Risky Whiskey

by Lucy Lakestone

  “Don’t go,” Barclay said, frowning at me in particular, as if I was the troublemaker. “No one in their right mind goes into a New Orleans cemetery at night.”

  “Ghosts?” Melody asked.

  “People,” he said. “Much scarier than ghosts. But probably ghosts, too.”

  Barclay was right about the people. I didn’t believe in ghosts, except for maybe a few spots here in my hometown. If any city had them, it was New Orleans. I also hadn’t ruled out resident vampires.

  I found the memorial on my phone. “Charity Hospital Cemetery. I don’t remember anything about that one.”

  “Dash and Pepper and I will go,” Neil said. “I’ll text you when we arrive, Luke, and I’ll text you when we’re done.” The implication being, if they didn’t hear from us, call in the cavalry.

  “All right,” Luke said. “Keep us in the loop.”

  “Here.” I took the bottle Cray had given us out of my bag and handed it to Barclay. “Take this. It would be a shame if something happened to it.”

  It was as if I’d sprinkled fairy dust on him. He took in the label, and his scowl transformed into a smile of wonder. “Dude. Really?”

  “Cray gave it to us. Glad to share. Dash, are you up for this?” I asked. “Would you prefer to just call the cops?”

  “And tell them everything? Besides, they’ll laugh at this ridiculous situation. Let’s go check it out.” Dash tightened his hat on his head, a new determination on his face. “I need to know who’s out to get us.”

  10

  We flagged down a cab to take Neil, Dash and me to the intersection nearest Charity Cemetery. Dash and I sat in the back, Neil up front, and I read up on the memorial as we motored to Canal Street.

  “Have you received any other notes?” Neil asked Dash.

  “No! Honestly, I was hoping this was over.”

  “Maybe it will be after tonight,” I said, expressing optimism I didn’t really feel.

  We didn’t say much else for the rest of the ride, but my tummy was not entirely happy, and I was wishing I’d had some snackery with my snaiquiri so I wouldn’t feel quite so tipsy. Dash seemed a little fuzzy, mostly anxious, and Neil was a rock. Heck, when wasn’t he a rock?

  “Um, is it just me, or are there a lot of dead people around here?” Dash whispered after the cab dropped us in front of a dilapidated white structure with a gate at Canal Street and City Park Avenue. The car peeled rubber getting out of there. This was a weird, not-quite-square three-way intersection, and the traffic lights and occasional headlights weren’t bright enough for me.

  “This is kind of the nexus of dead people here,” I said. “This is the gate for Odd Fellows Rest, an old secret society cemetery. Lots of tombs. And there are people buried in the walls.”

  “Atmospheric,” Neil said with grim humor.

  I pointed out Cypress Grove across Canal Street and Greenwood in the opposite direction.

  “What the hell is that?” Dash asked in alarm as a car’s headlights caught a bizarre shape atop a small hill in Greenwood.

  I suppressed a semi-hysterical giggle that was half fear. “I think that’s the Elks mausoleum. That’s an elk. I saw it on a field trip when I was a kid.”

  “Well fuck me and fuck their elk,” Dash said, and I laughed for real this time at the unexpected vitriol.

  “We might want to take it down a notch,” Neil said quietly, tapping his phone, probably sending his text to Luke. “How far away is this place?”

  I whispered this time. “Just up Canal.” We walked in the direction I indicated, side by side like Dorothy, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow. Only we weren’t worried about lions, tigers and bears. It was more like muggers, ghosts and killers. I clutched my messenger bag tightly and tried to look fierce.

  “But everything’s closed,” Dash said.

  “So maybe we meet at the gate,” I said.

  Dash sounded hoarse. “I hear voices.”

  “Is that a—bus?” Neil asked.

  A short, white bus was parked just up and across the street. We crept across the streetcar tracks and behind it, then peered around its bumper.

  About ten people were passing through a black iron gate topped by the words “Charity Hospital Cemetery.”

  “It’s open!” I said.

  “For a tour,” Neil said. “Let’s follow them in.”

  “Maybe our source is one of the tourists,” Dash murmured as we strolled in behind them like we owned the place.

