6

Luci’s aunts lived in an area of narrow, rutted streets and mixed architectural ancestry just off St. Charles in a house that was a narrow embellished Victorian built just prior to the turn of the century. Set on a corner lot, it had long settled into the midst of an abundant tangle of shrubbery and flowers barely confined by the high wrought-iron fence that circled the property.

Their handyman, Boudreaux, a small Cajun with a speech impediment that made it difficult for the non-Seymour to understand him, kept the house in pristine condition. His tall, spare and mute-by-choice wife, Louise, cared for the aunts. Both had been with the aunts for as long as Luci could remember.

Coming down that first morning, Luci ran into Louise in the hallway outside the breakfast room. She carried a covered tray, so Luci held the door open for her, then followed her in to where the aunts were seated around the long light table in the even longer, lighter dining room.

Despite the long passage of time, they were just as she remembered them. Well, maybe a bit more transparent. They had always looked like they’d just marched off a Russian assembly line, since they were as similar in looks as folk art nesting dolls and not similar in height. Easy to believe that they’d emerged from inside each other rather than the more conventional birthing.

Each had a round white bun on the crown of her head, a round face, round eyes, and round spots of rouge on each cheek. Their skin was white and crepe thin, like tissue paper that had been crushed and then smoothed. Their mouths were crumpled pink bows. Their now faded blue eyes still reflected constant, utter delight with life and living.

Miss Weena, the youngest and shortest, was also the trendiest, favoring caftans in wild colors that were too long and constantly tripped her. She was, Luci recalled as the past made a return engagement, the adventurous sister and the only one who had ever held a brief, but real, job. It was a source of wonder to the family that anyone had actually hired Miss Weena, let alone armed her. Her employer had paid a brief but painful price for his lack of judgment, to his heart and his manhood. But as Miss Weena was wont to point out, he was too old to have children anyway.

It was one of Miss Weena’s caftans that Luci had donned for her first foray outside her bedroom. That it landed just below her knees didn’t trouble her . Vanity wasn’t part of the Seymour profile.

Miss Hermi, the middle sister, favored gray and lavender, which suited her drift-through-life personality. She suffered from the illusion she was a gardener, much to Boudreaux’s dismay, and she had a gentle passion for cement gargoyles. It must make the back garden a nightmare to tend but had been a delight to small children with big imaginations.

Miss Theo, the eldest and tallest sister, still wore black, plain and classic. She was considered the sensible sister, though non-Seymours might find this assessment hard to swallow. Her eyes were bright and intelligent, if somewhat remote. She tended to look at life as something quite interesting, but not her concern.

Luci waited until Louise arranged the tray on the table before greeting her. Louise needed both hands free to scribble a greeting on the chalkboard that hung by a chain from her belted waist. Out of deference to Louise’s carpal tunnel syndrome, the greeting was brief. Luci kissed each aunt’s papery cheek before taking her own chair, feeling most of her twenty-seven years peel away. So little had changed here, she felt like a time traveler.

Until Louise lifted the lid from the tray.

No succulent eggs and sizzling bacon. No pancakes dripping with real butter. Luci looked at what was there, then looked up to ask, “Can I have the Fruit Loops?”

Designed in the early 1950s by the Israeli government to use against the PLO, the Uzi submachine gun is capable of firing 950 rounds per minute. Over time, improved technology has made it the choice of military forces worldwide, including the U.S. Secret Service.

It was also Fern’s choice.

She didn’t want it because it had a 9mm chamber or a folding metal stock. She wanted it because it was cute and compact. Neat. Manageable. Especially the mini version that they finally chose from Chainsaw Teddy’s supply of deadly hardware. On his advice they got the semi-automatic version, which, because of the higher firing cyclic rate, would be easier to control.

Teddy had a smirk on his meaty face when he told them this, but they chose not to respond. Explanations of what had gone wrong were unnecessary. He’d seen the news and been expecting them. Donald didn’t even give the AK-47 a regretful glance as they left.

“So, what do we do now?” Fern tucked the Uzi out of sight under the seat of their stolen Ford.

