by W E DeVore
She pushed her head forward, wondering if she’d heard him correctly over the running water. “I thought Mike was divorced…”
The nail tech reached for her left foot and began cleaning her cuticles. “He and his wife just lived separate. They never got divorced. Too expensive.” He stopped his work and examined her toe. “You sure you want a pedicure? This looks fresh.”
“I got one yesterday, but I don’t like the color,” she hedged.
He shrugged and replied, “It’s your money, baby.”
“How do you know so much about Mike?” Q asked.
He sat back on his low stool and said, “I like to talk. He was a regular. Came in here every week for a pedicure. He was on his feet all day at the Exchange. Said it helped. When I was bringing my wife over here from Vietnam, I was worried about things. Hadn’t seen her for several years. He told me about him and Wanda. He was a nice man.”
“Yes, he was,” she said. “So, how did it work out? With you and your wife I mean.”
He tilted his head towards a pretty woman wearing a face mask while applying polish to a client’s nails at a nearby table, her large pregnant belly forcing her to hunch over the table.
“Just fine,” he replied.
Q eyed the woman’s stomach and self-consciously fingered her own empty womb. She blinked back a sudden surge of grief.
Seeing her distress, the tech asked with concern, “You ok?”
She nodded, unable to speak without crying. He patted her foot and stood up, returning with a glass of white wine.
“I’m Icarus Nguyen,” he said, handing it to her. “So, you must be Ben’s wife, Q. You said your husband owns the Cove, right?”
Stunned by his unusual name, she said, “Wow. I don’t usually meet people with names stranger than mine…. Yeah, I’m Q. Q Toledano. How do you know my husband?”
“Same as Mike. Same as you. He comes in here for pedicures with his sister at least a couple times a month.”
“Which sister?” she asked, having never heard of this particular family bonding exercise of her husband’s.
“All of them, I think,” Icarus said, smiling. “How many does he have, anyway?”
“Five, if you count his sister-in-law.”
“Emmy, right?” Icarus asked. “That’s always a fun day.”
“Let me guess. They talk about highly inappropriate, very X-rated things.”
Icarus blushed and glanced at his wife. “How do you think that happened?”
Q laughed out loud and sipped her wine while Icarus massaged her calves with hot stones.
She finally asked, “Do you know how I could get in touch with Mike’s wife? I’d like to send my condolences. I couldn’t make it to the funeral.”
Q had spent the day of Mike’s funeral with her face hovering over a toilet, praying for death to take her, unable to even keep water from coming right back up. Ben had finally taken her to the emergency room, not willing to stand by, listening to her retch anymore; knowing that if she couldn’t keep food down, she wasn’t keeping down the hypertension medicine that was supposed to be controlling her blood pressure.
“The funeral was nice. I’d never been to a Jewish service before. Wanda was there, of course. That’s her name. Wanda Jacobs. She lives in the Bywater, but that’s all I really know. Mike said that she started buying up houses after Katrina. Has quite the little real estate empire. He was very proud.”
“Why did they separate in the first place?” she asked.
Icarus concentrated on applying a new coat of nail polish and said, “She had a drug problem when they got married. So, did Mike. When they both got sober, it just didn’t work. But they loved each other, I think. She was pretty upset at the funeral…”
He paused before asking, “You’re a musician, right? Ben’s said you were on tour.”
“Yep.”
“Would you know anyone who’d be interested in buying the Emporium? Wanda wants to sell. She doesn’t want to run it, but the only offer she’s got is from an investment firm that wants to close it and turn it into condos. She didn’t want to do that to Mike. Figured if that’s what he wanted, he would have done it himself.”
Q shook her head and replied, “Some investment firm is interested in the Cove, too.”
“Charter Real Estate?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“Probably Charter Real Estate. They want to turn a few blocks down here into luxury condos. Lucky me, I’m on the wrong side of Napoleon. They’re not looking over here,” he said, derisively.
“You looking to sell?” she asked.
“No, but it would be nice to be asked.” He gestured around to his shop. “I mean, it’s a nice shop, right?”
She grinned. “It’s lovely. Just think how much lovelier it will be with luxury condos across the street instead of my husband’s hairy ski boats and Mike Ackerman’s bunions.”
Icarus chuckled. “I didn’t think of it like that. I should have told Wanda to sell the shop to them.”
“Well, the music business isn’t what it used to be, she’s probably not going to have much of a choice. My drummer said Mike was about to go bankrupt.”
“Business wasn’t good. He’d taken on a new line. But he said it was too much trouble for the return on his investment. Maybe that’s why he did it. Killed himself I mean. Seems to me, he could have just sold and retired early.”
Q agreed. “It sucks no matter how you look at it.”
