Drive Thru Murder

by Colleen Mooney

  “Maybe you should direct that bad energy at a black hole in outer space away from all of us here on earth, you know, in case there’s a current shift, or a hurricane brings the Gulf of Mexico water back this way.”

  Sandra stopped watering to ponder how she would work that—sending energy to space—because she gazed heaven-bound for a few moments before she said, “That’s a good idea. I hadn’t thought of a hurricane bringing it all back here. I’ll try that instead.”

  “I guess I had a negative energy thing happen to me last night.” I wondered if telling Sandra my negative energy story from CluckIt would cause her more problems.

  “I, uh, heard there was someone shot at the CluckIt on Claiborne Avenue. I saw you there.”

  “You saw me? You were there?” I watched her for an answer.

  “Yes and no. I get visions of things that happen. When you walked up just now, I got a flash of you at the CluckIt. I saw you at the drive-thru. It was only a glimpse, like a snapshot, of a moment in time.”

  “Wow. You didn’t happen to see a snapshot of the person’s face who climbed in the window?” I asked.

  “No, not that face, only yours. I only saw you clearly in my flash,” she said. “I used to stop at that CluckIt on my way home before my car blew up. I find it odd you went there.”

  “Why? I was hungry and decided to go to the drive-thru. Why is that odd?”

  “Because it’s a cross-dressing hangout. You don’t strike me as the type who has many cross-dressing friends.”

  “I can’t buy food from a cross-dressing fast food place?” I asked.

  Sandra just shrugged and didn’t elaborate further.

  “The police had a ton of questions, and I had very few answers. It all happened so fast,” I added.

  “It all could come back to you more clearly in time,” she said.

  Sandra didn’t strike me as anyone who remembered things very clearly, given all the time in the world. I looked at the burned-out Fiat and asked, “What are you going to do about your car?”

  “The insurance company told me they were sending an investigator to check it out. The city left a notice that said I had to move it off the street, so I pushed it in the driveway. I hope my claim pays soon so I can buy another car. Otherwise, I have to keep taking the streetcar to work, like your roommate plans to do, and a cab home. I can’t afford a taxi both ways.”

  “You’ve met Suzanne? I didn’t realize you two knew each other.”

  “No, we’ve never met. I work in the French Quarter reading palms, and sometimes I get a flash of something that doesn’t make sense at the time I see it, but sooner or later I figure it out. I had a flash of a woman leaving your house and walking to the streetcar stop. I didn’t know her name until you just told me.”

  I gave Suzanne a ride to work last night. She hadn’t taken the streetcar, but she plans to.

  “Can you try to see me, you know, in a church wearing a wedding dress with a man standing next to me? Can you see what he looks like?” No harm in asking if she mustered up any other flashes of me.

  She zoned out on me for a minute because she pointed the hose in one place again soaking the same bush. When she re-entered the present orbit she said, “I saw you standing inside a very big house, a big house like the ones on St. Charles Avenue.”

  Wait. What? Dante certainly didn’t live in a big house uptown. Maybe it was where we were going to live together someday? Right. On a policeman’s salary? Sandra’s delusions were rubbing off on me.

  Sandra finished watering and went to her burned-out car. She had a 100-pound bag of cat food in the trunk and told me she kept it there, so she didn’t have to haul it up and down the steps. She took out a stack of plastic bowls and started to scoop cat food into them, setting them down around her feet. Cats appeared meowing and circling like sharks in bloody water. She handed me a stack of the bowls filled with the kibble and said, “Put these in the driveway in front of the car. I don’t want anyone to see how many cats I feed.”

  “I think that ship has sailed,” I said, thinking Sandra might get flashes of the future but she doesn’t seem aware of the here and now. “Why don’t you want any of the neighbors to see you feeding the cats? Do any of them complain?”

  “Just one who used to live in the house you moved into,” she said. “Opal said she didn’t like the smell of cat pee.”

