“Oh, we’re setting sail, Negative Nelly. I’m counting on this gig.”
Marian hissed, and Ruth elongated her neck.
It was time to debut a line I’d come up with to justify my questioning. “I gotta admit, I’m nervous about working on a steamboat where a dead body was found.”
Marian pshawed. “That was a freak occurrence. The captain thinks he was another rapscallion looking for Galliano’s mythical gold.”
“Rapscallion?” Ruth perked up. “You into Scrabble?”
“Certainly, but it’s the captain’s word, not mine. And if you ask me, this Nick Pescatore was stoned on alcohol and fell into that freezer, which is why I never touch the stuff.”
Ruth gave the table a tap. “We can agree on that, sister.”
I wondered whether Marian was in drink denial like her twin.
“Pardon the flapdoodle, riverboaters.” A tall, seventy-something male stood at the microphone on the stage. He cut a striking figure in a white bowtie and suit that matched his unruly hair and mustache. “That saphead detective is getting too high for his nut, interrupting my speech with his blatherskite.”
Marv was right. The captain was almost incomprehensible.
“Now, where was I?” He twisted the end of a whisker. “Ah, yes. The mighty Mississippi is a half mile wide and two hundred feet deep, and it’s a rogue stream. So your labor on the Galliano promises a grand adventure.”
Yeah, The Poseidon Adventure, if the battle of the Ruths was any indication.
He chuckled and slapped his knee. “Why, just yesterday I saw a bag lady in all her misery take a tumble into the river. She surfaced and tussled with a catfish that was bunking in her purse.”
Ruth and Marian honk-laughed, but I crossed my arms. I took offence to the misery reference.
“The brouhaha reminded me of a set-to I once had with a catfish as a whippersnapper deckhand on a steamboat. One summer’s day I was lunching on the main deck, enjoying the majesty of this great river, when a ten-foot catfish rose up and snatched a Vienna sausage from betwixt my fingers.”
Wendell the bartender’s eyes popped and lip dropped, reflecting the general reaction in the room.
The captain’s jaw set. “Since I had just begun my repast, I made a lasso and tied the end of the rope around my waist. Then I held up another sausage, and sure as a gun, the slippery sucker returned to thieve the rest of my lunch. I lassoed him with all speed, and he pulled me the two hundred feet to the river bottom.”
Ruth and I shared a side-eye. His tale was taller than the ten-foot catfish.
“We scrapped and scuffled,” he said, reenacting his side of the battle, “and I was sure the end was nigh from the way he spat and growled. And then the ornery cuss ripped off my britches with his teeth.”
The bartender’s head snapped back, and I tried to imagine a catfish pucker. And then for some reason, I thought of Jefferson Davis’s Civil War drawers.
“By then I was seeing stars from lack of oxygen, so I grabbed his nostril with my left hand and gave him a wallop that knocked him foolish.” He gave the air a right hook. "Still bound to the unconscious thief, I kicked and clawed at the water till we rose to the surface. And that catfish became the midday meal he’d tried to rob me of.”
Tim the sailor shot up and gave his captain an ovation, while the rest of us managed a few embarrassed claps.
The captain bowed. “Our test cruise has been postponed until the day after tomorrow. In the meantime, riverboaters, you may report to your respective stations.”
Marian rose and pursed her lips. “Told you we weren’t leaving tomorrow.”
Ruth stared after her as she left. “Did you get a load of that old harpy?”
“I did.” I stared at Ruth pointedly. “Many times.”
“No Fun Meter for her.” She stood and shot me a sober look over her horned rims. “But between you and me, if anyone’s too high on his nut, it’s that captain.”
I agreed even though I still wasn’t sure what that meant.
She smacked her lips. “But I do wish I’d seen that catfish take on the bag lady.”
That was my cue to report for kitchen duty. I stood and headed for the galley, trying to reconcile the captain’s seemingly amiable nature with the murder of his business partner. He was definitely a kook, but he didn’t strike me as a killer.
I opened the Staff Only door. No one was in the galley, but dry goods were stacked on the counters and the chopping-block island. I assumed the police had emptied out the pantry while inspecting the crime scene.
