Could that be true?
I shudder to consider it, since it would mean that for some folks, the only way to feel good is to feel bad.
I don’t want to feel bad, Cash. I don’t want to live a life of pain and sorrow, of shame and regret. I want to live a GOOD life, a HAPPY life.
So my hope is that Frenchman got it all wrong. My hope is it doesn’t matter how much a soul suffers; there’s always room for joy.
Love, Maggie
The pages of history are hard and sharp. They’ll cut your fingers if you’re not careful.
As I stand outside the all-too-familiar green door of my sperm donor’s house, remembered torture and terror accost me. Zombies, vampires, and witches are said to walk among this city’s citizens, especially in The Quarter where tradition and folklore run deep. But the only true monsters I’ve ever seen in this whole wide world are men like Rick.
It’s zero eight thirty, and the residential street he lives on is quiet. The neighborhood kids have gone to school. The adults have left for work. The only sounds of life are coming from the wind chimes hung on the porch next door, their wistful, tinkling tune ringing slightly discordant.
Luc pulls out a small case with the tools necessary for picking a lock. But before he can go to work, I brandish a key from my pocket. “What are the chances?” I ask him.
His eyebrow arches. “I can’t believe you kept that.”
“A souvenir to mark the time I spent here and a reminder that I got the fuck out.”
“Guess this’ll be the first test to see if you’re right about him. If he hasn’t changed the locks, then it’s a pretty safe bet he hasn’t changed the safe or the combination either.”
I insert the key into the lock. It sticks, but it always stuck. With a flick of my wrist, the lock clicks open and the door swings wide.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Luc murmurs as we slip into the house.
The warning beep-beep-beep of the security system has me hurrying over to the wall panel. I punch in the four-digit code and turn to wiggle my eyebrows when a high-sounding chirp tells me the alarm has disengaged.
“Never thought I’d say this”—the wire clippers Luc has out and at the ready get tucked into his hip pocket—“but thank the good Lord for Rick and his blind arrogance.” He glances around and frowns. “Damn. Would you look at this place? It hasn’t changed a bit.”
With a jaundiced eye, I take in the entryway and adjoining living room.
“The television is new,” I say contrarily. Then I admit, “But you’re right. There’s the umbrella stand he bashed me over the head with when I didn’t clean the gutters the way he wanted me to. And there’s the armchair I nearly broke when I fell over it after he punched me for leaving a load of clothes in the dryer for too long. Oh, and let’s not forget the landing where I stood with a gun in my hand, ready to blow his fucking head off.”
Luc’s lips thin as he silently watches me.
“Stop giving me that look. I’m fine. In fact, cheers to you, Rick, you fat, pompous prick.” I salute the silent house with the flask I pull from my back pocket.
“I don’t get it.” Luc’s brow is wrinkled.
“Don’t get what?”
“If he’s extorting a bunch of rich folks for boatloads of cash, where’s he putting the money?” He makes a circular motion with his hand. “Not in this house.”
The Uptown neighborhood where Rick lives is decidedly upper middle class. No one in their right mind would call this place a dump. But Luc’s right. It is outdated.
“Rick’s always been a beady-eyed squirrel, hoarding his scratch for who the fuck knows what. Maybe he plans to buy a private island or a big-ass yacht and retire early.” I turn toward the back of the house. “Keep an eye out,” I call over my shoulder unnecessarily.
Like the rest of the place, Rick’s office is a blast from the past. I avoid looking at the photo of my mother sitting on his desk. Don’t want to see the haunted expression in her eyes.
Truth is, I’ve often wondered why he keeps that picture. It’s not like he loved her any more than he loves me. He certainly never spared her the hard kiss of his knuckles when the mood struck. If the cancer hadn’t killed her, I’d bet my left nut he would have. Eventually.
Maybe that’s why he keeps her picture. To gloat over the fact that she’s dead and he isn’t.
