The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels (20 page)

I realize I have no game plan, so I opt for the direct approach. I pull a card from my pocket and hand it to her. As she looks at it, I tell her I’m a neighbor, pointing over my shoulder
toward Barracks Street.

She takes a step back and, still looking at the card, asks me in. She closes the door.

Dark, the front room is stuffy with the strong scents of incense and scented candles – vanilla, cinnamon, lilac maybe. A line of candles sits atop a chest of drawers to my right; two more
are on the coffee table. Incense smolders in an urn on an end table next to the maroon sofa, reminding me of high mass. I cough.

“Oh,” she says, “it’s cooler in back.” She leads me through the front room, down a narrow hall, past two bedrooms on the right, to a brightly lit kitchen. The rear
door is open to a small patio filled with banana trees.

She moves to a window and flips on a window fan, then pulls the chain on the ceiling fan above the small, Formica table. She slips my card in a breast pocket and asks if I’d like some
coffee.

“Sure.” I watch her nice, round hips move away. She’s about five-three and slim, but not skinny. Shapely slim. My kinda woman.

She turns to the stove and lights a burner beneath a white porcelain coffee pot. Turning back, she smiles, moves up and says, “Give me your coat. You look hot.”

I pull off my jacket and she takes it and drapes it over the back of a chair next to the table. She points to another chair and says, “Sit down, Mr Caye.”

She sits across from me. The fan-driven breeze feels good, especially on the perspiration collecting around my temples. Her creamy, white skin looks paler in the bright light. She’s very
pretty. I notice she isn’t sweating at all.

“So,” she says, “what can I do for you?” Her gaze is penetrating, almost invasive.

“I never noticed your sign before. You’re new to the neighborhood, aren’t you?”

She nods. “Moved in last month.”

I loosen my navy blue tie and unbutton the top button of my white shirt. Then I smile and ask, “What does a sorceress do, these days?”

“Help people.”

“So a love sorceress must help people with love problems?”

“Sometimes.” She stands and moves to a cabinet next to the sink, where she digs out two cups and saucers. “Cream or sugar?”

“Black.”

She fills our cups, puts them on the table and sits again.

I wait. It’s an old police trick. People will automatically restart a conversation if you just wait.

“You have a love problem?” Her right eyebrow rises.

I look into those light eyes, which seem suddenly different. She looks at me in an innocent, child-like way, the kind of look you’d see on a grade-school girl. The atmosphere seems
intoxicating again, thick, even with the air blowing over me.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, her head nods. She takes a sip of coffee and says, “You’re here about someone else’s problem. Why don’t you just come out and
ask?”

I take a sip of the strong coffee and chicory.

“Two actually.” I put the cup down. “Fortenberry and Redfearn. Sounds a little like a British law firm.”

“Actually Mr Fortenberry is an architect and Mr Redfearn, an industrial engineer. But I can tell you little else about them.”

“Why not?”

“It’s confidential.”

I grin. “As I recall, the law recognizes doctor–patient, priest–penitent, lawyer–client confidentialities. I don’t remember anything about
sorceress–confessor?”

She takes another sip of coffee.

“How long were you a police officer?” She smiles again.

She’s bright. I like that.

“Seven years.” I want to ask her how old she is, but down south we just don’t do that. She can’t be much over twenty. So I ask, “How long have you been a
sorceress?”

“Professionally? Two years.”

I take another sip. “You from around here?”

“Born and raised. Went to Sacred Heart. Where’d you go to school?”

I should have known. When someone doesn’t have a recognizable accent, they’re usually from where you’re from.

“Holy Cross,” I tell her. Like dogs, we’ve just sniffed each other. Sacred Heart – she’s an uptowner – upper class. Holy Cross – I’m from the
lower part of town – working class.

She pulls her hair away from her face with both hands. I like watching women do that.

“So how did you become a sorceress? They teach it at Sacred Heart?”

She laughs lightly, then her face turns serious. She looks at the window fan and says, “I was born a sorceress.” She turns to me with ovaled eyes. “I have a gift, Mr Caye. I
can sense feelings in people.”

And it occurs to me – I don’t know her name, but I don’t ask. I wait for her to continue her train of thought. She doesn’t disappoint me.

