Luci gave a slight shudder, one echoed around the table in varying levels of revulsion. Past time to change the subject to one nearer and dearer to her thoughts.
“Speaking of panting,” she began. “I was talking to Lila—”
“How is your mother?” Miss Hermi asked, her anxious expression belying the friendly inquiry.
Luci grinned. “The same. She—”
Miss Theo patted her hand. “We all have our cross to bear.”
Miss Hermi and Miss Weena nodded. Four gazes drifted toward the fireplace mantel and the row of pictures marching across the surface. Luci was the only one of them to have a Seymour mother, but she shuddered with her aunts at the grim, sensible mother faces casting long shadows over the ineffectual Seymour men they’d married.
Luci pushed back her chair and went to study the pictorial genealogy, a gallery that didn’t include her paternity. Was her father the key to her not-quite-perfect family fit? To her split personality? Every other Seymour had a Seymour father to look at, to blame for their mother. Lila wouldn’t talk, so somehow the aunts must be persuaded to spill the right beans. A Seymour woman could always be counted on to spill some beans, just not always the right beans.
“Is my father—” she turned back to her aunts. Their reaction was interesting. All three pairs of eyes widened, then narrowed and were directed toward their empty cereal bowls.
After a long, awkward pause, Miss Weena said, “He was a lovely man.”
Was? “Lila said he lives here in New Orleans.”
Miss Theo looked far too innocent. “Did she? Well, I suppose he might. He was a soldier back then, so we just assumed...”
“Cut a lovely figure in his uniform,” Miss Hermi said, hastening to fill the hanging pause left by Miss Theo. “I expect the pictures are still in the attic—”
Two irate stares cut her off in mid-sentence.
“Or...not,” she finished feebly.
That subterfuge was alien to them was obvious by how bad they were at it. Had Lila gotten to them first? Why would they back Lila up though? She was the female family black sheep, first for getting pregnant and then for taking Luci away from them. She should have, Luci realized, come back sooner. There was at least one deep spot in the shallow Seymour waters.
She pretended not to notice the worried glances that passed between them, but it was hard not to notice when they stood up and formed a row in front of her.
“What?” She looked from one face to the other, seeking enlightenment that might not ever come. It was obvious they were up to something.
“It just won’t do.” Miss Theo picked up the edge of the caftan that Luci had borrowed from Miss Weena. Miss Hermi and Miss Weena both nodded agreement as they circled Luci like vague, charming vultures, their buns bobbing eager approval. “Something in black?”
“Black?” Luci wasn’t sure she wanted to know what was coming, but with Seymour fatality, she knew there was no way to avoid it.
Miss Hermi smiled. “To get the police, Luci dear.”
“Police?” Luci blinked, but their sweet faces didn’t alter one whit. “Police.” They nodded encouragingly. Luci pondered for a beat, then agreed. “Definitely black.”
Mickey would certainly start mourning when he saw her. Might as well beat him to it. But first she needed to outmaneuver her aunts.
The door to the attic creaked when Luci pushed it open. Behind her she could hear Miss Weena calling her. She leaned out to call, “Be right down!” then slipped through the door and closed it. And opened it again before she passed out from lack of oxygen. The heat was past oppressive, bordering on abusive. It was a stale and cloying wet blanket that set itself against her need to hurry. But despite the discomfort, there was a kind of magic in the murky semi-dark. Attics were magic and mysterious places in all the best books, where unexpected things could be counted on to happen. Luci had never been immune to magic. That this particular attic might hold the key to her past only heightened the sensation that she’d crossed more than just a wooden threshold to arrive here.
On the other side of that threshold she heard the insistent trill of her aunts and, with a sigh, turned on the lights and drove the magic into the far corners, leaving an ordinary attic with an assortment of boxes and trunks and a lot of shoeboxes. More than a lot, she noted with a grin. The aunts must have decided to challenge Imelda Marcos’s position as the Queen of Shoes.
