Another man sitting close by added, “He’d stay all afternoon talking to guys coming in off the rigs. He had a bottle of wine for each one of us to take home for our holiday dinner with our families. It’s nice you’re here on his behalf. We all liked Larry and we liked working with him.”
“He was looking for love in all the wrong places, cher,” Andre said. “We all heard about the one he married. We know her cuz she grew up around here. Her real name is not Donna Twilight or whatever it was she told Larry. Her real name is Cherie Sassone.”
“Larry said he met her …” Julia started to say.
“Speed dating, he said he met her speed dating, remember, Julia? I met them both at the party the other night.” I cut her off before she could say something I’d have to kick her for again. Julia nodded.
She was being very antisocial given the fact we were surrounded by all these men. At any other time, given this much male attention, Julia would have been in her element, but these were working men. They wore jeans, flannel shirts, and work boots, not business suits. Julia was a bit of a snob and too bad for her. Some of these guys worked the rigs, yes, because they either owned them, inherited them, or they were on their land and got paid based on oil production from the wells. Some of these men were likely millionaires. We were the only two women in the dining hall besides Andre’s mom, and she was serving the food she cooked. The receptionist came in, got a plate, and left. I assume she went back to her position at the front door.
“Speed dating, huh?” Andre shook his head. “That poor girl had a rough life, and I think Larry just wanted to help her. He seemed to have a soft spot for ones who looked broken.”
“Rough life? What do you mean?” I asked while Julia sat looking at her food and poking at it. I stepped on her foot under the table.
The three guys sitting by us looked at each other. I nodded for them to go on.
“She grew up with an alcoholic mom and a very abusive father. Her dad knocked the mom around until he killed her. Cherie ran away from home when that happened,” Andre said between bites.
“We’d seen her with a black eye or two at school. Her dad went to jail, and Cherie started working in the bars at thirteen,” T-Jean added. “She was a good-looking girl and with makeup she looked older, a lot older.”
“Yeah, some guy outta Houston started buying up these bars where young girls worked and made them into exotic dance clubs,” Andre said.
The men who were just talking about Larry all looked at their plates and took a few bites. They were too polite to call them what they were – titty bars – or call Donna—Twilight—Cherie—whatever her name really is, a stripper in front of us.
“Recently, those bars started adding speed dating,” a man sitting about two seats down said. His name was Henry and the others pronounced it like the French do, On Ree.
“And how do you know all this about the bars?” Julia asked with a tinge of sarcasm.
Andre put down his fork. “Because we see the neon sign flashing in the window telling us when we pass them on our way home.”
“So how many children do you each have?” I asked before Julia could say another thing.
“T-Jean has five girls,” Andre said picking up his fork, grateful for the interest in his family. “I have three boys. He’s gonna be working to get them girls married off for the rest of his life.” That brought a round of laughter from the fellas sitting close to us.
“Who did Andre’s boys sit next to in first grade?” I asked.
“His boys better not sit next to my girls,” T-Jean joked.
“All my boys are gonna go to LSU and play football like I did. Of course, I’ll make them get a degree for something other than engineering on an oil rig. This work has gotten too dangerous. We work hard so we can send our kids to LSU.”
“And thank God we make it home when our shift is over,” T-Jean added as his mother moved over to him and poured another heaping spoonful of crawfish étouffée on his plate.
T-Jean’s mamma dished out seconds or thirds while asking us if we wanted bread pudding for desert. Julia and I declined.
A powerful strong smell of whiskey sauce announced Mamma’s approach with the pan of bread pudding. She pulled a big ice cream scoop of pudding out of the baking pan and dropped it on our plates saying, “You both are too skinny. Cher, I bet you two have to jump around in the shower to get wet. Eat the pudding.” She moved on to the guys, serving without asking.
We ate our lunch with some nice, gentlemanly comradery. Andre and T-Jean were true to their word. They boxed up what was left of our lunch and gave it to us to take home. I was stuffed and still had three-fourths of my meal left. Julia was about the same, plus we now had a big whopping serving of bread pudding for dessert. My boxed lunch felt like it weighed ten pounds.
When I got up to bring my tray to where I saw the men leaving theirs, Andre walked alongside me and said, “Follow me and I’ll show you where that goes.”
Once we were away from the table, Andre looked at me and said, “Look, I don’t want to cause any trouble, but you two ladies seem nice. Larry got mixed up with the wrong ones trying to help Cherie. We only knew he was married to her after the fact. Cherie had a hard life and got mixed up in God only knows what. Watch out for your friend.”
Andre gave Julia his card and said, “Here’s my card. We’ll let the other fellas know when you have the services. If we not out on the rigs, we’ll be there, and please let Cherie know we are sorry for her loss.”
Before Julia could start in on her plans to cremate Larry, I said, “We will let you know if there are services or a memorial. Julia’s not sure what she and Donna, I mean Cherie, will plan. They have to wait on the coroner to release his body.”
“Oh, right, right, right,” Andre said. He put on his baseball hat that was tucked in the back of his pants, tipped it our way, and walked off.
“Sorry for your loss, Miss Julia,” the men said leaving the lunch room.