“We head over to where the broad is staying and scope things out.” He tossed her a map of the city. “I marked it on the map. But let’s get some grub first.”

“Drive-through okay? Wouldn’t like to leave our Uzi alone in case someone steals our stolen car.” Fern rubbed the Uzi with the heel of her shoe and smiled.

“Yeah, just keep it outta sight. Bulls are still jumpy after last night.”

“Yeah.” Fern looked grimly cheerful. “Read in the paper that they think we’re part of a radical senior citizens group. It’s too bad we had to be so visible for so long last night.” Fern thought back to the moment when it seemed like the Seymour woman was looking right at her. How observant was she? And if she had fingered them? It would make the stakeout more difficult. “We should never have tried it at the airport like that. Planes are never on time.”

“Damn Artie.”

“Are you quite sure you don’t want to be Unabelle’s flower girl?” Miss Theo asked, her spoonful of Lucky Charms quivering just shy of her mouth.

“Completely quite sure,” Luci said. She’d polished off the Fruit Loops in crunchy short order. The roof of her mouth was a tad sore, but her sugar craving was at least assuaged, while leaving room for the beignets she had her sights set on.

“But you’d get to strew rose petals in Unabelle’s path, Luci dear,” Miss Weena said, disbelief predominant in her fluting voice. Fruity Pebbles was her all-too-appropriate breakfast of choice.

“Not everyone wants to strew rose petals.” Miss Hermi put her faint but pursuing opinion into the mix. She liked Captain Crunch. She’d always, Luci recalled, had a soft spot for a man with a mustache.

“I’ve always wanted to strew,” Miss Weena said dreamily. “Or to be strewn.” Her hopeful glance slid in Miss Theo’s direction.

Miss Theo ignored her, her attention centered on snagging the last soggy Lucky Charm floating listlessly in milk. Miss Weena looked so crestfallen Luci decided to help her out.

“Could she fit in the dress, Miss Theo?”

Miss Theo looked up, her gaze assessing Miss Weena’s all too diminutive figure. Miss Hermi threw her lot in for Miss Weena—and the cause of peace—with, “Who else will we find now, Theo?”

“All right,” Miss Theo said. “You can strew. Maybe Unabelle won’t notice.”

Three pairs of eyes widened and looked at her.

“Maybe?” Miss Weena asked.

“She could,” Miss Theo said, a hint of defensive taking the burnish off her usual regal style. “She noticed when we tried to switch her puce dress for a white one.”

“You’d think,” Luci said, “that someone who’d waited as long as Unabelle would be panting to wear white.” Luci realized what she’d just said and knew what her aunts were thinking. It was hard to imagine Unabelle panting, let alone—

Luci gave a slight shudder, one echoed around the table in varying levels of revulsion. Past time to change the subject to one nearer and dearer to her thoughts.

“Speaking of panting,” she began. “I was talking to Lila—”

“How is your mother?” Miss Hermi asked, her anxious expression belying the friendly inquiry.

Luci grinned. “The same. She—”

Miss Theo patted her hand. “We all have our cross to bear.”

Miss Hermi and Miss Weena nodded. Four gazes drifted toward the fireplace mantel and the row of pictures marching across the surface. Luci was the only one of them to have a Seymour mother, but she shuddered with her aunts at the grim, sensible mother faces casting long shadows over the ineffectual Seymour men they’d married.

Luci pushed back her chair and went to study the pictorial genealogy, a gallery that didn’t include her paternity. Was her father the key to her not-quite-perfect family fit? To her split personality? Every other Seymour had a Seymour father to look at, to blame for their mother. Lila wouldn’t talk, so somehow the aunts must be persuaded to spill the right beans. A Seymour woman could always be counted on to spill some beans, just not always the right beans.

“Is my father—” she turned back to her aunts. Their reaction was interesting. All three pairs of eyes widened, then narrowed and were directed toward their empty cereal bowls.

After a long, awkward pause, Miss Weena said, “He was a lovely man.”

Was? “Lila said he lives here in New Orleans.”

