Devil take me down, p.24
Devil Take Me Down, page 24
part #2 of Clementine Toledano Mystery Series
Q sped up her pace and quickly opened the front door. She turned and said, “Oh, Ethan, do we really have to? I mean, what’s the point? I don’t want to talk about this mess anymore tonight. Aaron can take me home. I just feel like curling up in my pajamas with a big bowl of soup. Thanks for everything, though.”
They left without waiting for a response. Sanger’s squat rattle-canned black truck was parked in the street, blocking Ethan’s car in. They jumped inside and he quickly turned over the ignition. The motor roared to life. He drove to the corner and turned left towards Magazine.
“Where we going?” she asked.
“Not your house,” he said, his voice momentarily betraying his concern.
“Oh god, Aaron, do you think he’s the one?” she asked.
“You tell me, Clementine. Is he our guy?” Sanger asked, his voice serious and rigid.
Q nodded. “He’s our guy. I think I blew it.”
“How?” he asked.
“I told him I knew who Beth was dating,” she replied, banging her head in penitence against the back of her seat.
“Ernst was right,” he said sincerely. “You would have made a great cop.”
Sanger drove down Magazine until they reached an all-night Mexican cantina. He parked in front and they walked to the garishly decorated bar. It wasn’t until she was sipping her second bottle of beer in front of a plate of nachos piled with every topping imaginable, that she began to process what had happened.
“So it’s Ethan,” she finally said.
Sanger took a large bite of nachos. “If I were a betting man, I’d take even odds on it.”
“God damn, I hate being right. I knew it. As soon as he talked about Angie the way he did,” she grumbled. “Why did we even look at anyone else?”
He thought for a moment. “We still don’t know for sure it’s him.”
“He wanted me to live in his little dollhouse, that’s furnished, by the way, with a fucking piano in the bedroom,” she insisted. “Oh, and he knew about Ben and Strickland and nobody, not even Ben’s sisters or Josh, knew about that.”
“We need to prove it, Clementine. Intuition is not evidence,” he replied. “Don’t get me wrong. He’s good for it. I agree with you, but we need proof. Undeniable proof. Like a trophy room or something. Even if he has a tattoo like Ben’s, that’s not going to override the DNA evidence they’ve got.”
“What if he comes after me?” she asked, scared.
“How do you feel about a roommate?” he offered.
She felt just fine.
~~~
Q yawned and stretched reaching for her phone on the nightstand. When she saw Orleans Parish on her caller ID, she smiled and eagerly picked up. She impatiently tapped her finger while the recorded voice asked her to accept the charges, excited to tell Ben that they finally had a lead.
“What the hell, Clementine?” Ben’s angry voice assaulted her ear.
“That better be a very clever witticism on the state of my current employment. Wait, I haven’t told you yet. Holy wannabe space oddity, David Bowie, wait until you hear this,” she chided. “But first, I have some amazing news …”
“Josh came to see me,” he interrupted.
“Shit, was I supposed to be doing something with the Cove? I just assumed he handled it all, I didn’t even think…” she started apologizing.
“This is not about the damn Cove,” he answered tersely.
“Well, then would you care to tell me what it is about?” she asked.
She could hear him exhale and he said in low voice, “What the fuck is Aaron Sanger doing shirtless and fresh from a shower, in our home on a Saturday morning?”
“What the fuck do you think? Helping us.”
“That’s not what Josh said it looked like,” he scolded.
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Josh wasn’t even there, Frank was, bringing me beignets - fuck, nobody is that nice. So, we made it look like I might be available, now that I’m being dragged down with you in this media madness. Thank you, ever so, for asking me how that feels, by the way. One of your friends is framing you for murder, remember?” she said, annoyed.
“Just tell me what happened,” he whispered, his voice breaking.
