Carmela and Ava both gave silent nods.
“Did you see or hear anything strange?” he asked. “Aside from the . . . coffins and such.”
They both shook their heads no.
Babcock’s forehead wrinkled, and he held up a hand. “Don’t answer so quickly,” he told them. “Take some time, give this serious consideration. What you might recall as a small detail could be important in the long run. You might think something is incidental, but when we start putting all the clues together your input could be quite helpful.”
“The first thing that comes to mind,” said Carmela, “is that the door was open when we arrived.”
“Standing all the way open or cracked open a little bit?” Babcock asked.
Carmela held her thumb and forefinger up to show him. “An inch. Maybe two inches.”
“Okay,” said Babcock, nodding encouragement, “and when you went inside, what did you see?”
“Coffin,” said Ava. “Big bronze honker parked front and center.”
“Did you look inside?” asked Babcock. “Did you lift the lid?”
“No!” said Ava.
Carmela gave a start. “You think someone was in there? Hiding inside the coffin?”
“We don’t know,” said Babcock. “We have to collect the data before we can process it.”
“You make it sound like you’re some kind of computer analyst,” said Ava, sounding huffy. “Why don’t you just give us a straight answer?”
Babcock struggled a little to keep his cool. “Because we don’t have any answers yet. But we will. I promise you we will.” He glanced down at the spiral-bound notepad in his hand. “Did you know the victim’s husband?”
“You mean
Melody’s
husband?” said Ava.
“Of course we knew him,” said Carmela. “Garth owns Fire and Ice Jewelers in the French Quarter.” She paused. “Actually, Garth and Melody own it together. Owned it.”
Babcock jotted something in his notebook.
“What?” Carmela asked sharply. “You couldn’t possibly suspect Garth?”
Babcock shrugged. “He’s probably not a viable suspect, unless he’s unbelievably quick and was able to get back to his shop without being seen. But it appears that Garth Mayfeldt
was
at his shop when all this took place. Of course, we have to check him out anyway.”
“Does Garth know about . . . um . . . Melody yet?” Carmela asked.
Babcock cocked his head and stared back at her. “He does now. I sent one of my guys over there right away.”
“Have you talked to your guy yet?” asked Carmela. “How did Garth take it?”
“How do you
think
the husband took it?” asked Babcock in a slightly hoarse voice. “He completely freaked.”
“Oh dear,” murmured Carmela.
A squeal of brakes sounded in the street, and Babcock glanced over his shoulder. A frown passed across his face. “Jackals are here,” he muttered.
“Huh?” said Ava.
“Reporters,” said Babcock. He stood up and gave Carmela and Ava a cursory glance. “Don’t talk to them, okay?”
“Okay,” said Carmela as he stalked away.
“Hey,” said Ava, suddenly recognizing a familiar face. “There’s Toby LaChaise.” Toby was a reporter for the
Times-Picayune
and harbored a not-so-secret crush on Ava. She raised a hand. “Say hey, Toby!”
A grin split Toby’s face when he recognized her. “Ava!” he called, cutting through a crush of people and picking his way toward her.
“Don’t say too much, okay?” said Carmela. She patted Ava’s shoulder, stood up, and eased herself away. She pushed
through the crowd of gawkers, letting her eyes search for Edgar Babcock. There was one thing she’d forgotten to ask him. The blinding flash of light she’d seen just before Melody’s body came hurtling down. What had it been? Some sort of explosion or incendiary device?
And, truth be told, there was something else on Carmela’s mind, too. Although she felt guilty about asking Babcock, she wondered if she’d be seeing him later tonight. If, when all this terrible business was wrapped up as best as possible, he’d come over and play snuggle partner with her. She was beginning to seriously crave the man.
If she could just get him alone for a couple of seconds . . .
A horrendously bright light suddenly shone directly in Carmela’s face. She blinked hard, threw up a hand, and instinctively recognized the intrusive red eye of a KBEZ-TV video camera. There was another flurry of activity and then a woman with an enormous blond bouffant hairdo and impossibly tight red suit stepped into the spotlight, posed prettily, and held a microphone to her collagen-enhanced lips.
