Love Power

by Martha Reed

  “Forget it. I get it a lot.” Gee stated wryly. “Oh, wait. Here we go.” Switching the cigar to her left hand, she cranked the volume control knob on the dashboard radio.

  Jane instantly recognized Mick Kiesling’s aggressive drum solo opening as “Love Power” began to play, followed by his famously hesitant snare set that sounded like a round of semi-automatic weapons’ fire. Kenny Pascoe’s gloriously funkified thrumming bass guitar quickly supported Scottie Brennan’s choppy opening lead D electric guitar chord. Lemonhead Meyer wailed in on his high-pitched train whistle harmonica as Scottie began to sing:

  Listen up, people!

  Take some time to expand your mind

  To help you see

  That the way it was

  Is not the way to be.

  Marianne Tanner’s smoky contralto aggressively elbowed its way forward and to Jane’s delight Gee joined in:

  Hold tight, feel the power

  Take control, shape it hour by hour.

  I need you, to get me through it.

  You need me, to help you do it.

  Step by step, let’s put up a fight

  Them saying it’s so, don’t make it right.

  I believe

  You believe

  We believe in

  Love power!

  “Crissakes, Gee!” Jane collapsed against the leather seat in amazement. “You have one helluva voice.” She pointed at the radio as Marianne Tanner wailed up an octave. “You think maybe you inherited it from her? Your voice? Crissakes! Listen to her. She makes that song work.”

  “Could be.” Gripping the cigar between her teeth, Gee steered The Boat into the Guardian Storage lot, pulling into a vacant handicapped parking spot. “It’s the strangest thing. I’ve heard her voice all my life everywhere I go, but I’ve never seen a picture of her. I have no idea what she looked like.”

  Jane unsnapped her seatbelt. “Ken never kept a photo?”

  “No, he said he burned them with his session tapes. Pops says I look a little bit like her, but mostly that I look like him.” She plucked a speck of tobacco off her tongue. “I tried pulling a screen shot off the MTV video once. She’s mic’d up behind Mick Kiesling’s drum kit. It’s too grainy to see any real detail.”

  “What if you backtracked her to Kansas City?” Jane’s detective instinct kicked in. “She was in Ken’s high school class with the other WarBirds, right? That school should still have a copy of their yearbook in their library or archive.”

  “I never thought of that.” Gee looked hopeful.

  “You could also try one of those online DNA testing services. You might reconnect to Marianne that way.”

  Gee looked doubtful. “I’d need to think about that. I’ll walk you in.” Stepping from The Boat, she caught Jane’s skeptical look. “What? It’s complicated. I can’t upset Maman. She goes big fou when I mention looking for Marianne.”

  Saluting the security camera, Jane turned for the door. “When did you find out you were adopted?”

  “My cousin Ray clued me in when I was eleven. Didn’t make much a difference.” Gee followed one step behind, grinning crookedly. “I was working through some other issues at the time. Getting abandoned by Marianne Tanner was the least of my worries. I kept waiting for my dick to fall off.”

  “Sorry!” Jane snorted. “Shouldn’t laugh, Gee, but damn girl, you’re funny.” She dug out her key fob. “Did you ever imagine what she was like as a person?”

  “Sure I did.” Gee puffed her cigar. “Whenever I had a teenage fight with Maman or Pops. Used to imagine running away to find her only I didn’t know which way to go. She didn’t leave me a note. Mostly, though, I wanted to ask her why she left me behind.”

  Dropping the cigar into the watery gutter, Gee studied it as it lay in a puddle, hissing. Resting her hands on her square masculine hips, she looked blank and bereft. Jane’s heart went out to her new friend as Gee stepped on the cigar butt with the pointed toe of her loafer and snuffed it out. “Was she trying to give me a better life? Do I have any brothers or sisters? You know, the usual shit adopted kids wonder about.” Gee stared unblinking into the night sky. “Maman and Pops are my real parents.” She stated. “They put up with all of my shit.” She turned, her dark eyes filled with doubt and concern. “I never want to hurt either one of them. Or Aunt Babette. Unless we find Dee, they’re all the family I’ve got left.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Dodging the Decatur Street traffic, Jane followed Gee around the for-hire carriages lining the curb, stepping over a gutter filled with crushed red Solo cups and pyramids of puckish green mule turds.