  Neil didn’t say anything, just led us up the path and then off to the side and behind a chunky white structure faced in shiny black panels. The voice of the tour guide drifted back to us from where the group had stopped in the center—the eye of the hurricane, according to what I’d read online. I only heard a few words, but I knew the story all too well.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” Dash asked as he clung to the wall, out of sight, looking around at more blocky structures set in a rough circle and an expanse of grass that rolled away into the darkness. “This doesn’t look like a cemetery. I don’t see any graves.”

  “It was basically a potter’s field,” I said. “Poor people were buried here. Victims of yellow fever and flu epidemics. And then they built this memorial. You’re leaning on a grave.”

  Dash jumped back, and Neil’s mouth twitched.

  “There are dozens of victims of Hurricane Katrina buried in here, including some who were never identified.” I’d known only a few of the fourteen-hundred people killed in the storm, but I never got to mourn them. Once my parents sent me to Aunt Celestine, I came back only for short visits, much later. My aunt and I stayed in a hotel every time, and my parents were too busy talking about all the good work they were doing with their church and hurricane victims and their missions to Central America to discuss all that we’d really lost. For them, the hurricane was like crack. It gave their needy souls a focus they’d been unable to find in me.

  “OK, now I’m creeped out,” Dash said.

  “You should be,” I agreed.

  “Maybe hiding isn’t the right thing to do.” Neil glanced at his phone and pocketed it again. “It’s midnight. Let’s give them a chance to contact us.” The tour guide’s spiel had ended, and now the tourists were wandering through the memorial. Following Neil’s lead, we also wandered for several minutes, but we stuck together.

  No one came up to us. Couldn’t our informant see us? The dead seemed like they were crowding in. And now the tourists were gathering back at the gate, getting on the bus. If we didn’t get out of here soon, we might be locked in, and the last thing I wanted was to spend the night with Katrina’s glorious dead.

  We got to the large black plaque in the middle and pretended to read it, but all of us were looking around, knowing our time had run out.

  And then I heard a whoosh and a clatter.

  I jumped back instinctively and looked up at Dash. He held a hand to his forehead. Crimson rivulets of blood trickled through his fingers.

  “What the—?” I sputtered.

  “We’re leaving now.” Neil yanked on the stunned Dash’s arm and pulled him toward the entrance. I walked quickly behind them, then heard another whoosh past my ear.

  “What the hell is it?” I asked, finishing my sentence this time as we broke into a run. I spied Dash’s hat caught in a bush in a strip of vegetation. I grabbed it and kept going, then saw another hat lying on the grass. Maybe that was his? Without thinking, I grasped the brim and had to give it an extra yank to free it—from the arrow that had pinned it to the ground. Another whoosh by my head as I bent to grab the arrow told me I didn’t have time to extract the shaft from the ground, so I leapt up and stumbled after the others as we made a run for the front gate. We got a funny look from the rosy-cheeked tour leader, who was hovering there looking for the rest of his tourists.

  “Do you have room on that bus?” Neil asked him.

  I shot Neil an Are you crazy? look. “I don’t care if there’s room. We’re getting o
n it!”

  Neil shrugged his assent, caving to my panic, and we both pushed Dash forward and onto the bus. The tour leader apparently grokked our urgency, because he boarded right behind us and plopped into the driver’s seat. He cranked up the motor as the three of us stood in the middle of the packed bus, Neil and I steadying Dash between us.

  There was a loud crack as something hit one of the side windows, greeted by screams from the tourists. The glass cracked but didn’t break.

  Neil didn’t look especially concerned. “Oblique hit, maybe?”

  “Your play-by-play for tonight’s Hunger Games provided by Neil Rockaway,” I quipped, and Neil quirked his mouth at me. OK, so stress made me sarcastic.

  “Hang on, everyone!” the leader-driver said. The bus jumped away from the curb and hurtled down the street. “Everyone OK? As you can see, we go all out on our ghost tours, and so do the ghosts!”

  There was nervous laughter. A few people stared at us, since it was kind of obvious we weren’t part of the tour. Others pulled out the cocktails and flasks they’d stowed on the bus and took generous swigs.

