Baton Rouge Bingo (10 page)

Once he sat down, I said, in as kind a voice as I could muster, “First off, Taylor, I want you to know you’re welcome to stay with us as long as you want or need, okay? This is your home, and I mean that—you are always welcome here. That’s never going to change. Both your uncle and I are really glad you’re here, but this is kind of an awkward time for us.” I gestured toward the television. “Obviously, you need privacy—so from now on the rule is Frank and I will call before we come upstairs, and you can consider this apartment
your
apartment—which means you can lock the door, and we’ll always knock if the door is locked. I’m sorry to have caught you twice today—but no more in the living room downstairs. You’re more than welcome to watch porn DVDs or watch it online, anything you want—we aren’t going to judge you. Hell, it’s our porn you’ve been watching.” As the words left my mouth I remembered that we had actually recorded ourselves several times having sex, and made a mental note to hide all the homemade porn in the house.

Better safe than sorry
is a mantra I fully believe in.

He cleared his throat, his face reddening yet again. “Uncle Scotty—”

“And none of that, just call me Scotty.” I went on, looking him directly in the eye. “If your uncle wants you to call him Uncle Frank, that’s between the two of you—but I’m not that formal, okay? You can also call my parents Mom and Dad, if you like—but that’s also up to them—you all can work that out amongst yourselves. But you’re part of the family now—” In spite of myself I started to choke up. The stress of everything was finally catching up to me. I took a deep breath and gathered myself. “I am also not one of those people who believe in lying to young people, so I’m always going to be honest with you. Right now, my father has been kidnapped, and we’re not entirely sure why.”

The color faded from his face and his eyes widened. “Kidnapped?” He goggled at me. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” I replied. “How much do you know about your uncle and me? What we do?”

“We-ell,” he paused, licking his bottom lip, “Rhonda told me that you actually have a third—Mom didn’t know about
that
.”
He gave me a big smile at that, his eyes twinkling. “We might want to keep that from her, you know. She’s pretty uptight about sex—which is why the whole gay thing kind of threw her for a loop. She’s not a bad person,” he added quickly. “I mean, she goes to church and everything, but I don’t think she really believes everything she’s supposed to.” His face darkened. “Dad’s the one. He’s a true believer.”

“I can’t even imagine what that must be like for you.” I closed my eyes and quickly said a prayer for my father. “My parents have always been really supportive. So what did else did Rain tell you about Colin?”

“He works for some kind of international company, so he’s gone a lot—Colin. I know Uncle Frank is retired from the FBI, but other than that, not really a whole lot.”

“That’s all true, to some degree or another.” I sighed. “But if you’re going to be around here, you might as well know everything. For one thing, Frank and I have our own business, we’re licensed private eyes.” I chose not to mention that we didn’t really get a lot of cases. Storm and some of his lawyer friends threw us some work every once in a while, but that had kind of dried up lately. Fortunately, between Frank’s FBI retirement and my trust fund, we pretty much had enough money to live comfortably anyway. “And yes, Colin works for an international company called Blackledge. Blackledge is kind of an independent version of the CIA.” As I spoke, his eyes got wider and wider and his smile grew wider in excitement. I gave him a quick overview of some of the cases we’d been involved in, and finished with Mom and I finding Veronica Porterie’s body. “So, that’s where we are right now, Taylor. Dad’s been taken—we’re not really sure why, so we have to find this deduct box in order to get him back. Don’t get me wrong—we’re also going to be trying to find Dad, but we don’t have any clues as to who took him or where they are keeping him, so we’re going to focus on the deduct box for now. Mom’s pretty shaken up, understandably. We can’t contact the authorities, but Colin has a lot of really great equipment here in the spare bedroom closet that we’re going to have to move if you’re going to use this room, but we’ll worry about that later. I’m going to scan both apartments for bugs, and then we’re going to head back over to my mom’s and do the same thing there. Once we know if they’re listening to us or not, we can make some plans about how to proceed.”

Once I finished talking, the enormity of it all overwhelmed me, and I felt really tired. I
was
tired. I don’t sleep well in beds other than my own, so the last few nights I’d been restless and hadn’t gotten much sleep. What I really wanted to do was curl up in bed with Frank and sleep for at least a week. But with Dad in danger, I wasn’t going to be able to do that any time soon.

Not that I’d be able to sleep all that well under the circumstances anyway.

“What can I do?” Taylor asked. “I want to help. I mean, you’ve taken me in and given me a place to stay. It’s the least I can do, right? There has to be something I can do.”

