Cayenne heard the ringing in her head. It was thick and far away. She was swimming in the deep blue eyes of a French baker. She found the ringing annoying, distracting her from JeanMarc who was feeding her a fresh oyster from the shell. She rolled over in bed and pulled the pillow over her head, but second by second she was losing him, losing the image, losing the dream. She flung her arm over to the other side of the bed.
Empty.
"Only in your dreams, loser," she muttered to herself and pulled the pillow more firmly over her head. The ring insisted one more time and the recorder kicked in. Mike Piéce's voice filled the apartment with urgency.
"Hey, Cay. I tried calling your office but you must be taking the day off." He was speaking in a hushed whisper. "Say I shouldn't be calling you, but I know you'd find out from Rufus anyhow. We have another stiff. Slit throat, just like the others. Down on Decatur, down by the French Market. I'm calling from there now and Rufus….." The recorder cut him off with a loud beep.
Cay sat up in bed, and immediately 25 pounds of dog jumped on the bed and starting licking her face.
"Dammit, Roux! Cut me a break." She pushed her dog away defensively. Visions of JeanMarc jumped back into her head. She laidback on the pillow enjoying the scenery, absent mindedly petting Roux who had sneaked back close to snuggle.
She was out late the night before with a security job, playing the party girl while observing the staff at an after hours place and trying to figure out who was lightening the till of hundreds of dollars every night. She checked her clock. 2 p.m. An ungodly hour to be woken when you went to sleep at 11 a.m.
She stumbled over to the recorder and listened to the message again. Another body. She quick threw on some clothes, ran a brush through her hair, and grabbed a bagel. She thought again and switched into her running shorts. Rufus was bound to be there and she didn't want to get Mike in trouble. She wanted to look as if she stumbled on the scene while running along the riverwalk.
It seemed to Cay that she and a thousand other New Orleanians stumbled on the crime scene. The street corner was near the French Market, a few blocks down from Jackson Square, on what looked like the route of yet another Carnival parade. Blissfully unaware of the murder in their midst, dozens of merry makers and partiers dressed in outrageous costumes, were dancing around and carrying go cups, even though it was early afternoon.
Yellow police tape marked off a slice of the area and extended back to a narrow alley. Several of the partiers had ripped off sections of the crime tape and wrapped them around their neck like a strand of bright yellow beads. Mike must have called her soon after he got there, because when Cay jogged upon the scene, the ambulance crew was just taking the body out of the alley on a stretcher. The face was covered, but Cay could see the right arm of the victim had escaped from the sheet and hung vulnerably to one side of the stretcher. A shirt sleeve was soaked in blood, darkening the pattern on the cotton shirt.
She recognized the toaster pattern on the shirt fabric.
It was Hillary.
The bagel Cay ate that morning lurched in her throat. She took a sharp intake of air through her nose to keep from getting sick. Queen for a day, the words echoed through her brain. Read 'em and weep.
A million questions raced through her head. The cakes had to be the key. Was Philippe the killer? Was someone using the babies to kill the krewes one by one? Are these random killings? What did Pon Pon and Traceaux have to do with this all? If the bead was found, would the killings stop?
She must have looked pale and lost because as soon as Mike spotted her, he ran over.
"Cay, are you okay?" he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. She was too nauseous to discourage him. Rufus Thibodeaux suddenly appeared too, and despite the fact that a bloody, dead body passed right by his side, he smiled a huge, white toothed smile.
"Well, well, well! Is this a nice domestic scene. You didn't tell me Cay that you two were so close." Rufus continued to smile broadly.
"She had a baby, just a few days ago!" Cay blurted out. The smile left Rufus's face.
"What are you talking about? You know her?" Rufus barked.
"Her name is Hillary, she's with the Krewe du Couture. They've got a den down on Venus Way. Did you find a baby on her?
"One of them plastic things?" Rufus looked at Mike, who nodded. "Now, Cayenne Mackenzie Del Roi. You start telling me everything you know."
Cay knew it was time to come clean. The sight of that bloodied shirt slammed it home to her that something very evil was going on. People she knew were dying. In her mind's eye, she could see Hillary holding the glue gun as if defending Mary Dan. "God damn me!" Hillary had boomed out in her loud voice, not knowing her wish would come true.
