A Sheetcake Named Desire (14 page)

“I’ll do that,” Detective Sullivan said, and we fell into a silence that might have felt companionable if I hadn’t been hanging my head out the window and battling the urge to toss all four margaritas onto the city streets. I’m not sure how far we drove, but suddenly, without warning, the rain that had been sprinkling my face every few seconds gathered into a full-scale rainstorm. A deluge fell on me as if someone had overturned a bucket, washing away the last few shreds of my dignity.

Could this night get any worse? I was afraid to ask.

Gasping in shock, I pulled my head inside and fumbled to roll up the window while torrents of rain pelted both me and the passenger side of Sullivan’s car. Water dripped from my hair onto my face, and to my horror, tight little ringlets formed with every drop. I don’t let anybody see me in my natural state, so I used the hem of my blouse to wipe hair and rainwater out of my eyes. “Holy Mother of God, what just happened?”

“Rain.”

If Sullivan hadn’t been wearing a gun, I might have slugged him. “I got that much. Where did it come from?”

“Usually clouds.”

I pondered how much jail time assaulting an officer might get me as I squeezed water from my hair. “Is this normal?”

“It rains here. A lot. But we could have done without this storm.”

If this was just a harmless rainstorm, I didn’t want to know what a hurricane was like.

He turned onto Miss Frankie’s street and squinted to see through the sheets of running water. “If there was any evidence in the garden we missed the first time through, it’ll be gone now.”

“I thought you said there wasn’t any physical evidence.”

“None that we found at the time. I haven’t given up hope that we’ll find something somewhere.”

I forgot about my hair for a moment. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

“Footprints would be nice. An eyewitness would also be good.”

“What about Ox? Did he see anything?”

Sullivan shook his head. “He says whoever it was hit him from behind. He didn’t see a thing.”

And here I was freaking out over a little uncontrolled frizz in my precious hair. I needed to get my priorities straight. “The sooner you can find the person who did this, the better.”

Sullivan took his eyes from the road for a split second and settled them on my face. “We’ll find him, Rita.”

As he pulled into Miss Frankie’s driveway, a rogue wave of nausea tore through me, and all four margaritas rose up in my throat. I was powerless to control them. Sullivan stopped at the bottom of the drive behind a dark-colored car partially hidden by the shadows. I paid scant attention, assuming it was Miss Frankie’s car. Memory loss brought on by tequila. Very common.

Rain pounded on the car so loudly, I could barely hear my own groan of horror. I searched frantically for the door handle, running both hands over the door like a crazy woman.

Sullivan leaned across me to open it, and I tumbled out of the car, right into the small lake that had already formed at the end of the driveway. I scrambled to my knees and crawled blindly toward a flowerbed I remembered edging the street. It was a bad choice and I knew it, but I wasn’t going to cough up the contents of my stomach right there in front of Sullivan.

Apparently, he had other plans because between hacks, I heard the sound of his boots on the pavement. He waited patiently for me to finish, then reached down and helped me to my feet. My stomach hurt, and my pride had taken another severe beating, but at least the cold sweats and nausea had passed.

He held me with one hand and brushed hair from my face with the other. “You okay?”

“Yes. No.” I sagged against him, grateful for his strong arms and solid body. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.”

“Tequila, and lots of it. I think your new friend Gabriel poured generously when he mixed your drinks.”

I groaned again. “You think he tried to get me drunk?”

“I think it’s a distinct possibility.”

“But why?”

“If you don’t know the answer to that, you’re not as smart as I thought.” He turned me around before I could react. “Go inside. Take a hot shower and get into bed. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

“Sullivan, I—”

“Don’t worry about it.” He paused at the car door and grinned at me. He looked good wet. “And after what we’ve been through together, you might as well call me Liam.”

Seventeen

When I say I’m not much of a drinker, I mean I’m not much of a drinker
anymore
. I wouldn’t say that I was wild in high school, but I attended my fair share of parties. I honed my skills in college, and by the time I met Philippe, I could slug back a few shots with the best of ’em. But it had been a while since those days. When I woke up the next morning, I learned another useful tidbit: holding one’s liquor is a skill that deteriorates if not properly maintained.

I’m not sure how I made it upstairs and into bed, but I must’ve managed it somehow, because that’s where I woke up. My wet clothes were lying on the floor in a soggy mound, and when I moved my face, I realized that my pillow had soaked up some of the water from my hair.

Aunt Yolanda would be so proud.

Moving slowly and carefully, I hauled myself to the shower and spent a while trying to wash away the bar stench of stale cigarette smoke and recycled alcohol. And I thought. A lot. About why I was in New Orleans in the first place, about my marriage and its failure. In the bright light of morning, much of last night became a blur, but I clearly remembered flirting with the bartender and the look on the detective’s face as we stood in the rain. Which was odd behavior for me, at least the me I’d been since the divorce. Flirting with two different men at my not-quite-ex-husband’s memorial service? Who did that?

Things had gotten complicated and painful before Philippe and I split up, and I’d shut down after he left. Oh, sure, I’d had the occasional fleeting romantic thought, but I hadn’t been feeling any particular longing to hook up with anyone. Yet somehow, stepping off the plane in New Orleans seemed to have flipped a switch on my libido.