Among the trunks, she found her mother’s. It had sat at the foot of her mother’s bed until they left town so many years ago. She did a cobweb check and was surprised to find her path relatively free of sticky obstructions. The floor was dusty, so she crouched in front of the trunk and teetered for a moment until she found her balance again. Her elbow bumped one shoebox tower and sent it toppling, but she didn’t let the shower of paper that erupted from the boxes distract her.
Now that she was here, she felt a strange reluctance to disturb the past. The musty smell of damp and old assailed her nostrils as her feelings swirled in uncertain patterns. Did she want to do this? She’d been so angry with Lila for deceiving her about her father that she hadn’t stopped to think about how it might affect her. What if she found him and didn’t like him? What if he was as annoying as her mother? What if—
She stopped, trying to avoid the thought, but it came anyway.
What if he didn’t like her?
“This could be such a bad idea,” she told the boxes.
She could walk away now. She hadn’t crossed any “points of no return” yet. Once she saw a face, had a name, it would be harder to walk away. Unless she’d already passed that point? She looked at the lid and knew she couldn’t leave it alone. If she did, her aunts would take her choice away. For whatever reasons their busy and confusing brains had conjured up, they didn’t want her to know who her father was. It was her right to know—even if she didn’t act on that knowledge.
The trunk wasn’t locked, but it resisted opening after so many years. She had to hold it with one hand while she shone the light in.
On top was a framed picture of her mother and a man. Luci reached for the picture with hands that trembled, then let the lid close again. She took a deep breath, then looked at the photograph. It was old and a bit fuzzy. Whoever had been holding the camera wasn’t good with it. Their clothes—Lila’s the worst the sixties had to offer, and her companion’s the uniform Miss Hermi had sighed over—were in the light, leaving their faces in shadow. His was even harder to see than Lila’s because of his hat. Only his jaw line, strong and well-defined, gave any sense of his face.
Luci traced that jaw. “Are you my father?”
In the distance, she heard Miss Weena call again. Luci sighed, then turned her attention to the papers she’d knocked over.
“Dollar bills?” A shoebox full of dollar bills? A quick check of a few more boxes indicated they all contained bills, not shoes. “What? Now they’re afraid of banks and large bills? Oh my.”
She finished and turned to leave, the photograph tucked under her arm. Later. She’d deal with it and all those unsettling feelings it stirred up...later.
It was easy for Mickey to persuade his partner, Kevin Delaney, to take their break at Cafe du Monde. Delaney was always happy to go where the fat content was high.
Open twenty-four hours to locals and tourists, it served its famous cafe au lait, a strong chicory and milk-laced coffee, and beignets, square doughnuts fried in oil and liberally doused with powdered sugar. Sitting under the canopy, there was always the chatter of people to provide counter-point to the plaintive ballads of the jazz musicians plying their trades for tips, while overhead, slowly spinning fans moved the humid air enough to provide an illusion of cool.
“You want the last beignet?” Delaney asked, his hand hovering over it.
Mickey shook his head, his hand cupping the cooling coffee as Delaney snagged a lone golden square. Idly Mickey wondered how coffee could cool when it was so damn hot. It was easier, more comfortable to think about c
offee than to dwell on last night.
“I guess that means you don’t want another order?” Delaney made it a hopeful question. He was a big man with a large, shaggy head of hair, a barrel chest and gentle brown eyes.
Mickey looked at him in resignation. “What do you care? You know you’ll eat them all anyway.” Delaney gave him an injured look and Mickey sighed. “Fine. I’ll take another coffee.” He’d need to keep the caffeine level in his blood high if he were going to get through the day. The headache had survived the night.
Delaney placed their order, then turned to look at Mickey. “You really need to lighten up, Ross. You’re gonna have a heart attack.”
A gleam of humor lit Mickey’s glum expression. “You’re telling me to lighten up? After you just scarfed six beignets?”
