was married now. Or maybe divorced. Either way, she was a free-spirited, world traveler who could have just met up with a couple of old friends. Maybe she went off to enjoy some late-night holiday cheer. Leaving the scene of a crime would not be entirely out of character. Logic and reason told me this was possible. But my gut said it wasn’t for two reasons: Cash and Dr. Weisman.
I didn’t know Cash all, but he was a friend of Natalie’s. It made no sense why one friend of Natalie’s would shoot another friend of Natalie’s. Sure, it was the French Quarter. Shootings happened way more than they should. Something about this one seemed off. It didn’t take a private investigator to come to that conclusion.
Second, there was Dr. Weisman. I didn’t know him well, but I knew something was off. What kind of man’s first response to his wife’s sudden death is let’s dump the body? Still, finding a connection between Dr. Weisman and Natalie's apparent kidnappers was going to prove problematic. I had no leads! Again, hopeless.
“You gonna answer that?”
Zane’s gruff voice interrupted my thoughts. I had been so consumed by them I didn’t even hear my phone ringing. As a rare cool breeze blew past, I shivered. Retrieving my phone from my pocket, I noticed the call was from an unknown number with a 504 area code. Crossing my fingers that it might be Natalie, I answered.
“Nat?”
“What? Nat?” A male voice paused. “Uh, hey, Nat. How’s it going? Man, it’s been a crazy night. I got shot.”
My heart sank. “Cash?”
“Yeah?”
“This is Jordan.”
“Who?”
“Jordan.” I paused, waiting for him to make the connection. He didn’t. “Jordan? Jordan James?” Another pause. Nothing. I took a deep breath. “You called me.”
“You said this was Nat.”
“No, I asked if— Never mind.” I took another deep breath. “What’s going on, Cash? Everything all right? Have you heard from Natalie?”
“What? No, I haven’t. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where are you going with that?” I heard a muffled female voice in the background. “No, I’m not finished. I’m still eating. And can I have more Jell-O? That stuff is awesome.”
As we crossed Bourbon and Orleans Street, three girls, probably all twenty-one-year-olds and visibly drunk, stumbled past us. They were slurring “Jingle Bells” in such a manner it sounded more like “Jungle Beams.” One of the trio, a petite redhead sporting light-up purple reindeer antlers, slammed into me. She sent me backward, the remnants of her drink landed on my shoes and pants. Any unimpaired observer could see Red ran into me. Unfortunately, that was not her point of view.
“Hey! You better watch yourself,” she said between hiccups, her four-foot-nothing frame inches from mine. I tried to ignore her. I walked past, but this act only made her angrier and she blocked my path again. “And just where do you think you’re going?”
On the other side of the phone, I could hear Cash continue to beg for more Jell-O, preferably orange or blue. I sighed. “I really don’t need this right now.”
“You should’ve thought of that before you ran into me.” Her words were slurring together and she began to sway. From the corner of my eye, I saw Zane had stepped back. He was watching the scene unfold with visible amusement. “Apologize.”
“What? No.” I started walking again.
She ran backward then got in my face again. To any bystander, I’m sure the whole incident looked comical, especially considering our height difference, her flashing antlers, and the googly-eyed Grinch spaghetti strap T-shirt she was wearing in late December.
She grabbed my arm. It took everything in me not to use my martial arts training and throw her to the ground. Instead, I decided to use a less violent approach. “Hey, that bar back there is offering free Christmas shots to girls twenty-one and under.”
“Seriously?” She let go of my arm.
“Yep.”
“Which one?” she demanded, getting in my face again.
Feisty little drunk reindeer, I mused.
“That one,” I replied, pointing behind me at nowhere in particular. While she and her friends were trying to figure out where I had pointed, I began walking at a far brisker pace. “Cash? Cash, are you still there?”
“Hmm?” There was another pause. “Hey, who’s this?”
“It’s still Jordan. Jordan James?” I shook my head. “Jamestown?”
“Oh, Jamestown, hey! Wow, I didn’t know you called. You hear I got shot?”
I slapped my forehead. “I didn’t call. Cash, you called me.”
“For real?” I nodded in exasperation even though I knew he couldn’t see it.
“Sorry, I’m on some serious meds right now.”
“So I’ve heard,” I mumbled. Looking up, I found myself standing beneath the brown and white street sign for St. Peter Street. “Look, Cash, I gave you my number in case you remembered anything from earlier about those two guys who shot you.”
