And if all this weren’t bad enough, they had to protect the innocent—always assuming they knew who the innocent were—in the midst of a wedding. With the dogs of political patronage nipping at their heels.
Then there were the logistics problems. The department was shorthanded anyway, with sixteen officers under indictment and/or on suspension for various charges ranging from rape to theft to murder. And the problems with their fleet of cars, most of which weren’t running because of budget shortfalls. And the ones that were running were driving politicians around so they wouldn’t get mugged.
Pryce had only been able to produce one other pair of detectives to watch tonight. They were outside right now. Tomorrow he was hoping to scare up a female officer to relieve some of the pressure on the four men, but he was making no promises—while radiating unspoken threats about their fate if something went wrong.
And there were so many things that could go wrong around the Seymours.
Mickey’s thought processes reached this unsatisfactory point when it occurred to him that it was not a good thing for there to be music coming in from outside. His sore muscles protesting, Mickey padded over to the window and heard a very familiar laugh from outside before he could jerk the curtain back.
“No—”
But it was.
Luci.
Dancing directly under a street lamp with some young stud in shorts and a muscle shirt.
Luci’s aunts’ aversion to technology extended to air conditioning. The house was cool—thanks to Gracie—but that couldn’t come close to six thousand feet above sea level cool. That, humidity-dampened sheets, and thoughts that tended to circle around the question of Mickey’s captain and her paternity drove Luci outside where she found the frat boys having another party. She was tired of thinking, tired of wondering if Henry Pryce were her mother’s Pooh Bear.
How could she not have realized that finding her father would bring her face-to-face with her mother’s lover? There’d been no Immaculate Conception in her case. No comforting fictions to tell herself. She was a “love” child, an outcome of passion.
Her thoughts kept getting caught up in images of Lila and Pryce tangled in sheets. She had to move, to push out thinking, and untie the knotted fragments and figure out what she was going to do. The party seemed like the perfect way to push it all out.
Young firm bodies clutched each other, dancing in the street. Other young bodies sprawled in abandon across the long-suffering lawn in front of their even more long-suffering house. A keg poked out a window, and pizza boxes were stacked four and five deep on the porch.
In other words, it was just what the doctor hadn’t ordered.
A couple of slices of pepperoni and a beer later, Luci hooked her bandaged arm over the massive shoulders of someone everyone called Tank, who was large enough to have his own weather system, and started swaying to Roy Orbison’s “Mystery Girl.” It seemed appropriate on a variety of levels.
Mixed with the smell of beer and pizza, her nose picked up several hundred different plant smells, but magnolia, she decided, was her favorite and it didn’t clash with Tank’s aftershave which was called, he told her, Mighty Dog.
She felt the disturbance in the force before Mickey tapped Tank on the shoulder—then banged him on the shoulder to get his attention. With a prehistoric grunt, Tank ambled off after a sweet young thing, each step causing minor concussions in the soggy ground.
Without missing a beat, Luci transferred her arms to Mickey’s smaller, less rock-like, but infinitely more pleasant shoulders. His aftershave, she was sure, had nothing to do with dogs or other animals. It was, she decided, smiling dreamily up into his frustrated face, probably called Suit.
It was playing with fire to smile at him, but she couldn’t seem to give a care. The night, the smells, the sound of the music, the feel of the air were so far out of her time and place that she didn’t feel like herself at all. Besides, she was trying not to think about herself. That’s why she’d come outside. To become one with the night and forget her troubles and just be a girl with a guy. To pretend she was ordinary, as normal as the next girl.
Mickey spun her in a circle. “Do you think you should be out here dancing when someone wants to kill you?”
“I thought you were in bed.”
He could have gotten angry and ground his teeth. His dentist could probably use the money with that new office to pay for, but it was too hot and in this light Luci looked good enough to eat and almost normal. So he grinned and spun her again, liking the feel of her body brushing his and how easily she followed him. “You thought wrong. Aren’t you worried about what I might do to you?”
