Ace of Pentacles, Reversed
Great plans may come to naught
It’s very hard to be a private eye when the case is personal.
And it’s not like we’re conventional private eyes in the first place. Me with my weird psychic gift, Frank and his past as an FBI agent, Colin…well, like I said, there’s nothing conventional about any of us. Keeping a professional distance is difficult when someone you love is involved—and that’s how mistakes are made, clues overlooked, important things not recognized for what they are—which is why cops aren’t allowed to get involved with cases involving people they know.
As I walked, I put aside my fears about Taylor and thought about the case.
Billy, Fidelis, Megan, and Margery’s daughter Amanda had all gone to Newman together. They’d had a prior history before being cast in the show. It wasn’t unusual—according to things I’d read, the producers would find a woman to be the cast anchor and then use her to recruit other women to the show. So the women usually had some kind of connection before they started filming. And as the show ran, the women would compete to find their own friends to replace the Dames who either quit or were fired.
New Orleans was a small town, so it only stood to reason that the cast would be connected to each other beforehand.
So, who had been the cast anchor for New Orleans?
My phone started vibrating in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw Brandon’s number lit up on the screen.
I ducked into a doorway and answered. “Brandon! Thanks for calling me back!”
“I didn’t think you’d call,” his voice purred in my ear. “But I’m glad you did.”
I bit my lower lip. “How are you doing? Things must be really crazy for you since…” I let my voice trail off.
“Oh, God, you have no idea.” He went into a long diatribe about the network, and the future of the show, and they had asked him to step in for Eric temporarily, and there was just so much going on, and trying to put out fires and save the show and—
When he paused to breathe, I said, “I thought you were going out clubbing with Taylor and Eric Friday night?”
He took so long to answer I wondered if he’d hung up. When he did, his tone was cool. “Yes, I did go with them to a couple of places. But once we got to the Brass Rail—well, I know I’d told you I’d watch out for your nephew, but that just wasn’t my kind of place, so I left.” Another pause. “I suppose you blame me. I wouldn’t have left had I know what was going to happen.”
“I don’t blame you, Brandon. I was just curious, is all.”
“Yes…well, I have another call. Let’s have a drink or coffee sometime soon?” He hung up before I could answer.
I slid my phone back into my pocket and started walking again.
Nice job, Scotty. He probably won’t take your next call.
I smiled. I could, of course, text him to meet me for a drink.
He was definitely interested—I’d just have to be sneakier about pumping him for information.
I shivered as another cold blast of wind came from the direction of the river.
So, who had been the anchor for the New Orleans cast?
It had to have been either Fidelis or Megan. But why cast Margery instead of her daughter, who was someone they’d gone to high school with? But that was the key; those three were the seed they’d planted to grow the show from. Rebecca Barron was connected through them through Billy, but even so…why would they cast Rebecca?
Maybe Rebecca was right. Maybe she’d been recruited as an underhanded way to hand Billy some ammunition to win his lawsuit.
And how were Serena and Chloe connected to the others?
I tried to remember everything Serena had said about getting cast on the show. For someone who was very open to talking about anything from the size of her breasts to the shortcomings of men she’d slept with, she’d been kind of cagey about how she’d wound up on the show. Maybe she was connected to one of the other women through charity work or something. That was how she’d met my sister.
I made a mental note to follow up on the casting and to see if there were other connections beside Newman High.
I started walking. Lord, it was cold. I could see my breath as I walked. According to the weather app on my phone, the hard freeze alert was still in place for the south shore of the lake until Tuesday afternoon. I tried to focus on enjoying the Christmas decorations on the houses as I walked up Royal Street, pushing everything else out of my mind. Taylor would turn up, we’d find out who killed Eric and Chloe, and the Colin situation would turn out fine. It always had in the past, right, so there was no reason to think this would be any different. He’d have to keep us in the dark, like always, and so I’d never know why that Russian had wound up in our apartment dead.
The important thing to do was stay calm and think clearly.
And consider every possibility, no matter how outrageous it might seem.
I tried to remember any time I’d seen Taylor lose his temper. It didn’t happen often—unlike his uncle Frank, Taylor was pretty even-keeled. He wasn’t even too angry with his parents for throwing him out.
I couldn’t imagine any scenario where Taylor would take a baseball bat and swing at someone’s head.
And from the position of the body, whoever had killed Eric had swung at him from behind.
Taylor might kill someone if he was defending himself, but I couldn’t see any way clear to where Taylor—drugged or not—would hit someone from behind.
You don’t know that. You don’t know what Taylor is capable of.
I pushed that nagging little voice out of my head.
I hate that voice.