There was silence for a moment. I glanced down at the phone to see if the call dropped or maybe Cash had because of the “serious meds.” Finally, I heard him make a sound. “Right,” he mumbled. “The guy who shot me.”
“Do you remember anything about the one with the gun?” I pressed. “Or his friend? Anything at all? Hair color? Eye color? Clothes? Shoes?”
“Clothes?” he repeated, clicking his tongue. “Yeah. There was a weird sweatshirt.”
A second line had formed of random people following a tall, thin man in his late-thirties with dreadlocks, a Santa hat, and a saxophone blaring Louis Armstrong’s “Christmas in New Orleans.”
“A what?”
“One of them was wearing some weird, like, sweatshirt with letters and made-up words on it.”
“What do you mean by made-up words?” I paused, trying to figure out what he might have been suggesting. “Like a foreign language? Not English? Hello? Cash?”
“Hmm?”
“You said one of the two guys who shot you tonight, when you were in the French Quarter with Natalie, was wearing a sweatshirt that had weird letters and made up words on it. Did you mean the words were in a foreign language?”
“Uh, maybe?”
I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath. The smell of steaming seafood and gumbo filled my nostrils as I passed a hole-in-the-wall restaurant called Bub’s. I have had more luck extricating details from carbon-dated microfilm in the Boston Public Library based on one scant clue than from a living, breathing man who was within inches of the only suspects in a current missing person case.
“Was it in Spanish?”
“Uh, no.”
“French?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Italian?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Cash, do you know any of those languages?”
“I took Spanish in high school.”
I clenched my teeth.
“You know, now that I think about it . . . kinda looked Russian.”
My ears pricked. “Russian? Really? Are you sure?”
“Uh, yeah. I think. I mean, it wasn’t, like, hola or bon jour so something fancy like that. Looked like one of those other languages.”
A thought crossed my mind. “Any chance it could have been something, like, from Estonia?”
“I don’t know. What language do they speak in Estonia, wherever that is?”
“Not sure, but I think it could be Russian. They're neighboring countries.”
“Maybe.” He paused again. “Ooh, orange and blue Jell-O? Chloe, you are an angel in red and green scrubs.”
“Cash?”
“Mmm?” he warbled around a mouthful of what I could only assume was Jell-O.
“Is there anything else you can think of? Anything at all?”
“Uh-uh.” Another loud slurp. “God, this is good. I need to get shot more often.”
“Right. Okay, well, if you think of anything else, let me know?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay. Thanks, and take care of yourself.”
The call ended. I put the phone back in my pocket. I stared at a neon sign above the bar across the street. It read RUBY’S in hot-pink fluorescents that flickered as the bulbs made a feeble attempt to hang onto life. I felt a presence beside me. I didn’t have to look to know it was Zane.
“So what’s the scoop, Veronica Mars?”
Ignoring his comment, I smirked up at him. “I think I have my first clue.”
19
“So what’s your plan?”
I had hoped by being back in the French Quarter, Zane would get bored and leave. No such luck. Instead, he followed me as I headed back to the car, pondering my next move.
“Cash said that one of the guys who shot him was wearing a sweatshirt with letters and words in a foreign language,” I mumbled to myself, walking as quickly as I could down the streets, wet with morning dew and littered with trash from last night’s revelers.
“So?”
“He said the words could’ve been in Russian.”
“So?” came an unsought response.
“So,” I repeated, gritting my teeth as I pushed past a stumbling, middle-aged man who smelled of cigarettes and whiskey. “They speak German in Belgium. Natalie’s dad has been going to Belgium on business.”
“As in the guy with the dead wife? The one hooking up with the DA? The same guy who’s probably on his way home from dumping her body in Bayou Bienvenue?”
I cringed at the thought and nodded. “Yeah.”
“So, some hospitalized, drugged-up hippie recovering from a gunshot wound tells you he may or may not remember one of the guys who shot him may or may not have been wearing a shirt that may or may not have had words on it that may or may not have been in Russian. That’s your clue?”
“When you put it like that, it sounds ridiculous.”
He shot me a dubious frown.
My back tensed. “There could be a connection.”
“There could also be a connection between your so-called case and Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance, but I doubt it.” I glared at him. “You do know they speak several languages in Belgium, right? German’s not the only language there.”
