No Mardi Gras for the Dead

by D. J. Donaldson

  “They’re not real, are they?”

  “Sure they are.”

  She looked again. “I don’t think so.”

  Teddy made an odd clunking sound in this throat and the two alligators began swimming hard, pressing against the glass with their noses.

  “Another fellow and I are the ones that found them,” Teddy said. “We actually found four. I think the other two are in the aquarium on Canal. At least I hope so. Hate to think anything happened to them. Possession of a white alligator is considered good luck.”

  “Then why did you give them away?”

  Teddy shrugged. “We found them a short while after we first met and I figured that I already had all the good luck anybody deserved.”

  *

  * *

  An old gray-bearded black man weighed down with most of what he owned and accompanied by a black Labrador stepped into the recessed frontage of a dress shop. He put down his load and spread out a blanket for the dog to lie on. When the dog was stretched out and comfortable, the old man unfolded the chair he’d brought and settled in himself, a keyboard in his lap, a trumpet close at hand. In the shop behind him, a blond woman straightened the necklace on a mannequin in the window and came outside, locking the door behind her. She spoke a word to the old man and stroked the dog’s head before hurrying off down the street. A few feet away at a table for two in the window of the Royal Orleans Rib Room, Kit’s eyes were on Teddy.

  “Today was nice,” she said.

  “For me, too,” Teddy replied.

  “I liked your alligator story.”

  “One of the few you haven’t heard before.”

  “But the best.”

  “Really? I kind of like the one where the alligator bites down on a metal rod so hard, he drives two teeth through the top of his skull.”

  “That’s good, but it’s not in the same league with the white alligators.”

  “Well, what I said was true and it makes me worry about this case you’re working on. You should think about carrying a gun. It wouldn’t have to be a Dirty Harry model. There are nice little discreet bangers powerful enough to stop an alligator. Get one of those. I could teach you how to use it or you could go to the police firing range. I’m sure they could provide some instruction.”

  Kit wrinkled her nose. “I’m not a gun person. Besides, I’m not serving warrants or making arrests. I’m just turning over stones.”

  “Sometimes stones have snakes under them.”

  “Considering how long ago this murder happened, this snake probably hasn’t got any teeth left.”

  “I don’t even want one gumming you.”

  Kit’s attention was taken by a couple being seated across the room. He was a distinguished-looking man with streaks of gray in his hair. She was an elegant blonde wearing a pink silk jacket over a sequinned ivory shell complemented by an ivory skirt with a tulip hem. Kit probably wouldn’t have given them more than passing notice if the blonde hadn’t been Victoria French.

  As French sat down, she saw Kit and waved. Kit waved back. The sight of French gave the cap on Kit’s gremlin pit a hefty shove and the creatures inside worked at the resulting opening all through dinner.

  Hours later, with Lucky shut in the kitchen and Teddy’s heart beating against Kit’s naked breasts, the gremlins made their escape. Sex with Teddy was always a storm of white pleasure whose furious winds blew away all thought and worry, a tempest that turned flesh and sinew to quicksilver. But tonight, the winds blew weakly and there was no magic.

  Realizing that something was wrong, Teddy raised his head and looked at her. Seeing that her eyes were open, he lifted off her and dropped onto his back, breathing hard. “Have I done something wrong?”

  Kit turned on her side and bunched her pillow under her head so she could see Teddy’s face. She put her hand on his chest and lightly stroked the soft hairs there.

  “Where is this going?” she said. “Where are we going?”

  Teddy turned his head to look at her. “Does every ship have to have a destination?”

  “I used to think it didn’t, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “Why the concern all of a sudden?”

  “I don’t know exactly… things I’ve seen, things I think about… the future… what it will be like.”

  “What I said when you asked me why I gave the white alligators away… I meant that.”

  “Then it seems that there should be more to our relationship.”

  “Maybe there will be… eventually.”

  “I’m not sure that’s enough.”

  Teddy rose up and sat for a moment on the edge of the bed, his back to her. Kit sat up and pulled the covers to her chest. Teddy turned to her. “Didn’t you once tell me you broke off with what’s his name—David… somebody—because he was pressuring you into commitments you weren’t ready to make?”

  “That was then and this is now.”

  “Now you’re ready?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Kit, how can I respond to that? You’re asking me to make a decision you haven’t made yourself.”

  “I know.”

  Teddy turned and sat quietly on the edge of the bed, his hand rubbing the back of his head. Then he stood up. “I think I should go.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Kit said. “It’s so late.”

  He reached for his shirt. “I kind of like to drive at night. And you need some time to think without me around.”

  Silently, Kit watched him as he finished dressing and picked his hat off the dresser. He got his suit out of the closet and draped it over his arm. “If it’s okay, I’ll leave my other things in the bathroom… just in case. When you get this worked out in your mind, call me. I guess…”

  “What?”

  “I guess I should have kept at least one of those white alligators.”

  Then he was gone.

  As the front door shut behind him, Kit put Teddy’s pillow on her knees. She pressed her face into it and muttered, “Damn.”

  9

  Kit hurried to the phone, hoping to hear Teddy. She didn’t. But the voice was familiar.