“I don’t know how to worry.” Her smile dared him to make her.
The air was heavy with moisture and still hot despite the sun’s deference to the moon, turning their skin slick and hot as they brushed together. Then apart. The moon brushed soft light across her hair and face, deepening the shadows around her mouth. Making her mouth damn near irresistible.
“Mystery Girl” finished, but Mickey didn’t let go, just watched her until another tune filled the flower-scented air. He supported her body with his arms, the slow beat of the music requiring little from him in the way of skill. Holding her gaze with his, he steered their slow steps off the street, inside the gate, and under the canopy of a magnolia tree, where the light from the street barely penetrated.
She looked like she was going to say something. He gave her time. His mother had brought him up to be a gentleman. When she didn’t, he bent his head. Her mouth, that sweet, straight mouth, tasted different in the dark. More heat. More spice.
He could have stayed there all night, exploring, tasting, shaping and being shaped, but he went too deep and had to come up for air.
They fell apart, the world rushing into the space with a reminder of all the reasons he shouldn’t have done that. The look in her wide eyes the only reason he should have.
“I guess I’m more like my mother than I realized,” she said.
“I shouldn’t—have done that.”
Her hand lightly touched his cheek, the palm moist and soft against his skin, a gentle fire burning in the depths of her eyes. “You were provoked.”
She stepped back, then left him, but paused at the steps to add, “Do you think it’s a good idea to hit on your boss’s daughter?”
The ground rocked under his feet. “How did you know—”
Her lashes swept down, then up. “I didn’t. Not for sure.”
She was up the stairs and inside before he could choke. She didn’t slam the door behind her, but he still winced. And wondered if he was too old to join the Foreign Legion.
Because Donald put out the TV, they didn’t hear about the explosion until after they picked up a newspaper from a vendor. They read it over breakfast, too discouraged by failure to even think about regrouping until they’d had their coffee and a good long whine.
“Don’t care. I don’t want to blow her up from a distance anymore, Fern.” Donald glared ahead. “I want to do her face-to-face. I want to watch her die in front of my eyes. I want to empty my clip into her even after she’s dead. I want to empty several clips into her and then burn her body!”
Fern sighed, trying to shift her broken arm into a more comfortable position. “I suppose that means we head back to Teddy?”
“That’s right.” Donald subsided into a state of muttering and non-verbal grumbling as he nursed his Café du Monde café au lait. From the river, the steamboat hooted derisively. She would be glad, Fern decided as she swatted a mosquito the size of a bee that was trying to crawl inside her cast and feast, to leave this place behind. Focus on Disneyland, she told herself. Only on Disneyland. You’ll get there if you believe it, Fern. You’ll get there if you have to crawl on your hands and knees, girl.
Artie read about the explosion in the newspaper the hotel brought with his breakfast and his newly shined shoes. It added insult to injury to know the bump on his head and the blood on his shoes hadn�
��t happened in a good cause. It was hard to sound optimistic when he made his daily phone call to Helen. He’d never been able to fool Helen—well, at least not completely.
“You sound like your biorhythms are out of whack,” she said. “Are you remembering your bio-vitamins?”
“Wouldn’t dare forget them, my dear.” Just the sound of her voice in his ear made him miss her like a limb. He didn’t get it. He’d loved maybe a hundred women. Loved and left them, and not just for the money. After a while he just got bored with them and had to move on. He didn’t much like being married, but he liked having money, and his only real skill was convincing women to marry him and give him their money. Until Reggie handed him a foolproof scam and fate handed him Helen. What was it about her that was so different? If he believed in that yin and yang stuff, which he didn’t but Helen did, he’d think maybe it was that.
Helen said they knew each other in a past life or maybe lives. He’d refused to be hypnotized for fear of what he might reveal about this life, but Helen figured he’d been her Troy or her Caesar or maybe her Napoleon. He liked thinking of himself as Napoleon. Bet he had some great shoes in his closet.