The awful image of Nick in the freezer appeared before my eyes. Was Luigi right? Was it too dangerous to take a possible Mafia case? Those men weren’t amateurs like the other murderers I’d investigated. They were professional assassins who dealt in cruel forms of death.
Dealt.
The playing card. I had to find someone who could tell me what the queen of spades symbolized. But not Chandra Toccato. No more psychics for me, just a straight up tarot card reader.
I gripped the handle of the pantry door, and after a deep inhale I pulled it open. As I’d suspected, the pantry had been emptied. I spotted a trap door in the wall near where the freezer had been. Cautiously, I lifted the lid to a wide tin tube, probably an old garbage chute. If a weapon had been involved in Nick’s death, it could’ve been the disposal route.
Next, I scanned the shelves and the cracks between the baseboards and the floor. There was nothing to see, not even a scuff mark on the tile.
I exited the pantry and followed the hallway to a small room with a desk and a walk-in refrigerator. Slowly, I opened the door, and a shiver went down my spine. The blast of air from the cooling fan wasn’t the culprit, it was the contents.
Lemons.
Crates and crates of lemons.
Given everything I’d been through with the St. Joseph’s Day tradition, the sight of hundreds of lemons made me more than skittish. But my anxiety was amplified by Luigi’s story about the lemon and the origin of the Mafia. Was this walk-in full of citrus some kind of bizarre proof that the Scalino clan ruled the boat?
“Hands in the air!” A throaty female voice cracked at my back.
My feet flew up along with my arms.
“What do we have here? A lemon thief?”
Technically I was one, but I wasn’t going to tell that to her. “My name’s Franki Rockford, and I was looking for the kitchen manager to report for duty.”
“And you thought you’d find me locked in the freezer, did ya?”
She had me there. “Well—”
“Can it. I know you thievin’ types. I’ve been in this business longer than you’ve been alive. Now put your hands down and let me get a look at ya. I’m Pat Seaman.”
I turned to face her, and the name really fit. Apart from her pendulous breasts and five-foot stature, Pat was a cross between a stout sailor and the Sea Hag from Popeye. She had a bulbous nose and prominent chin, missing teeth, and a barrel chest that would rival that of Bluto—and my mother’s friend Rosalie. And the roots of her bleached boyish hair needed a major touchup.
“We’d best clear out before Chef Scalino comes.” She slammed the walk-in door, grabbed my wrist, and dragged me up the hall with a limp-lope that was pure Igor from Frankenstein.
Pat released me at the island, and I rubbed my wrist. Meanwhile, she hacked up some phlegm into a handkerchief and stuffed it into her back pocket.
I had to swallow, but all I could think of was that loogie.
“Let’s get your training outta the way. You wash dishes and make the shrimp cocktails, and that includes the peeling and de-pooping. Any questions?”
I wanted to ask if she was aware of the term deveining, but I had to focus on practical matters. “Yeah, where do I throw away the shrimp peels? In that chute in the pantry?”
One bloodshot brown eye squinted while the brow of the other rose. “I see you had a nice look around.”
“I wanted to get familiar with th
e galley, so I can do a good job.”
“As long as that’s the reason.” She kept the squint eye on me. “That chute in the pantry is called the ‘dollar hole’ because in the olden days cooks used to throw food waste in it. We don’t use it ’cause it goes straight to the river.”
So if a weapon had been used to kill Nick, it was gone forever.
“Because I’m the manager, I do the crawdad boils.” She paused to let that sink in. “And the chef makes his famous lemon-mint sorbet.”
“So that’s what the lemons are for?”
“You got some kind o’ lemon obsession?”
“What about lemons?” The man’s voice shot through the galley—not like a rifle, but more like a BB gun.
Pat sneered. “Our new dishwasher and de-pooper is fixated on ’em, Chef.”
I would’ve suggested “galley hand” as my title, but I was too busy watching Alfredo Scalino pull a knife from a block.
His beady gaze met mine. “Fuggedabout my lemons. They’re dead to you, capish?”
