"Okay?" I turned on the faucet and filled my glass.
Glenda lit a cigarette in a pink holder. "It's all in the imagery, Miss Franki. Think of it as beef cake but with cherry pie."
For the first time I was grateful that I'd given up sweets for Lent. I took a sip of water and pulled out a chair, but there was raw poultry on the seat cushion. "Ugh! Who put these chicken cutlets here?"
Gaysia turned off the mixer and picked them up with her bare hands. "Uh, hello, Hunty! It's not like they're the kind you eat."
"What other kind is there?" I asked, bewildered.
"The kind you make boobies with," she replied, stuffing them into her bra.
I poured out my water and grabbed an open bottle of champagne.
"What's eating at you, sugar?" Glenda sat on the kitchen table trucker-girl-mudflap-style. "Are you having more man troubles?"
"You could say that." I flopped into the chair. "Jeff Payne, the manager at Bradley's bank, has been sending pictures of me in compromising positions to the bank clients."
Glenda gave me a half-lidded look. "You took nudie pics?"
"Werk it, girl," Céline said as she rolled out the piecrust.
Gaysia licked chocolate cake batter from her finger. "Sounds like Ms. Cheesecake could teach us a thing or two in the dessert department."
"It wasn't like that." I filled my champagne glass to the brim. "Out of context the pictures look incriminating, but they're not."
"Mm-hmm," the queens intoned in unison.
"I'm serious," I protested. "Jeff set me up so that he could get Bradley fired and take his position as president."
Dolly stopped stirring. "Now why in the heck would this man sabotage you to get your beau's job?"
"Because women have been exploited by men throughout herstory," Gaysia replied, jabbing the mixer at an invisible enemy.
Céline shook her rolling pin. "Someone needs to make this Jeff guy RuPaulogize."
"He'll get what's coming to him, girls." Glenda took a deep drag off her cigarette. "'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.'"
My jaw dropped as my injured brain wondered whether it had hallucinated that Bible quote. If it hadn't, then forget Cirque du Soleil and The Grand Ole Opry—Glenda's kitchen was The Twilight Zone.
As if to reinforce my theory, Carnie entered the room sporting a blonde pixie wig and a shift dress with long, puffed sleeves covered with pink, yellow, and orange daisies. She looked like the 1960s model Twiggy, only trunky.
"Sorry I'm late." She spotted me and put a hand on her chest. "Well, look what the tiger cat dragged in. I haven't heard from you in so long that I thought you'd run off to the jungle to live among your kind—the snakes."
I sighed. Carnie was no hippie at a love-in, no matter what her outfit implied. "Um, I saw you three days ago, and I've been working on your case ever since."
She sniffed and eyeballed my champagne. "Doesn't look like you're working now."
"It's Saturday, Miss Carnie." Glenda gave her a reproachful look. "Miss Franki's taking a well-deserved day off."
Carnie glanced at her mod Mary Janes and managed to look quasi-contrite. "I was shocked when I saw the news about Curaçao's murder. Glenda said she was wearing an amber pendant. Do you think it was mine?"
"I'm no Dirk, but I'd say it was the fake," I replied. "Real amber doesn't sparkle the way that pendant did when I shined my flashlight on it."
Céline placed a platter of pigs in a blanket in front of me and winked. "The weenies are tucked extra tight."
"Awesome," I said, because it seemed like the appropriate reply.
"You know," Carnie began as she took a seat, "I can't say I'm surprised that Commie waxer is a killer."
"We don't know that Nadezhda killed anyone." I helped myself to a pig in a blanket. "Eugene is still a suspect, and so is Amber's ex-pimp."
Glenda exhaled a puff of smoke. "This is the first I've heard of you suspecting King. What gives?"
I blew on the piping hot pig. "Yesterday I found out that he might be the owner of the sugaring company Amber was working for."
Carnie shrugged her psychedelic shoulders. "So, he found a new way to exploit her. That doesn't make him the killer, either."
