I pressed end and shoved the phone into my bag. "A complete waste of time."
"He's not going to help?"
"Nope. He just gave me the usual speech about how she's doing this because she loves me, which is beside the point. It really bothers me that neither one of my parents gets how serious this is. But you know what really gets me?"
"No, what?"
"My nonna never once got on the phone."
She shrugged. "So?"
"So?" I repeated, surprised by her lack of insight. "Her whole M.O. is to get on the phone every time I call and try to pressure me into whatever the scheme du jour is. The fact that she didn't can only mean one thing. She's up to something, Veronica. Something bigger than the pranzo ufficiale."
"What could be bigger than that?"
"I don't know," I said, looking out the passenger window. "But the prospects are terrifying."
When I opened the door of my apartment at six thirty, I half expected to find Napoleon lying on the floor with a burst bladder. Instead, he was in his now customary position, flat on his back on the zebra chaise lounge with his legs splayed wide open. Ever since we'd moved into the bordello-themed apartment, he'd been exhibiting a newfound animal virility. Lately, he'd taken to humping the leg of the lilac velour armchair. It had long gold fringe—to match the drapery—that clearly brought out his inner lion.
"You look like you need to lay off that chair leg, buddy," I said.
He gazed at me through half-lidded eyes.
I smiled and entered the kitchen, tossing my bag onto one of the Bordeaux-and-gold Dauphine chairs arranged around the rococo dining table. I hadn't eaten since lunch and, to cite Duran Duran, I was "Hungry Like the Wolf." I pulled open the refrigerator door and peered inside. Celery and a pan of re-hardened Zip Wax. I slammed the door and rummaged around in the pantry where I found some rock-hard raisins and a jar of Nutella. Of course, I made the healthy choice—the milk-chocolate hazelnut spread. There was calcium in the milk, cancer-fighting antioxidants in the chocolate, and protein in the hazelnuts. Sure there was no fruit or vegetable, but let's not forget that nuts contain nutritious oils not unlike those of the olive and the avocado.
After grabbing a spoon from the drawer, I flopped onto the chaise lounge next to Napoleon. From his upside down position, he kept one now fully-opened eye trained on the spoon as I raised and lowered it from the jar to my mouth a couple or twenty times.
"I've told you before, Napoleon, chocolate is good for people but poisonous for dogs."
His ear flopped closed as though refusing to listen to any more of my excuses.
I spooned another gob of the silky-smooth ambrosia into my mouth and heard the phone ring from inside my purse.
"Sonamabiccia," I cursed in Italianized English as I jumped up and ran to the kitchen. I placed the Nutella on the counter and threw the spoon into the sink. Then I grabbed the phone from my bag and saw "Bradley" on the display. Instead of the usual chest-fluttering happiness I felt when he called, now I felt nothing but gut-wrenching anxiety. By this time, Pauline had probably given him an earful about me, my nonna, and the pranzo ufficiale.
"H-hello?" I stammered, bracing myself for the worst as I carried the phone into the living room.
"Hey, babe," Bradley's sexy voice replied without a trace of animosity.
For a split second, his greeting reminded me of my infuriating exchange with Pauline hours earlier, but I was too relieved to think about the venomous vixen now. I curled up on the chaise lounge and purred, "Hey you."
"When you sound like that," he growled, "you make me want to drive straight to your house and break the door down."
My pulse began to quicken, and I said in a husky voice, "Then it's too bad you're out of town."
"Actually, I just got back. One of my meetings got postponed, so I caught a flight out a day early."
"Oh?" Now my pulse was racing. "Where are you now?"
"I'm getting some takeout on my way to the office. I've been craving Chinese."
Chinese? My blood stopped cold. But then I reminded myself that he was talking about food, not scheming secretaries who were after their bosses.
"Sometime I need to bring you to this place," he continued. "It's a dive, but the food is amazing. It's called 'Oriental Triangle Chinese.'"
I sat straight up. Did he say triangle and Chinese? My mind flashed to my tarot card reading. Was this a sign that Chandra was right about that Three of Cups card?
"They have some French food too," he added.