Miss Theo looked far too innocent. “Did she? Well, I suppose he might. He was a soldier back then, so we just assumed...”

“Cut a lovely figure in his uniform,” Miss Hermi said, hastening to fill the hanging pause left by Miss Theo. “I expect the pictures are still in the attic—”

Two irate stares cut her off in mid-sentence.

“Or...not,” she finished feebly.

That subterfuge was alien to them was obvious by how bad they were at it. Had Lila gotten to them first? Why would they back Lila up though? She was the female family black sheep, first for getting pregnant and then for taking Luci away from them. She should have, Luci realized, come back sooner. There was at least one deep spot in the shallow Seymour waters.

She pretended not to notice the worried glances that passed between them, but it was hard not to notice when they stood up and formed a row in front of her.

“What?” She looked from one face to the other, seeking enlightenment that might not ever come. It was obvious they were up to something.

“It just won’t do.” Miss Theo picked up the edge of the caftan that Luci had borrowed from Miss Weena. Miss Hermi and Miss Weena both nodded agreement as they circled Luci like vague, charming vultures, their buns bobbing eager approval. “Something in black?”

“Black?” Luci wasn’t sure she wanted to know what was coming, but with Seymour fatality, she knew there was no way to avoid it.

Miss Hermi smiled. “To get the police, Luci dear.”

“Police?” Luci blinked, but their sweet faces didn’t alter one whit. “Police.” They nodded encouragingly. Luci pondered for a beat, then agreed. “Definitely black.”

Mickey would certainly start mourning when he saw her. Might as well beat him to it. But first she needed to outmaneuver her aunts.

The door to the attic creaked when Luci pushed it open. Behind her she could hear Miss Weena calling her. She leaned out to call, “Be right down!” then slipped through the door and closed it. And opened it again before she passed out from lack of oxygen. The heat was past oppressive, bordering on abusive. It was a stale and cloying wet blanket that set itself against her need to hurry. But despite the discomfort, there was a kind of magic in the murky semi-dark. Attics were magic and mysterious places in all the best books, where unexpected things could be counted on to happen. Luci had never been immune to magic. That this particular attic might hold the key to her past only heightened the sensation that she’d crossed more than just a wooden threshold to arrive here.

On the other side of that threshold she heard the insistent trill of her aunts and, with a sigh, turned on the lights and drove the magic into the far corners, leaving an ordinary attic with an assortment of boxes and trunks and a lot of shoeboxes. More than a lot, she noted with a grin. The aunts must have decided to challenge Imelda Marcos’s position as the Queen of Shoes.

Among the trunks, she found her mother’s. It had sat at the foot of her mother’s bed until they left town so many years ago. She did a cobweb check and was surprised to find her path relatively free of sticky obstructions. The floor was dusty, so she crouched in front of the trunk and teetered for a moment until she found her balance again. Her elbow bumped one shoebox tower and sent it toppling, but she didn’t let the shower of paper that erupted from the boxes distract her.

Now that she was here, she felt a strange reluctance to disturb the past. The musty smell of damp and old assailed her nostrils as her feelings swirled in uncertain patterns. Did she want to do this? She’d been so angry with Lila for deceiving her about her father that she hadn’t stopped to think about how it might affect her. What if she found him and didn’t like him? What if he was as annoying as her mother? What if—

She stopped, trying to avoid the thought, but it came anyway.

What if he didn’t like her?

“This could be such a bad idea,” she told the boxes.

She could walk away now. She hadn’t crossed any “points of no return” yet. Once she saw a face, had a name, it would be harder to walk away. Unless she’d already passed that point? She looked at the lid and knew she couldn’t leave it alone. If she did, her aunts would take her choice away. For whatever reasons their busy and confusing brains had conjured up, they didn’t want her to know who her father was. It was her right to know—even if she didn’t act on that knowledge.

The trunk wasn’t locked, but it resisted opening after so many years. She had to hold it with one hand while she shone the light in.