"I know, but preaching for tips on Bourbon Street has to be the world's worst way to make a living—second only to begging at a homeless shelter." I pulled the pig from the blanket and popped it into my mouth. "He needs another source of income, and your necklace could've set him up in suits for a long time."
Glenda stubbed out her cigarette. "Miss Eve did tell us that King has been upstairs at Madame Moiselle's, so he knows his way around the place."
"Right." I swallowed and bit into the blanket. "I just have to verify that he goes by the nickname Peach."
"Peach?" Carnie echoed. "Gurl, I heard Amber talking on the phone to someone by that name about a month ago. That's why I thought she was hooking again."
I almost choked in mid-chew.
"Why?" Glenda slid seductively off the table. "What did she say?"
Carnie pressed flower-power fingernails to her pixie. "She said something about not being able to take on another client while she was in school. I figured it had to be a regular john."
I swallowed. "Or a second sugar daddy."
Either way, it was time to pay another visit to the pulpit.
Semi-convinced that I was being punked, I glanced in the rearview mirror and then turned to stare at my mother from my Mustang window. "Are you guys seriously going to watch the St. Joseph's Day parade from Madame Moiselle's balcony?"
"Well, what do you expect us to do, Francesca?" She flailed her arms like a drowning woman. "Santina just started walking again, and your nonna doesn't like crowds. It's the perfect place."
Sure, except for the nude women, the horny men, the simulated sex acts, the excessive drinking, the foul language, and the occasional fist fights. "Uh, does this mean that you're okay with me stripping there?"
My mother's lips grew as thin as a switchblade. "I didn't drive all the way from Houston—with your nonna, no less—to have you smart off to me. Drop the attitude before you get back from parking the car."
"So much for the mental health day," I said as I pulled away from the curb, and I didn't care if she'd heard me. I wasn't big on parades, especially after I'd gotten arrested at the last one. And now not only did I have to go to a parade, but I had to watch it with my mom and the nonne from lap dance chairs on the balcony of a sex club.
If I ever made it back, that is. The parade was due to start at six, which wasn't for another hour. But the Quarter was already packed, and I had to make it the mile to the Private Chicks parking lot.
As I inched my way up Burgundy Street, I started to think about Bradley and the fact that he hadn't called. Attorney's orders or no, he should've contacted me by now, and I couldn't understand why he hadn't. He wasn't the type to blame me for his own actions, so the only thing I could guess was that he was embarrassed about punching Detective Sullivan. Or…
My blood ran so cold that icicles pierced my heart.
…Jeff had sent him those pictures.
I shuddered and shook off the thought. Even though it didn't matter if he had seen the pictures since I was planning to break up with him, I couldn't go there, not now. To distract myself, I looked out the window at some members of the Italian-American Marching Club who were standing by their traditional ATV-drawn chariots. I took one look at their signature black tuxedoes with flashy red and green bowties and stacks of matching Mardi Gras beads around their necks, and I swerved onto St. Ann.
Forget the freakin' parade, I had a pimp-preacher to call on.
It took twenty minutes to travel the two short blocks to King's corner, but I was rewarded for my travail. He was standing in the pulpit in a silk dollar-bill suit—not with bills pinned to the fabric like Glenda did to me on my birthday but with solid dollar-bill print fabric.
And on the subject of bills, a buxom fifty-something woma
n in a bodacious blue spandex minidress was in the process of handing him a wad of them. It was too much to be a donation for a street sermon but enough to be a payout from a long day of hooking.
King looked over his shoulder when he pocketed the cash, as though making sure no one had seen him. By chance, our eyes locked through the windshield, and he broke into a run.
On autopilot, l whipped into a customer-service zone and hopped from the car. As I gave chase, he dashed up the street and darted to the right.
When I rounded the corner, he ducked into the last place I would've expected—Cathedral Academy, an old convent chapel that served as the site of St. Louis Cathedral's altar to St. Joseph.
I ran inside and saw David and the vassal standing by the altar as King hoofed it up the aisle on the right side of the building.
"Stop that preacher!" I yelled as I pointed at King.
Not known for their physical prowess—unless sugar baby boobs were at play—David and the vassal began pelting King with lemons, presumably those that my mom and nonna had bought to ensure my engagement.