It started raining again when I was still about a block or so from reaching Mom and Dad’s. The temperature was still falling, and my face felt frozen. I started darting from balcony to balcony, trying to keep dry. The drops were big and wet and stung a little on bare skin. The sun had vanished, and it seemed dark as night—which made the twinkling of Christmas lights in store windows brighter and more festive. I ran across Dumaine Street, managing to avoid being hit by a speeding yellow cab who also had the nerve to honk at me, even though he’d run a stop sign, and by the time my trembling gloved fingers were fitting my key into Mom and Dad’s back gate, water was running off my trench coat and stocking cap. Cold water was also dripping from my coat collar onto my neck.
I ran up the back stairs, letting the gate slam shut behind me, and reached the back door.
At least the gate blocked the wind, even if it didn’t block the rain.
I took the steps two at a time, hoping against hope that Taylor would be here. It wouldn’t explain why he left without his phone or his keys, but…
Hope springs eternal.
I was a little out of breath when I reached the landing, but there was an overhang that protected me from the rain. I banged with my first on the kitchen door to let them know I was coming in before unlocking it—Mom and Dad can be a little jumpy if you just let yourself into their apartment without warning.
They may be hippies, but they also take full advantage of their Second Amendment rights.
And safe is always better than sorry.
Mom and Dad are late risers, usually not getting out of bed before noon. They’re nocturnal by choice—they love staying up all night drinking wine and smoking pot and talking about politics and the things that were wrong in the world, and what they might be able to do to correct those wrongs. I remember many a night growing up, falling asleep in my bed to the murmur of their voices in the living room. The hardest part of moving out of their home was getting used to falling asleep to silence.
When I opened the door, warm air escaping the apartment washed over me and my skin started tingling from the temperature change. I stepped inside and pulled the door shut. There was a small foyer—Mom used to call it a mud room when we were kids, even though we were rarely muddy when we came home. But there were hooks on the wall for coats, and mats for wiping off your shoes. I slipped my coat and hat off and hung them up before stepping into the kitchen.
Mom was standing at the stove adding wine to whatever she was sautéing on the stove in her big black cast iron skillet. Whatever it was, it smelled amazing.
“Scotty!” Mom smiled, looking up from the stove. “A pleasant surprise! Are you by yourself?”
My heart sank. “Just me. Taylor’s not here, by any chance?”
“No.” She picked up the joint burning in the black-and-gold Saints ashtray on the counter next to the range. She took a hit as she reached up to give me a big hug. Mom is a little shorter than I am. Physically, she’s a bit on the tiny side. I don’t think she’s ever weighed more than 110 pounds, even when she was pregnant.
She seems much bigger than she is because her personality is so huge.
She touched my cheeks. “Oh, you’re freezing, you poor thing.” She pressed the joint into my mouth as she stepped away from me. “Take a couple of hits and have a seat. You want me to make you some tea? It’ll warm you right up.”
I obliged, taking a small hit before handing the joint back to her. “Some tea would be great.” I sat down on one of the barstools in front of the other counter top.
She filled the kettle with water, reaching with her other hand into the cabinet above the sink. She grabbed the metal container she kept her tea bags in and took off the top, frowning at the contents. “Oh, dear, I need to restock, I’m almost out of everything. Is English breakfast okay? I think that’s all I have. But I can run downstairs if you want something else?”
“English breakfast is fine. Lemon and honey, if you have it.”
She laughed. “Have you ever known me to not have either?” She turned on another burner, blue flames making a ring beneath the black iron top. She placed the kettle over the flames, opened the tea bag, and placed it in a mug. In one fluid motion she retrieved a slice of lemon from the refrigerator. The little plastic bear containing organic local honey was sitting on the counter near me. “Are you hungry? I’m making risotto.”
My stomach still felt uncomfortably full from my lunch at Five Guys. That seemed like it had been weeks ago. “No, I’m not hungry. I had lunch a little while ago, but thanks. It smells terrific.” I took another small hit from the joint and put it back in the ashtray. My brain and body were already starting to relax from the weed, tension and stress drifting away in a cloud of smoke.
“Go sit in the living room with your father and get comfortable.” Her smile started to fade as she looked at my face. “Something’s wrong. What’s wrong, honey?”
“It can wait,” I replied, slipping out of the kitchen and into the living room.
Dad was watching a Marvel superhero movie on the big screen television—I couldn’t tell which one, but the lead actor was a stunningly beautiful blond man whose body was the stuff of erotic fantasy—and wore a Saints hooded sweatshirt and matching sweatpants. A wisp of smoke was rising out of the bowl of the golden-colored dragon-shaped bong on the coffee table. “Hey, son,” he said, blowing smoke out through his nostrils. “Have a seat. I’m watching a special effects movie.”