The timing couldn’t have been worse.

I swallowed some ibuprofen that I found in the medicine cabinet and pulled on some clean clothes, then lifted my head as high as I could and marched down the stairs to face Miss Frankie. She hadn’t come out of her room as I stumbled up the stairs last night, but I was pretty sure she’d heard me come in.

Not my finest hour.

I found her in the kitchen with a pot of fresh, strong coffee and a plate of eggs and toast, which she put down in front of me.

The smell made my stomach revolt, so I pushed the plate away. Subtly, so as not to insult her.

She moved it right back and shook her finger in my face. “Eat. The protein will help the hangover.”

So much for avoiding the large pink elephant in the room. My face turned the same shade as the pachyderm, and I mumbled, “I guess you heard me come in.”

“Well, I guess so.” She smiled and sat across from me. “It’s been a while, but I remember what pickled sounds like.”

I tried to hide my burning face behind my napkin. “I’ll take a taxi to pick up your car. If anything happened to it overnight, I’ll pay for the damages.”

Miss Frankie pushed at the air between us. “Oh, pish. I’m not worried about that, sugar. We can pick it up later. The important thing is that you didn’t try to drive when you were three sheets to the wind.”

“Yeah. Well.” Thank God for Sullivan.

“That reminds me,” Miss Frankie said as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a key. “This is yours.”

I took it from her and let the key chain dangle on my finger. “What’s it for?”

“Philippe’s Mercedes. The police brought it back last night. It’s yours now.”

A Mercedes? Was she kidding? I shook my head and tried to give the key back to her. “I don’t need it. It should be yours.”

“Don’t be silly. I have a perfectly good car of my own.” She pushed the key back in my direction. “At least use it while you’re here.”

Oh. Sure. “I should spend some time at Zydeco after we get your car,” I said, then realized that Miss Frankie’s hair was teased and sprayed and her face made up as if she had somewhere to go. “What’s on your agenda today?”

Miss Frankie spent a minute pouring coffee, first cracking open a new can of condensed milk and splashing a little into each cup before adding the freshly brewed chicory coffee. She put together a plate for herself and carried everything to the table. “I suppose I’ll have to talk with the funeral director at some point.”

I’d forked up a bit of the egg, but I stopped with it halfway to my mouth. “Do you want me to go with you?”

“I’d love you forever if you did.” Changing the subject, she scowled at the uneaten egg on my fork. “Go on. Eat. It’ll help.” Her scowl deepened, and she got to her feet. “Maybe I should grab that bottle of bourbon. Put a dash in your coffee. A little hair of the dog that bit you might do the trick.”

“No!” I detest the taste and smell of bourbon, and just the thought of it made my stomach pitch and roll. I slipped a bite into my mouth to prove that I was on the road to recovery. “I’m fine. Really I am.”

Miss Frankie watched me chew and swallow before she resumed her seat. “So, did that detective tell you anything last night? Are they any closer to figuring out who killed my boy?”

To my surprise, the food was helping me feel better. I slathered Miss Frankie’s signature strawberry freezer jam, still slightly frozen the way I liked it best, on the toast and took a little bite of heaven. Fresh strawberry flavor exploded on my tongue, and the sensation of still-cold jam on the warm toast swept me back to childhood for a moment. Back when the world was safe and nothing bad ever happened. But bad things were happening now. I shook my head slowly. I didn’t want to discourage her, but I didn’t want to offer false hope, either. “Not yet, but he seems to think they’ll find the killer eventually.”

“Eventually.” Miss Frankie let out a heavy sigh. “I’d give anything to be able to help the police solve this case. Philippe didn’t have any enemies that I knew of, but
someone
certainly seems to have hated him.”

“You could help the police, you know,” I said around another mouthful of egg. “Tell them everything you know and point them in the right direction.”

“But that’s the hell of it, sugar. I don’t really know anything.”

“You know about the accidents at Zydeco,” I said to Miss Frankie. “Start there.”

“If I thought for one minute the two things were connected, I’d run to the police.”

I had my doubts, but I knew the stubborn expression on her face. The harder I pushed, the more determined she’d become. “You might be right,” I said, shelving the sabotage angle for the moment. “What do you know about a man named Dmitri Wolff? Have you ever heard of him?”

Miss Frankie shook her head slowly. “Should I know him?” “He stopped by Zydeco yesterday. Apparently he also owns a cake shop, in the French Quarter.”

Miss Frankie’s expression grew cold. “Gateaux?”

“I think so. He’s interested in buying Zydeco.”

“Over my dead body!” The minute the words slipped out, she looked horrified. “That was a horrible thing to say. How could I have said that?”

I reached across the table and put my hand on hers. “It’s okay.”

“It most certainly is not!” She jerked her hand away and covered her face. “It’s too much. It’s just all too much. The bakery. Some awful person trying to take it away. And Philippe. I swear, if I knew anything that might help the police, I’d tell them. But Philippe never said a word to me about his life.”