"I don't know if it will help, but I might have some information for you." Cay croaked out, her words raspy.
Mike looked at her in surprise and moved in. "Cay, you just take your time and tell us what you know." He pulled a detective's notebook from his coat pocket.
Cayenne hated herself for what she was about to do. "Sorry, Mike. Sorry. Just him," and she nodded in Rufus's direction. She saw the look of confusion, then hurt, then anger as he figured it out.
He didn't say a word , but stomped away. "I got serious police work to do," he muttered.
Rufus looked at Cayenne. "Boo, this better be good. I'll be back to talk with you shortly."
Rufus moved back over to the crime scene to finish his work, talking with witnesses and looking around the crime scene for possible clues. Mike seemed to be avoiding coming near Cayenne, so she moved down the block to give him space and found a spot amongst the partiers to watch the rest of the waning parade.
A late straggler of a float pulled by a tractor rolled by. She caught some beads thrown by a jester and another two strands were thrown her way by a woman with a head dress of bright feathers and tiny Christmas lights. A passerby shoved a go-cup in her hand and filled it with beer. By the time Rufus found her again, she looked like a regular Mardi Gras reveler.
"Laissez les bon temps rouler, girl!" Rufus said dryly.
"What?" she said, still in shock.
"It means "Let the good times roll,." Rufus said shaking her head. "Where have you been? Hiding in a swamp somewhere?" His gruff exterior melted. "Come one, let me buy you a sandwich."
They walked two blocks to a place called the Central Grocery and found two places at the counter. A young girl sauntered over to take their order.
"Muffuletta for me." Rufus said, not even asking for a menu. "And coffee."
The young girl looked at Cay.
"Ahh, I guess I'll have the po boy."
"Dressed?"
Cay nodded numbly, "And a beer. Here, put it in this cup." She ignored Rufus look of disapproval.
Rufus turned his massive frame toward Cay and put his hand on her arm. "Now suppose you talk to me and tell me what you know about his murder investigation?"
Cayenne had every intention of telling Rufus the whole thing. Too many people had died. But something in her flashed a warning. She took a long sip of water trying to judge how much to say. She remembered Mary Dan's words about not letting anyone die. But what could a bead have to do with murder? What about the confidentiality of her client? She decided to tell the truth. But not all of it.
Cay started her story at the Slippery Slope Bakery. She told Rufus about following Dinah home to return her cloak and meeting up with the Krewe and seeing Hillary get the baby. She said she remembered that Shawn had a baby on him and said that Mike had casually mentioned that the second murder had one, too. She mentioned Philippe's bakery and the special cabinet where the King Cake came from. She thought Philippe had been acting very strange and she had heard him tell Dinah it was getting very dangerous.
The waitress brought their sandwiches and Cay's beer.
"I've never seen a murdered body before," Cay ended, and took a bit bit of her po-boy. "Do you think we have a serial killer on our hands?"
"No," Rufus said sternly. "This is a police matter and I don't want to start any alarms about some Mardi Gras killer on the loose.. We'll check out this Philippe joker and find out what scam he's running with those cakes."
There was a beat of silence before Rufus spoke again. "That was wrong of Mike to give you all that information ." Rufus leaned in closer. "Unless you used some of those fancy ways you girls use to get it out of him?"
Cay affected the most innocent look she could. "Mikey is a real nice guy. And a good cop. He's young, though. I'm sure you are teaching him a lot." She nervously fingered the beads around her neck.
Rufus took a big bite of his muffuletta and saw her playing with the beads. "So you are really getting into this damn Mardi Gras stuff, huh? Well, I got you something you might like."
He dug in his pocket and pulled out a pale nugget that looked like a grape, placing it in front of Cayenne.
"So much Mardi Gras crap around the body. I almost missed this little guy thrown off a float. It's an old one." Rufus patted the bead affectionately. "The stiff obviously was watching the parade. They still throw some of the old beads from the floats and I bet the strand broke on this one. It's a score to find these old ones."
Cay stared unbelievingly. It was identical to the bead in the Polaroid Mary Dan had given her.
