by W E DeVore
Chasing Those Devil Bones
Clementine Toledano Mysteries: Book III
a novel by W.E. DeVore
Chasing Those Devil Bones
ALSO BY W.E. DEVORE
Clementine Toledano Mysteries
That Old Devil Sin
Devil Take Me Down
Chasing Those Devil Bones
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 W.E. DeVore
All rights reserved
ISBN-10: 1981837663
ISBN-13: 978-1981837663
Anxious Laughter Publishing
Contents:
Chapter 1: Dancing at the Fest
Chapter 2: Yesterday’s Rain
Chapter 3: No Rest for the Wicked
Chapter 4: Bourbon Street Baby
Chapter 5: I’m on Fire
Chapter 6: You Can Run But You Can’t Hide
Chapter 7: Cincinnati Saves the Day
Chapter 8: The Garbage Underneath
Chapter 9: And Baby Makes Three
Chapter 10: The Living End
Chapter 11: 7th Inning Stretch
Chapter 12: The Big Boom
Chapter 13: Goodbye, New Orleans
“We are two arrows flinging through the void with purposeful chaos, orbiting the same fixed point in our universe…”
-The Archangel
To Atek, whom I’ve now known for exactly one half of his mind-blowing, instigating life.
Happy birthday, my cosmic titan twin.
12.13∞12.13.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As usual, and forgive me for being repetitive here, I’d like to thank Heather Thomas and Jim Boitnott for their ongoing cheerleading and encouragement that continues to help dispel the self-doubt that plagues artists and authors alike.
More than those that came before it, this book is about the unique platonic friendships that can only exist between men and women. In that spirit, I would like to thank Devin Mohr, for his sardonic joy; Bradley Brunet, for his stoic grace; Ralf Dietel, for his raging playfulness; and Phil Garfinkel, for his emotional intellect. I love each of you more than I can say.
Chapter 1
Dancing at the Fest
An imminent invasion of thunderclouds loomed over the tent city that popped itself up for two weeks every year where a horse track usually stood. Q Toledano eyed the storm with suspicion, as it gathered more dark, billowing clouds to it, concentrating its power above the grandstand. She tugged on her sweaty tank top, feeling as droopy as the Goatwhore album cover silkscreened on it, and blew a delinquent curl out of her face as the humidity wrapped the heat around her like a fiery, wet, wool blanket.
Don’t you rain on me.
Charlie Bourdel, mad trumpet player and persistent thorn in her side, stood next to her on the side of the stage, watching the same storm front. “I heard thunder a little while ago.”
“Son-of-a-bitch,” she muttered. “We’re going to get rained out.”
They both glared at the act on stage, willing their set to hurry up and end; if for no other reason than the frontman with the apparent Django Reinhardt fetish couldn’t find his rhythm section’s pocket with a flashlight and a cutpurse.
Charlie knotted his waist-length ponytail behind his head to get the weight of it off his neck. He lit a cigarette and took a deep drag, snapping his Zippo closed with a loud clank. “I swear we did something to piss off whoever makes the cubes. Doesn’t matter what time we play; we keep getting screwed.”
For the third consecutive year, QT and the Beasts' performance at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival was about to be cut short by five inches of torrential rain. Climate change had slowly transformed the last part of spring in Southeast Louisiana into monsoon season and was drastically reducing the length of their Jazz Fest appearances in the process. The fact that they kept getting booked on outdoor stages closer and closer to the headline timeslot wasn’t helping. Not one bit.
She clapped her hand on his shoulder. “Better start warming up. I doubt we’ll get much of a soundcheck.”
“Wait,” he said. “We’re still playing?”
“Hell yes, we’re still playing, Charlie.” Q put her hands on her slender hips. “I came to play. And we’re playing, weather permitting, or not.”
“Fine by me. You’re the one that will get electrocuted when that pretty little mouth of yours touches the microphone.” He shrugged and dropped what was left of his cigarette to the stage, stubbing it out with one of his flip-flops.
Q grinned. Charlie Bourdel wore combat boots three-hundred-and-sixty-four days a year. Seeing his very pale, very hairless, bare feet on the day they played Jazz Fest every year was a highlight in her calendar. She considered them a metaphor for the man himself: fragile and delicate on the inside, armored-up and ready to do battle with anyone on any given day on the out.
She walked to the back of the stage, where Tom Wills and his nephew, JJ Augustine, sat on a road case, happily sharing a joint. Tom’s bare feet rested comfortably on the stage, his long, tanned legs easily reaching the floor. JJ’s squat legs dangled, childlike. His violet Jordans swung happily to the rhythm of the music on stage, oblivious to the slow butchering the acoustic guitar was inflicting on the beat.
“Alright, Dazed and Confused, we’re playing,” she instructed them. “At least until the lightning kills the power.”
Tom took a long hit off the joint and held it in, asking, “Ok, so, I have to know. Which one of us is Dazed?” He exhaled a cloud of fragrant smoke in her face. “And which one is Confused?”