If that was true, then something had been seriously wrong. If anyone should have known what was going on in Philippe’s life when he died, it ought to have been Miss Frankie.

I braved a sip of coffee, and closed my eyes in bliss. I’d learned to appreciate chicory in my coffee while Philippe and I were married, and his mother could brew a heavenly cup to rival anything at Café Du Monde. “So who
did
he confide in?”

“I have no idea. Someone at work, maybe.” She shifted in her seat, and her expression grew grim. “Or that woman.”

“Quinn?”

Miss Frankie shrugged. “Maybe. Oh, don’t get me wrong. She’s a lovely girl, and she has the face of an angel. But there were times when I wondered if maybe she wasn’t a little too interested in Philippe’s money, if you know what I mean.”

Did I ever! “You don’t think she was really in love with him?”

“No, I don’t.”

I shouldn’t have felt so pleased by that, but that didn’t stop me from gloating or from wondering again if Quinn could have wielded the knife that killed Philippe. “I guess that means you didn’t like her?”

Miss Frankie made a face. “Let’s just say that I was surprised when Philippe brought her around. She didn’t seem like his type at all. You wouldn’t think they had a thing in common.”

“
We
didn’t have much in common outside of the kitchen,” I reminded his mother.

“That was different. Your differences didn’t bother you.”

That wasn’t exactly true. It was our differences that had driven us apart in the end. I’d loved to read; Philippe had preferred spending his leisure time with a gun or a fishing pole. I’d loved movies and the theater; Philippe had liked fast cars and motorcycles.

“There’s no law that says you have to like every little thing the other one does,” Miss Frankie said, as if she could read my mind. “Robert and I were as different as can be, but we spent thirty wonderful years together. The differences between Philippe and Quinn were deeper. Spend five minutes with her, and you’ll see what I mean.”

I reached for the strawberry jam and a second piece of toast. “I already have, remember?”

“Then you know she’s nothing like you.”

That was quite possibly the nicest thing she’d ever said to me.

“No, but a lot of people think she seems genuinely distraught over Philippe’s death.”

“Distraught over losing his bank account, you mean.” Miss Frankie sat back with a tight smile. “I’ve thought about this a lot in the past couple of days, and I think something wasn’t right between them. I saw them the night before Philippe . . . was killed. We had dinner together at Napoleon House.” She stopped speaking for a moment, remembering.

I munched toast and waited for her to go on.

“They tried to act as if nothing was wrong,” she said at last, “but the tension between them was as thick as pea soup. I wish now that I’d asked Philippe what was going on, but I didn’t. I just pretended not to notice.”

The curiosity I’d been battling since yesterday stirred to life again. Aunt Yolanda had spent a lifetime warning me about poking my nose where it didn’t belong, but the advice had never stuck. Philippe’s relationship with Quinn definitely fell into the “none of your business” category, but that only made me wonder about it more. “Have you told the police about that? I mean, if there was something going on between them, the police should know.”

Miss Frankie fumbled with a handkerchief for a moment, dabbing tears from her eyes, before letting out a weary sigh. “What is there to tell? Neither of them actually said or did anything unusual. If there was some kind of trouble between them, Quinn is the only one who knows what it was, and she’s not going to admit anything that might make her look bad.”

“But the police will know how to interrogate her,” I pointed out.

“And what? She’ll lie, and they’ll believe her.”

“They won’t take her word over yours,” I assured her.

“You don’t know that. She’s convincing. Look how she got to Philippe.”

“You think she lied to him?”

“I’m almost certain of it. I just can’t prove it. But things changed between Philippe and me after she came along. That’s all I know.”

“The police need to know that, too,” I said again.

“No. I refuse to drag Philippe’s memory through the mud when he isn’t here to defend himself.”

Her refusal made no sense to me, but I tried once more to change her mind. “But you
have
to tell them everything. They need to know so they can pursue every angle.”

Miss Frankie put her cup down on the table with a soft
bang
. Her mouth was set in a thin, hard line. “I don’t have to do any such thing. Family is family.”

“Exactly! That’s why we should do everything we can to bring Philippe’s killer to justice. I’m not saying Quinn did it,” I pointed out, “but what if the murder is somehow related to what happened between them?”

Miss Frankie folded her hands together in her lap and fixed me with a look. “And what if it’s not? What if I tell them what I
think
was going on, and I’m wrong?”

I sighed with frustration, but clearly Miss Frankie wasn’t going to budge. I could tell Sullivan—
Liam
—what she’d just told me, but would that be enough? Or would he just chalk my suspicions up to jealousy? “Okay, let’s forget about Quinn for a minute. Did Philippe ever mention having trouble with anyone from the Dizzy Duke?”

Miss Frankie looked up suddenly. “As a matter of fact, he did. I can’t believe I forgot about that.”

“Can you tell me?”

“I don’t know the details, but he mentioned something about a man bothering one of the girls there. Things got heated. Philippe stepped in. You know how he was.”

“Yeah. I do. Do you know the woman’s name?”

“I don’t think he mentioned it. The only reason he said anything at all was because his shirt was ripped when he stopped by to bring me a cake for my book club.”