by W E DeVore
The Devil’s Luck
Clementine Toledano Mysteries: Book IV
a novel by W.E. DeVore
The Devil’s Luck
ALSO BY W.E. DEVORE
Clementine Toledano Mysteries
That Old Devil Sin
Devil Take Me Down
Chasing Those Devil Bones
The Devil’s Luck
Coming Soon: Until the Devil Weeps
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 W.E. DeVore
All rights reserved
ISBN-10: 1720695695
ISBN-13: 978-1720695691
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Anxious Laughter Publishing
To Jimmy. Thanks for the music. May the memory of the righteous be for a blessing.
And to Phil. For giving me the idea in the first place.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Heather Thomas, Jim Boitnott, Sarah Thornburg, and Lynnette Stead: What can I say, but thank you? Writing is a lonely art. But it is so comforting to have a team of friends who love me enough to tell me when I’ve missed the mark and when I’ve hit a bullseye. I’m so grateful to have your support.
Also, and not for nothing here, the Hellgate crew holding it down thirty years later is nothing to sneeze at, am I right?
In that spirit, I’d like to thank Greg Lenihan for inspiring a generation of young writers to persevere and follow their passion where it led them. Love your teachers, dear readers, without them we would be but shells of ourselves.
Chapter 1
Mama Don’t Play That
Q Toledano looked down in abject horror at the word displayed on the small screen in her hand. Its confident font confirmed what her body had known for at least a week but what her brain had been too stubborn to admit.
Fuck.
The world around her began to spin of its own accord, and she backed into the wall, sliding down to the cool, tile floor, continuing to stare at the screen she held in her hand. She blinked several times, willing the letters to rearrange themselves and spell something else. Her stomach threatened a secondary revolt, and she doggedly breathed in and out, slowly regaining her composure and her control over her own body.
An impatient pounding on the door beside her matched tempo with the impudent pounding in her skull, and her trumpet player’s voice followed behind it, yelling, “Q, what is taking so long? We’ve got to do soundcheck. Pull it together, will you?”
She tucked the piece of plastic she held in her hand back into its box.
“Just a second, Charlie,” she called. “For fuck’s sake, you picked the restaurant. I told you it probably served roadkill.”
Q grudgingly stood up and wrapped the entire box of betrayal in paper towels before shoving it to the bottom of the garbage can.
“Move your ass, Clementine,” Charlie shouted.
Ignoring him with some effort, she walked into one of the empty bathroom stalls, flushed the toilet twice for effect, then returned to the sinks. Holding onto the granite counter, she inhaled and exhaled the panic and the tears away. She washed her hands slowly, trying to buy herself some more time before she had to go on stage and act like the world hadn’t just tilted off its axis to knock her down to her knees. She watched the water pass over the diamond ring on her left hand, sparkling in the dim light and carefully dried her hands, trying to process what had just happened.
It happened weeks ago, tramp.
After recording an album with an international rock star, she’d achieved additional notoriety from the intense social media campaign around it and the viral videos that had infected his obsessive fan base. Almost immediately following her rise to Internet celebrity, her band, QT and The Beasts, had helped a New Orleans music legend complete his final album - even briefly touring with his band after he’d passed away.
Since then, gig offers from places further and further from New Orleans had come their way. QT and The Beasts had been on the road two weeks out of every month for the last six. When they were home, the monthly Bourdello Burlesque review they headlined was sold out. She’d forgotten to go to the doctor to get her birth control shot, and she’d known that she was long since past due. But she hadn’t cared.
One night. One stupid night. What were you thinking?
She’d been feeling ill for the last ten days, writing off the indigestion and headaches as road fatigue, until tonight. When she’d pulled on the fitted, low-cut shirt she’d packed for the gig, she was shocked to discover that she had something closely resembling a grown woman’s cleavage. And then, at dinner, the smell of barbecued meat mingled with her bandmates’ combined man-smell, making her eyes water and her stomach churn. She’d barely made it to the bathroom to throw up what remained of lunch. On their way back to the venue, she’d ducked into the drug store across the street, claiming to need Imodium and coming out with her heartless piece of plastic instead.
Q looked at herself in the mirror one more time, carefully applying eyeliner and lipstick, making sure her long, dark hair would hold in its bun. She pinched her cheeks in a futile attempt to pink up her decidedly corpse-like complexion. Glancing self-consciously at her cleavage, she had the sudden realization that she’d have to start wearing a bra for the first time in her adult life if this kept up.
She quickly straightened her spine and tested a casual smile at her reflection in the mirror before shoving her make-up into her back pocket and exiting. Charlie was waiting for her when she came out of the bathroom.
“You okay?” he asked sincerely.
She nodded. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to puke in the piano.”