“There you are, you sweet thing.” I pat the knee-high safe tucked between two filing cabinets. It’s matte black, sitting on four wheels, and proudly boasting the name of a safe company out of Buffalo, New York.
Same locks. Same security code. Same safe. I’m not the praying sort, but recently I’ve taken to invoking Saint Roch.
Come on, man, I silently implore him. Don’t let this be the one thing that bastard changed.
Squatting, I blow out a breath and spin the combination dial. Twelve, twenty-five, sixty-five, zero. Rick’s birthday plus a zero tacked onto the end. Yes, he’s the kind of jackass to choose his own birthday as a combination. Also, yes, he was born on Christmas Day. Which I find supremely ironic considering there are few men less Christ-like than Richard Bartholomew Armstrong.
An ice pick of unease slips up my spine when the door handle remains stubbornly stuck horizontal. Patting the safe like a lover, I say quietly, “Come on, ol’ girl. You don’t want to let me down, do you?”
Never underestimate the power of charm, even on inanimate objects.
I try the combination again. This time I’m careful to make sure the hash mark at the top of the dial precisely lines up with the four numbers. And then…hooah! The silver handle clicks downward, and the heavy door swings open.
Money has a specific scent. Not sure if it’s the paper it’s printed on, the ink the treasury department uses, or what. But you know it when you smell it.
I definitely smell it. No wonder since the safe is packed top to bottom with dead presidents. Grabbing a small stack, I flip through the bills.
Hundreds. All of them.
“Fuck me.” I sit back on my heels, staring at what’s got to be close to a quarter million dollars.
Did I give Rick too much credit? I mean, it’s not like his business successes have come from an overabundance of brainpower. More like from running backroom deals, taking advantage of lack of government oversight, and strong-arming anyone who dares come up against him. Still…this? If it isn’t Mason jars buried in the backyard, it’s the next closest thing.
Taking out my cell phone, I snap a few pictures—never know what evidence might come in handy. Then I slide the blue, leather-bound ledger from the top of the neatly stacked cash and open it.
There are pages and pages going back years. Some of what’s written might as well be in Mandarin for all I can make heads or tails of it. But other things, like transactions listed next to routing numbers, are far more clear. As are the dollar amounts printed next to the names of some of the small businesses Rick owns in and around the city—places like family diners and car washes are perfect for laundering a little moola.
I carefully photograph each page even though none of what I’m seeing seems to have anything to do with the people Rick is extorting. Then…pay dirt.
A list of initials with dates and dollar amounts scribbled next to them comprise the last three pages of the ledger. If I compare some of these initials with the names of the people Miss Bea gave to Luc, dollars to doughnuts I’ll find matches.
“Got you now, you miserable prick,” I mutter.
Stuffing the ledger back into the safe, I pull out my flask to toast to my success. I also need to administer some liquid medication. Used to be I had good days and bad days. Recently, the bad days have come to stay.
And yet, despite that, I still have the capacity to feel complete and utter joy at the prospect of putting my old man behind bars. I want to spin in circles atop a mountain, arms outstretched Sound of Music-style.
“So?” Luc turns away from his lookout spot near the front door when he hears my footsteps.
I pat my cell phone inside my hip pocket. “Let’s go talk to Maggie.”
Over the weekend, Luc convinced her to leave this part to us by promising her we would stop by Bon Temps Rouler and fill her in on what we found the second we found it. True to his word, twenty minutes later, we’re bellied up to the bar as Maggie gets ready to open for the day.
She pours each of us a cup of coffee. When I add a generous double shot of Gentleman Jack to mine, I catch the worried look in her eye. I know what she’s going to say before she says it.
“Have you sent along your medical records to Dr. Stevens?”
“Thursday and Friday were holidays. Then it was the weekend. And this morning, I was busy breaking into Rick’s house to gather evidence that’ll hopefully keep your pretty neck out of Sullivan’s noose. So when were you thinking I was supposed to contact the VA to pass along my stuff?”
I wince at her stricken expression and mutter, “Sorry. My head’s fucking killing me today.”