I looked back at him. His eyes were dancing with excitement. “Taylor—just stay here until your uncle and I get back from my mom’s.” I got up and walked over to the closet. I opened the door and smiled to myself. I’d never had to come into Colin’s equipment closet before, but should have known that it would be organized to within an inch of its life. Everything was in a box, and each box was carefully labeled in a very neat script. A quick glance showed that they were all organized alphabetically. I could hear Colin saying in my head, “Organization is the key. The last thing you want to waste time doing when an assignment goes bad or your cover is blown is to try to find some piece of equipment you need because you didn’t organize everything properly. That’s a good way to get yourself killed.”

I found the scanner and removed the box. I opened the box and lifted it out. It was small, had a handle that fit easily into my hand, and looked kind of like a price gun. There was a little screen on the top. I remembered seeing Colin use it—you just turned it on and made large sweeping motions throughout the entire area being searched. I switched it on—it had a rechargeable battery, and the charging cord was looped into a figure 8, with twist ties keeping it in that shape so it wouldn’t tangle. “We’re definitely going to have do something about this closet if this is going to be your room.” Another thought came to me. “And you need to stay out of this closet until we move this stuff out of here. These aren’t toys—it’s dangerous and expensive equipment, and Colin wouldn’t be too thrilled to need something and have it be broken.” As soon as I said it, I could have slapped myself senseless. I’d pretty much guaranteed Taylor was going to go through everything in the closet by saying that—telling a teenager not to do something was like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

The first minute he was alone, he was getting in there.

As though he could read my mind, he said, “Of course not. No worries.”

I made a mental note to get everything out of the closet as soon as possible.

“Want to see how this works?” I asked.

If his eyes opened any farther, they’d pop right out of their sockets. He nodded excitedly.

“Come on downstairs with me, then.”

He followed me down the hall. I opened the outside door. The air was even thicker and heavier, and it had gotten even darker. The air was so damp it might as well be raining already. I mumbled a little prayer to the Goddess and stepped outside. I took a deep breath and grabbed the railing, starting down. Taylor, of course, was completely fearless and went clattering down the stairs so quickly he was down to the landing in a matter of seconds, smiling up at me expectantly. I resisted the urge to slap the grin right off his face, and focused on making it down to the landing and around the second flight to the third floor. I breathed a sigh of relief when I was finally standing in front of my apartment door. I opened it and stood aside so he could go inside first. I shut the door just as the rain started coming down. There was a flash of lightning followed by an immediate clap of thunder so loud and close the entire building shook.

Thank you, Goddess, for letting me get down the stairs before THAT happened.

I locked the dead bolt and smiled at Taylor. I switched the scanner on and passed it to him. “You want to do the honors?” I asked with a big grin.

“Oh hell to the yes!” He grabbed it out of my hands and stared at it. “What do I do?”

“You hear that beeping?” It was low and regular, with maybe a three-second interval between beeps.

“Yeah.” He nodded vigorously.

“That’s a normal reading. It’ll beep a lot louder and a lot faster when it finds something it deems not normal,” I said. “The easiest way to use it is to go along the walls in a general sweeping motion, like this.” I demonstrated, moving about five feet and then going down the wall in a waving motion. “Generally, it can be assumed bugs wouldn’t be planted on an open wall like this—they usually try to hide them on picture frames or on lampshades—somewhere no one would notice it right away. That way they aren’t readily noticeable.”

We were finished with the hallway and were working on the cabinets in the kitchen when Frank came out of the bedroom and frowned. “What the hell?” He gave me a weird look. “What’s going on here?”

Taylor’s frown of concentration turned into a grin as he stopped what he was doing. “Scotty told me about Colin and his dad and everything!” He turned back to the open cabinet and started working his way back through the kitchen.

Frank grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into the living room. “Are you insane?” he hissed through clenched teeth.

“Sorry, we kind of told him to use the spare room upstairs, didn’t we?” I whispered back. “And that’s where Colin stores his equipment—in the spare room closet. Didn’t have much choice, did I? Besides, it’s not fair to him not to let him know what’s going on. He’s pretty bright—he’d figure it out for himself something was going on. And I don’t want him to think
he’s
the problem. Do you?”

Frank smacked his palm on his forehead. “Christ.”

“Rain already kind of told him what we do—I don’t see any reason to lie about what Colin does.” I shook my head. “Who knows when Colin will be back, and I don’t like the idea of lying to him, do you?”

