An Alliance of Sorts
“Can you believe the balls on that man, Aunt Ruby?” Kelly huffed as she put the car into gear and pulled out into the street.
“The live one or the dead one?” Ruby asked with a thin-lipped smile.
“Aunt Ruby, you know exactly who I mean. You really don’t expect me to work with that close-minded idgit, do you?”
“Kelly, if you can help put an end to these awful murders, then yes. Suck it up and try to help.” Ruby looked across the street to the hulking old edifice of the Grande Hotel. “Didn’t Candy say the last murder happened behind the Grande?” Ruby pointed. “Let’s go have a look.”
Kelly turned into the side street beside the Grande Hotel and slowed her recently purchased PT Cruiser at the alley. Though ten years old, Kelly had fallen in love with the electric blue convertible. Near the back entrance of the old hotel Kelly saw yellow crime-scene tape strung, preventing her from driving farther and a brown parish patrol vehicle parked askew in a gravel lot. She pulled her car into a graveled space beside the squad car and shifted into park.
“I guess we walk from here. It’s not too far,” Kelly said as she unbuckled her seatbelt.
She and Ruby walked up the alley to see a man and a woman in brown Parish uniforms. The woman stood behind the dumpsters dusting one of them for fingerprints. The man carried a camera and snapped pictures around the alley and the back entrance of The Grande Hotel.
“Are you picking up anything yet?” Ruby asked as they approached the yellow tape.
Kelly shook her head slowly. “There are a lot of dead here. Long dead. They seem afraid.” Kelly slowed and cocked her head to listen. “An older African American woman keeps telling me to watch out for the…” She paused and screwed up her face in confusion. “First she said the black man, but she was showing me a Caucasian man dressed in black. She’s telling me to watch out for the man in black not the black man.”
“Excuse me, ladies.” Kelly turned her head to the uniformed man. “This is an active investigation. I’m afraid you’re gonna have to move along. A young lady lost her life here. It’s not a tourist destination. Go on back home or over to one of the gambling boats if you need to be entertained.”
“There’s no need to be insolent, young man,” Ruby chided.
“Come on, Aunt Ruby, I told you I can’t work with this department. They’re nothing but a bunch of close-minded idgits in tacky uniforms.”
Kelly strode back to her car, but walked slowly to stay in time with her hobbling Aunt. As they opened the doors of the bright blue car another Parish vehicle arrived and Kelly recognized Travis Maître behind the wheel. He grimaced at her as she dropped into her driver’s seat.
“Looks like the head idgit is here,” she mumbled and reached into her purse for her keys. She started the car and shifted into reverse as Travis stepped out of his brown Parish Tahoe. He waved, but Kelly ignored him and threw gravel with her tires as she sped out of the alley.
Ruby asked her to stop by the grocery on their way home and Kelly pulled into the Piggly Wiggly parking lot. She ran in and picked up a gallon of milk and a roasted chicken from the deli. Neither she nor Ruby felt like cooking, but Benny and Melanie would need something for supper. The roast chicken with some instant mashed potatoes and salad would be fine. Both children would want a bowl of cereal later while watching television.
The outdated green rotary dial phone on the wall began ringing as Kelly and her Aunt stepped into the big kitchen of the DuBois mansion. The house had been built in the mid-nineteenth century with money the family had accumulated from area agricultural interests. Those interests had dried up long ago, as had the DuBois fortune.
“Hello,” Kelly greeted the caller.
“May I speak with Kelly DuBois, please?”
“This is she. How may I help you?”
“I saw you at my crime scene. Did you talk to my victim?” Travis Maître asked smugly.
“No, I did not, Mr. Maître. I’m sorry I wasted your time. Goodbye.” Kelly took the phone from her ear.
“Miss DuBois, wait please.” Kelly heard Travis shouting.
“Yes?” she asked hesitantly.
“I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot this afternoon. My mama drives me to distraction sometimes.” Kelly could tell he fumbled for words on the other end of the phone. “Well, she invited y’all to have lunch with me and she didn’t tell me about it. I know she was tryin’ to help me with my investigation, but…”
“I understand, Mr. Maître. Mamas … What can you do?” Kelly saw her Aunt Ruby smiling impishly as the older woman fumbled with her cane and put the milk into the refrigerator.