Q threw a pillow across the room in anger. “Alright. Let’s see, Sheila ‘Thundercunt’ Jordan got a hold of my sealed court records and plastered my rape all over the five o’clock news, oh and by the way, not so subtly implied that you were the one that raped me. So, I went down to the T.V. station to fuck a bitch up and almost got arrested myself, but Tommy and Camilla showed up just in time. Then I jumped out of Tommy’s car, barefoot on Broad Street and got wasted with Sanger, who, for your information, just got fired for helping us. He spent the night in our guest room after we sobered up and spent half the night trying to figure out how your fucking cum got all over a dead woman’s face,” she yelled without taking a breath.
“Did you sleep with him?” he asked. “I wouldn’t blame you…”
“No, Ben! For fuck’s sake!” she exclaimed, punching the mattress several times in frustration before taking a breath to calm herself. “You know, seeing as how I believe you when you tell me you didn’t murder all those women and have been risking my neck trying to prove it, maybe, just maybe, you could trust me not to fuck around on you. And maybe, just maybe you could stop wasting our fifteen-minute phone call with this bullshit so I can tell you which one of your motherfucking friends framed you for murder!”
She laid back in bed, pushing away angry tear, until she heard Ben’s voice on her phone say, “Darlin’? Q? QT-pie? I’m an asshole.”
“Yes. Yes, you are. But you’re my asshole and I miss you.” She brushed away her tears, kicking herself out of bed to walked downstairs. On her way down, she explained Sanger’s theory about the Aucoin evidence and what had happened with Derek and Ethan the night before.
“Ethan? Are you certain?” he asked.
Q sat on the couch and gratefully accepted the cup of coffee her new roommate handed her. “Certain enough that Aaron doesn’t want me to live here alone. He’s moved into the guest room,” she paused, waiting for Ben to explode.
He didn’t. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know, baby. I don’t know,” she said, helplessly.
“Please don’t do anything dangerous,” he begged.
“That’s what we’re trying to avoid.”
It’s Called Fishing Not Catching
Everything hurt. They had run through the complete set over a dozen times until Derek no longer had notes. Q’s body was bruised from the harness. Her arms were sore from the weeks of strength training that Derek had insisted on, to make the muscles in her arms more clearly defined. And her ears were still ringing because the monitor engineer couldn’t understand tapping on the ear, pointing down, angry face sign language.
Her body's litany of complaints woke her from a less than restful sleep. She kicked off the covers and held her legs in the air, feeling the water swollen inside draining down toward her kidneys. As tired and sore as she was, she felt relieved to have some form of distraction directing her attention away from her least favorite seventy-two hours of the year. She tried to focus her mind away from its darker places, remembering last year’s anniversary instead. It had been the only time in eleven years she hadn’t descended into a maudlin funk for three solid days. Ben had surprised her with a train ride to Memphis, far away from New Orleans and its unpleasant memories.
She tried laying back down and curling her body around the memory of dancing with Ben on Beale Street, but there was no way to get comfortable. Q pushed out the black thoughts of Arabi and breathed in warmer dreams of Ben, holding onto them as long as possible, before she finally decided to shake off her stupor and get out of bed.
As usual, Sanger was already awake, looking through all of Ernst’s notes from the February killings, searching for something, anything, to connect one of the victims to Ethan. He sat in his habitual spot on the couch, a solitary island in a sea of paper.
He mumbled a greeting as she walked by him on her way to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and a container of yogurt. Breakfast in hand, she returned to the living room to get a status update. From the look on Sanger’s face, it wasn’t good.
“I can’t find anything,” he said. “There has to be something.”
“What about their taxes?” she asked, eating a large spoonful of yogurt.
Sanger looked at her like she had suddenly grown three heads.
“Think about it. The killings were in February, so all these women would have gotten their thing, that form that Ben has to give his employees in January.” She snapped her fingers trying to remember what Ben had called it. Q hadn’t worked a regular job in two decades.
“A W2?” Sanger suggested, still regarding her and her extra heads.