“Kimber Breeze,” muttered Carmela. She’d had run-ins with this woman before, and they’d always ended badly. Someone, a rather wise man, had famously quoted, “never argue with people who buy ink by the gallon.” That same advice could just as easily be applied to dealing with TV reporters like Kimber or any other type of paparazzi. Talk to them, say a little too much, or give the wrong impression, and your name, face, and/or sound bite would be instantly captured and transmitted to the far corners of the world where it would probably remain floating in cyberspace until the end of time.
Carmela stepped into the shadows and watched as Kimber Breeze bulldozed her way through the crowd and right up to a woman who was wrapped in an expensive-looking white trench coat and sobbing into a hanky. Kimber flashed her megawatt smile at the woman, then thrust her microphone
into the woman’s face. But the woman gave a terse shake of her head and turned away.
Not to be defeated, Kimber tried again. This time a uniformed police officer stepped in to intercede. Carmela could hear Kimber’s angry protests all the way over here and wondered who the woman was. Maybe Melody’s silent partner? The woman who’d put up all the money for Medusa Manor?
“Hey,” said Ava, at Carmela’s elbow now. “We should get out of here, yeah?”
Carmela agreed. “Now that the media’s on the scene, it’s really gonna get crazy.”
“And nasty,” said Ava. “That piece of blond trash is Kimber Breeze, isn’t it?”
“Afraid so,” said Carmela as she and Ava slipped down the sidewalk toward her car. Another TV van had just screeched to a halt, and now those people were jumping out like rabid paratroopers, shouldering lights and cameras, hoping to capture some grisly footage for the ten o’clock news.
“Turning into a circus,” noted Ava, as they climbed into Carmela’s car.
Carmela backed away gingerly from a white van that was tucked a little too close to her, nosed away from the curb, then negotiated a tight U-turn. As she was about to pull away, Carmela saw Edgar Babcock standing on the boulevard talking to one of the newly arrived TV reporters. Carmela noted that Babcock looked slightly harried in a tensed-up, in-the-middle-of-a-murder-investigation sort of way. He also looked as handsome as ever. Touching her brake, she eased over to the curb. “Hey,” she called to him.
Babcock looked over at her and raised his eyebrows in acknowledgment. He held up a single finger to the reporter, then strode over to talk with Carmela.
“I can’t stop by tonight,” were his first words.
“I understand,” said Carmela. She knew the job came first. Especially this job.
“Call you tomorrow,” he told her.
Carmela nodded. She was just starting to pull away when she called back to him. “Hey.”
Babcock stopped in his tracks.
“If Melody was already dead,” said Carmela, “why would her killer set her body on fire and toss it out the window?”
Babcock looked thoughtful for a few seconds. “Don’t know,” he replied. “Maybe . . .” He shrugged, searching for words. “To scare you?”
Chapter 3
“Y
OU don’t have to heat up that delicious andouille sausage gumbo just on my account,” Ava told her. “But I’m glad you are.” She lounged on one of the cane chairs that were bunched around the dining table in Carmela’s French Quarter apartment. The charming one-bedroom unit was situated directly across the courtyard from Juju Voodoo and Ava’s own apartment tucked directly above it.
“Cooking’s no problem,” said Carmela. “You look like you need a little fortification and I’m absolutely starving.” She glanced down at Boo and Poobah. The two dogs were milling about excitedly, trying to be enticingly cute. “You two have already eaten enormous dinners,” she told them. “You’re done for the night. Finished. Kaput.”
Boo, a red fawn Shar-Pei with an expressive, wrinkled face, stared up at Carmela with pleading eyes that said,
Please! I’m so hungry, almost on the brink of starvation!
Poobah, a shaggy black-and-white Heinz 57 dog with a ragged ear,
lay down quietly, happy to let Boo carry on her hard lobbying for extra helpings.
“How about a mystery muffin?” Carmela asked. She dangled a plastic bag full of muffins for Ava to see. “They’re frozen, but I can pop ’em in the microwave.”
“Are they the ones made with mayonnaise?” asked Ava. “From your momma’s recipe?”
“Mm-hm,” said Carmela.
“Got any of your fabulous brown sugar butter to go with ’em?” asked Ava.
“Yes, I do,” said Carmela. “And we’re going to need some wine, too. Yes, I definitely think we need wine.” She dug around in her refrigerator and grabbed the brown sugar butter and an already opened bottle of Chardonnay.
“Excellent idea,” said Ava, jumping up immediately to grab a pair of crystal wineglasses. “Help calm our nerves.”
