Mickey reached for his aspirin, but the bottle was empty.
Luci, subtly buffering her aunts from the worst of the confusion, flitted from room to room. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the confusion began to resolve into a sort of order. Tables appeared in the garden just off the dining room where the caterers were busy. The smell of breakfast food was replaced by the smell of party food. Flower arrangements began to appear on tables and shelves. The band—brass, not string—set up in the garden inside the newly finished gazebo. Someone took the police tape away from the bougainvillea and set up some chairs over the spot where Reggie had been buried.
Mickey and his men were kept busy issuing ID’s to arrivals, making a final security check over the house and going over last minute problems with the teams Pryce had sprung for the occasion.
Half an hour before the scheduled party time, Luci rounded up the aunts and started herding them upstairs to dress.
“Aren’t you cutting things a little close?” Mickey asked, the radio in his hand crackling with voices.
“Don’t worry! This is the Big Easy. No one will actually come on time.”
Mickey watched her hips swish up the stairs out of sight. Then he looked at Delaney. “My uncle will.”
It was a good thing Eddie was on time. Since he was the only one who noticed the bride hadn’t joined them yet. Pryce was about to order a lock down and search when Luci descended wearing a black mini skirt, red off-the-shoulder blouse, and cowboy boots.
“Something wrong?”
“Unabelle’s not here.” Mickey was terse.
“Has anyone checked her room?” Luci looked at each upturned male face as chagrin dawned. She shook her head. “Men!”
Fern gave her wispy bun a pat, spritzed it with cheap hair spray, then leaned over to smooth her red lipstick with a bent pinkie. The bright color looked uneasy on her thin mouth, but Fern was happy with the result as she rubbed the edges together, then pursed her mouth.
“Time to go,” Donald muttered.
Fern turned as he tugged at the tie around his thin neck. Fern straightened it, then patted his cheek. “You scrub up pretty good, old man.”
“You ain’t bad yourself.” Donald grinned. “You got the invite?”
Fern nodded, picking up the bag that matched her flowing flowered dress.
“Where’s the gun?”
“In my cast. Don’t forget the gift.”
“I won’t be forgetting anything.” Donald’s look was wolfish, eager. “Let’s do it.”
“Your people in place, Ross?” Pryce looked up from the plan.
Mickey spun around and nodded like a military man. “Yes, sir. We’ve got good coverage. Thanks for the extra men.”
“It’s was easy once the governor decided to come.” Pryce looked down again, his gaze assessing. “Any last questions? Problems?”
Thousands of both, but none that could be voiced. Mickey looked at Delaney but echoed his, “No sir.”
“Right. Let’s do it then.”
Dante looked up as his aunt came in the room. “Cloris, you look—amazing.” He took her hands, kissed both her cheeks and tried not to notice her red-rimmed eyes or the bird nestled in the flowers of her straw hat. At least the dress was perfect. He’d taken her to the best boutique in the city and outfitted her in classic black. If she’d lose the hat…but of course, she wouldn’t. Arvin had bought it for her and she was hoping he’d see it, remember what they’d had and come back to her.
She was so deep in denial she couldn’t crawl out without a little help from a bullet aimed well-and-true at Marvin’s faithless heart.
“Should I wear gloves?” Her body was fluttering with nervousness. “I’ve never been to a posh party before.” She dropped her purse, waiting until Max had retrieved it for her before saying, “Are you sure Marvin will be there, Harvey? I’d much rather stay home—”
“You want to find him, don’t you?”
Her lower lip quivered. “Of course I do, but—”
“Then be brave. We won’t stay long, I promise.” Dante smiled coldly.
“You won’t hurt him, will you? I couldn’t bear it—”
“Why would I want to hurt him?” He looked past her to Cain and Abel waiting impassively on either side of the door. “You ready?”
Though no unsightly bulges marred the impeccable lines of their identical suits, they both nodded.
“Then let’s do it.”