“I can sense things about people. Sometimes before they do.”

She finishes her coffee and asks if I’d like another cup. I shake my head and finish mine.

“We’re not talking about witchcraft here, are we?”

“Hardly.” She unbuttons the top button of her dress, reaches in and pulls out a gold chain and crucifix. “I’m still a practicing Catholic.”

“Then you don’t sacrifice cats and dogs.” I watch her face carefully and the surprise there turns into a wide smile.

“No. I love animals.”

“Then you don’t know why so many cats and dogs are missing in the neighborhood?”

She picks up our cups and saucers and moves to the sink. She wipes her hands on a red checkered dishcloth. Turning, she rests one hand along the kitchen counter and lifts her hair off her nape
with her other hand to let the fan cool her neck. Her eyes stare at me. I almost smile, because she’s waiting now – for me to restart the conversation.

“So what do you do, exactly?”

“People come to me with problems.” Her voice is deeper. “Sometimes, I’m able to help them.”

“So you have the power to make people happy?”

“Sometimes I can point them in the right direction. It’s up to them.”

I wait a second before saying, “Mrs Fortenberry and Mrs Redfearn think you seduced their husbands. Caused them to leave their wives.”

Her eyes still look innocent as she shakes her head. She lets her hair fall.

The doorbell rings.

“Sounds like my eleven o’clock appointment is early.”

She starts for the door and I scoop up my coat and follow her back through the house, back into the insufferable front room. When she turns back to me and looks up with those soft eyes, I
apologize.

“I put you on the spot and you didn’t throw me out. Thanks.”

She turns to open the door and I have another question.

“What’s your name?”

“Maggie. Maggie LeRoux.”

Nice French name.

She opens the door to a young man with wavy brown hair and glasses. He wears a tweed suit and looks soft, almost effeminate as he stands there awkwardly.

“Come in, Thomas,” Maggie says with a warm smile.

Thomas extends a hand for me to shake and says, “And you are?”

I tell him my name as we shake hands. His hand is clammy and limp.

I resist wiping my hand on my pants after he pulls his hand away.

“And what do you do?” Thomas asks, his eyes suddenly intense.

“Detective.”

“Oh, my.” He smiles and there’s something familiar about his face. “I’m a playwright.” He turns to Maggie and says he’s ready. She ushers him in.

I step out, toss my coat over my shoulder and walk away.

I don’t go home. I turn right and walk up Burgundy, past more Creole cottages and multistory townhouses, passing beneath more lacework balconies.

An early lunch at the Napoleon House sounds like a good idea to me.

Starting my canvass at the corner of Governor Nicholls and Burgundy, I find no one in the first few houses who know anything of the woman in the yellow house down the
block.

Four doors from Maggie’s cottage, the door is open on another cottage, this one painted a pale blue. I knock on the screen door and a woman’s voice answers, “Hello?”

I knock again.

A slim woman with her hair in a bun steps into the front room. She wears a casual off-white dress and has a mop in her hand.

“I’m not buying anything today,” she tells me.

“I’m not selling anything.”

She huffs and leans on the mop handle. “Then what do you want?”

“I’m a detective. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.”

She moves forward and I see she’s not a bad looking woman at all. No make-up on her face and a little perspired from housework, she’s not bad at all.

“It’s not about that woman again, is it?”

I turn toward Maggie’s house and smile slightly. “Woman?”

“The red witch.”

“Actually, it is.”

“Well, come on in.”

We talk in her living room. Me on a green easy chair. She on the matching sofa. The room smells of old cigarette smoke. The ashtray on the end table next to me has a gray line of ashes still in
it. Her name is Agnes English and no, her husband hasn’t left her. He’s at work at Hibernia Bank. No, she’s never even seen Maggie, but her cat’s been missing for two
weeks.

“A yellow tabby. Maybe you’ve seen her. Name is Judy and she’s such a love.”

“Just disappeared?”

Agnes nods and tears well in her eyes.

A half hour later, I’m knocking on another screen door, this one on the house next to Maggie’s. Another woman with a mop moves into the front room, squints at me and asks what I
want.

As soon as I tell her I’m a detective, she shushes me and moves quickly to the screen door.

