“How can it be this humid at this time of night?” he asked me. “She made me drive her to the Roosevelt and drop her off so she wouldn’t be late. Miss Daisy rode in the back while she made me drive her old tank of a Mercedes.” Frank exhaled and dropped his head back as if the effort totally exhausted him.
“I’m surprised she didn’t make me wear a uniform, you know, like the ones the monkey wears with the cap, and hops around a music grinder.”
He began searching his satchel until he found a Kleenex. He whipped it out of his bag like a magician pulling scarves out of his sleeve. He used it to blot the glistening perspiration from his face.
“Frank, did she tell you a name of the man she is going to meet? I think this is dangerous, don’t you?”
“She won’t tell me any details.” Frank said while looking at himself in my visor mirror and licking his index finger. He held the finger in the air pointing to heaven as I watched him out of the corner of my eye.
He added, “Yes! It’s dangerous, but you can’t tell Miss Know It All anything. She’s gonna do what she wants to do.” He went back to looking at himself in the mirror and plastering his eyebrows in place with the spit on his finger. While he groomed himself, I went over some of the questions I wanted him to ask.
When we arrived at CluckIt, I drove up to the drive-thru window and Lionel was standing there.
“Hi Lionel, remember me?” I asked.
“I sure do. I surprised to see you here again so soon,” he said with a weak smile. Then he ducked his head a little to get a better view of Frank.
“This is a friend of mine,” I said by way of introduction and Frank held up his arm bent at the elbow, waving his hand rapidly back and forth from the wrist like a child.
I asked if we could come in and ask him some questions, and if Earline was there. He said she was, so I parked the car, and Lionel met us at the locked front doors, directing us into the area where people sat to eat with their food orders.
Lionel moved four chairs that were upside down on a table from their front door lockdown so Frank and I could sit. Lionel said Earline was working, and he went to get her. They came over together to talk with us.
“Hi Earline, this is my friend Frank, and I wanted to ask you some questions about Merlot and that partner of his, Chardonnay. Frank might be able to help me figure out what was going on with them that got her killed. She deserves justice and I hope I can help her get it.”
“It’s Franki, with an ‘i’ at the end. No ‘e.’ Frank half stood when Earline walked up and presented his hand to look more like he wanted her to kiss it than to shake it.
Earline smiled, took his hand in both of hers and said hello, calling him Franki.
“I was on my way to pick up Frank…Franki, when I heard on the radio that a body wearing a CluckIt uniform was found in the lake,” I said.
Earline added, “It was that Charles who done got Jimmie killed. That some justice if he dead too. I just know this was all his doing.”
“I know you probably told all this to the police, but I feel connected to Jimmie after being in here that night. I wish I could have done more for her. She was an innocent bystander from what I can tell,” I said, looking at Earline. Then I don’t even know why I added, “I know how it is to love someone who doesn’t love you back in the same way.” I felt Frank’s eyes dart to me after I said it. Earline nodded then looked down at her hands clasped together in her lap.
“The detectives keep calling me asking if I remember anything else,” I said.
OK, the detective continuing to call me was stretching the truth, but Dante did ask me if I remembered anything else while he killed time waiting for his coffee. He might ask me again.
“I’d like to go over what happened to see if it rings any bells, or makes me remember any detail I might have forgotten. It all happened so fast.”
Earline and Lionel recited what each thought had happened, and most of what they said I had seen when I was there, or had heard via the drive-up speaker. So, I asked if they minded some questions about the two victims. They said they didn’t.
“Do either of you know who Chardonnay or Charles was seeing besides Jimmie, I mean Merlot? Could it have been a woman?” I asked glancing at Frank.
“Charles dressed most times like men, but Jimmie would get him to dress as a woman when they worked the same shift,” Earline said. Lionel shook his head no as if remembering something bad. I thought he disagreed with Earline.
“What are you thinking?” Frank asked Lionel. “Please feel free to say anything. I won’t get my feelings hurt.”
Lionel nodded and smiled at him.
“Well, that Charles was no good all around. He was a no-good worker and a no-good partner to her. Jimmie, she was always on time and did her job, and she sometimes did Charles work for him, too. He always getting over on her,” Lionel said.
Earline nodded, wringing her hands. I felt sorry for Earline because I was sure she didn’t like remembering Jimmie being treated badly by Charles.
“No good, how?” Frank asked.
“Well, the main office was always threatening to fire Charles for making a lot of calls to some number and talking on it for over an hour,” Lionel said. “They was long calls and showed up on the store phone number so the main office people called me to find out who was always on the phone that long and not working.”
“Why didn’t he just call on his cell phone?” I asked.
“I heard him tell Jimmie he couldn’t pay his cell bill,” Earline said. “I told her she didn’t need to be paying his bills, but I know she would give him money if she had it.”
“Do you think he was calling for phone sex?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” Lionel nodded while he was answering. “When he was on those long calls I hear him talking all kinds of nasty sex stuff to men and women. I’m the manager for the night shift, so I had to tell him he couldn’t use the phone for personal calls. This here is the CluckIt phone, and CluckIt pays for it. Anyone can use it for emergency but not for personal business.”