Delaney patted his bulk. “I have a large frame to maintain. Unlike you, my anal retentive friend. You worry the details too much. Get some perspective, step back and look at the big picture once in awhile.”
“I tried. But you were blocking my view.”
Delaney grinned, his good humor unfazed. He might have retorted, but the food arrived. He leaned forward, trying to ease his wallet out of his back pocket. It was wedged.
Mickey sighed, extracting his wallet from the inside pocket of his last good suit. He tossed a few bills onto the waiting tray and watched as the waiter left without returning any change. Maybe he’d sensed Mickey’s building financial crisis and had decided to make sure he got his tip.
“I’ll get the next one, Ross.”
“You’ll have to. By the time I buy a new car and new suits and pay the rise in my insurance rates—that’s if they don’t drop me—” He shook his head.
“Too bad about your wheels.”
“Yeah, that’s what my agent said. Right before he reminded me that I chose not to get rental car coverage. I asked him how I’m supposed to get to work? He tells me to take the bus.”
“That’s cold.” Delaney paused in the act of lifting his cup to his mouth. “Did Caroline get hold of you?”
“Yeah. She heard about the shooting. Was worried. Wondered if she could help. Why do women do that?” He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to ease the tension already knotting there.
“What? Want to help?”
“Yeah. What, does she think I can’t figure out how to get myself to and from work without a car?”
“So, how did you get to work?”
“Caroline picked me up.”
Delaney hid his grin behind his coffee cup. “That’s very independent of you.”
“Ha, ha. I should’ve known this would happen when I broke my own rule: never, ever get involved with someone you work with. Especially a woman.”
“Well, the only other choice is the men, Ross. Though if you’re thinking of a change in lifestyle, maybe you can still find that perp we caught last week. Course, you’ll have to wait until after you testify against him before you ask him out.” Delaney gave Mickey a shit-eating grin.
“I don’t think his boyfriend would like it.” Mickey refused to rise to that bait again. Delaney’d been trotting it out all week. It was getting old. “Do I want to know if you heard anything new on the shooting last night?”
Delaney shifted gears. “Not much. You know they found the car—” He stopped, then continued when Mickey nodded. “But don’t think I told you it’s knee deep in shell casings which forensics is painstakingly dusting for prints. They might be done by the turn of the century. But they might not. At least two murders last night. You weren’t the only one getting shot at last night.”
“Great. Been a bad year for the NOPD.”
“No kidding. Did I mention the memo?” Delaney looked at his cup instead of Mickey.
“What memo?”
“The one about improving our crime stats so the news hounds will quit kicking our butts in print.”
“Damn. They might try cutting us some slack.” Mickey knew it would never happen. It wasn’t “in” to cut cops slack.
“Ah, well.” Delaney sighed before adding, “It does make us look bad when our fellow officers keep getting arrested. ‘Course, if the three officers on the scene last night had got off even one shot—”
“Her dress was wrapped around my piece.”
“Way I heard it, you were too busy copping a feel to pull your piece. And that lipstick all over your shirt—” Delaney shook his head in mock sorrow.
“Very funny. All you comedians seem to forget...” Mickey’s voice trailed off as a pair of real lookers swayed past, their hips eye-grabbing in indecently short skirts. Not bad, he decided, thought the legs weren’t as good as—he snapped that thought off before he could complete it. He didn’t want to think about Luci. It wasn’t a fruitful line of thought. He turned back to find Delaney looking at him with amused resignation.
“Don’t you ever get tired, Ross?”
“Of looking? Never. It’s the talking and the touching that’s getting real hazardous to my bachelor status.”
There was a short companionable silence, then Delaney asked, “You never said what happened when you finally got the girl deposited with her family. Were they getting worried?”
“Worried? The Seymours? They don’t know how to worry.” Mickey tipped back in his chair until he was balancing on the back legs and clasped his hands behind his head.
Delaney grinned. “So what did they do?”