It isn’t a lie.
Then again, it’s not why I lit into her either. I blame that on the hug she gave me when I came through the door.
It was soft and warm and lingering. She let me feel every inch of her. Made me remember what it was like to hold her and know she was mine. Which, in turn, left me unaccountably angry.
Not at her. At life.
“I plan to call my docs at the VA today and set things in motion,” I assure her, careful to modulate my tone.
“I’m not trying to burden you with more stuff,” she says. If I was capable of hating anything about Maggie, it would be the look on her face right now. It verges on pitying. “I swear I’m not. I just think before you—”
“I said I’ll take care of it, Maggie,” I interrupt her. “Now, can we talk about more important things?”
Pulling my cell phone from my hip pocket, I explain about the cash hoard in the safe as I thumb through the photos of the ledger pages until I come to the first one with the list of initials and amounts. Setting my phone on the bar, I point.
“See that one there? BJS? It’s got to be that Billy Joe Summerset guy, don’t you think?”
“Could be coincidence,” Luc says, then starts reciting some of the other names Miss Bea gave him. A sixty-second comparison tells us that each of them matches a set of initials inside Rick’s ledger.
“You said you thought there was probably a quarter of a million in the safe?” Maggie asks.
“Yeah.” I nod. “Why?”
“Well, I don’t need a calculator to see that if these figures are true dollar amounts, then Rick has extorted these people for way more than that over the years.”
“So then, what’s with the stockpile in the safe?” Luc wonders aloud.
I scratch my chin. “No way to know for sure. My guess would be this is the money he hasn’t yet been able to funnel through his system of foreign bank transfers and small businesses.”
“Good Lord,” Maggie breathes, her eyes wide and blinking. “This is it, isn’t it? This is the proof we need.”
Hate to temper her excitement, but… “It’s a start,” I say cautiously. “We need to talk to your cop friend and see where we go from here. Even if this is enough to begin an investigation into Rick, who knows if it’s enough to bring Sullivan down with him? Or if it can even be tied to Sullivan. As much as it tickles my pickle to think of Rick rotting away inside a prison cell, it’s not actually him we’re after.”
“Okay, Mr. Glass Half Empty.” Maggie’s hands go to her hips. “Where’s your optimism?”
It got flushed down the toilet the day the doctors handed me my prognosis.
“Set up a time and place we can talk to your cop friend,” I urge.
“I’ll text him now.” She takes out her phone and types a message. Before she’s finished, the front door opens, and Earl finds his way to his spot.
He scowls at Luc and me, muttering, “This place is getting too crowded in the mornings for my tastes.”
Maggie rolls her eyes before grabbing the coffee carafe and heading toward him. As she pours him a cup and tops it off with a generous portion of cream, she assures him, “You’re still my favorite. Always and forever.”
He harrumphs, but I see his mustache wiggle—an indication it’s hiding a smile.
“And to prove it,” she continues, “I’ll let you choose what we play on the jukebox this morning. Although, I swear, if you pick Ray Stevens, I won’t speak to you for a week.”
“What’s wrong with Ray Stevens?” he demands in affront. “The man’s got a good voice. He’s funny. And he sure as shit knows how to tell a story.”
“Yeah, if the kind of story you enjoy involves a squirrel going berserk in church.”
Earl chuckles. “Like I said, funny.”
“No Ray Stevens.” Maggie puts her foot down.
“Fine. Put on “Do-Wacka-Do” by Roger Miller.”
She groans, but thirty seconds later, she’s got the song cued up. The sound of snappy guitar strumming softly echoes through the overhead speakers.
“Happy?” she asks Earl.
This time his mustache can’t hide his grin. “Now this is the way to start the day.” He salutes her with this steaming coffee mug.
She chuckles, but it’s cut short when her phone chirps. Slipping it from her pocket, she frowns at the screen and makes her way back to me and Luc.
“Bad news. Rory Ketchum took his family on vacation to Key West. They won’t be home until Thursday.”