He put his arm around her shoulders and the heat of it made her break out into a cold sweat. Her head swam, and she abruptly sat down on the floor to keep from falling.
“Fuck, Q,” Charlie said, squatting beside her. “You don’t look so good.”
“Funny, I feel just awful,” she joked, figuring that if Charlie Bourdel was genuinely worried for her health, she was most likely on death’s door.
He left her and returned with a glass of clear liquid. “Soda water, no vodka. The last thing you need is any alcohol in your system.”
She sipped it deliberately and tried to slow the pounding in her throat. He sat down beside her, resting against the wall with his elbows on his knees.
“He know?” Charlie asked.
“Who’s he and what should he know?” she asked, finally catching her breath and her balance.
“Ben. Does he know you’re pregnant?” he asked.
Pregnant. Oh god. What am I going to do?
She shook her head and started to deny it.
“Don’t say it out loud,” she pleaded instead, as if not saying the word would make it any less true. “How did you know? I just found out two minutes ago.”
Charlie glanced down to her cleavage. “In my experience, a woman doesn’t go up three cup sizes in four days without two things: a plastic surgeon or a bun in the oven.”
“What am I going to do, Charlie?” she asked, honestly wanting to know.
“Whose is it?” he asked. “Derek’s or Aaron’s?”
“Neither.” She elbowed him hard in the ribs. “What is wrong with you?”
“I don’t know, you look awfully freaked for a married woman who’s pregnant. I figured you and one of your groupies got up to more than just singing or baseball.”
“Unlike you, I have some self-control,” she scolded him.
“Obviously not, seeing as how you’re the one that’s knocked up.”
“When Ben showed up in Atl
anta, we hadn’t seen each other for weeks, and we didn’t have anything...” she explained and stopped herself as panic consumed her. “Fuck, Charlie. I don’t know if I want to do this.”
“Well, it’s not like you don’t have options. It’s not a done deal,” he said. “They try to make it tough in Louisiana, but it still only takes a minute.”
Q glowered at him. “I’m married, Charlie.”
He looked at her earnestly. “Married women have abortions, Q.”
She turned away. “Not if they want to stay married to Ben Bordelon, they don’t.”
Ben had been hinting at starting a family since the night they were married. Talking about how they’d manage the clubs he owned, along with QT and The Beasts’ rigorous gigging schedule. How they could turn the guest room into the music room so that the baby could sleep across the hall from the two of them. After nearly losing Ben to trumped up murder charges and her own life to a serial killer, Q had been happy to dream about a normal life with him. But that was before QT and The Beasts’ profile took off on an upwards trajectory towards notoriety.
Charlie stood up and held out his hand. “You want to cancel the show? Beg off with food poisoning?”
“No, it’s sold out. I’ll muscle through. I’ll put a bucket nearby, just in case,” she said, taking his hand and letting him pull her up. The world tilted again and Charlie caught her. “You’re going to give me shit about this until the day you die, aren’t you?”
“Yep,” he said. “But don’t worry about it. I’ll save it until you’re in labor. Give you something to look forward to.”
He walked with her back through the bar and into the empty venue. Tom Wills was on stage, already in the midst of packing up his drum kit, placing each stand in its own bag. Three years ago, they’d found the body of their former bass player’s girlfriend in Tom’s large hardware case, and he’d refused to get a replacement, opting for individual bags instead. The Beasts had happily covered the expense; not a single one of them wanted to ever see a coffin-shaped box at load-out again.
Tom glanced up at his bandmates and called out, “You puke?”
Q nodded.
He set down the high-hat stand he held in his hand, walked to the edge of the stage, and sat, swinging his long, gangly legs to a rhythm nobody but Tom could hear, his feet almost reaching to the floor.
“I already told the manager,” he said. “He’s not happy, but I told him he’d be less happy if our girl threw up all over his sweet little baby grand.”
“It’s ok, Scare, we’ll play,” she replied. “Dinner did a number on me is all.”
“I’m pretty sure that was Ben, Q. Don’t you go blaming that good barbecue.” He winked and stood up with a grunt. “Come on, little mama, let’s get set up and hustle through this show, so we can get you back to your husband.”
She glared at Charlie in confusion.
He shrugged. “What? You’re sick all the time. You’re bitchy, even for you. And, magically overnight, you have tits that don’t belong on a twelve-year-old boy. Even JJ figured it out.”
While the Beasts finished setting up, Q lay back on the piano bench and closed her eyes, trying to think through the logistics of how this was going to work and finding no immediate solution. She tried to be happy about it; tried to think of it as a good thing; tried to imagine holding a baby in her arms; tried to feel some spark of maternal elation.
It didn’t work.
