That Old Devil Sin

by W E DeVore

  “... No really, I swear that poor little man followed her around like one of them sad Bassett hounds,” Camilla was saying, while making a very pouty face. “It was pitiful. I don’t think he ever got over it. And Q was all… well, you know…being Q and pretending she had no idea what he was talking about.”

  “No idea what who was talking about?” Q asked as she crossed the room and poured herself another mimosa.

  “Charlie, trying to separate you from your jeans for the first three years he knew you,” Camilla stated.

  Q settled into a chair at the kitchen table. “What are you talking about, Camilla? Charlie never tried to pick me up.”

  Camilla looked at Ben and shook her head. “See what I mean?”

  Ben nodded and laughed quietly to himself while working on another shrimp.

  “Would one of you please explain what you’re talking about?” Q asked petulantly.

  Camilla rinsed her hands and dried them on the tea towel she was wearing over one shoulder. “Girl, you know Charlie Bourdel has been trying to get you in his bed since the moment he clamped eyes on you.”

  “That is not true,” Q said firmly. “Ben, don’t believe a word this woman says. Living with Tom is addling her brain.”

  Before Camilla could raise a defense, the door to the bathroom swung open and Pete appeared in the kitchen doorway holding a pair of scissors. “Could one of you ladies tidy up the back? I can’t tell if it’s crooked or not.”

  Camilla had the same reaction that Q had moments earlier and Ben nearly deveined his thumb instead of the shrimp in his hand. Pete “The Pocket” Fontain stood clean-shaven, piercingless, and dressed in the clean shirt he had apparently borrowed from Tom; his jeans from Lundi gras laundered and neatly pressed, courtesy of Camilla St. John-Wills. Q stood up.

  “Sure, Pocket, sit down over here,” she said, gesturing to her chair.

  Pete sat down and handed her the scissors. As Q tidied up the few misaligned cuts, he said, “No more ‘Pocket,’ Q, just ‘Pete.’ Actually, I’m thinking about going by my middle name, ‘Drummond.’ What do you think?”

  His signature, artificially accentuated, slurred New Orleans drawl had been replaced with complete sentences that followed something closer to the actual rules of the English language. Camilla finally spoke up.

  “Pete, what’s going on?” she asked hesitantly.

  “If I’m going to get a teaching position, I can’t very well look like a gutter punk, now can I?” he answered calmly.

  Camilla and Q looked at each other. Neither of them had heard him speak like the educated man he was for nearly a decade.

  Q finished cleaning up his haircut and set down the scissors. She walked over to the oven and picked up a tea towel to sweep off the cuttings from his shirt.

  “Pete, baby, you might want to manage your expectations…” she said gently.

  Pete stood up and reached for the broom standing in the corner near the back door and began to sweep up his hair. “I’m aware of that, Clementine. However, my plans are the same as they were Monday evening. I’m going home today to finish packing and let Arlene know that no one will be there the remainder of the month. Then I’m getting in my car and driving to Tennessee to my mom’s cabin. The money from the Cove should be enough to hold me over while I get my head straight, and then I’ll find some work. I imagine my accreditation is a little out of date, so I’ll have to look into that, but I’ll work it out.”

  He swept the clippings into the dustpan and threw them into the trash. Ben finished deveining the shrimp and washed his hands. He turned and leaned against the sink.

  “Pete, brother, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to leave town right now.”

  Pete sat back down and folded his arms. “One, you’re not my brother. Two, I don’t care what you consider to be a good idea.”

  Q crouched down in front of him so she could look at his face. “Pete, baby, I know you just went through something awful, but you can’t just bail. Ben’s right. It won’t look good if you just up and leave.”

  “Up and leave?” Pete stood up and began to pace the room. “I was going to leave yesterday before the parades. I should be in Tennessee right now. I’d be going on seven days sober if I had. This place is going to kill me. It already killed Ronnie.”

  Camilla took a guilty drink of her Bloody Mary. “Pete, maybe you and Q should go outside and talk this through,” she said. “Ben and I will finish getting brunch together and get to know each other a little better.”