“No, I don’t.” He looked worried. “Maybe having him come here wasn’t the best idea. I didn’t think this through, I guess.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be such a drama queen. You didn’t create the situation, your asshole brother-in-law did. He’s a good kid and we can’t turn our backs on him. We just have to figure out how to make this all work.”

“I just don’t like the idea…” He paused. “That maybe we’ve put him into danger.”

I shrugged. “Well, if the kidnappers are keeping tabs on us, it’s too late to worry about that now—they’ve already seen him. We just have to make sure he’s careful, until we have Dad back and the case is solved.”

He grinned at me. “You’re pretty amazing, you know that?”

I grinned back. “Yeah, I know. In the meantime, we just kind of need to figure out what to do with that stuff, or move Colin’s clothes out of the master bedroom—”

The loud beeping of the scanner interrupted me.

I turned around to see Taylor standing next to the desk, an excited look on his face.

Frank crossed over quickly and started looking.

The bug was attached to the base station for the landline phone.

Frank pulled it off, a grim look on his face.

He gestured for Taylor to keep going.

After another half hour or so of thorough scanning, that was the only bug we found in the entire apartment.

“What are we going to do with it?” Taylor asked. His eyes were glittering with excitement. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet, like a ball of nervous energy. With a grim look on his face, Frank dropped the bug down the garbage disposal, turned on the faucet, and flipped the switch. The grinding sound was loud, and after about twenty seconds, Frank flipped it off. “I hope,” Frank said angrily, “someone was listening to that. And it burst their fucking eardrum.” The muscle in his jaw was twitching the way it always did when he was angry.

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said as thunder shook the building again. “Why bug
us
? And why kidnap Dad in the first place? I just can’t figure this out.”

“We don’t have much to go on,” Frank replied, his voice tense and even. He leaned back against the counter. “All we know for sure is whoever took Dad for some reason thinks we either know where this deduct box thing is or can figure it out. Which means they’ve probably been looking for it without any luck.”

I nodded. “Somehow Veronica Porterie must be connected to it.”

Frank made a strange face. “How do you figure?”

“It’s simple.” Taylor interrupted me before I could say anything. “Unless you believe in coincidences, there has to be some connection. Ms. Porterie was an old friend of Scotty’s mom, right? Didn’t you say she came by your mom’s this weekend? Maybe she was being followed, so whoever the bad guys are, they think maybe she told your mom something. And then she was murdered—the Porterie lady, I mean—and someone kidnapped Scotty’s dad, probably around the same time she was murdered, right? It’s not much of a stretch.” We both stared at him. He turned red and shrugged. “I watch
Law and Order
and I love to read mysteries.”

“Real life isn’t like a TV show, Taylor,” Frank replied. He exhaled. “Okay, say you’re right. Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to bug Mom’s apartment rather than ours?”

“Well, whoever it is, they’ve done their homework,” I said grimly, giving Taylor an approving look. “And how did whoever it was get in to plant the damned thing?” One of the great things about our apartment was no one could get in without a key or being buzzed through the door downstairs. Millie and Velma were extremely security conscious—one of the benefits of having an older lesbian couple as landladies—and their rules were very strict about who was allowed in.

“You know damned well anyone who wants to break in here can get in if they want to.” Frank scowled. “They just have to come in over the roofs and drop down to the balcony. We never lock the French doors.”

“That doesn’t explain why, though,” I replied, conceding the point. I mean, it was true, but it was also highly unlikely. To begin with, how would they get onto the roofs to cross them without being seen? They’d have to break in somewhere, unless they were the Ninja Lesbians. That was how I’d first met them—they came over the roofs and swung down onto our balcony before kicking the doors in. But they were highly trained operatives—they’d scaled a brick fence and then the back side of a building. Maybe that wasn’t as difficult as it sounded, but I’d prefer to think it was pretty damned hard. I opened my mouth to point that out—but I could tell by the look on Frank’s face that now was not the time to argue the point. “I mean, that’s good thinking, Taylor, but it still doesn’t make sense. It was just a coincidence that we found Veronica’s body. If we hadn’t gone out there…”

Frank didn’t say anything, just looked from me to Taylor and back. “Well, maybe we should have another chat with Mom.” He hesitated before continuing. “We need to go over there to sweep her place anyway, and I’d like to talk to Emily or whoever was on duty in the store when your dad was kidnapped.”

“Well, we don’t really know when they took him. And for another thing,” I looked over at Taylor, “how did they get Dad out of there without attracting attention? There’s always a lot of foot traffic on the streets around the Devil’s Weed. I don’t see how they could have done it.” My head was starting to hurt.