  I liked cats but I wasn’t crazy about the smell of cat pee either. Sandra was feeding a lot of cats.

  She started to say while picking up the empty food bowls, “Let me give you a palm reading—no charge—since you’ll be the one helping me.” She stood up and finished with, “and you’re my new neighbor.”

  I didn’t quite understand what she meant by being the one helping her since I was more of a dog person. Maybe she had one of her flashes of me feeding all the cats. I saw three run over here from under my house, and decided they had to relocate. I mentally noted to buy some moth ball crystals to sprinkle around the perimeter of my house to keep them from taking up residence there. I really didn’t want to hear the sound of cats crying, fighting and mating all night while my dog barked at them.

  While I didn’t live and breathe by Tarot cards or palm readings, I did have a healthy respect for their place in the cosmos. I didn’t want to offend the otherworld, causing the Tarot gods to wreak havoc in my personal space here on earth. Heaven knows I create enough chaos in my life all by myself.

  “I’d love a palm reading, but I’ve got a ton of errands to do, so I can get settled in the new place,” I nodded toward our house. “Maybe another time?”

  “Sure, anytime you see me home, just come over. Who knows, I might get a vision of the one who will be waiting for you at the altar.” She smiled.

  Chapter Four

  I left Sandra and headed to Magazine Street in search of organizational items—baskets or plastic containers to put some of Meaux’s toys in. Magazine Street stretched from Canal Street all the way to Audubon Park and was a mecca for every type of shopping, from high end retail clothing boutiques to second hand thrift or antique stores with everything in between. On the way, my cell phone rang. It was Jiff.

  “Did you still need help moving? My case settled, so I’m all yours,” he said when I answered.

  “Great timing, Counselor. All of my stuff is moved in,” I said.

  “I’m at your service anyway. I can help you unbox. Have you eaten? Want me to stop and get you lunch?” he said.

  “I was just heading to Magazine Street to pick-up a few items, like hangers, plastic shoe boxes, you know. But, I have other news I want to tell you.”

  “Let me guess. You’re ready to fly away with me to Mexico?” Jiff was always asking me to take a week’s vacation and go somewhere exotic with him.

  “Actually, that sounds a lot better than what I have to tell you. Maybe you heard it on the news. I was at the CluckIt drive-thru last night when that shooting and kidnapping happened. I saw the guy climbing in the window, heard the shots and then saw him climb back out pulling a body with him.”

  “Brandy, are you okay?”

  “Yes. I’m just a bit overwhelmed by it all,” I said.

  “Why didn’t you call me? What can I do to help you?”

  Yes, why didn’t I call him?

  “I feel bad about what happened to those people and angry that the police don’t seem to be taking it very seriously. I all but had to force them to listen to my statement on what I witnessed, and it was Dante who caught the homicide. I thought he would at least be interested in what I had to say.”

  “The police see so much crime that they get immune to most of it,” he said. “I don’t think it had anything to do with you.”

  “You and your firm did a great job for my friend Julia when the odds were against her. I wanted to see what you thought of it all. Both victims were transgender, bisexual or cross-dressers. I’m not sure how, or if that figures into it. It doesn’t seem like they had anyone but each other, or at least,
one thought so.”

  “Hey, if you don’t want me to chauffeur you around today while you sit in the back collecting your purchases, why don’t we meet later and have dinner? I’ll meet you anywhere you want,” he said.

  “Let’s do that. I’ll call you around five or six o’clock? That will give me time to get my errands done.”

  “Great. If you don’t call me, I’m going to hunt you down,” he said and laughed.

  “Deal.” I gave him a muah and hung up.

  I parked on Magazine Street in the block that was my favorite to shop along. Before I could get out of the car my cell rang again. I thought Jiff must be anxious to see me if he was calling me back so soon. Only it wasn’t Jiff, it was Woozie, my parents’ housekeeper and the woman who raised me.

  “You needs to git yourself over here right now. Your sister and Dante’s twin brothers be in a big mess o’ trouble,” Woozie blurted out even before I could say hello.