“Well, I was wondering if I might make it up to you with dinner. I’m off tonight, unless that’s inconvenient. I know it’s short notice.”
“No, Travis, tonight would be convenient. Did you have someplace in mind?”
“I thought we might drive over toward Lafayette and go to the Texas Roadhouse for a steak.” He paused. “You do eat meat, don’t you?”
“Yes, I eat meat and the Roadhouse sounds lovely.” Kelly rolled her eyes at her Aunt who sat smirking at the kitchen table. She gave Travis directions to the DuBois house and they settled on seven o’clock as the time for him to pick her up.
“You see,” Ruby said. “I told you a nice young man would come along for you when the time was right.”
“How old is he, anyway?” Kelly asked and poured a glass of water from the dispenser in the door of the big side-by-side refrigerator. “He looks older than me.”
“He is. I’m pretty sure Candy had him in seventy-seven. So he’s in his late thirties, I guess.”
“Almost ten years older than me. How do you know his mother? She’s a good bit younger than you and I know you don’t attend church.”
Ruby chuckled. “No, I do not. I taught French for several years. Candy was a student.”
“I never knew you taught school, Aunt Ruby.”
“Oh, no. I did private lessons here at the house. Candy took French classes at the high school, but her parents were taking her to France one summer and hired me to polish her up.”
“I’ll keep that in mind if I want my French polished.” Kelly smiled. “It’s pretty rusty.”
“Mai qui, ma Cherie.”
Kelly fixed supper for the children, cleaned up the kitchen, and went up to change. Melanie followed Kelly up the wide marble stairs to the room she used while staying with her aunt.
“Grandma said you have a date. Is he cute?”
“I don’t know,” Kelly said, pondering the question from her little ten-year-old cousin. “I guess it depends on your definition of cute. He’s not bad looking, but I don’t know him that well yet.”
“What’s knowing him got to do with it?” Melanie scratched her bright blonde head. “He’s either cute or he’s ugly.” Melanie screwed up her delicately featured face. “I don’t think I could go with an ugly boy.”
Kelly sighed. Melanie’s parents had both died the year before and Ruby had taken on raising her two grandchildren. Her daughter, Julia, helped, and Kelly did what she could. How do you explain relationships to a child?
“You should get to know somebody before you decide about their cuteness. A very handsome man might be a man who would beat his children or kick his dog, while the not so handsome man might coach little league and work at an animal rescue shelter. Which one of them would you consider cute?”
“Oh. I see. Grandma always says pretty is as pretty does. I guess that’s what she means by that.”
“It’s exactly what she means.”
“Okay, well I hope this guy is cute. You need a boyfriend.” Melanie plopped onto Kelly’s bed. “What are you gonna wear? Where are you going? Are you gonna make out with him? If he’s cute, that is.”
“Just hold on, girlfriend,” Kelly interrupted the interrogation. “We’re going to dinner at the Texas Roadhouse. I’m wearing jeans and a sweater. And nice young ladies do not make out on first dates.”
“You should wear your pink sweater. It shows off your boobs better.” Melanie stood and skipped out of the room.
Oh my God. Now she’s giving me fashion tips and she doesn’t even have boobs yet.
Kelly took off her blazer and pulled her t-shirt off over her head. She gazed into her closet and reached for the hanger with her pink turtleneck sweater.
Mel is right. This one does look good on me and he was thinking about how much he appreciated a woman with nice breasts.
The doorbell sounded as Kelly spritzed on some Estee Lauder Pleasures.
“It’s your date, Kelly,” Melanie yelled from the bottom of the stairs. They passed one another at the mid-point and Melanie added with a mischievous grin. “He’s pretty cute, Kel. You should rethink that not making out part.” The girl sped past her before Kelly could reply.
In the grand foyer, under the glimmering antique chandelier stood a very handsome Travis Maître dressed in jeans, a dark blue Polo shirt, and cowboy hat. A sudden rush of warmth consumed her and Kelly felt her breasts react. That hadn’t happened in a while.
“I see you dressed for the Roadhouse.” Kelly smiled and nodded to his black creased hat. “I thought the good guys were supposed to wear white hats.”
Travis took off his hat and held it in both hands over his chest, smiling. “But it wouldn’t match the boots.” He lifted a foot for her to see his shiny black cowboy boots.
