Jerry called around lunchtime to tell me he’d found nothing in local clinics or ER’s about a guy bleeding from a shoulder wound last night. He didn’t hear anything from any of his informers on the street either. He had a small collection of them, in various walks of New Orleans life. Most of these he had cultivated in his time at the NOPD. He liked to brag that they were more loyal to him now because he could bribe them at a higher rate.
I found myself wishing I were in a book or movie; some place where information was always for sale somewhere. In fiction, a fugitive could always find a shady doctor (usually without a valid license, preferably revoked in a colorful scandal) who would patch him up--or even provide cosmetic surgery--for a price. Bogart had done it in the movie Dark Passage and cleared his name with the help of the ever-stunning Lauren Bacall. Regardless, if there were any such medical quasi-professionals in New Orleans, they kept very low profiles. It made me wonder, not for the first time, how people outside the law networked. Was there an Underworldnet? If there was, I hope it had a catchier name.
Jerry’s voice pulled me back from Tangent Avenue. “Are you sure it was his blood you saw, Zo? Maybe you got a nosebleed and it was your own blood that made you faint.”
“It flowed from around his collarbone onto my hand as I was trying to give the guy CPR, Jerry.” I snapped. “I’d know if it was my own blood dripping on my hands. There’d be spots where it splashed, either on the floor or on my blouse, not smudges or evidence of a spill. Besides, I couldn’t tell you last time I had a spontaneous nosebleed.”
“You had the flu and were sneezing and blowing your nose for most of the last ten days, and you haven’t had a nosebleed?” He sounded dumbfounded.
What an odd question. “Was I supposed to?”
“I want your nose. I want two, one for each kid. When they’re sick, we have to tell them not to blow their nose all the time, but you know kids. They’re so good at listening. So they get nosebleeds from overblowing anyway. You wouldn’t believe the amount of tissues we go through. I hope they don’t get what you had, it sounded nasty. Speaking of which, are you sure there isn’t anything funny in that cough syrup you took?”
“Jerry, I have never hallucinated in my life. Why would I start now?”
“You could be overtired,” he said in a tone he probably used on his kids. “I keep telling you that you work too much.”
Mr. Pot, permit me to introduce Ms Kettle. “I own the place. I also live upstairs, it’s a little hard to take a day off when I’m right there and open seven days a week.”
“That’s what I mean. When was the last time you took a real vacation?”
“I went up to Chicago in September,” I said defensively. I made the trip at least once a year.
“That was to visit your mother’s grave and it wasn’t even over a weekend,” he said. “Take Woo, take a week and go to the Bahamas. Take a cruise to Mexico, cruise ships leave from here all the time. Find a beach and drink rum punches out of pineapples that have little umbrellas stuck in them. Someplace warm where you can forget about winter and tourists and not-quite dead bodies. Feliz and James can handle Bloody Murder for a week. It would do you and Michael some good.”
Both of us? “Jer? You know something I don’t?”
“I just observe, sugar, and you two do not have enough of what they used to call “quality time.” Why don’t you move in with him?”
This again. “Why don’t you mind your own business?” Did Spenser and Susan get this much crap for not getting married? I didn’t think so, and they were together through most of the Robert B. Parker series.
“You are my business, baby girl. Even if you weren’t family, you’re dating one of my employees. You’re dating an employee who also happens to be a friend of mine. That makes it doubly my business.”
Jerry came from a very large family--sisters, cousins, aunts, the whole family tree. My orphaned state bothered him on a visceral level. When we’d first met, I’d hired him to investigate my dead parents, who didn’t seem to have any blood connections of their own. They’d eloped in the early sixties in a fit of teenage hormones, cut all ties and started a new life. I didn’t—and still don’t--know what their given last names were. My brother Gene had been killed in what I’d originally been told was a climbing accident before he finished college. That was it as far as blood family was concerned. Such a situation was inconceivable for Jerry, so I was part of his family now, like it or not. Most of the time I liked it. Among my friends in New Orleans, and now Michael, I had a coterie that was probably better than blood family. It was more dependable at any rate. My father couldn’t even be trusted to stay dead.
“Jerry, you worry like I work. You barely know how to do anything else. Is there any word from the lab?” I knew it was too soon, but it was a good way to change the subject.