I nodded, and he stabbed the knife into the island.
Apparently, he wasn’t big on OSHA workplace safety and health standards. And I was certain that he would’ve had no problem sending an up-and-coming mobster to my apartment to pose as an exterminator. What I didn’t know was what he planned to do after he’d learned that the winepress was there.
The chef placed a hand on his forehead, too prominent due to a receding hairline, and looked at Pat. “The captain just told me we’re docked tomorrow.”
She laid worried red eyes on me. “Come back at 0600 hours the day after tomorrow.”
I didn’t wait for further instruction. I threw open the galley door and stopped cold.
Kate the cocktail waitress straightened. She touched the sideburn of her cropped dark hair, averted her eyes, and walked away.
She’d been eavesdropping on our conversation. But why?
7
Please tell me Kate doesn’t know I’m a PI. I kept that thought to myself rather than blurting it out bag-lady style as I strode through the empty dining hall. The last thing I wanted to do was disappoint Luigi, but if my cover had been blown, I’d have to remove myself from the case. And no one else at Private Chicks could investigate Nick’s death. Veronica wasn’t doing much field work anymore, and she wouldn’t reassign the case to David. A possible Mafia hit was too dangerous for a college kid, and he was already busy investigating me for my nonna. The rat.
I pushed open the door to the gambling area, but Kate wasn’t there. I glanced to my left and saw Wendell the bartender crouched behind the bar, stuffing something into a cabinet. “Excuse me.”
He started and fell onto his behind. “Lawd a’mighty.” He clutched his chubby chest. “I thought Baron Samedi done come to dig my grave.”
Any time the voodoo loa of the dead was mentioned, I paid attention. And Wendell was awfully anxious. Did he have something to hide? “I just wanted to know if you saw where Kate went. Sorry I scared you.”
“It ain’t your fault, it’s this damn boat. After they found that man in the freezer, I almost didn’t take this gig.” He pulled himself to his feet. “I sent Kate home just now. Ain’t nothing for her to do here today, and the less we’re all here the better.”
I slid onto a barstool. I wished I could’ve talked to Kate before she’d left, but I agreed with him about the Galliano. “I’ll bet a lot of people backed out of this job. We’ll probably have to make do with a skeleton crew for a while.”
His brown eyes popped. “Don’t never say skeleton, now. My people came from Haiti, and we don’ throw that word around.”
That explained his Baron Samedi reference. I’d been in New Orleans long enough to know that Haitians fled to the city after an eighteenth-century slave revolt, and they brought voodoo with them.
Wendell bent and resumed struggling with the cabinet, and I peered over the bar to see what it was.
A long, hard case. The perfect size for a rifle or machine gun.
I sat back and acted casual. “Need any help?”
“Nah, jus’ trying to store my bone.”
I blinked. “Did you say bone?”
He cast a wide-eyed look over his shoulder. “That’s one of them words we don’ throw around. I meant a trombone.” He gave the case a shove and closed the cabinet. “I’m a musician, but I bartend to play the bills between gigs.”
“Ah. Where have you worked?”
“All over The Big Easy.” He rose and leaned his forearms on the bar. “You name a joint, and I’ve either played there or served drinks. I even worked on a cruise ship once.”
Like that sailor. “Did you work with Tim Trahan, by any chance?”
“Sure did. I don’ know him well, though. I worked with Kate too, but I cain’t remember where.”
I needed to track her down before we set sail on the test cruise, so I concocted a fib. “She looks familiar to me, but I can’t figure out where I’ve seen her.”
“Well, if I find out where I know her from, I’ll tell you. But right now I need to inventory the liquor, so I can get the hell outta here.”
I rose from the barstool but sat down again. “Oh, we’ve got a lot of lemons in the galley. Did you need some for drink garnish?”
He scribbled something on a clipboard. “All I need is lime, orange, and cherries. We’re serving a limited number of pre-mixed drinks to start, mainly bloody Marys, Harvey Wallbangers, and Hurricane Katrinas.”
