“Here, I bought you a house warming gift,” he said and held out the bag for me to take. It wasn’t gift wrapped and I could see it was a Mr. Coffee electric coffeemaker.
“Thank you, but I have a coffeemaker,” I said after looking in the bag without taking it.
“You sound crabby. What’s the matter, didn’t get much sleep?” he asked and walked off to my kitchen without waiting for my answer.
“Maybe you can give it to your brother and my sister as a—wedding/help you stay up with the baby—gift?” I followed him into the kitchen where he began tearing open the box and setting it up on my counter.
“I heard,” was all he said.
“You won’t get your money back if it’s not in the original packaging. It will look bad if you give it to your brother after you use it,” I said. “And it’s not in the box.”
“Wait until you taste the coffee it makes,” he said, ignoring me.
“Well, there goes your refund,” I said watching Dante rip the box apart and pull out the pieces to set up the coffee pot.
“After a cup made with this, you won’t want to use the relic anymore.”
“The relic has a name. It’s called My Coffee maker, not Mr. Coffee’s.”
I usually liked watching him when he didn’t know I was doing it, except now. Dante was pushing my buttons and I was starting to feel irritable.
I asked, “Did you hear me, or have you quit using the ear protection at the firing range?” He didn’t answer but continued to set up Mr. Coffee.
Dante could be very thoughtful—in brief duration—when the mood suited him. We had stood in a wedding together, right after I met Jiff and asked him to be my date to the wedding. Dante may have thought Jiff was a threat then. He took dancing lessons so he could dance with me all night at the reception and keep me away from Jiff.
Someone tried to kill me during the reception, and it curtailed our gliding around the dance floor. I’m still waiting for him to take me out and show me his moves—still waiting, and waiting.
“Maybe my sister and your brother will have a nice-size wedding with dancing,” I said. “Then we’ll have another chance to let you lead me around the dance floor.”
“A big wedding is just going to cost a lot of money. They should use that money to get started as a family.” He measured water to pour into the Mr. Coffee.
“Well, hopefully it will be the only marriage for them and you can’t blame them for wanting to have a nice one,” I said.
“They’ve made a tough road for themselves as it is. Any money your parents or mine want to spend on a wedding ought to go towards paying for a few months’ rent on a place of their own, not throwing a party to celebrate a huge mistake. I’m staying out of it, and you should stay out of it, too.”
“A huge mistake? Stay out of family needing our help?” I was astounded, and my questions caused him to stop trying to force the basket into the coffee maker and look at me.
“You know what I mean. They should get themselves out of this mess like they got themselves into it—on their own. That’s not the way to start their life together,” he said and finally pulled out the instructions to read the automatic section.
“Well, at least they’re starting their life. Sherry and your brother are both twenty-five years old. They aren’t teenagers. They knew what they were doing.”
Okay, I know Sherry knew what she was doing and the twin should have known where it could wind up. He should have chosen his actions more wisely.
“What are we doing?”
“Brandy.” He stopped reading the instructions and looked straight at the wall in front of him. “What is the big rush? I just want to set this up for you, have a cup of coffee and get going.”
Oh really.
“Well, if you don’t want to discuss our family, then tell me why no one, not even you, has contacted me to see if I remember anything else that happened at CluckIt. You know, I was thinking about the person I saw climbing in and out the drive through window and—”
“NOPD is on it. Please stay out of it.” Dante was going through my cabinets looking for ground coffee.
“Well, you might be on it, but you haven’t solved it, have you?”
My inner demon was wide awake. I didn’t like the abrupt tone Dante was taking with me over the family situation, and I’m sure the one I was sending him wasn’t any different.
“I heard on the news a person was found in the lake. Was it the CluckIt man who was abducted, kidnapped, whatever you want to call it?”
My hands were on my hips as I stood facing him, invading his space, while he faced the wall and the coffeemaker.
“I can’t give you the details. It’s an…”
“Ongoing investigation.” I finished the sentence for him. “It’s none of my business. Stay out of it. Why did you come over here this morning? Oh right, to plug in Mr. Coffee.”
Even though I agreed with him about my sister and his brother, I felt myself itching for an argument. He was using it to keep the attention off of us, and I wanted to use it to put the focus on us.
“Do you think someone can give you his or her negative energy?” I asked remembering the conversation with Sandra when I first met her. I pulled out the food and water bowls for the dogs while Mr. Coffee percolated.
“Are we talking about that dog you found tied in your yard, or your nutcase neighbor across the street who gives off enough negative energy I can feel it in here, even through the walls?” he asked. He was holding a coffee mug watching the coffee drip into the pot.
“Really, you can feel it through the walls?” I stopped feeding the dogs and turned to look at him with one hand on my hip.
“Only when I am in receive mode,” he said and laughed.
I didn’t.
He recognized the turn in my mood and decided to go sit at the kitchen table.
When the coffee maker pinged it was ready, I poured us each a cup. I restrained the urge to pour the rest of the pot in his lap. As long as we had changed the subject, Dante was happy to talk about anything else.