On top was a framed picture of her mother and a man. Luci reached for the picture with hands that trembled, then let the lid close again. She took a deep breath, then looked at the photograph. It was old and a bit fuzzy. Whoever had been holding the camera wasn’t good with it. Their clothes—Lila’s the worst the sixties had to offer, and her companion’s the uniform Miss Hermi had sighed over—were in the light, leaving their faces in shadow. His was even harder to see than Lila’s because of his hat. Only his jaw line, strong and well-defined, gave any sense of his face.

Luci traced that jaw. “Are you my father?”

In the distance, she heard Miss Weena call again. Luci sighed, then turned her attention to the papers she’d knocked over.

“Dollar bills?” A shoebox full of dollar bills? A quick check of a few more boxes indicated they all contained bills, not shoes. “What? Now they’re afraid of banks and large bills? Oh my.”

She finished and turned to leave, the photograph tucked under her arm. Later. She’d deal with it and all those unsettling feelings it stirred up...later.

It was easy for Mickey to persuade his partner, Kevin Delaney, to take their break at Cafe du Monde. Delaney was always happy to go where the fat content was high.

Open twenty-four hours to locals and tourists, it served its famous cafe au lait, a strong chicory and milk-laced coffee, and beignets, square doughnuts fried in oil and liberally doused with powdered sugar. Sitting under the canopy, there was always the chatter of people to provide counter-point to the plaintive ballads of the jazz musicians plying their trades for tips, while overhead, slowly spinning fans moved the humid air enough to provide an illusion of cool.

“You want the last beignet?” Delaney asked, his hand hovering over it.

Mickey shook his head, his hand cupping the cooling coffee as Delaney snagged a lone golden square. Idly Mickey wondered how coffee could cool when it was so damn hot. It was easier, more comfortable to think about coffee than to dwell on last night.

“I guess that means you don’t want another order?” Delaney made it a hopeful question. He was a big man with a large, shaggy head of hair, a barrel chest and gentle brown eyes.

Mickey looked at him in resignation. “What do you care? You know you’ll eat them all anyway.” Delaney gave him an injured look and Mickey sighed. “Fine. I’ll take another coffee.” He’d need to keep the caffeine level in his blood high if he were going to get through the day. The headache had survived the night.

Delaney placed their order, then turned to look at Mickey. “You really need to lighten up, Ross. You’re gonna have a heart attack.”

A gleam of humor lit Mickey’s glum expression. “You’re telling me to lighten up? After you just scarfed six beignets?”

Delaney patted his bulk. “I have a large frame to maintain. Unlike you, my anal retentive friend. You worry the details too much. Get some perspective, step back and look at the big picture once in awhile.”

“I tried. But you were blocking my view.”

Delaney grinned, his good humor unfazed. He might have retorted, but the food arrived. He leaned forward, trying to ease his wallet out of his back pocket. It was wedged.

Mickey sighed, extracting his wallet from the inside pocket of his last good suit. He tossed a few bills onto the waiting tray and watched as the waiter left without returning any change. Maybe he’d sensed Mickey’s building financial crisis and had decided to make sure he got his tip.

“I’ll get the next one, Ross.”

“You’ll have to. By the time I buy a new car and new suits and pay the rise in my insurance rates—that’s if they don’t drop me—” He shook his head.

“Too bad about your wheels.”

“Yeah, that’s what my agent said. Right before he reminded me that I chose not to get rental car coverage. I asked him how I’m supposed to get to work? He tells me to take the bus.”

“That’s cold.” Delaney paused in the act of lifting his cup to his mouth. “Did Caroline get hold of you?”

“Yeah. She heard about the shooting. Was worried. Wondered if she could help. Why do women do that?” He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to ease the tension already knotting there.

“What? Want to help?”

“Yeah. What, does she think I can’t figure out how to get myself to and from work without a car?”

“So, how did you get to work?”

“Caroline picked me up.”

Delaney hid his grin behind his coffee cup. “That’s very independent of you.”

“Ha, ha. I should’ve known this would happen when I broke my own rule: never, ever get involved with someone you work with. Especially a woman.”

