Days later, after the package had been delivered to Eliah and after the bill had been mailed to Rufus, Cay realized she was halfway into the Mardi Gras season and had yet to have a piece of king cake. The traditional Carnival pastry was a regular tradition during Mardi Gras. A small plastic baby representing the Baby Jesus was baked into the cake, and who ever found it in his or her piece was "king for the day" and had to bring the cake for the next day.

"All work and no play," Cay reminded herself. She took advantage of a break in her afternoon schedule to drive her aging Honda over to the Slippery Slope bakery to pick up the most buttery, most delicious and lightest cake in town.

The Slippery Slope Bakery was enjoying a brisk business as Cay pushed her way through the door. Several customers pushed up to the glass cases, waiting for their chance to order. Cay breathed in the warm, yeast tinged air, and was instantly reminded of a former employee who had once rescued her from a wicked voodoo ceremony. The lovely and delicious JeanMarc no longer worked here, kicked out of the country on a deportation order after a particularly rageful Phillippe could stand the sexy Frenchman no more. Still, a nostalgic thought of oysters and champagne washed over her as she heard the Slippery Slope's bell tinkle delicately.

Thoughts of the French Adonis swiftly vanished when she heard a female voice sing out from behind the counter.

"Hey, Cupcake!" A woman under a curly mop of hair and dressed in a white baker's apron waved a hand in Cayenne's direction.

"Hey, Sprinkles!" Cay answered back in her traditional greeting to the baker behind the counter. "Happy Carnival Season! How you hanging on?"

"Phillippe is impossible, of course, and we can't keep up with the special orders, but c'est la vie, c'est la vie!" Yolanda threw her hands up in the air in mock defeat.

Another female voice also called out to Cayenne. "You must try out new creation! It is all the rage across the parish," A dark haired, dark eyed beautiful young woman popped up from below the counter, lugging a tray of pastries to the show case and displaying them proudly.

"Deirdre developed a line of single serving king cakes called 'cakelets'," Yolanda, a.k.a. Sprinkles, said proudly. "You can buy any number of them, and one will always have the baby. Brilliant! No fuss, no muss!"

Deirdre sported a huge grin. "Even Phillippe was impressed."

After firing the popular JeanMarc, Phillippe had finally gotten smart. He lobbied two of the best bakers in the French Quarter to come work for him. Deirdre Ramirez and Yolanda Logan had a reputation that had brought even more fame and glory to the venerable Slippery Slope. Their creations included (beside the personal king Cakes) an incredible selection of cheesecakes including pumpkin, Grand Marnier, espresso and a peanut butter-chocolate that was to die for. The addition of a small espresso counter and a delivery services was also one of their many ideas for improvement.

"How about six king cakelets and a slice of Swiss Miss cheesecake to go?" Cayenne ordered.

Deirdre nodded and smiled. "Good choice!" She said and started putting her original creations in a pink box, while Yolanda moved toward a refrigerated case toward the back wall to pull out a cheesecake for slicing.

Through the back swinging doors, a white streak burst from the kitchen, screaming, "Mademoiselle, this is the first I have seen you in here this season and I am sick that you might be eating your cakes from some other bakery, just sick!" Phillippe stormed out into the lobby and gave Cayenne a big kiss on the cheek, then turned around to look at his staff.

"They are marvelous, aren't they!" He turned and winked. "They create the real magic, these two!"

Yolanda handed the box and bag over the counter and accepted Cay's money in exchange. "There you go, my little cinnamon bun."

Phillippe turned and shooed her away with his hands. "Now go, Miss Detective. My people must get back to work! You bring nothing but trouble to us. Now go!"

***********************************

She was working on the insurance case, munching on one of Deirdre's cakelets, and going through Mambozo's carefully pecked notes when the phone rang. It was Rufus Thibodeaux from the New Orleans Police Department. He sounded madder than a tabby cat falling into the Mississippi River.

"Cayenne McKenzie Del Roi! What the hell is going on over there?" He roared into the phone.

"Well, good morning to you, too, sunshine!!" She snapped back.

"This is no social call, Cayenne. Frank Montana was found dead early this morning in the back stairwell of the building where he was renting some shit hole room."

"Dead!" Cayenne spoke so sharply that Mambozo came from the other room to investigate.

"More than dead. Probably murdered. A preliminary from DuBois down in Forensics says that falling down stairs could have not have produced the extent of head trauma that Mo had. And he also had a eight inch tear in his belly from a switchblade. Needless to say, we are investigating it as a homicide. His apartment was a mess. Someone was looking for something and tore the place apart."

Rufus barely took a breath. "What the hell is going on, Cay? I send you some business and the client ends up dead. I'm not paying that bill, Cayenne. Don't you have some satisfaction guaranteed clause? Well, I'm not satisfied!"