New Orleanians learn to second line early. It’s easy to do and there are no special steps to learn. One need only to be unselfconscious and have a brass band that can pump out a good Mardi Gras beat. The extras, like sequined umbrellas or a hankie to wave, are second to the joy of forming a line and going where the music leads.
They did the Mambo first. Maybe Miss Weena was saving the Hepplewhites for the grand finale. Or she could have been saving them for herself. The raucous sound of the brass band made radio communication problematical until the second line moved outside. That’s why Mickey didn’t know until he heard them speaking to Luci that Dante and his entourage had arrived.
“Who let them in?” Mickey hissed into his mike.
“Had to, sir. They had an invitation.”
“Did you search them?”
“Head to toe. Nothing.”
“Damn!” Mickey paced towards the new arrivals.
“Did you think I wouldn’t come?” Dante was saying.
“I never doubted you would.” Luci batted her lashes at Dante, then winked at Mickey as Dante bent to kiss her hand. “Let me introduce you to my aunts. They’re looking forward to meeting you.”
She slid her arm through Dante’s and led him toward them.
“Miss Theo? I’d like you to meet Mr. Dante. He’s the one I told you about—”
“Mr. Dante!” Miss Theo’s face lit up as she turned towards them. “I can’t tell you how excited I was when dear little Luci told me you were coming to our party!”
“I’m charmed, Miss Theo—” Dante began suavely.
“Hermi! Weena! Look! He’s here! Mr. Dante!”
The remaining two sisters fluttered forward, words bubbling from their mouths like sparkling water, engulfing him in their special form of femininity.
“Trifle long, but I loved your book!” Miss Hermi twittered.
“Dark, definitely a dark story, but droll, too!” Miss Weena patted his arm, her round face tilted up and cut by a wide smile.
“A most interesting book,” concluded Miss Theo. “Where did you get the idea for it? Such a large concept! Life. Death. Redemption.”
Miss Weena reached up and smoothed the hair above his ear. “It’s funny. You don’t look Italian.”
Mickey bit back his first grin of the day at the look on Dante’s face at this reference to Dante’s Inferno. The urge quickly left him when he heard a bawdy flourish heralding the imminent appearance of the Hepplewhites. There were only four, but it seemed like more as the undulating pecs and hips cut a swath through the appreciative female crowd. Most of the men fell back with something less than appreciation as the dancers started to shed clothing. Would Luci find this “cool?” Would her eyes be heated like they’d been when he kissed her?
Pryce crossed to join him, his opinion of the Hepplewhites written in large neon across his face. “Where’s Luci?”
Mickey looked around, slow at first, then with rising panic.
At that moment, in the mysterious way of the universe, there was a lull in the party sounds and the music as the Hepplewhites completed their shedding, baring their glory for the pleasure of their interested audience. Before the music and the screams could catch up, Mickey clearly heard the sound of shots in the room directly above them.
18
It was ridiculously easy for Fern to approach Luci Seymour, the small gun and the cast on her arm concealed in the folds of her loose dress and the lacy shawl she’d picked up in a little dress shop in the Quarter and paid for with one dollar bills.
“Excus
e me, miss?”
Luci turned with a friendly smile.
“Is there another ladies’ room? The one down here has someone—” She grimaced slightly. With those old aunts of hers, the girl would know all about incontinence.
“Oh, of course. Upstairs—” With a gentle, but firm grip on her arm Luci eased Fern through the crowds and out into the hall. “If you go up here, take a right—”
Fern turned up the edges of her mouth in what she hoped passed for a smile and shoved the concealed gun into the girl’s side.
“Could you show me, dear?” The girl’s eyes flicked towards the guard, bored of face, rocking on his heels across from them. In a low voice, Fern warned, “Quiet, or he gets it, too!”
The girl gave her a steady look that seemed to test her resolve, so Fern ground the weapon into her ribs a little harder and said louder, “Sorry to be a bother, dear, but at my age, you can’t afford to wait too long.”