  “We’re taking a slight detour, but we’ll return to our BYOB Midnight Ghost Tour in just a few minutes,” the driver said. I caught his eye in the rearview mirror. He didn’t look happy.

  Hey, it wasn’t our fault some maniac with a bow and arrow shot up his bus. Probably.

  I plucked the handkerchief poking up from Dash’s jacket pocket, pushed his hand away from his forehead and pressed the cloth against his skin. The white fabric blossomed scarlet, but even minor head wounds were big bleeders. At least that’s what I told myself.

  “I can hold it,” Dash said softly, taking over and putting pressure on his wound. “I should’ve thought of the handkerchief.”

  “You had other things on your mind. How do you feel?” I asked.

  “Stupid,” Dash said, and a rush of empathy warmed my heart. “You got my hat?”

  “Um, yeah. I think.” I held up both of the hats and picked the most familiar one. “This is yours?”

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes widening.

  There were two holes in the fine straw mesh, one in the front, one in the back.

  “That ventilation should come in handy back in Bohemia,” Neil said.

  I raised an eyebrow at him and couldn’t suppress a smile. “I’ll tell you more when we stop,” I murmured. There were too many interested parties on board. For a second, I wondered if maybe one of them was the archer—but then, that last arrow had struck the bus as we were leaving, so that didn’t make sense.

  “Anybody missing a hat?” I called out, waving the one that wasn’t Dash’s, a natural straw fedora-style hat with a band in an alternating gray and white triangle pattern. No one bit.

  The driver ended up dropping us off at the same hospital where Barnie was staying. The guys got off first, and I leaned over to the driver and whispered, “You didn’t leave anybody behind back there, did you?”

  The driver turned as pale as one of his ghosts and snapped his gaze up to his mirror. He mouthed numbers as he counted, and then his face relaxed. “All here. I hope your friend’s going to be OK. I’m going to report this to the cops when the tour’s over. You should call in your report, too.”

  “Great idea. Thanks a lot.” I grabbed one of his tour brochures from a holder on the dash and stepped down to the street. At least if the driver reported what happened, we had the option of not being involved at all. I wasn’t sure what the right thing to do was anymore. There was more at stake than some bad whiskey now.

  Neil had already taken Dash through the doors of the hospital, and I followed, wondering if someone had really been trying to kill Dash. Or maybe all of us.

  11

  When Dash was finally taken back for examination amid the busy flow of incapacitated drunks and mysterious injuries, Neil and I sat on the uncomfortable emergency room chairs to wait. His arm rested lightly against mine. The contact was comforting after the scare we’d just had.

  I held the two hats out, one in each hand. “I got Dash’s hat and this other hat. What I wasn’t able to pick up was the arrow that carried Dash’s hat off his head.”

  “You actually saw an arrow? I wasn’t sure. I don’t know much about guns, but I wondered if a gun with a silencer might have been used.”

  “That’s a grim thought. But the arrow had poked right through the hat. I think there’s no doubt that’s what injured Dash.”

  “And no one on the bus claimed this other hat,” he said thoughtfully. “Oh, damn, I need to text Luke.” He pulled out his phone, and I couldn’t resist looking over his shoulder as he tapped out, “We’re OK. Complications. More later.”

  “Complications. Ha.” I looked up at him.

  Neil’s eyes arrested mine. Normally so hard to read, those blue-rimmed grays seemed to say a lot tonight. They held concern. The camaraderie of shared danger. A spark.

  I swallowed and looked away, then placed Dash’s hat on an empty chair and turned over the other one in my hands until I thought it was safe to look back. “What if this belonged to the shooter?”

  Neil ran a hand over his trim beard and took a moment to answer. “Maybe, since it didn’t belong to anyone on the bus. Not that any of them admitted, anyway.”

  “So maybe we need to find out who it belongs to.”

  “Tall order. Everybody wears a hat like this.”

  I lifted a shoulder. “At least at Cocktailia.”

  “True,” he said. “Plus it might’ve been in the cemetery before we ever arrived. Before the shooter ever arrived.”

