by Cynthia Lott
The “mushroom haired” girl walked away from her date in a huff a little nuclear bomb continually exploding in tiny bounces on her head as she strode swiftly to the lady’s room. Her partner watched her leave, downed his drink and slouched back into his chair, fumbling for some peanuts in the bowl in front of him.
We sat for a while in silence and watched the people around us play out their evening – the laughter, enhanced by alcohol, brought energy and liveliness to the place. It was a welcome distraction to thoughts of a dismembered girl and a mutilated dancer. I thought about how most of the people in that club would never have to see a dead body, except for one in a coffin, dressed to life-like perfection. They would never have to see body parts splayed across a bed or a boy’s throat slit open. I envied them.
“Ms. Shapira, if I can’t convince you to dance with me then I’ll go dance with that lovely lady over there who’s been checking me out.” Roy gestured over to a woman in her late twenties with long, feathered black hair. She had been watching us for the past thirty minutes and was definitely flirting with Roy, sucking suggestively on her straw. I rolled my eyes. I was used to women flirting with Roy everywhere we went, but he was the kind of man that barely noticed their attention and seemed to rarely care when he did.
Roy was a gentleman in the truest sense of the word: holding doors open for women, letting them use his umbrella, giving up his seat on a bus, pulling their chair out in restaurants. A woman could fall easily for all of those good manners on top of his stunning good looks. But there was only one woman in his life besides me, and that was his dog, Sasha. As Sasha and I were the only two women who shared his bed, I frankly wasn’t too fussed about it.
He walked over to the woman’s table where she sat alone, and I watched the two of them move towards the dance floor as they spoke in low whispers. He pulled her close to him as “Love Hangover” began to play.
I felt trapped in a hangover of Carpenter’s presence, his feathers and messy death scenes.
He is foxy, seductive, charming. He has a lyrical voice and a soft touch when he caresses your face.
Perhaps it wasn’t so bad to meet your end with someone so compelling or at least handsome, with his white teeth and sensuous lips, his dark hair and deep brown eyes. And if you were under such a spell, were you aware that you were about to meet your death; and, if so, did a small part of you actually welcome it?
Maybe my mother met her own Thomas Carpenter, seducing her off of the Almonaster Bridge at two in the morning, his finger gesturing for her to come closer and closer to the edge. With the right formula, some deaths are welcomed.
Throughout my life, I played out my mother’s suicide over and over in my mind…the way I think it might have happened. I am never sure why my mother chose the Almonaster Bridge but it overlooks a canal that in the moonlight can be rather pretty with the light reflecting onto the water. When it’s raised for passing boats, it looks majestic and haughty and when it’s in normal position, humble and working-class.
It was the summer of 1952 and by the time my mother reached the middle part of the Almonaster at two a.m., she was beyond my father and me. Her mind had already tuned us out, shut us down hours before when she drove her large brown Buick to her destination. She left the car parked at the bottom, where the bridge begins, where the beams take form, and walked to the middle. At that time in the morning, it was quiet, and I doubt anyone noticed her anyway as she tied a Klaus & Sons Hardware Store rope along one of the steel guardrails.
She had only purchased it a day before. My father later found the receipt in her glove compartment, hidden behind a small empty brandy bottle. She was wearing her mother’s four sterling silver bracelets, and the sound of them clanking against the metal of the rails must have been comforting to her…that the work so anticipated was now finally being done.
She tied the other end of the rope around her thin neck, the fibers probably feeling hot on that summer evening, her blue silk blouse already sticking to her skin. Maybe there was a slight breeze blowing around her black skirt, wafting around her gardenia perfume and cooling her legs as she kicked off her black ballet flats, staring out over the canal. My mother had a fear of drowning, and I’m sure she felt a peace knowing that her feet would never touch the water. She had chosen her method of death and it was not going to involve canal submersion.
