by Greg Herren
Dad yawned and nodded. He closed the door, and I heard him whispering to Mom. As soon as the door closed, Venus stepped back into the hallway. She rolled her eyes and smiled.
I walked into my old bedroom, or as I called it, the Scotty Shrine. I flipped on the light and went back in time. I’d moved out permanently when I was eighteen, and nothing had been changed in the room since that day. Posters of a shirtless Marky Mark still hung on the walls, the bookcases still held my collection of Hardy Boys, and all my wrestling medals and trophies were displayed on top of dressers. All my childhood toys and games were on the shelves in the closet. It was a little unsettling—Storm and Rain’s rooms were the same.
And sure enough, Mom had put the damned rabbit in the center of my bed. I walked over and picked it up. It was so surreal to me that this filthy, disgusting old relic of my childhood was something people were being killed for. I closed my eyes and said a quick prayer, but felt nothing unusual. I opened my eyes and turned it over in my hands. Mom hadn’t washed it, the way she said she was going to—she probably hadn’t had time. Things had been moving pretty fast since the parade ended. I held it up to the light. It still stank of dust and mold. I squeezed it in a couple of places. It didn’t feel like anything was inside it. I shook it a bit, feeling a little stupid.
Why would Doc put the Eye inside this thing? I wondered. I was just starting to think Colin was wrong when I turned it over.
There was a place, just below the tail, where it had been stitched back together. The thread looked new.
I squeezed it, but felt nothing but stuffing.
Venus is going to be pissed—there’s no jewel stuffed inside this thing, I thought as I carried it back into the living room with me. I could smell coffee brewing in the kitchen. Venus was sitting on the couch, her face unreadable as she was typing into her cell phone. She looked up and her lip curled. “That’s the rabbit he was talking about?”
Before I could answer, Mom walked into the living room in her tattered robe, yawning. “Scotty, why on earth are you waking us up at this ungodly hour?” She was too sleepy to be angry—so far. She peered at the clock on the mantelpiece. “Why, it’s barely eleven!” She rubbed her eyes. “Venus, is there anything new on Doc’s murder? Is that what this is about?” She plopped down into a wingback chair and yawned again. “And what are you doing with Mr. Bunny?”
I was digging through a drawer in the coffee table, looking for scissors. “Venus, you explain it to her?” There was a lot of crap in that drawer. Mom was pretty fastidious, but the various junk drawers scattered throughout the house were disorganized messes. I pawed through electrical cords, vials of glitter, instruction manuals for electrical appliances, and batteries before I finally put my hands on a pair of scissors. Dad walked in carrying mugs of coffee as Venus was explaining to Mom Colin’s theory about Mr. Bunny. I started cutting the thread.
“So Colin thinks this jewel is in Mr. Bunny?” Mom took a swig from her coffee mug. She shuddered. “I’m not sure how I feel about having that evil stone in my home.” She looked at Dad. “We’ll have to do a cleansing.” He nodded back at her.
“The stone itself isn’t evil,” I pointed out. “But it makes sense, doesn’t it?” I said as the thread snapped in two. I started pulling the stitches out. “If it wasn’t in Doc’s apartment, he had to have gotten it out of there somehow before.” I got the last of the thread out, and pulled the tear apart, sticking my right hand into the nasty stuffing. The old material ripped some more.
“Be careful, Scotty,” Mom warned. “I’d like to keep him, you know.”
“Wait a minute!” Venus cautioned. “That might be evidence—”
“That’s a bit of a stretch, Venus.” My father adjusted his glasses. “It belongs to Scotty, and it wasn’t present in Doc’s apartment when he was killed. If you want it, you need a warrant.” He folded his arms.
In that moment, I felt sorry for Venus. My parents are a royal pain in the ass to the authorities. “Fine,” she said after a moment, “rip the damned thing to shreds.”
I gave her a sour look, and she smiled back at me. I started pulling out the stuffing, tossing it aside on the table. Mom grabbed a plastic bag and started collecting it. I stuck my hand in as far as it could go, and felt nothing. I kept pulling out the stuffing until there was absolutely nothing left inside. I started to toss aside the empty skin in disgust when a small slip of paper fluttered out of the hole.