“I wonder how he was paying for those calls. They aren’t cheap,” I said. When everyone looked at me, I added, “I’ve heard they’re not cheap and you need a credit card.”
“He had a wallet full of credit cards,” Earline said. “I’d hear him say, ‘wait a minute, try this one’ when they didn’t want to take one. I wondered how he was paying for those. I bet he was putting some in Jimmie’s name if he couldn’t pay his cell bill.”
Lionel shrugged and said, “The main office deducted five hours he spent on the phone out of his last paycheck, and that made him crazy mad when they did. Charles kept making the calls, so he was gonna be fired soon. I had to tell him if the main office saw any more calls to that phone number again he’d get his self fired, or they were gonna fire me.”
“Do you think he was calling a transgender sex line?” Frank asked.
“I don’t know what that is, but you know, phone sex. The main office man called it some adult phone sex line and it was showing up on this CluckIt bill. They told me tell him to stop, or he gonna be fired,” Lionel said.
“Charles tell you anything about who he called or how he got that number?” Frank asked.
“Charles tell me one time, after he took up dressing like a woman with Jimmie, that he go to some bar, he never said the name, and the bartender gives him a number to call for the phone sex. He said after he talked to the he/she on the phone sex line, they ask to meet up with him somewhere, and he thinks so they can do the stuff in person. Charles seemed like he was gonna meet someone that night after his shift. He wasn’t talking nice to Jimmie, and I think he was up to something that turned bad on him,” Lionel said.
“Seems like it was more bad for her,” Earline said, wringing her hands. Then she started straightening the salt and pepper shakers on the table we sat at that didn’t need straightening.
“You remember something else?” I asked Earline.
“Yeah.
He come to work that night in his male self. He put on that wig you found to try to satisfy Jimmie. She was all down in the mouth and I guess he figured it would keep him in her good graces. I hear him once calling that phone sex line and asking for someone named Zena or Zeta or something like dat, and he’d say, ‘Baby this is your Daddy Charles’ or trash talk like dat,” Earline said. “That’s why I told you Jimmie was too good for him. She would do his dishes while he went outside to make one of his calls. I’d hear him going out the back door talking to some nasty thing wanting God knows what.”
Lionel just shook his head.
“She was a real good person and a hard worker. She was always the Employee of the Month,” Lionel said and Earline smiled a little and pointed to the wall where photos in frames engraved with the month and year hung on a wall near the condiment station. Every one of the frames had a photo of Jimmie.
“Wow. Jimmie was the Employee of the Month many times.” I nodded toward the showcase.
“She was,” Lionel said, and Earline looked like she was going to cry. I didn’t notice Charles Ballon taking up any spots.
“Somebody, sounded like a man, would call here asking for Charles. They said give him a message and it would be only a phone number, no name. Then they say he knows who it be when he call it. Sure enough. Charles would dial that number and that’s when I hear him give his credit card number so he can talk sex to someone,” Lionel said.
“Do you remember the phone number?” Frank asked.
Lionel shook his head.
“Was it a different number every time?” Frank asked and Lionel said it might have been.
“Maybe you can show me the phone bills?” I asked. “It will have a printout of who he called.”
“We don’t get no phone bills here. They go to the main office,” Lionel said.
“Can you call your manager and ask him for those bills?” I asked.
Earline and Lionel shrugged their shoulders and looked at me like I had asked them to translate Chinese.
“They mail the checks here once a week and I give ’em out, that’s all. If something has to be done, the manager calls me to do it. I’m the store manager with no manager pay,” Lionel grumbled.
Frank asked, “Did Charles ever come in drag before that night?”
Lionel shrugged, suggesting he couldn’t remember. Earline said he only came in drag when he worked with Merlot/Jimmie.
Frank then asked, “Are you sure Charles went both ways, with men and women?”
Both said they thought so because he flirted more with women than men. Earline said Jimmie was the one who initiated the relationship with Charles.
Frank then asked, “Did Jimmie go both ways, with men and women?”
“Oh no,” Earline said, shaking her head. She seemed pretty sure on this one. “I think Charles liked women more, but for sure Jimmie only liked men. She never went with a woman. She liked women, but only as friends.”
“Do you have an extra photo of Jimmie, or one of Charles we might borrow?” I asked, nodding to the Employee of the Month Wall of Fame again. “You probably gave one to the police, right?”
“Yeah, I gave that policeman a photo of each of them. I’ll get you one out the office.” Lionel said, “We keep extras if they Employee of the Month more than one time, like Jimmie was. No chance Charles getting picked even if he still alive. We start with two photos and if they get picked, I can take the second photo to make more copies. I have one left of Charles. You can have it.”
When Lionel came back with the photos, Frank and I looked at the one of Charles closely and noticed he had taken it in a man’s uniform, and his nametag said Charles, whereas James Batiste’s nametag in the photos said ‘Jimmie’ and she dressed like a woman wearing a wig, makeup, and a ladies’ uniform—the same in all ten photos of her as Employee of the Month on the wall.