I couldn’t help but smile in spite of everything. Just being around my parents always makes me feel better. They had good energy. My dad loved what he called special effects movies, watching them all the time—but never knew what their names were, who the stars were, or what the movie was about if he was asked later. He just enjoyed the visuals—which probably had something to do with him being such a huge stoner. Mom usually could name the movies and the casts, although she despised the celebrity culture the American entertainment industry fostered.
Don’t ever get her started on the E! Network. “Making people famous for nothing besides being famous,” she would sniff angrily. “Dumbing the whole country down, making women feel like they have to have their faces reshaped and remolded, implants here, shave this bone down there…and for what? The almighty dollar? Thanks for setting women back a thousand years.”
It probably goes without saying that she hate-watched Grande Dames.
“Everything okay, son?” Dad asked.
I’ve never had much of a poker face, especially around my parents. I’ve never been able to lie to them, primarily because I’ve never really needed to—they weren’t those parents. They always trusted us to use our best judgment, and we weren’t ever punished for making bad decisions. They believed that experience was the best teacher, and we needed to make our own mistakes so we could learn and grow from them. We were also what they call now free-range kids, and we grew up in the French Quarter. Sure, when we did something wrong, we didn’t get away scot-free—but they didn’t believe in grounding and they certainly didn’t believe in hitting. Usually, they’d just sit us down and we would have a long discussion about why what we did was wrong, how it affected other people, and as long as we could figure out what lesson we’d learned from making the mistake, we wouldn’t have to clean the tobacco shop or scrub the kitchen floor or any of the other chores used for punishment.
Doing domestic work was what my parents considered a win-win punishment. We hated doing it and an odious chore got checked off the list—which made the overall effect a positive one.
Mom and Dad were all about positive experiences.
Mom and Dad had also taught us, from earliest childhood, to think for ourselves and to use logic in making arguments. They didn’t believe in shielding us from anything, either.
And since we grew up in the Quarter, we were pretty jaded by the time we were teenagers.
“I was kind of hoping Taylor would be here,” I said. “He hasn’t been by, has he?”
Mom walked into the living room, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “No, not today. You don’t know where he is? Did you try calling him?”
“He left the house without his phone—”
Mom turned white and sat down, hard, on the arm of the sofa. “He doesn’t go anywhere without that phone. Have you called the police?”
“It’s probably a bit early to be worried, but yeah. He wasn’t there when we got home from interviewing a witness on the West Bank,” I replied. Mom and Dad wouldn’t ask questions about the case—they’d want to know everything but respected confidentiality. “He left his keys and his phone behind. I thought I’d check here, you know, just in case.”
“What did the cops say?”
“Frank and I talked to Blaine and Venus,” I said, “but it’s too soon for them to be able to do anything about it. I suppose it’s not too much to hope that he might have gone somewhere without his phone, is it?”
“Well, I’d like to believe that,” Dad said, “but that kid suffers from separation anxiety if he’s away from that phone for too long.” He shook his head sadly, and I could almost hear him thinking kids these days. “You don’t think—you don’t think something’s happened to him, do you?”
“Does it have something to do with that awful man who was murdered Friday night?” Mom asked. “Because he deserved it, and no one will ever convince me otherwise.”
“I don’t know, Mom.” I buried my face in my hands. I knew I probably shouldn’t tell them about Colin and the body in the apartment, but I had to tell someone. The fear that it had something to do with Taylor’s disappearance was too strong, and it was eating me up inside.
And they were family. Mom and Dad would never rat me out. Mom would go to her grave before she would tell the cops anything.
I took a deep breath and looked at them both. “Something else kind of happened Friday night…”
The great thing about my parents is they don’t judge. Ever. They raised us all to have a sense of morality, a strong idea of right and wrong, but Mom and Dad’s moral teachings probably wouldn’t have passed muster for most people. Their politics definitely shaped their morality, and their deep distrust of government at every level—city, parish, state, federal—colored their values. But they also encouraged us to be free thinkers, to make up our minds, to come up with our own moral codes—even if that conflicted with what they believed.
Colin is a perfect case in point. I loved Colin, and so did Frank, therefore so did they. They looked at both Frank and Colin as two more sons, welcomed them to the family without question. Years ago, we had all been led to believe that Colin had been responsible for the deaths of two of my uncles—my mother’s half brothers (it’s a really long story)—and then he disappeared from our lives for three years. It turned out in the end (it’s an even longer story) that he wasn’t responsible, but his job as a secret agent for hire required him to let us think that.
When he came back into our lives, Mom and Dad welcomed him back, not just to New Orleans but to our lives and our family, even before I was willing to listen to him.
That had been a lesson in the meaning of family I hadn’t known I’d needed.