I picked it up. It was folded into a little triangle, like the paper footballs kids make to play table football. Holding my breath, I started unfolding it.
I smoothed it out on the table, and stared at it.
“What does it say?” Mom sat down next to me and peered at it. “Read it out loud—I don’t have my glasses.”
I took a breath and read it out loud:
“From Pleshiwar to the parish of the maid,
Who saved a city and was burned down to ash
To the park where so many still ply their trade,
Behind the spires of the saint, always asking for cash
Stands the fisher of souls with his arms open wide
Follow his left hand to the canopy of trees
Just beyond the orphan’s friend, go alongside
The Muses line up, to sing with the breeze
Just find the place for the blonds from the seas.”
“A riddle?” I exploded, tossing the paper down on the table. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I glared at the rabbit. “It’s not even good poetry.” As I said it, Venus’s phone rang. She walked into the kitchen to take the call.
“Doc loved puzzles,” Dad said, yawning. “And riddles. He said it kept his mind sharp.”
“Does this make sense to either one of you?” I sat back on the couch.
Mom picked it up and squinted at it. After a moment, she put it down with a shrug and walked into kitchen to get more coffee. I picked up my own cup and took a drink.
“This was exactly the kind of thing Doc loved—a treasure riddle that leads to where he hid the jewel,” Dad said, examining the paper over the top of his glasses. “I can almost hear the old son of a bitch laughing.” He sat down next to me. “Obviously, he would have made it hard, but he wouldn’t have made it impossible to solve.” He patted me on the shoulder. “Let’s use our brains, shall we?” He laughed. “You know how Doc was about brainpower.” He covered a yawn, and closed his eyes. “This shouldn’t be too hard, really, if we put our minds to it. Hmm, the parish of the maid? That’s New Orleans, obviously.”
“Huh?” My mind had wandered a bit.
“Joan of Arc was called the Maid of Orleans. Don’t you remember your history?” Dad said patiently, patting my leg. “So, the parish of the maid would be New Orleans.”
“Oh, yeah.” I closed my eyes. There was a huge gilt statue of Joan of Arc mounted on horseback, and carrying a banner, down on Decatur Street where it split into two one-way streets. It had been a gift to the city from Orleans, France. “Okay, the first line is referring to the Eye, obviously. It came from Pleshiwar to New Orleans.” I sat up. “That was easy enough.” I reread the second line. “But what the hell does the rest mean? And the blonds from the seas? Who’s the orphan’s friend?”
“It’s a riddle—it’s not supposed to be easy,” Dad replied. He frowned as Mom walked back into the room. She sat down on the other side of me.
“I don’t get it.” I shook my head. “Let’s come back to that one. The next line?” I cleared my head. “The saint, always asking for cash?” I sighed. “A saint statue? But which one?” There were literally hundreds of statues of saints in New Orleans.
“I need to get back to the crime scene,” Venus said as she walked back into the room, slipping her phone into her jacket pocket. “Everything’s under control here, right?” She looked over at the riddle. “What the hell?”
“This is all that was inside the rabbit,” I explained. “A riddle.”
Venus shook her head. “I
swear, every time I get involved with this family, it’s something crazy.” She pulled out an evidence bag from her pocket. She looked at me. “Can I take this?” When I nodded, she slipped the rabbit skin and the stuffing inside it and sealed it. “I’m going to need to take that riddle with me, too.”
“You sure you don’t want some coffee to take with you?” Mom asked.
“Let me make a copy first.” I grabbed a pad of paper and wrote it down. I scrutinized the handwriting, to see if there were any clues in it. But no, it was just Doc’s usual precise lettering. I handed it to her.
“I’ll be in touch,” she said as she sealed it into another evidence bag. “You know how to reach me if you need me.” She walked out the back door.
“This is hopeless.” I sighed. “If Doc weren’t dead, I’d cheerfully strangle him.”