“Well, the only other choice is the men, Ross. Though if you’re thinking of a change in lifestyle, maybe you can still find that perp we caught last week. Course, you’ll have to wait until after you testify against him before you ask him out.” Delaney gave Mickey a shit-eating grin.

“I don’t think his boyfriend would like it.” Mickey refused to rise to that bait again. Delaney’d been trotting it out all week. It was getting old. “Do I want to know if you heard anything new on the shooting last night?”

Delaney shifted gears. “Not much. You know they found the car—” He stopped, then continued when Mickey nodded. “But don’t think I told you it’s knee deep in shell casings which forensics is painstakingly dusting for prints. They might be done by the turn of the century. But they might not. At least two murders last night. You weren’t the only one getting shot at last night.”

“Great. Been a bad year for the NOPD.”

“No kidding. Did I mention the memo?” Delaney looked at his cup instead of Mickey.

“What memo?”

“The one about improving our crime stats so the news hounds will quit kicking our butts in print.”

“Damn. They might try cutting us some slack.” Mickey knew it would never happen. It wasn’t “in” to cut cops slack.

“Ah, well.” Delaney sighed before adding, “It does make us look bad when our fellow officers keep getting arrested. ‘Course, if the three officers on the scene last night had got off even one shot—”

“Her dress was wrapped around my piece.”

“Way I heard it, you were too busy copping a feel to pull your piece. And that lipstick all over your shirt—” Delaney shook his head in mock sorrow.

“Very funny. All you comedians seem to forget...” Mickey’s voice trailed off as a pair of real lookers swayed past, their hips eye-grabbing in indecently short skirts. Not bad, he decided, thought the legs weren’t as good as—he snapped that thought off before he could complete it. He didn’t want to think about Luci. It wasn’t a fruitful line of thought. He turned back to find Delaney looking at him with amused resignation.

“Don’t you ever get tired, Ross?”

“Of looking? Never. It’s the talking and the touching that’s getting real hazardous to my bachelor status.”

There was a short companionable silence, then Delaney asked, “You never said what happened when you finally got the girl deposited with her family. Were they getting worried?”

“Worried? The Seymours? They don’t know how to worry.” Mickey tipped back in his chair until he was balancing on the back legs and clasped his hands behind his head.

Delaney grinned. “So what did they do?”

“Do? Nothing. If she had been a kid, her parents would’ve been crazy to send her to them. Seems they forgot she was even coming.”

“Forgot?”

“Yeah, maybe the party they were at distracted them. Was at the frat house across the street. Loudest damn party I’ve seen since college.”

“Uh huh.” Delaney fingered his chin. “Didn’t you say these were older ladies?”

“Two-feet-in-the-grave old.”

Delaney shrugged. “I guess it’s true what they say about only being as old as you feel.”

“Yeah, well, these birds feel pretty damn young, then. Were having a great time teaching the boys the bunny hop.”

Delaney choked, then stretched his legs under the table next to them. “You think anyone past sixty’s over the hill, Ross.”

“You are over the hill, Delaney. Should’ve been put out to pasture years ago.”

Delaney wadded up a napkin and threw it at him. “So, were they upset about the shooting?”

“I told you, they don’t get upset. They wanted to know what it was like to get shot at.”

Delaney gave a silent whistle. “I’ll have to admit they sound a few bricks short.” He had to pull his legs in when a server almost tripped over them.

“More than a few, Delaney. Took me a devil of a time to convince them I’d brought them dear little Luci.”

“How could they—?”

“Apparently they don’t have a real good grasp of time passing. When I left they were trying to decide if they could alter her flower girl dress to fit or if they should make a new one.”

Delaney grinned. “I’d like to meet them.”

“You would. You can get along with anyone.”

“Yes, well, isn’t it lucky I’m so well equipped to be your partner?”

Mickey had to laugh. “All right, all right. It’s just that people can be so—so—”

“Human?”

Mickey laughed again. “Yeah. Damn human.”

“I heard she had great legs. Worth dying for.”

“The legs were good,” Mickey admitted. “If they could just be detached from the mouth.”