"No, I can tell that. In fact, you are hysterical." Cayenne shot back. "Calm down, Rufus. You can't be any good as a detective if you are blowing your lid."

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Cay could hear the big man breathing, trying to pull himself together. He finally spoke.

"You are right, boo. I apologize." He took another big breath and she could hear him struggling on the other end. "Mo was special to me, so I'm not taking this too well."

He took another breath. "I need to hear everything he said to you and I need to know everything you know about what happen to him since he left Angola."

"I can come down to the station this afternoon. Two o'clock okay?"

"Let's make it 5 o'clock over at McCloskey's."

"McCloskey's?" Cay was puzzled. Rufus was the ultimate, professional detective. McCloskey's was a tavern over in the Warehouse District. Rufus didn't conduct interviews in bars, unless the dead stiff was at the foot of the bar stool and he was politely letting sleazebag finishing his beer before hauling his ass off the jail where he wouldn't have another alcoholic beverage for the length of his sentence..

"Something tells me that this investigation is going on outside of official police business?" Cay ventured.

Silence. She could hear the loud voices and the ringing phones of the station room. Then a quiet voice as if to shield his words from other prying ears in the busy police station. "This one is personal."

Something in his voice said that she was not to ask anymore questions over the phone.

"I'll meet you there at tonight. But you're buying."

"I will buy you one beer as a professional courtesy but I ain't paying your detective bill until I'm satisfied and I'm not going to be satisfied until I know who killed Frank Montana and why. See you at five." He slammed down the phone.

Cayenne sat quietly at her desk for a long time after she hung up the phone. In her mind, she walked through every step of Montana's visits, the phone call, the secretness, the startled look on Eliah's face when she delivered the packet, the bad blood between the Magnolias and the Arrows, Dumont LaTourne's clipped irritating voice waxing pretentiously about stolen property. She wasn't sure what fit and what was coincidence.

She remembered Mo's rough, scarred hands and the flash to anger she saw in his eyes. Frank Montana was a tough man, convicted of the murder. He just got out of Angola and was hiding something. It could have been that he pissed off the wrong person at the wrong time. He lived in a rough part of town. Maybe it was just a robbery gone bad.

But she knew inside that it wasn't a simple robbery. Mo was protecting his daughter from someone.

"Why didn't Mo deliver that headdress himself?" She asked aloud the question that has been bothering her during this entire case. "Why didn't he let his daughter know he getting out of jail?"

"Maybe it bought him some time," Mambozo suggested, startling Cayenne out of her deep thinking. "Maybe he didn't want LaTourne to find out."

Cay nodded. It made sense. Mo was let out of jail earlier than he was sentenced for. Maybe he didn't want to tip off LaTourne. Cay had let that cat out of the bag when she talked to Raynaldo.

"I've got to learn more about that headdress." Cayenne said aloud. She reached for the phone and dialed the number of the one person she knew who would know about the history of a battered old Indian headdress.

"Stew du Roux. Can I help you?"

"Kristina, this is Cayenne."

"Hey, where ya't? Come on in for a bowl today. Stan just made a tasty prawn gumbo and I think the old man has outdone himself."

Kristina Guillaume and her husband Stan were the owners of the Stew Du Roux, a small café with a city reputation for genuine Creole cooking. Kristina also had reputation as an Southern historian. She had graduated from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge with Masters Degree focusing on Louisiana folklore, and was working with the Tulane Library of New Orleans History Special Collections series collecting oral histories of the old folks that lived around the city and in the Bayou backcountry.

"I'll take a big bowl of a raincheck, but I have to draw on your knowledge here. I need to tap into your expertise on Southern folklore. I'm on a murder case and I need some local history."

She briefly explained about the headdress, the Yellow Magnolias, and about LaTourne's interest.

"Anything ring a bell in your oral histories that you have done having to do with an Indian headdress or with Frank Montana and the Yellow Magnolias?"

"I have an interview scheduled with Sugar Babe Fontaine this weekend. Let me see if I can make it happen earlier. She's 102 years old and sharp as a tack, though she doesn't see very well any more. She is also my most reliable source of gossip over 50 years old. Maybe she's know something about a headdress that has a legend behind it"

Cay could hear the scratching of a pen. She could imagine Kristina cradling the phone to her ear with her shoulder and writing on the back of her order pad.

"The Yellow Magnolias, huh?" Kristina hesitated, her voice tinged with concern. "I must confess that I don't know much about them except for their reputation. They were tough. You didn't want to mess with the Yellow Mags. You could get yourself killed."

Coming January 21, 2005:
CHAPTER SIX: Indian Red

Copyright by Aileen M. McInnis, 2005. All Right Reserved.