Sturdy fingers brushed across her cheek and she opened her eyes, realizing that she’d drifted to sleep listening to the familiar sounds of Tom warming up. Her bass player, JJ, was crouching down beside her, worry tracking over his sweet, young face.
“You ready for soundcheck, sista Q?” he asked.
He helped her to sit up and sat with her on the piano bench for a minute, letting her rest her head on his solid shoulder.
“Don’t funk it up too much, JJ,” she said. “I’m running a little low on groove right now.”
JJ leaned his cheek against the top of her head. One of his dreadlocks tumbled down from where it had been tied up, tickling her neck. “It’ll be alright. The road’s beating up on me, too. I miss home.”
“Me, too, sweetheart. Me, too.”
At twenty-one, JJ was the youngest member of QT and The Beasts by over a decade. And while he may have been an adult, to Q, he’d always be the same ten-year-old boy who used to like to hold her hand.
“I’m going to be a shitty mom,” she said.
“Nah, you mother me all the time,” he said. “You’re actually pretty good at it.”
He patted her knee and stood up. JJ’s calm washed through her and she pushed her concerns out of her mind. If this was going to be QT and The Beasts’ last night on the road for the next eighteen years, she was going to burn it down.
She cleared her throat and said into the microphone, “Change of plans, boys; we’re playing until they kick us out or I throw up. Whichever comes first.”
Tom grinned like a lunatic and called, “My money’s on you, Q. I want to go home, don’t let me down.”
She laughed, hoping that Tom didn’t win his bet by her vomiting on the front row.
◆◆◆
Two long sets and one mad dash to a garbage can backstage later, the Beasts were packing their gear, preparing to settle in for the four-hour drive from Pensacola to New Orleans. JJ and Tom had refused to let Q help with load-out, adding to the list of items Charlie promised to reserve for future use. Q sat in the front seat of the van, staring uselessly at the vacant parking lot across the street, and sipping on a tall cup of iced club soda to settle her roiling stomach.
When her phone rang, she was relieved to have something to do. But when Ben’s name and smiling face appeared on the caller ID, she considered letting it go to voicemail. On the fifth ring, matrimonial guilt kicked in, and she answered.
“Hey, darlin’, how’s Florida?” he asked. His gravelly voice had the opposite effect it usually had on her emotional state; aggravating her when it usually reassured her.
“Shitty. I ate something I shouldn’t have,” she lied. “I got sick as a dog and puked backstage after the second set. We’re heading home now. I’ll be back about sunrise. Don’t wait up.”
“You okay?” he asked, concerned. “This stretch on the road hasn’t been treating you so well. Maybe you should lay off touring for a minute.”
“Jesus Christ, Ben. I’m fine,” she snapped, more than mildly annoyed. When her outburst was met with silence, she continued more evenly, “I’m sorry, baby. I’m just tired of being in this fucking van and I really don’t feel very well.”
“It’s alright, darlin’,” he replied gently. “Just come on home, so I can take care you. I’ll be leaving the Cove in an hour or two. I’ll wait up for you.”
The small part of her that didn’t blame Ben for her universal urge to vomit was relieved that she wouldn’t fall sleep alone tonight. Luckily for marital harmony, that relief momentarily silenced the larger part of her that wanted to grab her husband by his testicles and scream, “I told you to wear a fucking condom, asshole!”
By the time the Beasts finally pulled onto the highway, Q succumbed to her new-found fatigue and slept nearly the entire way west on the I-10 corridor. JJ nudged her awake when they pulled into her driveway. She regarded her fern-lined porch with an involuntary sigh of gratitude before hopping out of the van and pulling her bags out of the back, refusing to let any of her bandmates help her with them.
As she walked up the porch steps in the pre-dawn light, Ben stepped out of the house, barefoot and shirtless in a pair of athletic pants. His long, blond hair hung loose around his shoulders; the angel tattoo that covered his chest smiling its ethereal smile. Q put down her bags and he pulled her into a long kiss that pushed away the faint remnants of nausea and fatigue. And she found that, despite all her fear, discontent, and trepidation, she was glad to be home.
Chapter 2
The Lioness
Q opene
d her eyes to find sunlight streaming in through their bedroom window. Ben was curled behind her, his arm wrapped protectively around her hips. She moved closer to his warmth, stirring Ben. His body responded as he pushed against her, turning her face to his so that he could kiss her lips.
“God, I’ve missed you,” he whispered.
Her body concurred, and she moved his hands to where she’d missed him most. He rolled her onto her back and began to kiss her collarbone, working his way down her body with his tongue. As he reached her bellybutton, Q flexed her stomach muscles to find an even more pleasurable angle and felt an alien presence just beneath her abdominal wall.