by W E DeVore
The waitress brought the table their round of drinks and Kyle stood up, raising his fishbowl to Q. “Regulators, assemble!”
Every member of Dark Harm stood at attention and held up their own glass. Derek bent down and began to pound a beat on the table with the flat of his hand and Fiona shouted a piercing aboriginal call. Derek and Fiona abruptly stopped their noisemaking and Derek raised his glass to Q with the rest of the band.
Q looked around at her bandmates, unsure of what they expected of her.
“Regulators!” Dave announced like a drill sergeant.
“Regulators!” Fiona, Nick, and Kyle echoed.
Q slowly stood and picked up her glass.
“Regulators?” she guessed.
Derek gave her a quick wink from the other end of the table and Kyle said, “To lighting up the road with primordial flame!”
A broad grin spread over Q’s face, in wonderment of her current situation.
Nick shouted, “Here, here!”
Everyone drank their toast and Derek grabbed Jeffries, kissing her fully on the mouth as everyone at the table cheered him on, including Q. She flopped back down into her chair and leaned closer to Sanger. “Well, that was different.”
“What was that about?” he asked.
Kyle nudged Q with his elbow. “Had to make official. When we were stuck in Brazil about fifteen years ago, the only movie that was running in the hotel was Young Guns. We watched it for three days straight and it became our thing.”
“And the primordial flames?” Q asked with amusement.
“Derek usually does the honors, but I felt like I owed him. You, too. Welcome to the family, Q. It’ll be fun having you on the road with us.”
“I’m looking forward to it, Kyle.”
Sanger’s back stiffened and he frowned at her. “Were you going to tell me?”
She slumped down and picked at the napkin in her lap, not wanting to look at him. “I just did.”
She waited for him react, fear pooling in her stomach. Not knowing how he would respond to the news.
“I’ll miss you,” he said simply as he slouched down to her height so that he could look at her sideways at eye level. He was smiling. “I’m proud of you, Clementine. This is a big thing. I know that. And you’re going to be amazing.”
Q blushed and quickly changed the subject. “Please let yourself be happy, Aaron.”
“I am happy,” he said. “You always say that. Why wouldn’t I be happy?”
She considered his face and wondered what he was keeping from her, but she realized that it was no longer her place to be the keeper of every single one of Sanger’s secrets and let it go. Glancing around the table at the people who would be her family for most of the next year of her life, she suddenly felt very small.
◆◆◆
By the end of dinner, Jeffries was sitting on Derek’s lap and Derek’s hand was well on its way towards rounding third if it moved two millimeters further North up Jeffries’s thigh.
Q stood up and stretched, deciding to leave before she lost any more respect for the woman who was potentially putting her life on the line to save Q’s own. Fiona joined her, wrapping her arm low on Q’s waist. “There’s one born every minute.”
“What’s that?” Q asked. “A sucker?”
“Nope. A starfucker.”
Q tended to agree, but said, “You’re one to talk, Fi.”
Fiona laughed. “I am, aren’t I? You want my advice?”
“Not sure that I need it but go ahead.”
“Never have sex with him. That man is like crack cocaine.” Fiona sighed nostalgically.
“I don’t think I follow you,” Q said.
“Nothing else feels so good as when he’s inside of you, and you can never just try it once.” Fiona grinned at her and drained the last of her beer from its bottle in one long swallow.
Q burst out laughing. “Then you don’t have to worry. I’m already a crack head.”
Fiona gave her a horrified, wide-eyed, stare.
Q playfully shoved her away. “My husband is quite the perfect drug himself.”
Fiona tilted her head from side to side. “I can see that. He’s very… tall.”
“Watch yourself,” Q scolded.
“I’m glad you’re coming out with us, Q. It’ll be good for the tour. Good for all of us. We’ve all been doing this for too long. It can get stale pretty fast.”
“Anything can get stale if you take it for granted. I’m beat. I’m going to head home.” She nodded to Sanger and he moved to join her. “You taking me home or do I ask the security firm?”
“I’ll take you,” he said. “We’re going to have to walk back to the Orpheum to get my truck, though.”
They headed out into the French Quarter, walking up Dauphine down the quiet, residential street. Q paused, inhaling the fragrant night-blooming jasmine that was inundating the sidewalk with its sweetness. “I’m gonna miss that smell.”
Sanger took a deep inhale and suddenly pulled her into a tight embrace. He held onto her for several long moments until tears formed at Q’s eyes as she clutched at his warmth. He finally let her go and they walked in a comfortable silence.
“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Aaron,” Q finally said.
“I know.”
She started to laugh, taking Sanger with her. He rubbed the back of his neck, smiling to himself, pleased with his Star Wars joke.