  “Gee?” Jane called, remembering the spare Quaker neatness of her former Nantucket Island home. “Does it ever bother you that this whole town looks like it’s falling apart?”

  “Decay is a large part of our charm,” Gee replied easily, juggling Aunt Babette’s glittering skull key ring in her hands. “Can’t fight the climate. Reminds you to enjoy the hell out of every day, because the next world is always right there, waiting.” Scratching her knuckles, she smiled. “That’s a good sign. Means I’m gonna meet an old friend or find some money.”

  “I’ll add that to my growing list of Creole superstitions.”

  Gee paused before turning for Jackson Square. “What do you believe in, Jane?”

  “Me?” She gave it some thought. “I think we’re all just really smart monkeys. Everything else, even that hoo-ha going on in that big cathedral over there is a myth. We made up a bunch of stories to comfort ourselves around some campfire and being human, as usual, we took things too far. Excess is what we do best.”

  “Even after what you saw at Aunt Babette’s Tarot reading? And the Ouija board?”

  “Especially after what I saw with both of those.” Jane stated firmly. “That’s the kind of shit that gets people tied to stakes and set on fire.”

  Gee hooted. “That’s your Yankee history, my friend, not mine. We never burnt our witches. We recognize their gifts and we honor them.”

  “If you’re talking Salem,” Jane huffed, “we never burned our witches, either. Salem witches got hanged except for one poor bastard who got pressed to death.”

  “What?” Gee stopped dead in her tracks as her jaw dropped open. “How do you press someone to death?”

  “You stick him under a board and you keep piling big rocks on top of him until his ribs crack and he stops breathing.”

  “Damn, you Yankees are mean.” Gee looked cockeyed. “I thought the Spanish Inquisition was tough.”

  A wrought iron fence surrounded Jackson Square. Local artists used it to display their wares and one artist, an elderly, ruminating white man waved his cane.

  “Everything’s on sale today,” he shouted. “Fifty percent off just for you.”

  His paintings seemed to be NOLA cityscapes painted in different shades of gray. The wet paint had dripped down his canvases like the city was melting.

  “I’ll match his offer.” A jolly black woman sitting next to him cackled. She was selling 3-D acrylic sculptures made from flattened two-liter soda bottles covered with mirrored beads and chips of colored glass. “If you pay cash.”

  She sat next to a tattooed blonde psychic who started tapping her Tarot deck against her metal TV tray before she inexplicably started shrieking like a hyena. Her shrill cry bounced off the buildings and echoed around the square. “Me, too! Me, too! Cash only.”

  “Want a reading, Jane?” Gee asked. “My treat?”

  “Fuck off.” Jane growled. “You haven’t been listening.”

  “Can’t help myself.” Gee shrugged unapologetically. “You’re so easy to rile. It’s irresistible.” She spun on her heel. “Dee’s shop, Le Maison Grise is on the arcade.”

  Spanish or French, Jackson Square is a beautiful setting. Jane climbed the concrete steps leading to the covered sidewalk. Her bad knee gave her a twinge and she paused to study the bronze statue of Andrew Jackson on horseback in the middle of the square. He
seemed to be tipping his hat at the passing tourist horde heading for the Café du Monde for beignets. Gee had continued on. Jane had to hop and trot to catch up.

  “What the fuck?”

  Gee stood in front of the black lacquered door. Holding the glittering skull key ring in her hand, she glanced at the doorknob and then looked back at her keys.

  Jane strode to catch up. “What is it?”

  Gee flicked a spider-webbed key ring already hanging from the lock. Looking hopeful, she thumbed the latch. “You think maybe Dee is in here?”

  “Don’t touch it!” Jane shouted.

  Gee snatched her hand back.

  “Now your prints are on it.” Swinging her backpack forward, Jane dug for her phone. “I’m calling 911. Reporting a burglary in progress.”

  “Fuck that. I’m going in.”

  “No, Gee! Wait!”