Whenever Colin tried to explain, they just told him he was family and that was all they needed to know.
“If Colin killed him, he must have been a very bad man,” Mom said, reaching for Dad’s bong and loading the bowl carefully. “And you were smart not to tell the cops anything about that. Keep your mouth shut. Police involvement could put his life at risk—and yours, and Frank’s as well. Do you think these Russians might have taken Taylor?”
“It’s something we have to consider.” I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. “I called Angela and left a message. She hasn’t called back, of course. I just don’t know what to do.”
“Sometimes nothing is the right thing to do,” my mother said, lighting the bowl and taking a big hit. She blew out the smoke. “And you’ll know the right thing when the time comes. I just hate the thought of anyone hurting him.” Her eyes glinted. “If they hurt Taylor, there’s no place on Earth where they’ll be safe.”
She does scare me a little sometimes. “It’s not like it’s the first time,” I replied. It was ridiculous how many times we’d all been kidnapped or held as hostages. “But these people know where we live, Mom, and that worries me. Even if they don’t have anything to do with Taylor being missing…when will we be safe in our home again?” If Colin was telling me the truth. He’s lied to me before.
And that was the worst part of this whole thing. I didn’t know what was true and what wasn’t. Much as I wanted to believe Colin…
I didn’t know my ass from my elbow, to quote Papa Diderot.
“Have you reached out to Taylor’s mother yet?” Dad asked, taking the bong from my coughing mother and passing it to me.
“Why would we do that?” I shook my head. “His parents gave up all claim to him when they kicked him out.”
“Scotty.” Mom gave me what we all call the look. “No matter what else she may be, the woman is his mother. And when the news breaks—and you know it’s just a matter of time before some vulture claiming to be a reporter is going to release that Taylor was the young man with Eric Brewer the night he was murdered, all hell is going to break loose. And if he’s missing…” She shook her head. “I’m not a lawyer, but even I know that looks bad, like he ran away or something because he has something to hide about that night. You have to find him.”
“What can we do to help?” Dad asked.
“Just keep an eye out for him.” I took a hit from the bong just as my phone started beeping. I put the bong down and reached for my phone.
There was a text message from Serena: Scotty can you come over to Margery’s? She wants to talk to you.
Margery Lautenschlaeger?
Wanted to talk to me?
I texted back, Frank and I will head over there in a few minutes.
Serena: Terrific. Look forward to seeing you both.
I stood up and the head rush from the weed almost caused me to sit back down. “Whoa, that’s some potent stuff.”
Dad nodded. “Yeah. It’s the best batch we’ve had in a while—I should have warned you.” He started shoving buds into a plastic Ziploc bag. “Here, take some with you. It’ll help you stay calm.” He sealed the bag and rolled it up.
I shoved it in my pocket as I stood up. “Thanks. I have to run now—a witness wants to talk.”
“So, you want us to call you if we see or hear anything?”
I nodded. “Stay here, for home base, while Frank and I head over there.”
“What if he comes back to your apartment?”
I hadn’t thought about that.
Fuck.
“I’ll come mind the fort while you’re gone,” Dad said, getting up and walking over to the hall closet.
“No, you don’t need to do that,” I replied. All I needed was for Dad to get kidnapped. I still had nightmares from the last time that happened. (It’s a really long story.) “Love you both—will keep you posted.”
I galloped down the back steps and out the gate onto Dumaine Street. It was still raining, and the wind was still blowing. The gutters were filling with water. I groaned, jumped over the gutter, and started running as quickly as I could in my trench coat. The streets of the Quarter were almost completely deserted as I made my way downtown on Royal, hurrying from balcony to balcony, cold water dripping from my soaked stocking cap down the back of my neck and down my back. I was almost ready to start sobbing from the cold by the time I made it back to Decatur Street and the welcome cover of the balconies on our block. I unlocked the gate and run down the tunnel to the courtyard before taking the stairs two at a time. “Frank?” I called as I entered the apartment, tossing the sopping wet cap into the laundry basket and heading down the hallway to the living room.
He wasn’t there.
Fuck.
“Frank?” I checked out on the balcony, but he wasn’t there, either. There wasn’t a note on the little whiteboard on the refrigerator—our preferred method of communication—and I checked both bedrooms and the bathroom to be sure.
I went out the back door and climbed the steps to Taylor’s apartment. The door was locked, and I opened it. “Frank?” I called out tentatively. “Taylor?”
There was no answer.
I pulled out my phone and texted Frank: where are you?
I checked everywhere—the bedrooms, the closet, the bathroom, everywhere—but there was no sign of either of them up there.
I ran back downstairs. This time, I checked for Frank’s coat.
It was also gone.
What the hell, Frank?
I had a really bad feeling about this.