by H Hiller
“Then you aren't a suspect in my murder investigation. I can safely say every other cop in Louisiana is ready to write this off as a dog killing its owner. There is no reason to make this any more interesting by putting your name in the mix.”
“Then why are you investigating it at all?” She was not convinced.
“My sister didn’t want the dog to be shot. I also don’t think the dog came up with this idea on its own, unless maybe the dog is just a really good judge of character.”
Amanda now relaxed enough to lean back. She had been leaning forward in her seat as we spoke, using her cleavage and exposed right leg as an effective distraction.
“Anyway, back on the subject,” Logan again interrupted. “What would you like to see happen?”
“Well, I really do not want anything to do with any of Biggie’s estate.” Amanda smiled when she caught me looking at her thigh. “Can't you just give it to someone else?”
“Only your son, or you on behalf of your son, could do that and we still have to go through probate either way.”
“Well, how long before you have to file the will?” I wondered.
Logan looked at me with that look all lawyers develop as a means of telling a third party to mind their own business.
“I can hold off a couple of weeks without drawing much notice. There really is nobody else getting much out of this than the boy.”
“What about Biggie’s personal holdings?” I persisted. Logan brought me to the meeting and I was going to use the opportunity no matter how much he now regretted doing so. “Who gets those?”
“Charles didn’t have much in his own name, and just about all of that is going to pay the burial and probate costs.” It was obvious the attorney had already done the math on those financial assets and expenses.
“Can't I just sign a quit-claim or something? You could sell the company and donate the money to charity.”
“It could be a lot of money.”
“I have enough money that I don’t need his,” Amanda snorted. She certainly did seem to have enough money to raise a child in this crystal palace.
“I will look into all of this for you,” Logan assured Amanda and stood up.
I started to get up as well, but Amanda placed a hand on my arm and motioned for me to stay. She told Logan to see himself out and then stood to refresh my glass of tea. This allowed her to move next to me on the bench, and then to move close enough to rub flesh.
“So, if Cadillac is just what people call you, what is your real name?”
“Cooter.”
“I’m sure there’s an interesting story behind a name like that.”
“It’s really not that interesting. I mean, compared to your own story of becoming a famous movie star and all.” The disappointed look she gave me made me elaborate a bit.
“It’s an inside joke of my father’s. He was born and raised in the boot-heel of Missouri. I wound up named after his hometown. Being Detective Cooter doesn’t make it very easy to get taken seriously so I use the nickname an NOPD officer gave me most of the time.”
“Yeah, about that.” She set her tea on the table and placed one hand on my knee. I did not move her hand, or my knee. “What sort of detective are you, anyway?”
“I actually work for the State Patrol, but I was assigned to New Orleans from the day I left the academy. My unofficial title here is Reserve Investigator. I was injured in Iraq and was recuperating in a hospital when I learned my father had disappeared and came back to New Orleans to look for my father as soon as I was released. My dad had retired from NOPD and his old partner has his job as Chief of Detectives. We struck a deal that he would let me use his resources to look for my father so long as I helped him put his department back together. It didn’t work quite as planned and a friend and I opened a cafe just down the street on Decatur a year or so after I came back. Now I split my time between the cafe and handling anything NOPD doesn’t have the man hours to justify bothering with. Biggie’s death is the first homicide investigation I have handled.”
“I do remember reading about your dad’s disappearance. So you never did find anything out about what happened?”
“All I know for sure is that he was rounding up known felons who had stayed behind. The idea was to evacuate them for their own protection. I think his purpose was to get the hard cases out of here so the good people left behind needed less protection.”
“How do you think he disappeared?”
“What I have been able to piece together is that he was on a night patrol that was ambushed and he got separated. He likely drowned and his body floated into the lake when the water went down. I was only able to track down a couple of the NOPD cops he was with. Both of them left town right after the storm and were particularly unhelpful when I spoke with them.”
“Why do you suppose that was?” Her hand was still on my knee.
“Maybe because I said that they should have searched harder at the time.”
“Now here you are trying to understand why a dog would murder its owner.” Amanda leaned back as she laughed and took her hand from my knee.
“Funny little world we live in. Everyone else is ready to close the case.”
“Then why are you even bothering?” Her hand was back, but now on my thigh.
“I want to know who came up with the idea.” It was the absolute truth. I couldn’t think of many people more deserving of a death like Biggie’s. I also still felt the dog was just somebody’s pawn and should not suffer disproportionately for its part in the murder. I placed my hand over hers and looked her in the eye. “So, you don't have to seduce me to get me to keep what I have learned about your son a secret. I promise.”
“Oh, I’ve already figured that out. There are plenty of other reasons to seduce you.” Amanda stood up and took off her skirt. “Why don’t you join me in the pool?”
“Sorry. I didn’t bring my suit.”