“No, I don’t suppose you can.” To Fern’s consternation, the girl’s straight mouth twitched as she turned and padded up the long staircase. Fern was puffing as they reached the top, her heart protesting the fast ascent. Behind her she could hear the opening refrain of the bawdy burlesque.
“The Hepplewhites are starting their act. And you passed them up to shoot me? You really need to work on your priorities.”
For just a moment, Fern was tempted. She’d seen their poster in one of the tee shirt shops that littered the Quarter. They were mighty fine. Hard to keep her sights fixed on Mickey Mouse with those pecs in mind.
Luci half-turned, her eyes, a mixture of hope and mischief, inviting Fern to join her. Then the door on the right opened and Donald gestured threateningly.
“What ya waiting for, Fern? Get her in here before someone comes!”
Fern pushed, but Luci didn’t budge.
“That’s Mickey’s bedroom.”
“So?”
“Well, it just seems—wrong. Or ironic.”
“Just get in there!” Being so exposed in the open hall was making Fern uneasy. Down in the hall below they could hear the sound of voices rising towards them on waves of burlesque beat.
Luci shrugged. “Ironic it is, then.”
With a twist that caught Fern by surprise, Luci freed herself and sauntered into the room, not stopping until she reached the four poster bed against the far wall. She smoothed the counterpane and tucked the single pillow on the far side of the bed behind her back. With feigned unconcern, she crossed her legs and arms and looked at them.
“So? What do we do now? I thought I knew my lines for this scene, but you’re not at all what I expected. Do you really mean to kill me and why?”
“Course we do!” It wasn’t Fern’s imagination that Donald sounded defensive.
“You don’t look like killers. Is this your first time? Is it just me that you’re trying to kill or do you have, like, a quota or something?”
Fern looked at Donald. He looked as bewildered as she felt. This was not following the usual course. The girl was supposed to plead for her life. Ask the usual questions. Not...not... Fern didn’t know how to describe what Luci was doing. But somehow it all seemed to fit with the difficulty of killing this girl.
“Quota?” Fern shook her head.
“I’m doing it, aren’t I?” Luci gave them a sympathetic look. “My family predisposition is hard to combat. But I will try to play the scene by the prescribed rules. I shouldn’t like to die wrong after all’s said and done.”
“Scene?” Donald shook his head, the gun he held wavering.
“Yeah. The why-are-you-doing-this, you-tell-me-and-I-exclaim-in-shock scene.”
“Shut up!” Donald gripped the gun tighter, wiping a hand down the side of his pant leg. “Why we’re doing it is none of your never mind,” he snarled.
Donald always reacted like that when he doesn’t know something, Fern could have told Luci, but she was too bewildered to do so. And too busy fighting the growing conviction that this was going to go wrong, too. That this time they weren’t going to be able to get away.
Luci smiled. “Is that a silencer on your gun? I’ve never seen one before—oops. I’m doing it again, aren’t I? But then you didn’t quite follow the script either, did you? You’re supposed to say it’s nothing personal, doll, or something like that, but business is business—”
“Oh, it’s personal, doll. ‘Bout as personal as it gets—”
“Really? Would you like to talk about it? You seem to have quite a head of steam built up and it might make you feel better to talk about it. And steady your aim. Why don’t you sit down—”
Her tone of friendly concern almost had Fern moving towards a nearby chair.
“Shut up!” Donald’s voice seemed especially harsh. “I don’t like people what gives me trouble and you gives me more trouble than—” He choked a couple of times in his attempt to find a suitable comparison.
“Calm down and just do it, Donald,” Fern cautioned. Wouldn’t it be just like a man to have a heart attack and leave her to finish the job?
“Let me savor it, Fern!” Donald wiped his beaded forehead with the back of his free hand. “Waited a long time—”
Luci exchanged a worried look with Fern, a look that Fern returned before she realized what she was doing.
“Are you all right? Your color isn’t too good—”
“Shut up,” Donald snarled again.