“It’s the Quarter,” Frank replied darkly. “Nobody notices anything here.”

He had a point, much as I hated to admit it. “But AFAR was behind stealing the tiger, right? Maybe her murder had something to do with that.”

“It’s probably all part of the same thing,” Taylor said, his eyes widening even farther. “Don’t you think? I mean, AFAR’s never really done anything in Louisiana, have they? They aren’t exactly popular in the South.”

Another good point. Why all of a sudden was AFAR interested in Mike the Tiger? LSU had had a tiger living on campus since the 1930s, and the current habitat was state of the art, probably one of the best tiger habitats in the world. AFAR usually confined its activities to states where they had a donor base, like California and New York. In the Southern and more rural states, AFAR had never gotten any traction. Louisiana’s nickname was “sportsmen’s paradise” because the hunting and fishing was so good here.

“So, all of a sudden, AFAR decides to come to Louisiana and free Mike,” Taylor went on. “And the president of AFAR’s daughter just happens to be one of his caretakers. And said president is murdered, probably on the very day the tiger is stolen. And your dad is kidnapped right around the same time.” He had stars in his eyes as he looked back and forth between Frank and me. “It’s got to be all connected. It does!”

“I think he’s right, Frank.” I waved my hand tiredly. “I think we should question Mom a little more thoroughly about what she and Veronica talked about the other day. And then we need to go talk to that Huey Long expert.”

“Huey Long expert?” Frank’s eyebrows went up.

Today had been so crazy, I wasn’t surpsied Frank didn’t remember our phone conversation. “I did a web search for
deduct box
on Mom’s computer.” I filled them in quickly on what I’d found at the Huey Long website. “You remember that drunk Tulane professor who wouldn’t leave Colin alone at Papa Diderot’s Thoth party? Turns out he’s an expert on Louisiana history, with a specialty in Huey Long.”

“Too bad Colin’s not here—he’d be able to get any information he wanted out of that guy.” Frank made a face. He sighed. “Okay, first we’ll go over and sweep Mom’s place,” Frank went on. “Taylor, you just stay here until we get back, okay? And whatever you do, don’t let anyone in.”

“I want to go with you,” Taylor said, folding his arms stubbornly. He looked so much like Frank right then it was almost scary.

“No, you need to stay here,” Frank replied sternly. “Like I said, stay here and lock the doors and don’t answer if someone rings the buzzer and most definitely don’t let anyone in.”

“I want to help,” Taylor insisted, setting his jaw. A muscle started jumping in his lower cheek, the way Frank’s always did when he was angry. It was positively spooky. “I know I can help. I’m not a baby. I’ve already helped, haven’t I?” He turned to me with puppy-dog eyes. “Please?”

“He’s you all over again,” I said to Frank. “We’d better let him come with, anyway. I’d rather he stay at Mom’s so he’s not alone when we go uptown to talk to that professor.” I looked at Taylor. “You can come help us sweep Mom’s apartment—Rain’s there staying with her, and when we go uptown you can stay there—I’d feel better and would worry less if you weren’t alone.” Frank started to protest but I held up my hand to cut him off. “Besides, if they got in here to plant a bug, they can get in here again, even if we lock the French doors. And by now they have to know we’ve found the bug and disabled it. It isn’t safe for us to leave him here alone.” For a brief second, I worried about warning Millie and Velma—but they were perfectly capable of defending themselves, as they’d proved over and over.

I walked into the living room and slipped the bolts on the shutters, then bolted the French doors, too. The rain was still coming down pretty hard, and there was a roar of thunder that shook the house and made the lights flicker briefly.

“All right,” Frank said, slipping the scanner into a backpack, which he hoisted over his right shoulder. “Let’s go.”

We grabbed umbrellas and headed out the back door. I locked both the lock on the doorknob and the dead bolt. The rain was coming down in ridiculous amounts, so heavily that I could hardly see when I got to the bottom of the stairs. The courtyard, even with the drainage, was under about an inch of water as we splashed through it on our way to the passage to the front gate. Theoretically, both the roof of our building and the one next door covered the passageway, but it never really worked that way. Both roofs drained out to pipes that reached the sidewalk in the front, but in several places in the passageway it was coming down in a waterfall. My calves and ankles and feet were completely soaked by the time I got to the gate. I turned the dead bolt and opened it, letting Frank and Taylor out. Then I closed it and locked it just as a gust of wind almost ripped my umbrella out of my hands.