  “Okay.” I was going to add, “I’m in the car so I’ll head that way,” but Woozie hung up after she heard me say okay. Woozie had been my grandmother’s housekeeper, on my dad’s side, raising my dad in the same house they still lived in. She has been in the family longer than some of our furniture. My dad jokes that Woozie was here even before his mother was born. She’s considered part of the family to Dad and me, but not to my mother.

  Woozie was the one who picked me up and put Band-Aids on my skinned knees, or ice on a cut lip. Woozie was there and told me I looked pretty when I got dressed up to go out on dates and fixed my hair for my proms. Once in a blue moon, my dad would tell me I looked pretty if my mother wasn’t around to hear him. My mother tolerated Woozie, and Woozie wasn’t a fan of my mother’s, but they both knew Woozie was here to stay.

  As I parked in the driveway alongside of my family home I wondered what my sister and Dante’s brothers had everyone wound up over. They probably rolled someone’s house in toilet paper. Whatever they did I was sure my mother’s mantra would be broadcasting loud and clear: ‘that’s not the way we raised you’. No matter the perceived transgression from either of us, my mother absolved herself of any parental involvement with that mantra. She had done the right thing while we, despite her colossal effort at mothering, did the wrong thing, and it was always my fault.

  Since I moved out, every time I walked through the front door everyone was in the middle of a new crisis. It was early Saturday afternoon when I arrived and found everyone standing in front of a chair or recliner where they had been sitting. My mother was standing at the dining room table in front of her ceramic work which, according to my dad, had taken up permanent residence there.

  My sister, Sherry, was at the other end of the dining room table with red swollen eyes, tears running down her face. Walking in when she was already crying was never a good sign. My dad stood in front of his recliner.

  Woozie was standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. holding a giant wooden spoon. When she saw me, she started taking small steps backward into the kitchen while giving me the come hither eye to join her there.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” I asked at the exact moment I registered an enormous family dilemma unfolding, and Woozie had put me right in the middle of it. It must have been the last resort for her to throw me into the ring of fire with my mother.

  “Great! I guess you’re here because you heard the news,” my mother said in an unusually snarky voice directed at me.

  “News? What news? Somebody died?” From the blank stares, I foolishly thought this might be about me and asked, “Is this about CluckIt?”

  “You gonna wish somebody died,” Woozie’s voice boomed across the living room as she took her last step backward, disappearing into the kitchen.

  “We’re not having chicken from CluckIt,” my mother snapped. “Woozie made dinner.”

  My dad announced in a factual tone like the one he would use to ask you to pass the potatoes at dinner, “Your sister is pregnant.” He continued in his potato passing voice, “With one of the Deedler twins from next door.”

  There was a pause long enough for me to dart my eyes to each of them, looking for a reaction.

  Then he exploded with “And she doesn’t know which one is the father!” He fell back into his seat as if saying it out loud deflated him.

  Wait. What?

  I was processing my dad’s live news feed when I noticed my mother standing and glaring at me. Uh oh. I thought I was in the clear on this one but I’m pretty sure my mother had a different opinion.

  “Well, you should be pleased with yourself,” my mother hissed. “You’re providing a poor example by moving out and gallivanting around the world, unchaperoned. That is not how single women should conduct themselves, and now you’ve ruined your sister’s life.”

  “What? Gallivanting? Unchaperoned around the world?” I looked at my dad and asked, “Does she have us confused with the Royal Family?”

  He appeared to be in a trance or maybe he was just ignoring us.

  Returning the glare my mother was giving me I said, “You do know I still live in New Orleans, in Mid-City, just ten minutes from here? I believe gallivanting involves great distances. I haven’t been to the West Bank, or even to the airport in Kenner since I moved out. I did leave the parish to go to the Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival for a day. It’s across the lake in St. Tammany Parish but that’s still the same time zone.”

  I turned back to my father and asked, “Dad, what did you mean, one of the Deedler twins, and she doesn’t know which one? She can tell them apart. We both can.”