I wondered whether the Hurricane Katrina used lemon, but I didn’t want to mention the fruit again. Word could get back to the Sea Hag and the chef that I really was lemon-obsessed. “Is that like the Hurricane at Pat O’Brien’s?”
“It’s got the rum and the OJ, but also Banana liqueur and Galliano. We want to make a couple of drinks with Galliano to call out the name of the steamboat.”
For me, Galliano called out Nick’s final text to Luigi. “Have you ever heard of a drink called the Galliano Gold?”
He stuck out his lower lip. “No, but I oughta make it. Sounds like Galliano and Goldschläger.”
The same thing Luigi had thought. If only that had been the case.
“Ahoy, mateys!”
Ruth’s pirate cry gave Wendell and me both a jolt. He dropped his clipboard, and I spun on my barstool and saw her scurry down the grand staircase. With her pale varicose-veined legs and knobby knees protruding from cargo shorts, long white socks, and spanking new Keds, Ruth looked more like a Girl Scout Troop leader than a pirate or a cruise director.
She approached and gave me the stink eye. “Instead o’ parkin’ it at that bar, you ought to be touring this fine steamboat.”
I limited my reply to a glare.
Wendell shook his head. “I ain’t left the main deck.”
“Because it’s haunted?”
“Say what?” Wendell backed into the bar, and a bottle of Galliano shattered on the floor.
Ruth tsked. “A grown man like you afraid of some bullpucky about ghosts?” She looked down at Wendell as he cleaned up the mess. “The best way to get over that is to take a tour. The second floor’s the cabin deck with a library and the purser’s office. There’s a gift shop too, but you can skip that. It’s got a bunch of history books and nautical crap.” She hid her mouth behind the back of her hand. “And between you and me, the woman who runs it is a pain in the porthole.”
If I’d had a drink, I would’ve choked on it. Evidently, Ruth had yet to see the similarity between herself and Marian Guidry.
“On the top of the boat, you got the Texas deck with the pilothouse next to the smokestack, the captain’s suite, and the crew’s quarters. There’s even an old steam calliope.”
I shuddered. Calliopes reminded me of creepy carnival music, which then reminded me of Glenda’s drag queen friend, Carnie Vaul.
Wendell rose with a ragful of glass shards. “Uh-uh. I ain’t spendin’ the night on no haunted steamboat. They gonna have to drop me at the dock.”
> “Oh, pshaw. It’ll be a hoot. Kind of like telling ghost stories around the campfire.”
“I never did that,” Wendell muttered.
Neither had I, but judging from Ruth’s getup, she had.
She leaned on the bar. “Hey, you play in a jazz band, don’t you?”
“Yes ma’am. The Treme Tribe.”
“Good, because I’m going to need you. I just met with the captain, and we’ve lost a lot of revenue in ticket sales thanks to the murder. You got a singer?”
“Nah, but I’ll ask around.”
“You do that.” She pointed at him and headed for the grand staircase. “And get someone classy. We want to bring in the high-roller gamblers.”
Wendell’s brow was on alert as he watched her leave.
I gave him a reassuring smile even though I was thinking about Marv hearing the body of the sailor ghost smacking the paddlewheel. “The haunted stuff is nonsense.”
“Spirits exist, trust me on dat.” He shook his head. “But I ain’t as worried about them as I am the queen of spades card in that dead man’s hand.”
I was stunned that he knew about the playing card. The police usually kept unusual details under wraps to help catch the killer. “How did you know about that?”
“After our meeting this mornin’, I heard the captain tell the gift shop lady that the detective he was complaining about called to ask about that card. He wanted to know if all her playing cards were accounted for.”
I was going to have to visit the gift shop myself and find out. “Why would the card bother you?”
“In Haitian Vodou, the houngan and mambo, tha’s what they call the priest and priestess, use playing cards instead of tarot.”
I hadn’t considered a possible voodoo connection to Nick’s death, but I should have since we were in New Orleans. “You mean, they use cards to tell your future?”
“No, they don’ do that. They use ’em to tell you which of the loa are working in your life.”
“So what does the queen of spades mean?”
Galliano Gold (Franki Amato Mysteries Book 5) Page 8