The sidewalks were pretty much deserted because of the rain, with people taking shelter under balconies or inside. The gutters were full and in some places were overflowing onto the sidewalk. The rain was relentless, battering at our umbrellas while gusts of wind tried to wrench them out of our hands. Cars were going slow since the water was rising and it was so dark. There was a bright flash of lightning before thunder roared so loudly that I jumped. I could smell burnt ozone when we reached the corner at Royal Street. I didn’t think we were ever going to get to Mom’s, but finally we crossed St. Philip Street and there was only another block to go. By the time we reached the door to her back stairs, my legs were soaked and I was shivering.

I unlocked the iron gate and the door behind it and let Frank and Taylor in before closing both and making sure they were locked again. Water was running down the steps like a gradated waterfall, and we splashed our way up, the rain beating steadily on our umbrellas. Frank and Taylor stepped out of my way when I got to the top and fumbled with my keys. Finally, I unlocked the back door and called out, “Rain? Mom?” as I shook the excess water off my umbrella before dumping it into the umbrella stand right beside the door.

My teeth started chattering immediately, because even though the temperature had dropped outside because of the rain, Mom still had her air-conditioning set at sixty-five.

The entire place reeked of pot smoke, and I walked through the kitchen to see Rain curled up under a blanket on the couch. She was holding a joint and watching
Grand Dames of Palm Springs.
She exhaled, a plume of smoke heading for the ceiling. She gave me a lazy grin. “Sorry. Didn’t want to waste the hit. You know how it is.”

I rolled my eyes as Frank came into the room, followed by Taylor, who had the scanner in his hands and was staring at it in fierce concentration. Frank didn’t look very happy and gave me a frustrated look. I tried not to grin.

Taylor was really taking to being a private eye.

Rain watched him for a moment and looked at me, puzzled. I held a finger to my lips and shook my head. “How’s Mom?” I asked in a pleasant, conversational tone, gesturing for her to play along.

“Still sleeping,” Rain replied.
You think the place is bugged?
She mouthed the words at me, her eyes following Taylor and Frank as they cleared the room and headed down the hallway.

I plopped down next to her on the couch. “We found one in our apartment,” I whispered. “If
our
place was bugged, surely the kidnappers must have planted some bugs here.”

“This is all so fucking crazy, Scotty.” She took another hit from the joint. “Why would anyone kidnap Dad? It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, no offense, but Dad’s pretty harmless. I can see Mom pissing someone off enough to kidnap her and fit her with cement shoes.” She rolled her eyes and held up her hand to cut me off as I started to speak. “You know I’m right. She’s pissed off a lot of powerful people over the years. So have you, for that matter—but everyone you’ve pissed off is in jail.”

That hadn’t even occurred to me—but I immediately dismissed the thought. All the killers I’ve exposed were still doing time and would most likely never get out.

“But then again, nothing around here ever makes sense,” Rain went on. “I know I shouldn’t have rolled this”—she gestured with the joint—“but I was going crazy sitting around here waiting for the phone to ring, you know? And Mom’s just a wreck.” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen her like this, ever. Have you?”

I shook my head. “No, but you know, she’s always had Dad as her rock.” I could feel the fear and worry building up inside me again, so I closed my eyes and focused on my happy place until I was able to get myself under control. “I can’t imagine what she would do if—no, I’m not going to go there.” I choked myself off.

“Nothing’s going to happen to Dad, Scotty.” Rain put her arm around me and I put my head down on her shoulder.

You don’t know that
,
I wanted to say, but if that was what she had to believe to keep from breaking down, I wasn’t going to take that away from her.

Frank and Taylor came back into the living room, Frank putting the scanner back in his backpack. He was frowning. “Nothing—nothing at all.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense, any sense at all. Why would they bug
our
apartment and not Mom’s?”

Taylor looked like he was about to explode. “What is it, Taylor?” I asked, sitting up and wiping at my eyes so Frank couldn’t see I’d been upset.

He gave Frank a dirty look. He took a deep breath. “You’re
assuming
the kidnappers planted the bug. You don’t
know
that’s who did it.
”

Of course—he’s absolutely right.

“He’s right.” I stood up. “We don’t.”

“For all you know, it might have something to do with Colin’s work,” Taylor went on, as Frank just gaped at his nephew. “And you told me, Scotty, that any number of people have issues with you—you’ve put a lot of people in jail, haven’t you? And Uncle Frank, you worked for the FBI long enough to retire, right? You probably made a bunch of enemies, right?”