She tilted her head to the side. “Sober up, Tommy. We’re playing. And if you miss one beat - one stinking beat – I am telling your wife how much weed you’ve smoked today.”
JJ nodded in approval. “Good on you. Just leave me out of it, please. Auntie C will tell my mama, and it’ll be my hide.” His long dreadlocks floated around him as he happily bounced down onto the stage to retrieve his bass. “Come on, Uncle T, we playin’, and I’m not carrying you.”
Tom closed one eye and looked at Q. “You know you’re the one that will get electrocuted, right?”
“I have escaped both a hired hit man and a serial killer, Scarecrow. A little lightning doesn’t scare me,” she said, stealing the joint from his fingers.
Tom Wills was as gangly as a scarecrow and only a third as graceful until he sat behind a drum kit and became elegance personified.
“It’s not the lightning you should be worried about. It’s the rain,” he corrected. “Water and electricity don’t get on too good.”
She took a long hit and let the smoke linger inside her lungs.
“On the contrary, Scare, water and electricity get on a little too well, that’s the problem.” She released her hit. “Come on, let’s do this. It’s Sanger’s birthday and I promised we were going to burn this motherfucker to the ground, just for him.”
Tom nervously looked around. “Where is the good detective, anyway? He’s still homicide, right?”
“Relax, Tommy,” she said, sitting next to him. “Sanger’s with my sweet husband at the beer tent. And honestly…” She held the joint to her lips for another hit. “Unless you’re killing for this shit weed you’ve been smoking? He doesn’t care.”
He laughed out loud and took the joint from her. “Good to know, Q. Goddamn, I like you married.”
She swung her legs to the current act’s closing number, relaxing into her buzz. “Me, too, Tommy. Me, too.”
When Tom had married the now Camilla St.
John-Wills, he had begged Q to try it on for size, drunkenly telling her at his wedding that, without a doubt in his mind, she was the type of girl who should be married. Q had stubbornly disagreed with him for exactly seven years, but now that she was a happily married woman of six months, she had to admit that he’d been right all along.
For the past eleven days, Q had been living in her own personal idea of heaven: Jazz Fest, pop-up gigs, and her husband happily eating Camilla’s magic cookies at her side, wherever she went, instead of working at the bar he owned, hell and gone from the Mid-City happenings of Jazz Fest. A month earlier, she had hatched a scheme to give a perfect birthday to the man responsible for her current state of happiness.
Detective Aaron Sanger had been partnered with her godfather, Ernst Gautraux, on the NOPD before Ernst had retired. He was also the reason she was still alive and her husband, Ben, wasn’t sentenced to life in prison in Angola. When Ben had been framed for three murders the previous fall, Sanger had stayed by her side during most of the ordeal, getting himself fired in the process, piecing together the evidence to prove Ben’s innocence, and protecting her from the crazed man that was after them both. She was more than indebted to him and she planned on spending most, if not all, of her life repaying that debt.
In the months that followed Ben’s release from prison and Sanger’s reinstatement on the force, the three had become close friends, despite having very little in common beyond enjoying each other’s company. Because the good detective’s birthday fell on the last day of Jazz Fest this year, Q had hatched a scheme to make the very biggest of deals out of it and thank him the best way she knew how: VIP treatment at The Fest and a special performance, just for him. Unfortunately, she’d quickly realized that her idea of a perfect birthday and Sanger’s idea of a perfect birthday were not remotely close to being the same. How someone could not enjoy happy crowds, walking around in the sweltering dust and heat, and listening to any kind of music you like, was beyond Q’s comprehension, but she was willing to give her new friend the benefit of the doubt.
The thunder started right as the last song of the current band’s set was coming to a close. Tom slid down off his seat on the road case to join the rest of the Beasts and Q stood up to take another look at the sky. A strong wind blew across the stage, instantly drying her sweaty clothes, and making her shiver. She felt a familiar weight on her hip and she wrapped her fingers through her husband’s hand. He bent down to nuzzle her neck with his mouth and she turned her head to kiss him. His white t-shirt clung to his lean frame, making the outline of the tattoo that covered his chest clearly visible through the damp fabric.
“Ben Bordelon, did you order this rain?” she asked.
He shook his head and handed her his beer, reaching up to retie his long, blond hair into a tighter ponytail.
“I did not.” He closed one eye and scanned the sky. “I figure you’ve got thirty minutes, max.”
“Damn it.” She looked around them. “Where’s Sanger?”
“About to be the proverbial stick in the mud,” Ben said, clearly disappointed.
“That good, huh?” She took a sip of beer, happy to discover that it was still fairly close to chilled. “You take him to see Ryan Adams over at Gentilly?”
As far as she could tell, Sanger seeing his favorite act play live had been the one thing he was actually looking forward to today. It was also the only thing that had kept him from leaving hours ago.
“I did, indeed.” He took back his beer. “A friend of his was the cop on duty and let us stand at mix position. Things were going great until these two girls flirted their way under the tent with us. They were all fucked up and way more interested in getting Aaron’s attention than listening to the set.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it was just Sanger’s attention they were trying to get.” She eyed him suspiciously, knowing full well the effect her husband had on most women.