There was, admittedly, a part of me hoping that what came next was skinny dipping with my shapely hostess. What happened instead was that she gave me directions to a small closet just outside of the half bath off the living room, where she kept an assortment of swim suits. I selected a set of baggy surfer-style trunks and returned to the deck wearing the shorts and my shirt. I set my shoes and folded jeans atop my messenger bag, with my pistol tucked inside, beneath the table. The bag is my mobile office. It holds a tablet computer with mobile internet, spare batteries for it and my telephone, a digital pocket camera and small voice recorder, extra clips for my sidearm, and a Starbucks card.
“Much better,” Amanda said and motioned for me to join her in the pool. She had set two rafts adrift in the rather limited space of the pool. I hesitated before taking my shirt off, but did and jumped into the waist deep water and climbed aboard the empty raft. She paddled to my raft and we sat facing one another with our waists roughly side by side and our legs stretched out on the rafts. She had the more even suntan by far.
Amanda looked at my exposed body for a very long moment without saying a word. I knew what she was studying but waited for her to make the first comment. It had taken me a long time to be comfortable looking at myself in a mirror after I was ambushed.
The scars, but mostly my struggles with their emotional counterparts, had cost me a few promising romances since my return. I had nearly convinced myself that the only women who could look at the mess I had made of my body required money to do so. The Quarter has more than a few very attractive women willing to make that transaction, but I was tired of being the one who felt the most empty in those exchanges.
“That is a very impressive collection of scars.” Amanda reached out a hand and touched the long vertical scar on my left knee. “Someone did some high-quality work on your face, but I’m sure you were handsome anyway. What happened here?”
“Bad landing,” I said as her fingernail traced along the scarred knee and a bit higher but I saw this was not enough of an answer to satisfy her curiosity. She showed not the
slightest bit of repulsion at what she was touching or seeing. “I was going down a helicopter fast rope on a mission in Afghanistan. I broke my knee when the helicopter hit a downdraft and I hit the ground a lot too hard.”
“So you were some hot shot special forces guy.”
“Only if you think that’s something sexy,” I joked rather than answered.
“Well it’s sexier than falling down the stairs, right?” Her thin fingers traced the silver dollar sized puckers of purplish flesh around my left chest and shoulder. “And here? That doesn’t look like anything you did falling down stairs.”
“AK-47 rounds. All but one went straight through.” I leaned forward to show the larger, but matching, scars on my back. This was not a trip down memory lane I wanted to make. I tried to joke that being hit at point blank range meant the bullets flew through me so fast they didn’t have time to kill me. The one that didn’t go through nearly did kill me.
“What were you doing?” I could tell she was tilting back and forth between being absolutely fascinated and utterly appalled at what she was looking at.
“Zigging when I should have been zagging,” I continued to distance myself from discussing the incident. My resume from the Middle East isn’t something I talk about with strangers, even pretty ones.
Amanda spent another ten minutes searching out my lesser scars and getting my minimal responses to each new discovery. I tried to brush them all off as being old war wounds, which I told her is what you get fighting old wars. This was actually a way my father used to describe his own war wounds. The truth is that being lucky to be alive just means we weren’t lucky at all when we were injured.
Amanda’s hand traced across my cheek and torso before it settled again on the scar on my knee. I rested my own hand on her soft tanned thigh, only in part to keep us from drifting apart. We floated together for another hour or so listening to street musicians in the square below, drifting just inches apart beneath the cloudless Louisiana sky. We barely spoke another ten words before I had to leave.
I could not find the words to express what I felt in those silent moments we shared. There had never been a moment since the day I didn’t die in the ambush that I thought I might ever feel quite so glad to be alive. Amanda’s smile seemed to say she understood.
TWELVE
It took a supreme effort to accept that floating in a movie actress’ swimming pool was not going to provide the clues I would need in order to solve what had happened to Biggie Charles. Neither of us was quite ready to part ways so soon after meeting so Amanda offered a tour of her condo once we had both changed out of our swim suits. She had changed into a halter-topped wisp of a very short sun dress, and was gliding across the glossy dark wood floors barefoot.
There were three balconies on the main floor, each with a panoramic view. The one in Georgia’s room looked down on the very spot where Biggie Charles had died less than a hundred yards away. There were two guest bedrooms, each with its own full bath, and an office at the opposite end of the second floor, but the most stunning room proved to be the master suite at the very top of the three thousand square foot home. Amanda and I lingered outside of the spacious sun-lit bedroom, facing one another across the distance of the open double doorway. I sensed she would not have resisted any sort of sexual advance, and am pretty sure she knew I would have allowed her to make the first move. I hesitated on my part because it would have shown incredibly bad judgment to leap into bed with anyone remotely connected to the case.
This was not my real concern, though. Mostly I just wanted to be invited back and to hopefully re-learn intimacy with someone who seemed to be comfortable with the damaged goods I still considered myself to be. Amanda pointed out that all of the windows were tinted, no doubt disappointing police helicopters patrolling the afternoon skies, as she closed the distance between us.
“You are going to come back, right?”
“If that’s what you would like.”