“Do? Nothing. If she had been a kid, her parents would’ve been crazy to send her to them. Seems they forgot she was even coming.”
“Forgot?”
“Yeah, maybe the party they were at distracted them. Was at the frat house across the street. Loudest damn party I’ve seen since college.”
“Uh huh.” Delaney fingered his chin. “Didn’t you say these were older ladies?”
“Two-feet-in-the-grave old.”
Delaney shrugged. “I guess it’s true what they say about only being as old as you feel.”
“Yeah, well, these birds feel pretty damn young, then. Were having a great time teaching the boys the bunny hop.”
Delaney choked, then stretched his legs under the table next to them. “You think anyone past sixty’s over the hill, Ross.”
“You are over the hill, Delaney. Should’ve been put out to pasture years ago.”
Delaney wadded up a napkin and threw it at him. “So, were they upset about the shooting?”
“I told you, they don’t get upset. They wanted to know what it was like to get shot at.”
Delaney gave a silent whistle. “I’ll have to admit they sound a few bricks short.” He had to pull his legs in when a server almost tripped over them.
“More than a few, Delaney. Took me a devil of a time to convince them I’d brought them dear little Luci.”
“How could they—?”
“Apparently they don’t have a real good grasp of time passing. When I left they were trying to decide if they could alter her flower girl dress to fit or if they should make a new one.”
Delaney grinned. “I’d like to meet them.”
“You would. You can get along with anyone.”
“Yes, well, isn’t it lucky I’m so well equipped to be your partner?”
Mickey had to laugh. “All right, all right. It’s just that people can be so—so—”
“Human?”
Mickey laughed again. “Yeah. Damn human.”
“I heard she had great legs. Worth dying for.”
“The legs were good,” Mickey admitted. “If they could just be detached from the mouth.”
“Too bad I’m married to my job, I’d look her up. Sarge is always telling me I’m late for my mid-life crisis. Just can’t seem to get up the steam for it.” There was a short silence as he munched contentedly on his doughnut. Then he brushed the powdered sugar off his belly and leaned forward, his gaze serious. “Any chance that shooting was meant for you?”
“Why would it be meant for me?”
“Well, we are on Dante
’s ass and he’s known for not liking that. You find out something you haven’t gotten round to sharing with me?”
“Only if it’s something I don’t know I know. He’s been running book for longer than I’ve been a cop, Delaney. Being a known associate with a dead man isn’t grounds to pull him in, much as I’d like to. So unless he’s lost his head, I can’t see Dante getting hot under the collar over the little we’ve been able to scrape up on him.”
“So what do you think it was then?”
“You saw the report. It was an elderly couple wearing joke glasses.” Mickey brushed at the white powder dusted across his trousers, smearing it across the dark surface.
“Jeff Parish guys think they broke out of an old folk’s home.”
“They would. Only no reports on any breakouts and they haven’t made any demands.”
“I recognize that look, Ross. Something’s bothering you.”
“A lot’s bothering me—like losing my car.” He shoved his hands through his hair, staring into the crowd with a frown. “But, it just seems that if someone went there wanting to make a stink by shooting up a crowd, they’d have done it when there was a crowd. Why wait until almost everyone was gone?”
“Screwing up their nerve?”
“Maybe, but if that’s the case, then it took them from the time the flight was due in, until it actually arrived. That’s a lot of exposure for no return.” Mickey frowned, his mind replaying the events—while trying not to get stuck on Luci and her legs.
“So, you think they were waiting for someone on that flight?”
“It was the only one left to come in.”
“But...” Delaney was thinking hard. “If they wanted to kill just one person, why choose such a hit-and-miss, damn public way to do it? Unless—” He looked sharply at Mickey. “They thought they could avoid focusing attention on their real target?”
“Might have worked if a lot of people died.” Mickey considered the idea from various angles. “I could make a case for it.”
Do Wah Diddy Die Page 5