  Q gently wrapped her arm around Pete’s waist and guided him out the back door. They were greeted with a gentle breeze blowing off Lake Pontchartrain. Q could hear the water lapping on the other side of the levee. They sat on the back steps in silence for a few minutes.

  She finally said, “I told Ben.”

  Pete leaned forward on his knees and watched a man throw a Frisbee to his dog as they walked along the levee. Q leaned back on her hands and turned her face up to the sky, watching the cumulous clouds gather and dissipate overhead.

  She finally asked, “You ever tell anyone what happened?”

  Pete shook his head and she continued, looking back up at the clouds, “You know, I think we were wrong to keep it such a secret all these years. I always thought it would be so awful for anyone to know. It’s not though. It’s lighter somehow. I’m lighter somehow.”

  She realized he was crying and squeezed his shoulder, gazing at the clouds for a few more minutes while he calmed himself. “I don’t blame you, for wanting to leave. I actually do think it would be the best thing for you. But you can’t run away from everything, baby. Ronnie will still be just as dead in Tennessee as she is in New Orleans. You’ll still be an addict. You’ll still have to live with what happened back in Arabi all those years ago. That won’t go away just because you can see the Smokey Mountains from your porch.”

  He wiped his eyes. Still watching the man and his dog’s progress across the levee, he asked, “What did Ben say?”

  “He loves me.” Q’s voice broke and she took an uneven breath before continuing. “Sorry, haven’t said that out loud yet. Still getting used to it.”

  “That’s good, Clemmie. That’s real good.”

  She was taken aback at his childhood nickname for her.

  Pete stared at the levee and said, “You deserve to be happy. I should have reminded you of that every day for the last ten years until you believed it. I let you down. Let myself down, too. We’ve been acting like we were the ones that did something wrong that night, you know?”

  She did know. Ten years of hiding and lying and pretending like nothing bad had ever happened to either of them. The guilt over taking a man’s life, albeit a bad man’s life, had consumed Pete until there was hardly anything left of the boy she had grown up with. Q needed to be the stronger of the two of them to feel normal again. She needed him to fall apart so that she could pick up the pieces to make him whole, as if it would somehow mend her at the same time. She suddenly realized that lying to the police was the latest in a long series of deceptions that began the moment she had convinced Pete to start QT and the Beasts and it was time to put it to an end.

  “Why did you lie to the Uncle Ernst?” she asked.

  He continued to look straight ahead. “That argument Ronnie and me had. It was more like a fight,” he said flatly. “Ronnie was high and mad as hell. She was saying all kinds of crazy things about people owing her and she was going to get hers and how we were fixed up now.” He paused and looked down. “It was hard seeing her like that…like someone holding up a mirror in front of me. I didn’t like what I saw.”

  “What happened?” she asked quietly.

  “Nothing, really. It just…it doesn’t look good. She was pulling at me, begging me. I shook her and pushed her away. I told her she'd end up dead if she didn't stop and I wasn’t going to stick around and watch.”

  “But that’s understandable. You should have told Ernst. You should call him and tell him no
w,” she said, looking at him.

  Pete shook his head. “I’m not an idiot, Q. I know what I am. I know people don’t think I’m stable, especially your godfather.”

  He paused and looked at her for the first time since they sat down. “You know I’m right. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have lied either.”

  “I shouldn’t have lied, Pete, it was wrong and it’s only going to make things worse. They’re going to find out. Someone is bound to have seen you with Ronnie that night. It’s better if they hear it from you before they hear it from someone else. You have to think about how it’ll look when they find out you did lie after you’ve left town. Daddy would call it a slam dunk; you know I’m right about this.”

  Pete slowly nodded. “I suppose you’re right, Clemmie. I should stay put, at least until I come clean about what happened. I’ll go home this afternoon and call Ernst. The sooner I get this behind me, the sooner I can get out of this damn city.”

  Q leaned back and looked at the clouds. Pete followed suit. They sat and looked up at the sky watching storm clouds gather over the lake. He reached over and took her hand. “You’re my best pal, Clemmie.”

