Skeleton Letters

by Laura Childs

  Now it was Marilyn Casey’s turn to vent. “If you really want to know, I’m about to go plumb crazy! I’ve made so many notes and written down so many ideas, I don’t know where I’m going anymore!”

  Tandy took a step back. “That’s good for a writer, huh?”

  “I don’t know,” said Marilyn. “Maybe.” She looked both excited and frustrated.

  “How can we help?” asked Carmela. Probably, Marilyn had a good reason for stopping by today, right?

  “Notebooks,” said Marilyn, holding up her hand, as if asking for permission to speak. “I need at least two more notebooks.” Her eyes lasered across the displays at the front of the store, but didn’t find what she was looking for. She looked fretful, producing a set of deep, vertical furrows right between her brows. “You carry that sort of thing, right?”

  “We sure do,” said Carmela. She led Marilyn back to a pecan highboy that had been shoehorned between the paper baskets and the flat files, and said, “We’ve got tablets, spirals, leather bound, and, let’s see, even some notebooks with recycled paper.” She pulled a couple of notebooks down and handed them to Marilyn. “These have lined paper, I think that’s what you probably want. Oh, and if you’re interested in decorating the covers with fabric or paper, we also stock plain chipboard notebooks.”

  Marilyn balanced a notebook in each hand as if she were carefully weighing the merits of each one. Finally she held one out and said, “This orange spiral is perfect. I’ll take two.”

  “Good choice,” said Carmela. The orange spiral notebooks were her personal favorite, too. “Anything else? Pens? Maybe a Rapidograph?”

  Marilyn blinked at her. “What’s a Rapidograph?”

  “They’re neat little pens,” said Carmela, grabbing one from a display. She pulled the cap off and said, “See? It’s a pen with an extremely fine tip. Artists and designers use them mostly, but if I’m writing a longer piece, I use a Rapidograph because it practically flies across the page.”

  “That’s for me,” Marilyn enthused. “Two of those, please.”

  Carmela popped everything into a brown paper bag with handles, slapped on a colorful crack-and-peel Memory Mine label, and asked, “Anything else?”

  Marilyn sidled up to the counter. “Do you know anything more?” she asked in a low voice. “About the murder investigation?”

  “Not really,” said Carmela.

  “Because,” continued Marilyn, “I heard you were very close to one of the detectives.” She gave a sheepish shrug and said, “At least that’s what Tandy told me.”

  “I’m close to him,” said Carmela, “but that doesn’t mean I’m close to the investigation.”

  “Too bad,” said Marilyn.

  Carmela tapped an index finger against the bag. “Too bad is right,” she agreed. “But maybe . . .”

  “What?” asked Marilyn, leaning in closer.

  “I might have something in the next day or two. There’s something . . . someone . . . I want to check out.”

  “Really?” said Marilyn. She seemed incredulous.

  “Baby . . . Baby Fontaine . . . asked me to kind of look into things. Since Byrle was a really dear friend of hers.”

  “And you do this kind of thing?” asked Marilyn. “Investigate?”

  Carmela gave a reluctant nod. “It would appear so.”

  “Then you’re the lady in the middle of it all,” breathed Marilyn. “Seeing as how you were also a kind of witness.”

  “Not much of a witness,” Carmela admitted. “I didn’t even get a look at the killer’s face.”

  “Because he wore some kind of cloak.”

  “That’s right,” said Carmela.

  “Still,” said Marilyn, “it’s wonderful you’re trying to untangle this thing. As a kind of . . . good citizen Samaritan.” Marilyn’s eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. “Kudos to you, girl. Go for it.”

  “And if I find out anything,” said Carmela, “I will let you know.”

  “Bless you,” said Marilyn.

  Carmela was about to wander back to her crafters when Ava called.

  “Carmela!” Ava sobbed. “You’re not going to believe what just happened!” There were more heartrending sobs, then she gasped out, “They just told me . . . oh, I can’t even . . .”

  “Ava? What’s wrong?”

  “Everything!” came Ava’s anguished voice.

  Carmela had no clue what Ava was upset about, but immediately asked, “Are you in any physical danger?”

  “No,” Ava gasped again. “It’s just that . . .”