She would have been fully made up with foundation, powder, mascara, and lipstick, as she was always one to look after her appearance. God forbid someone should find her corpse without a dash of blush or a thin stroke of eyeliner. Did she imagine what we might think when we woke from our dreams, from our comfortable beds to find her gone? My father said he knew the moment he saw the empty drive way. He knew that if he were to ever wake up and find her car gone, she surely had put an end to it.
She was hanging from the bridge, a ghastly sight for the unfortunate passersby who thought at first she was a fake, a dummy or mannequin thrown over the bridge as a university prank. My father had to identify her body, and his only consolation was that she died a quick death. When my father was alive, I sometimes wanted to shake him and say, “We were duped. She was supposed to grow old with us, and she didn’t.”
When someone jumps off of a bridge, breaks their own neck and leaves you with the mess of their death, I feel like you have the right to cry as long and hard as you damn well please. My father didn’t seem to feel this way. He often hid tears behind handkerchiefs, newspapers, and books, anything that would hide his face from me. I never witnessed him have an emotional breakdown, a flat-out bawling fit on the round multi-colored rug in our living room, or an anger so fierce that it knocked the doors off of hinges. I wished that I had.
I turned towards the dance floor and watched Roy, finding myself pulled into the music and vibration. He was a sexy dancer, and I was growing jealous despite my best efforts. His dance partner slithered up close to him, her hand running down the front of his pants.
Why don’t you just blow him right there on the dance floor?
Turning away, I felt the heat rush through my face as I observed everyone moving to their own rhythm. I finished my second drink realizing that nobody liked a jealous girlfriend, if I could even call myself a girlfriend.
The giggling women were now dancing with some of the football guys, giving them hope for a lasting evening. A young man in his thirties was spinning around a woman with long blonde hair and lots of bangle bracelets. With each spin, her short fuchsia dress flared upwards like an umbrella, offering brief glimpses of her dark red panties. I closed my eyes and let the music play around me wishing for a moment that my father was there sharing a Sazerac. He had one before dinner every evening and, outside of the daily Schlitz, it had been his cocktail of choice.
“Look at all of them out there, Bren. They’re having a nice time. Life is short, Honey. Onwards and upwards. Relax, dance, let loose. You deserve it, you know. You work so hard. Hell, let it go for a night,” he would say, his elbows leaning back on the leather-padded bar.
When I turned back around to the bar to order another drink, there was something odd in front of me, something that hadn’t been there before. Sitting on the bar was a folded white napkin. As I opened up the corners, I saw illustrated on the white paper in black ink, five small birds in a tree, each one sitting on a different branch with three of the birds scratched out. I stared at it for a few moments and stood up, looking around.
Who could have slipped this by me while I sat here? I couldn’t have been so lost in my own thoughts that I didn’t notice someone standing close enough to leave it. How could I have closed my eyes for a few moments and missed this?
“Marcus, where did this come from?” I startled him as he mixed a martini.
“What…you mean the napkin? It came from that guy over there…only he’s not there anymore. Weird.” He pointed to an empty table in a dark corner.
He had been there…for how long?
A woman at the end of the bar called Marcus’s
name, asking for two dirty martinis. The cacophony of noises was drowning out our conversation, and I motioned for Marcus to step closer from behind the bar.
"Corrine…hold on a second, honey…give me two minutes.” He waved his hand at her. “Speak louder, Brenda…”
“Marcus, listen to me. This is very important. What did this man look like?”
“Awww hell. Let me see. He was a young guy….dark hair. Relax,
Brenda. He asked me to give it to you, so I did. What’s wrong?” He slid a drink over to another patron.
“Did you see him leave? Did he say anything else to you?”
“No. He just said, ‘Could you please give this to Brenda Shapira for me,’ and handed me the folded napkin. I didn’t even look at it. I don’t know. He looked sophisticated, had a slight accent…Italian maybe? He seemed pleasant enough. Knew your name. I thought he was a friend of yours or somebody interested in you. I’ve never seen the guy before. I got a million things going on back here so yeah, I really wasn’t paying him much attention. You know what I mean?”