Once again, I thanked them and told them again I was sorry they lost a friend and co-worker. I gave them my phone number and said if they remembered anything else, or ever found out the number Charles called would they please call and tell me. I was about to add, or call the police, but thought better of it.
Earline said she would. Lionel nodded and walked us to the doors, unlocking them to let us out. I heard the click when Lionel relocked them behind us, making me think locks only keep the honest people out. Evil people will find a way in if they put their minds to it.
On the way back to the guest house, and after Frank had immediately viewed his appearance in my visor mirror as soon as we got into my car, he opened the glove box and center console, checking out the contents.
“Are you looking for something?” I asked.
“No, just wanted to see how big the compartments are in these cars. I’ve never been in a BMW before.”
“Well, this one is the smallest one they make, but I’ve already had it five years and I hope to get five more out of it,” I said.
“It looks brand new, not five years old,” Frank said as he looked around again reviewing the interior to see if he missed anything to give away the car’s age. When he settled back in his seat he said, “Charles might have been experimenting with being a transgender and hadn’t decided to cross over. Some trannies stay men, but always present as women, like Merlot, the one called Jimmie. Some just try it on to see if they like it. It’s very expensive to make the change. Many do dress-up instead.” Frank did finger air quotes around dress-up.
Frank opened a compact and dabbed at his forehead before he went on, “There’s always something for everyone. Charles might have been a kinky so-and-so, playing her, using her for sex. Some people just like sex and they don’t care with who.”
That’s what I had started to think now. I didn’t the night of the murder. They were all too upset that night to tell me this stuff, and some gal who worked there was shaking a finger at Earline, saying she better keep her mouth shut especially to the police. I wondered who Charles got that sex phone number from.
I asked Frank, “Is there any particular bar someone like Charles would go to for that specific sort of phone sex?”
“Are you kidding? In this city? That would be like trying to pick out your waiter from your favorite Chinese restaurant in a room full of Chinamen,” he said.
“Not mindful of political correctness, are you?” I asked.
He ignored me.
“I’ve been to a ton of boy-bars here, especially in the Quarter. I haven’t seen this Charles guy in any I go to.” Frank was looking at the Employee of the Month photos. “Charles might fancy chicks with dicks or just be a kinky straight guy. There’s a bar I used to go to….”
“Please call or text me when Julia gets in,” I cut him off right as we arrived at the guest house. He was giving me more information than I ever wanted, or needed to know. “And let me know how Julia’s date went, or if you bump into anyone who has that number or gives you any number Charles might have called,” I said.
“OK, I will. You’ll hear from Miss Priss if it went well. You won’t if the date was a dud,” Frank said, gathering his satchel. He dabbed some balled up Kleenex on his face. The humidity was causing some of his makeup to slide toward the southern hemisphere.
“Please call me either way. I want to hear the scoop from you, okay?”
“It’s a deal, darling.” And with that Frank air-kissed me on both cheeks, got out, and closed my car door, sashaying up the steps and through the doors to Julia’s Bed and Breakfast.
I guessed he lived here now, and I thought Julia better keep tabs on her eyeliner.
As I drove home, I wondered if I could find out the number Charles called by tracking down the main office of this CluckIt. Maybe I’d call their headquarters and ask for the phone bills.
Who was I kidding? They wouldn’t give them to me, but they would have to if the police requested them. Finding out the number Charles called that got him and Merlot killed could point to the killer. I could run them at my office, offline of course. Or, I should tell Dante,
so he could get the police to pull the phone records, but they wouldn’t share that info with me if they felt bothered to do it at all.
So, I called Silas and told him about the phone sex line that one of the victims called, and how someone else called that victim to give him the number that we think was always changing.
“Yeah, I heard there was some local number going around cheaper than the 800 ones,” he said.
“Can you see if you can get that number? The one given to Charles Ballon? I’ll send you a photo I have of him to your cell. Maybe someone will recognize him,” I said.
“For you, I’ll see what I can find out. Hey, if you want someone to talk dirty to you, by all means I’m your man,” he said.
“Silas, you’re like my brother, I hardly think I could listen to dirty talk from you. Let me know what you find out.” I hung up.
My phone pinged a text from Jiff that asked me to call him, because he was worried and wanted to know if I got home all right. It said if he didn’t hear from me in fifteen minutes he was going to CluckIt to see if I was still there. I called him and told him everything I found out and that Silas and Frank were helping me with the crazy phone number that Lionel told us about.
We stayed on the phone talking until almost two a.m. Neither of us wanted to hang up.
“Hey, this is a school night and it’s getting late,” I said. “We have to work tomorrow.”
“Meet me for a drink tomorrow night, after work?” Jiff asked.
“Okay, if we’re both not tired from staying up so late. Call me when you’re ready to leave your office.”
“I won’t be too tired to see you, so plan on me picking you up at home about six o’clock,” he said. Before he hung up he added, “I hope you dream of me.”
Chapter Nine
Monday morning, like clockwork, Dante pulled up in front of our house at seven o’clock. He was carrying a large Target shopping bag when he got out of his car. I opened the front door before he knocked.
Drive Thru Murder Page 8