“Not yet, doll. They told me they’ve got a lab tech out with the flu and another one on vacation so it might be a few days before they get to your blouse. I’m sorry, I wish it could be sooner.”
It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but I took it with good grace. “It’s okay, Jerry, when they can.” Now would be nice, but showing the impatience I was feeling wouldn’t make it happen any faster. I thought about high school. Specifically the times when I was keeping my expression perfectly serious when one of the sisters found me and Marie someplace we weren’t supposed to be. It worked.
“If I hear anything, I’ll call you, you know that.” Jerry said. “And take that vacation, Zo. Enjoy a week away for a change. You work your ass off. You know Feliz can handle the place without you for a week. You deserve a break today.” He was sounding more and more persuasive. He also sounded like an old commercial jingle, but I decided to keep that last bit to myself. Reminding people of their age is rarely a good idea.
I had no doubts about my partner’s ability to handle the business. Feliz was a godsend who started as a customer when I first opened the shop. It was also perfectly true that she had certainly taken own her share of time off. Of course, she had two kids in school with their own schedules. Thanks to me, her primary help with childcare was in jail serving twenty-five to life. Bless Feliz’s Catholic heart, she still visited her sister Amati regularly. Her brother José was also behind bars, but he refused to see her. I had no similar excuses. My own criminal relative was missing in action and I’m not sure I’d visit if I knew where he was. “I’ll think about it, okay?”
“Good girl. As soon as the lab looks at your blouse, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks, Jerry. You take some of your own advice, okay?”
“Sure thing, Zo. I gotta go. I’m buried in paperwork.”
Mentally, I rolled my eyes. He wasn’t going to listen to his advice any more than I was going to follow it. As his business expanded, Jerry spent more time in the office as well as working on private investigations. He could use a vacation as well. He seemed to be getting cranky.
A week away did have a certain amount of appeal. While Michael and I had talked about it, there was always a busy season for Bloody Murder or Michael had a new network deployment to in the way of scheduling. While Michael had started as a consultant, Jerry recently made him the head of technology at his company. This was coupled with handling any network security issues for clients who didn’t have their own people. In other words, my boyfriend was working almost as much as I was. That made hearing this encouragement from Jerry a bit of a contradiction, now that I thought about it.
So. No new information. Dodson was a bust so far, but I wasn’t out of resources yet. One of them was due for his daily cup of coffee any time now. My next-door neighbor Sam Collins had been one of Bloody Murder’s first paying customers and was at the coffee almost daily ever since. A retiree, he spent a lot of his days people-watching from his porch when he wasn’t tending his roses. He had the time now, he said more than once. That wasn’t always the case.
Meanwhile, there was plenty for me to do, including figuring out creative new ways to get more inventory on the floor. The majority of the tourist business was usually Thursday through Sunday, so early in the week was the best time to do major rearranging. If the Saints were in the playoffs, the games brought in even more people in the weeks before the Superbowl. The scheduling allowed us to close earlier on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We stayed open later the rest of the week, usually until nine.
“You know Zo,” James said as we stacked an assortment of Linda Fairstein’s books--her newest one would be on sale tomorrow, but we wouldn’t put it out until tonight after closing. “If you moved in with Michael, you could expand the store into your upstairs. Move all the used books up there. That way they’d have to walk through the new books to get to the used ones, and then again on the way out.”
“Et tu, James?” He was a natural salesman.
“It would be good for business,” he said with a stare completely devoid of guile. “Besides, you guys have been together for over a year. Isn’t it about time?”
“Excuse me? My relationship is on a timetable?”
“Well, for those of us who don’t have one, we need to live vicariously.” His eyes twinkled. Audacious, James was, at least around women he wasn’t trying to date. Not unlike my late brother who had almost never been without a girlfriend. I sneezed and ran for the tissue box.
“What happened to the girl you took out last weekend? Rachel? Robin?” I asked after I’d blown my nose. Names had never been my strong point. It was how I got in the habit of writing things down. There was a time in my life when I was never without a notebook and pen.
“Rebecca. She’s a nice girl, but she lost interest when she found out that Wireless Angel doesn’t have a recording contract yet.” He snorted. “She thought I was a “real” musician.”