The minute he said the word French I had my answer. "And a bit of Italian, I'm sure," I muttered.
"Sorry, Franki. The cell signal is weak in here. What'd you say?"
I cleared my throat and replied in a frosty tone, "I said, I prefer Italian."
He gave a low, sexy laugh that warmed my chilled blood—and some other parts of me too. "I do too."
"Well, in that case," I began, nestling back into the chaise lounge, "you'd better get right over here so I can serve you my specialty." The second the words came out of my mouth I hoped he understood the euphemism. Because if not, the only thing I could offer him to eat was "ants on a log" with hair removal wax in place of peanut butter.
"I wish I could," he said wistfully. "But something came up at the bank today that I have to take care of ASAP."
I swallowed my disappointment, along with a glob of Nutella that had gathered around one of my molars, and resumed my seductive tone. "I guess you'll just have to wait to sample my specialty on our date tomorrow night."
"About that," he began, "Pauline rescheduled the meeting that got postponed as a video conference for tomorrow night. I'm sorry."
I leapt to my feet and bit the inside of my cheek to keep from blurting out something I would regret. I had no doubt that she'd scheduled that meeting to keep Bradley away from me, but I couldn't tell him that. I needed him to think that I was trying to get along with her, even if I had no such intention. So, through clenched teeth, I uttered a normal-sounding "Thursday, then?"
"I'll try, babe, but I can't guarantee anything. Between the merger and some other things going on at the bank, I've been working nonstop. Even Pauline is working overtime to help me put out fires."
Yes, she is, I thought. Yours and mine.
I heard my phone beep. I pulled the phone from my ear and looked at the display—Scarlett Heinz. "Bradley, I have to take this call. It's really important."
"Okay—"
I pressed answer before he could finish speaking. It served him right for letting Pauline cancel our dates. "Hello?"
There was silence on the other end.
"Scarlett?"
"Don't call me again," she said in a low, unsteady voice.
"I'm sorry if I'm bothering you. Delta said it would be all right to call—"
"Well, it's not," she interrupted.
"All I want is justice for Ivanna Jones," I said firmly.
"It's too late for her," she gushed. "But it ain't for the rest of us."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, you don't know what you're messing with," she replied in a frightened tone. "If you're smart, you'll let it lie."
"What's going on, Scarlett? Please tell me what you know." I waited for her to respond, but I heard dead air on the other end of the line. I looked at my phone and realized she'd ended the call.
I lay back on the chaise lounge, stunned. It had been clear from the start that Scarlett had information about the case. But judging from her warning to me just now, something was going on at Oleander Place—something far more sinister than Ivanna's death. And that was a possibility I hadn't foreseen.
As I stroked Napoleon's belly, I wondered what, exactly, was I "messing with" and whether Miles McCarthy was involved in some way. The bigger question, though, was whether other lives were at stake. Like Scarlett's.
Or mine.
8
"So what do you want to do about Scarlett?" Veronica asked the next morning as I exited Interstat
e 10 in the direction of the French Quarter.
"I guess I'm going to have to go to Oleander Place to try to talk to her after her shift. Depending on how long it takes us to question everyone at Lickalicious Lips this morning, I might be able to do it today."
"That reminds me." She pulled a tube of pale pink Chanel lip gloss from her hot pink Dolce & Gabbana Miss Sicily bag and applied a fresh layer.
I turned onto Canal Street. "Where'd you say this place was again?"
She smacked her lips. "On St. Peter."
I nodded and glanced in the direction of Pontchartrain Bank—which we were passing purely by chance, of course. I immediately spotted Corinne's fairy-like figure walking toward the main door with her handbag clutched to her chest and her head lowered. She looked despondent, like a Tinker Bell with drooping wings.
"That's Corinne Mercier," I said, pointing in her direction. "It looks like something's wrong."
"Why don't you pull over?"
"I think I will." I steered my Mustang into a thirty-minute customer service zone in front of a tourist shop.
Veronica rolled down her window, and I leaned across her lap and shouted, "Everything okay, Corinne?"
She turned toward my car and glanced uncertainly at Veronica. "Bonjour."