At least they're serving some purpose, I thought, because my engagement odds aren't looking good.
King stopped running and shielded himself with his arms, and I shoved him stomach-down to the ground.
"You're Peach, aren't you?" I ground out as I straddled his back and twisted his arms behind him.
"What choo talkin' 'bout, woman?" he demanded with one side of his face pressed to the floor.
"You own the sugar baby company that Amber signed up with. Admit it," I ordered as I gave his wrists a twist.
"Ow!" He kicked his leopard-spotted shoes. "I don't own no damn comp'ny."
"Then what was that woman paying you for?" I leaned close to his ear. "And don't try telling me it was for a sermon, because if you do, you'll be preaching that song and dance to the police."
His body went slack. "I cain't be arrested. I'm in a sanctuary."
That explained the choice of the chapel. I turned to David and the vassal. "Arm yourselves."
"That won't be necessary, now." King drew a deep breath. "If you mus' know, I'm often called upon by the female doubters in my congregation to help them find the divine—through sacred unity."
"I don't understand."
He grinned revealing his gold teeth. "I help them find Gawd with sex."
I cocked a brow as the reality of what he'd said dawned on me—and as I tried to comprehend how any woman could get past his suits. "You're a gigolo?"
"If you don't mind, I prefer the term spiritual escort."
I climbed off of him. "No more questions."
King stood up and straightened his pink dollar-sign tie. "I'd like to say it was a pleasure, but instead I'll wish you all a blessed day." He looked at me and winked. "And may the Lawd be with you."
For once, the vassal wasn't the only one with a slack-jawed stare. David and I watched equally open-mouthed as the pimp-turned-preacher-gigolo strolled from the chapel like a king leaving his castle.
"We'd better pick up those lemons," I said as I noted the whispers and scowls of a few churchwomen. "What're you guys doing here, anyway?"
David scratched his head. "Uh, your nonna said we had to test out the altar before you guys got here from the parade."
I rolled my eyes. "Thank God it's finally St. Joseph's Day so I can get back to my life, and you can get back to working on the case."
"Oh, I have something for you." He pulled a piece of paper from his back pocket. "I looked up Old New Orleans Traditional Witchcraft, but it's, like, lame."
"Why do you say that?" I asked as I bent over to retrieve a lemon.
The vassal pushed up his glasses. "Because the practitioners rely mainly on different colors of the same candle for all their witchcraft needs."
"Huh?" I stood up and looked at the color printout in David's hand, and my face turned as white as the image he was pointing to.
It was the candle of the nude woman that I'd seen in the kitchen at Madame Moiselle's on the day Curaçao's body was discovered.
The one that Eve Quebedeaux had lit.
21
"Why did we have to visit this altar again?" Glenda asked as she wrestled with the blue and white tablecloths that the nonne had draped over her. "I'm sweatin' like a whore in church in this getup."
I refrained from commenting on her second statement given that a) the Cathedral Academy was owned by the Catholic Church, and b) she was dressed like the Virgin Mary. "You heard the nonne—because we're stripper sinners, you need to eat, and I have to steal a lemon."
"Oh, for heaven's sake." She grabbed a grissino off the table, bit off the tip, and chewed it like she was eating a dead cricket. "There." She choked down the breadcrumbs. "I've eaten. Now I'm heading back over to Madame Moiselle's."
I grabbed her by the garments. "Not without me you don't. You're my ticket out of this hell."
She rolled her eyes. "Then swipe a damn lemon already."
By this point, I was more than ready to steal a lemon if it meant getting my mom and nonna on the road back to Houston. The problem was that people were milling around all three tiers of the altar. "I have to wait until no one's looking."
Glenda frowned at a fig pie next to a platter of lemons. "Then you might want to gouge out the eyes on this pie."
The only eyes I wanted to gouge out were Bruno Messina's, because they'd been glued to my chest ever since he'd arrived with Santina to see the altar. "That's a St. Lucy's eye pie," I explained as I gave Bruno a go-to-hell glare. "They put eyes on it because she was blinded for refusing to renounce her Christian faith."
