Ava slid by Carmela, then suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. One hand flew to her throat; the other reached back to catch Carmela’s arm in a murderous grip.
“What?” asked Carmela, wondering what had shaken her friend.
“What?”
But as her eyes slowly grew accustomed to the dark of the interior, she was able to discern the lump sitting in front of them. Long, angular, metallic, with a rounded top.
Oh,” said Carmela. And for the first time, she herself felt a quick pang of nervousness about this project.
“A coffin,” said Ava in a raspy voice.
“It’s a . . . haunted house,” said Carmela. She tried to put a little oomph in her voice, and failed miserably.
“I get that,” said Ava, beginning to recover. “And I’m okay with stuff like skeletons and voodoo dolls and shrunken heads. I
deal
with that shit all day long. But actual people coffins kind of weird me out.”
“But you like vampires,” said Carmela.
Ava’s shoulders moved up an inch. “Well . . . yeah. Sure. Doesn’t everybody?”
Carmela shook her head in amusement. “You are so off the hook, Ava.” Taking a few steps forward, she touched a hand to the coffin lid and drummed her fingers lightly.
Like whistling in a graveyard?
she wondered.
Yeah, maybe.
“So this shouldn’t be a problem, huh?” she asked Ava.
“ ’ Spose not,” said Ava. She hesitated. “You’re right, I’m getting used to the idea.” She exhaled slowly. “Yeah. I’m okay now.”
“Excellent,” said Carmela. She lifted her eyes and gazed around the once-grand parlor that was now merely cavernous. Tattered velvet drapes that had once been mauve but were now merely drab hung in despondent swags across tall, narrow windows. A threadbare Oriental carpet covered the sagging wooden floor. An enormous ornate chandelier dangled overhead, dingy now and without any luster, but probably a magnificent piece once the crystals had been soaked in ammonia and distilled water and gently scrubbed. “This place really is Medusa Manor,” Carmela marveled.
Ava glanced around, taking in the decayed splendor of the room. “Crazy,” she muttered.
“Look at that enormous marble fireplace,” Carmela pointed out. “And the ornate mirror over there. See how wavery our image is? How old is that mirror? What do you suppose it’s seen? How old is this
place
?”
“Hundred years,” Ava guessed. “Hundred and fifty?”
“I think so,” said Carmela, whose interest in the project was suddenly growing by leaps and bounds. “We could work wonders with this old mansion. Transform it into a spectacular haunted house!”
Ava thought for a minute, then gestured toward one dingy, plum-colored wall. “Rows of white ceramic skulls, maybe five high, eight across, all mounted in shadow boxes. With flickering candles inside them.”
“The coffin pushed up against that far window,” said Carmela. “Flanked by enormous brass candlesticks.”
“And buckets of roses?” said Ava.
“Maybe just long stems of thorns.”
They turned in tandem, noticing the curving staircase for the first time.
“I’m seein’ a dangling skeleton up there,
cher
,” said Ava. “And maybe a floating head or two. Got to have a disembodied head.”
“Love it,” breathed Carmela. She was pleased that Ava seemed to have gotten past her coffin phobia.
“So what’s the deal?” asked Ava. “Melody and her gang would lead people through here in groups of eight or ten?”
Carmela nodded. “That’s Melody’s plan exactly.” Melody was Melody Mayfeldt. She and her husband, Garth, owned Fire and Ice Jewelers in the French Quarter. Melody was also queen bee and organizer of the newly formed Demilune Mardi Gras krewe, one of the few all-female krewes. Carmela and Ava were members of Demilune and had tossed beads from their three-tiered blue-and-gold float this past Mardi Gras.
“So . . . where’s Melody?” asked Ava, frowning. “We’ve already got some good ideas. Now we gotta huddle with her.”
“Melody,” said Carmela, absently. “She knew we were coming. I just spoke with her an hour ago.”
“Came and left?” said Ava.
“But the door was cracked open.”
Ava walked to the foot of the staircase and called out “Melody!” at the top of her lungs.
Echoes floated back to them. But no Melody materialized.
Ava inclined her head. “Upstairs fussing around? Can’t hear us?”
The two women climbed the sweeping staircase. When they reached the second-floor landing, they saw a myriad of footprints tracking across dusty floorboards, but that was all.