"Bone-jure," Veronica replied with a polite nod. Like me, she spoke an unofficial Texas dialect of French.
I cleared my throat. "This is my partner, Veronica Maggio."
"I am 'appy to meet you," Corinne said, approaching the window. She was so small that she barely had to bend over to see inside the car. "After yesterday, I am in desperate need of Private Chicks' services."
I killed the engine. "Why? What happened?"
"Zere was more money missing from my teller drawer." Her big blue eyes welled with tears. "Anozer five hundred dollars."
"This has happened before?" Veronica asked.
I nodded. "Did you have to pay back the money again?"
"Non. Mr. Hartmann and I were here until midnight. We did not find ze money, but zis time he tell me not to pay."
So that's the bank business he had to take care of ASAP. I pressed my fingers to my lips. "Could one of your customers be a short change artist?"
"I don't sink so. Ze bank train us to recognize such tricks."
"Does anyone else have access to your drawer?" I asked.
"I don't see how, but I suppose it is possible."
"Well, if someone did steal money without you noticing," I said, "then the security cameras would have captured it."
"Yeah," Veronica agreed. "Has anyone checked the surveillance tape?"
"Oui, we review ze tape last night wis Pauline."
"Pauline?" I repeated, surprised. And incredibly annoyed. "What's she got to do with this?"
"She is in charge of ze computer wis ze security files."
"That's odd," Veronica said. "You'd think that an IT person or at the very least a manager would handle that sort of thing."
"And not an executive secretary," I muttered. For the life of me, I couldn't fathom how an intelligent man like Bradley could trust a conniving piece of work like Pauline so implicitly. Whatever the reason, I sincerely hoped it didn't have anything to do with her violet, almond-shaped eyes.
"You know Pauline," Corinne said. "She has her hand in everysing."
"Yes," I said dryly, thinking of Bradley's pants. Then a thought occurred to me. Did she also have her hand in Corinne's teller drawer? She certainly seemed to be around every time cash came up missing. But it didn't make sense unless she needed money or had some ulterior motive for wanting Corinne fired.
"It is almost nine o'clock," Corinne said. "I must go in. But I am serious about hiring your firm."
"We can discuss the details another time," Veronica said.
"Yeah, don't worry about that now," I added. "I'll come by the bank this afternoon to see what I can find out. We'll have to keep this arrangement strictly confidential—for your sake and mine. If Bradley finds out I'm poking around in bank matters, he'll ban me from the premises." And possibly from his life.
"But of course," she said. "Au revoir."
As soon as Corinne had entered the bank, Veronica turned to me. "What do you think is going on?"
"I don't know, but I'd be willing to bet my eye teeth that it has something to do with Pauline."
Veronica frowned. "I know you don't trust her, but that's a pretty serious accusation."
I sighed. "I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong. This is business—it's not personal." Okay, so maybe it was. But just a little.
She arched an eyebrow and crossed her arms. "Oh, really?"
"Yes, really," I said, mentally crossing my fingers. "Everything was fine until Pauline showed up on the scene. But ever since then, bad things have been happening. At first I thought she was just after Bradley, but now I'm starting to think she wants more than that."
She smirked. "Like total bank domination?"
"Go ahead and laugh, Veronica. But when I prove that she had something to do with the missing money, I'll be the one to laugh last," I said with a pointed look. Then I started the V-8 engine and revved it—for dramatic effect.
"Okay, but are you sure you want to take this case? You've got a conflict of interest here. And if you're wrong about her, it could ruin your relationship with Bradley."
"I don't really have a choice, do I?" I asked, shifting in my seat to face her. "Corinne is my friend, and I want to help her. And Pauline is already trying to ruin my relationship with Bradley. Any minute now, she's going to lay the news of the pranzo ufficiale on him and blame it squarely on me. So if I have a chance to show him her true colors, which are black and blacker, I have to take it."
"All right," Veronica said. "Just be careful."
"Around the perilous Pauline? Count on it," I said as I sped away from the curb and tried to figure out how in the hell I was going to investigate Pauline without her or Bradley realizing it.