  Jane choked as golden speckles danced before her eyes. Her fingertips went numb as an icy rising tide of crippling anxiety crept up her calves. Oh, no. It’s going to be bad. The cold shaking tremor spilled up over her kneecaps and she knew it wouldn’t stop rising until its sucking tentacles gripped her stomach and probed her heart. Jane groaned as searing images started flashing through her mind: the golden oak staircase rising to the second floor; the curved ebony bannister; that goddamned opened bedroom door as Sarah’s anguished screaming filled her ears. Her molars crunched as she fought to release her clenched jaw. Fucking PTSD. Not now. Focus, girl. Focus and stay calm. Push through it.

  “Jane? What’s going on? You okay?”

  “Don’t go in.” Jane gasped like a fish left stranded by low tide. “Might be click bait.”

  Gee rocked back. “Click bait?”

  “A trap. Might be a trap.” Blindly shaking her head, Jane tasted the coppery blood from her bitten tongue. “Call for backup.”

  “We’re not cops.” Flexing her elbow, Gee shoved the door open. “It might be Dee.”

  Le Maison Gris was dim with shadow and she stepped in.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “Dee?” Gee shouted. “You in here? Answer me, girl.”

  Jane shivered as she stumbled across the threshold. The sound of the tinny bell hanging over the door faded away and the shop returned to a brooding silence.

  “Dee!” Gee persisted. “Where y’at?”

  A breeze swept through the open door, rustling the paper flowers on their stems and stirring the close, stale air. Stay focused. I can’t let Gee do this alone. She needs me. Jane’s stomach still felt queasy and an unpleasantly greasy sweat slicked her skin, but her mind began to clear. She grabbed her nose as her sinuses filled with a mixed stink of patchouli oil, dried strawberries and rancid bacon fat.

  “Goddammit, Dee! Answer me.”

  Gee flipped a wall switch. The shadows retreated under the glass display counters as the single central milk glass globe lit up and the two gigantic overhead wicker paddle fans began to whirr. Jane took another step forward, her ears cocked for the slightest sound. She turned to check the cash register and her sneakers crunched.

  “Watch it, Gee. There’s glass on the floor.”

  She slipped past a line of shattered jars and stick bundles bound by thin strands of multi-colored thread, recognizing the withered stalks of lavender and chamomile. The other dried bundles remained a complete mystery. Evidently, the jars had held some type of natural herbal or voodoo remedies. Squeezing her hips sideways to get past an off-kilter counter, Jane had to turn her back on a cluster of pale manikins wearing gaudy Mardi Gras masks.

  “I hate those fucking things.” She shuddered. “They look like circus clowns.”

  “Dee hates them, too, but they pay the rent.” Gee moved toward a jewelry display in the middle of the room. Frowning, she fingered the overturned black velvet trays. “Aunt Babette didn’t say the place was trashed. Someone’s been in the shop since she left.”

  “Yep.” Jane felt like a hunter, intent and focused. I forgot how much I love the feeling of an active investigation. How can something so terrifying feel so good? She studied the register. The locked box drawer dangled off its broken hinges, cracked in half. “Someone used a pry bar to hack into the register, Gee. Time to call it in.” She thumbed 911 on her phone.

  “911 Dispatch. Police or ambulance?”

  “Police.”

  “State your emergency.”

  “An apparent burglary.”

  “Your name?”

  It took two tries. “Jane Byrne.”

  “We’ve recorded this number. What’s your location?”

  “Le Maison Gris, a shop in Jackson Square. Gee? What’s the address?”

  “Tell them it’s on Chartres Street. They’ll know where it is.”

  “Any sign of forced entry?”

  “Not exactly. We found a set of keys in the door, but the owner is missing and the place is trashed. It wasn’t left this way.”

  “Stay on site. A unit is responding.”

  “10-4.” Jane thumbed the red end call button. How strange it is to be on this side of the thin blue line. “They’re coming.”

  “Good.” Gee suddenly dropped to her knees as Jane spotted something blurry and white moving fast and low to the ground reflected in the store’s mirrors.

  “Watch it, Gee!”

  “Free!” Gee scooped up a gorgeous longhaired Persian cat. Hugging the cat tight, she cradled it against her shoulder. “What’s going on, Free, baby? Where’s your mother?”

  “A cat.” Jane sighed. She could hear the animal happily purring from across the room. She was so hyped up it sounded like a two-stroke Evinrude motor. “What’s free?”