“Too bad I’m married to my job, I’d look her up. Sarge is always telling me I’m late for my mid-life crisis. Just can’t seem to get up the steam for it.” There was a short silence as he munched contentedly on his doughnut. Then he brushed the powdered sugar off his belly and leaned forward, his gaze serious. “Any chance that shooting was meant for you?”

“Why would it be meant for me?”

“Well, we are on Dante’s ass and he’s known for not liking that. You find out something you haven’t gotten round to sharing with me?”

“Only if it’s something I don’t know I know. He’s been running book for longer than I’ve been a cop, Delaney. Being a known associate with a dead man isn’t grounds to pull him in, much as I’d like to. So unless he’s lost his head, I can’t see Dante getting hot under the collar over the little we’ve been able to scrape up on him.”

“So what do you think it was then?”

“You saw the report. It was an elderly couple wearing joke glasses.” Mickey brushed at the white powder dusted across his trousers, smearing it across the dark surface.

“Jeff Parish guys think they broke out of an old folk’s home.”

“They would. Only no reports on any breakouts and they haven’t made any demands.”

“I recognize that look, Ross. Something’s bothering you.”

“A lot’s bothering me—like losing my car.” He shoved his hands through his hair, staring into the crowd with a frown. “But, it just seems that if someone went there wanting to make a stink by shooting up a crowd, they’d have done it when there was a crowd. Why wait until almost everyone was gone?”

“Screwing up their nerve?”

“Maybe, but if that’s the case, then it took them from the time the flight was due in, until it actually arrived. That’s a lot of exposure for no return.” Mickey frowned, his mind replaying the events—while trying not to get stuck on Luci and her legs.

“So, you think they were waiting for someone on that flight?”

“It was the only one left to come in.”

“But...” Delaney was thinking hard. “If they wanted to kill just one person, why choose such a hit-and-miss, damn public way to do it? Unless—” He looked sharply at Mickey. “They thought they could avoid focusing attention on their real target?”

“Might have worked if a lot of people died.” Mickey considered the idea from various angles. “I could make a case for it.”

“I don’t know, Ross. It’s pretty messy. Risky, too. Why not just arrange a quiet little accident?”

“How do we know they haven’t already tried that?” Something twitched at the edge of his mind, then faded.

Delaney nodded. “Makes a little bit of sense, Ross. Your noodle isn’t as hashed as you claim. So, if you’re right about them, they missed their mark last night and might try again?”

Mickey nodded. “I think it’s at least worth looking into. There weren’t that many people involved. Maybe five or six coming off the plane. Everyone else had cleared out. If one of them had a near accident lately—”

Again with the twitch. What was he forgetting? What was he too damn tired to call up from the slippery depths of his brain?

“Something wrong?”

Mickey rubbed his head where the remains of last night’s headache lingered. “I’m forgetting something. Hope it’ll come back. Feels important.”

“Don’t sweat it. Thoughts are like women. They only come when you don’t want them.” Delaney pushed his chair back. “I’ll see if I can scare up a list of those names. All it’d take is a phone call to each person. Though I think I should talk to your Luci in person—if only to see the legs.”

“You can waste your time if you want to. I asked her the standard questions last night.” And got some highly non-standard answers, he could have added but didn’t. It would only encourage Delaney. He liked to collect eccentrics. “If you insist on questioning her, count me out. I could die a happy man if I never have to talk to her again—”

The end of his sentence was drowned in the sudden honking of horns and squealing of tires. An old, rattletrap car pulled recklessly across traffic and stopped at the curb. Right next to a “NO PARKING ANYTIME” sign. It was a Volkswagen full of bodies, most of whom appeared to be the male-with-biceps variety. With one exception.

The door creaked open. Luci Seymour delicately began to extricate herself from the young man on whose lap she’d been perched. Her momentary suspension across a hefty knee left a lot of her infamous leg exposed for an enjoyable moment, effectively halting male traffic on the sidewalk for the duration of her suspension. Then there was a collective in-drawn breath of awe, changing quickly to one of regret when, with a wiggle and a twist, Luci freed herself and her skirt from car and man.