Luci looked amused. “Or what? You’ll shoot me? I really think I’ll do what I want with my last living moments—
When Fern thought things couldn’t get any weirder a third voice cut Luci off.
“Well, that was gross,” the placid voice said from behind her. “Did you know there’s a body—oh, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
A chilly wind ruffled the edges of the counterpane and the curtains at the window. It lifted the straying ends of Fern’s and Donald’s hair.
“What the hell—”
“This is who has been trying to kill me,” Luci put in helpfully.
“They don’t look like killers, except for the gun,” Gracie said.
“Surprised me, too,” Luci said.
“Shut up!” Donald looked right. Fern looked left. There was no one to be seen.
Fern looked at Donald as the voice continued, “I suppose they’re the ones who put this body up the chimney?”
Fern froze, her breath constricted as apprehension tightened her chest. Who the hell was talking?
“There’s a body up the chimney?” Luci straightened from her pillow and dropped her feet to the floor. “I wonder if its Boudreaux’s lost corpse?”
“Did Boudreaux lose a corpse? It’s not like him to lose something so large.”
Fern looked over her right shoulder, coming nose to nose with Donald doing the same. Continuing their rotation, they turned to face the source of the voice: a female head protruding from the mantle of the fireplace.
She tried to speak, but couldn’t manage more than a strangled cry.
Donald sounded worse than her. And the hand holding the gun shook as he pointed it at the head.
“Anyone we know?” inquired Luci from behind them, as if there were no head poking out of solid wood.
“Just a moment.” The head faded back into the woodwork just as Donald pulled the trigger. The wood where the head had been splintered twice. “Hmmmm, I don’t think so.” The voice was hollow and rather distant for the first half of the sentence, but came closer as the head emerged from wood once more.
Donald fired again, this time taking out a bottle of aspirin sitting on the mantel.
“Goodness. The mouth shaped the words placidly as she turned to examine the scars. “I haven’t been shot at since I died—”
“No!” The word rose to a shriek. He fired again and again, emptying the chamber, continuing to pull the trigger when bullets no longer spat out of the barrel.
With a howl of rage and fear, Donald threw the gun at the head. Then dropped to the floor—in fetal
position. The last thing Fern saw before the red mist enclosed her was Luci stepping close and bending to peer up the chimney. “Dang, there is a body in there. What do you want to bet Mickey will blame it on me?”
“Lot of prints all over this room,” the tech told Mickey.
“I figured there would be. Some of them are mine,” Mickey said wearily. “But if we print all the guests and staff, then we can compare for the ones that shouldn’t be here.”
“If the killer wore gloves—”
“Then we’re out of luck. A state we are all too used to.”
The tech nodded glumly and resumed his careful dusting of the myriad surfaces in the room. It was much easier for everyone to work now that the aging catatonic killers had been lifted onto stretchers and carried away. The woman, Fern, had finally stopped trying to crawl to Disney World, but it had taken two officers to restrain her until the hypodermic could be inserted into her arm.
The police photographer was lying on his back in the cavity of the chimney taking shots of the dangling corpse while the Coroner’s office awaited the signal to pull it out. And in a corner, a tense Captain Pryce sat next to Luci, not touching her, both of them looking uncomfortable, yet pleased.
Mickey rubbed his eyes, trying to push back those nightmarish moments when he’d rushed up the stairs with gun drawn. His careful study of the house’s layout had served him well. He’d known what room to kick open the door to, then, while Delaney covered him, dive into with a low flying roll that brought him right to Luci’s feet—and in perfect position to see the body up the chimney. Not to mention nose-to-nose with the gibbering Donald. No surprise his rush of relief at seeing Luci safe was complicated by the desire to strangle her for being all right.
“What happened?” he’d snapped, rolling to his feet.
Then she’d pointed at Gracie, still half-in and half-out of the mantle.
“Gracie startled them.”
“Startled them.” He looked at the couple slumped on the floor.
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