  She smiled, suddenly feeling like she was eight years old again. “You’re my best pal, Peetey Bird.”

  Best Two Out of Three

  The next two days passed through an orgasmic haze of caresses, laughter, and whispered, moaned, and screamed ‘I love you’s.’ Q awoke Saturday morning in a delirium of joy that filled her to capacity. She lay on her side and watched Ben sleep, listening to the steady rain outside the window. She lightly brushed back the hair that had slipped over his face. Ben smiled and opened his eyes.

  “’Morning, darlin’,” he said, yawning and glancing over her shoulder at the window. “More rain. What are we going to do to pass the time?”

  Q grinned and pulled him to her. He leaned in to kiss her when the doorbell rang.

  “Uh-uh,” she said, putting her lips on his and pulling him on top of her. Ben started kissing his way down to her navel and the doorbell rang again, and again.

  He looked up from her stomach. “What the hell?”

  The ringing doorbell was now accompanied by an insistent overly loud knocking on the front door. He got up out of bed and lifted Wednesday’s jeans from where they lay crumpled next to Wednesday’s shirt by the door. He pulled them on and said while he buttoned them up, “Don’t move, darlin’, let me go get rid of whichever one of my asshole sisters that is downstairs.”

  She grinned and called after him as he left the room, “You can see your hard-on!”

  “Serves ‘em right,” he yelled back.

  She lay back on the bed and stretched, listening to Ben pad barefoot down the stairs and open the door. She jolted upright when she heard raised voices below and Ernst’s voice holler her name up the stairs.

  Q jumped out of bed and began to look around for her clothes before she realized that both Wednesday’s clothes and her overnight bag were very nearly right where Ernst was currently standing. She slipped into Ben’s discarded shirt and quickly rolled up the sleeves and buttoned it up as she walked downstairs.

  Ernst was standing at the base of the staircase two feet in front of her overnight bag and two steps below where her jeans and an inside out Sepultura t-shirt had been cast aside. Ben was leaning against the open front door and another man, Q recognized as one of the detectives from the Cove on Lundi gras, stood between them.

  “Clementine, why aren’t you answering your phone?” Ernst asked.

  “Why do you think?” she replied sarcastically and strode down the rest of the stairs with as much dignity as she could muster. She edged past Ernst and headed to the large round table in the foyer. She slipped her hand inside her satchel to pull out her phone.

  “Dead,” she said, waving at Ernst. “Forgot to charge it.”

  Ben closed the front door and the man standing next to him asked, “And you, Mr. Bordelon?”

  Ben patted his back pockets and retrieved his phone. He looked at it and shrugged. He stepped between the two intruders to join Q in the foyer. He kissed her firmly on the mouth in defiance. “Why don’t I make us some coffee?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he walked through the living room and into the kitchen. Q intentionally followed him with her eyes until he disappeared through the doorway. She sighed and turned back to her godfather.

  “Clementine, this is not how ladies behave in public,” Ernst reproached.

  She put her hands on her hips and stared down her nose at him. “One: we’re not in public, this is a private residence into which you’ve intruded. And two…” she said, smiling at the private joke, “…I’m not much of a lady. Now, would you two like to sit down and tell me what is so urgent that you go and try to break down the man’s door?”

  She made an annoyed gesture toward the living room. Ernst said, “This is police business, Q. You were a witness at the scene of a murder. Or did you forget that?”

  “Since when is my ladylike behavior, or lack thereof, police business?”

  Before Ernst could fire back a response, his fellow detective interjected, “Why don’t we all go sit down? I’m sorry for the interruption, Miss Toledano.”

  Q let the two men walked ahead of her. Once Ernst and the other man sat in the two chairs, she curled up into the corner of the sofa.

  “Where is Peter?” Ernst asked.

  She shrugged. “How should I know? I’ve been here with Ben for the last two days…with a dead phone, remember?”

  Ernst ignored her. “When did you see him last?”

  “Ash Wednesday at Camilla and Tom’s house. He was still there when Ben and I left. I think he was heading back to his apartment, but he may have stayed with them. I don’t know.”

