by Seth Pevey
She was on a plane back to Seoul, to become a nun in some convent up in the mountains. At least, that was how Father Kim told it, when he’d handed the old detective his first real paycheck since he’d left the force.
Felix, of course, had let him keep it all, despite Melancon’s wounded sense of fairness. Bills didn’t care about a man’s pride, though. So, Melancon had smiled in defeat, folded the little slip of paper back into his pocket, gave the boy a pat on the shoulder.
A fine boy. A fine man, after all.
But the case of the Korean girl had been upsetting for other reasons. Before the mystery had unraveled, Melancon had been holding out some hope that it hadn’t been that way with Julie—he was sure that she’d had a better head on her shoulders. He’d wished it all just a bit of random bad luck. She’d been abducted, chosen for her good looks when the city was already drowning. He’d seen her jogging or something, singled her out, said to himself, I will take that one.
But this hope didn’t change what Melancon knew in his gut. G.D. had been a practiced seducer. A charmer. A real Ted Bundy type. He was smooth, learned, mysterious. Tall, dark and handsome. All of it. He used his stories and his compelling, fringe religion and his broad shoulders…and he’d lured them.
How could it be?
He sipped his iced-tea until Janine arrived. She appeared on the balcony with her doe eyes and high heeled shoes, a leather purse on a gold chain. She came up to his table, adjusted her chair twice but didn’t sit, let a hand comb through her hair. She wouldn’t look at him. He could see that she was terrified.
“Janine, it’s ok. I’m ok.” he said. “There is nothing you need to do or say except just sit and have dinner with a lonely old man.”
Her shoulders sagged. She looked at him and sat down, glanced at his iced-tea.
“Can I get you a drink or something?”
She shook her head, looking at him now more seriously. What did she see?
He figured she was trying to perceive what could not be put into words. Janine laid a hand over his, finally looked him in the eyes. Her olive palm was warm and soft. David Melancon decided that, as old as he was, and as many as he had known, there was still a lot of things about women that he would never quite grasp. An intangible quality to them. As if they were privy to some other sense of the world that he was not—a hidden garden of humanity in which they could call every flower and tree by a secret name.
And vice versa. After all this, he was sure of that. There were things, bestial and looming in that same garden. Dark uncertainties, visions that would wake a man in a cold sweat—things that the daughters of this world seemed to peer past somehow.
He tried his best to smile at her.
“Why is it, Janine, that the things we desire always hurt us the most? Whether it be whisky or bad men, or a false religion? Why aren’t we better than that? Are we just a bunch of creatures running around, like moths to a zapper?”
“If you’re going to talk like that, David, I think I will have a wine.”
He laughed through his nose. Maybe that was it. The soft deflection. The gentle way she guided his forehead away from the stone wall he was banging it against. With a simple grace, Janine shrugged her shoulders at all that darkness.
Melancon’s real smile peeked out at her. It fluffed his baggy eyes, lifted his wan cheeks. The first genuine smile in quite a while. The sinking sun, the cool ice, a warm palm on the back of his hand—demand so little from the world that it opens its furtive glow to you, its casual beauties.
“So, what are you going to do now?” she asked.
“I’m going to take a long vacation. Someplace cold and still.”
“Well, it looks like your trombone man was charged with accessory to…”
He shook his head. “You were right the first time, Janine. Drink your wine and let’s talk about steaks instead. This place has the best porterhouse in town. They make this herb garlic butter that they let melt on top. I tell you, that’s about as close to heaven as you can get.”
A poor turn of phrase, he realized. But he didn’t care. Words, for once, had lost their luster. What he wanted now was a belly full of meat, to watch the sun fall down and hear the city’s lilting, joyous music echo below. He wanted to hear the gulls calling as they sought the sea. To hear the brass men blowing an old song from days gone by. Then to sleep without dreams. At last, perhaps, to feel Janine’s warm palm on his chest in the light of a new morning.
The End
Afterword
Only you can solve Herbert and Melancon’s next big mystery.
You’ve finished “The Roots of Misfortune,” and I hope you’ve enjoyed it. I put a lot of hours into making it the best reader experience possible, and I hope that came across in the words. As a small-time indie writer, those hours spent have to be budgeted out of a real life in which I spend forty plus hours a week running a business…all to put the roof in my stomach and the bacon over my head…how does that go again?
The point is (you probably guessed it), this is the part where I ask you for a review!
You see, as an indie writer, I am made or broken by exposure. If I get exposure, in the form of reviews, word of mouth, Goodreads lists, Twitter posts - or whatever else has lots of avid readers looking and talking - it means I’m able to succeed.
That publishing success, in turn, means I’m able to whittle away a few more hours from my business demands in order to write more words for you. Which is what I desperately want.
I hope that is what you want too.
So please, let the world know if you enjoy my work. The more you do that, the faster Felix and Melancon can get to the bottom of their next crazy, deadly, intriguing, New Orleans-y adventure!
They are both counting on you, dear reader. And so am I!
Please leave a review – Amazon, Goodreads, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter – whatever! You can also sign up for my mailing list at my blog: https://sethpevey.com/, for future updates, giveaways, and possibly even advanced beta-reader status!
Help Herbert and Melancon keep letting the good times roll, and I’ll see you in book number 3!