“You don’t seem too busted up about it.” It was a nice change from him falling in and out of love with the frequency I did my laundry.
“Well, I’d only taken her out twice. It was enough to know it wasn’t going to go anywhere. She liked the band scene more than she liked the music, but didn’t understand that I still had to have another job to make it. While I love working here, Zo, you have to admit it’s not the most glamorous job in the world. And it’s never going to make me rich.”
“It’s not making me rich either.” I moved a pile of books and the dust caused me to sneeze again. “But I never promised glamour, just discounted books and all the coffee you could drink. Put another pot on, would you? Then we’ll see what else can go on these shelves. Oh and James?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s her loss, you know.”
“So you and Feliz keep telling me.”
“Well, it’s either that or we watch you sulk.” That was not quite true and he knew it.
“Hey,” he pretended to look offended. “I’m a musician. We don’t sulk, we brood.”
“I thought that was poets.” And Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. That was Marie’s favorite movie. She’d made me sit through it several times. She thought he smoldered.
I followed James to the coffee bar, let him refill my cup with the last of one pot, and sat on one of the stools, surveying my domain. The used books had taken on glacier-like characteristics and were slowly creeping out of their shelves to cover new territory when they thought nobody was looking. The chairs and the loveseat that surrounded the coffee table by the fireplace were in decent shape. The loveseat was fairly new; the chairs had been freshly slipcovered. I didn’t spend a ton on chairs--when I first opened they had been from thrift stores. This way if they had coffee spilled on them or they were otherwise damaged, I could wash or replace the slipcover.
In the back room there was more inventory, and not a lot of free space. We’d removed one of the desks and now Feliz and I shared the remaining one. I did most of my non-physical work from one of the chairs by the fireplace with a laptop. Some kind of expansion might not be a bad idea, I considered, but I wasn’t ready to give up my apartment. I also wasn’t sure about how zoning laws would apply. I bet it involved a mountain of paperwork and not a little money.
Logistically speaking, it would be a nightmare. I’d have to get up early, be showered and dressed before I even started making the muffins, assuming I made them in the upstairs kitchen. Or I’d make them wherever I was living and they’d be cold by the time I got to the store. I found the idea of cold muffins unacceptable. Michaels’ condo was in the trendy/yuppie part of the city and on a good day in rush-hour traffic, a cab could get me to the edge of the French Quarter in maybe half an hour. I didn’t want to buy a car. I did just fine without one. Never mind that I’d have to pay to park it at least a few blocks away and walk to work. I didn’t object to the walking, but I preferred to do it when the sun was out and the wind was calm, neither of which were ever guaranteed. I’d also have to pay a hefty monthly car insurance bill. No thank you.
The door opened and my next-door-neighbor strolled in. Sam had retired to the Big Easy about a month after I’d moved into Royal Street. Once a Wall Street big shot, he now lived a life he described as quiet contemplation. Compared to Bourbon Street, one block away, our part of the Quarter was quiet. Royal has class. Along the street you could find a tea shop (getting your leaves read was extra), antique dealers, and art galleries. On Bourbon it was bars, drinks by the yard, sex shows and cheesy touristy merchandise. My block, on the corner of St. Philip, was a mix of craft merchants and private homes, one more block away from the river and it was all residential.
“Hi Sam,” I swung behind the bar and put a cup of coffee in front of him.
“Hello, Zofia.” Sam never used nicknames. “James, how are you?”
“Fine, Sam.” James grabbed another muffin and went back to cramming more books onto shelves. I put a muffin on a plate for Sam. He didn’t always make it over in time for muffins, but he never complained if he missed them. In the mini-fridge I found the cream cheese. After a little more hunting, I washed a knife for him.
“What’s on your mind?”
Wait a minute. I’m behind the bar, shouldn’t this conversation be the other way around? I wiped down the perfectly clean counter and picked up some silverware left behind by a previous patron. “Who said something was on my mind?”
Sam cut off the top of his muffin and spread cream cheese on it. “You’re cleaning something that doesn’t need cleaning and fussing with a knife.” I put the knife down. James appeared to be out of earshot, so I leaned in towards Sam, my forearms on the counter.
“Sam, did you happen to see or hear anything weird around six-thirty last night?”