Rufus had just laid a $5000 bead right in front of her and didn't have a clue what he had done. She tried to keep her face totally neutral, but something must have shown in her eyes.
"I knew you would probably recognize it." Rufus grinned, obviously pleased with himself. He took a huge bite of his sandwich and munched joyfully.
"What?" Cay croaked. "Why?"
Through a mouthful, Rufus answered. "This bead looks a lot like a pair your dad had years back when he lived back here. Surely he must have shown you. He used to wear them every chance he got, saying they were his special Carnival beads. His voodoo beads, he'd call them." Rufus continued. He swallowed what was in his mouth, but his voice was still thick. "Anyway, this little fellow reminded me of your dad, so I thought you'd like to have it."
"This is a voodoo bead?"
Rufus slammed his fist on the counter, annoyed. "It's a stupid glass bead that might be worth $5.00 on EBay except for that chip in the side. Ain't no luck good or bad in that bead except that poking around a dead body made me look down on the ground. Just thought you'd like it as souvenir, kind of a reminder of your dad."
Rufus picked up his coffee cup and took a big gulp. "You keep talking about voodoo and I'm going to take that bead and burn it. That's the only way to get rid of a bad gris gris spell."
"How you know so much about voodoo?"
"Your dad and I worked a really weird murder case back in the 70s that involved some voodoo priest and some suspicion about sacrifices and what nots," Rufus continued. "We never really solved that one. Couldn't pin anything on the guy, but your dad really got into it in a big way. That was right before he left to head North and made you, my little one."
Rufus looked deep into his coffee cup. "We were supposed to get together to go fishing the weekend he died in that crash. I had to cancel because one of my grandkids was sick. Then he upped and got hit by a car."
"You miss him a lot don't you, Rufus?" she said putting her hand on his big paw.
"I just wish I could have got the hit-and-run that killed him, Boo. I owed him that much. The driver a phantom though. Nobody saw nothing."
Cay didn't know if she was more in shock from seeing Hillary's dead body or the lavender bead rolling around the counter in front of her. She sipped her beer slowly and chewed on the plastic rim of the cup. She knew the bead perfectly matched the strand of beads that had hung around Mary Dan's neck. Rufus thought it was just an old bead tossed off a float. But how did it get to Hillary in broad daylight in the middle of the day?
Then a thought came to her.
"What parade was on that route today?" she asked.
Rufus replied, "The Krewe du Vin always parades down Decatur this time of Carnival."
Cay kept her face expressionless. Evangeline had talked about parading in the Krewe du Vin parade. She flashed back onto the scene in her office when she had interrupted Evangeline in her office. Evangeline had been looking at something and had shoved in into a bag of doubloons. We still need him to find out how to make it work, she had said into the phone at the time. It must have been the missing bead. Evangeline left quickly after the incident. Cay figured she never got back to removing it from the bag before she was killed. The bead must have been thrown from the float by some unsuspecting krewe member and the bead found its way to Hillary in the crowd because she had the magic baby from Philippe's cake.
"Were there any throw coins found on Hillary's body?"
Rufus studied her quietly, then pulled out his cell phone. He put a call into Mike still at the crime scene and asked a few questions. He snapped his phone shut and paused before responding. "They found a couple doubloons on the stiff. From the Krewe of Zydeco."
"That's Evangeline Pon Pon's krewe."
Rufus stared at her again, then slowly shook his head in admiration. "You would have made a good cop, Cayenne." Rufus got back on the phone and relayed the message to Mike before putting his phone back in his pocket and returning to his sandwich.
The waitress brought the tab. Rufus scooped it up, pressing a big greasy thumbprint in the middle of the pale green page. He was uncharacteristically quiet.
Cay picked up the bead and put it in her pocket. She knew Rufus was still thinking about her dad. "That voodoo priest still around?" she asked gently, wrapping her leftover po-boy in a napkin.
Rufus blew his nose loudly in his napkin. "Yeah. Been low profile ever since though. He runs a bar now not too far from here off Royal, some place called Misrules. Sting Ray, he goes by."
CHAPTER EIGHT: I Graduated From the Global School Of Investigation
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