“That’s the one!” she said. “So, if I were dating an accountant and I got one of those, wouldn’t I ask him to help me with my taxes? Maybe not all of them, but I bet that Tracey Aucoin would have. Doing my taxes is a pain in the ass because I’m self-employed. I can’t imagine having a catering business would be much easier than having to document gigs and expenses. Maybe he used it as a way to get back with Strickland. Offered to do her taxes, saying he was a changed man,” she explained, shrugging. “Just a thought.”
“A fucking brilliant thought,” Sanger said, draining the last of his coffee and standing up. “Come on, let’s go see Lucy, she can get those tax records.”
“You go,” she said. “I feel like I got ran over by Satan’s Buick. I’d like to go for a walk and maybe do some yoga. The dress rehearsal party is tonight. I need to get to feeling better.”
“Do you think that’s safe?” he asked.
“Broad daylight. Audubon park. Public transport there and back. What’s Ethan going to do?” she asked. “He’s hardly talked to me since that night.”
Sanger reluctantly agreed and they left the house together. Q waved at his pick-up as he drove past her on her way to the streetcar line. As she walked, she reveled in the momentary normalcy. Sanger had been bringing her to rehearsals and waiting for her until they were finished. Derek had taken to calling him her guard dog, ‘Spot.’ In the two weeks since that chilling night at Ethan’s apartment, they had only learned two things: Ethan was very good at covering his tracks and Derek was very good at punishing Q for bruising his over-inflated sense of self.
She stepped off the streetcar at Audubon park and quickly strode to the walking path, avoiding bicyclists and runners along the way. When she had first moved in with Ben and he’d begun his physical therapy, he’d tried to convince her to start running with him. Q was of the opinion that if humans were intended to run, it wouldn’t be so unenjoyable. Still, she quickened her pace.
A quarter of the walk around her first lap a breathless voice said from behind her, “Q Toledano, what brings you out on this fine day?’
She turned to find Frank running towards her. He slowed his pace and fell into stride next to her.
“Have Ben’s healthy habits finally rubbed off on you?” he asked, smiling.
When her face fell, he said, “I’m a jerk. Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”
Q shrugged and kept walking along side of him, glad that she didn’t have to be afraid of every single one of Ben’s friends anymore.
“It’s alright. And yes, that’s what happened. We started walking here together when he was in physical therapy last year,” she explained.
He squeezed her bicep and said, "Looks like you've been doing more than walking."
She looked down, and said, "My current employer has a Tina Turner fetish."
“I can see that," he said, releasing her arm.
They walked in silence for several steps.
"I've noticed your friend’s been spending a lot of time over at the house. Seems like his truck is a permanent fixture in the driveway,” he said, his tone even and friendly.
“I don’t like to be alone,” she lied.
Lying, cheating whore accusations in three…two…one…
“Awfully cold thing to do to a man in his own home,” he said. “Q, I don’t know you that well personally, just what Ben’s told me, but are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
She looked at him sideways to find his gaze straight ahead, his face with the same carefree expression it had worn a moment earlier. She wondered how many years, if ever, it would be before Ben’s friends would trust her again. She knew Sanger was right. Telling any of them now was premature. They still had no proof that Ethan did anything. And maybe there was nothing to find. But Q had to keep the lie going for appearances, if for nothing else.
“No, Frank, honestly I’m not. But I don’t see how we’re going to get through this. I keep thinking back to when Ben and I started seeing each other and I can’t imagine him killing someone and then being with me. Can you?” she asked, hesitantly.
“I can’t imagine Ben hurting anyone, let alone murdering them,” he agreed. “I don’t think I’ve ever even seen him angry.”
Q laughed dryly, saying, “I have. You must not piss him off like I do.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Frank said absent-mindedly while looking at his watch to measure his heart rate.
She paused before continuing, “He nearly broke this asshole’s nose one night.”
“What?” Frank asked in surprise.
“You never heard that story? It was that awful night we found that woman murdered at the Cove. Well, right before that, this guy, Urian, he not so subtly implies that he can smell more than just my perfume on Ben and Ben hauled off and coldcocked him right in the nose. Joe jumped over the bar, even,” she told him.