Her phoned dinged and she excused herself before fishing it out of her pocket.
Sanger: ATF is here. Mike was already on their radar. You out of the neighborhood?
She texted back:
Not exactly, I’m hiding out in the nail salon up the street. The cops were coming down Napoleon by the time I got here. Found out a few things you might be interested in.
Her phone dinged with his response almost instantly.
Sanger: Get your ass back here before I get arrested. Bring the guitar. ASAP 911.
“Got to go, Icarus,” she said, standing up.
“But your toes aren’t done,” he argued.
“Don’t worry about it. I have an emergency. I have to go. Like right now.”
He gave her a confused look, unused to customers choosing external urgency over the quality of their pedicure. Still shaking his head in wide-eyed, annoyed astonishment, Icarus cleaned the nail polish off the one foot he’d completed, and she handed him two twenties, assuring him she’d be back just so that he’d let her get up and out of the massage chair.
She took off at a run as soon as she left Sun Nails, but within a few strides, she was forced to slow down to a power walk as her uterus reminded her that it still wasn’t one hundred percent ready for such an activity.
Half a dozen unmarked SVUs were parked in front of Mikey’s by the time she arrived. She spied Sanger sitting sideways in the backseat of the furthest vehicle. His hands were cuffed in front of him, and she quickly moved to join him. A redhead in tight, black jeans and a tailored, button-down black blouse blocked her way.
“Store’s closed,” she said flatly.
“I know,” Q replied. “Detective Sanger told me to come.”
The woman cursed. “Who are you?”
“I’m Q… Clementine Toledano. He asked me to come and bring this.” She held up the guitar and fished out the blue ‘Mikey’s Music Emporium’ tag from her pocket.
“Clementine Toledano, I’m Special Agent Jefferies. ATF. You’re under arrest for criminal trespass,” she said, taking the guitar from Q and handing it to a colleague. She roughly grabbed Q’s elbow and cuffed her while reading Q her Miranda rights.
Q let herself be guided towards the SVU containing Sanger. As they approached, she called out, “Thanks a lot, cowboy.”
Sanger glared at Jeffries as she helped Q into the SVU beside him and slid into the driver’s seat.
As soon as the agent was seated behind the wheel, Sanger leaned forward between the
front seats and said, “Look, Agent Jeffries, I told you I was just helping a friend get a guitar she paid for. My friend’s here with the guitar. Neither one of us had a clue what was in those guitar cases in there. Is this really necessary?”
He flashed his effortless smile at her in the rear-view mirror. The smile that was supposed to reassure anyone who saw it that there was no threat. That they were in safe company.
It didn’t work.
Jeffries turned around and scowled at him. “Save it for the singles’ bar, pretty boy. I’m not buying what you’re selling.”
Q snorted, stifling the laughter that could only come from being in such a ridiculous, unexpected situation.
“Is there something about this that’s funny to you, Ms. Toledano?” Jeffries asked.
“Yes. About two dozen things, actually. Do we really look like gun runners to you?”
“You do. He looks like a dirty cop,” she replied.
Oh, fuck you, lady.
A surge of sisterly affection for her friend demanded an immediate retraction, no matter what the consequences. “Are you fucking kidding me? Have you looked up Sanger’s record? Just how far, exactly, is your head up your ass at the moment?”
Sanger intervened to try and diffuse the situation. “Clementine…”
She scowled at him. “Shut the fuck up, cowboy. Nobody calls you dirty. Nobody, you understand me?”
Q shoved him to the side with her hip and wiggled forward until she could lean around the driver’s seat. Jeffries gave her a bemused sidelong glance and Q tilted her head to closely observe the agent’s reactions, looking for any sign of weakness. “Are you so fucking desperate to put this case to bed that you’re really going to arrest a well-known musician and a highly decorated, hero cop? They’re going to be making fun of you at the water cooler for the rest of your damned career.”
Jefferies stared her down and coolly replied, “You’re not as well-known as you seem to think you are, Ms. Toledano. I’ve never heard of you.”
“Ever heard of Stanley Gerard?” she asked.
“No, I haven’t,” Jeffries said.
Q turned to Sanger. “What is with you cops? Do they remove your groove things at the academy or something?”
“Nice try,” Jeffries said. “Now, sit back and shut the hell up.”
“How about Dark Harm?” Q asked. “You look like you went through a brooding goth girl phase at some point.”
Apparently so, because the agent went three shades whiter.
Q leaned in. “As Derek Sharp loves to tell everyone, I’m the motherfucking Archangel, Agent Jeffries. I co-wrote Scarification. You know, that record you keep hearing on the radio? I could pull out my phone right now and call Derek up just to tell him I think his music is lame. Still think I look like a gun runner?”