  I shook my head. “It wasn’t far off the path. I think we would have noticed it when we came in.”

  “So we need to find someone who’s lost their fedora and is good with some kind of bow and arrow.”

  “Sure. Easy.” I returned Neil’s wry smile and continued. “The style is somewhat distinct. The rim is short and rolled a little.” I turned it over to look inside. “And it has a pretty lining.”

  “Gray silk. Nice. Is that a label?”

  I looked more closely at the small, dark gray square sewn into the lining. “Chapeau Brothers. There’s another tag.” I fingered the tab that had been tucked under the sweatband inside. “Size large.”

  “So our shooter has a big head. Not surprising.”

  I grinned. “Now judging his brains by the size of his head?”

  “His ego.” Neil leaned back and crossed his legs and sighed. He looked tired.

  “What is it?”

  “I have a big workshop to give tomorrow. I’m worried for me and for you, since you guys have to make the drinks. I’m tired. And more relevant right at this moment, someone is trying to kill us. Why?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t see why anyone would want to whack us. Or Dash. But if I had to guess, I’d say he was the target. As for the bad whiskey—that could have been so much worse.”

  “Again, why? We need to ask him some questions.”

  “Cripes!” I pulled out my phone. “I should text Travis.”

  “I texted him when you were helping Dash check in. He was worried and asked if he should leave his date and come here. I told him Dash had a minor accident and would be OK.”

  “I think that’s accurate. Hey, should we go see Barnie?”

  “Not now. I hope he’s asleep. We’ll try to see him tomorrow.”

  “OK.” I was too tired to argue, now that he mentioned it. The alcohol had worn off, and it had been a hell of a long day. I slouched in my seat, too, adding the mystery hat to Dash’s on the other chair, and dug around in my messenger bag until I found my little tin of jelly beans. I sort of wished I was still carrying around a bottle of rum.

  “Want one?” I held the box out to Neil.

  “Oooo, licorice.” He took one and popped it in his mouth.

  “Good. You’re a freak like me. Black jelly beans are my favorite.”

  He chuckled. “I’m into green, too, but licorice makes me think
of absinthe.”

  “And absinthe makes me think of New Orleans.” The good parts, anyway. I closed my eyes against the waiting room’s fluorescent lights and tried to picture myself in the Carousel Bar, slowly spinning, high on Sazeracs.

  I was awakened from a doze by Neil’s elbow. “Dash is out.”

  “He is?” I sat up, groaning from stiffness. I straightened my glasses, which had gone cockeyed on my face. The clock on the wall said it was one forty-five. Great.

  Dash came over to us, patting a small bandage on his head, and we stood to greet him. “Six stitches,” he said, “and a lot of questions.”

  “What did you tell them?” I asked.

  “That I bumped into a grave. What could I tell them? I have no idea what’s going on.”

  Neil gestured toward the door. “I just summoned a ride. Let’s get you back to the hotel, and we can all get some sleep.”

  “OK.” Dash noticed me picking up the hats. “My hat.”

  “You want it?” I held it out.

  “No—no, you keep it for now. I think I need a new one.”

  “New hat. New memories.” I knew what that was like. New town. New memories. Which I found in Bohemia Beach, with its easygoing pace and blue ocean. It had hurricanes, yes, but none yet like the one I’d left behind. More to the point, it had my aunt and my dog, who were all the family I had left.

  The cab ride went quickly. Neil didn’t ask Dash any questions, and neither did I. We were all exhausted, and there wasn’t much we could do tonight. We’d start fresh in the morning.

  “Do you want us to go with you to your room?” Neil asked Dash once we were back in the lobby of the Hotel Lebeau, which still had a few revelers walking around.

  “I’ll be fine. Travis is next door if I need anything. That is, if he’s not out with his new amour.”

  “Or in with her.” The guys looked at me, and Neil was suppressing a laugh again. “Ew. I mean, that didn’t sound right. Sorry.”

  Dash gave us a small smile. “Probably an accurate assessment. We’ll touch base tomorrow to make sure everything’s ready for Saturday, but I know you have your workshop. We’ll get through this.”