He shook his head. “No, but I’m guessing you did.”
I told him about the man who wasn’t there. “I’ve had someone check the local ER’s and clinics. Nothing so far. I’m getting over the flu, so someone thought I might be hallucinating because of something in the cold medicine. Or maybe from being overtired from working too hard or being overstressed.” Funny, up until the moment the stranger had asked me to call him an ambulance, I hadn’t been feeling particularly stressed. I was just trying to get over the aforementioned flu.
“That doesn’t mean much, Zofia. He managed to stumble in on someone who happened to know CPR. Maybe he found someone else who knows first aid.”
At least Sam didn’t doubt me out of hand like Jerry had. Michael wanted to believe me, but I had to face it, the available evidence contradicted what my brain said I saw. Score one for Zofia, one against, and two maybes—at this point, I was undecided. The whole situation was just weird enough that I was beginning to wonder if there wasn’t something to the idea that I hadn’t seen what I thought I saw. Jerry was right, damn him. I hadn’t had a real vacation since before I met Michael.
But nothing said Sam couldn’t be right, too. His explanation was only a hair more plausible, but, I reminded myself, no more unreal than a man coming into my store in the dead of evening and asking for help before passing out. Maybe I did get his heart restarted and that was enough? How much blood do you lose before you lose consciousness?
“Did you ask anyone else around here?” Sam asked between bites.
I shook my head. “I looked outside right when he got here, and the street was quiet. I haven’t had time to ask the neighbors, and I’m not sure I should. It might worry them.”
Sam nodded sagely. “So if someone followed your disappearing man, he or she kept to the shadows.”
Probably a he, I thought. If my attempt at resuscitation had failed, it would probably take someone of more than my strength—and some height wouldn’t hurt either--to be able to drag him out of the store before Michael arrived. “It was pitch black at six o’clock. The light from the store doesn’t illuminate much on Royal.” I grumbled. “I feel like I’m in a Hitchcock movie, only instead of Rear Window, it’s Shop Front Door.”
The phone rang and I grabbed it. “Bloody Murder bookstore.”
“Um . . .never mind,” said a hoarse whisper. I was pretty sure it was male. Someone else with the flu? Either that or he was disguising his voice. I heard a dial tone and stared at the receiver.
“Wrong number?” Sam asked unnecessarily.
“I wonder,” I said. “Wrong numbers don’t usually say, “Never mind,” do they? Most people say, “I’m sorry,” if they get a wrong number or they just hang up.”
“Well, I do. You do. I suspect even James over there does, but some of us have manners.” He ate the bottom half of his muffin.
“Sam, I was raised by a woman who was originally going to be a nun. Mom was quite big on manners and propriety.” She was big on reverence too, but I’d never quite gotten the hang of that. I missed Mom. She’d been dead for nearly twelve years in the car accident I thought had also killed my father. Dad was currently wanted for murder (not hers), an episode in my life about which I had mixed feelings. I’d been the one to turn him in to the cops. After he made his escape. I still wondered if I’d done the right thing and sometimes I hated him for putting me in that position.
I had mixed feelings about the veracity of my memory too. I’d always been bad with names, and I had more than one whack on the head in my permanent record. Maybe the grouchy paramedic was right to be concerned.
“Zofia, you’re thinking too much,” Sam said gently.
Not the first time in my life I’d been told that. “How did you know?”
“Rose used to get the same line in the middle of her forehead. Usually when she was trying to convince herself of something. “Sam always smiled when he talked about his late wife, which wasn’t often. It had taken her death for Sam to realize he had been spending all his time at work saving for a nebulous future where they could finally relax.
“I think I would have liked Rose.”
“I think so too. You’re practical, like she was. But don’t make my mistake and work away your youth, okay?” Youth? I turned thirty-six in a few months. “Are you trying to convince yourself that the guy was here or that you imagined it?”
“That he was here,” I said without thinking, then smiled. I had been thinking too much, that’s what started me doubting myself. No matter what might be in my flu/cold/cough medicine, or how overworked I was, I was sure that a guy had collapsed on my floor last night. My gut told me it had been him on the phone. I checked the caller ID on the phone. “Unknown.” No proof one way or the other.
That meant I had to listen to my instincts.