“Nothing is hopeless, Scotty,” Mom reprimanded me. “And don’t joke about killing people, even if they are already dead. You don’t want to send that kind of energy out into the universe.” She shrugged. “So it’s not easy? It’s something we have to do. Doc left this for you. He wanted you to find this Eye thing, maybe to return it to where it belongs.”
“Why didn’t he just return it?” I groaned. “Why did he keep it all these years? Wouldn’t it have just been simpler to give the damned thing back?”
“Well, we can’t very well ask him, can we?” Mom retorted. “We may never know what he was thinking, or why he did what he did.” She got up and walked over to one of the windows, opening the shutters and letting bright sunlight spill into the room. “I can’t even begin to tell you how disappointed I am in Doc.” She shook her head. “All that crap he used to spout about colonialism and imperialism, the destruction of native cultures and its appropriation by white supremacists, was all just a bunch of garbage.”
“What do you mean?”
She turned away from the window. “If he stole this jewel from that temple—a jewel that was important to an entire culture—it’s more than just a robbery, Scotty, don’t you see that? He basically spat in the face of an entire culture, robbing them of their heritage. It’s no better than the way the Europeans stole this entire continent from the natives. And if he really believed the things he said, he would have returned it to where it belonged.”
“We may never know what he was thinking,” I replied.
She made a face at me. “Don’t mock your mother.”
I sighed and wrote out another copy of the riddle. “All right, well, I am going to head home and see what’s going on around there. I left Colin to watch the apartment, and I don’t trust him completely.”
“Scotty—” This was my dad. “Don’t you think everyone deserves a second chance?” He gave me a sad smile. “He didn’t kill your uncles, we know that now.”
I bit my lip. “He still went away and left us thinking he did.” I swallowed. “Not a word in three years, Dad. Not an ‘I’m sorry I left the way I did,’ not a ‘hey, I’m alive,’ nothing.” My voice broke a little bit. “You weren’t the ones he left.”
Dad put his arm around me and shushed Mom as she was about to splutter something at me. “Son, he did leave us, too. You always seem to forget that. He was a part of our entire family, not just your boyfriend.” He kissed the top of my head. “I know it’s hard. I know it hurt. But we didn’t raise you to be so unforgiving. Just because he had to go away and not say good-bye, or because you haven’t heard from him since, doesn’t mean he didn’t care. Have you ever considered he might not have been able to? Maybe he thought it would be easier on both you and Frank to just disappear. I mean, his job is dangerous.”
“Every time he is on a case he could be killed, Scotty.” Mom took over. “Even when he’s not on a case, I am sure he’s made a lot of enemies who would love to see him dead—or maybe they’d want to harm people he cared about to make him suffer.”
“Stop making sense,” I said, irritated. It did make sense, and it was an angle I’d never considered. “I know he loves us, okay? I just wish Frank were here. I don’t like having to deal with this alone. It concerns him, too.” My heart sank as that thought sank in. How the hell am I going to explain all of this to Frank?
“Frank will be fine,” Mom urged. She held up her hand as I started to speak. “No, listen to me. You have every right to blast him, to tell him how hurt you and Frank were when he vanished like that.” She smiled. “Trust me, he got an earful from me.”
I decided it was probably not the best time to tell her he’d probably shot himself to get his foot in the door. I also realized there wasn’t any point to continuing the argument. They’d forgiven him and would think I was an awful person if I didn’t at least try.
I couldn’t win.
“Okay, I’ll talk to him.” I threw my hands up.
Mom and Dad smothered me in a huge hug.
I broke away from them and headed down the back stairs.
I opened the gate, and peered up and down Dumaine Street. It was a sunny day, and the coast looked clear. I shook my head and shut the gate behind me, making sure it latched. I headed down to Decatur Street, figuring it would be safer for me to walk up that street. It was similar to Bourbon Street in that every block was lined with restaurants and bars. There were also little shops that catered to the tourists, selling all that crap People Not From Here always seem to be convinced is symbolic of the city: feather boas, beads, little masks, etc. Farther up the street, closer to my house, there were a lot of secondhand shops that always came in handy when trying to put a costume together.