Agent Jefferies cursed and muttered under her breath, “That’s where I’ve seen you.” She scowled at Sanger. “Why did you say she ran some burlesque in the Quarter?”
“She does,” he said. “She plays with every damned body, every damned where. How am I supposed to keep track?”
“He also hates Derek Sharp because he calls him my lap dog, ‘Spot,’ so it would be the last name he’d dropped,” Q offered.
“Guard dog,” Sanger corrected. “Your guard dog, not your lap dog. Why do you always have to make it more insulting than it already is? And that’s not why I hate him. He’s given me loads of other reasons.”
“Whatever.” Q held up her wrists. “Now that we’ve established that I’m not a gun runner and neither is Sanger, can we take these off and be friends?”
Jeffries turned her back to them and clutched the steering wheel in an angry death grip, staring out the windshield. “At the office, we need to make this look good.”
“For whom?” Q asked.
“Mr. Ackerman’s silent business partners. They might be watching,” Jeffries replied. “Besides, I think both of you owe me some explanations.”
Q flopped back against the seat and rolled her head over to look at Sanger. “This is not how I thought this day would go.”
Sanger started to chuckle despite himself. Over the last year, Q had slowly indoctrinated him into the world of Star Wars that had somehow been omitted from his childhood. While he still insisted that he didn’t see the point, he’d willingly watched every movie with her at least twice.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” he said, winking at her.
She dissolved into giggles.
“Keep it down back there,” Agent Jeffries yelled at them as her partner slammed Sanger’s door shut and jumped into the passenger seat.
When they pulled out into traffic, Sanger leaned closer to Q. “Sorry about this, Clementine.”
“Don’t be. Now when Ben calls you my partner in crime, we’ll have a better story to tell.”
By the time they pulled up in front of the Federal Building in the Central Business District, Sanger and Q were taking turns making each other laugh at their current predicament, much to the chagrin of the two agents in the front seat.
As Agent Jeffries pushed them through the parking garage and into the elevator, she said, “I’m so pleased that the two of you find this situation so amusing.”
Sanger screwed on a crooked grin and winked at her. He leaned his face closer to hers, maintaining steady eye contact, and said in a low voice, “Well, I do aim to please you, ma’am.”
Q bit her lip and tamped down another fit of laughter, watching Agent Jeffries unwillingly flush as Sanger let his eyes slowly travel over her face and down to parts unknown before glancing away with an amused smirk on his face.
Once they were seated in an interrogation room and alone, Q said, “God help the women of this fair city if you ever decide to use that superpower of yours.”
Resting his elbow on this table, he turned his head to the side to regard her. He traced his lips with his thumb, a lopsided grin on his face, and asked, “And what superpower is that, Clementine?”
Her mouth fell open and she snapped her fingers before pointing emphatically at his thumb. “That power, right there. The one you’re drunk with.” When Sanger just winked at her and slacked back into his chair, she said, “There will be no living with you after you have sex with Yvie.”
“Speaking of,” he said, looking up at the clock on the wall. “Keep your sarcasm to a minimum, will you? I’m supposed to pick her up in a few hours, and that mouth of yours could easily land us in a holding cell overnight.”
“Hey,” she responded. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean, dickhead?”
“Do you really need me to explain it to you?”
Q sighed and shrank back. “No. I’ll put my tongue in my pocket.”
They waited another thirty minutes for the agents to rejoin them. Just as Q began singing her third verse of the jailhouse blues she was making up for Sanger’s ongoing amusement, Agent Jeffries walked into the room carrying B3’s guitar case.
“Tell me what happened the day you found Ackerman’s body.”
Sanger folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “I’ve already told you what happened, Agent Jeffries. Clementine went to pick up her nephew’s guitar from Mike Ackerman’s shop. It wasn’t open. She went to his house…”
“How did you know where he lived?” Jeffries asked Q.
“How do you think?” she replied. “I’ve known Mike since I was a kid. He owned the only music store on this side of town. I grew up off Nashville.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Parties. Mike used to throw parties at his house and invite all of us.” Q reclined back in her chair, mimicking Sanger’s posture.
Jeffries continued, “All of whom?”
“Musicians, club owners. You know, customers. Friends. Friends of friends,” Q said.
“What happened at these parties?”
“Music. Drinking. Hooking up. The things that normally happen at parties,” Q explained with little enthusiasm.
“You’re kidding me, right?” Q turned to Sanger. “She’s kidding me, right?”
He gave her an exasperated stare and Jeffries said, “Answer the question.”
“Yes, Agent Jeffries. There were drugs there,” Q replied. “It was a Mardi Gras party chockablock full of musicians. What do you think? Musicians plus drugs equals true love. Of course, there were drugs there.”