She leaned in and really studied my face. My hairline had been restored with hair plugs and my rebuilt smile of implanted teeth was straighter than it had ever been. The metallic plates holding my skull in place were hidden by the tanned flesh over my reconnected facial muscles.
“I’m glad they decided to make you so handsome.”
“Thank my sister. She gave the plastic surgeon a picture of someone better looking than I ever was.”
I didn’t want to scare her off with a graphic description of my condition when I arrived at the hospital in Baghdad. I died twice on the operating table before lapsing into the merciful coma. The hospital kept me rather than transferring me to a military hospital so I might die somewhere in Germany instead. I was eventually stabilized and then moved to a private hospital in Italy, at which time Tulip was finally notified that I was still alive. That had been barely two weeks after our father’s abrupt disappearance. Tulip arrived in an emotionally brittle state and Tony spent the next year nursing both of us back to health.
“I don’t know that I have ever met anyone with this much plastic work that wasn’t an actor,” she commented offhandedly, adding nothing about the coma comment. “The difference is that you are actually a real person under all that work.”
“Well at least they did a good enough job to get your attention.”
“Being able to be discreet is what got my attention. I don’t want you telling the tabloids about any time we spend together.”
“Then I guess I should leave this afternoon out of my report.”
“Only if you ever want to come back, on an unofficial basis.” Amanda touched my lips with her long index finger for a lingering moment. It certainly seemed like a good trade to me. It was also the right time to make my exit.
I invited her to dinner, but she had plans so she suggested a late dinner the next evening. She wanted to have her son tucked into bed before she left the house. I left her place unsure if I was more surprised by the existence of Amanda’s son or the possibility of an entirely unexpected romance.
I walked through the Market to my place above the bistro to get the slim files I had been given by the dog’s veterinarian and its breeder. I needed to give them to the dog handler Tulip had arranged. I was not so distracted by my thoughts that I was unaware of the kid who crossed the street as I passed the mule carriages across the street from Amanda’s place. He fell in step behind me as I passed the steps leading up to the Moonwalk next to Café du Monde. My immediate thought was that he was one of the pair I had encountered at Wal-Mart, but he was built leaner than either of them. He would have done better a better job of staying inconspicuous had he remained on his side of the street. I was too aware of young Black men in my proximity after the Navigator incident.
My stalker hid his face behind a ball cap and sunglasses, but he was staring a hole into my back. I monitored his reflection in the shop windows along the way. He gave himself away by the way he bumped against so many tourists as he focused more on me than on his surroundings. I probably could have lost him easily, but I was trying to learn what I could from him by his appearance and actions. I kept an eye out for the Navigator.
I headed back to Amanda’s to pick up the station wagon I had left parked there and picked my shadow up again as I passed the gift shop to the Margaritaville bar and grill. He was either working alone or his partners were better at tailing me than he was.
I walked back to where I had parked the Cadillac and stared up at the Brewery building. I realized that it would likely be very hard to ever pass the building again without thinking of this afternoon no matter how things turned out. It was, though, a vastly better way to remember the old brewery than as the parking lot where Biggie Charles died. My shadow had melted into the crowd surrounding Jackson Square by the time I backed out of the parking space and went to meet my dog sitter.
THIRTEEN
There had been just one call from the animal shelter regarding the dog since I had dropped it off. It was a call on Sunday afternoon to inform me that I neede
d to find it another home. The dog was attracting too much media interest and was becoming a distraction. They were not afraid it would attack anyone else, which I privately thought would have given me a clear direction to follow. Were the dog actually inclined to randomly attack or, better yet, had someone inadvertently stumbled upon the attack command or trigger, then it would have been easier to blame things on either the dog or some small fault in its training.
I had relayed news of the dog’s imminent eviction to Tulip after the Saints game was over and told her to find me a new shelter or a dog sitter. I thought she was joking when she called back two hours later and told me she could not find a foster home among her pit bull loving friends, but had talked our mother into letting me board Taz in our boat house.
My surprise at my mother opening the door to the family’s first dog was severely offset by the fact she had only agreed to let it live in the space I kept for those times I needed to get out of the city. The dog would only be able to destroy things which belonged to me personally, and to do so to its heart content.
Tulip had better luck finding a dog sitter when she reached out to someone named Roger Kline, who worked part-time at the SPCA facility and was a foster owner for the pit bull rescue charity that Tulip represented. Roger had not hesitated to agree to work with Taz, and she claimed he shared our belief that Taz’s attack was not solely the dog’s idea. He had apparently been waiting for my call most of the day and agreed to meet me at the dog pound in Algiers. He was already familiarizing himself with the pit bull when I arrived. It turned out he had been working at the facility all day as it was.
Roger Kline looked and dressed like a former roadie for some touring rock band when he wasn’t wearing his work uniform. His personal wardrobe seemed to consist of weathered denim and vintage concert tour T-shirts. He was gaunt, bearded, and thin in that way men who do yoga become. His beard was nearly as gray as the pony tail in his hair.