After an impromptu stop by the office to retrieve Veronica's laptop, we pulled in front of Lickalicious Lips at nine thirty a.m. I made a quick U-turn in the middle of St. Peter to grab an unlikely parking spot in front of the Gumbo Shop two doors down. The minute I stepped out of the car, my nostrils were filled with the tantalizing aroma of roux, a thickener made of bacon fat and flour used as a base in Cajun and Creole cooking. I fervently hoped that the questioning of the Lickalicious staff would last until lunchtime so that I could have a hearty bowl of chicken Andouille gumbo—and a heaping helping of warm bread pudding with whiskey sauce.
"Look, Franki!" Veronica slammed the car door. "Lickalicious Lips is next door to Fleurty Girl, that darling boutique I was telling you about."
I snorted. It figured that she would focus on fashion while I fixated on food. "Maybe we can check it out later," I said as I headed for the cosmetics company. "After lunch."
Veronica stopped to admire a tutu on a mannequin outside the shop entryway while I tried the handle of the worn white door to Lickalicious Lips.
"It's locked." I glanced at the windows for signs of life. "I hope they haven't shut down."
"Try the doorbell," Veronica said, arriving at my side.
I pressed the buzzer and took a step back. As I waited, I scrutinized the exterior of the building. I had expected to see brightly painted brick with a cute lip-themed sign. Instead, it was an unmarked stuccoed structure with faded beige paint and the white-trimmed windows and green shutters typical of the French Quarter. I was about to ring the bell again, when the door opened to reveal a tall male in his mid-thirties wearing a wrinkled, white lab coat and khaki pants.
He blinked as though unaccustomed to sunlight. "Can I help you?"
"Yes." I handed him my card. "I'm Franki Amato, and this is Veronica Maggio. We're investigating the death of Ivanna Jones."
He blinked again, this time from surprise. After reading my card front to back, he narrowed his small steel-blue eyes. "Who hired you?"
Veronica stepped forwa
rd. "We're representing Oleander Place."
"We'd like to come in and ask you a few questions, if you have a moment," I added.
"I don't know." His brow furrowed. "I've already talked to the police."
"I understand," I said in a gentle tone. "But our client is dissatisfied with the progress of the police's investigation, so we're retracing their steps to make sure all evidence has been uncovered. For Ivanna."
He hesitated and then gestured for us to come inside. "I'm Dr. Adam Geyer. Call me Adam."
"What do you do for Lickalicious Lips?" I asked as Veronica and I entered.
"I'm their cosmetic chemist or, at least, I was. I have no idea what's going to happen with the company now." He exhaled and ran a hand through his short blond hair. "Please, have a seat."
Following Veronica's lead, I sat in one of two black leather armchairs facing the wooden table that served as a desk. The place looked more like an IKEA showroom than a cosmetics firm. "Is this your office?"
"No," he replied, taking a seat behind the desk. "I work in the next room, in the lab. This was where Ruth Walker sat. She was our administrative assistant, but she resigned on Monday."
I wondered whether Ruth had merely jumped from the proverbial sinking ship or whether there was something more to her resignation. "Would it be possible to speak to her?"
Adam paused and then scribbled something on a piece of paper. "Here's her cell, but I can't guarantee she'll talk to you. She wants nothing to do with this company now."
"Thanks." I took the number and shoved it in my bag.
"Had Ruth been working here long?" Veronica asked, opening her laptop on her knees.
"About three years."
Veronica began typing notes. "What about the other employees?"
"There aren't any. I make the prototypes in house, and then we send them to an outside firm for production and distribution."
That explains the lack of testers here in the lobby, I thought—not without a pang of regret. "How long have you been with Lickalicious Lips?"
"Ivanna recruited me to help her open the company ten years ago. She was working on her Masters in Cosmetic Science at Farleigh Dickinson while I was finishing up my PhD there. She was a student in a class I was teaching, and one day she came to my office hours and said she was going to start Lickalicious when she graduated. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but then a year later she called and offered me a salary I couldn't refuse."
Franki Amato Mysteries Box Set Page 36