“Did you have a red bike when we were kids?” I asked.
“No, but the kid up the block did. I don’t remember much about him.” Dante said. “Why are you asking?”
“I don’t remember him either,” I said. “I just remembered riding on a red bike when we were kids.”
We talked about what our plans were for the day while I finished getting the bowls of dog food and water ready to feed the dogs. I filled the water bowls with fresh water, adding a few drops from a carafe that had Holy H2O written on it.
“Why do you have holy water in the refrigerator, and why are you pouring some in the dog’s bowl?” he asked.
“That’s where I keep it, and the new guy might have heart worms. I’m hoping the holy water helps him get through the treatment if he does, and I hope it protects Meaux from getting them, or any other doggie ailments.”
“Those nuns in grammar school really did a number on you,” he said as he sipped his coffee.
“Remember, dog is God spelled backward. Why do you think that is?” I finished putting the dog bowls down. “Besides, you’re the one who wanted me to call the rescue Jesus.”
“Are you calling him Jesus?” Dante overly exaggerated the pronunciation.
“Yes, but that’s only because I haven’t had time to think of another name.” I thought how ridiculous I sounded. “I thought you liked dogs.”
“I think Jesus,” again Dante used the Spanish version, “could work for any breed. I do like dogs—one at a time. Every home should have one. I repeat, o-n-e, one.”
“Well, when you have your place, or get your own home, then get o-n-e dog,” I said.
It irked me that he was trying to dictate what I should do here, in my house, one he never discussed sharing with me. The smile was long gone from my voice.
“Aren’t you glad your mother didn’t subscribe to the o-n-e rule for children?” Dante had one brother a year older
than he was and three younger brothers.
The other reason I moved out of my parents’ home was so I could do animal rescue for this breed without being chastised for the number of dogs I brought home. I never had more than three, and one was always my dog.
When Suzanne said she’d be my roommate, she also said she didn’t care how many dogs I rescued and fostered in our home. She said she liked seeing wagging tails greet her no matter what time she came in.
Dante turned his head and tilted it to his shoulder, listening to the radio pinned to his collar. He stood frozen a few seconds and then he assumed normal movement while he reported, “There’s been another homicide, and I have to go.” He dumped the remainder of his coffee in the sink and headed to the front door. “Look, another murder means I won’t be getting off anytime soon.”
“Like that’s a newsflash?” I asked while I picked up the empty dog food bowls.
I took my time walking behind him to the door so that he had started down the steps by the time I got to it. I watched him all the way to his squad car. He was wearing an ill-fitting suit his mother bought him off the rack from the Sear’s store in the mall. Miss Ruth didn’t subscribe to custom fit.
Since he still lived at home, and his mother still did his laundry, she only bought 100% polyester so she could throw everything in the washing machine—his suits, coats, jackets, pants—everything. She was a frugal woman, so no dry-cleaning bills for her. That made sense when all five of her boys were younger. Now, the suit only made him look dumpy, like Hanky.
Just as he was reaching for the door to get in his squad car, my neighbor Sandra across the street was getting out of a cab and attempting to negotiate the flight of stairs up to her front door on the second floor. Dante stopped to watch her. She staggered on a diagonal. She looked like a bumper car bouncing off the sides every time she hit the very low railing, sending her reeling in the other direction.
On the final stagger, she appeared to pick-up speed and tripped head first over the low riser and into the fifteen-foot tall ligustrums on one side of the center stairway. She landed upside down suspended in the hedges and didn’t hit the ground.
“Dante, come on. Help me get her outta there,” I said running past him and across the street to where Sandra was stuck.
Dante took his time walking across the street muttering under his breath that he was going to be late for work. It took us almost thirty minutes to get her untangled. I told him to leave after the third, or maybe it was the fourth time he checked his watch. When I said I could get her upstairs by myself, I didn’t have to tell him again.
Chapter Ten
The department I managed had access to all data records, phone records and long-distance calls made by anyone, anywhere on any device. This was necessary to investigate fraudulent activity and discover where it originated, and what was needed to catch the hacker and file charges. We needed consent from companies we worked with to legally put monitors on their lines, but the fact was we could do it at any time and they would never know.
If I wanted to, I could check and see what pizza joint someone called for dinner delivery, but the head of the department received daily reports of all search requests and would wonder why I was checking on someone’s take out order.
Between working for my clients and fighting the urge to do an unauthorized search of the CluckIt phone records to see who Charles Ballon might have called, I searched database records for anyone who might have lived at our address before Suzanne and I moved there. I spent every free snippet of time I had trying to find the names of previous tenants or owners.
I starting researching who had owned the house I rented, and if any leases were ever recorded. I noticed my landlord owned the house now and it had been in his family since the early 1900’s. He grew up there, and after his parents died, he inherited it and used it as a rental. This was easy to find in the city’s tax records because when I searched for his name as the owner of the property, it showed the tax bill was mailed to a different address. It was the same address we mailed our rent check to.