“What about your prostate enhancer herbs?” Helen said in his ear. In the background he could hear her counting out someone’s change for the stamps they’d just bought while she waited for his answer. If she had a flaw, it was talking about his prostate while at work in the Butt Had Post Office.
“I’m taking it all, honey,” he said, “so I can be your love bunny when I get back.”
“And when will that be? I miss my love bunny terribly,” she said briskly, adding, in the same tone, “that will be thirty-two cents, Reverend.”
Artie winced. He was a traditional guy when it came to proper subjects for the ears of a Reverend. “As soon as I get this last bit of business worked out, I’ll be home to stay, sweet cheeks. No more business trips for this guy.”
Helen’s sigh was music to his ears. “I can’t wait.”
16
Mickey woke the next morning feeling surprisingly chipper for someone who would probably be drawn and quartered when his Captain found out he’d spilled the beans. If it happened, it happened. At least he’d had the best kiss of his life and the best night’s sleep in a month. He whistled as he went downstairs, meeting Delaney in the hall.
“Still high on pain medication?”
“Some things are better than drugs, Delaney.”
“You aren’t hitting on Pryce’s daughter, are you?”
“Of course not.” He avoided looking at Delaney. “Uh, where is she? I thought we were supposed to be protecting her?”
“She’s breakfasting with her aunts in there. And what’s this “we” stuff? I’m the only one who’s been watching her this morning, while you had a nice little lie in—”
“Well, I had to go pull her in off the street last night, so I figure that makes us even.”
“Off the street? Last night?” Delaney frowned. “What was she doing in the street last night?”
“Dancing. The frat had another party. I thought we had some guys watching her?”
“So did I. Guess we were both wrong.”
“How quaint. Men who will admit they’re wrong.”
They both turned quickly to find Luci leaning against the door frame with her arms crossed. Her expression was a puzzle that Mickey wasn’t afraid to meet.
No quarter asked, none given.
She didn’t say it out loud, but she might as well have. Mickey gave a slight nod, accepting her challenge, his eyes steely with resolve. That other areas got steely with desire, he chose to ignore.
Delaney gave them each an uneasy look, then said, a mite too heartily, “So what’s on the schedule for today?”
“I still have a lot of errands to run, but we’re going over the guest list this morning for the Sunday garden party. Dull stuff for New Orleans’ finest, I’d think.”
Mickey looked at Delaney with a sigh. He nodded.
“We probably ought to take a look at it, too.”
Luci’s answering smile was wicked. “Going to check out my aunts’ friends, are you? How deductive. I look forward to seeing you in action.” She indicated the room with a sweep of her hand. “Please, feel free to join us.”
Mickey paced forward, holding Luci’s green-eyed gaze as he aimed for her instead of the doorway she indicated. It was a harmless game of chicken, a small clash in this private battle of the sexes. But one he was determined to win, would have won, but fate intervened. When he was close enough to smell her perfume, just before she’d have to back down, the doorbell rang.
“You’d better get that,” she said. “Just in case it’s a mad murderer.”
It wasn’t the murderer. It was an officer bearing news about the autopsies of the John Doe aka Frosty the Frozen man and Reggie Seymour.
“Captain must have lit a fire under the coroner’s office to get both autopsies so quickly,” Mickey said.
“That or promised them his first born—” Delaney broke off, a slight flush staining his face.
Mickey pretended not to notice, then pretense became reality as he scanned the report on their recently thawed John Doe. Delaney worked his way through the one on Reggie Seymour.
Then they exchanged reports. Then they looked at each other in frustration.
“This doesn’t help a whole lot,” Mickey said. “Both shot through the heart with the same small caliber weapon. Frosty died approximately three to five hours after eating a sandwich and was probably frozen within the last five years because his dental plate wasn’t in use earlier than that. Not a real big help.”