“What happened to you this morning?” she asked. “I really was worried.”
“I told you, I slept in.”
“You never sleep. Let alone sleep in.”
He shoved his hands in his back pockets and watched a drunken group of tourists argue about which direction Preservation Hall could be found. As they moved past the trio, he said, “Yvie came over last night. We had a long talk. And I slept and she stayed.”
Q instinctively wanted to insist that of course, Yvonne would stay, but she held her tongue and waited for Sanger to continue.
He exhaled slowly. “I don’t think it’s quite fair to Yvie. Me being in love with someone else while I’m falling in love with her, but…”
“Tori’s dead, Aaron.”
“Yes, she is, Clementine.”
Then she remembered the story Sanger had told her one night while splitting a bottle of tequila. He’d been in love with a woman after Tori, and it hadn’t worked out in his favor. “It’s not just Tori, is it?”
“I don’t know anymore. But Yvie makes me happy. She wants me. I can sleep when she’s with me. She doesn’t think I’m funny…”
“You’re not very funny, cowboy,” Q interjected.
“Yeah, yeah.”
They turned the corner and headed up to Burgundy, avoiding a large tour group listening to the story of a gruesome murder that was supposed to have happened in the two-story brick building on the right. As they cut up the street, Sanger asked, “Do you think I’m being fair to her?”
“To whom? Yvie?”
He nodded.
“Look, I’m the last person to ask about this. Ben is the only man I’ve ever loved. But I decided to love him, or let myself love him. If that makes any sense. It wasn’t an unstoppable force. I could have left him. But I didn’t want to. So, I let the switch get flipped. I let myself be happy.”
“You never had the switch get flipped for you?”
“Hard to fall in love when you’re always alone, Aaron.” They walked in the quiet. Q opened her ears to take in the symphony of sounds coming at her from every direction in the stillness of the peaceful street.
Sanger finally said, “You’re lucky that you had a choice. It’s hell when you don’t.”
Q shook her head. “No, it’s not. It’s only hell when you don’t get loved in return. What did Yvie say? When you told her that you loved her?”
“I didn’t say it. Not like that. I told her that I was falling for her. That I didn’t want to be in love with anyone but her. She asked if I still loved Tori.”
“And you said….”
“No. I told her no, but Tori’s not the problem. And I didn’t tell her that.” He looked at his feet, ashamed.
“This other woman. The one you loved after Tori, the one you can’t kick. Does she love you back?”
“No.”
“Is there a chance in hell that she would?” Q asked.
“No.” Sanger choked as he said it and Q looped her arm through his.
“Then she’s an idiot. But if you really are falling in love with Yvie, you should let yourself fall. She’ll catch you. It’ll work out fine.”
“How do you know?”
She smiled to herself and breathed in all the ways she felt loved a daily basis. “Because I know how the Bordelons love, Aaron, and if you can get you some, I highly recommend it.” He laughed, and she said, “Speaking of, I’m going to need you to do something for me while I’m on tour.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, our little gang is getting broken up and rearranged. I need you and Yvie be the adorable couple taking care of the lonely Viking I’m leaving at home. Can you do that for me?”
“I can.”
“And one more thing.”
He pulled her close and said, “Absolutely anything.”
“Don’t forget about me.”
“I couldn’t forget you if I tried.”
Chapter 13
Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down
Wednesday came, and Q braced herself for a morning of lying her ass off. She wasn’t sure how they were going to help Sanger and Sanger didn’t seem to know himself. His quiet confidence had become such a reliable structure for her to lean against that once it was removed, she found she was having trouble standing on her own two feet. But that wasn’t what scared her.
And an unsure cop was a dangerous cop. In Sanger’s case, she didn’t have to worry about him pulling his gun too soon; she worried that he’d forget to pull it at all. Somehow, the pieces of the puzzle he was assembling were fitting together correctly, but they just weren’t forming a picture that made much sense at the moment.
The worst part was that, being the self-aware creature that he was, Sanger knew the image he was creating was distorted, but he wouldn’t admit it. After the dinner in the Quarter, Q had begged him to share his theory about Mike’s death with Ernst and try to inject some background of police experience into solving it. She didn’t know if he’d listened, but she did know that he’d spent every night this week with Yvie and not working late. And she wasn’t quite sure what that meant.
“Something just seems off, Ben,” Q said as she laced up her Converse while she sat on the bottom of the stairs. “About this whole case. About Sanger, too. I don’t like.”
“You said that about Tori,” he reminded her. “Pete, too.”