“A digestif,” said Carmela, pouring the wine. “That was some awful scene tonight.” They clinked their glasses together, and each took a fortifying gulp.
“Never seen anything like it,” declared Ava.
“Melody was such a dear person,” Carmela murmured. “I can’t imagine she had an enemy in the world.”
Ava took another gulp of wine, let loose a tiny, genteel burp, then said, “Melody wasn’t exactly Miss Popularity with some of the men’s Mardi Gras krewes. Remember when she applied for the Demilune float to roll on Fat Tuesday? Lots of vigorous opposition.”
Carmela thought about Ava’s words for a moment. “But not enough to kill her for.” She sighed. “Too bad we still haven’t made it past all that male chauvinist shit.”
“It’s the South, honey,” said Ava. “Lots of stuff folks can’t get past.”
Carmela ladled her sausage gumbo into red Fiestaware bowls, then added extra scoops of steaming-hot red beans. She set the bowls on yellow plates and snugged her mystery
muffins into a wicker basket lined with a white cloth napkin. She pulled knives, forks, and spoons from kitchen drawers, and then Ava helped her ferry everything to the mahogany dining room table that formed a sort of demarcation line between Carmela’s tidy kitchen and the slightly belle époque-style living room.
Since bidding
sayonara
to her soon-to-be-ex-husband Shamus Meechum, Carmela had made a concentrated effort to create an elegant, posh apartment for herself that was long on comfort. Countless forays through the scratch-and-dent rooms of Royal Street antique shops had yielded a brocade fainting couch, marble coffee table, squishy leather chair with ottoman, ornate gilded mirror, and a marble bust of Napoleon with a slightly chipped nose. Lengths of antique wrought iron that had once graced antebellum balconies now hung on her redbrick walls—perfect shelves for pottery, bronze dog statues, and her collection of antique children’s books.
Carmela’s bedroom-bathroom suite held a queen-sized bed covered with plush velvet pillows that she’d hand-stamped with romantic designs. There were also two cushy dog beds and an antique vanity table that had narrow drawers on both sides and a huge round mirror in the middle.
“Delish,” proclaimed Ava, scraping her spoon against the bottom of her bowl.
“There’s more beans if you want,” said Carmela. “Or . . . we could have dessert. I have a cocoa loco pie.”
“Homemade?” asked Ava.
Carmela smiled. “It’s my home and I made it, so . . . sure.”
“Let’s do pie and wine,” said Ava. She paused and looked at Carmela. “Gee, you’re being sweet about all this. I know I wasn’t much help earlier tonight. I did get slightly hysterical.”
“I can’t imagine what you could have done,” said Carmela. “What anyone could have done. Before we could process
what was happening, Melody was dead.” She shook her head and muttered, “Bizarre.”
“Too bad Babcock’s not coming over tonight,” said Ava. “You could try to pry some details out of him.”
“He was playing it awfully close to the vest,” said Carmela, “so I don’t know what good it would be. Besides . . . even if I knew something, what could I do?”
Ava frowned slightly as she considered Carmela’s question. “You’re telling me you’re not gonna get involved? You
always
get involved.”
Carmela wrinkled her nose. “I wish you wouldn’t say that.”
“That was a compliment,
cher
, because you’re so good at figuring stuff out. At solving actual crimes.”
Carmela hunched over her glass of wine. “Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.”
“Well, I would,” replied Ava. “Besides, Melody was our friend. And we were right there. Eyewitnesses. So it feels like our civic duty to get involved.”
“Somehow,” said Carmela, “I had a feeling you were going to say that.” She gathered up plates and bowls, carried them to the counter, and stacked them in the dishwasher. A few minutes later she returned with slices of cocoa loco pie. “Shall we retire to the salon?” she asked.
Carmela and Ava nibbled pie and sipped wine while Boo and Poobah lay at their feet and fretted.
“You’re not going to get a single bite,” Carmela told Boo. “Chocolate is toxic to dogs. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you . . .”
“Hey,” said Ava. “I forgot to tell you. Thea Toliver delivered the prom dresses earlier today.”
“Delivered them where?” asked Carmela. “To your shop?”
“Oh yeah,” said Ava. “There’s like a million dresses jammed in my office. Its like . . . frilly sardines.” The food and wine were helping Ava relax.