  “Sorry to call on a Sunday… but the paper… the article said it would be all right.”

  The mystery caller from before, the one who said he’d been there when Francie O’Connor died. Kit pressed the phone tightly against her ear as though that might somehow make it harder for him to bolt. Her mouth was dry and her tongue was a wooden block. “I’m glad you called,” she said. Rather than risk pushing too hard too fast, she decided to let him take the lead.

  “When we last spoke,” the mystery man said, “you thought we should talk. I think so, too…. But… I can’t come to… I don’t want to be seen with you.”

  “You pick the spot, then.”

  There was no answer and Kit felt that she was about to lose him like last time.

  “Would you be willing to… come alone and not tell anyone about this until… afterward?” the caller asked.

  “Agreed.”

  “How do I know you’re not lying?”

  A reasonable question, Kit thought. And one that she had better answer convincingly. What to do? How to sound trustworthy? Staying with her earlier decision not to press, she said, “You don’t know if I’m lying. But if this is eating at you like I think it is, the only way you’re going to get relief is to take the chance.”

  Silence—but he was still there, obviously chewing on what she’d said. Her pulse was racing and she realized she was breathing unusually fast. She shifted the receiver so he couldn’t hear.

  Click!

  Her heart seemed to stop. In her mind, she saw the white flanks of a deer disappear into a dense thicket. Gone. She had lost him… again.

  She replaced the receiver, took a deep breath, and looked at the ceiling. Call origin. After his first call, why hadn’t she contacted the phone company and ordered call origin for her office and home phone? Then she would have had him. It wasn’t a mistake she
would make again. First thing Monday…

  She was sitting so close to it that the sound of the phone ringing again startled her.

  “You’re right,” the mystery caller said when she picked up and identified herself. “I’ll have to take a chance. I’m tied up today until late tonight. So I guess it’ll have to be tomorrow sometime.”

  “Why not tonight?” Kit said. She knew that she was pressing now but didn’t want to give him time to change his mind. Besides, his speech pattern was not as hesitant as before, so a little aggressiveness seemed safe.

  “I suppose we could,” he said. Then after a short pause, he added, “Yes. That would actually be good for me… quieter… no one to… yes, tonight. Come to the main entrance of the Aquarium of the Americas at twelve-thirty tonight.”

  “How will I know—”

  He hung up.

  With her mind still grappling over what to do about Teddy and now this new development, Kit was in no mood to go to Adrian Iverson’s to smell roses. But she had promised.

  Sabine Road was across the river near Waggaman, which created a distinct dilemma for Kit. The quickest route was out Jefferson Highway and over the Huey P. Long Bridge. But that old bridge was so high and its two lanes in each direction so narrow it scared the pants off her to go over it. So she never did.

  The only other choice was to go downtown, use that bridge, and fight all the construction traffic associated with the new West Bank Expressway.

  Deciding that it was foolish to be so frightened of a bridge that thousands of cars used every day, she turned right on St. Charles, took another right on Louisiana, and headed for South Claiborne, which, eventually, becomes Jefferson Highway.

  As she drove, she thought about her appointment at the aquarium. Had that been smart? Suppose Teddy was right. This could be one of those rocks with a snake under it. But if this was a setup, would the caller have acted so hesitant to meet at all? Not likely. Then, too, she had been the one to suggest meeting tonight. He had wanted to wait. No, everything was fine.

  Ahead, a car with a bumper sticker that read YOU GET HIS FAZER, SCOTTY, I’LL GET HIS WALLET signaled for a right turn. She slowed and the Trekkie angled into the parking lot of a K & B. Fine? Sure, everything was fine—except for her love life, which was not only not fine but bordered on abysmal. Maybe she should have kept quiet last night. But Teddy had noticed that something was wrong. How would she have explained? A headache? He certainly would have spotted that for what it was.

  And so it went until she turned onto the Huey P. entrance ramp. For the time it took to cross, there would be no extraneous thoughts, only utter concentration and a peculiar fluttering in her stomach, which was already beginning. The ground below dropped away and the road climbed toward the sky. She could see on the fringes of her concentration, toy barges plying the café au lait waters of the Mississippi far below. Thankfully, the railroad track separating inbound and outbound traffic was empty. Too cautious to speed across the bridge, Kit stayed in the slow lane, which put her on the outside, where all that separated her from empty space was a thin concrete curb and a flimsy railing.

  She was nearing the highest point now and each turn of the car’s wheels tightened the spring in her belly. Soon it would be all downhill and the river would be getting closer instead of farther away. Damn, but these lanes were narrow. She saw a black smear of rubber on the curb, three bars in the railing missing. Subconsciously fearing that the spot might reach for another victim as she passed, she let the car drift to the left.

  The blare of a horn.

  Startled, she overcompensated to the right, barely avoiding the dreaded curb but scaring the living hell out of herself. Where had that car come from?

  She reached the West Bank drained and angry at how she had let the bridge control her.

  Sabine Road ran south, into a sparsely populated, soggy forest of skinny trees with Spanish moss hanging languidly from their skeletal branches. A mile from Sabine’s origin with highway 90, a driveway appeared on her right. Flanked on each side by a curved iron fence set into lush green grass, it was a welcome human sign in a landscape more suited to things with tails and fur.