“I was right about both.” She stood up and they moved to walk out of the house to go pick up Sanger for the appointed time. “But I’ve never seen him like this. He’s so unsure of himself.”
Ben grinned and put his hands on her hips. “You’ve never seen him in love before.”
His tenderness cut through the storm of worry that was beginning to bluster inside her skull and she rested her forehead against his chest. “He is, isn’t he?”
Ben pulled her closer. “You were the only thing I could focus on for weeks after that first night we spent together.”
She grinned up at him. “It was a pretty good night. With the rain and all.”
He cupped her face in his hand before tracing her neckline with the back of fingers. “Not just the rain…”
Flashes of remembered moments of everything that had happened from the moment Ben had offered her a ride home after a gig to the moment she woke up to him running his tongue down her spine ran through her mind and she decided she no longer cared what happened with Charter Real Estate or Sanger’s investigation. She had precious weeks left with her husband and she didn’t want to waste a minute of it.
“Let’s cancel the meeting and go back to bed,” she said. “Sanger’s barking up the wrong tree and he knows it. He’s just too stubborn to admit it.”
“You sure?”
“Sure that I’d rather be naked with you than in a business meeting?” she asked. “What do you think?”
“Done.” Ben scooped her up in his arms and they were two steps away from the top of the stairs when the doorbell rang, followed by three efficient knocks. Ben groaned in frustration and carried her to the door.
“Put me down,” she said, laughing.
“No,” Ben replied.
Q unlocked the door, opening it while still in her husband’s arms, and still giggling. Sanger stood in front of them on the porch, looking angry and uncomfortable in his fitted suit.
“Boker tov, Rabbi Sanger,” she sing-songed.
“Shut up, Clementine,” he replied and held up a photograph. “So much for our brilliant fucking plan.”
She took it from his hand and saw herself embracing Sanger under a streetlight in the French Quarter. Ben set her on her feet and regarded the image over her shoulder. She caught her breath at the beauty of the moment. “I don’t know who BBB is, but they missed their calling. They should have been a photographer.”
Sanger slacked back, annoyed. “Turn it over.”
Put to death what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness. Only a fool is quick to react, a wise man stays calm when insulted, for suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. Flee from sexual immorality for God will judge adulterers and the sexual immoral as one. But if you confess your sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive you your sins and purify you from all unrighteousness.
“It’s not signed,” Q said. “Why isn’t it signed?”
“Who the fuck cares?” he asked.
“I do,” she said. “This isn’t BBB. It’s not angry. Where are the threats? Derek’s notes are full of ‘man-up, buttercup’ bullshit. Why would they send this to you and not me?”
Ben took the photo from her hand and turned it over to read it. “They’re not mad at Aaron. You two weren’t doing anything to be mad about. It’s just a warning. They’re warning him not to get involved.”
“Why?” Sanger and Q asked simultaneously.
“You’re a cop,” Ben replied, walking into the house. “Maybe they don’t want a cop anywhere near this and they’re scared. Too scared to sign their note even.”
Q and Sanger followed behind him.
“Where did you find this, Aaron?” he asked.
“On my windshield this morning. I was walking Yvie to her car and I saw it.”
Q took the photo back from her husband and read through the note several times. “It’s not angry. It’s like a sermon.” She glanced at Sanger, still studying the words in front of her. “You’re not a threat. They know you’re not a threat. They also don’t know where you live. Not exactly, anyway. Just what your truck looks like. I mean, it’s hard to miss,” she reasoned.
“Well, no matter what, this bad for you, Clementine. Derek and Jeffries were pretty convincing the other night and BBB didn’t stay to watch them make out in the window. They followed us back to the Orpheum and then followed me home.”
Q’s face fell as she realized he was right. “No, Sanger. They followed me home, not you.”
Ben cursed, and she wrapped her arms around his waist, under his suitcoat and breathed him in. “It’ll be ok.”
He held her to him and kissed the top of her head. Looking up at Sanger, he said, “Find this fucker.”
“Did you tell Jeffries or Rex yet?” she asked Sanger.
“No,” he replied. “I came straight here to see if you got anything.”
Q walked away from Ben and pulled out her phone. She dialed Derek’s number and waited for him to answer.
“Angel, I can’t talk now, I have company,” Derek said in a low voice. Q heard feminine laughter nearby.
“Mazel tov,”
she said. “I need you to check your alleyway for a love note.”
“Later, angel. I’m not… presentable.”
“You’re never presentable. Put on some fucking pants and go downstairs. Now,” she replied.
Derek mumbled something to his companion and she whined. He grunted as he pulled up his pants and said, “If I go down there and scare some poor old woman with my stunning erection, it will be on your conscience, angel.”