“Keep your voice down,” she says as she unlatches the door and lets me in.

In a light-weight sky blue blouse and short white shorts, she’s a sight with her long strawberry-blonde hair pinned with two barrettes. She leads me through the front room, which smells
faintly of pine oil, back to a bright kitchen. I can make out her visible panty line along her ass as she moves in front of me. I like that in a woman.

“Coffee, officer?” she asks. Her eyes are the same color as her blouse.

“Sure.”

I watch her bend over for the grounds and flutter back to the sink to fill the percolator.

“I’m Lola Kinks.” She plugs in the percolator. She’s suddenly self-conscious, standing with the strong sunlight behind her and the way I’m leering at the front of
her shorts and the dark patch between her legs.

She moves to the small wooden table, sits and crosses her legs.

I sit across from her as the blush slowly fades from her pretty face.

As soon as Lola tells me she’s a widow, something inside stirs, something down south. I readjust myself as I sit.

When she mentions Okinawa, the stirring fades.

“My husband was killed in the last day of battle. Sniper.”

She’s a war widow. Dammit. I hate moving in on war widows. Like most surviving veterans, I feel a little guilty that I lived. It just seems slimy to ease in on a war widow, even three
years after Hiroshima.

As the coffee perks, Lola tells me how she’d married her high school sweetheart, spent a whirlwind honeymoon in Mexico, then sent him off to the Pacific. He fought at Eniwetok and Saipan
before Okinawa.

Damn, he’d seen some of the heaviest action.

When the coffee’s ready, she fixes us some and I try not to leer at her, although I do steal another peek at her ass as she’s pouring cream in her cup.

“Didn’t mean to get off the subject,” she says as we start in on our coffee. “I guess you’re here about the red witch again, aren’t you?”

“Why do you call her that?”

“Ever see her? She’s spooky and with that sorceress sign. Who knows what she’s up to next door.”

I take out my note book. “Ever see anything unusual?”

“All the time.”

Lola tells me about moaning and wild laughter, about boogie-woogie music, about strange smells, about hearing incantations and voices whispering harshly late at night.

“Smells?”

“Not cooking smells. But like in church. Incense and other strange odors.” She goes on but tells me nothing new.

I remind myself how good detective work is done in details, not broad strokes. But these details are redundant. I close my note book and thank the widow Kinks.

As she leads me out I ask if she’s heard of any missing animals.

“My dog ran away the same week the witch moved in. Dug a hole under the fence and I haven’t seen him since.”

A black lab, he answers to the name Nigger.

Jesus, lady!

She shakes my hand and gives my hand a gentle squeeze. And there’s something there, for a moment, in those sky blue eyes. But she blinks and looks away and it’s gone.

“She’s a flirt, you know.”

“Really?” I act surprised.

“She flirts with my fiancé.”

Fiancé? Did she say fiancé?

“In the backyard last Saturday. I saw her smiling at him and her in a silk robe with God knows what underneath.”

A war widow with a fiancé. If there’s one thing a man like me knows, a woman with a fiancé is as approachable as a nun. Women with fiancés are newly in love. Bored
housewives are more my style.

It takes a few more minutes, but I manage to escape from the widow Kinks’ house and those pretty blue eyes.

The electric clock on my bedroom wall shows it’s almost midnight.

I sit in my easy chair, just inside my balcony’s French doors, as a light rain wets the Quarter. A cool breeze floats in through the partially opened doors. With the porch light on outside
Maggie’s, I can see the red door clearly. I raise my glass of Johnnie Walker Red and compliment whoever laid out Cabrini Playground. The trees are interspersed perfectly to give me a clear
view of Maggie’s.

A dull light flickers in her front room. Candles, probably, but I haven’t seen the red witch since I got back – unless I close my eyes.

Maybe it’s the smoky scotch or maybe she put a spell on me, but when I close my eyes, I see those hips moving lithely, like a cat, beneath that tight dress. I see those ovaled, green eyes
staring back at me. The cupie-doll lips, pursed as they come in close for a kiss, touch my lips and . . .

I down the scotch and yawn.

Tomorrow, I tell myself. I think it’s time I become a client of the red witch. What have I got to lose?