  “Tell your sister what you just told us,” Dad said. My mother was making mean eyes at me while she went to put her arms around Sherry.

  Sherry sobbed louder.

  “Wait, this is getting us nowhere fast,” I said. “Is it because you can’t tell the twins apart? Or, is it because you did it with both of them?” I asked and noticed my mother’s face turning white.

  “It be the second one,” Woozie yelled from the kitchen.

  I looked from face-to-face in a moment of shocked silence. “Does Miss Ruth or Mr. Albert know?” I asked. I raised my voice to ask the question so Woozie could answer. Miss Ruth and Mr. Albert were our next-door neighbors. They were also Dante’s parents and the parents of his younger twin brothers who were going to make the next Father’s Day interesting.

  “Sherry don’t think Miz Ruth know yet,” Woozie yelled again from her out of sight position in the kitchen. My mother had been known to throw things at us, even Woozie—once. The safest place away from my mother was in the kitchen surrounded by knives, pots, pans and the dinky twenty-two caliber Saturday Night Special we all knew Dad hid in the pantry next to the refrigerator behind a bottle of liquor.

  “I think I’m going to see Woozie while y’all talk among yourselves,” I said sprinting to the kitchen.

  Our kitchen was just past the stairway going up to the bedrooms in our house. My dad had remodeled it numerous times trying to please my mother who demanded a Subzero refrigerator Woozie and I referred to as the double wide and the matching range. My mother’s demands were ludicrous since she never went into the kitchen except to complain, not even for a glass of water, let alone to cook.

  Woozie wanted my dad keep my grandmother’s stove. It was vintage. Woozie said they just didn’t make them like that old stove anymore. My mother said it looked like pioneer women used it last. It was gleaming white and took up the entire wall along one side of the kitchen. I talked Dad into using white marble for the countertops instead of the cheap Formica my mother wanted.

  My dad always said he didn’t marry my mother because she could cook. The thought of them—romantically—always made me cringe. Woozie and I held firm until Dad, out of fear Woozie might quit and leave him to my mother’s cooking, got everything we wanted.

  “Woozie, what in the world is going on out there? Did Sherry just drop that bomb on them without any warning?”

  “No. Your momma found a
home pregnancy test in the trash. Sherry got the wrong answer on the test. Since you don’t live here no more, she couldn’t say it was yours. When Sherry say it hers, your momma started yelling this be all your fault. You know how your momma and daddy get when it comes to that girl.” Woozie was talking in a lowered voice while she put dirty dinner dishes in the dishwasher.

  “Every time Sherry leave this house, it’s always with both them two boys, always two, never just one of ’em. Your momma and daddy be telling your sister not to be running with them two boys. After she leave with the two of them, they say to each other, at least there’s three and they less likely to get in trouble. You know what the kinda trouble they mean. The very trouble she in now.” Woozie stopped loading the dishwasher. She looked at me while she made the half-moon sign over her stomach.

  “So, did Sherry say she didn’t know who was the father or did she admit she’s been having sex with both twins?” I asked.

  “Well, from what I could make out from the kitchen here, she said she didn’t know which one got her pregnant. She didn’t admit she done it with both. I walked to the doorway to hear better just as you came in.” Woozie dished out the scoop while wrapping up leftovers from dinner.

  “Sherry’s having sex with half of Dante’s family, and I can’t get him to spend five minutes alone with me.” I sat at the kitchen table and watched Woozie.

  “Don’t worry what she be doing. You hungry? Want some of this before I put it away?”

  My stomach was in knots. “If you make me a plate to take home I’ll have it for dinner one night this week.”

  “I bet you ain’t even got a bottle of water in your icebox,” Woozie said as she put together a plate. She put it in a large grocery bag and added a block of cheese, a box of crackers, three bottles of Pellegrino waters and a box of ginger snaps she knew was my favorite. “I bet you got dog food but no people food,” she added.