I rolled my eyes. “Duh.”
Honestly, I didn’t know that.
He snorted, shaking his head. “You’ve got a better chance throwing a dart at a wall full of mugshots than following this lead.”
“If this is your idea of helping, it’s not.”
“Didn’t say I was here to help.”
“Then why are you here?” I asked, louder than I realized.
A waiter wiping down a wrought-iron table at a bar across the street glanced up for a moment before returning his gaze to the wet cloth and food-encrusted table.
“If you don’t want to help me,” I said in a lower voice, “give me the car keys and go.”
Zane sniffed, crossing his muscular arms.
I shook my hand in his face. “Give me the keys!”
He continued to stare.
“Now!”
“No.”
“This is insane!” I felt my face flush. My blood pressure rose. I pointed down the street. “There’s a cop back there. All I have to do is go there, tell him you stole my car keys, and you’re screwed.”
“Do it.”
“What?”
“Go back there and tell that cop I stole your car keys.” That was a dumb move on my part. He knew I couldn’t actually report the car as stolen. Natalie stole it from her dad. And, since she was now missing, technically, I stole it too. When I didn’t reply, he scoffed. “That’s what I thought.”
“I’m tired,” I admitted, shaking my head. “Exhausted, actually. This has been the longest night of the longest week of my life. That’s saying a lot.”
He didn’t reply.
I took a deep breath, exhaling it slowly. “I just want to help my friend. Maybe this lead is a joke, but if there’s any chance, I have to try. She’s my friend.”
He remained silent. At first, I thought he was thinking up some nasty comeback or a rude comment. The longer he was quiet, the more annoyed I became. I felt like he was judging me with his soulless eyes. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“What? What now? You don’t have anything to say on the matter?”
He continued to stare.
“Seriously?” He blinked. “Nothing at all?”
Finally, he brushed past me in the direction of where we parked the car.
“Find some new friends,” he called back.
~ ~ ~
“You really hang out with some interesting people.”
Those were the first words out of Jon’s mouth when he answered my call. By the time we got back to the car, and after Zane forced me to pay for parking with the last of my cash, I called Jon. It was 6:28 a.m. so I knew back East, it was almost seven-thirty. Jon was never a morning person. I hoped that by now, he had something. I was a little annoyed he hadn’t called. He knew something.
“What do you mean?”
“Sophie’s still looking into it,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I repeated when Jon failed to elaborate.
Contemplating the time made me realize something else. At least six hours had passed since Natalie went missing. Police shows always emphasize that the first forty-eight hours are critical in such cases. The more time that elapsed without my finding Natalie, the worse things looked for her.
Something was amiss. Natalie
had not tried to contact me since she went missing. Even for her, that was unusual. Especially considering I had her car.
Natalie had pulled vanishing acts in the past. But she was never gone for long. I realized as I pressed the phone against my ear, I was biting my lip. I was never what you would call an uptight child. I had a pretty decent, minimally-manic childhood. Those few episodes that left me stressed always led to my unconsciously biting my lip to the point it would bleed. I felt the first, tiny taste of blood. I pressed my lips together.
A loud yawn reverberated in my ears. “You called me in the middle of the night. You’re lucky I answered. I had rehearsal last night for A Christmas Carol at the Modern.”
“Who’re you playing, Scrooge?”
“You want me to hang up?”
I rolled my eyes. “Sorry.”
“She said there’s a whole lot of stuff with this guy, like international travel. Over the past year, he’s been in and out of Eastern Europe at least twelve times and his flights are booked under different names.”
“Twelve? Are you sure?”
“That’s why she’s still checking. Makes no sense why he wouldn’t be throwing up red flags if he’s travelling under aliases. The Dr. Martin Weisman who lives in Metairie, Louisiana’s birth date is May, uh, something 1960. I forgot the date. Anyway, cross-referencing his address and birth date, there are—I think she said—like, fourteen flights to and from Eastern Europe, most of them out of an airport in Copenhagen, but some out of Tallinn, Estonia.”
“Is Copenhagen in East Denmark or West?”
“How should I know?”
“East.” Zane tapped his hand on the steering wheel as we sat at a red light near Jax Brewery. An empty bicycle taxi hurried across before the light changed.
Simple Misconception (Jordan James, PI Series) Page 17