“Reggie probably as much as five weeks ago. It’s been a dry month,” mused Delaney. “Got a positive ID from his record. Dental, what’s left of his prints are a match. The tattoos and jewelry substantiate the ID.” He sighed, giving Mickey a rueful look. “Well, at least we know the how. And half the who.”
“But there’s still a lot of whys, whens, wheres, the other who—” Unbidden from his memory came, “and that other Arthur.”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” Mickey said. “Just something that’s been spinning in my brain. The unaccounted for neighbor. I’ll bet the old ladies could tell us something about him. If we can only find a way to get them to tell us.”
Dante looked up as Max slid in the door. Behind him his Persephone was almost finished. He’d miss her when she was gone, but there would be another. There would always be another. He lay down his pencil and leaned back in his chair, stretching.
“I talked to our guys watching the Seymour house.” Max hesitated, then said, “It seems the police are watching the house, too.”
“What?” Dante straightened, staring at his underling with narrowed eyes.
“Well,” Max said. “Maybe, maybe not. I talked to our snitch at the NOPD—seems they think someone is trying to kill Luci Seymour—there’s no hint of anything about the money.”
Dante frowned. “What’s going on, Max?”
“I don’t know. But at least the police don’t know either.”
The white square envelope was on the floor, just inside their door, when Fern and Donald got back from lunch.
“What is it?” Donald asked, heading for the beer while Fern studied the envelope.
“Must be some kind of mistake. Name on outside says it’s for ‘Arthur Miller and date.’”
“Arthur?” Donald looked at Fern. “Open it.” There was a short pause, then, impatiently, “Well? What is it?”
“You’re not going to believe it. It’s an invite to a party Sunday afternoon. At the Seymour’s.”
Donald stopped, stared at Fern, then grabbed the card. It only took a moment to read the words but Donald had to read them twice—because he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Is this some kind of joke, Fern? How’d Artie do it? Get them to invite us to the bash? We don’t know them! We’re trying to kill one of them!”
“Look, this was inside, too.�
�� Fern held out another scrap of paper. This one took even less time to read. It only had two words in bold black print: Do it.
“It could be a trap,” Fern said.
“Could be,” Donald said, “or the answer to all our problems. Can’t miss face-to-face.”
Fern nodded, her thoughts moving on. “I’ll need something to wear. Didn’t bring a party dress. And a gift.”
“A gift?” Donald looked at her like she’d lost it.
“It’s a wedding party, Donald. If we don’t bring a gift they’ll wonder why.” She tapped the invite against her chin. “Silver’s nice. Or linens. A person can’t have too many linens.”
“Is your Arthur coming to the party, Miss Theo?” Luci looked up from her list as the two detectives entered.
Mickey pulled out his notebook and flipped it open, wondering if Miss Theo’s Arthur was one of the three on his list.
“He’s looking forward to it, dear. Since his surgery he can’t burp or vomit, but he can eat cake again.”
“As long as he can do the important stuff.” Luci made a small note on her list, then looked at Miss Weena. “What about your Arthur?”
“He said he was coming before he left,” Miss Weena said, taking her admiring gaze off Delaney for a brief instant.
“Did he say where he was going?” Mickey asked.
“He might have,” Miss Weena said, inching closer to Delaney and smiling up into his face. “I’ve never been that good with geology.”
Delaney inched away from her. “Is he a geologist?”
“A proctologist. Good with his hands is my Arthur.” She stroked Delaney’s arm. “Nice suit.”
Delaney started to sweat. Mickey wanted to help him, but he felt like he was sinking, too. He didn’t mean to look to Luci for help, but he did. She looked startled, then pleased.
“They need to discuss security arrangements for the party, dears. Someone wants me dead.”
Miss Theo patted her hand. “Nonsense, dear. You’re our Rock of Gibraltar.”
Do Wah Diddy Die Page 17