The coroner’s van was pulling away from in front of my house when I got there. The Crime Lab van was also gone. I unlocked the gate and walked back in. I climbed the back stairs. I walked into my living room, and moaned. Crime scene tape was stretched across my French doors. Colin was sitting at my computer, typing away.
“So, I gather the balcony is off-limits?” I snarled, starting a pot of coffee. “Did they say for how long?”
Colin smiled at me. “No, they didn’t, but I doubt they’ll need to come back and check anything out. I mean, he obviously wasn’t killed out there.”
As the coffee started, I walked over and peered through the curtains. There was a chalk outline of a body where Levi had landed. I felt a bit nauseous, and turned back to Colin. “Did she say anything else?”
He nodded. “He was killed on the roof—they found traces of blood up there. He was bludgeoned. The body was cold, so they aren’t sure of the time of death. That’s going to take an autopsy. But I think it’s pretty safe to assume he was probably killed sometime last night.” He gestured around the apartment. “When you got back here with Venus last night, you thought the place had been searched, right?”
I nodded. “But why throw the body onto my balcony?”
“Here’s what I’m thinking.” He turned around and faced me. “While you were at the parade, Levi searched your apartment. He came down here and hired you after you got back—he was probably waiting for you. He fed you that line of bull, hired you, and then you went back out again. I think he came down here and started searching—”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t wash, Agent.”
He frowned. “Why not?”
“Because, dumbass, there was no reason for him to search my apartment.” I folded my arms and smirked at him. “He had no idea Doc was going to give me the stupid rabbit—no one could have known before it actually happened. No one could have known Doc would dump water on me. Nobody could know I was even going to walk that way on my way to the parade.”
He picked up a pencil and started tapping the eraser against his front teeth. “Well, Doc was obviously planning on doing something with the rabbit.” He smiled at me. “And was the Eye inside of it?”
I shook my head. “Nope. All that was inside that rabbit was stuffing. Ratty, rotting, dirty disgusting stuffing.”
He made a face. “Then where—”
“Doc was a lot smarter than that.” I plopped down on the couch. I w
as exhausted, and just wanted to go back to sleep. “He left a riddle inside the rabbit. I’m assuming the riddle is a clue to where he actually hid the Eye.”
“A riddle?”
I nodded, and yawned. “I tried figuring it out, but my mind is fried. Maybe I should just take a nap.”
“Why don’t you do that?” He sat down on the couch. “Give me the riddle and I’ll see if I can figure it out while you sleep.” He held out his hand.
I just gave him a look. “Yeah. That’s going to happen.”
His face fell a little bit. “You can trust me, Scotty.”
“Can I really?” I replied. “Tell me about it, Colin.”
He took a deep breath. “Look, I know it was incredibly shitty of me to leave the way I did. But it’s my life, Scotty. The truth is, when I first moved here I thought I could give up that life. I really did. And I thought that—” He paused, and glanced over at the balcony doors. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” I followed his gaze. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“Shh.” He pulled his gun and got to his feet, and started creeping toward the doors.
But when he reached the end of the couch, the center doors exploded open, slamming against the walls with a huge crash as the glass inside of them shattered.
“What the fuck—” I spluttered as two black-clad figures leaped through the doorway.
“Drop the gun,” one of them said.
Colin’s gun fell to the floor.
“Who the hell are you?” I gasped out.
Colin turned and looked at me. “It’s the Ninja Lesbians.”
Chapter Ten
STRENGTH
Love is always stronger than hate
Surely, I hadn’t heard that right—I must be in shock.
He did not just say ninja lesbians. Did he?
Without moving my head, I stole a glance at him out of the corner of my eyes. Despite the fact my French doors had just been kicked in, my mind registered that he seemed relaxed—too relaxed, given the situation. Shouldn’t we be ducking for cover? Shouldn’t he be pulling his own weapon?