She blinked blue lashes. "That's an odd tradition."
What could I say? Obviously, since I was about to steal a lemon from the church to get a husband, the oddities in the Sicilian-American culture abounded.
"And what does 'prega per noi' mean?" she asked, referring to the words written in crust on the pie.
"'Pray for us.' And frankly, I could use some prayers right now." I looked longingly at a bottle of Pinot Grigio on the altar. "Between my crazy family and this case, I don't think I'm going to make it to thirty-one."
As though reading my mind, Glenda picked up the bottle and popped the cork. "Well, your mom and nonna are leaving the day after tomorrow, and you're making progress in the case. You've practically ruled out Saddle and King as suspects."
"But I've added Eve, I think." I picked up a wine glass. "I mean, she's the house mom, so it makes sense that she could be Amber's mother figure. I just can't believe she's a witch. She seems so normal."
Glenda filled my glass. "Appearances can be deceiving, Miss Franki."
"I'll say." I glanced at her Virgin Mary look. "The thing is, Nadezhda could be a witch too."
"Why don't you call Witchiepoo?" she asked as she poured herself a drink.
I almost gagged on my wine. "Theodora?"
"No, sugar," she replied drily. "The witch from H.R. Pufnstuf."
I looked at her like she'd lost it. "Why would I want to call that whacked witch?"
"Because she might be able to tell you whether Eve is a witch." She tipped her glass toward me. "And Nadezhda too, for that matter."
As much as I wanted to avoid Theodora, I knew she could help. After all, she was a witchcraft consultant, according to her business card. "I guess I could ask her to stop by Amber's funeral in the morning. I'm sure Eve and Nadezhda will be there."
"Perfect." She took the wine from my hand. "Why don't you go pick your fruit and then give her a call?"
"All right. Here goes nothing." Glancing from side to side, I approached the lemons. When I reached the table, the platter raised to the level of my hand. Astonished, I looked around and spotted my nonna—holding a remote control.
Now I knew why she'd had David and the vassal design the altar.
"Franki, baby!" Bruno shouted from behind me.
I jumped as though my hand had been in the collection plate instead of the lemon platter.
As smooth as his slicked back hair, I thought. "You don't call me anything after throwing me under the bus to your mother."
"Hey, it was nothing personal." He straightened the black collar of his Saturday Night Fever shirt. "I had to tell her something after she found a receipt from the club in my pants pocket."
No doubt when she was doing your laundry.
"By the way, Mamma said you liked those peanuts." He gave a self-assured sneer. "Consider them a belated birthday gift."
I rolled my eyes. The peanuts reminded me that I still had to go back to the dentist to get my permanent crown, which was yet another reason to dislike Bruno. "Yeah. Thanks."
He nudged me with his shoulder. "I hear you're gonna swipe a lemon."
"Why would I do that?" There was no way I was going to let this creep think I was looking for a proposal.
His beady black eyes widened. "Because you're not getting any younger, and I've seen you strip."
Before I could react, Glenda stepped between us and pointed at a platter with twelve whole fried trout, symbolizing the twelve apostles.
"Move it on along, mister, or you'll be sleeping with the fishes." She picked up a loaf of bread shaped like a cross and held it like a club. "You got me?"
Bruno backed away and ran to his mother.
"Now's your chance, sugar." Glenda pointed the cross at the altar. "Go get yourself a lemon."
I saw my nonna and a short, dark-haired woman headed in our direction. "I can't. My nonna's on her way over here with someone."
Nonna shuffle-strutted up wearing a tricolored sash that one of the parade marchers had bestowed on her, as well as the "Kiss me, I'm Italian" beads that she'd wrenched from the grip of a Swedish tourist. With her black mourning dress, the red and green accessories made her look like Miss Elderly Italian-America.
"Glenda," Nonna began as she took her by the arm, "my friend-a Mary, she want-a to meet you."
I smirked and wondered if it was because of Glenda's Virgin Mary garb.
Franki Amato Mysteries Box Set Page 75