  “Drew Gaspar didn’t drop by, did he?” asked Carmela. For some reason, an image of Gaspar had suddenly popped into her head. Gaspar pressuring Ava for . . . something.

  There were a few seconds of silence, and then Ava said, “No. But I really need to . . .”

  “Hang on, honey, I’m coming right over,” said Carmela. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “Hurry!” sobbed Ava.

  Carmela ducked out the back door, breezed down the cobblestone back alley that was already garbed in twilight, and flew the two blocks to Ava’s shop. For some reason she kept thinking about Drew Gaspar. A little smarmy, a little bit slithery.

  Carmela pulled the front door of Juju Voodoo open forcefully as she plowed her way in. Her caramel-colored hair was tousled from the wind, and her cheeks were flushed from her half-walk, half-run over. “What’s wrong?” she demanded of Ava, who was standing behind her counter, looking angry and stunned.

  “You’re not going to believe this!” Ava wailed.

  Carmela put a hand on her chest, trying to still her thready breathing. “Try me.”

  Turned out, Gaspar hadn’t dropped by to see Ava at all. But someone had delivered a bombshell.

  “I’ve been kicked off the Angel Auxiliary at St. Tristan’s!” said Ava, looking positively stricken.

  “You what?” Carmela blinked, even as she warned herself not to get too upset. After all, she’d just broken a land speed record for this?

  “It’s so unfair,” Ava moaned.

  Carmela gazed across a shop counter that was piled high with a jumble of shrunken heads, plastic skulls, voodoo potions, and evil eye necklaces, and said, without batting an eye, “You’re right, it’s terribly unfair.”

  Ava sniffled into a rumpled hanky. “From what Camille told me, it was all Rain Monroe’s idea. Rain spearheaded the movement against me!”

  “Who’s Camille?” asked Carmela. Best to get the players straight in her head before she tried to sort things out.

  “Camille’s the head of the Angel Auxiliary,” said Ava. “She called me, like, five minutes ago.” Ava sniffled. “Well, maybe ten minutes ago now.”

  “Okay,” said Carmela.

  Ava continued to leak tears. “Camille promised to plead my case in front of the board of directors, but . . .” Ava just shrugged and looked lost. “Who knows?”

  “And you say this was Rain’s idea?” It sounded like the kind of sheer nastiness Rain Monroe delighted in perpetrating.

  “Yes!” Ava wailed. “She must really hate me!”

  Carmela fumed inwardly. She knew how much Ava loved her work at St. Tristan’s. And wondered what had prompted Rain’s nasty maneuver. Was the board worried that Ava was somehow connected to Byrle’s murder? Was the board genuinely disturbed that Ava owned a voodoo shop? Was Rain Monroe just a rabid nutcase? Or, Carmela wondered, had she herself provoked Rain, and firing Ava was just petty retribution?

  “You know what?” said Carmela, forcing herself to sound upbeat. “This is all going to work out.”

  Ava picked up a beige linen voodoo doll marked with various body parts. “You think?” She toyed with a long red pin.

  Carmela gave a warm smile. “Sure I do.” Maybe I do.

  Ava still didn’t look convinced. “But what can we . . . ?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Carmela told her. “I’ll figure something out. I’ll speak to the board or have Babcock explain about t
he investigation or whatever.” She squared her shoulders and said, “I’ll go talk to Rain myself if I have to.”

  “You’d do that for me?” Ava gave her a look filled with puppy-dog adoration.

  “Of course, I would. I can be very persuasive when I want to be.”

  Ava gave a final sniffle, picked up a can of Diet Coke and took a sip, then said, “Thanks. I feel better now.”

  “Sure you do.”

  “This thing just came zooming out of left field.”

  “Bad new . . . tough news . . . is always like that,” said Carmela. “You never get a chance to prepare yourself for the big disappointments in life. You just get . . . gob-smacked.”

  “And just when things were going so well.” Ava glanced back toward her reading room, where a customer, a woman in an expensive-looking camel-colored suit and cape, was just getting up to leave.

  Carmela caught her drift. “You hired Madame Blavatsky?”

  “I sure did,” said Ava. “And I have to say, my customers adore her. She’s a very gifted psychic.”

  “Maybe we should go back and take a little sip of psychic energy,” joked Carmela. “It might be better than chugging a can of Red Bull.”