In the car on the way home, I said, “I’m sure this is a lot to take in. Look, I’m gonna stop up here for five minutes at a client’s office. I have a bottle of bourbon I’m dropping off to him.”
“I gotta get back,” Julia started to say, but I gave her a look. “Okay, Okay.”
“I drove you here. In case you didn’t notice, it’s an hour and a half each way,” I said. “I went with you, and now you are gonna stop with me for ten minutes while I go in to meet my client.” Julia could test the patience of the Pope. “Have you not learned anything after that lunch? You can sit and act all high-and-mighty now, but I remember you working at the Club Bare Minimum in the French Quarter trying to make ends meet after you left the telecom job,” I said, and Julia looked shocked. “You might have more in common with Donna Twilight than you care to admit from what those guys told us about her at lunch.”
I pulled off the highway and parked in front of a building similar to the one we had just left. Julia sat looking at her hands and saying nothing. “You can sit in the car or you can come inside and sit in the waiting room while I meet with my client for ten or fifteen minutes.” I took the keys out of the ignition and headed inside.
Chapter Thirteen
I brought a bottle of Gentleman Jack as a holiday thank you for my client. He had mentioned often enough after a long conference call that he was off to have a Jack and Coke after some of our brutal days slogging through reprogramming data gone wrong. Five minutes into the meeting with my client, I could have sworn I heard a car horn honking. Julia had opted to wait in the car. I’m sure she thought that would hurry me along. If it was Julia blowing the horn, I was going to pull her out of my vehicle by her hair right here and she could get home however she had to. My client jumped up to his feet saying it was probably one of his employees who bumped his new little roadster and set off the hair trigger on his car alarm. I wished him a happy holiday and headed back to my car.
My cell phone rang and it was Dante.
“Hey, I’m on a
lunch break so I have a few minutes to talk,” he said when I answered.
“Dante, I’m getting ready to drive back to New Orleans with Julia in my car. I’m in Houma, and I only have a few minutes to chat.”
“What are you doing down there?” he asked. “With Julia?”
“It’s a long story, and it has to do with Julia’s brother who died at the party she had at her house the other night. Didn’t Hanky and Taylor fill you in?”
“You met Taylor?”
“Yes, did they tell you about her brother?”
“Well, yeah, Julia’s in it again,” he said with the sound of exasperation in his voice. Dante and Julia could only agree on one thing and that was there was no love lost between them.
“No, I don’t think so. But you’re in Houston still, right?”
“Yes, I told you I probably won’t get back till late Christmas Day, if at all. The flights are oversold.”
“I need you to ask your pals in the Houston Police Department if they ever heard of this name and possible alias. I’m going to text it to you. See if you can get someone to run it. You’re right there. It has to do with Julia’s brother who died. Can you do that for me?”
“Get Hanky and Taylor to run them,” he said in his ever-so-helpful tone.
“These names should pop in the Houston database. It’s one name with an alias. Please?”
“All right. Text them to me. I’ll call you if I get a hit or something on them, but if I do, I’m also going to give it to Hanky and Taylor. It’s their case,” he said and hung up.
“Merry Christmas,” I said out loud to a dial tone. I continued, “Gee, Dante, sorry I’ll miss you and your family this Christmas Eve. After all, it’s only been every year since I was born that we’ve spent Christmas together with both our families at your house. But, don’t worry about me. I’ve made other plans.”
One of the things Dante did that annoyed me the most was hanging up without ever saying goodbye. Well, anyone who did it annoyed me, but he did it all the time, and while I didn’t talk over the phone with him often, he was batting a thousand. Working in the telecommunications wheelhouse, I tried to impart this common phone courtesy which was totally lost on him. I knew I had made plans with Jiff at his parents’ home. I just wanted Dante to realize I wasn’t waiting for him anymore, and I wanted this painful squeezing of my heart to stop every time I thought about it.
I started to hit send after texting in the names Andre told us he knew Donna Twilight by, then I remembered something Larry said and added two more names and a phone number.
“Who was that?” Julia asked when I returned to the car.
“Dante,” I said while texting the same information to Hanky.
“What did he want?” Julia asked. “I thought things were over with you two?”
“Well, wait, let me finish this text.” I was looking at my phone and punched a few more names and a brief text explanation into my cell. I didn’t want to call Hanky and explain it to her with Julia sitting right next to me.
“What?” I looked up and remembered she asked me about Dante. “Well, yes, I have made other plans this year with Jiff. I don’t think I’m seeing him or his family, but Dante hasn’t signed off on our relationship yet. This is hard, Julia.”
“Dante hasn’t signed off? It looks to me like he never signed on. He’s never there for you,” she said.
“You’re right, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting him to be there for me. I know it’s what I’ll never have,” I said. “He just told me he’s in Houston at a conference, and he won’t be back for Christmas Eve. I didn’t tell him I have other plans since I haven’t heard from him in weeks. The last time we spoke was before Thanksgiving, and I didn’t see him then either.”
“I thought you have plans to spend Christmas Eve with Jiff at his parents’ home?” Julia asked.