“Are you sure he had an accent? How was he dressed?”
“Yeah, yeah, definitely an accent. He was wearing a white dress shirt and black pants…classy, not part of this crowd though.” His countenance grew increasingly serious as he wiped his hands on a kitchen towel.
“When did he give this to you?”
“Probably about twenty minutes ago, but I was busy behind the bar so I took it from him and put it back here until I got caught up with drinks. Like I said, I’ve never noticed him before. He kind of showed up and then disappeared. I don’t even know how long he sat over there. He never ordered anything. I swear I talked to him for like a second.”
I realized I was becoming more hysterical than I intended, my body visibly shaking. I motioned for Roy to join me. He whispered something to his dancing partner and slid away, leaning against the bar.
“What’s going on? You look stressed. Are you jealous of my dancing partner? I don’t think she’ll be the one coming home with me. She’s not that great of a dancer, anyway.” He smiled and caressed my face.
I was beyond jealousy and handed him the illustration.
“He left this for me. He knew my name. Look at it. You’re right. There are five birds drawn with three scratched out. Now he’s leaving me illustrations, Roy.”
Roy stared at the napkin and looked around.
“Brenda, are you sure this was him? If it was, we need to find this guy. Is he in here somewhere? When did this happen?”
“Yes, it was him. It was while my back was turned and you were on the dance floor. He gave the napkin to Marcus for me, distinctly mentioning my name. He’s gone now, but he was here and he was watching us as he sat over in that empty corner. Roy, this time he wasn’t wearing his mask and Marcus saw his face. Marcus also said he had an accent. Italian maybe. I knew it. I sensed he wasn’t from around here. The Venetian mask. His accent. Why is he here, Roy? And why did he give this to me?”
Roy looked at the napkin and back at me. “Is there a quieter area in this place?”
“Yeah, there’s a dining room. It’s closed for the night.”
“Let’s bring Marcus in there…we need for him to sketch this guy’s face before he forgets. Jesus, this place is a madhouse. Brenda, there are three birds marked off on here. Three. We’ve only found two victims so far. So who is this third person?”
* * *
Chapter Eight
In the short time since Claire’s murder, Colin Watkins seemed to have aged at least five years, his dark hair turning a peppery grey and his face displaying more wrinkles and frown lines along his thin lips and forehead. Once the host of the New Orleans socialite scene, he seemed to have shrunk a few inches shorter. His dark eyes were dull, looking both at me and past me. One would never guess that he had once been dubbed “The Sun King” akin to Louis XIV of France for his lavish parties and patronage of the arts. As he sat across from me at the station, he placed a card between the two of us, his hand shaking slightly. I felt a sense of relief that my father was never going to have to experience this…the zombie-like waltz of losing a child.
“I was going through some files…some accounts on my desk…and this must’ve slipped in between them. It fell out. Carmen always places my mail on my desk. This somehow got lost among other papers. Take a look at it. I think it’s from him,” Colin said as he drank his coffee and looked at me with intense eyes. I wished I had slipped some of Roy’s flask of rum into his coffee mug just to calm this man down. He definitely could have used it.
I opened the card. The front was simple and bore an illustration of a king cake with the words, “Happy Mardi Gras!” Inside was a brief note written in cursive black ink:
What happens in the Past shall always revisit us in the Present.
It will be lovely meeting your daughter. –T.C.
“There was no envelope with this? Where did Carmen find it?” I tried to hide my feeling of shock and discomfort, placing the card back down on the table.
“She said it was in a pile of mail sitting on our doorstep probably a few days before Claire was murdered. She jumbled it all together and placed it on my desk. There was no postal address or anything…only my name on the envelope. Here it is.” He slid a white envelope over to me. It simply stated, “Mr. Colin Watkins” on the front, again in the same cursive style and black ink.