  They walked past life-sized skeletons, shelves of saint candles, colorful bags of love charms, voodoo jewelry, and potions in purple bottles.

  “Sorry the shop is such a mess,” Ava apologized. “We’re hot and heavy into inventory. Everything’s all moved around.”

  To Carmela, Ava’s place didn’t look one bit different. It was always a mishmash of skull earrings, candles, potions, evil eye necklaces, T-shirts, and various Halloween items. Which, of course, was its charm. Today, for instance, a large furry bat with a six-foot wingspan peered from dark rafters overhead.

  Madame Blavatsky gave a welcoming smile as they entered the little octagonal reading room. She was sitting at a small, round table with her trusty crystal ball, and was all glitzed up in a shimmery silver blouse, floor-length midnight-blue skirt with silver threads running through it, and a couple of dozen chunky silver bracelets and rings flashing on her hands. Carmela managed a peep at the madame’s shoes. Yup, those were silver, too.

  “How’s it going?” Carmela asked, trying for low-key friendly.

  “Very well,” said Madame Blavatsky. Her fingers skittered over her crystal ball, then closed around it. “You’re interested in a reading?”

  “Maybe,” Carmela hedged. Truth be told, she wasn’t a big believer in tarot, the I Ching, and the like. Wasn’t any sort of believer in prognostication.

  “You want to know what’s going to happen tonight?” Madame Blavatsky asked. “When you go talk to that man?”

  Her words stopped Carmela dead in her tracks. “Um . . . what?”

  “The little adventure you have planned for tonight,” said Madame Blavatsky. “You want to peer into the future? Try to pierce the veil of space and time?”

  “Well . . . sure,” said Carmela. “Why not?” She let loose a low chuckle, but the hair on the back of her neck was standing straight up and prickling like crazy. She wanted to yell out loud to herself, Calm down, there’s no reason to get nervous. No spirits or otherworldly beings are at work here. This all falls into the category of stupid parlor trick. Although, for some reason, she wasn’t quite believing any of that at the moment.

  “Oh,” Madame Blavatsky said to Ava, seeing the confusion on her face. “She hasn’t told you yet.”

  Ava turned dark, questioning eyes on Carmela and said, “Told me what?”

  Chapter 14

  RAIN pelted down in juicy splotches as Carmela navigated her car through the dark city. Overhead lights and neon signs cast test patterns of light on her windshield. Ava sat cross-legged in the passenger seat, the defroster swirling her hair into a tangled Medusa-do as it worked overtime to keep the windows defogged.

  “When were you going to tell me about this mysterious foray to visit Brother Paul?” asked Ava.

  “I was going to tell you after you calmed down,” said Carmela. “After you got over your initial shock of being booted out of the Angel Auxiliary.”

  But Ava was still smarting and filled with emotion. “It felt awful,” she said, wringing her hands, “almost like I’d been fired from a job. And, you know, I’ve never been fired from anything in my whole entire life!”

  “Never?”

  “Well, once I worked at the corn factory over in Hamilton. After about two hours of chucking cobs into the husker I realized it wasn’t the career path I wanted to pursue. Still, when I left, it was by mutual agreement.”

  “You agreed you didn’t want to work there anymore,” said Carmela.

  Ava giggled. “And they agreed I wasn’t very good at chucking cobs.”

  “I can understand that,” said Carmela, as they splashed through an enormous puddle.

  “This much rain is just plain crazy,” said Ava, peering out. Lookit, your wipers can barely keep up.”

  “It’s a deluge, all right,” said Carmela. “Thank goodness we’re past hurricane season.”

  “Seeing this much rain just brings back bad memories,” said Ava, suddenly looking morose again.

  Carmela squinted through her windshield as she negotiated a turn onto St. Bernard. “Of Katrina, yeah.” The entire city had been smacked down by the hurricane. And Carmela, doing her very small part in the recovery, had spent months and months helping customers dry out and salvage soggy photos and important documents.

  “I hope this rain isn’t heralding some kind of bad luck,” commented Ava.

  “Have you been listening to Madame Blavatsky’s predictions?”

  “I’m, like, being serious here,” said Ava. “The lady is relevant. She possesses some very keen insights.”

  Carmela wasn’t buying it. “You think?”