Ava called again. Then Carmela called. Then Ava again.
No answer came back save the hiss of the night wind rattling through fireplace flues and attic rafters.
“She’s not here,” said Carmela. “Darn.” Now she felt a little timid about invading this slightly strange building. “We’ll have to come back later.”
“Maybe in the light of day,” suggested Ava. “When we can see things a little better.”
They descended the stairs and gave a cursory look around. Still no sign of Melody.
“Face it,” said Ava, “she’s not here.”
“Must have been a problem at the store,” said Carmela.
Ava shrugged. “Oh well.”
They moved out onto the front verandah, hesitant about abandoning their meeting. Then Carmela decided there was nothing more they could do, so she pulled the front door closed behind her.
“This neighborhood is changing,” Ava observed as they headed down the sidewalk toward the car.
“Getting gentrified,” said Carmela. “Lots of gumbo joints, jazz bars, and sexy boutiques moving in.”
“Pretty soon it’ll look like Magazine Street,” put in Ava. “Although that’s not all—”
Carmela suddenly gripped Ava’s arm.
“What?” asked Ava, pausing in her tracks to stare at her friend.
Carmela held up a single finger, shook her head to silence Ava, then glanced back at the house. She’d heard something. At least she
thought
she’d heard something. Or was she just being jumpy and imagining things?
Was she going to get spooked once they had to buckle
down and start designing sets and theatrics? When they had to put together the Chamber of Despair or the Theatre of Lost Souls? Those were ideas Melody had mentioned to her. Carmela had been noodling a half dozen more.
A low, muffled cry floated on the night air, and Carmela knew in a heartbeat this wasn’t her imagination. Then the cry morphed into a scream that began slowly and built in agonizing intensity. A terrifying banshee’s wail . . . or the sound of someone being . . .
Glass suddenly exploded overhead, causing Carmela and Ava to spin on their heels. Looking up, they were staggered to see a blinding flash in the third-floor tower room of Medusa Manor, as if an incendiary bomb had just been detonated! Then shards of glass rained down and, like some unholy nightmare visage, a flaming body hurtled though the broken window! Arms spread wide, flames swirling about its head, the apparition took on the appearance of an avenging angel!
Carmela watched in horror as the body tumbled downward, almost in slow motion. She let out her own cry of despair as Ava fell to her knees beside her and screamed, “Oh my Lord! Medusa Manor really
is
haunted!”
Chapter 2
B
LUE and red strobes from police cruisers lit the old neighborhood. The bleat of an ambulance racked the air. Neighbors ventured tentatively out from their small, West Indies-style cottages, disrupted by the screams, the explosion, the cacophony of it all. But the damage had already been done.
A charred body, covered with a flimsy, fluttering blanket, lay sprawled on the cracked sidewalk. A sputtering gaslight overhead lent drama to the bizarre scene.
“It wasn’t a haunting,” Carmela told Ava as her friend sat huddled and sniffling on a cement step next to a wickedly pointed wrought-iron fence.
Carmela had spoken with the first responders immediately, attempting to give them a careful eyewitness account. Then she’d repeated her story, adding a few more remembered details when Detective Edgar Babcock arrived on the scene. His demeanor had been properly sympathetic even as he remained focused and businesslike. This was a crime
scene, after all. He was in charge. The fact that Edgar Babcock enjoyed a personal relationship with Carmela wasn’t about to interfere with his work.
“What . . . ?” began Ava. Her eyes were rimmed with dark eye makeup that had mingled with tears, giving her the look of a sad raccoon.
“It was more like . . . murder,” Carmela whispered.
Ava’s face transformed from ashen to stark white. “Oh no. And they’re sure it’s . . . ?” She couldn’t bear to finish her sentence.
Carmela gave a grim nod. “I’m afraid so.” She tried to form more words, but her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton. She licked her lips and cleared her throat. “They’re pretty sure,
I’m
pretty sure, it was Melody.”
Ava dropped her head in her hands. “Awful,” she murmured. “Simply awful.”
Carmela sat down beside Ava and lifted a hand to knead the back of her friend’s neck.
Ava relaxed slightly at Carmela’s touch, then raised her head and gazed mournfully at the blanket that covered the pathetically charred figure of Melody Mayfeldt.
“Who would do this?” she asked.