“Mr. Watkins, we’re going to want to keep this. Are you sure this was the only one he left? Nothing more than this one?” “No…nothing. I searched everywhere. I can’t believe I missed
this. I don’t know this man, Detective. I’ve never met him in my life. Not that I can recall. I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. What on earth could I have done to this man to warrant the killing of my daughter?” Tears formed in his eyes. I placed the card in a plastic evidence bag and handed him a Kleenex.
Could he have prevented it? Probably not. But it would haunt him all the same.
“He’s mentioning the past. Something he’s linked to your family and to Claire in particular. You’re certain he doesn’t know anyone in your family, or would you know his family perhaps? Can you think of anyone that might be connected to this man?”
“He’s never been in my home before that night. I work with a lot of people. Over the years…God only knows how many people. Maybe it’s possible I came across him or his family at some point. I don’t know. But I would remember doing something so heinous to bring about revenge on my own child, Detective. I may have pissed some people off in my time but nothing that would make someone want to do this.” Colin wiped away a few tears, drying his hand on his pants leg.
“Let me look into this a bit further. In the meantime, I need for you to try to remember anything…any event that might have something to do with this man. It could be anything at all. No matter how small, let me know. How is Mrs. Watkins?” I handed him another tissue. I wanted to change the subject, to focus on the living people in his life.
“My wife is managing. She keeps to herself a lot, but we have someone who comes to our home to talk with her. Carmen, too. I have to say it’s been beneficial and I’m the last person to believe in psychiatrists, but it seems to be good for the both of them. I will try to remember everything I can and will ask Anna, too. Maybe she’ll remember something I can’t.” He rose from his chair. I wanted to keep him there a few moments longer, to be able to say something that would take his mind off of the situation; but it was clear from his body language that he was ready to leave the station.
“Thank you, Colin. Anything at all may be helpful. I ask that you keep this information from the media. We don’t want them upsetting the investigation.” I shook his hand and guided him towards the entrance.
“You have my word on that. I don’t want those bastards messing up anything. Jesus, it’s hard enough watching this shit on the news. Excuse my French. I’m sure you can understand. It’s been surreal.”
“I under
stand more than you know.”
He walked towards his car at the pace of an old turtle, shuffling his feet as he moved along. Bless him. I turned around and made my way towards Roy’s office. I placed the plastic bag on his desk, in front of him.
“A card from Carpenter, left for Colin Watkins to warn him about his daughter’s death. I feel bad for him…he looks terrible.” I slumped down in the chair across from him.
“Man, he just found this?” He slipped on some gloves, picked up the plastic bag and retrieved the card.
“Yeah. He has no idea what Carpenter meant by the note, but he’s going to ask his wife to see if she can remember anything. It’s clear by the card that Carpenter has some heavy resentment towards this family – at least enough to off their daughter, Roy.”
“This is bad. This might have been prevented had he found the card. Poor man. Do me a solid. Call David’s mom. She might have received something too. Let’s keep this investigation within our team, yes? I don’t want to bring anyone else into this but our station. They’ll understand at headquarters. I’ll dust this and see if there are any prints.”
I left the card with him and returned to my office. Flipping through my green notebook, I found the page with Gwendolyn Savoy’s phone number written in red ink.
Kicking off my black heels, I looked at the number and ruminated on how I would approach Mrs. Savoy. I only met her once at the station: a small thin woman, reminiscent of my own mother with long blonde hair, green eyes and high cheekbones. Perhaps had I seen my mother grow older, she would have looked similar to Gwendolyn: fine wrinkles, the veins slowly becoming more transparent under the skin of her hands, the age spots materializing on her face and arms.
Memories of my mother were scant but vivid: holding her hand at Godchaux’s Department Store, blowing out the huge wax candle shaped in the number nine on my birthday cake, eating homemade pralines, smelling the Noxema on her face, and cuddling up next to her back in the large bed my parents shared.