He winked at her. “That’s my story, darlin’, and I am sticking to it.”
“So, what was the problem with these Sanger fangirls?” she asked, not sure why two drunk women hitting on her terminally single friend would be a bad thing.
“All they did was talk. Loudly,” he said, his gravelly voice fully annoyed. “And, our friend, Aaron, likes to be able to hear the lyrics. And his boy don’t sing too loud.”
“So much for my brilliant plan,” she grumbled, watching the first drops of rain begin to fall in the mud-caked grass outside the tent.
She called out to the technicians clearing the stage, “Piano to the left, not the center.” Turning back to Ben, she explained, “Charlie’s still on his center stage kick. Don’t mind me; I’m just the singer.”
“One of these days, you two are going to have to fight that out,” he said, having heard both ends of the argument numerous times.
“But it’s so much more fun to call him a diva and remind him that he’s overcompensating for his shortcomings.” She grinned up at him.
The tech approached her. “Look, Q, if you’re going to play, we’re going to have to skip soundcheck.” He scowled at the sky. “I wouldn’t do a lot of talking either. They just issued a tornado watch. Probably going to shut us down for at least an hour or two.”
“Fine. Let’s just do this.” She squeezed Ben’s hand. “See you on the other side.”
“Don’t get electrocuted. I have plans for that body of yours later.” He kissed her on the cheek before spanking the back of her shorts.
Q skipped to the upright piano at the front to the stage, her Converse already slipping on the rapidly condensing humidity. Charlie strolled over, carrying his trumpet.
“I hope Aaron appreciates this little surprise of yours,” he said. “These arrangements were a bitch to work out a horn part for. I wish you would just let me play my guitar.”
“Noted, Charlie.”
Charlie had always considered himself more of a guitar-god, than a trumpet player. She had wondered more than once if he really knew the magic that happened when he put his lips to a horn.
Q sat at the piano bench, deciding to truncate the big speech she’d planned, knowing that they had precious little time before they’d be rained out.
She nodded towards Front-of-House and spoke into the mic. “This set’s for Aaron Sanger. He doesn’t like our kind of music, so we thought we’d play his. Happy birthday, cowboy. Hit it, Tommy.”
Tom played four bars of a jazzed-up two-step beat and Q pounded out a bluesy rhythm on the piano, singing, “Baby, baby, baby, listen to what I say…”
JJ joined them, playing a funkier version of the original bass line. Charlie blew his horn, imitating what had once been a guitar part. And just like that, QT and the Beasts played a New Orleans Jazz-style version of Aaron Sanger’s favorite Buddy Miller song. She looked out at Front-of-House to see Sanger smile for the first time all day.
By the time they got to the halfway mark of their sixty-minute slot, the rain was coming down in earnest. The monitor engineer at the side of the stage circled his hand, signaling them to wrap it up.
Q decided to play the song she’d written for Sanger’s birthday on her own so that the crew could start battening down the stage, and the audio engineer would have fewer channels to worry about, while he covered up his rig.
She said into the microphone, “Go get dry, boys. I’ll take it from here. Yo, Sanger! Listen up, cowboy. This is your birthday present.”
She looked out through the drenching rain and started playing a simple, lilting waltz before singing:
A little rain may come
But that won’t matter none
A little rain may come
But it’ll pass on by
If you keep on the light
A wicked wind may howl
And try to strike us down
A wicked wind may howl
But you’ll stop its bite
If you keep on the light
As she hummed into the microphone during the bridge, her lips touched the meta
l and she got a little shock. She quickly backed her face away and played the melody on the piano instead, her fingers sticking to the moist keys.
A little rain may come
And a shadow may cross the door
A little rain may come
But it’ll pass on by
If you keep on the light
Because she couldn’t hum the outro without risking another electric shock and, also because she doubted she’d be heard over the rainstorm anyway, she closed her eyes and opened her mouth, wordlessly wailing the closing notes instead. She stood up from the piano to wave at the three dozen or so people entranced enough by the song to stand in the mud and the rain to watch it through to the end. As she did, a giant flash of lightning struck just overhead, turning the sky a brilliant and unnatural shade of green. Q ducked, instinctively covering her head with her hands.
She helped the tech push the piano to the back of the stage, gratefully accepting the towel he handed her. The Beasts had packed up in a hurry while she sang the last song and had already left to take cover. Q pulled on a plastic poncho and ran, splashing through the mud, to meet Ben and Sanger at the Front-of-House tent. Sanger’s hair was a mass of curls he struggled to control in the wind and the wet.
She shrugged. “Best I could do, being a lowly jazz musician and all.”
He grinned and settled his gun-metal grey eyes on hers, pulling her into a quick hug. “I don’t know what to say, Clementine. Nobody’s ever done something like that for me before.”
“Least I could do for the man who saved my life,” she replied. “Happy birthday, cowboy.”
“I’ve never heard that last one…” he started.
“Of course, you haven’t, you hayseed. I wrote it special. Just for you. Tell me the truth. Was it sad and country enough or did I fall short?” she asked.