“That’s different. Now that? That I can see Ben doing. Protecting you, I mean. Or one of his sisters,” Frank replied.
Q continued, without thinking, “And then there was this one night, about a month before that. I had decided to break it off with him and did my level best to follow through. He threw everyone out of the bar.”
Frank snapped his fingers. “Holy shit. I forgot about that. He wouldn’t even let poor Ethan get the paperwork he needed to start on the taxes.”
Her heart raced with excitement. “You and Ethan were there?” she asked. “I didn’t remember.”
“I don’t doubt it. You were pretty angry yourself, missy. I think you spent the entire night either avoiding Ben or fighting with him. Man, all of us were enjoying the fireworks. Giving him a really hard time, that’s probably what threw him over the edge,” he said, shaking his head and laughing.
Q playfully backhanded his stomach. “You are a jerk,” she joked.
“I’ve known Ben Bordelon for over a decade. When we first met, he was with…” he stopped himself.
“Angie,” she finished. “You can say it. Tell me, I’d like to know.”
Just because she couldn’t tell Frank the truth about what was happening with Ben, didn’t mean she couldn’t pull some information from his memories.
He shrugged and said, “Well, I used to work at this bar on Magazine and Angie would come in there for a burger or a drink after work. Sometimes by herself and sometimes with friends. She was just crazy beautiful. So, I’m thinking, this girl must be alone, maybe I’ll make a play for her and then Ben walks in, you know, looking like Thor or something, dressed like he does. Anyway, they were like this painfully attractive couple…not as painfully attractive as you and Ben, mind you, y’all give me a tooth ache.”
Q blushed and picked up her pace, struggling to keep up with Frank. He noticed and slowed a bit.
“Anyway, in between you and Angie there was that long line of New Orleans ladies sashaying by Ben, trying to get into his bed. Everything is usually pretty easy for him. It’s like the man never fails. Not with his business, not with a woman… So, to see him implode with you so epically and to have a front row seat…well, it sounds mean, but we all thought it was hilarious, especially because we all knew how strung out he was on you,” he said. He put his hand on her shoulder and continued, “Don’t get me wrong, Q. We wanted him to succeed in the end - we’re not complete assholes - but it was fun watching him work for it for once.”
“Were you working that night?” she asked, trying to picture the crowd of people drinking at the bar, looking for a familiar face. She’d been so focused on her own indignation that she didn’t bother remembering much of anything else.
“Nah. I think Joe was? Maybe Josh. I can’t remember. I had come to check you out and catch up with the crew. I’d played golf with Josh that afternoon and he was gossiping about y’all like a little girl. I swear he’s worse than a church social,” Frank said. “Anyway, I figured I’d come find out what all the fuss was about.”
Q was a little surprised. “You hadn’t see us play before?”
Frank smiled apologetically. “Sorry, maybe. If I had, I wasn’t paying much attention. Don’t be offended, I’m not much of jazz fan. If it’s not Waylon or the Judds, I’m tuning it out.”
“So no Frank Sinatra for you?” she asked, just to double check the path that Sanger and she had chosen.
Frank looked at her in puzzlement. “Who?”
“Frank Sinatra. Old Blue Eyes. Sung ‘My Way’…” she tried.
“The Aaron Pritchett song?” he suggested.
“I have no idea who that is and no,” she laughed. Despite herself, she was starting to really like Frank Bettendorf and was relieved to be able to believe that he may be as nice as he seemed.
“Can I ask you something?” she said after several dozen rapid steps.
“Shoot,” he said.
“Why didn’t you ever come to the house before Ben was arrested?” she asked.
“Well, I don’t know if Ben’s told you, but I’m a personal trainer. I’m usually going to work when y’all are getting home. Opposite schedules. Then there’s this pretty little thing that’s been occupying all my spare time.” He smiled to himself.
“Your upstairs neighbor, you mean?” Q asked point blank.