“Oh. Right. That’s very important.” Kelly smiled and picked up her brown purse that did not match her black flats. “See you later, Aunt Ruby,” Kelly yelled to her aunt, who sat with Benny at the kitchen table, helping him with his math homework.
“Have fun and drive safely,” Ruby called back.
“Yes, ma’am,” Travis added respectfully as he returned his hat to his nearly shaven head. Kelly couldn’t decide whether he cut it short because it had thinned or because style dictated. She ran a hand over her unruly blonde curls, knowing she’d wished many times women could wear their heads bald. How she’d envied Sinéad O’Connor.
“You look nice,” Travis added.
“Thank you. So do you. And you’re welcome.”
“For what?” he asked as he opened the passenger door of his Jeep Cherokee.
“You thanked me for wearing such a nice tight sweater.”
“Oh,” he said and blushed.
Kelly watched him walk around the vehicle and open the door. He tilted his head so he wouldn’t knock his hat off as he climbed in. “This mind reading thing might be a problem. Is there some way you can turn it off while we’re having dinner?”
“It doesn’t work quite like that, but I’ll try to tune you out. I have to do that in public places. It can get annoying listening to all the jerks commenting on my boobs or my ass.”
Travis raised an eyebrow. “I’ll bet. I’ll attempt to keep my rude thoughts to myself.”
“Thanks.”
They chatted benignly during the thirty-minute trip to the restaurant, avoiding the subject of the murders. It wasn’t until their salads arrived that Travis broached the subject.
“Did you see anything today when you went over to the hotel? Did you talk to Rose Murphy? That’s the dead girl’s name.” He took a sip from his mug of beer. “I don’t know how that stuff works. Can you see them when you talk to them?”
Kelly chewed her bite of salad before answering. “It’s different with every spirit. Some never manifest in a physical form.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know why. Was your victim a white girl?”
“Yes, she was white with long blond hair. She was thirty-two and slim.”
“Then, no, I didn’t see her.” Kelly sipped her beer. “But, she’s newly dead. I think sometimes it takes a while for them to figure out they’re dead. They don’t manifest until then.”
“So you didn’t see anybody.”
“Oh, I saw a lot of people. That alley is teeming with spirits, but they were all African American and from what looked to be the turn of the century or before.” Kelly paused when the waitress arrived with their steaks. “The women all wore long skirts down to the ground and the men looked like farmhands in rough trousers and overalls.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. St. Martinsville was settled by free people of color a long time ago.” He took a final bite of salad before dumping the little containers of butter and sour cream onto his baked potato, while Kelly did the same. “I think there was a cholera epidemic there around the turn of the century and they used the hotel as a make-shift hospital. A lot of people probably died there.” Travis cut into his rare piece of beef. “I don’t suppose any of those good folks witnessed anything Sunday night that I could take to the prosecuting attorney?”
“Maybe.” Kelly forked up a bite of the potato, tasted it, and reached for the salt.
“Are you shitting me? One of them really saw something?” Travis asked wide-eyed, forgetting his steak for the moment.
“An older lady kept after me, saying I should watch out for…” Kelly furrowed her brow and put down her fork. “At first I thought she was telling me to watch out for the black man and I thought that was odd because all the men there were black.” She took another drink of her beer. “She was speaking archaic French and even my modern French is pretty bad. I finally figured out that she was trying to tell me to watch out for the man in black. She may have been talking about what happened in the alley to your victim or it could have been something else altogether.” Kelly shrugged her shoulders. “I can’t say for certain.”
“Wait a minute. Did you say a man in black as in a man wearing black clothes?” Travis asked excitedly. “I suppose getting your ghost lady into an interrogation room with a sketch artist is out of the question,” Travis sighed.
“I’m afraid not. The dead seem to be limited to the area where they died. My French is so poor; I doubt I could even relay her answers clearly. Is a man in black significant?”
“One of my witnesses said she thought she saw a man wearing a black hat and black coat standing out behind the dumpsters that night after they found the body so yes, it could be very significant.”
“That’s why you had somebody dusting the dumpster for prints?” Kelly popped a bite of steak into her mouth. “I hope she found some. I don’t think my witness would stand up in a court of law.”