If his dealings with us were any indication of his record keeping, then I already knew he wasn’t big on paperwork. When we called and asked to see the house for rent, he didn’t insist on an application to check our references. After he had walked his eyes all over Suzanne and me, a time too many in my opinion, he shook hands and told us the deposit was due with the first month’s rent.
We handed him our checks, and he gave us the keys. When I asked about a lease he said he didn’t need or want one. When I said I’d like a lease for six months to a year, he agreed but it took a week of me calling him every day to finally send one for us to sign. He was a nervous and nosey little man, and asked us a million questions about our families, our jobs, what cars we drove, if we had boyfriends, where we went to school, and if this was our first house we ever rented.
I remember thinking he should work for the military, or police department interrogating suspects. Of course, when I had told him I dated someone with NOPD, that sealed our deal. He liked the police being in the neighborhood regularly.
I placed a call to Mr. Chauvin, our landlord, to see if he could tell me something to help find the elusive tenant who lived in the house before Suzanne and I moved in.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Chauvin, this is Brandy Alexander. I live in…,”
“You live in my house. What’s wrong? You break something?”
“No. Nothing’s wrong and we didn’t break anything. I wanted to…,”
“Are you moving? Are you calling to tell me you’re moving out?”
“No. This isn’t about moving…,”
“You can’t pay the rent this month?”
“We can pay the rent, Mr. Chauvin. Just wait a second. I have a question about your previous tenant.”
“Fara Theriot?”
“I don’t know her name. What can you tell me about her?”
By now, it sounded like he had settled down over all the possible rental disasters that my phone call conjured up for him. He said Fara Theriot mailed him a note saying she had been called back to her home state (none indicated) for a family emergency. The note also said she left the place as clean as she could, and there was $100.00 cash enclosed to cover any additional expense to have her unit professionally cleaned.
“Her name wasn’t Opal?” I asked.
He said no. I asked if anyone named Opal ever lived there and he said not to his recollection. I asked if he remembered anything else about her, where she was from, her emergency contact, or where she worked. I asked if she had a car.
He told me she gave him cash for the deposit and mailed a money order every month for her rent. She didn’t fill out a lease or an application—no surprise there—and she seemed like a trustworthy girl much like we were.
Mr. Chauvin thought Fara did some waitressing in the French Quarter or maybe it was at an uptown restaurant because she was a girl who dressed nice and appeared wholesome. He told me he thought she was a hard worker, not anyone looking for a problem or trouble.
When I asked what did he mean by wholesome, he meant she didn’t have any tattoos, multiple earrings or obvious piercings. He didn’t remember a car because she asked for directions on the streetcar line when she initially met him to see the rental. He said she had never been any trouble, never complained or asked for anything. She paid her rent on time and was never late. He said he was sorry to lose her as a tenant, then rushed to add not that he wasn’t happy to have us, because we were good tenants too. He said it was odd the way she left.
“Odd? How so?” I asked.
He said, “She left the place spotless and didn’t ask for her deposit back. She never called to let me know she was leaving. She mailed a typed note in a typed envelope when she had always addressed the rent checks and envelopes by hand. It said she was sorry she had to leave suddenly, but had a family crisis back in her home state but she didn’t mention any state. You know, I remembered Fara tell
ing me she was raised in foster care when I asked if her family lived here.”
“Where was the note mailed from?” I asked.
“That’s the other thing I thought was odd. I looked at the postmark after I read it and it was dated the day before and mailed from the Mid-City Post Office.”
“Do you still have the note?” I asked him.
“No. There wasn’t anything in it to keep it for—no forwarding address.” Then he added, “Look, if you find her, and I don’t know why you’re looking for her, tell her I’m happy to give her deposit back and the extra money she sent. Just let me know where to mail it. She was a decent girl and a good tenant and left the place immaculate. She even returned her key.”
Two things were off to me about Fara Theriot. One was Sandra said she complained about all the cats and called the cops on her. The landlord told me she wasn’t a complainer—she was a quiet and a good tenant. The second thing was the landlord said she worked long hours and didn’t have a car, so how could she afford to move out without trying to get her deposit back when she did everything she should do to get it back?
The landlord’s description of her sounded like someone living paycheck-to-paycheck. If she was living check-to-check, moving is expensive even when you do it yourself. It still takes money to pay for deposits, trucks, etc. Why did she get all her stuff out of there, leave it spotless, and not want her deposit back?
The rest of the day passed without any word or calls from Silas or Frank. I used every spare minute and my lunch hour to research all the databases I could get my hands on trying to find someone named Fara Theriot. She didn’t own a vehicle, and she didn’t rent a truck, car or hire a service to move her back to the home state after the family crisis.
I found nothing.
The utilities were cut off due to non-payment, so no forwarding address had been left with the Sewerage and Water Board or Entergy. She had deposits coming back if she had called to terminate the accounts. The cell phone number Mr. Chauvin gave me for Fara had been cut off also due to non-payment. When I dialed the number, there was no voice mail or greeting.
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