  “Anything about him seem odd to you?”

  “Not really, well not odd, more like back to normal,” she replied. “He took out those ugly cornrows and all his piercings and cut his hair.” She thought for a minute. “He also stopped talking like a Dr. John automaton and was speaking something most people would recognize as English. Seems like he’s really serious about getting straight this time.”

  Q tried to keep her tone even and breezy to mask the nervous unease that began gnawing at her stomach.

  Why are they asking about Pete?

  “He mention anything about leaving town?” Ernst asked.

  She nodded. “Camilla, Ben, and I all told him not to and that he should stay here and help with the investigation as much as he could. But he was really afraid that if he stayed, he wouldn’t be able to stop using. He and I had a long conversation about it and he finally came around.”

  The other man finally spoke, “Do you know if Mr. Fontain saw Ms. Denton at that Lundi gras party?”

  “I’m sorry, you are…” Q prodded.

  “Detective Sanger. We met on Lundi gras.”

  “Right. Sorry.” She chose her next words to carefully fudge the right details. “Yeah, he told me Wednesday that he saw her during the first break. I guess she tried to convince him to stay in town. They had a bit of a quarrel.” She turned to Ernst. “He said was going to call you and tell you about it. He was too upset on Monday to get into it, I guess. Mad at himself because the last time he saw her, they had an argument. Stupid not to mention it, but you know how Pete is.”

  Q tried to sound casual as she lied openly to her godfather. Ben walked back in with two cups of coffee and handed her one. He sat down next to her on the sofa and absentmindedly stroked her feet. Ernst gazed silently at the two of them for a few uncomfortable minutes.

  “You seem awfully at home, Clementine,” he said, clearly displeased at the idea.

  Ben replied before she could come up with a pithy response. “This is Q’s home.”

  Q and Ernst both looked at him in confusion. Ben looked at her and said, “If you want it to be, that is.”

  Her already anxious stomach did a backflip and she took a sip of coffee in an attempt to calm her nerves. />
  Detective Sanger asked, “Do you know where Mr. Fontain was headed?”

  “I told you. He was going back to his apartment. He said he wasn’t leaving town until this whole mess was over.”

  Just cut to the damn chase, already.

  “Peter’s not at his apartment,” Ernst finally said. “His car’s gone and his landlady hasn’t seen him since Wednesday. So, where did he go?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s still with Tom. Maybe he’s holed up at the rehearsal shed. Maybe he’s strung out in a crackhouse in the lower Garden District. How should I know? This is Pete we’re talking about.”

  “He’s not with Tom,” Ernst replied. “And he’s not at that tinderbox of a warehouse.”

  “You check the hospitals?”

  “You telling me how to do my job, Clementine?” Ernst asked tersely.

  Q shook her head. “No… I didn’t mean to... You did check, right?”

  “He’s not in any rehab centers or in the hospitals,” Detective Sanger reassured her. “A Mrs. St. John-Wills gave the impression that he may have left town. Do you have any idea where he may have gone?”

  Damn it, Camilla.

  “Maybe his mom’s cabin in Tennessee,” she said. “That was what he was planning to do before the murder. Didn’t he tell you all this on Monday?”

  Detective Sanger pulled out his notebook and started taking notes. “Where in Tennessee is that cabin?”

  She shrugged. “Somewhere in the Smokey Mountains. I haven’t been since I was like ten. Call my dad, he’ll know.”

  Ernst replied sarcastically, “Seems your father is having a little amnesia himself. He can’t remember the name of the town either.”

  Q stared him down.

  Time to go whistling through a minefield.

  “Look, Uncle Ernst. Pete always refers to that place as ‘my mom’s cabin in Tennessee.’ How the hell is Daddy or me supposed to remember the name of the pissant little town it’s near when neither one of us has been there for twenty-two years?”

  Ernst paused before continuing. “Fine. Have it your way. Let’s go over your statement from Monday and see if you two remember anything y’all were ‘too upset’ to mention.”