“Yes, but I’ve spent every Christmas Eve since I was born at Dante’s house. My family goes there too, but the special part was being at his house with his family. You know how my mother is,” I said.
“Yeah. If your family is always there, then why, why, why do you want to keep doing that?” Julia asked.
“Because, on Christmas Eve at Dante’s house, his dad would bring home a real tree. It was a big tree, like ten-to-twelve-feet tall, since we all had homes with fourteen-foot ceilings.” I said with that gooey, nostalgic feeling warming me. “It smelled so good, that fresh tree smell, all green and woodsy. Dante and his brothers helped him set it up and string the old-time colored lights on it. Then I’d help Dante and Mrs. Ruth put on her beautiful glass ornaments she collected over the years. Mrs. Ruth still makes fudge or other candy. When we were kids she would let us eat all we wanted when my mother wasn’t looking. She made hot cocoa for the kids and Dante’s dad made highballs for the adults. Sometimes my mother and sister would help decorate the tree.”
“Your mother and sister were always there and you still liked it?” Julia asked.
“Well…yeah. When I was a kid, I didn’t know any better yet,” I said. My mother and sister are each an acquired taste I was still working to acquire.
Once we were headed home after stopping to see my client, I changed the subject off of Dante and me. I asked Julia about the people who came to the party I didn’t get to meet. I wanted to know about the church ladies and asked her what possessed her to join that group.
“I felt I needed to go back to church because I have been fortunate lately with the bed and breakfast, and I thought it would help me become more understanding of people,” Julia said.
“In that case, I think you need a new church to help you with understanding, because this one seems to have failed you…miserably.”
“Very funny,” she said.
“How did you get so chummy with them so fast,” I asked, “because it does seem like these are your very new BFFs. Are some of them from the church group in your cooking club?”
“I joined the cooking group because I like to cook. Yes, some church ladies are gourmet cooking club members,” Julia said. “Well, they call themselves that, even though their idea of a good meal is a potluck dinner.”
“Cooks, or gourmet cooks?” I asked.
“It started as a cooking club a hundred years ago. That old lady that is still the president never comes to a meeting. We decided to raise the bar and make it a gourmet cooking club,” Julia said.
“We decided to raise the bar?” I asked. “You all should have just gone to a bar.”
“Okay, I decided to change the name because their idea of a cooking club was to learn how to make chicken one hundred different ways,” Julia said.
“So who are these people officially in the group?” I asked. “Are all the cooking club members from your church group?”
“Most are and one or two bring friends or neighbors when they feel like it, but not all of the church ladies are in the cooking club,” she said. “They drift in and out. They come when they feel like it.”
“What was the deal with the rum balls?” I asked.
“We were all supposed to make our recipe of rum balls and give a box to each member. It doubled as a recipe test and Secret Santa exchange. Only the president could give each of us a number to write on the bottom of our box so we could vote on the winner at the next meeting.”
“How many boxes were there to vote on? Do you know?” I asked.
“Eight,” Julia said. “But when Larry and Donna drove in from Baton Rouge three hours early, I sent them to go walk around the French Quarter to kill some time. Frank said they took a couple of boxes of rum balls with them. That sounds like Larry. If those women hated me before, they are gonna be really ticked off when they find out I can’t vote on their rum balls.”
I thought, maybe they will be happier if she doesn’t get to vote on any.
“Did you tell that to the police?” I asked. “Did you tell them that a box or two of rum balls were consumed and are now somewhere in a French Quarter trash can and perhaps on
their way to a landfill?”
“I think I did,” Julia said, rummaging around in her purse until she pulled out a lipstick.
“You know something isn’t adding up with those rum balls. You’re sure there were only supposed to be eight boxes?”
“Yes,” Julia said.
“The ninth box had to be a second box sent from someone who already delivered their box to the president, right? The one that was in your mailbox never got a number, and Frank said the other eight were all delivered at the same time, with numbers.”
“Right. So what?”
“So, someone sent that box to you. It was meant for you. Frank hid it so no one tasted it or even knew about it except Jiff and me. Did you taste any of the rum balls in any box? I didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t have any,” Julia said. “I’ll call that lady cop you don’t like. I need to make sure she knows there should have been eight boxes and Larry took two that we will never find.”
“I like Hanky. We just had a disagreeable start. She isn’t an easy person to get to know,” I said. “It should be interesting to see what they find in those rum balls that were sent to your house.”
Julia pulled the passenger sun visor down to open the mirror. She was still talking through pursed lips applying Fabulous Red lipstick, a color she raved about. “You know Hanky looks a lot better now. Looks like she had a makeover or something.”
“That’s because she was wearing man pants,” I said.
“What d’ya mean? She was wearing man pants?” Julia looked disgusted. “Are you saying she was buying her clothes at the Men’s Wearhouse?” Julia laughed as she applied her lipstick then rubbed her lips together to even out the desired effect so the red would look fabulous.
“Yes, that is exactly where she said she bought her clothes,” I answered checking the rear view mirror to see if I could change lanes. “I suggested some other places she should shop.”
Julia started making this hmm, hmm, hmm sound when she thought something didn’t run in a parallel universe with hers.
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