  She turned in and paused at the mailbox, which was set into a brick pier supporting the fence. Under the mailbox was a brass plaque that said IVERSON. Satisfied that this was the right place, she nudged the gas.

  Inside, the drive was bordered by full-flowered crepe myrtles large enough to shade the azaleas planted at their bases. On each side, the gloomy forest pressed against the bright swath that had been cut through it, patiently waiting, it seemed, for Iverson’s lawn mower to throw a rod and his weed eater to cough up its bearings.

  The drive made a gentle turn to the left, then resumed its former course, coming eventually to a duckweed-covered bayou nearly fifty yards across. She stopped at the foot of the bridge spanning the bayou, unable to proceed because a section of the bridge about five yards long was pointing up and down the bayou instead of across it. Beside the road was a small metal box on a pole. Under the box was a sign: CALL FOR ADMITTANCE.

  She got out of the car and opened the door on the metal box, which contained a telephone. She lifted the receiver and punched in the number displayed on another sign inside. On the first ring, Adrian Iverson answered.

  “Adrian, this is Kit.”

  “Right,” Iverson said. “I’ll let you in.”

  She heard a groan of gears and the misaligned section of road slowly began to move. By the time she got back behind the wheel, it was only another minute or so before she was able to proceed.

  The crepe myrtles continued on the other side of the bridge, but instead of forest beyond them, there was a well-tended lawn. The limits of the estate were marked by more brick piers and iron fencing that did not stop at the bayou but extended all the way across it. Thirty yards from the bridge, a service road went off to the left, toward four large greenhouses.

  The main house lay directly ahead, a delightful sprawling white two-story with green shutters that looked as though it had been lifted from The Battery in Charleston by a hurricane and deposited here. The front of the house was dominated by four huge square columns that served as piers for the green wrought iron enclosing the upper and lower porches. Atop the metal mansard roof, which was painted dark green, was a widow’s walk surrounded by more green iron fencing and containing a whimsical windowed cupola topped with a copper dome. Iverson was waiting on the front steps.

  “Awfully good of you to come,” he said as she got out of the car.

  He was dressed in brown slacks and a yellow knit golf shirt with a brown collar.

  “I didn’t have the bridge open for you because I get a lot of folks driving into the property just to see what’s back here. Please come in.”

  He stood aside and Kit stepped into the entry foyer. Despite having once read that it was considered cheeky among the rich to compliment them on anything they owned, Kit could not help saying, “Adrian, this is wonderful.” The huge foyer was lined by dark wood gleaming as though oiled. On one wall, the wood was intricately worked over a large fireplace. At the rear, a glistening staircase began between two imposing fluted columns and rose to a landing bathed in the light from a massive stained-glass window whose brilliant colors were woven into a theme of morning glories and dragonflies.

  “Come on back to my study,” Iverson said, “where we can talk.”

  Foyer… study, these words were too ordinary to describe Iverson’s home. On the far wall of his “study,” between two huge oval-topped windows magnificently draped and swagged, was a fireplace with a white marble mantel and a Chinese-red plaster overmantel. A recess in the overmantel contained an English landscape painting depicting a hunting dog on point. In front of the fireplace, the veined marble floor was covered by a needlepoint area rug with black and white stripes reminiscent of the pattern on a zebra. Facing each other across the zebra rug were a pair of brocaded wingback chairs. On the left wall, tall bookcases made of teak or som
e other black wood were decorated with six green marble columns with gilded acanthus capitals. To the right was a gun cabinet and half a dozen rifles. From somewhere, Kit heard Westminster chimes strike the hour.

  Iverson waved her to one of the brocaded chairs. “What can I get you? I’ve got about anything you could name.”

  “I’m fine, Adrian. Are you a hunter?”

  “Not at all. I like guns. I guess most men do. But I believe they should be used only on paper targets. Since you won’t let me get you anything, perhaps you’d like a tour instead.”

  “I would.”

  “The best place to start is on the roof.”

  Kit followed Iverson back into the foyer and up the great staircase to the second floor, where a narrower version of the stairs continued to the cupola Kit had seen coming in. Surprisingly, even though it sat fully exposed to the sun, the cupola was as cool as the rest of the house, a feat accomplished by a large air-conditioning duct in its ceiling. Iverson opened the door and Kit stepped onto the deck, into air superheated by the sun and the reflection of its energy from the metal roof underneath.

  “Obviously, it’s much nicer up here around dusk, when the sun isn’t blazing so,” Iverson said.

  Kit walked over to the waist-high fence. “Watch your hands,” Iverson warned. “That metal is probably hot.”

  He came up beside her. “As you can see, we’re actually on an island. The bayou you came over leads in both directions to a large cypress swamp that surrounds us on three sides.”

  Hand shading her eyes, Kit followed the sweep of Iverson’s hand. A roar echoed from the swamp.

  “Bull alligator,” Iverson explained.

  Kit shuddered.

  “Are you all right?” Iverson asked.

  “I’m fine. I once had a bad experience with an alligator, is all.”

  “What happened?”