“Damn.” Luc rubs a hand over his face.
“Nothing to be done about it.” I sigh in exasperation. “But ask him if he’d be willing to meet us as soon as he gets back into town.”
Maggie shoots off another text and receives a reply almost immediately. She looks up from her screen. “Will seven o’clock on Thursday evening work?”
“Got nothing else on my calendar,” Luc says.
I simply give her a thumbs-up and she types in a final message before sliding her cell phone back into her pocket.
For a while, none of us speaks, each lost in our own thoughts. Then Maggie asks Luc, “Your mom left for Shreveport yesterday, didn’t she?”
He nods. “She called ’round seventeen hundred to tell me she’d made it home and was snug as a bug in a rug.” His eyes narrow. “She also asked me to tell you that she enjoyed your talk and she hopes you won’t hold anything against her. She said, and I quote, ‘Tell Maggie I’m only a momma bear looking out for her cub.’ Since I reckon I’m the cub in question, you wanna fill me in on what y’all discussed?”
Maggie looks uncomfortable. But she plays it off with a smile and then mimes zipping her lips. “What’s talked about on Aunt Bea’s front porch swing stays on Aunt Bea’s front porch swing.”
I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something in her face when she looks at Luc that wasn’t there before.
Chapter Forty-seven
______________________________________
Maggie
What you don’t see with your eyes, don’t witness with your mouth.
I heard that from a young man who used to stop into Bon Temps Rouler for a drink while he studied the Torah.
Unfortunately, folks around here don’t seem to cotton to that particular piece of wisdom. No telephone, no internet, no cable news station is as blisteringly quick at spreading information as the denizens of New Orleans.
That being the case, I should’ve known the visits Luc and I paid to Sullivan’s blackmail victims would reach his ears. I should’ve known he would react by barging into my apartment first thing in the morning with two police officers in tow. And I definitely should’ve known he’d drag me downtown for questioning despite Jean-Pierre’s objections and Yard’s feral-sounding growls.
“What do you think you’re doing going around town trying to make people tell lies on me?” His expression hasn’t changed in the hour he’s been interrogating me. It looks like he’s caught a whiff of something fetid.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I’ve repeated that phrase—that lie, heaven help me—at least two dozen times. With each passing second, and with each repetition, my fear grows like the yeasted dough Auntie June uses for her homemade bread. “Now, I want a lawyer,” I add.
In case you didn’t know, let me be the first to tell you that television gets lots of stuff wrong. I mean, have you ever seen a character have to wait for change after buying something at a store? No. They simply pay and leave. And have you ever watched an actor drive around a parking lot for thirty minutes looking for a spot? No. There’s always a space available right in front. And yet every police procedural or court drama I’ve ever watched has nailed it when it comes to an interrogation room.
Small space. White walls. Creepy mirror that everyone knows is two-way. And a camera with an evil red eye blinking in the corner.
That’s where I am. A room that might as well have graced the set of Law & Order.
I realize now that what I’ve missed while watching those shows is the feel of the place. It’s hot. Literally. This room is made to make a person sweat. And it smells bad. Like the body odor and terror of hundreds of “perps” or “persons of interest.”
Sullivan ignores my request for a lawyer, again, and instead walks around the table toward me, the heels of his cowboy boots clapping against the tile. My heart pounds in time to each approaching step, and I now know how those wild pigs who live in the swamp feel when they have to go to the water’s edge to grab a drink despite knowing an alligator is lurking in the depths below.
It’s a crapshoot. And the stakes are life and death.
“What are you up to, little missy?” he demands, his eyes shining hot beneath the shadow of his cowboy hat’s brim.
“Nothing,” I say, hating that my voice sounds as thin and as brittle as a twig. “I want a lawyer.”
He props one hip on the table in front of me. His thigh brushes my forearm. Since my hand is cuffed to a steel bar in the middle of the table, I can’t move away.
Volume Two: In Moonlight and Memories, #2 Page 13