  “Oh yeah, she’s definitely in touch with the great beyond. She knew you were going to ask me to help spy on Brother Paul tonight.”

  “Maybe she didn’t divine it,” said Carmela. “Maybe you just happened to mention that we’d run into him and she made a lucky guess. Sometimes luck is a dandy stand-in for intuition.”

  “Maybe,” said Ava, scratching her head. “But I’ll tell you one thing. My customers love her. Missy Lafourche has been in three times this week alone.”

  “Good for business,” Carmela murmured. “I don’t know how good it is for Missy.”

  “Some people just like to know what’s around the next corner,” said Ava.

  “And I’m happy just to see what’s directly in front of me,” said Carmela.

  They whooshed down Paris, past a row of wrought-iron gaslights strung out like glowing rosary beads. Carmela didn’t know if it was an optical illusion caused by the rain and fog, but it felt like she was entering some ethereal magical realm.

  And that lasted for about three more minutes, until she turned into the parking lot of the Storyville Outreach Center. She slowed to a halt as a large, ramshackle building that had once been a warehouse loomed in front of them. A few rusted and pockmarked cars sat willy-nilly in a muddy parking lot. Rain continued to pound down.

  “This is it?” said Ava. Her upper lip was curled in disgust, distaste evident in her voice. “It looks awful. Like a cootie factory.”

  “It’s a soup kitchen,” said Carmela, unsnapping her seat belt. “It’s not supposed to replicate a plush dining alcove at Antoine’s. Stands to reason a place that feeds the homeless is going to look a little rough around the edges.”

  “But if it looks this nasty,” said Ava, pulling herself out of the car, “how bad is it going to smell?”

  Turned out, not so great.

  Pushing their way through the double doors of Storyville Outreach, they were met with the mingled odor of wet clothes, burned coffee, and beef stew. Luckily, the stew was the more prevalent top note.

  “I guess they’re just serving dinner,” said Ava. All around them, men and women were picking their way toward long trestle tables. They looked tire
d, downcast, and weatherbeaten.

  “Hungry?” said Carmela.

  Ava gave a tight shake of her head. “Not really.”

  “Oh hey,” said Carmela, noticing Brother Paul acknowledge their grand entrance. “Looks like we’ve been spotted.”

  “What do you think gave it away that we’re not exactly in the homeless category?” asked Ava. “Your Louis Vuitton bag or my Ralph Lauren jacket?”

  “Hard to say,” said Carmela, as Brother Paul’s wary eyes continued to home in on them from across the room. Then he whispered something to an assistant and headed directly for them.

  “Peace be with you,” said Brother Paul, as he greeted them. Tonight he was dressed civilian style. Black longsleeved shirt, baggy blue jeans, ragged tennis shoes. His thin gray hair was combed straight back, and his dark eyes remained as piercing as ever.

  “You remember us?” asked Carmela.

  Brother Paul tilted his head sideways, as if he were deep in thought.

  “We met the other day,” said Carmela. “In the basement of St. Tristan’s Church.”

  “And that must be why you were sent to me,” murmured Brother Paul. “To help serve in our ministry.”

  His words lit up Ava. “Serve?” she squawked. “You mean . . . serve dinner?” She uttered the word dinner as if she’d been asked to dish up dog poop.

  Brother Paul gestured toward the rows of tables. “I have a hungry and weary flock tonight.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Ava. She put a hand on her hip and twisted her body. “You want us to be, like, waitresses?” She looked horrified.

  The beginnings of a smile flitted across Brother Paul’s stern face. “No, no,” he told her. “First we say a few prayers of thanksgiving, then our flock will proceed through our rather democratic cafeteria line.”

  “Maybe we could make this little venture reciprocal,” said Carmela, eager to lob a few questions at Brother Paul. “We help you, then you help us.”

  “Perhaps so,” said Brother Paul. He crooked an index finger and they followed him as he threaded his way through an orderly layout of tables, then through a swinging door and into a large industrial kitchen.

  “Whoa,” said Ava. “Big place.” Storyville Outreach may have looked shabby from the outside, but the kitchen, with its secondhand stainless steel restaurant counters and shelves, fairly gleamed. Enormous silver pans bubbled atop two large industrial stoves and at least a dozen people, all garbed in white, bustled to and fro in the hot, steamy environment.