Carmela shook her head. “No idea.”
“A monster,” whispered Ava.
Carmela simply nodded. There seemed to be no shortage of monsters stalking the world these days. In New Orleans, the murder rate had skyrocketed to around two hundred fifty per year, making New Orleans the bloodiest city in the United States. Not so good. Especially if you called the Big Easy home.
“Your detective friend is here,” said Ava, finally noticing Babcock. “Taking charge, I guess.”
Carmela gazed over at Edgar Babcock. Tall and lanky, he moved slowly and languidly like a big cat with a reserve of coiled energy. As though he could pounce at any moment. His ginger-colored hair was cropped short, his blue eyes were
pinpricks of intensity, he was clean-cut and square-jawed. Interestingly enough, Babcock was also a bit of a clothes-horse, always dressing extremely well. Tonight he wore a summer-weight wool tweed jacket, dark slacks, and elegant leather slip-on loafers that just might be from Prada.
Carmela lightly touched two fingers to her heart. “Thank goodness Babcock got the call out.”
“If anybody can find Melody’s killer, he can,” said Ava, her voice still shaking. “Babcock’s tenacious.”
“A pit bull,” agreed Carmela.
Carmela and Ava sat in silence watching Edgar Babcock in discussion with two African American men in navy-blue EMT uniforms. The EMTs listened to him, offered a few words back, then gave grim nods as they turned back to their rig to grab a gurney. Babcock stood there alone, letting his eyes slowly reconnoiter the crime scene, making sure his officers and the crime-scene unit were handling their assigned tasks. Then he put hands on narrow hips, bowed his head for a few moments, seemingly to compose himself, and walked slowly toward them.
Ava lifted a hand in greeting. “Hey,” she said, without much enthusiasm.
Babcock stooped down to be at their level, and Carmela heard his knee joints pop.
Not so young anymore
, she thought. Then again, who was? Even though she was barely pushing thirty, she had a failed marriage to contend with, a business that was just barely profitable, and two dogs to care for. And she was part of an intrepid band of News Orleans residents whose city was
still
experiencing fallout from Hurricane Katrina, some four years later.
Carmela no longer felt the careless abandon of youth. Now she carried some baggage with her.
“If it’s any consolation,” Babcock said, speaking to them quietly and in confidence, “your friend was probably dead before . . . well . . . before she was thrown from that third-floor tower window and landed on the street below.”
Carmela gave him a wary look. “You’re positive Melody didn’t burn to death?”
Edgar Babcock grimaced. “No, no, she didn’t,” he said, hastily. “From what I could determine, and from what the EMT guys are telling me, there appears to have been some type of gunshot or explosion—we’re not sure what exactly—that resulted in a traumatic and fatal head wound.”
Ava gazed at Carmela with saucer eyes. “Someone was inside Medusa Manor with us. I knew it!”
“Possibly,” said Babcock. “We can’t say for sure yet.”
“You’ve searched the house?” asked Carmela. “Set up a . . .” She struggled to find the right word. “Set up a perimeter?”
“Absolutely,” Babcock assured her.
“And you’re positive the killer’s not still in there?” asked Ava. She glanced back at the house, a little fearfully.
“Well,” said Babcock, “we’ve conducted a fairly thorough search, even though your Medusa Manor’s a very strange place. I mean, there are coffins and piles of junk everywhere, and video equipment hidden in the walls. There’s also an actual hearse parked in the underground garage. If the killer is still in there, he’s very well hidden.”
“Melody’s killer,” muttered Carmela. She let her mind wander back to happier times with her friend, enjoying a fleeting memory of Melody Mayfeldt sitting atop the Demilune float this past Mardi Gras. Wearing a blue-and-silver tunic, she’d tossed armloads of beads to crazed paradegoers who were thronged twenty deep. Melody had been ecstatically happy that wild and magical night. And now here she was. Dead.
Carmela glanced at the crowd that had gathered in earnest now. Lots of curious people. Some taking photos; a woman writing furiously in a notebook; another man, a tall, thin man, kicking at things on the ground with his foot. She frowned, wondering who all these gawkers were, suddenly depressed that they’d seemingly crawled out of the woodwork. Then she pulled herself back to reality as Babcock began asking questions.
“So you two were inside the house?” Babcock asked.