  “She’s Free, Dee’s store cat.” The purring grew even louder. “Can you believe Dee found her living under a dumpster? Brought her in and gave her a home. Isn’t she a beauty? Named her Free Pussy.”

  “Nice.”

  “Usually gets a laugh.” Carrying Free Pussy, Gee strolled toward the rear of the shop. “I still don’t get what’s going on here.” She pointed her chin at a poster of partying Carnivale mummers that lay on the floor, ripped to shreds, and a display of fake matchstick voodoo dolls that had been tipped over, brutally stepped on, and crushed.

  “I get that they went through the jewelry. Some of it was sterling; they could sell it for cash. And they hit the register, so we know they were looking for money.” Gee stared at the floor. “Buy why trash the poster and crush the dolls? You’ll notice they didn’t bother the T-shirts or the masks or any of the commercial tourist crap. They only hit Dee’s voodoo merchandise.” She resettled Free Pussy against her neck. “This looks more like some pissed off teenage vandalism than a burglary to me.”

  “Maybe so.” Jane stepped around the counter. “How did they get Dee’s keys?”

  “Now that is a good question.” Gee turned toward a bamboo curtain partition. Without warning, Free Pussy hissed and spat, growling so demonically low in her throat it sounded like a human moan. Suddenly arching her back like a horseshoe, she fiercely clawed Gee’s hand, struggling for release before leaping away.

  “Fuck, Free!” Gee shook her fingers. “That hurt!”

  “Don’t move.” The hair on the nape of Jane’s neck slowly stirred. “Do you smell that?”

  “Jane? You’re scaring me.” Gee froze. “Why are you looking like that?”

  “I smell bleach.” Jane sniffed repeatedly. “Chlorine bleach.”

  “So? Maybe they knocked over a bucket.”

  “No. Bleach destroys DNA. Criminals use it to cover their tracks. Where’s it coming from? Is there a basement?”

  “Basement? What basement? The water table’s two feet beneath our feet.”

  “What’s back here?” Jane gently pushed a bamboo curtain aside.

  “A supply room, where Dee keeps her inventory stuff.”

  The swinging curtain stirred the overpowering chlorine odor into the breeze. The bitter scent grew so sharp that it singed Jane’s nostrils and brought tears to her
eyes. Tugging her jacket over her right hand, she flicked the hallway light switch, revealing a stubby corridor crammed with chrome shelving, cardboard boxes and a dinged up half-opened metal storeroom door.

  “Stay back, Gee.” Jane had a ghastly premonition. “Leave this for the cops.”

  “Fuck that.” She lunged ahead. “I’ll go look.”

  “No.” Jane caught her arm. I can’t let her do this alone. “Follow me.”

  Turning sideways to minimize her profile, Jane slipped into the hall. They continued toward the storeroom step by cautious step. Pulling her sleeve over her left hand, Jane covered her nose and her mouth, breathing shallowly through the mesh polyester microfiber. Her nostrils burned as the chemical scent grew even stronger and she noted a curling spatter of burgundy droplets on the concrete floor. Using her elbow, she pushed the storeroom door open. Blindly reaching in, Jane slid her sleeved right hand along the strangely stickily resistant wall. Feeling for the light switch, she flicked it on.

  Gee screamed.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Gee’s scream pierced Jane’s ears, triggering a PTSD memory echo so vivid her knees buckled. The storeroom smelled like a chlorine bomb had exploded. An uncapped gallon bleach bottle lay tipped on its side on the floor. Jane’s eyes wept as she captured the searing CSI image like a digital snapshot. She almost heard the shutter click.

  A lake of congealed blood pooled from one end of a rolled-up square of mint green rug, oddly turned pile side out. Plum colored splotches had seeped through the weave. Jane spotted the dull ivory tone of open raw bone. Bloody footprints in two different sizes crisscrossed the floor. Hundreds of dried dripping crimson handprints plastered the walls with one long jagged spray where the killer had flicked his blade. Turning, Jane shoved Gee back into the hallway. Gee stumbled and fell to her knees.

  “What was that?” She screamed, pushing up off the floor. “Was that Dee?”

  Jane’s brain spun through the obscene snapshot images like a satanic merry-go-round that she couldn’t un-see. “Don’t go back in there, Gee. Wait for the cops.”